Rough Weather

54

I was back in Boston, in my office, discussing with Hawk the official weekday start of the cocktail hour.

“You don’t have to wait for no damn time,” Hawk said. “You want a drink, have a drink.”

“At ten in the morning?” I said.

“That when you want it, yes.”

“How uncivilized,” I said.

“I is of African heritage,” Hawk said. “’Course I uncivilized.”

“True, while I am a descendant of Irish kings.”

“Which be why you wanting a drink at ten in the morning,” Hawk said.

“Not always,” I said.

“So what we talking about?” Hawk said.

“It’s four-thirty,” I said. “Half-hour to go.”

Hawk shook his head.

“Weird,” Hawk said.

“How about yesterday?” I said. “You wouldn’t respond to a good-looking college girl who came on to you.”

“Too young,” Hawk said.

“She’s a full-grown woman, almost twenty, anatomically correct. What’s too young.”

“She talked funny,” Hawk said. “You know, like they all do. High voice, nasal, talk very fast. Grating.”

“Well, yeah. But how much talking were you expecting?”

“She say dinner,” Hawk said. “That be chitchat. She say want me to come to your room now? Be different.”

“Man,” I said. “I didn’t know you had limits.”

“Like to have sex with women who was at least born when John Carlos and Tommie Smith was in Mexico,” Hawk said.

“Wow,” I said. “And here I am thinking you required only a pulse.”

Hawk grinned.

“Also depends what else I got on my plate at the time,” he said.

“Glad it’s going well for you,” I said.

“Yowzah,” Hawk said, with the accent on the zah.

My phone rang. It was Bradshaw.

“I gotta see you,” he said. “Now.”

“Where are you?” I said.

“Wagner Motel on One twenty-eight in Burlington,” he said. “Across from the mall.”

“What do you need?”

“I need help,” he said. “I’m in danger. You need to come right now.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I’m in room two-oh-three, under the name Bailey.”

“Here we come,” I said.

“We?”

“My associate Hawk will be with me. Big man, black, don’t panic if you see him.”

“Nobody else,” he said. “No one knows I’m here.”

“Mum’s the word,” I said.

“Hurry up,” he said. “Just get here quick.”

I hung up. And looked at Hawk.

“Gotta go rescue Bradshaw,” I said.

“From what?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “He said to hurry.”

“There go the cocktail hour,” Hawk said.

“We can stop in a packy,” I said. “Maybe buy a couple of nips for the car.”

“Pathetic,” Hawk said.

“I know,” I said. “I thought so when I said it.”