The Ophelia Cut

by John Lescroart

  But so what? Goodman would protect him.

  Except apparently not.

  Rick had underestimated Jon Lo, certain that Liam would protect him in any dispute with the Korean gangster. He never thought that Lo or his women would dare protest. But Lo had complained, and worse, Liam had sided with him.

  Which led to the question: who needed whom?

  In the not so olden days, Rick and Liam would often get out of work early and repair to some bar for the evening. They’d gone to Giants and 49ers games together, barbecued at each other’s places, done some profitable deals with elements that were perhaps not entirely kosher. Although they had not been actual partners, Rick had been privy to Liam’s secrets, plotting and strategizing, growing the business, the Goodman brand.

  And now, somehow, much of that seemed to be threatened. This underage-drinking sting was propelling Liam into a trajectory over which Rick would have little if any influence. Rick could envision Lo recommending one of his own people to take over day-to-day operations of Goodman’s staff.

  And then what would happen to Rick?

  What he needed to do was remind his boss that the two of them were bound at the hip, mostly through one of their early endeavors that they called the Army Business. It had turned into Goodman’s major source of revenue, accounting for nearly $2 million in billings over a four-year period.

  They’d hatched the scheme one day after Rick mentioned an acquaintance of his, a woman in the army stationed at Camp Parks across the bay, who had recently returned from Afghanistan, pregnant and nearing her term. Army policy did not send pregnant women to war zones, and this woman’s hope was to get pregnant again soon after her delivery so she could avoid returning to the active theater. She had a six-month window.

  The only problem she had was that her husband did not want another child.

  As it turned out, Liam knew a wealthy couple who were having trouble conceiving. They were looking for a surrogate mother to carry their baby. They would be willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars for the right person. But they were leery of the type of woman who would agree to do this. They wanted assurances that the price was fair and that, once consummated, the deal would go through as planned. Basically, they thought they’d be much happier and more secure if they had a lawyer on board. If the whole process could get vetted.

  Within a month, Liam had contacted all the parties and brokered this first deal, acting as middleman. He pocketed four fifths of the fee—less Rick’s finder’s cut of three thousand dollars—and gave the remaining twenty thousand to the surrogate mother, who was only too happy to get a small percentage because she wasn’t doing it for the money but so the pregnancy would keep her safe at home.

  It was a sweet deal all around, the only drawback being that it could be construed as a conspiracy to defraud the United States government, since the army was not only paying the active-duty female soldier but covering all of her pregnancy-related medical expenses as well.

  Over the next few years—driven entirely by word of mouth in the city’s toniest neighborhoods—Liam and Rick found and provided thirty-two army surrogate mothers for desperate wealthy couples. Lately, with the drawdown of troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the market had all but dried up, but by this time, Jon Lo’s businesses and friends had stepped into the breach in terms of campaign contributions and billings, and Goodman’s political career had been well launched.

  Rick’s hangover was gone. And so would be this morning’s problems, his sense that his job security was in doubt, as soon as he found an opportunity to remind Liam about some of these less than savory aspects of his early career and rise in politics.

  It wouldn’t be blackmail. Rick’s reminder wouldn’t be threatening. The message would be clear and simple—Liam’s secrets were safe as long as Rick kept his job.

  Satisfied that he’d come to an elegant solution, Rick stepped out into the reception area, turned left, and knocked on Liam’s door.

  THE RAIN STARTED falling hard just after lunchtime.

  Brittany, at her own request, was at the back counter at Peet’s. Normally, she preferred the serving counter up front because it made the day go by more quickly. Today she wanted a way to duck into the back room if Rick came in.

  She didn’t think he would. He’d probably be cool and leave her alone. She’d made it clear that she didn’t want any more to do with him. But his phone calls over the weekend had made her wonder—he might be a big enough jerk to come in.

