A Catskill Eagle Read Online Free

“No underwear, no makeup.”
    Hawk was leaning against the wall near the open window, looking at the parking lot, listening to the silence. He nodded.
    “Two more minutes,” I said.
    Hawk nodded again.
    I went into the den. There was a desk in there and a big sectional sofa and a color television set. I sat at the desk.
    It was disorganized and cluttered with small slips of paper stuck into alcoves, and mail in piles that had been pushed aside to clear writing space. A letter from me showed among the other mail. Susan’s calendar was there. There were entries on various dates in Susan’s nearly illegible hand. Most of the entries meant nothing. There was no entry for today, and for Monday it said Dr. Hilliard G-3:40.
    The doorbell rang. I turned off the light in the den and almost at the same time Hawk killed the living room light. He was out the window by the time I got to it and by the time the doorbell rang again we were both crouched against the outside wall of the building moving in its shadow toward the Buick, fast.
    There was no sign of anyone in the lot, and no sign of anyone at the door.
    “This the back,” Hawk murmured. “They must be at the front.”
    We were in the car, and Hawk drove. He went out the other side of the parking lot and turned left and drove slowly parallel to the condominium building toward Mill River Boulevard. In front were two Mill River Police cars. We turned right on the boulevard toward 101, not fast, staying under the speed limit.
    “They know we’re gone,” I said.
    Hawk said, “How you get the gun in?”
    “Henry rigged me a leg cast and we hid it in the foot.”
    Hawk laid the .44 in his lap. I was driving barefoot. Hawk said, “They catch us, they gonna shoot us. So you be ready. This a bad town, babe.”
    I said, “Susan. I want to know. Tell me.”
    Hawk nodded. “Yeah. Some of this gonna be hard to hear.”
    I didn’t say anything. The dashboard clock on the Skylark said 4:11.
    “Susan call me,” Hawk said. “She say she can’t call you. But she in trouble. She say she gotten involved with this dude Costigan and he a bad man.”
    There was nothing on the road before us. The Skylark started to creep up past sixty. Hawk slowed to under fifty-five.
    “She say she want to leave him but she think maybe she can’t. She say she too involved to leave on her own.”
    “Involved how,” I said.
    “She didn’t say. She sounded real tight. So I say, I come right out in the morning, and if she want to leave I take her with me. And if anyone bother her, I tell them to stop. And she tell me come to her condo, which is down here in Mill River, and she give me the address, fifteen Los Alimos. Unit number sixteen. And she say, she don’t know if she want to leave, but she needs to talk with me and if she want to leave, she need to be able to.”
    We had reached 101. Hawk turned north, toward San Francisco.

CHAPTER 5

    IT WAS A CLEAR NIGHT, A LOT OF STARS, THE moon about three-quarters full. The land loomed higher in a dark mass of low hills to my left, and tabled away flat toward the bay on my right. There was nothing on the highway.
    “So you went out,” I said.
    “Course.”
    “Without telling me anything.”
    “Yes.”
    The wheels made a little hum on the asphalt and now and then when we hit a seam there was a harumph.
    “I wouldn’t have told you either,” I said.
    “I know,” Hawk said.
    On the other side of the highway a big produce truck went by, heading south toward Salinas.
    “So I got here and rented a car and drove on down to Mill River like she say. And Susan’s there.”
    “How’d she look,” I said.
    “She looking terrific, except she looking real tired and she tense, like she frantic but she don’t want anyone to know it, including her.”
    “How’d she sound?” I said.
    “Same way,” Hawk said. “Got a bow, you could play `Intermezzo‘ on her.”
    I blew out some breath.
    Hawk said, “Told you this wouldn’t be easy.” I