“But you don’t think so.”
Moses shrugged, then sighed. “He could be anything. What I’m saying—granted, I’m old, but—is you might want to find out a little bit about somebody before you start talking about him as ‘the real deal.’ He’s a guy you don’t know at all. How can you even consider that he might be the real deal? You’re setting yourself up for disappointment, and I hate to see that. Over and over again.”
She nodded. “It’ll stop when I find the right guy. That’s what I’m going for.”
“There’s more to life than that, and I know you know this, but it’s not just all about the right guy.”
“Don’t try to tell that to Mom.”
“All right, all right, although a little unfair. Your mother and I have been very lucky.” He took in a breath, let it out. “But what about in the meantime, while you’re looking for this perfect right guy?”
“The meantime is what we call life, Dad. Sometimes it’s a little scary, sometimes there’s drama. I’m okay with that. Really, I am.”
Moses crossed his arms.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “You’re right. I’m too protective. It’s your life. You should live it the way you want to. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
At this, Brittany’s whole being seemed to relax. Her head canted to one side, and a soft smile gathered around her mouth. “I’m not some fragile Ophelia. You remember what you always used to say to us when Erica and I were younger and got upset, that line from ‘Try to Remember’?”
Moses nodded. “The one about the heart being hollow if it hasn’t been hurt.”
“Beautifully rendered, Dad. Yes, that’s the one. See what it does? It turns a little bit of hurt into a good thing.”
“As long as it’s only a little bit,” Moses said.
“Any more than that,” Brittany said, “I’d kick its ass.”
“That’s my girl,” her father replied, “but you’d have to get in line.”
3
FOR NO APPARENT reason, Dismas Hardy decided to get serious about losing a tenth of his body weight. Sixty years old, he’d always been a fair-weather jogger and occasional aerobics guy on the street or in one gym or another, but like Jiminy Cricket, he wanted to live to be a hundred and three, so he thought he needed a hard-core approach, something that could punish him and reward him at the same time.
This approach also fit his personality, which had its competitive side, to put it mildly. He had not lost too many cases in his professional career; he was an expert thrower of darts and a skilled snorkeler and scuba diver; he tended to win at chess, at poker, and at Scrabble (except against his son, Vincent, a fact that galled the shit out of him). He related to the Jimmy Buffett song “Last Man Standing”—and he often was. The private investigator he used, Wyatt Hunt, was almost twenty years younger and a jock of the first order, and Hardy always whipped him at darts and sometimes beat him at basketball and racquetball by sheer force of will.
So he wanted a challenge that would get his BMI down a couple of points, turn back the clock so he would feel the same as he did when he was thirty-five.
Not that he was worried about dying or anything.
But today he was having second thoughts about the regimen he’d decided upon. He stood on the packed sand outside the Dolphin Club, on the shore of the bay in Aquatic Park. Out in front of him, choppy green water stretched across to the breakwater about a quarter of a mile away. Buoys demarcated a swimming lane in the enclosed area.
He wore a wet suit against the fifty-four-degree water, the same temperature as the surrounding air. It was a few minutes after ten, the hour when the club opened to the public; the fog had not yet lifted.
A fit guy somewhere in his thirties appeared next to him wearing only a blue Speedo. Hardy glanced sideways, fighting down his pique at young guys in general and thinking that by no stretch was fifty-four degrees reasonable for swim trunks, but the guy didn’t appear to be suffering at all from the elements. Instead, shifting easily from foot to foot, he offered Hardy a smile. “Better not to think too much about it,” he said. “Just wade in.”
“I’d like it better if there was someplace to jump, get it over in a hurry.”
“First time?” the young man asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You were standing out here when I started getting changed. Most of the regulars, they just go for it.”
“I’m going to. I’m waiting for a command from on high.”
“Hey, don’t let me rush you. We’ve all been there. But it’s too cold to just stand here, so if you’ll excuse me.” And with that, the guy took five or six springing steps and then dove flat into the water and was off in an efficient crawl.
