Pale Kings and Princes

34

We had a plan, but it took a little time. Juanita went home, Caroline stayed home. Susan and Hawk and I went back to Boston, in Hawk’s car.

“Shoulda got me a cap,” Hawk said. “And practiced up saying yassah and opening the car door.”

“Leather puttees,” Susan said. “I think you’d be simply scrumptious in leather puttees.”

“Yasum,” Hawk said.

“Are you worried about Juanita?” Susan said to me.

“No,” I said.

“She’s unstable as hell,” Susan said. “She could go straight to Esteva.”

“Doesn’t matter. Our plan will work either way.”

“ ’Less of course old Cesar shoot us both in the head when we show up,” Hawk said.

“We should avoid that,” I said.

“Felice probably the gunny anyway,” Hawk said. “Cesar look more hands-on.”

“You care to share your plan,” Susan said. “It doesn’t sound fail-safe.”

“Still needs some polishing,” I said. “Do you think you can get Caroline a job in Boston?”

“I’m going to talk to a man I know at Widener Library. It would be good, I think, to get her out of Wheaton.”

“Maybe she care to try my famous African beef injection,” Hawk said.

“Oh, oink,” Susan said.

“Yasum,” Hawk said.

The snow had stopped and the night sky was clear and black with no moon but a lot of stars. Hawk dropped Susan and me off in front of my place on Marlborough Street about two hours before dawn.

“Be back at noon,” Hawk said. “With the van.”

“Rent it,” I said. “We got enough problems without driving a hot truck.”

Hawk smiled and drove away and Susan and I stumbled up to my apartment and fell on the bed and went to sleep without undressing.

Showered and shaved and smelling like an early lilac, I made two phone calls before I left Susan eating whole wheat biscuits and drinking coffee at my kitchen counter when Hawk showed up in a yellow rental van at noon.

“The sour-cherry jam,” I said, “is unusually good with those.”

“Take care of yourself,” she said.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

“I’ll be here,” she said.

“There is, you know, also a therapy featuring Irish beef...”

“I’m familiar,” Susan said, “with the treatment.”

“Perhaps when I get back...”

“Certainly,” Susan said.

I got the sour-cherry jam from the refrigerator and put it next to her on the counter. And leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. It was a long kiss and when it broke, Susan put her hand lightly on my cheek and we looked at one another for maybe twenty seconds. I smiled. She smiled and I went to the door. I stopped there for a moment and looked back at her. There was nothing to say. So I turned and went.

Despite all the sputtering and fluttering, the snow had amounted to very little. The sun was hard and clear.

“Blizzard coming,” Hawk said.

“You feel it in your old bones,” I said.

“No, the weather nitwit told me this morning on the tube. We in some kind of hiatus in the storm,” Hawk said. “Gonna be snowing like hell this afternoon.”

“Hiatus,” I said.

We drove to the Harbor Health Club and Henry Cimoli helped us load the two hundred keys of coke into the van.

“You guys having a big party?” Henry said.

“Business,” I said.

“That’s good. I was feeling left out, you know. Store the stuff in my gym and then don’t invite me to the party?”

“Give you a key for your trouble,” Hawk said.

“Not me,” Henry said. “Willie Pep fucked up my nose as bad as I want it fucked up.”

It was still bright when we left Henry and went onto the Mass. Pike from the tunnel on the Southeast Expressway. Hawk was wearing a fur coat over a black turtleneck sweater, leather jeans, and black cowboy boots. We drove due west on the turnpike. By Worcester the sky had begun to darken.

“Weather nitwit right,” Hawk said.

“If only he were brief,” I said.

Hawk nodded.

“You know Esteva scragged Rogers,” he said.

I nodded.

“And you know he dumped the kid too,” Hawk said.

“Yep.”

“But you can’t prove it without making the women testify, and maybe not even then.”

“Be tough on Caroline,” I said. “Be even worse on Juanita.”

“Juanita a twerp,” Hawk said.

“Good point,” I said.

“So you gonna set them up in a situation where you know they going to try and kill you, so you and me can kill them.”

“They don’t have to try, in which case we nail them attempting to purchase cocaine.”

“If Lundquist goes along.”

“He’ll be okay,” I said.

“You think Esteva going to let you get away with selling him back his own blow?” Hawk said.

“No,” I said.

“So you figure he gonna try and we gonna out-quick him.”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to drive to his place and out-quick him when he’s not looking?”

“Yes, but I can’t.”

“I know you can’t. What I don’t know,” Hawk said, “is why you can’t.”

“Remember those guys in Maine got busted because they were shooting bears in cages?” I said.

“Didn’t get bit by the bear,” Hawk said.

“Would you do it?” I said.

“No,” Hawk said.

I didn’t say anything.

“The analogy sucks,” Hawk said.

Ahead of us the sky was very dark and I could see the line where the snow had started to fall again. We were driving straight into it.

“Sure,” I said.