Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

by Marcia Muller

  James Lewis, Oakland Port Commission: “Let’s face it, our port’s in trouble. Nobody wants to see GGL leave. But if Gordon’s successful with the Hunters Point project, it’ll mean a boost for the whole Bay Area economy. If the new mega-terminal draws business from other West Coast ports, we’re sure to siphon off some of the overflow.”

  Noah Romanchek, Suits’s chief counsel: “I don’t think that what’s been happening to T.J. has anything to do with GGL or either of the ports. … Why? Because the person knows too much about his organization: how much to offer a guy to go back on what’s practically a done deal, which moneyman’s on shaky enough ground to be bribed. Hell, he even knows T.J.’s personal habits: where he stops in for a beer at night, how to get into the place where he lives. You look closely at T.J.’s associates and you’ll find your man.”

  Russ Zola, Suits’s organizational strategist: “Noah’s right, but I’ll take it a step further. What’s going on doesn’t have a damn thing to do with this current turnaround—or maybe with business at all. … I can’t say why; I don’t have that good a grasp of it. But whoever’s doing this to him has put a lot of energy into it. It feels personal, like you said. A grudge that’s been nurtured a long time. You go back into his past, his personal life, and then you’ll be on the right track.”

  Carole Lattimer, Suits’s chief financial officer: “What Noah and Russ told you strikes me as right on target. You’re going to have one tough time shaking anything out of T.J., though. He’ll protect that sacred privacy of his to the grave, and there’ll be hell to pay for any of us who violate it.”

  There was more, but those were the best-taken and most convincing points. I switched off the tape recorder. Lattimer’s voice saying “to the grave” had put a chill on me. I got up and went downstairs, looking for companionship.

  The first floor was deserted. In the foyer, Ted’s desk was tidy, his lamp turned low. The parlor was dark, the evening news flickering soundlessly on the TV screen. As I moved toward the back of the house, past the law library and Hank’s and Rae’s dark offices, I belatedly remembered this was the coop’s softball night. They were playing another firm down in San Mateo, where the sun was probably shining.

  In the kitchen I went to the fridge, poured myself a glass of jug wine, and marked my initials in the IOU column of the sheet taped to the door. Then I sat down at the table by the window to wait for Suits, listening to the old house creak and groan around me.

  Softball night, I thought, and nobody’d reminded me. I’d never been a regular on the team—my schedule was too erratic for that—but when possible I’d gone along and dusted off my high school cheerleading skills. But today there hadn’t been any reminder notice of the game on my desk, and of course I no longer had a mailbox by Ted’s workstation for somebody to slip a note into.

  Was it possible, I wondered, that the members of the coop harbored resentment because I’d turned down what they all considered a handsome promotion? Did they take my need to be my own boss as a personal rejection of them? If so, the partners had masked their feelings well when I’d appeared at their mid-July meeting and informed them of my decision; they’d seemed genuinely pleased when I asked if I could rent office space. But now that I thought of it, tonight wasn’t the first time I’d been left out of their activities: nobody had told me about last Thursday’s poker game; nobody had invited me to go in on the pizza that several of them had ordered while working late last Friday; my office no longer seemed to be a stop on the route for people collecting people for a trip downhill to the Remedy.

  Maybe all these years I’d mistaken what were essentially business relationships for friendships. Maybe now that I no longer worked for the co-op those relationships would cease. Sure, old friends like Hank, Ted, and Rae would still come around, but what about the others—Jack, Pam, Larry, Gloria, Mike? I didn’t regret my decision to fly solo, but it saddened me that it might involve such a big trade-off.

  * * *

  Suits arrived at twenty to seven; I could identify him by the sound of his odd gait. “Back here in the kitchen,” I called.

  A few seconds later he appeared in the doorway, his bruised face drawn, his suit rumpled, his shoulders sagging.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “It’s been a long day.” He came over to the table and slumped into the chair next to mine.

  “Drink?”

  “I could use a beer.”

  I went to the fridge, got one out, and again marked the IOU column. When I handed the bottle to him, I asked, “So how was Long Beach?”

