One Got Away

by S. A. Lelchuk

  “Susan?”

  She looked over for the first time, then stood. Susan Johannessen was a slight woman with the same sharp cheekbones and narrow, anxious face as her brothers. Gold Cartier bangles jingled on a thin wrist as she took in my scuffed motorcycle boots.

  “Who are you?” In spite of the question’s directness there was something diffident in her manner.

  “My name is Nikki. I was hired by your brother Martin. Do you have a few minutes?”

  At the mention of her brother she gave me a closer look. Her brown eyes weren’t unfriendly, but they contained no warmth. “Hired…” she repeated. “Such a specific word, and yet so vague. I’m guessing you’re not his new personal assistant?”

  It was a good guess. I told her as much.

  “Then what do you do for him?”

  “You deal with art. I deal with people.”

  Her voice still gave nothing away. “And does someone need dealing with?”

  “That’s what I was hoping to talk to you about.”

  She frowned and shook her head. “Right now isn’t good at all. It’s a very busy time for me; we have a major show coming up next month.” She named an artist I had never heard of. “A wonderful British painter, if you’re unfamiliar. I’ve been practically living here, trying to prepare.”

  “Just five minutes?”

  She dusted invisible dirt from a corner of a frame. “Nikki, did my brother happen to mention anything to you about my relationship to my family?”

  “I understand that you don’t call each other up asking what you had for breakfast.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” She smiled in spite of herself.

  “What’s another?”

  Susan regarded a blue metal sculpture of a huge bird, rising almost to my height. The beak was ferocious and its talons were wrapped around what I realized was a prostrate man, frozen in his wiggling. A placard identified the piece as EARLY BIRD. “Do you know, Nikki, much about the metaphor of an albatross?”

  In answer I quoted Coleridge: “ ‘Instead of the cross, the Albatross across my neck was hung.’ ”

  Susan nodded. “My personal albatross has always been my family—my surname, my siblings, the expectations placed on us since birth. Laugh if you will—the bratty whining of a trust-fund kid—but I mean that as honestly as anything you’ll ever hear from me.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Long ago,” she continued, “I determined that the only realistic way for me to lead a life of my own was to distance myself from them. And so that’s what I did.”

  “You didn’t seem to get all that far,” I felt compelled to point out. “Your mother lives pretty much right up the street. Your brothers, too. And you’re across the Bay in Tiburon.”

  If being contradicted annoyed her, she did a good job of hiding it. “Distance can be many things besides literal feet and inches. It’s true that I live in Marin and work in this city. But I mean that I make my own money. I have a career, my own life, my own friends. I do my best to remain out of the fray, you might say.”

  “I just visited William. He didn’t seem to be in much of a fray. That was a hit-and-run, right?”

  Her face grew somber. “Poor William. He was the golden boy, you know, growing up. That was so terrible, what happened to him.”

  “They never caught the person?”

  “Not yet, anyway. The police are searching for whoever it was.” She thought of something. “That’s why you’re here—my brother hired you to help them?” Her brown eyes showed irritation, but maybe a bit of amusement, too. “You have a way of getting your five minutes without it being given. Are you always like that?”

  “I saw there’s a coffee shop next door,” I answered.

  “Your point being?”

  “Let me buy you a cup. Espresso, if you want. That way you can drink it fast.”

  * * *

  Once she made the decision to step outside, Susan seemed to relax. It was a nice day and we took our coffee to go, strolling along Hayes Street in the direction of Alamo Square. Back in the ’80s no sane person would have walked Hayes Street by herself, day or night. It had been an unforgiving neighborhood, people bolting in and out for the symphony or opera. Now Hayes Valley was one of the trendiest in San Francisco, full of upscale clothing boutiques and tempting brasseries. Where San Francisco would stop was anyone’s guess. They were even developing the badlands of Hunter’s Point. Soon there wouldn’t be anywhere to go but up.

  “So, William,” I prompted Susan. “The golden boy?”

  She nodded assent. “When we were kids he was always the most charming, the handsomest, the one who could get away with anything. Star tennis player, good grades…” She smiled, remembering. “I mean, he was a choirboy. Literally—he was in a choir. A tenor. Not a bad one, either.”

  “Better than your brother Ron?”

  She laughed. “Ron was the literal opposite of a choirboy. In every way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Susan smoothed a strand of hair and considered. “Ron was a little devil. He was handsome and clever, like William, and that doubtless helped him to extricate himself out of most situations, as a boy. It caught up to him eventually—I think he was nearly suspended from Princeton—but he managed to make it through unscathed.”

  “Suspended for what?” I asked.

  Her face clouded. “I don’t really know. Not exactly. I overheard our father talking about it—I was still in high school.”

  “You don’t sound that enamored with your brother.”

  Her face shifted and I felt I could almost glimpse the nervous girl she must have been, growing up, forever a middle sister, timorous in the shadows of her elder brothers. “Ron could be quite cruel to me when we were children,” she said matter-of-factly. “He’s not the nicest fellow, even now. If you need me to tell you that, you’re not much of a detective.”

  “And how about your relationship with William?”

