Treasure Hunt

6

At six o’clock that night, Mickey checked the coals in his Weber kettle cooker and then came back into his purple kitchen. He walked over and opened the refrigerator, atypically loaded with food. After leaving Hunt’s, he’d gone down to the Ferry Building, and though it was by then late in the day, the various stores there still had a selection of foodstuffs that put to shame most of the other, regular grocery stores in the city. Now he pulled out the paper-wrapped leg of lamb he was going to butterfly and barbecue after smearing it with garlic, rosemary, salt, pepper, soy sauce, and lemon juice. He brought it over to his cutting board, where he’d piled up the ingredients you really didn’t want to refrigerate if you didn’t have to: heirloom tomatoes-green, purple, yellow-bunches of Thai basil, thyme and rosemary, two heads of garlic, a lemon.

He opened a bottle of Chianti and poured himself half a juice glass full.

Grabbing his favorite six- inch carbon-steel Sabatier knife off the magnetic holder on the wall, he honed it to a razor’s edge with his sharpening steel. Then, whistling, he pulled the leg of lamb toward him and started cutting.

Five minutes later, Mickey laid the lamb out flat on the grill and covered it. Then, back in the kitchen, he took a saucepan down from its rung on the wall. He put it on the stove over high heat, throwing in half a stick of butter and some olive oil. In another minute, he’d added chopped shallots, garlic, thyme and rosemary, some allspice, and three cups of the chicken stock that he made from scratch whenever he started to get low. Some things you simply couldn’t cut corners on.

He stirred a minute more, added a cup and a half of Arborio rice and some orzo, then turned the heat all the way down to the lowest simmer and covered the pan. This was his own personal version of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat, a simple pilaf, but he liked his strategy of first making the kitchen so fragrant that it drew his roommates to the feast whether they were inclined to eat or not.

And sure enough, here was Jim following his nose through the doorway from the living room. “That smells edible.”

“Should be,” Mick said, pouring wine into another juice glass and holding it out for him. “You ready yet for some hair of the dog?”

“That was one ugly fucking dog,” Jim said, taking the glass, “but salut.” He and Mickey clicked their thick glasses and both sipped.

And then Tamara appeared in the doorway. “I’m not really hungry, but I might have a little of whatever that is.”

“We call that a side dish, Tam. It goes with the other stuff that’ll be ready in a half hour.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’ll have much, but I’ll sit with you guys.”

Mickey handed her a half glass of wine. “Whatever,” he said.

Tamara and Jim sat on the green benches on either side of the table, dipping the still-warm sourdough bread into a small bowl of extra virgin olive oil. The finished, medium- rare lamb rested under foil on the cutting board as Mickey finished cutting the tomatoes for “Donna’s famous salad” (named after an old girlfriend and early cooking influence), which was going into his big wooden bowl and was composed only of tomatoes, basil, salt, and balsamic vinegar, no oil.

When the doorbell rang, Mickey turned away from the cutting board. “Tam,” Mickey said, “you want to get that?”

She turned the knob and pulled the door open and just stood there. “Wyatt?”

“Hey, Tam.”

“I don’t…” She inhaled, then let out the breath. “I…”

“Mick didn’t tell you I was coming over?”

“No.” Another long exhale. “He knew if I’d known, I might have left.”

“Why would you have done that?”

“Because… because I don’t know. I didn’t want to face you.”

“You want,” Hunt said, “I can go now.”

“No. Don’t be stupid. You’re here.”

“I can just as easily be gone, Tam. I don’t want to cause you any pain.” He hesitated. “Mickey should have told you he asked me.”

“No,” she said. “He was right not to. He’s trying to force me to change the way I’ve been lately.”

“How’s that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Look at me.”

“You look fine.”

“No, I don’t. I look like death.”

“Death should look so good.”

She snapped at him. “Don’t bullshit me, Wyatt. If you’re going to patronize me, then maybe you really ought to get out of here.”

Hunt’s gaze went hard. “And then what? I mean between you and me. That’s just it?”

“Even if it is, what does it matter?”

“I hope you don’t mean that.” He took a breath. “It matters because, like it or not, you’re family, and I don’t have so much of it that I can afford to lose any of it. I love you, Tam. I’m always going to love you. Don’t you know that?”

Looking down, she shook her head. “Sometimes I feel I don’t know anything anymore. I thought you hated me.”

“I could never hate you. Why would I hate you?”

