Back Story (12 page)

We were sitting in his office. Quirk had one foot up on an open file drawer in his desk. The crease in his tan flannels was still intact. His blue-and-tan-striped tie was loosened. His blue oxford shirt was open at the neck. His blue blazer hung wrinkle-free on a hanger on a hat rack near the door. Quirk thumbed through the thin manila folder for a moment.

"Paroled February second, 1965," Quirk said.

"Coincident with Abner Fancy," I said.

"Who the fuck is Abner Fancy?" Quirk said.

I told him about Shaka and about nearly everything else I had. He listened without speaking.

When I was done, he said, "The fucking Bureau."

"My thought exactly," I said.

"They're hard to fight," Quirk said.

"Maybe," I said. "But I think Epstein's with us."

"I know Epstein. He's straight, but he's a career guy in the Bureau. He can't do too much without blowing his career."

"I know."

"Which is why he's using you," Quirk said.

"I know."

"Me too," Quirk said.

"I know," I said.

"So where are you going to go from here? You got more info than the Census Bureau, and you still got no fucking idea what went down in that bank twenty-eight years ago?"

"If I could find Bonnie Karnofsky," I said, "I bet she'd know."

Quirk's door opened, and Belson came in. He looked at me.

"I saw Hawk outside with the motor running," he said. "I thought you might be sticking up headquarters."

"That would be big money," I said.

Quirk said, "Sit down, Frank, we need to think some stuff through."

Belson took the other chair. He was thin with a blue beard shadow that was always there no matter how recently he had shaved.

"Run it past him," Quirk said. "The short form, so I don't have to listen to it all over again."

I brought Frank up to date, omitting a few things as I had with Quirk, such as the shootout at Taft. Belson was motionless while I talked, looking straight at me, listening completely.

"Okay," Belson said when I finished. "You got Abner and Leon at the same joint where Emily and Bonnie are teaching revolution to the cons. At the same time, they are part of the Dread Scott Brigade. Nine years later, the Dread Scott Brigade claims credit for a bank stickup in which Emily is killed. Best we can tell there was a black guy and a white woman in the stickup. There was probably someone with a car outside. You have to figure that Emily wasn't in there to cash a traveler's check."

"I'm flattered," I said. "You listened."

"Be crazy to think all this ain't part of the package," Belson said.

I knew Belson wasn't talking to me. He was simply thinking out loud. Belson was perfectly okay at thinking, but his real strength was looking at a crime scene. He missed absolutely nothing. In his head, I knew he was trying to recreate what I'd told him into some pattern he could look at.

"Why are the Feds covering up?" Belson said.

I said nothing.

Quirk prompted him. "What do they usually cover up?" Quirk said.

"Informant."

Quirk and I both nodded.

"They had an informant in there," Belson said. "And when it went bad, they didn't want anyone to know that an FBI informant was participating in a bank robbery, while he. "

"Or she," I said.

". was on the payroll."

"So, assuming Frank's right, who's the informant?" Quirk said.

"Would they have covered it up if it were the vic?" Belson said.

Quirk smiled without warmth. "Sure," he said.

"Of course, we don't know they're covering up an informant," I said.

"They're covering up something," Belson said.

"And we'd like to catch them at it," I said.

Quirk and Belson both smiled.

"We would," Quirk said.

"Then we might as well work on the assumption that they were papering over an insider operation that went sour," I said. "It could be Emily, or Abner, or Leon, or maybe Bunny."

"Or someone we never heard of," Belson said.

"Hey," I said. "It's your fucking premise."

"Emily's dead," Quirk said. "We got no idea where Abner is. We know Leon's in L.A., but he's not talking, and we got no leverage on him. We need to find the Karnofsky broad and pry her away from her old man."

"We got no leverage there either," Belson said.

"Yeah, but she's local and so are we," Quirk said.

"And after we've done that," I said, "then we need to get her to tell us what she knows and testify to it."

"Step at a time," Quirk said. "First we find her. Then we get her away from Sonny."

"I'm not sure there's a legal way to do that," Belson said.

