When necessary, one could play good cop/bad cop alone.
He sat and started to make himself a joint. His hands were shaking. The left side of his face was red where I'd slapped him. He got the joint assembled. And lit. And he took a deep, long drag on it and held it in as long as he could before he exhaled slowly. He studied the burning end of the joint for a moment. Then he leaned forward a little and put his elbows on his knees and looked straight at me.
"Daryl ain't really my daughter," he said.
"She know that?" I said.
"No."
"Tell me about it."
"I don't know all about it," Barry said. "Just the part I know about, you know?"
"Tell me that part," I said.
He took another long drag on the reefer. "Me and Emily was living in a house downtown," Barry said, "with Bunny and a couple black dudes, a guy named Abner, and a guy named Leon."
He smoked some more.
"And Abner and Bunny kind of paired off. And me and Emily got together. And Leon was mostly bringing home, you know, the harlot of the night."
The joint was gone. He made another one, calmer now, his hands steady as he talked. I waited. He spent awhile getting the joint together and getting it lit.
"So who had the, ah, fling with Emily?" I said.
"Emily had a lotta flings," Barry said. He was easy now, gliding on marijuana. "But that ain't what went down."
I nodded. Patient, but stern.
"Emily ain't Daryl's mom, neither."
Jesus Christ.
Barry knew it was headline news. He waited a moment to let the effect sink in, enjoying it. Feeling important. Feeling happy now, on his second joint.
"Tell me about that," I said.
"Abner and Bunny were going really hot and heavy," Barry said. "Her especially. She was like a bitch in heat around him."
He paused for a moment and smiled to himself, I think, remembering. I waited. He remembered.
Finally I nudged him. "Uh-huh."
He smoked some more and then came back to me. His smile was beginning to look a little loopy.
"And," he said, "anyway, he knocked her up."
"What was Abner's last name?" I said.
"I don't remember. It was a funny name."
"Dandy?" I said.
"No, man. But like that."
"Fancy?"
"Yeah. That's it. Abner Fancy. What a hot-shit name."
"And Bunny?"
"Like I tole you last time. When I knew her then, she was calling herself Bunny Lombard."
"But that wasn't her real name."
"No."
"Her real name was?"
"Karnofsky," Barry said. "Bunny Karnofsky. No wonder she changed it."
"Daryl is Bunny's daughter?"
"Her and Abner's," Barry said.
"So how did she end up with you?"
Barry grinned. A big grin, a high and happy grin. Forget about being slapped around. All is forgiven. He took a drag on his cigarette.
"Jesus," he said, his voice odd and strained as he let the smoke out through it slowly. "Where are my fuckin' manners? You wanna toke, man?"
"Thanks, no," I said. "How did Daryl end up with you?"
"Bunny gave her to us."
"Just like that?"
"Yeah. Baby was fair-skinned and, you know, Emily was dark anyway. No one was going to notice."
I walked to the door and looked out at the black Lab sleeping in the sun, on his side, his eyes shut, his tongue lolling out. I turned and looked at Barry.
"Why?" I said.
"Emily kind of liked babies," Barry said. "And, like, Bunny said she'd give us support money."
"Or her mother would," I said. "I was more wondering why she gave her to you than why you took her."
"She didn't want her."
"Any reason?"
"I don't know," Barry said. "Maybe she didn't want a shvartzeh kid. I think she just didn't want the bother. At least she didn't leave it in a Dumpster."
"Good for her," I said. "You adopt her?"
"Not really," Barry said. "But I got her birth certificate. In case anything ever came up."
"May I see it?"
"It's in a safe place."
"Safe from whom?" I said.
"Whoever," Barry said. His loopy smile had a crafty little edge to it.
"That's why the support payments keep coming," I said.
He shrugged.
"Even though she's thirty-four and gone," I said.
He shrugged again. The reefer had burned down to the most meager of roaches. He could barely hold it. Carefully, he took a last long drag on it, trying not to burn his lips.
"That's how you live," I said. "That's how you got this house. All that crap about her grandparents' insurance. You've been blackmailing Bunny for years."
"Two thousand a month ain't much," he said.
He snubbed the remnant of his reefer out in his ashtray and began to fumble with the makings for a new one.
"So she was yours for, what, six years, and then Emily took up with Leon, and then she got killed and. "
"The cops shipped her back to me, everybody thought I was her father," Barry said. "What the fuck, man, Leon wasn't going to keep her."
"You didn't need her for the blackmail scam," I said. "You had the birth certificate."
Barry shrugged. "She'd been with me for six years," he said.
I stared at him. The counterculture had always seemed Saran-Wrap thin to me. Passionate about abstraction, flaccid about human feelings. Barry was inarguably an aimless creep. But there it was. He'd taken Daryl and made some vague and nearly useless attempt at fathering her. I shook my head.
"What?" Barry said vaguely.
"Where does Leon fit in all this?"
"I don't know. He was fucking Emily for awhile, then she went away with him. Then she got killed. I don't know much about him after she got killed."
"He involved in that bank holdup?" I said.
"I dunno."
"He know about Daryl?"
"What about her?"
"Did he know she was Bunny's daughter."
"Naw. Me and Emily and Bunny was the only ones who knew."
"Abner didn't know?"
"Oh, him, yeah, I suppose."
"You know what happened to him?"
"Naw."
He had smoked himself past good feeling and was starting down the hill to depression.
"You know who Bunny's father is?" I said.
He started to cry.
"Naw, man. Shit, I don't know nothing. I never knew nothing. I never been nothing."
"Well, I guess you were Daryl's father," I said. "Sort of."
53
I was having breakfast with Captain Samuelson at Nate and Al's deli in Beverly Hills, just two booths away from Larry King. In the booth with us was a thin-faced, sandy-haired FBI agent named Dennis Clark. Samuelson said he had no reason to bring Leon downtown, and that Leon was known to be heavily lawyered, and in the current climate, Samuelson didn't want a black man's lawyer screaming publicly about police harassment.
"On the other hand," he said, "it would seem no more than courteous for us to go with you when you stop by for a chat."
"Reduces the chance that he'll shoot me, too," I said.
"I suppose it does," Samuelson said.
I had ordered scrambled eggs with onions. Samuelson had shredded wheat. Clark was drinking black coffee.
"I'm here because Epstein called me," Clark said. "We went through the academy together. He's a good agent and a good guy."
"We appreciate it," I said.
"Just remember, my presence is completely unofficial."
I nodded. Samuelson ate some of his cereal.
"We just need you to be there, Dennis," Samuelson said. "You don't have to say a word."
"Just so you know," Clark said.
"We know," Samuelson said.
"And if I swear I wasn't present, you both back me."
"We do," I said.
Clark looked at Samuelson.
"Of course, Dennis," Samuelson said. "Absolutely."
Clark nodded and drank his coffee. Samuelson sprinkled some Equal on his cereal and ate a spoonful.
"Why'd you decide to talk with him again?" Samuelson said to me. "You learned bubkes last time."
"I got the tacit admission that he knew Emily Gordon," I said.
"The broad that got killed."
"Yes."
"You knew that anyway."