The Ophelia Cut

by John Lescroart

  It got to be around nine o’clock, and she’d had a couple of cosmos and learned more about Rick. On the positive side, he had a real job, chief of staff for Liam Goodman; he wasn’t and hadn’t been married; he was twenty-seven. Not so good was that he wasn’t wild about dogs or cats or country music, although he could tolerate . . .

  “. . . Taylor Swift.”

  “She’s not even country anymore,” the Beck said.

  “No,” Brittany put in. “She is country. She’s just not stupid country.”

  “Well,” Rick said, “stupid country is what I mean by country. Which is why Taylor Swift is okay. Because she’s not really country. Like”—he turned to Brittany—“who’s this playing right now?”

  “Carrie Underwood.”

  “There you go. Totally country, totally stupid. ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel.’ ” Rick was getting into it. “Give me a break. Drive the damn car yourself! Don’t give it to Jesus! How’s Jesus supposed to know how to drive? Does she think they had cars back in ancient Israel? I want to punch her.”

  “No punching women allowed,” Rebecca said.

  “Not unless you have to.” Rick gave the Beck a flat look, dead serious for a split second before breaking into a teasing smile, then continuing, “But country? Really? Totally LCD.”

  “How can you say that?” Brittany cut between them. “Carrie is not the lowest common denominator. To say nothing of Brad.”

  “Who’s Brad?”

  “ ‘Who’s Brad?’ he asks. Paisley? Only the best guitar player in the world? And singer and songwriter, while we’re at it.”

  “Nope. Sorry. He’s the tick guy, right? ‘I Want to Search You for Ticks’?”

  “A great song.”

  Jessup shook his head. “LCD.”

  “Blake Shelton?”

  Rolling his eyes. “No.”

  “Miranda Lambert.”

  “Please.”

  “Get out! Kenny?”

  Rick turned to the Beck. “What’s this with the first names?” Back to Brittany. “Kenny?”

  “Chesney? Hello?”

  Finally, Rick let himself grin. “Okay, beach stuff only, not bad. But that’s as far as I’m going. At least until I get another drink. And speaking of that, what’s a guy got to do to get a drink around here?”

  In the bathroom, washing her hands, the Beck said, “I’m glad neither of our dads was around to hear him say that sometimes you had to punch women.”

  “That was a joke.”

  “Really? Not the funniest one I’ve ever heard. And you didn’t pick up just a little tiny bit of condescension?”

  “Why? Because he doesn’t like country music?”

  “No. Just the general attitude.”

  “He’s got opinions, Beck. That’s a good thing.”

  “Kind of depends on what they are, don’t you think? I can’t say I’m really taken by the way he got you to order another round for us all. And you went.”

  “I’m a nice person, Beck. I went to get us drinks. Big deal.”

  “I don’t know. You combine arrogant and impatient, and okay, he’s good-looking, but he’s a politician, and I bet he’s used to getting his way. At least that’s the way he comes across. Don’t you think?”

  “I think somebody might be a little jealous here.”

  Drying her hands, the Beck turned to face her. “Get real, Brit.”

  “YOUR DAUGHTER IS beautiful,” Jessup said.

  McGuire leaned over the bar, close to the young man wearing a suit and tie on a Friday night. “She is,” he agreed. “She’s a wonderful person. How’d you two meet each other again?”

  “I’m a regular customer at Peet’s. We got to talking. One thing led to another, and here we are.”

  “So where are you two off to?”

  “That plan is still uncertain. Hopefully someplace we can talk, get to know each other a little.”

  “That’s a good start.”

  Jessup flashed a confident grin. “Gotta communicate,” he said. “That’s the key.”

  McGuire narrowed his eyes. Was the guy putting him on with this cliché? He simply nodded, saying, “Can’t argue with that.”

  “I think it’s cool,” Jessup went on, “that she asked me to come meet her down here. Say hi to her dad on night one. That’s not everybody’s first move. It’s gutsy. I like it. And no guts, no glory, as they say.”

  “I don’t know if I’m all that intimidating,” Moses replied.