  By the time the lunch rush had petered out, Brittany figured he’d gotten the message, so she wasn’t prepared when there he was, standing at her counter, looking hopeful and pathetic with his wet hair and his dripping raincoat. Clueless, he started right in. “Hey. I just wanted to tell you in person that I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said the way you thought. It just came out wrong.”

  “Yes, it did. Do you want some coffee? Because otherwise I’ve got work to do.”

  “I want to see if we can try again.”

  “I’m not going to discuss that here. I’m at work.”

  “I see that. Can I call you later?”

  “I’d prefer not.”

  “This isn’t fair.”

  “It seems fair to me. I really can’t talk now. I’d like you to go.”

  “I just don’t know what I did wrong.”

  “That was obvious.”

  “But I want to explain.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Really. Nothing. Now you need to go, or I’m going to call my manager.”

  Rick put his palms on the counter between them. His face was gray. Rainwater dripped from his hair. “Listen, I’m begging you here. This isn’t right. Just give me a chance.”

  “I gave you a chance.” She looked away from him, up to the front counter, and raised her voice. “Mitch!”

  She’d told her manager what she was worried about, and the large black man stepped away from the espresso machines and was by her side, in Rick’s face. “Is there a problem here?”

  Rick said, “I need a minute. One minute, that’s all.” He chuffed out a breath. “I . . . need . . . to talk . . . to this woman.”

  Mitch gave him a flat glare. “She isn’t interested. Are you interested, Brittany?”

  “No.”

  “There you go. Crystal-clear.”

  Rick leaned in. “Listen, I—”

  Mitch cut him off. “You listen, pal. It would be best if you left right now. Brittany, go on in the back room and take a break.”

  When she’d disappeared, the two men stared at each other.

  Rick wiped his hand over his face. “This isn’t over,” he said. “I could have you shut down, you realize that?”

  “Oh, you’re one of the important ones, are you? You work at city hall?” Mitch unholstered his cell phone. “Let me just call 911 and see if the cops who come know who you are. You want to find out? They come in here every day, so they already know who I am.”

  Rick removed his hands from the counter, flipped Mitch off, and turned for the door.

  “Have a nice day,” Mitch said to his back.

  “I COULD JUST have him whacked.” From behind the Little Shamrock’s bar at seven o’clock on this blustery Monday night, Tony Solaia smiled into the fathomless eyes of Brittany McGuire. “You go to the right part of town, the going rate is around a hundred bucks. One good night’s tips. Or you could have a crackhead do it for bus fare.”

  “You know the rate to have somebody whacked? That’s a little worrisome.”

  “Bartenders know everything,” he said.

  “That’s what my father always says.”

  “He’d know, wouldn’t he?” He pointed at her wineglass. “Are you good?” he asked. “Because I’m making the rounds.”

  “I’m good.”

  She watched him move down the bar, schmoozing, pouring drinks, laughing, a man in his element. Brittany knew how tough a taskmaster her father could be, especially around his baby, the Little Shamrock
. Moses tolerated neither sloth nor slovenliness in his bartenders. He demanded perfection first in drink making, then in pricing, the temperature of the water in the rinsing sink, the shine on the glasses, the right type of glass for each drink. God forbid a customer’s glass got to empty before the bartender or that night’s cocktail waitress offered a refill.

  She marveled—it was little short of a miracle—that Tony Solaia had shown up here for the first time last Friday and now was behind the bar working. It hadn’t hurt that Uncle Diz had made the introductions.

  He was coming back to where she sat. “Seriously, are you worried about this guy?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Which one? Not really, or no?”

  “No, I guess. He was more pathetic than anything else. He just didn’t get that I don’t want to see him again.”

  “I can see how that could make a fellow sad.”

  “Well . . . thank you. Anyway, I think he got the message today. I don’t think he’ll be back. We won’t have to whack him.”

  “Have him whacked,” Tony corrected her. “You don’t whack somebody yourself, although you could. Generally, you have them whacked. It’s way cleaner.”

