CHAPTER 38


Hawk and I were sitting in my office in the late afternoon on a day that made you feel eternal. All the trees on the Common were budded. Early flowers bloomed in the Public Gardens, and the college kids littered the embankment along Storrow Drive, soaking up the rays behind BU.

We’d been asking around after Major for a couple of weeks now. And the more we asked where he was, the more no one knew.

“He’ll show up,” Hawk said.

“He’s maybe killed three people,” I said. “Be good if we found him rather than the other way around.”

“We’ll hear from him,” Hawk said. “He’s going to have to know.”

“Know what you’ll do?”

“What I’ll do, and what he’ll do when I do it,” Hawk said.

“You’ve given him a lot of slack,” I said. “I’ve seen you be quite abrupt with people who were a lot less annoying than Major is.”

“Kind of want to see what he’ll do too,” Hawk said.

“I sort of guessed that you might,” I said.

“We’ll hear from him,” Hawk said.

And we did.

The phone rang just after six, when the sun had pretty well departed, but it was still bright daylight.

“Got a message for Hawk,” the voice said. It was Major.

“Sure,” I said. “He’s here.” I clicked onto speakerphone.

Hawk said, “Go ahead.”

“This Hawk?” Major said.

“Un huh.”

“You know who this is?”

“Un huh.”

“You can’t prove I done those people,” Major said, “can you?”

“You got something to say, say it.”

“Maybe I didn’t do them.”

“Un huh.”

“That all you say?”

Hawk made no response at all.

“You been looking for me,” Major said.

“Un huh.”

“You can’t find me.”

“Yet,” Hawk said.

“You never find me ‘less I want you to.”

Again Hawk was silent.

“You find me, you can’t do nothing. You got no evidence.”

“I know you did it,” Hawk said.

“You think I done it.”

Hawk was silent.

“So what you do, you find me?” Hawk didn’t say anything. “What you think you do?” More silence.

“Can’t do shit, man.”

“Un huh.”

The speaker buzzed softly in the silence. Hawk was leaning his hips against the edge of my desk, arms folded. He looked like he might be waiting for a bus.

“You still there?” Major said.

“Sure.”

“Want to meet me?”

“Sure.”

“You know the stadium in the Fenway? By Park Drive?” Major said.

“Un huh.”

“Be there, five A.M.”

“Tomorrow,” Hawk said.

Again the scratchy silence lingered on the speakerphone, and then Major hung up. I hit the speakerphone button and broke the connection. Hawk looked over at me and grinned.

“Think he’s alone?” I said.

“No. They won’t leave him.”

“Even when Tony Marcus says to?”

“We crate Major and they’ll go,” Hawk said. “But they won’t leave him there.”

“And they will probably bother us while we’re trying to crate him,” I said.

“Only twenty of them,” Hawk said.

“Against you and me?” I said. “I like our odds.”

Hawk shrugged.

We were quiet for a while, listening to the traffic sound wisp in through the window.

“We don’t know he did it,” I said.

“You hear him say he didn’t?” Hawk said.

“Haven’t heard him say he did,” I said. “Exactly.”

“How you feel ‘bout the Easter bunny?” Hawk said.

“Maybe Major’s just profiling,” I said. “Makes him feel important, being a suspect.”

“We see him tomorrow,” Hawk said. “We ask him.”

Загрузка...