The Hunt Club

by John Lescroart

  Hunt picked up a shrimp. "I heard a rumor the judge was thinking about messing with the prison guards' union."

  "Where'd you hear that?"

  "A source who, alas, must remain unnamed. But the gist of it " Hunt gave him a succinct rundown of what he'd learned that day about the CCPOA and Palmer's interaction with it. Of course, Juhle knew about Palmer's well-publicized battle with the union, but the inside details of the allegations surprised even the veteran cop.

  When Hunt finished, Juhle was sitting back again, beer and food forgotten. "The wife, Jeannette, she mentioned them, too, the union," Juhle said. "Of course, this was back yesterday when we thought it was her, so it didn't make much of an impact. Now, though, you've got me wondering. If Palmer was really going to bust them, it's someplace to look. Who told you about this?"

  "A lawyer friend of mine. Her firm, Piersall-Morton, represents the union."

  "Great. You can save me a phone call. You got a connection there?"

  Hunt said, "Of course. Connections are my life. But she's busy, Dev. You're a cop. You call the office, they'll direct you."

  Juhle had to take it. "All right, all right," he said. "Piersall. Why is that name familiar?"

  "It's a huge law firm?"

  "No, that's not wait." Juhle went to snap his injured fingers and winced against the pain. "Ah. The brain comes alive and it all comes back. I've been meaning to ask you. Andrea Parisi?"

  Hunt's frown was pronounced. "What about her?"

  Juhle came forward and leaned into the table. "What about her is that as I believe I've mentioned, there are no coincidences, and we found her business card at Staci Rosalier's place last night."

  "At the victim's place?"

  "In her wallet. So if she's in this somehow, Parisi, I mean, I need to know about it."

  "How would she be in it?"

  "I don't have any idea, but maybe you do."

  "Nope."

  "But you've been going out jogging with her."

  "Occasionally, Dev. Only occasionally. And so what?"

  "So did she ever mention Staci."

  "No. Never."

  "But Staci had her card."

  "Wow. That really narrows it down all right."

  "All right. How about the judge?"

  "Yes. She mentioned the judge."

  "In what context?"

  "In the context that Andrea and I were talking today, and Palmer got himself killed two days ago. The topic's come up with just about everybody I've seen in the past couple of days, Dev. Now including you. What exactly are you thinking?"

  "Just that if Parisi's with Piersall, that puts her around the guards' union, right? It's a lead. It's something." He snapped his fingers again. "She's your connection there. At Piersall."

  Hunt forced a smile. "No comment. Except to say that it's a matter of public record that I bill out some reasonable hours to Piersall. So what? I think I've already told you I didn't kill Palmer. I'm pretty sure Andrea didn't, either. Although you could always ask her."

  "I'm not saying she did. But I'd like to know why Staci had her card."

  "Coincidence?"

  "I hate that."

  Hunt shrugged. "It happens. Maybe she saw her at MoMo's and is trying to break into TV."

  Juhle shook his head. "That's what Shiu said, too, so it can't be right."

  "Okay, so how about the next time I talk to Andrea, I ask her about how Staci might have got the card? If she even remembers at all."

  Their waitress arrived with another raft of selections, but after forty-five minutes of continuous eating, both men were done. Juhle asked for the check and came back to Hunt. "So one last question: Who stood you up?"

  Hunt decided to tap-dance. "I haven't yet decided if, technically, it was exactly a stand-up. She just decided not to have dinner. She got pretty wrecked last night, and I think she still was hurting. Physically, I mean."

  "You're making excuses for her? Do you have any idea how pathetic that makes you? Are you in love?"

  "Marginally, maybe a little more."

  "Connie will be so relieved. But not if you're in love with somebody who gets wrecked one night and stands you up the next. As qualifications go, those kind of suck."

  "She's had a tough week."

  "Maybe we should start a Tough Week Club. Now who are we talking about?"

  Hunt sat back, drained his teacup, shook his head, put on a smile. "You know me better than that, Dev. I don't kiss and tell."

  "But you didn't kiss her. You couldn't have if she stood you up."

  "As I said, that point is technically unresolved. I may have kissed her before tonight, in which case I still wouldn't tell."

  "You moved on her last night when she was wrecked?"

  "That would have been ungentlemanly, so we can rule it out."

  "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

  "See. That's what makes you so good at your job. The trained inspector sees things other people would clean miss."

  * * *

  Hunt drove by Andrea's house on the way home. It wasn't on the way, and he didn't really plan for it. He pulled up across from where he'd parked that afternoon. The house was completely dark. It was still early, a little short of ten o'clock.

  He wanted to see her again. It was as simple as that.

  Hunt pulled into her driveway, turned off his ignition and lights, and got out of his car. Her garage door had small windows at eye level and Hunt looked in. Her car was gone. Nevertheless, he walked over to the stoop and peered through the glass panes in the top of her door into pure darkness.

