The Ophelia Cut (13 page)

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.”

B
UNDLED 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.”

H
E 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 know 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.”

M
OSES 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.”

Moses nodded, moved to one side, stared out through the mist at the Opera House across the street. When he heard a door open behind him, he turned.

“Mr. McGuire.” The well-dressed young man advanced on him, the picture of confidence, smile in place, hand outstretched. “This is a pleasant surprise. Good to see you again. What can I do for you?”

Moses did not take the proffered hand. Instead, he cast a disdainful glance at it and then looked up, meeting the young man’s eyes, speaking in a conversational tone. “You can leave my daughter alone.”

Rick shot a quick look across at Diane. A twitch danced at the corner of his lips. “I thought I’d been doing that,” he said. “She hasn’t been talking to me.”

“You’ve tried to talk to her.”

“Okay, you mean at Peet’s. I wanted to try to get back together. But she wouldn’t talk to me.”

“I heard you objected, and they had to throw you out.”

“That’s an exaggeration. I wasn’t happy, but I left on my own.” He backed up a step or two.

“That’s not the last time you saw her, is it?”

Diane rose behind her computer. “Is everything all right here, Rick?”

“Everything’s fine,” he said. Then, to Moses, “Although maybe we should continue this conversation out in the hall, let Diane get back to her work.”

“Fine with me.”

“You’re sure?” Diane asked with a nervous glance at Moses.

“We’re good,” Rick said, then turned to Moses. “Good. Right?”

“Peachy.”

Rick started walking toward the exit, Moses a couple of steps behind him. Out in the hallway, the younger man turned to him. “Where were we?”

“I was telling you that Peet’s wasn’t the last time you saw her.”

Brazening it out, Rick stared into Moses’s face for a beat. “How is she?”

“How would you expect her to be?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“I mean when you manhandle somebody, you throw ’em around, sometimes you cause some real damage.”

Rick managed to hold out for some seconds before he looked down and said, “I didn’t mean to hurt her. It was an accident. She pulled away and slipped and—”

Those words marked the end of any doubt about what had happened, and Moses struck with all the power he could muster. Rick, in the middle of explaining, wasn’t looking for it and couldn’t begin to block the punch. He never even saw the vicious right jab that hit him high on the cheekbone, knocking him onto his heels, his head snapping back and slamming into the wall as a blind flurry of three more punches—left, right, left, carefully aimed, surgically executed—turned his legs to jelly and dropped him.

As blood, a good quantity, started to run out of Rick’s nose and mouth, pooling on the floor, Moses looked down at his victim in disgust. Leaning over, he got close to Rick’s ear. “You come near my daughter again,” he said, “and you are a dead man.”

Straightening up, massaging his knuckles, Moses turned and walked at a normal pace back down the interior hallway, out to the majestic steps, down the imposing wide stairway, where the wedding was still going on, and out into the fog of the late afternoon.

A
T A LITTLE
past three o’clock on Saturday, the last day of March, Rick Jessup looked up at the flight of twenty-seven steps that led to the front door of Jon Lo’s Victorian home on Divisadero Street. As if the street weren’t steep enough, ascending from Cow Hollow up to Broadway. He couldn’t imagine why anybody would buy a house that was so torturous to get to. Maybe Lo drove his Mercedes up and down the driveway directly into the attached garage every day and never used the steps. To anyone visiting, those steps were a definite physical and possibly psychological hurdle.

At the top of the stairs, Jessup turned to look back over the roofs of the Marina District and out to the bay, which today was dotted with dozens of sailboats and hundreds of whitecaps. He was standing there, hesitating, when the front door opened. He whirled around.

“How long were you going to wait before you rang the bell?” Lo asked.

“I was just catching my breath and admiring your view.”

“It’s the bay,” Lo said. “The gray bay. Would you like to come in?”

“Thank you.”

Jessup swallowed against his nerves and followed Lo into a lavishly decorated and overly furnished living room that featured the same view as the porch, minus the wind. Lo appeared to be at ease in his castle. He wore pleated light brown dress slacks, tasseled cordovan loafers without socks, a black V-neck sweater.

No sooner had he offered Jessup a seat on the couch than a breathtakingly beautiful Asian woman in a wildly colorful silk blouse appeared bearing a platter: a white porcelain pot, fine china cups and saucers, a selection of teas and cookies. Without a word or even a glance at the two men, she placed the platter on the glass and chrome coffee table in front
of Jessup. Straightening up, she put her hands together in a prayerful gesture and bowed, then disappeared as quickly as she’d arrived.