Hush Money (8 page)

“So, Lamont is outing people,” Hawk said.

I put a left jab out and Hawk picked it off with his right glove.

“Un huh.”

I turned my head, and rolled back from a right cross and felt the big soft glove just brush past my cheekbone.

“And he got two hundred fifty thousand in his money management account at Hall, Peary.”

I tried a flurry of body punches which Hawk took mostly on his elbows, and then closed up on me and clinched.

“Un huh.”

We broke and moved in an easy circle around the ring looking for daylight.

“I not a thinker like you,” Hawk said, “being the pro-duct of a racist ed-u-cational system.”

“This is certainly true,” I said and threw a lightning fast left hook which Hawk seemed to catch quite easily on his hunched right shoulder. He countered with a whistling right uppercut which I managed to avoid.

“But if I a thinker,” Hawk said. “I be thinking that
OUT
plus money could equal blackmail.”

“That’s amazing,” I said as I circled him clockwise, bouncing on my toes to demonstrate that I wasn’t getting tired. “And you’re not even a licensed investigator.”

Hawk shuffled in suddenly and threw a short flurry of punches which I bobbed and weaved and rolled and ducked and mostly avoided. I countered with an overhead right which Hawk pulled back from. Hawk stepped back and leaned against the wall of the gym.

“You think we go fifteen and not get a winner?” Hawk said.

“Fifteen for real,” I said, “maybe we’d be trying harder.”

“Have to.”

We walked out of the boxing room and down to Henry Cimoli’s office.

“How long’d you go,” Henry said.

He was in his trainer’s costume, a very white tee shirt and white satin sweatpants. His small upper body looked like it might pop the weave in the tee shirt.

“Half hour,” I said.

“You need mouth to mouth?”

“Not from you,” Hawk said and put his hands out for Henry to unlace the gloves. When we were both glove free, Henry nodded at the small refrigerator next to his desk.

“Trick I learned when I was fighting,” he said. “Keep some good sports drinks handy so as to replenish the electrolytes.”

I opened the refrigerator and took out two bottles of New Amsterdam Black and Tan.

“You can use my office, you want,” Henry said. “I got to go suck around the customers.”

“You too teeny to run a health club,” Hawk said. “The same people come here year after year, since the place stopped being a dump. Nobody lose weight. Nobody put on muscle. Everybody look just like they did when they signed up to get in shape.”

“One difference,” Henry said. “They are a little poorer, and I am a lot richer.”

Hawk grinned at him.

“Maybe you ain’t too teeny after all.”

Henry jumped up and kicked the palms of his outstretched hands with his toes, and landed easily and laughed and went out to the gym floor.

“Agile too,” Hawk said.

“Easy to be agile if you’re the size of a salt shaker.”

“Almost beat Willie Pep once,” Hawk said.

“I know.”

Hawk sat in Henry’s chair and took a pull at the beer. He swiveled the chair so he could look out Henry’s picture window at the harbor.

“You getting anywhere on Susan’s friend’s stalker.”

“I got a guy I like for it.”

“Time for me to go reason with him?” Hawk said.

“No. I’m not sure he’s the one.”

Hawk shrugged. He put his feet up on the windowsill and crossed his ankles and took another drink of beer.

“Thing I like about Henry,” Hawk said. “He keep the sports drinks cold.”

“That’s a good thing.”

We were quiet for a moment. One of the big harbor cruise boats eased past, all glass and sleek lines, on a luncheon cruise to nowhere. It loomed close to the window. We could see the people, mostly couples, seated at tables in the main cabin.

“You think Robinson connected to the Lamont kid?” Hawk said.

“I don’t know yet. I hope not. That thing shows every sign of being a mess.”

“See any connection with Abdullah?”

“Nothing you don’t know,” I said.

The cruise ship had moved out of sight. For a moment the only activity out the window was the wake of the cruise boat and the gulls that swooped ever hopeful behind it. I finished my beer and Hawk reached over without taking his feet down and got two more out of the refrigerator.

