Back Story

50

Sigmund Czernak had a big tree-shaded white colonial house with a rolling lawn and a picket fence that faced the town common. On the common, in front of a white eighteenth-century meetinghouse, there was some sort of fair. Folding tables with baked goods. Balloons. A popcorn machine that perfumed the air all the way to Czernak's back door. I parked in the turnaround at the top of the drive, headed out, between a dark blue BMW sports car with a gray top, and a black Mercedes SUV. There was a dark blue Ford Crown Victoria parked beyond the Mercedes. I went around to the front door, walking under a maple tree that must have been older than the house, and rang the front doorbell. A small, white, ratty dog yapped at me through the screen door.

"Careful," I said to him, "I'm armed."

From somewhere behind the dog, a woman's voice said, "Sherry, quiet down." There were footsteps, and Bonnie Karnofsky appeared in the doorway. Sherry didn't quiet down. She yapped some more.

"Yes?" Bonnie said.

"Hello," I said. "My name is Spenser, and I'm looking for anyone who knew Emily Gold."

"Excuse me?"

I said it again.

"Who's Emily Gold?" Bonnie said.

"Your classmate at Taft," I said. "Remember, you and Emily and Shaka and Coyote?"

"You are talking ragtime," she said and raised her voice and yelled, "Ziggy."

She had far too much blond hair, which would probably abrade the skin if you brushed against it. But her face was youthful and pretty, and her body was quite aggressive in tan shorts and a yellow tank top. A man appeared behind her, tall and slender with back hair slicked back tightly to his skull and big horn-rim glasses. The ratty little dog was yapping steadily.

"Who's this," he said to Bonnie.

"Guy asking questions," Bonnie said. "I don't know what he's talking about."

"Whaddya want, Jack?"

"I'm trying to locate people who knew Emily Gold," I said.

"We know any Emily Gold?" he said to Bonnie.

"Never heard of her," Bonnie said.

"So fuck off," he said to me.

"That was great," I said. " 'Fuck off.' Wow! You don't much hear talk like that anymore. It made my knees weak."

"Bunny," he said to Bonnie. "Get Harry."

She disappeared. Ziggy froze me with his stare. The dog yapped. It wasn't getting anywhere, but it wasn't losing ground either. Two men appeared behind Ziggy.

"Him," Ziggy said. "Asking Bunny questions."

The two men pushed past Ziggy and opened the screen door and came out onto the front step with me. The fresh popcorn smell drifted across the front law from the common. One of the men was wearing a flowered Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned over his undershirt. He pulled one side of it back to let me see that he was wearing a gun.

"Eek," I said.

"No rough stuff here," Ziggy said. "Take him somewhere."

"We could go to the fair on the common," I said.

"Look at that, Cheece," the guy in the Hawaiian shirt said to his pal. "He ain't scared."

Cheece was a thick dark man with a Vandyke beard and small eyes kept barely apart by the bridge of his flat nose.

"Yet," Cheece said.

He took hold of my left arm and started to steer me away from the front door. "We'll go around back," he said. "Then we'll see."

"Sure thing," I said and pulled my arm away. "No need to push."

I set out ahead of them toward the back of the house where my car was parked. The two of them had to hurry to stay a step behind me. At the corner of the house, I turned right, and as Cheece came around the corner, I turned and hit him full out with a right cross that snapped his head left and put him on his back. As he rounded the corner, the guy in the Hawaiian shirt reached for his gun. I caught his right wrist before he could get to the gun and pulled him toward me and turned him so that I could bend his arm up behind his back. I put my left forearm under his chin and put some pressure on his neck. Then I turned both of us so Hawaiian Shirt was between me and the house. He was between me and Cheece, too, but Cheece was just now beginning to sit up, and I knew that his chimes were still ringing. It was Ziggy and whoever else was in the house that I needed to think about now. I began to back toward my car, dragging Hawaiian Shirt with me. He didn't make a sound. As I was halfway across the driveway, I saw Ziggy appear in the back door. He looked at Cheece, who was now on his hands and knees, and at Hawaiian Shirt and me in the driveway. He disappeared from the back door for a moment and then reappeared carrying what looked like a 9mm semiautomatic, though it could have been a.38- or a.40-caliber. If he shot me with it, the difference would be insignificant. I was at my car. I kept my left forearm tight on Hawaiian Shirt's throat and let go of his right arm and pulled my own small gun. I poked it into Hawaiian Shirt's back so he'd know I had one.

"You stand right there or I will shoot you to death," I said.

I let go of his throat. He didn't move. With him still screening me and my gun still pressed against his spine, I reached behind me with my left hand and opened my car door.

"Stay right there," I said and slid in to my car and put the key in, starting the engine. From around the jamb of his back door, his body mostly screened, Ziggy was aiming at me with both hands on the gun. Still holding my gun, I put the car in drive and floored it. The car lurched forward, tires screaming with friction as they spun on the hot top driveway. Hawaiian Shirt hit the ground the minute the car moved, and a bullet thumped through the backseat passenger window of my car. I bent as low as I could as I tore down the driveway. I felt, more than heard, another bullet tear into the body of the car somewhere. Then I was out of the driveway and onto the street and gone, only a little worse off than I was before.