CHAPTER 12


As soon as we pulled into the Double Deuce quadrangle the Reverend Tillis and a woman with short gray-streaked hair came out of the building. Tillis had on a dashiki over his suit today. The woman wore faded pink jeans and a Patriots sweatshirt. Hawk got out of the car as they approached. Neither of them looked at me.

“This is Mrs. Brown,” Tillis said. “She has a complaint about the Hobarts.”

Hawk smiled at her and nodded his head once. “Go ahead,” Tillis said to her.

“They been messing with my boy,” the woman said. “He going to school and they take his books away from him and they take his lunch money. I saved out that lunch money and they took it. And one of them push him down and tell him he better get some protection for himself.”

The woman put both hands on her hips as she talked and her face was raised at Hawk as if she were expecting him to challenge her and she was ready to fight back.

“Where’s your son?” Hawk said.

She shook her head and looked down. “Boy’s afraid to come,” Tillis said. Hawk nodded.

“Which one pushed him down?”

The woman raised her head defiantly. “My boy won’t say.”

“You know where I can find them?” Hawk said.

“They hanging on the corner, Hobart and McCrory,” she said. “That where they be hassling my boy.”

Hawk nodded again. I got out of the car on Hawk’s side. Jackie got out the other.

“What you planning on?” Tillis said to Hawk.

“I tell you how to write sermons?” Hawk said.

“I represent these people,” Tillis said. “I got a right to ask.”

“Sure,” Hawk said. “You know Jackie, I guess.”

Tillis nodded and put out his hand. “Jackie. Working on that show?”

“Tagging along,” she said.

“Figure this is for us?” I said.

“See what we do,” Hawk said. “Otherwise no point to it. It ain’t exactly the crime of the century.”

“Mrs. Brown, I think you and I should allow Hawk to deal with this,” Reverend Tillis said, making it sound regretful. Hawk grinned to himself.

There was no one in sight as we walked across the project. Jackie stayed with us. I looked at Hawk. He made no sign. It was warm for April. Nothing moved. The sun shone down. No wind stirred. Jackie took a small tape recorder out of her shoulder bag.

Ahead of us was a loud radio. The sound of it came from a van, parked at the corner. A couple kids were sitting in the van with the doors open. Major leaned against a lamppost. The big kid that Hawk had nailed last time was standing near him. The others were fanned out around. There were eighteen of them. I didn’t see any weapons. The music abruptly shut off. The sound of Jackie’s heels was suddenly loud on the hot top.

Major smiled at us as we stopped in front of him. I heard Jackie’s tape recorder click on.

“What’s you got the wiggle for, Fro?” Major said. “She for backup?”

The kids fanned out around him laughed.

“Which one of you hassled the Brown kid?” Hawk said.

“We all brown kids here, Fro,” Major said. Again laughter from the gang.

Hawk waited. Still no sign of weapons. I was betting on the van. It had a pair of doors on the side that open out. One of them was open maybe six inches. It would come from there. I wasn’t wearing a jacket. The gun on my hip was apparent. It didn’t matter. They all knew I had one, anyway. Hawk’s gun was still out of sight under a black silk windbreaker he wore unzipped. That didn’t matter either, they knew he had one too.

“What you going to do, Fro, you find the hobo that hassed him?” Major said.

“One way to find out,” Hawk said.

Major turned and grinned at the audience. Then he looked at the big kid next to him. “John Porter, you do that?”

John Porter said “Ya,” which was probably half the things John Porter could say. From his small dark eyes no gleam of intelligence shone.

“There be your man, Fro,” Major said. “Lass time you mace him, he say you sucker him. He ain’t ready, he say.”

Hawk grinned. “That right, John Porter?”

The cork was going to pop. There was no way that it wouldn’t. Without moving my head I kept a peripheral fix on the van door.

John Porter said, “Ya.”

“You ready now, John Porter?” Hawk said.

John Porter obviously was ready now. His knees were flexed, his shoulders hunched up a little. He had his chin tucked in behind his left shoulder. There was some scar tissue around his right eye. There was the scar along his jawline, and his nose looked as if it had thickened. Maybe boxed a little. Probably a lot of fights in prison.

“Care to even things up for the sucker punch?” Hawk said.

“John Porter say he gon whang yo ass, Fro,” Major said. “First chance he get.”

The laughter still skittered around the edges of everything Major said. But his voice was tauter now than it had been.

“Right, John Porter?” Major said.

