Embarcadero Station
Epilogue

Copyright© 2011 by A.A. Nemo

I sat and watched the tops of the clouds grow orange and pink as the sun came up behind the Gulfstream G650 business jet as we cruised above 50,000 feet. I turned from the window and smiled at the sleeping form in the large horizontal sleeper seat next to me. She was so bundled in the blankets I could only make out her shape. I didn't need to see her to know she was beautiful and she loved me. I was a lucky man.

The new Gulfstream belonged to Mr. T. J. Tan, a billionaire and long time client. My sleeping companion and I were the only passengers and we were bound for Singapore where T.J. would meet us and the new forty-seven million dollar addition to his jet fleet. When T. J. found out I was heading his way he graciously offered us a ride on the delivery flight. The beautiful blue and white aircraft had flown from the factory in Savannah Georgia and stopped for us in San Francisco. It could fly non stop to Singapore from California and it had every luxury amenity, and a delivery crew of four.

This was part business trip, but mostly a honeymoon. It was also a new beginning the two of us. From Singapore we would go on to Australia and New Zealand for a month and then make our way back across the Pacific via Fiji and Tahiti and Hawaii. I wanted nothing more than to make her as happy as she made me.

It had been almost two years since the disastrous day I had returned from my trip to Taipei to discover my wife was an alcoholic and very close to being addicted to cocaine, and worse, her mental state had declined to the point that she was bent on suicide. Her alcohol addiction and her mental illness – and that was what it was, caused her to fall prey to an unscrupulous partner at her law firm. During those days my life and Sarah's life had been turned upside down and I was on an emotional roller coaster. I hated Sarah and I loved Sarah. I was also nagged by guilt for not doing more to get her into treatment. She had resisted all my attempts to even discuss it and of course as our marriage spiraled downward the hostility and absence of real affection took its toll. I consider myself a smart guy but when you are in a failing relationship it chips away at your soul and soon you find yourself trying not to care or simply deluding yourself that the other person will one day miraculously return to the loving caring person you used to be married to. With Sarah that was not to be. I knew something was wrong but recognizing the fact that she was clinically depressed was beyond me. And the fact she was finding solace in alcohol, drugs and risky sexual behavior was beyond anything I could imagine.

On top of that I discovered afterwards that Sarah had become incredibly jealous of my work with Trisha Nielson-Ryan. She had never forgotten that I had been in love with Trisha many years before, and she with me. In her deluded mental state Sarah had convinced herself we were having an affair.

Fortunately Sarah made a rapid physical recovery. Her mental state took longer and it was difficult for me to help her. Of course I made sure she had the best medical care and paid for her stay at the Redwood, but emotionally I was unable or unwilling to muster the courage to do all the things her therapist recommended. For awhile I could hardly stand to be in the same room with her for any length of time. Had I not witnessed her self-destructive meltdown that Sunday morning – my wife dressed like a hooker, and heard the phone calls from her co-workers, and seen the drugs, I might have been able to join her, as she requested, for those months of therapy. But those images were burned into my brain and the hurt I had suffered while she caused our marriage to disintegrate meant that for a long time I couldn't face her. Her betrayal was certainly the abandonment I had subconsciously feared all these years since she threw me over for what I considered a frivolous quest in high school.

During the time of Sarah's destructive behavior I became a hard man, or I should say returned to being a hard man. My marriage to Sarah and the raising of our children had mellowed me and taken the edge off, but the hardness I had picked up in the Marines always lurked under the surface. I had learned to kill and had become a master at it from long and short range. As I left the Corps a shrink told me that my problem wasn't that I enjoyed killing and felt no remorse, but the fact I felt nothing at all. The old Marine Corps saying that "the only thing I feel when I kill is recoil" pretty much summed it up. It was my job and I did it well.

