Hundred Dollar Baby (17 page)

"You seem to be studying every woman goes by," I said to Hawk.

"Make sure Farnsworth don't sneak past us in drag," Hawk said.

"All you've ever seen of Farnsworth is a ten-year-old Mug shot," I said.

"Why I got to pay such close attention," Hawk said.

A good-looking young woman walked past us wearing unusually tight jeans with a short fur jacket. Hawk studied her as she passed.

"Could be him," Hawk said.   

"It's not him," I said.

"Pays to be vigilant," Hawk said.

We watched her as she passed us and turned into the park. As the drive south curved, she went out of sight.

"Why there got to be two of us watching for this dude Farnsworth?" Hawk said. "At the same time?"

"You know it takes more than one," I said. "Even if he never takes a cab, one of us may need to take a leak now and then."

"A leak?" Hawk said. "Us? You ever see Superman about to bound over a tall building, stop, and say, 'Oh gee, I gotta take a leak'?"

"Once we spot Farnsworth and you are sure you'll recognize him," I said, "then we can take turns."

"That be him?" Hawk said.

It was Farnsworth, who was out in front of his apartment waiting for the doorman to get him a cab.

"Got that tracker instinct," Hawk said, "inherited it from my ancestors tracking lions in Africa."

The doorman flagged a cab on Central Park West. He held the door until Farnsworth got in, closed it behind him, and the cab pulled away heading downtown.

"Cab's kind of a problem," I said. "Your ancestors ever run down the lions?"

"They could, but they usually waited for the lion to come back, see if he brought anything with him."

We waited. Farnsworth came back three hours later and went in and stayed there until Hawk and I hung it up and went home for the evening.

We had driven down in Hawk's white Jaguar, which seemed a little too noticeable for tailing someone. So the next day we got an unobtrusive rental car and doubleparked, along with several others, down the street west of Farnsworth's apartment. His street was one-way east. I stayed on foot. Hawk stayed with the car. If he walked, I stayed with him. If he cabbed, Hawk followed him. We did this for three days without learning anything more than the fact that Farnsworth came and went. He shopped at Barney's. He ate lunch with a woman at Harry Cipriani's; he walked in the park; he met a woman for drinks at the Pierre; he bought groceries at D'Agostino's on Columbus Avenue.

The hotel bill was mounting, always a cause of some discomfort. But we were on an open-ended job for which no one was at the moment paying me. So that night we ate in the same coffee shop on Madison where I'd had a tongue sandwich with Corsetti.

"How long we going to do this?" Hawk said.

"Eat in Viand's coffee shop?" I said.

"Hang around outside Farnsworth's apartment learning nothing."

"Didn't you learn patience," I said, "from your African ancestors?"

"If they was good with boredom," Hawk said, "they wouldn'ta been hunting lions."

"There's that," I said.

"Can't you think of nothing else to do?"

"No."

"But you too stubborn to quit."

"There's an answer," I said. "And Farnsworth has it."

"You want me to ask him the question?" Hawk said. "I could ask him kinda firm."

"I don't even know what question to ask," I said. "There's something going on that involves April, and Farnsworth, and Patricia Utley, and the late great Ollie DeMars, and I don't know what it is."

"We could ask him that," Hawk said.

"And if he doesn't answer and you can't scare him into answering, we're nowhere, and he's been warned."

"I could hit him until he told us," Hawk said.

"Which he'd do quick. You wouldn't have to hit him much, would be my guess. But how would we know if it was true? Everybody I've talked to has lied about everything I've asked them. I don't want any stories. I want facts."

"Facts?"

"Observable phenomena," I said.

Hawk was having a hot turkey sandwich. He ate some. "They make a nice hot turkey sandwich here," he said.

"Brisket's nice, too," I said.

"I could kill him," Hawk said.

I shook my head.

"Might not answer the questions," Hawk said. "But maybe the questions go away."

"No. I'm going to find out what's going on with April."

"Just a thought," Hawk said.

