Pale Kings and Princes

Cesar never blinked. Hawk made a little laughing sound to himself that sounded like “hum.” Then he turned and came after me. At the foot of the stairs were Arthur and three other guys who didn’t look like workers. I recognized two of them from the lobby of the Reservoir Court Motel. We walked through them without comment and through the office and out into the yard.

“How’d you like Cesar,” I said.

“Ain’t no lettuce plucker,” Hawk said.

“Probably not,” I said.

We got in Hawk’s car and pulled away. Slowly.

“He ain’t gonna give you money for that stuff,” Hawk said. “He can’t stay in business, he let people hold him up like that.”

“I know,” I said. “He’s smart, though. He haggled with me just like he was going to pay.”

“He’ll come to a price with you and then when you show up he’ll kill you.”

“Unless we prevent him.”

Hawk grinned. “Cesar going to take heavy preventing.”

“We heavy enough?” I said.

Hawk’s grin widened. “ ’Course,” he said.

“You got some kind of plan here?”

“About half a plan,” I said. “I held back the two hundred kilos so I could have some leverage with Esteva. If everything was above-board a hundred keys is enough to blow Esteva out of the water and if it did I could turn the other two in.”

“But it didn’t,” Hawk said.

“No. Which meant pretty sure that everything was not aboveboard.”

“We back to Wheaton’s finest again.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Where the stuff now,” Hawk said.

“In a storage room downstairs at the Harbor Health Club.”

“You kind of illegal,” Hawk said.

“I figured you wouldn’t mind,” I said.

“Mind,” Hawk said, “I like it. Just never figured out where you draw all them lines you draw.”

“I’m a little fuzzy on that myself.”

“You know Esteva’s going to ace you if he can, which he can’t but he don’t know that. You know he’s Frosty himself for maybe the whole Northeast. You think he clipped three people including a seventeen-year-old kid. You willing to hijack his truck and hold his junk and extort him, all of which making him and old Cesar mad as hell.”

“True,” I said.

“But you not willing to just dust him and fold it up.”

“No.”

“You not practical, babe.”

“True.”

“You willing to kill some people. You done it to a bunch out west a couple years ago.”

“Yeah.”

“But not here.”

“I don’t know enough,” I said. “I don’t know the whole thing and Caroline Rogers has a right to know it all.”

“You had to shoot anybody since out west?” Hawk said.

“Shot a guy in the leg, couple weeks back,” I said.

Hawk said, “Um.”

“Didn’t I hear you whistling Willie Nelson back there in the warehouse?” I said.

“Susan play those tapes at me,” he said, “all the way out.”

“And maybe you kind of like Willie?” I said.

“He ain’t Jimmy Rushing,” Hawk said.

29

Susan came back from seeing Caroline Rogers. She came into the bar, where Hawk and I were being served in silence by Virgie. Hawk and I were drinking beer.

“Asked for champagne,” Hawk said to Susan. “They gave me Korbel.”

“Frontier living,” Susan said. Hawk slid down a stool along the bar, and Susan sat between us. Virgie came down the nearly empty bar and looked at her.

“Margarita,” Susan said, “on the rocks, salt.”

“What do you think,” I said.

“I talked with Wagner. He’s all right. He’s not awfully sophisticated about emotions, but he knows it and is glad for the help.”

“How about Caroline,” I said.

“She’s home,” Susan said. “Wagner released her while I was there and we took her home. She’s going to take tranquilizers for about three months and then we’ll slowly reduce the dosage.”

“Otherwise you get cardiac problems,” Hawk said.

Susan and I both looked at Hawk for a moment.

“That’s right,” Susan said.

Hawk smiled.

“You look like a scary Mona Lisa when you do that,” Susan said.

Hawk’s smile broadened.

“How’d Caroline feel about you,” I said.

“Ambivalent,” Susan said. “She’s suspicious of shrinks. She’d rather you had been there.”

“Un huh.”

“She is under the impression that you can leap tall buildings at a single bound.”

“Well,” I said, “not really tall buildings.”

“But whoever she’d prefer,” Susan said, “she knows she needs help with this, and she seems to believe, at least partially, that help is possible.”

“That’s encouraging,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” Susan said. “Hopelessness is hard.”

“Did you make any arrangements?” I said.

“I’ll see her tomorrow. Then we’ll see. I don’t normally do house calls. I don’t know if she’ll want to drive forty miles each way, twice a week, to see me.”

“You could refer her,” I said.

“Yes, for the long term. For the short term she’s suicidal and you can probably help her as much as I can.”

“By doing what?” I said.

“By being there. By seeing her. By telling her she can count on you. She’s fastened on you in the middle of a time when everything has collapsed.”

“Hell, I’m part of what caused the collapse,” I said.

“Don’t matter,” Hawk said.

“That’s right,” Susan said. “It doesn’t. It’s a little like the baby geese that, new hatched, imprint on their keeper and act as though he were their mother. When tragedies like this hit people, they are nearly destroyed, the old order has, at least symbolically, died.”