Back Story

by Robert B. Parker

  Leon’s gaze was steady. He made no comment. Hawk appeared to be paying no attention to either of us or anything else. But I knew that he was taking in the room. If the balloon went up, he’d know where he was.

  “I’ll make it easy,” I said. “We know that you and she were an item. We know you went to Boston and she went with you, or after you, it’s not clear which. And she was in a bank during a holdup and got shot.”

  Leon neither spoke nor moved. There was about him a sense of contained energy that could explode if jostled. I jostled it some more.

  “What do you know about the Dread Scott Brigade?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Know a guy named Abner Fancy?” I said. “Called himself Shaka?”

  “No.”

  “Bunny Lombard?”

  “No.”

  “How about a really bad asshole named Coyote?”

  “Nothing about him,” Leon said.

  I glanced around the vast, inhospitable room.

  “This the house that dope built?” I said.

  “I came into some money,” Leon said.

  “A lot.”

  “Yes,” he said. “A lot.”

  “You have any idea who shot Emily Gordon?” I said.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t care.”

  I took out my card and handed it to him.

  “You think of anything,” I said, “give me a shout.”

  He took the card and looked at it and tore it in half and dropped it on the floor.

  “Or not,” I said.

  Leon gestured at Slim. “You and Tom can go now,” he said.

  Hawk looked at him for a moment. “When you in the joint, Coyote,” Hawk said. “How many guys you punk for?”

  Leon’s face got tighter, but he didn’t speak. Slim and his associates led us back to the car, where, as soon as I got there, I opened the trunk and took out the two guns and gave one to Hawk. I saw the slim guy tense a little. The jockey licked his lips. Hawk and I got in the car and drove away.

  31

  We were driving back down the hill on Beverly Glen.

  “Leon ain’t pushing loose joints in pool rooms,” Hawk said.

  “Unless he pushed an awful lot of them,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “We didn’t learn much,” Hawk said. “ ’Cept that he knew Emily Gordon. He pretty much admitted that the minute he let us in.”

  “Had to ask,” I said.

  “ ’Course you did,” Hawk said. “Can’t know what’s going to happen before you go in.”

  “We accomplished something, though,” I said.

  “Got to see inside the mansion,” Hawk said.

  “Well, yeah, that’s worth something. We also got another reason to look behind us when we walk.”

  Hawk grinned. “Keep us alert,” he said.

  We wound down past the Glen Market, where I had once bought a bottle of champagne to drink with Candy Sloan.

  “If I weren’t a master detective,” I said, “I’d be getting frustrated.”

  “You been walking around all these years thinking you a master detective?” Hawk said.

  At the foot of the hill, I followed the tricky little zigzag across Sunset.

  “I have been detecting the ass off of this thing now for what, two weeks? I know that Daryl’s childhood is made up. I know her mother was in Boston on promiscuous business. I know her father’s a dope fiend. I know that the people who did the robbery are headed by a black guy named Abner Fancy, who calls himself Shaka. I know that Emily’s promiscuous business in Boston was probably with Leon Dope King, who’s a black guy. I know somebody in the FBI wants this thing covered up. I know that Sonny Karnofsky wants it covered up. I know there’s a connection between Malone, the retired FBI guy, and Karnofsky.”

  “ ’Cause Sonny try to hit you coming from his house and nobody else know you be there.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You must be a master detective, too.”

  Hawk nodded, looking at the expensive houses of uncertain lineage that lined the flat of Beverly Glen.

  “And you put all that together. . . .” Hawk said. “And you got squat,” I said.

  “And several people trying to kill you.”

  “Being a master detective has its downside,” I said.

  “Wonder if Leon is Shaka,” Hawk said.

  “Your guy told me Abner Fancy was Shaka.”

  “Maybe Abner and Leon the same guy.”

  At Wilshire, I turned right.

  “We not going to the hotel.”

  “Driving helps me think,” I said.

  “Something better,” Hawk said.

  We were heading west along the Wilshire corridor, where the high-rise condos lined Wilshire Boulevard like palisades.

  “Why Boston?” I said.

  “Why not,” Hawk said.

  “It’s a question we haven’t asked, because we started out thinking that Emily came to visit her sister.”

  “We haven’t asked?” Hawk said.

  “But she didn’t,” I said. “She came chasing Leon. So what was Leon doing in Boston.”

  “Being as how I a bad guy,” Hawk said. “I know ’bout bad guys, and most of us, if we in California, don’t sit ’round saying, ‘Hey, man, le’s go over to Boston and hoist us a bank.’ ”

  “So, maybe someone was from Boston.”

  “Maybe,” Hawk said. “How we going to find out who?”

  “I’ll detect some more,” I said.

  “ ’Less somebody shoot your ass,” Hawk said.

  “ ’Less that,” I said.

