Taming a Sea Horse by Robert B. Parker Page B

his fork.
    "You find him he going to be in trouble?"
    "I don't know," I said. "I'm looking for a kid and it depends on how willing he is to help me."
    Tony ate half his ravioli. Patted his lips with his napkin, took a sip of Tsingtao beer, and said, "Maybe it ought to depend on whether I want him in trouble or nor."
    "Do you?" I said.
    Marcus smiled again. "Un huh."
    I nodded. "That's what you get out of it," I said.
    "Un huh."
    "What kind of trouble you want him in?"
    "What kind you got?" Marcus said.
    "Tell me about him," I said. "We can work something out."
    The Peking ravioli were gone. The waiter took the platter, replaced it with mu-shu pork and another round of beers.
    "Running whores is traditionally black turf," Marcus said. "In New York, in Chicago, in Detroit… here." He put a pancake on his plate and added a spoonful of mu-shu and carefully folded it over into a neat package and took a bite. Then he drank some beer and used his napkin. "Been that way a long time and everyone sort of accepts that."
    I nodded.
    "Which means here it's mine," Marcus said.
    "Okay by me," I said.
    "Even if it's not," Marcus said.
    "Just being polite," I said.
    "Polite is shutting up and listening, sowbelly," Marcus said.
    I looked at Hawk. "Sowbelly?"
    "White," Hawk said, "like salt pork. He insulting you."
    "Ahhh," I said.
    "Maybe you ought to sit on it too, Hawk," Marcus said. The four guys at the next table all looked over at us. Hawk poured the rest of his second bottle of beer into his glass, tipping the glass slightly so that the head of foam worked just right. He put the empty bottle down, picked up the glass, took a sip, looked for a minute at the color of the beer, holding it so the light showed through. Then he put the glass down and leaned back in the booth and looked at Marcus.
    "Ain't enough of you, Tony, to smartmouth both of us," he said.
    Marcus looked back at him and then looked away. "Fuck that," he said, and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Let's talk business."
    Hawk smiled and drank a little more beer. I waited.
    "Artie Floyd works for a guy named Perry Lehman. You know Lehman?"
    I nodded. "Skin magazines."
    "That's one part of it," Marcus said. "Soft porn, hard porn, gay porn, kid porn, fetish porn." Marcus paused and finished his pancake. He made another one. "Lehman got magazines for every taste."
    The waiter appeared and took away the empty platters and brought a bowl of steamed rice and a platter of chicken with cashews. Marcus gestured at the beer and the waiter went for some.
    "I think it's shit but no skin off my ass, is it." Marcus spoke in a neutral dialect most of the time, softly, like an FM announcer. But every once in a while there was a Caribbean trace in his speech. He served himself some chicken and some rice. "Then he branches out. He opens a series of resorts and vacation clubs and he starts staffing them with hostesses. At which point he starts cutting into part of my franchise. So I have lunch with him one day, and I tell him that he's off base. And that he should stick to the fuck magazines and let me run the actual fucking." Marcus drank some beer. "Try the chicken," he said. "Stuff's excellent."
    I nodded and put a little on my plate.
    "So the fucking sleaze bag says, sure. Right. He hadn't realized that, and he'd take care of it, and maybe we could work out… what the hell he say…" Marcus put his head back for a moment then looked back at me. "A franchising fee. A fucking franchising fee, man." Marcus shook his head. "Shit!"
    I ate the chicken. It was good. But I had already had more lunch than I was used to. The beer was good too. Marcus seemed to have a low tolerance for it. As he ate and drank he talked faster and louder and more profanely and the island accent became more frequent.
    "So I tell him to go think about it and we'll have lunch next week and we'll come to a decision. And I go and talk to some of my money people and they say maybe some sort of fee isn't a bad move,