Back Story

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.