16

When Tedy got close enough so that the timing would be right, I went down the stairs and started up Marlboro toward Berkeley. I had my hands in my coat pockets. I was whistling happily. Looking for love and feeling groovy. When I was far enough from my building so that I couldn't dash back inside, four guys got out of the Crown Vic and walked across the street toward me. One of them was Long Hair; beside him was the guy with the comb-over. With them was a blocky guy in a Patriots jacket, and a guy with a shaved head and tattoos on his neck. I stopped when they got to me.

"White guys look like shit with their heads shaved," I said to the group in general.

The guy with the shaved head said, "You talking about me, pal?"

"Just a general observation," I said.

"Never mind that crap," Comb-over said. "Got a message to deliver from Ollie DeMars."

"Wow," I said, "a message."

Long Hair and Comb-over were in front of me. The other two had moved behind me. One of them, it was the guy with the Patriots jacket, tried to put his arms around me and pin my arms. I turned sideways before he could get me pinned and hit him on the side of the face with my elbow. He let go and staggered backward as Tedy Sapp arrived behind Long Hair and Comb-over. Sapp hit Long Hair across the back of the head with his forearm. It knocked Long Hair face forward into the salt slush of the sidewalk. I hit Baldy four times as fast as I could punch. Straight left, left hook, left hook, right cross. He went down. I turned to look for the guy in the Patriots jacket. He was backing away. I looked at Comb-over. He was trying to get a gun out from inside his coat. When it was out, Tedy Sapp chopped it from his hand, almost contemptuously. Comb-over backed up a step with his hands raised in front of him. Sapp kicked him in the groin hard enough to lift him from the ground. Comb-over yelped and fell forward, doubled over in pain, and lay in the slush. Sapp and I both looked at the guy in the Patriots jacket. He backed up another couple of steps and then turned and ran. We watched him until he turned right on Arlington and disappeared.

I looked at the three men on the ground. Comb-over would take a while to recover. Baldy was on his hands and knees with his head hanging. Long Hair was sitting up. We did a fast shakedown to make sure there were no other weapons. There weren't.

"I love the pat-down part," Sapp said.

"Pervert," I said.

"Your point?" Sapp said.

I grinned.

"Since they had four guys and one gun," I said, "I'd guess they weren't going to pop me."

Sapp nodded.

"What was the message?" I said to Long Hair.

He looked at the sidewalk and shook his head.

"Now that's dumb," I said. "You just got your ass handed to you by a couple of guys who could spend the week doing it again if they had reason. What did Ollie want you to tell me?"

Sapp poked Long Hair in the ribs gently with the toe of his work boot. Long Hair looked at him, and then at me.

"Ollie says to tell you to stay away from the whores."

"And?"

"And give you a good beatin'," Long Hair said.

"Well," I said. "You did your best."

We were quiet. No sirens wailed in the distance. No patrol cars pulled around the corner from Arlington Street. If anyone had seen the fight, they hadn't thought enough about it to call the cops. I looked at Long Hair. He didn't know anything. None of them did. They were street labor. Asking them stuff was a waste of time.

"Tell Ollie," I said, "that if he keeps annoying me, I will stop by and tie a knot in his pecker."

Long Hair nodded.

"Beat it," I said.

Long Hair and Baldy got slowly to their feet. They got Comb-over up, still bent over in pain, and got him into the backseat of the Crown Vic. Tedy Sapp bent over and picked up Comb-over's gun and looked at it and nodded to himself and slipped it into the pocket of his peacoat. The Crown Vic started up and pulled away. At Berkeley Street it turned right, heading for Storrow Drive, and we didn't see it anymore.

"You know the part about tying a knot in somebody's pecker," Sapp said.

"I was trying for a colorful metaphor," I said.

"Sure," Sapp said. "But if it happens, can I be the one does it?"

"God," I said. "I gotta find me some straight help."

Sapp grinned.

17

April had an apartment on the fourth floor of the mansion. We were up there eating oatmeal cookies and drinking coffee. The apartment was nice in the unengaging way that good hotel rooms are nice. There were some paintings on the walls that went just right with the room. There were no photographs of anyone anywhere that I could see.

"Two of the girls quit today," April said. "Bev and another girl."

"Bev's the one that got beat up," I said.

April nodded.

"Are you making any progress?" she said. "I'm going to lose more girls, I know I am. And the clients who were here when those two apes rampaged through here…"

"Before Hawk and I joined the operation?" I said.

These oatmeal cookies had no raisins in them. I was pleased. I always thought raisins ruined oatmeal cookies.

"Yes," she said. "Those clients will never be back."

I nodded. April looked very nice today. Very pretty. Very pulled together. Very grown-up. She was wearing tan pants and a simple cobalt-colored top unbuttoned at the throat. They were expensive clothes and they fit her well.

"You need to do something," she said.

She was sitting on the couch, and when she spoke she put her cup down on the coffee table and leaned forward toward me.

"He's going to destroy me," she said.

"You mean he'll destroy your business."

"For me that's the same thing," April said. "This business is my life, the first time I've ever had something that was mine, that I could build and nurture."

"So why would he destroy that?" I said.

"What?"

"Why would he destroy your business. What would he get if he does?"

"Because he's crazy," she said. "Because he's cruel. Because he's a wretched pig of a man. I don't know. How do I know why he does what he does?"

"And you don't know who he is," I said.

"Of course not," April said.

Her face had flushed a little bit.

"If I knew who he was," she said, "why wouldn't I tell you so you could stop him?"

"And there's nothing you know that I don't know," I said.

"Oh my God, you don't believe me?"

"Just asking," I said.

She put her face in her hands and began to cry. I waited. I took the occasion while I was waiting to eat another raisin-free oatmeal cookie. She continued to cry. I went and sat on the couch beside her and put my arms around her.

"Nothing we can't fix," I said. "Whatever the truth is, it's nothing we can't fix."

She turned her face into my chest and cried some more. I patted her shoulder. The crying slowed. She wriggled against me a little and raised her head and looked at me. I smiled at her. Suddenly she leaned in against me and kissed me with her mouth open and tried to put her tongue in my mouth. I was horrified. It was like getting French-kissed by your daughter. I turned my head.

"April," I said.

She had squirmed herself on top of me as I leaned back against the corner of the couch, so that she pressed fulllength against me.

"You've never touched me," she said. "Not since you met me. You've never touched me."

"You were pretty young," I said.

"And now I'm not," she said.

Her face was so close to mine that her lips brushed my face when she spoke.

"Too late," I said. "It would be like incest."

She was moving her body against me as she lay on me.

"Wouldn't you like to fuck me?" she said. "I'm goodlooking and I'm really good at it."