I did. Hawk listened without expression, his face the pleasantly impenetrable blank it always was.
“You got more information than you can handle,” Hawk said when I got through.
“I do,” I said.
“‘Course it easy for you to have too much information.”
“How about yourself,” I said. “You make anything out of it?”
Hawk grinned at me. “I’m just a simple thug,” he said. “I ain’t supposed to make nothing out of it.”
“That may be true of me,” I said.
“Simple thug?”
“Yeah.”
“Thing is, all of the stuff you know doesn’t add up to who done what.”
“That is the thing,” I said.
“You tell Mary her husband was gay?”
“No.”
“Rita gonna find out about Smith’s finances for you?”
“Yes.”
“When she do you’ll have more information.”
“And I still won’t know anything.”
“Be used to that,” Hawk said. “You think Mary lying, or you think the Brinkster call himself?”
“If he did,” I said, “it would be sort of a stopgap. He had to know I’d ask her myself pretty soon.”
“Maybe he figure you ain’t around, pretty soon.”
“Because he knew somebody would hit me,” I said.
Hawk nodded. “Or maybe he did call her,” he said. “And she lying when she say he didn’t.”
“Which might mean the same thing,” I said. “Except she’s so goddamned dumb.”
“Dumb enough to think you wouldn’t check on her?”
“She gets by with dumb,” I said. “She uses it. She may even rely on it.”
“There got to be some money in here someplace,” Hawk said.
“See, that’s just the reason you’re a hooligan and I’m a detective,” I said. “You jump to conclusions. I search for clues.”
“Here’s a clue,” Hawk said. “A banker, a financial guy, a real estate developer, and a lawyer. All connected in some way to a homicide.”
“Gee, you think there’s money involved?”
“How I know. You the detective. I is just a hoo-li-gan.”
“At least we’re clear on that,” I said. “Maybe we should revisit Jack DeRosa.”
“The jailbird? Why him?”
“Can’t think of anybody else?” I said.
Hawk grinned.
“‘Least he fit on the list,” hawk said. “Right after lawyer.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I called Frank Belson and asked him if we could arrange to talk with DeRosa again. He called me back in an hour.
“DeRosa’s been out of jail for a week,” he said. “Eyewitness couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.”
“Charges dropped?”
“Yep.”
“Got an address for him?”
“Got the one he had when they busted him,” Frank said, and gave me the name of a street off Andrews Square.
In half an hour Hawk and I were crossing the bridge on Southampton Street. We were in Hawk’s Jaguar. Hawk parked it behind a place that sold orthotics, where it was about as inconspicuous in South Boston as Hawk was. We walked across the street to a brick duplex, which had a tiny front yard that had been carpeted with gray stone and surrounded by a chain-link fence. The downstairs windows were grated. There was a peephole in the front door.
“DeRosa don’t seem interested in botany,” Hawk said.
“He’s probably just a renter,” I said.
