desk and yelled at Hawk, ”Telephone.“
Hawk did shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits on his bag and I responded and we stopped, and Hawk, grinning widely, went to the phone. The rest of the room cheered and clapped. I yelled after him.
”Hey, gee whiz, my dad’s got a barn, maybe we can put on a show.“
Hawk disappeared around the corner and I went to the heavy bag. When he came back his grin wasn’t as wide, but his face had a look of real pleasure.
He leaned on the other side of the bag while I pounded it.
”You going to like this, babe,“ he said.
”You been drafted,“ I said.
”You been messing with Harry Cotton, haven’t you?“
I dug a hook into the bag. ”I spoke with him.“
”You got that slick way, you know, how you talk so sweet to people. Harry putting out a hit on you.“
”He’s too sensitive,“ I said. ”Call a guy a weasel and tell him he smells bad and he goes right into a goddamned swivet,“ I said.
”He do smell bad, that’s a fact,“ Hawk said.
”You know Harry?“
”Oh, yes. Harry’s an important person in this town.“
”That him on the phone?“
”Yeah. He want me to whack you.“ Hawk’s smile got wider. ”He ask me if I know who you are. I say, yeah, I think so.“
I did a left jab and an overhand right.
”How much he offering?“ I said.
”Five G’s.“
”That’s insulting,“ I said.
”You’d have been proud of me,“ Hawk said. ”I told him that. I said I wouldn’t do it for less than ten. He say lot of people be happy to do it for five. I said that wasn’t the point. I said lot of people be happy to do it for nothing, but they can’t, ’cause they ain’t good enough. I said it’s a ten-thousand-dollar job at least. He say no.“
”Harry was always cheap,“ I said.
”So I said no. Guess you safe again.“
”From you at least.“ I did some low body punches into the bag. Hawk held it steady.
”Harry will hire cheap,“ Hawk said. ”He’ll hire some bum, don’t know no better. You’ll bury him and…“ Hawk spread his hands. ”I got nothing going for a while. Maybe I hang around with you some.“
”What would the rate for hitting us both be?“ I said.
”‘Bout one hundred and thirty-two trillion,“ Hawk said.
”Harry’s too cheap for that,“ I said.
CHAPTER 29
At nine o’clock I was at the Giacomin house in Lexington. I forced the back door and went in and turned on the lights. In Patty Giacomin’s bedroom was a small secretary with slender curving legs and gold stenciling. Her picture in a leather frame was on it. I opened the leaf and sat down on the small rush-bottomed stool in front of it and began to go through the contents. When I’d been here I’d seen Patty do her bills here, and there wasn’t much else but bill payment receipts and canceled checks. The only handle I had besides her sweet Stephen was her periodic trips to New York.
In a half hour I found what I wanted: American Express receipts from the New York Hilton dated roughly a month apart going back several years. They were all room charges, she’d paid them all with her American Express card, and she’d kept the receipts. She kept all receipts apparently without discrimination. So there was nothing terribly significant about her keeping these. She probably didn’t know what was important, so she kept them all.
I went through everything else in the house and there was nothing else worth looking at. I took all the American Express receipts and Patty’s picture, turned off the lights, and closed the door.
The spring night was quiet in Lexington. The rain had stopped. Lights shone in people’s houses and there were open windows. Voices drifted out occasionally, and the sounds of television. It was late, but there were still cooking smells in the air. As I went toward my car, a cat slid past me and into the shrubs in the next yard. I thought about Harry Cotton’s contract. I touched the gun on my hip. The street, when I got to the car, was empty. In the circle of the streetlights moths flew without apparent purpose. The cat appeared from the shrubs and sat on its haunches under the streetlight and looked up at the moths. It was a yellow-striped cat with white chest and face and paws.
I got into the Bronco and started up and drove away from Emerson Road. The ball game was coming in from Milwaukee and it made the sound it always made, soft crowd murmur in the background, the voices of the announcers in familiar pattern, the occasional sound of the bat hitting the ball, the metallic stilted voice of the P.A. announcer, repeating the hitter’s last name. The sound seemed almost eternal.
It was nearly midnight when I got back to my apartment. Susan and Paul were still up watching a movie on television. Susan said, ”There’s a sub out there if you haven’t eaten.“
