Dwayne shook his head.
'We going to stay here for a while,' he said. 'See what happens. See if it's like you say.'
'Coach Dunham will want to talk,' I said.
'Things be like you say,' Dwayne said, 'I call him in a while.'
'There's another piece of the deal,' I said. Dwayne waited.
'You learn to read,' I said.
'Nobody tell Dwayne Woodcock what he do and don't do.'
I nodded my head at Hawk. 'Man saved your life awhile ago,' I said.
Dwayne looked over at Hawk and nodded his head sharply once.
'You owe him,' I said.
'Can't read,' Hawk said, 'you gonna be a dumb fuck all your life, excuse me, Chantel, and whitey gonna yank you around.'
'He's right,' Chantel said in a flat voice.
'Nobody call Dwayne Woodcock a dumb fuck,' Dwayne said. He started to get up.
'Sit down, Dwayne,' Hawk said. 'We went to all this trouble to save your ass, I don't want to have to shoot you now.'
Dwayne was on his feet staring at Hawk. Hawk remained as still on the door jamb as he had. The old guy kept painting. For all he cared we could have been on television.
Chantel said, 'Dwayne, the man saved your life and mine. You know you got to learn to read. Both of them saved your life.'
Dwayne stood for a long moment without speaking, then he sat back down.
'College will be able to arrange for a reading specialist,' I said. 'Coach Dunham can get that going.'
Dwayne nodded.
'I want your word on it,' I said.
Dwayne stared at me. I waited. Chantel banged her elbow into his upper arm.
'Dwayne,' she said, making it two long syllables.
Dwayne still stared. Then he said, 'You got it.
'Thank you,' I said.
I looked at the painting the old guy was working on. It was mountains with a valley and a lake in the valley.
'White Mountains,' he said. 'New Hampshire.'
'Un huh,' I said and headed for the door. In the Jaguar, driving back up Blue Hill Ave., Hawk said, 'Grateful motherfucker.'
'Maybe he is,' I said, 'but can't show it.'
'Or maybe he ain't,' Hawk said.
36
SUSAN and I were having dinner at a place called Rarities in the Charles Hotel in Cambridge.
Outside the bank of picture windows Charles Square was beginning to look autumnal, and the first pumpkins and cornstalks were clustered around the display base of the Charles Square sign. Harvard students were back; parents, visiting, were lounging around the hotel lobby looking a little startled that they had kids in college.
'They convicted Deegan's friends today,' I said.
She was reading the menu closely, peering through the crimson-rimmed twelve-dollar half glasses that she bought in Neiman Marcus.
'Bobby Deegan? Dwayne Woodcock's friend?' she said.
'Yeah, Bobby sang them all right into the state penal institution at Ossining.'
'And Bobby?'
'Disappeared into the witness protection program.'
'Do those work?' Susan said.
'They work if the guys after you have limited resources, and they work if the guy in the program isn't a dope. But most of them are dopes. They can't stay away from it. They knock over a crap game or they show up in Vegas on a gambling junket and someone recognizes them, or they get in a fight and someone hears about them.'
'Do you think it will for Bobby Deegan?' The waiter came solicitously by and took our order.
'Deegan's smart,' I said, 'but he's been a wiseguy his whole life. He's never held a job, except being a crook. They'll set him up with new identity, papers, some money, a house. And they'll place him in a job. Selling real estate, say, or being a short order cook; that kind of thing. And he'll go to work every day and after a while his boss will tell him to do something and Bobby won't want to and they'll come to words and Bobby will pop him on the
