Fatal

by John Lescroart

  He couldn’t make another mistake. He had to think about it some more, make sure he did the right thing. Not ruin everything with one (more) stupid move.

  He must avoid resorting to any desperate acts.

  Everything depended on that.

  * * *

  Kate and Ron had a tradition on First Fridays that went back to the first weeks after Kate had quit the venture capital day job and now, seventeen years later, the enclosed booth for two at the back of Sam’s Grill had their names inscribed on a little brass plaque on the side wall. It was a low-key source of pride for both of them, and when Kate slid into her place, the first thing she did was kiss her fingers, then touch them to the plaque. Ron, sipping from his stemmed martini glass, nodded in acknowledgment, silently letting her know that he’d already performed the same ritual.

  Putting down his glass, he asked, “You realize what today is?”

  “I need a hint.”

  “Minor milestone.”

  “Hmm.” Reaching across, she lifted his glass and took a small sip. “How minor?”

  “Medium, I’d say. Medium minor. But real nonetheless.”

  “One more hint.”

  “Okay. You and me, not the kids.”

  She sat back, crossed her arms, and put on what she knew was her cute pout. Finally, she met his eyes, lifted her finger, and pointed. “The plaque,” she said.

  “You are good,” he said, impressed. “What about it?”

  “Big number anniversary.”

  Breaking a grin, he nodded in admiration. “Would you believe two hundred?”

  “I would,” she said, “except I can’t believe we’re that old.”

  “Ah, but you forget that time spent at Sam’s doesn’t make you older, so we save almost half a year right there.”

  “Well, then, I suppose it is marginally possible, age-wise.”

  Their favorite waiter in his tuxedo, Stefano, arrived and they placed their order for a half-bottle of Roederer sparkling wine to mark the occasion. When Stefano left, closing the curtain behind him, Kate popped up quickly, leaned across the table, and kissed Ron. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi yourself. One more.”

  “It better be a good one,” she said.

  He put his hand up behind her neck and held her there a moment. “How was that?” he asked when he let her go.

  “Adequate. Quite decent, actually.” Smiling, she settled back into her place, indicated the plaque again. “What was your methodology figuring this was number two hundred?”

  He smiled back at her. “Do you have any idea how great it is to be out with a beautiful woman who uses the word ‘methodology’ correctly?”

  “Fun?”

  “Fun would be part of it, yes.”

  She had her left hand stretched out along the side of the table and he took it.

  “Methodology,” she said.

  “Coming right up. We start with a few assumptions,” he said, and began laying them out for her—averaging twelve lunches a year for six plus years before Sam’s had put the plaque up, then eleven years after that, minus about one miss a year due to one thing or another, they were either at two hundred or pretty damn close. “So I say we declare it a minor milestone and celebrate.”

  “Minor milestone it is.”

  “And in light of that . . .” He reached down into his jacket side pocket and took out a small maroon felt box, holding it out to her. “To my partner at two hundred First Fridays.”

  Her eyes glistened as she reached for the box and opened it to reveal a black pearl with a golden chain. She shook her head back and forth. Sighing, she said, “You are too much, you know that? How did I ever get to keep you?”

  “Must be clean living.” Ron shrugged. “I saw it in a window downtown and it spoke to me. You don’t have any other black pearls, do you?”

  “You know I don’t.” She was fastening the chain’s clasp behind her neck. “I’m never going to take this thing off.”

  * * *

  After lunch, harboring a slight buzz from the sparkling wine, Kate walked around downtown, winding her way among the skyscrapers in the financial district, then at last cutting through the Embarcadero buildings that she knew were home to Peter’s firm.

  Eventually she found herself at the Ferry Building.

  Midafternoon on a warm sunny Friday, the place was alive with sightseeing tourists and locals getting a jump on their weekend gourmet shopping. Kate browsed the aisles at Sur La Table, stopped at booths for extra virgin olive oil, dried mushrooms, locally cured prosciutto. At the Golden Gate Meat Company, by now having defined her mission to make a special dinner by way of thanking Ron again for the black pearl, she picked up a large filet of venison, Ron’s favorite. With the blood-rare meat, she’d serve mixed roasted vegetables—carrot, fennel, fingerling potatoes, leek—and a bottle of Silver Oak.

  Or, no. Not the Silver Oak.

  Given everything, maybe a Bordeaux would be a better choice.

  She didn’t expect to see Peter here, but the slight possibility lent an edge to the day as she negotiated her way through the milling crowd. Someone who might be him—but turned out not to be—appeared in the periphery of her vision nearly every time she turned a corner; the anticipation at least as powerful as the now-dimming effects of the champagne. All but unaware of it, every couple of minutes she would press her hand to her stomach and reach for a breath.

  The Jerusalem artichokes looked excellent, too, and would perfectly complement the other veggies, she thought.

  Laden now with her purchases, she headed for the restroom, thinking after that she would go sit outside in the sunshine overlooking the bay and have a cappuccino before Ubering home. But as she turned into the corridor, on the wall she noticed what was probably one of the last public telephones in San Francisco; certainly Kate could not place another one.

