I nodded.

“Even pimps got faith.”

“You think Junior and Ty-Bop go with him?” I asked.

“Nah, man,” Hawk said. “Probably steal the collection plate.”

My cell rang in my coat pocket. I answered.

“We got to talk,” Mattie said.

“Okay, talk.”

“Right now,” she said. “In person.”

“I’m with Hawk.”

“Meet me at the playground at the McCormack.”

“Hawk will like that.”

I made a U-turn and headed toward the bridge.

“Southie?” Hawk said.

“Yep.”

“Mattie?”

“Yep.”

“What she want?”

I shrugged and headed that way. It had started to rain, but it felt warm and pleasant inside the car. I turned on the windshield wipers as Southie passed in the washed-out hues of an old Polaroid. Old brick and chain-link fences. Churches and donut shops. Abandoned storefronts and renovated condos. The road was slick but not yet iced.

We parked in front of the small playground. There was a swing set with heavy chains and thick rubber seats laden with wet snow. Small metal animals with handles for ears and springs for feet poked from the white ground.

Cold rain pelted the windshield. We got out and stood with Mattie.

“You want to sit in the car?” I asked.

“Theresa Donovan is fucking missing,” Mattie said. “It was all people were talkin’ about at Mass. People tried to shut up when I was around. I guess they thought it might freak me out.”

“What did you hear?”

“That she’s gone,” Mattie said. “You know she about shit a brick when you started asking about my ma. And I know Mickey is saying she was with my ma the night she died.”

“You spoke to Mickey?”

Mattie nodded.

Hawk stood close on the sidewalk and leaned against a wrought-iron fence. Rain beaded down his bald head. His arms folded across his chest. He looked completely at home.

“You know it was Red and Moon,” Mattie said. “You got to do somethin’. Her little sister is my age. She puked her guts out this morning.”

“If she’s with those two,” I said, “we’ll know.”

“Let’s go,” Mattie said. “Come on.”

“I love a spunky kid,” I said.

“I wanna watch you guys stomp those animals,” Mattie said.

“We good at the stompin’,” Hawk said.

“Years of practice.”

The rain turned to sleet and felt like tiny needles on my face. The expanse of the housing projects seemed to grow quiet and still. It felt as if we were the only three present.

“You don’t go off half cocked,” I said. “You move when the time is right, not when you’re mad. You go clearheaded and with a plan.”

Hawk nodded. “If they got this girl, we get her.”

Mattie shook her head. “Must be easy for you two to be cool,” she said. “How can you? You just stand around and move slow and make jokes. How can you joke around? What are you thinking?”

“Hawk and I have been up against a lot worse,” I said. “We watch and wait. We rush in and scare them, we’ll never find her.”

“She’s fucking gone,” Mattie said. “They’ll kill her.”

“If they wanted to shut her up,” I said, “she’s already dead.”

Mattie’s face had grown red. Her hands balled into fists. She was doing that biting thing with her cheek again. “Jesus. Neither of you know what it’s like. I lost my mother.”

“I lost my mother, too,” I said.

“It’s not the same,” Mattie said. “Your mother died. Mine was killed. You don’t know what that feels like. It fucking hurts.”

The air seemed to drop a few degrees. Sleet fell harder than rain. We all stood there, stubborn. Two cars passed, rolling slow, down the road through the projects.

Hawk turned to Mattie. “I know.”

I had known Hawk most of my adult life. He’d never mentioned a family. For all I knew, he’d just appeared fully formed like a Greek god.

“I was older than you,” Hawk said. “A bad man killed her.”

“What happened?” Mattie said. She dropped her fists and stood in the sleet in her misshapen coat and ridiculous cap. She studied Hawk with an open mouth. She breathed as if just finishing a marathon.

“Doesn’t matter,” Hawk said.

“Did you find him?”

Hawk nodded.

“Did you get even?”

“Oh, yes.”

Mattie wet her mouth. Her face had gone from bright red to colorless. Sleet salted the shoveled pathways, crooking in broken mazes. I kept quiet.

“How’d that feel?” she asked.

Hawk moved from the fence toward us. He looked down a few feet at Mattie. Without much emotion, he said, “Perfect.”

44

Mattie sat in the backseat. Hawk rode shotgun.

She had removed her soaked Sox cap. Her jacket was weatherproof and slick. She chewed gum and smiled, leaning into the seat between us. “Where we headed?”

“We goin’ on a stakeout, missy,” Hawk said. “Sit back and enjoy the excitement.”

I turned on the car’s heat. The sleet pinged off the road ahead. Bringing Mattie along contradicted every microfiber of good judgment I had. But she’d asked to watch us work. And watching and waiting wasn’t a dangerous gig. And since I wasn’t going to teach her how to box or build a house, maybe this was something.

“This is fun to you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because it feels like I’m doing something,” she said. “They’re not making the rules. Feels like we’re in charge.”

I nodded.

“So why don’t you just snatch up those two bastards and beat their ass?” Mattie said.

“That’s what I keep on telling Spenser,” Hawk said.

“You should listen to Hawk more,” Mattie said.

Hawk smiled.

I followed Dorchester Avenue up to West Broadway and took the main thoroughfare over to G Street and Red Cahill’s three-decker. I parked down the street in a neat, unobtrusive spot between two cars still blanketed in snow. The rain and sleet had done little but pockmark the mounds of snow and ice. The sleet prattled on the windshield as I turned off the ignition. Hawk leaned back in the passenger seat. The rental felt warm and somewhat homey on a winter day.

“Did Theresa’s family have any ideas about where she might have gone?” I asked.

“Nope,” Mattie said. “Finished up her shift and was gone.”

Mattie leaned in again. She blew a large pink bubble. “She and her kid sister are real close. They were really freaked out.”

Mattie was quiet for several moments. Hawk shut his eyes.

“So what do you two do on stakeouts?” she asked.

“Sometimes Parcheesi,” I said. “Sometimes Hawk likes to sing to me.”

Hawk did not open his eyes as he hummed a few bars from “Old Man River.”

“So you sit around, drink coffee, and bullshit.”

“Kid’s good,” Hawk said.

Thirty minutes later, Red and Moon were on the move. I started the car.

I waited a beat and then followed the Range Rover out of Southie and over the Summer Street Bridge. When Red took Atlantic toward the North End, I half expected to learn of some kind of Irish-Italian collaboration. But Red kept on driving north over the Charlestown Bridge, past the Garden and up over Old Ironsides. They parked in Charlestown across from a stretch of public housing and walked into a pool room cleverly named A-1 Billiards. In a few minutes, they walked back to their car and drove off.

I hoped Mattie was getting bored.

She wasn’t.

She studied how I drove. I lagged far behind on straightaways but followed close at lights. If Red stopped at a business, I kept going. I’d circle the block, make sure they were off the street, and find a place. We blended in. We flowed with traffic.

At one point, Mattie thought we’d lost them. I jockeyed for position on a bridge and came up two cars behind them.

I smiled with satisfaction.

“Not bad,” she said.

We weaved in and out of traffic along the JFK. I would slow to five, six, eight cars behind Red’s Range Rover. I would speed up and pass them and fall back behind.