Back Story s-30 Page 2

  "I read the case file yesterday," I said.

  "So you know we didn't clear it." He drank some more beer. "They're always a bitch, the fucking cases where shit happens for no good reason."

  I nodded. "Anything you remember, might help me?" I said.

  "You read the case file, you know what I know," he said.

  "I used to be a cop," I said. "Everything didn't always get included in the case file."

  "Did in mine," Bennati said.

  "What happened to the FBI intelligence report?" I said.

  "Huh?"

  "In your notes you say the FBI was sending over an intelligence report. It's not in the file and you never mentioned it again."

  "FBI?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "For crissake, we're talking like thirty fucking years ago."

  "Twenty-eight," I said. "You remember anything about the FBI intelligence report?"

  "Too long," he said. "I'm seventy-six years old and live alone except for the dog, and drink too much beer. I can barely remember where my dick is."

  "So you don't remember the FBI report?"

  "No," he said and looked at me steadily. "I don't remember."

  I took a card out of my shirt pocket and gave it to him.

  "Anything occurs to you," I said, "give me a buzz."

  "Sure thing."

  As I walked toward my car, he took another High Life out of the cooler and twisted off the cap.

  6

  The Boston FBI office was in Center Plaza. The agent in charge was a thin guy with receding hair and round eyeglasses with black rims named Nathan Epstein. It was like finding an Arab running a shul. We shook hands when I came in, and he gestured me to a chair.

  "You're the SAC," I said.

  "I am."

  "At least tell me you went to BC," I said.

  "Nope." He had a strong New York accent.

  "Fordham?"

  "NYU," Epstein said.

  "This is very disconcerting," I said.

  "I know," he said. "People usually assume I'm from Accountemps."

  He was wearing a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a powder-blue silk tie.

  "I am looking into a murder during a bank holdup in 1974," I said.

  "Tell me about it," Epstein said.

  I told him about it.

  "Why did she come to you," Epstein said when I finished.

  "Mutual friend."

  "And why did you take it on?"

  "Favor to the friend," I said.

  "Favor to a friend?" Epstein said. "The case is twenty-eight years cold. You have some reason to think you can solve it?"

  "Self-regard," I said.

  Epstein smiled. "So they tell me," he said.

  "You checked me out?"

  "I called the Commissioner's Office, they bucked me over to the Homicide Commander."

  "Martin Quirk," I said.

  Epstein nodded.

  "You check out everyone you have an appointment with?" I said.

  "I remembered the name," Epstein said. There was something very penetrating about him.

  "You recall the case?"

  Epstein smiled and shook his head. "Wasn't with the Bureau then," he said.

  "Would it be possible for me to get a copy of the case file?"

  He sat and thought about it. He was a guy that was probably never entirely still. As he thought, he turned a ballpoint pen slowly in his hands, periodically tapping a little para-diddle with it on the thumbnail of his left hand. Then he leaned forward and pushed a big khaki envelope toward me, the kind that you close by wrapping a little string around a little button.

  "Here's the file," he said.

  "Quirk?" I said.

  "He mentioned you might be looking into the Gordon killing."

  "Have you read it?"

  "The file?" Epstein said. "Yes. I read it this morning. I assume you've read the BPD case file."

  "I have."

  "You'll find this pretty much a recycle of that."

  "Someplace I can sit and read this?"

  "Outside office," Epstein said. "One of my administrative assistants is on vacation. My chief administrator will show you her desk."

  "Was there a time when we would have called your chief administrator a secretary?"

  Epstein smiled his thin smile and said, "Long ago."

  I took the folder and stood.

  "I think I know what you're looking for," Epstein said.

  I raised my eyebrows and didn't say anything.

  "I don't know where the Bureau intelligence report is either," he said.

  "The one that was supposed to be delivered to Bennati?"

  "Yes."

  I sat back down, holding the file envelope. "You noticed," I said.

  "I did."

  I sat back in my chair. "You guys gathered intelligence on dissident groups," I said.

  "Some," Epstein said.

  "Some? For chrissakes, the Bureau probably had a file on the Beach Boys."

  Epstein smiled again. I think.

  "Things have changed in the Bureau since those days."

  "Sure," I said. "So do you have a file on the Dread Scott Brigade?"

  "None that I know of."

  "Could there be one you might not know of?"

  "Of course."

  "If there was one, how would I access it?"

  "You'd get me to request it through channels," Epstein said.

  "Will you?"

  "I did."

  "And?"

  Epstein drummed on his thumbnail with his pen. His face was completely without expression. "There appears to be no such file," he said.

  "So how come Bennati thought one was on its way?"

  "That is bothersome," Epstein said. "Isn't it."

  7

  I drove up to Toronto on a Monday morning, with the sun shining the way it was supposed to in May, and got an all-chocolate, fifteen-month-old female German shorthaired pointer, whose kennel name was Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper. She was crated when I got her, which was a sound idea given that it was a ten-hour drive home. You wouldn't want her jumping around in a strange car and causing an accident. As I pulled onto 404 north of Toronto, she whimpered. At the first rest area we came to on 401, I discarded the crate next to the Dumpster behind the food court, and Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper spent the rest of the trip jumping around in the car. Susan had said that ten hours was too long for her to have to ride on her first day, so Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper and I spent Monday night at a motel in Schenectady. Unless you are a lifelong GE fan, there's not a lot to be said for Schenectady.

  Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper slept very little and was full awake at 5:10 Tuesday morning. We pulled out of Schenectady before dawn and got to Cambridge around noon. When we pulled into the driveway off Linnaean Street, Susan was sitting on the front steps of the big, five-colored painted-lady Victorian house where she lived and worked. As I got out of the car I said "Oh boy" to myself, which was what I always said, or some variation of that, whenever I saw her. Thick black hair, very big blue eyes, wide mouth, slim, in shape, great thighs, plus an indefinable hint of sensuality. She radiated a kind of excitement, the possibility of infinite promise. It wasn't just me. Most people seemed to feel that spending time with Susan would be an adventure.

  "Omigod," Susan said when Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper and I got out of the car.

  Susan's yard was fenced. I opened the front gate and closed it behind us and unhooked the dog from her leash. She was uneasy.

  Susan said, "Pearl."

  The dog pricked her long ears a little. Then she ran around Susan's smallish front yard in a random way as if she were trying to find a point of stable reference. Finally she decided that I was her oldest friend outside Canada and came over to me and leaned in against my leg for emotional support.

  Susan watched her with the full-focus concentration that made her such a good therapist. If she concentrated on something long enough, it would begin to smolder.

  "Pea
rl?" Susan said.

  The dog looked at her carefully and wagged her tail tentatively. Susan nodded slowly.

  "She's back," Susan said.

  "Yes," I said. "She just doesn't know it yet."

  Susan crouched at the foot of her stairs and opened her arms.

  "Pearl," she said again.

  The dog walked to Susan and sniffed her. Susan put her cheek against the dog's muzzle and patted the dog's head.

  "She'll know it soon," Susan said.

  8

  I was in the lobby of the New Federal Courthouse on Fan Pier. "International Consulting Bureau," I said. I gave my card to the guard and he looked at it, then checked his computer screen.

  "Whom do you wish to speak with there?"

  "Whom?"

  The guard looked up at me and grinned. "It's the training program they give us," he said.

  "I wish to speak with Mr. Ives," I said. He nodded, punched up a number, and spoke into the phone.

  "Mr. Spenser to see Mr. Ives."

  He nodded and hung up.

  "Over there," he said, "through the metal detector, take the elevator to the fifteenth floor."

  "There a room number?" I said.

  "Someone will meet you at the elevator, sir."

  "Of course," I said.

  At the security barrier there were four guards from the Federal Protection Service.

  "I have a gun on my right hip," I said to them. "I'm going to unclip it and hand it to you, holster and all."

  The guards spread out slightly and two of them rested hands on their holstered guns. The head guard was a black man who looked like retired military.

  "And do you have a permit, sir?"

  "I do."

  "First the gun, then the permit," he said.

  I handed him the holstered gun, then I took my permit from my shirt pocket where I had put it in anticipation of this moment. The head guard read it carefully.

  "We'll hang on to the gun and the permit," he said. "You can pick them up on the way out."

  "You're asking me to risk the federal courthouse unarmed?" I said.

  The guard's face stayed serious.

  "Yes, sir," he said. "We are."

  He swept his arm toward the metal detector, and I went through without incident.

  "Elevators are there, sir."

  "Stay alert," I said. "If I run into trouble, I'll scream."

  "We'll be here, sir."

  At the fifteenth floor there was a woman with long, silver hair and a severe young face. She was dressed in a black pantsuit and a mannish white shirt with a narrow black tie. Her black shoes had very high heels. We stepped into a long hallway. There were office doors along both sides of it. The hallway floor was carpeted in dark red. There was no identification on any of the office doors, all of which were closed.

  "Spenser," I said,

  "Follow me, please," she said.

  There were discreet security cameras at either end of the hall. I smiled at the one I was facing. It's good to be cheery. The severe woman knocked on the last door on the right.

  From inside, a voice said, "Come."

  The woman opened the door and stepped aside, and I went in. Ives was sitting at an empty desk in a blank room with a view of the harbor. He looked at me without expression until the door closed and we were alone.

  Then he smiled, sort of, and said, "Well, well, young Lochinvar."

  "How about maturing Lochinvar," I said.

  "You're as old as you feel," Ives said, and gestured at the straight chair in front of his desk. "Sit."

  Ives was sort of tall and leathery with sandy hair. He wore a tan poplin suit with a pink oxford button-down shirt and a pink bow tie with black polka dots. The room was entirely without ornamentation except for Ives's Yale diploma framed on the wall behind his desk.

  "You ever hear of an antiestablishment organization in 1974 that called itself the Dread Scott Brigade?"

  Ives smiled his dim smile. "It is my business to hear of things," he said. "Why do you ask?"

  "They killed a woman in a bank holdup in Boston in September of 1974."

  "And were never caught," Ives said.

  I nodded.

  "Which is why you're here," he said.

  "Yes."

  "You're going to catch them."

  "I am."

