Now and Then

by Robert B. Parker

  “This needs to come out right,” I said.

  “This being what happened to Doherty recently,” Susan said,

  “or what happened to us years ago, or both?”

  “Goddamn it, Susan, this is what I do. I don’t tell you how to do what you do.”

  Susan nodded. Had he been capable of it, Hawk might almost have looked shocked. I had probably never raised my voice to Susan in Hawk’s presence. I wished I hadn’t now.

  “I think your work and mine may be intermingled here,” she said. “But the problem is better dealt with by you than me.”

  “I’m sorry I yelled,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry I kvetched.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Chollo looked at Hawk.

  “I miss something?” he said.

  Hawk shook his head.

  “Long time ago,” Hawk said.

  This is for Rose . . . always.

  35.

  Because he knew who I was, tailing Red was a little harder. I needed to drop off him more. And I periodically lost him because I was too far off. But I didn’t mind, I just wanted to talk to him alone, in a proper location where there was privacy and space. I knew where he lived. I always found him again. Mostly he drove Alderson places. Though never on dates. Sometimes I crossed paths with the Feds tailing Alderson. We ignored each other. The FBI guys weren’t clumsy, but it is hard to stay on somebody’s tail for a long time without getting noticed. I assumed Alderson knew they were there. My time came in a couple of days. Red drove Alderson out to Taft University in Walford. The FBI and my humble self were trailing along behind them. Red dropped Alderson in front of a red-brick building on the Taft campus. There were evergreen shrubs around the building. A small neat sign out front said Hanes Science Center. A big sign on the front door said something about a conference in the auditorium about

  “Taking Back Your Country.” There was a list of speakers. Alderson was at the top. I wondered if it was because he was important or because his name started with A.

  The FBI peeled off behind Alderson, hoping to catch him saying something subversive. I stayed behind Red as he drove around a corner and parked on the top level of a four-story garage behind the Hanes building. I went in behind him and parked three cars away. We got out at about the same time. He looked at me and did a small double take.

  “Whadda you doing here?” he said.

  “Came to chat with you, Darcy.”

  He thought for a moment about my knowing his name. Then he said, “I go by Red.”

  “My name was Darcy, I’d go by Red, too,” I said.

  “You ain’t got red hair, asshole.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  He made a brush-away gesture with one hand and started toward the elevator. I stepped in front of him.

  “We need to talk, Darcy.”

  “You looking for trouble?” he said.

  “Information,” I said.

  “I got no information for you,” he said. “You looking for trouble, I’ll be glad to accommodate you.”

  He tried to move past me to the elevator. I moved and blocked him again.

  “How’d you happen to hook up with Alderson?” I said. He took two handfuls of my jacket up near my neck.

  “You gonna move, or am I gonna move you?” he said. He was a big guy, bigger than I was, but jacket grabbing is an amateur move, and I suspected he’d gotten by much of his tough guy life on being big rather than skillful.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’ll move.”

  He grunted and shoved me scornfully away and started past. I kicked both his ankles out from under him and he went down sideways and hard on the cement floor of the parking garage. I stepped back and waited. It took him a minute.

  “You tripped me,” he said. “You fucking sissy.”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  It took him a minute but he got his feet under him and got up and charged me. I moved a little and steered him past me and into the trunk of a car parked next to his. He grunted and steadied himself against the car. The impact had set off the car alarm and the horn began honking rhythmically.

  “Stand still,” he said. “You fi ght like a fucking girl.”

  “You think?” I said.

  No one normally paid much attention to car alarms. But there might be a security guy with too much time on his hands. Best to end it. Red came after me a little more carefully now. His fists were up in front of his face. I feinted at his body with my left hand and then hooked it up over his guard when it 157 dropped. It staggered him, and I followed with an overhand right that put him on his back. He stayed there waiting for his head to clear. When it did he sat up.

  “You some kind of fucking pro?” he said.

  “I am,” I said.

  “I don’t even know what we’re fi ghting about,” he said.

  “I think you wanted to show me that you could kick my ass,”

  I said.

  “And maybe I can,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Hasn’t been going too good so far.”

  Still sitting, Red nodded.

  “Whaddya want?” he said.

  “I want to talk with you.”

  “I ain’t ratting out Perry,” he said.

  “No harm having some coffee,” I said. “Talking about it.”

  He nodded. Red hadn’t been knocked on his ass very often. He was trying to adjust.

  “Okay,” he said, and got slowly to his feet.

  34.

  I met epstein for breakfast at Zaftig’s in Brookline.

  “There’s nothing closer?” I said when I sat down.

  “It’s close for me,” Epstein said.

  “You live in Brookline,” I said.

  “Am I Jewish?” Epstein said.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “And I like a nice deli,” he said.

  “My honey is Jewish and she lives in Cambridge,” I said.

  “Sometimes they stray,” Epstein said.

  “On the other hand, she is a shrink,” I said.

  “But they never stray far,” he said.

