yourself in really bad trouble.'
'Who am I dealing with?' I said.
'You'll find out-if you don't smarten up.'
'Listen,' I said. 'This is getting boring. You guys are stuck. They sent you over here to run me off but they told you not to make any trouble. So you can threaten me, but you can't back it up, because you were told not to.'
'You think so, huh?'
'Jesus, who writes your dialogue? Yeah, I think so. The point here is to get me to stop causing trouble here, not to escalate it.'
'Say that's right,' Curly said. 'That don't mean that you ain't going to run into trouble someplace else, if you get my drift.'
'Yeah, that's occurred to me. But see, you think I'm scared of you. You're used to it. Most people are scared of you. 'Cause you're official badasses, and you walk around with guns, and call people chico. What you don't understand is that you should be scared of me.'
The three of us stood there silently. Then the guy with the sunburn jerked his head at his brother and they turned and walked back to the Olds.
'You'll see us again,' he said, and got in the car. The engine cranked and the car backed up with a lot of engine noise and tire squealing. I waved good-bye as it backed into Boylston Street and pulled away. When they were gone I walked up to the corner and found a pay phone in a drugstore and called Henry Cimoli at the Harbor Health Club.
'I need Hawk,' I said. 'I'm hanging around outside the Crown Prince Club, you know where that is?'
'Yeah, I know. It's a whorehouse for Yuppies,' Henry said.
'Unkind,' I said.
'But true,' Henry said. 'I'll tell him.'
I bought a package of peanut butter Nabs at the check-out counter and went back down the alley and leaned against my car some more and ate the Nabs.
At five-ten Hawk parked behind me in the alley and got out and walked over to me. He had on a pale lavender sport jacket over a pink tank top. His slacks were creamy linen and his shoes off-gray. He had on wraparound sunglasses and his head gleamed in the late afternoon sun.
'You been here all day trying to get up courage to go in the Crown Prince Club,' Hawk said. 'And you want me to walk you over.'
'I been standing here all day,' I said, 'and first the doorman came over and asked me to leave, and then two gunnies came around and told me to leave.'
'You still here,' Hawk said.
'Yeah, but I think maybe I need someone to keep an eye on my back.'
'Who the gunnies?' Hawk said.
'Don't know. They were maybe thirty, brothers, southern European, one of them called the other one Paulie.'
'Well, we know Perry Lehman connected.'
'Yep.'
'How come you standing around out here annoying everybody?' Hawk said.
'I don't know what else to do,' I said. 'So I figured if I annoyed Lehman enough maybe something would happen and I'd know what to do.'
'You good at annoying,' Hawk said.
'Years of study,' I said.
'Yeah,' Hawk said, 'but you had a natural talent to start with.'
28
At about a quarter to six, Perry Lehman came out of the Crown Prince Club. The doorman came with him. The doorman opened the door of a stretch limo, Perry got in and the stretch limo pulled away. I got in my car and followed it. We turned left onto Boylston and right onto Charles and left onto Beacon and headed west. The traffic was still heavy and the limo didn't go fast. There were a lot of stops. It wasn't hard to follow Lehman, but I wanted him to see me following, and with heavy traffic it took some doing. At six thirty-five the limo pulled into a long, curving drive in Chestnut Hill near the reservoir. I went right in behind it. The drive curved up among flowering shrubs and green lawn. The limo stopped under a portico in front of an enormous white chateau-style home. I pulled up behind it. A black man in a light gray three-piece suit came out to open the door, and another one came out dressed the same and stood beside the limo and looked at my car.
Lehman got out of the limo and turned and stared at me. The guy holding the door closed it and the limo pulled away. I sat in my car and looked back at Lehman. He said something to the two attendants and they all looked at me. Then the two black guys came over to my car.
'Mr. Lehman wishes to know what you want.'
'Awful warm for a vest, isn't it?' I said.
'State your business, please.'
'Actually I'm with the National Organization for Women, and I was wondering if Mr. Lehman would care to
