When they let Ellis out, Hawk picked him up and brought him to my office. I had just finished endorsing the check from Cone, Oakes, and was slipping it into the deposit envelope when they came in.
“What are you going to do now?” I said to Ellis.
He was as tight and watchful and arrogant as he had been before, but now that he was out he was more talkative.
“You been in the place four years, what you do?”
“Whatever it was would involve a woman,” I said.
“You got that right,” he said.
“Try to make it voluntary,” I said.
“You got no call talking to me that way,” Alves said. “Ah’m an innocent man.”
“You didn’t do Melissa Henderson,” I said. “That’s not the same as being innocent.”
“You get me in here to talk shit?” Alves said.
“You need some money?” I said.
“’Course I need money,” he said. “You think being inside a high-paying fucking job?”
I took two hundred dollars out of my wallet and gave it to him. It left me with seven, until I deposited the check, but the bank was close by. Ellis took the money and counted it and folded it over and slipped it into the pocket of his pale blue sweat pants.
“Ah’m supposed to say thank you?”
“We know you an asshole, Ellis,” Hawk said. “You don’t have to keep proving it every time you open your mouth.”
“I just figure Whitey owe me something, and he making a down payment,” Alves said.
Hawk looked at me and grinned. “Way to go, Whitey.”
I nodded modestly.
“You got a job anywhere?” I said.
“No reason for you to be asking me about no job,” Alves said. “It got nothing to do with you.”
“Know a guy runs a trucking service out of Mattapan,” I said.
“Don’t need no help from you,” Alves said.
“You did yesterday,” Hawk said.
“I’m supposed to be grateful?” Alves said. “I’m in for four years on something I didn’t do, that some honky rich kid done, and they let me out and ah’m supposed to say thank you?”
“Actually it was a nigger rich kid,” Hawk said. “And they didn’t let you out, Spenser got you out.”
“And he got paid for it too, didn’t he? Who gonna pay me for my four years?”
“Actually,” I said, “two hundred is probably about what four years of your time is worth. You want that trucker job give me a call.”
“Don’t you be sitting ’round waiting,” Alves said.
He turned toward the door and hesitated fractionally while he looked at Hawk, saw no objection, and walked out of my office.
“Glad he didn’t get all sicky sweet with gratitude,” Hawk said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s always so embarrassing.”
“He be back inside in six months,” Hawk said.
“I hope so,” I said.
We were quiet for a moment.
“I probably wouldn’t have made it back without you,” I said to Hawk.
“Probably not,” Hawk said.
I picked up the deposit envelope and looked at it.
“What do you think he’ll do with the two hundred?” I said.
“Depends,” Hawk said. “If he don’t have a gun, he’ll buy one. If he does, he’ll spend it on a bottle of booze and a woman.”
“Nice to know he’s got priorities,” I said.
“Good to know what they are, too,” Hawk said.
I nodded and looked at the deposit envelope again. It was a lot of money.
“I might have made it back alone,” I said.
Hawk smiled his charming heartless smile.
“Maybe,” he said.