Danny Sullivan had a wedge-shaped face, narrow, pointy chin, and a brain that put to shame anything made by IBM. He wore a beard and mustache that were thin and neatly groomed. Danny’s red hair, pale, freckled skin, and green eyes left no doubt that he was more Irish than the leprechaun on Notre Dame’s uniforms. His suit came from Brooks Brothers, a lightweight summer one in a shade of tan that reminded me too much of the army. It was well tailored and spoke of Danny’s unstoppable upward mobility.
Danny is my oldest and closest friend. It has been that way since kindergarten. We ran track together in high school. He stayed the course, went to Harvard Law, and later went on to protest the war with legal opinions and pro bono work for anyone against it. I swerved in the other direction. I quit school and found myself in a recruiter’s office, then in the army. Danny traded defending war protestors for free for defending real criminals for real money. I traded textbooks for a free membership to the local VA hospital, marred skin, and dreams I don’t like to talk about. Danny eventually became a respectable Republican and was working his way deeper into the upper crust. In keeping with being raised in South Boston, Southie, we referred to each other as Andy and Danny, not Dan or Daniel, and certainly never Andrew. It was a Southie sign of familiarity. Michael was a saint, Mikey was your friend. Nicholas was the name your parents used when you got in trouble, later when you were in court. To your close friends, you were Nicky. It was our only concession to the old neighborhood.
“Andy.” He pointed a finger at me like it was a pistol; the other three fingers were wrapped around a glass of scotch with a name I couldn’t pronounce and price I could only afford when a relative died. “Andy, the client wants an investigator, one that can keep his mouth shut and is willing to break a rule or two.” Danny was all class. Now he said things like investigator instead of private eye. I knew him before there was a gas tank with HO CHI MINH painted on it casting shadows over the old neighborhood. These days, Danny acts as though he has to look out for me. He feels guilty that I went to Nam and he didn’t. He is annoyed because I haven’t had much interest in trying to catch the middle-class brass ring—a stable job, a wife, kids, house, a mortgage, and a dog. I have tried to explain to him, but he just thinks that I am using Vietnam as an excuse to be a fuckup.
I lifted the pilsner glass of Löwenbräu to my lips and listened to his sales pitch. I didn’t need much of one. I was between jobs and had time to spare. I don’t do well with too much time off. My apartment seems too big, too dusty, and too empty these days. The Karmann Ghia was going to need a new clutch soon, and I had known Danny long enough that when he wanted me to take a job for a client, I took it.
“Andy, she is a little idiosyncratic—she wants you to fly out to San Francisco to meet with her. Fly out on her nickel and hear what she has to say.”
“Why doesn’t she come out here if the case is here?” Usually clients come to the investigator; it is what makes all those detective novels so interesting in the beginning. The leggy brunette with a husky voice and trouble written all over her walking through a frosted-glass-paneled door.
“Andy, she is rich and she has commitments, and you like San Francisco. Go out there, hear what she has to say, see if you can help her. Have a nice meal, stay in a nice hotel, and go out to Alcatraz, play at being a tourist, maybe meet a nice lady for a night . . .” He trailed off at that.
“I haven’t been back to San Francisco in years.” I remember getting off of the chartered Pan Am flight, walking up the Jetway and into the airport. People stared at my uniform, stared at me. No one spat on me or anything dramatic. I just knew that I was in a strange, unwelcoming land. In the bars, my tan and my short hair gave me away, and there were a lot of ladies who didn’t want anything to do with me. I remember a dark bar, someone saying “Baby Killer,” and a fight. I remember the feel of a nose giving way under my fist, a leg giving way to a knee in someone’s crotch, and the cop’s nightstick against my head. I never held any of it against the city.
“Yes, man, that is it. Go hear her out and take the case.” Danny was pressing hard.
“Important client?” He wore glasses, and the light played off of them, making it hard to see his eyes.
