Tell Me Who I Am Read online

  “She wants to see you. We can deal with the hair and ratty clothes. The drunk part is up to you.”

  He looked wistfully at his beer, then pushed it away. Stood and said, “Then let’s get a move on.”

  Later that day when Jackson—a cleaned-up and barbered man in brand-new clothing—and my client met in my office, the resemblance between them was totally apparent: same facial shape; same eye color; similar features. His had been roughened by too many bad years; hers were toned and smooth, but the worry lines around the eyes were the same. I was sure a DNA test would prove they were brother and sister.

  At first they were shy, exchanging pleasantries but holding back in a way that decidedly would not make a good TV movie. I ordered in sandwiches from Angie’s Deli downstairs, then found an excuse to leave them alone. When I peeked through the office video cam an hour later, they were sitting close, talking earnestly. I ordered up dessert. And when they emerged an hour after that, they were holding hands. After they’d left, I felt lonely for my own relatives.

  Mick was out somewhere on a case. John didn’t answer any of his phones. Sister Charlene, I knew, was overseas and probably in lengthy conferences with bankers and venture capitalists. Sister Patsy answered her cellular but said she’d have to call me back; she was supervising the installation of a pizza oven at her restaurant in Napa County.

  Who else? Robin Blackhawk, my half sister in law school at UC Berkeley? No, she was in Cozumel for a long-deserved vacation. Saskia Blackhawk, my birth mother, had told me she’d be in Washington, DC, for the week. Ma, my adoptive mother, was jurying an art show in Mendocino County and hadn’t left a number. Of course, there was my birth father, Elwood Farmer.

  After three rings he answered at his home on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. I started babbling about solving the cold case and telling my client who she was, as I’d been hired to do.

  “Relax, my daughter,” he said. And then added a variation of the first phrase he’d ever delivered to me, “Wait a moment, until you’ve assembled your thoughts.”

  I waited and assembled. I could hear Elwood’s patient breathing.

  Finally I said, “You know, Elwood,” then corrected myself, using the name he now preferred I call him, “Father, a lot of the things that I’m required to do in my work don’t make me feel proud. In fact, some of them are downright distasteful.”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “Well, today I did something that makes me proud. I reunited a sister and brother who had been lost to each other since they were quite young.” Then I proceeded to tell him about the case.

  “This should be no surprise to you,” he said when I’d finished. “It’s what you did when you located your mother and your half brother and sister and me. Along with us and your adoptive relatives, you’ve created a whole new family. Be glad of it, and depend on it, as we depend on you.”

  Please turn the page for a preview of Marcia Muller’s new Sharon McCone mystery

  SOMEONE ALWAYS KNOWS

  Coming in July 2016

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 5

  1:05 p.m.

  Ted buzzed me. “You’re not going to like this.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You and Hy have a visitor. Gage Renshaw.”

  My breath caught and my pulse elevated. “…Gage—that can’t be! Hy and I assumed he died years ago.”

  “But you never received conclusive proof of it.”

  “No, but it’s been years since he disappeared. Knowing Gage, he would’ve turned up to devil us long before this. Are you sure it’s him?”

  “Turn on your surveillance cam and take a look.”

  I touched the switch. The grainy picture on the monitor—not the best we should have bought—showed the reception desk; I moved the cursor to take in the rest of the room.

  The figure slumped on the sofa was Gage Renshaw all right. Older, more rumpled than I remembered him, but still with that jet-black hair with a white shock hanging down over his Lincolnesque forehead.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  “What should I do with him?” Ted asked. “Throw him off the roof garden.”

  “Come on, Shar, this is serious. He’s smarmy and obnoxious as ever, and he’s demanding to see both you and Hy.”

  I asked him to show Renshaw in.

  Up close he looked even seedier than he had on the monitor. When he shambled into my office I noted that his hair was unbarbered and the large white shock that hung over his fore- head was greasy, and that he hadn’t shaved today. His clothing, khakis and a blue shirt, were rumpled and worn. His beat-up leather flight jacket I could understand: both Hy and I had ones like it; the more years you’re a pilot, the more evidence of your prowess you want to exhibit, and—for whatever reason—a disreputable flight jacket is part of the mystique.

