Back Story

by Robert B. Parker

  She said, “Good-bye, Mr. Spenser,” and went in after him. I looked at the spaniel. She sat up suddenly and scratched her ear with her right hind foot.

  “Enjoy,” I said to her, and walked back to my car.

  24

  I drove out the road from Malone’s cottage in green shade. The trees pressed close to the small road. I recognized white pine and maple and oak, and some pale-skinned birch. I felt like Natty Bumppo. A half mile from Malone’s cottage, a dirt road cut across the paved road. I was twenty yards past it when I spotted a car parked across the pavement. I looked in the rearview mirror. A car pulled out of the dirt road behind me and parked across the pavement. Men got out of both cars and stood behind them. They had long guns. I was pretty sure this wasn’t a speed trap. I slowed. There was no way past the car in front of me. I checked the rearview mirror again. There was no way past the car behind me, except that when it had pulled straight out of the dirt road, it had left a little space behind it. I couldn’t go straight past it on the pavement, but I might be able to turn onto the dirt road. I didn’t have any other choices. I did a really perfect, and really quick, three-point turn and floored it back toward the second car. Behind it, two men raised their guns. Probably shotguns. I slouched down behind the wheel as much as I could, and just before I hit their car I rammed on the brakes and yanked my car as hard right as I could. The car almost stood on its side. But it didn’t, and I was onto the dirt road and into the woods. It was barely a road. Something scraped the bottom of my car. I smelled gasoline. The car bucked and stumbled; it went far too fast down through the root-welted, rock-stubbled trace. My right wheel hit an outcropping of granite, and the tire exploded. Ahead of me I could see the glimmer of the lake. I stomped on the brakes and rolled out of the car and hit the ground running. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and running shoes. At least I was dressed for it.

  To the right was the gray-buckled remnants of a fishing camp. I went past it on the run. I was pretty sure these were city guys behind me. If I got them deep enough into the woods, I might have a chance. I was a city guy, too, but I hadn’t always been one.

  Behind me I heard the cars pull up, the doors open and close. I had a short-barreled .38 on my hip, but against five or six guys with shotguns, that was pretty much irrelevant. This was a case of Feet, do your duty. I slowed to a jog as I moved through the woods. Twisting my ankle on a rock or tripping would be a bad thing. The lake showed itself occasionally, when the forest thinned for a moment. I knew I could run ten miles, and I was hopeful that none of my pursuers could. If they could, carrying shotguns, I was also hopeful that they’d give up before I did. I looked at my watch: 2:30 in the afternoon. The sun would have moved westward enough to get a direction. It was hot in the woods. There were insects. A vast network of thin vines with thorns was everywhere, catching at my pants legs. I was walking now, moving as fast as the forest permitted, keeping the lake on my left. I was glad for the heat and the bugs and the thorny vines. I could put up with it to save my life. I wasn’t so sure the shooters could put up with it to kill me. There was an opening in the forest where a big old maple tree had fallen, its upper branches ten feet out into the lake water. I climbed over it and stopped and listened. Distantly, I could hear them thrashing along. I could hear their voices. They were not happy voices. I looked at the lake and the tangle of rotting limbs in the water. Beyond them across an inlet, I could see the imploded fishing hut. We’d been walking around a long inlet for an hour. Straight across, it was about a hundred yards. I could hear my heartbeat, steady but loud and fast from exertion. I took my gun out and went along behind the fallen tree and into the water. Holding the gun high enough to keep it dry, I waded carefully over the underwater rocks, slippery with algae, until I was neck deep among the rotting leaves and branches.

  I waited.

  They were about ten minutes behind me, five of them, three with shotguns. All but one were wearing street shoes. They were sweat-soaked and angry.

