Liquid Smoke

by Jeff Shelby

  “It does.”

  She set her glass down. “I assume you heard me say no more work talk tonight.”

  I smiled at her. “I did.”

  “Then I’ll also assume you have a pretty good reason for bringing this guy up.”

  I stared into my drink, the ice melting slowly in the alcohol and sugar.

  “I think Russell Simington is my father,” I said.

  We sat there for a few minutes without speaking. Liz’s face told me she was working out what to say next. Our food arrived, and the waitress asked if we needed anything else. We both shook our heads.

  “Will you explain it to me?” Liz finally asked.

  I told her about my conversation with Darcy Gill, ignoring the twinge of guilt I felt for not opening up the same way to Carter. I told her about San Quentin and death row and everything else.

  She stuck a fork in her food, then rested it on the plate, distracted. “I can check it out. If you want. See if she’s legit.”

  I shook my head. “I think she’s telling the truth. But I’ll find out for myself.”

  She nodded and picked up her fork.

  We ate quietly for a few minutes. I knew I’d changed the course and tone of our evening, but I wanted to tell her. It was the kind of thing I would have kept from her in the past.

  “He was a bad guy,” she said.

  “Figured.”

  “No, I mean bad,” she repeated. “If I’m remembering correctly, the way it went down, it was ugly.”

  Her conviction was like a kick in the groin. “That’s the impression I got from this lawyer.”

  She bunched up her napkin and laid it on the table next to her plate. “Are you gonna go?”

  I leaned back in the chair. “I haven’t decided.”

  She started to say something, then stopped.

  “Say it,” I said. “Whatever you were just about to say.”

  “I think it would be hard, Noah,” she said, softly. “Not that you shouldn’t do it, but I think it will be tough and you should be ready for that.”

  “I know. Seeing this guy who’s done all these things,” I said. “And then realizing that I’m his son. I’m not sure what I get out of it or if I should even want anything out of it.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I think you should consider all those things. But I was looking at it a little differently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The waitress came and cleared the table, and we passed on dessert.

  Liz put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Let’s say you go and meet with him. You learning anything that might enable this woman to get him off death row is really unlikely. In California, once they punch your ticket for the chamber, it’s a done deal. He’s probably going to die regardless of what he may tell you.”

  “I know that. And it sounds like he deserves to,” I said.

  She shook her head and pushed a stray strand of hair away from her face. “You’re assuming that he’s going to be this awful person, this guy who matches the image you’ve created of him. What if he’s not like that at all?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  She stared at me, her blue eyes radiating concern. “What if you like him?”

  Silverware clinked against plates and murmured conversation drifted in the air around us.

  “I’m not saying I don’t want you to do this,” she said, reaching across the table and taking my hand. “I’m really not. You probably need to do it. But you’re talking about him as if you’ve already met him and you know exactly how he’s going to be.” She paused. “You need to consider the idea that he’s not going to be a monster and that you may feel some connection to him. And that might be hard to deal with when the time comes for him to die.”

  Her words felt like a slap to the side of my head. She was right. I hadn’t thought of it that way. The indecision and fear I’d been fighting all day went up a notch.

  She laced her fingers with mine and squeezed my hand. “I’ll help any way I can. But are you ready for all those possibilities?”

  I appreciated her asking, but we both knew I wasn’t.

  SEVEN

  We spent the night at my place, and I was awake at four in the morning, staring at the ceiling, knowing I was going to the airport.

  I didn’t pack a bag. I wasn’t planning on staying longer than the afternoon.

  I woke Liz after I showered and told her I’d call her later on. She hugged me, maybe a moment or two longer than usual, then kissed me goodbye without saying a word.

  The drive to Lindbergh took twenty minutes on the empty freeway, and I was ticketed and through security by seven thirty. I didn’t feel like talking with Darcy until I had to, so I bought a paper and sat down with it in the coffee shop to have some breakfast.

  Neither the paper nor the greasy eggs were able to keep my mind off what I was venturing into. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to balance what Darcy wanted me to find out and what I needed to know for myself. I didn’t think that Simington would have given her my information just so he could tell me the entire truth about his crime. I had a feeling it had more to do with making amends before his death.

  I watched people walk to their gates and questions kept popping into my head. Did I really look like his son? How would he introduce himself? What was it like inside San Quentin? Would he have excuses for his actions or would he take pride in what he’d done?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted answers to any of those questions, but I knew I was getting on that plane.

  The first boarding call went out over the loudspeaker, and my stomach tightened.

  At eight fifteen, I figured I couldn’t postpone the inevitable as they made the last call for passengers to San Francisco.

  I walked through the Jetway, my stomach already churning. I was carrying self-doubt and second guesses like pennies in my pocket.

  The cabin was three-quarters full. Business travelers in suits. Some college-aged kids. A mother with a small child strapped to her body in the first row. She smiled at me as I went by, and I returned her smile.

  My ticket said 10C.

