Open Chains

by D. F. Bailey

“Oh, sorry.” Finch realized he might have taken his game a step beyond the finish line and on to a victory lap before the two partners understood the rules. He fished his press card from his wallet. Five years ago when he worked the crime beat, he rarely showed his card twice in one week. Today it was twice in one hour. “I’m a reporter for The Post.”

  Walter’s head canted to one side. “Business reporter?”

  “It varies.” Finch noticed it was their turn to order. He pointed a finger to the bartender. “Know what you want to drink?”

  His companions looked away. They ordered two Heinekens and when the bottles and glasses appeared they turned their attention to the party scene.

  “Nice meeting you,” Walter said in a low voice as if he now regretted speaking so openly. He walked toward the crowd surrounding the pool table with Rene at his side, whispering into his ear.

  As Finch approached the bartender he felt buoyed by the mood in the room and another lucky round of interrogations. Over ten years of investigative reporting he’d almost perfected his technique. Sometimes people would reveal their innermost secrets before they realized they were under a microscope. Candor and indiscretion. A dangerous mix.

  “What would you like?” the bartender dragged a cloth over the bar surface.

  “Sort of feel like I’ve crashed a party,” Finch confessed. “Last week a friend came to visit me, now I’m trying to track him down. Tony Turino.” Finch clicked his phone and brought up the image that Finkleman had texted to him. “His buddies call him Tony Tornado.”

  The barman studied the photo for a moment and rolled his eyes. “Yup. This’s his local watering hole.”

  “He live near by?”

  “Maybe. Can’t say much about him. Except he’s a complete bullshitter.”

  “Can’t trust him, huh?”

  “Everything he says is BS. Look, Tony just doesn’t fit” — his voice tone sounded a warning — “the dude’s a square peg trying to squeeze into a round hole.”

  Finch considered this. Wasn’t the usual expression ‘a round peg in a square hole’? “What do you mean?”

  “This place and Tony. The dude was … you know. Square.” He rolled his shoulders so that his deltoid and trapezoid muscles stretched the fabric of his shirt. Finch could see that he worked out. “Know what I mean? Shotwell’s is a right-swiping, chick-friendly party bar.”

  Finch laughed at that. The Tinder app installed on every phone. Lust bubbling beneath all the giggles and grins. “What about his friends. Anyone?”

  “He had an uncle who yarded him out of here when he’d had a few too many.”

  “An uncle. No buddies?”

  “This dude, Fuzzy. Another misfit.” He snorted with a look of disdain. “The last couple of times they were here together. But before then — never seen him.” His eyes narrowed. “So what’s this about?”

  Finch tipped his chin to one side. “Tony and I served in Iraq at the same time. Oh-three and four. I’m just trying to follow his tracks over the past few weeks.” Finch smiled knowing that everything he’d learned so far was accurate. Unlike his visit to The 500 Club, here no special maneuvers were required.

  The bartender looked Finch in the eyes, and said, “Well, thank you for your service.”

  Always strange to hear this, he thought. A confession spoken only by those who’d never been in the forces. Perhaps the bartender had lost a family member in the war. Finch leaned a little closer.

  “So who’s this guy? Fuzzy?”

  “Don’t know. Funny name for a dude bald as a cue ball.” His eyes followed a young woman crossing the room. “Couldn’t stop talking about Canada.”

  “Canada?” Finch leaned closer.

  “Yeah. Some kind of fishing trip up there.”

  “How ’bout the uncle. Did you get his name?”

  “Sorry.”

  “One last question.” Finch passed the slip of paper toward the barman. “Does this phone number look familiar?”

  “415?” He blinked. “Sorry dude, I keep everything on speed dial.”

  “Yeah. Don’t we all. By the way, you got any Shotwell’s matchbooks on hand?”

  “That I do, my friend.” He reached under the bar for two matchbooks. “Take a couple. Believe it or not, it’s the best advertising we do.”

  “Well, it worked on me.” Finch slipped the matchbooks into his pocket. “It’s the one thing that brought me down here.”

