Back Story s-30 Read online

"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 oregano 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.

  "She have a boyfriend?"

  Barry shrugged.

  "Is that a yes?" I said.

  "We had a sort of informal marriage, man. You know?"

  "So she had a boyfriend?"

  "She had a lot of them."

  "But this one she followed to Boston."

  "I guess," Barry said. "You know his name?"

  "His name?"

  "Barry, are these questions too hard for you?"

  "It's been thirty years, man."

  "Twenty-eight, and in that time you forgot the name of the guy that your wife ran off with?"

  "She didn't run off with him, she followed him, there's a difference."

  "Sure there is, what was his name?"

  "Coyote," he said. "He was an African-American dude."

  "You have any idea where Coyote is now?"

  "Naw, man, how would I know that?" He took a last drag on what was now a very small roach and snipped it and put it on the orange crate.

  "What did Coyote do for a living?"

  "He was a hippie, man. We all were. Mostly, we ripped off the system. Sold a little dope."

  "Welfare?"

  "Sure."

  "What else do you know about Coyote?"

  "What's to know, man? He was part of the movement, you know. We didn't ask a lot of questions. I think he mighta done time."

  "Where?"

  "Hell, I don't know."

  "Maybe California?"

  "I guess."

  "What was he doing in Boston?"

  "Hey, man, you think he calls me up, tells me what he's doing?"

  "There were a couple of other women there when Emily was shot," I said. "Any idea who they were?"

  "No, man."

  "You know any of her friends?"

  "Sure. I knew a lot of them."

  "What were their names."

  "Names? All of them?"

  "Yeah."

  "Been a long time," he said.

  "Give me any you can remember."

  "I. " he spread his hands. "My head's a little scrambled. Bunny."

  "Bunny who?"

  "Ah Bunny. Bunny Lawrence, Lombard. Lombard, Bunny Lombard."

  "Excellent, Barry. Gimme another one."

  We did this for maybe half an hour, during which time I coaxed three other names from him. I wrote them down. He didn't know where any of them were anymore.

  "They were just around, you know, in the movement," he said.

  "Okay," I said. "And when Emily was killed, you had sole custody of Daryl."

  "Yeah. That's when I got us this house."

  "You bought this place after your wife died."

  "Yeah. Emmy's parents bought her a little insurance policy when she was born. Typical."

  "Typical of what?" I said.

  "Middle-class mentality," Barry said. "Have a baby, buy it insurance."

  "And you were the beneficiary?"

  "No. Emmy changed it to Daryl. But I was her father, so I used the money to buy her this house."

  "Which she still owns?"

  "Hey, I been paying the mortgage for twenty-eight years."

  "World's best dad," I said. "How long was Daryl with you."

  "She took off when she was eighteen."

  "You mean she ran away."

  "Whatever. We wasn't mad at each other or anything. She just wanted to be on her own."

  "You stay in touch?"

  "She wrote me sometimes."

  I decided not to ask if he wrote her back. Barry started to roll another joint. On his big, cedar-shaving dog cushion, the Lab made some lip-smacking noises in his sleep. He was probably half snookered on secondhand smoke.

  "Is there anything else you can think of," I said, "that might help me find who killed your wife." Barry got his cigarette burning. "Not a thing, man."

  "Ever hear of a guy named Abner Fancy?"

  "Abner Fancy, hell no, man. I wouldn't forget a name like Abner Fancy. Goddamn."

  "Ever hear of a group called the Dread Scott Brigade?"

  "Wow," he said, "a blast from the past. The Dread Scott Brigade. Yeah, I think so. I think Emmy had some friends was in Dread Scott. Emmy hung out with a lot of blacks."

  "Coyote a member?" I said.

  Barry shrugged. He was getting tired.

  "Coulda been. I don't know. Mostly I did my music, smoked a little dope." He smiled modestly. "Scored a few ladies myself, you know?"

  "Way to go," I said.

  I gave him my card. He looked at it.

  "Anything occurs to you," I said, "get in touch."

  "Hey, man," Barry said. "You're from Boston."

  "I am."

  "What are you doing out here?"

  "I came to talk with you."

  "Me? Hey, that's really cool."

  "Way cool," I said. "Anything you can think of."

  "Sure," Barry said. "Sure thing."

  He took in a long pull of marijuana smoke and held it. I walked to the door. Barry was still holding the smoke. As I opened the door, he let it out slowly and smiled pleasantly at me through the smoke.

  Reefer madness.

