Treasure Hunt

4

Saturdays, Mickey went to his cooking class at La Cuisine, located in a large Victorian house on Webster Street between Clay and Sacramento. He was already halfway through his six-week Professional Series course-“Knives and Butchering,” his eighth formal class in the past three years. At his present rate, he could expect to get his Certified Culinarian ticket, the lowest professional ranking, and possibly get hired to cut onions or sift flour for eight hours a day, in only another two or three years.

But it was working toward something that he loved. By the time he was thirty, if everything worked out, he’d be working in a kitchen; at forty he’d have his own place. Maybe a small one, but his own.

It was a timeline he could live with.

His class began at the stroke of eight o’clock, and if you were late, you weren’t admitted. No excuses tolerated, even if you’d paid your entire tuition up front, even if you couldn’t find a parking place, your uncle died, all of the above. Marc Bollet, the maître, locked the front door at showtime sharp, and didn’t unlock it again for five hours. “You want the experience of working in a professional kitchen?” Marc said more than once in his still-pronounced French accent. “You must learn never, ever to be late. Never to be sick. Don’t plan on too many days off, or vacations. La cuisine is not a career. It is a vocation, a sacred thing. Never be less than at your very best. Or you will find yourself without a job. Because there is always, always, someone who wants your chance.”

Now Mickey, a full twenty- five minutes before class was to begin, courtesy of the best parking spot he’d ever found, got to the stoop with his cup of Starbucks and was somewhat surprised to see that, even this early, he wasn’t the first of his classmates to arrive. Ian Thorpe looked up with an easy, crinkling, blue-eyed smile under a wispy blond mustache. He wore chef’s clogs, a pair of stained khaki shorts, and a blue fisherman’s sweater with white horizontal stripes. “Hey,” he said. “I was hoping I’d catch you before class.”

“Me? You caught me. What’s up?”

“I saw you on the tube last night.”

Mickey broke a small smile. “Me too,” he said. “But only four times. After that it got boring.”

“They identified you as a private investigator.”

“I know, but they didn’t get that part exactly right. I just work in the office, more or less the grunt. Answer phones, get the coffee, like that.”

“Damn.”

“What?”

Thorpe blew out. His eyes scanned the street behind Mickey for a moment. “Nothing, really. I was hoping maybe… well, maybe you could talk to your bosses…”

“Boss. Singular. Wyatt Hunt. The Hunt Club. You need a private eye?”

“I don’t know what I need, to tell you the truth, but somebody like your boss might be a good place to start. I need somebody who knows something about the law and how it works and who isn’t a cop. And it’s not for me. It’s my sister. She worked for Dominic Como.”

“She did? What’d she do?”

“She was his driver.”

Mickey’s mouth all but hung open. “You’re kidding me?”

“No. Why do you say that?”

“ ’Cause that’s what my grandfather did for him too.”

But just at this moment, another pair of their classmates showed up at the corner. “Maybe we can talk a little after class?” Thorpe said. “You be up for that?”

Mickey shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

After class, back at the nearest Starbucks, Mickey removed the plastic top from his cup, blew over the coffee, and took a sip. “So,” he said, “your sister.”

Thorpe nodded. “Alicia.”

“Younger?”

“Three years. She’s twenty-five. Maybe I care about her so much because she’s my only family, actually.”

Mickey put down his cup. “I’ve got a sister who’s pretty much my only family, too, except for a grandfather.” He didn’t see any reason to include his boss, Wyatt Hunt, an adopted foster child himself, who, on his own time, back when he’d been working for the city’s Child Protective Services, had tracked down Jim Parr and convinced him to meet with his all-but-forgotten and abandoned grandchildren, a meeting that had eventually led to Jim’s job as Dominic Como’s driver and then Jim’s adoption of Mickey and Tamara less than a year later. Mickey went on. “Anyway, my dad disappeared for good when I was like two. My mom overdosed when I was seven. Heroin.”

