Back Story (4 page)

"Are you and Daryl an item?" I said.

"God no," Paul said. "I like her, but she's way too crazy for me."

"Crazy how?" I said.

"She drinks too much. She smokes dope too much. She sleeps around too much. She's too intense about her career."

"What do you know about her family?" I said.

"Nothing," Paul said. "Except for her mother's murder she never talks about her family, except that it was a close-knit loving family. Like the other night."

"So she didn't talk specifically about her mother?"

"Just about the murder. The murder is very big in her life."

The waitress brought us menus.

"My God," he said. "Actual food."

"No reduction of kiwi," I said.

"No skate wings," Paul said. "No pate of Alsatian bluebird. No caramelized parsnip puree with fresh figs."

The waitress took our order.

"Why do you suppose she didn't want me to talk with her aunt?"

"Daryl's hard to understand," Paul said.

"She ever talk about her father?" I said.

"No. I always sort of assumed he was dead."

"Siblings?" I said.

"She never mentioned any."

"How long have you known her?"

"Two years," Paul said. "We worked together in the first play I did in Chicago. When she's up, she's a hell of a lot of fun."

The waitress brought smothered pork chops for Paul, spaghetti and meatballs for me.

"Why are you asking about her?"

"Because I don't know about her."

Paul was nodding as I spoke.

"And that's what you do," he said. "You ask unanswered questions."

"Information is good," I said.

"So how come you didn't ask more about the aunt?"

I smiled.

"Because you're going to go up to Maine and see her," Paul said. "You have her name and the town she lives in."

My mouth was full of spaghetti. I nodded. I was eying the assortment of pies behind the counter as I ate. Plan I ahead.

"I know another reason you asked if she were my girlfriend," Paul said.

"Paternal solicitude," I said.

"Besides that," Paul said. "If she were my girlfriend, then you'd have to welcome her to the family. And she's afraid of dogs."

"Not a trait I value," I said.

I eyed the pies again. I thought one of them might be cherry.

"Of course we're not exactly family," Paul said.

"Depends on how you define family," I said.

"You, Susan, and me?"

I nodded.

"And Pearl?" he said.

"Of course," I said.

"How about Uncle Hawk?"

"Uncle Hawk?"

"Uh-huh."

"I think Uncle Hawk is all the family Uncle Hawk needs," I said.

"Well," she said when she answered the door. "You're a big strapping boy, aren't you."

"I am," I said. "Could we talk for a bit? About your sister's murder?"

"My sister was murdered thirty years ago," she said.

"Twenty-eight," I said. "Can we talk?"

"Are you a policeman?" she said.

"I'm a private detective, working for your niece."

"Daryl?" she said. "Come in. Sit down. Tell me what you want."

Her house was coastal cute, with a hemp rug, lobster pot coffee tables, steering-wheel mirrors, ship's captain lamps, and big scallop-shell ashtrays. There were a lot of butts in the ashtrays, and when we sat in her front room, Sybil immediately lit another cigarette and didn't apologize. There was a big Shaker table in front of a bay window where you could see a scrap of the ocean. On it were several spiral-bound notebooks and a blue champagne flute with pencils in it. She saw me look.

"I write poetry," she said. "By hand. The tactile sensation of actual transcription seems vital to the creative process."

I nodded.

"What can you tell me about your sister's death?" I said.

"Nothing. She was in a bank. Some radicals held it up. One of them shot her."

"Where were you at the time."

"Movies. I took Daryl to see Harry and Tonto."

"Your sister was in Boston to visit you," I said.

"She was crashing with me," Sybil said. "She was in Boston chasing some guy."

Sybil's face was dark from sun and tough from wind and deeply lined from maybe too many cigarettes. She was about sixty, and she sat with her legs apart, one arm tucking the slack dress between her legs.

"Who?" I said.

"Don't know. She was always chasing some guy, dragging the damn kid along," Sybil said.

She took in smoke and exhaled slowly. I quit smoking in 1963. The smell no longer pleased me.

"How about her husband?"

"Poor Barry," Sybil said. "He married her, when she got pregnant with Daryl, you know, sort of do the right thing?"

"Were they married long?"

"Hell, I don't really know who married them. You know? They may have just sworn an oath of flower power."

"They were hippies?"

"Sure. Me too."

"Drugs?"

