The Hunt Club

18

Hunt got lucky with Mickey Dade.

Besides the occasional work he did for Hunt, Tamara's twenty-three-year-old younger brother also drove a cab in the evenings while he sporadically attended chef's school during the day at the California Culinary Academy when he could afford classes. Hunt thought the interest in food might have had something to do with Mickey getting down to his last spoonful of peanut butter when he'd been ten, but they'd never discussed it.

Tonight, though, Mickey was circling Union Square, not four blocks from Farrell's office, when Hunt got him on his cell phone. Picking him up out front, Mickey left the meter off and started to drive. Hunt, sitting in the passenger seat next to him, wasted no time. "How's it look for work over the next day or two, Mick?"

"Clear enough. I could probably find a few hours. What do you want?"

"I don't know yet. You hear about Andrea Parisi?"

"Who?"

"I guess not, then. She's on TV about the Donolan trial almost every day."

"I don't watch TV. Waste of time."

"I know. It's one of the things I've always liked about you most."

"Except for the Iron Chef. I love that show."

"Mick."

"Yeah."

"Andrea Parisi."

"Okay."

"She's missing. We're going to try to find her."

"Who's we?"

"You, me, Tamara, Craig, some of my pals from the legal world."

"Where'd she go?"

"Was that a smart or dumb question?"

Mickey took a beat. "Dumb. I get it. If she's missing, though, don't the cops automatically look for her?"

Hunt explained about Missing Persons, as well as where they stood with Parisi in a general way, while Mickey managed to run three reds and hit fifty miles per hour between every other stoplight on the way down to Brannan. He got Hunt home in a little under ten minutes, but before he sped out in a hail of gravel for a dispatch fare at Lulu's, he promised Hunt he'd keep his cell phone on and await instructions.

"You got your camera on you, right?" Hunt asked him. "Just in case."

Mickey patted the small leather case on the car seat next to him. "Always, dude, always."

Back home, Hunt changed out of his business suit into jeans, hiking boots, an old flannel Pendleton. By the time he'd changed, his computer was up, and he sat at his desk, where he Googled the names Ward and Carol Manion. Andrea Parisi had not made it to her final appointment with Carol Manion, true, but if the two women had talked after Hunt had left Parisi, that made Mrs. Manion perhaps the last contact Andrea had had before she disappeared. She might have said something, left some hint.

He spent nearly a half hour scanning through a selection of the hits-there were over seventy thousand of them, so anything greater than a cursory look was impossible, even after he winnowed his searches down to the narrowest parameters he could. The Manion name hadn't quite made it into the very pinnacle of the San Francisco pantheon inhabited by the Swigs and Gettys and Ellisons, but they seemed to be well on their way to getting there. Hunt already knew about their statewide-rumored soon to be nationwide-chain of discount specialty grocery stores. Likewise, in just the last couple of years, they had acquired huge brand recognition for their fledgling Manion Cellars label by producing some extremely cheap, remarkably high-value Napa cabernets and merlots. Hunt himself had a couple of bottles of their stuff in with the rest of his minimalist collection on the floor next to his refrigerator. The family had been among the biggest bidders at the Napa Valley Wine Auction for the past several years, last spring paying more than one hundred thousand dollars for a jeroboam-size bottle of '96 Screaming Eagle from the birth year of their younger son, Todd. In sports, aside from their involvement with the 49ers and NFL football, they owned a minor-league baseball team in Solano County and were big-time sponsors of the U.S. Winter Olympic Ski Team. The tragedy Hunt had vaguely remembered concerned their older son, Cameron, who'd died in a waterskiing accident just last summer. The twenty-four-year-old golden boy was a competitive racer who'd been training in Lake Berryessa for the Emerald Bay Classic at Lake Tahoe when he'd hit a submerged log at seventy miles per hour.

Hunt did quite a bit of this kind of computer work and knew exactly what he was looking for, and suddenly there it was. The Manions' private residence was the site of the Kidney Foundation dinner in 2000, and the society write-up of the event included the information that the home on Seaview Drive in the Seacliff neighborhood "commanded a stunning panoramic view from the Golden Gate to the Farallones."