Quirk grinned at him. Quirk's grin was but slightly less formidable than Quirk's glare. He jerked his head at me.

"That's what Private Shoofly is for," he said.

"You're suggesting some quasi-legal activity for me?" I said.

"B and E," Quirk said. "Kidnapping, forcible restraint. That sort of thing."

"And if it all goes to hell and the FBI slaps the cuffs on me?" I said.

Quirk smiled the smile again. "Then we do what, Frank?" he said.

"Deny any knowledge," Belson said.

"Cool," I said.

"I," Daryl started. "I. need you to, ah, report."

"Sure," I said.

"I mean, I know I didn't really pay you much. Exactly."

"You paid me six Krispy Kreme donuts," I said. "That's a lot."

"Could you please tell me what you've learned?"

"Sure," I said.

I told her. She sat frowning with concentration.

When I got through, she said, "Do you mean that my mother was involved in the robbery?"

"Maybe," I said.

"And the Leon that my mom was fucking was a con?"

"Seems so," I said.

"And Bunny is the daughter of a gangster?"

"Yes."

She sat limply in the chair with her face sagging and didn't say anything.

"Can you question Bunny?" Paul said.

"We can't find her yet. If her father's got her hidden, she'll be hard to find."

We were quiet. Hawk had finished Ernst Mayr and was reading something called Einstein's Universe. I looked closely. His lips were not moving. It was bright outside, and the sun made long parallelograms on my floor. Daryl looked at me, and then at Paul, and not at Hawk. Then again at me.

"This isn't what I wanted," she said.

I nodded.

"I wanted you to get the bastard that shot my mother."

"I know," I said.

"You saw my father," she said. "How'd you like to grow up with him?"

I saw Hawk glance up from his book and almost smile for a second. Then he went back to reading.

"I don't want to know all this shit about my family," Daryl said.

"I don't blame you," I said.

"Why do I have to know this?" she said.

She was leaning forward in her chair now with her clenched fists pressed against her thighs, as if to keep them apart. Paul sat beside her with his face set in silence.

"Can't put it back," I said.

"I know that. Don't you think I know that? I don't want to know any more. I want you to stop. I'm going away."

"Where?" I said.

Paul answered. "Baltimore," he said. "Our run's over here."

"And I don't want to hear any more about this," Daryl said. "Okay? No more."

"You don't have to hear any more," I said. "But stopping is a little harder."

"Why would you keep doing it, if I don't want you to?"

"I guess because I sort of have to," I said. "There are too many hornets, and they're too stirred up."

"Hornets? Why are you talking about fucking hornets?"

I saw Paul set his face a little tighter.

"Since I started this thing," I said, "people have tried to kill me on two occasions."

"But why?"

"I don't know exactly, but it has to do with investigating your mother's death."

"How can you be sure?"

"And on two other occasions, people have warned me to stop investigating your mother's death."

"They said that?"

"There are several people, it seems, that have pressing reason to want your mother's murder left unsolved. They aren't going to take my word, or yours, that I've stopped."

Daryl sat and stared down at her clenched fists. She shook her head slowly.

"I don't want this," she said. "I don't want any of this."

Nobody said anything.

"I don't want this," she said again, her head down.

"Daryl," Paul said. "This isn't just about you anymore."

She stood up suddenly.

"Well, fuck you," she said. "Fuck all of you."

And she turned and marched out of my office. Her swift passage made dust motes hover momentarily in the sunny rhomboids splashed across my office floor. Hawk dog-eared the page and folded his book shut.

"Fuck all of us?" he said. "What'd I do?"

"Wrong place, wrong time," Paul said.

"I would have said she was angriest at me," I said.

"You were handy," Susan said. "Her mother died on her and left her to be raised by her hippie-dippie father."

"And she was probably angry at the person who killed her mother and left her to be raised by the hippie-dippie dad," I said.

"But she also, I suspect, wanted you to reinforce the fantasy she'd created."

"That if her mother hadn't been killed, the fantasy childhood would have been true."

"Maybe," Susan said. "Remember The Great Gatsby. James Gatz's imagination had never really accepted his parents?"

