Hungry Ghosts (13 page)

Gary came to life. He charged across the empty street, his black hair flying out behind him. “God dammit, that asshole Korematsu had me towed!”

I caught up to him on the curb. “Because you're John's brother?”

“Why else!”

“Red zone, fire hydrant?”

“You don't get towed from a crime scene for parking infractions.”

I shook my head. “This isn't a village; it's a preschool. Gary, are you still driving the same car, the big black barrister bucket?”

“Yeah.” I remembered now that Grace, who had coined the description, had said he was not amused.

“Where were you when you got my call?”

“Uh, Tadish's.”

“Uh-huh.” Tadish's Grill, a long-term San Francisco standard for fish and good drinks, was a few blocks to the south, in downtown.

“So you valet parked.”

“Oh, right,” he said in the sheepish tone that had allowed him to keep secretaries and paralegals and, for longer than he might have, three wives. The tone had never worked on John, and Gary's success with Mom and Dad and Katy and Janice drove John crazy. In John's eyes, Gary was an infuriating joke our parents had perpetrated on him.

“Okay, you're buying me dinner. Plus a stiff drink before.”

“I never thought otherwise,” he said, which meant that he hadn't thought about it at all.

But when we got there, Gary surprised me. He said to the maître d', “Can I still claim my reservation? It was for seven. I had an emergency.”

The maître d' nodded, showing that he, too, knew Gary. He led us through the waiting crowd to a wood-paneled booth.

“I thought they never took reservations,” I hissed.

Gary just smiled. But it was a weak smile that reflected his shock. He rapped the bell on the table and when a waiter arrived, he ordered us martinis.

“Gary,” I said after the drinks came and we'd both had the kind of swallow that rockets down, assuring you things are not as bad as they seem, “you've seen dead bodies before, right?”

“Yeah. But not people I know.” He now took a long, too easy swallow of gin, and I wondered how much lucid time I had with him. “Yeah, I've come across a couple of bodies, but then they're the problem, you know, and I have to figure out my client's response. But this . . . Tia . . .”

“Tell me about Tia.”

“You know her.”

“Not the way you do,” I said, not knowing what that way was.

“Tia.” His eyes half shut as he caressed her name.

“What was she like to date?”

He held the glass in both hands and looked into it as if it were a pool of memories. “Like winning the lottery, at least in the beginning. Every moment was exciting. She knew everyone, but she had this way—and I saw it from the other side later—of waving to people that acknowledged them enough to maintain working relations, while she squeezed my arm or whispered something out of the side of her mouth to me. It was a skill. I tried it but,” he shrugged, “not me.”

I wanted to cover Gary's hand with mine. Instead, I looked into my glass, sipped my drink, and didn't insert myself into his memory. “Winning the lottery . . .” I prompted.

“You know how I am about my work. Workaholic! All my wives complained. They were right, but that's the way it is in the law when you're going up against the best. Okay, I know it's maddening to be the one who ends up eating alone, canceling stuff with people, waiting for hours after your guy swore the third time he'd be right there.”

“But Tia . . . ?”

“Tia . . .” He took another long swallow and the warmth of the gin spread across his face.

I took a sip of my drink. Two couples—a white-haired man in a long camel coat, a sturdy blonde woman dislodging a cashmere scarf, and two younger men, one of whom was probably their son and the other his partner—settled in the next booth.

“Tia,” he caressed her name again. “We planned nothing ahead. I just called on the fly. That's the way she wanted it. Like when the other side got a continuance and suddenly I had two free days. I called at five. By eight we were on our way to Hawaii. In the morning we woke up with the waves off
our lanai. It was like we were the last two people in paradise. We never saw a soul. But meals arrived; everything we needed was there. And Tia was a temptress in b—” Crimson spread over Gary's face.

“Forgot I'm your little sister, right?”

He swallowed the rest of his drink and rang the bell for the waiter. “Should've rabbits that last sentence.”

I laughed.

“But it wasn't just long weekends, and wasn't just the sex. If I had two hours for dinner, she knew somewhere new and perfect. Going into the office late meant a morning like . . .” he smiled and I didn't ask. “Even a phone call; it was never the expected. She was game for anything; nothing frightened her. Or if it did, that just made her do it. A double dare. Plus, she always left me smiling.”

“And what did you do for her?”

“Grace asked me that, and not as nicely, either. I paid, I was a respectable escort, and I appreciated every single thing.”

The waiter arrived with a fresh martini, though Gary hadn't put in the order. He eyed the untouched menus. “We have Oregon clams.”

Gary smiled. “Sautéed, then. Trust me, Darce. Allard only deals in the best.”

I nodded and the waiter headed off. In his wake a wave of noise—laughter, talk, ice jangling, forks hitting china—washed over us, as if to remind us of our good fortune at having this booth. “So, Gary, I have to ask you, why did it end?”

He put down his glass, leaving his hand on it, finger circling on the sweating surface. “I don't know. Truth is, I didn't take it in for a while. I mean, it was over in her mind weeks, maybe months, before I added up the number of times I'd called and she didn't have time for dinner or even a weekend, or I just got no answer.”

“Were you devastated, furious, humiliated?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Really. See, I was too busy. I had just gone solo and I was breaking in a new secretary and discovering I needed three paralegals instead of the one I thought I was getting by with before. I hadn't realized how much support I got from the firm. But on my own everything was a crisis and took more time and I needed to focus a lot more—”

“Just as Tia planned, right?”

“Huh?”

