Back Story. Part 32

"Because?"

"Because he a f.u.c.king c.o.kehead and he having a f.u.c.king miscarriage about the shooting in the bank."

"And Shaka thought he'd rat?"

"No harm being sure," Leon said.

"Except maybe to the white hippie a.s.shole."

"How about Bunny?"

"s.h.i.t, man, I ain't seen Bunny since it went down."

"Weren't you her main squeeze?"

Leon shrugged.

"For awhile," he said. "She used to be Shaka's when he still Abner Fancy. Then he dump her for Emily, which leaves her on the loose. So Bunny's a pretty hot little b.i.t.c.h, and I scoop her for awhile. But I dumped her before the bank thing. I think she was having eyes for Abner again."

"Who was now Shaka," I said.

"Yeah. We was all big for names back then," Leon said.

"You know Emily had a husband?" Leon smiled a very thin smile.

"I heard that."

"And a kid."

"Yeah. Daryl. I remember the kid. Emmy brought her when she took off with me."

We were quiet.

"What are you guys f.u.c.king around with this thing for now?" Leon said.

"Maybe so we can put you in the jug, Leon," Samuelson said. "And hammer in the cork."

"Me. You f.u.c.king can't touch me. I got a deal with the f.u.c.king federal government. Ask him, the FBI f.u.c.k." Leon pointed at Clark. "He'll tell you."

"You got no deal with me, Leon," Clark said.

"f.u.c.k you. Ask Malone. You people can't touch me. We got a deal."

n.o.body said anything.

"Okay. Arrest me or get the f.u.c.k out," Leon said. "I ain't talking no more without my lawyer." Samuelson stood. "We'll get back to you," he said. And the three of us left. On the ride back down the hill, with Samuelson driving, Clark said, "You know they weren't just worried about keeping Leon in place."

"I know," I said.

"They didn't want it known that one of their paid informants was the wheel man for a bank job," Clark said.

"I know," I said.

"I'll talk with Epstein, see if we got a chance. Maybe we can open this thing up and let a little air in."

"Maybe we can bust Leon, too," Samuelson said.

"I'll talk with Epstein about that, too," Clark said. "You know what it's like fighting the system you're in."

"I do," Samuelson said.

"It's why I'm not in one," I said.

"Really?" Samuelson said. "I talked about you with some people in Boston. They said you got canned for being an obstreperous hard-on."

"That's the other reason," I said.

54.

I was home. More or less. It was evening, and I was in Quirk's office with Epstein and Quirk, entertaining them with tales of California. "You think Leon would have blabbed like he did, if Clark wasn't there?" Quirk said.

"No. Leon sort of thought Clark would protect him. In twenty-eight years, he must have gotten pretty used to a.s.suming the Feds would protect him," I said.

"So we know why the Bureau sat on this thing," Epstein said. "What we don't know is who killed Emily Gold."

"We could bring Bunny Karnofsky in and ask her,"

I said.

"On Leon's say-so?" Epstein asked. "Twenty-eight years later?"

"Capital crime," I said.

"Sure," he said. "And Sonny Karnofsky's daughter. They will have her lawyered up so tight we may not even be able to see her."

"And then she's on notice," Quirk said. "And, my guess, she and her husband will take a long trip someplace and no one will be able to remember where."

"You know the husband?" I said to Quirk.

"Ziggy Czernak. He used to be one of Sonny's bodyguards."

"Now he's Bunny's bodyguard."

"Maybe it's true love," Quirk said.

"Maybe."

Quirk looked at his watch. "Late," he said. "My wife will be annoyed."

"You scared of your wife?" I said.

"Yeah. You going to tell the kid?"

"Daryl?"

"Yeah."

"That her parents aren't who she thinks they are?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know. I still need to find out who killed. the woman she thinks is her mother."

"Day at a time," Epstein said.

Outside Quirk's one window, the summer evening had settled in. It wasn't quite dark, but the sky had turned that navy blue and the color permeated the atmosphere.

There were occasions when this was my favorite time of day.

"So, what do you want to do?" I said.

Epstein and Quirk looked at each other.

"I still have the home office to fight," Epstein said.

I nodded.

"Sonny's got resources," Quirk said. "I don't want Bunny to get scared off and disappear."

I decided not to mention that she might already have been scared off by me. I thought it best, for the moment, to a.s.sume that they'd leave her in place and try to bury me.

"We need to get Bunny alone," I said.

"We do," Quirk said.

"You have any suggestions?"

"You and Hawk could get her out of there," Quirk said.

"Excellent idea," Epstein said. "Unofficially speaking."

"Hawk's with Susan," I said.

Quirk nodded.

"I figure Frank and I could sit in on that as, ah, private citizens during off-duty hours."

"I could sit in on that," Epstein said.

"Unofficially," I said.

"Of course," Epstein said. "Unofficially."

"Be nice if we knew where Abner Fancy was."

"Would be," Quirk said.

"I wouldn't want you to exhaust yourselves," I said. "But have you looked?"

Quirk nodded.

"He's not in the system," Epstein said. "We don't know where he is, or even if he's alive."

"Well," I said. "When I get Bunny alone, I'll ask her."

"Let us know," Quirk said, "when you want us in Cambridge."