“Heroin,” Thorpe said. “I hate that shit, and you’re talking to one who knows.” He lifted his eyes, his voice suddenly flat. “My dad shot my mother and then killed himself when I was twelve. It wasn’t much fun.”

“No. Doesn’t sound like it.” Mickey took a beat, let out a short breath. “That’s a worse story than mine, or damn close. And I don’t hear them too often. And now we’re both training to be chefs. Somebody should do a study. Orphans and chefs.”

“We want to cook for people ’cause there was nobody to cook for us.”

“Good theory. So you guys didn’t have other family?”

“One aunt in Texas. An uncle in Florida. Neither interested.”

“So how’d you and your sister stay connected?” Mickey asked.

“Alicia, mostly, not giving up. We both bounced around a lot. Foster homes, you know? You too?”

Mickey shook his head. “We didn’t have that. My grandfather-the one who drove for Como-showed up and took us in. Saved us, no doubt. Maybe himself in the bargain.”

“Well, Alicia and me, we got split up and farmed out to different families. I got into some bad behavior mixed with drugs and wound up at the youth work farm till I was seventeen. Alicia, she moved in with three or four different families, but she had some issues of her own-guys, mostly-and none of the family units took. But somehow she kept up on me, where I was, and finally talked me into the Sunset Youth Project.”

Mickey nodded. “One of Como’s charities.”

“Right. Actually, the main one. So, anyway, between that place and Alicia keeping me honest, I eventually straightened out, got back into school, and then even college. A miracle, really.”

“But now you say your sister needs a private eye around Dominic’s death?”

Thorpe nodded. “She volunteered out at Sunset and got pretty close to him in the last few months. The cops came by and talked to her yesterday. She got the impression that she was some kind of a suspect.”

Mickey sat with that for a moment. At last, he picked up his coffee and sipped at it. “How close was pretty close?”

“I don’t know, not for sure.”

“But what would you guess?”

Thorpe made a face, then shrugged. “I’d say it wouldn’t be impossible that they were having an affair, though Alicia’s always said she’d never go out again with a married guy.”

“Again?”

“I told you, guys were always her problem. She’s kind of pretty, and then of course having her father kill himself, she’s got a few issues of abandonment and self-esteem. Wants to prove she’s attractive to men. You’d think after the first fifty, the issue would kind of go away. But in Dominic’s case, I didn’t ask, and she didn’t say. She did tell me, though, that she didn’t kill him.”

“You asked?”

He nodded. “Directly. I wanted to know what we were dealing with.”

“And you believe her?”

“Absolutely. She wouldn’t ever lie to me. I’m sure of that.”

“Okay.”

“Plus, you should see her. When it finally came out he was actually dead and not just missing, after you found him in the lagoon… I mean, she’s been crying full-time ever since.”

Even with his limited experience of criminal matters, Mickey had learned that crying wasn’t a guarantee of innocence or of much else. Wyatt Hunt had told him that most people who kill someone close to them spend at least some time afterward crying about it for one reason or another-genuine remorse for what they’d done, or self-pity for the predicament in which they’d put themselves. “So what would you want a private investigator to do for you?” Mickey asked.

“I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. I only thought of the possibility of it when I saw you on the tube and they said that’s what you were. I know it’s not much of a connection, you and me. But I thought you might be cheaper than a lawyer.”

That drew a quick laugh. “That’s true enough. Most of the time, we work for lawyers. That’s basically the gig. So you’re right, we’d be cheaper. Although we’re probably not going to be what she needs.”

“Well, I thought that at least you weren’t a cop out to get her. I thought maybe you could find out the truth.”

“Often not so easy. But you should know that the cops aren’t going to be out to get her unless there’s some evidence that points to her. And then after that, the truth might not be what you want to hear, in spite of what she’s told you, or didn’t tell you.”

“I realize that. But I feel like I… I mean we talked about it, and both of us feel like we ought to do something. We can’t just sit and let the cops build a case around her. Especially since it was somebody else.”

Mickey’s mouth broke into a smile. “So basically you’d want us to find out who killed him?”

“Or just eliminate Alicia as a suspect.”

