Part 6 (1/2)

”You ever think about being black, Hawk?” He looked at me for maybe ten seconds. ”We a lot alike, Spenser. You got more scruples maybe, but we alike. Except one thing. You never been black. That's something I know that you won't ever know.”

”So you do think about it. How is it?”

”I used to think about it, when I had to. I don't have to no more. Now I ain't n.i.g.g.e.r any more than you honkie. Now I drink the wine and screw the broads and take the money and n.o.body shoves me. Now I just play all the time. And the games I play n.o.body can play as good.” He drank some more champagne, his movements clean and sure and delicate. He was eating with no s.h.i.+rt on and the overhead light made the planes of muscle cast fluid and intricate highlights on the black skin. He put the champagne gla.s.s back on the table, cut another slice of salmon and stopped with the portion halfway to his mouth. He looked at me again and his face opened into a brilliant, oddly mirthless grin. ” 'Cept maybe you, babe,” he said. ”Yeah,” I said, ”but the game's not the same.” Hawk shrugged. ”Same game, different rules.”

”Maybe,” I said. ”I never been sure you had any rules.”

”You know better. I just got fewer than you. And I ain't softhearted. But you know, I say I gonna do something I do it. It gets done. I hire on for something, I stay hired. I do what I take the bread for.”

”I remember a time you didn't stay hired for King Powers.”

”That's different,” Hawk said. ”King Powers is a douche bag. He got no rules, he don't count. I mean you, or Henry Cimoli. I tell you something, you can put it in the bank.”

”Yeah. That's so,” I said. ”Who else?” Hawk had drunk a lot of Taittinger and I had drunk a lot of Amstel. ”Who else what?”

”Who else can trust you?”

”Quirk,” Hawk said. ”Martin Quirk,” I said. ”Detective Lieutenant Martin Quirk?”

”Yeah.”

”Quirk wants to put you in the joint.”

”Sure he does,” Hawk said. ”But he knows how a man acts. He knows how to treat a man.”

”Yeah, you're right. Anyone else?”

”That's enough. You, Henry, Quirk. That's more than a lot of people ever know.”

”I don't guess Henry will give you trouble,” I said. ”But Quirk or I may shoot you someday.” Hawk finished his salmon and turned the big bright grin at me again. ”If you can, man. If you can.” Hawk pushed the plate away, and stood up. ”Got something to show you,” he said. I sipped at my beer while he went to the closet and brought out something that looked like a cross between a shoulder holster and a backpack. He slipped his arms through the loops and stepped back from the closet. ”What do you think?” The rig was a shoulder holster for a sawed-off shotgun. The straps went around each shoulder and the gun hung, b.u.t.t down along his spine. ”Watch this,” he said. He slipped his coat on over his naked skin. The coat covered the gun entirely. Unless you were looking you didn't even see a bulge. With his right hand he reached behind him under the skirt of his suit jacket, gave a brief twisting movement and brought the shotgun out. ”Can you dig it?”

”Lemme see,” I said. And Hawk put the shotgun in my hand. It was an Ithaca double-barreled 12 gauge. The stock had been cut off and both barrels were cut back. The whole thing was no more than eighteen inches long. ”Do a lot more damage than a target pistol,” I said. ”And it's no problem. Just go buy a shotgun and cut it down. If we have to go to another country I ditch this and buy a new one where we going. Take me an hour maybe to modify the mother.”

”Got a hack saw?” Hawk nodded. ”And a couple of C clamps. That's all I need.”

”Not bad,” I said. ”What you going to do next, modify an Atlas missile and walk around with it tucked in your sock?”

”No harm,” Hawk said, ”to fire power.” The next morning I got up early and went up and burgled Kathie's apartment while she was at the laundromat. I was neat about it, but sloppy enough to let her know someone had been there. I wasn't looking for anything, I just wanted her to know someone had been there. I was in and out in about five minutes. When she came back I was leaning in the doorway of the next apartment house wearing sungla.s.ses. As she pa.s.sed I turned away so she wouldn't see my face. I wanted her to spot me but I didn't want to overact.

I used to know a guy named Sh.e.l.ley Walden when I was with the cops who would get spotted tailing a guy through a rock concert. I never knew why he was so bad at it. He had a small, innocuous look about him and he wasn't clumsy, but he couldn't keep out of sight. I tried to run this stakeout like Sh.e.l.ley would have. If she spotted me when she went by she didn't let on. I knew Hawk was somewhere behind her but I didn't see him. When she went into her apartment I walked casually across the street and leaned on a lamppost and took out a newspaper and started to read it. That would have been Sh.e.l.ley's style. The old Bogart movies where he pulls back the curtain and there's a guy under a lamppost reading a newspaper.

I figured she'd see that someone had been rummaging in her apartment and that would get her nervous. It did. About two minutes after she went in, I saw her looking out her window. I was looking surrept.i.tiously over my newspaper and for a moment our eyes met. I looked back down at the newspaper. She knew I was there. She should recognize me. It was sunny and I wasn't wearing my Irish walking hat. No mistaking me for Rex Harrison. She had reason to be nervous about being spotted. She had phony pa.s.sports and stolen guns in her bedroom. That would be enough to bust her. But I wanted them all. She was the string and they were the balloon. If I cut her off I lost the balloon. She was all the handle I had. What she should have done was sit tight, but she didn't know that. She would either call out the shooters again, or she'd run. She sat in her apartment and looked at me looking at her for nearly four hours, and then she ran. Hawk had been right. The shooters must be getting wary of me. Or maybe I'd cleaned them out. Maybe all the shooters the organization had had been used up, except the one guy that got away. I wasn't dealing here with the KGB. Liberty's resources were probably limited. She came out of her apartment at about two in the afternoon. She was wearing a tan safari jacket and matching pants and carrying a very large shoulder bag. The same one she'd had at the zoo. She was careful not to pay me any attention as she went past me on Cleveland and headed up Goodge Street toward Bloomsbury.

