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Daniel Chalmers nursed a Guinness and looked at his watch. The arrangement always stood, even if one or both couldn’t make it. Midnight, the pub with the seediest reputation, the first to arrive orders two pints and waits up to one hour. It was twenty minutes into his hour wait.
A relic of time, the Sociable Goat Pub hailed from the late 1800s. Not old enough to gain notoriety from its age, nor kitschy enough to draw a hip crowd looking for the “newest old thing,” the dingy bar was just an old, tattered, worn dive that drew in a few regular patrons that weren’t welcome elsewhere. It was dimly lit and reeked of a hundred years of cigarette smoke and spilled alcohol.
In the corner, a rerun of a football match flickered on an old black and white television. Two young blokes argued drunkenly over whether the Queens Park Rangers were truly that bad or if it was just an off season. A man in a tweed suit was face-down on the bar, a limp hand still grasping a half-gone beer. The barkeep sponged off the well-worn wooden bar with a dirty rag, avoiding disturbing his drunken patron. In a booth across from the bar, an overly painted woman dueled her tongue with her current client as he pawed at the hemline of her skirt.
Daniel had spent a lot of his youth in places such as this, mingling with people such as those. But he’d worked his entire life to improve his station, to be more than just a street urchin begging for coins. Having never been tied down to any one place nor any one person allowed him freedoms most work-a-day fools never considered.
He huffed a mirthless breath and took a swig of his warm drink. No, he wasn’t a work-a-day fool. He was just a fool. An old, sick…dying…fool. He’d die alone, mourned by few, remembered by fewer.
He coughed. Automatically he pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and covered his mouth. The cough was a ruinous act that had gotten progressively hard to cover up and harder to recover from. How he’d managed to suppress it for most of this last escapade amazed him. As the coughs subsided, he gasped for air. He didn’t need to look at the cloth to know he’d produced blood. It was normal now, expected. He wiped his lips and stowed the used item in his other pocket.
His watch now read twelve thirty.
Doubtful his companion would show up tonight, he let his mind wander back to the one time he’d had a chance at a different life. If only he’d grabbed that opportunity to be that work-a-day fool on the small Irish potato farm. If only he’d hung on with every bit of his strength to her.
But no, he needed that one additional score to get that extra money. He knew he shouldn’t leave, knew something could go wrong with his caper, knew she’d need him so very much in the next few months. Because he knew she was pregnant.
She’d not said anything to him yet, but she’d become nervous around her father – the farmer who employed Daniel as a summer hand – and she was on her knees in the church praying endlessly. Good Catholic girls didn’t come up pregnant in Ireland in the 1950s. It was scandalous and her family would disown her if he didn’t do right by her. So, he would do right. Get some money, buy a ring, marry the girl, raise a family, work on the farm. All very…domestic.
It terrified him.
He’d made love to her one final time, staring into her bright blue eyes, stroking her dark hair, holding her as she cried and refused to explain why. When she’d fallen asleep, he kissed her lips and slipped away from the hay loft. Off to make his…their…fortune.
He never saw her again.
“Daniel?”
With a jolt, he returned to the present to see those eyes from the past staring down at him.
“Harry!” He exclaimed, hearing the roughness of his voice caused by both coughing and too many sad old memories. He cleared his throat and indicated the pint of Guinness across from him. “Given the late hour, I feared you had abandoned me.” He made sure his tone was as light as usual.
“Never. Just…delayed a bit.” Daniel noted Harry’s finger-brushed hair, his rumpled clothing, the lack of a tie. He also saw the way Harry ducked his gaze. Just as she did in those final days when she didn’t want to tell him the important news.
Daniel then knew exactly what had delayed Harry’s arrival. A certain brown-eyed American girl who had an annoying habit of trying to steal his protégé had finally given him the ultimate moment.
Harry carefully took the seat across from him, a wince wrinkling his brow as he twisted his abs to scooch into the booth.
“Your injury still hurting?” Daniel asked. “I thought it was healing well.”
