to ace him,' I said.
'Yes.'
'So,' Hawk said. 'You going to?'
The Gray Man shook his head.
'It would have ruined everything else if I did it sooner,' he said. 'And now'-the Gray Man shrugged-'he's gone again.'
'And it pleases you,' I said. 'The way it's going to work out.'
'It does.'
'Hawk gets to clean up the people who killed Luther,' I said.
'Except for Podolak,' the Gray Man said.
'That will come,' I said. 'The city gets pretty well cleaned up of its, ah, criminal element, and Tony's kid gets to take over.'
' 'Cept there ain't nothin' to take over,' Hawk said. ' 'Cause the Afghans have moved on, and when they come to ask you 'bout it, 'pears you done moved on, too.'
The Gray Man said, 'You sound like a minstrel show.'
Hawk's voice dropped a pitch. With no expression he said, 'I speak in many voices, my gray friend.'
'Apparently,' the Gray Man said.
'So there's Brock Rimbaud in charge of a business with no product, and no supplier, in a town that is probably going to be run by the state.'
The Gray Man smiled.
'And you like that,' Hawk said. 'You like thinking 'bout the little twerp coming to the office and you ain't there.'
'And trying to find Mr. Johnson, and he ain't there,' the Gray Man said.
He put his hands on the desktop and pushed himself gracefully to his feet.
'So that's why you didn't shoot Johnson,' I said.
'Certainly,' the Gray Man said. 'Even if I did, there would shortly be another Johnson.'
I nodded.
'And Ives?' I said.
The Gray Man smiled.
'Ives expects to be disappointed,' the Gray Man said. 'It is the nature of his work.'
He glanced around the damaged office.
'And our work here has not been fruitless,' he said.
'No,' I said. 'It hasn't.'
The Gray Man looked around the room again, then at Hawk and me.
'Down the road somewhere,' he said, and walked across the room and out the same door that Johnson had gone through.
56
I SAT IN my car in Roxbury, at the edge of Malcolm X Playground, on a street I didn't know the name of. Across the street, Hawk stood in front of a bench, in the playground, looking down at a very small black boy who was sitting in the lap of a tall black woman I knew to be his grandmother. The boy was the only surviving member of Luther Gillespie's family. His grandmother was maybe forty-five, strong-looking, with careful cornrows, wearing jeans and a freshly laundered man's white dress shirt with the sleeves half rolled and the shirttails hanging out. The boy pressed against her, staring up at Hawk without moving. He held onto her shirt with one hand.
Hawk spoke. The woman nodded. Hawk took an envelope out of his coat and handed it to the woman. She didn't take it right away. First, she took the hand that held it, in both of hers, and held it for a minute while she said some animated somethings to Hawk. Hawk nodded. Then she took the envelope and slipped it into her purse on the bench beside her. Hawk continued to look down at the boy. The boy stared silently back. Hawk spoke. The boy didn't answer. Hawk squatted on his heels so that he and the boy were at eye level. The boy turned his face in against his grandmother's breast. The grandmother stroked the boy's head. Hawk stood, nodding to himself. Nobody said anything. For a moment, none of them even moved. Then Hawk nodded again and turned and walked across the street and got into the car.
'We done?' I said.
Hawk nodded.
I put the car in gear, and we drove back toward downtown.
'First installment on Boots's money?' I said.
'Kid's money,' Hawk said.
'Is there a grandfather?' I said.
We turned onto Washington Street. The black neighborhoods stretched out on either side, neither elegant nor
