'I'd have to deal with Gerry anyway,' I said. I looked at Hawk.
'Where you want to go?' he said to Beaumont.
Beaumont hesitated and looked at me, and then at Hawk. He decided.
'Montreal,' he said.
Hawk nodded. 'Get your things,' he said.
CHAPTER 32
I was in my office on Monday morning, with my office calendar, figuring out how many days were left until baseball season began. The door opened and Vinnie Morris came in and stood aside, and Joe Broz came in, followed by Gerry Broz. I opened the second drawer in my desk, near my right hand where I kept a spare gun. 'Broz and Broz,' I said. 'Double the fun.'
Vinnie started to close the door and Joe shook his head. 'Wait in the car,
Vinnie,' he said. 'Joe?' Vinnie said. 'In the car, Vinnie. This is family.' 'I'm not family, Joe?' Broz shook his head again. 'No,' he said.
'Not quite, Vinnie. Not on this.' 'I'll be in the corridor,' Vinnie said.
Again Broz shook his head. 'No, Vinnie-in the car.'
Vinnie hesitated with the door half open, his hand on the knob. He was looking at Joe.
'Go, Vinnie. Do it.'
Vinnie nodded and went out without looking at me and shut the door behind him. Gerry started to pull up one of my client chairs.
'No,' Broz said. 'Don't sit. We ain't here to sit.'
'Jesus, you got to tell me everything to do. Stand? Sit? In front of this creep?'
'Spenser ain't no creep,' Joe said. 'One of your many problems, Gerry. You don't think about who you're dealing with.'
'So whaddya going to do, explain him to me?'
Joe stared at me. It was almost as if we were friends, which we weren't.
Then he inhaled slowly and turned to look at his son.
'Man gave you a break,' Joe said. 'He could have dropped you in the woods.'
'He knew what would happen to him if he did,' Gerry said.
Gerry was a little taller than his father, but softer. He was dressed on the cutting edge with baggy, stone- washed jeans and an oversized black leather jacket with big lapels. Joe wore a dark suit and a gray tweed overcoat with -a black velvet collar. Both were hatless.
'What would have happened?' Joe said.
'You'd have had Vinnie pop him.'
Joe nodded without saying anything. I waited. At the moment this had to do with Joe and Gerry.
'And what should I do now?' Joe said.
'Since when do you ask me, Pa? You don't ask me shit. You asking me now?'
Joe nodded.
'Okay-we'll have Vinnie pop him, like you shoulda done a long time ago.'
Joe was looking only at Gerry. Gerry's eyes shifted back and forth between
Joe, and, obliquely, me.
'You think he's got to go, Gerry?'
Gerry shifted, glanced again at me, and away again.
'For crissake, Pa, I already told you. Yeah. He's trouble. He's in the way.
We'd have had Beaumont out west if he hadn't been there.'
'And you chased him into the woods with four guys besides yourself, and he took you.'
` Pa. 11
'With a fucking bullet in him.'
'Pa, for crissake. You gotta do this here, in front of him?'
Gerry's face was flushed. And his voice sounded thick.
'And he got away with it,' Joe said. His voice was flat, scraped bare of feeling by the effort of saying it.
'Pa.' Gerry's breathing was very short. Each exhalation was audible, as if the air was too thin. 'Pa, don't.'
Joe nodded vigorously.
'I got to, Gerry,' he said. 'I thought about this for three four days now.
