Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,41

are backup. You’re the one.”

“I know,” Hawk said.

We both looked at her. She finished a story with her arms out and raised toward the ceiling. The table burst into laughter. Hawk smiled.

“I’ll stay as close as you do,” he said.

“Almost as close,” I said.

“Almost make all the difference,” Hawk said. “Don’t it?”

“It does,” I said. “But I suppose if I were truly enlightened I’d say that would all be pretty much up to her.”

“But you not that enlightened,” Hawk said.

“No,” I said.

“Me either,” Hawk said.

We were quiet again, watching the table of women. Women seemed so much more at ease in social groups than men did. Men were okay in project groups, where they had a common goal and vocabulary. Sports teams. Combat units. Construction crews. Guarding Susan. But six guys all dressed up having dinner together was usually a sorrowful sight.

“I know we talked ’bout it before,” Hawk said. “And I know you not going to go for it. But . . . any one of us, Vinnie, Chollo, me, be happy to clip Alderson for you. Chollo could do it and be back in Bel Air for cocktails before the cops found the body.”

“I gotta do it,” I said.

“Clip him?”

“No, I gotta even this up.”

“Nothing says even like two in the head,” Hawk said.

“Not my style.”

“’Less you has to,” Hawk said.

I nodded.

“I’ve had to,” I said. “So far, not this time.”

“This ain’t just about Doherty,” Hawk said.

“Whatever it’s about,” I said, “I’m going to clear it.”

“It about Susan and the guy she took off with two hundred years ago,” Hawk said.

“Whatever it’s about,” I said, “I’m going to clear it.”

44.

It took two hours to fly to Cleveland, and thirteen hours to drive there. I drove. Route 90 all the way. There is nothing to equal a long boring drive alone for clearing the head. And mine needed clearing. Out the Mass Pike. Through the Berkshires. Onto the New York Thruway. Through Buffalo. Down along the eastern shore of Lake Erie. Through Erie. To Cleveland. It was dark when I got there, and my head was so clear as to be empty. I checked in, unpacked, went to the bar and had a sandwich and a couple of beers, went back up to my room, and, exhausted from the excitement, went to bed.

In the morning I went out and looked for Red’s shelter. I had a list of shelter addresses I’d gotten by phone Monday, from the Department of Public Health. Epstein had supplied head shots of Red and of Alderson, blown up and enhanced, from surveillance photos. I was wearing a Red Sox hat to be provocative, and a leather jacket to be warm. I was alert. I had a gun. I was everything a slick Boston private eye should be when patrolling the street shelters in Cleveland.

I liked Cleveland. It was no longer the mistake on the lake, when the river caught fire, and so did the mayor. There was a new ballpark, and a new arena. The downtown was alive. The flats were more so. There had always been a kind of magisterial, real city architectural dignity about Cleveland. It was still dignifi ed, but now it was also lively. Where I was looking, however, the liveliness, if any, was chemically induced. Mostly there was torpor. Except for the people who staffed the shelters. They seemed sincere and sufficient. Though most of them seemed sort of tired, too. My third day in Cleveland was bright and hard cold, with a wind off the lake. In mid-afternoon, some distance out Euclid Avenue, in the basement of a dingy church that might once have been a furniture store, I found a shelter where a staffer recognized Red when I showed his picture. Her name was Cora. Black. Kind. Tired. Pretty tough.

“I don’t know his real name,” she said. “We called him Red. He was a kid, really, big as he was. There was something forlorn about him. Did he make it?”

“He’s sober,” I said. “Gainfully employed.”

“How come you’re asking about him?”

“I’m investigating someone who might have counseled him,”

I said, and showed her Alderson’s picture.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “Dr. Alderson.”

“Tell me about him,” I said.

We were in a large empty basement filled with cots. On each cot was a pillow and a folded blanket. In the far corner of the room was a small kitchen setup: stove, refrigerator, sink, cupboards. Something in an industrial-sized pot was simmering on the stove. A man in a white T-shirt was sweeping up.