middle of Commonwealth Avenue runs flat and straight between Kenmore Square and the Public Garden. There are trees and benches in the mall and on pleasant summer days there are kids and dogs and couples, joggers, and roller skaters and Frisbee players in sufficient number to make things seem lively. Now in the dark three weeks before Christmas it was empty and cold and still.
At Fairfield, Susan turned toward the river, crossed Marlboro Street, and turned onto Beacon.
'Hydrant,' I said, and Susan saw it and pulled the Bronco into the space frontward. She began to jockey the truck back and forth trying to get parallel to the curb beside the hydrant. Hawk and I were silent as she went forward and backward, getting very little closer to the curb in the process.
'I know,' she said, 'I know I'm supposed to back in, but I hate to back in.'
Hawk and I were silent. Across the street and two doors up was Poitras's town house. There was no light on at the front door, but I could see light spilling out from around the drawn curtains.
Susan finally parked with one wheel up on the curb and the back end of the Bronco jutting aggressively out into the street.
'The hell with it,' Susan said.
Hawk and I were quiet. It had gotten very cold. There were no stars showing in the narrow channel of black sky above Beacon Street as we crossed. At the door I stopped and listened. Faintly I could hear music. I put my ear against the door. The music was a little stronger. I thought I could hear also, maybe, a faint sound of talk and movement, almost as if there were a party.
'Let's cruise around back,' I said, 'and take a peek in.'
We went in single file, no more laughing, very little talk. First me, then Susan, and Hawk a soundless, nearly invisible third.
The drapes were drawn across the French doors, but I was able to peer through a narrow gap and catch a glimpse of a crowd. The sound of music and crowd noise was louder through the glass doors. Looking up, I could see the shades drawn on all three floors with light leaking out. I gestured with my hand toward the street and we walked back down the alley to Fairfield and around the corner back onto Beacon.
'It's a large party,' I said.
'Friday night,' Hawk said.
'Never set up a raid on a Friday night,' I said.
'Can we do it anyway?' Susan said.
Hawk looked at me.
I said, 'Why not. I got a key. Let's go in and have a look. If the party's big and wild enough, no one will pay any attention.'
Hawk nodded once. Susan said, 'Party, party.' In the dim light from the streelamp I could see her eyes wide and the slight indentation around her mouth that meant repressed excitement.
We went to the door and I knocked lightly. No answer. I tried the knob. It was locked. I took out the duplicate keys and opened the front door. The place must have been soundproofed because when the door was open the blast of sound was overpowering. Hard rock music thumped and voices were shrill and glasses clattered. We stepped inside and closed the door. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and pot and the smell of booze, and hot with human scent. We took off our coats in the hallway and laid them across the umbrella stand. While we were doing that a big surly-looking man appeared at the end of the hall and walked toward us. He was wearing a blue blazer that was too small for him and the gun he wore under it made a clear bulge. He had long muttonchop sideburns and his hair was longish, so that it trailed over his collar in back. Hawk smiled.
'What are you people doing here?' the surly man said. Hawk smiled some more.
'We been over there,' he said vaguely, pointing with his right hand across his body at the wall next to his shoulder. The surly man was close now and frowning as he looked in the direction that Hawk was pointing. He said, 'Huh?'
And Hawk hit him with the edge of his pointing right hand across the bridge of his nose. I could hear the bone break. The man grunted, put his hands toward his face, and Hawk hit him, still with the edge of his right hand, this time just back of the left ear. The surly man's hands never made it to his face. They dropped straight in front of him and the surly man's body followed. He fell face forward on the floor and he lay still. I opened the front door. Hawk and I each took hold of the back of his coat collar and dragged him outside. Hawk reached down and slipped his gun out of its holster and we shoved him over the ornamental railing in behind the bare winter shrubs. Then we came back in and Susan closed the door behind us. Her eyes were shiny. Hawk handed her the surly man's gun, a short- barreled Colt detective special. 'Stick that in your purse,' he said. 'Don't want to leave it laying around.' Susan plonked it into her shoulder bag. It disappeared easily. She could have kept a collection of blunderbusses in there without being discovered.
We followed the noise and smoke and smell along the hall and down the three steps to the living room. Susan's hand was on my arm.
Susan said, 'Jesus Christ.'
The room was a swarm of debauchery, a maelstrom of naked and part-naked limbs and torsos. It looked like a feverish animation of one of those Gustave Dor6 illustrations for The Inferno. Somewhere in the swarm rock music was playing at top volume on a good stereo. The smoke hung under the ceiling, eddying around the table lamps as the hot light bulbs caused a tiny thermal updraft. The thump of the music made a discernible vibration in the stairs as we stood looking in. I let Hawk stand in front of us in case Poitras or Amy or April spotted us.
The laughter that had filtered out through the French doors as I stood there in the dark a few moments ago now snarled with the music, raw and harsh and gilded at the edges with hysteria. Slicing through the thick smell of pot and booze and perfume and sweat was a thin medicinal smell I wasn't sure of. Ether maybe. The heat was threatening. The air seemed hard to breathe. Hawk was whistling softly through his teeth again. He was less than a foot away and I could barely make out the tune; it was 'Stars and Stripes Forever.'
'Thank God it's Friday,' I murmured to Susan.
The room was the same one in which I'd had my correct beer with Amy the first time I'd come, but just barely. Much of the furniture was gone and what remained had been pushed against the walls. On the bar there were
