"Wife died four years ago," Bennati said. "Daughter comes up from Stoughton usually once or twice a week, vacuums, dusts. " He shrugged. "Mostly it's me and Grover. I can cook okay and do my laundry."
We were drinking Miller High Life from the clear glass bottles.
"I don't smoke no more," he said, looking at the boats moving toward the harbor across the wide water below us. "Ain't got laid since she died." He drank some of the Miller High Life with an economy of motion that suggested long practice. "We done fine, 'fore she got sick." Grover put his head on Bennati's thigh and looked at him. "Watch this," Bennati said. He tilted the bottle of beer carefully and Grover drank a little. "Right from the bottle," Bennati said. "Huh?"
"Cool," I said.
"Don't let him drink much," Bennati said. "Gets drunk real easy."
I patted Grover on the backside. His tail wagged, but he kept his head on Bennati's lap. "I'm looking into an old murder," I said. "One of yours. September 1974. Woman was killed in a bank holdup in Audubon Circle."
Bennati drank the rest of his beer and reached down and got another one out of the cooler under the table. He twisted off the cap and drank probably four ounces of the beer in one long pull. He looked at the bottle for a moment and nodded.
"Yeah, sure, bunch of fucking hippies," he said. "Stealing money to save America. Killed her for no good reason."
"I read the case file yesterday," I said.
"So you know we didn't clear it." He drank some more beer. "They're always a bitch, the fucking cases where shit happens for no good reason."
I nodded. "Anything you remember, might help me?" I said.
"You read the case file, you know what I know," he said.
"I used to be a cop," I said. "Everything didn't always get included in the case file."
"Did in mine," Bennati said.
"What happened to the FBI intelligence report?" I said.
"Huh?"
"In your notes you say the FBI was sending over an intelligence report. It's not in the file and you never mentioned it again."
"FBI?"
"Uh-huh."
"For crissake, we're talking like thirty fucking years ago."
"Twenty-eight," I said. "You remember anything about the FBI intelligence report?"
"Too long," he said. "I'm seventy-six years old and live alone except for the dog, and drink too much beer. I can barely remember where my dick is."
"So you don't remember the FBI report?"
"No," he said and looked at me steadily. "I don't remember."
I took a card out of my shirt pocket and gave it to him.
"Anything occurs to you," I said, "give me a buzz."
"Sure thing."
As I walked toward my car, he took another High Life out of the cooler and twisted off the cap.
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."
7
I drove up to Toronto on a Monday morning, with the sun shining the way it was supposed to in May, and got an all-chocolate, fifteen-month-old female German shorthaired pointer, whose kennel name was Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper. She was crated when I got her, which was a sound idea given that it was a ten-hour drive home. You wouldn't want her jumping around in a strange car and causing an accident. As I pulled onto 404 north of Toronto, she whimpered. At the first rest area we came to on 401, I discarded the crate next to the Dumpster behind the food court, and Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper spent the rest of the trip jumping around in the car. Susan had said that ten hours was too long for her to have to ride on her first day, so Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper and I spent Monday night at a motel in Schenectady. Unless you are a lifelong GE fan, there's not a lot to be said for Schenectady.
Robin Hood's Purple Sandpiper slept very little and was full awake at 5:10 Tuesday morning. We pulled out of Schenectady before dawn and got to Cambridge around noon. When we pulled into the driveway off Linnaean Street, Susan was sitting on the front steps of the big, five-colored painted-lady Victorian house where she lived and worked. As I got out of the car I said "Oh boy" to myself, which was what I always said, or some variation of that, whenever I saw her. Thick black hair, very big blue eyes, wide mouth, slim, in shape, great thighs, plus an indefinable hint of sensuality. She radiated a kind of excitement, the possibility of infinite promise. It wasn't just me. Most people seemed to feel that spending time with Susan would be an adventure.