“Show-off,” Hardy said to himself. Then he stepped forward, gasping as the cold water came up under his wet suit. In a few steps, he was hip-deep.
He threw himself forward in a racing dive and starting swimming.
THOUGH THE YOUNGER man swam twice as many laps inside the buoys as Hardy did, lapping Hardy in the process, they finished at about the same time. Hardy, his teeth gripped to keep them from chattering, had just sat down in the locker room, still in his wet suit, when the door opened behind him and Adonis appeared again. “How’d it go?” he asked.
Hardy nodded, shook his head, nodded again. His cheeks were numb, so he wasn’t sure how much of a friendly grin he was mustering. “Could be warmer.”
“You’ll get used to it. I never thought I would, and now I don’t really even think about it. Get in, start moving, pretty soon you’re almost toasty.”
Hardy looked up with a rueful eye. “I’m a few light-years from toasty.”
“You’ll get it,” the man said, then after a moment’s hesitation, he stuck out his hand. “I’m Tony.”
Hardy took the proffered hand, a vise grip that stopped short of being intimidating. “Dismas.”
Tony cocked his head. “The good thief?”
“That’s him. The name doesn’t ring a bell with most people.”
“Yeah, well, Anthony Solaia—that’s me—I was an altar boy in first grade. I was all about the saints back then, especially Joseph and Dismas, numbers one and two to make it into heaven.”
“I always thought Dismas was first.”
“Before Joseph? I don’t think so, dude. Joseph, after he died, just waiting in purgatory or wherever they held them all that time? They had to let him in first. Besides, married to a virgin his whole life as part of the deal, never complaining, he had to have figured they owed him. He would have made a fuss.”
Hardy broke a small grin. “We’ll ask when we make it up there, get it straightened out.”
THOUGH HE’D BEEN warned, Hardy nevertheless paused in front of the address on Mission Street that his daughter, Rebecca, had given him. For all the world, it looked like another of the derelict buildings that had become so depressingly common in the greater downtown area over the past few years. What once might have been a beckoning storefront window was now painted a dull matte black, as was the front door, which yawned partially open into a darkened reception area. Hardy was thinking that this was a great spot, all right, if you wanted to get mugged.
But yes, this was the address.
While he was standing there taking in the ambience, a mixed-gender posse of seven young people appeared from around the corner and, with no hint of hesitation, pushed through the half-open outer door and entered. Hardy fell in a few steps behind them, entering the dim anteroom in time to see the last of them disappear as the inside door clicked shut.
Hardy walked over to that door, looked around, and—feeling foolish and somehow conspicuous in his business suit—knocked three times. At eye height, a two-inch-diameter circle of red light opened in the center of the door. An eye appeared briefly in the peephole, then a disembodied voice intoned, “Yes?”
“Fiddle,” Hardy said. The password.
The door clicked again
and swung open. Barely visible in the dim red light behind the door, a leather-clad, sweet-faced young man sat on a stool. “Welcome to Burning Rome,” he said. “Watch your step going down.”
It was good advice, and not entirely unnecessary, since the stairway descended into even darker blackness before a landing midway led to the next flight of stairs, perpendicular to the left. A solitary red lightbulb shone above this second stairway, casting its minimal glow onto the steps, and as he walked down, Hardy became aware of a bass line emanating from behind the door at the bottom of the stairs.
When he opened that door, to his surprise, he found himself in an attractive place. It was a well-lit, classy speakeasy rather than skuzzy garage, with a high ceiling and brick walls on all sides. A substantial dark wooden bar stretched from one end to the other; John Mayer sang through the sound system at a volume far below the assault level Hardy expected.