  “A pisser. My second-choice guy blew me off.” He sipped beer, set the bottle on the table. “Believe me, I know what his deal is down there. It doesn’t come close to what I’m offering. He has to’ve been bought.” He leaned back in the chair, massaged his temples with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Suits, I talked with a number of people today. There’s something of a consensus about what’s going on.” Then I set forth the theories, quoted from the tapes. “I need to spend some time with you, go over the information on your associates and turnarounds that Dottie Collier sent me. And I need to talk with you about your personal life.”

  He shook his head.

  “Suits, isn’t it worth talking if we can stop this person?”

  He got up and went around the table to the window. Stood with his back to me, looking out at the misted cityscape. How many times in the years I’d worked here had I done the same? I’d brooded, analyzed, planned, suffered, and rejoiced at this window.

  Finally he said, “It’s not that I’m hiding anything.”

  “I know.”

  “But I’ve never been able to talk about personal stuff, except to …”

  I waited.

  He turned and stared at me, intense eyes moving over my face. After a moment he stepped toward me and touched my cheek. His fingers were dry; their effect on me was nothing more than the brush of autumn leaves. When he withdrew his hand, he frowned down at it, as if he’d experienced the same sensation—one that he hadn’t expected. Then he nodded, a decision made.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

  “Who?”

  “We’ll go to your place first. Pack a bag—weekend clothes. Better be prepared for rain and cold, if what we ran into coming up the coast is any example.”

  “Suits—”

  “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “Too many questions. Just let it unfold.”

  Nine

  As the JetRanger crossed the Bay and sliced through the airspace above Marin County there was enough daylight left so that I could see thick fog masses boiling through the hollows of the coastal hills. Josh set the copter on a northwesterly course above the Point Reyes National Seashore; ahead, the lights that ringed Bodega Harbor glowed faintly through the mist.

  Somewhere between my house and the landing pad on Bay Vista’s roof I’d made the conscious decision to give in to what Suits called letting events unfold. Not an easy concession for a person like me, who felt a constant need to be in control, but now I found curious comfort in my self-imposed passivity. Perhaps it was the gathering darkness or the rhythmic throbbing of the engine and the flap of the rotor; maybe I was just tired. Whatever the reason, I felt cocooned. Besides, my failure to ask questions was bugging the hell out of Suits.

  By the time we passed Fort Ross, flying parallel to the shoreline above the sea, night was falling. I took a last look inland, saw the tops of sequoias piercing the fog cover, and thought of miniature Christmas trees on a spun-cotton back-drop. Soon after that there was nothing but blackness.

  Suits kept glancing at me, mystified by my silence. He’d undoubtedly expected me to pepper him with questions the whole ride—and had also expected to amuse himself by fending them off. After a while I smiled serenely at him. He frowned and looked away.

  Soon drops of rain began to speckle the
windows. Josh’s voice came through the earphones. “Looks like we’re in for more weather like we saw down south. I’m going to take her up higher, try for smoother air.”

  Suits didn’t reply, leaving it to the expert.

  The air wasn’t any smoother at the higher altitude; the copter hit a crosscurrent with a bump. “Sorry about that,” Josh said. In the distance lightning flashed.

  “What is it with this weather?” Suits asked. “It’s August, for Christ’s sake.”

  I’d flown in far worse, but that had been on commercial carriers or with Hy, whose abilities and instincts I knew and trusted. The cocoon of comfort I’d spun began to unravel; my fingers tensed against the seat edge. I glanced at Suits, but he seemed sunk in private thoughts.

  Another jarring crosscurrent. Josh took the copter even higher. Wind buffeted it, driving us farther out to sea; rain made slash marks on the windows.

  “Boss, I think we better bypass the cove and set down at the county airport. That pad’s dangerous when it’s wet, and I don’t like landing that close to the cliff in this wind.”

  “Okay, ask Ground Control at Little River to call that cabdriver down at Elk, see if he’ll run up and fetch us.”

  “Right.”

