Ceremony (14 page)

"You're about ten seconds from dead," I said, "unless I know that never again will anybody go anywhere near Susan Silverman."

The blood was steady, from a cut inside his mouth probably, and it was ruining his shirt and tie.

"Never heard of her."

I hit him in the face again, holding his lapel with my left hand to keep him up.

"You sent somebody out there to scare her, or me, or both, because I'm looking around under some of your rocks." "Man's crazy, Hawk." Marcus had trouble saying crazy, because his lower lip was starting to puff.

"Probably is," Hawk said, "but that don't help you none, Tony."

Marcus turned back toward me. "What you after?"

I let go of him and stepped back away from him. Marcus glanced quickly at the door and away. I knew he was waiting for reinforcements.

"Anybody comes in that door, and I'll kill you," I said. "So don't be too hopeful."

"Won't matter," Marcus said. "I'm dead. You're dead. Hawk's dead. Won't matter. I didn't get to own what I own by being scared to die."

"What am I digging up that you don't want dug up?" I said.

Marcus shook his head. "Take another punch, if you want to. Keep you busy 'fore you die."

"Okay," I said. "You're tough. I'm tough. Hawk's tough. Let's stop for a while being tough and start being smart."

There was a soft knock on the door. I took my gun out and pushed the muzzle into Marcus's neck. He didn't flinch. A voice outside said "Tony?" I nodded. Marcus said, "Yeah, Buster?"

"There's a cop car parked outside, Tony," Buster said.

Marcus said, "Go stand behind the bar, Buster. Polish some glasses."

The blood continued to run down his chin. He made no move to wipe it away.

"What you got in mind?" Marcus said to me. I put the gun back on my hip and said, "You got a very fine organization working here. Whores, dope, numbers, cards, horse parlors, bootleg booze, loansharking-did I leave anything out?"

"Protection," Marcus said. "Some leg breaking. Shooting."

"Fun," I said. "I'm not out to break that up. If it's not you, it'll be someone else. I do what I can, not what I should."

Marcus nodded.

"What I want is Mitchell Poitras and a little kid named April Kyle."

Marcus shrugged.

"So why do you care?"

Marcus made a small noncommittal gesture with one hand.

"I say you didn't want the Poitras connection exposed. I say you had a nice supply of white suburban teenage whores coming in, and there's always a big demand for them. High-ticket items, you might say. And you found me chasing one of the kids that Poitras recruited, you figured it would be easier to chase me off than to risk the source drying up."

"Say that's so," Marcus said. "So what?"

"It's not easy to chase me off," I said. "And it's not going to get easier. You probably got enough bodies finally to get it done, but it won't be easy. You're up against me, and you're up against Hawk."

"I not sure he do have enough bodies for that," Hawk said softly.

"If you do, and you burn me, or both of us, then there's some cops that will take it hard, and they'll keep hoisting your pimps and busting up your books and maybe bringing you in once a week for routine questioning. And maybe you'll fall down the stairs when they do. Chasing me off is a mistake. It's nothing but trouble."

"You got a better idea," Marcus said.

"I bet he do," Hawk murmured.

"I take Poitras and the kid and leave you out of it," I said. "I can't leave Poitras in place."

"I don't give a shit about one whore more or less," Marcus said.

"You know that Poitras makes chicken flicks down there-boys and girls?" Marcus frowned. "Boys too?" he said.

"Yeah."

"I don't deal in that," Marcus said.

"I take Poitras, and you're out of it."

"If I don't like it."

"We do it anyway," I said. "And a lot of people get dumped, and your business goes to hell."

"He talking for you, Hawk?" Marcus said.

..Yep… "You with him the whole way?"

..Yep." "Would he go that way for your black ass?"

Hawk said, "Do it, Tony. You don't know him, but you know me. He as hard to kill as I am. And as bad. Do it or he going to fuck up your life."

"No way you can push me into a deal I don't want," Marcus said. "Not with guns or fists or anything else. I don't push."

"It's a deal that makes sense," I said.

"I make a deal and I stick to it," Marcus said. "Hawk'll tell you that. You make a deal with me and it's dead solid done. You understand. No mistakes, no backing out. I say I'll do something, I do it."

