said. “Shut the fuck up.”
There was a soft intake of breath in the room. Hawk and Tillis locked eyes for a moment. Then Tillis turned away.
“I’m on the record,” he said, and went and sat on a chair in the front row.
“Now,” Hawk said, “anybody got an idea who killed this little girl and her baby?”
“Cops know?” I said.
A woman said, “You know, everybody know.” She had long graceful legs and a thick body, and her skin was the color of coffee ice cream.
“It’s the Hobarts, or the Silks, or some other bunch of gangbangers that keep changing the name of the gangs so fast I can’t keep track. And how we supposed to stand up to them? We a bunch of women and old men and little kids. How we supposed to make some kind of life here when the gangbangers fuck with us whenever they feel like?”
“They don’t fuck with me,” the old man said.
“Course they do,” the woman said. “You old and fat and you can’t do nothing about it. That’s why you here. They ain’t no men here, ‘cept a few old fat ones that couldn’t run off.”
The old man looked at the ground and didn’t say anything, but he shook his head stubbornly.
“They got guns,” another woman said. She was smallish and wore tight red pants that came to the middle of her calves and she had two small children in her lap. Both children wore only diapers. They sat quietly, squirming a little, but mostly just sitting staring with surprising dullness at nothing very much. “They got machine guns and rifles and I don’t know what kinds of guns they all are.”
“And they run the project,” Hawk said.
“They run everything,” the big woman said. “They own the corridors, the stairwells. They’d own the elevators, if the elevators worked, which a course they don’t.”
“They got parents?” I said.
Nobody looked at me. The woman with the thick body answered the question, but she answered it to Hawk.
“Ain’t no difference they got parents,” she repeated my word with scorn. “Some do. Some don’t. Parents can’t do nothing about it, if they do got ‘em. How come you brought him here? Reverend didn’t tell us we’d have to talk to no white people. White people don’t know nothing.”
“He knows enough,” Hawk said. “Name some names.”
The group was silent. One of the babies coughed and his mother patted him on the back. The bigbodied woman with the graceful legs shifted in her seat a little bit. The old guy glowered at the floor. Everyone else sat staring hard at nothing.
“That get a little dangerous, naming names?” Hawk said. He looked at the Reverend Tillis. Tillis was standing with his hands behind his back, gazing solemnly at the group. He shook his head sadly, as if he would have liked to speak up but grave responsibilities prevented him. “Sure,” Hawk said. “Anybody got an idea why the kid and her baby got shot?”
Nobody said anything.
Hawk looked at me. I shrugged.
“Me and Satan gonna be around here most of the time the next few weeks,” Hawk said. “Till we get things straightened out. You have any thoughts be sure to tell us. Either one of us. You talk to Spenser, be like talking to me.”
Nobody said anything. Everyone stared at us blankly, except Tillis, who looked at me and didn’t like what he saw.
CHAPTER 4
We came out of the meeting at about 9:30. It was a fine spring night in the ghetto. And around Hawk’s car ten young men in black LA Raiders caps were enjoying it.
A big young guy, an obvious body builder, with a scar along his jawline and his hat on backwards; was sitting on the trunk of the car.
As we approached he said, “This you ride, man?”
Hawk took his car keys out of his pocket with his left hand. Without breaking stride he punched the kid full in the face with his right hand. The kid tipped over backwards and fell off the trunk. Hawk put the key in the lock, popped the trunk, and took out a matte finish Smith and Wesson pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. With the car keys still dangling from the little finger of his left hand, he jacked a round up into the chamber.
The kid he had punched was on his hands and knees. He shook his head slowly back and forth, trying to get the chimes to stop. The rest of the gang was frozen in place under the muzzle of the shotgun.
“You Hobarts?” Hawk said.
Nobody spoke. I stood half facing Hawk so I could see behind us. I didn’t have my gun out, but my jacket was open. Hawk took a step forward and jammed the muzzle of the shotgun up under the soft tissue area of the chin of a tall kid with close-cropped hair and very black skin.
“You a Hobart?” Hawk said.
The kid tried to nod but the pressure of the gun prevented it. So he said, “Yeah.”
“Fine,” Hawk said and removed the gun barrel. He held the shotgun easily in front of him with one hand while he put his car keys in his pocket. Then without moving his eyes from the gang he reached over with his left hand and gently closed the trunk lid.
