CHAPTER 36


Tony Marcus agreed to meet us at a muffin shop on the arcade in South Station.

“Tony like muffins?” I said.

“Tony likes open public places,” Hawk said.

“Makes sense,” I said. “Get trapped in a place like Locke-Ober, you could get umbrella’d to death.”

South Station was new, almost. They’d jacked up the old favade and slid a new station in behind it. Where once pigeons had flown about in the semidarkness, and winos had slept fragrantly on the benches, there were now muffin shops and lots of light and a model train set. What had once been the dank remnant of the old railroad days was now as slick and cheery as the food circus in a shopping mall.

The muffin shop was there, to the right, past the frozen lo-fat yogurt stand. Tony Marcus was there at a cute little iron filigree table, alone. At the next table was his bodyguard, a stolid black man about the size of Nairobi. The bodyguard’s name was Billy. Tony was a middle-sized black guy, a little soft, with a careful moustache. I always thought he looked like Billy Eckstine, but Hawk never saw it. We stopped at the counter. I bought two coffees, gave one to Hawk, and went to Tony’s table.

Tony nodded very slightly when we arrived. Billy looked at us as if we were dust motes. Billy’s eyes were very small. He looked like a Cape buffalo. I shot at him with a forefinger and thumb.

“Hey, Billy,” I said. “Every time I see you you get more winsome.”

Billy gazed at me without expression. Tony said, “You want a muffin?” Hawk and I both shook our heads. “Good muffins,” Tony said. “Praline chocolate chip are excellent.”

Hawk said, “Jesus Christ.”

Tony had two on a paper plate in front of him. He picked one up and took a bite out of it, the way you’d eat an apple.

“So what you need?” he said around the mouthful of muffin.

“Gang of kids running drugs out of a housing project at Twenty-two Hobart Street,” I said. Tony nodded and chewed on his muffin. “Couple people been killed,” I said.

Tony shook his head. “Fucking younger generation,” he said.

“Going to hell in a handbasket.” I said. “Tenants at Double Deuce hired Hawk and me to bring order out of chaos there…”

Marcus looked at his bodyguard. “You hear how he talks, Billy? `Order out of chaos.‘ Ain’t that something?”

“And the most successful local television show in the country is doing a five-part investigative series on the whole deal.”

It got Tony’s attention. “What television show?”

“Marge Eagen, Live,” I said.

“The blonde broad with the big tits?”

I smiled. Hawk smiled.

“What do you mean, an investigation?” Tony said.

“What’s wrong in the ghetto,” Hawk said. “Who’s selling drugs, how to save kids from the gangs, how to make black folks just like white folks.”

Marcus was silent for the time it took him to eat the rest of his second muffin.

When he finished he said, “You in on that?”

“Sorta parallel,” I said.

Tony pursed his lips slightly and nodded, and kept nodding, as if he’d forgotten he was doing it. He picked up his coffee cup and discovered it was empty. Billy got him another one. Tony stirred three spoonfuls of sugar carefully into the coffee and laid his spoon down and took a sip. Then he looked at me.

“So?” he said.

“The investigation is centered on the project,” I said. “And”-I looked at Billy-“while I don’t wish to seem immodest here, Bill, the investigation, so called, will go where we direct it.”

Billy continued to conceal his amusement. “So?” Marcus said.

“Any drugs moving in the ghetto are yours,” I said.

Marcus rolled back in his chair and widened his eyes. He spread his hands.

“Me?” he said.

“And if there is a thorough investigation of the drugs trade in and around Double Deuce, then you are going to be more famous than Oliver North.”

“Unless?” Tony said.

“Voilб,” I said.

Tony said, “Don’t fuck around, Spenser. You want something, say what.”

“Move the operation,” I said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere but Double Deuce.”

“Hawk?” Marcus said.

Hawk nodded.

“Say I could do that? Say I could persuade them to go someplace else?”

“Then you would be as famous as John Marsh.”

“Who the fuck is John Marsh?” Tony said.

“My point exactly,” I said.

Behind us a train came in, an hour and a half late, from Washington, and people straggled wearily through the bright station.

“Okay,” Marcus said.

“Good,” I said. “One thing, though.”

Marcus waited.

“Kid named Major Johnson,” I said. “He’s going to have to go down.”

“Why?”

“Killed three children,” I said.

Marcus shrugged.

“Lots more where he came from,” Marcus said.

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