I looked at Hawk. He nodded.

"I take Poitras and the kid and the kid he lives with. I keep you out of it, and Poitras won't talk because he knows what would happen if he did." Marcus nodded.

"And if anyone goes near Susan Silverman I'll kill him. And you." Marcus made a movement with his puffed lips that was probably a smile.

"Thought you'd get to that."

"He talking for me on that too," Hawk said.

Marcus nodded. He looked down at the two bodyguards face down on the floor. "Took Buster easy enough," he said almost to himself. "And these two clowns." He picked up his napkin from the desktop and began to dab at the blood on his chin. "Not sure you could have pulled it off without the cops outside." He stopped dabbing with the napkin and held it wadded against his mouth. "Got some cop in your pocket," he said, his voice muffled by the napkin. Hawk and I were quiet. Holding the napkin against his mouth, Marcus rolled his neck as if trying to loosen the muscles. Then he looked at me and took the napkin away from his mouth. It was bloody and wet. "Okay," he said. "You make sure Foitras knows what not to talk about. He talks, it's on you."

"Okay," I said. "We clean?"

"Almost," Marcus said, and hit me an overhand right on the jaw. He rolled off the desk as he threw the punch, and his full weight was behind it. It was a good punch. I had to take a quick backward step to keep from falling. "Now we're clean," Marcus said. "Your lucky day, honky. You and your lady."

My head was ringing. "Not bad," I said. "Not a bad punch for a pimp."

As we walked out through the restaurant Hawk said, "I seen you slip better punches than that one." There was no one in the restaurant except Buster, behind the bar, holding ice against his forehead.

"Won't hurt if he feels better about things," I said.

"We could have zipped him."

"But then there'd be people trying to zip us. This way is better. It puts Susan out of it, if he'll keep his word."

"He will," Hawk said.

In front of the restaurant, as we went out onto Tremont Street, was an unmarked car with the motor idling, and its give-away buggy whip antenna trembling slightly in synch with the engine vibrations.

"That's why no reinforcements came," I said.

"Henry called Quirk," Hawk said.

I bent over and looked in the window. Belson sat behind the wheel and Martin Quirk was beside him. Quirk rolled down the window. The smell of Belson's cheap cigar was strong.

"Henry call you?" I said.

"Uh-huh."

"You down here officially?" I said.

"Nope. Henry told us somebody took a swipe at Susan, and you and your pet shark"quirk pointed at Hawk with his chin -"were coming down to talk with Marcus about it."

Hawk grinned and drifted over to his car and put the shotgun in the trunk.

I said, "We did. It's all straightened out." There was a shotgun between Quirk's knees and another one locked upright into the catch on the dashboard.

"Thanks," I said.

Quirk was immaculate, as he always was. Hair recently cut, face newly shaved. His trench coat just out of the cleaners.

Quirk nodded. Belson chewed his cigar into a more comfortable corner of his mouth.

"Best to Susan," Quirk said. And the car pulled slowly away and drove Tremont Street.

Hawk was leaning against his car with his arms crossed. I said, "Let's go." And Hawk walked around and got into the driver's side.

As we headed back for the Harbor Health Club, Hawk said, "You tell Henry to do that?"

"No. I told him to let Quirk know if we didn't come back. You were there."

"Not sure how legal that is," Hawk said, "cops sitting backup while you and me roust some citizens." "About as legal as you and me rousting the citizens," I said.

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

Hawk dropped me at the Health Club and I picked up my car and drove out to Smithfield. I was in Susan's kitchen drinking coffee and eating oatmeal cookies when she came home from school. Cataldo came into the house with her.

"You don't have to watch her anymore," I said. "It's been fixed."

Susan put her coat across the back of a kitchen chair and said to Cataldo, "Coffee?"

Cataldo shook his head. "No, thanks. I hope," he said to me, "there was no crime committed in fixing things?"

"Cynical and suspicious," I said. "Years of police work will do that to you, Suze."

She was making instant coffee for herself at the counter and her face was serious. She nodded. Cataldo said, "See you, Susan."

She said, "Thank you very much, Lonnie."