  Back in his car, he sat behind the wheel with the motor off for the better part of another half hour, until the cold had eaten through him. If she came home and found him sitting there, what was going to be his pathetic excuse? He'd come across as clinging, needy, lovesick, maybe even a potential stalker.

  He turned on the ignition. He'd catch up to her tomorrow. Backing out of her driveway, he drove half a block down to Bay Street and turned south, heading for home.

  * * *

  Alone in the front of his warehouse, Hunt shot hoops.

  Basketball wouldn't ever hold the place in his heart forever reserved for baseball, but besides shortstop, he'd played point guard on his high school team and still got in at least twenty-two games a year with a city league team that played through the fall and early winter, although ironically he wasn't much of a fan of the pro sport. He and Juhle called the NBA the TMA—the Tattooed Millionaires Association—and he also wasn't really fond of the music they played at the games.

  But shooting hoops—shooting hoops was the best therapy in the world.

  And tonight he needed some, self-administered. So he'd start right at the edge of his half-court hardwood, take a shot, move up a few steps, but still outside the three-point range, take another, get to the top of the key, then the free-throw line. Whenever he missed, he, of course, charged the basket for a layup, then ran it out for another round until he tired. He stood six foot two, and when he'd been a teenager, he'd considered his ability to stuff one of the great athletic achievements of his life, but somewhere in his twenties, that skill had left him. He still tried every time he suited up in his sweats, though—the springs might come back for one fleeting day, and he didn't want to miss them.

  Finally, though, the industrial clock over the backboard said it was 11:42. He was dripping and about done in. He liked to go out with three in a row, and he'd made his first two and now stood at the free-throw line, bouncing the ball at his feet a couple of times. Then another two times. Then once. Held the ball for maybe thirty seconds. His breathing slowed.

  Dropping the basketball, he stopped the bounce with his foot, pushed it back under him, and sat down on it.

  Without taking that last shot, he walked off the court and turned out the lights on the playground side of his place, flipped on the overheads on the living side, went in and showered. When he finished, he went into his bedroom, opened his dresser, pulled out another
pair of gray sweats and put them on, then opened another drawer and reached under the T-shirts where he kept the picture.

  He hadn't taken it out in a couple of years. He didn't even remember the last time.

  It was the only one he had kept of Sophie. The night he'd burned all the rest of them, he'd taken this one out of the frame, but something about it had stopped him. He hadn't been able to make himself erase all signs that she'd ever existed. He couldn't do it.

  It wasn't a glamour shot, which was maybe what he liked about it the most—although God knew she'd had the capacity for glamour when the mood struck her—but it captured her. The laugh, the skin, the magic of her. It might have been the night she got pregnant, or, as her glow revealed, she may have already known. But in this shot, she was in her medical scrubs, just off her rounds at the Med Center, on a Saturday evening at the Shamrock Bar where they'd met.

  She'd given him a new telephoto lens for his birthday, and Hunt had been shooting extreme close-ups of birds in Golden Gate Park all day. When she'd come in and sat down at the bar, he'd been in the bathroom—timing was his specialty—camera and new honking lens around his neck. When he'd come out, she hadn't seen him. She was talking to the bartender there, laughing at something he was saying. And Hunt had raised his camera, brought her up close enough to touch, and caught her in that moment. When he saw what he'd captured, he'd blown it up to eight by ten and framed it and put it next to their bed, along with her favorite shot of him—on a windboard flying over the bay.

  Now he moved the glossy over under the light and laid it flat on the dresser. His face softened by degrees until he put his hands down on either side of the picture and leaned on them.

  He'd considered sharing his life with someone back when he was with her. But since then, that feeling had left him. There had been a few women since—nice enough, attractive enough—set-ups by Connie, that type of thing, but if the kind of involvement he'd had with Sophie was going to empty his soul out so thoroughly, his own preservation demanded that he avoid it. He just wasn't going to open that door again. It wasn't worth the pain.

  He didn't even know Parisi. Not really. And what he did know wasn't all good by a long shot. But she'd gotten inside him.

  "How dumb is this?" he said aloud to the picture.

  But, of course, Sophie couldn't answer.

  14 /

  The following morning—Thursday, June 2—Hunt was moved by two considerations to walk the fifteen-odd blocks from his home to his detective agency's two-room office over the Half Moon Café on Grant Avenue in Chinatown.

  First, an unexpected break in the fog had created a glorious morning.

  The other was that the waiting period was over today—he'd circled the date on his calendar—and he could stop and pick up his new gun, a 380 ACP Sig Sauer P232, which gave him about an inch less barrel and an inch less height than the weapon he'd been carrying for the last couple of years, the Sig P229.

  He'd fallen in love with the new weapon the last time he'd been to the range with Devin Juhle, who'd been trying one out and ultimately decided against it. For Devin, it was too small, and he didn't feel he could be as accurate with it. But Hunt had found the opposite to be true. Lighter and easier to handle, the gun performed better for Hunt than anything he'd ever shot. Plus, though the actual spec difference in size wasn't that great, it felt far less bulky in his back-of-the-belt holster.

  Armed with his new toy, knocked out by the beauty of the day, Hunt surprised himself by stopping in and buying a bag of freshly made, still-hot char siu bao—sticky dough buns filled with pork in a sweet sauce. The Chinese food last night with Juhle had been so good that he was unable to resist the craving for more this morning. Back out on the street, Hunt's sense of well-being got so much the better of him that he emptied his pockets and put all his coins in the hat of a homeless guy who was sleeping in one of the doorways.

  In his office, Tamara was out from behind her desk watering the plants. She wore a red miniskirt, red low-heeled shoes, and a demure white blouse that nevertheless stopped in time to display a couple of inches of taut flat stomach and a faux-diamond navel stud. "If you ever get a job in a real office," Hunt said, "you know they probably won't let you show off your tummy."

  She flashed him a tolerant smile. "That's why I won't work in a place like that. Craig likes my tummy."

  "It's a fine tummy," Hunt said, "but old guys like me—not saying me personally, but guys like me—might find it distracting in a business environment."

  "Well, that's their problem. Not saying you personally, but people like you. We're never going to have this be like a real office, are we? With dress codes and everything?"

  "It's unlikely," Hunt said. "Except maybe if Craig pierces anything I can see."

  "Does his tongue count?"

  Hunt held up a hand. "Tam. Please. Not before breakfast. He hasn't done his tongue, has he?"

  "No, but we were talking about maybe the two of us You wouldn't really fire us, would you?"

  "No. Never, I hope. But I also would find it a little hard to have a casual little chat like we're having right now because I would be creeped out."

  She smiled at him. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you, then, about Craig's "

  Hunt stopped her. "Better left unsaid," he said. "But speaking of the boy?"

  "He's process serving. Six subpoenas."

  "Six in one day? Don't tell me somebody's actually getting to trial."

  She nodded. "Believe it or not. One of Aaron Rand's clients. Craig's on his cell if you need him." She pointed to the white bag in his hand. "Tell me those are fresh bao."

  "I'll play your silly game," he said. "These are fresh bao, but sadly I only bought a dozen."

  She gave him a look, held out a be-ringed hand punctuated with red nail polish. "A dozen feeds a hungry family of four. Give."

  "Besides, they're just out of the oven. Way too hot to eat."

  "I'll blow on them."

  Hunt sighed theatrically. "It doesn't seem right." He opened the bag, handed her one of the buns. He turned and let himself into his office, closing the frosted glass door behind him. Taking off his coat, hanging it on the rack by his door, he reached around and took out his new gun, just to look at it again. But holding it now, he suddenly realized that he needed to run downtown and get his CCW—carry a concealed weapon—permit updated to cover it. Technically, he shouldn't be walking around with the thing in its holster on him until he'd done all the paperwork. He reminded himself to remember to take care of it at lunchtime, then put the gun back where it belonged and went around to his desk.

  The office was good-sized, square, utilitarian. When he'd first seen it, it had essentially been a large windowless closet—a major factor in its affordable rent. His first improvement was to knock out a three-foot-square section of the wall and put glass between Tamara's office and his own to let in some natural light.

  Next Hunt installed wall-to-wall carpet throughout. He had a standard-issue IKEA blond desk with a computer and phone and a matching swivel chair and a double stack of light tan metal filing cabinets. From his home, he'd brought down two acoustic guitars—one steel and one gut—and hung them for easy access on the wall to his left. On his right was a Corian counter with a sink and hot plate and printer and fax machine on top and a small refrigerator with drawers for surveillance supplies—night goggles, binoculars, pilot bags when pit stops to pee weren't an option—and photo equipment underneath. He thought that the bunch of framed old black-and-white baseball photographs that he'd gotten cheap at the ballpark didn't look too bad above the counter.

  He'd resisted the urge to call Andrea when he'd gotten up. He knew that he could have pretended that he was just checking up on her, making sure she was feeling okay, that her hangover had abated, but he didn't need Juhle to tell him how lame that would be. He'd get in touch later in the day, casually. No mention of the phone call she had promised yesterday.

  Now that he'd made it all the way into work without having yielded to the temp
tation to call her, he resolved that he'd put it off until later and simply ask her out. She'd either say yes or no. He didn't really believe it, but he knew it was possible that their moment yesterday could after all have been her exhaustion and vulnerability, and he didn't want to play to those cards. If anything real had been there yesterday, it would still be there today—or even tomorrow.