Cold Service - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,34

right now?"

I hadn't been shot as recently as Hawk. But it isn't something you forget. Funny thing was, I never thought of the bullets hitting me. I thought of the hospital, of the lights and tubes and sounds. I remembered the weakness, the craziness, the paranoid delusions. I thought of the smells. It didn't control me; I was always able to put it away, but the memory lurked in my cell structure.

Slowly Hawk put one foot up on the edge of Rimbaud's desk. He smiled and tilted his chair back so that he was rocking gently on the back legs. He held the smile and said nothing as he rocked.

"Nothing to say, Big Mouth?" Rimbaud said.

"You need an army to shoot it out with Boots," Hawk said. "And I don't think you got one."

"We can keep nibbling at his business until we got it all," Rimbaud said.

"You nibble enough to threaten him and the deal with Tony won't hold," Hawk said.

"I don't know nothing about no deal," Rimbaud said. "He gives us trouble and we'll take him out. I'll take him out, me, personal."

Hawk nodded.

"And another guy will take over who won't want you nibbling at the business, either."

Rimbaud didn't say anything, a rare moment of relief.

"Brock," I said. "He's got an army; you got a squad, maybe. Tony may help you for a while, but if it comes down to it, he's not going to go full-bore to the mattresses twenty-five miles from his own turf. My guess is he'd throw you to the Ukrainians and take his daughter home."

Rimbaud said, "She ain't going noplace."

Neither Hawk nor I said anything. Rimbaud sat, trying to think. The gun was still raised, but I think he'd forgotten it. After a while he put it down. His two pals put theirs away. Hawk continued to rock.

"You got a plan?" Rimbaud said.

"Nope, we sort of looking for one," Hawk said.

"I got ten men," Rimbaud said. He nodded at the other two. "Nuncio and Jaime, and eight other guys. I make eleven."

"You know how many Boots has got?" Hawk said.

"I don't know. Fuck him. I don't even care."

"Better if you knew," Hawk said. "Why here?"

"You mean why try to take over Marshport?"

"Yeah."

"I'm looking for a place to do business, see. And I figure to do it smart. So I look for a place ready to blow up, you know? And here it is, Marshport, a black and Latin city run by a bunch of white Bohunks, like, ah, you know, like ripe and ready."

"Except there's a lot of the Bohunks," I said, "and all of them are tougher than Donald Trump's agent."

"I'm white," Rimbaud said. "But only on the outside. I mean, I grew up black. I'm like black inside. I know about black. I can bring these people around."

"Okay, bro," Hawk said. "You keep on doing what you're doing and we'll check in with you once in a while, let you know what we're doing."

"What are you doing now?" Rimbaud said.

He didn't sound black inside.

"Collecting data," Hawk said.

"That's all?"

"Un-huh."

"What you going to do when you get enough data?" Rimbaud said.

"Depend on what the data tell us," Hawk said. "Tha's why we gathers it."

Rimbaud leaned back in his chair.

"I guess we're after the same thing," he said. He took a cigar from the leather humidor and began to trim the end with a small penknife.

Expansive.

Hawk nodded.

"Give him a card," Hawk said to me, "case he care to call us."

"Sure," I said.

I stood, took a card from my card case, and bent over the desk to put it in front of Rimbaud. Rimbaud was too cool to look at it while we were there.

"I have anything," he said, "I'll let you know."

Hawk stood.

"Have a nice day, bro," Hawk said.

Then we turned and went out the front door.

"Bro?" I said as we walked across the street.

"You heard him," Hawk said. "He say he black inside."

"Rimbaud isn't anything inside," I said.

Hawk grinned.

"You honkies always badmouth a brother," he said.

34

SUSAN SAT WITH Hawk and me at the downstairs bar in a restaurant Susan liked, called Upstairs on the Square. "Do you guys have any plan at all?" she said.

Hawk smiled at her.

"Was thinking of getting drunk," he said. "First time since I got shot."

"I've never seen you drunk," Susan said. "Do you get witty and elegant, like my honey does?"

"Never been that drunk," Hawk said.

In honor of the conversation, I took another swallow of my Blue Label and soda.

"Well," Susan said, "before you are, tell me a little