So I arranged to have Greg Modine killed and Hal Jones beaten. Hal was damned lucky and the only reason he was spared was that he had a family. That rainy Sunday while Sarah was unconscious I had easily accessed the law firm's downtown San Francisco offices. The electronic tools provided by Steven allowed me to move about unobserved and undisturbed. In Greg's office I uncovered a pharmacy of illegal drugs and on his computer the photos that were used to blackmail Sarah and other members of the firm especially a number of young female employees. He really was a piece of work and the world became a better place without his slimy presence. His computer also showed me how the corruption permeated the highest levels of the firm. I downloaded all his files then destroyed his computer with a doomsday virus. A less virulent but persistent virus took down the office network but not before I got the access to it. The fact the law firm had no computer access for a couple of weeks was very hard on its bottom line.

It does help to have friends in high and low places and my anonymous tip was quickly corroborated by Sarah and some of the young victims and search warrants were quickly served.

The large amount of cocaine found in Greg's office opened up the can of worms that included his dealings with the East Bay drug gangs and he was hung out to dry as was the law firm. Of course the amounts of recreational drugs found at the firm during the searches implicated a lot of people and there was no shortage of employees who were willing to testify. I knew once all the information got out about drug use and trading cocaine for sex and the coercive tactics that were being used on some of the younger female staff the firm would certainly not survive, at least in its present prestigious form.

Of course I was a suspect, maybe not a prime suspect, but a suspect nonetheless when Greg disappeared. He had plenty of people looking for him, upset about his testimony before a grand jury and worried about what he might further disclose. Lots of bad people wanted him to disappear. I wanted to do the job myself but Steve talked me out of it and when Greg went missing I was on a plane to Seoul. No details were provided but I fantasized that pieces of his body now made up part of the foundation of the new Trans Bay Terminal. Actually he probably ended up dumped in the Pacific many miles off shore. Yes, the world was a better place without him.

That pesky FBI guy, Special Agent Cameron, seemed to have decided I was the primary suspect despite the fact I had a rock solid alibi. The first time we met he appeared at my door, "just to talk". I told him I hardly knew Modine but if he was dead and buried I would not mourn his passing, or that of any member of the firm. I wished them all a speedy transit to hell. The next interview was at the FBI office and this time I brought my attorney. Cameron had subpoenaed all my financial records – probably looking for a payout to a hit man or perhaps just looking for dirt. I also knew those records would be going to the IRS and that I could look forward to years of audits. I considered it a small price to pay for the vengeance but still I had hired Sarah's new boss, Helene Connors.

Helene was a very attractive forty-something, but hard as nails and a tough defense attorney who made it clear to the FBI that I had already provided a statement and all my records and unless they were going to charge me, to stop the harassment. I liked her. I also liked the fact she never asked me about my relationship with her employee, Sarah.

I knew Helene's ex, Michael Connors. He was a client. I had won the contract when his PI firm upgraded all their systems, plus their maintenance contract. It wasn't a big job, but I thought it was important. I didn't know what split them up but I did know Michael's business partner was his new wife and she was a knockout and he'd started a new family with her.

It was our kids who brought Sarah and I back together in the months after the divorce was final. Of course we had to get together for the big things like Nicole's college graduation. Then there were dinner out nights when Matt was home from school. Most times he would stay with me at my condo in San Francisco and since Sarah worked only a few blocks away it was logical to invite her along for dinner. Nicole made a point of taking the BART over from Berkeley. During nice weather the four of us would sit at an outside table at one of the restaurants along the Embarcadero or at the Ferry Building. Sometimes we would stroll the Embarcadero after dinner and I would have Sarah and Nicole on my arms. We looked like a happy family. These dinners became a weekly event and I found myself looking forward to them.

Over the months Matt had began to warm to his mother, of course he never knew about the sex and drugs, he just bought into the "mental illness" and their relationship reestablished itself over a year or so. At first he was pretty gun-shy around his mother, afraid she might revert to the harridan he had experienced in high school. But soon things were pretty much back to normal. Of course with him at college, his attention was being focused elsewhere. I knew he was puzzled why I made little effort to get us back together. I think he figured after the hurt I'd suffered it would take longer, but that I would eventually come around.

 
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