Hawk ignored the head gesture toward a booth and took the barstool nearest the kitchen. Hemoved it away from the kitchen door and sat on it, leaning against the back wall. I sat at the other end, near the door. No sense bunching up. The guy with the skinny neck shrugged and looked at his coffee maker. The water had nearly stopped dripping through the filter. He leaned his hips against the inside of the bar and crossed his arms and studied it as it dripped more and more occasionally. Finally it stopped altogether. The round glass pot was full.
The guy with the skinny neck got a round bar tray from under the bar and put a coffee mug on it, a small cardboard carton of heavy cream, and a bowl filled with paper packets of Equal. He put a teaspoon on the tray beside the coffee mug. Then he put the tray up on the bar top and went into the kitchen. He came back in maybe two minutes with a plate of Italian pastries. I saw raisin cake, biscotti, hazelnut cake, and cannoli. He put the plate on the tray and then he leaned back against the bar again and folded his arms again, and looked at nothing.
Which was what I was looking at.
Then the door opened and a big guy came in wearing a tan Ultrasuede thigh-length coat. He had very big hands, and even though everything seemed to fit him fine, his hands were so big that it made him look like his sleeves were too short.
He looked first at Hawk in the back, and then at me. And then moved on into the restaurant leaving the door ajar and leaned on the wall near Hawk.
Gerry Broz came in next, and after him two more bodyguards. One wore a tan corduroy sport coat over a dark brown sport shirt. The sport coat had brown leather elbow patches but fit him so badly that I could see the bulge on his right hip where he wore a gun. The other bodyguard wore a dark blue three-piece suit.
He had on a blue and red figured tie with a very wide knot, and a trench coat worn like a cape over his shoulders. As he came through the front door, he reached back with his left hand and pulled it shut. Then he produced a double-barreled shotgun with the barrels sawed off and the stock modified, and held that, muzzle down, in his right hand.
'That it for backup?' I said to Gerry. 'Nobody on the roof?'
'Hey, asshole, you asked for this meet,' Gerry said.
'One of your many good qualities, Gerry,' I said. 'You are a master of the clever riposte.'
The tall guy with the two big hands said from the back, 'Why don't you just shut your fucking mouth.'
'Barbarians,' I said to Hawk. 'We have fallen among barbarians.' I looked at the guy behind the bar. 'And this seemed like such a nice place too,' I said.
He ignored me. He picked up the tray he'd prepared and went over to the booth along the left wall, near the door, where Gerry had slid in by himself. It was getting harder and harder for Gerry to slide into booths.
Every time I saw him he seemed to have gained another ten. He wasn't a big guy, and he obviously didn't work out, so that everypound he packed on looked like twice that and very flabby. Moreover his wardrobe hadn't caught up to his poundage, so that everything seemed tight and you had the sense that he was very uncomfortable.
The bartender poured him some coffee, and left the pot. Gerry poured some heavy cream in, added four packets of Equal, and stirred slowly while he ate a biscotto. His hair was cut long in the back and short on top, where it was spiked. He had a camel's hair topcoat on, which he wore open with the belt hanging loose. He wasn't too much older than Paul and already there were small red veins showing on his cheeks. He swallowed the last of his first biscotto, and drank some coffee, and put the mug down.
'Okay, asshole,' he said. 'Hawk told Lucky you wanted to ask me something.'
He nodded his head toward the guy with the sawed-off so I should know which one was Lucky.
'What are you and Rich Beaumont doing?' I said.
Nobody said anything. Gerry gazed at me without expression for a long time.
The bartender cleared his throat once, softly, turning his head away and covering his mouth as if he were in church.
Finally Gerry said, 'Who?'
'Rich Beaumont,' I said. 'You and he are involved in some kind of scam which has gone sour and now you and everybody else is looking for Rich. I want to know what the scam was.'
Gerry looked at me stonily some more. It was supposed to make the marrow congeal in my bones.
Then he ate a cannoli, drank some more coffee, looked around the room with what passed in Gerry's life for a big grin.
'Any you guys know Rich Beaumont?' He made a point of mispronouncing it, putting the emphasis on the first syllable.
'You, Lucky?'
The guy with the shotgun shook his head.
'Maishe?'
Maishe was the guy with the oversized hands. 'Never heard of him,' he said.
'Rock?'
The bartender shook his head.
'Anthony?'
'Never heard of no Rich Beaumont.' The guy in the corduroy coat mispronounced Beaumont just as his boss had.
'You got any other questions, asshole?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'How many more times you think you can screw up like this before your father won't let you play
