Go-Between

by Lisa Brackmann

  “So, Gary,” Sam said when she’d finished. Then silence. She waited.

  When it was clear that he wouldn’t speak first, she asked: “Is there anything you can do?”

  Another pause. “What does Gary want?”

  She felt the acid churn in her gut. This was what she’d wanted to avoid. “I don’t know, revenge?”

  Sam chuckled softly. “Is there something he wants you to do?”

  She was afraid to tell him the truth, but she couldn’t come up with a good enough lie.

  “So you know Gary,” she said.

  She listened to the silence on the other end of the line. He wasn’t going to answer. “I’m afraid if I tell you that he’ll find out,” she finally said. “And that you won’t be able to protect me.”

  “A legitimate concern. But Danny told you to call me, didn’t he?”

  She couldn’t say what she wanted to. Which would have been something like, “Yeah, and he also thought that smuggling pot into Texas was a great idea.”

  “Gary wants me to take a personal assistant job,” she said. “For a woman named Caitlin O’Connor. She has a nonprofit called Safer America.”

  She thought she heard the clicking of a keyboard, but she couldn’t be sure.

  “Interesting. And what did you tell him?”

  “That I’d do it.”

  “All right.” Another pause. “We’ll work with that, then.”

  “What does that … what do you mean?”

  “Just that you’re cooperating, that’s all. It gives us a few different options. Negotiation. Compromise.”

  She didn’t believe him. She’d been around these people enough now that she knew there was almost always a hidden agenda. Another option. “Or something else?”

  “Perhaps.” If she could have seen his face, he would have been smiling. She was sure of it. “For now, just go along with him. Let’s keep this conversation between the two of us. I’ll do some fieldwork, and we’ll see what makes the most sense, how we should play this.”

  “What about Danny?”

  “I’ll work that angle too. Find out who else aside from Gary might be backing the charges, if I can. See what can be done.”

  After that, Michelle drove to Evergreen.

  She still had a restaurant to run.

  Joseph, the executive chef, the guy who’d designed the menu and the recipes, was working tonight. She didn’t expect that he’d be working there much longer. The line cooks had learned his recipes, and one of them, Guillermo, was a natural talent who was coming up with ideas of his own. Joseph was getting bored, she could tell, and was ready to move on to the next project, maybe a bigger place in another town, maybe his own restaurant, though she doubted he wanted to take that step. He was a hired gun, and she’d known that from the beginning.

  Which made him the perfect person to talk to now.

  Six o’clock. The early dinner crowd had drifted in, the ones who came for happy hour, half-priced wine by the glass tonight. All the bar seats were taken, and between that and the tables, two-thirds full, Matt was having a busy night.

  “Emily, hi!”

  Helen, her head waitress—not an official title, but that was how Michelle thought of her—waved from the back of the restaurant. She worked more hours than anyone else on the serving staff. Helen was in her late twenties and had dropped out of Humboldt State a year ago. Michelle hadn’t asked why. It wasn’t any of her business, and anyway, someone shares something with you, sometimes they want an exchange of confidences in return.

  What she knew was that Helen worked hard, that she was smart and reliable.

  Michelle headed in her direction.

  “Everything going okay?”

  “Yeah, you know,” Helen said with a shrug. “We missed you.”

  “That’s nice of you to say.”

  Helen stood her ground. Clasped her hands together. She was stocky, brown skinned and freckled, her caramel-colored hair done up in two braids that swirled around her ears like elaborate cinnamon rolls.

  “Seriously. We’re running low on some produce, and it’s like, we can still get it if we switch up our suppliers, but I don’t know, I’m thinking it might be time to adjust the menu.” She suddenly seemed embarrassed. Twisted her clasped hands. “Somebody just needs to decide.”

  “Okay,” Michelle said. “Thanks.”

  She went into the kitchen.