“What’s going on with Abdullah?” I said.

Hawk didn’t move. He continued to look out the window at the harbor. He raised the bottle and took another drink of beer.

“You’re completely pragmatic,” I said. “You don’t care what people call you. You don’t care if people are annoying. You don’t care about color. You don’t get mad, you don’t get sentimental. You don’t hold a grudge. You don’t get scared, or confused, or boisterous, or jealous. You don’t hate anyone. You don’t love anyone. You don’t mind violence. You don’t enjoy violence.”

“Kind of like Susan,” Hawk said.

“Okay,” I said. “You don’t love many. My point stands. You taking a run at Amir Abdullah because he called you a Tom is bullshit. You don’t care about insults any more than you care about fruit flies.”

Hawk drank the rest of the beer in his bottle and put the bottle on the desk. He dropped his feet off the windowsill, swiveled around, and got another two bottles out of the refrigerator. He put one on the desk in front of me, opened the other, and leaned back in Henry’s chair facing me. His face had no expression. His black eyes were bottomless. I waited. I was barely into my second beer.

“I got you into this,” Hawk said.

I nodded. One of the water taxis from Logan Airport plodded past. Few couples in this one. Mostly men, a scattering of women. Both genders dressed for business, carrying briefcases, paying no attention to each other, too busy to flirt, or too tired, or it might mess their hair.

“I was about fifteen,” Hawk said, “making a living as a mugger. Used to go to the Joe Louis gym to use the bathroom. Joe Louis didn’t have anything to do with it, of course, but half the black boxing clubs in the country were using his name. Got so I’d hang around in there, watch the fighters. Sometimes when there wasn’t much going on they’d let me hit the bag. I figured if I was going to make a living beating people up, I might as well practice. I got good at it. Make the body bag jump, make the speed bag dance. Had trouble in those days with that little jeeter bag, but even some of the fighters had trouble with that.”

“I still have troubles with that,” I said.

Hawk smiled.

“Naw, you don’t,” he said. “Neither one of us do. So one day Bobby Nevins comes in, sees me working on the bag, asks me have I got a manager? I say no. He says ‘You ever fight in the ring?’ I say no. So he says, ‘You want to try it?’ And since I been making a living beating people up I figure why not? So I say sure, and he puts me in with some tall skinny Puerto Rican guy probably don’t weigh more than a hundred fifty pounds. And I’m thinking how smart Bobby is to start me off easy, so I lace ‘em on and get in the ring and of course the guy cleans my clock.”

“Knowing how helps,” I said.

“It do. But Bobby sees something he likes and he takes me on, and when he finds out I’m not living anywhere special he takes me in, and I learn to fight and maybe along the way to use a fork when I’m eating. Stuff like that. Robinson was a little kid then, maybe twelve, and his mother kept him away from the fighters, so I see him, but I don’t know him much. So one day Bobby say to me, ‘I think you need to get a little schooling.’ And I say why, I gonna reason with people in the ring? And Bobby say, ‘You should take an English class and a math class.’ And pretty soon I’m in night school at the community college. And my English professor is a brother name of Dennis Crawford. Young guy maybe four, five years older than me. He talk like Walter Cronkite, and he wear horn-rimmed glasses and tweed jackets and English brogues and all around, he about the smartest brother I ever saw. I never saw a black man with an education. Bobby’s wife was a schoolteacher, but she didn’t spend no time with the fighters so I didn’t really know her either, and besides she was a woman. So we reading
Othello
and we reading
Invisible Man
and we discussing them and Professor Crawford, he smarter than the white boys and even the white girls in the class. Never saw nothing like it.”

Hawk tilted the beer bottle back and drank some more and held it up to the light and looked to see how much was left. I stayed quiet. Then he took another swallow and put the bottle down.

“‘Course I never say nothing in class. Those days I only know six words if you count mother fucker as two. But I listened. One day after class Professor Crawford asks me to come to his office.”

