Rough Weather

49

Hawk and I were in Providence in the offices of Absolute Security, talking to Artie Fonseca.

“Security logs?” Fonseca said.

“You saying you didn’t keep any?”

“Well, sure,” he said, “we kept them. But they are for our internal use only. I couldn’t release them to you without explicit instructions from Mrs. Bradshaw.”

“How many of your people got killed,” I said, “when the wedding thing went down?”

“Four,” Fonseca said. “You know that.”

“And what did you say to me about that?”

“Sure, I know. I said anything I could do to help… but the cops already got the whole wedding list. What good will the daily logs do you, going back five years?”

“I want to see if there’s a shrink that was treating Adelaide.”

“The daughter? Why?”

“If there is one,” I said, “I’d like to talk to him.”

“Man,” Fonseca said. “I can’t…”

I looked at Hawk.

“Four of his people,” I said to Hawk. “Killed without a chance. Didn’t even get the holsters unsnapped.”

“Man don’t seem to care,” Hawk said.

“There’s a confidentiality clause in the contract,” Fonseca said. “I violate it, we lose the account. I gotta think of the guys working for me now. They’d be out of work.”

“No,” I said. “You violate it, and they find out, you might lose the account.”

“And you won’t tell them.”

“No.”

“How about him?” Fonseca said, nodding at Hawk.

“Hawk? He doesn’t tell anybody anything,” I said. “Even when he should.”

Hawk smiled happily.

“Jesus, Spenser,” Fonseca said. “You got me in a bind.”

“Simple business,” I said. “Either you let somebody gun down four of your people like vermin and walk away from it, or you do what you can to even it up.”

Fonseca stood and walked across the room. He got a bottle of water out of a small refrigerator.

“You guys want any water?” he said.

Hawk and I shook our heads. Fonseca walked back to his desk and sat down. He unscrewed the top on the bottle of water and drank some.

“Gotta stay hydrated,” he said.

I waited. Hawk waited. Fonseca looked at the water bottle. Then he looked out his window at the Providence River. Then he looked back at me.

“Okay,” he said, “we got the logs computerized. You can read them off the screen. You know how to use a computer?”

“Sort of,” I said.

Fonseca sat down, clacked around with his computer for a moment, and then nodded at the screen.

“You know how to scroll through?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

Fonseca stood and gestured to his chair.

“Be my guest,” he said.