“Let me tell you about this book I’m reading,” he said wildly. “It’s called Oblomov and it’s about this guy who can’t get out of bed. No, I mean it. All he does is lay in bed, day and night, and then he meets this woman and she falls for him. Shit, I can’t remember her name . . . I’ll look it up and tell you later. Anyway, he falls for her, too.”

The drunk stopped struggling and stared at Hawkins. Hawkins went on.

“And he’s got this one chance to live, see. To be alive. All he has to do is get out of bed. . . .”

The drunk started to weep and Hawkins let him go. He stumbled blindly out of the place, still crying, with Vinnie and everyone else watching, and Hawkins got back on the barstool next to Ableson. He was sweating with rage and it took him a minute to talk. Then he said to Ableson, “If it weren’t for Levy and the books, I’d’ve killed that asshole.”

“You should’ve,” Ableson said.

Hawkins turned to look at him. “Should I, Mo? Then what?”

He didn’t turn violent the night they arrested Calla­day either. It was way out in Bay Ridge, the coldest night of the year. The bay looked frozen green, and the bridge was covered with ice. They’d gotten a tip that Calladay was there, in this little house at the end of a crummy block, with his girl friend, and they’d come in the middle of the night, closed off the street, and surrounded the place. Nothing happened for hours, and they were all cold and miserable, hating the man who was keeping them there, and Ableson thought they’d start shooting as soon as the door opened. But Hawkins had the horn, and when the lights came on in the front, he got out of the car and stood next to it. Ableson took his gun out, and he knew the others were ready to kill like he was. But when the door opened, Hawkins said through the horn, in a voice so gentle and clear Ableson could still hear it if he tried:

“Don’t, Mike. It’s so fucking cold.”

It was that simple, Ableson thought in amazement. No one wanted to die in that cold, to fall dead in the stiff filthy snow. And after a second, Calladay raised one hand high over his head, and then the other, and they arrested him without firing a shot.

That was the man Ableson knew. Not the nasty son of a bitch who threatened to punch Joe Turner’s eyes out and tear Ableson’s head off.