John Porter nodded. His eyes reminded me of the eyes of a Cape buffalo I’d seen once in the San Diego Zoo. He kept his stare on Hawk. It was what the gang kids called mad-dogging. Hawk’s grin got wider and friendlier.

“Well, John Porter,” Hawk said, friendly as a Bible salesman. “You right ‘bout that sucker punch. And being as how you a brother and all, I’ll let you sucker me. Go on ahead and lay one upside my head, and that way we start out even, should anything, ah, develop.”

John Porter looked at Major.

“Go on, John Porter, do what the man say. Put a charge on his head, Homes.”

John Porter was giving this some thought, which was clearly hard for him. Was there some sort of trickery here?

“Come on, John Porter,” Major said. “Man, you can’t fickle on me now. You tol me you going to crate this Thompson first chance. You tol me that, Homes.” In everything Major said there was derision.

John Porter put out a decent overhand left at Hawk, which missed. Hawk didn’t seem to do anything, but the punch missed his chin by a quarter of an inch. John Porter had done some boxing. He shuffled in behind the left with a right cross, which also missed by a quarter of an inch. John Porter began to lose form. He lunged and Hawk stepped aside and John Porter had to scramble to keep his balance.

“See, the thing is,” Hawk said, “you’re in over your head, John Porter. You don’t know what you are dealing with here.”

John Porter rushed at Hawk this time, and Hawk moved effortlessly out of the way. John Porter was starting to puff. He wasn’t quite chasing Hawk yet. He had enough ring savvy left to know that you could get your clock cleaned by a Boy Scout if you started chasing him incautiously. But chasing Hawk cautiously wasn’t working. John Porter had been trained, probably in some jailhouse boxing program, in the way to fight with his fists. And it wasn’t working. It had probably nearly always worked. He was 6’2“ and probably weighed 240, and all of it muscle. He might not have lost a fight since the fourth grade. Maybe never. But he was losing this one and the guy wasn’t even fighting. John Porter didn’t get it. He stopped, his hands still up, puffing a little, and squinted at Hawk.

“What you doing?” he said.

Major stepped behind John Porter and kicked him in the butt.

“You fry him, John Porter, and you do it now,” Major said.

There was no derision in Major’s voice.

“He can’t,” Hawk said, not unkindly.

John Porter made a sudden sweep at Hawk with his right hand and missed. The side door of the van slid an inch and I jumped at it and rammed it shut with my shoulder on someone’s hand, someone yelled in pain, something clattered on the street. I kept my back against the door and came up with the Browning and leveled it sort of inclusively at the group. Hawk had a left handful of John Porter’s hair. He held John Porter’s head down in front of him, and with his right hand, pressed the muzzle of a Sig Sauer automatic into John Porter’s left ear. Jackie had dropped flat to the pavement and was trying with her left hand to smooth her skirt down over her backside, while her right hand pushed the tape recorder as far forward toward the action as she could.

Somewhere on the other side of McCrory Street a couple of birds chirped. Inside the truck someone was grunting with pain. I could feel him struggle to get his arm out of the door. A couple of gang members were frozen in midreach toward inside pockets or under jackets.

“Now this time,” Hawk was saying, “we all going to walk away from this.”

No one moved. Major stood with no expression on his face, as if he were watching an event that didn’t interest him.

“Next time some of you will be gone for good,” Hawk said. “Spenser, bring him out of the truck.”

I kept my eyes on the gang and slid my back off the door. It swung open and a small quick-looking kid no more than fourteen, in a black Adidas sweatsuit, came out clutching his right wrist against him. In the gutter by the curb, below the open door, was an automatic pistol. I picked it up and stuck it in my belt.

“You all walk away from here, now,” Hawk said. No one moved.

“Do what I say,” Hawk said. There was no anger in his voice. Hawk pursed his lips as he looked at the gang members standing stolidly in place. Behind him Jackie was on her feet again, her tape recorder still running, some sand clinging to the front of her dress.

Hawk smiled suddenly. “Sure,” he said.

He looked at me.

“They won’t leave without him,” Hawk said.

I nodded. Hawk released his grip on John Porter’s hair and Porter straightened. He walked away from Hawk with his head down.

“You fucked yourself,” Major said without any particular emotion. “You dead, motherfucker.”

“Not likely,” Hawk said.

Major stood silently for a moment, looking at Hawk, then he looked at me.

“Enjoy yourself, slut,” he said to Jackie. And his face broke into a wide smile.

Then he turned and nodded at the gang. They followed him, and in a moment they were gone and all there was, was the two birds across the street, chirping.

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