To the left of the house was a beach, where the street curved. To the right was a high hedge concealing the neighbors’ house next door. A blond teenage girl in a very small lime green bikini answered the door. She looked maybe seventeen. I carefully did not leer at her when I said, “My name’s Spenser to see Mr. Shepard.”
The girl said, “Come in.”
I stepped into the front hallway and she left me standing while she went to get her father. I closed the door behind me. The front hall was floored in flagstone and the walls appeared to be cedar paneling. There were doors on both sides and in the rear, and a stairway leading up. The ceilings were white and evenly rough, the kind of plaster ceiling that is sprayed on and shows no mark of human hand.
Shepard’s daughter came back. I eyed her surreptitiously behind my sunglasses. Surreptitious is not leering. She might be too young, but it was hard to tell.
“My dad’s got company right now, he says can you wait a minute?”
“Sure.”
She walked off and left me standing in the hall. I didn’t insist on port in the drawing room, but standing in the hall seemed a bit cool. Maybe she was distraught by her mother’s disappearance. She didn’t look distraught. She looked sullen. Probably mad at having to answer the door. Probably going to paint her toenails when I’d interrupted. Terrific-looking thighs though. For a little kid.
Shepard appeared from the door past the stairs. With him was a tall black man with a bald head and high cheekbones. He had on a powder blue leisure suit and a pink silk shirt with a big collar. The shirt was unbuttoned to the waist and the chest and stomach that showed were as hard and unadorned as ebony. He took a pair of wraparound sunglasses from the breast pocket of the jacket and as he put them on, he stared at me over their rims until very slowly the lenses covered his eyes and he stared at me through them.
I looked back. “Hawk,” I said.
“Spenser.”
Shepard said, “You know each other?”
Hawk nodded.
I said, “Yeah.”
Shepard said to Hawk, “I’ve asked Spenser here to see if he can find my wife, Pam.”
Hawk said, “I’ll bet he can. He’s a real firecracker for finding things. He’ll find the ass off of a thing. Ain’t that right, Spenser?”
“You always been one of my heroes too, Hawk. Where you staying?”
“Ah’m over amongst de ofays at de Holiday Inn, Marse Spensah.”
“We don’t say ofays anymore, Hawk. We say honkies. And you don’t do that Kingfish dialect any better than you used to.”
“Maybe not, but you should hear me sing ’Shortnin‘ Bread,’ babe.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I said.
Hawk turned toward Shepard. “I’ll be in touch, Mr. Shepard,” he said. They shook hands and Hawk left. Shepard and I watched him from the front door as he walked down toward the Caddie. His walk was graceful and easy yet there was about him an aura of taut muscle, of tight coiled potential, that made it seem as if he were about to leap.
He looked at my ‘68 Chevy, and looked back at me with a big grin. “Still first cabin all the way, huh, baby?”
I let that pass and Hawk slid into his Cadillac and drove away. Ostentatious.
Shepard said, “How do you know him?”
“We used to fight on the same card twenty years ago. Worked out in some of the same gyms.”
“Isn’t that amazing, and twenty years later you run into him here.”
“Oh, I’ve seen him since then. Our work brings us into occasional contact.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, I could sense that you knew each other pretty well. Salesman’s instinct at sizing people up, I guess. Come on in. Have a cup of coffee or something? It’s pretty early for a drink, I guess.”
We went into the kitchen. Shepard said, “Instant okay?”
I said, “Sure,” and Shepard set water to boiling in a red porcelain teakettle.
The kitchen was long with a divider separating the cooking area from the dining area. In the dining area was a big rough hewn picnic table with benches on all four sides. The table was stained a driftwood color and contrasted very nicely with the blue floor and counter tops.
“So you used to be a fighter, huh?”
I nodded.
“That how your nose got broken?”
“Yep.”
“And the scar under your eye, too, I’ll bet.”
“Yep.”
