Sharp Edges (4 page)

"Wait a second, you're not thinking of moving the Leabrook account to Colfax Security, are you?"

"No, of course not. But I want to know whatever you can get on him."

"It will take me a while. Mind if I ask why you need to know about Colfax?"

"Because I'm going to spend my summer vacation with him."

Two

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"L
evel with me, Cyrus, what kind of pressure did you use on Jake to get him to show up for Rick's graduation?" Meredith Tasker held wisps of blond hair out of her eyes. "Did you threaten to turn him in to the IRS for income tax evasion? Tell him you'd sabotage his latest business negotiations, maybe? Or did you go for the more direct approach and hire some professional leg-breakers?"

Cyrus leaned back against the fender of his dark green Jeep. He folded his arms and studied the scene in the crowded high school parking lot.

It was a clear, warm day in Portland. Perfect weather for a graduation, he thought. The ceremony had ended a few minutes earlier. Parents, some vastly relieved, others triumphant, stood in small groups and congratulated each other on having survived the experience of getting a teenager through high school. Their exuberant, newly graduated offspring, glorying in their sense of immortality and unlimited futures, clustered in various energetic flocks. Laughter and elated shouts drifted across the grounds.

"I don't know what you mean, Meredith. Jake wouldn't have missed Rick's graduation for all the high stakes deals in Southern California."

"That son of a bitch missed his own mother's funeral because some business came up in New York that required his personal attention. Come on, I was his wife. I know him better than anyone. What did you do to get him here today?"

Cyrus shrugged. "Nothing much. I had my secretary call his office last week to remind him of the date."

There was no need to add that as soon as his secretary had gotten Jake Tasker on the phone, Cyrus had taken over the call. The conversation had been short and to the point.

"I told you, I can't make it," Jake Tasker said from his L.A. office. "I've got business. Rick will understand."

"Let me put it this way, Tasker. Either you put in an appearance at Rick's graduation, or my next phone call will be to Harry Pellman."

Tension hummed over the line. "What do you know about Pellman?"

"I know he's one of your biggest clients."

"What of it?"

"He owes me a favor," Cyrus said softly.

A year ago he had retrieved an exquisite and extremely valuable seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry that had been stolen from Pellman's private collection. There had been complications because the thief happened to have been Pellman's recently discarded lover. Pellman had wanted the matter handled with absolute discretion.

Colfax Security prided itself on absolute discretion.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jake asked warily.

"If I suggest to Pellman that he find himself a new broker, he'll pull his account from your firm and transfer it to one of your rivals in about ten seconds flat," Cyrus said.

"Christ, I don't believe this. You'd tell Pellman to dump me just because it's not convenient for me to go to Rick's graduation ceremony?"

"Yeah. That about sums it up. I'm glad we understand each other, Tasker."

"You are a real bastard, you know that?"

"I'll look for you in the audience."

Cyrus pushed the memory of the conversation aside and gave Meredith a reassuring smile. "Like I said, Jake wanted to come."

Meredith's mouth curved faintly, but her eyes remained grave. "All right, I won't push it. I'll just say thank you, the way I've thanked you over and over again for the past five years. I don't know what I would have done without you, Cyrus. I owe you more than I can ever repay."

"You don't owe me anything."

"That's not true, and you know it. Every time I think of how you stepped in after Jake walked out…"

"I'm Rick's uncle, remember? I had a right to step in and lend a hand."

Meredith looked across the parking lot. Cyrus followed her gaze and saw Jake Tasker and Rick moving toward them through the crowd.

"You were only married to Katy for two years," Meredith said quietly. "Hardly enough time to saddle you with a sense of obligation toward her family."

"Whatever I did, I did because I wanted to do it." Cyrus said. "Not because I felt obligated. Don't ever forget that."

She glanced at him quickly with a troubled expression. "Rick was so excited when Jake showed up today. He hasn't seen him in months. You know how it is, the out-of-town act always gets the most applause."