“A rich client, whose rich husband has a bright political future.” Danny had given up liberalism and the antiwar movement to drive a Cadillac to work and have a Mercedes in the garage for the wife. Danny’s wife had the type of ambition that had dragged them out of Southie. It would have made Danny’s very Catholic mother angry, except for the fact that the Protestant wife was a Republican and the mother of their two daughters, who are already going to the right schools in first grade.
“Political future in California? I thought that was for Democrats only?”
“Look at Reagan. Andy, people aren’t stupid anymore. They gave up on peanut farmers who can’t get them gas for their cars or keep the mullahs in check. I am telling you, California . . . well, maybe not LA, but California is going to be the next Republican state.” Ronald Reagan had beaten Carter, and we were a couple of years into his first term. I liked his hair—that was about all I could say.
“Okay, call her and tell her I will make arrangements to fly out.” I raised the pilsner glass to my lips, and when I looked back at him, Danny was grinning the grin that prosecuting attorneys had come to hate. He reached down and swung his briefcase up onto the table with the same ease that Bjorn Borg served. I listened to the double snap of the catches opening and lost sight of his face when the lid went up. A Pan Am ticket envelope landed in front of me next to my empty glass.
“She wants to meet you tonight. I booked you on the 2:15 from Logan.”
I picked up the envelope and held it pinched between my fingers.
“You knew I would say yes.”
Danny smiled that smile that reminded me of sharks and wolves. “I knew you would. You have never let me down before.” The way he said it I wondered how much this client meant to him. I slid the envelope in the pocket of my corduroy sport coat.
“I guess I should run, then.” I stood and we shook hands. I made my way through the restaurant to the street. The Ghia was where I left it. It was hunter green with a tan interior. I bought it used, a couple of years old from a coed in Cambridge whose father bought it for her new the last year they made them. She wanted to follow the Grateful Dead around. I wanted a car. I just loved the look of the car. I got in the Ghia and fought my way through lunchtime traffic to my apartment. I was living in a part of Back Bay that was nice but still affordable. I parked and hustled up the back stairs.
The apartment was a fourth floor one-bedroom that was hot in summer and cold in winter, but it did have a view of the Charles River. The building wasn’t in the best shape, but you couldn’t beat the location or the view. The door opened, and I walked into half an apartment. The bookshelves looked as though they had been ransacked by a burglar who specialized in fiction. I did have a TV, a small color one that I could watch the Red Sox on, but it wasn’t good for much else.
In the bedroom, I had a bed but no bureau, a mirror but no bedside table. This was how my furniture looked after Leslie. It had been almost two months. I was still finding her hair stuck to my clothes and had just gotten past the point where the phone was in my hand and I had almost dialed her number.
In the closet, I found a canvas mailman’s bag that I used as luggage. Into it went my shaving kit, a white button-down shirt, T-shirts, and everything else for two nights—a trio of Raymond Chandler’s novels in one omnibus and a book about the Battle of Thermopylae. I slid off my sport coat and took off the shoulder holster with the Colt .32 in it. It had been my father’s once and now it was mine. The pistol was flat, with art deco lines and sensibilities—like the Ghia, I fell in love with it at first sight. It didn’t hurt that it seemed to be in every Bogie movie. I picked up my jacket, put it back on, and was off to Logan.
I parked in the long-term lot, made it into the terminal, and made my way through all the counters and the security checkpoint in short order. I stopped to present my ticket; then I was down the Jetway and into the plane itself. The door closed behind me, and I leaned back in my seat. I am not fond of flying. There is always some screaming baby or kindergartner kicking my seat. I don’t like being trapped in my seat in some aluminum cylinder for hours on end. At least in the army they would open the doors and let us jump out.