  Joseph was there, working on the finishing touches of a salmon dish; Copper River, she thought. She caught a whiff of the fish through the general smoke and chaos of the kitchen and suddenly realized how hungry she was. Had she even eaten today?

  “Hey, Emily,” Joseph said, glancing at her for a moment, then returning his attention to the garnish.

  “When you can, would you take five and meet me in the office?”

  He paused for a moment and actually looked at her, his expression some combination of concerned and annoyed. Maybe he thought she was about to fire him.

  “Nothing bad,” she said with a quick smile. “Just some business.”

  Someone had been watering her plants, at least.

  She sat down at her desk, booted up her computer and logged onto the restaurant’s receipts and inventory system.

  Receipts were connected to the registers out front, so it was fairly easy to see how business had been in her absence. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  Inventory and expenses were a different matter. As much as she wanted to standardize it all, different vendors had different ways that they liked to do things. You could have one artichoke grower at the farmer’s market who used an iPad and then a winemaker who only took cash or checks and wrote out all his receipts by hand.

  And of course, the restaurant did a lot of cash business as well. Pot dealers like Bobby tended to have an excess of it.

  “Shit,” she said aloud. Bobby. He had to know by now that something had gone very wrong on Danny’s run. What should she do about it? What made the most sense?

  A perfunctory knock on the door. Joseph entered without waiting for her response.

  He really is kind of a prick, she thought. But a lot of chefs were like that.

  “Hey.” He came over to her desk, pulled the guest chair beneath him, the legs scraping the battered linoleum floor, and sat. He was a big guy, in his thirties, curly red hair, big belly, big, thick hands that were scarred from knives and grills and hot oil.

  “How’s it been?” she asked.

  “Good.” A shrug.

  “Glad to hear that.” She hesitated. How to put it? “So I imagine that you’re getting ready to move on,” she said.

  Joseph’s head canted back and he frowned, like he was surprised that she was that perceptive. She supposed that was understandable, given Emily’s cover story: a hobbyist with money to burn (thanks to her boyfriend in the pot trade; “Jeff’s” sideline was pretty much an open secret in town, or at least a well-trafficked rumor) who’d decided to buckle down and get serious about her dream of owning a restaurant. Which wasn’t that far off from the truth, really, except for the “dream of running a restaurant” part. It was more that she’d had to do something, and a photography business or gallery hadn’t seemed like much of a moneymaker. And she did know about food. About wine. About how to create an atmosphere. She’d hired a consultant to help set the place up, to teach her the basics, but he’d left a couple of months after the opening. “You don’t need me from here out,” he’d told her. “You’ve got a knack for this business.”

  Who knew?

  “Yeah, well, things run pretty well,” he said. “It’s a good group.”

  “That’s good to hear.” Again, she hesitated. Then plunged ahead. “Because the thing is, I’m having a family situation. An emergency. That’s why I had to go out of town. And unfortunately … it looks like it’s going to be dragging on for a while.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” He actually did seem sorry. He looked down at his lap, at the grease stains on his apron, maybe. “Parent?
”

  “What?”

  “You know.” He shrugged. “Aging parent.”

  It was as good an excuse as any. “Yes. My dad.”

  He shook his head. “Fucking drag.”

  “Yeah.”

  Joseph shifted in his chair. She didn’t know much about his personal story, next to nothing, really, but this seemed to be an issue that had some resonance for him. Might as well play it, she thought.

  “We’re not a big family,” she said. “And there really isn’t anyone else in the position to help. So, it’s pretty much landed on me.”

  “I know how that goes,” he muttered.

  She nodded. “So I’m going to have to be out of town a lot for the next few months. And what I was wondering was, if you’d be willing to … take on a little more of a managerial role while I’m gone. I’ll pay you for it.”

  Now Joseph looked alarmed. “The paperwork and stuff, it’s not really my thing.”

  “I know that,” she said quickly. “I mean as an executive chef. For the administrative end, I was thinking about promoting Helen. She seems really organized to me, and like she has a sense of the big picture.”