Hunt punched in Mickey Dade's cell number again, and this time gave him his marching orders: Would he try to get out to Seacliff before it got dark, ask around if he had to, and get the exact address of the Manions' home? With that, Hunt would be able to find their personal telephone number, where he could then reach Mrs. Manion and maybe get a few words with her.

Finally, in his kitchen, suddenly ravenous, realizing that he hadn't eaten since the morning's bao, Hunt cut a three-inch chunk of dry salami off the roll that hung from a peg inside his refrigerator. It would have to do.

He had to move.

Hunt didn't go to the Little Shamrock much anymore. Directly across the street from Golden Gate Park on Lincoln and Ninth Avenue, the bar used to be the local hangout for him and Sophie, but he didn't live in the neighborhood anymore, and it really wasn't much of a destination place in its own right. Even if it had been, Hunt wouldn't normally have chosen to frequent it. He'd put away and buried that part of his life.

Still, tonight, no one had been home at Juhle's when he'd gone by. He cursed himself for not calling first, but he hadn't wanted to endure more scorn and perhaps rejection on the phone. If he simply showed up with another apology to his friend, though, he might get in the door. And from there make some kind of pitch for information. He wasn't, in fact, sure of exactly what he was going to say.

But the Shamrock was on this side of town, and now something else-the recent though mostly oft-repressed memories of his life back then, the photograph of Sophie at the bar-was drawing him back to revisit the old haunt.

On a Thursday night at seven thirty, Hunt expected that the place would be crowded wall-to-wall with people, which wouldn't have been saying much since on its best night the watering hole's maximum occupancy probably peaked at a hundred souls. Sophie and Hunt sometimes used to get in here when there were only a couple of customers before the cocktail hour, and it had always struck them as almost impossibly small for the flourishing concern that it obviously was-the establishment had first opened its doors in 1893 and had been in continous operation ever since.

The old wooden bar ran halfway to the back of the place. Directly in front of the bar, the place was only about eight feet wide. Three tiny tables with four chairs each provided some seating. The facing wall was further cluttered by antique bicycles and other turn-of-the-nineteenth-century memorabilia, including a grandfather clock that had stopped for the last time during the 1906 earthquake. In the back by the dartboards and jukebox, the room widened out a bit, but a couple of seating areas with sagging couches and overstuffed chairs took up a lot more room than tiny cocktail tables would have and gave the spot a homey feel.

Now out the wide front window the sun cast its last long shadows on Lincoln. A couple in matching black leather sat on stools at the far end of the bar, nursing pints of stout. A lone dart thrower pegged in the back. Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" played quietly over the speakers. The television was dark, and no bartender trod the boards behind the bar.

Hunt took one of the stools nearest the door, wondering if he should just leave, unsure why he'd stopped by here in the first place. For most of a minute, he sat waiting and had just about made up his mind to go when the dart player ducked under the far end of the bar-"With you in a sec."

Parking his darts in the gutter, the bartender started toward him, and Hunt said, "Mr. Hardy?"

The man stopped, cocked his head. "Doctor Hunt," he said, then lowered his voice. "You can drop the Mr. Hardy when I'm here behind the bar. It's Diz. And what brings you all the way out to the frontier on this fine night?"

"I've got a better one," Hunt said. "What's a top-dog lawyer doing tending bar at a place like this?"

Dismas Hardy-Amy Wu's boss and Wes Farrell's partner-flashed a craggy grin. "I own some of this place," he said. "A quarter of it, to be precise."

"And you bartend part-time?"

"Very part-time. As in almost never. My brother-in-law's usually back here, but he's…well, he's doing a bit of rehab, and he asked me to fill in for a few days. I didn't realize you came in here."

"I don't, really. Not in a few years."

"Well"-Hardy threw a napkin down onto the bar-"you seem to be here now. So what're you drinking?"

"I'll have a beer. Tap. Bass."

