'Tony say he can help you with the Red Rose thing.'
'Why?'
Hawk shrugged. 'Don't like it that some guy's killing black women.'
'Tony's become an activist?'
'Tony been making his living from black women all his life,' Hawk said.
'Maybe he don't like seeing the pool depleted.'
'So why send you?'
'Tony think you don't like him. Think maybe he send one of his own, ah, employees, you might whack him.'
'Okay, where we eating?' I said.
'Tony likes the Legal Seafood in Park Square.'
'Me too,' I said. 'What time?'
'Noon.'
'You think Tony knows something?'
Hawk shook his head. 'Think he wants to see if you know something.'
'Gonna be a quiet lunch,' I said.
Legal served the best seafood in the city and they didn't make you dress up to eat it. Marcus was there when Hawk and I arrived, sitting at a table with a smooth-faced blond woman who wore lavender lipstick and her hair pulled back on one side. Marcus had a fat neck and a big mustache and a short black Afro touched with gray, and he looked sort of soft.
The look was deceptive. He had forced himself on the Irish and Italian mob in Boston and taken away the black community. Nothing much happened in Roxbury and along Blue Hill Avenue that Tony didn't get some of.
Black Boston was pretty much his and there wasn't anything that the white mobs and the cops and the new Jamaicans had been able to do about it. He nodded at the two empty chairs and Hawk and I sat.
'Bloody Marys are good here,' Tony said. He had one in front of him.
The blonde had a glass of white wine. The waitress stood beside us.
'Something from the bar?' she said.
I ordered a Sam Adams beer. Hawk ordered a bottle of Cristal champagne.
'Jesus Christ, Hawk,' Marcus said.
Hawk smiled without humor or meaning.
'You working with Quirk on this Red Rose thing?' Marcus said. 'What do you know that's not in the papers?'
'Nothing,' I said. 'How bout yourself?'
Marcus shook his head without speaking. The waitress brought my beer and Hawk's champagne and more drinks for Marcus and the blonde. She opened the champagne, poured some for Hawk, and put the rest in a bucket near him. He smiled at her and seemed flustered. 'Do you need a little time with the menus?' she said.
Hawk nodded and smiled again, and she flushed slightly and hustled away.
'Woman's fallen in love with me,' Hawk said.
'Who can blame her,' I said. The blonde looked puzzled.
'I don't like it that some honkie fruitcake is going around this city wasting black women,' Tony said.
I raised one fist and held it for a moment, above my head. Hawk murmured, 'Right on, bro,' and drank some champagne.
Marcus shook his head. 'I don't expect any understanding from a white guy,' he said. 'But you, Hawk?'
Hawk put his glass down and leaned slightly forward toward Marcus.
'Tony,' he said, 'I ain't black, he ain't white, and you, probably, ain't human. You want to look good down around Grove Hall, that's your business. But don't waste a lot of time with the black brother bullshit.'
The waitress came for our order. I ordered Cajun fried squid. Marcus ordered red snapper for himself and the blonde. Hawk ordered scallops.
When the waitress left, Marcus smiled a little bit. He said, 'You never been too sentimental, Hawk.'
Hawk poured himself a little more champagne.
'So it doesn't matter none what my reasons are,' Marcus said. 'All I'm saying is, if I can help on this thing, I will. I got a lotta contacts, a lotta resources.'
'What makes you so sure the killer's white?' I said.
'What they said in the papers,' Marcus said. He finished his Bloody Mary and gestured toward the waitress for another one and a white wine for the blonde. The waitress looked at me. I shook my head. She departed.
'Tony, I don't like you,' I said.