"I will," I said. "You'll get to meet the new Pearl."

"Is she calm and relaxed?"

"No," I said. "She'll bark and race around and, if she likes you, jump up and rest her paws on your shoulders and lap your face."

"I think I went out with her once," Epstein said.

55.

The car picked me up as I turned onto Ma.s.s. Avenue going home from Police Headquarters. It was a dark burgundy Lincoln, and the driver was pretty good. He dropped back several cars behind me, changed positions occasionally, and once even turned off and went around the block, in a stretch where there was no chance for him to lose me. It's easier to tail at night, because mostly to the guy being tailed you're merely a set of headlights like every other set. But in this part of town, the streetlights were bright and the traffic was heavy, so the ambient light was pretty good. The last time anyone had tailed me, the plan had been to shoot me. I a.s.sumed there was a similar plan in place now. It would be someone from Sonny, and, given how badly it had gone the last time or two, I suspected that this time it would be Harvey, the specialist. I could go around the block and back to Police Headquarters and probably discourage the stalker. But that would just postpone things, and something happening was more likely to resolve this mare's nest than nothing happening. The question was where to let it happen. I stayed on Ma.s.s. Avenue while I thought about this, through the South End and into the Back Bay. At Beacon Street, I turned left and, a block later, swung right up the ramp onto Storrow Drive. I drove west along the river into Allston and went up the slight ramp at the Anderson bridge, turning left away from the bridge onto North Harvard Street. A half block up, I turned right into the parking lot at Harvard Stadium and parked. I unlocked the glove compartment and took out the 9mm Browning I kept for emergency firepower. I ran a sh.e.l.l up into the chamber, let the hammer down, and got out and walked through the open doors into the nearly total darkness under the stands.

In less stressful moments, I had come here with Susan, who thought it a perfect conditioning plan to run up and down the stadium steps. I found it most effective in keeping my knees sore. I went up the entry stairs and into the moon-brightened area low down in the stands, close to the field.

Harvard Stadium was a bowl, open at the northerly end. At the top of the stadium was a covered arcade where people could circle until they found their seating section. With the Browning in my right hand, I went up the stairs on the run, grateful at this moment for the hours with Susan. It was still a long way to the top. I felt conspicuous in the bright moonlight. I thought of a line from Eliot. something about the nerve patterns displayed on the wall by a magic lantern. My back felt tight, I could feel a gun sight on it. I could hear my heartbeat and my labored breathing as I went up. I was wearing sneakers, but my footfalls still seemed blatant in the pale, empty stadium. No one shot me. At the top I was in under the arcade roof, shielded by the chest-high wall. From where I stood, I could see most of the stadium. There was no movement. Harvey might not be a fan of the Crimson, and might not know the stadium as well as I did. He also knew I was in here, and he might proceed with caution. My throat was tight. My breath still rasped. Nothing happened. Where were they? I waited in the stillness and the moonlight. Nothing. I waited. Nothing. I waited. Across the stadium, I saw a figure rise cautiously from an entrance near the goal line. I looked below. There was another figure on this side. There were at least two of them. In the gentle moonlight, it was hard to say for sure, but neither of them looked like Harvey, which meant he was somewhere else in the stadium. They wouldn't have sent anyone else, not after I had been to the Czernak home. Not after I'd actually spoken to Bunny. The men below were now fully out of their stairwells, crouching as they came. Both had shotguns. Swell. At the closed end of the stadium, behind the goalposts at the other end of the field, a third figure emerged from the stairwell. Even from where I was, I knew it was Harvey. I stayed where I was. The three men stood still now and slowly surveyed the stadium. Then they moved up a few steps and did it again.

I realized why they had been so long in coming. First they had swept the s.p.a.ce under the stands, starting at either end and driving anyone there toward the middle, where Harvey waited. Now they were doing it in the stadium, working their way up, and if they found no one by the time they got to the top, they would move along the arcade toward the center, pushing anyone up there toward the center, where Harvey waited. It would not be good to let them do that. The guy across the way was a long shot with a handgun, probably one hundred yards. The guy near me would be duck soup. I c.o.c.ked the Browning and stood in the shadow of one of the support posts. I rested my elbows on the top of the wall, and, holding the gun in both hands, I centered in so that the middle of the far man's body sat on top of the little gun sight at the front of the barrel. I centered the front sight in the V of the back sight and leveled it off. I took in some air and let it out and stopped breathing. I squeezed the trigger slowly and kept squeezing, firing five rounds. One of them got him, maybe more than one. He twisted suddenly and dropped the shotgun and fell forward. I didn't see him hit. I was on my feet, firing at the second man, close to me. He had no place to go. He sank to a knee between the seats and raised the shotgun and fell backward, and the shotgun fell on top of him. I looked for Harvey. He was gone. My ears rang. The silence of the stadium after the eruption of gunfire was almost more a.s.saultive than the gunshots.

I was alone with Harvey now, in the thin moonlit darkness, to play another kind of game in the big arena. Fight fiercely, Harvard. He couldn't run. He couldn't go back to Sonny and say I'd killed the other two and chased him off. He'd played this game before and never lost. He thought he could kill me. I had four rounds left in the Browning and five in the Chiefs Special on my hip. I thought I could kill him.