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Authors: Robert B Parker

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"Including you?"

"Led by me," Susan said.

She put Pearl's food down on the floor and patted Pearl on the shoulder as Pearl began to eat.

"Certainly," she said, "Quirk and Belson would give it special attention. Healy, the FBI person."

"Epstein," I said.

"And when Hawk came back from central Asia, he'd put together his own posse, don't you think?"

"Might," I said.

"He'd get Vinnie Morris, the Mexican man from Los Angeles."

"Chollo," I said.

"Who might bring Bobby Horse."

"Probably would," I said.

"I'm sure Tedy Sapp would come up. And maybe even that black gangster, you know, the one with the huge bodyguard," Susan said.

"Tony Marcus." I said. "The huge bodyguard is Junior, the jittery little doped-out shooter is Ty-Bop. How come you can't remember people like Tony Marcus, and you remember Bobby Horse like he grew up with you."

"I don't know," Susan said.

Pearl had cleaned up her supper, and was sitting again, staring at Susan.

"How can you not know?" I said. "You have a Ph.D. from Harvard?"

"Well, I did read somewhere that by adulthood, we are so full of accumulated data that our brain has trouble sorting it."

"Oh," I said.

Susan reached into a polished chrome canister on her kitchen counter and came out with an odd-looking item, which she handed to Pearl. Pearl ate it.

"What was that?" I said.

"Duck and sweet potato," she said.

"Part of our supper?" I said.

"No," Susan said. "Our supper is being prepared as we speak by the lovely folks at Upper Crust Pizza. It will arrive at seven."

"Large?"

"Yes."

"Not broccoli or brussels sprouts on it."

"No, I've put health aside this one time," Susan said. "What do you think of my theory about why they haven't shot you?"

"They may know a lot. They may not," I said. "But what they do know is that the murder of someone connected to the Jumbo Nelson case would fully engage the local cops."

"So they'll kill you only if it is less dangerous than letting you live," Susan said.

"Probably," I said. "But their success is not a foregone conclusion, you know."

"I know," Susan said. "In fact, I can only bear the possibility if I am certain they'll fail."

"Everybody has so far," I said. "Besides, if I can believe Alice DeLauria, my immediate danger is only a savage beating."

"That's consoling," Susan said.

"I was hoping it would be," I said.

"And you're not afraid," Susan said.

"I am afraid," I said. "It's overhead, sort of. The price of doing business."

"And you're able to push past it."

"Yes," I said. "Otherwise I couldn't do what I do."

"And you do what you do because?"

I shrugged.

"I'm better at it than I am at anything else?"

Susan nodded.

"And you read
Le Morte d'Arthur
too early in life," she said.

"Yeah, that too, I guess."

"And, I suspect, if you didn't do what you do, you'd be someone else," Susan said.

"Maybe," I said.

"And you won't let fear make you into someone else."

"What if I said to you, 'I love what I do but I'm too scared to do it'?"

"I know," Susan said. "I know."

"Yes," I said. "You do."

"I wish Hawk were here," Susan said.

"He'll be back," I said.

"Unless he got killed over there," Susan said.

"Hawk doesn't get killed," I said.

"Oh," Susan said. "Like you."

"Exactly like me," I said.

Susan made me a big scotch and soda, and herself an unusually large martini.

"Will Z be all right?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "He might be quite good."

"And if he's not?" Susan said.

"At least he won't be quite bad," I said.

"Have you noticed," Susan said, "that he's beginning to talk like you?"

"Who better?" I said.

We drank our drinks on the couch. Pearl was too late to get in between us, so she sat on the other side of Susan. Susan finished her drink, which was unusual, and put the empty glass down on the coffee table. She put her head against my shoulder. We sat like that for a time, until she turned farther toward me and buried her face in my chest. I put my arm around her, until the pizza came.

Z AND I WERE DRIVING
out Storrow Drive in the late afternoon on a bright, cool Tuesday, to do some intervals at Harvard Stadium, when I picked up the tail. It was a black Cadillac sedan, and it was discreetly changing position behind us from time to time, doubtless hoping to deceive me.

"Aha, Sixkill," I said. "The game's afoot."

"The Caddy behind us?" Z said.

I looked at him. He shrugged.

"Injun read sign," he said.

"Let's make sure," I said.

I turned off Storrow at the Mass Ave Bridge exit, and went across the river and turned left onto Memorial Drive. The Caddy came along behind, trying to look like it wasn't following. I went all the way to the place where the Charles does a big bend, and re-crossed the river onto Soldiers Field Road, and stayed to the right of the underpass, and turned right to Harvard Stadium. By now the Caddy had figured out that we'd made them, and just came along behind us with no further deception.

The gate was open, and I drove in and around the stadium and parked near an entrance.

"Gladiatorial combat," I said. "On the floor of Harvard Stadium. Is that cool or what?"

"Gladiatorial combat?" Z said. "You are one weird white eye."

We walked under the stands to the field.

"Well, see," I said. "It's got a kind of Roman Colosseum design to it."

We stood on the fifty-yard line and waited. Z's breathing was maybe a little fast, but it was steady. If there was tension in him, it was the tension of a drawn bow. He was focused on the entrance we'd come through.

