20
Hawk was back in less than an hour. When he came in he shook his head. “Gone?” I said. “
Uh huh.“
“Clues?” Hawk said, “Clues?”
“You know,” I said, “like an airplane schedule with a flight to Beirut underlined. A hotel confirmation slip from the Paris Hilton. Some tourist brochures from Orange County, California. A tinkling piano in the next apartment. Clues.”
“No clues, man.”
“Anyone see them leave?”
“Nope.”
“So the only thing we know for sure is he isn’t in his place on Prinsengracht, and he isn’t here in this room.”
“He wasn’t when I looked. She tell you anything?”
“Everything she knows.”
“Maybe you believe that, babe. I don’t.”
“We’ve been trying. You want some more wine? I ordered some while you were gone.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” I poured some for Hawk and some for Kathie. “Okay, kid,” I said to Kathie. “He’s gone and all we’ve got is you. Where might he be?”
“He could be anywhere,” she said. Her face was a little flushed. She’d had a lot of wine. “He can go anywhere in the world.”
“Phony passport?”
“Yes. I don’t know how many. Many.” Hawk had taken off his coat and hung the shotgun rig from the corner of a chair. He was leaning far back with his Frye boots crossed on the bureau and the glass of red wine balanced on his chest. His eyes almost closed. “Where would the places be that he wouldn’t go?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I going too fast for you, sugar? Watch my lips close. Where would he not go?” Kathie drank some wine. She looked at Hawk the way sparrows are supposed to look at tree snakes. It was a look of fearful fascination. “I don’t know.”
“She don’t know,” Hawk said to me. “You do take up with some winners, babe.”
“What the hell are you going to do, Hawk, keep eliminating the places he wouldn’t go until there’s only one left?”
“You got a better idea, babe?”
“No. Where would he be least likely to go, Kathie?”
“I cannot say.”
“Think a little. Would he go to Russia?”
“Oh no.”
“Red China?”
“No, no. No Communist country.” Hawk made a gesture of triumph with his open palms turned up. “See, babe, eliminate half the world just like that.
“Swell,” I said. “This sounds like an old Abbott and Costello routine.”
Hawk said, “You know a better game?”
Kathie said, “Have they had the Olympics yet?” Hawk and I looked at her. “The Olympic games?”
“Yes.”
“They’re on now.”
“Last year he sent away for tickets to the Olympic games. Where are they being held?”
Hawk and I said, “In Montreal,” at the same time.
Kathie drank some wine and made a small giggle and said, “Well, that’s probably where he went, then.”
I said, “Why in hell didn’t you tell us?”
“I didn’t think of it. I don’t know about sports. I didn’t even know when they were being held or where. I just know Paul had tickets for them.”
Hawk said, “It’s pretty much on the way home anyway, man.”
“There’s a restaurant in Montreal called Bacco’s that you’re going to like,” I said.
“What we do with fancy pants here?” Hawk said.
“Please don’t be dirty.”
The white linen dress was very simple, square-necked and straight-lined. She had a thick silver chain around her neck and white sling high-heeled shoes with no stockings. Her wrists and ankles were red and marked from the ropes. Her mouth was red and her eyes were puffy and red. Her hair was matted and tangled from her long struggle on the bed.
“I don’t know,” I said, “she’s all we have.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said. Her voice was small when she said it. Quite different from the one she’d used when she said she’d kill us when she could. Didn’t mean she’d changed her mind. But it didn’t mean she hadn’t. I figured between us we could keep her from killing us.
“She change sides awful fast,” Hawk said.
“They got changed on her,” I said. “We’ll take her. She may be helpful.”
“She may stick something in us when we ain’t looking too.”
“One of us will always look,” I said. “She knows this Zachary. We don’t. If he’s in on this he might be there. Maybe others. She’s the only thing connected to Paul we have. We’ll keep her.”
Hawk shrugged and drank some wine.
“In the morning we’ll check out and get the first flight we can to Montreal.”
“What about the two stiffs?”
“We’ll ditch them in the morning.”
“Hope they don’t start to stink before then.”
“We can’t ditch them before that. The cops will be all over the place. We’ll never get out of here. What time is it?”
“It’s three-thirty.”
“About nine-thirty in Boston. Too late to call Jason Carroll. I only got his office number anyway. ”
“Who Jason Carroll?”
“Dixon’s lawyer, He’s sort of in charge of this thing. I’ll feel better when I’ve talked with Dixon about our plans.”
“Maybe your wallet feel better too.”
“No, I think this one will be on me. But Dixon’s got a right to know what’s going on.”
“And I got a right to sleep. Who she sleep with?”
“I’ll put a mattress off the floor and she can sleep on the box spring.”
“She look disappointed. I think she had another plan.”
Kathie said, “May I take a bath?”
I said, “Sure.”
I dragged the mattress off the bed closest to the door, and stretched it out across the doorway. Kathie went into the bathroom and closed the door. The lock snicked into place. I could hear the water running in the tub.
Hawk stripped to his shorts and got into bed. He took the shotgun under the covers with him. I lay down on the mattress with my pants still on. I put my gun under the pillow. It made a lump, but not as big a lump as it would make in my body if Kathie got it in the night. The lights were out and just a thin line of light came under the bathroom door. As I lay in the dark I began to smell, only vaguely so far, a smell I’d smelled before. It was the smell of bodies that had been dead too long. It would have been a lot worse without air conditioning. It wouldn’t get better before morning.
Tired as I was, I didn’t sleep until Kathie came out of the bathroom and stepped across me and went to bed on the box spring of the near bed.