"Coming up." Hardy walked to the spigots, drew two brews, then walked back, carrying both of them. He placed one on the napkin in front of Hunt and took a sip from the other, putting it down in the gutter. "So. You working tonight?"

"Not for money." Then, "You hear about Andrea Parisi?"

Hardy nodded. "Amy and Wes were telling me earlier. She still missing?"

"Yep."

"You're looking for her?"

"Starting, yeah. I was just with Wes and Amy at your offices, in fact."

"Doing what?"

"Putting them to work on it."

"I thought it went the other way. The law firms hire the investigators."

"Usually that's true." He hesitated, wondering if he was shooting himself in the foot. He and Hardy had always gotten along, but in Hunt's experience, the average managing partner usually wasn't overjoyed to hear about billable hours that didn't get billed to some client or another. "But we're all pretty worried." He ran through his quick analysis of Parisi's chances. "We figure we might have a day, maybe two."

"How long has she been gone?"

Hunt checked his watch. "Thirty hours, give or take. It doesn't look good, but at least her body hasn't turned up anywhere. On the slim chance…"

"Where are the cops on it?" Hardy asked.

"Missing Persons won't do anything for at least another day or two. But do you know Devin Juhle?"

"Sure. Homicide."

"Right. And, most of the time, a pal of mine." Hunt delivered it straight. "He considers her a suspect in the Palmer murders."

Hardy narrowed his eyes. "We're talking the same Andrea Parisi? Trial TV?"

"Right. So now Juhle wants her as badly as we do, maybe worse. I'm hoping to leverage him to do what Missing Persons won't."

"A homicide cop? And what do you want from him?"

"What he knows."

Hardy seemed to find that amusing. "And he's just going to tell you? How are you planning to make him do that?"

This was, of course, Hunt's problem. Especially after Juhle's last words to him. "We go back a ways," he said.

Hardy appeared to get a kick out of this. "Because you're friends, you're just going to ask him?"

"That was the original plan, but I knew a couple of things, and I didn't tell him right away. So now he thinks I was holding out on him."

"Sounds like you were."

"Well, there you go. Anyway, it's a problem."

"Well, the bad news," Hardy said, "is that he wouldn't tell you anything if you just asked, anyway. It's the same gene that predisposes these guys to homicide. He probably wouldn't tell his wife, either. The good news is it happens that I've had a little experience with exactly this sort of problem." He paused. "Abe Glitsky's one of my best friends." Glitsky was San Francisco 's Deputy Chief of Inspectors. For a dozen or more years before that, he'd been the chief cop in the homicide detail.

"That's impossible," Hunt said. "You're a defense attorney."

"It is impossible," Hardy agreed genially enough. "If you knew Glitsky like I do-and count your lucky stars you don't-you'd know how impossible. But I'd be lying if I told you he hasn't been a help to me more than once."

"On the defense side?"

"Sometimes kicking and screaming, I might add. But, yeah."

"How did that happen?"

Hardy lifted his beer out of the gutter, took a sip. "When you can't just ask," he said, "you trade."

Hunt couldn't decide if what he liked the most about his Cooper was the turbocharged power; the cool, high-tech, vaguely Art Deco dashboard; or the fact that it could fit into parking places only a little bigger than the size of a toaster. He pulled up right in front of the familiar small house on Twelfth Avenue between Ortega and Noriega and parked between its driveway and the house next door, in maybe eight or nine feet of curb space. Though it was dark out now, he knew that the garages on either side and all the way up and down the block sported signs that read: DON'T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE! And in his own personal experience, he knew the home owners meant it. A couple of times, he'd hung half a foot over the outer lip of somebody's driveway and come out to find himself towed-one hundred and twenty-five bucks plus the ticket, thanks.

Juhle's home looked like all the other houses on the block-two-story stucco with four steps up to the front stoop, the built-in one-car garage taking up a third of the footprint. In the daylight, the house's fresh, bright green trim distinguished it somewhat from its neighbors, and at this time every spring, the flower boxes in the windowsills bloomed with daffodils, impatiens, and angel's hair. But by now it was a few minutes after nine, none of these amenities were visible, and it was just another shivering house squatting out in the fogbelt of the Sunset.

