Liquid Smoke (4 page)

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.

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.

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 to 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.

“And unless I’m looking in some sort of trick mirror that takes me back a ways, you must be Noah.” A small, tired smile emerged on his mouth.

I shifted in the chair. “Yeah. I’m Noah.”

He folded his hands on the small ledge below the panel. “It’s nice for me to meet you, but I expect it’s not the same for you.” “Not exactly.”

He nodded as if that was the response he expected. “I assume you’re here because that Darcy woman found you.”

My heart was thumping, almost as if it was beating against my ribcage. “Yeah.”

He shook his head, chuckling to himself. “She is a pistol, that one. Surprised she’s not here with you, actually.”

Even if I could have, I didn’t feel the need to explain her absence to him. So I said nothing.

He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what else we’re supposed to do.”

“Me either.”

“She told you about me?” “I got all the highlights.”

He studied me for a moment, then laughed. “Highlights.” We sat there in silence. It felt like everything I’d expected and nothing I’d expected, all at the same time. “How is Carolina?” he asked. “Fine.”

“You and she close?”

“None of your fucking business.”

He pursed his lips. “I suppose.”

Everything seemed to be closing in around me, and I needed to escape.

“Look,” I said. “Darcy thinks you’ll talk to me and it’ll help her win your appeal. Are you going to do that?”

He leaned back in the chair and readjusted the glasses again. “No appeal is going to change my situation. I’ve done what I’ve done, and there’s no going back.” He stared at me with my own eyes. “I’m going to die here, and I’m alright with that.”

“Then I am, too,” I said quickly.

“As you should be,” he said. “But seeing you here, in front of me, has given me some things to think about.” “Good for fucking you.”

He came forward again, his hands folded together neatly on the ledge. “I’m not going to fight with you, Noah. All the reasons you hate me are the right ones. I’m not going to try to change that.”

He was defusing the anger inside of me, and that made me hate him even more. I wasn’t ready to drop thirty years of anger like it was a used napkin. But I was sitting there for a reason, even if I hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

“Darcy thinks that you were under orders from someone else to kill,” I said, deflecting the conversation away from me. “Were you?”

Russell stared at me, almost through me, his mind elsewhere. Then he snapped back to the present.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“It might. To her and to your case.”

“How about to you?”

I stood. “I’m not here about me and you. I could give a shit about me and you. Darcy is trying to help you. She convinced me to have a conversation with you, so here I am. But I’m not gonna sit here and let you get to know me. I may look like you, but that doesn’t mean I am like you.”

He sat back in the chair, studying me. It was unnerving.

“You wanna die without fighting, it’s fine by me,” I said. “You don’t wanna give me anything to pass along to Darcy, then I’m outta here.”

I felt my chest heaving, and I was furious with myself for getting so worked up. I needed to get it together.