'Then the kid gets Marshport,' I said.
'Not for long,' Hawk said.
'No,' I said. 'He's too stupid.'
'And he don't know it,' Hawk said. 'And he ain't tough. And he don't know that, either.'
'Deadly combination,' I said.
'Tony's only hope would be to take it away from him,' Hawk said.
'Or hope the daughter gets over him.'
'Be easy to do,' Hawk said.
'Maybe not for her,' I said.
'Gonna have a lot of people mad at us,' Hawk said.
'We'll get over it,' I said.
'Ain't really your fight,' Hawk said.
We each drank another swallow of whisky. The rain came steady on the black window.
'Yeah,' I said. 'It is.'
Hawk was quiet for a time, then he nodded his head slowly.
'Yeah,' he said. 'It is.'
I got up and looked out my window. Berkeley Street was dark and shiny wet and empty. A few cars went by on Boylston Street. And once in a while there was somebody walking, bent forward, hunched against the rain, hands in pockets. Genderless in the dark weather.
'Can't let it go,' Hawk said.
'I know.'
'Gonna be a bad mess any way it plays,' Hawk said.
'Certainly will,' I said.
'So, I guess we may as well do what we gonna do and not think too much 'bout what everybody else gonna do,' Hawk said.
'Isn't that what we always do?' I said.
'It is,' Hawk said.
29
WE TOOK MY car this time, which no one would recognize, and sat in it, up the street from the Ukrainian fortress on Market Street in Marshport. The rain had gone, and the cold that had come in behind it was formidable. My motor was idling and the heater was on high. The outside temperature registered six on my dashboard thermometer.
'Why is it again we live 'round here?' Hawk said.
'We like the seasonal change,' I said.
The street was nearly empty. A stumblebum in many layers of cast-off clothing inched his way up Market Street. He stopped to stare down into a trash barrel and then moved on. Several windows in the three-deckers on both sides of the street were boarded over. There were no dogs, no children. Just the solitary bum shuffling numbly along.
'Think it's colder in the poor neighborhoods?' I said.
'Yes,' Hawk said.
'Because God favors the rich?'
'Why they rich,' Hawk said.
'It is easier,' I said, 'for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than…'
'Here they come,' Hawk said.
Two men wearing overcoats and watch caps came out of the stronghold and got into a Chevrolet Suburban. We saw the plume of exhaust from the tailpipe as the car started up. We all sat for a time while the defroster cleared the windows on the Chevy. Then it rolled forward and went toward Marshport Road. We let them get far ahead and cruised out after them. There were some cars on the road, and when we turned onto Route 1A there were more. On open highway, it's easy to stay with the car you're tailing but harder to avoid being seen. In the city it's easy to stay unseen, but more difficult not to lose the tailee. Fortunately I was nationally ranked in both modes, and when the Ukrainians pulled up in front of a used-furniture store on Blue Hill Ave, they thought they were alone.
The store was in the first floor of a three-story wooden building with peeling gray paint. There was a liquor store on one side, and an appliance repair shop on the other. The store looked as if it had once sold groceries. The big windows in the front were frosted with the cold. A big sign pasted inside the half window of the front door read USED AND NEW FURNITURE: BUY OR RENT. An old maroon Dodge van was parked on the street in front of the store. It had no hubcaps. The Ukes double-parked their Suburban beside it and walked to the store, leaving the motor running. As they walked toward the store, one of the two men absently beeped the remote door lock device on his key chain. The taillights flashed once. The men went into the furniture store.
'We need to be pretty close behind them,' Hawk said. 'They don't look like they planning to stay long.'
