rest of the world just doesn’t understand. You’re sure you see something the rest of us’re too thick to get. Your friends, you’ll move heaven and earth to justify them. You’ve always been that way. Used to be Mike, now it’s Gary. So Gary couldn’t have set this up ...” His voice trailed off and I had the feeling he found it hard to believe Gary had purposely sabotaged him either. “If it’s Mike, he must’ve walked out of the house one Thursday in a bubble of innocence and been spirited off to another life. Because you adored him, there has to be some very fine, all-redeeming reason a forty-three-year-old man can’t walk back in the door now and just say, “I screwed up.”
I just stared. Then I said the only possible thing. “Fuck you!”
A patrol car, lights flashing, raced up the down lane of the exit road. When John spotted it, he jumped back and the expression on his face was not that of a police detective relieved to have a ride back to the station. Nor did he take the all too familiar gritted teeth inhalation of one prepared to take a ribbing. His expression was momentary; the next instant he was walking toward the car, leaning down toward the driver. But during that moment, I could have sworn his face showed a flash of fear.
4
I RAN TOWARD the patrol car.
John glanced back at me, got in and slammed the door. The car sped away down Telegraph Hill Boulevard.
“Damn you!” I was so furious—so hurt—and stunned by his attack, my temptation was just to let him deal or sink. What I needed to do was get to the location and get ready for my gag. It was already 5:30. In an hour I’d be turning the ignition key. But there was no way I could just let John go, not as out of control as he’d been.
I leapt the observation ledge, skidded between pines and cypress, pushed off and leapt for the plaza.
They were almost at the Lombard curve. I slid down the double railings, swung forward and hit the sidewalk.
John glared out the window. He still had that panicky look. The vehicle picked up speed, nearly hitting a cab. Both paused momentarily. John made some kind of signal, and the patrol car shot away.
I yanked the cab door open and flung myself in. “Hang a U.”
“I can’t do a U here!”
“Of course you can. John will cover for you. He’s not paying you to lose him.”
“He’s not paying me at all.”
“He will when we get there. If you don’t lose him, Webb.”
Webb Framington Morratt hung a U, shooting me across the leather seat, then hit the gas. He was on what he called an unofficial retainer from John. Very unofficial. I wasn’t sure the range of things he did for my brother or their legality. But he definitely wouldn’t want to offend him. “Keep him in sight.”
“He didn’t tell me to trail him.”
“Of course he didn’t. When he called you, he figured he’d be sitting back here with me. He didn’t figure you’d screw around so long a patrol car would get to him first.”
“I didn’t—”
“No matter. Just keep up because I don’t have the address.”
When we got there, John would be livid, Webb Morratt would be outraged, and the next time I needed to make use of Morratt I’d pay for it. But that would be then; this was now. “John uses you because you can tail a car in traffic. Because you say you can. Don’t give him reason to doubt it. Your record for honesty isn’t the best.”
He grunted, but did step on the gas.
I braced my feet as we shot through the narrow North Beach streets, the cab swaying as Webb whipped around corners.
What was with John? If he’d stayed up nights planning the cut, he couldn’t have pierced deeper. Mike was four years older than me; I’d adored him. In a family where siblings paired off, he was my other half. I told him everything; he told me . . . less than I’d realized. When he disappeared, I was fifteen. As a family we held together; individually and in private we fell apart. John, for his part, just plowed on. Why this outburst now of all times?
Morratt was watching me in the rearview mirror. I took a breath. “Tourist season, and you’ve still got time to hang around for John.”
Morratt scowled, his round pink head scrunched like a ball a retriever had just had a go at. The ball unwrinkled a bit. He hesitated, fighting his urge to sound off. It was a losing battle. “What’d you think, John’s my patron? I do some work for him. He’s front of the queue, but he’s not keeping me in gas. There’ve been times I’ve missed airport runs for him. Fast fares. It’s a big loss I incur for John.”
If I’d been biting my lip I’d have bled to death. “But you could pick up fares at Coit Tower the times you dropped him off, right?” I was trying to make sense of it all.
“I never dropped him off there.”
Was he lying? Damn! What was my brother doing up there that he was so hot to hide? Wait a minute. “So you’ve just picked him up there.”
He nodded, with a grunt.
Of course. “Cheapskate. You mean he’d have called another cab to get him up there? So he didn’t have to pay you to wait?” Pay him to sit around enjoying the view while the meter ticked? To note whatever it was he was doing up there. So Morratt could tell me.
He studied my face in the mirror. Now he had his eyes on the rearview the whole time. The road was incidental. “Yeah.”
“There were times he called you, right, and you dropped everything, right, and then he wasn’t ready and you had to sit around and wait, on your own sweet time, right?”
His eyes narrowed. Even Webb Morratt had a limit. Just as I was deciding on a different approach, he said grudgingly, “Nah. If he made me wait, he made it up.”
“And when you had to go out of your way to take his friend down with him, was that on the meter, too?”
“Nah, that wasn’t the problem. It was him driving around dead silent after, going crazy if I said two words. You know what a bummer that is when you’re alone hauling hack all day and finally you get someone you can shoot the breeze with and he clams up, plus makes you clam, and even—get this—turn off the radio. Like a tomb. And when he—”
A horn honked.
Morratt shot a glance out the window. Traffic was almost stopped. Ahead on the left was the Ferry Building and for a moment I wondered whether there was a reception or rally there. Then I spotted the cause of the hold-up. It was the set. My set, where I’d be doing my stunt in—yikes!—fifty-five minutes. As I’d told Karen Johnson, Market Street was closed for two blocks, from here up past California Street, which was where the action would be. I could see two fire engines and an ambulance, and a huge crowd—workers stopping on their way to the Embarcadero BART station, streetcars out to the Castro, Glen Park, the avenues, or buses to the East Bay.
The black-and-white stayed on the Embarcadero under the Bay Bridge and cut right on Brannan. From there it was an easy
