Free Early Autumn by Robert B. Parker Page A

mother. Then they met. Across the bridge the Oldsmobile began to move, slowly. The boy dropped to the pavement. His mother hesitated and then crouched down beside him, tucking her skirt under her.
Flat
, I muttered,
flat, goddammit
.
    I slammed the MG into gear and headed for Paul and his mother. Across the way the Olds began to pick up speed. A Ford station wagon swung around the corner from Memorial Drive, looped out into the wrong lane with a lot of squealing rubber and blaring horns, and rammed the Olds from the side, bouncing it against the high curb and pinning it. Before the cars had stopped, Hawk rolled out of the driver’s side with a handgun the size of a hockey stick and took aim over the hood of the wagon. I cut across the traffic and rolled the MG up beside the sidewalk between the Olds and the two Giacomins.From down the bridge I heard gunfire. I jerked up the emergency, slapped the car into neutral, and scrambled out of the MG.
    “Patty, get in, take Paul and drive to Smithfield, Paul’s got the address. Explain who you are and wait for me there. Move.”
    There was another gunshot from five smoots away. I had my gun out and was running toward the Olds when I heard the MG take off with its tires squealing. I was almost at the Olds when I saw Hawk go over the hood of the wagon, reach into the driver’s side of the Olds and pull somebody out through the window with his left hand. With the barrel of his gun he chopped the pistol out of the other man’s hand, shifted his weight slightly, put his right hand, gun and all, into the man’s crotch and pitched him over the railing and into the Charles River.
    A big guy with a tweed cap got out of the back seat of the Olds as I came around behind it. I turned sideways on my left foot and kicked him in the small of the back with my right. He sprawled forward and a gun that looked like a Beretta clattered on the pavement ahead of him as he sprawled. It skittered between the risers of the railing and into the river. I looked into the car and saw Buddy crouched down on the passenger’s side of the front floorboards, huddled under the dash. Hawk looked in at the other window, the enormous handgun leveled. We saw Buddy at the same time.
    Hawk said, “Shit” stringing out the vowel the way he did. From the Boston side of the bridge I heard a siren. So did Hawk. He put the bazooka away inside his coat.
    “Let’s split,” I said.
    He nodded. We ran down Mass. Ave. and into one of the MIT buildings.
    We moved through a crowded corridor lined with ship models in glass cases.
    “Try and look like an upwardly mobile nineteen-year-old scientist,” I said.
    “I am, bawse. I got a doctor of scuffle degree.”
    Hawk was wearing skintight unfaded jeans tucked into his black boots. He had on a black silk shirt unbuttoned nearly to his waist, and the handgun was hidden under a white leather vest with a high collar that Hawk wore turned up. His head was shaven and gleamed like black porcelain. He was my height, maybe a hair taller, and there was no flesh on his body, only muscle over bone, in hard planes. The black eyes over the high cheekbones were humorous and without mercy.
    We went out a side door at the end of the corridor. Behind us there were still sirens. We strolled across the MIT campus away from Mass. Ave.
    “Sorry about your car,” I said.
    “Ain’t my car, man,” Hawk said.
    “You boosted it?” I said.
    “’Course. Ain’t gonna fuck up my own wheels, man.”
    “’Course not,” I said. “I wonder if they’ve fished that guy out of the Charles yet.”
    Hawk grinned. “Damn,” he said. “Wish the fuzz had been a little slower. I was gonna throw ’em all in.”

CHAPTER 13
    We wandered in a mazy motion through the MIT complex down to Kendall Square and caught the subway to Park Street We walked up across the Common to Beacon, where Hawk’s car was parked in front of the State House by a sign that said RESERVED FOR MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL COURT. It was