After the clear and cloudless day, the fog was in and now obscured most of the rest of the street. But he could see lights on inside at Juhle's. They'd gotten home.

As he mounted the front stoop, Hunt found himself fighting his nerves. Constant action since he'd finished his deposition work at McClelland's in the late afternoon had insulated him somewhat from his growing visceral worry-by now nearly a physical sickness-about what had happened to Parisi. With every minute, the odds that she was alive grew longer. And yet he couldn't accept her possible death, if only because he wanted to believe that life wouldn't do this to him again-give him hope, even a deluded, perhaps foolish hope, only to steal it away.

All he knew was that he needed to find her. To find out, if nothing else, where it all could go with her. And without Juhle's help and even active cooperation, he didn't think it was going to happen.

He pushed the doorbell, heard the chimes within, and waited in the fog.

Connie met him at the door with a kiss on the cheek. "You've got guts, Wyatt, I'll give you that."

But then she led him back to the rest of the family. Juhle, his arm in his sling and his other hand in a bucket of ice, looked through him. The kids-Eric, Brendan, and Alexa-all jumped up from the kitchen table, where they were eating their pizza. Uncle Wyatt was a favorite. He often arrived laden with coins, candy, other treats for them, and tonight was no exception. For some reason, their parents tolerated these gifts from Hunt but from no one else, and it set a tone of acceptance. That, plus the fact that their father usually seemed looser when Hunt was around. Juhle would play games with them that he otherwise didn't have all that much time for-Foosball and Ping-Pong out in the garage, football or baseball catch out in the street, hoops on the driveway. Occasionally, the two men would play guitar together or listen to new CDs. Wyatt was cool.

Tonight after they'd pilfered his pockets for Necco wafers, the kids went back to their places. Hunt moved around behind them and pulled a quarter, one at a time, out of each child's ear. Eric was still in his Hornets uniform. "How'd you guys do tonight?" he asked him.

"We killed 'em, nine to two," the older boy replied. "Dad was coach. He let me pitch."

"How'd he get to be coach? He looks like he's hurting right now."

"He's okay," Alexa said. At seven years old, she was the queen of fatherly protection. "Nothing like Coach Doug."

"Are we talking about Mr. Malinoff?"

"Yep," Brendan said.

"What happened to him?"

Finally, Juhle relaxed the frown he'd been cultivating. "Pickle," he said.

"Malinoff played pickle?"

"In spikes," Eric said. "On the grass."

"You know pickle, right, Uncle Wyatt?"

"Sure, Brendan. In fact, I invented it. Run back and forth between bases, slide under the tag, right?"

Alexa caught him with a suspicious glare, turned to her father. "Did Uncle Wyatt really invent pickle?"

"If he says so," Juhle said, then added with some edge, "I know he wouldn't lie."

Hunt turned to Connie. "So what happened to Malinoff?"

"He challenged the kids. Said he'd give five bucks to anybody who could beat him."

"Daddy told him not to," Alexa said, "but Coach just called him a wimp. I heard him."

"He was kidding, honey," Connie said. "Just teasing. He knows your father's not a wimp. It was kind of an adult joke about how he hurt his arm, that's all."

"It wasn't funny." Alexa was in full pout. "I didn't like it."

"God didn't like it, either," Juhle said, "which is why he punished him."

"What did God do?" Hunt asked.

Connie was having trouble keeping a straight face. "He broke Coach's leg," she said.

"Ow!"

"That's what Doug said, too."

"Not exactly, Dad," Eric said.

"No, I know. And I bet Uncle Wyatt can imagine what he really said, too. But we don't use that kind of language, do we? It's bad sportsmanship. Right?"

To a chorus of "Rights," Juhle stood up, took the dish towel Connie held out for him, and wrapped it around his catching hand. "Okay, you guys, finish your pizza, and I hear there's still homework to be done. And no Neccos tonight, either. Con?"

