CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR


I got through with the cops about 3:30 in the morning. During which time I drank too much coffee. The license plate on the Chrysler had been stolen earlier in the week from a 1986 Chevette, which belonged to an elderly woman in Amesbury. None of the cops recognized the kid I’d killed. The ME promised fingerprints by tomorrow night. Belson told me they’d probably need to talk to me some more, but there was nothing wrong with my story, and he couldn’t see any charges being brought. I agreed with him.

At 4:15 I was lying on my back in my bed, exhausted and wide awake. I had killed people before, and didn’t like it. I’d also had too much coffee. The way the kid’s face had looked with the pleasant summer rain falling on it made me think of Candy Sloan’s face, lying in the rain among the oil derricks, a long time ago. Susan was right. I had never quite put that away.

It was daylight before I got to sleep. I slept and woke up and slept and woke up until 2:30 in the afternoon, when I dragged out of bed, logy with daytime sleep. I took a shower and put on my pants and went to the kitchen, acidic still with too much really bad coffee. I made myself a fruit smoothie with frozen strawberries and a nectarine. I poured the smoothie into a tall glass and took it with me to the living room and sat in a chair by the window and looked out at Marlborough Street and drank some.

The soft rain of the night before had turned harder. It was dark for midafternoon and everything was gleaming wet. Cars were clean. The leaves on the trees were fat and shiny with rain. Good-looking women, of which the Back Bay was full, moved past now and then, alone, or walking dogs in doggie sweaters, or pushing baby strollers protected by transparent rainproof draping. The women often had bright rain gear on, looking like points of Impressionist paint in the dark wet cityscape. My apartment was quiet. I was quiet. The rain was steady and hard but not noisy, coming straight down, not rattling on the window. I sipped my smoothie. My doorbell rang.

I picked up my gun off the kitchen counter and went and buzzed the downstairs door open. And went and looked through the peephole, after a moment. The elevator door opened and Hawk stepped out. I opened the door and he came in, wearing a white raincoat and a panama hat with a big brim. And carrying a paper bag. I knew he saw the gun. He saw everything. But he had no reaction.

“Raspberry turnovers,” he said.

I closed the door. He held out the bag, and I took a turnover. I ate it while I made coffee and Hawk hung up his coat and hat.

“Been following your man Conroy,” Hawk said.

He stirred some sugar into his coffee.

“He make you?”

“Me?” Hawk said. “Vinnie?”

“I withdraw the question,” I said.

Hawk took a turnover from the bag and ate some. I sipped some coffee. It didn’t feel so bad. It sat sort of comfortably on top of the smoothie.

“We picked him up where you left him,” Hawk said.

I nodded.

“I saw you,” I said.

“‘Cause you looking for us.”

“Sure.”

“So me and Vinnie, we double him, me on foot, Vinnie in the car. And he never knows we there. He goes back to the bank. Stays about an hour, then comes out and gets his car. I hop in with Vinnie and we tail him up to Boxford.”

“Long ride,” I said.

“Yeah. Deep into the fucking wilderness,” Hawk said. “Vinnie kept him in sight.”

“Vinnie’s good at this kind of work,” I said.

“He is,” Hawk said.

“But is he fun, like me?”

“Nobody that much fun,” he said. “You like these turnovers?”

“Yes.”

“Place in Mattapan, make the crust with lard, way it’s supposed to be made.”

“That would make them illegal in Cambridge,” I said.

“So Conroy drives to a house in Boxford,” Hawk said, “and parks in the driveway and gets out and goes in, and me and Vinnie sit outside, up the street a ways, and wait.”

I got a second turnover out of the bag and started on it. Lard. Hot diggitty! “How long he in there,” I said.

“He don’t come out,” Hawk said. “Lights go out about eleven-thirty. ‘Bout two in the morning we decide maybe it’s over. So I go check out the house. No name on the door. No name on the mailbox. There was a car in the garage, but I couldn’t see the license plate.”

“So you came home,” I said.

“Yep. Left Vinnie at the bank, pick him up when he come in for work.”

“What was the address up there?” I said.

“Eleven Plumtree Road,” Hawk said. “In a big honky development.”

“How do you know it’s honky?” I said.

Hawk chewed some turnover and swallowed and smiled at me.

“Boxford?” he said.

“Good point,” I said.

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