“Think you right on target,” he said. “You got no natural moves like me, but you learn pretty good.”
“So where’d she go?” I said.
“Meet some man,” Hawk said.
“That’s the easy part,” I said. Hawk began again on the speed bag. “Which man? Where?”
“You know some of the men in her life,” Hawk said.
“That’s about all there were,” I said.
“Check them out.”
I was hooking the heavy bag, three left hooks, one right. The bag bounced and swayed on the heavy chain. The shock of the punches went up my forearms. It had been one of my first surprises when I began to box, all that long time ago, punches hurt the wrists and forearms, you have to build up both to hit hard. Until you build them up you get not only arm weary, but arm sore.
“Cops are doing that,” I said. “They got more manpower and clout than I have. They can do it quicker.”
“They know all the names?” Hawk said.
“Sure,” I said. “Almost.”
“Figured you’d get sentimental ’bout one or two people.”
“Guy out in the Berkshires, be too tough on him,” I said. “Besides, she wouldn’t go with him.”
“Un huh.”
“Guy in L.A., married, he wouldn’t have her.”
“Un huh.” Hawk moved around the speed bag, hitting it in changing combinations like a man playing an instrument. “Maybe she threaten to tell the wife,” he said.
“She’s not that crazy,” I said.
“Bad man?”
“He’d take Joe Broz with a Q-tip.”
“Hell,” Hawk said, “we can do that.” I hit the bag.
“I don’t think she’s that crazy,” I said.
“She pretty crazy,” Hawk said.
We both worked on our punches for a bit. The room was hot, there was light coming in through an ocean-facing window, and dust motes danced in its bright stream. Outside there were people tightening the upper abs, expanding the cardiovascular piping, firming up the pecs. In here there were only two guys beating hell out of simulated opponents. It seemed sort of silly, in that perspective. But it felt good.
“I was wondering,” I said, when we were finished and the hot water was sluicing over us in the shower room, “how come you’re so sure she went amok when you turned her down.”
Hawk raised his head and stared at me. “You can’t be serious,” he said.
Chapter 31
I had my feet up on the window sill in my office. I Across the way they had torn down the building where Linda Thomas had once worked. I used to watch her through the window, bent over her art board, then she’d been in my life, then she’d been gone. She was still gone, and now the building was gone. Sic transit the whole caboodle.
The phone rang behind me on the desk. I swiveled and answered. It was Quirk.
“Got a possible suicide you might be interested in,” he said. “I’ll pick you up outside your office in about two minutes.”
“Okay,” I said and hung up.
I had on my down-lined leather jacket and my Chicago Cubs baseball hat and was on the corner of Berkeley and Boylston with more than a minute to spare when Frank Belson wheeled the gray Chevy in toward me and backed up traffic on the green light while I climbed in the back. Belson hit the siren through the intersection and left it on.
“Cuts right through the holiday traffic,” Belson said.
“Can’t you get one that plays ‘Silent Night’?” I said. “Whoop whoop just isn’t jolly-sounding.”
“Security guard saw a car go into the water off the pier behind the Army base,” Quirk said, “across from Castle Hill Terminal.”
We went into town on Boylston and tumed right on Arlington. The store windows were full of red ribbon and spray-on snow. The streets were full of slush.
“Area C got a truck out there with a winch and hauled it out. It’s a rental from Western Mass. There’s a stiff in it.”
“I.D. the stiff yet?” I said.
“No,” Quirk said. “But there’s a note for you.”
Belson went under the expressway and up and through the South Station Tunnel with his siren whooping and his blue lights flashing. He slid off onto Atlantic Avenue and turned out Summer Street at the South Station.
The Boston Army Base is shabby, half used, dilapidated and full of nostalgia for most of us who processed through it on the way to wars someplace, quite some time ago. It had been the first stop on my long trip to Korea. At the end of the pier, there were three white cruisers with the blue stripe on the sides, a big tow truck with a
