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“The balance between Mike’s personal and professional life is well done.  It makes the characters relatable and provides realism to the story. Hot Shot is a very good legal thriller. Perhaps the best part is its satisfactory yet realistic ending.” – LJ Ryan, LJ’s Mystery Reviews

1
“WE HAVE A NEW CLIENT”

The twinkling Christmas lights strung along the pinewood bar reflected in the gregarious barkeep’s eyes. My uncle, Big John Dunleavy, spoke to me in a well-practiced brogue—even though he’d never set foot on the Emerald Isle. “What’ll it be, lad?”

“You’re off duty, Big John.”

“I’ve been running this dive for almost sixty years, Mikey. I’m always on duty.”

“Not tonight.” Although his grandson, Joey, had taken over the day-to-day operations a couple of years earlier, Big John still showed up every morning and stayed until last call. “Dunleavy’s isn’t a dive. It’s a neighborhood institution.”

“Give your favorite uncle a break.”

“I’m trying.” I leaned forward and shouted above the roar in the crowded saloon on Irving Street on the west side of San Francisco where the sun rarely peeked through the fog. Big John’s body and mind were as sound as ever, but his ears required a little boost from his hearing aids. “It’s your eighty-fifth birthday party. You get the night off.”

“Fine.” His jowls wiggled as he poured himself a pint of Guinness using the immense right hand that once hauled in passes when he was an all-city tight end at our alma mater, St. Ignatius. “I’ll be back at work first thing in the morning.”

“I wouldn’t expect otherwise.”

At ten-thirty p.m. on Sunday, December twenty-third, Big John’s pasty face rearranged itself into a satisfied smile as he tossed a dishtowel over his shoulder and scanned the festive room packed with well-wishers—many of whom had been regulars for decades. Over the years, he had adapted to changing times and tastes as his Irish and Italian customers moved to the suburbs and were replaced by second- and third-generation families from Chinatown. During the day, Dunleavy’s was now a gathering spot for the neighborhood’s seniors who sipped tea from white mugs and consumed Big John’s “Special Noodles,” a concoction he’d based on a family recipe provided by Mayor Ed Lee, who used to stop by a couple of times a week before he died of a heart attack at the Diamond Heights Safeway. The local cops and fire fighters still came in for Big John’s fish and chips.

I spoke directly into his better ear. “A lot of young people here tonight.”

“Millennials. Business went up almost thirty percent when I put in free WiFi. The tech kids love it. I have my own Facebook page and Twitter handle.”

You can’t stay in business for more than a half-century unless you’re adaptable. “There are trendier places.”

“We have a five-star rating on Yelp. Seems we’re viewed as one of the last ‘authentic’ pubs in the City.”

That’s true. “The kids come all the way out here for authenticity?”

“I don’t question their motives before I accept their cash, lad.”

Neither would I. “Where do they park?”

“They don’t. Driving is so last millennium. They take Uber and Lyft. Sometimes they even take the N-Judah. Public transit is hip again, too.”

The streetcar stopped a block from Dunleavy’s. “You okay with a younger crowd?”

“Absolutely. They’re well-behaved. They’re good tippers. And they spend most of their time texting. Besides, I have a long-standing policy of treating all paying customers equally. Money is money, Mikey.”

Yes, it is. “Your regulars don’t mind?”

“They like being around the kids, too. It makes them feel young again.”

It had become fashionable for Baby Boomers like me to bash Millennials like my kids, but I enjoyed their company—especially since my daughter and son were members of their tribe.

I walked around to the business side of the bar and put on a well-used apron. I had taken the helm of the watering hole countless times. So had my dad, a San Francisco cop who was married to Big John’s sister. And my older brother, Tommy, who was a star quarterback at St. Ignatius and Cal before he died in Vietnam. And my younger brother, Pete, who became a cop, and then a P.I. Pop had helped Big John build the bar three years before I was born. Thomas James Charles Daley, Sr.—who was Big John’s best friend—had been gone for twenty years. My mom had been gone almost ten. They would have enjoyed the party. Although he wouldn’t say it aloud, I knew that Big John missed them. And I did, too.

I took a moment to savor the ambiance. The mismatched tables were adorned with balloons. Behind the pool table, a Christmas tree stood between a Hanukkah menorah and a Kwanzaa kinara. For patrons of more secular and whimsical persuasions, Big John had situated a Festivus pole near the big-screen TV. Everybody was welcome at Dunleavy’s.

Big John smiled broadly as my twenty-year-old daughter, Grace, approached us. His phony Irish lilt became more pronounced. “Hello, darlin’. How’s my favorite great-niece?”

