by Jim Kohlberg
We had walked through the labyrinth together and found the center of the maze. But we had not thought to leave crumbs for the trail back out. Why bother? We were so sure we could find it anytime. Joe’s wandering was over for good now. And I had an empty path ahead.
I placed the photograph facedown and fled to the street. I started to open my car door, but a cloud of drink and gloom hung over me so I padded home through the fog. Once there, it only took a couple fingers more of single malt to fall downward into sleep.
Chapter 13
Morning broke with no easing of the previous night’s heavy fog. From my small two-bedroom stucco, which the previous owner had trimmed in magenta, I looked through my view alley to the bay. No accountant is without a calculator when it comes to real estate, and if I ever sold the place, the alley was gold. I could see white froth on top of slate-gray swells and a tanker lumbering under the bridge out to blue water. Even at this distance, the tanker dwarfed the sailboats tied up a half mile closer at the docks; they looked like children’s toys tethered in the bathtub by an orderly, compulsive parent.
The tang of cold and sea mist chilled the tile on my bathroom floor as I shaved. I took a steaming shower. I opened the door when I heard the phone ring. I paused, then stepped back into the shower and pretended I didn’t know who it was. I tried to push it out of my mind, but every jangle of the water gurgling down the drain sounded like a summons to another ringing bell.
I turned the water off, got out, and marched over to the phone as I dripped on the floor. I punched in Christina’s hotel number, which I had written down on the pad beside the phone four days earlier. The operator answered, chirping, “Ritz-Carlton,” with an Asian accent.
“Christina Lawson’s room, please.”
Background music. Clicks of a computer keyboard. A breath. “Sorry. No one here. No Ms. Lawson.”
“Christina Dempsey, then.”
“No Ms. Dempsey.”
“She was there yesterday.”
“No Ms. Lawson, no Dempsey. Thank you. Can I help with anything else, sir?”
“No, thank you,” I said and put the phone back on the cradle.
Christina was in one of her moods again. She might pace the beach at Stinson for two days straight. Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito with a backpack and sleep in one of the World War II bunkers on Fort Baker overlooking the bay. Fly to Costa Rica and back. Shop in Hong Kong. Now I would have to go find her. Drive all over town. Call everyone. Leaving a trail with my name on it.
I pulled on a pair of pants and felt the dampness on the back of my knees stick to the khaki. I tugged. I heard a seam on the right hip rip. Fuck. I pulled out a sport shirt and yanked it on. A button popped. It bounced across my bedroom’s wood floor. Goddamn Christina. I smashed my feet into some Top-Siders, grabbed my black leather jacket, and swept my wallet and keys off the kitchen counter under the kitchen phone.
I yanked open the door and froze. There was a small figure hugging its knees on my steps. A suitcase and an arm lay against the steel and wrought-iron railings. Christina turned and looked up at me from under her lashes, an “I dare you” expression on her face but a glint of fear behind her eyes. After she looked at me a second, the brave face softened, and she smiled and got up, grabbing leather handles.
“I’m here, Max.”
“So I see.”
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
I shut the door behind me. She deflated a bit and leaned against the railing.
“Please, Max?”
“We went over this at the Ritz.”
“No, we didn’t. You talked. I listened.”
“Didn’t you hear anything I said?”
“Of course I did. I just didn’t agree with any of it.” She had eased up the steps to the landing and was now on equal footing with me. Her left eye fluttered as she put a hand on my arm.
Even now, her skin was flawless and had the gleam and glow that you only see in airbrushed magazine photographs. There were no flecks in her green irises now, and her breath smelled of mint, and her skin shone from the almond oil she used. It gave her the faint suggestion of India, of bongs and collegiate incense. But this wasn’t a dorm room, and we weren’t in college. This school was permanent.
“Christina, I explained it to you. If they see you here, Guthrie’s going to have more of an apparent motive than he does already. Right now they have only one, not more, and a working theory, but you have two cops who believe you. Let’s not screw that up.”
“Who are they?”
“Two detectives.”
“Their names?”
“Hannaford and Hopkins. They’re the only guys on our side right now.”
“Our side? I’m the one they’re trying to pin a murder on.”
I sighed.
She said, “I just want to come inside.”
As usual, she won. I picked up her suitcase and turned with it to the door. As I pushed the front door open for her, she smiled at me and took a little jiggle step over the threshold.
I was about to follow her inside when I heard the muttering purr of an engine and tires crackling against asphalt. I turned around as a Bentley coupe rolled to a stop at the bottom of my steps. Even in the morning mist, it shone like a dark green emerald. The front window whispered down.
George Stoppard’s gray curls stuck out from the car’s sill, and a jacketed elbow protruded. The folds in his face looked deeper than when I had seen him last. His dark eyes darted around the façade of my house before settling on me navigating down the stairs. He pointed his chin a couple of times at me. Michael Kessler sat next to him. His blond head nodded once, and a hand came up in acknowledgment.
“Good morning, Max,” Kessler said.