Hardy made his way across to where his wife and daughter sat, looking similarly lovely—two redheads in leotard tops, fitted jeans, and boots. Mother and daughter were facing each other, turned toward the bar, wineglasses in front of them, and neither saw Hardy until he appeared at the table and said, “You’ve got to love a place where you need a password to get in.” He hung his jacket over the back of the chair at the tiny table in the middle of the teeming room. “Although I think ‘fiddle’ is a little obvious, don’t you?”
Frannie leaned over and kissed his cheek, and the Beck answered, “It changes every day.”
“They really don’t let you in if you don’t know it?” Frannie asked.
The Beck’s face took on a puzzled look. “Why would you not know it? It’s on their website.”
“What if you aren’t near a computer?” Hardy asked.
The quizzical expression remained. “Then you Google it on your phone.” She put a hand on her father’s arm. “And don’t say, ‘What if you don’t have a phone?’ ”
“Okay, I grant you everybody has a phone, but what if you can’t get Google on your phone?”
His daughter looked to her mother. “He’s joking now, right?”
Frannie patted Hardy’s hand. “He’s smart in other ways,” she said.
“I’m just thinking about the hordes of poor people walking by on Mission, unable to slake their thirst for want of a password.”
“Slake,” Rebecca said. “There’s a Dad word.”
“And a fine one it is,” he said. “Maybe they should make it tomorrow’s password. Meanwhile, I’d like to order something slake-able. Do waitresses come around, or do I go to the bar?”
“Either way. The bar, though, if you want the complete experience.”
“Which is?”
“One of their signature cocktails. The mixologist here is amazing.”
“Mixologist,” Hardy said. “There’s a daughter word. Is a mixologist different from a bartender?”
“He invents drinks, Dad. Makes his own bitters, infusions, garnishes, like that. I think you’d like some of them. He does a thing with gin and bitters and basil that you would positively love.”
“Basil the herb?”
“Is there another kind?” Frannie asked.
“What if I just want a single malt or a simple martini?”
“He cures his own martini olives. They’re awesome. But watch out for the pits.”
“Yikes,” Hardy said. Then to Frannie, “We can’t tell Moses about this place. He’d go postal here in a heartbeat.”
By this time, a cocktail waitress who was only slightly prettier than Scarlett Johansson had gotten to their table and, with a devastating smile, put a napkin down in front of Hardy.
“Macallan Twelve.” Hardy, striking a blow for purism, added, “Neat.”
ON HIS WAY back from the bathroom, Hardy passed the mixologist station at the end of the bar, with its substantial line of young and even younger people waiting for service. He’d been here for only one drink, and already the crowd had thickened to the point that he could barely see through to the back wall. Someone had cranked up the volume on the sound system. The place was definitely starting to hop. Glancing over to his right, Hardy caught a glimpse of the dervish behind the rail mixing up a shaker of something, then stopped and did a double take as he recognized the young jock from the Dolphin Club, Tony.
Small town.
Crossing to his table, excusing himself through the throngs, he got back within earshot of his two women and yelled at them, “When did they lower the drinking age to fourteen?”
Then his eyes drifted back to the entrance just as the door flew open and a couple of men appeared, quick-stepping over to the nearest corner. A couple more appeared right behind them. Hardy, knowing cops when he saw them, stepped back to see what was going on. A third pair came in and headed directly for him, and for the office behind the bar.
The first IDs came out as the uniforms started through the front door. By this time, no more than seven or eight seconds after the first uniform entered, Rebecca put her hand on her father’s arm. “What’s happening? Who—?”
The question was answered for her by a fullback in plainclothes who, seeing that the cops had the people they had come in after, had stationed himself by the door. He blew a whistle that stopped every conversation in the place, then bellowed over the music, “May I have your attention, please. San Francisco Police. This bar is closed. Please stay calm and make your way to the exit.”
“STUPIDEST THING I ever saw in my life,” Hardy was saying to Frannie as he cut into his duck at Prospect, one of their favorite new places to eat. “Total overreaction, the idiots. So there are sales to minors? You wait until the bar’s closing, and you arrest anybody you want. They’re lucky somebody didn’t have a heart attack, or people didn’t think bomb or fire, or a gang of kids didn’t decide to mob them. You know how easily the whole thing could have gotten out of hand?”