  ※

  Finch had about an hour to spare. He decided to drive home, shower, and then walk down to North Beach and grab a table at Eve’s favorite Italian restaurant. Their home on Alta Street stood on a southeast-facing slope below Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. Alta Street was little more than a narrow dead-end lane, barely wide enough to accommodate two cars as they passed one another. It contained about a dozen condos, renovated cottages and houses packed side-by-side. Bunched together, the housing stock created a sort of west-coast modern, row-house complex. Their cottage was a tidy hide-away with a roof-top view of the Financial District, San Francisco Bay, Berkeley, Oakland — and in the distance, the Berkeley Hills.

  Eve had purchased the house after inheriting a windfall fortune of more than one hundred million dollars from her best friend, Gianna Whitelaw, and her deceased fiancé. Despite her frugal inclinations, Eve spent over three hundred thousand dollars in a massive home renovation, creating what her designer described as “a domicile worthy of her current station in life.”

  Then came what Eve called “the big change.” With her new financial resources she’d purchased a minor interest in The Post and a year later, she triggered an option to purchase a majority share. With the corporate reins in her hands, she made several astute moves and set the enterprise on a new track without a single misstep. Would it work? That was anyone’s guess, but she’d already turned more than a few heads. From his perspective as a journalist, Finch was impressed. But now the trouble up in Canada had distracted her. Something would have to give.

  After his shower, Finch marched along Montgomery, turned right on Union Street and down the hill into North Beach. The Caffé DeLucchi occupied the street-level floor of a four-story flatiron building on the corner of Columbus and Stockton Streets. The structure was a gorgeous architectural bauble that represented the best of San Francisco’s whimsy and charm. He found a table for two next to a window overlooking Stockton Street and texted Eve to meet him ASAP. My treat, he added, knowing it would bring a smile to her lips.

  Twenty minutes later she appeared at the door. “Give me a minute,” she said as she closed in for a kiss. She draped her jacket over the back of the chair and made her way to the washroom.

  In the previous summer the restaurant had changed hands and Eve wanted to see if the menu had suffered under the new owner. At first glance, Finch couldn’t detect any significant differences.

  “The menu’s virtually the same,” Eve claimed as she glanced at the fresh sheet. She looked at the waiter. “Are there any changes?”

  “È ancora la perfezione. I think you’ll find-a everything as good-a as before.” His spoke with an exuberant Italian accent.

  “Excellent.” Her index finger pointed to a salad on the menu. “So. I’ll have the insalata mista and the capellini e gamberi,” she said and studied him a moment. He had a smooth, swarthy complexion. Dark, curling locks fell against his forehead and his thick neck was framed by a starched buttoned-up collar. A genuine Italian, she thought. Very attractive.

  “And the insalata spinaci and braised lamb shank for me,” Finch said.

  “To drink, sir?”

  “Two glasses, a liter of San Pellegrino, lime wedges, and ice.”

  “Molto bene, signore.” He collected the menus and made his way to the kitchen.

  “So. How’d you do — any luck at those two bars?”

  “Like that old song goes, Yes, we have no bananas.”

  She laughed. “Who exactly was managing the fruit cart?”

  Finch took a few minut
es to describe his visit to The 500 Club, the initial pushback from Marty the bartender, and his reluctant revelation that until a month ago J.R. had been a regular. “Then” — he snapped his fingers — “he disappeared.”

  Finch leaned back as the waiter delivered their salad plates and the bottle of San Pellegrino. He opened the bottle cap, poured a few inches of water into each glass and set it aside. “Buon appetito,” he said and wheeled about to the table behind Finch to take another order.

  “So you think it means — what exactly?” Eve used her fork to mix the dressing in her salad. When she tasted the first tender leaves of lettuce, a smile came to her lips. “Mmm,” she whispered, and then, “Or does it mean anything at all?”

  “It means he broke his pattern of behavior.” Finch nodded, as if hearing his own words conferred a certain logic to his thinking.

  She swiveled her head from side to side, not so sure of this conclusion. “Or maybe he has the flu. What about Shotwell’s?”