“Nothing to worry about. No infection. Bandages freshly changed.” He took a deep drink from the glass, dropping the subject.
“Linda help you with that?” Daniel needled.
Harry frowned at him. “Laura.”
“Linda, Lisa, Laura,” he said with an indifferent shrug.
He’d seen Harry spend time carefully wooing a woman only to leave her soon after the consummation. Laura was something entirely different. She was, Daniel surmised, The One. And he was damned glad Harry had found someone that important. He hoped the boy would stand firm and not follow Daniel’s lonely path.
That said, there was no way he was going to let on that he had anything but disdain for the pesky Miss Holt or their relationship.
“Are you ready to help me with one last hurrah before I retire?” He pulled a news clipping from his breast pocket. Some nonsense about blood diamonds and Angola and warlords. Nothing either of them would dare take part in due to extreme danger and even more extreme violence. But he’d needed something to base his next flight of fancy on, something to offer Harry as a lure away from Los Angeles and life as a detective. And this was the only article he came across in The Guardian that day that mentioned gems or art.
Harry didn’t read the article, barely glanced at the headline. He just shook his head and chuckled.
Daniel re-folded the clipping and tucked it away. “Then what will you do, my boy? You’re free as the breeze. All your old identities are gone. You can start anew. Be anyone. Go anywhere.”
The excitement built in his own heart, remembering how he felt taking on new personas throughout his own history. But it was that wanderlust that lost him his would-be wife and child. If only he’d stopped to see what was in front of him instead of always looking so far forward.
Harry reached into his jacket and extracted a small blue item. He placed it on the table between them.
Daniel grinned. “A new passport? Already?” He picked it up, examined the exterior, fingered the embossing, felt the texture. “Excellent quality. And who are you to be next?” He thought for a moment to come up with a couple Humphrey Bogart characters. “Philip Queeg? Joseph Barnett?” He opened to the identification page. “Remington Steele…”
Though he was thrilled with the decision, Daniel fixed a pout to his lips. “Honestly, Harry. It’s been years. Yet you’re sticking with this particular charade? With that woman?”
“Her name is Laura, Daniel. I’d appreciate if you’d remember to use it.”
“My boy, I’ve never seen you so adamant about a woman before. You’ve never stayed in one place longer than a handful of months. Even as a youth, I could barely keep you at the villa for a month without you running off.”
“But I always came back.”
“That you did.” Daniel smiled. “So, tell me, how did you procure such a quality piece of craftsmanship in such a short time?”
Harry took the passport from his hands and returned it to his pocket. “Laura gave it to me. But I suspect it has your fingerprints all over it.”
“Of course it does. I just touched it.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m saying that you obtained it from one of your friends and gave it to her.”
Daniel raised his eyebrows in shock. “You can’t honestly think that I would help her to sink her talons into you even further? Why in heaven’s name would I do that?”
He leaned back in his seat. “That’s the part I can’t figure out. Why would you do that?”
Harry stared at him, and Daniel knew he was studying him, using the tricks Daniel had taught him over the years to read people’s body language.
Daniel laughed. “Do you take me for a of sentimental, romantic fool? Trying to orchestrate some sort of happy ending for a former student?”
“Not a happy ending for me,” Harry said, his eyes narrowing, “but for you.”
“How could this possibly be a happy ending for me? Losing you to…Laura? Hardly what I’d been battling for since you met her.”
“That’s just it,” said Harry, “I can’t put the pieces together. But you did help her obtain the passport.”
He sputtered, “I did no such thing!”
“She told me, Daniel.”
He stared at Harry for too long. Further denials were useless.
“What’d she say?” he finally asked.
“Said that you handed her an envelope and said that if the Earl of Claridge thing didn’t work out, you figured she’d want it.”
“And she did, I see.”
“It was presented as gift from her and Mildred. But when I started asking how she, the law-abiding, by-the-rules Laura created a fake passport in a day, she told me it was you.”
