“Me either,” I said. I still had hold of the doorknob.
“Come back when you can,” she said. “I miss you when you’re gone.”
“Me too,” I said. I left the door open and went back and kissed her on the cheekbone, up near the temple. She rolled over on her back and looked up at me. Her eyes were wet. “Bye-bye,” I said.
“Bye-bye.”
I went out and closed the door and headed for Harv Shepard’s place with my stomach feeling odd.
I don’t know if I was scared or not, but Shepard was so scared his face didn’t fit. The skin was stretched much too tight over the bones and he swallowed a lot, and loudly, as we drove out Main Street to the Holiday Inn.
“You don’t need to know what I’m up to,” I said. “I think you’ll do better if you don’t. Just take it that I’ve got something working that might get you out of this.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because it requires some deception and I don’t think you’re up to it.”
“You’re probably right,” he said.
Hawk had a room on the second floor, overlooking the pool. He answered the door when we knocked, and Shepard and I went in. There was assorted booze on the bureau to the right, and a thin guy with horn-rimmed glasses reading the Wall Street Journal on one of the beds. King Powers was sitting at a round table with an open ledger in front of him, his hands folded on the edge of the table. Stagey bastard.
“What is that you have with you,” Powers said in a flat Rudy Vallee voice.
“We’re friends,” I said. “We go everywhere together.”
Powers was a tall, soft-looking man with pale skin and reddish hair trimmed long like a Dutch boy, and augmented with fuzzy mutton-chop sideburns. His wardrobe looked like Robert Hall Mod. Maroon-checked doubleknit leisure suit, white belt, white shoes, white silk shirt with the collar out over the lapels. A turquoise arrowhead was fastened around his neck on a leather thong and stuck straight out, like a gesture of derision.
“I didn’t tell you to bring no friends,” Powers said to Shepard.
“You’ll be glad he did,” I said. “I got a package for you that will put a lot of change in your purse.”
“I don’t use no goddamned purse,” Powers said.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought that was your mistress on the bed.”
Behind me Hawk murmured. “Hot damn” to himself. The guy on the bed looked up from his Wall Street Journal and frowned.
Powers said, “Hawk, get him the fuck out of here.”
Hawk said. “This is Spenser. I told you about him. He likes to kid around but he don’t mean harm. Leastwise he don’t always mean harm.”
“Hawk, you hear me. I told you move him out.”
“He talking money, King. Maybe you should listen.”
“You working for me, Hawk? You do what you’re told.”
“Naw, I only do what I want. I never do what I’m told. Same with old Spenser here. You yell your ass off at him, if you want, but he ain’t going to do a goddamned thing he don’t want to do. You and Macey listen to him. He talking about money, he probably ain’t bullshitting. You don’t like what you hear. Then I’ll move him out.”
“Aw right, aw right. Let’s hear it, for crissake. Spit it out.” Powers’ pale face was a little red and he was looking at me hard. Macey, on the bed, had sat up, and put his feet on the floor. He still held the Journal in his left hand, his forefinger keeping the place.
“Okay, King. First. Harv can’t pay up, at this time.”
“Then his ass is grass and I’m a fucking lawnmower,” Powers said.
“Trendy,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Trendy as a bastard, that slick maroon and white combo. And to top it off you talk so good. You’re just an altogether with-it guy.”
“You keep fucking around with me, Spenser, and you’re going to wish you never did.”
“Whyn’t you get to the part about the bread, Spenser,” Hawk said. “In the purse. Whyn’t you talk on that.”
“I got a buyer with about a hundred thousand dollars who is looking for some guns. I will trade you the buyer for Shepard.”
“What makes you think I can get guns?”
“King, for a hundred thousand skins you could get a dancing aardvark.” He smiled. His lips were puffy and when he smiled the inside of his upper lip turned out. And his gums showed above his top teeth.
“Yeah, maybe I could,” he said. “But Shepard’s into me for a lot of fucking dough.” He ran his eyes down the ledger page in front of him. “Thirty big ones. I took a lot of risk with that dough, just on a handshake, you know? It ain’t easy to trade that off.”
“Okay,” I said. “See you, we’ll take it elsewhere,” I said. “Come on, Harv.”
Powers said, “You’re choice, but your pal better have the payment on him now, or we’re going to be awful mad.”