“Well, if she’s really a suspect, what you really need is a lawyer.”

“Except that’s a problem too.”

“Why?”

“Money.” Thorpe came forward, elbows on the table. “I mean, we’ve got maybe a thousand or so between us, but that’s at the outside. It would pretty much tap us both out.”

Mickey sat back and turned his cup slowly on the tabletop. “Actually,” he said at last, “if that’s all the money you have, it’s good news in a way.”

“How’s that?”

“You can’t afford even the cheapest lawyer. And no reputable investigator would even start this kind of open-ended job for that kind of money. So you don’t have to lose any of it. And if somebody-lawyer or investigator-offers to take you on with that little as a retainer, you know you’re dealing with a shyster.”

Thorpe’s shoulders fell.

“Another good-news moment,” Mickey continued. “If Alicia does get charged, the court will appoint a lawyer for her for free. You know that, right?”

But Thorpe shook his head. “Her getting charged wouldn’t be good news, no matter what. I spent some time in custody when I was younger. I think real jail might actually kill her. We can’t let it get to that. She didn’t kill Dominic, I promise you.”

Mickey spread his hands in an apologetic gesture. “In that case, I doubt they’ll get anywhere near an arrest. But I don’t-” Suddenly he stopped as the germ of an idea occurred to him.

Dominic Como was a recent, high-profile murder. San Francisco’s large and generous philanthropic community, and in fact many of the charities with which Como had been actively involved, could be expected to have a vested interest in apprehending his killer. But in general, precisely these very people had a deep-seated mistrust, if not actual hatred, of police and law enforcement in general. In this, the most left-wing big city in the country, better the murder of one of their own should go unsolved than that they should cooperate with the Man. Police, and probably the mayor herself, would be seeking a speedy resolution to the Como case, and at least an arrest. But a lot of the people who might know the most would be the least likely to talk to the cops.

What if, Mickey wondered, the Hunt Club could act as the clearinghouse between the people with information, the police who needed the information, and the institutions that had the cash that would be willing to pay for the information? What if he could pitch the idea of a “people’s reward” for information related to Como’s death?

This could in theory serve a host of purposes: It might provide valuable tips for the police; it would involve the wider community in the investigation; it could, of course, most importantly motivate an otherwise reluctant witness to come forward. On a more personal note, the Hunt Club could stay open servicing the reward hotline. If the reward was a significant dollar number, many a lunatic would also be contacting the charities who’d offered the money with spurious and/or just plain stupid or wrong information.

The Hunt Club might be of real value managing the flow of information to the police, forwarding any genuine leads, and gatekeeping against reports from the nutcase front. The process would save the cops perhaps hundreds of man-hours of unnecessary work winnowing out the wheat from the chaff.

This was work the charities would want done, but they would be ill-equipped to do it themselves, and he and Hunt could do it with their collective eyes closed. Mickey thought that there might be several prospective clients who could chip in to pay for the Hunt Club’s services. Finding them would be a bit of a treasure hunt, but once Mickey did that, he might be able to give Hunt a couple of months’ respite before being forced to go out of business.

The more he thought of it, the surer Mickey was that the money was out there; he just had to find it. And if they did the job right and met with success, it might even help to restore the reputation of the Hunt Club within the legal community. It could, in fact, be a new beginning for Hunt, and maybe even for Tamara. And Mickey, disposed to like Ian Thorpe because they shared such similar tastes and backgrounds, might even be able to set his and his sister’s minds to rest.

All of this came to Mickey in a rush, his eyes glazing over. For those few seconds, he went still as a stone, until Thorpe tapped the table in front of him. “Mickey? You all right?”

He came back to himself with a small start, a fleeting smile. “You know,” he said, “I can’t really promise anything specific, but I don’t see how it could hurt to talk to your sister, maybe give her a heads-up on how the next couple of weeks might go. If you think she’d talk to me.”

“If I think she’d talk to you. Are you kidding me?”

Ian Thorpe already had his cell phone out. Was punching numbers.