The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(78)

“Good to know.”

“That’s it?” he said.

Then I told him what I was always telling my high school players.

“Do your job.”

We got back late on Sunday night from Seattle, having been fogged in for a few hours. The next morning, I drove over to the Flood Building, on Market Street, where my brother Jack had rented office space for Wolf.com.

His website had spent the past few days running with the story about Cantor and me, even circling back to Ryan Morrissey’s sleepover at my house, doing everything possible to make me sound like either a woman of extremely easy virtue or perhaps a bigger menace to society than the late John Gotti.

The Flood Building was a twelve-story high-rise that despite having undergone several makeovers had stood for more than a hundred years at the corner of Market and Powell. Now the San Francisco landmark housed what I considered a modern form of media whorehouse: Wolf.com.

I took the elevator up to the tenth floor and entered a loftlike space that was big enough to hold a dozen desks. I spotted Seth Dowd in a corner, phone to his ear, typing away.

He nodded at me in greeting. I offered him my most dazzling smile and gave him the finger.

Jack had a glassed-in office that faced Market. His door was closed. I could see that he was talking on the phone but walked right in anyway without knocking.

He put the phone down when he saw me, stood up, and said, “If you take a swing at me this time, Sis, I want to warn you, I’m swinging back.”

“At least it won’t be the kind of sucker punch you threw at Danny.”

“He had it coming. You might forgive and forget. I’m not that guy.”

He sat back down, almost impatiently, and said, “What do you want?”

I sat down across from him.

“I want to tell you a story.”

“We’re always on the lookout for good stories at Wolf.com. What’s this one about?”

“About my going to see Dad on his boat the night he died,” I said.

I saw genuine surprise on his face.

“You were there?”

“Right before you were,” I said.





Ninety-Three



“I ASSUME THIS IS an off-the-record conversation,” Jack said.

“Said a brother to his sister.”

“Is it off the record or not?”

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?”

“I’ve got a better question,” he said. “Did your boyfriend ask you to wear a wire?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You’re right.”

“And you know what?” he said. “I frankly don’t care if you’re recording this or not. I didn’t kill him.” There was a familiar smug look on his face. “Should I speak louder?”

He leaned back and folded his arms, put his feet up on his desk.

“And, by the way, why are we even having this conversation this much after the fact?”

“Because I’m sick of you and everybody else in this office treating me like a criminal,” I said. “That’s why.”

“Get over it.”

“You were there after I was there, even though the only two people who know that are sitting in this room.”

“Did Cantor send you?” he said.

“He doesn’t know that either one of us was at the boat. And he doesn’t know that I came here to see you. All he knows is that Dad came to my house the night before.”

I could see that I had surprised my brother again.

“You told anybody who’d listen after he died that you hadn’t seen him since you walked away,” Jack said.

“I lied. Family trait. Like blue eyes.”

He shook his head, almost sadly, from side to side.

“You’ve never been any better than the rest of us. The only one who thought so was the great Joe Wolf.”

There was a knock on the door. Seth Dowd poked his head in.

“Not now,” Jack said.

Dowd closed the door and walked away.

“I am curious about one thing. What are you hoping to accomplish by coming here?”

“To get you off my back once and for all,” I said.

“Not happening. And why would I? Because you think you have some kind of leverage with me now? You don’t. The only person who can put me on that boat is you. If it ever came to it, it would be your word against mine.”

“Cantor likes me better,” I said.

“Obviously.”

I grinned.

“What’s so funny?”

“We’ve got something on each other,” I said. “Just like when we were kids.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Jack said again. “I hated him. But not enough to kill him and risk going down for it no matter how much better my life would get with him out of the way.”

“You nearly killed him once.”

“He deserved it that time,” Jack said. “And if you ask me, he deserved somebody finishing the job this time.”

I stared at him. The older he got, the more he reminded me of our father. A lot of it was in the eyes. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Joe Wolf had gotten his way in the end after a lifetime of trying to toughen up his children. Jack had turned out to be as mean as he was.