“Fine. Happy Birthday, Big John.”

“Thank you. I wasn’t sure that you would make it tonight.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it. I just drove up from L.A. Came straight here.”

“You still seeing that boy?”

“No.”

“Boys are like the N-Judah, honey. If you miss one, another one will come along soon enough.”

“May I use that line?”

“Absolutely.”

Grace Fernandez Daley was halfway through her senior year at USC. She was a dead ringer in appearance and temperament for her mother, who was sitting in a booth near the back door. Rosita Carmela Fernandez was my ex-wife and San Francisco’s Public Defender. She was also my boss. Grace was a film major who had lined up a post-graduation job at Pixar. In her spare time, she was running a wildly successful dating and sex-advice app for college students that she had modestly christened the ‘Love Goddess.’”

“How’s business?” Big John asked her.

“Excellent.”

“Everybody here reads your stuff.”

“Glad to hear it.”

He finally dropped the brogue. “What can we get you to drink, young lady?”

“Just water, Big John.”

“Can we offer you a beer?”

“I won’t turn twenty-one until next month.”

“As if you’ve never ordered a beer in a bar.”

“I don’t want you to get into trouble on your birthday.”

My uncle let out a throaty laugh. “You think somebody is going to arrest me? This room is full of cops and their spouses, kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. And, in a few cases, their mistresses. A couple of assistant chiefs are shooting pool. Your Grandpa Tom used to come here after work. Your Grandma Margaret wasn’t crazy about it, but at least she knew where he was. I served your father his first adult beverage at this very establishment—when he was fourteen.”

“Fifteen,” I interjected.

“I stand corrected. I taught him how to tend bar when he was seventeen. It wasn’t entirely legal, but the customers liked him, and it put a few bucks in his pocket to pay for college. Your dad is the head of the Felony Division of the P.D.’s Office. Your mom is the P.D. If I get arrested, my crackerjack legal team will take good care of me.”

Grace’s hoop-style earrings shimmered as she flashed a smile that looked just like her mother’s. “Do you have a Grapefruit Saison?”

I looked over at my daughter. “A what?”

Big John spoke up before she could answer. “She’s testing me, Mikey. It’s pilsner made by Holy Mountain Brewing in Seattle. It’s all the rage with my younger customers.” He turned to Grace. “I’m out of the Grapefruit, but I have a Hart and an Ox. Which would you prefer?”

Her smile became broader. “You’re good, Big John.”

“You think you’re the first person who’s asked for a craft brew?”

“Guess not. I’d like a Hart, please.”

“May I see your ID, please?”

Her grin disappeared. “Really?”

“I run a business, young lady.”

She pulled out her driver’s license and placed it on the bar.

Big John pretended to study it. “Not your real ID, Grace. Your fake ID.”

Her smile reappeared. She handed a second license to Big John.

“Nice work.” He showed it to me. “The technology has gotten better, Mikey. This looks very authentic.” He gave it back to Grace. “How much did it set you back?”

“Seventy-five bucks.”

“Things have gotten cheaper, too.” He reached below the bar, pulled out a bottle of Hart, and instructed me to pour it into a glass for my underage daughter. Then he turned to Grace. “Would you go out in the back and see if anybody needs anything?”

“Will do.”

“Thanks, darlin’.”

As I watched her head out to the patio, I spoke to my uncle. “You know that you’re the only person on Planet Earth who can get away with calling her ‘darlin.’”

“There are still a few privileges at my advanced age.” He gave me a knowing smile. “She’s a beauty, Mikey.” He caught himself. “Am I still allowed to say that?”

“Yes.”

“Looks just like Rosie. And every bit as smart.”

“Indeed.”

“So, how does my favorite nephew—the ex-priest—feel about his daughter’s business?”

I was afraid you might ask. “I’ve been a lawyer a lot longer than I was a priest.”

“You going to answer my question?”

Eventually. “I take it this means that you know about her little side hustle?”

“Everybody does, Mikey. Why do you think all the young people come to my homely little watering hole out here in the fog? I’m a D-List celebrity. Around here, I’m known as the Love Goddess’s great-uncle.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“How did they find out?”

“I might have let it slip.”

“My eighty-five-year-old uncle is cashing in on the popularity of my twenty-year-old daughter’s sex-advice app?”

“Don’t be such a prude, Mikey. It’s good for business. If I play my cards properly, this humble tavern is going to put another generation of Dunleavys through college. So, how does an ex-priest-turned-lawyer feel about his daughter running an app called the Love Goddess?”