  “Not you personally but the whole idea. Meeting the dad. She’s obviously proud of her family. I like that.”

  “You’ll see when you get to know her that there’s a lot to like. She’s really pretty great. But I’m her dad. What else am I going to say?”

  “You might say nothing. You might say she was a difficult kid and still is. You might say I should watch out, she’s trouble underneath it all.”

  “Nope,” McGuire replied. “I can’t say any of that. I’ll let it go with pretty great. You’ll see. And speak of the devil . . .” He nodded as his daughter and the Beck made their way back from the bathroom.

  “Nice talking to you,” Jessup said, extending his hand over the bar. “I’ll watch out for your girl.”

  SHE AND RICK were going to grab a bite before they went dancing and drank some more, although frankly, Brittany was skeptical about whether they were really going to dance, or even eat, before they went back to Rick’s place.

  Not her place. She didn’t do her place with guys.

  So they were at the Shamrock’s front door, holding hands on the way out, when her uncle Dismas showed up with this guy Tony, who was insanely off the map in terms of hot, and suddenly, Rick seemed like a kid. Next to this new guy, Rick’s coat and tie looked pretentious, forced.

  Everybody shook hands, and Brittany hugged Uncle Diz and learned that Tony was here to meet her dad and maybe work at the bar part-time. So the Beck—it turned out she knew Tony slightly from Rome Burning—would get to be here and hang out with him, and who knew where that would lead?

  There was nothing Brittany could do about it in the moment. She was leaving like right now with Rick, and it would be super-awkward, to say the least, to stick around long enough to flirt a little, let Tony know that this Rick thing was new and maybe not even happening in any serious way.

  NOW IT WAS Saturday morning and she was at Rick’s place, in bed with her eyes barely open, and he was coming back naked from the bathroom, and even as he was sliding under the sheets, she was thinking of a plan so it didn’t turn into an all-day, all-weekend kind of thing.

  He sidled up against her, and she felt his breath under her ear, and she wondered why it always seemed to be like this, where, just when you’re pretty sure you’ve got exactly what you’ve been craving, you see something else, and you want that more.

  RICK SET A nice breakfast table with a bouquet of flowers in the middle. There was fresh fruit—strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple in a large white bowl—and orange juice and delicious-smelling coffee already poured into oversize colorful mugs. Humming, he was working over the stove in boxer shorts when she came in from her shower, her hair wet, wearing a robe with a Ritz-Carlton emblem that he had given her from his closet, no doubt for mornings such as this.

  She sat at the table, sipped her coffee, picked up a slice of bacon, and took a bite. She stole a look at him, so confident in his underwear with his solid back, six-pack stomach, and ripped abs.

  He turned and caught her. “Are you okay?”

  “Good.”

  “Only good?”

  “Good is pretty good,” she said.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Me, I’m amazingly good. You know why? Because you’re amazing. Last night was amazing. This morning.” He pointed at the table. “Help yourself to anything.”

  “Thanks. I will.”

  “Eggs up in two minutes. I’m a genius with eggs, omelets my specialty. Brie and mushroom.”

  “I can’t wait.”

&
nbsp; He took a beat, narrowed his eyes. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I just said I was good. You don’t remember that?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Okay. Because if there’s anything else you’d like . . .”

  She lowered her gaze at him, said in a warning tone, “Rick.”

  “I just want to make sure you’re happy.”

  “In about one more minute, I won’t be,” she said.

  “Okay, I get it. I’ll stop.”

  “That would be the move.”

  When he set the plates on the table, he sat down opposite her, still shirtless, his confidence seemingly restored. “Double your money back if this isn’t the best omelet you’ve ever had in your life.”

  “In my life? My whole life?”

  “Ever,” he said.

  She cut off a piece with the side of her fork and took a bite. “Wow,” she said.

  He beamed across at her. “What did I tell you?”

  “A-plus,” she said, gesturing around the table. “Everything is great. I mean it.”

  They were silent as they tucked in to their food. Then Rick put down his fork, reached across the table, and touched the sleeve of her robe.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Just this. I knew we’d be good.”