  28

  Hawk and I were staying up in La Jolla, at La Valencia. I called Susan. After that, Hawk and I took a run along the cove and had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was near the top of the hotel and had spectacular views of the Pacific. We each started with a martini.

  "It always amazes me," I said to Hawk, "how some kids can grow out of the trash heap they started in."

  "Daryl?" Hawk said.

  I nodded.

  "Her mother," I said, "apparently slept with everybody that would hold still long enough and then got murdered. Her father did dope until he turned into a mushroom. And she grows out of that, apparently on her own, to become a functioning adult and a good actress."

  The sun was almost touching the far rim of the ocean. Five pelicans swung over the cove, flying in an orderly arrangement. The last two divers came out of the water. I drank a little of my martini. Hawk's martini was the traditional straight up with olives. Always the rebel, I had mine on the rocks with a twist. I sipped again. The martini tasted like John Coltrane sounds.

  "A little like Paul," Hawk said.

  "Yeah," I said. "But Paul had me. Who has she had?"

  Hawk looked out at the wide, slow ocean, with the evening beginning to settle onto it.

  "Maybe she have a lot of stuff in her," Hawk said.

  "Maybe."

  "And maybe she have Paul," Hawk said.

  I thought about it, and so as not to waste time while I was thinking, I drank some more martini.

  "I don't know if he's known her long enough," I said.

  "Paul a smart kid," Hawk said.

  "I know."

  "And he pretty strong," Hawk said.

  "He is."

  "Got from his uncle," Hawk said.

  "Uncle Hawk?"

  "Sho' nuff."

  "Jesus Christ," I said.

  29

  In the morning, Hawk and I ate huevos rancheros outside on the patio. Then we strapped on our rental guns, got in our rental car, and headed for the 405. It's a two-and-a-half-hour drive from San Diego to L.A., unless Hawk drives, in which case it's just less than two hours. At twenty past noon we checked into the Beverly Wilshire Hotel at the foot of Rodeo Drive. "This pretty regal," Hawk said in the high marble lobby, "for a couple of East-Coast thugs with loaner guns."

  "We deserve no less," I said.

  "We deserve a lot less," Hawk said. "But I won't insist on it."

  Captain Samuelson had his office in the Parker Center. I left Hawk outside on Los Angeles Street with the car. It saved parking, and I figured Sonny Karnofsky wouldn't make a run at me inside LAPD Headquarters.

  Samuelson's office was on the third floor in the Robbery Homicide Division, in a section marked Homicide Special Section I. Samuelson came out of his office in his shirt sleeves. He was fully bald now, his head clean shaven, and he'd gotten rid of his mustache. But he still wore tinted aviator glasses, and he was still one of my great fans.

  "The hot dog from Boston," he said, standing in his office doorway.

  "I thought I'd swing by," I said. "Help you straighten out the Rampart Division."

  "Not possible," Samuelson said. "Besides, I'm out of town, fishing in Baja, won't be back until you've left town."

  "You can run," I said, "but you can't hide."

  Samuelson jerked his head and stood aside, and I went into his office. I walked in and sat and looked around.

  "Slick," I said.

  "I'm a fucking Captain," Samuelson said. "Section commander. Of course I have a slick office. Whaddya want?"

  "Coyote, don't know his real name," I said. "Formerly of San Diego. Black, about sixty. Maybe done time. Maybe for possession with intent."

  "You think I know every two-bit dope slug in the city?" Samuelson said.

  "Yes."

  Samuelson took out a package of Juicy Fruit gum, unwrapped two sticks, and folded them into his mouth. He held the package out toward me. I shook my head.

  "Every time I chew gum," I said, "I bite the inside of my cheek."

  "Clumsy bastard," Samuelson said.

  "Have trouble walking, too," I said.

  Samuelson nodded and swung his swivel chair around to a computer on a table at a right angle to his desk. "See what I can pull up," he said.

  He played with the computer for a couple minutes. "Okay," he said, reading off the screen. "Holton, Leon James, AKA Coyote. Born in Culver City, February tenth, 1940. First arrest in San Diego, August eleventh, 1953, for assault, dismissed because the plaintiff never showed. October I960, in San Diego, suspicion of armed robbery, lack of evidence. List goes on. I'll print it out for you." Samuelson tapped the keyboard.

  "He did time in 1966 for armed robbery," Samuelson said, still reading. "And in 1980 for dope."

  "Long dry spell," I said.

  "Both those collars were in San Diego, too," Samuelson said.

  "Anything else interesting?"

  "You first," Samuelson said.

  Seemed fair. I told him what I knew about Emily and Daryl and Barry and Leon.