Hawk.
“Are you a detective, too?” she said.
Hawk smiled at her.
“No, ma’am, ah jess come along to carry his luggage,” Hawk said.
“He doesn’t seem to have any luggage,” Valerie said.
“Easy job,” Hawk said.
Valerie smiled again, staring at him directly now.
“You spending the night in town?” she said.
“Uh-uh,” Hawk said.
“Want to buy me dinner?” Valerie said.
“How old are you?” Hawk said.
“I’ll be twenty in the spring,” she said.
“And I won’t,” Hawk said.
“So what?” Valerie said.
Hawk smiled at her again and shook his head.
“You good-looking and you nice,” Hawk said. “But you too young.”
“You’d be surprised,” Valerie said.
“No doubt that I would,” Hawk said. “And I thank you for the offer. But I be having dinner with my age mate here. He’s boring, but he’s boring about things I know.”
She shrugged.
“No harm trying,” Valerie said.
“None,” Hawk said.
“Boring?” I said to Hawk.
54
“You don’t have to wait for no damn time,” Hawk said. “You want a drink, have a drink.”
“At ten in the morning?” I said.
“That when you want it, yes.”
“How uncivilized,” I said.
“I is of African heritage,” Hawk said. “’Course I uncivilized.”
“True, while I am a descendant of Irish kings.”
“Which be why you wanting a drink at ten in the morning,” Hawk said.
“Not always,” I said.
“So what we talking about?” Hawk said.
“It’s four-thirty,” I said. “Half-hour to go.”
Hawk shook his head.
“Weird,” Hawk said.
“How about yesterday?” I said. “You wouldn’t respond to a good-looking college girl who came on to you.”
“Too young,” Hawk said.
“She’s a full-grown woman, almost twenty, anatomically correct. What’s too young.”
“She talked funny,” Hawk said. “You know, like they all do. High voice, nasal, talk very fast. Grating.”
“Well, yeah. But how much talking were you expecting?”
“She say dinner,” Hawk said. “That be chitchat. She say want me to come to your room now? Be different.”
“Man,” I said. “I didn’t know you had limits.”
“Like to have sex with women who was at least born when John Carlos and Tommie Smith was in Mexico,” Hawk said.
“Wow,” I said. “And here I am thinking you required only a pulse.”
Hawk grinned.
“Also depends what else I got on my plate at the time,” he said.
“Glad it’s going well for you,” I said.
“Yowzah,” Hawk said, with the accent on the
My phone rang. It was Bradshaw.
“I gotta see you,” he said. “Now.”
“Where are you?” I said.
“Wagner Motel on One twenty-eight in Burlington,” he said. “Across from the mall.”
“What do you need?”
“I need help,” he said. “I’m in danger. You need to come right now.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’m in room two-oh-three, under the name Bailey.”
“Here we come,” I said.
“We?”
“My associate Hawk will be with me. Big man, black, don’t panic if you see him.”
“Nobody else,” he said. “No one knows I’m here.”
“Mum’s the word,” I said.
“Hurry up,” he said. “Just get here quick.”
I hung up. And looked at Hawk.
“Gotta go rescue Bradshaw,” I said.
“From what?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “He said to hurry.”
“There go the cocktail hour,” Hawk said.
“We can stop in a packy,” I said. “Maybe buy a couple of nips for the car.”
“Pathetic,” Hawk said.
“I know,” I said. “I thought so when I said it.”
55
I put my ear to the door. The television was playing loudly. I looked at Hawk. He shrugged.
“Call the manager or kick it in?” he said.
“Call,” I said.
We were at the end of the corridor. I went to the house phone on the small lamp table. In a minute or two a nervous-looking young guy with an ineffective combover got out of the elevator and walked down the hall to us. He looked uneasily at Hawk. Then at me.
“You the man that called?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