  “Totally different situation.” Finch provided a more detailed description of the saloon and went on to relate the bartender’s description of Tony Turino, a steady customer who never fit into the party bar scene. “A bullshitter who drank more booze than he could handle,” he said, and added that Turino had to be dragged home by his uncle a few times.

  “Did you get his name?”

  “No. But what hit me,” he added, “was that over the last few weeks, Tony had a new friend.”

  “A friend?”

  “A bald guy named Fuzzy.” He finished his salad and nudged the plate to one side so that he could set his elbows on the table, lean closer and continue in an undertone. “Apparently Fuzzy” — he glanced around to ensure nobody would hear him — “couldn’t stop talking about a trip to Canada.”

  Eve’s fork wavered in mid-air. “Really?”

  Finch nodded. A lingering silence hung between them as if they’d been hypnotized by a mote of dust suspended in the air.

  “What about Nine? Was he bald?”

  “Maybe.” Finch shook his head as a look of doubt crossed his face. “You remember how dark it was.” He exhaled a puff of air and leaned back in his chair. “Honestly, I never got a close look at him.”

  “I know.” Her voice carried a note of sympathy. She set her fork on the empty salad plate. Her face softened and she pulled his hand into her fingers. “Look at it this way. We’re both better off not knowing what he looked like.”

  He nodded. Since his time in Iraq, and then covering the crime beat for The Post, he’d seen enough of the dead. It was always his memory of the victims’ faces that haunted him. The emptiness which revealed their betrayal. They’d all been cheated in a game with no second chances.

  The waiter approached them with their main courses. He slipped the salad plates onto an empty tray and asked if they needed anything more. Finch shook his head and thanked him. He inhaled the aroma of the lamb and prepared to carve off a piece with his knife.

  “Enjoy,” he said.

  His phone pinged. An in-coming text.

  “Oh please. Don’t answer it.” Eve gave him a weary look.

  Finch ignored her plea and pulled his cell from his jacket pocket. He studied the message a moment and turned his face to her.

  “What is it this time?” She glanced through the window. Scores of people stood at the intersection waiting to cross Stockton Street.

  “Google Alerts. The VA just tweeted that Tony Turino’s going to be buried in Sacramento Valley National Cemetery. One o’clock on Saturday.” Finch took a moment to recall the day of the week. After packing up on Mayne Island, closing down the cabin and driving all the way to San Francisco, he seemed to have jumped a day. “In two days, right?”

  “No, tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  He put on a forced smile and leaned forward. “Right. What I meant to say.”

  She replied with a dismissive chuckle and curled some strands of pasta around the tines of her fork. “That means the Canadians released his body in less than a week. That’s a good sign.” She paused. “Pretty soon the coroner’s report should be wrapped up, too.”

  “And what are the odds,” Finch asked, “that his uncle will show up at the funeral?”

  “You’re right.”

  Finch put his phone face-down on the table and dug into his meal. “So Saturday morning we drive up to Sacramento. Can you make it?”

  “Maybe.” She ran a hand over her jaw. Apart from her trip to Mayne Island, she’d been working six- and seven-day weeks for months. “I’ll need to arrange a few things at work. Then we go.”

  ※

  On Saturday morning Finch and Eve drove through a light rain along Highway 80 toward Sacramento. They were delayed when traffic had to funnel into one lane to squeeze past an overturned farm trailer that had dumped thousands of tomatoes across the road. By the time they reached Dixon, the rain had stopped and the sun began to break up the cloud cover.

  “Good thing we left a little early,” Eve said as she checked her watch. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes to spare. At the most.”

  Finch turned the car onto Midway Road. The landscape, a flat, uninterrupted plain, had been scorched in the summer months and the grassland was little more than a parched stubble.

  “Not much rain up this way,” he said.

  It was the first sentence he’d spoken in the past ten or fifteen minutes. Of the many things he appreciated about Eve, her ability to sit with him in silent contemplation ranked very high. Many of the men and women he’d known seemed to be intimidated by silence. As if words alone provided comfort, and if they weren’t talking, they could never relax.

  But Eve embraced Finch’s need for solitude and silence. That’s why she hadn’t balked when he told her he wanted to live in the cabin on Mayne Island to complete his book. He needed to commune with an inner world. So be it, she told herself and encouraged him to go.

