28
Thirty minutes later Jack was motoring down the San Diego Freeway, going over all the things on his to-do list for the rest of the day: calls to make, traces, follow-ups, surveillance to set up.
The Marina Freeway turnoff loomed a quarter mile ahead and, at seventy miles an hour, was closing fast. As he started to merge onto the off ramp, he had a sudden thought about his son, Chris. He vividly recalled Cardona’s reaction to the video of his daughter. Following his instincts, Jack veered sharply to the left and continued down the 405 toward LAX. Everything else would have to wait.
The early spring light illuminated the most mundane objects from the window of the Boeing 737. Emerald-green hills were alive with development and industrial commerce surrounding the iconic skyline of San Francisco. Sailboats with multicolored spinnakers heeled to one side in the choppy waters and shared sea lanes with cargo-laden freighters. The Golden Gate Bridge glowed brightly in the afternoon sun, an architectural wonder that could put a smile on the most cynical face.
Jack barely noticed. He was worried. He had put in two unanswered calls to Chris as he waited to board the plane and was now going to show up unannounced and knock on his son’s dorm room at Stanford.
Chris had warned him in no uncertain terms to stay away, to let him go through his emotional trauma alone. But Jack had to make sure Chris understood that he wasn’t alone. Not in his fear, not in his recovery, not in this lifetime. He had family who loved him. Maybe his drug use was just a momentary lapse, self-medicating to make the pain in his healing arm go away. If not, Jack was going to make sure that he reached out.
After landing, Jack checked back into the Garden Court, the only hotel he knew in town, and then walked up Campus Drive toward Klein Field at Sunken Diamond and watched the baseball team practice, hoping for a glimpse of his son somewhere in the stadium. Chris wasn’t there, which Jack found disturbing, and he still wasn’t answering his phone. Jack headed over to Florence Moore Hall, better known as FloMo. Within the asymmetrical grouping of seven separate student houses, Chris lived in Alondra. His building was all freshmen, coed, and the tab was entirely picked up by his athletic scholarship. It was a high honor.
Jack walked through the front door and took the stairs to the second floor. It was late-afternoon quiet and Jack stood for a moment outside of room 2B, raised his big fist, and then knocked. He listened. Not hearing any movement, he knocked again, a little harder. Jack’s heartbeat started to elevate; he was getting upset, a little light-headed, not knowing where Chris was, imagining the worst. He knocked one last time, hard. A young man three doors down opened his door, looked out, saw Jack’s state of mind, and just as quickly closed the door. As Jack turned to walk away, 2B was yanked open and he heard, “What!”
Chris appeared in the doorway with disheveled hair, torn T-shirt, red-rimmed eyes. He had obviously been asleep. At four in the afternoon. He’d dropped more weight in the past week, his pupils were dilated, and he was clearly high. Chris shook his head, exasperated, and walked back into the room. Jack followed him in and gently closed the door behind them.
Chris turned on his father. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said with total disgust that cut Jack to the quick.
“You’re stoned,” Jack said in a controlled tone.
“I am not. Answer my question. What the hell are you doing here? Why didn’t you at least call?”
“I called. I left two messages. But you were too high to answer your phone.” Jack wished he hadn’t said that, but there it was.
“Dad, I’m not stoned!”
“Your team is out on the field. You were asleep. You tell me.”
“I don’t sleep at night. I told you to stay away.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he delivered like a punch to the heart.
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Jack said, bringing a little attitude into play.
“What?”
“Do you think you’re the only Bertolino who’s got a thick skull?”
Chris let out a labored sigh, and Jack wanted to slap the shit out of his progeny. But he fought to control himself and the energy in the room. “Has your mother ever, ever once in your entire young life done what you told her to do?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit.”
“My laundry.”
“You ask her. You’d be wearing crusty Jockeys if you ever told your mother what to do. And she’d be right. You hear me? She’d be damned right.”
Chris sat down on the edge of his bed, his head low. The cast on his arm jutted out at an uncomfortable angle.
Jack leaned back against the small desk that dominated the dorm room and felt claustrophobic, too large for the space.
“You think I’m gonna be told to do anything?” he went on. “Do you think that was my reputation at work? A detective who did what he was told?”
“No.”
“I think it’s time to rethink your strategy here. This is not a winning strategy.”
Chris leaned off the bed and pulled two bottled waters out of a mini-fridge that was an arm’s length away. Just about everything in the dorm room was an arm’s length away. He handed one to Jack, who accepted the offer, screwed off the top, and took a long pull, diminishing some of the heat in the room.
“Where did you get your drugs?”
“I’m not doing drugs.”
“Where did you get your pills?”
“From you.”
That actually made Jack feel better. He knew better than to trust a user, even his own son, but if Chris was still taking the pills he stole from Jack, he might not be too far gone.
“Tommy went through a lot of effort to set you up with good doctors, where you’d feel safe, away from campus. Now, do you have him on retainer off of money I wasn’t aware you possessed?”
“Dad . . .” Chris sounded like a boy again.
“Then why did Tommy do it, Son? Call in favors for you.”
“He loves me.”
“Why am I here?”
“You love me.”
“You wanna get rid of me?”
“Yeah.”
Jack smiled and his eyes got moist.
“Let’s call Dr. Leland and see if she can fit you in this afternoon.” Jack knew that she’d make the time. He had called her office as soon as he landed. “I’ll drive you over. If you two don’t get along, and I think you might, we’ll find someone else. But just know, we won’t stop until you find someone that works for you.”
Chris took a swig of water and looked out his window. He didn’t say yes, but more important, he didn’t say no. Jack took that as a win and soldiered on.
“How’s the pain?” he asked, referring to his son’s arm.
“Comes and goes. Two in the morning, three.”
“Dr. Pick has an opening tomorrow at eleven. He thinks if it’s physical, it might be as simple as changing the angle of your brace.”
Chris jumped up off the bed, red-faced. “Physical! What the hell does that mean? You think I’m making this up? It’s psychological? I’m a nutter?”
“I misspoke! Muscular, not physical. Muscular, and not nerve damage. Chris, I’m trying, I make mistakes.”
“No kidding.”
“No kidding.”
Chris turned back to the window and Jack did the same. Dr. Pick, a neurologist, could give Chris something for the pain that wasn’t addictive, if Jack could get him to his appointment.
“What’s her number?” Chris finally mumbled.
Jack pulled out his phone, accessed the number, and hit Dial. He handed the phone to his son, who grabbed it and waited for Dr. Leland to pick up on her end.
Father and son stared out the window and watched normal college life pass them by in the quad below.