I PAUSE BEFORE leaving my deceased friend. I turn back to him, pat the right pocket of his stylish jeans. I feel what I’m looking for: Fred’s cell phone. Might have his most recent calls. And goddamn if I’m not out of my own prepaid minutes.
I do a quick sprint by the open safe behind Fred’s desk to assure myself that, as I suspected, it’s empty. Fred’s smarter than that. Or was.
Seconds later, sirens nearing, I’m awkward-ostrich-sprinting down the hall. I fling open my office door, working against seconds, skid to my desk. I lean down to the lower left-hand drawer. I fumble with the key. I always wondered why old man Sandoval locked up his Dewar’s. Just figured he was cautious, like anyone in the reputation business.
I fumble around inside the drawer, pushing aside the fine liquor. I see nothing. No thumb drive, no computer file, no folder, or papers. Just the Dewar’s. I lift the bottle, and I see it: a little drive, taped underneath. It’s even smaller than a thumb, at least my fat digit. I palm it, stuff it into my pants with the phone, and jam out the side door, around the side of the building and into my car.
I squirt away in the moonlight, my driver’s door not fully closed ’cause I can’t fold my body inside quickly enough. A block away, I pass a police cruiser, fast approaching, about to discover a dead body and evidence pointing to me as a killer. I’d better find an alternate theory.
Ten minutes later, I’m parking a block away from the Pastime Bar, just where this madness started. I’m flashing a bunch of obvious thoughts: Fred gathered some research that has so much significance to the pending election that someone’s willing to kill him for it, and to threaten the life of a six-year-old boy named Zeke.
More than one someone.
There were the two guys who accosted me earlier, and the guy who accosted Fred to completion. That guy must’ve done some pretty violent cajoling to get Fred to open his safe, only to discover the mysterious computer file was not there. The key to finding the file was somewhere on Fred, and Fred managed to palm it and pass it off to me.
I flash on a memory of Fred once proudly showing me a picture on his desk, a photo of him with six toddler grandkids, three of the kids crying. Fred told me that you’ve got a better shot at getting 50 percent of the electorate to agree with you than you’ve got at getting 50 percent of the toddlers in any given photo to simultaneously smile.
I push the image of dead Fred from my memory and replace it with another recollection, that breakup conversation with Meredith, my ex. I’m stung by something that’s shaken loose from the recesses of my brain: among the handful of reasons she gave me for splitting was that she said that she thought I’d be a great father, but only if I wanted to be. Those were her words, I remember. I had just assumed she heard her biological clock ticking and was baiting me to find out if I’d commit to the next step of our relationship.
But maybe there was one already in the oven. And she didn’t like my shrug response when she asked me about fatherhood. If I had known, would I have shrugged?
I’ve walked into the alley behind the Pastime, and I’m sharing standing space with two fetid metal trash bins and two equally fragrant smokers. They’re inhaling in silence. Springsteen’s “Rosalita” pumps through the back door. I ask one of the smokers, a tall, slump-shouldered lean-to with unkempt curly hair I can respect, if he could ask Nat to come chat with a friend. Everyone here knows Nat, my journalist acquaintance.
While I’m waiting for him to come back, I pull out Fred’s phone. I paw it until I bring up the Internet browser and I search for Meredith Canter, Santa Cruz. Before the search returns appear, Nat does. He’s a head shorter than me, but who’s not, with a confident walk, like a former athlete, a face that would be a little too pretty if not for the slightly pronounced ethnic nose.
“What the hell happened, Zach? I heard you had a scuffle.”
“Nothing Advil can’t solve. Did you get a good look at the guy who came in earlier? Have you seen him before?”
Nat takes me in. He’s doing his thing, which is studying people, and often identifying them and breaking them down by their medical conditions. Like, for instance, someone new comes into the bar and he’ll say: psoriasis, or torn left ACL, or pigeon-toed, or degenerative bone condition, or some nonsense like that. He went to medical school before he became a journalist and he just can’t get seem to get past all that trivia he ingested. It’s helped make him one of the most authoritative journalists on how the high-tech lifestyle impacts people’s physiology, and their neurology. But Nat’s penchant for always seeing pathology is almost a pathology unto itself. And, while I generally find it amusing, I’ve got no time for it now.
“Funny you should ask,” Nat says. “Guy had me stumped. For a second, I could’ve sworn he’s got Pikwickian syndrome.”
“Nat, I . . .”
He thinks I don’t understand what he means. “Rare condition. Most people don’t survive it. Charles Dickens actually coined the name. There was something about that guy—a puffiness. Fat pockets that had been emptied out, like he might’ve overcome something as a child. Pretty unlikely, though. More likely that he’s got an autoimmune disorder and the treatment is bloating him, or he’s cushingoid, y’know, the puffy water retention that comes with heavy use of steroids . . .” He pauses. He looks closely at me, realizing something serious is going on. I see he’s focused on my pant leg. There’s a sticky stain from Fred’s blood. Nat says: “You’re not cut. So that’s not your blood.”
I ignore him. “So you haven’t seen him before.”
Nat shakes his head. I nod. No biggie, not unexpected, and that’s not really what I need his help with.
“Do you have your laptop?” I ask.
I’ve got to be among the tiny percentage of San Franciscans who don’t carry a laptop or even own one. I’ve got a desktop, which does the job fine, but no way I’m going back to my Tenderloin flat to find out who is waiting for me with a bat or a knife or a gun or the trifecta. Nat’s in the other 99.9 percent; he’s always packing electronics, having given in to modern journalism in a way that I just haven’t been able to stomach. Or maybe I’m just not cut out for it.
“In my backpack. You want to come in and use it?”
“Would it be okay if I use it out here?”
“Suit yourself.”
He disappears again. I pull up the phone. Google has returned my results. The third one is a Facebook page from Meredith Canter. But I can’t tell anything about her, or see her picture. Apparently, I’ve got to “friend” her first. Hey, Facebook, she’s not just my friend, she was the love of my life, and she may be the motherfucking mother of my child. I still gotta friend her to find out?
Nat returns and pulls his laptop out of a ratty black backpack. I ask if I might sit in my car and use it for ten minutes. He tells me to pop back in and grab him when I’m done.
I squeeze myself into the car, in a darkened parking spot on a residential street, where I can’t fathom anyone could think to find me. I insert the thumb drive.