The bikini girl smiled, looked to Arty Leblanc, who was not smiling, and then quickly walked back toward the kitchen. The bald thug and the redheaded kid joined Leblanc and tried their very best to look tough. The bald thug wasn’t bad. The kid was terrible. He looked about as menacing as Howdy Doody dancing on a buckboard.

“Anyone ever tell you that you look like Howdy Doody?” I said.

He snorted. “Who the fuck is that?”

“He’s fucking with you,” Baldy said. “He’s saying you’re young and don’t know shit. Howdy Doody was a fucking puppet on TV a hundred years ago.”

“He was actually a marionette,” I said. “Marionettes are played by strings. Puppets are controlled by someone shoving their hand up their keister to make them do things.”

“You saying I’m a fucking puppet?” Baldy said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “From this angle, I can’t see Jackie DeMarco’s right hand.”

Hawk smiled. He had turned on the bar stool and his feet were firmly planted on the ground, but I had never even seen him move. His right hand touched his belt slightly below where he kept the .44 Magnum.

“This is a class place,” Arty said. “How about we all talk outside? You know, like gentlemen.”

Two more men walked in through the front door. They were dressed about as well as Arty Leblanc. Cheap pleated khakis and golf shirts. The men’s faces glowed from being out in the sun all day. They were telling jokes and stumbled slow and fast into the situation. “What’s up, Arty?”

Arty eyed me. Baldy stepped up closer. His nose was maybe six inches from mine. If my nose wasn’t so flat, it could have invaded my personal space. “These men were just leaving.”

I picked up my beer. It was half full. Or half empty. I swirled golden liquid around in the light.

“Let me finish up,” I said.

“Just leave,” Arty said. “Your tab is paid. Just don’t make us have to punch your ticket.”

“Yikes.”

The jolly businessmen walked quickly out in a cloister, like a school of fish out the front door. Three of the waitresses huddled near the kitchen door at the end of the bar. They didn’t seem scared. They were smiling and whispering to one another.

“You know why I hate golf?” Hawk said.

“Too many assholes play it?” I said.

“Exactly.”

Baldy pulled his coat back to show a shiny new automatic. Arty, unarmed on the links, smiled. He had a lot of gold fillings. As Hawk stood, Howdy Doody swallowed a couple times.

“Why you harassing these people?” Arty said. “What’s the matter with some folks from Boston making some bucks down here? What are you, the IRS?”

“Tell me about Jackie DeMarco and Bobby Talos.”

“I don’t know no one named Talos,” Arty said.

“Come on, Spenser,” Hawk said. “Shall we dispense with the pleasantries? Arty doesn’t know. He’s too low on the food chain.”

“What’d you say, spade?”

I took in a long breath. I stood, planted my feet firmly, and judged the distance between me and Baldy.

“What’s my name, son?” Hawk said.

Arty Leblanc snickered.

Hawk moved close enough to him that he bumped chests. “What’s my name?”

“I know you, Hawk,” he said. “You’re one badass spade.”

Hawk hit Arty Leblanc so hard and fast under his chin, I heard the pop before I saw a thing. A neat, clean undercut turned out Arty Leblanc’s lights and he slumped to the floor. One of the other golfers dropped down to catch him as Baldy came for me, throwing a hard left at my face. I twisted and covered up my face, and his knuckle connected with my forearm. I pivoted back and shot two hard rights at his temple. The first one connected hard and knocked him back. The second one connected with the top of his head as he dipped his chin. Howdy Doody ran for Hawk and Hawk grabbed him by the front of the shirt and threw him over the bar. The two golfers attended to Arty, wanting no part of the action. One of the bikini girls shrieked. Another called for Richie to knock me on my ass. Richie. For some reason the bald guy didn’t look like a Richie. He looked like his name would be Animal or Bronco.

I hit him again, connecting with a left. He hit me again with a right. Hawk was leaning against the bar, jacket pulled back, .44 exposed, drinking his beer.

Richie and I circled. He was breathing hard. His body was shaped like a barrel, equal parts stomach and chest. A little blood was spilling off his lip. He felt it and wiped it away with his right hand. He smiled, trying to circle in close. I moved a little to the left and stepped in hard and fast with a couple jabs, then a right hook and another right hook. It rattled him, and he dropped the boxing and rushed for me. I sidestepped him and hit an elbow to his throat. That slowed him down a great deal. As he lurched forward, I got two uppercuts nice and clean into his big, bloated gut. He couldn’t breathe, and in a panic reached into his coat, where I caught his fingers on a revolver and ripped it from his hands.

“Let him go,” I heard someone say.

“Uh-oh,” Hawk said. “It’s Howdy Doody time.”

Howdy Doody had a shotgun up in his arms and pointed it at me and then to Hawk. Hawk hadn’t moved. He picked up the beer again and finished it off.

“Say, Art?” Hawk said. “That tab still paid?”

Arty was unconscious. He wasn’t moving from the floor.

“Guess so,” Hawk said.

My breathing wasn’t as good and I could feel a bad give in my newly assembled knee. I nodded to Hawk. Hawk nodded back. One of the girls was shaking. The fun was over. She was calling the cops.

I pushed past Richie and the trio of golfers on the floor. The redheaded kid had a wild look in his eye that I didn’t like.

Hawk and I walked out together onto Seventh Avenue and strolled back to where we’d parked our car. The globes of the old-fashioned streetlamps were burning bright, the sky pink and blue. Women wearing next to nothing walked past us, talking on cell phones and chatting and laughing. Boys in tank tops and baggy jeans followed them into the dance clubs and bars. We passed a big plate-glass window where old men were rolling cigars for tourists.

“Got what you wanted,” Hawk said. “DeMarcos know we here. And I didn’t even have to mess up my suit.”

“Might need a press.”

“How about that Richie?”

“I think I wounded his pride.”

“How about that knee?”

“Might have wounded that, too,” I said.

“Let’s get something to eat,” Hawk said. “Whipping up on white boys sho’ gives us darkies a powerful thirst.”

37

We had a four-hour dinner at an old steakhouse in Tampa called Bern’s. Hawk downed two bottles of Iron Horse champagne and the next morning showed no ill effects. He was dressed and ready in the lobby as I emerged from the elevator, reading the business section of the Tampa Bay Times. He had already gone for a five-mile jog and had breakfast. I was moving a bit slower, having ordered room service and called Susan.

We drove north along Highway 19, the morning sun high and bright, to Dunedin, where the final two addresses were. Both were in a development called Esperanza Marina on an inlet off the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t until we got there that we realized it was, in true Florida style, a gated community. I stopped at the gate and a woman in a white golf shirt emerged from the guard shack. She held a clipboard, which seemed to indicate some serious duties. A pleasant smell of salt air blew off a warm, sticky wind.

“Hello, sirs,” she said after I’d rolled down my window and she’d looked inside. “Names, please?”