  He spread his hands wide and said, “Here you see me in all my resurrected glory.” The raspy catch in his voice from smoking too much had worsened. Then he plunked himself down in one of the chairs that faced my desk and propped his feet on its edge. Yes, he did have a broken and badly knotted shoelace, and the heels and soles were worn down.

  Hy took the other chair, and I retreated to mine. “So, Gage,” Hy said, “long time.”

  “You bet.”

  “What’ve you been doing with yourself?”

  “This and that.” With an annoyed gesture he pushed the shock of white hair off his forehead.

  “How come you haven’t been in touch?”

  “No need to be.” Then he looked around and added, “Nice operation you’ve got here.”

  “We like it,” I said.

  “Bringing in the big bucks. Nice house in the Marina, nice place on the Mendo coast. And Hy, I hear you’ve still got the ranch. Still got a plane too. And this firm has one of those CitationJets, if you need to get where you’re going in a hurry.”

  “Where’d you get all this information?” Hy asked.

  “You’re a fine one to question me. We learned at the feet of the same father.”

  “What does that mean?” Hy asked.

  “Father Mammon. He taught us the lure of the buck.”

  Hy’s expression told me he had no patience for that kind of nonsense. He said, “What do you want, Gage?”

  “What do I want?” He paused, rubbing his stubbled chin as if in thought. “What does Gage want? Well, at the moment he doesn’t rightly know. Why don’t you show me around this place?”

  “It’s off-limits to anybody but qualified personnel.” “You were always big on security, Ripinsky.”

  “It’s paid off for me.”

  “For you, maybe.” He stroked his chin again. “Not for me.” Pause. “What do I want? Not an in with this agency, for sure. No action here. You’ve turned what was a great outfit into a bunch of wimpy yes-men. You still have the training camp down south? The safe houses?”

  RI has always maintained various fully staffed dwellings throughout the country to provide for clients at risk. These range from pricey homes and condos to modest suburban tract houses to sleazy motels. I’d had the dubious privilege of hiding out in one of the worst in San Francisco, a former hot sheet motel near the Great Highway.

  Hy said, “We have a number of safe houses, yes. We still own the camp, but we don’t use it much any more.”

  The training camp is comprised of fifty-some acres, an airstrip, and a few classrooms and housing near El Centro in the Imperial Valley. It was originally used for teaching operatives and clients the tools of their trade: self-defense, evasionary driving tactics, firearms skills, hand-to-hand combat. I’d been there only once, and encountered a horrible situation that had nearly cost Hy and me our lives. If I could help it, I’d never go back.

  “Yeah,” Renshaw said, “it looked kind of dead when I drove by there on my way up here. Where you sending the new ops now?”

  “We outsource the training.”

  “Still, you oughta keep the place up. There’re weeds growing t
hrough the asphalt on the runway. And the buildings look like shit.”

  I asked, “Where were you driving up from, Gage?” “South.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “It’s all you’re getting.”

  I noted the word up on a legal pad. Renshaw glanced curiously at me, but didn’t ask what I’d written.

  “You want to buy the camp? We’re putting it up for sale soon,” Hy said. “You could start your own driver-training and stunt school.”

  “Ha. No way.”

  “Why not? You above all that now?”

  They were likely to get off on an unnecessary and unproductive tangent, so I said, “Since you’re so disparaging of the firm, Gage, and not legally entitled to any sort of compensation”—God, that was what I hoped to hear from Hank later!—“just why did you come here?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I can’t articulate it.”

  “Try; I’ve never known you to be at a loss for words.” “But I am.” He spread his upturned hands wide.

  “Then why show up at all, unannounced, after so many years?”

  “Maybe I’m sentimental, just wanted to catch up on old times.”

  “Well, it’s been great, but…” I stood up.

  Renshaw stood too. “Now that you’ve mentioned it, though, there just might be something I want from you old pals.” He chuckled and then started for the door. “You folks’ll be hearing from me soon, you betcha.”

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Tell Me Who I Am

  An Excerpt from Someone Always Knows

  Newsletter

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  Excerpt from Someone Always Knows copyright © 2016 by Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  Cover design by Crush Design

  Cover art Royalty free/Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Cover design of Someone Always Knows by Crush Creative

  Cover photography of Someone Always Knows by Chad Ehlers

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  ISBN 978-1-4555-9469-6

  E3-20160324-DA-PC