The bar would be open. I wondered if they served New Amsterdam Black & Tan these days. I looked back at the Big Guy. He was still standing there beside Washington. Next to the monumental sculpture he looked small.

CHAPTER 6

I was sitting at my desk with my feet up, reading the Globe, when Hawk came into my office with a bag of donuts and two large cups of coffee. My windows were open behind me and the sound and scent of morning traffic drifted up, along with the smell of bacon cooking somewhere, and beneath it, the smell from the river five blocks away. Even though it was September, it still smelled like summer.

"Got you some delicious decaffeinated," Hawk said.

"You drinking real coffee?" I said.

"Guatemalan dark roast," he said.

"Keep drinking that stuff you'll be bouncing around like one of the Nicholas Brothers."

Hawk set out the coffee for each of us and put the bag of donuts between us. He hooked one of my client chairs over near the desk where he could reach the donuts and sat down. He was wearing a dark blue suede jacket made to look like denim, over a white silk tee-shirt. His jeans were pressed and his black cowboy boots were hand tooled from the skin of some reptile I didn't recognize.

"Just up tempo my natural rhythm," he said.

"What we going to do about Marty Anaheim?"

"Sort of a problem," I said.

"I told the slugger I wouldn't spill the beans."

"That you made him, and he told you who sent him?"

"Yeah."

Hawk stared at me for a time. Then he shook his head.

"… obedient, cheerful, thrifty," he muttered, more to himself than to me, "brave, clean, and reverent."

"I'm not too obedient," I said.

"You ain't too fucking reverent either," Hawk said, "but you still a goddamned Eagle Scout."

"I told him I wouldn't," I said.

"You know what Marty's like."

"I remember once Marty beat a guy to death with a pool cue," Hawk said.

"They playing pool, and the guy kidding Marty. Saying how Patriots folded against the Bears in the eighty-five Super Bowl. Marty likes those Patriots. So he starts hitting the guy with the butt end of the pool cue."

"Guy overestimated Marty's sense of humor," I said.

Hawk nodded.

"Your slugger probably be in some trouble, you tell Marty he screwed up the tail job."

"He's a dope," I said.

"He couldn't tail a bull through a china shop. No need to get him killed."

"Everybody know Marty's a psycho. You work with him, you gotta be prepared to deal with that."

"I sort of promised."

"Okay," Hawk said.

"I know what you like. How we going to do it?"

I ate a plain donut and drank some decaf. Hawk sipped his Guatemalan dark roast.

"Well, the best guess is that Marty, or more likely Gino Fish, knew that Julius hired me. And they wanted to see who I talked to and what I found."

"Julius hired us," Hawk said.

"You're so sensitive," I said.

"Nobody follow me."

"For cris sake I said.

"You haven't been doing anything."

"I waiting for my kind of work," Hawk said.

"I don't do gumshoe work, rattle fucking doorknobs."

Hawk stood and went to my window and looked down at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. It was a fine bright morning.

There was a lot of foot traffic at ten of nine, people going to work at the big insurance companies that littered the Back Bay. The young women were still in their summer dresses. The young men wore no topcoats.

"Cross Boylston," Hawk said.

"Corner near Louis'."

I stood beside him and looked.

"Sort of tall with square shoulders," Hawk said.

"Fishing hat, tan raincoat, looking uninterested."

"I see him," I said.

"Newspaper under his arm."

"So he can lean on a lamppost and read it," Hawk said.

"He's doing everything but," I said.

"Your guy?"

"No," I said.

"They wouldn't send the same tail two days in a row."

"They haven't been too smart so far," Hawk said.

"You made the first guy as quick as we made this one."

"Not the same thing," I said.

"We were looking for this one."

"Sure," Hawk said.

"Why don't we just go see Marty, see what he wants?"

"You know where to find him?"

"Sure," Hawk said.

"

"Course it's possible," I said, "we brace Marty Anaheim, we get ourselves in trouble."

"Or him," Hawk said.

CHAPTER 7

The guy in the raincoat followed Hawk and me to a bar on Canal Street, near the old Boston Garden.

"Marty here about every morning," Hawk said.

The bar was called Poochie's, and through the big plate glass window in front we could see that Marty was there with a couple of other guys in suits drinking draught beer, and watching a motorcycle race on the big color television over the bar.

"Why don't you wait out here and confuse the tail," I said.

Hawk smiled and leaned against the entrance wall. The guy in the raincoat was across the street, near the MBTA entrance, pretending to count his change.

"He'll doodle around out here for a while," Hawk said.

"Trying to figure out if Marty'll be mad, and then he'll come in."

"That's about right," I said.

I walked in and sat on a bar stool next to one of Marty's companions and ordered a beer. Marty glanced at me and away, then he let his glance drift back to me out of the corner of his left eye.

The guy in the raincoat was decisive. After a minute or so, he came in and spoke to Marty, standing on the other side of Marty, whispering so I couldn't hear. Marty listened without taking his eyes off the motorcycle races.

"Okay, Dukes, beat it," Marty said when the guy in the raincoat finished whispering.

"I'll talk to you later."

Marty glanced casually past me at the street through the big window, then let his glance drift disinterestedly over me. I gave him a big friendly smile. He didn't smile back. Marty was a bodybuilder, and a successful one, if you judged by the way his suit didn't fit. He was clean shaven with shoulder-length blond hair and a dark tan. He had a small scar at the left corner of his mouth.

And his right eye seemed to wander off center. There was a gold earring in his left earlobe, and a very big emerald ring on his right pinky. The two guys with him were weight-room types. The one next to me had a medallion of some kind on a gold chain around his neck. On the television another motorcycle race was under way. I didn't watch. Marty and his pals did, with Marty occasionally glancing at me. I waited. Finally it was more than Marty could stand. He leaned forward and looked at me from the other side of his buddy with the medallion.

"How you doing," he said.

He had a surprisingly high voice.

"Fine," I said.

The beer was growing slowly flat in front of me, but ten in the morning seemed a little early. Marty kept leaning forward. His two friends were looking at me too.

"I know you?" Marty said.

"Sure you do," I said.

"I'm your hero. You want to be just like me."