  “Shit! . . . I shoulda left the freakin’ shotgun in the car. . . . You think he’s got a gun? . . . How the fuck do I know? . . . All I know we’re supposed to clip him. . . . Yeah, well you blocked the fucking road right we’da had him clipped and gone. . . . Fuck you. . . . Yeah, well fuck you. . . . How the fuck was I supposed to know the asshole would drive into the fucking woods. . . . You’re the fucking asshole. . . . Whyn’t both of you shut the fuck up. . . .”

  They labored past me, sweat-soaked and red-faced. When they had passed, I slipped out from among the branches and headed across the inlet. I could touch the bottom most of the way. I came out of the lake behind the shack, moving quietly. They could have left someone with the cars. They hadn’t. The two cars sat silently in the dappled yard at the end of the dirt road, a Chrysler LeBaron and a Ford Crown Victoria. I put my gun back in the soaked holster, under the saturated T-shirt, on the waterlogged belt that held up my wet jeans. I felt like Burt Reynolds in Deliverance. I looked into both cars. No one had left any keys. I shrugged as if someone could see me and opened the hood on the Ford and pulled the ignition wires free and started the car by the always reliable hotwire method. I backed the Ford around and headed it up the dirt road. Then I got out and opened up the Chrysler and pulled all the spark plugs loose from the wires and threw them into the lake. I got back into the Ford and drove carefully back up the dirt road.

  25

  Hawk came into my apartment with a long duffel bag. He set it on my coffee table and unzipped it.

  “We going to the mattresses?” he said.

  “What brings you?” I said.

  He took out a 12-gauge pump shotgun and stood it against my kitchen counter. He took out four boxes of shells and put them on my counter.

  “Susan.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t come herself,” I said.

  “Me too.”

  “She tell you the whole story?”

  “Much as she knows.”

  “That would be the whole story,” I said.

  “How come you tell her? Makes her worry.”

  “If I don’t tell her, she’ll worry all the time.”

  “ ’Cause she never know if you in danger or not.”

  “Yes.”

  Hawk nodded. “How long you think it took them to walk out of there?” he said.

  “Given the woodsmanship they showed me, they might still be in there.”

  “There more where they came from.”

  Hawk took an M-16 rifle out of the duffel bag and leaned it next to the shotgun. He took three extra magazines and put them on my counter next to the shotgun shells.

  “Sonny?” he said.

  “Who else?” I said.

  “Harvey with them?”

  “No. I guess they figured they wouldn’t need him.”

  “How Sonny know you up there?”

  “Could have had a tail on me,” I said.

  “That you didn’t make?”

  “Unlikely,” I said.

  “So?”

  “Only people who knew when and where I’d be were the Malones.”

  Hawk took a Glock semiautomatic handgun out of the bag and put it on the counter along with an extra magazine and three boxes of 9mm shells.

  “The cops and the robbers?” Hawk said.

  “Wouldn’t be a first,” I said.

  “No,” Hawk said. “Wouldn’t.”

  He took a change of clothes out of the bag and folded it on top of the bookcase. He took out a shaving kit and walked to the bathroom and left it, and came back into the living room and sat on the couch with his feet on the coffee table.

  “You got a plan?” he said.

  “Be good if we knew why Sonny was interested in this,” I said.

  “That’s not a plan,” Hawk said. “A plan be how you going to find out why Sonny interested in this.”

  “Gimme a minute.”

  Hawk went around the counter into my kitchen and made himself a peanut-butter sandwich on whole wheat. He found
a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, opened it, and poured some into a pint beer glass and came back around the counter, moved some of his arsenal around to make room for his sandwich, and sat on a stool to have lunch.

  “Think of anything yet?” he said.

  “How come I always have to think of stuff?” I said.

  “ ’Cause you the white detective,” Hawk said.

  “But if I always think of stuff and you don’t, it just reinforces the black-white stereotype.”

  “I know,” Hawk said.

  “So why don’t you think of a plan?” I said.

  “You just trying to weasel out ’cause you can’t think of no plan,” he said.

  “Okay, I admit it,” I said. “You go.”

  Hawk grinned. “Brain, do yo’ duty,” he said.

