Yesterday's Echo

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Book: Read Yesterday's Echo for Free Online
Authors: Matt Coyle
for it in the local paper and sales dipped for a time, but he never blinked. I handled the back of the house while he handled the front. After about a year, I was general manager of the whole restaurant and he was a semi-absentee owner off rock climbing in Joshua Tree, Yosemite, or Grand Teton.
    I’d first worked at Muldoon’s as a fourteen-year-old kid prepping veggies for Turk’s father. The money I made on weekends made a difference to my family after my dad had lost his job with the La Jolla Police Department. Turk was an all-city high school linebacker with scholarship offers from all over. But he took the time to show me the restaurant ropes and became a big brother to me. And my best friend.
    â€œSo, tell me about this Stone guy.” Maybe Stone had been lying to me about buying Muldoon’s just to get under my skin.
    â€œBreakfast first.”
    Turk walked down the entry hall and made a left at the hostess stand into the lounge. He stood behind the bar under a set of Irish bagpipes mounted on the back wall. The uilleann pipes bore the Muldoon family crest. They were Turk’s prized possession. A family heirloom his father brought over from the old country. Every St. Patricks’ Day, Turk would pull them down and play “Danny Boy” just like his father had before him. A collector once offered him $10,000 for them, but he turned him down. One night in a quiet moment over too much Jameson, Turk confessed that he hoped to someday hand the pipes down to a son.
    After he finally settled on one woman and quit playing on the sides of mountains thousands of feet in the air.
    I sat on a stool and watched Turk concoct his version of breakfast. He pulled a banana, an orange, a lime, two eggs, and some cranberry juice from the under-counter refrigerator. After he peeled the orange and banana and tossed them into a blender, the raw eggs and cranberry juice followed. He topped everything with a few squeezes of lime, ran the blender on high for a few seconds, then poured in a pint of our house dark amber from the beer tap.
    â€œYou want some?” He set an empty glass down in front of me.
    I just stared at him. He shrugged his shoulders and took a swig directly from the pitcher. Dirty foam hung from his three-day growth of mustache.
    â€œWhich route did you climb on Half Dome?”
    â€œRegular Northwest.”
    â€œThat’s the one we did that time, right?” My only trip to Yosemite, rock-climbing Mecca, way back in college. I remembered Turk ascending nature’s monument, heaven just out of reach and a view of the granite valley below. His movements were sure and fluid like an orangutan swinging through the trees. I fought my way up behind his lead, muscling against the rock instead of working with it. But somehow I made it to the top.
    â€œYou should come next time.” Turk took another gulp of his breakfast, then came around the bar and sat down next to me.
    â€œI don’t think my knee or your restaurant would allow it.” I rubbed my left knee that had been shredded in a college football game. “So tell me about Stone.”
    â€œHe was part owner of a casino in Vegas before he moved out here. Back when the mob still had a piece of the action. I think it was the Starlighter, before they blew it up and built whatever the hell they put in its place.”
    â€œWhat brought him to San Diego?”
    â€œEvidently he was forced out of the casino.” Turk took another slug of breakfast and made a sour face. “He got into real estateout here. Owns a few hotels. Now he’s a big time philanthropist. He’s clean and shiny like Vegas never happened. He just donated a pile of cash to put a new wing on the La Jolla library.”
    â€œDoes he own any restaurants?”
    â€œI don’t know. Why?”
    â€œHe told me he was interested in Muldoon’s and that you should give him a call.” The anger welled up in me like steam in an

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