“He says fix it,” Hawk said. “He wants the kid to get his tenure.”
“Bobby got any money?”
Hawk shook his head. He was holding the coffee mug in both hands, his hips resting against the color- coordinated countertop, the steam from the coffee rising faintly in front of his face.
“So we’re in this for the donut,” I said.
Hawk nodded and smiled. When he smiled he looked like a large black Mona Lisa, if Mona had shaved her head… and had a nineteen-inch bicep… and a 29-inch waist… and very little conscience.
“How’s that work, exactly,” I said. “You take on somebody for no money, and I get to share in the profits?”
“You the detective,” Hawk said.
“True.”
“Whereas,” Hawk said, “I just a simple thug.”
“Also true.”
“And you my friend.”
“Embarrassing, but true.”
“So.” Hawk spread his hands, holding the coffee cup with his right, in a gesture of voilа. “I try to bring you as much business as I can.”
“Like this thing.”
“Exactly,” Hawk said. “And I going to help you with it.”
“Swell,” I said.
“So what we going to do first?” Hawk said.
“Drink some more coffee,” I said.
Hawk nodded. “Tha’s a good start,” he said. “Then what we going to do, bawse?”
“Get you diction lessons,” I said. “I always know when you are really jerking my chain, because you start sounding like Mantan Moreland.”
“Mantan Moreland?”
“I’m kind of proud of coming up with that one myself,” I said. “Where did the Lamont kid do the deed?”
“Had a condo in the South End,” Hawk said. “Did it there.”
“Okay, that’s Boston Homicide. Which means Quirk and Bel-son.”
“So we talk with them first,” Hawk said.
“I’ll talk with them first,” I said. “They’d arrest you.”
“Bigots,” Hawk said.
CHAPTER THREE
I was in Cambridge with Susan. We were cleaning up the backyard behind the house on Linnaean Street where she lived and worked. Pearl the wonder dog was catching some rays on the top step of the back porch while we worked. Since part of what we were cleaning up was left by Pearl, it seemed only right that she be there.
I had dug a large hole in the recently thawed earth in one corner of the yard and into it I was putting shovelfuls of yard waste which Susan, wearing fingerless leather workout gloves, had raked into a number of small piles. One of the things that made Susan so interesting was the fact that she looked like a Jewish princess and worked like a Bulgarian peasant. As far as I knew she had never been tired. I dumped a shovelful of waste into the hole and shoveled a little dirt over it.
“Reminds me of my profession,” I said.
“Cleaning up after?” Susan said.
“Yeah.”
In addition to her workout gloves, Susan had on black tights, a hip-length yellow jacket, and a black Polo baseball cap. In the spirit of cleanup she had put on designer work boots, black leather with silver eyelets, which looked odd, but good, over the tights.
“It’s a good reminder,” Susan said, “of life’s essential messiness.”
“Or Pearl’s.”
“Same thing,” Susan said.
Pearl raised her head slightly at the mention of her name, and then looked slightly annoyed that it was a false alarm. She sighed noisily as she settled her head back down onto her front paws. The sun was bright, and the earth had thawed, but in the shady corners against the fence and under a couple of evergreen shrubs, granular snow lingered like a dirty secret, and lurking inside the sixty-degree temperature was an edge of cold to remind us that it was too early for planting.
When we were done, and I had shoveled the dirt over the waste hole and tamped it down, Susan and I went and sat on the penultimate step, just below Pearl.
“Are you actually going to investigate that tenure case at the university?” Susan said.
