"Adjusted to your environment," I said.
Anne grinned. "That would be me," she said. "Adjustable Annie. If people were eating smoked worms for supper, I'd be gobbling them right down."
"Nothing wrong with flexible," I said. "Did you know Bunny well?"
"Yes. We were both into causes. Did a lot of marches and sit-ins. Very serious. Smoked a lot of dope together, but very seriously. It was a political position to smoke dope then."
"How fortunate," I said.
"Yes. I notice as I grow older that if you have deeply felt political convictions, you can make pretty much everything fit them, if you need to."
"Yes," I said. "I've noticed that, too. She have any pet causes?"
"Mostly what we all had. The war! The establishment! The moral imperative of acid! She and I and about four other kids formed a prison outreach group. We figured all prisoners were political prisoners."
"Tell me about that," I said.
"We used to go down to Walpole two nights a week and give seminars on revolutionary politics with one of the professors."
"Whose name was?"
"Nancy Young."
"Do you know where she is?"
"Probably dead. She must have been in her fifties then. Big woman with a lot of gray hair. In retrospect, she was probably a lesbian. But we didn't think about that much at the time."
"How about the folks in charge at the prison," I said. "They didn't mind you teaching revolution to the inmates?"
"They thought we were just teaching American history. Nobody ever monitored us. We loved it. We thought we were revolutionaries. We decided to organize with some of the prisoners. Make a cell to help them when they got out or if they escaped. Like an underground railroad."
"What fun," I said.
"It was heaven," Anne said. "We wanted to help them escape, but we didn't really know how, and we never freed one. But several of them joined us when they got out. We felt so authentic, we nearly wet our pants."
"Can you remember who the prisoners were?"
"One of them called himself Shaka. We loved that. Shaka. It was so primeval."
"Can you remember his real name?"
"We would have called it his slave name in those days."
"Can you remember?"
"It was a funny name. Made me think of a comic strip."
"Abner Fancy?" I said.
"Yes, that's it. Abner Fancy. Always made me think of Li'l Abner."
"Any other prisoners?"
"There was another man, a friend of Shaka's, I think. We called him Coyote. I really can't remember his actual name. I probably never knew it."
I looked at the yearbook pictures for another minute.
"How about Emily Gold?" I said. "Any pictures of her?"
"Emily? Oh God, Emily. She was killed a long time ago. Murdered."
"Was she in your group?" I said.
"Yes. She was Bunny's best friend."
"She was in the group with Shaka and Coyote?"
"Yes."
"When did you last see any of these people?"
Anne was thumbing through the yearbook.
"Oh, God. Years. I'm a nice Irish Catholic girl from Milton. Once there were actually ex-convicts in the Brigade, I got scared. My only close friends in the Brigade were Bunny and Emily. They both dropped out of school, and I didn't. We just sort of drifted apart."
"Brigade?"
"Yes, we called ourselves the Dread Scott Brigade. D-r-e-a-d, isn't that so college kid?"
She pointed at a picture in a montage of photos.
"Oh, sure," she said, "here's Emily."
She looked like Daryl. Her hair was sixties straight, and she had the funked-out sixties look in a granny dress, but it could have been Daryl with a protest sign. The picture was too small for me to read the sign.
"And now she's been dead for. what?"
"Twenty-eight years," I said. "Her daughter looks just like her."
"She had a daughter? I didn't even know she was married. listen to me-as if she would have had to be married to have a child. God, am I middle-aged suburban or what?"
"It happens," I said. "Do you know where Bunny Lombard is now?"
"No idea," Anne said. "When I knew her, she was from the North Shore someplace. Paradise, maybe."
"When did you last see her?"
"She left in the middle of sophomore year, so 1965, I guess, probably in the winter. Why are you looking for her?"
"I wanted to ask her about Emily Gold," I said.
"Because of the murder?"
"Yes."
"I thought she was shot, like at random, by some guy holding up a bank."
"We'd like to find out who that was," I said.
"Are you working for Emily's daughter?" Anne said.
"I am."
"Jesus Christ," Anne said. "How are you going to find out a murder that happened twenty-eight years ago."
"Diligence," I said.
She smiled and shrugged. "Well," she said. "You found me."
41
It was a little after 3:30 in the afternoon when Hawk and I carefully opened up my office for a new business day. Hawk looked around the empty room. "Harvey don't show me shit," Hawk said. "I working for Sonny, you be dead now."
"You wouldn't work for Sonny," I said.
"Beside the point," Hawk said.
I opened the windows behind my desk and looked out at the Back Bay. There was a group of three young women, rigorously conforming to the current look: cropped T-shirt, low-slung jeans, and a clear view of the navel. None of the three was slim enough to carry it off. Most people weren't. I listened to my messages.
While I listened, Hawk unlocked my closet door, got the sawed-off, put it beside him on the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table, and began to read some more about evolution. I called Samuelson.
"Remember Ray Cortez?" he said.
"Leon Holton's PO," I said.
"Well, Ray appears to be a man of passionate convictions," Samuelson said. "He knows Leon is swimming in an ocean of drug money, and he seems to be getting away with it, and Ray's dying to violate him right back inside."
"I got no problem with that," I said.
"None of us do," Samuelson said. "After I got Leon's address from him, he started thinking more about Leon, and how last time Leon did time it was for possession with intent and he served nine months in Lompoc."
"Minimum security?" I said.
"It's like serving nine months at Zuma Beach," Samuelson said, "on a conviction that usually carries serious time, and even more so if it's your third strike."
"Third?" I said.
"Yeah. We got him for two, but Cortez says that Leon used to brag how he did time back there."
"In Massachusetts?" I said.
"Yep. He was bragging how connected he was."
"Back here?"
"All over. He said even if he got busted, he did soft time and not for long."
"Who's he wired to?" I said.
"I was wondering that, too," Samuelson said. "Which set me wondering why the FBI queried us about him in '75. So I called the L.A. office. I get along with the SAC. And they checked back in the files, and it took them awhile but they found it. The request came from the Boston Office."
"Evan Malone," I said.
"I'll be damned," Samuelson said. "It always amazes me when you know something."
"Me too," I said. "They know why he wanted information?"
"No. They reminded me that it was twenty-eight years ago."
"Anything else bother you?" I said.
"Like, why did they query us?" Samuelson said. "Why didn't they query San Diego?"
"My question exactly," I said.
"That's scary," Samuelson said. "Anyway, I called a guy in San Diego, and he checked into it and called me back and said they got the same query."
"Any reason?"
"None on file."
"So they weren't sure where he was," I said.
"But they thought he was in Southern California," Samuelson said. "I checked San Jose and Oakland, where I can call in favors, and they got no record of any query on Leon Holton."
"So they were looking for him," I said.
"I'd guess," Samuelson said.
"But it wasn't an arrest query."
"No. Just information."