That's what John thought too, but he wasn't quite as confident of it as he'd been before he'd seen the files, and it made him feel better to hear Nick say it.
"Well, I'm not so sure,” Nelson proclaimed from the back seat. “I told you twelve years ago that it was a mistake to get involved, and I still say so. You can't go around filing depositions when you're dealing with human scum like-"
Nick laughed. “Nelson, give it a rest, will you? If I thought there was anything to it, I'd be the first one to ask for some help from J. Edgar Hoover over here, believe me."
"Yeah, like hell you would,” John said.
Nick laughed again, which was meant to close the subject, but Nelson, warmed up now, wasn't about to comply.
"Nick, sometimes I don't understand you at all. You're just sticking your head in the sand. Now, we all know that John has been talking to Brenda about this. Are you going to deny that, John?"
John glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Not me."
"I wouldn't think so. Well, I was against bringing John into this in the first place, you all know that, but now that he is in, I think we should get his help."
"Oh, hell,” Nick grumbled and slouched down into his seat with his arms folded.
"John?” Nelson said in the peremptory tone that had been raising the hair on the back of John's neck for over thirty years, since he had been eight and Nelson had been twelve anyway, and probably before then.
"Nelson?” he replied mildly.
"Now, then. I want you to find out how we can get in touch with this Gasparone person. With the others too."
That caught John by surprise. “Get in touch with them?"
"Exactly, I think it's time to lay things on the table with them. They may be gangsters but they're also businessmen. They may have something in mind, some sort of…remuneration. We're in a sound financial position now. We can afford to negotiate, to work things out."
"Forget it,” Nick muttered without turning around.
"It's not a good idea, Nelson,” John said firmly. All the same, in one respect Nelson did have a point. When sleaze-bags like Gasparone got even with people for doing them wrong, they went out and blew their heads off, or maybe just their kneecaps if the original offense wasn't too bad. The point was to make it clear to others that it wouldn't be a good idea to do the same thing. But when they started in on piddly little things like a minor injury or accident here or there- such as the happenings on the plantation-you had to assume that they were after something; some kind of cooperation, or compliance, or kickback.
That is, if they were involved at all.
"Nick,” he said, “they haven't been in touch with you, have they?"
Nick looked sulkily at him. “Are you kidding me?"
"What about anybody else that might be speaking for them? Somebody in the coffee business that could be backed by them? Anybody, well, suggesting that-I don't know, that you ought to give them special terms, or-"
"In touch with me? No, give me a break."
Nelson took up the attack again. “Just because they haven't approached us doesn't mean we can't approach them. I'm only saying that if they feel they have a grievance, the sensible thing-"
"Lord, don't you love it!” Maggie cried with a laugh. “Nelson the Ethical. God forbid that we file a deposition against these lousy creeps back then when it counted, and now he can't wait to sit down and negotiate with them."
"I'm only saying-” Nelson began.
Nick cut him off. “Nelson, will you use your head for once? If these cruds wanted to get back at me for what happened in Seattle, why go all the way to Tahiti to do it? And do what, when it comes down to it? Bribe our employees to lose a few records…to jam the pulper? Hell, no, if they had a score to settle with us, they'd just burn down the building right here on Whidbey Island. It'd be a whole lot easier. That shack would go up like kindling."
Rudy, who had been minding his own business, sat up with a jerk. “Oh, thank you very much. That'll help me sleep nights."
"Or blow it up, or something,” Maggie suggested. “That's what I'd do."
"Wonderful, even better,” said Rudy.
"Weil, how do all of you explain it then?” Nelson said hotly. “How do-"
"Hey!" Nick sat up in the front seat and twisted around as the ferry settled squishily against the Mukilteo pilings and John turned on the car's ignition. “Can I just say something? Enough, already Now, we're going to be at John's place in forty minutes. I haven't seen Marti in a long time, and it'd be nice to talk about something else besides all this warmed-over crap. Okay?"
"Suits me,” said Maggie.
Rudy held up his hands, palms forward. “Hallelujah and amen to that."
Nelson stared out the window and grumped an inaudible response.
Nick eyed John. “You too? Can we talk about something else for a while?"
John threw in the towel. “Okay. As long as it's not coffee."
"Fair enough.” Nick settled comfortably back. “Ah, I always look forward to seeing that lovely bride of yours. You really lucked out there, old son."
"I'm not gonna argue with that,” John said.
Nick laughed fondly. “It's always a treat seeing what she comes up with for dinner. What's it going to be this time, do you think-boiled tofu, maybe?"
"Don't laugh,” John said grimly.
"Oh, come on, you guys,” Maggie said generously, “it's not going to be as bad as all that."
Chapter 6
That depended on who was asked. Dinner was rice cakes topped with pecan-garbanzo paste, grilled-eggplant-and-feta-cheese salad, and spicy squash-and-orzo stew, all of it perfectly cooked and beautifully served, but still, from John's point of view, rice cakes, eggplant, and squash.
Rudy uncomplainingly if inattentively consumed whatever was put before him, as he usually did. John sometimes wondered if all that coffee-tasting had burned out his taste buds and immunized them against anything else. Excepting wine, of course. Nelson, whose French-born wife had taught him to like creamed dishes and elegant sauces, picked at his food and filled up on mango-pumpkin bread and apple-fig chutney. Only Maggie ate with any enthusiasm, but then John had once, with his own ears, heard her say that the happiest she got when it came to food was when she sat down to a steaming plate of organic brown rice and poached carrots.
Nick, like John, ate moderately and with an occasional polite murmur of appreciation, but John knew his secret. Whenever Nick knew he was coming to dinner at the Lam’ he first fortified himself with a four-course restaurant lunch, usually of prime rib and butter-drenched baked potato. (On company-dinner nights, John did exactly the same, except that he usually made it T-bone steak and butter-drenched baked potato.)
One of Marti's missions in life was to stamp out what she thought of as junk food (which included nearly everything John loved), and most of her menus, John swore, came from TV cooking shows hosted by onetime gourmet chefs who had suffered heart attacks, seen the light, and were now fanatical preachers of low-fat, sodium-free living. Fortunately for the happy state of their marriage, Marti's job as a nutritionist kept her at the Virginia Mason Clinic until late in the afternoon, zestfully dishing up fatless, saltless recipes to hapless patients unable to defend themselves, and Marti and John themselves had to eat out most evenings.
But once a week or so, there was an unavoidable meal like this, which John, grateful for Marti's many other virtues, considered a small price to pay. The fact that wine, not on her list of forbidden matter, flowed freely made it all the easier. This evening's had been brought by Rudy, three different California Cabernets, to be drunk (naturally) in a meticulously prescribed order.
By the time the third bottle was opened, Nick, the natural and uncontested focus of family gatherings, was in high gear with reminiscences of his days as a young soldier in the South Pacific-he had illegally joined up at sixteen-during World War II.