“You know who it was?”
Moses shook his head. “I need a scorecard to keep up with her nowadays.”
Tony seemed about to say something.
“What?” Moses asked. “You know something?”
“Not really,” Tony said. “Let her tell you, if there’s anything to tell.”
AT TWELVE-THIRTY, TONY went home, and now, near one, Moses sat on a stool at the far end of the bar. He’d locked the door fifteen minutes ago. Outside, a steady, wind-driven rain continued to strafe the windows. Every minute or two, a lone vehicle would go hissing by on Lincoln. Inside, the only meager light came from a sixty-watt Tiffany lamp on a low table set in the back.
He spun a half-empty glass of ginger ale in front of him. On the bar next to his glass was the Shamrock’s shillelagh, a two-foot length of iron-hard Kentucky ash with a fist-sized knot at one end and a leather thong at the other, that Moses had used several times when mediating melées in his career as a publican. It was a formidable weapon of persuasion. He had no actual memory of having lifted it from the place where it hung behind the bar and bringing it with him out front.
His mind seemed to be jangling with white noise.
Somebody had, at the very least, manhandled his daughter. The more he thought about it, the more obvious it was. But her assailant was someone whose identity, in her misguided wisdom, Brittany was choosing not to reveal. Moses had a feeling that Tony might know who it was, but he wasn’t talking, either.
The inchoate knot in the center of his gut that had accompanied his dawning recognition of what actually happened to Brittany had flowered into a black rage that was threatening to consume him.
Some cowardly punk had hurt his daughter badly enough to send her to the hospital.
He kept having to fight down images of Brittany as a helpless baby, his baby now in pain, with her lovely face swollen, bloody, and battered.
In his younger and even not so younger days, back when he’d been setting some drinking records, Moses had not let his Ph.D. in philosophy keep him from being a serious brawler. His nose was permanently disfigured from all the times it had been broken. He still worked out with a heavy bag a couple of times a week to keep up his hand-eye. As a teenager, he’d fought Golden Gloves; he knew how to handle himself in a fair fight. If your pleasure was street fighting, he could kick and gouge and jam elbows and knees. If a target presented itself, he’d even been known to bite.
Anything to win.
Now he wanted to fight as badly as he’d ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted to pound flesh, to smell copper-fresh blood, to crack bone.
His breath came in ragged gulps.
He would have a drink, goddammit. He needed a drink, and it made perfect and absolute sense. What had he been doing, denying his true self for all these years? He was an avenging angel, in a pure and righteous rage, and he wanted a drink.
He went around the bar and took down a bottle of the Macallan from the top shelf. He free-poured to the lip of the glass, then brought it up to his nose to smell it.
God.
The power of the smell slowed him for a second and, the Scotch untouched, he set the glass next to the shillelagh and stared at it.
For a moment, the fury subsided.
He knew who he was. He was Saint Augustine, bringing a concubine to bed so he could deny himself sex with her and thereby, upon conquering the temptation, please the Lord.
Just pick it up and swig it down. Feed the rage. Be who you are.
His hand reached for the glass.
Instead, he grabbed the shillelagh. With an inarticulate roar, he brought the heavy club across in a wild sweep, breaking the glass and sending its shards and the whiskey out into the room. Every swing punctuated by profanity, he brought down the head of the shillelagh time and again with all his might, smashing it against the bar. Again and again and again.
Until, at last, he was spent.
He let the shillelagh fall to the ground. He gripped the edge of the bar, his body sagging with exhaustion, his breathing that of a horse that had galloped to the absolute limit of its endurance.
10
HARDY HAD TWO seating areas in his office. The one in front of his desk was formal, with a Persian rug on which two Queen Anne chairs flanked a lion’s-claw mahogany coffee table. The other, off to the side and taking advantage of the corner windows overlooking today’s blustery Sutter Street, consisted of two brown leather chairs and a matching love seat.
The office door closed behind Moses McGuire. He stood for a moment, taking it all in. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here,” he said.
“Sure you have.”
“I think I’d remember. It’s pretty fancy.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
“I’m not sure I do. If I were a client, I’d be worried that you were charging me so you could buy this kind of furniture, keep up appearances.”
“If you were a client,” Hardy said, “you’d be worried about going to prison, and you wouldn’t give a damn about the furniture. You’d be thinking you didn’t want a cot and a toilet for the next twenty years.”
“There’s that, too, I suppose.” Moses glanced around again. “So where do I sit? Is there a protocol?”
“Whatever makes you more comfortable. Meanwhile, you want some coffee? Water? Anything?”
“I think I’m good.” He eased himself down into one of the leather seats. “Now I’m better. And where do you sit?”
“Same as you. We’re all about equality here. You sit where you want. I sit where I want. Like here.” He sat in the other leather chair. “What’s brought you down here for the very first time? You don’t look so good.”
“I didn’t sleep much last night. I was having a wrestling match with the devil.”
“Who won?”
“I think I did, but it was close.” Moses cleared his throat, looked around some more, came back to Hardy. “I wanted to ask if you could lend me Wyatt Hunt for a day or so.”