  Her voice softened. “William was different. He could be very judgmental—I was his younger sister, I was desperate for his approval—but he was never mean. He protected me from Ron when we were children—he was the only one Ron would back down from.”

  “Is William married?” I asked.

  “He was. He married young—right out of college.”

  “Was? What happened?”

  Susan sipped her coffee. “I liked his wife. Later—after the cancer—well, that changed my brother. He developed a sadness, a kind of gloom. I’ve noticed that, from certain people. The golden ones, so to speak. Things go so well, so easily; then, when they don’t, they don’t have the same armor, the same protective calluses.”

  “And Martin? Tell me about him.”

  She glanced at me. “Your client, you mean? Doesn’t that make him off limits?”

  “I’m not asking for skeletons,” I replied. “I’m trying to understand your family.”

  We had reached Alamo Square and the Painted Ladies, a cheerful hilltop row of ornate Victorians painted in bright colors. We found a bench and sat. I watched a leashed dog stare at a gray squirrel as though astonished at its audacity. Braced on its hind legs, the squirrel looked back, bright eyes gleaming, tail quivering. Then the squirrel leapt up a tree trunk, breaking the standoff.

  “My younger brother,” explained Susan, “was more of an introvert. He never fit in quite as well. Our father was rather old-fashioned—he prized activity, energy, athleticism, maybe just raw competitiveness—what was popularly known as manhood. Martin never excelled in any of the areas our father felt mattered most.”

  “Was he close to your mother?”

  She shrugged. “As close as anyone could get to my mother.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Our mother kept everyone at a certain distance—my father included. That was her nature. That is her nature.”

  I used the opportunity to shift the conversation. “What about Dr. Coombs? Did she keep him at a distan
ce?”

  Susan looked startled at this. “I’m just trying to get a sense of things,” I repeated.

  “From what I understand, my mother has a certain… faith in Dr. Coombs.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  She nodded. “Several times, all brief. Although I strive to keep distance from my family, there are certain events, fundraisers and benefits, where my presence is required.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  She drank coffee. “He seems a perfect gentleman. Charming, witty, urbane, educated, handsome. Everything. The whole package, as that dreadful saying goes. The subject of art came up and I could have mistaken him for a collector, he was so knowledgeable. The kind of man that everyone probably wishes she could go around town with.”

  “Were you upset seeing him going around town with your own mother?”

  The warm afternoon light made the Painted Ladies, with their pastel tones of green and yellow and blue, look even more stately and beautiful. Susan finished her coffee and watched a sparrow forage in the grass. “I wasn’t upset. Why would I be?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Martin certainly was.”

  She laughed. “Of course, poor Martin was! He spent his whole life trying to be close to our mother. Then some strange man waltzes along and does it effortlessly. I can’t imagine how that made him feel.”

  “But not you?”

  Susan paused, as though marshaling her words. “Like I said, I’ve spent my whole life trying to put distance between us—my family, and most certainly my mother. Besides, I’ve developed a certain laissez-faire when it comes to my attitude toward what people should or should not be doing—my family included. Let people try to be happy. It’s easy enough not to be, God knows. If it made my mother happy to run around with Coombs, who am I to get in the way? Besides,” she added, “Martin is a man. They’re always bound to be more jealous of that sort of thing.”

  “Jealous, or protective? You must have known she was being awfully generous—and that Coombs wasn’t exactly saying No thanks.”

  She shrugged. “Mother has sufficient money.” Her face showed no sign that she was probably making the understatement of the year. “And our family has a million-man army of financial advisors and bankers looking after our interests. If there was anything truly outrageous, anything that could really hurt, I’m confident that they would alert us.” Susan seemed to be finished, then added, “She’s in her eighties, Mother. Let her spend her money the way she wants. Assuming I reach that age, the last thing I want is nosy people looking over my shoulder telling me what I can and cannot buy.”

  “Can I ask you something personal?”

  Her eyes grew distrustful. “Maybe?”

  “When your mother dies… how does the inheritance work?”

  “That is personal. A bit too much for my liking.”

  “Sorry.” I didn’t withdraw the question.

  She thought about it, then shrugged. “I suppose I don’t see the harm in answering. The bulk of the estate will be split evenly between myself and my brothers. Nothing very exciting.” Susan turned to face me square. “Now I have a question. What exactly did my brother hire you to do?”

  I had been trying to decide how to answer this. I settled for a degree of honesty. “He has a few concerns. One of them is that Coombs might try to blackmail your mother.”

  The word seemed to frighten her. “Blackmail? What could he possibly know?”

  “You tell me. Is there anything in your family he could use?”

  She considered this for quite a long time before she spoke. “As is probably the case with any family like ours, I can’t claim the origin of our wealth is perfectly pristine. I know, for example, that during the Second World War, our family firm manufactured pharmaceuticals used by the German army and, probably, the SS—but that’s hardly revelatory, and some journalist dug it up years ago.”

  “I see. Nothing else?”

  She thought some more. “Nothing comes to mind. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

  The conversation seemed to have ended naturally. Susan consulted a delicate rose gold watch, not bothering to hide the action, and stood. “It was nice to meet you, Nikki. Please do keep me informed if you learn anything. I would appreciate that.”

