Pete Braga's Cabrillo Star was berthed in Tuna Harbor, just a few blocks from downtown. Walking up the gangplank McMichael knew that the ship had seen some history. She had been built of wood as a tuna clipper back in the thirties, when they still caught the big fish with poles. She had seen action in World War II along with dozens of other tuna ships requisitioned by the navy to carry food in their freezers. She'd been converted to a seiner- a net boat- after the war. Then retired when the great super-seiners took over the industry and the Cabrillo Star became nothing more than a failed tourist venue and a quaint reminder of a time that was gone.
And, in 1952, she'd been the place where McMichael's grandfather, Franklin, had been shot to death by Pete Braga after a dispute over money.
All of this had come to McMichael through Gabriel, who gathered information and gossip about Braga as if it was required by his religion. So what's Pete do with that worthless old tub of leaks he murdered Franklin on? He sells it to the city as a tourist destination and parks it out in Tuna Harbor. And does the city think people will pay to step aboard that stinking rat nest? Of course not. But Pete offered them options on some of his waterfront properties and they saw green- hotels and restaurants and tourist stuff. So what's the city council going to do- buy his rotten old ship for a few hundred grand or lose out on a shot to develop the harborside? Like Pete isn't a millionaire ten times over by now. Like he needs that kind of beer money. Like he's not selling Fords to the city all day every day and offerin' no bargains. Take my word for that.
McMichael called Patricia's name, got no answer, walked the port side past the freezer holds and the converted bait wells. He saw that his father had had it wrong about the Cabrillo Star- the hull was clean and true, the decks and bridges were bright white in the cool January sun, hardly a chip on the gunwales or rails, and even the old winches looked ready to handle a couple of hundred feet of nylon net, no problem.
"McMike!"
She came down off the radio bridge in jeans and tennis shoes and a red anorak with fur around the hood. Little oval sunglasses. Her dark curls bounced to her shoulders as she walked toward him and McMichael felt the familiar old tickle in his stomach.
She kissed his cheek and aimed him back toward the bridge. "I'm cleaning out Pete's things," she said. "The city owned this ship for twenty years and never got around to it."
"I thought the city still owned her."
"Pete bought it back when the tourists stayed away by the thousands. The galley's full of old junk."
"What are you going to do with her?"
Patricia started up the ladder. "We've agreed to sell it," she said, looking back down at him. "I got a restaurant guy up in Marina del Rey maybe interested. Three hundred grand he can have it. Sell the Ford dealership, too, though it's worth more."
McMichael waited until she was onto the bridge, then climbed up. "Split five ways?"
"You talked to Hank Grothke."
"Both of them."
Patricia shook her head. "The old man, last month they caught him stalking around the office early one morning, shredding papers. You name it- contracts, wills, magazines from the lobby, even some of those ass gaskets from the bathrooms. Made me think, you know, when I get that old just take me out and shoot me."
"Sure."
"I knew I could count on you."
"I kind of liked him."
"You're still capable of the unexpected."
She grinned at him. He'd never been able to tell if her half smile held joy or something more complicated. Unlike Stephanie, whose face was her heart.
"Never know what you'll find behind enemy lines," he said.
"Fun, wasn't it?" Patricia deployed her half smile again.
"Lots of that."
"Now we're older and duller," she said.
"Yeah," said McMichael. "Wheelchairs and shredders, right around the corner."
Her grin was gone. "What can I do for you, Tom?"
"I can't figure out who'd want to kill your grandfather. The nurse is clean. I don't think she set him up, either. I don't think she was involved at all. Nothing taken from his home, except those earrings you mentioned and maybe the hummingbird. And like you said, why would someone take those and leave the other two pounds of gold and diamonds? Tell me about him, Patricia. What was he doing on the Port Commission with the new airport? How was the car dealership going? And the Tunaboat Foundation- I know it has deep pockets and I hear there were some disagreements on the board. I'm throwing a wide net, but help me if you can."
"Enemies."
"And his state of mind, his clarity."
"Sharpen your little pencil, McMike. Come on down to the galley and we'll get some coffee."
The pot was already made. Patricia poured two mugs black and sat across from him in one of the booths. McMichael looked out the porthole to the south. He could see the navy shipyards and the Coronado Bridge and the cold blue sky. He tapped his pen against his notebook.
