What Comes Around

CHAPTER 15

“Hullo, Ambrose,” Hawke said, answering his mobile a few moments later.

“Well, since it appears to be you on the phone, one can only deduce that you survived the encounter.”

“Excellent deduction, Constable. One of your best.”

“Do you require any assistance, by chance?”

“That would be nice. Where are you? Enjoying a quiet pipe by the fireside somewhere?”

“Hardly. I’m standing about twenty feet outside what used to be your front door, waiting in the pouring rain for all the shooting to die down in there.”

“Ah, you’re here, then. Well. Do come in, won’t you? Doors open, as you can see,” Hawke said. “Meet me at the Monkey Bar, will you? We would seem to owe ourselves a libation, some sort of restorative, I suppose. What’s your pleasure, old warrior?”

“A gin and bitters should do nicely. Boodles, if you have it.”

“I certainly do.”

“What about the deceased?”

“Oh, I don’t think he’ll be having anything this evening. He’s moved on.”

“Ah. Well, good work, Alex. On my way inside now. I’ll see you at the bar.”

“Cheerio, then.”

“Cheerio.”

Hawke looked down at the corpse at his feet. Brass cartridges glittered everywhere on the tile floor. He used one bare foot to roll the man over onto his back, saw one dead black eye staring blindly back at him.

“I should have killed you that night in Tangiers, Payne,” he said. “I could have done with one less funeral in Maine, you miserable bastard.”.

He found Ambrose standing behind the bar, his cold pipe jammed into one corner of his mouth, pouring a healthy dollop of rum into Hawke’s favorite tumbler. Congreve smiled as he poured. “The ambrosial nectar of the gods,” he said.

“Indeed.”

“What shall we drink to?” Congreve asked, raising his glass of gin.

“Let’s see,” Hawke mused.

He plucked one of the cigarettes from a silver stirrup cup on the bar, lit up, and thought about it a second before speaking.

“Absent friends and dead enemies?” Hawke said.

And that was the end of it.