Free Cold Service by Robert B. Parker Page B

recognition."
    Maybe the foreign language was her native tongue.
    "Where does she live?" Hawk said.
    "With her current husband, I suppose."
    "Heavens," Hawk said. "I didn't even know she was married."
    "Maybe she isn't, but I think she is; either way, she's living with Brock."
    "Brock?" Hawk said.
    "Brock Rimbaud," she said. "I've heard he's worse than she is."
    "Do you know where they live?"
    "On the waterfront somewhere."
    "You wouldn't have an address?"
    "Oh, God, no," she said. "I've had no connection, to Tony or his hideous family, in years."
    I was not buying that.
    Natalie appeared to see that as an interview-ending remark, because she closed the door after she said it.
    "Brock Rimbaud?" I said.
    "Don't sound like no brother," Hawk said "Maybe he changed his name," I said. "Trying to pass."
    "What you think his real name is?" Hawk said.
    "Old Black Joe?" I said.
    "Mostly they ain't naming us that no more," Hawk said.
    We walked back down Revere Street in the melting rain. I hunched my shoulders a little as a drop of water wormed down inside my collar on the back of my neck. Maybe wearing his hat bill backward was more than a fashion statement on Hawk's part. I grinned at him as we reached Charles Street.
    "Smile didn't work," I said. "Did it."
    "Just prove she a lesbian," Hawk said.

26
    SPENSER'S CRIME-STOPPER TIP number 31: If you have a name and no address, try looking in the phone book. I did, and there they were. Brock and Jolene Rimbaud, it said proudly, with a Rowes Wharf address. Hawk and I went down there. For the second straight day, it was raining. The Big Dig was still everywhere, as they began to dismantle the aging ironwork of the old elevated expressway.
    The Rowes Wharf condos were part of a big handsome complex on the waterfront that included a huge archway and the Boston Harbor Hotel. In the lobby of Rimbaud's building was a security guy in a blue blazer and striped tie. Hawk asked him for the Rimbauds.
    "May I say who is calling?"
    "Say we from Mr. Marcus," Hawk said.
    The guard dialed the phone and spoke into it and hung up.
    "Through that door," he said, "down the steps, turn right, second condo."
    We went. The door led outside. We were on a boat slip. To our right, a promenade led past the big archway, to the hotel. In good weather, people sat outside on the promenade and drank flavored martinis and ate light meals and listened to live music. In the cold rain, the promenade was empty except for one guy in a fashionable yellow slicker, trying to hold an umbrella over a miserable little white dog whose hairdo was being seriously compromised as they walked toward the archway. We walked up the two steps at the Rimbaud condo and rang the bell. The door opened and it was Brock himself. He looked like the cover of a romance novel. Shoulder-length blond hair, pale blue eyes, chiseled features, pouty lips, his flowered shirt unbuttoned halfway down his manly upper body. He stood so that his right hand was concealed behind the door.
    Hawk said, "My name's Hawk. This is Spenser. We need to talk."
    "Tony send you?" Brock said.
    " 'Course he did," Hawk said. "It's raining."
    "I don't give a fuck what it's doing," Brock said. "You come in when I know why you want to."
    A good-looking young woman with coffee-colored skin appeared behind Rimbaud. Her hair was in an elaborate pattern of tight cornrows. Ethnic as hell.
    "Who is it, Brock?" she said, and pressed her considerable boobs against his left arm.
    "Couple dudes say they from your old man," Rimbaud said.
    Jolene was barefoot and a little big for her clothes. She looked to be a size six. Her jeans appeared to be a size two. They ended well below her navel. Her cropped tank top ended well above. She had a nice, flat stomach, and her arms and shoulders looked strong.
    "I don't know them," she said.
    "Well, my heavens," Hawk said. "Look at how you've grown, girl. I knew Veronica and Tony when you was born, child. And look what you turned out to be."
    I looked