Doreen hurried past, frowning with concentration. Red patted her backside as she passed. She neither slowed nor looked at him.
“They hiring out there,” I said to Red.
“Don’t think so. You guys know weapons?”
“Up to mortars,” I said. “For sure. After that, maybe.”
Red nodded. “Anything else? Sometimes they need instructors.”
“Hand-to-hand,” Hawk said. “PT. Arm wrestling.”
Red grinned, “Yeah, too bad we ain’t looking for arm wrestlers. We got a PT and unarmed combat guy. Big old buck name of Elson.”
“Billy Elson?” I said.
“Naw, Lionel Elson from Hamtramck, Michigan.”
“Don’t know him,” I said. “How about PT?”
Red laughed. “I look like a guy does a lot of PT. Lionel does the PT but most of us don’t pay much attention. Him and Teddy Bright.”
“Well, ask around, will you? We’re looking for work and we’d rather work in some out-of-the-way place, you know?”
“Where there ain’t a lot of cops,” Red said.
“Where it’s quiet,” Hawk said.
Red winked and finished his drink. “I can dig it, babe. Lot of us got places we better not go back to.”
Hawk smiled pleasantly.
Red rocked slightly against the bar. “I’ll ask the cadre chief,” he said. “You never know.”
“Hardly ever,” I said.
CHAPTER 30
“MAN GOT HIMSELF A PRIVATE ARMY,” HAWK said. “like a chinese warlord.”
I nodded. We were driving toward Hartford, east, directly into the morning sun. The road was curvy and not wide.
“We could kick the shit out of Lionel and Teddy,” Hawk said. “Maybe persuade folks we could do their job better.”
“That’s always an option,” I said. “Let’s try this way, first.”
Hawk shrugged. “Hate getting tied in to those government assholes,” Hawk said. “They could fuck up a square knot.”
We found a diner in West Hartford with an outside pay phone. Hawk went to order breakfast and I called Ives on the number he’d said was always manned. He’d misstated slightly. This morning it was womaned. She said a noncommittal hello. I said I wanted to talk with Ives and she said could he call me back. I gave her the pay phone number and hung up and waited.
Ives called back in five minutes. “Good to see you early-birding it,” he said. “Caught any worms yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Here’s what we need. We need two guys that work at the Transpan weapons facility in Pequod, Connecticut, to disappear.”
“Permanently?” Ives said.
“A month ought to be plenty,” I said.
“What are their names?”
“Lionel Elson and Teddy Bright.”
“Teddy Bright?”
“Would I make it up,” I said.
“What else can you tell me?”
“They are instructors in hand-to-hand combat and physical training at the Transpan test range.”
“Why does a manufacturer have a hand-to-hand combat instructor?”
“We’ll find that out,” I said. “After you scoop Lionel and Teddy.”
“Do you care how we do it?”
“No. We’re angling to get hired in their place and so it shouldn’t look rigged and it shouldn’t connect us.”
“Hurry?”
Behind me a big ten-wheeler ground past, down-shifting as it slowed for a stoplight in the next block.
“Ives,” I said. “You need to remember why I’m in this?”
“Ah yes, the maiden in the tower.”
“After this is over, Ives, you and I may have to discuss your tone. But right now I want her out of that tower,” I