Daniel chuckled. Unfortunately, it caught in his throat and started him coughing. The fit was violent, and the fresh handkerchief didn’t contain all the blood this time. Harry provided his own silk pocket square to help clean up. After regaining his breath, Daniel wrapped the soiled cloths together and put them in his pocket.
Harry’s expression was one of grave concern and seriousness. “I’ve never asked this of you before, Daniel, but I want the truth. All of it. No matter how bad.”
“Truth,” he said. The word grated on his very soul. He’d avoided facing it his whole life, but he was too near the end now and he needed to say things to the one person in the world that mattered to him. “Truth is I’m dying.”
A small noise came out of Harry’s throat. “Of what?” he eventually asked.
“A combination of things. A bit of a toss-up as to which will get me first.”
“How long?”
He shook his head. “Months maybe? A year at most.”
“What are you doing for it?”
“A pharmacy’s worth of pills. None of which make any difference at this point.”
When he looked, there were tears in Harry’s eyes. “Oh, Daniel…”
He sighed. It was now or never. And it would be so easy to just never reveal the truth. “I have only one regret,” he eventually admitted.
“What’s that?”
He looked into those blue eyes and felt tears spring to his own at the bitter reminder of what he’d destroyed before it’d even started. “My family.”
Harry shook his head. “I didn’t know you had a family.” A beat later, “Let me help you find them. Laura and I…it’s what we do.”
“I know where they are,” he said, swallowing. He steeled himself to push forward, for he’d not said her name aloud in decades. Saying her name would make it real again, expose the raw pain he still felt when he allowed thoughts of her to cross his mind. “Gabrielle Murphy. She was the most exquisite woman I’ve ever met. The one person who could have set me on the straight and narrow path permanently, had I not been so reckless in my youth.
“But instead of being sensible and marrying her, I decided to get involved in a risky heist. I was caught and I spent three years in prison. When I was released, I went back for her. But she was gone.”
“Where’d she go?” Harry asked.
Daniel dragged in as deep a breath as he could. “She was pregnant when I left. She died giving birth.”
Harry frowned. “Did you know she was expecting when you left her?”
“She hadn’t said anything, but I suspected.” He looked into those blue eyes again. “No, we’re talking truth here. I knew. She hadn’t said, but I knew. And I took the risk anyway.”
“Daniel…” Harry growled.
He forged ahead, ignoring Harry’s disapproval of his actions. He had to get to the real heart of the matter. The part he’d purposefully hidden for twenty years, because he knew the news would break the man sitting across from him. Potentially end their relationship completely. “I spent the subsequent years searching for my son.”
“The child lived?”
“Yes,” Daniel said as he raised his eyes up to meet Harry’s directly, “you did.”
The play of emotions across Harry’s face was brief, skipping to rage in an instant. Daniel had expected as much. Muscles in Harry’s cheeks flexed, his shoulders rose and fell with each ragged breath.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, Daniel, but now’s not the time…”
“I’m not playing, son.”
Harry jerked his gaze away and turned his body toward the edge of the booth. “You were going to die and never tell me, weren’t you?”
“Had I not had a bloody coughing fit in front of you, yes, likely I would not have told you. At least, not until after…”
Harry scowled and poked an accusatory finger at him. “You’re a coward.”
“I am,” he agreed. “So cowardly that the letter I have written for delivery after my death isn’t even addressed to you, but to Laura. She could decide if…”
“I can’t believe you!” Harry roared, the outburst gaining the attention of the few remaining bar patrons. He stood up and paced, clearly uncaring everyone was watching them now. “You expect Laura to carry your burdens? You don’t even like her!”
“On the contrary. Not only has she proved herself a worthy opponent, but I trust her. And you, above all people, know how rare it is to truly trust someone. I suspect we both trust her with your life.”
Him speaking in such an unexpected way about Laura seemed to do the trick, and Harry sat back down, still agitated, but seemingly less angry.