  32

  Hawk put our guns in a locker at the airport, put the key in an envelope, and dropped the envelope in the mail. We got on American Flight 12, and five and a half hours later Vinnie picked us up at Logan and handed each of us our very own gun.

  “Did they behave while we were gone?” I said.

  “Who?” Vinnie said.

  “The firearms.”

  “The guns?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Vinnie said.

  “Man’s without sentiment,” Hawk said.

  “You’re as fucking goofy as he is,” Vinnie said.

  Vinnie drove us home through the new Ted Williams Tunnel, which was not yet open to the general public. I raised this point with Vinnie.

  “I am not the freakin’ general public,” Vinnie said.

  We went through the tunnel without incident.

  In the morning I called Daryl, and at 10 A.M., with Hawk lounging on the couch, I sat in my office and drank coffee and talked with her.

  “I’m half awake,” she said. “We had a performance last night.”

  “Coffee is the answer,” I said.

  She smiled. “To everything?”

  “No. Sometimes there needs to be orange juice too.”

  “Did you see my father?” she said.

  “I did.”

  “Isn’t he a jerk?”

  I nodded. “He is,” I said.

  She shook her head sadly. “He couldn’t control himself,” she said. “Let alone control my mother.”

  “Leon’s last name was Holton. That ring any bells?”

  “No.”

  “How about Abner Fancy?”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “A funny one,” I said. “You ever hear it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember any of your mother’s friends?” I said. “Anywhere?”

  “In her whole life?”

  “Yes. Any names come to mind? Even if you’ve only heard of them?”

  “My mom died when I was six, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m almost as keenly aware of that as you are. Any names?”

  “Bunny,” she said. “One of the people my mom was with in Boston was named Bunny. I remember because I always thought of a huge white rabbit hopping along.”

  “Bunny Lombard?”

  “Could be,” Daryl said. “I
don’t think I ever heard a last name.”

  “How did your mother know her?”

  “I think they were in college together,” Daryl said.

  “Your mother went to college?”

  “A year or two, then she dropped out.”

  “Where?”

  “Some school around here,” Daryl said.

  “Here?”

  “Boston. Starts with a T.”

  “Tufts?”

  “No.”

  “Taft?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Taft University.”

  I looked at Hawk, draped on my couch. He looked back at me and smiled widely.

  “It would have been good to know that sooner.”

  “Why? What difference would it have made?”

  “If you want me to find who killed your mother,” I said, “then you give me whatever you know, and let me decide if it will make a difference.”

  “Well, you don’t have to get all rumpled up about it.”

  “The hell I don’t,” I said. “What else haven’t you told me? Do you know how she met Leon?”

  “No.”

  “Did your aunt go to Taft?”

  “She’s older than my mother. I think she went first.”

  “She stay in school?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did Leon and your mother come to Boston?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “We drove. Leon and Mom and me.”

  “Besides Bunny,” I said, “did you meet anyone here?”

  “We stayed with my aunt; there were people coming and going.”

  “What can you tell me about them?” I said.

  She stared at me with her lips tight and began to cry.

  I looked at Hawk. He had his head back, examining the ceiling.

  “I know it’s hard,” I said. “But I don’t know how else to get information.”

  “Why are you so awful?” she said.

  “Must be a gift,” I said.

  She stood suddenly and left the room without another word. Hawk continued his examination of the ceiling.

  “Sure do know how to question a client,” he said.

  I nodded slowly, looking at the open door through which my client had departed.

  “Master detective,” I said.

  33

  We drove up Cambridge Street to Government Center. Hawk said he would stay with the car while I talked with Epstein.

  “You both have an interest in crime,” I said.

  “Our perspectives differ,” Hawk said.

  Epstein stood when I came into his office, but he didn’t come around the desk to shake hands. Warm, but not effusive.

  “Your retired agent is connected to a mobster named Sonny Karnofsky.”

  “Malone?”

  “Yep. You familiar with Sonny?”

  “I know the name,” Epstein said. “You got a story?”

  I told him about the ambush up at Bow Lake. While he listened, he put his elbows on the desk with his hands tented and the index fingers resting against his chin. When I finished, he sat silently, tapping the tips of his fingers together softly. I waited. After a time, he took in a deep breath.

  “This sucks,” he said.

  “Think how I feel.”

  “Can you identify any of the people who tried to shoot you?”

  “No.”

  “You saw them.”

  “At a distance,” I said. “And briefly.”

  “Not even a possible?” Epstein said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was distracted by my attempts to flee.”

  Epstein nodded. I saw no sign of sympathy. “So what, exactly, am I supposed to do about this?” he said.

  “If I knew what you were supposed to do,” I said, “I might know what I was supposed to do. In the meantime maybe we can take solace in one another.”

  “Misery loves company,” Epstein said.

  “Madly,” I said.

  Epstein leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. He seemed to be admiring the gloss on his black wingtips.

  “What’s frustrating is that we know so much and can prove so little,” Epstein said.

