Now and then - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,34

dropped out and ended up on the street in Cleveland.”

“How long you been straight?”

“Ten years,” Red said. “No booze. No dope. It was Perry. Lotta guys thought he was just another fucking do-gooder hippie, you know? Lotta guys didn’t pay him no attention. But I could hear him. I could hear what he said and I could see it right off.”

“Did he work with some sort of organization in Cleveland?”

I said.

“Oh, Perry, yeah, sure. He always got a organization, you know? I don’t pay no attention to that. It’s Perry. He’s the one. He knows, man. He knows what’s wrong in this country. And he is not afraid to call attention to it when he sees it. They lie to us. They don’t care about us. They made up a goddamn war, to get reelected. They fucked the duck in New Orleans after the hurricane. And the country trails along behind them sucking up the handouts, doing what it’s told.”

I finished my turnover. It wasn’t a very good turnover. But the worst turnover I’d ever eaten was excellent. And this one was far from the worst.

“So you joined up with him.”

“It was like a crusade, man. It is like a crusade. Yeah, I’m with him all the way.”

“You think Perry ever killed anybody?” I said.

“Of course not,” Red said. “Perry’s all about life.”

“How about you,” I said. “You ever kill anybody?”

“No.”

“If Perry asked you to, would you?”

“He wouldn’t ask,” Red said.

“Even if the crusade were at stake, if everything you and he and others had worked for was threatened.”

“I’d do anything I had to do for Perry,” Red said. “He saved my life. My spirit, man. My spirit was dead, and Perry brought it back to life.”

“How about to get this audiotape he wants?” I said.

“I trust Perry, man. He says it’s important to us, I believe him.”

“Would you take it by force, if you had to?”

“Why not,” he said. “The culture does it to us all the time.”

“The culture is sure a big pain in the ass,” I said.

“You buy into it?” he said.

“Not in, not out,” I said. “I like the object of my emotions to have more identity.”

“Huh?”

“My girlfriend went to Harvard,” I said. “Sometimes I talk funny.”

“So you’re saying you’re on the fence,” Red said. “Too many people like that. In order for evil to triumph, you know, it requires only that good men do nothing.”

He said the part about evil by rote, like a kid reciting the pledge to the fl ag.

“Or good women,” I said.

“What?”

“Don’t want to sound sexist,” I said.

“Oh yeah, men and women.”

“Who said that thing anyway, about good men?”

“Who said it?”

“Yeah.”

“Perry,” Red answered.

“Did you know Jordan Richmond?” I said.

“Yeah, sure. Perry was dating her.”

“Was it serious?” I said.

Red grinned and made a short chug-chug gesture with his fi st.

“It was about sex?” I said.

“Perry likes the women,” Red said.

“And you?” I said.

“I get my share,” he said.

“Any idea who killed her?” I said.

“Jordan?”

“You know another woman been killed recently,” I said.

“No.”

“So any idea who killed her?”

“No.”

“How about her husband?”

“Don’t know nothing about him,” Red said.

“If Perry needed a shooter,” I said, “would he know where to get one?”

“He don’t need no shooter.”

“Of course not, but hypothetically, would he?”

Red looked proud.

“I know my way around,” he said.

“You could get him a shooter?” I said.

“I know my way around.”

I looked around the café. It was hung with Taft pennants, and pictures of Taft athletes past and present. There was a picture of Dwayne Woodcock above the big stainless coffee urns. I’d done some business with Dwayne before he went on to a big career in the NBA. I wondered what happened to him after basketball. I wondered if he could read yet, at an adult level. I wondered if he was still with Chantel. I hoped so.

“I gotta go,” Red said. “Perry likes me to be around in case there’s any trouble.”

I nodded. He stood.

“You sucker punched me this time,” he said.

“Well, for what it’s worth,” I said, “you take a good punch.”

He looked at me for a moment.

“Yeah,” he said. “Next time I’ll be a little more careful.”

He turned and walked out of the café. I sat around for a little while, drinking coffee and appraising the coeds, trying to be one on whom nothing is lost.

37.

We were in Susan’s spare room. Vinnie was asleep on the couch.

“Red did not look like so much to me,” Chollo said.

“He’s big and strong,” I said. “But he doesn’t know how.”

“Most people don’t know how,”