'My mother used to call it the walking shadow.'
'The tongs?' I said.
'The whole thing,' Herman said. He lit another cigarette, put the Zippo away.
'The whole thing. Wherever you went if you were Chinese, it followed you. Disappears when you shine a light on it. Move the light away, it's right there again, walking shadow.'
He was looking past me out at the street, looking at the people moving past us, and they seemed to me for a minute as they must have seemed to Herman Leong all the time: insubstantial, and temporary wisps of momentary history that flickered past, while behind him was the long, unchanging, overpowering weight of his race that bore upon the illusory moment and overpowered it.
'You going back up there,' Herman said.
'Yeah.'
'Mistake.'
I shrugged.
'I'm in the tough-guy business,' I said.
'I jump a case because two teenagers tell me to fade, and what do I do next for a living?'
Herman nodded.
'Guess you got to go back,' he said.
'Yeah.'
'Couple things,' Herman said.
'One, these kids are absolute stone killers. Don't be thinking that they're seventeen, or that they weigh about one hundred pounds. Killing people is who they are.
Makes them feel good.'
I nodded.
'Same with anybody got nothing else,' I said.
'I'll shoot one if I need to.'
'You'll need to,' Herman said.
'And more than one.'
'You said 'a couple of things.' What's the other?'
'Bring backup.' Herman said.
'I heard about you. And I know about you even if I didn't. You're a cowboy.'
I shrugged.
'You can't do this alone,' Herman said.
I grinned.
'No man is an island,' I said.
'Who said that, Hemingway?'
'John Donne, actually.'
'Close enough,' Herman said.
'Low faan all look alike, anyway.'
CHAPTER 18
I met Hawk in a parking lot behind the Port City Theater. It was drizzling, and the rain had made puddles on the uneven asphalt surface. Oil leaching into them made unpleasant-looking color spectrums on the surface of the dirty water. Hawk was wearing a black cowboy hat and a black leather trenchcoat, which he wore unbuttoned. He was leaning on his Jaguar, and beside him in a leather jacket and a tweed sc ally cap was Vinnie Morris.
'Vinnie,' I said.
'Spenser.'
'Assistance,' Hawk said in his mock WASP accent, 'in combating the yellow peril.'
'You mention to Vinnie the fee?' I said.
'Told him he'd get what I'm getting.'
'You back with Joe?' I said.
'No.'
'Things are a little slow.'
'Yeah. I got some dough put aside, but I'm sick of going over the dump every day, shooting rats.'
'Good to keep your hand in,' I said.
