Back Story (16 page)

Sometimes the work helped people. But who was getting helped this time? Did Daryl want to know what I had learned? Would it help her? Was I the one to decide that? Several people had died so far in pursuit of information that no one might wish to acquire. They hadn't been good people. But I had known I'd have to kill them when I led them to the stadium, where I knew the layout and they didn't. I hadn't known there'd be backup. But I hadn't known there wouldn't be. Did I stick at it because I was curious? Because I was a nosy guy who wanted to know what everyone had been covering up? Now I knew. Or at least I knew most of it. Was it worth a lot of dead guys? I did this work because I could. And maybe because I couldn't do any other. I'd never been good at working for someone. At least this work let me live life on my terms.

I ran the swab through the barrel of the Browning, and it came out clean. I looked down the barrel. Spotless. I wiped the gun off with a cloth and let the receiver forward, let the hammer down, and had more Scotch. The nearly full half gallon on the counter gleamed reassuringly in the light from under my kitchen cabinets. I fed cartridges into the magazine of the Browning. They went in economically, each one taking no more space than it needed to. Nice-looking things, bullets. Compact. Bright brass casing, copper coating on the slug, leaving some gray lead exposed at the blunt nose. When it was loaded, I slid the magazine into the pistol butt.

My glass was empty. I made another drink and took it to the front window and looked out at Marlborough Street at 2:15 A.M. The brick and brownstone faces of the buildings were blank. No windows were lighted. The cars parked on the street seemed abandoned in their stillness, and the bleak street lamps made the street look lonelier than I knew it was.

I was doing this because I had started out to do this, and if you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms, and somehow you need to live up to them. What was that line from Hemingway? What's right is what feels good after? That didn't help. I took a long drink of Scotch and soda. There was that line from who, Auden? Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man. I could see my face reflected in the window glass. It was the face of a guy who used to box-the nose especially, and a little scarring around the eyes.

I went back to the counter and sat and looked at the Browning 9mm semiautomatic pistol as it lay there. As an artifact, it was nice-looking. Well-made. Precise. Nice balance to it. Blued finish. Black handle. Everything it should be and no more than that. Form follows function. The magazine was full and in place. But there was no round in the chamber. As it lay on my countertop, it was less dangerous than a sixteen-ounce hammer.

Maybe Harvey lived life on his own terms, too. And maybe he was faithful to the terms. Maybe that was why he'd kept coming in the dark unknown stadium when both his backup were gone. What would he be doing tonight if he'd won? Was that the only difference? That it maybe bothered me more than it would have bothered him?

I took my drink with me and went around the counter and picked up the phone and called Susan. Her voice was full of sleep.

"Guess I woke you up," I said.

"It's quarter to three," Susan said. "Are you all right?"

"More or less," I said. "I needed to hear your voice."

The sleepy thickness vanished from her voice.

"Where are you?" she said.

"Home."

"Are you drunk."

"Somewhat," I said.

"Do you need me to come over?"

"No," I said. "I need you to tell me you love me."

"I do love you," Susan said. "Sometimes I think I have loved you all my life."

"You haven't known me all your life."

"A meaningless technicality," Susan said.

"I love you," I said.

"I know," Susan said. "Has something bad happened?"

"I've had to shoot some people," I said.

"You're not hurt."

"No."

"You've had to shoot people before. It's part of what you do."

"I know."

"But?"

"But," I said, "rarely in pursuit of so measly a grail."

"The truth?"

"The truth sometimes sounds better than it is," I said.

"I agree. But it's no measly grail."

"And the violence."

"You are a violent man," Susan said. "You have been all your life."

"How good a thing is that," I said.

"It's neither good nor bad," Susan said. "It simply is. What makes you who you are is that you have contained it within a set of rules that you can't even articulate."

"Sonova bitch," I said.

"You know it's true," she said. "Even bad as you feel right now, and some of that is booze talking, at the center of your soul you know you didn't do a wrong thing."

"Maybe that's a lie I tell myself."

"No," Susan said.

"Flat no?"

"I'm a shrink. I'm allowed to say that. Besides," Susan said, "you are the damn grail."

"I am?"

"You are," she said. "A lifelong quest to be true to who you are."

"And that's a good thing?" I said.

"It's the only thing," she said. "Good or bad. It is the simple fact of you." I could hear the smile in Susan's voice. "And for what it's worth, I wouldn't want you to be different."

"Even if I could be," I said.

"Which you can't," Susan said.

"So what makes me better than Harvey?"

"Would I ever fall in love with Harvey?"

"No."

I didn't say anything. Susan let me be quiet for awhile. Silence was never a problem for us.

"No," I said. "You couldn't."

"There's your difference," Susan said.

"I'm okay because you love me?" I said.

"No. I love you because you're okay."

Again we shared a silence.

Then I said, "Thank you, Doctor."

"Take some Scotch," Susan said. "Call me in the morning."

"Don't you know enough?"

"No. I need to know who killed Emily Gordon."

"You think you might be getting obsessive about this?" Hawk said.

"Susan says it's because I am my own grail."

"That's probably it," Hawk said. "But you already know more than the client wants to find out."

"I want to know," I said.

"Oh," Hawk said. "Long as you has a reasonable explanation."

We were drinking coffee in Hawk's car again in the parking lot at the end of the causeway in Paradise. It was a perfectly swell morning. The temperature was 78, the sun was out, the breeze was gentle. Behind us, the Atlantic Ocean was endlessly rocking. It was cool enough to reduce the number of exotic bathing suits. But in a fallen world, even perfection is flawed.

"What are we looking for," Hawk said, as a little silver Mercedes, the kind with the retractable hard top, drove past us toward the Neck.

"Whatever we can see," I said. "We're really here to think up a way to get Bonnie Karnofsky alone."

