Early Autumn Part 26

CHAPTER 31.

Susan took Paul with her to work. "He can read in my office waiting room," she said. "Until this is cleared up he won't be safe alone and probably not with you."

"It'll be cleared up quick," I said. "Next week, kid, we'll be back working on the cabin."

He nodded. Susan and Paul drove to the junior high school in her Bronco, the left side pocked with bullet holes. I followed in my MG. When I saw them safely inside, I drove back into Boston to my office. I needed time for sitting and thinking. I parked in my alley and went up the back stairs. "When I got there, the door was ajar. I took out my gun and kicked it open.

A voice said, "Don't shoot, babe, it's Hawk." He was sitting in my clients' chair, tipped back against the wall out of the line of fire from the door. Hawk was never careless. I put the gun away.

"Didn't know you had a key," I said.

Hawk said, "Haw."

I went around my desk and sat down. "Cotton raise the ante?"

"Naw, I just come by to hang out with you, you know. I got nothing to do and I get restless. You wasn't at your apartment so I figured you'd come here."

I said, "Somebody tried to hit me at Susan's last night."

"She okay?" he said.

"Yeah, but that's not the gunny's fault."

"We gonna go see Cotton today," Hawk said. His face was impa.s.sive but the lines around his mouth seemed a little deeper and his cheekbones seemed a little more prominent.

I looked at him for a minute. "Yeah," I said. "We are."

Hawk stood up. "May as well get an early start," he said. I nodded. I took out my gun, spun the cylinder so there was a slug under the hammer, put a fresh slug in the chamber I usually kept empty under the hammer, and put the gun back on my hip. We went out. I locked the office door, and we went down the back stairs.

In the alley I said, "Where you parked?"

"Down front of your place," Hawk said.

"I'm right here," I said. "We'll take mine."

We got into the MG. Hawk pushed the pa.s.senger seat back further. "Cute," he said. We drove down Berkeley and turned west onto Commonwealth. The trees were leafing and brownstone town houses were bright with early flowering.

As we went through Renmore Square, Hawk said, "You gonna have to kill him."

"Harry?"

"Uh-huh. You can't scare him."

I nodded.

"He near put a hole in Susan," Hawk said.

I nodded. About a block short of Harry's used-car lot I pulled in and parked in a loading zone. We got out.

Hawk said, "I think I might drift around back, case they see you coming."

I said, "You know the place?"

"I been in there," Hawk said.

I nodded. Hawk turned down a side street, and cut through an alley and disappeared. I walked straight up Commonwealth and into Harry's office. Harry was at his desk. Sh.e.l.ley and two others were in the service bay. When I came in the door, Harry reached into the desk drawer for a gun. He got it out and half raised when I reached across the desk and slapped it out of his hand. Then I took him by the shirt front with both hands and yanked him out of his chair and frontward across the desk. Sh.e.l.ley yelled, "Hey," from somewhere to my left and then I got a dark glimpse of Hawk between me and the sound of Sh.e.l.ley's voice. I dragged Harry across the desk and slammed him against the far wall of the cinder-block office. He grunted. I pulled him away from the wall and slammed him back against it, He was kicking and clawing at me but I didn't notice much. I shifted my right hand from his shirt to his throat and jammed him against the wall, holding him up by the throat with his feet off the floor.

"Which one shot at us last night?" I said.

Harry swatted at my face. I ignored it and leaned my hand in against his windpipe. "Which one?"

He pointed at Sh.e.l.ley. I dropped Harry and he slid down the wall and sat gasping on the floor. I turned toward Sh.e.l.ley. "If you can get past me," I said, "Hawk won't shoot. You're out of here free."

Sh.e.l.ley and two others stood motionless against the wall in the repair section. Hawk with his gun steady and relaxed stood in front of them. There were three pistols on the floor. Sh.e.l.ley looked at Hawk. Hawk shrugged. "Okay by me, Sh.e.l.l. You ain't gonna make it by him anyway."

"Yeah, if I win you shoot me."

"You don't try and I shoot you now," Hawk said.

One of the other two men was Buddy Hartman. I said to him, "Buddy, take your pal and beat it. You ever come near me or anyone I know, I'll kill you."

Buddy nodded. His companion was a lean, dark, handsome man with the dark-blue shadow of a recently shaven heavy beard. His companion nodded too and they went past me and out the door of the gas station and down the street, walking fast without looking back. Hawk shook his head. "Should have burned them," he said.