  In a black tank top and cut-off jeans, a heavily tattooed and pierced young woman with bright pink hair and a ring in her nose stood with the handset to her ear, her laughter shrill enough to draw disapproving stares from the passersby.

  Outside at her tiny table, the coffee was delicious and the weather fine, almost impossibly so, she thought, here right on the edge of the water, where usually an afternoon breeze or, more commonly, afternoon gale, would originate.

  While she sipped, one of the ferries arrived and disgorged its load of mostly enthusiastic and happy passengers. Whoever had been at the table next to her had left behind part of a croissant-like something, and suddenly a large seagull swooped down right over Kate’s head, grabbed the morsel, and took off, only to be attacked immediately by another pair of birds, with much squawking and avian drama.

  At about the same moment, the pink-haired girl who had been using the pay telephone came out of the building. She noticed Kate glancing at her without any sign of judgment and gave her a small acknowledging smile and a nod before she continued out onto the pier, around the corner and out of sight.

  Kate savored the last of the coffee, super-sweet with the last of the undiluted sugar. Checking the time, she saw that it was three o’clock, almost exactly the time she had called him yesterday. There was still plenty of time if . . .

  The tiny shining bubble of anticipation, barely noticeable when she’d sat down with her coffee, had expanded so that it seemed to fill all that she was made of.

  Gathering up her stuff, she pushed back from the table and stood.

  She would not call him on her cell phone. That just got too risky. The pink-haired girl finishing up with the pay telephone, on the other hand, just behind her on the wall inside the building, was so obviously a sign that it could not be ignored.

  In any event, she could not ignore it.

  But she would leave it to fate. If somebody else was using the phone when she got to it . . .

  * * *

  “Hello. Can I please speak to Peter?”

  “He’s not in the office. May I take a message? Or would you like his voicemail?”
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  “Do you know how I can reach him?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t. But he checks his voicemail frequently. He should get back to you right away.”

  “All right. Thank you. Voicemail would be fine.”

  “Just a minute. Here you go.”

  * * *

  As soon as he told her hello, Theresa told him that he sounded terrible.

  “Thanks,” Peter said. “That’s nice to hear. I feel like shit, too. No sleep.”

  “Problems with the depo?”

  “I suppose. Anyway, here I am, dutifully checking in. Anything I need to know about?”

  “No. It’s pretty slow. But have you checked your voicemail?”

  “Just before I called you. I didn’t have any.”

  “Hmm. That’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you got a call from a woman asking for you about twenty minutes ago. I put her through to your voicemail. She didn’t leave a message?”

  “Apparently not. Did she say who she was? What it was about? If it was important.”

  “No, none of the above, but she sounded a lot like the woman yesterday who said she was a personal friend of yours. You’re sure she didn’t leave anything on voicemail?”

  “I’m sure. Nothing.”

  “Oh, well. If it’s important,” Theresa said, “I suppose she’ll call back.”

  5

  IN NOTHING LIKE THEIR FINE and playful moods at lunch at Sam’s that day, Ron and Kate waited in the living room for their kids to get in from school. It was a few minutes past six. Kate stood at the wide windows at the front of the house, watching the street through the plantation shades. The sun was low in the west, casting the whole street in a warm yellow glow.

  The lovely quality of the light didn’t translate indoors.

  Ron sat in his reading chair. Kate had come in a minute before and handed him a heavy glass half filled with Scotch, then gone over to look out the front windows.

  From behind her, Ron said, “Maybe you should go back out and make another one of these while I pound this one down.”

  Turning back to him, she said, “Finish that one first, and then we’ll talk about the next one.” She went over to him, sat on the chair’s arm, and fingered the black pearl on her necklace. “I’m still in a bit of awe about this thing, you know,” she said.

  He looked up. “Changing the subject isn’t going to help.” He took a good pull of the drink. “Although I’m glad you like it.”

  “I love it.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “And I’ve got a great dinner planned. We’ll be all right.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Of course we will. It’s just a client. You’ve lost clients before.”

  “Not like this one. Ten million in billings last year, twelve the year before. You don’t just make that up in a couple of weeks. And fucking Geoff . . .”

  “It’s not Geoff, Ron, it’s . . .”

  “It’s fucking Geoff, don’t kid yourself. Geoff’s still got Tekkei, my fucking client, because it wasn’t him that screwed everything up. It was me. Except I didn’t screw anything up. I did everything right. Considering what I had to work with—these people just refused to believe that US law forbid what they were doing. I don’t give a shit if it flies in Japan or China. Price fixing is a crime here. So considering that, I saved them. It was a resounding success, the best result possible. The best.”

  “I’m sure it was, Ron, but . . .”

  “But meanwhile,” Ron on a full-blown rant now, “because of my shame and loss of face, I have to bow to fucking Mr. Hiroshi and tell him I need to resign. When in actual fact I won the goddamn case and kept him personally out of prison. So what if three of his guys are looking at time? It’s so much better—two years max—than it could have been on any level. Hiroshi himself was looking at twenty years. And you know who saved his ass? You want to guess?”

  “No,” Kate said. “I know it was you. Everybody knows it was you.”

  “Ask Geoff that.”

  “Geoff knows, too, Ron. He does.”

