her bedroom and dressed and put my new Browning on my hip, slid past her into the living room and stayed out of the way until she was ready.
At nine fifteen we were on the Mass. Pike to Newton. We got off at West Newton and headed west on Washington to Commonwealth Ave. and west on Commonwealth to Madelaine's condo.
'I still say it would have been shorter,' Susan was saying, 'to go straight out to 128 and come back in.'
'No hurry,' I said. It was seventy-three degrees and sunny, an atypical late March day in Boston.
'Easy for you to say.'
Hawk's jag was parked in the apartment lot across the street from Madelaine's. I pulled in beside it and Hawk got out of his car and climbed in my back seat.
'They there,' he said. 'Deegan came out and took the paper off the front stoop about half hour ago.'
'How are you, cutie,' Susan said.
'Formidable,' Hawk said.
Susan leaned back over the front seat, and Hawk leaned forward, and they kissed.
'The basketball star coming?' Hawk said.
'His girlfriend says she'll have him here at ten,' I said.
'And when he get here, what is it we going to do, again?'
'We're going to bring him in and observe his interaction with Madelaine Roth and Bobby Deegan,' I said.
'Interaction,' Hawk said.
'They must be the people Dwayne's loyal to,' Susan said. 'Maybe we can get some sense of how or why.'
'Besides, I can't think of anything else to do,' I said.
'Could put them both in the river,' Hawk said.
'Come on,' I said. 'Up here the river's almost swimmable again. Aren't you opposed to pollution?'
'We've done it before,' Hawk said.
'The reasons were better,' I said, 'than any we've got now.'
Hawk shrugged and leaned back against the seat.
'There need to be some reasons, Hawk,' Susan said.
'Worried about reasons all my life, I be a long time dead by now,' Hawk said.
'Yes,' Susan said, 'that's probably true.' Hawk grinned in the back seat.
'Don't make much difference to me, sweet potato,' he said. 'Kill them, interact with them, tell them about God. Whatever works. Or make you happy.'
'How sweet,' Susan said.
'There's Dwayne and Chantel,' I said. Across the street a bright red Trans Am slowed in front of Madelaine's condo and then swung into the lot in front and into an empty parking space. Susan and Hawk and I got out of the car and crossed Commonwealth and joined them. Chantel was in the driver's seat.
Dwayne, looking a bit cramped, was in the passenger seat.
The car windows were down. Dwayne looked out at me and turned toward his girlfriend. 'What's he doing here, Chantel?'
'He's going to help us,' she said.
'I don't want to have nothing to do with him,' Dwayne said. 'Let's get out of here.' Chantel shook her head and took the keys and stepped out of the car.
'Goddamn it, Chantel,' Dwayne said. 'Get your ass in here and drive this thing away.'
'He's going to help us,' Chantel said.
'That honkie motherfucker?' Dwayne said. 'He the one got me benched.'
'Honkie motherfucker,' Hawk said. 'He does know you.'
'He'll help us,' Chantel said.
'He'll help shit. Dwayne say get in here and drive, you fucking well better listen to Dwayne.'
Chantel threw the keys into the car. 'You want to go. You drive it away. This man going to help us, if you'd just let him, dope.'
Dwayne's shoulders hunched, and his head sank. He seemed to shrink in on himself so that he looked like a huge black Richard Nixon, looking out under his eyebrows.
Chantel stepped around the car to the open window. 'Okay,' she said. 'Okay.' She patted Dwayne's face. 'Okay. I'm not mad. I love you, and I want you to be helped.'
Dwayne's head was hanging. He stared at the floorboards.
'You're not a dope, Dwayne. I just mad when I said that.'
Dwayne nodded without looking up. 'Let these people help us,' Chantel said. 'I trust them.'
