Chance (82 page)

“You shot him?”

“I was thirty seconds into a compromised situation, Doc. Last thing I needed was sound. You’ve seen my throwing blades. I might have tried for a kill shot, but like I said . . .”

“You couldn’t see.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see . . . you and I wouldn’t be sitting here. I could see who it was, I could see I hit him, and I could see he went down. There wasn’t time to close. What I couldn’t know was what had transpired between him and this goon . . . maybe nothing . . . maybe a call . . . maybe more help on the way and like I said . . .”

“You were thirty seconds in.”

“Time to go.”

“My God,” Chance said once more. “I can’t get my head around this . . . I can’t find the terms. A man is dead.”

“It happens. Who do you think this guy was?”

“I have no idea.”

“He was a soldier. He was armed. He had choices. He made a bad one.”

“And there was no other way to end it?”

“You think of one, I’m all ears.”

“Disarm him. Knock him out.”

“You’ve knocked out a lot of guys in the course of your practice? Disarmed them first, of course?”

Chance said nothing.

“There you go,” D told him.

They came to the freeway and southbound lanes where they drove once more in silence. The passage of time seemed of little consequence and the world changed. They came to the Waldo tunnel and the Golden Gate Bridge. San Francisco lay in the distance, disappearing even as they watched it, lost to a fog bank worthy of John the Revelator so that by the time they had reached the middle spans of the great bridge the thing toward which they pressed was gone and what they entered was no longer the Crystal City but only a vast impenetrable darkness. It was, Chance supposed, thinking now of the origin of things, how it had all begun and how at some point in
the perhaps not-too-distant future it would no doubt end. How then to make sense of the evening’s progression? What difference would any of it make when all was said and done? When entropy and darkness had had their way? It was admittedly the long view. But then the long view was what he was after, the short one having been fucked up beyond all recognition.

T
HEY HAD
by now entered the city though you’d be hard-pressed to know it. The car’s wipers swept the windshield, squeaking audibly with each pass while doing little to improve visibility.

“Wasn’t that bad, really, when you stop and think about it,” D said. “I was wearing latex. Cop never had a clean visual and nothing of
mine
left at the scene. All in all I’d say it was a pretty clean op. Not perfect, but still pretty clean. Exit was a little fucked up but that’s on you, brother.”

Chance didn’t trust himself to speak. He had taken to imagining what it must have looked like, a man hooked through the ocular cavities.

“You know what I’d like?” D said. “I’d like a fucking malted. The old kind, where they actually put the malt powder in so it’s not just milk and ice cream.” A moment passed. “My mother turned me on to those,” he added. “There was someplace in the city she used to take me. You know where we can get one?”

It was, Chance thought, the first he’d heard D mention family of any kind, and what’s more, that
till
this moment, he might just as well have been willing to believe the man at his side not only without the usual progenitors but sprung fully formed from his own forehead, the
product of some mysterious singularity. That said, Chance was
more
than willing to go engage in such an outing and no chore too absurd. In truth, he was grateful that D had come up with something for them to do. Anything short of more bloodletting would have served, anything to spare himself the empty apartment he knew to be lying in wait for him out there somewhere in the fog, rather, he imagined, like the proverbial beast in the jungle, waiting to spring.

The great ice-cream hunt, which is how he came to think of it, began somewhere near Fisherman’s Wharf while the night was yet young. It ended at a place called Ruby’s at the far end of Ocean Beach, where one had the feeling that a good many other things had ended as well. The air smelled of wet sand and dying kelp. Unseen waves thundered at them from across the Great Highway. A number of drinks calling themselves malteds had by now been purchased and consumed along the way but none were to D’s liking. This didn’t keep him from pounding them down. Strawberry was his flavor of choice. Chance had pressed on in hopes of finding an actual drink but none had been available till Ruby’s.

