Early Autumn (19 page)

“What’ll it be, Mr. Ritchie,” the bartender said.

Assistant Manager Ritchie said, “Jerry, you know this babe?” I held up the picture of Patty Giacomin. Jerry looked at it carefully, his hazel eyes expressionless. He looked at Ritchie.

Ritchie said, “Tell him, Jerry. He’s okay.”

“Sure,” Jerry said, “I know her. She comes in here about once a month, gets fried on Chablis, picks up a guy, and goes out with him. To her room, I assume.”

Ritchie nodded. “Yeah, to her room. Next day she checks out, pays her bill, and we don’t see her for a month.”

“Different guy each time?” I said.

“Yeah. I guess so,” Jerry said. “Couldn’t swear there was never somebody twice, but if it was, it was an accident. She was in here to get laid. She didn’t care who.”

“Know any of the guys?” I said.

Jerry looked at Ritchie. Ritchie said, “No.”

“And if you did?” I said.

“I wouldn’t tell you,” Ritchie said.

“Unless I come back with somebody from your old outfit,” I said.

“Come back with a New York cop on a missing person’s investigation, we’ll spill our guts. Otherwise, you have found out all you’re going to.”

“Maybe enough,” I said.

We had dinner at the Four Seasons, in the pool room, under the high ceiling near a window on the Fifty-third Street side. Paul had pheasant, among other things, and paid very close attention to everything Susan and I did. We had some wine, and the bill came to $182.37. I have bought cars for less. The next day we went to the Metropolitan Museum in the afternoon and in the evening we took Paul up to Riverside Church to see Alvin Ailey and his group dance.

In the cab going back downtown Paul said, “That’s not exactly ballet, is it?”

“Program says contemporary dance,” I said.

“I like that too.”

“There are surely lots of variations,” Susan said, “Tap dance too.”

Paul nodded. He stared out the cab window as we went down the West Side Highway and off at Fifty-seventh Street. We were alone, the three of us, going up in the hotel elevator and Paul said, “I want to learn. I’m going to learn how to do that. If I have to go away to school or whatever. I’m going to do that.”

Sunday we slept late and in the early afternoon went up to Asia House and looked at nineteenth-century photographs of China. The faces looking back at
us from 130 years were as remote and unknowable as patterns on another planet, and yet there they were; human and real, maybe feeling at the moment the shutter clicked a rolling of the stomach, a stirring of the loins.

We took a late-afternoon shuttle back to Boston and drove Susan out to her house. It was after six when we got there. I pulled the Bronco in next to my MG and parked and ran the back window down with the lever on the dash. Susan and Paul got out on their side, I got out on mine. As we walked back to get the luggage, I heard a car engine kick in. I looked up and a 1968 Buick was rolling down the street toward us. The barrel of a long gun appeared in the window. I jumped at Paul and Susan, got my arms around both of them, and took them to the ground with me on top, scrambling to get us all behind the car. The long gun made the urgent bubbling sound an automatic weapon makes and slugs ripped into the sheet metal of the Bronco and then passed and the Buick was around the corner and gone before I could even get my gun out.

“Lay still,” I said. “They could make a U-turn.” I had the gun out now and crouched behind the engine block. The car didn’t come back and the street was quiet again. The neighbors didn’t even open a door. Probably didn’t know what they’d heard. Automatic fire doesn’t sound like a gunshot.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s unpack.”

Susan said, “Jesus Christ,” as she got up. The front of her dress was littered with grass blades and small leaves. Paul didn’t say anything, but he stayed close to me as we carried the bags into the house.

“What was that about?” Susan said in her kitchen.

“I annoyed a guy,” I said. “Probably Harry Cotton, Paul.”

Paul nodded.

“Who’s Harry Cotton?” Susan said. She was making coffee.

“Guy that Mel Giacomin did business with.”

“And why is he shooting at you, and, incidentally, us?”

“I have been looking into the relationship between Harry and Mel Giacomin. And Harry doesn’t like it.”

“Are we going to call the police?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It would blow what I’m working on.”

“Maybe you’d better tell me in more detail what you’re working on,” Susan said. “Since it seems to be getting me shot at.”

“Okay,” I said. “You know I have been trying for some purchase on Paul’s parents so I could get them off his back.”

“Blackmail,” Susan said.

