"When's the last time you saw Mary Smith?" I said.

"Mary who?"

I sighed.

"Mary Toricelli," I said.

"Why?"

"Why not?" I said.

"I don't know when I seen her, all right?"

"Not all right," I said. "I've been told you and she are still intimate."

"Huh?"

"He mean you and she still f.u.c.king," Hawk said gently. "He just talk kind of funny."

"Hey," Levesque said. "That's no way to talk about somebody."

"Just trying to find a language you're comfortable with," I said. "What about you and Mary?"

"Who told you that?"

"People who know," I said.

"So if they know so f.u.c.king much, how come you're asking me?"

"I like to confirm at the source."

"Huh?"

"He mean ask the one f.u.c.king her," Hawk said.

"Hey, pal, watch your freaking mouth," Levesque said.

Hawk looked at me. "Pal," he said.

I nodded. "Limited vocabulary," I said. "I'm sure he meant no harm."

"Hey, I'm trying to work here," Levesque said. "You guys are on private property."

"Oh my," Hawk said.

Levesque glanced at Hawk. Hawk made him uneasy.

"My boss sees me talking like this, I could get fired."

I looked around. We were near the corner of a big corrugated-metal lumber shed.

I said to Levesque, "Let's go around the corner then."

Hawk took hold of his left arm and I his right and we moved him pretty quickly around the corner so we were standing out of sight between the back of the warehouse and a hill full of weeds. We banged him hard against the back of the shed, and stepped back.

"What's going on with you and Mary," I said.

Levesque put his hand under his shirttail and came out with a gun. It was a squat black semiautomatic.

"You motherf.u.c.kers get away from me," he said.

Hawk smiled. "You not saying it right," he said. "Correct p.r.o.nunciation be m.u.t.h.af.u.c.kas."

The gun wasn't c.o.c.ked. On a semiautomatic you have to c.o.c.k it for the first shot.

"Look at me," I said.

He looked and Hawk took the gun out of his hand. Hawk is very quick.

"Don't see so many of these," Hawk said. "Forty-caliber."

"Forty?"

"Yep."

"For crissake," I said.

I put my hand out. Hawk gave me the gun and as he did, Levesque turned and ran.

"You want him?" Hawk said.

I shook my head. I was looking at the gun.

"Nathan Smith was killed with a forty-caliber slug," I said.

"There's more than one forty-caliber around," Hawk said.

"I know," I said. "Still, most people don't own one. Most people buy thirty-eights or comnines."

"If he bought it," Hawk said.

"Still a large coincidence," I said. "Smith's killed by a sort of unusual gun and one of the princ.i.p.als turns up with a gun that's the same kind of sort of unusual."

"Gonna take it to Quirk," Hawk said.

"I am."

"Then we know," Hawk said.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT.

I had a picture of Marvin Conroy that Rita had gotten me from the Pequod Bank. Race Witherspoon and I took the picture down to Nellie's and showed it to the third-floor bartender, whose name was Rick. The place was nearly empty. Two or three guys sat around at separate tables, and a party of four were drinking tequila sunrises at a round table near the stairs.

Rick was a tall thin guy with his thinning hair cut very short. He wore round eyegla.s.ses with gold frames. There was a blue-and-red sea serpent tattooed on his left forearm. He looked at the picture of Conroy for a while, then looked at Race.

"He's cool," race said.

I smiled in a cool way. Rick studied me for a minute.

"Yeah, he was in here."

"You remember him?"

"Yeah, sure. He was a straight guy, and he was asking me about Nathan Smith. And he had att.i.tude."

"How could you tell he was straight?" I said.

Rick looked at me and snorted.

"Oh," I said. "That's how. What did you tell him?"

"I told him I didn't know Nathan Smith."

"He press you?"

"Yes."

"He say what he wanted?"

"No. I thought he might be some detective Smith's wife hired."

"Why?"

"Some of the men who come in here, they're married and their wives are starting to wonder about them."

"He ask about Nathan's s.e.x life?"

Rick shook his head. "Just wanted to know if he came in here often."

"If he came here often," Race said, "you wouldn't have to ask about his s.e.x life. It's why people come here often."

"Looking for young men," I said.

"The younger the better."

"So if you knew Smith came here often, you'd surmise he was gay."

Rick looked at me. "And you'd probably know the Pope was Catholic," he said.

"He talk with anybody else?" I said.

"He tried."

"And?"

"n.o.body here is going to talk with a guy like that."

"He hang around?" I said.

"Yeah. I got off work early one night," Rick said, "and I saw him outside."

"What was he doing?"

"Just sitting in his car outside the club. Another car went by in the other direction and the headlights shined on him."

"Was Nathan Smith here the night this guy was outside?" I said.

"I don't know... yes he was. Because I thought, "I wonder if he's waiting for Nathan.""

"Which he was," Race said.

I nodded. "And whom he probably saw," I said.

"So he knew he was queer," Race said.

"Conroy must have had some reason to think Smith was queer," I said. "Otherwise why would he come here?"

"And why here?" Race said. "Why not visit all the many gay places, the come-what-may places?"

"Maybe he did."

"We can ask," Race said.

"You know them all?"

"Known them all already," Race said, "known them all."

"Strayhorn," I said, "and Eliot in the same conversation."

"I'm not just another pretty face," Race said.

We spent the next eight hours moving from gay bar to gay bar. No one else had encountered Marvin Conroy that they could remember. Near midnight we sat at the bar of a place in the South End called Ramrod and drank beer.