Ruby’s was the real deal, a genuine full-service establishment, all worn plaster and chipped Formica. The linoleum flooring was laid out in old-fashioned checkerboard patterns of green and black. Memorabilia covered the walls—enough to suggest the place had been there since before the Great Flood. A black-faced clock with white hands and the likeness of Mickey Mouse at its center read twelve o’clock straight up when they came through the door that opened to the highway and the beaches beyond. It was half past two when they left. In the interim they sat opposite one another in a red Naugahyde booth like any other pair of nighthawks. Food followed drinks, at least for D, who opted for the bacon-wrapped cheeseburger times two, french fries, and a large Diet Coke. Chance watched, nursing a bottle of Rolling Rock beer. “My God,” he said finally. It was perhaps D’s mention of his mother, this in concert with the fact that Chance was a little drunk, that led to his addressing the big man as if he were just one more of the planet’s mortals.
“Do you ever worry about diabetes?” He was looking at the array of food and remnants thereof spread out on the table before them.

“I take medication for that,” D said matter-of-factly.

“Ah. And your cholesterol?”

“Cholesterol is great. Blood pressure is great.” At which point D embarked on an elaborate apology for the use of salt in eliminating fat from the diet. The theory, such as it was, appeared to hinge on the notion that salt had been shown as an effective cleaning agent in removing grease from skillets. The big man went on at some length, all the time adding ever more salt to the food on his plate, but Chance was finding it difficult to follow. Nor did it occur to him to ask if the other was serious. Four years of medical school, an internship, two residencies at prestigious hospitals, credentials up the wazoo . . . who was he to question anything? He was the guy who’d run away with the schizophrenic dancer, robbed the family money and broken his father’s heart, failed husband and father, now wheelman in flight from a murder and botched robbery on the outskirts of Oakland is who he was.

Whatever sleep he was granted that night came behind the wheel of the Oldsmobile in the small garage beneath his apartment where he reclined the seat as far as it would go and covered himself with a jacket. He was afraid to go inside, for any number of reasons.

He was awakened the following morning by the computer programmer come to get his own car from the garage. As to whether or not the programmer had seen him there, asleep at the wheel, he could not say. The two had not spoken since the night of Chance’s struggle with Jackie Black and had in fact gone so far as to avoid eye contact at those times when they might otherwise have exchanged pleasantries, though Chance put this more on the programmer than on himself. He was still willing to be friends. When the man had at last managed to extract his Toyota from its hopelessly cramped space and the door swung shut in his wake, Chance went upstairs to shower and shave. Later he rode the bus to his office, where men in suits were awaiting.

T
HERE WERE
three of them altogether. Chance could not say the sight was unexpected but this did not make it any easier to take. Passing from the hallway and into the outer waiting room of his office, it occurred to him that he was at that very moment in possession of Big D’s thumb drive and the files of Detective Raymond Blackstone, lifted from his laptop computer on the day of a murder and he exchanged what must have appeared, at least to her eyes, a look of pure terror with Lucy behind her desk. She responded with a raised eyebrow then stood to make the introductions.

One of the men, the youngest of the three, was a Shorthand Reporter, certified as such by the state of California. The other two men were attorneys. There was a Mr. Berg, appearing as counsel on behalf of the plaintiff, in this case a Mr. Chad Dorsey of Eugene, Oregon, and Mr. Green, counsel for the defense, Dr. William Fry, retired. Charges of elder abuse and undue influence were at long last being brought against Lorena Sanchez and the agency that had sent her to Dr. Fry. To ensure the future safety of whatever was left in Dr. Fry’s numerous accounts, Mr. Dorsey, a distant nephew, was seeking a ruling by the
court that would have Dr. Fry declared incompetent with regard to testamentary capacity and thereby grant the power of attorney to his heirs, in this case the aforementioned Mr. Dorsey. Dr. Fry had chosen to fight. Much to his chagrin, Chance had been asked to appear as an expert witness on behalf of the plaintiff. Things being what they were, the entire proceeding, on the books now for at least two weeks, had slipped his mind.

“Are you all right?” Lucy asked, her voice at a whisper. She was standing at Chance’s shoulder. He had just seen the men into his office. The question seemed to have become a standard one of late. Given his current circumstances, any interest in his well-being from any quarter was more than welcome. “I’m good to go,” he told her. “But thank you. Thank you for asking.” A moment passed between them. “You’ve changed your hair,” he said. “There’s more red in it today.”

“Umm, for about two weeks now.”

“Really? I’m sorry I didn’t notice.”

Lucy just looked at him. She seemed torn between laughter and a call to 911.

“I like it. Did I say that?”

“You did, just now.”

Chance nodded.

“Doctor . . .” She looked toward the room, the waiting men.