“You need a private eye?”
“I don’t know for sure. I’d like to talk to him and see.”
Hardy sat back in some surprise. “You can get Wyatt any time you want. He doesn’t work for me exclusively. What do you want him to find out?”
“Who beat up Brittany.”
At once, Hardy’s face hardened. He sat forward in his chair. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday.”
“How bad is it?”
“She’s banged up but okay. She’s back at our house, in bed.”
“Conscious, right?”
“Yeah, in and out of sleep. They gave her some pain meds.”
“But you’ve talked to her?”
“Oh, yeah.” Moses raised a hand. “And I know what you’re thinking: why don’t I just ask her who did it? Well, I did. Nobody hurt her. She fell down, that’s all. That’s her story, and she’s sticking to it.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“Let us say I am certain beyond a reasonable doubt.” Moses shook his head. “I want the son of a bitch thrown in jail, Diz. No, that’s not true. What I really want is to beat the shit out of him. Failing that, I’d settle for him spending some time in the slammer.”
“I don’t blame you. But if Brittany’s not going to testify, you realize that’s not going to happen, right?”
“I’ll talk her into it after she thinks about it a little more. She’s smart. She’ll give up wanting to protect him.”
“When that happens, she’ll give you his name, so you won’t need Wyatt. But maybe it’s not about protection,” Hardy added. “Maybe she’s afraid of him. Have you thought about that? In either case, protection or fear, she won’t help with any prosecution, and you still won’t have a name.”
“That’s why I want to borrow Wyatt. Just to find out who he is.”
“And then what? If Brittany won’t ID the guy.”
“Then I go to Plan B. ‘B’ as in ‘beat the shit out of him.’ ”
“Good idea, Mose. Then you get to go to jail.”
“Bullshit. I’m justified. Worst case, I’ll pay a fine and get back to my life.”
“You know when I just said ‘Good idea’? That was sarcastic. I meant it’s a bad idea. You know why? Because depending on the damage you do, you could go to prison for years, which—grizzled old man that you are—you don’t have to spare.”
“I don’t think so. He’d have to testify against me, and you want to talk about fear? I’ll put the fear of God in him.”
Hardy chortled. “And because of your vast experience with the law, you’re sure that’s the way it’s going to happen?”
“It’s worth the risk.”
“No,” Hardy said. “It’s really not. I understand the anger, and it would be good to get Brittany to press charges if you can. If you can’t, you’ve got to let it go.”
Elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him, Moses let his head fall, then slowly raised it to meet Hardy’s eyes. “The reality is, I want to kill him, Diz. I mean literally, whoever it is, I want to end his life.”
“I get it,” Hardy said. “I don’t necessarily blame you, but let’s not say those words out loud, all right? That’s just anger talking.”
His eyes glassy, Moses blew out a long breath. He pointed at his face. “This is anger,” he said. “She’s my baby, Diz. My beautiful little baby girl.”
“I know,” Hardy said. He reached out and rested his hand on Moses’s shoulder. “I know.”
BUNDLED UP IN hiking boots, jeans, and a fisherman’s sweater under his Giants jacket, Moses wandered around in the downtown mist for an hour, then stopped into Tadich’s for some sourdough and cioppino at the bar. After leaving Hardy’s office, he’d come to the conclusion that his brother-in-law was probably right. If he couldn’t get Brittany to identify her attacker and press charges, then there was no point in trying to find him.
Hardy was certainly correct in warning him off any direct intervention. That could easily backfire, could cause Moses all kinds of problems, including jail, especially if he involved anyone else, any potential witness against him, such as Wyatt Hunt or Hardy himself.
Half finished with his lunch, he took out his cell phone and called his wife. She picked up on the second ring.
“How’s she doing?”
“Okay. She’s sitting up with me now in the kitchen, having some chicken soup.”
“How’s she look?”
“Good.” With false brightness, Susan was clearly framing her end of the conversation for Brittany’s benefit.
“Any change in her story?”
“No. It’s about the same.”
“Can I say hello to her?”
“Sure. Just a sec. Here she is.”
And then his daughter’s voice, husky and weary. “Hey, Dad.”
“How’s my girl?”
“Better. Still a little tired, but okay. Couple of days, I’ll be good as new.”
“You can stay with us as long as you want, you know.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“So, listen, Britt. Do you remember anything more about how it happened?”
“Not really, Dad. It was just all so fast. Running and then slipping and then banging my head.”
“How’s your arm?”
“My arm?”
“Your left arm. I noticed you had a big bruise on it when I tucked you in last night. Has that been there a long time?”
Brittany hesitated. “I don’t know. I think it’s okay.”
“You don’t remember how you hurt it? Maybe you fell on it before you hit your face.”
“I don’t remember, Dad. It’s all right now, anyway. I’m okay, just sore.”
It hadn’t been anything like a real conversation, but Moses played it through again and again, listening in his memory for anything like a false note. The only time he detected a weakness was when he asked about her arm. Maybe he should have been more straightforward, calling her outright on it, ordering her to tell him. But she was in a fragile state, and he didn’t want to add to her distress.