  “Comforting, isn’t it,” I said. “We got anything to talk about or have you just been missing me?”

  “Good to stay in touch,” Epstein said. “The latkes here are fabulous.”

  The waitress brought us coffee, and I ordered latkes with applesauce. Epstein had eggs and onions with some sable.

  “The big red-haired guy,” Epstein said. “He’s not in the system either.”

  “He didn’t seem like a pro to me,” I said. “He knew what he was doing, he wouldn’t have dissed Chollo.”

  “Chollo?” Epstein said.

  “Friend of mine from LA, be like dissing a cobra.”

  Epstein smiled.

  “Remind you of me?” he said.

  “No.”

  The waitress came with breakfast, and more coffee. I had a bite of latke.

  “How are they?” Epstein said.

  “How should they be?” I said.

  “Fabulous,” Epstein said.

  “They’re fabulous,” I said.

  Epstein nodded.

  “Name’s Darcy Englund,” Epstein said. “AKA Red.”

  “I suspected that would be his nickname,” I said.

  “Nice to confirm it,” Epstein said. “Only other thing we got is that Red’s been with Alderson at least as long as Alderson’s been at Concord College.”

  “In what capacity?” I said.

  “Red?” Epstein said. “Hard to say. Friend, driver, gofer, bodyguard. We don’t know. Mostly he’s just around.”

  “Never been arrested,” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “Military service?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “Visible means of support.”

  “Last Hope,” Epstein said.

  “Got a job title?”

  “Nope. But he deposits a two-thousand-dollar paycheck from them every we
ek.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “Cambridge,” Epstein said. “Apartment on Hilliard Street.”

  “Close to Alderson,” I said.

  “Yep. About a block.”

  “You got a tail on him?”

  “No,” Epstein said. “He looks like small fish to me. We’re sticking with Alderson.”

  We were quiet. I finished my latkes. Epstein finished his eggs and ate a piece of toast.

  “No bagel?” I said.

  “I try to avoid ethnic clichés,” Epstein said.

  “Like eggs and onions with a nice piece of sable,” I said.

  “So, sometimes I fail,” Epstein said. “Whadda you got?”

  “Sheila and Lyndon,” I said.

  Epstein nodded.

  “Tell me about them,” he said.

  I did. Epstein took some notes on the organizations and places they had mentioned in connection with Alderson. The waitress warmed up our coffee as needed. My normal ration wastwo cups in the morning. I was somewhere around five this morning. Of course, they were small cups. I’d probably be able to sleep fi ne by the time the week was out.

  “A hippie legend,” Epstein said when I finished my recitation. “Perry told us he was forty-eight.”

  “Kent State was in 1970,” I said.

  “Which would have made him thirteen when it happened,”

  Epstein said.

  “Precocious,” I said.

  Epstein said, “We’ll run it down. See how much of the legend is true. Can you give me a couple of the pictures you took?”

  I nodded.

  “When the truth conflicts with the legend,” I said, “print the legend.”

  “William Randolph Hearst?” Epstein said.

  “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, ” I said.

  “Close,” Epstein said.

  The waitress brought the check. Epstein picked it up.

  “I got this one,” he said. “You’re a business expense.”

  “Wow, you do avoid ethnic clichés,” I said.

  “Jews are generous,” Epstein said.

  We still had coffee to drink, so we each drank some. Epstein put down his cup.

  “This,” he said, “has been a model of law enforcement giveand-take. Me, a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You, a simple private peep. And we share what we know to the betterment of our common interest.”

  “Ain’t it grand,” I said.

  “There was another shooting in Cambridge yesterday,”

  Epstein said. “Right in Harvard Square.”

  “The town too tough to die,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t know anything about that, I suppose.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “Some similarities to the guy got shot up in Kendall Square,”

  Epstein said.

  “The guy who killed Jordan Richmond?”

  “Yeah. This guy has no identity either. We got no record of him, no fingerprints on file, no DNA. He’s got no ID. The gun is unregistered.”

  “He had a gun,” I said.

  “Yeah, one I never heard of,” Epstein said. “Thing was manufactured in fucking Paraguay.”

  “Don’t see that many Paraguayan handguns,” I said. “Did he have it out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Been fi red?”

  “Not recently,” Epstein said.

  “Where’d he get hit?” I said.

  “Two in the forehead,” Epstein said.

  “Pretty good,” I said. “Sounds like a pro.”

  Epstein nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Most people aim for the middle of the mass. Gotta have confidence to shoot for the head. Especially in what looks like a gunfight. Odd how two guys with peculiar handguns and no ID get shot in the head on the street in Cambridge.”

  “Where’d it happen?” I said.

  “Little alley next to the post offi ce on Mt. Auburn Street.”

  “Not generally considered a high-risk area,” I said. “What time of day?”

  “Middle of the afternoon,” Epstein said.

  “Witnesses?” I said.

  “Couple people said they saw a white van speed away right after the sound of shooting.”

  “That’s it?” I said. “In that location? At that time of day?”

