Chapter 4

You got it so far? For four days, while Curly’s at the bottom of the lake, he’s not even a missing persons case; he’s just missing. This whole thing is under the surface. One Peter Henry Hightower has vanished from Kiev. The other’s boarding a plane from Lisbon to New York after having gone by train from Spain to Portugal. At least one man has died. Well, a lot more than that—men, women, and children—and a lot more death is coming. But we’re not ready for that.

The police in five countries all have just a small piece of what’s going on. In Granada, they’re examining the break-in at Peter’s apartment, wondering where the tenant has gone, wondering what kind of man lives like he does. In Ukraine, local, state, and international authorities have noted the appearance of the two Americans, and their disappearance, too. But Curly and Petey don’t seem important enough to distract them from much bigger problems, or to find out where they went. In Cleveland, the police know the most. Just like Kosookyy hoped, the FBI’s got files on him and all his buddies; they have a pretty good sense of what they’re all up to. It’s been that way at least since the Organized Crime Control Act got passed in 1970, when the feds started being able to prosecute RICO cases—after the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, for the people out there taking score at home. See, for the FBI to bust a bunch of guys at once, it’s not enough that those guys are just doing bad things. The FBI needs to show that those guys are, you know, organized. That they know each other, work together. That there’s a hierarchy, a system, people giving orders, people taking orders. So they’ve been collecting that kind of information for years, for at least a generation. Then they wait until the smoking gun appears, or until something big’s about to happen, something big and bad enough that they can bring everyone in and put them away for a long time. They work, these RICO cases, and the Cleveland FBI office has done some good busts. They’ve gotten Angelo Lonardo, who started off in 1929 by killing the people who killed his father, just a year after the big Mafia convention at the Hotel Statler, and risen to run the Mafia rackets in all northeast Ohio by 1980. They got Joseph Gallo, Frederick Graewe, and Kevin McTaggart, too. Drug running, murder, a bunch of other charges. Twenty-five federal convictions and twenty state ones. Just a couple years ago, they started going international. They’re investigating a Taiwanese company for stealing trade secrets from an Ohio glue factory; they’ll gather enough to convict the company’s president, along with his daughter, in 1999. They’re doing a lot of drug cases; they’ll do a lot of cyber crime. And by 1995 they’ve learned a couple things that don’t make them very happy.

Agents George Guarino and Anne Easton have been put onto the Cleveland office’s organized crime investigations, Easton because she’s smart, Guarino because he’s almost as smart and knows a thing or two about Cleveland; he grew up around here. We’re in the days before September 11, before organized crime takes a backseat to terrorism in the FBI’s priorities. So Guarino and Easton have some bureau money to spend. They’ve set up a nice little network of informants, they’ve been doing surveillance. They know the restaurant Petey and Curly visited, though they didn’t see them go in there. They know the man who owns the place and have been tracing the connections—of money, for the most part, because it’s all about money, right?—back to Russia and Eastern Europe, to someone, or something, called the Wolf. They know about a rival international group, whose Cleveland contact appears to be a man named Feodor. They know about someone called the White Lady, who they’re pretty sure lives in town, appears to have connections to a few different organizations, including Feodor’s and the Wolf’s—as if she’s playing a few sides at once. But they’re not sure why she’d do that, or even who she is. They’re just gathering their information on who’s dealing with whom, trying to build up an organization in their files that matches the one in the world. Their desks, not far apart from each other, are piled with pictures and printouts—we’re just at the beginning of the point where everything goes electronic—and now and again Guarino, who’s better at finding things than Easton is, gives her a tap on the shoulder: What do you think of this? And Easton, who’s better at making the connections than Guarino is, gives whatever he’s holding a good stare. Starts to talk. They must be involved. I’d say this is some kind of code, except they don’t seem to work that way. They’re catching up, figuring out how the new crime organizations work. But here’s the discouraging thing: The organizations don’t ever seem to end. The connections lead only to more connections, all over the world. They jump from country to country, never-ending webs of people and currency that involve as many rackets as the agents can think of, from money laundering and loan-sharking to arms dealing and human trafficking. If there are real lines between them, the agents can’t see them; they have no idea what the structures of these things look like on paper, let alone who’s running them. So they keep having the same little confrontation between them. Look, it’s okay, Guarino says. We can still use RICO to get them, right? We just define the organization how we need to. He’s trying to move the case forward, put some guys away. But Easton doesn’t want to do it that way. That’s not the organization, then, she might say. It’s just something we made up. We can do it that way, but it doesn’t change anything. We never get the guys who matter. Sometimes she hauls out the tired old analogies to hydras, to octopuses—you know, cutting off one tentacle when there are a hundred more, and the one you cut off grows back anyway—and Guarino just shakes his head. They both know what the problem is: They’re hacking apart the facts to make a story, and that their story’s got a lot of truth in it is beside the point. Maybe that truth’ll be enough to do the job, to serve some kind of justice, to do right by the people who’ve been wronged. But the people left out of the story—the victims and the perpetrators—are going to notice what’s been done. They’ll see the places the story doesn’t touch, and know that there, it’s open season.