  However, over the last ten miles Finch hadn’t been thinking about his book. He’d been mulling over the last funeral he’d attended, more than ten years ago after his son Buddy was killed in a car crash at the age of seven. Twenty minutes before the crash, Finch's live-in girlfriend, Bethany Hutt, had decided to drive Buddy to his Little League baseball practice. Then in a pique of madness that she never explained, Bethany rammed the passenger side door into the concrete on-ramp leading onto the 101 from Market Street. The police estimated the impact speed was above sixty miles an hour. His son died instantly. Bethany couldn't walk from the car to the ambulance without assistance. Her blood-alcohol count tested out at 0.16. Three days after the accident, the cops found Finch passed out on a curb next to a tequila bar in the Mission District. After making a court appearance, and attending Buddy’s funeral, Finch spent three weeks in the EdenVeil Center for Recovery. Once he’d picked up the pieces and reflected on what had become of his life, the only upside he could see was that he was sober.

  Nonetheless, Finch was shattered. His grief was compounded by the loss of his wife Cecily, who’d died of cancer a year before Buddy’s accident. With his family destroyed, Finch felt as if God himself had stamped a notice on his forehead: “NULL AND VOID.” The one thing he could cling to was his job at The Post.

  And the job became his lifeline. With the help of his editor Wally Gimbel he pulled himself together. Work provided a renewed focus to life. Sure, the world was full of crime and corruption, and likely there’d be no end to it, but if enough people dedicated themselves to the cause, together they could push back. For Finch, that meant digging up facts and turning them into a narrative, a body of information that could sometimes — if the stars aligned — point to the truth. The Biblical saying, “the truth will set you free” became his personal creed. Was he naive? No, he was sure of that now. The longer he committed himself to researching, reporting and writing, the more certain he became that his work was a personal calling. A passion. Without it, he wondered how he could live from one day to the next.

  And through it all, h
is love for Buddy never faded. As the car approached the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery, he struggled with the loss of his son and he tried to wipe the sting from his eyes. Strange, he thought. Empty tears. Maybe you’re no longer capable of weeping.

  “You thinking of Buddy?” Eve’s voice was barely a murmur.

  He nodded and she rested her hand on his thigh.

  “I can only imagine what happened, Will,” she said. “But still, I get it.”

  He turned a corner and steered the car through the cemetery gates. Before them stretched hundreds of rows of military gravestones, all geometrically aligned. No matter from which angle you perceived them, they presented perfect order and symmetry. These dead men and women still stood at attention. Still on parade.

  To his left, Finch spotted the service pavilion, one of the few structures in the vast acreage that extended in all directions. He pulled the car into the parking lot and cut the ignition.

  “Just six other cars,” Eve observed and checked her watch.

  “I wasn’t expecting a mass turnout.” Finch opened the door and stood on the crushed gravel lot. The air was cool and dry. The sun once again hidden behind a thin sheet of clouds.

  “Good day for a funeral,” he said and took her hand as they walked toward the glass doors of the service hall.

  She gave his fingers a squeeze and withdrew her hand. “I think we need to fade into the background here,” she whispered.

  Once they entered the building, they edged along an inner wall. A series of marble plaques surrounded them, each inscribed with the names of past battles and wars. On the center wall a large panel was engraved with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. When she found her bearings, Eve said, “Over there,” and nudged Finch toward two honor guards standing next to an open door.

  The inner chamber of the memorial hall was spare, almost spartan. Apart from the standard military statuary — each one mourning the fallen heroes — the atmosphere suggested a vast emptiness. Perhaps it’s only fitting, thought Finch. This is a space reserved for those marking their transition into the void. Most of them were already there.

  Six rows of chairs aligned in a precisely arranged arc faced the front of the room where a lectern stood next to an oak table. On the table rested a bronze cremation urn. About twenty people sat in the first and second rows. Finch studied them, wondering who might be Tony Turino’s uncle. He would be a man about sixty, probably white, someone bearing a resemblance to the stranger who’d visited Finch’s cabin only a week ago.