"First of all," she said, "Grandpa's state of mind was pretty good. He wasn't particularly forgetful or paranoid or having visions. He was a tough old man. He couldn't see all that well, and he kept driving- like I told you. I think he was a menace to society behind the wheel of a car. But this is the deal, Tom- my grandfather had enemies. He had business enemies, political enemies, personal enemies. You made a crack about dividing his estate by five. Well I don't know if Hank Grothke told you, but Grandpa has three living children and six living grandchildren. He disinherited four out of nine- that's pushing fifty percent."
"Tell me about the disinherited son."
"Carl is gay and Pete disowned him the second he came out of the closet. Carl had just graduated from high school. He's up in San Francisco now. I'll invite him to the funeral but he won't come. He also wouldn't sneak in and kill him. He's a decent and gentle man. One suspect down."
McMichael wrote and considered. "And his daughter?"
"That's my aunt, Liz DeCerra. She's sixty-one now, I think. Lives in Colorado. She's in the will. There, two suspects down."
"What about the grandchildren?"
"There are Cassie, Quentin and Max DeCerra. Pete wrote out Cassie because she ran off with a drug dealer, Quentin because Quentin punched him in the face, and Max because he broke into Pete's place and stole a bunch of cash and Anna's Lady Rolex."
"They sound like nice kids."
"Whatever, Tom. They were his grandchildren. Grandchildren have problems like anybody else."
McMichael wrote. "That leaves you and your brother and sister. Your side of the family stayed in favor."
"We lacked the physical courage of the DeCerras, that's for sure."
McMichael wasn't so sure. Things were about as physical as they could get, back when they were eighteen and seeing each other in secret, and Patricia had always gone straight for the forbidden settings: her parents' shower, her big sister's bed, her grandfather's deck, the living room, the patio chaise longue, the car. There was ample opportunity with her father at sea on one of Pete's boats and her mother a bookkeeper at the cannery. Then there was the beach at night, a picnic bench up on Palomar Mountain, the Regency Hotel by the hour, the sand dunes out toward Yuma, even a sweltering gas station bathroom on the way home.
He smiled and Patricia smiled, too, then she set her sunglasses on the table. Her eyes were dark and clear and McMichael instantly located the golden fleck in her right iris that he'd spotted for the first time when he was ten. And actually written a poem about when he was thirteen, with a rhythm and rhyme pattern based on Joyce Kilmer's "Trees." She'd given a photocopy of it back to him, covered with red lipstick prints and drenched in her perfume, but kept the original.
"What about Quentin or Max?" McMichael asked. "Do you think either of them might club the old man just for spite?"
"No. Those DeCerras are all hot-tempered, but they cool off fast."
McMichael looked up from his notepad. "Victor gets a nice piece of the estate."
She looked at him and shook her head. "And he's nothing but a ten-year-old in a sixty-three-year-old's body. Thanks to Gabe."
"That was never proven."
"He bragged about doing it. We Portuguese aren't exactly deaf, McMichael. And you Irish aren't exactly quiet."
"Is he ever violent?"
"Well, no. But he's a little short on self-control sometimes."
"Did he and Pete get along?"
She stared out the porthole. When she looked back at him he saw the moisture in her near-black eyes. "They loved each other. A man and his firstborn son. And with Victor the way he is, it was like Grandpa had a ten-year-old boy forever. Saddest goddamned thing I ever saw- two old men sitting in the Waterfront bar drinking port, one of them talking about fleet rates or whatever and the other showing him his new baseball cards or this new Game Boy gadget or a rock he found. Broke my hard little heart. Victor can blow up in about half a second, but never at Pete. Never. He's Pete's boy all the way, no matter how old he is. Forty, fifty, sixty- always the same."
McMichael had an image of Gabe and Tim Keller shuffling drunk along Kettner while Victor happily jaywalked or checked the newspaper racks for quarters. Living history. Past as present. Learn from or repeat.
"Pat, are you surprised that Pete left so much to the church and foundation? At the expense of his heirs?"
She shrugged and gazed out a porthole. "I wouldn't leave the Catholics three and a half million bucks. But I'm not complaining about my million plus, either. I'd give it up in a heartbeat to have Grandpa alive and complaining and annoying everyone again."
McMichael studied her profile, the elegant lines of neck and jaw framed in the fur of the anorak. Age had made her more beautiful. She turned her dark brown eyes on him.
"How old is your boy now, Tom?"
"Seven."
"Good kid?"
