One Hundred Twelve

VINCENT AND I SAT on the back deck overlooking an expanse of perfectly manicured lawn that looked as if it belonged on a golf course, drinking the delicious iced tea the houseman had brought out to us.

“You were the one who pressured the other owners.”

He nodded.

“But you didn’t feel as if you could tell me.”

“I was honor bound. If I told you, I would have had to tell you what had become of him.” He paused. “Your father’s word always mattered quite mightily where my father is concerned. So does mine.”

“May I ask how you got me the votes I needed?”

“It’s not really all that complicated or worth getting too deeply into,” he said. “At various times, all those old men have needed favors, and my father has provided them in various ways. Always making clear, of course, that favors such as these do not come free.”

“Of course not.”

“You had to suspect we had leverage with these men,” Vincent said, “or you wouldn’t have finally called.”

“You were the one who sent the rose, weren’t you?”

“It’s what my father would have done.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank both of you.”

“He always told your father that he would watch over you if anything ever happened.”

He turned so he was facing me more directly.

“There’s something else you need to know. Maybe something you should have been told when Joe died. Or should have been allowed to know all along.”

He smiled again. He wasn’t family, but it felt like he was in this moment.

“From the beginning, the Wolves have been owned by my father as much as they were owned by your father,” Vincent said. “When those men in San Francisco tried to take it away from you, it was as if they were trying to take the Wolves from us at the same time.” He paused. “Things have never worked that way in my father’s world. Or mine.”

I should have been knocked back by the news. Or surprised. Somehow I wasn’t. In so many ways, it made perfect sense. There had always been part of me that wondered how my father had come up with the money to buy the Wolves in the first place. I’d only asked him about it one time, when stories were being written several years ago about Joe Wolf being in deep financial trouble. Again.

“You just have to know what banks to use,” my father had said.

Now I knew which bank.

Vincent asked if I wanted more iced tea. I told him I had to be going. We talked more about Erik Mason and what he’d told Cantor before Cantor had finally called 911. I said that Cantor was convinced now that Mason, under orders from Michael Barr, really had killed them all.

“It sounds as if Mason is going to live.”

“Pity,” Vincent said. “It would make things far less complicated if he didn’t.” He sighed. “But if this is true, there will eventually be a reckoning for Mr. Barr. One that’s long overdue. One you can leave to us.”

“So this was all about Barr from the beginning?”

“Some of it. Perhaps not all.”

I left that alone, still trying to process everything else I had learned today. We walked back through the house. There was no point for me to go back upstairs and see my uncle. I’d already said my goodbye.

“I’m sorry you had to see him this way,” Vincent said.

“I’m still glad I came. Because I found out something today.”

“About the team, you mean?”

I said, “About how your family is more loyal to me than my own.”

I was walking to my rental car when he called out to me.

“One more thing,” he said.

I turned.

“Those things the owners discovered about the commissioner and Mr. Barr? The things that gave them leverage over him?”

“What about them?”

“You’re welcome.”

I told him that by tomorrow morning I’d be back behind my desk, that it was never too soon to start getting ready for next season.

“Time for me to get back to my team.”

Vincent Amato smiled.

“You mean our team.”

“Actually,” I said, “I don’t.”

I moved closer to him, away from the car, so I didn’t have to shout.

“Your father let my father run the team. Now you’re going to do the same with me.”

“And why would I do something like that?”

“Ask your father,” I said. “He just told me something upstairs my father told me my whole life.”

“And what was that?”

I quickly covered the distance between us, seemed to surprise him by hugging him goodbye, then whispered to him what his father had said to me upstairs in a voice so weak I almost couldn’t hear him.

“Kill or be killed,” I said to Vincent Amato.