  Suits stared at my face, waiting for a barrage of questions. I looked back silently, taking pleasure in torturing him. I already knew as much about our destination as he’d tell me, anyway: one of the many small coves that scallop the coast south of Mendocino.

  Suits turned his head toward the window again. For the tense remainder of the flight he broke the silence only once, suddenly sitting up straighter and peering downward. He said, “There it is—we’re right over Bootlegger’s Cove.”

  Josh had veered inland; I had to lean across Suits to see the coastline. A faint scattering of lights lay below; one of them blinked green. “Pretty,” I said and settled back in my seat.

  Suits frowned and waited. I smiled.

  “You’re getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?” he demanded.

  “Out of what?”

  He made a disgusted sound and began drumming his fingers on his knee.

  Several minutes later we touched down at the county airport at Little River. The wind lashed the rain into stinging torrents; Josh had to steady me against its force when I stepped out. Then Suits grabbed my arm—more for ballast than to assist me—and we ran for the tiny terminal. Under the overhang of its roof we shook off water like dogs, stamped our cold feet, slapped icy hands together. Josh hurried up a minute later with the bags, his hair plastered to his head.

  Suits asked, “You coming along to the cove with us? It’s been a long time—”

  “Can’t. There’s a sound in the engine that I don’t like. I’ll bunk in with my buddy in Albion, come back first thing in the morning and work on it.”

  “Whatever.” Suits shrugged. “We’ll drop you off, if that cab— Here he comes now.”

  A brown sedan with a light on top that inexplicably said “Yellow Cab Company” was pulling in to the terminal parking lot. Suits motioned to me, and we ran for it, Josh following with the bags. The cab’s interior was musty with old cigar smoke, but the driver, an elderly man in a hooded army surplus slicker, had the heat on high, so I could forgive any noxious odor. Suits and Josh greeted him familiarly, and we set off south, stopping to let Josh out at the foot of a road on the coast highway below the hamlet of Albion. As we continued, Suits began to hum tunelessly, fingers of his right hand splayed and pressing hard against his thigh.

  Nervous, I thought. Something to do with the person he’s taking me to meet.

  I didn’t ask, though. Just let it unfold.

  * * *

  When the cab turned off the highway some ten minutes later, its headlights washed over a high stake fence. Suits got out and ran through the rain to a wooden box mounted next to the gate, used a key, and the gate swung open. The driver pulled the cab forward, and Suits got back in. They’d done this before, I thought.

  The property beyond the fence was heavily forested in cypress; a blacktop drive cut through the trees, then climbed a steep rise. After the cab crested it, I saw rocky land falling away to the sea cliff and, on its edge, the lights I’d glimpsed from the air. Wind buffeted the cab as it crossed the unsheltered land; beside me Suits leaned forward, staring at a house whose outlines began to emerge from the sheeting rain.

  I leaned forward too, saw two long, low wings of fieldstone and timber connected by a peak-roofed glass gallery that resembled a greenhouse. The lights in either wing were masked by drawn curtains, and smoke from one of the chimneys was caught and swept inland by the gale. As the cab stopped in front of the glass section, spotlights flashed on inside; they shone on a profusion of palms and yuccas and vines, casting complex shadows through which a silhouette moved.

  Suits’s earlier tension flowed out in a sigh. “It’s called Moonshine House,” he told me, “after the liquor they used to offload down at the cove.” His voice was light now, almost boyish.

  I turned toward him, but already he was opening the cab’s door and scrambling out. While I located my purse and briefcase and pulled the hood of my parka over my head, he dealt with money matters and hoisted one of the bags with his good hand. I climbed out and grabbed the other, and we ran for the house. The door swung open, and I skidded through it, dropping the bag on a slick tile floor. A strong, slender hand steadied me. I looked into the face of the woman who waited there.

  Suits said, “Sherry-O, this is my wife, Anna.”

  She could have been my sister, we looked that much alike.

  * * *

  At first I could only stare, my eyes moving from Anna to Suits and back again. Then he let fly one of his alarming whoops of laughter and the spell was broken.