Hardy, again, had nailed it. She was either protecting this asshole or she was afraid of him. From the first minute Moses had questioned Brittany’s story and thought seriously about what had happened, he had assumed it was the former, but now, with a rushing sound in his ears, came the idea that the guy might constitute a continuing threat.
He might hurt her again!
Moses had not raised his daughters to meekly forgive someone who might hurt them. Both of his girls were independent and strong-willed. He would have thought that Brittany, particularly, would not be inclined to protect someone who had abused or hurt her. If anything, she would fight back, turn the guy in to the police, let justice take its course. But if she was afraid that he would hurt her again, perhaps more seriously, then he could envision her deciding that the better part of valor would be to let the whole thing pass. To Moses, the man who had beaten Brittany now not only had to be punished, he had to be given a message about the future in no uncertain terms.
His brow furrowed, his eyes in a steely squint over a tightly drawn mouth, Moses sat with his fists clenched on either side of his cioppino bowl.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
The elderly tuxedoed bartender slowly came into focus in front of him.
“Sorry?”
“Is there something the matter with the cioppino?”
“No, it’s delicious. Perfect, as always.”
“Pardon me for asking,” the bartender went on, “but you didn’t look like you were enjoying it.”
“I’ve got a few things on my mind.”
“Of course. Certainly. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“No bother. The cioppino’s great. You know, on second thought, maybe it could be improved on.”
“And how is that?”
“Let me take a look at your wine list, and I’ll let you know.”
HE STOPPED AT two glasses of the house red, proving to himself that he was in control. The idea that one glass always and inexorably led to binge drinking or to unconsciousness was ridiculous, and he had just proved it. He hadn’t had a drink in six years, and now he’d had just two drinks in six years, an average of one drink every three years, if he wanted to do the math.
He drove his car from Union Square down to Van Ness and found the impossible—a convenient parking place—not a block from Brittany’s coffee shop. The lunch rush was well over, with no line at the counter. He introduced himself to one of the workers as Brittany’s father and asked to speak to the manager.
Mitch came down from the back room and out into the customer area, where the two men shook hands. Mitch asked, “How is she? We miss her already. She’s a true ace of a person. I’m sure you know that.”
“We like her pretty much ourselves,” Moses said. “She says she expects to be back working in a couple of days.”
“That’s what she told me. So what happened? She says she slipped and fell, running for the bus, and banged her head.”
“That’s what she says.”
Mitch cocked his head to one side. “And yet here you are, her father, just stopping by—what?—to make sure we got the message that she wasn’t coming in?”
“No. Not quite that.” He paused. “I’m not sure I believe she fell. I wondered if anybody here, any of your workers, might have seen what happened.”
“The bus stop’s two blocks down.”
“Right. I know.”
“My point is, I don’t think anybody saw it from here, or could have, even if we were looking for it.”
Moses stood, somewhat baleful yet imposing, waiting for more. And it came.
“You don’t think it was an accident,” Mitch said.
“I don’t know. As you can see, I’m looking into it.”
“What else would it be?”
“An assault.”
Mitch’s eyes narrowed. “She dumped a guy last weekend, you kno
w that? He came in a couple of days ago, tried to talk to her, got a little belligerent. I had to throw him out.”
“You got a name?”
After a moment of reflection, Mitch shook his head. “I’m afraid not. But Brittany told me where he works and what he does.”
MOSES TRUDGED UP the wide marble steps of the ornate main staircase under the dome in the rotunda of city hall, a few blocks from Brittany’s coffee shop. The setting was elegant and majestic, often used for political photo opportunities. At the moment, from Moses’s perspective, his stomach churning and his blood high, the place had a surreal quality. A formal wedding was taking place off to the far right—he half expected to turn and see Susan playing her cello with the string quartet—and sixty or so guests in black-tie finery or designer gowns were roped off from the hoi polloi doing business or on their way to one of the many administrative offices.
At the top of the staircase, Moses followed the signs left to the offices of the city supervisors—San Francisco had eleven of them—and had no trouble finding Liam Goodman’s. In the hallway, his hand on the doorknob, he stopped for a last second or two. He drew in a breath, then another one, summoning the battlefield calm that had served him well in Vietnam, in his dozens of bar fights, at the showdown on Pier 70. He willed his blood pressure down, listened as the random lobby noise, the wedding music, faded into silence behind him.
Inside the office, he passed a room where some young people seemed to be working at a conference table. In front of him, an attractive middle-aged black woman glanced up from her computer and gave him a smile. “Can I help you?”
“I’d like to talk to the chief of staff, please. I’m sorry, his name slips my mind.”
“Rick Jessup.”
“That’s it.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No. I’m afraid I don’t.” Moses could be effortlessly charming when it suited him, as it did now. “I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop in. My name is Moses McGuire. Tell him I’m Brittany’s father. We met at my bar—the Little Shamrock?—last Friday. He’ll know what it’s about.”
“All right.” She picked up her telephone and spoke into it, then to Moses. “He’ll be right out.”
The Ophelia Cut Page 10