  “We could propound a theory,” I said.

  Epstein, his feet still up on his desk, put his hands behind his head and recrossed his ankles.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Pro-fucking-pound.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I know there’s something wrong with this case, Quirk knows it, and you know it. And we all three know that someplace up the family tree, the Bureau wants this case covered up.”

  Epstein nodded.

  “And so does Sonny Karnofsky,” I said.

  Nod.

  “And the link between them is Malone.”

  “And the loose cannon rolling around in it all is you,” Epstein said.

  “Humble but proud,” I said.

  “You got someone watching your back,” Epstein said.

  “I do.”

  “Good,” Epstein said. “Your theory say what the connection is?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “That’s why I stopped by.”

  “I got no theory,” Epstein said.

  “No, but you could find out if there had been some connection between Karnofsky and Malone when Malone was working for the Bureau. Or if Malone was involved in the Emily Gordon thing. Or both.”

  “I could do that,” Epstein said.

  “And maybe you could find out what there is to find out about Karnofsky’s family.”

  “I could do some of that, too. And I’m doing this because?”

  “Because you care about the Bureau,” I said. “And this whole thing is frying your ass.”

  Epstein was silent for awhile, as if he were thinking about things.

  “You were a cop once,” he said after awhile.

  I nodded.

  “You remember why?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you quit.”

  “Yes I did.”

  “You remember why?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m an organization man,” Epstein said. “I don’t want to quit.”

  “So you can look into Malone and Karnofsky, and Karnofsky’s family?”

  “You think he’s got a family member involved.”

  “He made a passing allusion,” I said. “And while you’re at it, you might want to see if you got anything in the system on Leon Holton or Abner Fancy. I know Holton did time in the California prison system. And I’ll bet Fancy has done time someplace. Fancy may be AKA Shaka.”

  “Shaka?”

  “Shaka.”

  “Like in Shaka Zulu.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Where do these guys come in?”

  I told him.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “I cannot spend Bureau money entirely at my own discretion.”

  “Me either,” I said.

  “At least you’re getting a fee.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much you make on something like this?”

  “Thinking of going private?” I said.

  “Just curious.”

  “For this particular gig,” I said, “I’ve received six Krispy Kreme donuts.”

  Epstein looked at me silently for a time. Then he smiled. “Lucky bastard,” he said.

  34

  Hawk was driving a silver Lexus that year. It had one of those E-ZPass things mounted on the windshield, and we zipped through the Allston tolls on the Mass. Pike without hesitation.

  “Did you acquire that transponder legally?” I said.

  “No,” Hawk said.

  “At least you’re consistent,” I said.

  “Guy behind us oughta have one, too,” Hawk said.

  “Somebody’s behind us?”

  “Blue Chevy,” Hawk said. “Was behind us on Storrow, too. Then he got hung up in the exact-change lane, and now he’s busting his ass to catch us.”


  I turned in my seat and looked out the back window.

  “Third car behind us?” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Picked us up on Storrow?”

  “Be my guess he picked us up front of your place,” Hawk said. “And I didn’t make him until Storrow.”

  “You see who it is?”

  “Nope. Maybe all day, all Sonny?” Hawk said.

  “Could be,” I said. “On the other hand, there’s folks in the FBI might want to know what I’m up to. If they picked us up in front of my place, then they know there’s two of us.”

  “They do,” Hawk said. “But they might not know one of us is me.”

  “So they might be overconfident?” I said.

  “Might,” Hawk said. “What you want me to do with them?”

  “We’ll go about our business,” I said. “If they’re Feds, they’re welcome to tag along. If they’re from Sonny and they try to kill us, we’ll try to prevent them.”

  “Wha’s this we, Whitey? They ain’t after me.”

  “You have to protect me,” I said. “I’m your only friend.”

  The Chevy tailed inconspicuously along behind us. Sometimes, on stretches without exits, it would pull past us and drive along two or three cars ahead. As we approached exits, it dropped back. It was several cars back when we took the Walford exit.

  Taft University was on a series of low hills along both sides of Walford Road, about a half mile from the Pike. The main entrance road curved up the tallest of the hills, past some dormitories, toward the administration building, which formed one side of a big quadrangle at the top. Hawk parked next to a sign that read FACULTY PARKING ONLY. The Chevy pulled in on the other side of the road, back down the hill a little in front of a dormitory. A mixed field of summer-school students was playing touch football on the lawn.

  “Let’s just sit for a minute,” I said.

  Hawk nodded, and we sat.

  The Chevy sat.

  We sat.

  Nobody got out of the Chevy.

  “As you so sensitively pointed out,” I said, “if they are interested in bodily harm, they’re after me, not you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So if I got out and you drove off, they’d come after me, and we’d know. Or they wouldn’t, and we’d know.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And if they’re from Sonny and bear me ill will, and if you hadn’t driven very far off, you could appear and descend upon them like the wolf upon the fold.”