  I worked my way up the aisle and reached row ten. D, E, and F were occupied by two teenagers and a guy reading the Wall Street Journal. A guy reading the New York Times was in A, next to the window.

  B was empty.

  Darcy Gill was nowhere to be found.

  I slid into my seat and glanced around. I didn’t see her. I wondered if she’d taken a flight the previous night, our conversation on the beach convincing her I wouldn’t be joining her. Or maybe she was running late.

  The doors to the plane closed, we pushed back from the gate, and the attendants began their run-through of the safety procedures.

  Darcy didn’t strike me as someone who ever ran late.

  I was annoyed that I’d gotten up in the dark and boarded a plane at her request and Darcy was a no-show. I wondered momentarily if she was playing some game.

  But just as she didn’t strike me as someone who showed up tardy, I didn’t think Darcy was a game player either.

  I glanced at the empty seat next to me.

  As the flight attendants took their seats and the plane taxied down the runway for takeoff, the anxious burning that had taken up residence in my gut since Darcy had accosted me in the water gained new life.

  EIGHT

  The flight was bumpy and rough as the plane navigated the thick marine layer along the coast, and I felt like a ping-pong ball by the time we landed.

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Darcy was supposed to be my tour guide.

  I dialed information on my cell and asked for a number for Darcy Gill. Information had a business number for her at a law firm called Gill and Gill. When I was connected, I heard a recording giving some perfunctory information. One of those pieces of information was Gill and Gill’s address.

  I walked outside and jumped in a taxi. I gave the driver the address, and we moved away from the congestion of the airport.


  San Francisco had never been my favorite place. Cold, rainy, and carrying an inferiority complex that it constantly denied, the city never felt like it belonged in California. The views were spectacular across the bays and the Golden Gate was pretty enough, but the place never felt comfortable.

  A missing Darcy and a meeting with Russell Simington had taken that uncomfortability to new heights.

  The taxi driver, a small Asian man who didn’t speak a word to me, navigated the streets of the city with the care of a wounded bull. The plane ride was nothing compared to the lightning-quick lane changes, rocket-like acceleration, and indifference toward red lights.

  The taxi pulled up to a three-story building that appeared to be waiting for a breeze to knock it over. The drywall on the outside was chipped away, a window on the top floor was boarded up, and the wooden door looked about two hundred years old. A small sign next to the door read “Gill and Gill.” Law firm, crack house. Same difference.

  I paid the silent man his money and stepped out into the wet, heavy morning air. The taxi exploded away from the curb, its tires screeching on the damp pavement.

  I pushed open the old wooden door. I was in a short, low-ceilinged hallway book-ended by another door at the opposite end. A frosted glass pane in the middle of the door had “Law Offices” stenciled on it.

  I opened that door into a room the size of a Geo Metro. A young woman looked up at me from behind a cluttered desk. Her hair was dyed jet black, with a purple streak right through the center. Each ear held a multitude of earrings. Her eyes were heavily lined with eyeliner and mascara, and her lipstick was nearly as dark. Her pale skin seemed to glow against the hair and makeup.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, sounding like she didn’t want to.

  “I’m looking for Darcy Gill.”

  “She’s not in,” she said.

  “Know where I can find her?”

  “No. I wish I did,” she said, annoyed.

  “Is she still in San Diego?” I asked.

  Surprise and curiosity appeared on her face. “I don’t know. Who are you?”

  “Noah Braddock. She came to see me yesterday.”

  She stood up. She wore a long-sleeved black sweater and black jeans that looked too big for her skinny frame. She looked me over like she was seeing me for the first time.

  “She’s not with you?” she said, her voice now sounding like she cared.

  “She was supposed to meet me on the plane. I was on it. She wasn’t.”

  She stared hard at me for a moment, her eyes cold and unfriendly.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Miranda,” she said, her eyes on her desk now, thinking. “I’m her paralegal.”

  “Who’s the other Gill in the firm?”

  “There isn’t one. Darcy thought it sounded better than just her name.”

  “Ah.”

  “When did you last talk to her?” I recounted our conversation on the beach. “And she was gonna meet you at the airport, right?” “She said she’d be on the plane. I told her I wasn’t sure what I was doing.”

  Miranda nodded. “Yeah. I talked to her right after that. She said you were kind of a dick.”

  “I’ll be sure to ask her about that. So she didn’t come back last night?”

  “If she did, I haven’t talked to her,” she said. “But she had reservations on the morning flight. I left a couple of messages on her cell, but she never called back.”

  It didn’t feel right. Darcy had come down to San Diego for one reason—getting me to San Francisco. It made no sense that she would miss the flight. If anything, I had half expected her to show up at my house and escort me to the airport.

  “Do you know where she was staying?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Miranda said. “I need to make a couple of calls. She may have just got caught up with something else.” She pointed a finger at me. Her nails were black. Shocker. “And you need to get over to Quentin to see your dad.”

  I bristled. “His name is Russell Simington, and I don’t know that he’s related to me.”

