“I hope to hell our boy Packer shows his face soon,” I told Joey after the last customers left and I locked the front door. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this — my feet and back are killing me.”
Joey laughed. “See, the thing is, most guys got no idea how hard it is running a restaurant, even a little pizzeria like this. But I got to tell you,” he sat down and put his feet up, a happy smile on his tired face, “it feels good to be back in the kitchen. I never realized how much I missed it before.”
After a week we were filling up for both lunch and dinner, and we had to hire a kid to help Joey out in the kitchen with prep work and dishwashing. I was running around like a madman out front but managing to hold my own, at least for the time being. Every night we both collapsed into bed, exhausted, and every day it seemed like we sold more and more pizzas. Just as we had planned, our customers by and large represented the upper echelons of the broader SLO community — both town and university. Given that our pizzas were priced at double those of the competition, such as it was, and our environment — no loud music, no video games, no flat-screen televisions tuned to ESPN or MTV — was ill suited for anyone under the age (chronologically or emotionally) of thirty, we attracted exactly the cohort into which I expected Dr. Packer to fit. It was just a matter of time, as I repeatedly explained to Roscoe Jackson during our weekly telephone calls.
“Plus,” I told him during the most recent of our calls, “we’re making money hand over fist down here. I mean, who would have guessed that there could be so much profit in pizzas? In fact,” I shook my head at the thought, “if we could get a beer and wine permit, it’d be like having a license to print money.”
Three days later five surfers walked in just as we were preparing to close for the afternoon. Two were middle-aged, in their fifties I guessed, one was ten or so years younger, and two were probably mid-twenties. All were dressed in T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops, the official footwear of SLO, and had obviously just come over from the beach. The two young guys were tatted and big-time buffed, with arms like cannons, whitewall haircuts, and attitudes that shouted law enforcement so loudly a deaf man would have heard it. One of the older guys and the forty-something sported beards while the other, a guy who would have been called a silver fox at Folsom, wore his surfer gear as if it were a Brooks Brothers suit.
“We just came over from San Onofre,” the silver fox explained in a voice that reminded me of Tony Bennett singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” It also reminded me of the voice of the judge who had sentenced me to three-to-five years. “We’re not too late for a pizza, are we?” He smiled. “We would have gotten here earlier but the waves were too good to leave.”
“The sign on the door says we close at two o’clock,” I replied casually, “but we’re not fanatics about it. Welcome to SLO Pizza. Everything’s fresh and,” I nodded toward the chalkboard on the wall that showed the toppings available that day, “if it’s not up there, we don’t have it.”
“What kind of beer have you got?” one of the young cops asked.
“We sell no intoxicating spirits,” I replied, shaking my head for emphasis. “The state of California, in its infinite wisdom, believes that issuing beer and wine permits to convicted felons would lead inevitably to a breakdown in public order, if not outright anarchy.” The three older guys all laughed. The two younger ones didn’t even crack a smile. Dicks for sure, I thought. And the only reason they’d be out surfing with the three older men would be to provide muscle, begging the question, why do the older dudes need muscle?
“Too bad,” the bearded oldster said, clearly meaning it. “Nothing goes with pizza like a cold beer.” He looked at his two buds and then back at me with a mischievous grin on his face. “Say, how about if we bring our own? I’ve got a cooler out in the Jeep filled with Coronas.”
“Well, with a group like yours, and the fact that we’re now officially closed for the afternoon, perhaps we could accommodate you.”
“What do you mean a group like ours?”
I smiled. “I’m guessing that at least one of you,” I indicated the three older men, “is a judge, and that you guys,” I nodded at the two steroidal stiffs, “are sworn peace officers.”
“Excellent,” the forty-something said, smiling and nodding his head. “You’ve got a good eye.” He pointed at the silver fox. “Meet Judge Sam Jackson, presiding judge of the superior court here in SLO, and Matt and James here are, as you guessed, deputy sheriffs. Bill Masterson,” the other bearded one, “owns Seven Hills Winery, the oldest and largest vineyard along the Central Coast, and I’m Charles Young, a healthcare consultant.”
“And surf bum,” the judge interjected.
“The pleasure’s all mine,” I said, shaking their hands. “And, like I said a minute ago, welcome to SLO Pizza.” The fact that Young had neglected to tell me Matt’s and James’s last names confirmed that they were the hired help, so to speak.
“What were you in the joint for?” Matt rather rudely asked.
“Stupidity,” I answered, looking not at him but at the three older men. They laughed and even the two hard-faced young cops cracked a smile.
They ordered three large pizzas with Italian sausage and mushrooms and, an hour later, when they were finished, left a twenty-dollar tip on the table. Back in the kitchen Joey watched as I dropped the twenty in our tip jar.
“I take it they liked the pizza,” he said as he chewed on a toothpick.
“They liked it a lot,” I assured him. “And by the way, the forty-something guy, the one who paid the bill and left the tip, is none other than the elusive Dr. Tony Packer.”
“Yeah?” Joey nodded his head, apparently no more impressed than if I’d just given him a weather report. “You sure it’s him?”
“About ninety-nine percent sure. He’s grown a beard and had what looks like a little plastic surgery done, but yes, I’d say I’m as sure as I need to be short of lifting his fingerprints. Which reminds me, I notice that they took all their empty beer bottles with them when they left.”
“Probably to be sure they got their bottle deposits back,” Joey sniffed. “You see it all the time — guys worth a million bucks would rather be poked in the eye with a stick than leave a nickel lying on the table.”
“Which probably explains why they’ve got the million dollars to begin with,” I pointed out.
“Whatever. So, what are you going to do now that you’ve ID’d our boy?”
“Nothing for the time being. His crew out there,” I nodded back toward where they had been sitting, “consisted of the presiding judge of the superior court, one of the leading vintners in all of California, and, for beef, two sheriff’s deputies.”
“I spotted the young guys as dicks the minute they walked in.” Joey paused and looked at me in a way that made me a little uneasy. “So,” he finally said, still working on his toothpick, “what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know, Joey, I’m going to have to think about it for a while. This guy is so smart, and so well protected, just like I told you he would be, that taking him into custody is going to be no easy thing.”
“It sounds like you’re not planning on calling the guy in San Francisco...”
“Roscoe Jackson?”
“Yeah, him. It sounds like you’re not planning on calling him with the news right away.”
“No,” I confirmed, shaking my head, “I’m not. Actually putting the collar on Dr. Packer and the missing twenty million dollars is going to require an extraordinarily delicate touch. If Roscoe’s client sends in the cavalry Packer’ll hear about it and be gone before they even leave San Francisco. And the big problem with that is that if they don’t actually succeed in apprehending Packer the VCs who hired us will almost certainly refuse to pay our fee.”