  The truth was, Helen already was a de facto manager during the times that Michelle wasn’t there. She did everything but the accounting, and there was no reason that she couldn’t do that as well, at least do enough of it to keep things running for the next few months.

  “Yeah,” Joseph said slowly. “Yeah, she’s good.”

  “We’ll need to find another server. Do you know anyone?”

  “I can find someone,” he said.

  She’d called Sam. Had Evergreen squared away, to the extent that it could be.

  One thing left on her to do list.

  Bobby.

  As it turned out, she didn’t have to go looking for him. He leaned against the end of the bar, having a glass of wine, holding up the goblet and checking out the red’s legs.

  “Hey, Emily,” he said.

  “Bobby.”

  He could have someone at the airport. Someone in the restaurant. A customer. A busboy. The bartender. And it didn’t have to be sinister. Just, “give me a call when Emily gets in, okay?”

  “You have a few?” he asked.

  “Sure. Let’s take a walk.”

  No way she wanted to have this discussion inside Evergreen.

  Fog dripped onto the flagstones of the plaza, and someone had hung a large red bra from the outstretched arm of the McKinley statue. Double D?

  Bobby adjusted his Kangol hat low on his forehead. Michelle zipped her fleece up to her chin.

  “So, I guess Jeff ran into some trouble,” Bobby said.

  Michelle nodded.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s doing okay.”

  “Does he … I mean, do you need anything, or, is there something I can do … ?”

  Can you get him out of jail? she wanted to ask. “Not really.”

  Bobby paused at the foot of the statue. It was a quiet night on the plaza. The fall term hadn’t started yet. A group of homeless men, passing around a paper bag. A couple of tweakers, a guy with a neck tattoo and a woman with sunken cheeks and skeletal limbs. A few knots of college kids who lived in town kicked a hacky sack around, and a violinist dressed in a 49ers hoodie played a concerto—a famous one, but she couldn’t remember what it was called. No one seemed to be listening.

  “Look … Jeff does me a solid, I’ll do him one. You know?”

  “No, I don’t know,” she said, irritated. A “solid”? Who talked like that, other than a frat boy? And Bobby was somewhere in his fifties. “What are you saying, exactly?”

  “Just that he stands up for me, I’ll stand up for him.”

  “And what, what does that even mean, you’ll stand up for him?” she snapped. “What can you actually do?”

  Bobby glanced around. Made sure no one was in earshot. “I’m not tied to any of it, okay? I mean, whatever he says, there’s nothing to back it up.”

  “He hasn’t said anything. Jesus.”

  “I know, I know,” Bobby said quickly. “Jeff’s a standup guy, no worries about that.”

  “If you’re not worried, then what’s this conversation about?”

  He readjusted his cap once more. Michelle fought the urge to knock it off his head.

  “Just checking in. Making sure we’re on the same page. Because there’s some guys who’re pretty pissed off they didn’t get their delivery. They’re gonna want to take it out on somebody. So we need to stick together on this. Right?”

  He stared at her a moment, his eyes unusually steady behind his round tortoiseshell glasses.

  “Right,” she said.

  Chapter Nine

  She booked an extra day in San Francisco. She needed a break between the obligations that she had in Arcata and the craziness she’d committed to in Houston.

  Also, she needed to do something about her hair.

  She’d always worn her hair shoulder length or longer. “Don’t cut it,” Tom had murmured, twining her hair in his fingers. “Don’t ever cut it.”

  “You have such great hair,” everyone had always said.

  The problem was, the last thing she needed was her face turning up on CNN or whatever, her standing at the shoulder of Caitlin O’Connor looking exactly like the Emily that people knew back in Arcata.

  Changing her hair wasn’t foolproof, but at least it might discourage people from looking twice.

  “I’m thinking short,” she told the stylist who stood behind her chair, the two of them staring into the three-sided mirror. “And maybe we should have some fun with the color.”