  9

  SUSAN WEISS HAD a sunroom at the back of the three-bedroom Irving Street top-floor apartment she and Moses had raised their kids in. The girls had named it the Fog Room, and the room’s door sported a wooden plank with that name burned into it by some hippie signmakers up in the foothills. Susan, second cellist with the San Francisco Symphony, spent a good portion of her time back there, in rare tepid sunlight or, more frequently, cocooned in fog, teaching her instrument to students ranging in age from four to seventy-one.

  Aware of the rule of the universe that cell phones ring in the middle of every lesson, Susan had turned off the sound on hers. But when the phone vibrated in the middle of Ben Feinstein’s solo, she took it from her breast pocket and, giving it a glance, tried to suppress a frown.

  Her daughter Brittany. More drama.

  Susan was sure Brittany knew that Ben’s lesson was on Thursdays at four. That was when she’d met him a couple of months ago. Susan also knew—it was hardly a secret—that something romantic had gone on between them for a few weeks and that it had ended badly, especially for Ben, whom Susan adored and secretly wouldn’t have minded if Brittany had fallen in love with.

  But, of course, Brittany being Brittany, that didn’t happen.

  Now here she was, calling in the middle of Ben’s lesson. Probably not a coincidence, and very unfair to the poor young man, especially if, as Susan suspected, Brittany was playing him along, luring him back for a week or two before tiring of him and dumping him again.

  Susan loved her daughter, sometimes to distraction, but this behavior with guys made her crazy.

  Ben stopped playing in the middle of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. “Is that important? Do you need to take it?”

  Susan sighed. If she even mentioned Brittany’s name, that would be the end of Ben’s concentration for today. In the immediate wake of the breakup, he’d canceled his next two lessons. Susan had to call him and cajole him back into his routine. Life would go on, she had told him.

  And now Ben was trying to let it do just that, and her daughter called.

  She shook her head. “Looks like a sales call,” she said. “Now, where were you?”

  Ben played sixteen bars before the house phone rang in the kitchen. He stopped playing again as Susan held up both hands, certain it was her daughter one more time. Very few people knew the landline number, and everyone understood that lesson hours were off-limits. Calling first the cell phone and then the home phone was a familiar strategy for Brittany, allowing her to get her way and be heard even if it was inconvenient for everybody else.

  “I’m sorry, Ben,” Susan said, standing up, frustration oozing out of her. “This might be important. I won’t be a minute.”

  She got to the phone on the third ring, saw that it was in fact Brittany’s cell number, and picked up. “Maybe you don’t remember that I give music lessons in the afternoons,” she whispered with asperity. “Can this possibly wait?”

  Her daughter’s voice was a whisper, fragile as glass. “Mom?”

  The one syllable told Susan that something was seriously wrong. All the anger leached out of her. She felt a wave of vertigo and had to put a hand down on the counter to steady herself. “What’s the matter, babe? Are you all right?”

  “Not really,” Brittany said. “I’m not too good.”

  “Where are you?”

  “St. Francis Hospital,” she said. “The emergency room.”

  THAT NIGHT, SUSAN sat at her kitchen table, ignoring the cup of tea she’d made for herself five minutes before. She ran her hand down the back of their black cat, Fuji, who had jumped up on the table as soon as she sat down and now, all stretched out, purred like a generator. A fitful, wind-driven rain pattered against the west-facing window.

  Her husband’s footsteps sounded in the hall. She straightened up, although the events of the day had left her feeling beaten down and bone weary. She was reaching for her teacup as Moses appeared in the doorway. “She’s down and out in drug land. Thank God for Vicodin.” He motioned at the stove. “Is the water still hot?”

  “Should be.”

  Susan watched him cross the kitchen, put a tea bag in a mug, and pour slowly from the kettle. They kept a small jug of honey on the counter, and Moses lifted the hand-carved wooden dipper and held it over the mug, letting it drip, then placing the dipper back in the jug. He got out a spoon and stirred with studied deliberation.