  We were quiet. Hawk looked ruminative. He chewed his sandwich. He sipped his champagne. I stood and walked to my front window and looked down on Marlboro Street. The colleges had closed for the summer, and the summer-school sessions hadn’t started. The whole Back Bay seemed empty and pleasant. I could even see a parking space up toward Berkeley Street.

  Behind me, Hawk said, “Damn.”

  “You think of something?” I said.

  “No.”

  I grinned. “You just discovered you’re no smarter than I am.”

  “Startling,” Hawk said.

  “Maybe we need to work on this together,” I said.

  “One half-wit plus one half-wit?” Hawk said.

  “We can hope,” I said.

  Hawk poured himself some more champagne. “So how come the mob . . .” Hawk said.

  “Or some of it,” I said.

  “And the FBI . . .”

  “Or some of it.”

  “Both want to cover up the twenty-eight-year-old murder of some hippie broad from San Diego?” Hawk said.

  “Nicely restated,” I said.

  “Thank you—you talk with the husband yet?”

  “Daryl’s father?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “San Diego seemed like a long way to go,” I said.

  “We got no place else to go.”

  “Excellent point,” I said.

  26

  Susan sat on the bed watching me pack. Pearl loped around my apartment, alert for something to chew.

  “What are you going to do about a gun?” Susan said. “It’s not a good time to be checking one through.”

  “Hawk has an arrangement,” I said.

  “I shudder to think,” Susan said.

  “If you came, we could stay at La Valencia in La Jolla and eat in their upstairs restaurant with a view of the cove.”

  “Would there be any sex involved?” Susan said.

  “Only with me,” I said. “Oh,” Susan said.

  We were quiet for a moment. Pearl padded silently into the bedroom and circled my bed and padded silently out. We both watched her.

  “I can’t leave her yet with someone else,” Susan said.

  I nodded.

  “You understand.”

  “Better,” I said. “I agree.”

  “But you still wish I could come,” Susan said.

  I smiled at her.

  “Why are you smiling?” she said.

  “You are always,” I said, “so entirely you.”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “I believe I am.”

  I finished packing and closed the suitcase.

  “How can you exist for several days with what’s in that suitcase?” Susan said.

  “Astonishing, isn’t it?” I sat on the bed beside her. She looked straight at me for a moment, then suddenly she pressed her face against my chest. I put my arms around her. Neither of us said anything. We sat for awhile.

  With her voice muffled against my shirt, Susan said, “Hawk will be with you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are one of the toughest men in creation,” she said.

  “Also true.”

  Pearl came back into the bedroom and saw us and came over and sniffed and sat suddenly down and stared at us with her ears cocked slightly forward. After a time, Susan raised her head and kissed me with her mouth open. She pressed herself harder against me.

  “Pearl is watching,” I said.

  “I don’t care,” Susan said.

  Which turned out to be true.

  27

  At San Diego Airport, a young, athletic-looking black man was waiting for us as we came into the main terminal. He was dressed like a character on television, with a blue-and-white durag under a side-skewed Padres baseball hat. There were a lot of platinum chains, some very expensive basketball shoes, some very baggy jeans, and a Chargers jersey that had SEAU printed across the back. He was carrying a green Adidas gym bag with white stripes on the side and holding a hand-lettered sign that said SPENSER on it.

  I said, “I’m Spenser.”

  He looked at Hawk. Hawk nodded, and the kid gave me the gym bag, folded up his sign, and swaggered away like a guy looking for a fight.

  The rental car was a white Volvo sedan. Hawk drove while I opened the bag and, among a couple of towels bunched up for bulk, found two holstered Smith & Wesson nines with four-inch barrels and a stainless satin finish. They each carried ten rounds, plus one in the chamber. There was an extra magazine for each gun and two boxes of Remington 9mm ammunition. I checked one of the guns, and it was loaded, including a round in the chamber. Hawk glanced over as he drove up Route 5.

