NINE
Kate Boyle backed her Corolla down the steep, narrow cul-de-sac in Russian Hill, hemmed in on both sides by unaffordable condoized three-story row houses, and by the equally unaffordable sedans that the condos’ techie owners and renters wedged nose-to-tail along the curbs in front of the houses.
Kate had been prowling for four blocks and nine minutes after inching past the house where she grew up, in search of a close parking space. Though the last time she had actually found a space close to home the Giants had a decent closer.
She hadn’t been up into the city from Palo Alto since the week after the funeral, and the truth, she admitted, was that she had felt relieved when she couldn’t immediately find a spot today. Because it delayed the confrontation for a couple more minutes.
Ten spaces downhill, and on the opposite side of the street, she spotted a fender twitch in her rear view and squeezed her steering wheel’s rim.
From the opposite direction, a lurking silver Beemer sprang uphill, turn signal flashing to lay claim to the space.
“Bastard!” The Beemer had her by four car lengths.
She floored the Corolla and caught a break when the exiting Maserati reversed after clearing its space. She plunged the Corolla’s tail into the void that the Maser had left, before the Beemer could get within ten yards.
After the Maser cleared out the foiled Beemer slam-braked to a stop a foot from the Corolla’s already-dented door panel.
The Beemer driver blipped down his passenger side window and screamed so loud that she heard every syllable through her own closed windows. “That shit box have a turn signal, bitch?”
Kate extended the appropriate finger, then smiled to herself and softly recited aloud what her father had said when he taught her how to drive in San Francisco. “Never signal, Katy. That’s just givin’ aid and comfort to the enemy.”
She waited, angled across the narrow street with her doors locked, until the Beemer driver bowed to the inevitable and backed away. She toed off her heels, squirmed into her Nikes, finished parking, then hoofed it. Four blocks, and every step felt uphill.
By the time she reached the house, she had to set the quiche that she had bought before she drove in from Palo Alto on the sidewalk, while she wheezed, hands on knees, and stared up at the place.
Mom had loved the house’s view out to the Golden Gate from the upper floors. He hated housework even more than he hated organized religion. But he scrubbed the windows to sparkling transparency every Sunday that Kate could remember, while Mom attended mass, and when he would have preferred to be watching the early games underway on the East Coast. Because he knew it would make her smile.
Apart from Jack Boyle’s many Neanderthal qualities, he possessed a few that his daughter admired. Foremost his unconditional and unending devotion to the few people about whom he gave a shit. That made her father unique among men. At least among all the men Kate had trusted since puberty.
But as Kate peered up today, the third-floor windows were black with grime.
Regardless, the place was distinguished by two bay-windowed stories over a one-car garage. By now, there couldn’t be more than a half dozen family homes left in Russian Hill that hadn’t flipped. If Dad ever sold, the location and view alone would draw silly-money bids from redevelopers, who would split the place into flats, then rent them to the twenty-something video game designers and app developers who were the only San Franciscans who could afford them.
After four minutes, Kate knew her pounding heart wouldn’t slow further if she shivered there ’til dark. Like she had a week after the funeral, when he pretended he wasn’t home.
She straightened, muttered, “David Powell, if you’re wrong I’ll castrate you,” then stepped to the door.
Kate balanced the quiche in one hand, rang the bell with the other, then held the quiche between both hands, chest-high in front of her. Less as a peace offering than to finesse the awkward moment. Dad didn’t hug.
The door opened, and he stood there looking the same, mostly. Same pilled, unbuttoned cardigan. Same thick brush of gray hair. Cut the same short length as it had been when short hair mortified one’s daughter. Less paunch than a sixty-something man was entitled to. But the eyes that always twinkled at the sight of her were dull, unlit stones.
She extended her offering.
He snorted. “Quiche?”
“Eggs. Ham. Cheese. Pie crust. You loved Mom’s.”
He tilted his head back, read the label through his bifocals, then snorted again. “Mom’s wasn’t organic and gluten-free.”
“Dad, those are dietary positives.”
“Those are code for ‘cardboard.’” He stood aside from the doorway, then sighed. “Put it on the dining room table.”
“On top of the pizza boxes or under them?” When she passed she smelled alcohol on him, old newspapers, and something thick in the air that may once have been cheese. And Holy Christ there wasn’t a square foot of table or counter not piled with clothing, magazines, or dishes. “Okay. We’re skipping the quiche.”
“Fine. Scotch doesn’t need embellishment.”
“No scotch.”
“What?”
“We’ll go out for pie. When I was little you used to take me out for pie.”
“There’s no pie in San Francisco since Bepple’s closed.”
“Bepple’s closed in 1993.”
