Back Story. Part 4

Ives began to nod his head slowly as he spoke.

"How do you know it exists?" he said.

"It was mentioned in a police report. Said an FBI intelligence file was coming."

"And it wasn't there."

"No."

"And the FBI can't find it."

"No."

"What does that tell you?" he said.

"Two possibilities," I said.

"One being that they are sloppy filers," Ives said.

"And the other that something is being covered up."

Ives rocked in his chair for a moment. "While the terms FBI and Intelligence are oddly disparate," he said, "I have not found them to be sloppy filers."

We were both quiet. Below us the harbor was gray and choppy in the May sunshine. One of the water shuttle boats from Rowe's Wharf was trudging toward the airport.

"You're telling me something," I said.

"I am a member of a highly secretive government agency," Ives said. "We tell no one anything."

"Of course," I said.

9.

Hawk and I were running intervals on the red composite track in back of Harvard Stadium. The sun was shining. The temperature was about 65. I was wearing a cutoff sweatshirt that was black with sweat. Hawk seemed calm. We would do a couple 220s, a couple 440s, and a couple 880s, and then walk a 440. We were walking again.

"Maybe we should walk an extra two-twenty," I said.

"Ain't two-twenties anymore," Hawk said. "I keep telling you. They two hundred meters, four hundred meters, and eight hundred meters."

"How do you know," I said.

"Ah is an African-American," Hawk said. "We know s.h.i.t like that. You see a lot of European Americans running those races?"

"European Americans?" I said. Hawk grinned.

"I can always tell," I said, "when you're sleeping with some theorist from one of the colleges."

"Abby," Hawk said. "She teach at Brandeis."

"I'll bet she does," I said.

"She a feminist, too," Hawk said.

"Of course she is," I said. "You want to walk another two-twenty."

"Sure," Hawk said. "I know you need it."

"I was thinking of you," I said.

Some of the Harvard track kids flashed by us, running their own training sprints. I was glad we were walking. I had the feeling they'd have flashed past us even if we'd been running. Some of them were women.

"You ever hear of a group back in the seventies," I said, "called itself the Dread Scott Brigade?

"Nope."

"Part of the radical movement," I said. "They held up a bank in Audubon Circle in 1974, killed a woman."

"I remember that," Hawk said. "I believe there was a brother in on it."

"Yes."

"Lotta brothers in radical movements then," Hawk said.

"Ungrateful b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," I said. "We rescue their ancestors from ignorance, teach them to chop cotton. And that's the thanks we get?"

"Good works don't always get rewarded," Hawk said, without any hint of a ghetto accent. His speech flowed in and out of Standard English for reasons known only to him. Most things about Hawk were known only to him.

"How come you weren't a radical?" I said.

"I was into crime?"

"Oh yeah."

"So how come you interested?"

I told him about Paul and Daryl and the missing FBI report. Then we ran some 220s and some 440s and some 880s. I kept up pretty well for a European American.

When we were walking again, Hawk said, "Quirk know about this missing report?"

"Uh-huh."

"And the FBI guy?"

"Epstein," I said. "Yeah, he knows."

"But neither one of them can find it."

"They haven't yet."

Both of us paused to watch a pair of young Harvard women jog past. As we watched them I said to Hawk, "You think staring at them is s.e.xist behavior?"

"Yes," Hawk said.

I nodded.

"That's what I thought," I said.

Hawk was silent for maybe twenty yards. The Harvard women were halfway around the turn.

Then he said, "Quirk wants to find something, he usually do."

"Yes," I said.

"Don't know Epstein. But he don't get to be SAC 'cause he a good old Irish Catholic boy."

"No."

"So he might be pretty good, too."

"Be my guess," I said.

Hawk was wearing black satiny polyester running pants and a sleeveless mesh shirt. From the far turn the two Harvard women looked back at him.

"We think he good. We know Quirk be good," Hawk said.

"So there a reason they don't find this report?" I shrugged.

"Maybe there's a reason they can't look," I said. "And maybe they hoping you'll do the looking for them."

"That occurred to me," I said.

Hawk looked at me for a minute. His expression was as unfathomable as it always was. "Good," Hawk said.

10.

Pearl lay at full length between Susan and me. "It's odd," Susan said. "Being in bed with a strange dog."

"That describes my life before I met you," I said.

"Oh, oink!" Susan said.

"s.e.xism again?" I said.

"In the extreme," Susan said.

"You chicks are so sensitive," I said.

"You too, big guy," Susan said. We were quiet, listening to the faint breathing sound Pearl made as she slept.

"I don't love her yet," Susan said. "Like I did the first Pearl."

"Not yet," I said.

"But we will," Susan said.

"Yes."

The room was nearly dark, lit faintly by the ambient illumination of the outside city.

"It's fascinating to see her beginning to morph into Pearl," Susan said.

"She's doing that," I said. "Isn't she."

"I know it's me, of course," Susan said. "I know she's not really changing."

"Maybe she is," I said.

"You think?"

"There are more things in this world than in all your philosophies, Horatio."

"I think you might have somewhat mangled the quote," Susan said.

"Is there a copy of Hamlet in the house?" I said.

"I don't think so."

"Then I stand by my quote," I said.

Pearl stood up and turned around several times and settled back down with her feet sticking into my stomach.

"You're lying on her side of the bed," Susan said.

"I prefer to think of it as her lying on my side."

"Well, at least she's the only one."