We had been five days in New York. I was sick of room service, sick of eating out, sick of not being home. I missed Susan. I missed Pearl. I missed looking out my office window. I missed Susan. I missed Chet Curtis. I missed Mike Barnicle. I missed Boylston Street, and the Charles River, and the Common, and the
Globe,
and the Harbor Health Club. I missed Susan. I missed spring training speculation, and commercials for Jordan's furniture, and Duck Tours, and the Ritz Bar, and Susan. But, on the other hand, New York, so far, was a perfect waste of time.

"How long will you hang in there," Susan asked me on the phone.

"Until I can think of something better."

"You could come home and watch April," Susan said.

"Lionel's the mover and shaker," I said. "He's up to something, and sooner or later he has to do something I can get hold of."

"A parking ticket, perhaps?"

"Don't be a smart ass," I said.

"I can't help myself," Susan said. "Any more than you can."

"I could help myself," I said. "If I wanted."

We spent a few more minutes on the phone in adolescent sex talk. When we hung up, I went to the hotel window and looked down at Madison Avenue. Had April wanted Leonard to kill Ollie? If so, why hadn't she gone to Tony when Leonard suggested it? Or maybe she didn't need to because someone else had done it. Or maybe she had someone else in mind and it wasn't time yet. Or maybe Tony was lying, or Leonard, or April. Or all of them in concert.

I made myself a drink and stood sipping it at the window. It seemed that April and Lionel had, at least at one time, been engaged in trying to establish a chain of upscale bordellos, the first few of which at least they were hoping to steal from Patricia Utley. They seemed to have fallen out, but maybe they hadn't. April seemed to not only want Dreamgirl to happen, she needed it. She seemed positively obsessed with it. I was pretty sure she couldn't go it alone. She didn't seem to like men much, but she did seem to need at least one to depend on. Maybe at first it was Lionel. Then maybe Ollie. Then maybe me. Which would explain her making a pass at me. If she needed a man, sex was what she used. It was why she didn't warm to Tedy Sapp. On him, sex was useless.

I drank a small, pleasant swallow of my drink. There was a lot of ice in the glass. The drink tasted clean.

Sex hadn't worked with me, either. Now who? Back to Lionel? Maybe that was the real thrust of her talk with Leonard. Would you kill someone for me. Maybe it was a test. If he said he'd kill someone for her, maybe he could be the man who helped her. Referring her to Tony meant he probably hadn't passed the test. Or maybe he had passed the test and was covering himself with Tony. There was a lot I didn't know. But working with what I did know, Lionel still seemed the logical choice to be re-anointed. Which was too bad. Lionel wouldn't take care of April. To him she'd be prey.

It was raining in New York. I was getting wet near the park, across the street from Lionel's building. Hawk was double-parked up the street. I wasn't getting too wet. I had on my Red Sox 2004 World Series Championship hat and my cognac-colored leather jacket. The hat kept my head dry, and the jacket kept my gun dry. The rest was wet. Water trickled down my neck no matter how carefully I adjusted my collar. The jeans and sneakers were soaked through.

At maybe 10:30 in the morning a silvery Porsche Boxster stopped in front of Lionel's building and April Kyle got out wearing boots and a bright red coat and carrying a small red umbrella. She gave the car keys to the doorman and ran into the building. The doorman scooted the car around the corner and came back in a few minutes, having parked it somewhere.

I wished I had a faithful assistant to whom I could say, "The game's afoot" or "Oh ho!" I could cross the street and say it to Hawk, but I knew he'd find it annoying. So I settled for giving myself a small nod of approval. Which made more rain leak past my collar in back.

I knew Hawk saw her. He always saw everything. If she came out and got her car, or got in a cab, he'd follow. If she came out and walked, I'd follow and Hawk would idle along behind, ignoring the occasional angry taxi. Nothing happened for maybe three hours, except the rain. Then April came out of the building with Lionel. They stood in the shelter of the doorway while the doorman hailed them a cab. A rainy day in Manhattan is not good for cab hailing. Even for professionals. When the doorman finally succeeded, he went back, held a large golf umbrella for Lionel and April, and escorted them to the cab. The umbrella shielded their view, and as they walked to the cab I ran across the street and jumped into the rental car with Hawk as the doorman closed the cab door and slapped his hand on the taxi's roof.

I couldn't help myself.

