“We won’t swim across,” I said. “We’ll drop off the fish pier and edge around below them.” Hawk didn’t say anything.
We went back out of the construction and walked to the fish pier. On the Boston side a big trawler lay against the pier empty. Hawk and I dropped onto it. I took off my blazer, my shirt and shoes. I checked that the snap on my holster was tight. Hawk had a shoulder holster, which he removed and readjusted over his bare upper body. He looked down at the water.
“Least there no sharks,” he said. “Pollution would have killed them.”
We left our clothes in a pile on the trawler and went over the edge into the cold ugly water. Treading water we pushed along the hull of the trawler and around its stern and moved along the pier, holding the rough stones and pressing close, out of sight from the pier ten feet above us. A radio played on the pier someplace and I could hear Willie Nelson. Debris bumped against us as we edged along the pier. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to know what it was. The water was cold and harsh and black. There were barnacles here and there on the stones of the pier. Not many, and probably from another time. Not much could live in the water these days. Now and then half-rotten seaweed made the stones slimy and made me slip as we edged along.
Hawk said very softly, “You figure this stuff flotsam, or jetsam?”
There was a second fishing boat, smaller than the first, with a narrow gush of water occasionally belching from the bilge pump. We went outside it. There was room inside but we didn’t want to risk getting crushed if the boat drifted in.
At the end of the pier we paused, Hawk behind me. I edged my head around the corner, The stern of the speedboat rolled gently five feet in front of me. I looked up. The Orientals weren’t visible. In the speedboat, from my oceangoing angle, I could see only the back of the driver’s white yachting cap.
I turned and put my mouth next to Hawk’s ear. “You take the captain,” I said. “I’ll go up the ladder.” Hawk nodded, only his head and one arm and shoulder showing above the water. We edged around the corner of the pier. Three gray and white seagulls bobbed on the water near the speedboat. They looked at us with what seemed to be annoyance.
I went inside the speedboat and caught the lowest rung of the rusty pier ladder. Hawk went past me, outside the speedboat. I looked back as he disappeared from view and then I took out my gun, and holding it in my right hand I went up the ladder. The man at the far right corner of the Exchange Building saw me as my head and shoulders cleared the floor of the pier, and went for his gun under his shirt. I shot him and he doubled up and dropped forward on the ground. The other two turned toward me.
“Freeze,” I said with a lot of sincerity. I had the GI .357 leveled and moving in a small are between the two of them. The man closest to me had his hand inside the gym bag. I felt a tremor on the ladder below me. I stepped up onto the pier, the gun still leveled and moving in its little arc. The fallen man by the edge of the building was doubled up, his knees drawn to his chest. He was grunting with pain. There was movement in the left edge of my peripheral vision.
“It’s me, bawse,” Hawk said.
“Never thought it wasn’t,” I said.
Hawk stepped to the man with the gym bag. He took a handful of hair in his left hand and caught the man’s right wrist with his right hand. He eased the hand out of the gym bag.
“Anything in that hand, and you dead,” he said. The hand came out empty. Hawk kicked the gym bag toward me. He slid his hands over the man’s body, took a big gravity knife out of the man’s right-hand pocket and stepped away. He turned toward the other man, by the edge of the Exchange Building. He pointed at him.
“You,” Hawk said. “Walk over here, hands on your head.”
The man looked at Hawk and shook his head slightly and shrugged.
Hawk jerked his thumb toward us, and put his hands on top of his head for a moment. The man nodded once and put his hands on his head and walked toward us. I held the gun steady on him. When he reached Hawk, he launched a karate kick with a movement so fast and precise it was almost immediate. Hawk leaned back out of the way and the kick missed. The man landed and spun and launched another kick almost before he’d landed; elevating like a spring.
Hawk caught him.
Hawk got the kicking foot around the ankle with his right hand and locked a handful of T-shirt with his left. He held the man motionless at eye level for a moment then pivoted and threw the man spinning into the harbor.
The man with the gym bag said, “Jesus Christ.”
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly.” I put my gun back in my holster and picked up the gym bag. It said NIKE on it, in white script.
The kicker floundered below in the water, thrashing after the speedboat, which was drifting twenty yards from shore, the captain slumped facedown in the cockpit. I took off my holster and put it in the bag.
“Take him with us,” I said to Hawk. “Around that way. I’ll meet you at the car.”
Then I headed down the right side of the pier carrying the gym bag. Down the pier I saw a Port Authority cop in a blue baseball cap walking rapidly along with two fishermen behind him.
“Officer,” I yelled, “quick. A man’s been shot.” The cop broke into a jog, one hand resting on his holstered gun, the other holding the walkie-talkie. As he ran he spoke into it.
“I got him out,” I said. “He’s back there.”
“Stick around,” the cop said. “I’ll want to talk with you.”
He went on past and the two fishermen followed.
“Yes, sir,” I said. I cut through one of the fishpacking bays and walked swiftly to the parking lot. People stared at me, shirtless in my soaked jeans. Hawk was sitting in the backseat with the Oriental man. I got in front, started the car, and we drove away. Halfway down Northern Avenue we saw an ambulance coming with its lights flashing, and behind it, two Boston Police cars.
“Fearsome doings on the fish pier,” I said.