Curly’s friends, his family, his mother, are calling each other more and more, getting more frantic with every call. Have you seen him? He didn’t go somewhere without telling us, did he? He wouldn’t do that. Where is he? It feels like a prophecy coming true. He was such a good kid, just a little wild, but that wildness led him somewhere they couldn’t follow, and they lost him. How could that ever end well? For the Hightower clan, though, things are a bit more complicated. Muriel’s been too afraid of her son for a couple years to ask what he’s been up to, too used to him being gone for months to know that he’s in trouble. Jackie doesn’t talk to anyone but herself. And Sylvie doesn’t say anything. She’s known for thirty years that her best chance of surviving in her family, and keeping her family alive, is to embody her mother’s spirit most of the time, friendly, steadfast, quiet. To observe and wait, and act only when she thinks she can make things better. Then her father comes out of her, and man, watch out.

Henry and Rufus are another story. They both have so much of their father in them. The same fire, the same shrewdness, the same cynical understanding of laws as things to be manipulated, skirted, ignored when necessary; the same quick separation of laws from morals and values. The same desire to take care of the people closest to them, the Old World instinct that helped so many people get out of Europe when they had to, and if Rufus and Henry could ever talk about it with each other, they would lament, together, how they failed in not giving it to their children. That conversation will never happen, though, because the things that make them so similar are the same things that drive them apart.

Henry still lives in New Canaan, in the same house Peter found him in nine years ago, and it’s been an interesting decade for him. In 1992, a premature heart attack puts him into semiretirement. His doctor shrugs, can’t diagnose what caused it, but says maybe he should stop working so hard. His wife is more specific: She tells him he has to work on eliminating the things from his life that are causing him stress. So he divorces her. Cuts back on his hours, starts doing everything by phone, starts talking about being bought out. He’s done. He throws out all his old clothes, buys new ones, dresses casual, or at least more casual. No cufflinks, no ties, blazers only when necessary, though the cut of his pants, the style of his shirts, give away that he’s got some money. That’s intentional. Henry’s too aware of the signals himself, knows that he can’t hide everything and can’t be bothered working so hard to try. He’s seen too many rich people try to pass themselves off as middle-class; everyone he knows, his neighbors, his former coworkers, all think they really are middle-class. It’s laughable. They fail to pass and don’t know they failed. People who don’t have their kind of money can get the right order of magnitude of their wealth just by looking at their European-sized shoes, the angle of the collar of their designer T-shirts. Maybe that’s why the rich are always building walls and fences around their houses, Henry thinks. If they didn’t, everyone would be able to see right through them.

He meets Holly, a woman from Winsted, not six months after the divorce is final, marries her in 1994. Alex seems to understand. She’s nice, she says to his father, and Henry’s glad that Alex is comfortable around her. But deep down, at the time, Henry doesn’t think about that too much. He’s too busy putting another life together for himself, wants Alex in it only if she wants to be in it, too. He’s not being callous; just loosening the rules, trying to give his daughter her freedom. When Henry was young himself, he used to think that the family bond was iron. After their father died, he never made that mistake again. He understands now that it’s just a question of keeping the lights on, the door open. Doing what you can to help that doesn’t kill the other’s pride. Though now and again he forgets, and has to relearn the lesson all over again.

