“Who’s got this in missing persons?” I said.
“Lipsky,” Quirk said. “I’m hanging around because it might be connected to the murder investigation.”
I nodded.
“You talked about Jill Joyce with Susan?” Quirk said.
“Sure,” I said.
“This theory about a man, Susan buy that?”
“Haven’t asked her,” I said. “Last night when I came home we barely spoke of Jill Joyce.”
“Hard to imagine,” Quirk said.
“Didn’t even know she was gone,” I said.
“We called L.A., yesterday morning,” Salzman said. “Hotel said you’d checked out.”
“I suppose you’ll be looking for her too,” Quirk said.
I nodded.
“Lipsky will be pleased to know he’s not alone on this,” Quirk said.
“Like you,” I said.
“Just like me,” Quirk said.
Chapter 30
HAWK and I were in the boxing room at the Harbor Health Club. We were pretty much the only ones that ever went in there. There were people waiting to get on the stair climbers and bicycles and treadmills. There were platoons of young women with body stockings and water bottles in constant rotation on the chrome weight machines. But in the boxing room there was only Hawk and me and now and then Henry Cimoli, when he wasn’t conferring with some stockbroker on the best way to sculpt the gluteus maximi. On the wall was a picture of Henry in his boxing shorts, taken the year after he’d fought Willic Pep. It was Henry’s connection to his roots, that the boxing room still existed at the club. When Hawk and I started, it had been a gym, and as times changed and Henry changed with them, it had turned into a health club and spa. Hawk and I still went there because of Henry; and Henry didn’t charge us. But all of us remembered the times when you couldn’t get an herbal wrap where you worked out.
I was hitting combination cycles on the heavy bag, and Hawk was playing the speed bag, whistling soundlessly the way he did. I don’t think he needed to work on hand speed. I think he just liked the sound.
“We wouldn’t be in this mess,” I said, “if you’d just come across for her.”
“Man’s got standards,” Hawk said. The speed bag danced musically against the backboard.
“I didn’t know you had standards,” I said. I did two left jabs and an overhand right on the body bag. “I knew you insisted they be alive…”
“So how come you didn’t give her a jab?” Hawk said. He was wearing a pair of violet silk sweat pants and white Avia basketball shoes. He had no shirt on and the muscles in his upper body coiled and uncoiled under his sweat- shiny black skin like liquid. The speed gloves he wore were red and when he hit the speed bag his hands were a red blur.
“I am,” I said, “part of a fulfilling monogamous relationship.
”Holy shit,“ Hawk said.
”I knew you’d just forgotten that for a moment,“ I said. ”What’s your excuse?“
Hawk paused for a moment and picked up a towel and wiped off his face and head. I stopped too and got a drink from the cooler of spring water. Everyone in all health clubs had simultaneously decided that municipal water was undrinkable.
”Strange babe,“ Hawk said.
”Yeah.“
”Must broads want to fuck me for the usual reasons,“ Hawk said, ” ’Cause I’m handsome, manly, and slicker than goose shit.“
”Or because they want to get even with their husbands, or they were just separated and want to prove they’re still attractive,“ I said.
”Or because they heard about how once you go black you never go back,“ Hawk said.
”I never believed that one,“ I said.
”But Jill.“ Hawk shook his head. ”Jill wants to fuck me for reasons got nothing to do with me, got nothing to do with pleasure. Jill wants to fuck me ‘cause I’m black and it be a bad thing to do, you follow?
“Sure,” I said. “Help her feel bad about herself.”
“Un huh,” Hawk said.
“But it’d help her feel comfortable with you,” I said. “If you’d tag somebody as bad as she is, you’re not such a big deal either, and if she can get you to do it, then she’s still got the power, the only one she can count on.”
“Sigmund Spenser,” Hawk said.
“You think I’m wrong?”
Hawk grinned and did a paradiddle on the speed bag.