The stewardess was wearing a blue skirt that showed enough leg to make me look up from Philip Marlowe’s misadventures whenever she swished by. She brought food and drinks, and smiled at me with a smile that was all plastic and no real warmth. The movie was something about the guy from that disco movie, but now he was a sound effects man. It had conspiracies and guns and Philadelphia. It seemed frantic, and I preferred peeking into Marlowe’s world. The dialogue was crisper and classier. At times, I tried to sleep, and mostly my ears hurt from the pressure.
The plane landed with a thump, and after a lot of waiting, I was emancipated into a terminal that had carpets of burnt umber. I walked up the Jetway, and this time no one in the terminal looked at me like I was a criminal. Now my hair was longer, and I had a beard. No one could see the scars, and I could pretend that they weren’t there. I was wearing penny loafers with blue faded blue jeans, a white shirt, and a corduroy blazer that was technically fawn colored. My watch was a simple Timex, and the only jewelry I wore was my old dog tags and my old St. Michael medal. I wasn’t religious, but he was the patron saint of paratroopers, and the combination of that medal and the dog tags got me through Vietnam. I followed the signs, and by the time I made my way to the street, there was a man in a dark suit and aviator glasses holding a sign with my name on it. I walked up to him and said, “I’m Roark.” He nodded his mirrored head and his ample blond, layered hair.
He opened the door to a dark blue Lincoln that was big enough to land helicopters on. We took the expressway and then angled down into the city. It was early evening and dark had set. The closer we got to the city, the more it seemed the show was on. Hippies, punks, addicts, and cops; they were all out doing their part of the elaborate social dance on the street. The car pulled up to a hotel that was old and dripped class. The glass partition between us hissed down, and he told me what room to go to. He didn’t get out and open the door for me. I wasn’t a guest—I was the help.
I stepped outside. We were only a few nights from Halloween. In Boston, it was an Indian summer and warm. In San Francisco, I shivered on the sidewalk, wishing I had the trench coat that Leslie had given me for my last birthday.
I went into the hotel, slowing only to gauge where the elevators were. I made my way up to the room. I knocked. She opened the door to the suite.
“Mr. Roark. Our Boston attorney recommended you quite highly.” She was blonde, more Lauren Bacall than Farrah Fawcett. She was probably thirty and looked twenty-five. She took my hand in a firm grip that let me know how the tennis racquet must feel.
“I hope you mean Danny Sullivan?” I was conscious of my accent, Boston steam-rolled with U.S. Army Southern into something flat and vaguely East Coast. She sat in a wing chair in front of an unlit fireplace and gestured for me to sit across from her in a matching one. She held a file folder, and there were more next to her on a small table. There was a glass of white wine on the table, and her hair was perfect. She was wearing one of those pantsuits that only look good if they are expensive, and your body is long and lean. Hers was very expensive and looked very good. She crossed one long leg over the other, and I knew without being told that horses and tennis had been a major part of her upbringing.
“Dan Sullivan is a bright man.” She was younger than Danny or me, but she owned everything that lay before her. The worst part was that she knew it. She made me feel like I was in the principal’s office for writing dirty words on the boys’ bathroom wall.
“He has a very bright future with us.” I’d bet good money that she had graduated from Radcliffe or Vassar. Her voice had a huskiness that would have been cheap on anyone else.
“Us? Who are you?” She had a quality that would make a man become ruthless just to keep her happy. I was with her for two minutes, and I was sure of it.
“My name is Deborah Swift. My husband is Geoffrey Swift of the San Francisco Swifts, as in Swift Aeronautical.”
“Oh, those Swifts, of course.” Swift Aeronautical had been Swift Marine, which had made wooden PT boats for the navy in World War II. In Korea, they had graduated to bigger boats and parts for jet planes. By Vietnam, they had given up on the boats and just focused on parts for jets. Those parts had made the Swift family millions to keep their existing millions from getting lonely.
“My husband, despite his unlikely name, has a prospect of becoming the first Republican senator from the Bay Area in a long time.”
“Bully for him.” Her eyes were big and green and distracting.