It’s 1995. Henry’s smiling when he sees the taxi pull up at the front of the house, sees Peter get out, squint down the driveway. The boy’s leaner, sharper than he was 1986. A decent haircut, the hang of his clothes more suitable to his frame. Still not a shred of America in him. The taxi driver must have asked him some questions, or maybe he was afraid to. Or maybe he already knew what Peter was all about, being the same way himself.

“You could have called first,” Henry says. “I would have picked you up at the airport.”

“Your phone number changed,” Peter says.

“Good thing I didn’t move,” Henry says.

He’s in trouble, Henry thinks, but doesn’t ask how. Figures Peter will get around to it. It takes five hours, after a tour of the property, the things that have changed since Peter last saw it. The first wife’s office is gone; it’s a study now, with a loom folded in the corner. They’ve filled in the pool and let the land go, let all the land go around their house. They like the way the trees are taking over. Soon we’ll have our own little preserve here, Henry tells him, and chuckles in a loose, genuine way that Peter doesn’t remember him doing back in 1986. Holly is the kind of woman who glows; she’s warm and nurturing. Thick curls woven into a loose bun at her neck and tied with a colored scarf. The kind of woman my dad should have ended up with, Peter thinks. They make fish and rice, curried vegetables. Split a bottle of wine, open another one, and at last Peter begins to talk.

“I got a call from someone named Curly,” he says. “From Cleveland.”

“Curly? I’m assuming that’s not his real name. Who is he?” Henry says.

“I have no idea who he is. But he says he was looking for Petey.”

Henry nods. In his brain, the first pieces are clicking into place. “That’s what they’ve been calling your cousin for years, now,” he says.

“I think Curly thinks I’m him,” Peter says.

“I was about to say the same thing,” Henry says, and becomes very still. Takes his wife’s hand. “What happened after the phone call?”

Peter tells him, about the break-in, his escape. The train from Spain to Portugal, the flight out of Lisbon. He’s almost positive no one saw him do any of this.

“How’d you get the money for the flight?” Henry says.

Peter doesn’t know which question Henry’s asking, decides to answer both.

“I’m a journalist,” he says.

Henry raises an eyebrow.

“And my dad gave me some money I’ve been hanging on to for a while,” Peter says.

Something in Peter’s voice tells Henry about what’s happened between Peter and Rufus. Father and son haven’t talked in a while.

“Peter,” he says, “I think it’s time you start to know a few things. Do you know what your father does for money?”

“No.”

“Well. Maybe he does something to help support himself a little. But the money comes from me. It’s always come from me.”

“I see,” Peter says. Henry can almost see the young man putting it together; a big part of his life that never made much sense is starting to make lots of sense. “Why did you do that?”

“Because we’re family.”

“Why did my dad go to Africa, then?”

“Because we’re family,” Henry says. “At first, I think it was disgust. But once you were born, I think he was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” Peter says.

“Rufus really didn’t say anything about us, did he?”

“No.”

“Peter, you may be in a lot of trouble,” Henry says.

“Why?”

“Because, Peter, the grandfather you were named after was a criminal. Oh, he made plenty of legitimate money. But at the beginning, it wasn’t legitimate at all, and, well, what can I say? He never quite escaped.”

“Did you?” Peter says.

You got some balls, kid, Henry thinks. Good for you. “Financially? Legally?” he says. “Yes. But the same thing isn’t true of everyone. And now Petey, your cousin, is a criminal too. I don’t know what kind—he’s not nearly as smart or as careful as your grandfather was. I don’t know how bad it is with him, either. Sounds like pretty bad, though. He was pretty bad already when you visited last, though you probably figured that one out even then. Who goes to summer school, right?” Henry smiles. Peter doesn’t, and Henry feels a little chastened. Peter doesn’t have the luxury of seeing the humor in it. Would Rufus see it? He thinks so. If Peter weren’t caught up in it. If Rufus knew how bad it was getting, the things he would say. This is why I left. This is why I didn’t want to see any of you ever again.

“Do you know where Petey is now?” Peter says.

“No. He’s involved in something I can’t see from where I’m standing. Maybe Sylvie can see it, but I can’t. I haven’t talked to him in years, Peter. Haven’t even talked to Muriel about him.”

