Back Story

23

I called Evan Malone at the number Epstein had given me and got his wife, and made an appointment to come up to his place on Bow Lake to talk with him. On the drive up Route 93, I called Epstein on the cell phone.

"Find anything in D.C. about Shaka?" I said.

"They got a file," Epstein said.

"Can you get it?"

"Classified."

"Don't you have clearance?"

"Need-to-know basis," Epstein said.

"You need to know."

"No," Epstein said. "I'd like to know. But I'm not working on a case which requires me to know it."

"And you can't work on the case because you can't get any information about it to work on it."

"That's a little oversimplified," Epstein said.

"They have no reason to classify some two-bit counterculture gunny from 1974 on a need-to-know," I said.

"Apparently, they do," Epstein said. "I'll try to spring it loose. There are some channels to go through."

"I'll bet there are," I said. "What reason would you guess."

"I don't wish to guess," Epstein said. "I'll see what I can find out."

"I'm guessing there was an informant involved."

"I don't wish to guess," Epstein said.

Malone's cabin, on Bow Lake, was alone in the woods. There were neighbors, I had passed them on the way in, but they weren't in sight from the cabin, and, as I got out of the car in the driveway, I could have been in Patagonia. An aging cocker spaniel came around the corner of the cabin and gave me a token bark before she sat with her tongue out, waiting for me to pat her. After I did, we went around to the front of the house, which faced out toward the lake. Malone and his wife were sitting on the deck, looking at the water. A pitcher of iced tea sat on a little tray table between them. We said hello, and I sat in a canvas-strapped folding deck chair. They didn't offer me any iced tea,

"I'm trying to backtrack an old killing," I said.

"Anne told me," Malone said and nodded sideways at his wife.

He didn't look good. His eyes were sort of unfocused. His face had sunk under his cheekbones, and he had the sort of thin, flabby look of a man who had lost a lot of weight in a short time. There was a lot of loose skin under his jaw.

"Emily Gordon," I said. "Killed during a holdup at a bank in Audubon Circle."

"Yeah?"

"I believe you were the lead agent on the case."

"Hard to remember," he said.

"But you know it was long enough ago to be hard to remember," I said.

Malone shook his head and didn't say anything. Malone's wife watched him all the time, as if she were afraid he might fall over without warning. She was short and plump with gray-streaked hair that used to be blond, worn in short bangs across her forehead.

"I know there was a Bureau file on the killing," I said. "But I don't seem able to access it."

Malone sipped his iced tea carefully, as if the glass were hard to hold. When he put it back on the tray table, his wife's hand moved to grab the glass if he had trouble. Neither of them said anything. The spaniel had gone to sleep with her head on Mrs. Malone's left foot.

"I wondered if you might have any recollection of what might be in the file."

Malone was slouched in the deck chair, his chin touching his sternum. He wore tan shorts and a yellow polo shirt with blue horizontal stripes, high white tube socks, and brown leather sandals. His legs were pale and thin and blue-veined.

"Mr. Malone has had some very difficult surgery," Mrs. Malone said. "He hasn't gotten his strength back yet."

"I won't be long," I said. "Anything you can tell me?"

"Nothing to tell," Malone said hoarsely. "Wrong place, wrong time. We never found the shooter."

"Did you know his name was Shaka?"

"No."

It was a splendid summer day, 75 degrees with a breeze off the lake.

"Do you know why she was in Boston?"

"Don't remember, something about a sister." There was sweat on Malone's forehead.

"Did you write a report?"

"Must have." He smiled a frightful, weak, humorless smile. "Bureau's big for reports."

"You recall any connection with Sonny Karnofsky?"

"Never heard of him."

No law enforcement guy in Boston in the past thirty years wouldn't have known about Sonny Karnofsky.

"Any kind of mob connection?"

"No." He looked at his wife. She stood at once.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Mr. Malone needs to lie down now."

I nodded. She sort of hovered around him as he got himself slowly out of the chair. He stood as if his balance were uncertain and began to walk very slowly, bent over as if his stomach were vulnerable and he wished to protect it. She was right with him, ready to catch him if he fell. Though how she thought she'd prevent him from falling, I didn't know. They reached the back door of the cabin. She opened it and put her hand under his arm and steered him through. Then she turned and looked at me.

She said, "Good-bye, Mr. Spenser," and went in after him. I looked at the spaniel. She sat up suddenly and scratched her ear with her right hind foot.

"Enjoy," I said to her, and walked back to my car.