Sh.e.l.ley stared after the two men who had gotten out. Then he lunged toward me, trying for the door. He weighed more than I did and the force of his lunge pushed me back against the doorjamb. I got a short uppercut in under his jaw and straightened him up with it slightly. Hawk leaned against the far wall with his arms crossed, the revolver still in his right hand. To my left, Harry Cotton was inching along toward his desk. I hit Sh.e.l.ley again under the jaw, and he stepped back and swung at me. I shrugged my shoulder up and took the punch on it. I hit Sh.e.l.ley four times, three lefts and a right in the face. He stumbled back, blood rushing from his nose. I hit him another flurry. He stumbled, waved an arm at me, and backed into Harry's desk. His hands dropped. I hit him one big left hook and a haymaker right hand and he went backward over the desk and hit the swivel chair. It broke under his weight and he lay still on the floor with one foot still on the desk. Harry was trying to get the gun I'd knocked away from him. It was partly under Sh.e.l.ley's body. I took a step around the desk and kicked Harry in the neck. He fell backward and made a swacking noise. I stood over him.

I said, "Never come near anybody I know. Never send anybody else. You understand me?"

Hawk said, "Ain't good enough. You gotta kill him."

"That right, Harry? Do I? Do I have to kill you?"

Harry shook his head. He made a croaking sound.

"You gotta kill him," Hawk said.

I stepped away from Harry. "Remember what I told you," I said.

Hawk said, "Spenser, you a G.o.dd.a.m.ned fool."

"I can't kill a man lying there on the floor," I said.

Hawk shook his head, spit through the open door into the repair bay, and shot Harry in the middle of the forehead.

"I can," he said.

CHAPTER 32.

Mel Giacomin's office was on a side street just off Reading Square. It was a private home that had been remodeled as an office. The secretarial pool sat out front in a big open room, and Mel and a couple of other men had private offices down the hall. Past Mel's office was the kitchen, which had been left intact, and there were cups and a box of doughnuts and instant coffee and Cremora on the kitchen table. Mel was in there drinking coffee when I showed up.

"What the h.e.l.l do you want?" he said.

"Clever repartee," I said.

"What?"

"I want to talk about fire insurance," I said.

"I don't want to sell you any."

"It's about fire insurance you've already sold, like to Elaine Brooks."

Mel looked at me. He opened his mouth and closed it. "I didn't..." he started. "I..." A woman with red hair in a frizz came into the kitchen. She wore a lime-green sweater and a pair of white pants that had been tight when she was ten pounds lighter.

"Let's talk in your office," I said.

Giacomin nodded and I followed him next door. We went in. He shut the door.

"What do you want?" he said when he got behind his desk. He was wearing a tan glen plaid three-piece suit and a blue-figured tie and a white shirt with light tan-and-blue double stripes in it. The vest gapped two inches at the waist, revealing belt buckle and shirt.

"I'll make it short," I said. "I know the arson scam. And I can prove it."

"What are you talking about?"

I took out the copy of my arson file memo and put it on his desk.

"Read this," I said.

He read it over quickly. I noticed that his lips moved very slightly as he read. Then his lips stopped. He was through reading it, but he kept staring down at the paper. Finally, without looking up, he said, "So?"

"So I got you," I said.

He kept staring at the paper. "You tell the cops?"

"Not yet."

"You tell anybody?"

"Don't even think about that," I said. "You don't have a chance against me, and even if you did, note that you're looking at a copy."

"You want a piece of the action?"

I grinned, "Now you are catching on."

"How much?"

"It'll vary."

He looked up. "What do you mean?"

"It means I want two things. I want you to stay away from your kid, and I want you to pay for his support, his schooling, whatever he needs."

"Stay away?"

"Relinquish, leave alone, get off the back of, fill in your own phrase. I want him free of you."

"And send him money?"

"Yes."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

"Nothing for you?"

"No."

"How much I gotta send him?"

"Tuition, room, board, expenses."

"How much will that be?"

"We'll let you know."

"I mean I'm not made of money, you know?"

I stood up and leaned over the desk. "Listen to me, Rat s.h.i.t, you're talking like you could bargain. You can't. You do what I say or you take a big fall. Two people died in one of those fires. Homicide in the commission of a felony is murder one"

"I didn't..."

I hit the desk with the palm of my hand and leaned a little closer so my face was about three inches from his. "Don't bulls.h.i.t, you keep saying didn't to me and you'll be down to Walpole doing the jailhouse rock for the rest of your G.o.dd.a.m.ned life. Don't didn't me, creep." Not bad, me and Kirk Douglas. I wondered if the palm slamming was overacting.

It wasn't. He folded like a camp chair. "Okay, okay. Sure. I'll go for it. It's a good deal."

"You bet your a.s.s it's a good deal," I said. "And if you don't stick to your end of it, you'll boogie on down to Walpole faster than you can say first degree murder. And, I may stick my thumb in your eye before you leave."

"Okay," he said. "Okay. How much you want to start?"