“I would like to see that he succeeds. To that end, I require the services of someone who is capable and, more importantly, discreet. Dan Sullivan says that you are that person. Are you?” The big green eyes were focused on me, and I was aware that the two top buttons of her blouse were not buttoned and that pale flesh was showing in contrast to tanned skin.
“I am discreet, and I am capable. The caveat is that I am also somewhat moral, and there are things that I won’t do.”
She laughed.
“Good, I like a man with a sense of morals. However, Dan also told me that you frequently bend the rules.” Her ears were perfectly shaped with diamond-accented lobes that you wanted to take between your lips, your teeth.
“I believe in right and wrong, and that doesn’t always conform with the rules and regulations.” She had a freckle at the beginning of the valley that was formed by the two buttons being undone on her blouse. She looked at the folder in her hands and looked up at me.
“Andrew ‘Red’ Roark, 10/13/1949, of Boston, Mass., attended Catholic high school in South Boston, a year and a half at the University of Rhode Island . . . Rhode Island?” She looked at me over the top of the folder. I shrugged. What could I say, I wanted to be an engineer, and it was close to the beach. “Voluntarily enlisted into the U.S. Army, February 1968 . . . voluntarily?” It was said the same way as “Rhode Island” was said, the way one might correct a particularly slow third grader. “Attended basic infantry and airborne training Fort Benning, Georgia, Army Special Forces training Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. Command and Control North, Republic of Vietnam.” Cool green eyes looking down rifle sights at my face. “What was Command and Control North, Republic of Vietnam?” A breath and the freckles heaved, and I was slightly weak in the knees.
“I can’t actually talk about all of that.” She gave me a look that made me feel like I should be waiting in line for the swings at recess. There would not have been much point in talking about it. It was like all wars, only those who fought in it understood any of it. She made mention of the rank I had earned and the medals I had been awarded, but none of that meant much. Friends who were gone, scars that covered wounds that ached when it got cold, and dreams that came by to visit more than poor relatives looking for a handout. That is all the war meant now. Not much of a war to talk about in a hotel suite in San Francisco.
“Ooooh, it’s secret. Honorable discharge 1972, Boston University for a semester, a few months off, and then the Boston Police Department for five years, all the time going to night school, almost eking out a degree. 1979, resigned from Boston Police Department, minutes before being fired for insubordination, and then off on your own as a private detective.” Her green eyes zeroing in on my blue ones and me not having anywhere to look or to hide. “Is that accurate?”
“More or less.” I didn’t like having my life summed up like that. It sounded cheap.
“My father was a marine.” After a pause, “He fought in Korea.” She said it in the same way that she summed up my life. Short and inexpensive.
“He came home from the war when I was a little girl.” I nodded, not knowing what else to do or say. “He was home for a while and everything was wonderful, my parents dancing in the kitchen and songs on the radio all the time. It did not last long. One night he went out for a pack of cigarettes, and we never saw him again. My mother eventually remarried, and I took my stepfather’s name. The best thing that my mother had to say about my father was that he was tall, and after a short time I stopped asking.” Light flashed off of the diamonds in her earlobes, and she shifted her slim body in the wing chair, then one long leg over the other. “My husband is going to announce his candidacy soon. We hope that in time he can run for president.” I had to stop for a second, because I was pretty sure that Reagan had it locked up until ’84.
“We have an excellent chance of representing the state, but I am, of course, careful. I don’t know what became of my father, but I would like you to find out. I do not want to read about any unpleasant surprises in the Chronicle.” I nodded as though I had all the answers. If she was talking about the 1968 Democratic Convention, I could see where having a missing marine father might be a black spot to avoid. Now being a veteran was no longer considered a sin. “I hired a large firm out here, but they were not able to find much. They did trace my father to a town on Cape Cod, but the trail ran cold for them. That is why I needed you. You are local, and people will tell you things they won’t tell a Pinkerton man from San Francisco.”
“What do you hope I will find?”
“I want to know if there is. . .
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