“Going away?” Stoppard asked. I looked down, realizing I still had Christina’s bag in my hand. Fortunately it was a leather duffel, something I could pass off as my own. I gave a quick glance over my shoulder to check that she was out of sight. Stoppard hadn’t seen anyone.
“No. Just to the gym.”
“Fancy gym bag.”
“Fancy car,” I said.
“You like it? Get in. I’ll drop you off at your gym.”
“Unless you want to wait at the curb like a chauffer, I need my own car to get back. Plus, the backseat doesn’t look too comfortable for adults.”
“You’d be surprised. I’ll take you for a spin. You ever been in a Bentley before?”
“No.”
He said, “Me neither. Get in.” I dropped the bag back at the top of the stairs, stepped down, and circled the front of the Bentley Continental. It said right on the hood: “Bentley.” I brushed a finger over the raised sterling badge. I opened the door, which felt as heavy as the door of a bank vault and swung shut as gently. Kessler leaned forward, and the seat tilted, revealing comfortable backseats for a sports car. Inside, the perfume of new buttery leather enveloped the cabin. It was so thick I could almost feel it coagulate on my skin and enter my pores, as if the sheen of wealth could pervade my entire body, organs and all.
“Whose car is it, then?”
“Test drive,” said Stoppard.
“They let you just take it? Alone?”
He looked over at me from a slight old-man hunch at the wheel. His hands released and he sat back. I could see the backs of their heads as they just stared ahead. Waiting. Well, I could wait too.
“They let me take the damn thing for a ride. Silly really. People always think the rich are more trustworthy.”
“They’re not?” I asked.
“You should know,” Stoppard said. “You see more of people’s financial underwear than practically anybody, right?”
“You make me sound like some pervert.”
“Not at all. An expert actually. How many times have you found people taking deductions they know they can’t?”
I shrugged. “People love freebies.”
“It’s human nature to cheat the IRS,” Kessler said to the win
dshield, his voice edging higher than Stoppard’s.
“I wouldn’t go that far. A very high proportion pay voluntarily. In general, people know what’s a deduction, what’s not.”
“And those that don’t?” Kessler asked.
“I try to show them the error of their ways.”
I looked around. We were still motionless. The motor’s idle was so quiet and the defroster so subtle I thought I was waiting for afternoon tea.
“Are you going to drive this thing?” I said.
“Certainly, sir,” Stoppard said, playing chauffeur. “Where shall I take you?”
“It’s your car,” I said.
He slipped the car into gear and it muttered away from the curb. As he sidled into traffic without looking, a taxi honked behind him. A tap on the accelerator and the car showed its muscle under all that elegant wood and leather.
“So all your clients are as honest as the day is long, my friend?” Stoppard said.
“Why don’t you guys just tell me why you’re here?”
Stoppard looked over at Kessler, who twisted in his seat. He trained that patrician face and gray eyes under the blond hair on me.
“Joe wanted to go big in the fund business a couple of years ago and invited me in.”
I nodded, hoping Kessler would just talk.
“He invited me in,” Kessler continued, “because he wanted scale and size, which matters, that sort of thing.”
“And why you?”
“Well, he knew of me. I was a small investor with him already, just trying him out. He asked me to take a piece of the firm in exchange for bringing in other larger investors and the capital for getting a track record to sell to others. Like my friend George.”
Stoppard nodded. “It was all disclosed. Michael here put up a hundred million seed capital for Joe’s short-long derivative funds, the risky trading, that sort of thing. After a year they had a track record, and I came in for a bit more. Just as a limited partner, an investor only.”
Kessler nodded a look at me. “That’s how things work. I took a risk.” He turned forward as Stoppard eased the car around a corner. “And got paid for it. At Joe’s request,” he said, “I promise you.”
I had no trouble believing it; that was Joe all the way. Give someone a piece of the pie and attract others in the right circle around them. I just didn’t understand why Kessler had done it or why Joe hadn’t tried to do it with Stoppard first. Maybe he had asked and gotten turned down.
Stoppard interrupted my thoughts. “I put up some money after Michael and Joe proved they could make money with their derivatives strategy. It was innovative, more creative than what my managers were doing for me.”
This was the ceaseless churning, the restless course of the money river seeking more—always more—like water racing downhill, scoring canyons through rock.
“And you’re telling me this because . . . ?” I asked, my voice ending a little higher than I would have liked. Kessler turned to the front, his part over.
“We’re telling you this so you know there was nothing going on with Joe and us. George was simply an investor like any other, albeit the biggest one, but only that. I was a silent partner who introduced him to our friends and got a piece of the firm for making a bet on him.”
“And . . .”
“We know you got Christina out of jail. We know Lewman. His MO is to find someone else to attack. We’re telling you, we’re innocent; we’re not targets for you at all, and you better get your facts straight about that ex-wife of his.”
“They weren’t divorced,” I said. “I know that much.”
“Getting there fast,” Stoppard said. “They had knock-down-drag-outs in the office, on the street, at Whole Foods. Anywhere.”
“That right?” I asked. “How many people saw this?”
“Everybody,” George said.