"No Neccos," she repeated, "'til tomorrow after school."

"Where are you and Uncle Wyatt going, Dad?" Brendan asked.

"Out to the living room," Juhle said, "for some private adult conversation."

"Dev, listen," Hunt was saying. "When you told me about it last night, maybe you don't remember, but you were all over the wife. Parisi wasn't any part of it, and even if I had thought about it and mentioned it to you, you would have said no way, that she was ancient history. If there was anything between Parisi and Palmer, they broke up six months ago. She is not jealous of Staci Rosalier all of a sudden now. The wife had the better immediate motive. Why else get 'em both to her house? Plus, you must admit, this isn't exactly something we've dealt with every day, you and me, withholding information. I didn't know it was information. Next time, I tell you everything before I think it. Promise. You'll be telling me to shut up before I've opened my mouth."

Juhle still didn't like it. His face hadn't softened except for the instant after the door to the kitchen had closed behind his family when he'd been referring to Malinoff and said, "It was a beautiful moment, I tell you. You should have seen it. The ambulance and everything." But after that, the fun was over.

Now he reclined-head back, feet up, eyes closed-in his big, brown leather lounger. His features looked drawn with fatigue, pain, and irritation. Connie's footfalls came from the back of the house, and in a moment, she appeared with a glass of water and some pills. She looked at her husband first, then over to Hunt, who was sitting forward on one of the other chairs, elbows on his knees, jaw set, eyes bright, tightly wound.

"Excuse me," she said, "time for medication." She dropped the pills into Juhle's hand, waited while he threw them into his mouth, then handed him the water. Then she turned to Hunt. "These usually make him sleepy," she said, and walked out.

When the two men were alone again, Hunt said, "I'd hate to have her mad at me."

Juhle opened his eyes. "Don't fuck with your friends, their wives won't be mad at you."

"How many times you want me to apologize?" No answer. "Dev, I need your help."

"What? Finding Parisi? You're dreaming, Wyatt."

Suddenly remembering Hardy's advice, Hunt said, "Listen to me. I can help you, too."

Juhle let out a short, aborted chuckle. "Sure you can. And you're motivated, right? You find Parisi, you'll give her to me. No, if you find her, you'll hide her from me. Or she'll hide herself, keep herself hid is more like it."

"That won't happen. I'm giving you my word it won't happen. If she's findable, I can help you," he repeated.

With a sigh, Juhle brought his lounger back to a sitting position. He still looked weary, but there was a hint of interest. "Why are you going to do that, Wyatt? And first, I've got to believe that you will do that."

"I just gave you my word, Dev."

Finally, Juhle nodded. "All right. That leaves how."

Hunt let out a breath. "You know what I do for a living about half the time in my job: I find people. And right now I've got people talking to everybody she knew, everybody we can find, personally, firm, family, you name it. If she's dead, she's dead, and she'll probably turn up someday. But last I saw her, I guarantee you she wasn't going into hiding on this murder rap. Somebody picked her up, and I'm just praying right now that they didn't kill her right away. That's where I'm coming from. Have you heard anything about a ransom note? Did you track any credit card use yet? Any sign that she's on the run?"

"All that's classified."

"Okay, so do we have a deal, or what? I'm telling you, I'll give you everything I get, the minute I get it. But I need to know what you've got about Parisi, every little thing. If I'm missing something. Someplace I could be looking."

"And what would that be?"

"If I knew, I'd know, wouldn't I? But give me that and I could take Parisi off your plate entirely and leave you free for everybody else. Mrs. Palmer, whoever. But that's the other thing I can give you that you don't have and I really believe you need."

"What's that?"

"A partner."

Juhle narrowed his eyes, his mouth tight. "I've got a partner."

"Right. I've met him. He helping you much?"

"He's a cop."

"Yes, he is."

"I don't go behind his back."

"Of course not. Go in front of him. See if he notices. Meanwhile, you and me, we do what you and Shane used to do-try to figure this stuff out."