  “Networking,” he said.

  “Hanging with a thug has its moments,” I said.

  “I prefers the term ‘criminal genius,’ ” Hawk said.

  “Of course you do,” I said.

  Barry Gordon had a small house in Mission Bay with a narrow view of the water. We pulled up in front, and I got out, with my new gun unholstered and stuck in my hip pocket. Getting the holster on my belt seemed more trouble than I wanted to go through in the car. Hawk waited in the car, listening to a reggae station. The front yard had a low picket fence around it. The fence needed to be painted. Actually, it needed to be scraped, sanded, and painted. The gate hung crooked, its hinges loose. In the small, weedy front lawn, a black Labrador retriever with a red bandana around his neck barked at me without hostility when I pushed the gate open.

  Behind me, Hawk lowered the power window and said, “Backup?”

  “Fortunately, I’m armed,” I said.

  Once I was inside, the Lab came over with his tail wagging slowly and his ears flattened, and waited for me to pat him, which I did before I knocked on Barry’s door, which needed the same treatment the fence needed. The door opened almost at once.

  “Hey,” Barry said.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “You Spenser.”

  “I am.”

  “So come on in, man.”

  “Thanks.”

  Barry was shirtless, wearing only tartan plaid shorts and flip-flop rubber shower sandals. He had a lot of gray hair, which he wore in a single braid that reached the small of his back. His upper body was slim and smooth, with no sign of muscle. The house appeared to have a living room on one side of the stairs and a kitchen on the other. My guess was that there were two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. Barry waved at the living room in general.

  “Have a seat, man. Anywhere you’d like.”

  The choices were limited. He had a daybed covered with a khaki blanket and two cane-backed rocking chairs. A big television sat on a small steamer trunk under the front window, and an old pink princess phone rested on an inverted packing crate. There was a large circular dog cushion in the middle of the room, filled, from the smell, with cedar shavings. The Lab, who had come in when I did, plomped down on it and stretched his legs out to the side and went to sleep. I sat on the daybed.

  “You want a glass of water or something?” Barry said.

  I shook my head. He sat in one of the rocking chairs. Beside the chair, on what looked to be an orange crate, was a Baggie full of something that looked like oregan
o but probably wasn’t. Beside the Baggie was a package of cigarette papers.

  “So,” he said. “How’s baby Daryl.”

  “She’s quite a good actress,” I said. “You ever see her perform?”

  “No, man, regrettably, I never got the chance.”

  “I can see you’re a busy guy,” I said.

  “I write music,” he said.

  “Of course you do,” I said. “What can you tell me about Daryl’s mother?”

  “Emmy?”

  “Emily Gordon,” I said.

  “Well, shit, man, she died thirty years ago.”

  “Twenty-eight,” I said.

  Without looking, Barry extracted a cigarette paper from the packet and picked up his Baggie. “That’s a long time ago, man.”

  He shook out some of the contents of his Baggie and rolled himself a joint. He was expert. He could roll with one hand. He put the joint in his mouth and fumbled with the flat of his hand on the orange crate.

  “You got a match?” he said.

  “No.”

  He stood and flip-flopped past the front stairs to the kitchen and came back with a pack of matches. He lit the joint, took a big inhale, and let it out slowly.

  “Calmer?” I said.

  “Huh? Oh, the joint. I know I smoke too much. I got to cut back one of these days. So what did you want to ask me?”

  “Anything you could tell me,” I said.

  “About Emmy? Well, you know, I haven’t seen her in about twenty-eight years.”

  He took a big drag on the joint and held the smoke in for a time and let it out slowly. He let his head rest against the woven cane back of the rocker. Then he giggled.

  “Shit, man, nobody seen her in twenty-eight years, have they?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “Why did she go to Boston?”

  “Always wanted to, I guess. You know how it is, man, you get some vision of a place, you finally got to go look at it, see how it compares.”

  He took another drag.