SEVEN
Jack Boyle had beaten the crowds, and sat alone at the skinny four-top farthest from the Buena Vista Cafe’s wood and glass double main doors. The café’s interior formed an L-shape, with the doors angled across the apex where the L’s legs joined. The L’s long leg paralleled Beach Street, and squeezed age-darkened wood tables between a tile-fronted bar along the inside wall and arched windows along the outside. Beyond those windows cold rain wept, as it had for days.
Jack had chosen the table not in order to avoid the damp drafts that would whistle in as the exiting brunch diners held the doors open for the entering lunch crowds. Though the older he got, the colder and wetter San Francisco winters seemed.
He chose this table because it was the one that he had cleared for the fragile, alabaster-skinned redheaded girl who had sat there, quiet and alone, while she read her Fodor’s guide.
Marian had ordered Irish coffee even though everybody did, and laughed at his crappy jokes even though nobody did. And she had waited ’til he got off that night because when he carded her, and noticed that it was her birthday, he had asked her to dinner.
He looked away from the rain, stared down into his second neat scotch of the morning, and didn’t move until somebody bumped against the table.
Without looking up, Jack lifted his glass. “Again. And a menu.”
The waiter didn’t budge. Christ, the staff here had gone all the way to hell in forty-two short years.
Jack glanced away from his glass far enough to realize that the person standing alongside the table wore a topcoat, not a waistcoat. Cashmere, at that.
A grey-gloved hand withdrawn from the coat’s pocket pointed at Jack’s neat scotch. “What? No Irish coffee? You know, they invented it here.”
Jack kept his head down. “I know they invented it in Ireland. So do you. Christ, David. What’re you doing here?”
David Powell tugged off leather gloves as thin as cocktail napkins and pocketed them. “Pleasure to see you, too, Jack. Mind if I sit?”
David Powell slipped off his coat, folded it across the back of an empty chair, and sat down opposite Jack.
“Apparently I don’t.”
A waiter materialized, neat and smiling, reset the table for two, then gathered Powell’s coat to hang and stood by silently.
Maybe not all the way to hell.
The kid peered down as Powell looked up. Fifty-eight, imperially slim, with silver hair brushed back to frame a tan, unlined face, David Powell looked the patrician he was.
David pointed at Jack’s glass, then at the empty spot in front of himself and held up two fingers. Then he brought his palms together, pantomiming a menu being read, and cocked his head at the waiter with a smile.
The kid nodded and disappeared.
“Still a man of few words, I see.”
David shrugged. “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug. Mark Twain said that.”
“He said San Francisco weather’s crap, too. So what brings you out in it?”
“You do. My office has been calling your home and leaving messages for days. Not a word back. And you don’t even have a mobile number anymore. My admin asked me whether you were antisocial.”
Jack shrugged. “Lack of a smartphone doesn’t make somebody antisocial.”
“True. What makes somebody antisocial is pigheaded cynicism. When I interviewed you thirty years ago, phones were dumb but you were already a pigheaded cynic.”
“Then you should’ve told me to fuck off thirty years ago.”
David smiled and shrugged again. “I figured your intelligence and work ethic would be worth the aggravation. They were. They still are. Jack, problem solvers are like words. The right one’s hard to find.”
The kid returned with scotches and menus.
They drank the scotches, they ate omelets. They talked about the shitheads who still protested at every hospital wing dedication and fund-raising ball that David paid for, even though he spent a smaller percentage of his net worth on personal consumption and a larger percentage of it on charity than any busboy, accountant, or cardiologist in San Francisco. They talked about the Powell Gallery’s new Impressionist exhibit. They talked about how the Giants needed better short relief and about Wall Street’s speculation on why Powell Diversified was sitting on far too much cash. It was, Jack realized, the longest conversation he had had in two years, and the first time in two years that he had laughed.
Finally, the kid brought coffee, cleared the table, and David grabbed the check.
Then he rested his elbows on the table, leaned forward, and frowned. “Jack—”
Jack rolled his eyes, puffed out a breath. “If Mark Twain’s the one who said there’s no free lunch, it was right after you picked up his check.”
David raised his palm. “Hear me out.”
Jack sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“Jack, have you heard about the Manuel Colibri business?”
Jack rolled his eyes again. “Christ, David. I read the papers front to back every morning. I just don’t read them on a tiny little phone.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You know I didn’t take it like that. The bridge is fixed. The bomber’s dead. His neighbors even adopted his goddam dog. They got new windows free from HGTV. Everybody’s happy except the billionaire looking up from the bottom of the bay.”
David’s frown deepened. “That’s what Maureen Dunn told me, too. I disagree.”
“With the mayor?”
“With everybody, apparently. Jack, I didn’t know Manuel Colibri well, or for very long. Nobody did, apparently. But he seemed better than just some billionaire. You know the rumors about Cardinal and life-extension research.”
“I don’t. Why the hell would somebody with my life care about extending it?”
David blinked, then said, “And killing Manuel Colibri at what amounts to an ELCIE rally’s just too coincidental.”
“Don’t know about that either.”
“And the story ties up the loose ends just too tight.”
Jack metronomed his head. “Maybe I am skeptical when a story’s too good to be true. But police departments have professionals for that. They’re called detectives.”
“Maureen says her detectives are too busy to chase conspiracy theories. And so are the feds.”
Jack snorted a laugh. “You want me to play detective?”