Hawk had turned so he was staring out at the now empty harbor where the ocean moved in its directionless way.

“When I get there he say he notice me in class and don’t think I’m your usual night school student and he ask what I do. And I tell him I’m a fighter and he says well tell me a little about that, so I do.”

I was as still as I was able to be and still breathe. The air in the room seemed to have gotten suddenly very dense. I wanted to drink some beer but I didn’t want to move. Hawk swung slowly around and let his feet rest on the floor.

“And while I’m telling him, he hit on me,” Hawk said with no discernible change in his voice.

“Shit,” I said.

“I got up and left. Never went back to his class again. Never told nobody about it.”

“Professor Crawford get caught up in the black power movement?”

“Yeah.”

“He change his name?”

“Yeah.”

“Amir Abdullah?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it because the professor was gay?” Susan said.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Would he have reacted the same way if it had been a female professor that hit on him?”

“No. Femaleness didn’t matter the way maleness mattered.”

“It was because he was treating Hawk as a means not an end,” Susan said.

“Avoiding the obvious wise remark about end…” I said.

“Thank you,” Susan said.

“… I think so.”

“The most august and accomplished black man Hawk had ever met and he – what would the street term be – dissed him?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“And years later he turns up. Do you think he remembered Hawk?”

“I don’t know. Hawk’s probably not the only kid he ever hit on. Still most people meet Hawk remember him.”

“Didn’t he go out of his way to be insulting?” Susan said.

“Maybe. I think by nature he’s an annoying sonovabitch.”

“Predators often resent rejection,” Susan said.

I shrugged. Pearl was resting her head on my thigh. I cut off a small bite of the linguiзa I had substituted for chorizo, and gave it to her.

“You’re just confirming her in her bad habits,” Susan said.

“Yes,” I said, “I am.”

Susan stirred some Equal into her coffee. Pearl heard the spoon click in the cup and left me for a more promising prospect. Susan gave her a small forkful of black beans.

“Talk about bad habits,” I said.

“At least I’m teaching her to use flatware,” Susan said.

“Important for a dog,” I said.

Susan smiled. She put her spoon down and put her chin on her folded hands and looked at me.

“It’s very odd,” she said. “It’s like suddenly discovering Beowulf’s childhood.”

“I met him about the same time this happened,” I said.

“When you were both fighting at the Arena.”

“Yes.”

“You think he’s all right?”

“Hawk?”

“Yes.”

“Few people are more all right than Hawk,” I said.

“He’s very contained.”

“Very.”

“And he pays a high price for it,” Susan said.

“You think?”

“The distance between containment and isolation is not so great,” Susan said.

“He’s got a lot of women,” I said.

“But not one,” Susan said. “I guess that’s right,” I said.

“You ought to know.”

“You think I’m too contained?” I said.

“You have me,” Susan said.

“A claim no one else can currently make,” I said.

“It makes your containment more flexible,” Susan said.

“More fun too,” I said.

“You’re just saying that because I balled your ears off an hour ago.”

“Not just that,” I said.

Susan ate some of her food.

“This is very good,” she said.

“You deserve it,” I said.

“Because I’m deeply insightful?”

“Sure,” I said. “And you also balled my ears off about an hour ago.”

While I was waiting hopefully, I called the Hingham police. It took a little while but I got to the chief, whose name was Roach. They’d had two stalking complaints in the last year. In one case the stalker had been in violation of a court order, and they had been able to arrest him and urge him to change his ways.

“You give me the name?” I said.

“Not without a good reason,” Roach said.

“Well, was the stalker a Hingham resident?”

“No.”

“Was he a stockbroker?”

“Hell no.”

“Okay,” I said. “What about the other one?”

“Never caught the guy.”

“But the stalking stopped?”

“Yep. My guess is he found someone else.”

“That’s my guess too,” I said. “Can you give me the name of the victim?”

“Nope.”

