“Bobby worried about his kid,” Hawk said.
“Even after he met me?” I said.
“Bobby don’t know about you.”
“I’m not so sure about me sometimes either.”
“I gave him my word,” Hawk said.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“So what you got in mind?”
“Well, I was thinking about pitching it in and becoming a caterer – you know? Leftovers R Us. Come in, take whatever there is in the house, fix up a tasty meal?”
Hawk continued to stare at the rain through my window. I went over and stood beside him and looked down. Puddles had formed and the raindrops hitting the puddles made tiny eruptions. The lightning skidded along the arch of the sky and shortly afterward the thunder cracked. It was dandy.
“I’d target the WASP market,” I said.
Hawk nodded. The rain slithered in thick rivulets down the outside of my window. It diffused the lightning flash prismatically for a transitory moment.
“Be about a hundred million white guys in this country,” Hawk said as the electricity crackled in the sky, “I end up with you.”
“Talk about luck,” I said.
“Talk about,” Hawk said. “What we gonna do about Bobby’s kid?”
“Do what we always do,” I said. “Keep dragging on the end we got hold of, see what we pull out of the hole.”
“What end we got hold of?”
“Willie and Amir.”
“So we follow them and see what’s at the other end.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“That your plan?”
“You bet,” I said.
“And you do this for a living?”
“So far,” I said.
“We gonna share?” Hawk said.
“Yes, you take Amir, I’ll take Willie.”
“Okay I give Amir a swat, I get the chance?”
“Long as he doesn’t spot you tailing him,” I said.
Hawk turned from the window.
“How you doing with that other gig, the stalker?”
“I’m working on it,” I said.
“You doing as good with that as you are with this?” Hawk said.
“No.”
Hawk nodded and smiled.
“Leftovers R Us,” he said. “Might catch on.”
On the street below, people were shielding themselves from the rain by various means, including but not limited to umbrellas. A woman went by holding her purse over her head, another used a briefcase. Several
“I figure I can buy a couple cases of cream of mushroom soup,” I said. “And I’m in business.”
“The basis of WASP cuisine,” Hawk said. “While I walking around behind Amir Abdullah, you got any idea what I’m looking for?”
“We’ll know it when we see it,” I said. “We need to know two things – who threw Prentice Lamont out the window, and why Amir was trying to sink Robinson Nevins’ tenure.”
“‘Cause Amir a creep?” Hawk said.
“Good enough for you and me, maybe not good enough for the university tenure committee.”
“They overrule the English department,” Hawk said.
“They can, Susan told me, and so can the dean,” I said. “Though Susan says neither one likes to.”
“So Robinson got a couple more shots.”
“If we can come up with something,” I said.
