Double Deuce (10 page)

We were sitting at the counter in the kitchen. I was drinking some Catamount beer, and Susan, to be sociable, was occasionally wetting her bottom lip in a glass of Cabernet Blanc. Pearl sprawled on the floor, her four feet out straight, her eyes nearly closed, occasionally glancing over to make sure no food had made a surreptitious appearance.

“They were scared,” I said. “Hawk could scare Mount Rushmore. But they wouldn’t give in.”

“It’s interesting, isn’t it. These kids have many of the same virtues and vices that other kids have, misapplied.”

“They’re applied to what’s there,” I said.

Susan nodded. “And the consequences may be fatal,” she said.

Across the counter, in the small kitchen, there was evidence that Susan had prepared a meal… or that the kitchen had been ransacked. Since there was a pot of something simmering on the stove, I assumed the former.

“The thing is,” I said, “we all knew Major did the killing. They knew it; we knew it; they knew we knew it; we knew they knew-”

“You admire their loyalty,” Susan said.

She was wearing black spandex tights and a leotard top. The outfit revealed nearly everything about her body. I looked at her eyes, and, felt as I always did, that I could breathe more deeply when I looked at her, that the air was oxygen rich, and that we would live forever.

“Windows of the soul,” I said. She grinned at me.

“Augmented with just a touch of eye liner,” she said.

“What’s in the pot?” I said. She glanced back at the stove.

“Jesus,” she said and jumped up and dashed around the counter. She picked up a big spoon and jostled the pot lid off with it. She looked in and smiled.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“Maybe Christmas,” I said, “I’ll buy you a potholder.”

“I’ve got some, but I couldn’t find it right away and I was afraid it would burn.”

She was trying to balance the pot lid on her big spoon and put it back on the pot. It teetered, she touched it with her left hand to balance it, and burned her hand, and flinched and the lid fell to the floor.

“Fuck,” she said.

Pearl had leapt to attention when the lid hit the floor and now was sitting behind the legs of my stool and looking out at Susan with something that might have been disapproval. Susan saw her.

“Everyone’s a goddamned critic,” she said.

“What is it?” I said neutrally.

“Brunswick stew,” Susan said. “There was a recipe in the paper.”

She found one potholder under an overturned colander and used it to pick up the pot lid and put it back on the pot.

“One of my favorites,” I said.

“I know,” Susan said. “It’s why I made it.”

“I’ll like it,” I said.

“And if you don’t,” she said, “lie.”

“It is my every intention,” I said. She set the counter in front of us, got me another beer, and ladled two servings of Brunswick stew into our plates. I took a bite. It was pretty good. I had some more.

“Do I detect a dumpling in here?” I said.

“No,” Susan said. “I tried to thicken the gravy. What you detect is some flour in a congealed glump.”

“What you do,” I said, “is mix the flour in a little cold water first, then when the slurry is smooth you stir it into the stew.”

“Gee, isn’t that smart,” Susan said.

I knew she didn’t mean it. I decided not to make other helpful suggestions. We ate quietly for a while. The congealed flour lumps had tasted better when I thought they were dumplings. When I finished I got up and walked around Pearl to the stove and got a second helping.

“Oh, for Christ sake don’t patronize me,” Susan said.

“I’m hungry,” I said. “The stew’s good. Are we saving it for breakfast?”

“The stew’s not good. You’re just eating it to make me feel good.”

“Not true, but if it were, why would that be so bad?”

“Oh, shit,” Susan said, and her eyes began to fill.

I said, “Suze, you never cry.”

“It’s not working,” she said. Her voice was very tight and very shaky. She got up and left the kitchen and went in the bedroom and closed the door.

I stood for a while holding the stew and looking after her. Then I looked at Pearl. She was focused on the plate of stew.

“The thing is,” I said to Pearl, “she’s right.” And I put the plate down for Pearl to finish.

“Tony like muffins?” I said.

“Tony likes open public places,” Hawk said.

“Makes sense,” I said. “Get trapped in a place like Locke-Ober, you could get umbrella’d to death.”

South Station was new, almost. They’d jacked up the old favade and slid a new station in behind it. Where once pigeons had flown about in the semidarkness, and winos had slept fragrantly on the benches, there were now muffin shops and lots of light and a model train set. What had once been the dank remnant of the old railroad days was now as slick and cheery as the food circus in a shopping mall.