"So," I said, "he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent."

"And to that conception," Susan said, "he was faithful to the end."

We were quiet for a moment. I was drinking a Ketel One martini on the rocks with a twist. It was nearly gone. Out of the corner of my eye, I located the waitress. Didn't want to wait until it was all gone. She met my eye. I nodded at the near-empty glass. She smiled and nodded, thrilled to serve me, and scooted toward the service bar. I looked at Susan.

"And?" I said.

"She changed her name," Susan said. "Lot of actresses do that."

"If her name had been Lipschitz, that would make sense. She might have taken her mother's name, of course. Young women sometimes do."

"Gold," I said. "And Silver is close."

"But still not the same," I said. "Let's assume you're right? Why hire me?"

"I would guess," Susan said, "that she hired you to enhance the family history, which she invented."

"And the opposite happened," I said.

"Something like that."

"Her mother was consorting with a convicted felon. Maybe part of a criminal enterprise."

Susan nodded.

"You ruined it," she said.

"But she knew when she hired me," I said, "that the fantasy childhood was false."

"People often know things that are mutually exclusive."

I saw the waitress coming with my second martini. I finished off the first, so as to round everything off nicely.

"I still can't just walk away," I said.

"No," Susan said. "You can't."

I looked at her across the table. Nobody looked quite like Susan. There were women as good-looking, though they were not legion, and there were probably women who were as smart, and I just hadn't met them. But there was no one whose face, carefully made up and framed by her thick, black hair, glittered with the ineffable femaleness that hers did. She was informed with generosity and self-absorption, certainty and confusion. She was subtle and literal, fearless, hesitant, objective, bossy, pliant, quick-tempered, loving, hard-boiled, and passionate. And it all melded so perfectly that she was the most complete person I'd ever known.

"What are you thinking about?" she said.

I smiled at her. "What would be your guess?" I said.

"Oh," she said, "that."

"In a manner of speaking," I said.

"Could we finish dinner first?"

"I suppose we have to," I said. "If we ever want to eat here again."

"So we going to sit here," Hawk said, "until hell freeze over or one of Sonny's cars comes off the Neck."

"Exactly," I said.

"And then we follow the car until we find Bonnie."

"Right," I said.

"You think that'll work?" Hawk said.

"I have no idea," I said.

"So why we doing it?"

"Because I don't know what else to do," I said.

Hawk was wearing black Oakley sunglasses and a white silk T-shirt. He watched a tanned young woman in a small black bathing suit walk toward the beach.

"That be your version of Occam's razor," Hawk said. "I'll do it because I don't know what else to do."

"Occam's razor?" I said.

Hawk shrugged, his eyes still following the woman in the meager bathing suit.

"I read a lot," Hawk said.

I nodded. The young woman sat down on a blanket near another woman in an equally insufficient bathing suit.

"You got a better suggestion?" I said.

"No."

"Then you agree we might as well do this."

"Yes."

An overweight woman wearing flip-flops and one of those two-piece suits with a little skirt walked by. She was pale-skinned. Her stomach sagged. Her hair was very blond and very teased. We watched her pass.

"The lord giveth," Hawk said, "and the lord taketh away."

"Have you ever thought we might be guilty of sexism here," I said.

"Yes," Hawk said.

A silver Mercedes sedan cruised past us, coining from the Neck. We checked the plates. It didn't belong to Sonny.

"For all you know," Hawk said, "Bonnie moved to Scottsdale twenty years ago to work on her tan."

"Sonny's going to all this trouble to cover her up," I said. "He might want her close."

"Or he might want her far," Hawk said.

"Well, yes," I said. "That too is a possibility."

"So we could be wasting a lot of time."

"Remember Occam," I said.

To watch the causeway, we had to sit with our backs to the ocean. But we could hear it and smell it and feel the breeze coming off it. Across the causeway, we could see the harbor, where the masts of the pleasure boats stood like marsh reeds. Herring gulls wheeled and squawked and got into a loud scrum over a remnant of hot dog roll on the edge of the street in front of us. A red Porsche Boxster went by with the top down. A slate gray Lexus SUV came by in the other direction. Then nothing. Then, after awhile, a blue Subaru Forester.