"Two reminders," I said. "One, try to stay on your feet. Two, stay in close. Guy your size especially."

"Three," Z said. "Remember what I've learned."

"Let that flow," I said. "Don't think about it."

Four men came out of the entrance tunnel and onto the field.

"You've trained enough," I said. "It should come as needed. Like riding a bicycle."

One of the four men was squat, with big hands, longish black hair, and a fat neck.

"You Spenser?" he said to me.

"We gonna fight?" I said.

"Not for long," the squat man said.

He put out a hard left. I checked it with my right and stepped around it as I blocked it with my left. I slid my left hand down, caught his wrist, pulled it toward me, and drove my right forearm against his elbow. He grunted with pain. I drove my forearm into his elbow again, harder, and felt the elbow break. He screamed. Someone hit me in the back of the head. I spun and hit him with the side of my clenched left fist, and continued turning, into a right cross that put the second guy down. I glanced at Z in time to see him bob under a big right hand from a tall kid with a gelled Mohawk and a weight lifter's build. Z turned his right shoulder into the bodybuilder's chest and drove a right upper cut up into the bodybuilder's chin that looked like it might loosen the guy's head. Mohawk took a step back, and Z hit him with a left hook just as the fourth guy put an arm around Z's neck. Mohawk took two more steps backward and fell down. The fourth guy, too, was an obvious bodybuilder, with his head shaved for scariness. Z dropped his chin and turned his head, which prevented Baldy from getting his forearm on Z's windpipe. Then Z quite thoughtfully located Baldy's feet and stomped his right heel down hard on Baldy's toes. Discouraged, Baldy let go, and Z introduced a move we hadn't taught him. He grabbed the guy by the throat with his left hand, and by the crotch with his right, lifted him chest-high, and slammed him to the ground. He wasn't out, but he didn't get up. The guy I had put down with a right cross had gotten to his hands and knees, and, like me, was watching Z. He decided to stay down as well. Mohawk was out. And the squat guy with the broken elbow was hunched up in pain and not threatening anybody.

"You boys local?" I said.

"You broke my fucking arm," the squat man said.

"I know," I said. "Hospital right across the river got an emergency room. You guys local?"

Nobody spoke. I bent over the guy whom Z had bodyslammed.

"Where you from?" I said.

He mumbled, "Charlestown."

I nodded.

"Who hired you?"

He looked at the squat man.

"Bull," he mumbled.

I nodded.

"Bull," I said. "You were the contractor on this. Who hired you?"

Bull shook his head.

"Soon as you tell me, we're outta here," I said. "And you can get to the hospital."

Bull shook his head.

"Or," I said, "I could break the other one."

Bull stood with his head down, trying to find a place that didn't hurt to put his left arm.

"Guy named Silver," he said.

"Hospital's right at the head of the Charles," I said. "You'll see it when you get out of the stadium. Go west on either side of the river."

Then I turned to Z and held up my hand; he gave me a high-five.

"What about our intervals?" he said.

"I think we've done them," I said.

Z AND I WENT
to the bar in Grill 23 for a victory drink.

I had a Dewar's and soda. He had Maker's Mark on the rocks.

"You have learned well, grasshopper," I said.

Z nodded. I sipped my scotch. He looked at his bourbon.

"Where'd you get the bodyslam?" I said.

"Television," Z said. "WWF."

"I suggest you lose it," I said.

"Worked like a charm today," Z said.

"Did," I said. "But the guy was a little quicker, or knew a little more, he'd have had time and opportunity to get a firm hold on your windpipe."

"What instead?" Z said.

"Stay on top of him. 'Specially a guy as big and strong as you are. Bombard him with more than he can prevent."

Z nodded. I had a little more scotch.

"Makes sense," he said. "On the other hand, I hadn't been there, they'd have had your ass."

"If you hadn't been there," I said, "I wouldn't have gone into the stadium in the first place."

"So you trusted me," Z said.

"Yep."

Z hadn't taken a drink yet.

"And you'll trust me again," he said.

"Yep."

"You had other people you could have called on," Z said.

"Yep."

"Why me?"

"Why not you?" I said.

"How'd you know I could do what you taught me?"

"This was a way to find out," I said.

"Christ," Z said. "A test run?"

"Yeah."

"What if I'd tanked," Z said.

"I figured they'd hire some local stiffs," I said. "And just on size, strength, and enthusiasm, you could distract them while I did my stomp."

Z looked at me for a while, then picked up his bourbon and drank some. He put the glass down on the glistening mahogany bar and looked at it. I looked at it, too. It looked so good, the amber liquid, the translucent ice, the squat, clear glass.

"I don't want to give this up," Z said.

"Maybe you don't need to," I said.

"I drink a lot," Z said.

"Maybe you cut back," I said.

"Everybody says that won't work."

"Everybody is generally wrong," I said. "Not everybody has to go all or nothing."

"You know that?" Z said.

"I did it," I said.

"You cut back?"

"I went from too much to not too much."

"You ever get drunk?" he said.

"Now and then," I said. "Not often."