Back Story. Part 25

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 f.u.c.king 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 s.h.i.t 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 f.u.c.king 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."

n.o.body 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, f.u.c.k you," she said. "f.u.c.k all of you."

And she turned and marched out of my office. Her swift pa.s.sage made dust motes hover momentarily in the sunny rhomboids splashed across my office floor. Hawk dog-eared the page and folded his book shut.

"f.u.c.k 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 was 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 gla.s.s. 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 a.s.sume 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. n.o.body 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 pa.s.sionate. 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?"

"I suppose we have to," I said. "If we ever want to eat here again."

45.

The Registry of Motor Vehicles told Quirk that Sarno Karnofsky had two Mercedes sedans and a Cadillac Escalade, registered in Ma.s.sachusetts. Quirk told me and gave me the plate numbers. I had the three numbers written on a piece of paper taped to my sun visor as Hawk and I sat in my car with the motor off and the windows open to let the sea breeze in. Hawk had parked his car beside me and come to sit in mine. We were in a parking lot along with maybe fifty other cars, at a public beach, on the mainland end of the causeway that connected Paradise Neck with the rest of the town.