"Now that you've shot up everyone but Bunny," Hawk said. "So they won't be expecting anything."

"I haven't shot anybody named Karnofsky," I said.

"Yet," Hawk said. "You figure she's with Dad and Mom."

"Almost certainly," I said. "There's no sign of life at the house in Lynnfield. Whatever Sonny's protecting her from, he's running out of room. I'll bet my reputation that he's brought her home."

"You got no reputation," Hawk said.

"Okay, so it's not a risky bet."

"And don't we know what he's protecting her from?"

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe the murder. Or maybe he doesn't want anyone to know she's guilty of miscegenation."

"Like the founding fathers," Hawk said.

"But not the founding mothers."

"You don't know that," Hawk said.

"You mean there might have been a Solly Hemings?"

Hawk grinned. "Probably my ancestor," he said.

I drank some more coffee. Nothing wrong with several cups of coffee. Stimulates the brain. If I drank enough of it, my brain got so stimulated that I couldn't sleep. But trying to think through a difficult problem. I'd be a fool not to use it.

"So how do we get to her?" I said.

"I dress up like Solly Hemings and walk back and forth past the house until she sees me, and, overwhelmed by desire, she dash out and we grab her."

I put my head back against the headrest. "We better think of a backup plan," I said. "In case that doesn't work."

"Sho 'nuff," Hawk said.

We finished our coffee. I got out and went to the snack bar and got us two more cups.

"We can go in and get her," Hawk said. "Or we can lure her out."

"Place is like a Norman keep," I said. "We go in, and a lot of people will get hurt."

"And we likely to be two of them," Hawk said.

"So how do we lure her out? Aside from the Solly Hemings ploy."

We thought about that for awhile. In front of the car, a squabble of gulls fought loudly over half an orange.

"We got her daughter," Hawk said.

"Even if she cares about her daughter, I can't do that."

"Use the daughter to trap the mother?"

"That's right."

"Man, you're confusing," Hawk said. "And not amusing. Couple days ago, you shot three guys. Now you won't use the daughter against the mother."

"I confuse myself sometimes," I said.

We drank coffee. The gulls squawked at one another. A Ford pickup went past us, toward town, towing a large sailboat.

"We gotta go in," I said.

Hawk took in a long breath and let it out slowly and didn't say anything.

"You know we do," I said.

"Uh-huh."

Two teenage girls in designer shades and miniscule bathing suits went past us, carrying beach bags and a blanket and a portable radio.

"Too young," I said.

Hawk nodded sadly. "I know," he said.

Our coffee was gone. Hawk went and got some. Keep drinking it. It was bound to work.

"The house backs up on the water," I said.

Hawk looked at me. His face brightened. "Think it got a private beach?" he said.

"If you had all that dough and owned that property, would it have a private beach?"

"It would."

"And if you were Bonnie Karnofsky Czernak and you were shut up in there with Mom and Dad, what would you decide, sooner or later, to do?"

"After I watched The View?"

"After that," I said.

"Might take my blanket and my radio and go down to the sea."

"Me too," I said.

"We need a boat," Hawk said.

"We need a lot of things," I said. "But at least we have an idea."

"Don't happen often," Hawk said.

"No," I said. "I'm surprised I recognized it when it came."

"That's Karnofsky's beach," Stone said. He had on his chief shirt with his badge on it, jeans, a baseball cap, and sneakers. He carried a Smith & Wesson.38 with a short barrel, just like mine. The perfect choice. Hawk, ever self-amusing, wore a blue blazer and white pants, and one of those boating caps with the long bill, like Hemingway.

"Can we assume they've spotted us?" I said.

"Sure. But it doesn't matter. They're used to us coming by."

"That little gully runs straight up between the rocks to the top of the hill behind Sonny's house," Stone said. "Got aerial photos, you want them."

"I do."

Stone nodded.

"On the other side of the rocks, maybe two, three hundred feet," he said, "is neighboring property."

"How about the other side?"

"Further," Stone said. "Other side of that point. There's a right of way down to the water."

The harbormaster kept the nose of the boat into the waves, idling just enough to hold our position.

"They use the beach much," I said.

"Sonny, never. The old lady, some." I scanned the rocks and trees around the beach.

There was a raft with a springboard anchored fifty feet from shore.

"Their raft?" I said.

Stone nodded.

"They use it?"

"Daughter comes to visit sometimes. She and her husband use it."

"How deep is it by the raft?"

"Phil?" Stone said to the harbormaster.

"Twenty feet," Phil said. "Drops off pretty sharp from the beach."

We were quiet, while far out into the Atlantic beyond us some sailboats were swooping about, and a couple of fishing boats plodded into the wind. On shore, nothing moved except a couple small seabirds with long beaks, which poked around in the rocks without any visible result. I knew how they felt.

"How often do they use the raft," I said.

"We don't check it every day," Stone said. "But when the weather's good, she's down here. She bakes for awhile and then goes in and swims to the raft. I assume it's to cool off. Hubby goes sometimes. Sometimes doesn't."

"I don't suppose we can use your boat," I said.

"It's the town's."

"I still assume we can't use it."

"You can't."

"You don't talk much," I said. "Do you."

"It's an experiment," Stone said. "If I got nothing to say, I try not to say it."

"Maybe I'll try it sometime," I said.

"You got a plan?" Stone said.

"We off the record here?" I said.

"I look like a fucking TV crew?" Stone said.

"I'm planning to snatch Bonnie Czernak, nee Karnofsky," I said.

"Good thing I'm not a fucking TV crew," Stone said.

"Where do you stand on that," I said.

"Off to the side."

"I'm not asking you to do anything but leave it alone," I said.

"I do that well," Stone said.