  She forced a smile against a pang of guilt and what she realized was pity. Completely misreading her smile as reinforcement of his own complacent state of mind, he let his lips turn up a fraction. “So what else do you like to do?”

  “Besides . . . ?”

  And then it hit her what he was referring to, and the eggs went rancid in her mouth, and she bolted up from the table.

  “CAN YOU BELIEVE the arrogance? I mean, what else do I like to do? We have a little sex, and that’s all I like? That’s who I am? Rick Jessup can go straight to hell!”

  Brittany sat on the Beck’s bed in her dorm room at Hastings College of the Law. Brittany hadn’t been back to her apartment and was wearing the clothes she’d had on the night before.

  The Beck sat at her desk, feeling sorry for her cousin, though it wasn’t like she hadn’t tried to warn her. “Maybe he didn’t mean it that way,” she said.

  “How else could he have meant it, Beck? You had to see his face, like he was so hot and wasn’t I lucky to go a couple of rounds with him.”

  “So it’s a couple now.”

  Brittany cocked her head. “Three, if you want to get technical, but not the point.”

  “Maybe the point is you shouldn’t go home with guys you don’t know. Maybe you should get to know them just a tiny bit before you hook up with them.”

  “You’re right, you’re right. I don’t know why I let this stuff happen to me.”

  “Oh, stop. Yes, you do.”

  “I do?”

  The Beck leveled a gaze at her. “Here’s the deal, Brit. You think guys don’t like you for who you are but because you’re so damn pretty. Maybe you ought to consider leading with your other strengths.”

  A brittle bark of laughter. “Like what?”

  “Well, maybe first would be patience. That might address the problem all by itself. You say you don’t want to waste the pretty, but you’ll have it for a few more years.”

  “Okay. Except I’m not patient. It is definitely not a strength. I want everything right now.”

  “And how’s that working out?”

  Brittany shrugged. “Yeah, but what if I die tomorrow?”

  “Not a probability. Even if you did, so what? Meanwhile, in the here and now, you’re having days like this one. Is that better?”

  Brittany’s shoulders settled an inch or two. Her long hair fell across her face.

  “Are you crying?” Rebecca asked. Brittany shook her head but didn’t raise it. Sighing, the Beck got up from her desk, sat on the bed, and put her arm around her cousin. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

  Brittany leaned in to her. “I’m such a mess,” she said.

  7

  IN HER JEANS and Hastings law school sweatshirt, the Beck sat on the counter in her parents’ kitchen. Across from her at the freestanding butcher block, her mother was inserting slivers of garlic into cuts she’d made into a seven-rib roast that was going in the oven.

  “You sure you’ve got enough garlic there?”

  “You don’t think?” Frannie asked. “It’s two whole heads, at least sixty slices.”

  “I was being slightly sarcastic, Mom. Maybe you should just cut off little slabs of the meat and stuff them into the garlic heads.”

  Frannie considered. “Maybe for the leftovers. Your dad might actually like that. And by the way, he was very happy about you coming here for dinner.”

  “Which is why he was waiting here with open arms to greet me.”

  “He will be. He’s trying to be religious about this new swimming thing.”

  “Because it’s such great beach weather?” A high-pressure cold front had blown in overnight, knocking the temperature down into the forties under clear blue skies. “Why is he doing this again?”

  “He thinks he wants to lose weight, get younger, live forever.”

  “So he’s going to eat a pound or two of prime rib tonight to kind of kick off the program?”

  Frannie inserted another clove of garlic, smiled over at her daughter. “He’s still working out some of the finer details. I think the prime rib was an excuse to bribe Uncle Abe into coming over to spend some time with him.”

  “Why would he need a bribe?”

  “It’s just been a while.” She gave her daughter a look. “We’ve tried to get together with them about half a dozen times in the past few months, and they’ve always had something else going on. Or say they do.”

  “You think they’ve been avoiding you on purpose?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like they might be.”

  “Abe and Treya? Your best friends?”

  “I know. I hope not.”

  “Is he mad at Dad?”