"It's okay, Meredith." Cyrus looked at Rick and wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to have a son of his own.

"Rick is still very young," Meredith went on earnestly. "When he matures a little and looks back on his teenage years, he'll understand that it was you, not Jake, who got him to manhood without any major disasters. He'll be grateful."

"I said it's okay, Meredith. I don't want Rick's gratitude. Hell, I'm grateful to him. We had some good times together."

"I know that he hasn't paid much attention to you today, but it's only because Jake showed up with his usual flashy gifts. That kind of thing is distracting to a kid that age. You mustn't think that Rick doesn't appreciate all you've done."

"Forget it."

She grimaced. "When I think of how you spent what little vacation time you had with him these past few years and most of your weekends, too—"

"Like I said, good times. Guy stuff." Cyrus smiled fleetingly at the memories of the camping and rafting trips, the karate classes, and the dive lessons.

He and Rick had done the kind of things that fathers and sons were supposed to do together. His own father had not stuck around to do them with him, and his mother had died in a car crash a few months after he was born. But he'd been lucky, he thought. He'd had his grandparents.

Back in Second Chance Springs there had been no money for karate classes and dive lessons, but that was beside the point. Beau had taken him fishing and hunting from the time he could walk. Cyrus had learned how to shoot, how to track game, how to survive in the desert, and how to find his way through the mountains without a map.

He no longer hunted, but the lessons he had learned had stayed with him. He still did some fishing when he got the chance. There was something about the long silences and the stillness of fishing that suited him. Fishing was important, even when you didn't catch anything.

His grandmother, Gwen, had taught him how to read, how to grow roses in the desert, and about fifty different ways to prepare tuna fish.

He knew he'd learned other things from his grandparents, things that were less easily put into words but that were infinitely more important. Things that some people thought were old-fashioned and out of place in the modern world.

They were things that were rooted in the very center of his being and that, on the rare occasions when he happened to be in an introspective mood, he realized defined him in some elemental way.

Katy had never comprehended or understood that deeply embedded part of him. Few people ever had.

There were some who would claim that the stuff Beau and Gwen had taught him was not especially suited to life in the modern world. But Cyrus knew better. He knew that it was the things he had learned from his grandparents that had made it possible for him to survive in that world.

"You claim that you were there for the good times with Rick," Meredith said. "But I'll never forget that you were there for the bad times, as well. I almost lost him, Cyrus. We both know that. He took the divorce hard."

"He was only thirteen. Tough age for a kid to go through his parents' divorce."

"There is no good age. He went wild those first few months after Jake left. Staying out all night. Hanging out with kids who were using drugs and alcohol. Shoplifting. It seemed like he was either moody or angry all of the time. I was scared to death."

"It's over, Meredith. He's graduated high school with honors and he's off to college in September."

"Because of you." She grimaced. "I still shudder when I think of the time the police called to tell me he had been picked up and taken to the station."

Desperate, panicked, and alone, Meredith had turned to Cyrus that night. It was Cyrus who had climbed out of bed to handle the aftermath of the incident that had involved alcohol, a fast car, and a group of kids who were growing up too fast and too hard without adult supervision.

At the start of their association, Rick had been filled with a deep, cynical distrust. Cyrus was his uncle, but only by virtue of the recent marriage to his aunt, Katy.

"Why did you come to get me?" Rick demanded as they walked out of the police station. "Where's Mom?"

"She's at home."

"She should have come, not you."

"I'm your uncle."

"Bullshit. You only married Aunt Katy six months ago. You hardly know me."

"Something tells me we're going to get better acquainted real quick." Cyrus unlocked the car door. "Get in."

"I'll take the bus home."

"It's two in the morning." Cyrus did not raise his voice. He never raised his voice. "Get into the car. You've given your mother enough grief for one night."

Rick hesitated. The streetlight caught the sheen of frustrated anger in his eyes. Cyrus knew the kid wanted to find strength and fortitude in his lonely defiance, but it had been a long night.

