“You didn’t fare so well yourself,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Hawk said.

“You have what they call a selective memory.”

“I remember selectively whipping your butt,” Hawk said, laughing.

I sipped some more Sam Adams. I wished the Marriott put out some nuts for you. The old Ritz put out nuts and snacks. You could count on it every happy hour. I’d been served so many times at that bar that my mouth began to water at five.

“You go with me to pick up Mattie at school,” I said. “And then we stop by and see Broz.”

“Little girl got some fair questions,” Hawk said. “Deserves answers.”

“You don’t think it’ll look like I had to bring my big, bad boyfriend along?”

“Nope,” Hawk said. He finished his champagne and stood. He slipped back into the black leather trench and reached for his sunglasses. “I like you, white boy. But no one ever said I love you.”

20

Hawk popped the trunk of his silver Jaguar. Grinning, he pulled away a heavy wool blanket, the kind used to cover furniture, and showed off four shotguns. Two Mossbergs, a Winchester, and a sawed-off Browning twelve-gauge.

We stood in the dim light of the Marriott’s parking garage. Hawk was still wearing sunglasses.

“When one meets with the Broz family,” Hawk said, “one should be prepared.”

“One should.”

“Joe’s boy might need a lesson in etiquette with an ass full of buckshot.”

“As Emily Post would recommend.”

“Emily Post do know her shit.”

“She do,” I said.

He slammed the trunk closed.

We drove in style back to Southie and Gavin Middle School. We parked behind a row of school buses and sat there in the parents’ line for about twenty minutes. When the final bell rang and the kids kicked open the doors, I was glad to be an adult. I would rather go up against any Southie tough than endure one more day of grade school, or any school, for that matter. Just the smell of the hallways induced instant dread. Kids passed Hawk’s car and stared inside.

“Super nannies,” Hawk said.

“Uncle Hawk,” I said.

Hawk growled.

I stepped out of the passenger side and waited for Mattie.

I looked across the street. I looked to the other cars, studying faces of parents. I did not see Moon Murphy or my new friends from the Mary Ellen McCormack. Hawk stayed behind the wheel of the Jaguar with the engine running. I caught a bit of Tommy Flanagan’s piano on the stereo. I believed the number was called “Cherokee.”

Mattie emerged from the school. She was dressed as all the other kids were, in uniform. White shirt, blue sweater, khaki pants. She slid into her blue coat and her pink Sox cap outside the front doors.

I waved to her.

She said a few words to a young Asian girl in glasses. She walked cool and deliberate, not too excited to see me, down the front steps of the old brick building.

“Next time, I’ll hold up a little sign with your name,” I said.

“You don’t have to pick me up anymore,” she said. “I can walk.”

“I prefer my clients not be run off the road.”

“They were just screwing with me.”

“Or that my clients are harassed.”

“Where’s your car?” she asked.

“Stolen.”

“That sucks.”

I nodded. “It does indeed.”

“Your face looks like shit.”

I shrugged.

We stood at the base of the school steps. Kids piled into the school buses, the diesel fumes adding an unpleasant smell to the air. The slush covering curbs was dark black. I walked her to the car. I let her sit up front with Hawk.

“Hawk, this is Mattie,” I said. “Mattie, this is Hawk.”

“Howdy,” Hawk said. He cranked the ignition.

“He a detective, too?” Mattie asked.

“I just a simple thug,” Hawk said. “Spenser the brains.”

“Hawk is too modest,” I said. “He’s also my fashion adviser.”

She turned and studied him. She liked him. “Cool jacket.”

Hawk checked his rearview mirror. He nodded in agreement.

“Where we going today?” she asked.

“You’re going home,” I said. “Hawk and I have an appointment.”

“Bullshit.”

“Lovely elocution,” Hawk said.

“Bullshit,” Mattie said.

“I work with Hawk today,” I said. I leaned into the front seat. “Tomorrow may be different.”

“You need me,” she said. “Nobody’s gonna talk to you. I got three more of my ma’s friends I called last night.”

“Why don’t you let me handle this?”

“Nobody says they saw her before she was killed,” she said. “But one of ’em saw Red this weekend at her cousin’s wedding. He’s goin’ to parties, getting high, while Mickey Green lives in a cage.”

“As your investigative consultant, I would advise you to quit running your mouth all over South Boston.”

Mattie didn’t respond.

“Hawk and I have a mutual friend,” I said. “He will provide us with an introduction.”

I saw Hawk grin in the rearview mirror.

“And then what?”

“We will have a talk with Red Cahill.”

“The way you talked to Moon last night?”

“That’s the way you speak to guys like Moon.”

“By knocking them in the head.”

“I knocked him on the chin,” I said. “An uppercut.”

Hawk nodded in appreciation.

“Nobody talks about those guys,” Mattie said. “Nobody says jack shit. They’re a bunch of cowards. They left her out there to die on The Point and don’t have the guts to say anything about it.”

I nodded. Hawk took a turn and joined up with Dorchester Avenue.

The music changed to Barry Harris. Or maybe it was Bud Powell. But it was that jazz piano that sounded playful and alive, cat and mouse with the rest of the band. Hawk’s car smelled of fine leather and expensive perfume.

“Anyone ever tell you that your car smells like a French prostitute?” I said.

“What you know about French prostitutes?” Hawk asked.

“I knows one when I smells one.”

Mattie didn’t say anything. She did not laugh at our witty repartee. She just stared out the frosted window at the old storefronts and apartment buildings. She wasn’t listening to us. Perhaps a good thing. After a while, she spoke.

“Someone saw something,” Mattie said.

She seemed to say it more to herself than to me. Or Hawk.

“Someone knows what happened,” she said. “And they’re too scared. Fucking cowards.”

Hawk turned the steering wheel in an expert fashion. In the leather and shades, he blended into the Jaguar. Mattie just studied the long stretch of Dorchester before us. The dirty snowbanks, the covered cars, the battered road signs. SLOW. STOP. NO PARKING.

“You good at beating people up, too?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Hawk said.

21

Gerry Broz had opened a sports bar at the edge of the Old Colony Housing Projects. There wasn’t much of Old Colony left; the wrecking ball had taken out a good half of the old brick buildings. What remained sat in decay and dim light as we passed. I remembered Old Colony being the kind of place where kids filled Dumpsters with water from fire hydrants to cool off in the summer. It had been an infamous cove of junkies and thieves, working-class fathers and mothers, professional boxers and hoodlums. Almost everyone had been Irish, with a few Italians tossed in.

“You remember that man from Southie, tried to impale a brother with an American flag?”

“During the busing.”

“Now I see brothers all ’round here.”

“We’ve been on the scene for a while,” I said. “Things change.”

“Joe Broz had you shot back in the day.”

I nodded.

“What was that about?”

“His son.”

Hawk grinned.

We drank coffee and watched the parking lot in front of the sports bar. It was an old two-story industrial building slapped with a fresh coat of yellow paint and new plate-glass windows. The narrow point of the bar met at Dorchester Street and Old Colony. A large sign read PLAYMATES.