“She gave you the push to go solo, and then when you did, you were too busy to notice she wasn't there. You were happy with your new business. You couldn't be too upset about her after she'd made you do what you really wanted. And you didn't have time to wallow, right?”

“Yeah. But it's not like I never thought about her. I just didn't have time . . . well, like you said.”

As if to save Gary further explanation the clams arrived, big luscious disks piled beside thick French fries. I forked one while the waiter was still setting down Gary's plate, dipped it in the tartar sauce, bit into it, and nodded serious approval. The waiter came as close to a smile as the white-aproned curmudgeons here permitted themselves. “Gary,” I said after the second clam, “what did Tia tell you about Mike?”

He chewed more slowly, as if masticating my question. He put down his fork. “This may have been Tia's biggest gift as a friend: she never asked ‘the question.' You've kept away from here so you don't have to deal with it, but every time any of us in the family makes a new friend, we just wait for ‘the question.' We can pretty much judge what kind of friend they'll be by how long they hold off. Sometimes it's ‘Have you ever heard anything more from Mike?' or ‘What do
you
think really happened to him?'
Then there are the guys after a few drinks who lean in close and whisper, ‘You know he's dead, right?' or the ones who ask whether it was Dad who abused him or us or Mom who didn't care enough or—”

“Jeez, Gary, stop!” Mom, who had been so grief-stricken after Mike's disappearance she either couldn't mention his name or couldn't stop talking about him—how could anyone dare to question her love? I wiped my napkin hard across my face to keep from bursting into tears. “I haven't come back here because I couldn't,” I said slowly. “I couldn't face being reminded of Mike every time I turned a corner. Every time I saw a guy like—”

“Eamon.”

“You know Eamon?”

“Of course. How could he be in San Francisco without any of us spotting him?”

I almost laughed. “Of course. I was just so shocked when I saw him. He must have thought I was nuts.”

“Nah, he's used to family reactions. At first we were put off by him not keeping away, but he's become like a pet. Even though it's a jolt every time I see him, he's sanding the sharp edges. Even Mom's accepted him; she treats him like a nephew.”

“Tia left the reception with him last night.”

“Hmm.” Gary forked his last clam and dipped it in sauce. He was thinking of Tia, and so was I. “Gary, when you questioned Tia after John did, early on, did she tell you anything?”

“Only that she had seen Mike at a party where there was liquor and grass, the kind of things that seem sophisticated to a sixteen-year-old.”

“John said she was a liar.”

“To him, yeah. You know, John can bring that out in people.”

“But you don't think—”

“If she is, she's very good.”

I didn't correct his use of the present tense. “So what did she say about Mike? In all the time you were with her, you had to have discussed him.”

He fingered his last fry, held it up halfway to his mouth, studied it, put it back on the plate. A tray of dishes clattered in the distance behind him. A woman's shrill laugh stabbed through the reverberating chatter. “Tia never said anything about him that I didn't know. But the thing is, Darce, I always felt there was something she was keeping back. Could have been a theory, some fact she knew about him back then, something she heard. I couldn't even get that far in finding out. And, dammit, when I was with her I didn't want to spoil things by pushing. I could have, but I didn't. I kept telling myself that it was only my gut feeling that she had anything at all, and if she did it couldn't be important after all these years. There was plenty of time to ask. But if I did start to ask she kind of shriveled away from me. So I put it off.”

What did
that
mean? I wondered.

The waiter came with the bill. “The clams were terrific, Allard,” Gary said, laying down four twenties without glancing at the bill.

“Fortunate we hadn't run out during your delay, Mr. Lott.”

So that is what it meant. “Your reservation, Gary, that was for you and Tia, right?”

He nodded sadly. “I thought I had forgotten her, but when she called it was the old excitement all over again.”

“She called you? When?”

“I dunno, couple of days ago. The day you got here.”

“So, the day before yesterday.”

“Yeah, because I put her off in case . . . uh . . . you . . . needed anything.”

“In case
I
needed? Really?” I was amazed. I'd always been such an
add-on in the family, the kid born after the midlife surprise kid, the shock after the afterthought. And I was touched at how hard a time my big-time lawyer big brother, a master of cross-examining witnesses and swaying juries, had had admitting it. Now I did put my hand over his. “Thanks.”

We pulled on jackets. Outside the fog was waiting. The valet brought his car.

“I'll drive,” I said.

“I've only had a—”

“It's not that. Occupational hazard. I've been in too many car rolls, accidents, gas tank explosions. Most of the time I'm doubling the passenger, sitting in the death seat so that I can spot impending disaster and leap out at the last possible moment. Trust me, you don't want me there while you're driving.”

“Okay, but no racing or rolling my car.”

“It'll be like riding with an aunt who learned to drive when she was eighty.” I had also won the To Hell and Back, the stunt doubles' auto race from the top of a nearly vertical canyon to bottom and back, no holds barred, no route too risky. But I felt it was better not to mention that just now.

Gary's car had all the things I never see on the cars we're about to crash on a set: padded leather seats, air bags, air conditioning, four speakers, and automatic transmission. I twisted the heat knob, another item there's no need for in stunt junkers, and pulled out onto Montgomery Street. Downtown San Francisco is dead after six. I swung across all four lanes of the Financial District's main drag as if I were making a right, hung a left on Market, and focused on avoiding the potholes and streetcar tracks, while Gary fiddled with the knobs on the console.

When he'd found one of the early Radiohead songs, shifted it to the rear speakers, and settled back in his seat, I asked, “Gary, what did Tia talk about when she called?”