Valediction

Crew Cut said, 'You've been hanging around here for several days.'

It didn't seem to be a question so I didn't answer.

'You've been asked,' Crew Cut said, 'not to interfere in our religious practices.'

Still no question.

The bald one said, 'So this time you're being told, not asked.'

I could feel the quick hot spurt of anger. The exterior and objective part of me was surprised. Well, well, there is anger in there.

I said, 'Is that actually your own hair you've got pasted down over your scalp, or does somebody paint it on for you each morning?'

He flushed. Sensitive. His buddy said, 'You are very close to getting yourself in some real hot water, pal.'

The anger had enlarged and was working its way up from the pit of my stomach, spreading along my back and shoulders and down my arms. I could feel my face getting hot. I was careful with my voice, easing it out so it was steady.

'This is different business,' I said, 'from pumping iron. It's a business I'm almost sure to be better at than you are. Don't make a mistake.' The muscles in my neck and shoulders were starting to bunch on their own. My whole upper body was tense.

The crew-cut deacon said, 'You are going to have to be taught a lesson.'

He put his left hand out toward me and I hit him with the back of my right hand as I unfolded my arms. I hit Baldy with the front of the same hand. His sunglasses flew off and the genie was out of the bottle. The energy release was immediate and large. It fed itself and intensified as it enlarged so there was only the welter of fists and elbows and knees and feet and forearms. Only butting heads, only gouging and biting, only force expanding in a kind of ecstasy, a frenzy released.

It was over too soon. A shame in a way to waste the energy. The deacons weren't that good. I stood with my chest heaving and the sweat soaking my shirt, staring at them sprawled on the roadway. I had broken at least one arm, and shattered at least one kneecap. When they woke up they'd be in pain.

'My fuse is awful short these days,' I said. 'Not your fault.'

I got into the car and drove up the gravel drive and stopped in front of the church. Bob Owens was standing in the doorway.

'Your deacons will need medical attention,' I said. My breath was still coming in short rasps. 'And maybe if I don't find Sherry Spellman pretty soon, you will too.' I let the clutch pedal out and the car continued around the circular drive and back out onto Route 114. In the rearview mirror I saw people hurrying toward the road.

The Incredible Hulk doesn't have a girlfriend either.

CHAPTER 13

The deacons had landed a few punches. When I woke up in the morning I had some bruises and my left eye was half shut. My hands were sore. I stumbled out into the kitchen and put ice cubes in a bowl and ran some water and put my hands in to soak. Paul wasn't home. He was in Connecticut with his girlfriend for the weekend. I took my hands out of the ice long enough to start the coffee and squeeze some orange juice and drink it. Then I soaked them some more and held some ice against my eye. I got dressed and poured some coffee and thought about breakfast. That seemed too complicated for me. So I had a corn muffin and drank a lot of coffee and read the Globe and the Times and half watched Sunday Morning on CBS. By 11:30 I was through both papers and felt over-coffeed and there was a Mass being broadcast on TV. It was too early to start drinking. I could go and look over one of the branch churches in Salisbury or West Boylston or Lakeville. Nice choice of locations. No trouble parking at any of thern. I thought about that for a while and found it more complicated than what to have for breakfast. I decided to wait until Monday. I looked at the clock, it was 11:33. There was a ball game on television at two and when that was over it would be late enough to start drinking, and then it would be time for bed. The immediate problem was getting through the next two and a half hours. I went into the living room and looked out the window. That wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped it might be. The phone rang. It was Hawk.

'How are you,' he said.

'I'm all right,' I said.

'You feel like a date?'

'With you?' I said. 'For crissake, you're colored.'

'Always figured that bothered you,' Hawk said. 'So I got a girl in mind for you, she just split with her old man.'

'She go for middle-aged thugs,' I said.

'She go for me,' Hawk said.

'Okay, I'll give it a go.'

'She'll meet us tonight, six thirty at the Bay Tower Room. I'll bring Laura.'

'The Harvard professor.'

'Yeah. Your date's a friend of hers. She say something hard, I explain it to you.'

We hung up. A date. Whoopee. Hope my acne doesn't flare up. I put on my gun and went downstairs. Bullard Winston's registration number had gotten me his address and it seemed a good way to spend a few pre-date hours on a Sunday afternoon. I walked up Arlington to Commonwealth and then west on Commonwealth toward Kenmore Square. Winston's home was in the block between Fairfield and Hereford, a block and a half this side of Mass Ave. It was a graystone town house and it was elegant. The stairs leading up to the front door were broad marble slabs. There were columns rising three stories to the roof on either side of the entry and the big windows above the entry on floors two and three were as tall as a man and paned with violet glass. The front door was black with a very large brass knocker. The glass panels on either side of the door were also violet. I