  "Except you don't know who they are."

  "Not yet," I said.

  "Or if they even exist," Ives said.

  "Somebody killed her," I said.

  "Why do you think it was this group?"

  "Cops got a letter from them afterwards, claiming responsibility."

  "Anyone can write a letter," Ives said.

  "It's a place to start," I said.

  "I suppose it is."

  Ives folded his hands over his flat stomach and leaned back in his chair and rested one foot on the edge of his desk. He made a slight gesture with his lips, which I had decided to treat as a smile.

  "So, you ever hear of them."

  "They are a domestic group," Ives said. "We concern ourselves with international issues. Have you consulted our counterintelligence cousins at the Bureau?"

  "There seems to be a missing file."

  Ives smiled again. "Ahhh!" he said.

  "Ahhh?"

  Ives began to nod his head slowly as he spoke.

  "How do you know it exists?" he said.

  "It was mentioned in a police report. Said an FBI intelligence file was coming."

  "And it wasn't there."

  "No."

  "And the FBI can't find it."

  "No."

  "What does that tell you?" he said.

  "Two possibilities," I said.

  "One being that they are sloppy filers," Ives said.

  "And the other that something is being covered up."

  Ives rocked in his chair for a moment. "While the terms FBI and Intelligence are oddly disparate," he said, "I have not found them to be sloppy filers."

  We were both quiet. Below us the harbor was gray and choppy in the May sunshine. One of the water shuttle boats from Rowe's Wharf was trudging toward the airport.

  "You're telling me something," I said.

  "I am a member of a highly secretive government agency," Ives said. "We tell no one anything."

  "Of course," I said.

  9

  Hawk and I were running intervals on the red composite track in back of Harvard Stadium. The sun was shining. The temperature was about 65. I was wearing a cutoff sweatshirt that was black with sweat. Hawk seemed calm. We would do a couple 220s, a couple 440s, and a couple 880s, and then walk a 440. We were walking again.

  "Maybe we should walk an extra two-twenty," I said.

  "Ain't two-twenties anymore," Hawk said. "I keep telling you. They two hundred meters, four hundred meters, and eight hundred meters."

  "How do you know," I said.

  "Ah is an African-American," Hawk said. "We know shit like that. You see a lot of European Americans running those races?"

  "European Americans?" I said. Hawk grinned.

  "I can always tell," I said, "when you're sleeping with some theorist from one of the colleges."

  "Abby," Hawk said. "She teach at Brandeis."

  "I'll bet she does," I said.

  "She a feminist, too," Hawk said.

  "Of course she is," I said. "You want to walk another two-twenty."

  "Sure," Hawk said. "I know you need it."

  "I was thinking of you," I said.

  Some of the Harvard track kids flashed by us, running their own training sprints. I was glad we were walking. I had the feeling they'd have flashed past us even if we'd been running. Some of them were women.

  "You ever hear of a group back in the seventies," I said, "called itself the Dread Scott Brigade?

  "Nope."

  "Part of the radical movement," I said. "They held up a bank in Audubon Circle in 1974, killed a woman."

  "I remember that," Hawk said. "I believe there was a brother
in on it."

  "Yes."

  "Lotta brothers in radical movements then," Hawk said.

  "Ungrateful bastards," I said. "We rescue their ancestors from ignorance, teach them to chop cotton. And that's the thanks we get?"

  "Good works don't always get rewarded," Hawk said, without any hint of a ghetto accent. His speech flowed in and out of Standard English for reasons known only to him. Most things about Hawk were known only to him.

  "How come you weren't a radical?" I said.

  "I was into crime?"

  "Oh yeah."

  "So how come you interested?"

  I told him about Paul and Daryl and the missing FBI report. Then we ran some 220s and some 440s and some 880s. I kept up pretty well for a European American.

  When we were walking again, Hawk said, "Quirk know about this missing report?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "And the FBI guy?"

  "Epstein," I said. "Yeah, he knows."

  "But neither one of them can find it."

  "They haven't yet."

  Both of us paused to watch a pair of young Harvard women jog past. As we watched them I said to Hawk, "You think staring at them is sexist behavior?"

  "Yes," Hawk said.

  I nodded.

  "That's what I thought," I said.

  Hawk was silent for maybe twenty yards. The Harvard women were halfway around the turn.

  Then he said, "Quirk wants to find something, he usually do."

  "Yes," I said.

  "Don't know Epstein. But he don't get to be SAC 'cause he a good old Irish Catholic boy."

  "No."

  "So he might be pretty good, too."

  "Be my guess," I said.

  Hawk was wearing black satiny polyester running pants and a sleeveless mesh shirt. From the far turn the two Harvard women looked back at him.

  "We think he good. We know Quirk be good," Hawk said.

  "So there a reason they don't find this report?" I shrugged.

  "Maybe there's a reason they can't look," I said. "And maybe they hoping you'll do the looking for them."

  "That occurred to me," I said.

  Hawk looked at me for a minute. His expression was as unfathomable as it always was. "Good," Hawk said.

  10

  Pearl lay at full length between Susan and me. "It's odd," Susan said. "Being in bed with a strange dog."