Back Story

6

The Boston FBI office was in Center Plaza. The agent in charge was a thin guy with receding hair and round eyeglasses with black rims named Nathan Epstein. It was like finding an Arab running a shul. We shook hands when I came in, and he gestured me to a chair.

"You're the SAC," I said.

"I am."

"At least tell me you went to BC," I said.

"Nope." He had a strong New York accent.

"Fordham?"

"NYU," Epstein said.

"This is very disconcerting," I said.

"I know," he said. "People usually assume I'm from Accountemps."

He was wearing a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a powder-blue silk tie.

"I am looking into a murder during a bank holdup in 1974," I said.

"Tell me about it," Epstein said.

I told him about it.

"Why did she come to you," Epstein said when I finished.

"Mutual friend."

"And why did you take it on?"

"Favor to the friend," I said.

"Favor to a friend?" Epstein said. "The case is twenty-eight years cold. You have some reason to think you can solve it?"

"Self-regard," I said.

Epstein smiled. "So they tell me," he said.

"You checked me out?"

"I called the Commissioner's Office, they bucked me over to the Homicide Commander."

"Martin Quirk," I said.

Epstein nodded.

"You check out everyone you have an appointment with?" I said.

"I remembered the name," Epstein said. There was something very penetrating about him.

"You recall the case?"

Epstein smiled and shook his head. "Wasn't with the Bureau then," he said.

"Would it be possible for me to get a copy of the case file?"

He sat and thought about it. He was a guy that was probably never entirely still. As he thought, he turned a ballpoint pen slowly in his hands, periodically tapping a little para-diddle with it on the thumbnail of his left hand. Then he leaned forward and pushed a big khaki envelope toward me, the kind that you close by wrapping a little string around a little button.

"Here's the file," he said.

"Quirk?" I said.

"He mentioned you might be looking into the Gordon killing."

"Have you read it?"

"The file?" Epstein said. "Yes. I read it this morning. I assume you've read the BPD case file."

"I have."

"You'll find this pretty much a recycle of that."

"Someplace I can sit and read this?"

"Outside office," Epstein said. "One of my administrative assistants is on vacation. My chief administrator will show you her desk."

"Was there a time when we would have called your chief administrator a secretary?"

Epstein smiled his thin smile and said, "Long ago."

I took the folder and stood.

"I think I know what you're looking for," Epstein said.

I raised my eyebrows and didn't say anything.

"I don't know where the Bureau intelligence report is either," he said.

"The one that was supposed to be delivered to Bennati?"

"Yes."

I sat back down, holding the file envelope. "You noticed," I said.

"I did."

I sat back in my chair. "You guys gathered intelligence on dissident groups," I said.

"Some," Epstein said.

"Some? For chrissakes, the Bureau probably had a file on the Beach Boys."

Epstein smiled again. I think.

"Things have changed in the Bureau since those days."

"Sure," I said. "So do you have a file on the Dread Scott Brigade?"

"None that I know of."

"Could there be one you might not know of?"

"Of course."

"If there was one, how would I access it?"

"You'd get me to request it through channels," Epstein said.

"Will you?"

"I did."

"And?"

Epstein drummed on his thumbnail with his pen. His face was completely without expression. "There appears to be no such file," he said.

"So how come Bennati thought one was on its way?"

"That is bothersome," Epstein said. "Isn't it."