Promised Land by Robert B. Parker Page A

me about how you are. I don’t expect to frighten you away, and I don’t expect to bribe you, but my employer would like to compensate you for any loss if you were to withdraw from the case.“
    ”Hawk,“ I said. ”All this time I’ve known you I never could figure out why sometimes you talk like an account exec from Merrill Lynch and sometimes you talk like Br’er Bear.“
    ”Ah is the product of a ghetto education.“ He pronounced both’t‘s in ghetto. ”Sometimes my heritage keep popping up.“
    ”Lawdy me, yes,“ I said. ”What part of the ghetto you living in now?“
    Hawk grinned at Susan. ”Beacon Hill,“ he said. He U-turned the Caddie over the center strip and headed back up Cape toward Hyannis. ”Anyway, I told the people you weren’t gonna do what they wanted, whatever I said, but they give me money to talk to you, so I’m talking. What your interest in Shepard?“
    ”He hired me to look for his wife.“
    ”That all?“
    ”You find her?“
    ”Yes.“
    ”Where?“
    ”I won’t say.“
    ”Don’t matter, Shepard’ll tell me. If I need to know.“
    ”No.“ I shook my head. ”He doesn’t know either.“
    ”You won’t tell him?“
    ”Nope.“
    ”Why not, man, That’s what you hired on for.“
    ”She doesn’t want to be found.“
    Hawk shook his head again. ”You complicate your life, Spenser. You think about things too much.“
    ”That’s one of the things that makes me not you, Hawk.“
    ”Maybe,“ Hawk said, ”and maybe you a lot more like me than you want to say. ’Cept you ain’t as good looking.“
    ”Yeah, but I dress better.“
    Hawk snorted, ”Shit. Excuse me, Susan. Anyway, my problem now is whether I believe you. It sounds right. Sounds just about your speed, Spenser. Course you ain’t just fell off the sugar-beet truck going through town, and if you was lying it would sound good. You still work for Shepard?“
    ”No, he canned me. He says he’s going to sue me.“
    ”Ah wouldn’t worry all that much about the suing,“ Hawk said. ”Harv’s kinda busy.“
    ”Is it Powers?“ I said.
    ”Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t. You gonna stay out of this, Spenser?“
    ”Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.“
    Hawk nodded. We drove a way in silence.
    ”Who’s King Powers?“ Susan said.
    ”A thief,“ I said. ”Loan sharking, numbers, prostitution, laundromats, motels, trucking, produce, Boston, Brockton, Fall River, New Bedford.“
    Hawk said, ”Not Brockton anymore. Angie Degamo has got Brockton now.“
    ”Angie chase Powers out?“
    ”Naw, some kind of business deal. I wasn’t in it.“
    ”Anyway,“ I said to Susan, ”Powers is like that.“
    ”And you work for him,“ she said to Hawk.
    ”Some.“
    ”Hawk’s a free-lance,“ I said. ”But Powers asks him early when he’s got Hawk’s kind of work.“
    ”And what is Hawk’s kind of work?“ Susan said, still to Hawk.
    ”He does muscle and gun work.“
    ”Ah prefer the term soldier of fortune, honey,“ Hawk said to me.
    ”Doesn’t it bother you,“ Susan said, ”to hurt people for money?“
    ”No more than it does him.“ Hawk nodded to me.
    ”I don’t think he does it for money,“ she said.
    ”That’s why ah’m bopping down the Cape in a new Eldorado and he’s driving that eight-year-old hog with the gray tape on the upholstery.“
    ”But…“ Susan looked for the right words. ”But he does what he must, his aim is to help. Yours is to hurt.“
    ”Not right,“ Hawk said. ”Maybe he aiming to help. But he also like the work. You know? I mean he could be a social worker if he just want to help. I get nothing out of hurting people. Sometimes just happens that way. Just don’t be so sure me and old Spenser are so damn different, Susan.“
    We pulled back into the parking lot at the motel. The blue and white was gone. I said, ”You people through discussing me yet, I got a couple things to say, but I don’t want to interrupt. The subject is so goddamned fascinating.“
    Susan just