Juhle looked down at his swollen hand, closed it and opened it again a couple of times. Finally, he gave it up with a sigh. "No. No note. No credit cards. No cell phone. No nothing. And why do you think," he asked, "we haven't gotten any kind of line on Staci Rosalier's family?"

"So I've got Wes talking to Fairchild and Tombo about what she might have been doing Monday night, which could eliminate her from your equation all by itself. Meanwhile, Amy Wu's with Carla-" Hunt said.

"Parisi's secretary Carla? We talked to her today," Juhle said.

"She give you anything?"

"Pretty much the same timetable you've already got. Not much else."

"Okay, but speaking of the timetable, I've got Mickey Dade going to find out where the Manions live so I can get to Carol, the wife."

"You don't have to bother," Juhle said. "Shiu and I already talked to her today. She lives out in Seacliff. Incredible spread. We waltzed in like we own the place."

"How'd you do that?"

"It doesn't get talked about much out in the world, but all her security guards are off-duty San Francisco homicide inspectors."

"Even Shiu?"

"Only the best for the Manions, Wyatt. I'm probably the only cop in the detail she doesn't call by his first name. Shiu called on her security number, and we got the red carpet."

"See." They'd been talking the case for ten minutes or so and by now the friction had bled out of the room. Hunt was all the way back in his chair, legs crossed. "This is why we need to communicate on this. So what did Mrs. Manion know?"

"Basically nothing. She never saw her. Parisi never showed. That's a dead end."

"She tell you what they were supposed to be talking about?"

Juhle stared up at the ceiling, dredging it back. "She's a bigwig on some committee-the Friends of the Public Library? Something like that-Shiu's got it in his book, I'm sure. Anyway, they've got a fund-raiser later on in the summer, and they wanted Parisi to be, like, the local celebrity master of ceremonies, so she wanted to feel her out on it. I guess they liked her work on TV, the new face and all."

Hunt let out a breath, finally shook his head. "So she leaves her house, gets in her car, and vanishes?"

"Right. That's what we've got."

"You get her phone records?"

"Working on them, Wyatt. She just became a live suspect today. We should have something by tomorrow, Monday the latest."

This wasn't nearly soon enough for Hunt, but he had no say on it. "And you've talked to Palmer's office, too?"

By now, Juhle's pills and weariness were slowing him down. He took a couple of seconds to respond. "Yep. He was probably thinking about moving on the union, although Gary Piersall says it was a bluff."

"So where would Andrea play there?"

"I've been trying to work that connection all day. It's a dry well."

"How about if she thought she knew or had discovered who'd put the hit on Palmer? She goes to…what's his name, the union chief?"

"Jim Pine."

"Right. She goes to Pine-or not to Pine directly. Maybe even to one of her colleagues at Piersall, maybe talks about her suspicions. She's going to blow the whistle, and somebody decides they've got to stop her-"

Juhle interrupted. "You're stretching it pretty thin here, Wyatt. Although let me ask you one. The union connection with Jeannette Palmer?"

"Which is what?"

"Invisible at the moment, except in Shiu's mind. I'm asking your opinion about it: She finds out her husband is having this affair and decides to have him killed? She's heard all these stories about muscle in the union, and she knows where they live, maybe how she can get to them."

Hunt shook his head. "No offense to your partner, Dev, but no."

"Just 'no'?"

A nod. "Think about it. She even gets to step one, she's blackmail bait forever. The union wants to knock off the judge for whatever reason in the world, they'll just do it. They wouldn't need the wife to ask them. They wouldn't believe her if she did. It's just stupid."

"My partner doesn't think it's stupid. He thinks that's what probably happened. I've been trying to get behind it, but it's been giving me this monster headache." Juhle pulled his hand down across his face, pressed at his forehead.

"I think you're right about one thing, Dev. I think Andrea's connected somehow. But she's the third victim, not the suspect."

"Well"-Juhle forced himself up and out of his lounger-"that's your theory. But either way, let's find her."