“Yes. Well, I’ve got it. I can produce a batch of evidence that Mel Giacomin was involved in a major arson scheme to burn down buildings for the insurance. He was in it with Harry Cotton, who’s a big-league bad person in town. I can’t prove Harry’s part, but if I give what I’ve got to Marty Quirk, it’s only time till the fuzz can. So I got something fairly heavy on Mel. To get it I’ve had to lean on some people including Harry Cotton and he’s mad at me. He put out a contract.”

“To kill you?” Susan said.

“Yes, he’s employed people to kill me.”

“How do you know?” Paul said.

“He tried to hire Hawk,” I said.

“Aren’t you scared?” Paul said.

“Yes. But like I said, there’s nothing to be done about that, so I don’t spend much time thinking about it.”

“I’m scared,” Susan said.

“Me too,” Paul said.

“Okay, we all are. They’re not after you. You just happened to be there.”

Susan said, “One of the things I’m scared for is you.” She was cutting celery up into a stainless-steel bowl that already contained white meat tuna fish. I reached across from the kitchen table and patted her hip.

“I got what I needed on Patty Giacomin this past weekend in New York.”

Paul said, “What was it?”

I said, “This is tough. She went to New York each month to pick up strange men in the bar at the hotel.”

Paul said, “Oh.”

“I thought about not telling you that,” I said. “But whatever we are doing, it doesn’t work well on lying.”

Paul nodded. Susan frowned. “There’s nothing illegal in that.”

“No, but Patty will bend to it. She won’t want to look at herself in that light. It wouldn’t help in custody or alimony fights, in the future. If any. It’s enough ammunition for me.”

Susan said, “Poor woman.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of tough to think about how desperate she was for whatever it was she thought she’d find. I don’t assume she found it, that way.”

“Promiscuity doesn’t have to be a sign of unhappiness in a woman,” Susan said.

“Once a month, in a distant city, with strangers, while drunk?”

Susan looked at Paul. “So why don’t we call the police about these men shooting at us?” she said.

“It would be hard to explain without bringing in Mel and Harry and such. I don’t want Mel in jail. I want him out earning money so he can support his kid and pay for his education and stuff.”

“Yes, I see that.” Susan mixed some mayonnaise into her tuna salad.

“I’ll stay with you tonight, and tomorrow I’ll see what I can do to wrap this thing up.”

“What are you going to do about the contract?” Paul said.

“I’ll probably have to talk with Harry about that,” I said.

Susan nodded. “I knew that would come.”

“You have a better thought?”

“No, it’s just you’re so predictable. You’re going to talk with him because he shot at us. If it had just been you…” She shrugged.

“Well, I need to get him out of my way if we’re going to get Paul into dance school.”

Susan was putting tuna salad on whole-wheat bread. The coffee had stopped perking. Her shoulders were stiff and angry.

“I cannot let some gorilla shoot at you,” I said. “I cannot. It’s against the rules.”

Paul said, “What rules?”

Susan said, “His. Don’t ask him to explain them now. I can’t stand it.” She put the platter of sandwiches on the table and poured some coffee. “At least take Hawk with you,” she said. “Will you do that? At least take Hawk. You have Paul to think of too.” She took a carton of milk out of the refrigerator and
poured Paul a glass. “And me” she said. Her hand shook slightly as she poured the milk.

“‘I could not love thee, dear, so much,’” I said, “‘loved I not honor more.’”

“Shit,” Susan said.

Susan took Paul with her to work. “He can read in my office waiting room,” she said. “Until this is cleared up he won’t be safe alone and probably not with you.”

“It’ll be cleared up quick,” I said. “Next week, kid, we’ll be back working on the cabin.”

He nodded. Susan and Paul drove to the junior high school in her Bronco, the left side pocked with bullet holes. I followed in my MG. When I saw them safely inside, I drove back into Boston to my office. I needed time for sitting and thinking. I parked in my alley and went up the back stairs. When I got there, the door was ajar. I took out my gun and kicked it open.

A voice said, “Don’t shoot, babe, it’s Hawk.” He was sitting in my clients’ chair, tipped back against the wall out of the line of fire from the door. Hawk was never careless. I put the gun away.

“Didn’t know you had a key,” I said.

Hawk said, “Haw.”

I went around my desk and sat down. “Cotton raise the ante?”

“Naw, I just come by to hang out with you, you know. I got nothing to do and I get restless. You
wasn’t at your apartment so I figured you’d come here.”