“Because I left.” She met his eyes. “I’m so so sorry. I just couldn’t handle”-a tear broke and trickled down her cheek-“any of it.”

“That was all right. I understood. It was fine.” Hunt brushed the tear away with a finger. “You handled what you could and did what you had to do, Tam. You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

“No? Then why do I feel like if I’d stayed on… maybe things with the business wouldn’t have gotten so bad?”

“That was nothing to do with you. You in the office wouldn’t have made any difference, wouldn’t have brought in any clients. That’s all on me and nobody else. What’s gone wrong is because of me and the decisions I made.”

Hunt stepped toward her. “Whatever you want to do, Tam, whenever you want to do it, I’m with you. I’m on your side. Really,” he said. “Really and always.”

She dropped her head and shook it one last time before bringing her gaze up to look at him, as something seemed to break in her. “Oh, Wyatt. I’m so sorry. I’m such a mess.” And then suddenly she was in his embrace. Her shoulders let go, deep sobs racked her body, and she held on to him with all of her might.

Hunt brought his arms up tightly around her.

“It’s all right,” he whispered.

Her visible loss of weight had shocked Hunt when she’d first opened the door, and now, holding her, he couldn’t help but be aware of how fragile she’d become. He would let her cry it out.

Gradually he brought a hand up to stroke her hair gently. “Shh,” he comforted her after a time, as the sobbing abated and she was starting to settle. “Shh. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

While Tamara went into the bathroom for a minute to get the swelling out of her eyes, Hunt came into the kitchen, nodded a hello at Mickey, and slid in next to Parr. “What’s a man got to do to get a drink around here?” he asked.

Parr nodded in commiseration. “He can be mighty light with a pour, that grandson of mine. I don’t know where he could have picked up that bad habit.”

Mickey, coming over with a fresh glass and the bottle of Chianti, said, “Yeah, well, what Jim here’s not telling you is that he’s still recovering from a few too many nonlight pours yesterday.”

“A rare anomaly for which I’ve already endured too much abuse from my offspring.” Parr picked up the wine and filled Wyatt’s glass, then poured a little more into his own. The two men clicked their glasses. “Mr. Hunt, it’s good to see you.”

“You, too, James. You too.” Hunt put his arm around Parr’s shoulders and drew him toward him. “You been keeping out of trouble?”

“Hah!” Mickey said.

“I had a few drinks yesterday in mourning for my friend, Dominic Como,” Parr said. “And the boy here decided he had to come drive me home from the Shamrock.”

Mickey turned from slicing the meat. “He’s leaving out the part about the bartender calling me at work, saying it was either going to be me or the cops.”

“That would never have happened.”

“Well, luckily, we didn’t have to find that out, did we?” Mickey popped a slice of lamb into his mouth. “And this is all the gratitude I get.”

“It’s a heartless world,” Hunt said. “I guess I shouldn’t have talked Jim into taking in you and Tam all those years ago. You wouldn’t have had all this aggravation.”

“He wouldn’t have had all the aggravation?” Parr said. “You want to talk aggravation, try living with two teenagers for any given week, much less the six or eight years it actually takes.”

“Seven,” Mickey said without missing a beat.

Parr turned on him. “Seven what?”

“Seven years. People are teenagers for seven years.”

“If you want to grant that teenagers are people at all and not an entirely different species. And where do you get seven?”

Mickey held up fingers as he counted. “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Seven.”

Parr turned to Hunt. “The boy is such a literalist.”

“I’ve noticed,” Hunt said.

Astonishingly, the warm weather was holding. After the dinner and its attendant accolades for the chef, Mickey suggested they take his bottle of homemade limoncello up to the roof, where there was a mellow dim light from a Japanese lantern, more room, a better view, and more comfortable chairs than the kitchen benches. So the three males walked up the outdoor stairway and out onto the deck that got used on every single one of the nineteen days a year that the nights were pleasant.

Everybody had helped bus the table, but at her insistence, Tamara stayed down to wash the dishes-she’d be up soon. So after they all got seated, Hunt checked behind him to make sure she was not coming up the stairs, then leaned in over the round deck table. “Is she seeing a doctor?”

Mickey shook his head. “No. She won’t do that.”

“Why not? How much has she lost?”

“At least twenty pounds, though she says less.”

At this, Parr coughed. “That much? Are you sure about that?”

Mickey nodded. “I asked her yesterday. She said eighteen, maybe more, so I’m thinking probably twenty or twenty-five.”

