It was a simple plan, but that was the type I preferred.
Chapter 5
Jed Newmark was drinking alone. Other drinkers in the bar on Stanyan Street surrounded him, but he’d chosen to ignore them and hunched over his drink at the bar. For a start he shared little in common with the young professionals who spent less time on drinking than they did on their cellphones. He was twice the age of the next oldest person in the bar, and that was the bartender. During the 1990s Cole Valley had grown popular with dot-commers, so much so that many of the original residents had moved out to make way for the young and affluent. Now some of those yuppie types were approaching their middle years, but they were still young punks to Jed. He felt old. Recently some young pup had heard his name and asked if he was any relation to Craig Newmark, the internet entrepreneur responsible for founding the San Francisco-based website Craigslist. Jed had played along and said yes. ‘Are you his dad?’ asked the young sycophant. Shit, Jed had thought, Craig Newmark has to be in his sixties by now.
He cupped both hands around his glass, just a drop or two of whisky left in the bottom, peering over at his reflection in the warped mirror beyond the shelved liquor bottles. He looked toadlike, short, squat, and round faced. His mouth drooped down at the corners, but didn’t help smooth out any of the wrinkles round his puffy eyelids. To be honest, it was a wonder he hadn’t been mistaken for Craig’s grandad.
He finished his drink, pushed the empty glass from him and slipped some dollars in the general direction of the bartender. Without even a nod of appreciation for the tip he’d added, the bartender continued serving Martinis to a middle-aged couple further along the bar. Feeling invisible, Jed walked out of the bar and into late afternoon sunlight. He blinked against the unfamiliar glare, before setting off for his apartment a couple of blocks south on Carmel. He was returning to an empty home. His wife, Rose, had died three years ago. Stomach cancer had spread to her liver where it did more damage than the hard liquor he’d consumed over the years ever did to his. Jed was alone in the world now. No children. No friends. That was not so until very recently, but then Andrew Rington had been taken during a senseless bout of violence in the man’s home.
Jed muttered to himself as he walked. The liquor he’d downed had thrown a cloak of cotton wool over him, fogging the pain of grief he’d felt at the news of Andrew’s murder, but it was still there like an itch at the back of his head that he couldn’t shake. Fucking senseless. How could such a good man as Andrew Rington be gunned down in his own home? What had this world become?
He had known Andrew and Yukiko for more than forty years. He knew the couple when they had lived in Little Rock, Arkansas, way back before the birth of their youngest son, Jared. They had been good friends, the more so because Rose and Yukiko got on so well, having grown up in the same neighbourhood of San Francisco as children. Jed had lost contact with the Ringtons for a few years, after him and Rose moved back West, and had been surprised to hear from Andrew a few years ago when they too planned to move back to Yukiko’s childhood home. Rose didn’t live too long afterwards, but it had been a happy reunion with Yukiko while it lasted. It had helped his wife through the final painful days of her illness. Jed and Andrew occasionally took themselves down to Fisherman’s Wharf to cast a line in the sea, or to simply sit on the benches and spend a couple hours in companionable silence watching the antics of the sea lions out on the jetties near Pier 39.
He felt the sting of tears and wiped at his cheeks with the back of a wrist.
He’d shared good memories with Andrew.
Then again, they also shared bad memories.
The basement.
He shook his head. Don’t go there, he commanded himself.
The Cole Valley district originally grew up around a streetcar stop at the entrance to the Sunset Tunnel. Now that area at the intersection of Carl and Cole Streets was the neighbourhood’s small business district, and Jed still managed a tiny flower boutique Rose had opened there. He had closed it the morning he’d heard of Andrew’s murder and hadn’t been to the shop since. He couldn’t go on neglecting it like this, but he still could not face work today. He wouldn’t be able to be polite to his customers and that wouldn’t do. Neither could he go to the shop drunk as he was. Tomorrow, he promised, he’d go in and design a wreath fit to place on his friend’s grave.
The home he’d shared with Rose was on the upper floor of a three-storeyed Victorian, the lower levels now rented to staff from the University of California. This time of day his neighbours would not be home, and he was glad that he wouldn’t be required to make small talk on the stairs. He pushed into his apartment having no memory of the walk back. Inside, the air-conditioning was turned too high, the air chilly. Nevertheless he shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on a hook in the closet next to the front door, and kicked off his shoes and placed them on a shelf. It was an old habit adopted from his wife who had always had exacting housekeeping standards. He worked his feet into a pair of slippers, and then headed along the short hall passing the sitting room.
Old age had brought intolerance to him, and he hated the cold. It played havoc with his joints. He decided he’d turn up the central heating before the mist returned and with it the ache to his bones. Perhaps a nice hot cup of coffee wouldn’t go amiss either. He entered the kitchen and placed the makings in his Mr Coffee machine and set it dripping. Like many of the items in the apartment the machine was a relic of earlier times, a gift bought for him by Rose back in the mid-1970s and carted round with them ever since. Thinking back on when she’d presented the machine to him, he smiled sadly. He was a fan of Joe DiMaggio, and his wife thought it apt that he receive a gift endorsed by the former baseball star. It was those little naive touches of hers that had made him love her so much. Feeling maudlin, Jed fetched his favourite mug, placed it next to the hissing machine and then made for the sitting room to deal with the heating.
A panel in the sitting room controlled the central heating; it was on the wall to the left as he entered. Concentrating on the task at hand he pushed open the door and went towards the panel. It took a second for his booze-addled brain to notice that something was out of place. He turned from the panel to look at the figure standing across the room from him with his hands clasped at his lower back.
‘Who are you?’ Even as the question rolled from his tongue it became redundant, because the man had lifted his chin and Jed got a good look at his features.
‘I see you know that already,’ the man replied.
Jed looked around the room, as though checking that nothing else was out of the norm. It was a wasted act, because it wouldn’t matter in the long run.
‘What do you want?’
The man snorted out a laugh. ‘I think you also know that.’
These days Jed was a florist, another thing he’d adopted and embraced from a life shared with his gentle wife, but he hadn’t always been. As a young man he’d had a very different skill set and the instincts he’d carried then surged to the surface now. He bunched his fists. ‘It was you. You killed Andrew Rington.’
‘It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?’
‘You murderous son of a bitch!’ Jed took a step forward.
The man brought his hands from behind his back, and with them the silenced handgun he pointed at Jed’s face. He smiled. ‘Isn’t that what they call “the pot calling the kettle black” ’
The gun spat, but Jed didn’t hear it. The bullet took out the back of his skull before the sound reached his ears.