If a man mourned a pie store for twenty-seven years, how long could he mourn the loss of half of himself? When David Powell had told her that he thought her father was ready to reconnect with her and with the world, she had expected a delicate, painful journey. She should also have expected that on the journey she would have to drive the bus all by herself. “Find your coat, Dad. It’s four blocks to my car.”
“The Ford’s in the garage. I’ll—”
“You’re half-bagged. The fresh air’ll do you good.”
* * *
Kate and her father stood, hands in coat pockets, in the pie shop on Mission. They stared up at the overhead menus while the aroma of the pies, arrayed in the old-wood glass cases to their front, and of strong coffee, drifted across them. This place had been to her and her friends as, she supposed, Bepple’s had been to him. How long before the Hispanic family that ran it were displaced by a glass box filled with people who could pay sixty bucks for a reindeer moss salad?
Jack read aloud, then snorted. “Vegan Avocado?”
The counterman smiled. “Señorita?”
“The Pear Raspberry with brown rice crust.” She jerked a thumb at Jack. “He’ll have the Dutch Apple.”
“Only if they’re free-range apples.”
Kate sighed and raised two fingers. “And black coffees. Extra large.”
Once they sat, Kate’s father inverted his first forkful of pie as though he expected to find scorpions crawling its underside, then tasted and raised his eyebrows. “Not bad. Not Bepple’s.”
“Dad,” She closed her eyes, opened them, “Nothing will ever be Bepple’s again. But the world’s still got good pie.”
He grunted, cut another bite.
She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about the funeral.”
“You?”
Of course not me. “I should have pushed harder to let Kirk deliver the eulogy for you. You know, he debated for Harvard. And you hadn’t passed beyond the anger stage of grief. People understand it’s hard for a spouse to hold it together.”
“Kirk the Jerk? He never even met your mother.”
“True, he never did.” And also true you turned out to be right about Kirk, whose fidelity didn’t match his rugby shoulders and his velvet tongue.
Jack said, “And I held it together.”
“You did. Mom was a practicing Catholic and you’re agnostic but—”
Jack pointed at her. “But we made it work! You’re the living proof.” He sipped coffee. “I just expressed my doubts. It was no time to lie.”
Oh God, it was exactly time to lie.
Kate nodded anyway. “Dad, there may be a time and a place to debate the proposition that religion was invented by extortionists to peddle afterlife to suckers who couldn’t deal with their loved one’s deaths. In front of two hundred Catholics and Mom’s sister the nun wasn’t it.”
“Oh?” He pointed at the ceiling. “You believe your mother’s sitting on a cloud listening to this conversation?”
Of course not. I’m your daughter. I’ve grown up just as cynical and secular as you are. Except I’m Mom’s daughter, too, so, I dunno. And it’s too soon, far too soon, for the two of us to talk about Mom. “Dad, neither of us needs to get into that right now.”
“You know that priest?”
“Father Alvarez? The one you turned to at the pulpit and called a lying mackerel snapper?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “I didn’t call him a pedophile, for chrissake!”
“Oh. Full marks for restraint there, Dad.”
He pointed at her again. “You didn’t get that sarcastic tongue from your mother!”
“Well that narrows it down.”
“Did you know that hypocrite came to the house the week after the funeral? To forgive me because we all say things we don’t mean in times of stress.” Jack Boyle scrubbed his eyes with his paper napkin, then wrung it as though squeezing out nonexistent tears. Then he rolled his eyes again. “And to thank me for the twenty thousand your mother left them.”
“And that pissed you off?” She felt her cheeks burn. You opened your door to someone you considered a pedophilic hypocrite, but not to your own daughter?
“When he came in he looked around and nodded and said Marian and I had created a beautiful, loving home.”
Father Alvarez must have arrived before the mozzarella in the pizza boxes turned black.
“Wow, Dad. What an awful thing for him to say.” Kate rolled her eyes. She hadn’t realized until this conversation how often her father did that. Or where she had picked up the mannerism.
Jack pointed at her again. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young lady! Your mother’s twenty grand wasn’t enough for the snappers. They expect me to leave the house to them instead of to you. Don’t you get that?”
What I get is you’re the only person left in this world I can count on. Or at least you used to be. And we have a long, long bus ride ahead of us to get back to that place. And in the meantime I need a subject change before I lunge across this table and choke the crap out of you.
She tasted her pie, chewed, swallowed. “David Powell got my managing editor to cut me loose on indefinite special assignment. To research a bio piece about Manuel Colibri. On condition that you help.”
“You do see what David’s doing? He’s manipulating us both. This special investigator business is crap. There’s nothing special here to investigate. He just wants his Eagle Scout badge in family counseling.”