“That’s too much,” Parr said. “I knew she was losing some weight, but I should have seen it was that much.”

“It’s been gradual, Jim. I didn’t see it myself until I happened to notice yesterday after all the time I’ve been staying away. So you don’t have to beat yourself up over it. But you’re right, Wyatt, it’s serious enough. She says nothing tastes like anything.”

“Well,” Hunt said, “that lamb sure tasted like something, and so did the pilaf and that salad. Have you been making food like that every night?”

“No.”

“Good. ’Cause if she had that in front of her and didn’t eat it…”

“Well,” Mickey said, “I haven’t been home here a lot the past few months.” He hunched his shoulders. “Without me, I think these guys live on macaroni and cheese, and not much of that.”

“Hey!” Parr said. “I eat an egg every morning.”

“Oh, sorry,” Mickey said. Then, to Hunt, “And Jim here has a whopping large egg every single day, which is why he’s so fit, relatively.”

“Tam doesn’t make a big deal of it,” Parr said. “She just doesn’t put food in her mouth, or not much of it.” Then, again, “I should have noticed.”

“Well,” Hunt said, “we’ve all noticed now.”

And then Tamara was up there with them and everybody had their limoncello in front of them in matching little blue glasses.

And, finally, Hunt got around to Mickey’s suggestion about Como. “I checked after you left, Mick, and you’re right. Nobody’s put up a reward yet.”

“Are you working on that?” Tamara asked.

“Not yet,” Mickey replied.

Hunt went on. “Mickey got the idea that we could drum up some business, go to some of these charities. The good news is I called the PD hotline number this afternoon, and there’s nothing about Como. So, so far, at least, the PD doesn’t have anything special going on around his murder. It’s just an answering machine saying they’ll get back to you. So the door may be open. The bad news is that the door might not necessarily be open for us.”

“Have you talked to Juhle?” Mickey asked.

Hunt shook his head no. “I thought I’d hit him at home tomorrow. I think his wife still might like me, although Connie’s got that loyal-cop-wife gene and I can’t be positive. But she and I have been through a lot together too. So it’s a faint hope. Anyway, I’ll find out soon enough.”

Parr cleared his throat. “Who’s Juhle?”

“Friend of mine,” Hunt said. “Also the homicide cop who pulled the case.”

“And why will you be talking to him, about this reward, I mean?”

“Because if we do have any luck drumming up this business, we’ll have to coordinate anything we do with what they’re doing. Sometimes cops don’t like to share, maybe you’ve heard. Juhle might take some convincing that this could be helpful to him.” Seeing the questioning look on Parr’s face, he asked, “What?”

“It just seems a little cart before the horse is all. I mean, if there’s no reward yet, what are you bringing to the party? Wouldn’t your position be a hell of a lot stronger if you had something tangible to offer?”

“That’s a good call,” Mickey conceded. “Wait until we get some of these charities on board, then talk to Juhle.”

“You could do that,” Parr said. “Or just save yourselves a lot of time and go straight to Len Turner.”

Hunt spoke up. “Who’s he?”

“He’s pretty much the Man around nonprofits in the city.”

“In what way?” Hunt asked. “I’ve never heard of him.”

Parr chuckled. “Which is the way he likes it. He’s a lawyer, pretty much at the top of the charity food chain. He represents most of the big ones and also runs the mayor’s community outreach program. Back in the day, he was Dominic’s right hand, and if anything, he’s got even more influence now. You want something to happen around a reward, he’s the guy you want to talk to.”

“Len Turner, got it,” Hunt said.

“And then you go get that bastard who killed Dominic.”

Hunt threw a look across at Mickey, then over to Parr. “That’s not exactly it, Jim. The main job would be fielding the calls. We wouldn’t really be investigating on our own.”

Parr leveled his gaze. “Well, you damn well should.” He swallowed against some strong emotion, then looked again around the table. “It’s just that Dominic saved this family. He didn’t have to give me my job. Nobody else would have, not with my history. I mean, here I am, two strikes down… hell, we all know.

“But he believed I could straighten up and do the job every day. And because of that, I got to build a good life finally and let you kids have yours. And then somebody goes and kills him. That’s just not right. It’s not right.” His watery eyes shone. “They got to be caught. That’s all I’m saying, that it’s personal. And if you’re going to be in this thing, you might want to keep that in mind as you go about your business.”

“Jim’s right,” Tamara said. “We get close, we ought to go after him.”