  “I don’t think ‘mad’ is exactly the word.” Frannie hesitated, pushed in the last slice of garlic, and slapped the meat. “Your father thinks it’s got to do with the thing.”

  Rebecca’s face went slack for a second, almost as though she’d been slapped. For the first couple of years after it happened, the thing had been the elephant in the Hardys’ living room. Both of Diz and Frannie’s intelligent children had been aware of the death threats against them—indeed, the cross hairs in red Sharpie over their faces had been the proximate cause of the final showdown—and they had followed the reports of the so-called Dockside Massacre until the news had all petered out. It had never been discussed, but they all knew, and they all knew that they all knew.

  Rebecca pushed herself off the counter. “Uncle Abe’s afraid it could come out?”

  “I think that’s it.”

  “And if he avoids Dad and Uncle Moses . . .”

  “Right,” Frannie said.

  “But they’ve been friends their whole lives. Why now?”

  “I don’t think there’s any one reason, Beck. I suspect Uncle Abe just decided that the friendship was a risk. Even after all their history. He’s got young kids again. Maybe Abe is thinking that defense attorneys and cops shouldn’t be friends after all. It’s weird and wrong, somehow. Better to not have the relationship, and then there’s no reason to talk about it.”

  “But they’re coming over today?”

  Frannie’s solemn nod said she hoped so. “If something doesn’t come up.”

  SOMEWHERE JUST UNDER the surface, Dismas Hardy was aware that he was treading on a path he’d gone down before. And that earlier path had led inexorably to the tragedy of the shoot-out at Pier 70 and all of its aftermath. He didn’t know why the reverberations of that long-ago day were reappearing in his life. The situation made him uncomfortable in a way he could not define.

  With his law practice slowing down, his partners moving on to other things, his kids out of th
e house, Frannie settled in to her own work, and his best friend mostly unresponsive to his invitations and overtures, Hardy’s day-to-day was not exactly a carnival of excitement. He kept putting one foot in front of the other, but there wasn’t much in the way of surprise or delight.

  He didn’t think about it consciously. He had gotten used to the fact that this was the way life got if something else didn’t get you first. He’d had a bit of a crisis about it all when the kids were young—chafing at his responsibilities, acting out against the boredom—but in the here and now, the feeling didn’t cause that kind of existential distress. He had gotten past all that. He lived with the simple calm certainty that the big events in his life were behind him.

  It wasn’t any big deal.

  He wasn’t bored, wasn’t depressed.

  But now, suddenly and unexpectedly, it seemed he was making a new friend, as he had before with a guy named John Holiday—a friendship that had turned out disastrously wrong. That path was familiar, with warning signs all along the way. Hardy knew he wasn’t going to heed those signs, because the idea that life could still hold promise was seductive, and life was too goddamn short.

  The first time he’d gone down this road had been with Holiday, a pharmacist client many years Hardy’s junior who had turned into a friend, then—in a surprisingly short time—a good friend. Holiday had been a Tennesseean with a lazy drawl and a laid-back style, to say nothing of a general irreverence for authority that bordered on pathological.

  Hanging out with Holiday was, while fun, sometimes dangerous, especially for a married man and an officer of the court such as Dismas Hardy. Holiday drank and partied too much and encouraged Hardy to do the same. Holiday didn’t work regular hours; he’d gone into the bar business after getting his pharma license revoked. He absolutely killed women—neither Gina Roake nor Frannie nor even Rebecca, sixteen at the time, had been immune to his devilish charms.

  And now Hardy had another client who, in only three or four short meetings, seemed to be turning into a friend of sorts. Tony Solaia was even younger than Holiday, apparently equally footloose, certainly equally charming. Also killing time working behind a bar. His Brooklyn accent couldn’t have been more different from Holiday’s drawl, but it set Tony apart in the same way—he came from someplace else, and he had the air and maturity of someone who had worked at an adult day job before becoming a mixologist. Like Holiday, Solaia was glib, whip-smart, self-deprecating. Whether he represented any kind of danger remained to be seen, but there was a coiled energy in his bearing that suggested the potential for it.