“Not good.”
“Not good at all. So, until I have more information, like where he’s living and what his day-to-day routine is, I’m saying nothing.”
“I heard that.” Joey paused for a long minute, obviously choosing his next words with some care. “Now that our boy has shown his face, I was thinking of something else,” he finally said.
“What’s that?”
“We drop a dime on him and, you know, as popular a guy as he seems to be around here, I mean it being his hometown and all that, our business is going to take a big hit.” He shook his head. “A big hit,” he repeated for emphasis.
I started to laugh, thinking for a second that Joey was being ironic, when it hit me — Joey liked it here, liked having his own pizzeria, liked being respected, admired even, as a legitimate member of the business community. I cut the laugh off. “The pizzeria was never intended to survive beyond our search for Dr. Packer,” I gently reminded him. “For one thing, the VCs who fronted the money are going to want as much of it back as possible, which means we’re going to have to liquidate all the assets as soon as we finger Packer. And for another, you’re right, as admired as Packer is locally, I doubt you and I are going to be the most popular dudes in town when word gets around that we’re the ones who busted him.”
“You’re coming up in the world.”
I was sitting in Anabel Fuentes’s office and had just told her about meeting the judge, the vintner, and the man who had introduced himself as Charles Young.
“If they like your pizza you can bet that everybody who’s anybody in SLO will hear about it,” she added.
“Just what we need,” I said, feigning dismay. “More business. I’m about to work myself into an early grave as it is.” I paused for a second, striving, probably unsuccessfully, for an air of nonchalance. “So what’s the story on this Charles Young? He introduced himself as a healthcare consultant and, to be honest, Joey and I should probably be thinking about some sort of health-insurance plan. Would he be someone we should maybe talk to?”
“If your question is does he sell health insurance, the answer is no.”
I waited for her to say something more and when she didn’t I couldn’t not smile. “Do you know him? Personally, I mean.”
“What, precisely, are you getting at?”
I shook my head and stood up, her obvious disinclination to talk about Charles Young telling me all I needed to know for the time being. “Just trying to get more acquainted with the local movers and shakers. Who knows,” I smiled and turned to leave, “at some point Joey and I may want to join the SLO Country Club and, God knows,” my smile broadened, “in that eventuality we’re going to need all the sponsors we can get.”
Anabel looked at me silently for several seconds, the expression on her face reminding me of the one on the associate warden’s face when he welcomed me, so to speak, to Folsom. “You would do well to keep in mind that SLO is still very much a small town, particularly when it comes to the men and women who matter most, from a business and political point of view. People asking questions, particularly people newly arrived like you and your partner, often raise suspicion, regardless of motivation. My advice is that you count yourself fortunate that Charles Young and his friends like your pizza and let it go at that.”
Two evenings later, twenty minutes after we’d closed for the night, the man who had introduced himself as Charles Young strolled into SLO Pizza, this time unaccompanied. I was alone, lying on the floor with my feet up one wall, a restorative yoga pose called viparita karani. Not something, I can assure you, I learned at Folsom.
“Namaste,” he said, a smile in his voice.
“Namaste.” I lowered my legs and rolled to one side, standing in one easy motion.
“You look closed,” he said with obvious disappointment, gesturing toward the darkened kitchen.
“Not only do we look closed, we are closed,” I confirmed. “But if it’s a slice or two of pizza you were looking for you’re in luck. Joey made me up a pie just before he left and you’re more than welcome to share it with me when it comes out of the oven.”
We chatted about inconsequential things — the quality of the surf at Pismo Beach, his favorite yoga studio in SLO — while I set a table for two. By the time everything was ready the pizza was done and I brought it to the table still bubbling from the oven.
“Be careful not to burn your mouth,” I warned. “It’s even hotter than it looks.”
He smiled. “I understand you’ve been asking around about me,” he said as he moved a slice to his plate.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it asking around,” I replied, pleased that we weren’t going to beat around the bush. “Just Anabel Fuentes, and not surprisingly she wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Not surprisingly?”
I tasted the pizza and closed my eyes momentarily as the intense flavors of Joey’s sauce spilled across my palate and rose into my sinuses. “Not surprisingly inasmuch as she and a few other heavy hitters in SLO like Bill Masterson and Judge Jackson know that your name isn’t Charles Young.”
“Who do you think I am?”
“None other than the elusive Dr. Tony Packer.” I took another bite and smiled with pleasure. “Can Joey make a dynamite pizza, or what?”
“I’ve never tasted anything like it,” he admitted, “anywhere in the world, including Italy. And as far as Tony Packer is concerned, most folks who think about it at all think he’s living like a king in Bangkok, or lying on the beach at Phuket.”
I shook my head. “That’s yesterday’s news. Just before leaving San Francisco I heard that the latest confirmed sighting has you living the ex-pat high life in Ho Chi Minh City, in a colonial French mansion overlooking the Saigon River.” I smiled. “Where, even as we speak, the FBI and a veritable posse of private dicks are throwing serious money around from the Mekong Delta to Hanoi in the hopes of finding a capitalist-minded communist official who will drop a dime on you.”
Packer laughed. “A delightful image.” He helped himself to another slice. “But answer me this: Why a pizza parlor? I mean, I know you’re here on behalf of your friend Roscoe Jackson, and that he, of course, is working for the VCs from whom twenty million dollars was borrowed—”
“Dude, I don’t think they think it was borrowed.” I smiled. “Stolen is more along the lines of how they see it.”
“—but why,” he continued, ignoring my good-natured interruption, “a pizza parlor?”
“I’ll tell you why a pizza parlor if you’ll tell me how you knew about me working for Roscoe Jackson.”
“All it took was a single phone call to a friend in San Francisco.” He shrugged. “She, my friend, asked one or two reasonably well-informed people who in turn made a call or two, and voilà. Your life is an open book, although I will say that your conviction and subsequent disbarment made things a good deal easier. As to why I would have made the call to San Francisco in the first place, you didn’t honestly think you could just ride the bus down here and open a restaurant without raising a few eyebrows, did you? Now,” he leaned back in his chair, “why a pizza parlor?”
“Have you ever heard of a cafe in Paris called Les Deux Magots?”
Puzzled, he shook his head, and I told him the same story I had told Roscoe Jackson. He threw back his head and laughed. “Too cool for school.” Still smiling, he looked at me carefully. “I’m curious as to why you haven’t yet told your friend and employer Roscoe Jackson about what you think you’ve discovered?”