The muffin shop was there, to the right, past the frozen lo-fat yogurt stand. Tony Marcus was there at a cute little iron filigree table, alone. At the next table was his bodyguard, a stolid black man about the size of Nairobi. The bodyguard’s name was Billy. Tony was a middle-sized black guy, a little soft, with a careful moustache. I always thought he looked like Billy Eckstine, but Hawk never saw it. We stopped at the counter. I bought two coffees, gave one to Hawk, and went to Tony’s table.

Tony nodded very slightly when we arrived. Billy looked at us as if we were dust motes. Billy’s eyes were very small. He looked like a Cape buffalo. I shot at him with a forefinger and thumb.

“Hey, Billy,” I said. “Every time I see you you get more winsome.”

Billy gazed at me without expression. Tony said, “You want a muffin?” Hawk and I both shook our heads. “Good muffins,” Tony said. “Praline chocolate chip are excellent.”

Hawk said, “Jesus Christ.”

Tony had two on a paper plate in front of him. He picked one up and took a bite out of it, the way you’d eat an apple.

“So what you need?” he said around the mouthful of muffin.

“Gang of kids running drugs out of a housing project at Twenty-two Hobart Street,” I said. Tony nodded and chewed on his muffin. “Couple people been killed,” I said.

Tony shook his head. “Fucking younger generation,” he said.

“Going to hell in a handbasket.” I said. “Tenants at Double Deuce hired Hawk and me to bring order out of chaos there…”

Marcus looked at his bodyguard. “You hear how he talks, Billy? `Order out of chaos.‘ Ain’t that something?”

“And the most successful local television show in the country is doing a five-part investigative series on the whole deal.”

It got Tony’s attention. “What television show?”

“Marge Eagen, Live,” I said.

“The blonde broad with the big tits?”

I smiled. Hawk smiled.

“What do you mean, an investigation?” Tony said.

“What’s wrong in the ghetto,” Hawk said. “Who’s selling drugs, how to save kids from the gangs, how to make black folks just like white folks.”

Marcus was silent for the time it took him to eat the rest of his second muffin.

When he finished he said, “You in on that?”

“Sorta parallel,” I said.

Tony pursed his lips slightly and nodded, and kept nodding, as if he’d forgotten he was doing it. He picked up his coffee cup and discovered it was empty. Billy got him another one. Tony stirred three spoonfuls of sugar carefully into the coffee and laid his spoon down and took a sip. Then he looked at me.

“So?” he said.

“The investigation is centered on the project,” I said. “And”-I looked at Billy-“while I don’t wish to seem immodest here, Bill, the investigation, so called, will go where we direct it.”

Billy continued to conceal his amusement. “So?” Marcus said.

“Any drugs moving in the ghetto are yours,” I said.

Marcus rolled back in his chair and widened his eyes. He spread his hands.

“Me?” he said.

“And if there is a thorough investigation of the drugs trade in and around Double Deuce, then you are going to be more famous than Oliver North.”

“Unless?” Tony said.

“Voilб,” I said.

Tony said, “Don’t fuck around, Spenser. You want something, say what.”

“Move the operation,” I said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere but Double Deuce.”

“Hawk?” Marcus said.

Hawk nodded.

“Say I could do that? Say I could persuade them to go someplace else?”

“Then you would be as famous as John Marsh.”

“Who the fuck is John Marsh?” Tony said.

“My point exactly,” I said.

Behind us a train came in, an hour and a half late, from Washington, and people straggled wearily through the bright station.

“Okay,” Marcus said.

“Good,” I said. “One thing, though.”

Marcus waited.

“Kid named Major Johnson,” I said. “He’s going to have to go down.”

“Why?”

“Killed three children,” I said.

Marcus shrugged.

“Lots more where he came from,” Marcus said.

Susan gave Pearl a forkful of pancake.

“Good for her,” Susan said. “Whole wheat, fresh fruit, a nice change of pace from bone meal and soy grits.”

“Almost anything would be,” I said.

“Are you going to put on a shirt,” Susan said, “before Jackie arrives?”

“Keep her from flinging herself on me?” I said.

“Sure,” Susan said. “Why is she coming over?”

“She didn’t say. Just that she needed to talk and would we be home.”

Pearl edged her nose under my elbow and pushed my arm.

“Of course,” I said.

