"You do any more messing around with the Reorganized Church then you gonna end up bad dead," Bald said.

I felt something. What I felt was d don't care. Just a little flash of I don't care, then it was gone and blackness came back.

"You two going to do it?" I said.

"You don't do what you're told, we'll do it."

"You might want to take a number," I said. "There's a waiting list."

"You think we're f.u.c.king around, a.s.shole?"

"It's the best you can do," I said.

Bald looked at his partner. "Maybe he needs a sample of what we can do," he said. The partner nodded and looked mean. Bald looked back at me and found that I was pointing my gun at the little indentation in his upper lip, right below his nose. He stared at it.

"Ordinary caliber thirty-eight slug," I said. "No liquid center, no cross-cut in the nose, no magnum load. Nothing special to worry about for a couple of toughies like you."

Both men stared at me.

"I don't suppose you feel like telling me who asked you to come over here and frighten me to death."

They didn't say anything.

"No, I figured you wouldn't. It's a corny question anyway."

They didn't move.

"It was good of you to show me what you can do. I don't mean to be ungrateful. But if you come back, I'll kill you."

They kept looking past the gun barrel at me.

"Take a hike," I said, and they both turned, together, and left my office. I went and closed the door behind them and then with my gun still in my hand, hanging at my side pointing at the floor, I walked over to my window and looked out onto Boylston and Berkeley streets.

In a moment they appeared on the corner and walked to the car that was illegally parked by the subway entrance. It was a white Chevy sedan. Bald got in on the driver's side and his partner got in the other and they drove away. As they did I wrote down their license number. A trained detective.

CHAPTER 20.

Bald's white Chevy was registered to Paultz Construction Company. My finely honed investigative instincts began to sniff the aroma of rat. Bald and his partner were hoods. They didn't do construction and they didn't do Bible study. They did kneecaps. I'd seen too many guys like Bald and his partner to be wrong on that. And it meant that Paultz Construction was dirty. And it meant that the connection between Paultz and the Bullies was something that people wanted to keep secret. "So what?" "So what?"

n.o.body had hired me to investigate anything like that. Tommy Banks had hired me to rescue his girlfriend and she didn't want to be rescued. I was just killing time. Killing time with Paultz Construction could get me killed. I don't care. I don't care.

Across the street my art director was back, bending over her board. She looked up as I looked at her and smiled and waved at me across the street. I waved back. She bent back to her work.

I took the phone book off the window ledge where I kept it and looked up the number of the ad agency and dialed it and asked for the art director. I watched across the street as she picked up the phone and tucked it against her face with her left shoulder.

"Linda Thomas." She continued to work on the board as she spoke.

I said, "My name is Spenser, I'm across the street smiling a winning smile out my window."

She looked over.

"My G.o.d," she said. "It's like talking to a pen-pal."

"Would you care to have a drink with me after work?" I said.

"That would be lovely," she said. "Where and when?"

"Ritz bar, this evening when you get through."

"Five thirty," she said.

"I'll meet you there," I said.

She waved across the street again and we hung up. It would feel a bit silly to sit there the rest of the day looking across the street. I got up and went out. It was good weather and I had Susan's book. I went to the Public Garden and sat on a bench near the swan boat pond and read.

A man and woman in their forties came and sat down on the gra.s.s near the pond under one of the willows. They had lunch in a big paper bag and shared it, leaning against the tree trunk, their shoulders touching. I dogeared my page and stood up and walked away, across the Public Garden, toward Arlington Street.

Sherry Spellman didn't belong in an outfit that had connections with Bald and his friend. I couldn't spend the rest of my life reading in the park. I couldn't take her away from the church, but maybe I could take the church away from her. I had one end of someone's dirty laundry and I was going to pull it all out, it was a way to kill time. And it was better to kill time than have it kill me.

From my office I called Marty Quirk. Neither he nor Belson had ever heard of the Paultz Construction Company.

"They're dirty," I said. "I know it."

"Lot of people are dirty. Because I'm a cop I'm supposed to know every one of them?"

"Another idol crumbles," I said.

"I'll ask around. I hear anything, I'll let you know."

"Thanks."

"You okay?" Quirk said.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm working on it."

"You need something, you call me."

"Yes."

We hung up. I called Vinnie Morris.

"What do you know about Paultz Construction Company?" I said.

"Why ask me?" Vinnie said.

"Because they're crooks and so are you. Figured you might have crossed paths."

"Spenser," Vinnie said. "You got a big pair of b.a.l.l.s. Last year Joe Broz and I discussed aceing you. Now you call me up and ask for a favor."

"What are friends for, Vinnie?"

Vinnie laughed a little. "I don't know a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing about the Paultz Construction Company."

"Ask around," I said. "You hear anything, let me know."

"Maybe."

Hawk came into my office. I hung up the phone.

I said, "Hawk."

He said, "Want to eat? Or start drinking early?"

"Eat," I said.

Hawk was wearing a pink suit with a pale blue shirt and a pink and blue small-dotted tie. A blue show handkerchief was tucked into his breast pocket and his head gleamed in the sun. As we walked along Berkeley Street no one made any comment on his appearance. No one seemed to think a pink suit was sissy.

We turned up Newbury. "How about Acapulco," I said. "Mexican cuisine."

"Tex-Mex," Hawk said. "I like it."

"It's no Lucy's El Adobe," I said.

"On the other hand," Hawk said, "it's no Guadala Harry's either."

We went up Newbury Street past the galleries and boutiques and stores that sold Danish modern waterbeds.

"You know anything about Paultz Construction Company?" I said.

"Nope."

"Two people driving a Paultz company car came by and told me that if I don't stop looking into the Reorganized Church of the Redemption, they would punch my ticket for me."

Hawk smiled happily. "You faint or anything?"

"Almost, but I managed to get my gun out and point it at them."

"So they decided not to do it right then."

"True," I said.

Acapulco is a small informal restaurant downstairs on Newbury Street that serves decent Mexican food and splendid Carta Blanca beer. We went in. People stared covertly at Hawk.

"The Reorganized Church has loaned the Paultz Construction Company three and a half million in construction mortgages," I said. "What does that sound like to you?"

"That sounds like laundering money," Hawk said.

"Yes."

"I'll see what I can find out about Paultz," Hawk said. "There's people talk with me that don't talk with you."

"There's bad taste everywhere," I said.

"You going to keep doing it."

"Yes. I don't like that kid being involved in something like this."

"Sherry?"

"Yes."

Hawk smiled again. "Thought you wouldn't," he said. "What kind of shape you in?"

I shrugged. Hawk drank some Dos Equis beer.

"People trying to kill you, you got be able to concentrate."

I nodded.

"You care if somebody blow you away?"

I watched the bubbles rise in my beer gla.s.s. "No," I said.

Hawk nodded. The waitress brought us our food. Hawk ordered another Dos Equis. The waitress looked at me. I shook my head. She went away. The room was half empty and not very noisy. I could feel the weight of Hawk's impa.s.sive stare. The waitress brought him his beer. He poured half of it into his gla.s.s and watched the head form and then drank a swallow and put the gla.s.s down.

Looking at Hawk, I knew why he frightened people. The force in his dark eyes was intensified by the absence of any expression.

"You better move on from there," Hawk said. "See a shrink, read a book, join a church, talk with me. I don't give a f.u.c.k how you do it. That your problem. But you don't move on, you gonna get flushed."

I sat motionless and didn't want my food. The beer was going flat in my gla.s.s.

"And something I won't do is try to explain to Susan how I let that happen." Hawk said. "Or Paul."

I nodded.

Hawk said, "You want your lunch?"

"No."

"Hand it over here," Hawk said.