Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,58

don’t you,” Hawk said.

“All,” I said. “Alderson, FFL, anybody who surfaces along the way.”

“You think he’ll come up with the million?”

“No.”

“You think he going to make a date to deliver,” Hawk said,

“and show up with some shooters?”

“I do.”

“And we gonna be ready for them?”

“We are,” I said.

Hawk grinned.

“And maybe we be lucky,” Hawk said. “And Alderson show up with the shooters and you got to kill him?”

“I’m going to roll this up,” I said. “I have to kill him, I will.”

“You already ratted him out to Epstein,” Hawk said.

“Double coverage,” I said. “I don’t want to wait for them. Until it’s done Susan can’t live her life.”

“You, me, Vinnie, and Chollo,” Hawk said. “You need anybody else? Maybe Tony give us some people.”

“We’ll be enough,” I said.

“Hell, you and me enough, babe,” Hawk said. “Everybody else just lighten the load.”

“There’s a lot on the line here,” I said. “I think I’ll stick with the old favorites.”

65.

In the event that Alderson and company didn’t bother to make an appointment, I went to sleep on top of Susan’s bed with all my clothes on. At 2:12 Hawk came in and woke me.

“They here,” he said.

I rolled out of bed. Put the Browning on my hip, stuffed two extra magazines into my pocket, and followed Hawk downstairs. We went into the spare room. There were no lights on. Chollo stood at one side of the front window looking out through the open louvered shutters. In Susan’s office, at that front window, I could see Vinnie dimly in the ambient light from the street. Vinnie had an assault rifl e.

“Chollo taking a little tour,” Hawk said. “Spotted them.”

“They make you?” I said.

“I am more stealthy than the Mexican jaguar,” Chollo said. He continued to look out the window as he spoke.

“So they didn’t make you?”

“Of course not.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“They arrived in a van,” Chollo said. “No markings. I count six. They have all been seeing many movies, I think. Black clothes, faces blackened.”

“I like the look,” Hawk said.

“Guns?” I said.

“Handguns, of course,” Chollo said. “I spotted at least one automatic weapon. An Uzi, I believe.”

“Where are they now?” I said.

“Around the house,” Chollo said.

“They don’t know that Susan’s not here,” I said. “And they need to get us both.”

“Doors are locked,” Hawk said.

“But not impenetrable,” I said.

“How nice,” Hawk said.

“Two ways for them to go,” I said. “Back stairs up to the porch off Susan’s kitchen, or through the front hall here and up the front stairs.”

“I’d do both,” Hawk said.

“Yes,” I said. “Me too. Chollo, you and Vinnie take upstairs. Off the kitchen. Hawk and I will lie in the weeds down here.”

Vinnie had already started up the stairs.

“I want one of them alive,” I said.

Chollo smiled.

“Play it safe,” Chollo said. “You get one alive. We get one alive. You don’t need two, I’ll shoot one.”

“Fine,” I said. “You see any sign of Alderson?”

“Sadly no,” Chollo said, and followed Vinnie up the stairs.

“They have jaguars in Mexico?” Hawk said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you take Susan’s office. They come through here, we’ll catch them between us.”

“Okay,” Hawk said. “But shoot careful. I don’t want you to shoot me.”

“You shoot,” I said. “I’m going to grab one.”

66.

In susan’s spare room, where I stood, with the louvers closed, the silence merged with the darkness, so that each seemed more intense than it otherwise would have. The dim nocturnal glow of streetlamps, moon, and stars drifted in through the glass panels in the front door, and made things faintly visible in the hallway. But Hawk, ten feet away from me in Susan’s offi ce, was perfectly invisible.

The darkness was thick and close.

I was holding a sawed-off baseball bat. A Manny Ramirez model. I kept my 9mm Browning on my hip, with a full magazine and a round in the chamber. No sound came from upstairs where Chollo waited with Vinnie. No sound came from Susan’s office where Hawk waited with his big .44 Mag in a shoulder holster, holding a sawed-off, twelve-gauge doublebarreled shotgun. I went to the front window and looked out through the shutter. Nothing moved on the street. No traffic. No cars with the headlights on and the heater going while the driver listened to late-night radio in the warm car. No couples coming home from a late party, holding hands, looking forward to intimacy. The quiet was stifl ing.

From the back of the house came the faint sound of glass breaking. It wasn’t much. They’d probably taped