I cut a wedge from my pancake stack and fed it to her.

“You think we might be spoiling this dog?” I said.

“Of course,” Susan said. “But how else will she learn to eat from the table?”

I looked down at Pearl. She was perfectly concentrated on the pancakes, her gaze shifting as one or the other of us ate.

“A canine American princess,” I said.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Susan said.

The doorbell rang and Susan got up to answer. I left my pancakes and went to the bedroom and put on a shirt. When I came back Pearl was still sitting gazing at my plate, but the plate was empty and clean. I looked at her. She looked back clear eyed and guilt free, alert for another opportunity.

“Ah yes,” I said, “a hunting dog:”

Susan came back with Jackie. I gave her a half hug and a kiss on the cheek. Pearl jumped around. Susan poured Jackie some coffee. Jackie declined pancakes. I had a few more.

“I’m sorry to intrude on your Sunday morning,” Jackie said. “But I have to talk about Hawk.” I nodded.

“Puzzling, isn’t he,” Susan said. Jackie shook her head.

“You know him,” she said to me. “You must know him better than anyone.”

I smiled encouragingly.

“I think I’m falling in love with him,” Jackie said.

Susan and I both smiled encouragingly.

“But I”-she searched for the right way to say it “I can’t… he won’t… ”

“You can’t get at him,” I said.

“Yes.”

Jackie was silent contemplating that, as if having found the right phrase for it, she could rethink it in some useful way.

“I mean, what’s not to like? He’s fun to be with. He’s funny. He knows stuff. He’s a dandy lover… But I can’t seem to get at him.”

I ate some more pancake. I’d made them with buckwheat flour, and they were very tasty. Jackie was looking at me. I glanced at Susan. This was her area, and I was hoping she’d step in. She didn’t, she was looking at me too.

So was Pearl. But all Pearl wanted was food. Dogs are easy.

“Part of what Hawk is,” I said, “is that you can’t get at him. Erin Macklin thinks that’s the price he paid to get out.”

“Out of what?” Jackie said. “Being black? Being black’s hard on everybody. I don’t shut him out.”

Susan remained quiet. She looked like someone watching a good movie.

“Well,” I said, “if you’re a certain kind of guy-”

“Guy?” Jackie said. “Guy? Is that it? Some fucking arcane guy shit?”

“Jackie,” I said, “I didn’t come over to your place and say, `Let me explain Hawk to you.”

She took a deep inhale and held it for a moment with her lips clamped together, then she let it out through her nose and nodded.

“Of course you didn’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m just very stressed.”

“Being in love with Hawk would be stressful,” I said.

“I don’t think I’m in love with him yet. But I will be soon, and I want to figure this out before it’s too late.”

I nodded. Susan watched.

“You were saying?” Jackie said.

“You have a sense of who you are,” I said. “And you’re determined to keep on being who you are, and maybe the only way you can keep on being who you are is to go inside, to be inaccessible. Especially, I would think, if you’re a black man. And more especially if you do the kind of work Hawk does.”

“So why do it?”

“Because he knows how,” I said. “It’s what he’s good at.”

“And that means he can’t love anybody,” Jackie said.

“It means you keep a little of yourself to yourself.”

“Why?” Jackie said.

“Suze,” I said, “you want to offer any interpretation?”

“No.”

I looked at Pearl. She appeared to be fantasizing about buckwheat pancakes.

“I don’t suppose,” I said, “that you’d settle for an eloquent shrug of the shoulders?”

“Not unless you’re willing to admit that you’ve gotten bogged down in your own bullshit and you don’t know how to get out,” Jackie said.

“It’s not bullshit,” I said. “But it is something one feels more than something one thinks about, and it’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t live Hawk’s life.”

“Like a woman?” I shook my head.

“Hawk sometimes kills people. People sometimes try to kill him. Keeping yourself intact while you do that kind of work requires so much resolution that it has to be carefully protected.”

“Even from someone who loves him?”

“Especially,” I said.

We were all silent.

“This is probably as much of Hawk as I will ever get,” she said.

“Probably,” I said.

“I don’t think it’s enough,” Jackie said.

“It might be,” Susan said, “if you can adjust your expectations.”

Jackie looked at Susan and at me.

“You’ve been lucky,” Jackie said. “I guess I’m envious.”

Susan looked straight at me and I could feel the connection between us.

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Susan said.