“You and Kathie can lurk around down at the stadium. If you can find a scalper you might buy tickets and go in. I figure that’s where Paul’s likely to show.”
“What I want with Kathie?”
“Maybe Zachary will show instead of Paul. Maybe , somebody else she might know. Besides, I don’t like leaving her alone.”
“That ain’t what you said this morning.”
“You know what I mean.”
Hawk grinned. “What you want with Dixon?”
“I need his clout. I need tickets to the stadium. I need his weight if we run what you might call afoul of the law. And I owe him to say what I’m doing. This matters to him. He’s got nothing else that matters.”
“You and Ann Landers, babe. Everybody’s trouble.”
“My strength is as the strength of ten,” I said, “because my heart is pure.”
“What you want me to do with Paul or Zachary or whatever, case I should encounter their ass?”
“You should make a citizen’s arrest.”
“And if they resist, seeing as I ain’t hardly a citizen of this country?”
“You’ll do what you do best, Hawk.”
“A man like to be recognized for his work, bawse. Thank you kindly.”
“You keep the car,” I said. “I’ll get a cab to the airport.”
I left my gun in the house. I wasn’t taking any luggage and I didn’t want to thrash around at customs. It was just after two in the afternoon when we swung in over Winthrop and headed in to the runway at Logan Airport, home.
I took a cab straight from the airport to Weston and at three-twenty I was ringing on Hugh Dixon’s doorbell again the same way I had a month before. The same Oriental man answered the door and said, “Mr. Spenser, this way.” Not bad, he’d seen me only once, a month before. Of course I suppose he was expecting me.
Dixon was on his patio, looking at the hills. The cat was there, asleep. It was like when you come back from the war and the front lawn looks just as it did and people are cooking supper and you realize they’ve been doing it all along, while you’ve been gone.
Dixon looked at me and said nothing. “I’ve got your people, Mr. Dixon,” I said.
“I know. Five for sure, I assume your word is good on the others. Carroll is looking into it. You want money for the first five. Carroll will pay you.”
“We’ll settle up later,” I said. “I want to stay on this a little longer.”
“At my expense?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I need some help.”
“Carroll tells me you’ve employed some help. A black man.”
“I need different help than that.”
“What do you want to do? Why do you want to stay on? What help do you need?”
“I got your people for you, but while I was getting them I found out that they were only the leaves of the crabgrass. I know who the root is. I want to dig him up.”
“Did he have a part in the killing?”
“Not yours, no, sir.”
“Then why should I care about him?”
“Because he has had a part in a lot of other killings and because he’ll probably kill somebody else’s family and somebody else’s after that.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to get me tickets to the Olympic games. The track and field events at the stadium. And if I get into a bind I want to be able to say I work for you.”
“Tell me what’s going on. Leave nothing out.”
“Okay, there’s a man named Paul, I don’t know his last name, and possibly a man named Zachary. They run a terrorist organization called Liberty. I think they are in Montreal. I think they are going to do something rash at the Olympic games.”
“Start at the beginning.”
I did. Dixon looked at me steadily, without movement, without interruption, as I told him everything I had done in London and Copenhagen and Amsterdam and Montreal.
When I was through, Dixon pushed a button in the arm of his wheelchair and in a minute the Oriental man appeared. Dixon said, “Lin, bring me five thousand dollars.” The Oriental man nodded and went out.
Dixon said to me, “I’ll pay for this.”