I said, “Somebody tried to hit me at Susan’s last night.”

“She okay?” he said.

“Yeah, but that’s not the gunny’s fault.”

“We gonna go see Cotton today,” Hawk said. His face was impassive but the lines around his mouth seemed a little deeper and his cheekbones seemed a little more prominent.

I looked at him for a minute. “Yeah,” I said. “We are.”

Hawk stood up. “May as well get an early start,” he said. I nodded. I took out my gun, spun the cylinder so there was a slug under the hammer, put a fresh slug in the chamber I usually kept empty under the hammer, and put the gun back on my hip. We went out. I locked the office door, and we went down the back stairs.

In the alley I said, “Where you parked?”

“Down front of your place,” Hawk said.

“I’m right here,” I said. “We’ll take mine.”

We got into the MG. Hawk pushed the passenger seat back further. “Cute,” he said. We drove down Berkeley and turned west onto Commonwealth. The trees were leafing and brownstone town houses were bright with early flowering.

As we went through Kenmore Square, Hawk said, “You gonna have to kill him.”

“Harry?”

“Uh-huh. You can’t scare him.”

I nodded.

“He near put a hole in Susan,” Hawk said.

I nodded. About a block short of Harry’s used-car
lot I pulled in and parked in a loading zone. We got out.

Hawk said, “I think I might drift around back, case they see you coming.”

I said, “You know the place?”

“I been in there,” Hawk said.

I nodded. Hawk turned down a side street, and cut through an alley and disappeared. I walked straight up Commonwealth and into Harry’s office. Harry was at his desk. Shelley and two others were in the service bay. When I came in the door, Harry reached into the desk drawer for a gun. He got it out and half raised when I reached across the desk and slapped it out of his hand. Then I took him by the shirt front with both hands and yanked him out of his chair and frontward across the desk. Shelley yelled, “Hey,” from somewhere to my left and then I got a dark glimpse of Hawk between me and the sound of Shelley’s voice. I dragged Harry across the desk and slammed him against the far wall of the cinder-block office. He grunted. I pulled him away from the wall and slammed him back against it. He was kicking and clawing at me but I didn’t notice much. I shifted my right hand from his shirt to his throat and jammed him against the wall, holding him up by the throat with his feet off the floor.

’“Which one shot at us last night?” I said.

Harry swatted at my face. I ignored it and leaned my hand in against his windpipe. “Which one?”

He pointed at Shelley. I dropped Harry and he slid down the wall and sat gasping on the floor. I turned toward Shelley. “If you can get past me,” I said, “Hawk won’t shoot. You’re out of here free.”

Shelley and two others stood motionless against the wall in the repair section. Hawk with his gun steady
and relaxed stood in front of them. There were three pistols on the floor. Shelley looked at Hawk. Hawk shrugged. “Okay by me, Shell. You ain’t gonna make it by him anyway.”

“Yeah, if I win you shoot me.”

“You don’t try and I shoot you now,” Hawk said.

One of the other two men was Buddy Hartman. I said to him, “Buddy, take your pal and beat it. You ever come near me or anyone I know, I’ll kill you.”

Buddy nodded. His companion was a lean, dark, handsome man with the dark-blue shadow of a recently shaven heavy beard. His companion nodded too and they went past me and out the door of the gas station and down the street, walking fast without looking back. Hawk shook his head. “Should have burned them,” he said.

Shelley stared after the two men who had gotten out. Then he lunged toward me, trying for the door. He weighed more than I did and the force of his lunge pushed me back against the doorjamb. I got a short uppercut in under his jaw and straightened him up with it slightly. Hawk leaned against the far wall with his arms crossed, the revolver still in his right hand. To my left, Harry Cotton was inching along toward his desk. I hit Shelley again under the jaw, and he stepped back and swung at me. I shrugged my shoulder up and took the punch on it. I hit Shelley four times, three lefts and a right in the face. He stumbled back, blood rushing from his nose. I hit him another flurry. He stumbled, waved an arm at me, and backed into Harry’s desk. His hands dropped. I hit him one big left hook and a haymaker right hand and he went backward over the desk and hit the swivel chair. It broke under his weight and he lay still on the floor with one foot still on the desk. Harry
was trying to get the gun I’d knocked away from him. It was partly under Shelley’s body. I took a step around the desk and kicked Harry in the neck. He fell backward and made a swacking noise. I stood over him.