"Probably a servant," Hawk said.

"Can't be sure," I said. "The Yankees are a thrifty lot."

A black BMW came by, and a dark brown Mercedes sedan. Wrong license number. We could smell hot dogs cooking in the snack bar in back of the beach house. At 2:30, Hawk took action. "Want a hot dog?" he said.

"Two," I said. "Mustard and relish."

"Want to pay for it?" Hawk said.

"No."

Hawk nodded. "Irish are a thrifty lot," he said, and moved off toward the stand.

We had eaten our hot dogs and drunk our coffee and taken turns at the men's room in the beach house. An Explorer and a couple Volvo wagons had gone by. An unmarked police car with a whip antenna pulled into the parking lot and stopped behind us. The driver got out and walked toward the car. He was a young guy, medium-sized, built like a middleweight boxer, moved like an athlete. He wore a short revolver on his belt and handcuffs and a badge. He came to the car on my side.

"How you doing," he said.

I nodded to indicate we were doing fine.

"My name's Jesse Stone," he said. "I'm the chief here in Paradise."

He didn't look like a small-town cop. Something about the eyes and the way he walked.

"Nice to meet you," I said.

Behind his Oakleys, Hawk did not appear to be looking at Stone.

"You been sitting here since seven-thirty this morning," Stone said.

"Pretty good," I said. "You picked us up fast."

"We got a nice little department here," Stone said. "I don't wish to intrude, but what are you doing?"

"My name's Spenser," I said.

"I know. We already ran your plates."

"I'm trying to locate Sonny Karnofsky's daughter, Bonnie," I said. "There's a state cop named Healy can probably vouch for me."

"I know Healy," Stone said. "He still doing vice?"

"He never did vice," I said. "He's at One Thousand Ten Commonwealth. Homicide Commander."

Stone smiled slightly. "Why do you want Bonnie Karnofsky?"

"Long story," I said. "The short version is we think she's a witness in a murder investigation."

Stone nodded. "You want coffee?" he said.

"Sure," I said.

Without speaking, Hawk held up two fingers. Stone smiled again.

"Cream and sugar?"

"Both," I said.

"I'll be back in a couple minutes," Stone said.

He walked back to his car.

"He ain't no small-town shit-kicker," Hawk said.

"I know."

Stone reached into his car through the open side window, took out the radio mike, talked for a couple minutes, and put it back. Then he strolled toward the snack bar. While he was gone, five cars crossed the causeway, none of them registered to Sonny. In a few more minutes, he came back from the snack bar carrying three cups of coffee in a cardboard carrying tray. Balancing the coffee comfortably, Stone got in the backseat, sat, and distributed the coffee.

"Healy tell you I was everything a crime fighter should be?" I said.

"No. He said you'd probably do more good than harm."

"Ringing endorsement," Hawk said.

Stone nodded at Hawk. "He said you should be in jail."

"Nice of you to check," Hawk said.

With a pocket knife, Stone cut a little hole in the plastic lid of his coffee cup. He drank some coffee.

"Tell me the long story," Stone said.

I told him the story, editing out the shooting at Taft. He listened soundlessly. Three more cars passed us on the causeway. None of them Sonny's. When I was through, Stone stayed quiet for awhile, drinking his coffee.

"Sonny hasn't got her," he said finally.

"You know that," I said.

"Yeah."

"You know where she is?"

"No."

"How do you know she doesn't live with Sonny?" I said.

"Sonny's lived here awhile; we like to keep tabs on him."

"You've had him under surveillance?" I said.

"Yep."

"Has he spotted you?"

"Nope."

"How are you doing it?"

"One of his neighbors is a good sport," Stone said.

"You're in a house."

"Yep."

"You do camera surveillance?" I said.

"Yep."

"You have any pictures of Bonnie?"

Stone drank some more of his coffee. He seemed to like it. Another car went fruitlessly by on the causeway. Then he said, "Yep."