CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

Race Witherspoon opened his studio door for me looking as if he had just ingested a fat canary. He had the collar of his silk shirt turned up and the brim of a summer straw hat tilted forward over his eyes.

"You're wearing your hat indoors," I said. "Is it a gay thing?"

"Race Witherspoon," he said. "Super sleuth."

"I gather you have information for me," I said.

Race sat down in a client chair facing me and crossed one leg over the other. He had on knee-length black shorts and dark leather sandals.

"Nice pedicure," I said.

"How sweet of you to notice, bubeleh."

"Years of training," I said.

"Nathan Smith was a serious chickenf.u.c.ker," Race said.

"How nicely put," I said. "He was drawn to young boys?"

"Early adolescent when he could get them," Race said.

"How solid is this?"

"Honey," Race said, "I talked with some of the chickens."

"He give them money?"

"Yes, but not like it sounds. He was more like a fairy G.o.dfather." Race grinned. "So to speak. He'd pay for dance lessons or music lessons or whatever. He set up scholarships for them to go to college. Paid for counseling. Wish I'd met the dear man when I was younger."

"So you could have gotten counseling?" I said.

Race snorted.

"How out was he?" I said.

"Way in the back of the closet, darlin'. Told people at Nellie's his name was Marvin Conroy."

"Marvin Conroy?"

"Un-huh. Nice butch name."

"Nice butch guy," I said. "Nathan had a sense of humor."

"So he borrowed some straight guy's name," Race said.

"Yes."

"Bet the straight guy wouldn't like it."

"No."

"Another thing," Race said. "One of the bartenders at Nellie's told me that somebody else had been in a year and a half ago asking about the same guy."

"Nathan Smith?"

"Un-huh, aka Marvin Conroy."

"The bartender know who this was?"

"Nope, just a middle-aged straight white guy."

"How could he tell he was straight?"

"Gay-dar," Race said. "You wouldn't understand, sweetie."

"The bartender remember what the guy looked like?"

"Just what I said."

"What did the bartender tell him?"

"Nothing. I told you, Nellie's doesn't stay in business by telling on their clients."

"Is he sure about the time?" I said.

"It was right after the Super Bowl," Race said. "The one where the Rams won."

"People at Nellie's watch the Super Bowl?" I said.

"All those muscle men in tight pants?" Race said. "All that b.u.t.t patting? Honey, get real."

"I never thought of it that way," I said.

"'Course you haven't," Race said. "You're much too straight."

"Unfortunately," I said, "I'll think of it now every time I watch football."

"It's good to have a queer perspective now and then," Race said. "How's Susan?"

"As always," I said, "beautiful and brilliant."

"Hot, too."

"You think?" I said.

"Hot, hot, hot," Race said. "If I was ever going to jump the fence..."

"But you aren't," I said.

"Oh, G.o.d, no!" Race said.

"Whew!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

It was early evening when I left Race's loft. Darker than it should have been, because it was overcast, with a warm rain falling on A Street. I turned up the collar of my raincoat and walked toward my car, which was parked past the overpa.s.s, toward Summer. There was no traffic. In the soft damp hush I thought I heard a car engine idling, but couldn't tell which one it was. On my left ahead, beneath the underpa.s.s, was an iron stairway that led down from the street above.

I paused. I had annoyed a lot of people in the last week or so. If someone wanted to shoot me this would be a dandy spot. Come down the stairs behind me, put a bullet in the back of my head, get into the car waiting at the curb, be out of sight in ten seconds. I stood. Nothing happened. I wasn't even sure I had heard the engine idling. And even if I did, people sat in cars with engines running all the time. Air conditioner on. Waiting for the wife. Listening to the radio. Calling on the car phone. I was probably overreacting. Other than embarra.s.sment and time wasted, however, there was no down side to overreacting. Underreacting might get me killed.

I took my gun out and held it against my side, and walked under the bridge. The iron stairs were on my left, and as I pa.s.sed them, I turned suddenly and ran up them. Three steps from the top I collided with a guy coming down. He had a gun in his hand and when I ran into him, it went off over my left shoulder. I shot him. He made a soft grunt and fell backward and down onto the wet iron stairs. I turned and ran down the stairs toward the street. Behind me I could hear the body slide down a couple of stairs.

As I reached the street, headlights caught me and a maroon Chrysler pulled out from the curb behind where mine was parked. I dove flat onto the sidewalk at the foot of the stairway and heard a burble of gunshots rattle against the stone bridge b.u.t.tresses. Automatic weapon. As the car ripped down A Street, its wheels spinning on the wet surface, I got my feet under me and headed back up the stairs. The car did a screeching U-turn and headed back. I stepped over the body of the guy I had shot. His gun lay two steps above him on the metal stair tread. It was a Glock. Below me the car slowed and someone sprayed the area at the foot of the stairs with gunfire. I went to the edge of the overpa.s.s and fired straight down into the roof of the car beneath me. The Chrysler lurched once, then surged forward and headed out of sight toward Congress Street, leaving a smell of burnt rubber and gunpowder to mix with the wet smell of the rain, and the more distant smell of the harbor.