“No. I want you to solve a problem. When you lawyered for me, every time I gave you a poorly drafted contract or an insoluble problem you didn’t let go ’til you choked the shit out of it.”
Jack waved his hand. “That was my job.”
David raised his index finger. “I’m only asking that you do that job one more time. Just look into Colibri’s murder. Your hourly rate will be Pullman Hartwell’s current senior partner rate, plus twenty percent—”
Jack shook his head. “Which was rapacious even when I was reviewing their bills. I don’t need the money. Or your charity.”
“Thought you’d say that. I’ll send the money to a charity that does need it. You choose one, or I can choose for you.”
“I choose you to butt out of my life.”
“Jack, I’ll pay any costs you incur. I’ve already talked to Maureen Dunn. She’ll appoint you a special investigator. She’s promised you’ll get government cooperation anytime you need it, even from the feds. If you find something, we turn it over to the authorities. It’s that simple.”
“No. Contract law is simple. Outwitting embezzlers who try to steal money from a man who’s got too much of it is simple. Exposing a murder conspiracy? That’s hard. Especially an imaginary one.”
Jack stared up at the saloon’s ancient tiled ceiling. Like most of this planet, it was older and wearier than he was. But every day the age gap seemed narrower. “David, what part of ‘I quit’ did you misunderstand two years ago?”
“Jack, you never quit anything in your life. You don’t know how. You just needed time.”
Jack let his mouth drop open, then wagged a finger. “Ah! This isn’t about justice for your new, dead friend. It’s about rehabilitating a withdrawn widower who’s been drinking his lunch lately.”
Powell lowered his voice. “It’s about helping an old friend. Who is very much alive. I know you. And I never knew a couple closer than you and Marian were. But you’re like a shark that drowns if it stops swimming, Jack. It’s time to reconnect with the world.”
Jack shook his head. “I read the news off paper. I still drive a car that doesn’t talk, with a carburetor I can adjust.”
“Jack, this Luddite posturing of yours merely announces that you’re stubborn.”
Jack said, “I’m not a Luddite. I’m a paranoid. I turned in that damn iPhone when I quit. Those phones are spies.”
“The Fourteenth Amendment protects us against government spying. Apple stopped building spying capabilities into iPhones years ago. That’s one reason we started using iPhones. And why would a commercial enterprise bother? Anything they want to know about a customer the customer will happily tell them in exchange for a free latte. Jack, we’re getting off track.”
“Not really. David, the longer we talk, the older I get. I’m too old to reconnect with the world you want looked into.”
“Perhaps. But you don’t have to do it alone. You’ve got an expert right in the family. Who’d be happy to help, if you let her.”
Jack’s jaw dropped. Then he slapped the table with one hand so hard that coffee erupted from his cup, while he stabbed at Powell with the other hand’s index finger. “That’s not helping, David! That’s meddling!”
“Kate didn’t think it was. She said you two haven’t spoken since the funeral.”
“I told you. I can’t answer a smartphone I don’t have.”
“What about that antique of a landline you do have? And is your mailbox carnivorous? Kate says when you wouldn’t answer the phone, or respond to the messages she left, or even the doorbell, she sent you letters. And they came back marked ‘undeliverable’ in your handwriting.”
“The funeral wasn’t my best day.”
“I recall. So, I’m sure, does the priest. And everybody else who was there. You don’t think Kate would understand and forgive you that?”
“Of course she would. Kate is her mother’s daughter. She’d forgive a germ for giving her a cold. But I don’t forgive me that. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fair enough. Put it behind you. Put the whole terrible business behind you. Kate’s ready to, I’m sure. But Jack, Kate’s the closest thing to Marian left on this Earth. You need her. And she needs you, perhaps even more. If you love her, don’t shut her out.”
Jack swallowed and the lump that grew in his throat made his voice croak. “You had no right to speak to my daughter without my permission.”
“She’s a grown woman who I’ve known since she and Marian sold me Girl Scout cookies. And I don’t need your permission to speak to a columnist for a magazine that Powell Diversified has advertised in for years.”
“Yeah. Well. Fuck off. Both of you.”
David nodded. “Exactly the reasoned, articulate initial response I’m used to from you.” He slid back his chair and stood.
Jack waggled his hand. “Maybe I’ll think about it a while.”
“I’m used to that, too. How long a while?”
“How much scotch is left in San Francisco?”
As David stepped past he patted Jack’s shoulder and whispered, “Give my very best regards to Kate.”
The kid waiter reappeared with a towel, lifted Jack’s overturned cup, and sopped up the spilled coffee. “This mess’ll be gone in a second, sir.”
Jack watched through the window as David Powell’s Bentley pulled in to the curb, picked him up, then disappeared into the rain.
“No. No, this mess is just getting warmed up.” Years before, in still, cold darkness above the North Atlantic, when David and Jack had shared the cabin of a Powell Diversified jet homeward bound from London, David had confided that he saw the world as a vast, multidimensional chess game.
Jack had smiled and asked whether, if it was, David was always six moves ahead of everybody else. David had stretched, yawned, then said, “Usually eight.”
Jack had no doubt that Kate would show up on his doorstep soon enough. He dreaded that moment. Yet he ached for it, too.
The kid nodded, smiled, and left Jack Boyle alone to boo-hoo about an immutable past that shouldn’t have turned out that way and a lonely future in which the only sure thing was a hole in the ground. But then, he thought, who had anything else?