He gritted the words out through clenched teeth, “Why did you never say anything for twenty years?”
“You were an angry young man. Had I told you back then, what would you have done?”
Harry twisted his head. “Probably something destructive.”
“Exactly. Better to be a mentor than a father. That way I was someone you could look up to while I earned your respect, rather than have you run away into heaven knows what kind of trouble.”
Sighing, Harry turned back toward him. “I wondered all my life what my father was like.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
He shook his head. “I’m not disappointed. You educated me, cared for me, molded me into a responsible man. I wanted you to be my father because nobody ever cared about me like you did.”
“Do,” he corrected. “I do care about you.” Hesitantly, he reached across the table. They never made physical contact, except for a rare handshake or a brief hug in greeting. To simply touch his son in a fatherly way was unknown to him. He covered Harry’s hand with his and was gratified when he didn’t pull away. “I’ve never said it before, but I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment I suspected you existed. And I’m an idiot for not telling you how I felt long before now.”
His son laughed. Daniel raised an eyebrow. He expected rejection or anger or embarrassment, but not that Harry would find humor in his confession.
“Thirty-two years with nothing,” Harry explained, “then I get two people in one night saying they love me.”
Daniel relaxed. “I should have told you many times over.”
Harry swallowed hard. “And I should have told you.” He covered Daniel’s hand with his free one. “I love you. Even when I was an untamed teen rebelling against your guidance, I loved you for giving a damn about me.”
They sat, holding hands for a few moments longer, until Harry leaned back, breaking contact. “I have to ask…what’s my real name?”
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“Your birth certificate had no other names aside from your mother’s. It didn’t list me and you were simply ‘male child.’” He saw the crestfallen look on his son’s face. “I suppose…you could choose Murphy? Or Chalmers?”
He shook his head. “No, I can’t be Murphy.” Daniel shot him a perplexed look and Harry shrugged. “A certain former employee would never let me live that down.”
“You told me to call you Harry,” Daniel said. “Apparently you have some affinity for that one?”
“It’s Bogart from To Have and Have Not.”
“I should have known.”
“Would you be offended if I stuck with Remington Steele?”
“Not at all,” Daniel confirmed.
It seemed to dawn on Remington then. “That’s why you got the passport in Remington Steele’s name. You knew I’d stay with Laura.”
“I was fairly certain you wouldn’t be as foolish as I was when the right woman was next to you.” If he could go back in time, Daniel would stay in that hay loft with Gabrielle. He would face her father’s wrath for getting his daughter in a family way. He’d happily endure a shotgun wedding. Then he’d spend the rest of his life contentedly married to her as they raised their son together. But he couldn’t turn back the clock. Instead, he could only guide his son to the future. “I’m truly happy you’ve found Laura. Now, don’t be like your father. Don’t ever let go of her.”
“Never.”
“Go now.” He shooed at Remington. “Get back to her and let an old, sick man get some rest.”
Blue eyes studied him again. “Our flight isn’t until six tomorrow night. Laura and I will meet you for lunch beforehand.” He glanced around the seedy bar. “Someplace much nicer.”
Daniel nodded. “Tomorrow,” he agreed. But he knew he wouldn’t show up. When he left this place, he was headed directly to his villa in France. Months was an exaggeration. A year was a flat-out lie. He’d forgone treatments and time was very short now. He’d finally said all he needed to say to his son. He wanted to die at home, finally at peace with himself.
“See you tomorrow then.” Remington slid out of the booth and stood.
Daniel also got to his feet and pulled him into a tight hug. “Always remember that I love you.” He felt him nod against his shoulder.
“I love you, too.” Remington chuckled. “She’s right. It does get easier, the more you say it.”
Daniel pulled back and patted his son on the shoulders. “Then I suggest you go say it to her again and again.”
He nodded and smiled. “Might even try one out on Mildred. She definitely deserves it after all she’s been through this week.” He stepped away. “See you tomorrow…father.”
Daniel said, “Good bye, son.”
END