“I’m conflicted. It wouldn’t have been my first choice for a career path. Then again, it’s paying for her senior year at USC, a nice apartment, and that new car parked outside.” And if the number of her followers continues to grow, it may be enough for a down payment on a house.

He arched a bushy eyebrow. “You don’t sound that conflicted.”

I’m not. “I’ve become more open-minded as I’ve gotten older.” And I’m not a priest anymore. “Besides, she isn’t hurting anybody, and she’s doing something she enjoys.” And she’s hauling in a boatload of cash.

“How does her mother feel about it?”

Not great. “She’s become more open-minded, too.”

Big John’s smile broadened. “Is Grace still going to take the job at Pixar?”

“I think so.” If she decides that she can afford the pay cut. “They’ve agreed to let her continue to run the app on her own time. They like to encourage their employees to develop their, uh, creativity.”

“Gotta admire her entrepreneurial spirit.”

“Just like you, Big John.”

“And her tenacity.”

“Just like her mother.”

His voice filled with pride. “Don’t let this go to your head, Mikey, but you and Rosie have done a nice job with your kids.”

Especially since we got divorced eighteen years ago. “Thanks, Big John.”

“Is little Tommy here?”

“He’s out in the back.” And he isn’t little anymore. Our fourteen-year-old son, Thomas James Charles Daley, was taller than I was. “You aren’t going to offer him a beer, too, are you?”

“Absolutely not. The drinking age for family is fifteen.”

“Happy birthday, Big John.”

“Thanks, Mikey. I’m going to take a lap and visit with my guests. Mind keeping an eye on the bar?”

“My pleasure.”

* * *

At one o’clock the following morning, the Public Defender of the City and County of San Francisco was sitting next to the ex-cop-turned-private-investigator in a weathered booth beneath a faded autographed photo of Juan Marichal in the back of Dunleavy’s. The most decorated homicide inspector in SFPD history sat across from them. The P.D., Rosie Fernandez, was my ex-wife. The P.I., Pete Daley, was my younger brother. The retired detective, Roosevelt Johnson, was my father’s first partner. Rosie was looking at the big-screen TV, her ever-present iPhone pressed to her ear. Between scowls, she was drinking a Bud straight from the bottle. Pete nursed a cup of coffee. Roosevelt sipped a club soda.

I slid into the seat next to Roosevelt and put my bottle of Anchor Steam on the table. Roosevelt and my dad had spent countless nights in this booth after their shifts had ended.

Rosie lowered the phone. “The kids took my mom home.”

“Good.”

Rosie’s eighty-four-year-old mother, Sylvia Fernandez, still lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow in the Mission that she and her late husband had purchased in 1962. Rosie’s occasional suggestions that her mother cash in her chips and move into a condo requiring less day-to-day maintenance had not been well received.

I turned to Roosevelt, who was wearing his usual charcoal suit and understated necktie. “Janet okay?”

He responded in the familiar baritone that still had a hint of his native Texas. “So-so.”

His wife had been waging a heroic fight against multiple forms of cancer for almost a decade. “You working on any cold cases?”

“Not at the moment. I’m trying to focus on my grandchildren.”

“Sounds good.” I looked at my brother. “Nice party.”

Pete’s brown hair and mustache used to be a half-shade darker than mine. Now they were a distinguished shade of gray. His pockmarked face bore the scars of a decade as a cop and almost twenty years as a P.I. He adjusted the sleeve of his bomber jacket and spoke in a Clint Eastwood rasp. “Yup.”

This represented chattiness for him. “You okay?”

“Fine, Mick.”

“I saw Donna.”

“Margaret wasn’t feeling well. Donna took her home.”

Margaret—named after our mom—was Pete’s twelve-year-old daughter and my niece. Pete’s wife, Donna, was a patient soul who had the profoundly thankless job as the chief financial officer of a big law firm downtown. Donna had adapted—at times grudgingly—to Pete’s unpredictable hours.

“You and Donna okay?” I asked.

“Fine.”

“‘Fine’ as in ‘good,’ or ‘not so good, but we’re dealing with it’?”

“We always work it out, Mick.” He changed the subject. “Could you believe all the tech kids here tonight? Big John is going to have to hire another bartender.”

“Maybe we could take a couple of shifts.”

“I got more work than I can handle.”

“I was kidding. You working tonight?”

“Later.”

“Cheating wife?”

“Cheating husband. Everything you’ve heard about sex, drugs, and misogyny in the tech world is true—only worse.”

“I assumed that much of it has been exaggerated.”

“You’d be amazed.”

Rosie finally ended her call. “We need to get down to the office.”

“It’s one a.m. on Christmas Eve.”