“I thought it was out of hand from the beginning.”
“And you’re right.” He chewed, swallowed, blew out a heavy breath. “Pack of fools.”
Frannie put down her fork. “Can you believe how they stormed in and took the place over? You’d have thought everybody in there was a major criminal.”
“Well, see,” Hardy said, “you put your finger on it. Gateway activity. Have a drink before you’re twenty-one, next thing you know, you’re robbing a bank or kidnapping somebody. It happens all the time, as the day follows the night.”
Frannie shook her head. “I mean, as if there isn’t serious actual crime, they decide they’re going to bust kids for underage drinking?”
“We won’t stand for it,” Hardy said. “It frays the fabric of society, don’t you know? And don’t forget, they also get to close down the bar and arrest the bartenders.”
“That benefits who, exactly? Unemployment’s at—what?—fifteen percent, and this puts more people out of work. Who does that help?”
“That’s a good question.”
“I know. But really, why? I can’t believe anybody in charge of anything could have let this happen.”
“Didn’t just let it happen, Fran. Made it happen.”
“That’s plain scary,” she said. “They could have arrested the Beck if she didn’t happen to have her ID on her.”
“No, they weren’t arresting the kids, and thank God for that. The guys my heart goes out to are the bartenders. Felony conspiracy, for Christ’s sake. How are they supposed to know somebody’s underage? People get carded at the door out front when they give the password. Inside, the bartenders pour them their drinks, and guess what? The IDs are bogus. Whose fault is that? And now those poor suckers are downtown getting booked for conspiracy to sell alcohol to minors. It’s a travesty.”
“Especially with you being a bartender and all.”
“Damn straight,” Hardy said.
4
LIKE HUNDREDS OF other law entities across the country, Hardy’s firm had changed dramatically over the past few years. The commercial real estate market and all of
its ancillary parts had ceased to be a meaningful source of income, and in its wake, dozens of other businesses failed. Construction and development money, business money, money that had been the lifeblood of the firm, had almost completely dried up. From a high of nineteen lawyers four years ago, Freeman Hardy & Roake was down to seven, mostly those who did plaintiff litigation, along with a mixed bag of criminal defense, including DUIs, shoplifting, minor drug busts—bottom-rung legal work. Not helping matters was the fact that of the firm’s four original name partners, Freeman was dead; Farrell had to remove his name after being elected San Francisco’s district attorney; and Roake was pursuing a more than halftime career as an author.
That left Hardy.
And wouldn’t you know it, he often thought, the cuts in staff had not extended to his receptionist/secretary, the perennially sour, long-suffering, humorless Phyllis. She’d been with David Freeman before he’d established the firm, and there was no way Hardy could get rid of her in good conscience. Which did not stop him from contemplating new scenarios for her murder on a regular basis.
Such as this morning, when he came in at eleven-thirty after his swim and she greeted him at the elevator door, arms crossed over her chest, tapping one foot, doing her best imitation of a schoolmarm cornering a child who was unconscionably late for school.
Hardy dredged up a hopeful smile. “Good morning, Phyllis. And how are you this fine morning?”
“It’s barely still morning, sir,” she said. “Several calls have come in for you.”
“Important calls?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir. This being a law firm, people who call us sometimes want to bring us some business, and that would seem important in the general scheme of things. To me, at least. Ed Benson was one of the calls.”
Benson was the chief clerk of the Superior Court, and his name got Hardy’s attention. “Ed Benson called for me? Did he say what he wanted?”
“Something about a glut of conflicts cases that they’re trying to clear. He said he’d consider it a personal favor if you could come down to the courtroom this morning . . .” She paused, sighed, continued. “By now it’s too late for that. I left the message on your cell phone, too.”
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