Dockstetter said something I didn’t catch.
“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me,” Brand said. “And Booker — all he’s interested in is getting next to Mrs. Cappellani himself. A disgusting man. You can almost feel the friction between him and Rosten, or at least anyone with perception can feel it.”
Silence from Dockstetter.
Brand said, “And I still say we ought to increase our production of generic table wines…”
There was more, but it was all shoptalk that did not mean much to me. In the middle of it the waiter returned with my pint of ale. I took a long draught, lowered the stein again, and with its bottom made interlocking circles of wetness on the table while I listened to Brand finish his diatribe over there.
Dockstetter said stiffly, “I’ve told you and told you, Philip, I don’t agree with any of that. Mrs. Cappellani is an intelligent woman, she’s done a marvelous job with the winery since that bastard husband of hers died. If you were right, she would have taken action herself long ago. Or Leo would have.”
“Mrs. Cappellani is becoming less and less involved with internal matters every year. And Leo — and Alex too — is too busy with his private life to pay proper attention to what’s going on.”
“That’s some way for an employee to talk.”
“It’s the only way for an employee who gives a damn to talk,” Brand said. “If you’d accept the facts of the situation, we could go to Mrs. Cappellani and between us make her understand that changes have to be made before it’s too late.”
“I won’t help you make unnecessary waves.”
Brand stared at him with a mixture of exasperation and contempt. “No, of course you won’t. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil — that’s your credo. You’ve got no backbone, Logan, none at all.”
“I don’t have to take that from you.”
“No — you don’t have to take anything from me.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
Brand slid out of the booth, got on his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you.”
“Damn it, Philip…”
“Oh go diddle yourself,” Brand said, and turned and stalked over to the entrance.
Dockstetter glared after him. In profile his face was white and so pinched now it looked deformed. He sat there rigidly for several seconds; then he got out of the booth in slow, measured movements, took a couple of bills from his wallet and put them on the table, and walked out after Brand. His back could not have been straighter or stiffer if he had had a steel rod strapped to his spine.
I watched him go, wondering if he was right about the status of the Cappellani Winery, or if Brand was. Well, in either case the Cappellanis appeared to have more than their share of problems. Dissension in the ranks along with everything else.
I looked at my watch, and it was ten past one. So maybe Shelly had gotten tied up at the office, or maybe she was one of those people who are chronically late for appointments. Not that it mattered much, except that I could smell the aroma of barbecued meat coming from the chefs counter and it was making me pretty hungry.
Waiting, I sipped my ale and glanced around at the boar heads and the other wall decorations. Now that I was alone with nothing to occupy my attention, the place gave me a certain nostalgic feeling. Five years ago, when I had been in love with a woman named Erika Coates who worked in the financial district not far away, I had had lunch with her here on several occasions. Good, intimate lunches that seemed, in retrospect, to have been filled with warmth and laughter.
But it had not been quite that way. Erika had plenty of good qualities, but she was also an uncompromising, unyielding person: if you wanted to play with her, you had to play by her rules. Two of those rules were that I had to give up smoking for my own good, and that I had to give up my profession because it was shabby and pointless and I was living a lie by trying to emulate the detectives I read about in the pulps. She had been right about the first and wrong about the second, as I had finally proved to myself, but the combination of the two had built an unmendable rift between us.
It took me a while to get over her — and I suppose I never really did get over her, despite not seeing her once in those next five years. I might have gone on that way, plagued by vague ghosts, if it had not been for the things that happened this past summer and the changes they had brought about in me. But with all of that, I had decided at last to put away my pride and get in touch with her if I could. I did not believe there was anything left between us; what has been lost and buried in the passage of time can seldom be resurrected. And yet I felt I had to know for my own peace of mind.
I had no trouble locating her; she still worked for the same company, and she was still unmarried. At first she had not wanted to see me, but because it was my fiftieth birthday she had finally consented to have dinner. And it had turned out to be a strained evening, both of us reserved and uncomfortable. When I told her about the lesion on my lung, she was sympathetic but she could not resist an I-told-you-so. When I tried to explain about the changes in me, she said they were a step in the right direction but until I quit being a private eye I was still living in self-delusion. Uncompromising, unyielding — the same old Erika.
At the end of the evening I told her I would call her, but we both knew I would not and that we wouldn’t see each other again. I did not know her and she did not know me; we no longer had anything at all in common.
I had no regrets about seeing her, though, because in doing so I had gotten rid of the vague ghosts and put my soul at ease. Still, sitting here now in The Boar’s Head, with memories on the walls and memories playing across the screen of my mind, I felt just a little sad for what once was and for what might have been.
I finished my ale, looked again at my watch. One-twenty. I considered calling the winery office — and while I was considering the street door opened and Shelly came inside.
When I leaned out of the booth and waved at her, she saw me and then came over wearing a lopsided grin. “Sorry to be late,” she said. “A couple of last-minute things to take care of.”
“No problem,” I said.
The waiter showed up as soon as she sat down, and we got our orders out of the way: two roast beef sandwiches, another Bass ale for me, a pint of Black-and-Tan — half Guinness and half lager — for her. After he drifted off, Shelly brushed a hand absently through her fine, short-cropped hair and looked at me in a frankly appraising way. She was dressed in a tailored three-piece wool suit and a blue silk blouse; the outfit, and some carefully applied makeup, made her look less hard-edged than she had last night. And even more attractive.
“So,” she said. “Tell me what it’s like to be a private eye.”
I shrugged. “Like any other job. Interesting sometimes but mostly pretty dull.”
“Which category does what you’re doing for Alex fall into?”
“What makes you think I’m working for Alex?”
“Aren’t you?”
“If I am, I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”
“Top-secret stuff, huh?”
“Nope. Professional ethics.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll bet it concerns Jason Booker.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s pretty obvious that Alex hates Booker and that he’s afraid Booker will marry Rosa. It would be just like Alex to hire a private eye to get something on Jason, or beat up on him, or whatever else it is you do.”