“We have a new client.”

It wasn’t unusual for defense attorneys—including the Public Defender—to get calls in the middle of the night—even on Christmas Eve. “What is it, Rosie?”

Her cobalt eyes gleamed as she played with the collar of her Armani Collezioni blouse. When we had met almost twenty-five years earlier in the file room of the old P.D.’s Office, her straight black hair had cascaded down to her waist, and her wardrobe consisted of jeans and denim work shirts. When she ran for Public Defender two years earlier, she had shortened and styled her hair and acquired a wardrobe more suitable for her occasional TV appearances.

She pointed at the TV. A reporter from Channel 2 was standing in front of a Victorian. Flashing red lights reflected off the house. The caption indicated that she was on Twenty-First Street, above Mission Dolores, where a bunch of tech moguls had refurbished several blocks of turn-of-the-century houses. “You see that?”

“Something happened on Billionaires Row?”

“One of the billionaires is dead. They’re saying our new client killed him.”

2
“THE PRINCE OF DISRUPTION”

“Which billionaire?” I asked.

Rosie was still looking at her iPhone. “The ‘Prince of Disruption.’”

I was more familiar with the players on the Warriors than those in the tech industry. “Does he have a name?”

Pete answered. “Jeff King. Founder of Y5K Technologies. If you believe the hype, his company is going to make cloud computing obsolete.”

I was fairly adept at using my iPhone and laptop, but I lacked the capacity and the interest to obsess about every incremental advance in technology. “Who gave him that nickname?”

“He did. At his Ted Talk a couple of years ago.”

Why am I not surprised? “How much is he worth?”

“You mean ‘How much was he worth?’”

“Uh, yes.”

“Supposedly, about ten billion.”

As a practical matter, that figure was incomprehensible to the son of a San Francisco cop who made ends meet on a P.D.’s salary and was hoping to retire someday on a civil servant’s pension. In the Bay Area’s tech Neverland, King was just another billionaire.

Pete was still talking. “In Silicon Valley, the scuttlebutt is that his company can compete with Amazon Web Services.”

“Don’t believe the hype.”

“It’s also an open secret that King was one of the biggest jerks in the tech space. That was quite an accomplishment—he had a lot of competition.”

It wasn’t a news flash that bad behavior was prevalent in the tech universe—along with every other industry, including the legal profession. I asked Rosie how he died.

“Looked like an overdose, but it’s too soon to know.”

He wasn’t the first high-profile entrepreneur to OD, either. “It could have been an accident.”

“The cops are saying our new client gave him a hot shot of heroin.”

“Who is he?”

“She. Her name is Alexa Low.”

“Where is she?”

“Homicide. They took her in for questioning.”

The Homicide Detail was housed in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice at Seventh and Bryant, next to the I-80 Freeway.

She stood up. “I’ll give you a lift downtown. We need to talk to her right away.”

I turned to Pete, who was pulling on his jacket. “You want to tag along?”

“I’ll head out to Billionaires Row and see what I can find out.”

“I thought you were tailing a cheating husband.”

“I’ll get somebody to cover for me.” He gave me a conspiratorial wink. “Betcha I’ll have company. Half the P.I.s in town were watching the Prince of Disruption.”

* * *

“What do you know about King?” I asked Rosie.

“Just what I’ve read in the papers.” She gripped the wheel of her Prius as we drove east on Lincoln Way along the southern border of Golden Gate Park. A mist covered the windshield. “His company is supposed to go public next year. It’s the hottest offering since Facebook.”

I didn’t pay close attention to such matters. “Is he really worth ten billion?”

“It’s all funny money to me.”

Me, too.

Her eyes were on the road, where traffic was light. “Late forties. Serial entrepreneur. Made money on a couple of startups, but had more failures than successes. This company was supposed to be his big payday.”

She knew more than I expected. “Inconvenient time to OD.”

“If he did, in fact, OD. For all we know, somebody could have given him rat poison. Either way, a lot of people may lose millions.”

“You think somebody killed him to stop the IPO?”

“Don’t know.”

“Any chance our new client killed him?”

“No idea.”

I asked her if King was married.

“The third time was the charm. A pretty wife and a baby daughter. If you believe the Chronicle, he was a dedicated family man.”

“Who died of a heroin overdose administered by our new client.”

“Allegedly administered. And we don’t know for sure that it was heroin or an overdose.”

“Right. Am I correct in assuming that our new client is not King’s wife?”

“You are.”

“What was her relationship to the deceased?”

“We’ll find out when we talk to her.”

End of Chapter 2. Buy HOT SHOT now on Amazon.