"He's a really good kid. Doesn't understand why Mom and Dad still love each other but don't live together anymore."
"Her decision?"
"Basically."
"But you go with the we love each other but decided it was best to be apart story? For his sake?"
McMichael nodded.
"No wonder he doesn't understand. Half of the explanation always sounds like a lie. How's the new hubby, the dentist?"
"Oral surgeon. Tassled loafers, a Testarosa."
"Revolting," she said.
"Yeah, well, she seems happy. Lost thirty pounds, got her face Botoxed and her chest hiked up."
"And you're what, paired up with some young cadet or playing the field?"
McMichael smiled and sat back. "Just working my ass off."
"No sand dunes?"
"Not right now." But damned if he didn't picture Sally Rainwater leaving foot pocks in white sand, looking back at him, a blanket over one shoulder and sandals in her hand.
"You could take the nurse out," said Patricia, somehow reading his mind. "She's pretty enough, but watch for bullet holes."
He cut her with a look but she just smiled.
"Victor still hang at the Waterfront?" asked McMichael.
"His home away from home."
"What about the dealership- was Pete's business going okay?"
"He was grossing a million a year income off of it."
"Arguments with his employees?"
"Every waking second, but nothing serious. They're all making a buck."
"Was Pete a gambler, sports or the tables or the horses?"
"He'd hit Del Mar in the season, drop a few thousand. He was always too tight with a dollar to gamble much."
Tight with a dollar, thought McMichael. He imagined Grandfather Franklin back in the summer of '52- a jovial, failed publican thirty-three years old with a rowdy son, a tubercular daughter, a pregnant wife and very little money. After his first tuna hunt and three bad-luck months aboard the Cabrillo Star, he was trying to get his pay out of Pete. His hat in his hand, Tommy. Your grandfather always so jolly and gentle, even with so much riding on his shoulders. And Pete tells him his quarter share on a bum trip like this one just covers Dad's room and board and fuel for the ship so he doesn't owe Franklin even a dollar. And Dad tells Pete he worked as hard as the others but Pete says that's the way it is with all first-timers on a bum trip, you only get the real money when you're making a half share on a good trip where you find the fish quick and don't burn up time and fuel looking for them.
"Yeah, I know that fits your father's version of history," said Patricia. "But tight and dishonest are two different things. Pete was honest. With his crews he was generous. Hell, later they bought Fords from him, so they couldn't have hated him."
McMichael said nothing for a long moment, thinking instead about the way the past forms the present, and how impossibly hard it was to change things once they were set in motion. Fifty years of hatred and vengeance born from a bad fishing trip and- most likely- two stubborn and hungry men who wouldn't back down until one of them was dead. And their children damaged in different ways, and their children still bickering over what had happened and why and who was to blame.
"I'm hearing talk about the old airport and the new Airport Authority, and Pete maybe switching sides," he said. "I heard Pete wouldn't let the Tunaboat Foundation sell some of its holdings because he thought the price would go higher. Sounded like he was getting the other port commissioners and foundation guys against him."
"That's all in the papers, McMike. If you want to know who was on Pete's side and who wasn't, you've got to talk to the Tuna Foundation and the Port Commission."
"Give me names. People who lined up with Pete."
"Try Malcolm Case, on the Port Commission. The Tuna Foundation, though, I don't know. But they take over the Cuba Room at Raegan's cigar place on Friday nights. Purely, I think, because it pissed Pete off to see his precious foundation doing business with a McMichael. Maybe Raegan could bug the room for you."
"Good idea."
"Nice seeing you, Tom."
McMichael stood and looked around the galley, wondered what it would have looked like filled with hungry men two months into a journey that might take them halfway around the world. Too tight for me, he thought, too cramped and noisy.
" Franklin was sitting exactly where you were," said Patricia.
"And Pete where you were."
"That's right."
"You always liked the risky places, Pat."
"I always liked what moved my blood."
McMichael guessed the distance between himself and Patricia at about a yard. With your arm out and a gun in it, you were talking maybe six inches between barrel and body. Pete would have been close enough to catch the backspray on his face.
"In my father's version of it," said McMichael, "Pete pulled the gun and Franklin grabbed him."
"In Pete's version, Franklin had a knife. That was also the cops' version- a folding knife with a five-inch blade."
"Gabe said Pete put it there after."
"Pete said it missed his throat by about half an inch. Took about thirty stitches to fix his arm. Did Gabriel say that cut was part of the setup, too?"