"The game's afoot," I said.

Hawk shook his head.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" He said.

We parked beside a hydrant and sat for two hours watching the front door of Patricia Utley's building through the rainwashed windshield. The water on the windshield distorted things, fusing the colors and bending the straight lines of the Upper East Side. But we could see well enough, and a car parked with its wipers going for two hours is a dead giveaway if anyone is paying attention.

It was still raining when Lionel and April came out of the apartment building. The doorman got them a cab. April tipped him. Hawk turned on the wipers, and we were behind the cab as it took them back through the park to Lionel's building. April and Lionel got out of the cab and went into the building. The cab left us and we double-parked behind a big plumbing truck that was already double-parked itself. Hawk shut off the wipers.

"This detective work is thrilling," Hawk said. "No wonder you've made it your life's work."

I leaned my head back and stretched my neck. Outside the car, the rain was coming straight down and hard.

"I think I'll maintain my post here in the car," I said. "If one of them comes out, one of us can always jump out and follow."

"One of us?" Hawk said.

"Hey," I said. "Are we buddies or what?"

"Buddies?"

"Salt and pepper," I said. "Black and white. Friends across the racial divide. Share and share alike."

"I ain't tailing nobody in the rain, honkie," Hawk said.

"Chingachgook would have done it for Leatherstocking," I said.

"Uh-huh."

"Jim would have done it for Huck."

"I ain't tailing nobody in the rain, Huck."

"Tonto would do it."

"I ain't your faithful Indian companion," Hawk said.

"Faithful Native American companion," I said, "is now the preferred way to say that."

Hawk nodded as if he'd just heard useful information. He said, "Snow nor sleet either, kemosabe."

We sat. It rained. The afternoon darkened. The lights of the traffic, white oncoming, red departing, blurred quite prettily through the rainwater on the windshield. The rain-fiItered emerald green of the traffic light on Central Park West was especially pleasant. The doormen at Lionel's building changed shifts. People went into the building and came out of the building. None was April, or Lionel. The question of who would tail a suspect in the rain was probably moot, and we both knew it. Small talk had long since petered out. We sat, silently staring at Lionel's entrance. We weren't uncomfortable with not speaking. Hawk's capacity for silence was limitless, and I could endure more of it than I usually got. By 7:30 we were both pretty sure April wasn't coming out tonight. Now it had become a contest to see who would endure. Hawk was motionless behind the wheel. It was ten o'clock. I was hungry and yearning for a drink. I knew it took days to starve, so I wasn't yet in fear of my life.

"I've heard in starvation that after a while you aren't hungry anymore," I said.

"Ain't never starved that long," Hawk said.

The rain stayed steady. It seemed to be in for the long haul with us.

At five past eleven, I said, "Did you know that moderate ingestion of alcoholic beverages is good for your HDL."

"HDL," Hawk said.

"It's clearly bad for our health," I said. "Sitting here like this without a drink."

Hawk nodded.

"Am feeling a little peaked," Hawk said.

I nodded. We sat.

At II:20 Hawk said, "Think she going to spend the night?"

"Looks that way," I said. "And you are looking a little peaked."

"You not looking so good either," Hawk said. "Kinda pale."

"By your standards," I said.

Hawk shrugged.

At 12:15 he turned on the wipers and headlights.

"You win," he said.

I pointed east, toward our hotel on the other side of Central Park. Hawk put the car in gear.

"Call it a draw," I said.

I was pretty sure she'd spent the night when April came out of the building with Lionel at 11:30 the next morning. Hawk and I were there. They took a cab downtown and got out in front of an Italian restaurant on Hudson just below Spring Street. Hawk and I lingered outside. At 1:17 they came back out of the restaurant with two guys in suits. Nobody looked happy. The two suits got into a limo. I wrote down the license number.

"You detecting?" I nodded.

"It's all in the training," I said.

"Something to see," Hawk said. "We gonna stay with April and Lionel?"

"Unless they split," I said.

They didn't. They got a cab on Hudson Street and went back up the west side.

Behind the wheel, Hawk said, "You want me to get one of those little chauffeur hats? Be like
Driving Miss Daisy?"

"No," I said.