  A gust threw a torrent of rain against the window. Susan jumped a little, but Moses didn’t react in any way.

  “Mose. What are you thinking?”

  He let out a breath that he seemed to have been holding. The spoon tinkled against the mug as he kept stirring. “Nothing.”

  She said, “It just took you two minutes to fix yourself some tea.”

  “It was a difficult cup to get right.” He lifted it to his lips, blew on it, took a sip. “And worth all the effort.” He sat down across from her.

  “Are you worried?” she asked.

  “About whether she’s going to be all right? No.”

  “It looked pretty terrible.”

  He shrugged. “Head wounds bleed. They look scarier than they are.”

  “Also the bump.”

  “Yeah, but no concussion. And no stitches, so no scars. She’ll heal up.”

  “So what are you thinking about?”

  “How it happened.”

  “Well, we know—”

  He held up his hand and stopped her. “We know what she told us, that’s all.”

  “You think she lied?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  “What do you think happened?” she asked.

  Moses tapped his fingers against the mug. “Her story is that she’s talking to this guy and she realizes she’s going to miss her bus, so she runs and slips on the wet pavement, falls, and bangs her head.”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe not so right. How did falling give her two separate head injuries? And why is one such a big bump? It’s a goddamn Ping-Pong ball. A bump like that—I’ve got some experience, you may remember—something flat hit her head. The sidewalk, a building. And where did she get the scratches on her face? Also, did you notice that she’d lost the top two buttons on her raincoat?”

  “No. I never looked.”

  “You can check any time you want. The coat’s in the closet. They’re gone, but the thread’s there, like the buttons got ripped off.”

  “So, a couple of buttons? They popped off when she fell.”

  “Popped off? All by themselves? Then explain about her arm.”

  “What about her arm?”

  “She couldn’t stop rubbing her left arm, high up.”

  “I thought she was cold.”

  “It could have been that,” Moses conceded. “But when
I was back in there, I pulled the blanket down and checked. There’s an obvious black-and-blue bruise.”

  Susan sipped at her tea. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I want to talk to this guy who disappears, leaving my daughter bleeding on the sidewalk.”

  Susan’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, my baby,” she said.

  Moses nodded. “Just sayin’.”

  MOSES WALKED IN the rain the seven blocks to the Little Shamrock, where Tony Solaia was turning into a godsend. Moses had called Tony as soon as he got the call from Susan about Brittany being in the ER. The young man had driven down on his motorcycle and shown up at the bar within fifteen minutes, ready and even eager to pull another shift.

  Moses had told Tony that he could shut the place down early if he wanted, but at the moment, fifteen visible customers were contributing to his livelihood, with maybe a dozen more throwing darts in the back. Standing outside for a last perverse second, he watched Tony behind the spotless bar, drying glasses to a high shine.

  When he stepped inside, Moses hung his waterproof beret and his raincoat on the old-fashioned wooden rack by the front door, then took an open stool. Tony came down and took his order—club soda—after which some regulars came over, asking about Brittany.

  “She’s fine,” Moses found himself repeating. “She slipped and fell down. She’s going to be all right.”

  When they’d all gone back to their places, Tony came down across from him. “So how is she really?” he asked.

  “Sleeping. Drugged. Pretty banged up.”

  “That must have been quite a fall.”

  Moses crossed his arms and exhaled. “I’m trying to keep an open mind. Not jump to conclusions. I keep trying to picture it, and it won’t come into focus, at least not the way she described it. She’s running in the rain, she slips, she falls on her face. She doesn’t put her hands out to stop her fall?”

  “What do you think?”

  Moses ran down the scenario he’d described to Susan and finished up by saying, “I need to have a talk with Brittany.”

  “You think she’s covering for somebody?”

  “That kind of follows from the rest of what I think, doesn’t it?”