  I said I would, and said goodbye.

  * * *

  My meeting with Ron Johannessen turned out to be both the shortest and least pleasant. I caught up to him in his driveway on Lombard Street. Behind a high row of hedges, I glimpsed an enormous Spanish Revival home, all stucco walls and marmalade roof tiles. Ron seemed to be just leaving. He was in a two-seater Aston Martin convertible. A good-looking man in the prime of his life, his looks were marred by an arrogance that dripped off him like syrup. There was a woman in the passenger seat of the sculpted silver car. To calculate her age, a mathematical formula might have divided Ron’s age by two, and then subtracted five. Even seated, she looked as thin and sleek as a gazelle. Her hair shone, and gold glinted against her skin.

  Ron looked up as I called his name, my voice raised over the noise of the V12 engine. He wore a leather jacket and designer sunglasses that he didn’t bother to remove as he stared up at me. “Who are you and what are you doing in my driveway?”

  “My name’s Nikki. Your brother wanted me to help him with—”

  That was as far as I got. “Do me a favor, Nikki, okay?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fuck off,” he said, with no change in his expression. “Now, immediately, and forever. And don’t try to talk to me again. I don’t want to buy whatever crap you’re selling, and you can tell my brother I said so.”

  Before I could respond, he threw the car into reverse and was gone.

  If I learned anything from the meeting, it was that Aston Martin exhaust fumes smelled just as bad as those put out by any other, cheaper engine.

  * * *

  There was one last stop before I headed back to East Bay. A fancy doorman building in Russian Hill. “Delivery,” I said. “For Mrs. Johannessen.” I held a bouquet of flowers that I had picked up from a florist down the street.

  The uniformed doorman crossed the lobby toward me. “I can take them for her.”

  “Can’t I just run them up? That’s what I usually do.”

  The doorman shook his head and held his hand out. “I’ll make sure she gets them.”

  “Today? They need to get to a vase, you know.”

  He snatched the bouquet, shaking his head in exasperation. “Of course, today. I’ve been doing this job close to twenty years, lady. You think our tenants like wilted flowers?”

  I left the apartment building, wondering why Martin had told me his mother was in Arizona. Something that only made me more curious about my new client.

  WEDNESDAY

  5

  Wednesday morning, I stopped for breakfast at the Golden Eagle Diner in Emeryville. Several freeways connected almost within sight of a billboard sign that towered over the diner, and thanks to a shrewd owner who’d built out a huge, tempting swath of parking lot, the Golden Eagle drew a lot of the trucker traffic that churned up and down the coast. Guys with ten, twelve hours of driving in front of them, wanting to tuck into a big plate of potatoes and eggs and plenty of coffee before hitting the road. The sky was parchment pale when I pulled in, the early morning filled with sounds of groaning semi transmissions and idling motors and passing traffic. Inside, the diner was bustling with a mix of truckers and off-to-workers.

  I found one of the few free stools and a waitress splashed steaming coffee in my mug without bothering to ask. Ignoring the proffered menu, I ordered eggs over easy, crispy bacon, and home fries as the waitress scribbled on her pad. The short-order cook’s back was to me, so I raised my voice to make sure he’d hear. “If that goddamn bacon isn’t crispy, I’m going to jump over this counter and—”

  “And what, give me a hug?”

  My brother Brandon turned, laughing, handsome even in his white apron and grea
se-stained T-shirt. In the past year he had put on much-needed weight, and his green eyes were alive and vital under mussed hair. He threatened me with a battered spatula. “Don’t forget, I’m armed.”

  I looked at him fondly. “If I was a potato, I’d be running for the woods.”

  “You’re not supposed to taunt the chef if you want your breakfast on time.” He turned back to the grill as he spoke, cracking eggs one-handed onto the sizzling metal and flipping a couple of sausage patties before turning back to me. Most of our morning conversations at the Golden Eagle went this way. Him cooking, me eating, a few words here and there. A year ago, my brother had been a different person. A thin, malnourished wreck, days and nights filled by heroin, bad company, and not much else. More at home holding a syringe than a spatula. Bad days, many of them. Bad years. Wondering when my phone would ring with the worst news in the world.

  He had been sober for almost a year, now. I was proud of him. After what he had witnessed as a boy, what he had been through, him standing here—healthy, employed, smiling—was, if not a miracle, at least somewhere on the spectrum of highly improbable events.

  “Whatcha up to?” he said, stirring a pile of home fries and scooping an omelet onto a plate for a waiting server.

  “Same as you—work.” I watched him crack more eggs, again one-handed and flashy. “Show-off,” I muttered.

  Brandon cracked another egg and deposited it onto the grill with an elaborate swoop of his arm. “I’ve never believed in hiding talent. You at the bookstore later? I’m off at two. Want to get lunch? Your treat?”

  I shook my head, trying not to smile. “As much as I love buying you lunch, I can’t today. I have to be in the city.”

  He half-turned from the grill, raising an eyebrow. “Work work.”