“Maybe. Maybe. Look—it was that damned pension agreement that started all the trouble. Not all of it—that prize asshole, Jason, letting his crew bilk Paragon didn’t help any. But trying to keep the reversion secret—two men died over that. And when it comes out—the legal stuff’s clean, but it could keep us in court for a decade. I talked to Ben Loring at Paragon this morning. He’s willing to help restructure the agreement, buy out the annuity and refund the plan, if the local wants to vote on it. We’d take it out of U.S. Met and give it back to Ajax Insurance to manage.”

I felt my shoulders sag in relief. Mr. Contreras’s pension—all the guys in the local—had been worrying me all week. “Can you afford it? I thought most of the money was in Diamond Head junk.”

Dick nodded. “Loring’ll work something out. And Peter will have to agree to put up some Amalgamated Portage shares as collateral. He doesn’t want to, but he’ll come around in the end. It’ll be his only hope for a plea bargain.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know. I offered Leigh my resignation. He wouldn’t take it. He did agree that we didn’t need young Pichea in the firm anymore after this year: that should please you. But—I need a leave of absence from the law, and Leigh supported that—more because he doesn’t want me embarrassing the firm than for any other reason, but I’ll still be gone six months. If I join an ashram, I’ll let you know.”

I offered him a lift downtown to the train, but he said he needed to walk, to clear his head. I went downstairs with him.

He took my hand and held it between both of his. “We had some good times together, didn’t we, Vic? It wasn’t all fighting and contempt, was it?”

I suddenly remembered Dick going with me every weekend to stay with my dad when Tony was dying. I’d forgotten that in the curtain of bitterness I’d draped across the past, but Dick, orphaned at five, adored Tony, and wept openly at his grave.

“We had some important times together.” I squeezed his hand, then pulled mine away. “Now you’d better go.”

He left without looking back.

54

A Long Way from Home

The next four weeks were a long, slow period of legal discovery, of hiring people to fix up Mrs. Frizell’s house, of finding someone to help her once she got home, and arranging with the state to pick up the tab. Carol Alvarado did a lot of the legwork for that.