Second Chance

Chapter 61

WE CAME BACK TO TOWN with a few names, courtesy of Estes. Recent parolees thought to be members of Chimera.

Back at the Hall, Jacobi parceled out the list to Cappy and Chin.

“I'm gonna start calling a few PQ's,” he said to me. "You want to join?

I shook my head. "I have to leave early, Warren.

“Whatsamatter, don't tell me you got a date?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. No doubt my face sort of lit into an incredulous smile. “I've got a date.”

The downstairs buzzer rang about seven.

When I opened the door, my father was peeking out from behind a catcher's mask, his hands outstretched in a defensive pose. “Friends...?” he asked, an apologetic smile sneaking through.

“Dinner... ” I smiled begrudgingly “That's the best I can do.” “That's a start,” he said, stepping in. He had cleaned himself up. He was wearing a brown sport jacket, pressed pants, an open-collared white shirt. He handed me a bottle of red wine wrapped in paper.

“You didn't have to,” I said, unfurling the wine, then gasping in surprise as I read the label. It was a first-growth Bordeaux, Chateau Latour, the year 1965. I looked at him; 1965 was the year I was born.

“I bought it a year after you were born. It was about the only thing I took with me when I left. I always figured we'd drink it on your graduation or something, maybe your wedding.”

“You kept it all these years.” I shook my head.

He shrugged. “Like I said, I bought it for you. Anyway, Lindsay, there's nothing I'd rather do than drink it here tonight.”

Something warm rose inside me. "You're making it hard to continue to completely hate you.

“Don't hate me, Lindsay.” He tossed me the catcher's mask.

“This doesn't fit. I don't ever want to have to use it again.”

I took him into the living room, poured him a beer, and sat down. I had on a wine-colored Eileen Fisher sweater, my hair pulled up in a ponytail. His eyes seemed to twinkle at me.

“You look gorgeous, Buttercup,” my father said.

When I scowled, he smiled. “I can't help it, you just do.”

For a while we talked, Martha lying beside him as if he were an old friend. We talked about trivial things, things we knew. Who was left from his old cronies on the force. Cat, and her new daughter he hadn't seen. Whether Jerry Rice would call it quits. We skirted the subject of Mercer and the case.

And as if I were meeting someone for the first time, I found him different from what I imagined. Not garrulous and boastful and full of stories as I remembered, but humble and reserved. Almost contrite. And he still had his sense of humor.

“I've got something to show you,” I said. I went into the hall closet and came back with the satin Giants baseball jacket he'd given me over twenty-five years before. It was embroidered with a number 24 and had the name Mays on the front chest.

My father's eyes flashed in surprise. “I'd forgotten about that. I got it from the equipment manager in nineteen sixty-eight.” He held it in front of him and looked at it a long time, like an old relic that had made the past suddenly vivid. “You have any idea what that thing must be worth today?” “I always called it my inheritance,” I told him.