I reloaded my gun and went back down the iron steps and knelt beside the man I'd shot. He'd been a tall, young guy, wearing a green satin warmup jacket with Paddy's in white lettering across the front, broken between the D's by the snap front of the jacket. His freckled face was blank now, wet with the rain. His eyes were empty. My bullet had caught him under the chin and plowed up through his brain and out the back of his head. There was a rain-diluted splatter of blood and tissue on the step where he'd fallen. He still wore his Red Sox cap.

In his pants pocket I found a spare magazine for the Glock, and two twenty-dollar bills folded over twice. No wallet. No identification. If anybody in the vicinity of Fort Point Channel had heard the gunfire they had ignored it. There was no activity on the street. No sirens. Just the merciless rain, and me.

I put my gun back in my holster and went down the stairs to my car and called the cops.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.

I got through with the cops about 3:30 in the morning. During which time I drank too much coffee. The license plate on the Chrysler had been stolen earlier in the week from a 1986 Chevette, which belonged to an elderly woman in Amesbury. None of the cops recognized the kid I'd killed. The ME promised fingerprints by tomorrow night. Belson told me they'd probably need to talk to me some more, but there was nothing wrong with my story, and he couldn't see any charges being brought. I agreed with him.

At 4:15 I was lying on my back in my bed, exhausted and wide awake. I had killed people before, and didn't like it. I'd also had too much coffee. The way the kid's face had looked with the pleasant summer rain falling on it made me think of Candy Sloan's face, lying in the rain among the oil derricks, a long time ago. Susan was right. I had never quite put that away.

It was daylight before I got to sleep. I slept and woke up and slept and woke up until 2:30 in the afternoon, when I dragged out of bed, logy with daytime sleep. I took a shower and put on my pants and went to the kitchen, acidic still with too much really bad coffee. I made myself a fruit smoothie with frozen strawberries and a nectarine. I poured the smoothie into a tall gla.s.s and took it with me to the living room and sat in a chair by the window and looked out at Marlborough Street and drank some.

The soft rain of the night before had turned harder. It was dark for midafternoon and everything was gleaming wet. Cars were clean. The leaves on the trees were fat and shiny with rain. Good-looking women, of which the Back Bay was full, moved past now and then, alone, or walking dogs in doggie sweaters, or pushing baby strollers protected by transparent rainproof draping. The women often had bright rain gear on, looking like points of Impressionist paint in the dark wet cityscape. My apartment was quiet. I was quiet. The rain was steady and hard but not noisy, coming straight down, not rattling on the window. I sipped my smoothie. My doorbell rang.

I picked up my gun off the kitchen counter and went and buzzed the downstairs door open. And went and looked through the peephole, after a moment. The elevator door opened and Hawk stepped out. I opened the door and he came in, wearing a white raincoat and a panama hat with a big brim. And carrying a paper bag. I knew he saw the gun. He saw everything. But he had no reaction.

"Raspberry turnovers," he said.

I closed the door. He held out the bag, and I took a turnover. I ate it while I made coffee and Hawk hung up his coat and hat.

"Been following your man Conroy," Hawk said.

He stirred some sugar into his coffee.

"He make you?"

"Me?" Hawk said. "Vinnie?"

"I withdraw the question," I said.

Hawk took a turnover from the bag and ate some. I sipped some coffee. It didn't feel so bad. It sat sort of comfortably on top of the smoothie.

"We picked him up where you left him," Hawk said.

I nodded.

"I saw you," I said.

"'Cause you looking for us."

"Sure."

"So me and Vinnie, we double him, me on foot, Vinnie in the car. And he never knows we there. He goes back to the bank. Stays about an hour, then comes out and gets his car. I hop in with Vinnie and we tail him up to Boxford."

"Long ride," I said.

"Yeah. Deep into the f.u.c.king wilderness," Hawk said. "Vinnie kept him in sight."

"Vinnie's good at this kind of work," I said.

"He is," Hawk said.

"But is he fun, like me?"

"n.o.body that much fun," he said. "You like these turnovers?"

"Yes."

"Place in Mattapan, make the crust with lard, way it's supposed to be made."

"That would make them illegal in Cambridge," I said.

"So Conroy drives to a house in Boxford," Hawk said, "and parks in the driveway and gets out and goes in, and me and Vinnie sit outside, up the street a ways, and wait."

I got a second turnover out of the bag and started on it. Lard. Hot diggitty! "How long he in there," I said.

"He don't come out," Hawk said. "Lights go out about eleven-thirty. 'Bout two in the morning we decide maybe it's over. So I go check out the house. No name on the door. No name on the mailbox. There was a car in the garage, but I couldn't see the license plate."