“Just what I said. I begged him to come home, to stay at home, to clear out of that apartment and come back home. But your brother just doesn’t listen to me. Now he’s not answering his phone and the parish office doesn’t know where he is either. He didn’t say Mass this morning, Reuben, can you imagine? They called
“Reuben, persuade Phil to come down here. Jim listens to your father. Jim listens to you. But Jim simply never listens to me.”
Reuben was throwing things into the suitcase. “I’ll find him. He’s out of his mind over this, and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Phil was in the oak forest when Reuben found him, walking and talking with Hockan Crost. Hockan excused himself to give them privacy and Phil heard the story before he said a word.
“How can I go down there, Reuben?” he asked. “Look, the change came over me last night. Oh, don’t worry about it. I was with Lisa and she called Margon immediately. It was past midnight. Wow. Have I got a story to tell you—.”
“Then you can’t go,” said Reuben.
“Exactly. The change will come again tonight and nobody knows at what time. But that’s just part of the problem, and you know it. Look at me, son. What do you see?”
Phil was right. His hair was fuller, thicker, and the strawberry blond streaks in it were most lustrous and prominent and he had the physique of a man in his prime. His face still bore the stamp of his age, but his eyes, his expression, his movements—all had been beautifully altered, and Jim would see this at once. Grace would see it at once.
“You’re right,” said Reuben. “Jim’s crazed, obviously, and seeing you like this, well—.”
“Might just drive him right out of his mind,” said Phil. “You’ve got to go in without me. Try to get him to move back home. Or get him someplace decent, Reuben, where he can recover from all this. A nice hotel suite. Jim hasn’t taken a vacation in five years, and now this.”
After a quick call to Laura, who was in the town of Nideck working with Felix and several of the new merchants—and three unanswered calls to Jim’s cell—Reuben was on the road by noon.
He was almost to Marin County before he heard from Grace again.
“I’ve reported him missing,” said Grace, “but the police won’t do anything about it. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet. Reuben, I have never seen Jim like he was. You should have seen him when we told him this priest was dead. I mean he was silently coming unglued. He just walked out of the hospital without speaking to anyone and disappeared. Reuben, we’ve found his car is in the parking lot. He’s on foot.”
“Mom, he might have taken a cab somewhere. I’ll find him. I’ll be there in an hour and a half.”
He pulled off the road long enough to call Jim’s rectory, with no success, to ring the apartment where he got no answer, and to leave another message on Jim’s cell. “I’m practically to the Golden Gate Bridge. Please, please call me as soon as you can.”
He was in San Francisco, on his way up Lombard Street, not certain whether to go home first or to the hospital, when a text from Jim appeared in his phone.
“Huntington Park, Nob Hill. Tell no one.”
“Minutes away,” Reuben texted and immediately turned right. This was not the worst place to be meeting his brother by any means. There were three hotels on top of Nob Hill right on the park.
It was raining lightly but the traffic wasn’t bad. He reached the summit of the hill in five minutes and pulled at once into the Taylor Street public parking garage. Grabbing his suitcase, he sprinted across Taylor and into the park.
Jim was sitting alone on a bench with a briefcase on his lap. He was in full Roman collar and black clerics, and staring ahead of him as if he was in a trance. A light rain gave a sheen to the pathways and had speckled Jim’s clothes and hair with silver, but he did not seem to feel the rain or the sharp cold wind.
Reuben reached out and put a firm hand on his shoulder. Still Jim didn’t lift his head.
“Look, it’s effing freezing here,” Reuben said. “What about we get some coffee in the Fairmont?”
Jim looked up slowly as if waking from a dream. He didn’t say anything.
“Come on,” said Reuben, taking him firmly by the arm. “It will be warm in there. It will be nice.”
He was still mumbling platitudes and inanities as he guided Jim into the big, bustling, and always glamorous Fairmont lobby. All the elaborate Christmas decorations were gone, but the lobby was in a way always dressed for a holiday with its shining marble floor, gilt-framed mirrors, gold columns, and gold-etched ceiling.
“Tell you what,” Reuben said, moving towards the desk. “I’m going to get us a suite. Mom won’t let you go back to your old apartment, not without turning the town upside down—.”
“Don’t use your real name,” said Jim in a dull voice, without meeting Reuben’s eyes.
“What are you talking about? I have to. I have to show my ID.”
“Tell them not to reveal your real name,” said Jim in a half murmur. “And don’t tell anyone that we’re here.”
The desk was entirely cooperative. They had a fine two-bedroom suite with a beautiful view of the park and Grace Cathedral opposite. And they would not give Reuben’s real name to anyone. Of course they recognized him. They knew he was the famous reporter. They would be absolutely discreet. They registered him under the pseudonym Creighton Chaney, which he offered on the spot.
Jim was in a daze as they entered the parlor of the suite, eyes passing over the ornate fireplace and sumptuous furnishings as if nothing was penetrating, as if he were engaged in some deep inner contemplation from which he couldn’t quite wake. He sat down on the blue velvet sofa and stared at the gold-framed mirror above the mantel and then at Reuben as if he couldn’t make much sense of what was going on around him.
“I’ll call Mom,” said Reuben, “but I won’t tell her where we are.”
Jim didn’t answer.
“Mom, listen to me,” Reuben said into the phone. “I’m with Jim and I’ll call you as soon as I can.” He cut the call off at once.
Jim sat there, holding the briefcase, as he had on the park bench, staring at the gilded fireplace screen as if there were a fire in the grate when there was not.
Reuben settled into a gold velvet armchair to his left.
“I can’t imagine what you’re feeling,” he said, “to have something like this happen to a friend. Mom said you told the police everything you know, that they said they can’t do a thing.”
Jim didn’t respond.
“Do you have any idea who’s responsible? Mom said something about a drug dealer that you knew.”
Jim didn’t answer.
“Look, I know you don’t want to tell me. You don’t want me rushing in and making a meal out of the culprit. I get that. I’m here as your brother. Will it help to talk about what happened to your friend?”
“He wasn’t a friend,” said Jim in that same dull expressionless voice. “I didn’t even like him.”
Reuben didn’t know what to say. Then, “Well, I figure that’s confusing at a time like this, too.”
No response.
“I want to call Dad and tell him I’m with you,” Reuben said and he went into the bedroom on the right. It was as lavish as the parlor with an elaborately dressed king-size bed and a curved couch beneath the window. Surely Jim would be comfortable in these digs if he could persuade him to stay.
As soon as Phil answered, Reuben brought him up to speed. This was bad. He would go get Jim’s things from the apartment and stay with him tonight, if only Jim would allow. “He’s in shock,” said Reuben. “It’s like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’m not leaving him.”
“I talked to your mother. She’s in a rage that I’m not coming down there, and I’m giving her ridiculous excuses just like I’ve done all my life for not doing what she wants. Call me back later, no matter what.”
Reuben found Jim seated on the couch still, but he’d laid the briefcase beside him on the sofa.
When he asked about getting Jim’s things, Jim looked up again as if waking from a dream. “I don’t want you to go over there,” he said.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ve got a suitcase with me. I always overpack. I’ve got everything you need.” He went on talking, because he felt somehow this was better than not talking, reflecting on what this shock might have meant to Jim, this happening in his parish. And he said from his heart that he was so sorry, so very sorry about what happened to the young priest.