"Screw it," Rick said. He flopped down onto the passenger seat.

Cyrus walked around the front of the car and got in behind the wheel. "You're lucky," he said as he turned the key in the ignition. "You got picked up by well-trained, professional cops."

"You call that lucky?"

"I was sixteen when I got pulled over by a sheriff back in my hometown. He beat the crap out of me before he let me go."

Rick stared at him. "You serious?"

"Yeah."

"Did your folks sue?"

Cyrus smiled grimly. "Spoken like a true child of the modern age. No, my folks didn't sue. My father wasn't around. He disappeared before I was born. My mother got killed by a drunk driver when I was only a few months old. That left my grandparents. They didn't have the money to file a lawsuit."

"So what did you do?"

"Learned a valuable lesson." Cyrus pulled away from the curb. "Made sure I didn't get stopped by a cop again."

"No, I mean what did you do to make that sheriff beat you?"

"I dated his daughter."

Rick gaped at him. "He arrested you just for going out with her?"

"Officially, Sheriff Gully stopped me for speeding. But we both knew he was pissed because he'd found out that I had spent the evening with his precious Angela."

"But why would he beat the shit out of you for that? I mean, it was just a date. Big deal."

Cyrus slowed to a halt at a stoplight and turned to look at Rick. "It wasn't quite that simple. I'd convinced Angela to go out with me because I knew her father would be pissed if she did it. And I was right."

"You
wanted
to piss him off?"

"Yeah."

"How come?"

"Because a few days earlier I'd heard him tell old Earl Dart down at the grocery store that I'd never amount to anything. That part didn't bother me much because I'd never figured the sheriff for being too smart, anyhow."

"So what was it he said that made you mad?"

"He went on to tell old Earl that he felt sorry for my grandparents, but everyone knew that no one could expect much from me because my mother had been a tramp who'd gotten herself knocked up at eighteen. He said my father had probably been married or something because she had never told anyone who he was. Then Gully said that he sure wouldn't want his daughter getting involved with me."

Rick whistled softly. "So you asked Gully's daughter to go out with you as a kind of revenge?"

"Yeah. I knew that Gully would be furious when he discovered what had happened."

"If you knew this Gully bozo that well," Rick said slowly, "you must have figured that he'd probably beat the crap out of you when he found out you'd dated Angela."

"Sure."

"So why'd you do it?"

"I couldn't think of any other way to balance the scales."

"What about Angela?" Rick asked. "What did she think of all this?"

"That's a very good question. The answer is that she wanted to go out with me because she was mad at her steady boyfriend and wanted to teach him a lesson."

"So she was using you?"

"We used each other," Cyrus said. "Neither one of us was seriously interested in the other."

"Damn." A shudder went through Rick. "You were willing to let that Gully guy beat you up in order to balance the scales?"

"Okay, so I wasn't as bright at sixteen as you obviously are at thirteen," Cyrus said. "The good news is that I've learned a lot since then."

Rick looked unwillingly fascinated. "Like what?"

"Nowadays when I decide to even the score, I'm a lot more careful. I try real hard not to get the crap beaten out of me if I can possibly help it."

Cyrus eased the memories of that first serious conversation with his nephew aside as he watched Rick and Jake approach the Jeep. He was aware of Meredith's tension as she waited beside him.

"I think Rick hated me for a while at first," she whispered.

"He didn't hate you."

"He blamed me for the divorce."

"He was thirteen. He was mad. He needed a target, and you were the only one around. Kids that age aren't rational or logical about that kind of thing. Hell, most adults aren't, either."

"Except you." Meredith snatched a tissue from her purse and hastily dabbed at her eyes. She gave Cyrus a watery smile. "You're always calm and rational. Always in control. Were you born that way?"

He smiled slightly. "As Grandpappy Beau used to say, there are only two ways to go through life. You're either in control or out of control. I picked the former."