"You better believe it," Sybil said.

"Pot?"

"Everything," she said. "If I could light it on fire I'd smoke it."

"Been off for awhile?"

"I quit in March of 1978," she said.

She snuffed out her cigarette butt, took a fresh one from its pack and lit it, and took a long drag.

"Except for these," she said. "I coulda lit this one from the other one. But I hate the chain-smoke image. So I always put one out before I light another one."

"I admire self-control," I told her.

"You probably quit years ago."

"I did."

"You don't have any of that sunken-cheeks look," she said. "Like me."

I had nothing to say about that, so I cleverly looked around the room. There were some genuinely awful seascapes framed on the walls.

"Were they together long?" I said. "After Daryl was born?"

"Emily and Barry? Depends what you mean by together. You know how we all were then?"

"I recall the period," I said.

"Yes, of course you do. You were probably off somewhere doing push-ups. A lot of us were crazy to be unconventional. If older people did it, we couldn't possibly do it. My father was in the Rotary Club, for God's sake. My mother played fucking bridge!"

"So what about Barry and Emily?"

"Emily would go off and have an interlude with some guy who looked like Rasputin, and when he dumped her she'd come back to Barry."

"And Barry took her back."

"He didn't want to look conventional, I think. You know? Never darken my door again? I was in a pretty long-term fog during the time."

"And they lived in La Jolla?"

"La Jolla?" Sybil laughed. It was an unpleasant guttural. "My father and mother lived in La Jolla. Emily and Barry lived under a Coronado Bridge ramp." She laughed the guttural laugh again. "La Jolla!"

"After Emily's death, Daryl went back to her father?"

"Yes."

"And when's the last time you saw her?"

"That was it," Sybil said. "I guess Barry didn't feel very good about the Gold girls."

"That was your maiden name?"

"Yep. Gold."

Sybil started on her third cigarette.

"Is there a Mr. Pritchard?"

"And before that a Mr. Halleck and a Mr. Layne and a Mr. Selfridge. After Pritchard, I stopped marrying them."

"You have any idea who might have killed your sister?"

"One of the hippies in the bank," she said. "Nobody knows which one."

"Just for the hell of it," I said.

"That's what the cops told me," she said.

"Any reason to doubt it?"

"Nope."

"Any idea who the hippies are?"

"Nope."

"Or where?"

"Nope."

"How about the guy she was in Boston chasing? Any thoughts on him?"

"He was probably a jerk," Sybil said. "It's what she went after."

"Any special kind of jerkiness?"

"She liked the blowhard revolutionaries, mostly. You know, a lot of hair? Power to the people? Got any dope?"

"And you're out of that life now?"

She smiled. "Got awful hard being a hippie by 1980 or so."

"Was probably never easy," I said.

"You got that right-constant worry that you might turn into your mother. Had to stay alert all the time."

"And you've not had any contact with Daryl all that time?"

"I send her a card every Mother's Day. I'm not sure why. I do them myself. I'm a painter." She nodded at the execrable seascapes. "I did all of those."

"Splendid," I said.

"I do enjoy my poetry. But it's not as good-yet. My real talent is painting."

I took a card out and gave it to her.

"If anything occurs to you, please let me know," I said.

"Sure," she said and went to her Shaker table and tucked the card under the blotter. Then she went to a short, narrow bookcase and took out a slim volume of computer printouts. There were several others left on the shelf.

"Take a copy of my poetry with you," she said. "I think you might enjoy it."

"Thank you," I said.

On the way back to Boston, I stopped in Kittery for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. While I ate, I read some of Sybil's poems, and when I departed, I left them in the trash can along with the empty coffee cup and the wrapper from the sandwich.

The back stairwell was ugly in the nasty brightness of the fluorescent lights, and so was the hall. The black lettered sign on my office door told the world that I was a private investigator, or at least the part of the world that walked along this hall. I stuck the bottle under my left arm and got out my keys and opened my door. There was a sweet chemical smell in my office. It wasn't very strong, but it was there. It was a smell I knew. Susan, getting ready to go out. Hairspray! I left the keys in the lock and stepped into my office sideways to keep from silhouetting myself in the open doorway. The Scotch remained under my left arm. The sub sandwich was in my left hand. My gun was out. Nothing moved. There was a little light spilling in from the hall and a little less light drifting up through my window from Berkeley Street.