He nodded at me, and Susan walked him to the door. When she came back, she put her arms around my neck from behind as I sat at the table and pressed her cheek against the top of my head for a moment. Then she got her coffee from the counter and came and sat across the table from me. She took a cookie and bit a small half-circle from the edge and sipped some coffee.

"What did you do," she said, "to fix it?"

I told her.

"What if Quirk hadn't showed up to cover your back?" Susan said when I got through.

"Can't say, maybe nothing. Maybe we'd have had to shoot some people. No use thinking about what didn't happen."

"I was scared all day," Susan said. "I knew you'd do something like that. I was afraid you'd do it alone. That you wouldn't even ask Hawk."

"I didn't ask Hawk," I said. "He came along uninvited. Like Quirk and Belson."

She nodded. "I was scared for you. I was scared you'd be hurt, or killed. And I was scared for me. Scared I'd have to deal with what I know about Poitras alone."

I nodded. "Quirk would have helped you," I said. "And Frank Belson."

"You think that Marcus will stick to his bargain?"

"Yes. Hawk says he will."

"And if Hawk is wrong?"

"Hawk isn't wrong about things like that," I said. "There are things Hawk doesn't know anything about. But what he knows, he knows for certain."

She nibbled at another cookie. She was wearing a new perfume, and the light from the window behind her made her black hair shine. Seeing her was a tangible physical sensation for me. I could feel the sight of her move through my body. It was always difficult not to touch her.

"We have to decide about Poitras and April and, I suppose, Amy Gurwitz," I said.

"I know."

"Busting Poitras will be easy. There's plenty of evidence in the place. Juries and judges are inclined to be unsympathetic to child pornographers, and I imagine the Department of Education frowns upon them as well, at least as far as official policy goes." "Yes. I'm sure it does," Susan said. "It's the girls." "Yeah, it is. I don't know what to do with the goddamned girls."

There was one cookie left on the plate. I took it and ate it while Susan held her coffee cup to her lips and tapped her bottom teeth slowly against the rim. Then she drank some coffee, put the cup down, and said, "I don't know either."

My jaw was very sore where Marcus had hit me. It had stiffened up overnight, and I had to talk through my teeth. I sounded as if I'd just graduated from Harvard.

It didn't impress a vice squad detective named McNeely who sat behind his desk on Berkley Street and listened while I told him my plan.

"We got nothing better to do than hang around with a handful of warrants and wait for you to give the nod?" he said.

"It's the only way it can go down," I said. "It's a deal I made, and I'll stick to it."

"You made," McNeely said. "Who the hell are you? You got information about a porn operation, you give it to me."

Belson was leaning against a file cabinet beside McNeely's desk. His cigar was burned short, and before he spoke he picked a shred of wet cigar wrapper off his lip.

"For crissake, Tom," Belson said. "He's handing you the garbage all wrapped and neat. All you got to do is swing by and pick it up."

"This ain't homicide, Belson," McNeely said. "This is vice. You brought him over and introduced him, you don't need to hang around and kibitz."

Belson winked at me. "Must be a slow month on the kickbacks," Belson said. "Vice guys are all grouchy."

McNeely was a thick slouchy man with a bald head. He looked at Belson hard for a long minute. Belson smiled at him. His thin face looking good-humored. A faint blue shadow of his heavy beard already showing, although it was only ten in the morning.

"I'll let that pass, Belson," he said finally.

"Thought you might," Belson said.

McNeely looked back at me. "How do I know you won't blow this?"

"Because I'm good, and this is easy," I said. "I didn't have to bring it to you first. I could have done my business and then called nine one. one. I'm giving you notice so it'll all be clean. The right papers, that sort of thing. The thing is going to blow statewide, and probably interstate. I could have called in the Staties, or the FBI, and left you sucking hind tit."

McNeely looked at Belson again. "He level?" he said.

"He's a real pain in the ass," Belson said. "But he does what he says he'll do."

McNeely was playing with a rubber band, stretching it between the thumb and little finger of his left hand. He leaned back in his swivel chair and examined the stretched elastic. He opened his three middle fingers out and stretched the band into a crude circle and looked at that.

"Okay. I'll go along," he said. "You fuck it up and you're out of business. I can promise you that."

"That's the kind of endorsement I was hoping for," I said.