Chapter 6: Twenty Questions

Gallivan Marine had its headquarters in a brick building on the Oakland estuary, with a tugboat tied up outside the lobby windows.

I had been in the Tiburon house six days.

On the third night I'd let myself lie down on the quilt in the room at the end of the hall.

I hadn't opened the dresser.

I had no plan except not to be a guest in my own life, so on the seventh morning I asked Brendan for a job.

"You're not working for us," he said.

"I'm not working for anyone yet," I said.

"I need to see how a big thing is run when it isn't mine, so give me a chair at the back of one meeting."

He gave me a chair at the back of this one.

The conference room had a long table, a view of the cranes, and a very small wooden stool in the middle of the floor.

It was the stool Dad had used on the tug to reach the top shelf, the second brother told me.

It stood about as high as a footlocker.

At ten o'clock Lawson Bexley walked in with his leather folder and stopped.

Six large men sat on one side of the table in a row with their arms folded.

At the end sat Brendan, in a chair that was somehow bigger than the others.

"Mr. Bexley," Brendan said.

"Thanks for coming about the Pier Nine lease."

"Not at all," Lawson said.

He looked at the stool.

Then he looked at me in my chair at the back, and I watched him understand everything.

"Please," Brendan said. "Sit."

Lawson set his folder on the table, straightened it by an inch, and lowered all six feet three of himself onto a stool built for a boy.

His knees came up nearly to his chest.

He did not complain.

"The lease is fine," Brendan said, folding his hands.

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