As my pupils dilated, I could see someone sitting behind my desk. I had a vague sense of a presence on the wall to my right.

"On the left side of the kneehole under the desk," I said. "There's a switch, controls the overhead."

I narrowed my eyes against the light. Nothing happened. No one moved.

"I would rather not shoot you in the dark," I said.

Another moment when nothing stirred. Then a movement. And the lights came on.

There were two men: the guy at my desk and another man standing against the wall just to the right of the bay window. Neither one was showing a weapon. I kept mine in hand, but let it hang by my side.

"You have a bottle of Scotch whisky," the guy at my desk said.

"I do," I said. "And I'm willing to share. But the sandwich is mine."

The guy at my desk had a lot of teeth and very large black-rimmed glasses. His elbows rested on the arms of my chair. He had pale hands and long fingers, which he tented in front of his chin. His hair was smooth, flat to his head, and shiny black. Hairspray.

"The Scotch will suffice," he said. "You have glasses, or must we pass it around like three winos." His voice had an undertone to it, like the murmur of machinery deep in the ground.

"I have the setups," I said.

The guy standing against the wall was round-looking, with a red face and a thick blond mustache that twirled up at either end. Both men remained still while I put the Scotch and the sub sandwich on the desktop, and my gun back into its holster. I got some ice from the little office refrigerator, and glasses and soda from the glass-front cherry cabinet that Susan had installed, which went with the rest of my decor like a necklace on a toad. I put it all on the desk in front of Pale Fingers and sat down in a client chair.

"One of you can mix," I said. "Scotch and soda, a lot of ice, a lot of soda."

I unwrapped my sandwich while the blond guy made the drinks. The guy at my desk had his with soda, no ice. The blond guy had it on the rocks, not many rocks. He handed me mine and went back and stood against the wall. I had a bite of my sub and a slug of my Scotch and soda, and waited.

The guy at my desk took his time with the whisky, sipping it gently, letting it sit a moment in his mouth before swallowing it delicately.

"Good year for Scotch," I said.

He smiled at me aimlessly. The blond guy took about half of his Scotch at the first pull.

"I'm with the government," the guy at my desk said. "We both are."

"How nice for the government," I said.

"You weren't here," he said. "We took the liberty."

"It's a way to get shot," I said.

"What gave us away?" he said.

"Hairspray," I said.

"You smelled it."

"Yep."

"Vanity will be my downfall," he said.

I took another bite of my sandwich, trying to keep the peripheral fallout off my shirt. I chewed. I swallowed. I had a drink of Scotch.

"Whaddya want?" I said.

Pale Fingers nodded and smiled.

"Direct," he said. "I like that."

I had another bite of my sandwich and waited.

"We are here to ask a favor of you, in the interest of security."

I sipped some Scotch.

"You have been asking questions about the death of a woman named Emily Gordon."

The blond guy with the mustache looked at me steadily. I think he was being menacing.

"We would prefer that you desist."

"Because?"

"Because it is in the best interest of the United States."

"How so?" I said.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm afraid I can't share that with you."

"What a shame."

"And if that is unpersuasive," he said, "I might suggest that it would be very much in your best interest as well."

I finished my sub. It was excellent. But that was true of almost all subs.

"Agreed?" Pale Fingers said.

I finished the rest of my drink.

"Buzz off," I said.

The guy at my desk was tenting his fingers again. He glanced at the blond guy. The blond guy was still giving me the hard eye.

"Are you sure you want to provoke the animosity of your government?" Pale Fingers said.

His mouth was tight and his eyes, even magnified by his glasses, looked very small.

"If this be treason," I said, "let us make the most of it."

"Unless you reconsider," Pale Fingers said, "we may find reason to investigate you."

"Given your track record," I said, "I remain undaunted."

"And a tax audit is not impossible."

"Yikes," I said.

Pale Fingers and the blond guy looked at each other. Pale Fingers shrugged. The blond guy shrugged back. Pale Fingers stood.

"You'll hear from us again," he said.

"Oh good," I said. "I hate when friendships sour."

We all looked at each other for a moment. None of us seemed scared. When they left, I made myself a fresh drink and went around behind my desk and reclaimed my chair. I put my feet up and looked at the open door into the bright, empty hallway, and thought.