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“Love, Dad,” I said.

Seventy-Three

I WALKED DOWN THEmiddle aisle then, not looking left or right or making eye contact with any of them, walked through the double doors, walked past the elevators and down a long stairway to the street level.

I was done talking for now. I just wanted to take a walk up Rodeo Drive and look at ridiculously overpriced clothes and maybe even buy some of them on what might be my last official day running the Wolves.

I was out on the street when Clay Rosen caught up with me.

“Want some company?”

“Do I have a choice?”

He smiled. “I’m going to take that as a rhetorical question.”

We headed up Beverly Drive first, past Nate ’n Al’s, which had been my father’s favorite breakfast place whenever he came to Los Angeles. Clay asked if I wanted to stop in. I said I couldn’t eat right now if I tried.

“It might have been a little too late,” he said, “but I honestly think you might have changed a few minds in there.”

“Just not enough of them.”

“I don’t see how. But I gotta say, you got their attention with that letter from your dad.”

“Did I?”

“It sure blew me away.”

We stopped at the corner of Canon and Beverly. I took the envelope back out of my pocket, took out the piece of paper, handed it to Clay Rosen.

He looked at it, then at me, then said, “Well, I’ll be damned.” He wasn’t just looking at me now. He was staring.

“You trust me not to tell?”

“You want to have another drink sometime?”

“I do.”

“I know,” I said.

What I showed him was the letter from the general manager of the Beverly Wilshire, welcoming me to the hotel and telling me not to hesitate to call him if I needed anything during my stay.

“I told you whose daughter I am,” I said to Clay Rosen.

Seventy-Four

JOHN GALLO WAS BACKin his office in San Francisco in the late morning when Danny Wolf called him.

“Where are we?” Gallo said.

“Still five to seven votes short.”

“By whose count?”

“Mine,” Danny said, “and the commissioner’s.”

Gallo didn’t say anything right away. Never a good sign, Danny knew.

“Do not screw with me on this,” Gallo said. “I’ve waited a long time to put this thing in motion.”