For a half hour it was hare and hounds with Kathie dekeing and diving the side streets of Bloomsbury with me behind her and Hawk behind me. At every turn I kept before me the clear image of Sh.e.l.ley Walden. When in doubt I asked myself, ”What would Sh.e.l.ley, do?” Everywhere she went, she saw me behind her. Only once in all of this did I catch sight of Hawk. He was in Levis and a corduroy sport coat, surprisingly innocuous, on the opposite side of the street going the other way. I let her lose me in the Russell Square Underground. She got on and I got on. At the last minute she got off and I let her go. As the train pulled out she was heading back out of the station and, behind her, Hawk, with his hands in his hip pockets and the faint bulge of the shotgun along his spine.

He was smiling as the train went into the tunnel.

14.

I went back and staked out Kathie's apartment, but she never came back. Good. She was probably headed for a new place. Any pattern break was better than none at this point. After dinner that night I finished up Regeneration Through Violence and was thumbing through the International Herald Tribune when Hawk called. ”Where are you?” I said. ”Copenhagen, babe, the Paris of the North.”

”Where is she?”

”She here too. She checked into an apartment here. You coming over?”

”Yeah. Be there tomorrow. Anyone with her?”

”Not yet. She just flew over, came to the apartment and went in. She ain't come out.”

”The revolutionaries do lead an exciting life, don't they?”

”Like you and me, babe, international adventurers. I'm at the Sheraton Copenhagen watching Danish television. What you doing, man?”

”I was glancing through the Herald Tribune when you called. Very interesting. An enriching experience.” Hawk said, ”Yeah. Me too.”

”I'll come over tomorrow,” I said. ”Room five-two-three,” Hawk said. ”Have them pack up my stuff and s.h.i.+p it to Henry. Hate to have some limey walking around in my threads.”

”Ah Hawk,” I said, ”you sentimental b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”

”You gonna like it here, babe,” Hawk said. ”Why is that?”

”The broads are all blond and they sell beer in the c.o.ke machine. ”

”Maybe I'll come over tonight,” I said. But I didn't. I slept another night in England. In the morning I arranged for Hawk's stuff to be s.h.i.+pped to the States. I called Flanders and told him where I was going. Then I packed my gun as before, in my luggage, and flew to Denmark. Have gun, will travel. Did Paladin do vengeance? Probably. The airport at Copenhagen was modern and gla.s.sy, with a lot of level escalators to move people around the airport. I took a bus in from the airport to the SAS terminal in the Royal Hotel. On the way I spotted the Sheraton. A short walk from the terminal. I made the walk carrying my flight bag, my suitcase and my garment bag, feeling the odd excited buzz I always felt in a place I'd never been. The Sheraton looked like Sheratons I'd seen in New York, Boston and Chicago. Newer maybe than New York and Chicago. More like Boston. It looked as Danish as Bond bread.

I checked in. The desk clerk spoke English with no accent. Embarra.s.sing. I didn't even know how to say Sren Kierkegaard. The h.e.l.l with him. How many one-armed push-ups can he do? I unpacked and dialed room 523. No answer. The air conditioner was purring under the window but wasn't cooling the room. The temperature was about 96. I opened the windows and looked out. There was a broad park across the street with a lake in it. The park extended several blocks down to the right. Across the park I could see another hotel. The open window's help was largely psychological, but I didn't feel quite as bad. I rea.s.sembled my gun, loaded it, put it in its shoulder holster and hung the rig on a chair back. My s.h.i.+rt was wet. I took it off. The rest of me was wet too. I took off my clothes, brought the gun and holster with me into the bathroom, hung it on the door k.n.o.b and took a shower. Then I toweled off, put on clean clothes and looked out the window some more. About two in the afternoon there was a knock on the door. I took my gun out, stood to one side of the door and said, ”Yeah.”

”Hawk.” I opened the door and he came in. He was wearing white Nikes with a red slash, and white duck pants and an off-white safari jacket with short sleeves. He was carrying two open bottles of Carlsberg beer. ”Fresh from the machine,” he said, and gave me one. I drank most of it. ”I thought Scandinavia was cool and northern, ” I said. ”Heat wave,” Hawk said. ”Never had one like this before, they keep saying. That's why the air conditioners don't do s.h.i.+t. They never really use them.” I finished the beer. ”Right in the c.o.ke machine, you say?”

”Yeah, man, right on your floor here, around the corner from the elevator. You got any kroner?” I nodded. ”I exchanged some at the desk when I checked in.”

”Come on, we'll get us a couple more. Helps with the heat.” We went out and got two more beers and came back in. ”Okay, where is she?” I said. The beer was very cool in my throat. ”About a block down that way,” Hawk said. ”You lean far enough out your window, you probably see her place.”

”Why aren't you poised outside watching her every move?”

”She went in about eleven, nothing happened since. I was thirsty and I figured I'd come see if you got in.”

”Anything shaking since I talked with you before?”

”Naw. She hasn't done a thing. Somebody else staking her out though.”

”Ah hah,” I said. ”What you say?”

”I said, Ah hah.”

”That what I thought you say. You honkies do talk strange.”