“Can you give her my name and number, and remind her that I’m trying to help some other woman who’s going through what she went through?”

“I can do that,” Roach said.

“Thanks.”

I hung up and sat. The phone was quiet. I swiveled my chair so I could look out my window at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. I opened the window so I could listen to the traffic. People were already in summer clothes although we were only about half done with May. There was a Ford Explorer waiting for the light on Boylston Street. The sunroof was open and there was heavy metal music thundering up. As I watched, someone stuck a sign out of the sunroof that said
Brendan Cooney for King.
The light changed. The Explorer moved on, its exuberant sign still deployed. The young are very different than we are, I said to myself. Yes, I responded, they have more time. What if you could be young again and were able to undo the things that were done that made you into the person you would later become. But then who would you be. Would Hawk have been Hawk if he hadn’t met Professor Crawford/Abdullah? Maybe this wasn’t a useful avenue of inquiry. Maybe I should run over a list of the women I’d slept with and see if I could remember how each of them looked with their clothes off.

I was up to Brenda Loring, who had looked excellent with her clothes off, when the phone rang.

“This is Meredith Teitler,” a woman said. “Phyllis Wasserman gave me your number.”

“I’m a detective,” I said. “I represent a woman who is currently being stalked.”

“I understand,” Meredith said. “What do you wish to know?”

“You worked at Hall, Peary?”

“Still do,” she said.

“You were a stalking victim.”

“Yes.”

“Is it still a problem?”

“I am no longer being stalked,” she said.

“Did you ever identify the stalker?”

“No.”

“Did you ever date anyone at Hall, Peary?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“He wouldn’t have been the stalker.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Well, he just wouldn’t. He was, is very nice.”

“Can you give me his name?”

“No, really, I’m happy to help. But I don’t wish to make trouble for a man who’s guilty of nothing.”

“Did you ever date Louis Vincent?” I said.

There was silence.

After a moment I said, “May I take that as a yes?”

“Why did you ask about Louis?”

“He’s suspected in a stalking on the North Shore,” I said.

Again silence. This time I waited her out.

“Yes,” she said finally, “I dated Louis Vincent.”

“And what caused you to stop dating?” I said. “I… I went back to my husband,” she said. “I had dated Louis while my husband and I were separated.”

“How’d he feel about you reuniting with your husband?”

“He was very much for it,” she said. “That’s why I can’t…”

“Did he have any thought that you might continue to see each other after you reunited?”

“I… well, he did say at one point it would be fun if we could still meet once a week or so and… ah… be in bed together.”

“And you said no.”

“I said I didn’t see how that would work if I were married again. He said he understood.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Will this have to come out?” she said. “I mean my husband and I… well, it’s working now. I’d hate to drag this thing back up.”

“I don’t see why it has to be a public thing,” I said.

“I don’t really believe it was Lou,” she said.

“You never know,” I said.

Profound.

I hung up and went back to looking out the window, and thinking about nudity. It was late afternoon and I was up to how Susan looked with her clothes off, when the phone rang. It was a guy named Al.

“I’m calling for a woman in Hingham,” he said. “You know who I mean?”

“Yes,” I said.

“She doesn’t want to talk about the stalking thing. But if she can help stop it for some other woman she wants to help. She asked me to call.”

“You her husband?”

“Something like that,” Al said. “I can answer most of your questions.”

“One, really,” I said. “She ever date a guy named Louis Vincent?”

“I’ll ask her,” Al said.

The line was silent for a minute or so, then Al came back on the line.

“Yes,” he said.

“Anything she can tell me about him?”

“No.”

“Already been discussed?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Thank her for me,” I said.

“You think this guy Vincent is the stalker?”

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“You know where to find him?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Where?”

“I think I won’t tell you,” I said.

“Well, you see him, tell him,” Al said. “There’s a guy looking for him, big guy, had some fights in his life, likes it, tell him when this guy finds him he’s going to yank his fucking head off.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said.