'You know what Marty's like.'
'I remember once Marty beat a guy to death with a pool cue,' Hawk said.
'They playing pool, and the guy kidding Marty. Saying how Patriots folded against the Bears in the eighty-five Super Bowl. Marty likes those Patriots. So he starts hitting the guy with the butt end of the pool cue.'
'Guy overestimated Marty's sense of humor,' I said.
Hawk nodded.
'Your slugger probably be in some trouble, you tell Marty he screwed up the tail job.'
'He's a dope,' I said.
'He couldn't tail a bull through a china shop. No need to get him killed.'
'Everybody know Marty's a psycho. You work with him, you gotta be prepared to deal with that.'
'I sort of promised.'
'Okay,' Hawk said.
'I know what you like. How we going to do it?'
I ate a plain donut and drank some decaf. Hawk sipped his Guatemalan dark roast.
'Well, the best guess is that Marty, or more likely Gino Fish, knew that Julius hired me. And they wanted to see who I talked to and what I found.'
'Julius hired us,' Hawk said.
'You're so sensitive,' I said.
'Nobody follow me.'
'For cris sake I said.
'You haven't been doing anything.'
'I waiting for my kind of work,' Hawk said.
'I don't do gumshoe work, rattle fucking doorknobs.'
Hawk stood and went to my window and looked down at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. It was a fine bright morning.
There was a lot of foot traffic at ten of nine, people going to work at the big insurance companies that littered the Back Bay. The young women were still in their summer dresses. The young men wore no topcoats.
'Cross Boylston,' Hawk said.
'Corner near Louis'.'
I stood beside him and looked.
'Sort of tall with square shoulders,' Hawk said.
'Fishing hat, tan raincoat, looking uninterested.'
'I see him,' I said.
'Newspaper under his arm.'
'So he can lean on a lamppost and read it,' Hawk said.
'He's doing everything but,' I said.
'Your guy?'
'No,' I said.
'They wouldn't send the same tail two days in a row.'
'They haven't been too smart so far,' Hawk said.
'You made the first guy as quick as we made this one.'
'Not the same thing,' I said.
'We were looking for this one.'
'Sure,' Hawk said.
'Why don't we just go see Marty, see what he wants?'
'You know where to find him?'
'Sure,' Hawk said.
'
'Course it's possible,' I said, 'we brace Marty Anaheim, we get ourselves in trouble.'
'Or him,' Hawk said.