“She is a very nasty woman,” Kessler said. “Made Joe’s life a living hell. She screamed at office workers, secretaries—sorry—administrative assistants, reamed out the contractors at the house they were building. Anyone and everyone.”
“They were building a house?”
“Just down the street from me,” said George. “Bigger than mine. Swimming pool, squash court. Beverly Hills Pink.” His cheek dimpled into a frown.
“Style did not fit in,” Kessler ended.
“With you?” I asked.
“With the street’s.”
“He paid twenty million just for the lot,” said Kessler. “Three years into construction and they’re only half finished.”
What was wrong with their old house? I wondered. The old one was five times the size of mine. The car made the last corner before my place. It stopped. George finally turned around himself.
“Look. We’re not trying to tell you what to do. Defend Christina all you want. Joe was never quiet about your history together.” Great, I thought, fodder for the rich folks’ snickering. “But don’t use us as a distraction.”
“And don’t go dredging up any of this hedge fund hysteria. There’s nothing there. Christina couldn’t have gotten any of it, and our financial affairs should not be public.”
Kessler had turned around now too and they both looked at me. I was the little kid who had peed on the backseat and both parents were lecturing. George turned back and eased off the brake and we slid forward to my house.
The Bentley rolled to a stop at my steps. Kessler opened the door and got out, pulling the seat forward to let me out. I ducked my head out and stood up, coming close to his chest, face-to-face, his erect, thin body wrapped in rich, soft fabric. I looked into his eyes, gray and observant, but with a hint of black on the rim.
“Max, we all know you have a good reputation. Smart. Tough. Honest,” he said. “Stay that way and stay clear of us. We’ll all be better off. In the future especially. We won’t forget. I promise,” he said, putting out a hand.
Rather then take it, I pulled the seat back and looked under the roofline through the open door. “Goodbye, Mr. Stoppard. Thanks for the ride.”
I stood up and nodded at Kessler, whose right hand had retreated into his jacket pocket. I walked around the back of the car and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. I turned, but the Bentley was already purring away.
The steps behind me seemed steeper then usual, and my legs labored up them. It wasn’t until my hand hit the doorknob that I saw Christina’s bag against the railing and remembered she was inside. Christ.
I opened the door slowly, determined to send her back to the hotel or to rent her an apartment somewhere.
Inside, I saw a shoe of hers lying on the entryway floor. She was already messing up the house. I followed it into the living room, the blue glow of my video system dappling the floor, expecting to see her in her favorite position, lying sideways, head on a pillow, watching a movie. Christina lay across the couch all right, but she was breathing laboriously, her right eye open, fixed and dilated, her left eyelid completely closed. Blood trickled from her left ear, tracking down across her jaw and beginning to collect in the fold of her shirt, spreading into a stain. I glanced around for another intruder, another bat. It couldn’t happen again, Jesus.
“Christina,” I said, putting a hand to her. “Christina.” The right eye rolled back into her head and all I saw was white, a doll gone mad. There was no external damage I could see. I ran to the phone and punched in 911, barely finding the voice to describe her condition. The paramedics screamed up to the door a long six minutes later.
Chapter 14
The ICU at UCSF hospital was a fearsome place. Bodies lay inert in beds, tubes protruding from mouths, wired arms, all leading to machines, as if the fading vitality of flesh fed the machines that beeped in glowing life. I had spent a day and a night there on a hard chair in an anteroom, dozing every three hours after the doctors’ rounds until finally, at five, the surgeon had woken me and handed me steaming black coffee in a mug stamped with I LOST MY ♥ IN SAN FRANCISCO on the side. When I held the
mug up to read it, he grimaced at the macabre joke.
“I’m Dr. Macintyre,” he said.
“How is she?”
“Stable,” he said. I looked across the nurses’ station to monitors that collected patients’ oxygen and heart rates, the room filled with buzzes and drips. Low moans escaped from patients half awake or half dead while the steady beat of Christina’s ventilator percussed the corridor’s air like a snare drum.
Christina lay on her back in the bed of ICU #10, the intubation tube taped from chin to ear, protruding from the slack of her mouth. Her paper-thin gown had slipped off her shoulder, and there was no one to cover her up.
I walked in and pulled the gown over her shoulder as a doctor followed me in carrying a chart. Christina’s skin was slack, and raw lesions dotted the backs of her hands and insides of her arms where they had inserted needles and tubes. Her left eye was still closed, the right one open, sightless. He put a hand on me and turned me toward the door but stopped at the threshold.
“How is she?” I asked again. “What happened?”
“We’re still not sure. We ran an MRI and tests last night. We’ll get preliminary reports this morning.”
“The blood in her ear. Was it a stroke?”
“It’s possible. Though her brain function is adequate. She’s being sedated. She fought the ventilator briefly when we intubated her.”
“You don’t have a preliminary diagnosis?”
“Has your friend had any problems before this?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about her relatives. Who should we contact?”
“I told the admitting nurse last night. She only has a mother back in Texas, I think. Last I heard, she was in a nursing home, or ill; I can’t remember. I don’t know of anyone else.”