T. Parker - Cold Pursuit

"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."