McMichael nodded then smiled. "Of course he did. No wonder it drove them all crazy that we were in love."
"They tried their best to split us up, Tommy."
"They couldn't do it, could they?"
"Never," she said.
"Only you could."
"Yeah. I broke your heart. And I've been apologizing ever since."
"It worked out right. I got Johnny."
"More than I could have given you."
He looked down to where Franklin would have fallen. Right at his feet, probably. Unless he reeled around fighting, like a lot of gunshot victims do. He thought about shooting someone that close up, how you really had to mean it, had to be ready for the blood and the fury. From habit he looked for bloodstains on the floor, but who knew how many times it had been sanded and refinished. He even looked at the paneling behind him for some sign of the exited bullet, but there was nothing.
"It didn't have to happen," he said.
"Most of life's that way."
She walked him abovedecks. "I remembered something that might help. About six months ago Pete told me that twenty grand was missing from his garage. He always kept a little cash out there, in cigar boxes, just-in-case money. Anyway, he said it was gone and I said, damn it, Gramps, the gardener or the nurse or the neighborhood kids or the rats probably made off with it. And he said, no, if it was the gardener he would just take it and go back to Mexico. The rats are too busy chewing into the dog food. And he says it couldn't be the nurse, because she's sweet and he's given her so many nice things, why would she make off with a little bit of cash? That's when he told me about the paintings and some stupid stuffed fish and God knows what else she's fleeced him for."
Twenty grand, thought McMichael. Lots of cash to hide in a garage.
Gifts to Rainwater, he thought. Pete addled? Pete in love?
Then, a brain thorn. But what was it? The cigar boxes? The gardener? The rats? For just a moment he let his mind wander and eddy but he couldn't come up with it. He wrote BT in his notebook and put a star beside it.
He wondered why a multimillionaire would stash twenty grand in his garage. Then he wondered why not? "What did you make of Pete's gift giving to his nurse?"
"It frosted my balls," said Patricia. "It still does. And I told him so. But it's not like I could change his mind, or fire her, or make her give the stuff back."
"Did you say anything to her?"
"I told her very calmly- calm, for me- that I thought she was a common prostitute. I threatened legal action, but we both knew Pete could do whatever he wanted. And Pete really liked her. He told me to leave her alone- he'd do what he wanted with her. That was that."
"Why didn't you tell me about the missing cash that night at Pete's?"
"I didn't connect it with a murder two hours old. And you kind of ran us out, because of Garland 's big mouth. That was an awfully bad night for me, McMike."
"Yeah, I know it was."
"Did Rainwater bother to tell you about the gifts she took?"
McMichael nodded.
"Well," said Patricia, "now that her sugar daddy's dead, she'll have to hustle along and find a new one."
"I don't think it was like that."
"What was it like?"
"I don't know yet."
"Just ask her- I'm sure she'll tell you nothing but the truth."
McMichael walked down the ramp and onto the dock. It was dark already and the waterfront lights seemed bright and cheerful now that the storm had passed. The tourists were out, bundled and strolling past the Star of India and the Berkeley and the restaurants. The brain thorn was still in there but he couldn't get a fix on it. Something Patricia had said. It hovered then vanished and then twinkled again, like a small star you only see when you look away.
He walked toward the Gaslamp Quarter and it struck him again how small and useless had been the death of Franklin McMichael, father of almost three, a lousy businessman but a willing quarter-share fisherman at the no-longer-young age of thirty-three. McMichael wondered at the commonplace desperation that had led him to the Cabrillo Star in hopes of talking Pete Braga out of a paycheck that he had coming- bum trip or not. McMichael figured- had always figured- that Pete Braga owed Franklin something for his labor and his time. It angered him that Pete had given him only a bullet, then walked. Walked, and gotten respect for killing a man. Of course it was self-defense. You cheat a man out of food for his family, get ready for self-defense. Braga was wrong. And what someone had done to his firstborn son just a year later- that was just as wrong. Maybe it was Gabriel, he thought, but maybe it wasn't. His father had sworn upon a Bible that he did not know who beat Victor senseless behind the Waterfront that night. Either way, his father had grown from a haunted boy into a ruined man. Either way, to McMichael it was all just proof of how human beings were dishonest, blind and murderous. Proof of why they needed laws. And cops. Otherwise you just got the same story over and over.