Rough Weather

30

We were walking up the mall in the center of Commonwealth Ave toward Kenmore.

“You see them?” Hawk said.

“Black Caddie?” I said. “Double-parked just past Dartmouth Street. Outbound side?”

“And?” Hawk said.

“Gray Ford double-parked just this side of Exeter, in-bound side?”

“Whaddya think,” Hawk said.

“Could be nothing,” I said.

“Or it could be something,” Hawk said.

“We probably need to decide,” I said, “before we get between them.”

“Be my guess,” Hawk said.

The cross streets were alphabetical: Arlington, Berkeley, and so on. We were at the corner of Clarendon.

“If they don’t plan to shoot us, we look foolish taking evasive action.”

“True,” Hawk said.

“But,” I said. “Say they do want to shoot us.”

“We don’t want to encourage that,” Hawk said.

“You know my motto,” I said. “Better to take needless evasive action, at the risk of looking foolish, than not to, and look dead.”

“That your motto?”

“I’m having it printed on my business cards,” I said.

“We can turn the wrong way onto Dartmouth, and probably shake them in the alleys,” Hawk said.

“But then we won’t know who they were,” I said. “Or if they were anybody.”

“If they anybody, we know where they come from,” Hawk said.

We had stopped walking and sat on a bench in the mall like a couple of tourists resting their feet. Neither of the cars moved.

“If they’re Rugar,” I said. “They won’t care about you. They’ll be after me.”

“You right,” Hawk said. “Maybe I just mosey on home.”

“Maybe you just mosey on up Clarendon to the alley, and you run lickety-split up the alley and back down Exeter.”

“Lickety-split,” Hawk said.

“And I’ll stroll languidly along toward Dartmouth, and if we time it right…”

“We’ll time it right,” Hawk said.

I nodded.

“We can end up with you behind the Exeter Street guys on that side. And I’m behind the Dartmouth Street guys on this side.”

“They expecting to catch us between them,” Hawk said, “and we catching them between us.”

“Rugar won’t be one of them,” I said. “Even if he sent them.”

“Why not?”

“He would do it alone,” I said.

Hawk nodded.

“One question,” Hawk said. “We get them surrounded, then what?”

“Then we’ll see,” I said.

“You just a planning fool,” Hawk said.