  “You want to just go for blonde? I mean, obviously fake blonde.” He framed her face with his hands. “I think you could pull it off.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Oh, I love the hair!”

  Michelle smiled and twitched a shrug. “I figured it was time for a change.”

  “Change can be good, or so everybody tells me.” Caitlin laughed. “I don’t know, I’m pretty sure they’re full of shit. Change is overrated, in my book.”

  As before, Michelle had met Caitlin in the Great Room. It was just after 4 p.m., and Caitlin had a bottle of chardonnay on ice. She looked to be on her second glass.

  “I guess it depends,” Michelle said. She’d been ready to leave Tom, at the end, or so she told herself, but who knew if she actually would have gone through with it? When the change had finally happened, she hadn’t had a choice.

  She thought about Danny. “I’ve had both good and bad,” she said.

  Danny being both.

  Caitlin poured a fresh glass of chardonnay and held it out to Michelle.

  “Thanks, but I should probably get settled in first.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Caitlin waved like she was shooing off a fly. “We can start tomorrow. I don’t have anything going on till that fundraiser in … I think it’s Los Angeles. But it’s not till next Tuesday.” Her brow wrinkled. “Or maybe Wednesday?”

  “I’ll make sure to check.”

  She’d gotten into Houston yesterday. Rented a car at the airport. Gone to the corporate housing Porter had recommended, on the outskirts of River Oaks but still only a ten-minute drive to Caitlin’s house. The rental office was sleek, soothing, a large room that resembled a community center at a condo complex, with tall ceilings, fabric-draped walls highlighted by sconces, a coffee urn and water with lemon slices, and a large salt water aquarium.

  She’d picked the smallest, cheapest unit available. One bedroom. Second floor. Two easy points of entry, the front door and a window close to it. She’d have those wired with a cheap alarm system. Nothing that would stop a pro, but it might surprise someone who didn’t expect it.

  The apartment was furnished with industrial upholstered chairs and a love seat done in rust and hunter green. The back window overlooked a main street, which in the direction of Caitlin’s house was lined largely with oaks and
the backs of estates. Then, at the intersection where her complex was, it shifted to a mix of businesses: restaurants, realtors, a florist. From her window she could glimpse the sign for a “gentlemen’s club” called The Zone Erotique.

  Was there any zoning in Houston, she wondered?

  Think of it as a hotel room, she told herself. That’s all it really is.

  After that, she’d gone to the AT&T store to get a new phone, and a new number. Michelle could have a real phone now, though she’d have to be careful with it. Anything other than a burner, anything attached to a regular account, with GPS, with useful apps, Gary could easily track.

  I need to buy more burners, she thought.

  “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can help you with today?” Michelle asked Caitlin now.

  “No, I don’t think so, hon. Come on by tomorrow morning, and I’ll make sure someone’s here from the office to help you get set up on the computer here, and bring you over a laptop for the road. Make sure we get our calendars in sync.”

  “All right.” Probably for the best. She needed to do some shopping, buy bedding and a coffeemaker and a few other things for the apartment.

  Michelle took a last sip of her chardonnay. Too bad she shouldn’t finish it. Much better than what Caitlin poured the last time.

  “Then tomorrow afternoon, there’s the board meeting. You don’t have to come to that if you need some more time to settle in.”

  Board meeting. Michelle felt a prickling down her spine.

  “Would … am I allowed to attend?”

  “Well, if you want. We have them every other week or so. I don’t attend every time, to be honest.” Caitlin laughed briefly. “They’d rather do them without me, I’m pretty sure.”

  “It feels like a good way for me to get a better sense of what you’re doing, how things work,” Michelle said. “But if you have things you’d rather have me do—”

  “No, of course not—if you want to go, well then, I think you should.” Caitlin sipped her chardonnay. “Just be warned—there’s lot of talk that generally doesn’t lead to much.”

  “Consider me warned. But I’m actually really excited to have the opportunity.”