Betrayals

Twelve

His plane’s descent took Jared directly over Boston proper, glittering in the clear evening air. The city of his childhood had changed. In the new skyline, he spotted the distinctive outline of the Wesley Sloan-designed Winston & Reed Building on the waterfront. He wondered if Quentin was working late, and if his aunt was there, pretending she didn’t run the place when everyone knew she did.

The landing was smooth, but the inactivity of the long cross-country flight had gotten to Jared, and he couldn’t wait to be out in the city and moving. All he’d done for the past seven hours was think about Mai, about Saigon and the man from Saigon and the Winstons-and about the Blackburns. Why did Rebecca have to be in Boston? He’d considered staying away because of her. But he couldn’t. He had to see Thomas Blackburn; he had to get answers to the questions he’d left hanging for fourteen years.

He couldn’t take any chances. The white-haired man had come to San Francisco. Obviously he had seen Mai’s picture in The Score. Now he had seen her.

Jared took a cab to the Massachusetts State House and walked the rest of the way to West Cedar Street. Whatever else might have changed in Boston in the past fourteen years, he supposed Beacon Hill would be pretty much the same.

And he knew Thomas Blackburn would be.

After the long flight, the exercise and the cool night air felt good. Jared took the familiar shortcuts to West Cedar Street, not even tempted to go by the house on Chestnut where he had lived with his mother after her brief marriage to his father. The place belonged to someone else and had for a long time.

The Eliza Blackburn house was in hellish shape. Jared discovered the doorbell didn’t work and tried the brass knocker, in need of polishing.

Thomas Blackburn opened the door, the strong smell of curry emanating from inside the house. He squinted at Jared, then nodded with satisfaction, as if he’d been expecting him.

“Jared,” he said.

“Hello, Thomas.” Jared put out his hand, but that wasn’t enough and they embraced briefly. Standing back, Jared added, “You haven’t changed.”

Thomas gave him a small laugh, shaking his head because, of course, he had changed. He was almost eighty now. He didn’t stand so tall and straight, and there were more lines in his face, more weariness. Yet his eyes were still that intense blue, his gaze incisive and uncompromising as he studied Jared for a moment.

“It’s good to see you, Jared.”

“And you.” Jared choked back his emotion. “It’s been a long time, Thomas. Too long-but you don’t seem surprised I’m here.”

Thomas shrugged, but his expression was serious. “I suppose not. Come inside.”

They went into the faded elegance of the front parlor. Neither man sat down. Jared was restless, anxious to move after his long, frustrating day. The odor of curry was even stronger inside, and he recalled that Thomas had always liked spicy food.

“You saw The Score?” he asked.

Thomas nodded. “Rebecca showed me.”

R.J. Jared had devoured every word on her in the short tabloid article, but there’d been no mention of where she was living. One of Boston ’s pricey new condominiums? She was the first Blackburn in two hundred years to have money to blow, and he hoped she was enjoying every minute of it. But he couldn’t think about her now.

“Jared-” Thomas broke off, sighing. “Jared, what’s happened? The pictures have stirred up trouble, I assume.”

“Yeah. One of the assassins from Saigon -the one who shot me-saw them and must have realized Mai made it out alive.”

Leaving out nothing, Jared told Thomas about the scar-faced man from Saigon and his visit to Russian Hill, and even after fourteen years, it seemed right to unburden his soul to this aged, experienced, tortured man. The friendship they’d forged when Jared was in college and Rebecca still a kid in Florida remained intact, although in 1975, when Jared had come to Thomas shattered after his own experience in Indochina, still suffering the effects of two bullets in his shoulder, they had realized the decisions they’d arrived at that night might mean they’d never see each other again. Jared had already acknowledged, if not accepted, that he and R.J. were finished. But he’d understood then-as he did now-that whoever had shot him in Saigon had also meant to kill Mai, and could try again.

As he had fourteen years ago, Thomas listened without interruption or any apparent reaction. Finally, when Jared had finished, he asked, “Where is Mai now?”

“My father’s place, outside San Francisco.”

“Good.” Thomas clamped one hand on Jared’s upper arm, his eyes glittering even in the dim light of the parlor. “Go back to her. Stay with her. Let me find out what I can about this man and deal with him. My guess is he’s not after Mai directly.”

Jared stiffened with disappointment and increasing frustration. “I’d hoped you’d talk to me, Thomas. I need advice-answers. Look, after Saigon I was so crazed and in such a state of shock, I’d have gone to Peru and opened a butcher shop if you’d told me it was the smartest thing to do. I trusted you then, and I trust you now. But Thomas…You haven’t been straight with me. I can’t let it lie anymore, not with this bastard showing up on my doorstep. Talk to me.” Stemming his anger, Jared softened his voice and asked, “You know this guy, don’t you?”

“From a long, long time ago.” The old man’s voice was distant, sadder than Jared would have ever thought possible. He had always seemed so impervious to anguish, but perhaps he was merely clever at hiding it from those who would take pleasure in his pain. Staring at the marble mantel where photographs of his lost wife and son were on display, he went on, “I’d assumed he never made it out of Saigon.”

Jared resisted the urge to press and press hard for information. “Who is he?”

Thomas shook his head, as if cutting off his own rampant thoughts, not Jared. “You came here because you trust me, didn’t you?”

Jared nodded.

Turning back to his young friend, Thomas clapped him on the arm, his grip stronger than Jared would have expected from a man near eighty. “Then believe me,” the older man said, “when I tell you the best thing you can do for yourself and for your daughter is to go home and let me see what I can root out on my own. You did what you had to do fourteen years ago. You knew then that you had to go on without answers-for Mai’s sake. Well, nothing’s changed.”

“Mai’s safe,” Jared said stonily. “I’m going to find this guy. I want to know what he’s up to. If it doesn’t involve my daughter, then fine. If it does-”

“Jared, go home.”

“I can’t. I’m not running away this time.”

“You didn’t before,” Thomas said with certainty. “You did what was right.”

Jared started to argue, but stopped at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

“Grandfather, how the hell much curry did you put in that stuff? It’s enough to kill a horse! My mouth’s on fire and-” Rebecca went silent as she came into the parlor.

The sight of her took Jared’s breath away. In her tangerine shirt and slim black skirt, she looked pulled together, gorgeous and very rich. She was older and even more beautiful, her eyes just as blue, her hair shorter, but still that unusual, very memorable shade of chestnut. And Jared realized, with a certainty that hurt, that although his life had gone on, he’d never really gotten over having loved and lost Rebecca Blackburn.

“Hello, R.J.,” he managed to say.

“Jared.”

Her voice was a whisper, and at that moment Jared knew that Thomas was right about one thing: nothing had changed.