  She held up her hands in mock apology. “Right, dude. Sorry. Not like you don’t look just like him or anything.”

  Darcy had said the same thing, and I didn’t feel any better hearing it a second time. “You’ve seen him?”

  “Of course. It’s the only thing we’re doing now.”

  “You and Darcy are the whole office?”

  Miranda started looking through the papers on her desk. “The whole office.”

  “And you’re a paralegal?”

  She snorted. “That’s my title. I’m third year at Hastings. Secretary, paralegal, investigator, office manager. I do it all.” She pulled a piece of paper from a stack. “Here we go. Eleven thirty is check-in.”

  “For what?”

  “Visiting hours start at noon,” she said. “You need to be there at eleven thirty so they can check your ID, do the cavity search, all that stuff.”

  Miranda thought she was funny. I thought different. She shoved the paper in my direction. “Fill this out before you get there. They’ll want it from you at the gate.” I took the paper. “What about Darcy?”

  The corners of her mouth flashed into a little smile. “You need someone to hold your hand?”

  “No. I meant what are you going to do to find her?”

  “It’s a scary place over there,” she said, still smiling. “All those mean, nasty men. I could get my sister to go with you. She’s thirteen, but she’s tough.”

  “You treat all your clients like this?”

  “Other than Russell, we don’t have any clients right now,” she said, the smile fading.

  “Imagine.”

  She waved a hand in the air. “Go. They won’t let you in if you’re late. I’ll work on tracking down Darcy.”

  “Maybe your sister can help you out,” I said, turning to leave.

  “Hey,” Miranda called out. “Noah?”

  I opened the door. “What?”

  “Say hi to your daddy.”

  I slammed the door behind me.

  NINE

  Two blocks away from Miranda, I waved down a taxi. I didn’t know where Darcy was, but I had other things to worry about.

  The cab went north out of the city. The irony was that California’s most violent prison sat on a beautiful plateau next to San Francisco Bay in one of the wealthiest counties in the state. For years there had been rumors that the state would sell the land to developers for billions and ship the prisoners to other prisons. But, so far, they remained incarcerated with an ocean view.

  I looked at the paperwork Miranda had given me. Basic stuff about who I was and why I was visiting. Probably just to have a record of me in case I tried to break someone out.

  Not likely.

  The cab pulled to a halt outside the entrance. The driver turned around. “This is as far as I go. Bad luck to drive in there.”

  I handed him the fare and tip. “Probably bad luck to walk in, too.”

  “No doubt, man.”

  The front of the prison looked like a city park. Big grassy lawns with palm trees. The parking lot was full, and there was a line at the main gate. A knot like a rock formed in my stomach as I got in line.

  The guard greeted me with a big smile. She looked at my paperwork, nodded, asked me a few routine questions. She handed back my license, but kept the paperwork. “You’ll have exactly fifty minutes, sir. We’ll notify you when there are ten minutes left.” She upped the wattage in the smile. “Welcome to San Quentin.”

  I walked through a metal detector and into an expansive courtyard. People talked casually, the prisoners identified by their bright yellow coveralls. Babies cried, toddlers ran in circles, and men and women held hands, trying to act like normal families. But the forced smiles and reserved actions told the real story.

  I felt like I was entering some sort of deranged amusement park.

  A guard explained t
o me that death row inmates were not allowed into the public areas, and I was directed through another gate and to a bank of windows down a narrow hall.

  I didn’t argue.

  I slid into a seat in front of the last window and my assisting guard told me that Mr. Simington would be along shortly. In the center of the window was a small circle with slats running through it, like in the box office of a movie theater.

  Only this movie was real.

  Sitting there by myself, the urge to run was greater than anything I’d ever felt. I had no place being there. I could live without meeting this man. My life would be no different. I owed nothing to him or to Darcy Gill. Nothing. Going through with this suddenly seemed like a ridiculous exercise in masochism, and I stood to get the hell out of there.

  There was movement behind the window and a guard pulled back the chair on the other side of the clear panel.

  I froze.

  Run or sit?

  I sat.

  The guard moved away, and Russell Simington moved into view.

  He was a little over six feet tall and well built, the yellow coveralls fitting him like a tailored business suit. I put him somewhere in his late fifties. Thick brown hair streaked with gray. The reading glasses he wore over his dark green eyes gave him an educated look. A nondescript nose. His skin was darker than I expected for someone in his position, a golden brown that only the sun can give. A tiny white scar stood out next to his right eye. A well-manicured beard, brown with gray like his hair, covered a distinguished jaw line. I saw a small tattoo near his right wrist, but I couldn’t make it out.

  I felt my breath getting away from me.

  If Russell Simington wasn’t my father, someone had done a damn good job of drawing us with the same pencil.

  He slid into the chair and gave a slight nod in my direction. “Hello,” he said. His voice was deep but smooth. “Hi,” I managed.

  He leaned forward, his face closer to the panel, and adjusted his glasses. “I’m Russell.” I said nothing.