“We?” Hunt said.

Tamara nodded. “And that’s the other thing, while we’re on this.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, I don’t know if you want to hear this after I’ve been such a flake for so long, but if you’re out following up leads, Wyatt, and Mickey’s out hunting up these people who are going to kick in more reward money, who’s going to be answering the phones and keeping the office going?”

A silence hung for a long moment around the table between them.

Until Mickey said, “I guess, Sis, that would be you.”

“Which would be special,” Hunt said, “if there actually was a reward and someone was paying us to administer it. Notice the judicious use of the word if.”

Len Turner was listed in Mickey’s telephone book under “San Francisco, City of” as the director of the Communities of Opportunity. At nine-fifteen P.M. on this Saturday night, after they’d come down from the roof, Hunt called Turner’s number on Mickey’s phone. He intended to leave a message that he’d like to make an appointment to meet with Mr. Turner early next week. He was somewhat surprised when Mr. Turner answered the phone himself; and dumbfounded when, after Hunt mentioned Dominic Como and his reward scenario, the man suggested that if Hunt were free, he might consider coming by to discuss the idea more fully right now.

Twenty minutes later, the night guard at the semidarkened City Hall let Hunt in, then directed him up the grand stairway where he’d find Mr. Turner’s office to the right on the second floor, Room 211. This turned out to actually be a suite of rooms, the first of which was furnished as a bare-bones, windowless conference area with a large blond wooden table and sixteen chairs. A back door out of this room led to a hallway with a couple more side rooms, at the end of which was a heavy paneled dark wood door with a frosted glass window, and a light on behind it.

Hearing what sounded like a telephone conversation in progress, Hunt hesitated for a moment, then knocked and heard a cultivated voice tell him to come in.

Len Turner sat behind a busy but apparently well-ordered, old-fashioned carved-front desk. He held up a finger, indicating he was just finishing his phone call, and Hunt waited on the square maroon Persian rug that he estimated at about twelve feet on a side. The right wall was book-filled from the floor to the ten-foot ceiling. Behind Turner, a couple of large windows afforded a postcard view of the Opera House and the War Memorial. Along the left wall, decorated with dozens of framed photographs of the great and nongreat posing with Leonard Turner, a couple of low filing cabinets made the room’s only concession to bureaucracy. By a low table with four upholstered chairs, there was also a half-size brushed-steel refrigerator and a table with an espresso machine, cups, glasses, and a selection of high-end spirits.

Turner, here in his office at nearly ten o’clock on a Saturday night, wore a light blue shirt and golden tie. His salt-and-pepper hair complemented a frankly handsome face of regular features, a strong jaw, an aristocratic nose. His voice, speaking on the phone, was businesslike and yet somehow soothing as he wound up the conversation. Now hanging up, he raised the wattage of his smile as he stood and came around the desk, extending his hand. “Mr. Hunt. Sorry to keep you waiting. Len Turner. Can I interest you in a good cup of espresso? I’m having some. Or water? Tea? A soft drink? Something stronger?”

“Espresso would be good,” Hunt said. “I was a little surprised to find you still working at this time of night.”

Turner nodded with a self-deprecating air. “A man who loves what he does never works a day in his life.”

“That’s a good way to look at it,” Hunt said.

“Have a seat,” Turner said, “and let me get this coffee going.” He put two demitasse cups under a double-spigot on the high-tech machine and pressed a button. In thirty seconds, he placed one of the cups in front of Hunt and took a seat with the other one across the table from him. “Now,” he said, holding his cup up in a toasting fashion, his face suddenly sober. “To Dominic.”

Hunt raised his own cup, nodded, and sipped.

“A terrible thing,” Turner said. “Terrible.”

“Did you know him well?”

“He was my closest friend.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Turner lifted his shoulders. “So when you mentioned what you wanted to talk about, naturally I thought it would be worthwhile to meet with you as soon as possible. I’ve been racking my brain to come up with some way to try to not only honor Dominic’s legacy and memory, but actually to help bring some closure to this horrible situation. When you mentioned a reward, it struck me as a singularly right gesture.”

“I’m glad to hear that. We thought it might be helpful to get more of the community involved if we could.”

“Of course. That may be the only way out of this, from what I’ve gathered from the police. If somebody saw or heard something. It’s a sad but unfortunately true fact that some people just don’t trust the police.”

Hunt nodded. “I’ve run into that.”

“So you know.”

“You’ve talked to them, then? The cops?”