  “That’s it. Oddly enough, one of the postal workers got a plate number.”

  “And?”

  “Stolen.”

  “Incredible,” I said.

  “I’m shocked,” Epstein said. “Shocked, I tell you.”

  “And nobody saw the shooter?” I said.

  Epstein looked at me for quite a long time without speaking.

  Then he said, “No. Nobody saw the shooter.”

  36.

  We went to the student union and sat in the café and had coffee. I had an apple turnover with mine. Red chose not to eat anything. I could tell by the way he spoke that his jaw had already started to stiffen where I popped him. It would be quite sore at the hinge tomorrow.

  “Tell me how you met Perry,” I said.

  “I was in a shelter,” he said. “Strung out.”

  “What were you on?”

  “Whatever I could get,” he said. “And Perry would come around to the shelter and talk to us.”

  “About what?”

  “About how pervasive governmental repression had forced me, all of us, into addiction and dependence,” Red said. “About how our only hope was to become independent, to be free of things that made us dependent, to stand up and say no!”

  It was Red speaking, but it was Alderson’s voice I was hearing.

  “The government made you do it?” I said.

  “Through economic manipulation.”

  “Like taxes?”

  “Yeah, and welfare, which creates a pernicious climate of dependence that we all fall prey to.”

  “Pernicious,” I said.

  “Once you start sucking on the federal tit,” Red said, “you become a federal slave. Being a drug addict is just one version of it.”

  “What were you doing before you became a drug addict,” I said.

  “I was playing football at Bowling Green. Scholarship. I failed to take advantage of the opportunity afforded me. I just played football and partied. And the partying graduated from beer to hard booze to pot to hard drugs. I dropped out and ended up on the street in Cleveland.”

  “How long you been straight?”

  “Ten years,” Red said. “No booze. No dope. It was Perry. Lotta guys thought he was just another fucking do-gooder hippie, you know? Lotta guys didn’t pay him no attention. But I could hear him. I could hear what he said and I could see it right off.”

  “Did he work with some sort of organization in Cleveland?”

  I said.

  “Oh, Perry, yeah, sure. He always got a organization, you know? I don’t pay no attention to that. It’s Perry. He’s the one. He knows, man. He knows what’s wrong in this country. And he is not afraid to call attention to it when he sees it. They lie to us. They don’t care about us. They made up a goddamn war, to get reelected. They fucked the duck in New Orleans after the hurricane. And the country trails along behind them sucking up the handouts, doing what it’s told.”

  I finished my turnover. It wasn’t a very good turnover. But the worst turnover I’d ever eaten was excellent. And this one was far from the worst.

  “So you joined up with him.”

  “It was like a crusade, man. It is like a crusade. Yeah, I’m with him all the way.”

  “You think Perry ever killed anybody?” I said.

  “Of course not,” Red said. “Perry’s all about life.”

  “How about you,” I said. “You ever kill anybody?”

  “No.”

  “If Perry asked you to, would you?”

  “He wouldn’t ask,” Red said.

  “Even if the crusade were at stake, if everything you and he and others had worked for was threatened.�
�

  “I’d do anything I had to do for Perry,” Red said. “He saved my life. My spirit, man. My spirit was dead, and Perry brought it back to life.”

  “How about to get this audiotape he wants?” I said.

  “I trust Perry, man. He says it’s important to us, I believe him.”

  “Would you take it by force, if you had to?”

  “Why not,” he said. “The culture does it to us all the time.”

  “The culture is sure a big pain in the ass,” I said.

  “You buy into it?” he said.

  “Not in, not out,” I said. “I like the object of my emotions to have more identity.”

  “Huh?”

  “My girlfriend went to Harvard,” I said. “Sometimes I talk funny.”

  “So you’re saying you’re on the fence,” Red said. “Too many people like that. In order for evil to triumph, you know, it requires only that good men do nothing.”

  He said the part about evil by rote, like a kid reciting the pledge to the fl ag.

  “Or good women,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t want to sound sexist,” I said.

  “Oh yeah, men and women.”

  “Who said that thing anyway, about good men?”

  “Who said it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Perry,” Red answered.

  “Did you know Jordan Richmond?” I said.

  “Yeah, sure. Perry was dating her.”

  “Was it serious?” I said.

  Red grinned and made a short chug-chug gesture with his fi st.

  “It was about sex?” I said.

  “Perry likes the women,” Red said.

  “And you?” I said.

  “I get my share,” he said.

  “Any idea who killed her?” I said.

  “Jordan?”

  “You know another woman been killed recently,” I said.

  “No.”

  “So any idea who killed her?”

  “No.”

  “How about her husband?”

  “Don’t know nothing about him,” Red said.

  “If Perry needed a shooter,” I said, “would he know where to get one?”

  “He don’t need no shooter.”

  “Of course not, but hypothetically, would he?”

  Red looked proud.

  “I know my way around,” he said.

  “You could get him a shooter?” I said.

  “I know my way around.”