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.
