Widow’s Walk

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Hawk and I drove down to Franklin in Hawk’s Jaguar.

“Figure you show up in a decent ride,” Hawk said, “they be impressed and tell you everything.”

“You bet,” I said. “That’s how it usually works.”

We found Roy Levesque at the lumberyard where he worked. He wore jeans and work boots and a plaid shirt that hung outside his pants.

“Whaddya want,” Levesque said.

The yard was loud with the sound of a band saw, and busy with trucks loading lumber and Sheetrock.

“See the car I came in?” I said.

“I don’t give a fuck what car you came in,” Roy said.

I looked at Hawk. He shrugged.

“When’s the last time you saw Mary Smith?” I said.

“Mary who?”

I sighed.

“Mary Toricelli,” I said.

“Why?”

“Why not?” I said.

“I don’t know when I seen her, all right?”

“Not all right,” I said. “I’ve been told you and she are still intimate.”

“Huh?”

“He mean you and she still fucking,” Hawk said gently. “He just talk kind of funny.”

“Hey,” Levesque said. “That’s no way to talk about somebody.”

“Just trying to find a language you’re comfortable with,” I said. “What about you and Mary?”

“Who told you that?”

“People who know,” I said.

“So if they know so fucking much, how come you’re asking me?”

“I like to confirm at the source.”

“Huh?”

“He mean ask the one fucking her,” Hawk said.

“Hey, pal, watch your freaking mouth,” Levesque said.

Hawk looked at me. “Pal,” he said.

I nodded. “Limited vocabulary,” I said. “I’m sure he meant no harm.”

“Hey, I’m trying to work here,” Levesque said. “You guys are on private property.”

“Oh my,” Hawk said.

Levesque glanced at Hawk. Hawk made him uneasy.

“My boss sees me talking like this, I could get fired.”

I looked around. We were near the corner of a big corrugated-metal lumber shed.

I said to Levesque, “Let’s go around the corner then.”

Hawk took hold of his left arm and I his right and we moved him pretty quickly around the corner so we were standing out of sight between the back of the warehouse and a hill full of weeds. We banged him hard against the back of the shed, and stepped back.

“What’s going on with you and Mary,” I said.

Levesque put his hand under his shirttail and came out with a gun. It was a squat black semiautomatic.

“You motherfuckers get away from me,” he said.

Hawk smiled. “You not saying it right,” he said. “Correct pronunciation be muthafuckas.”

The gun wasn’t cocked. On a semiautomatic you have to cock it for the first shot.

“Look at me,” I said.

He looked and Hawk took the gun out of his hand. Hawk is very quick.

“Don’t see so many of these,” Hawk said. “Forty-caliber.”

“Forty?”

“Yep.”

“For crissake,” I said.

I put my hand out. Hawk gave me the gun and as he did, Levesque turned and ran.

“You want him?” Hawk said.

I shook my head. I was looking at the gun.

“Nathan Smith was killed with a forty-caliber slug,” I said.

“There’s more than one forty-caliber around,” Hawk said.

“I know,” I said. “Still, most people don’t own one. Most people buy thirty-eights or comnines.”

“If he bought it,” Hawk said.

“Still a large coincidence,” I said. “Smith’s killed by a sort of unusual gun and one of the principals turns up with a gun that’s the same kind of sort of unusual.”

“Gonna take it to Quirk,” Hawk said.

“I am.”

“Then we know,” Hawk said.