'I was told to make this plain to you,' Beer Keg said. 'You leave that case alone from here on.'
Hawk opened the supply cabinet and took a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun off the top shelf and cocked both barrels. The guys by the door watched him closely as he did it, but by the time they reacted the shotgun was cocked and pointed. The sound of the hammers going back made the other two guys turn and look.
'Ten gauge,' Hawk said. 'Ain't even fair at close range.'
Hawk leaned against the wall with the shotgun in his right hand laid idly across the crook of his left arm. He smiled at them. They looked at me. While they had been looking at Hawk I had taken the occasion to take my Smith and Wesson.357 out of the side drawer of my desk. As they looked I cocked it, and keeping it in my right hand, let it rest on the desktop. I smiled at them.
'You should have been prepared,' I said. 'For the off chance that we wouldn't be paralyzed by fear.'
Beer Keg was a stand-up guy.
'Today was just a warning anyway,' he said.
'Might be our day to shoot you in the nose, though.'
Beer Keg waded right past that.
'Guy say we was just supposed to rough you up today.'
'What guy?' I said.
Beer Keg shook his head. His partner was wearing a black and red Mackinaw. Mackinaw's head was shaved above the ears with long hair on top. He was taller than Beer Keg, so his coat fit better.
'Nobody you know,' he said.
I raised the Smith and Wesson and sighted at Mackinaw's forehead.
'I might know him,' I said.
'I don't think you'll do it,' Mackinaw said and turned and walked to the door. I saw Hawk glance at me. I shook my head. Mackinaw opened the door and walked out and left it open behind him. The other three, frozen for a moment waiting for me to shoot, suddenly burst into action when I didn't and jostled each other going out the door.
'Bad luck,' Hawk said. 'You picked the wrong one to bluff.'
'I know,' I said.
Hawk walked back to the chair and sat where he could see Lila again. He put the shotgun, still cocked, in his lap. I got out of my chair with the gun still in my hand and walked to my window. In maybe a minute I saw all four of them gathered on the corner of Berkeley and Providence Street, which ran between Arlington and Berkeley behind my building. In another moment a maroon Chevy station wagon drove down Providence Street and stopped. They got in. The wagon pulled out onto Berkeley and headed toward the river. It had Massachusetts plates. I turned from the window and wrote the number on my desk calendar.
'You'd shot him dead, the others would have told you everything they knew and more.'
'I know.'
'Lucky you got me around,' Hawk said, 'to keep them from inducting you into the Girl Scouts.'
'It's the physical,' I said. 'I always have trouble with the physical.'
'You Irish, ain't you?'
'Sure and I am, bucko.'
'So you don't have a lot of trouble with the physical,' Hawk said.
'Just enough.'
Chapter 20
TAFT UNIVERSITY WAS in Walford, about twenty miles west of Boston and two towns north of Pemberton. I had been out there maybe seven years ago trying to do something about a basketball point fixing scam involving a kid named Dwayne Woodcock. In the process I had gotten to know the basketball coach, a loudmouth blowhard named Dixie Dunham, who was a hell of a basketball coach, and not as bad a guy as he seemed if you had a good tolerance for bullshit.
When I came into his office at the field house he knew me right off.
'Spenser,' he said, 'you son of a bitch.'
'Don't get sentimental on me, Dixie,' I said.
The office was pretty much the same. A VCR, a cabinet full of video tapes, a big desk, a couple of chairs.
Above Dixie's desk there was still a picture of the Portland Trailblazers point guard, Troy Murphy. Murphy had played his college ball for Dixie. Beside it there was now a picture of Dwayne Woodcock. Dixie was pretty much the same, too. He had on a gray tee-shirt, blue sweat pants with a white stripe down the leg, gray shorts over the sweats, and a pair of fancy high-cut basketball shoes, which I happened to know he got free by the case, as part of his consulting deal.
'So you come to make trouble for my program again?' Dixie said.
'I saved your damn program,' I said. 'You hear anything from Dwayne?'
'My players stay in touch,' Dixie said. 'I hear from them or I hear about them.'
'How's Dwayne doing?'