  “And what good does that do me? What good does it do us? Geoff should have stood with me and let them go take a flying fuck. Instead, he graciously agrees to take over their representation and just keep me out of it. Oh, and since he’ll be putting in the hours on Tekkei and I won’t, his points go up and mine go down. And never mind that my compensation tanks and his flies—what the hell do I do with my associates? Or with my own shares, for that matter?”

  “What would you expect him to do, Ron? Tekkei is still with the firm, with you guys. Geoff can’t give up ten million a year.”

  “Sure he can! Bina’s a bazillionaire on her own. He’s still got a great book. He could have stood by me instead of tossing me to the wolves.” He took another long drink, finally calming a bit. “Maybe I’ll leave the firm. Start up again on my own.”

  Kate gave his shoulder a buck-up squeeze. “Well, let’s see what shakes out,” she said. “We don’t have to make any decisions today.”

  Getting up again, she crossed back to the shutters and looked out. “Meanwhile, here are the kids. Finally. Thank God.” She paused for a short breath. “I don’t think we want to start this out by yelling at Aidan.”

  “No.” Ron tipped up his drink. “God forbid we show any anger at our little fucking darlings when they’ve helped pretty well shoot this day all to hell.”

  She shook her head. “It won’t help.”

  “It might. I’d sure like to try it one time and see how it worked. Who knows, maybe we’ve been doing it wrong all these years with all of our peace, love, and understanding.”

  “We’ve been doing fine. Aidan’s a good kid. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Yelling doesn’t teach him anything except how scary you can be.”

  “How about if I want him to see how scary I can be?”

  She crossed to him and went down on her knee in front of him, her hands on his arms, leaned up and gave him a quick kiss. “You don’t want that. You want them to love and respect you, and if you yell, they’ll just think you’re an asshole.”

  Ron closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. “I know, I know,” he said at last. “Of course we’ll be reasonable. Of course we’ll discuss everything. But I would so like to get permission to vent once in a while. My dad vented at me all the time.”

  “And you still think he’s an asshole.”

  “Yeah.” He broke a small grin. “But not all the time.”

  “It’ll be all right. You’ll see. The firm stuff and this with the kids.” She kissed him again and stood up as they heard the back door open behind the kitchen. “Is that both of you?” she called out.

  Janey was in eighth grade and the yearbook editor at Holy Name of Jesus, and Aidan was a junior varsity baseball player for the Wildcats at St. Ignatius. Kate and Ron identified themselves as agnostics—neither had gone a day to a Catholic school—but the schools were a good fit for both of the children; both parents agreed that there was no way either of the Jameson kids were going to a public school in San Francisco.

  Aidan’s voice had dropped most of an octave in the past five months. “Yeah,” his voice seemed to reverberate off the walls and hardwood floors.

  “Well, before you get comfortable, your father and I would like a word with you.”

  Another rumble, some mumbling back behind the kitchen, then both the children appeared under the arch leading into the living room, Janey a step behind her big brother but the first to wade right into it. “Hi, guys,” she said, all innocence. “What’s going on?”

  “That’s a good question,” Ron said. “So good I’ll shoot it back at you. Aidan, what the hell is going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “ ‘What do I mean?’ he asks. As if he has no idea. Are you really sure that’s the way you want to go with this? Pretending you don’t know what this is all about? Because let me tell you up front: we do know.”

  Ron looked imploringly acros
s at his wife, who picked up the thread. “Father Silas”—dean of men at St. Ignatius—“called your father at work this afternoon, checking to see if you were feeling all right since you hadn’t been in school for the last two days. And you weren’t answering your cell phone or texts either. Two days, Aidan! What in the world were you thinking? What is going on?”

  “Don’t be mad at him,” Janey said. “It’s my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Aidan shot back at her. “I did it on my own. It was my decision.”

  “What’s not her fault?” Kate asked. “Aidan, what was your decision?”

  “Cutting.”

  “You cut school? That’s the whole answer, you cut school?” Ron asked. “And did what?”

  Aidan shrugged. “Just hung out. Drove around.”

  “Just hung out and drove around? What for?” Ron threw his hands up in front of himself, brought them down, and stared at his son in disbelief. “Do you realize you only have a month or so to go until you’re done and school’s out for the year? If you fall off the bus now . . . well, you know this is the most important semester if you want to get into college . . .”

  “I don’t care about college.”

  “Of course you do,” Kate said. “We’ve all been working toward college for both of you since kindergarten. When did this start? What is it all about?”

  “It’s about Mr. Reed,” Janey said.

  After a long beat, Kate spoke into the silence. “Mr. Reed, your yearbook supervisor? What about him?”

  “He’s gay, you know.”

  “Yes, we know that,” Ron said. “Or we thought we did. But either way, so what?”

  “So what, Dad, is that he’s afraid they’re going to fire him.”

  “For being gay? In San Francisco? I don’t think so, sweetie. And what’s that got to do with Aidan anyway?”

  “Mr. Reed is gay and teaching in a Catholic school, Dad, and you know the archbishop’s got everybody thinking that’s the next step, and you can’t blame them. Didn’t you read the pastoral letter?”