“Just trying to gather some sense of what happened, which no one seems to have much of an idea of. Knowing Dominic as I did, I have to think it must have been some random mugging or robbery attempt or something. No one who knew him could have harmed a hair on his head.” He sat back. “But regardless, finding the perpetrator has got to get some real priority now in the short term. More than it seems the police are giving it.”

Hunt replied with some care. “I don’t think it’s that they’re not giving it a high priority so much as that it takes them time to generate and follow up any leads. And that’s where we thought we might be able to help.”

“That’s exactly what I was hoping too. Because the longer this whole thing festers, the more it can infect the entire community.” He paused. “I’m talking about the nonprofit community here.”

Hunt put down his cup.

Turner went on. “A man with Dominic’s profile, there are going to be the inevitable rumors about what really happened, and why, and who’s covering what up. And I think it’s critical that these rumors don’t gain currency, and that the wild speculations of people who may even sincerely be trying to help be somewhat controlled.”

“That’s how we were thinking to go, sir. If the reward gets large enough and does prompt a lot of calls, a good number of them are probably going to range from unlikely to ridiculous. Our idea is to identify those and save the cops time so they can concentrate on the valid leads.”

“Of course. Sure. Of course. But I’m also talking about-if we’re going to be working together here, you and I-I’m talking about keeping some kind of control over the flow of information that the public gets to see as well.” Perhaps realizing how that sounded, Turner held up a palm. “I’m not saying we hide anything, of course, that’s not what I mean at all. But you have to remember that there are any number of people in this city who see our work as wasteful or nonproductive or even unnecessary, and they’d like nothing more than to have ammunition to tear us down.”

Hunt sat back. “Are you saying they’ll find this ammunition around Mr. Como?”

“No. I strongly, strongly doubt that. Dominic devoted his whole life to the cause of easing poverty and helping the downtrodden. But even so, there are people who would smear him. And that’s what I’m hoping you’ll be able to exert some control over. How does that sound to you?”

Hunt felt that his own control over the precise parameters of his involvement, if any, with this man, had shifted to some degree. He wasn’t at all certain that he could promise Turner what he seemed to be describing, or whether in fact it was even a reasonable approach. He just didn’t know. The man was powerful and persuasive and clearly was going to have his own agenda, but Hunt didn’t think that there would necessarily be a conflict he couldn’t finesse. So after a moment, he nodded. “Doable,” he said. “It sounds doable.”

Turner clapped his hands. “Good. I really think this is an excellent idea, Mr. Hunt. Excellent. So how, specifically, were you planning to proceed?”

Over the next couple of minutes, Hunt gave him chapter and verse on Mickey’s idea of contacting many of the city’s nonprofit organizations and soliciting them for inclusion in the reward fund. Turner nodded in agreement throughout, at the end volunteering to help with the solicitations-he knew all these people-in any way he could. In fact, what made the most sense, he told Hunt, was that there be a central command; that Turner himself could act as the escrow holder of the funds, after which he would administer the reward and, in consultation with law enforcement, decide on the reward recipients, if any.

He would be the liaison between Hunt and the various organizations in Hunt’s efforts to keep the contributors informed. He would also be happy to consult with Hunt when there was a question of whether or not information should come out. “And finally,” he rolled along, “I think we have to talk about your compensation for all of your efforts on this.”

“I was thinking of me and my two associates billing at our regular hourly rate. I can get you our fee schedule first thing next week.”

“That sounds fair.”

“Great, but there is one other small thing. This whole concept really won’t work unless we get a guarantee of a certain flexibility on the part of city government.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, if the police or the district attorney decide to seize any- and everything we may get over the phone by search warrant as it comes in, then we’re not going to get any calls.”

Turner pondered that for a brief moment. “I could make a couple of calls and be of assistance in that respect. Meanwhile, I could have a contract drawn up in the next couple of days, but if you’d like to get started as soon as you can, we can be old-fashioned gentlemen and seal the deal with a handshake right now. How does that sound?”

Again, Hunt wasn’t completely sure how it sounded, but what Turner was suggesting was certainly not unethical and it would put Hunt, Mickey, and Tamara to work at full pay immediately. And it wasn’t unusual for a job to morph slightly or even greatly as its execution played out. He was sure he could stay on top of what were clearly Mr. Turner’s priorities.

So, stifling his minimal scruples, he stood up and reached out his hand across the table. “That sounds like a deal to me,” he said.