Walking Shadow (21 page)

"I got lunch," Hawk said as he got out of his Jaguar and went around and opened the door for Mei Ling.

"We been to Chinatown and Mei Ling ordered."

"No chicken feet," I said.

"We don't do chicken feet."

"American people are quite strange," Mei Ling said.

She was carrying a very large shopping bag. Pearl the Wonder Dog, ever alert, honed in on it at once, sniffing furiously. Mei Ling looked nervous.

"What kind of dog is that?" she said.

"Pearl don't like being called a dog," Hawk said.

He scooped Pearl up in his arms and let her lap his face for a while until Mei Ling had gotten the food into the house.

It was too late in the fall now to eat outside, so the picnic table was inside, in a space that would one day be a dining room. Susan and Mei Ling cleared the hand tools off of it, and spread the blue tablecloth over it and began to set out the Chinese food. Hawk went to the refrigerator, which was next to the table saw, and opened it and took out two long-neck bottles of Rolling Rock. He handed one to me and we stood out of the way drinking it. Hawk was dressed for the country. Black jeans, white silk shirt, charcoal brown tweed cashmere sport jacket, and cordovan cowboy boots.

"You just come from a tango contest?" I said.

"Me and Mei Ling been, ah, recuperating from our Port City ordeal."

"Lunch," Susan said.

We sat. Pearl moved about the table, looking for an opening.

We had paper plates and passed the many cartons around. It was an exotic assortment of Asian cuisine, not all of which I recognized.

Hawk and I drank some beer. Susan and Mei Ling had wine. I suspected that the workday had ended.

"What will happen to Jocelyn?" Mei Ling said.

"Not enough," Hawk said.

"Can they charge her with filing a false report to the police?"

Susan said.

"On the kidnapping?"

"Yes."

"No. All she did was send me a tape of her pretending to be tied up. Healy's working on some kind of conspiracy rap with the DA up there, but they're not sure it'll hold water."

"She was responsible for three deaths, one way or another," Susan said.

"Yeah," I said.

"She went through Port City like a virus."

"At least you stopped the illegal immigrant smuggling," Mei Ling said.

She was sitting beside Hawk on the picnic table bench. She sat very close to him and looked at him all the time. He smiled at her.

"Didn't stop it. Just got it relocated," he said.

"Of course, this is true, all Chinese people know what can change and what cannot," Mei Ling said.

"So she may get away with it."

"She may," I said.

I gave Pearl a pork dumpling, and one for me. I drank some beer.

"Of course," Susan said, "while punishment would be satisfying, what she really requires is treatment."

"She's not likely to seek it," I said.

"Then she'll do more damage," Susan said.

"Maybe Vinnie shot the wrong person," I said.

Susan looked at me solemnly for a moment, thinking about it.

"American people too," Susan said and smiled at Mei Ling, "have to know what can change and what cannot, I guess."

"Maybe I can get her to come and talk to you," I said.

"I hope so," Susan said.

"And maybe I can't."

"As long as you keep coming around, Tootsie," Susan said.

"That will do fine."

Mei Ling took a shrimp dumpling off of her plate with chopsticks and offered it to Hawk. He opened his mouth and she plopped it in. Pearl watched this closely and went and put her head on Mei Ling's lap. Mei Ling looked a little scared but took another shrimp dumpling and fed it to Pearl. I looked across the table at Susan and felt the heaviness of Port City begin to ease.

"Yeah," I said.

"That will do fine."

Robert B. Parker was born in 1932 and has a Ph.D. from Boston University. He has been Professor of English at Northeastern University, Massachusetts, teaching courses in American literature, and has written several textbooks, including The Personal Response to Literature. He has written numerous best selling novels featuring his wry Boston private detective, Spenser.

His most recent novel is All Our Yesterdays, about crime and betrayal across three generations.

Robert B. Parker lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife Joan, and his hobbies include jogging and canoeing.

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