Henry doesn’t want to get into it, the last few years between him and his sister. It’s 1987. Henry sees Petey at a family reunion for Easter, thinks he looks like a little thug and tells him so, before he gives it the kind of thought he should have. Petey just stands there, doesn’t say a word, and Henry regrets opening his mouth. But he can’t take it back now. Muriel screams and screams at him. How dare you say that. And then later on the phone, when Henry gets back to Connecticut, she connects everything to everything else. Just because you have a shitty home life, it doesn’t mean you have to make our home life shitty too. Henry listens, winces, sorry all over again he said anything, but hopes to salvage some good from his mistake. He doesn’t bring up the selling drugs, the sentencing, the mild incarceration. I’m trying to help. Petey’s going in the wrong direction, you have to see that. Muriel does see it, Henry knows that, but she’s not going to admit it. Henry hasn’t given her a way to do it without implicating herself, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to admit to her brother, under these circumstances, that she made a mistake.

We’re lousy parents, Henry thinks to himself—even then, back in 1987—both he and his sister. They had every chance with Petey, they had him right where he should have been, and they let him get away. And Henry knows he can’t take credit for how good his own kid is, except as a foil; Alex is good, always has been, always will be, even growing up around people as toxic as her parents, and even if she is, almost without a doubt, going to watch her father and mother say some terrible things to each other before they call it all off at last.

He gets all his information about the family from Sylvie after that. How Petey’s moved out of the house, gone who knows where, though it seems to be somewhere in Cleveland. Petey shows up at Muriel’s house, at Sylvie’s house, a couple times a year. At first, to ask for money, but soon enough, that stops, as soon as it looks like he’s come into money of his own, though it’s clear it’s not from working in a bank. The young man’s got a strut about him, Sylvie says, like he’s gone a little feral. Though to Sylvie, it’s as much an act as a real transformation. There’s a part of him that’s still that boy at my wedding in a little blue suit, Sylvie tells Henry. And I think that boy is scared to death of what the rest of him has become. A bit of Sylvie’s toughness showing, just enough that Henry realizes that if it had been Sylvie instead of Muriel raising that boy, Petey would be the straightest arrow of them all.

Peter stares at him from across the coffee table, and for Henry, it’s as though the entire family is in the room with them now. His brother and sisters; their spouses, whom he has never gotten to know; all their children, some of whom he wouldn’t recognize now. His own parents: his mother in the chair in the corner, knitting and humming, his father near the window, smoking in the house when no one smokes in the house. His father’s brother, Stefan, who had the kindest face Henry can remember seeing in his life. He looks again at Peter and glimpses a bit of Stefan in him, the one who, if he had been the patriarch instead of his brother, would never have taken the family so far, or let them drop from so high.

Henry’s earned enough of his own wealth that he doesn’t think he has to justify it to anyone he sees. He hasn’t let it turn him into a child or a crank, either, a man who confuses money with wisdom. He doesn’t glorify poverty. He’s not sentimental or stupid. But sometimes he wonders if they wouldn’t have been happier with less. This thing of having too much, of not having enough; it makes people insane, he thinks, makes them do insane things. They scramble and scream, they fight and scheme. They set traps and swindle. They bring each other down, then pile up the bodies to ascend even farther, even faster. Somehow there has to be some balance, doesn’t there? Of having just enough? But where is it? And why is it so hard to find?

“I think you need to go to Cleveland,” Henry says at last. “You need to keep moving. And you need to talk to Sylvie.” He gets up and leaves the room while Holly smiles at Peter and refills his wineglass. Then Henry comes back with a roll of bills folded in his hand. That old habit from Dad, he thinks, having all this cash lying around. Have any of us broken it?

“I want to help you get out of this,” he says. “How much do you think you need?”

“I can’t take your money now,” Peter says.

Henry smiles. “Peter. Just take it. And get in the car and let me give you a ride to the airport. And let me pay for the ticket.”

Peter stands there, just looking at him. So smart, and so much pride, Henry thinks. He looks just like his father right now.

“Are you sure?” Peter says.

“I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.”

“Okay, then.”

“Good. It’s settled. I’ll call Sylvie and tell her to tell Muriel you’re coming.”

“Okay.”

“Call me if you need anything.”

“I still don’t have your phone number.”

“Of course.” He smiles again. