“I ASSUME THIS IS an off-the-record conversation,” Jack said.
“Said a brother to his sister.”
“Is it off the record or not?”
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?”
“I’ve got a better question,” he said. “Did your boyfriend ask you to wear a wire?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You’re right.”
“And you know what?” he said. “I frankly don’t care if you’re recording this or not. I didn’t kill him.” There was a familiar smug look on his face. “Should I speak louder?”
He leaned back and folded his arms, put his feet up on his desk.
“And, by the way, why are we even having this conversation this much after the fact?”
“Because I’m sick of you and everybody else in this office treating me like a criminal,” I said. “That’s why.”
“Get over it.”
“You were there after I was there, even though the only two people who know that are sitting in this room.”
“Did Cantor send you?” he said.
“He doesn’t know that either one of us was at the boat. And he doesn’t know that I came here to see you. All he knows is that Dad came to my house the night before.”
I could see that I had surprised my brother again.
“You told anybody who’d listen after he died that you hadn’t seen him since you walked away,” Jack said.
“I lied. Family trait. Like blue eyes.”
He shook his head, almost sadly, from side to side.
“You’ve never been any better than the rest of us. The only one who thought so was the great Joe Wolf.”
There was a knock on the door. Seth Dowd poked his head in.
“Not now,” Jack said.
Dowd closed the door and walked away.
“I am curious about one thing. What are you hoping to accomplish by coming here?”
“To get you off my back once and for all,” I said.
“Not happening. And why would I? Because you think you have some kind of leverage with me now? You don’t. The only person who can put me on that boat is you. If it ever came to it, it would be your word against mine.”
“Cantor likes me better,” I said.
“Obviously.”
I grinned.
“What’s so funny?”
“We’ve got something on each other,” I said. “Just like when we were kids.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Jack said again. “I hated him. But not enough to kill him and risk going down for it no matter how much better my life would get with him out of the way.”
“You nearly killed him once.”
“He deserved it that time,” Jack said. “And if you ask me, he deserved somebody finishing the job this time.”
I stared at him. The older he got, the more he reminded me of our father. A lot of it was in the eyes. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Joe Wolf had gotten his way in the end after a lifetime of trying to toughen up his children. Jack had turned out to be as mean as he was.
“Why were you at the boat?” Jack said.
I told him. Told him the drunken things Joe Wolf had said to me before he told me that he loved me.
“You’re shitting me!” Jack said. “He told you he loved you and you believed him? Him?”
“I’m telling you what happened, and why it happened. I felt bad that I hadn’t said anything back to him.”
“Why would you have?”
His phone buzzed. He ignored it.
“I think back now, and it was almost like he’d had some premonition that he was going to die soon.”
“He didn’t tell you that he was leaving the team and the paper to you?”
“No.”
“And that was it,” Jack said.
“That was it. I left. I was sitting in my car when I saw you nearly running up the dock.”
He didn’t respond right away.
“Did he tell you I’d just left?”
Jack shook his head.
I said, “So what were you doing there that night?”
He blew out some air.
“You want to know the truth?”
“Not one of your strong suits. But give it a shot.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” he said.
“Help me out.”
“I didn’t go there to kill him that night,” Jack Wolf said to me. “I went there to try to save him.”