  Anna Gordon—taller and more slender than I, with waist-length black hair like mine before I had it cut—looked sternly at her husband. To me she said, “I don’t suppose he mentioned the resemblance.”

  “No.”

  “The man does love a surprise.” She shot him one more stern glance, then urged me to our left, into a long wing where kitchen, dining area, and living room flowed into a single open space that was dominated by a pit fireplace and a westward-oriented window wall. Instead of the sea, I saw our images—Anna’s and mine—reflected on the black glass. She touched my arm and pointed; we studied ourselves and each other.

  There were differences, of course: Her height, accentuated by slim jeans and a loose silk top the color of clover honey. Her features, more strongly Native American than mine, which are a genetic accident, a throwback to the Shoshone blood that traces to my great-grandmother, Mary McCone. Her mannerisms … I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but already I sensed a contentment … no, a self-containment that I didn’t have, probably never would have.

  But the likeness, given the circumstances, was unsettling.

  Suits came in behind us. He’d removed the raincoat he’d worn draped over his shoulders and was still chuckling.

  I turned and glared at him.

  He held out his good hand as if to fend me off. “Sorry,” he said. “The devil made me do it.”

  Really? I wondered. A practical joke, or an omission prompted by nervousness about how I would take the fact that he’d married a woman who looked a great deal like me? I thought of the way he’d stared at me in All Souls’s kitchen before making the decision to bring me here; of his brooding silence on the JetRanger and his edginess in the taxi. In either case, I’d misread Suits once again, imagining him to be a loner whose life was played out in a series of half-furnished places in cities that weren’t home. It convinced me that I would never read him accurately, would never do anything more than scratch the surface of his persona.

  Anna took my purse and briefcase, helped me out of my wet parka, and loaded them onto Suits’s good arm. “Make yourself useful,” she told him. Then she led me to one of the sofas that surrounded the fire pit. “Take off those boots and put your feet up,” she
said. “I’m going to fix us some food.”

  I sat holding my hands out toward the warmth of the flames. The rain whacked down on the roof, smacked mercilessly against the glass wall behind me. After a moment I pulled off my boots, wriggled my toes, and propped them up to toast on the fire pit’s edge.

  Anna had gone to the kitchen at the far end of the space—rich wood and copper and earth-toned tiles, warm on a night like this. Suits came in from wherever he’d taken my things and joined her. She stood at a counter that faced out into the room, arranging food on a plate; he moved behind her, cradling her body with his good arm. Anna paused in her work, turned for a kiss, touched his cast gently with her fingertips. When she resumed what she’d been doing, he rested his chin on her shoulder; she was a few inches taller than he, and his head fit nicely into the curve of her neck. As I watched, his weary face underwent a transformation: lines smoothed; his eyes closed; a smile curved his lips.

  My work has made me something of a voyeur, but even such an accomplished one as I knows when to stop intruding on a private moment. I looked away at the fire pit. In spite of the many questions that nagged at me, the flames soon had me mesmerized. I heard soft conversation and rattling of dishes in the kitchen, the repetitive beeping of a microwave oven. My limbs sagged against the soft cushions, and my eyelids grew heavy. …

  The conversation was louder now, something to do with wine. I jerked my head up; I’d been dozing. Anna crossed the room and set a tray laden with glasses, plates, and utensils on the fire pit wall. “Hope you don’t mind eating informally,” she said. “That dining room table? We’ve had it five years now and never once used it.” Then she went back to the kitchen, and I removed my still-damp feet from next to the tray. She and Suits returned with two additional trays and took seats on either side of me.

  “Okay,” Anna said, “you can eat fancy or plain, or both. We’ve got duck liver pâté and another kind—I think it’s pork and beef—with some of those designer mushrooms that Suits likes but I find suspect. There’s Brie and Stilton”—Suits growled in appreciation—“and caviar and anchovies”—she made a face—“and crackers and sourdough. Now, over here”—she indicated the tray closest to her—“is the kind of stuff I live on when he’s not home, which is most of the time. All microwavable.”