“Speak for yourself. Dad, Cardinal Systems is the mysterious black hole of the industry I cover. And Colibri built Cardinal. But people know even less about him than about the company he built.”
“Well, he’s not going to build it any bigger. He’s old news.”
“No. This could be the kind of story I got into journalism to write. I can feel it. It could be a steppingstone that would get me back to where I left off at the Post. You know what I write now? Profile pieces about millionaire computer geeks whose idea of hardship is acne. If I’d known, I would’ve gone back to Washington after Mom…” Christ, you just said we weren’t going to get into that. Kate sucked in a breath. “Dad, I’d eat dirt to write this story even if—”
“If what?”
“Dad, I’ll put it this way. If this assignment was algebra story problems I’d still do it,” her eyes moistened, she blinked, swallowed, “to get our life back. I miss Mom, too, Dad. But now I miss the way you were even more.”
Kate watched her father stare into his empty coffee cup and her heart pounded while she waited for a reaction.
“Algebra? That D you got in Algebra II was a gift to you from Mrs. Walker. So you’d graduate with your class. She showed me your grades. The final didn’t bring them up to passing but she gave you extra credit for coming in for tutoring.”
“You never told me that.”
When did you start digging boots out of the memory locker, then kicking your only child with them? This may be hopeless.
“Of course I didn’t tell you that. That’s the point. I wouldn’t tell Willie Mays he was a lousy violinist, either. You already had early acceptance at Columbia. All you needed was to graduate. I swear I didn’t ask her to pass you. She thought you earned it.”
“Oh.”
“Your gift was journalism.” He looked up and smiled. “Still is. I read your column every week. Every word. Three times. Haven’t found a single one that needed changing yet.”
“You never told me that, either.”
His eyes glistened. “Should have. Just did.” He swallowed. “You really want to write this article, then?”
Kate nodded. “Not just want to. Need to. Bad. You didn’t put me through Columbia so I could leave the world the same.”
“And you only get to write this article if I throw in with you?”
She nodded again. “That’s David’s deal.”
Jack shook his head. “You may need this aggravation. But I don’t.”
Kate’s heart skipped. “Yes, you do, Dad. Even worse than I do.”
He stared down at the crumbs left on his empty plate. Then he patted both palms on the tabletop, looked up, grinned, and for that instant his eyes shone like they had on sunny Saturday mornings when he dragged her out of bed for swimming practice. “So, where do we start, Katy?”
Her throat swelled and she bit her lip. You haven’t called me Katy since…
Kate looked down at the table top and blinked back tears, then looked up. “Where do we start, Dad? Depends. What do you already know?”
“About Cardinal? I don’t even know why they call it Cardinal. It sounds like they sell bird feeders.”
She smiled. “Cardinal actually didn’t start as an information systems company. And that certainly isn’t all it is now. It was founded by Frank Cardinale. He was a boat radio repairman down on Fisherman’s Wharf, kind of an eccentric loner. In the mid-sixties he started his own business on a shoestring to manufacture a fish finder he’d patented. But he was afraid Americans wouldn’t buy a complex electrical product from an Italian so he dropped the e from the company name. He must have been right, because fifteen years later he’d built Cardinal Systems into the powerhouse of marine electronics, without going public.”
“I thought Colibri was the rags-to-riches story.”
Kate nodded. “He was Cardinal’s second rags-to-riches story. ’Til the eighties, all people remember about Manuel Colibri is this quiet little guy who knocked around the waterfront doing odd jobs. Then he landed a full-time position as a janitor’s assistant at Cardinal. The legend is that Colibri worked hard, worked smart, and Frank Cardinale identified with Colibri’s humble beginnings. As Frank aged, his mental acuity diminished, and he gradually passed control to Colibri. By the time Frank died, Colibri was running the place. Colibri immediately sold the marine electronics business. He reinvested the proceeds buying new assets and new ideas all over the Silicon Valley almost before people started calling the valley that.”
“Smart.”
Kate shook her head. “Nobody thought so at the time. Smart entrepreneurs risk other people’s money looking for the next big thing, not their own. But a trillion dollars later, everybody thinks Colibri was a genius for staying private and self-funding. Self-funding meant that when a bet paid off, the payoff was bigger. And nobody knew how big the payoff was, or what he’d reinvest the payoff in next. And everything he invested in next seemed to turn out to be the next big thing.”
Kate’s father laid down his fork, narrowed his eyes. “David mentioned this ELCIE. That people thought it had to do with what Colibri was betting on next.”
Kate pushed back her chair and nodded. “That is what people thought. That’s what I still think. And that’s the kind of story problem I’m good at, Dad. Based on my instincts and training, I vote we start with a visit to ELCIE.”
Jack stood, then stared at the display case. “I vote we start with a cherry pie to go.”