Back Story

by Robert B. Parker

“No idea,” Anne said. “When I knew her, she was from the North Shore someplace. Paradise, maybe.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “She left in the middle of sophomore year, so 1965, I guess, probably in the winter. Why are you looking for her?”

  “I wanted to ask her about Emily Gold,” I said.

  “Because of the murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought she was shot, like at random, by some guy holding up a bank.”

  “We’d like to find out who that was,” I said.

  “Are you working for Emily’s daughter?” Anne said.

  “I am.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Anne said. “How are you going to find out a murder that happened twenty-eight years ago.”

  “Diligence,” I said.

  She smiled and shrugged. “Well,” she said. “You found me.”

  41

  It was a little after 3:30 in the afternoon when Hawk and I carefully opened up my office for a new business day. Hawk looked around the empty room.

  “Harvey don’t show me shit,” Hawk said. “I working for Sonny, you be dead now.”

  “You wouldn’t work for Sonny,” I said.

  “Beside the point,” Hawk said.

  I opened the windows behind my desk and looked out at the Back Bay. There was a group of three young women, rigorously conforming to the current look: cropped T-shirt, low-slung jeans, and a clear view of the navel. None of the three was slim enough to carry it off. Most people weren’t. I listened to my messages.

  While I listened, Hawk unlocked my closet door, got the sawed-off, put it beside him on the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table, and began to read some more about evolution. I called Samuelson.

  “Remember Ray Cortez?” he said.

  “Leon Holton’s PO,” I said.

  “Well, Ray appears to be a man of passionate convictions,” Samuelson said. “He knows Leon is swimming in an ocean of drug money, and he seems to be getting away with it, and Ray’s dying to violate him right back inside.”

  “I got no problem with that,” I said.

  “None of us do,” Samuelson said. “After I got Leon’s address from him, he started thinking more about Leon, and how last time Leon did time it was for possession with intent and he served nine months in Lompoc.”

  “Minimum security?” I said.

  “It’s like serving nine months at Zuma Beach,” Samuelson said, “on a conviction that usually carries serious time, and even more so if it’s your third strike.”

  “Third?” I said.

  “Yeah. We got him for two, but Cortez says that Leon used to brag how he did time back there.”

  “In Massachusetts?” I said.

  “Yep. He was bragging how connected he was.”

  “Back here?”

  “All over. He said even if he got busted, he did soft time and not for long.”

  “Who’s he wired to?” I said.

  “I was wondering that, too,” Samuelson said. “Which set me wondering why the FBI queried us about him in ’75. So I called the L.A. office. I get along with the SAC. And they checked back in the files, and it took them awhile but they found it. The request came from the Boston Office.”

  “Evan Malone,” I said.

  “I’ll be damned,” Samuelson said. “It always amazes me when you know something.”

  “Me too,” I said. “They know why he wanted information?”

  “No. They reminded me that it was twenty-eight years ago.”

  “Anything else bother you?” I said.

  “Like, why did they query us?” Samuelson said. “Why didn’t they query San Diego?”

  “My question exactly,” I said.

  “That’s scary,” Samuelson said. “Anyway, I called a guy in San Diego, and he checked into it and called me back and said they got the same query.”

  “Any reason?”

  “None on file.”

  “So they weren’t sure where he was,” I said.

  “But they thought he was in Southern California,” Samuelson said. “I checked San Jose and Oakland, where I can call in favors, and they got no record of any query on Leon Holton.”

  “So they were looking for him,” I said.

  “I’d guess,” Samuelson said.

  “But it wasn’t an arrest query.”

  “No. Just information.”

  “So what’d they want?” I said.

  “I’ve done all I can for you,” Samuelson said. “You’ll have to ask them.”

  “Thanks for your help.”

  “I’m not doing you a favor,” Samuelson said. “Leon the Coyote is ours now, and I’d like him out of circulation.”

  “To protect and serve,” I said.

  “And kick some ass,” Samuelson said. “When we can.”

  42

  Leon Holton spent five years in Walpole for attempting to rob a liquor store on Dorcester Avenue in 1960,” Quirk said.

  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 som
e 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.

  43

  Paul brought Daryl to see me at the office. She looked uncomfortably at Hawk when she came in. But Hawk made many people uncomfortable. He didn’t offer to leave, and I didn’t ask him to.

  “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.

  44

  She’s probably angriest at her mother,” Susan said.

  We were in a new restaurant called Spire. Susan was barely drinking a Cosmopolitan.

  “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 w
as 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?”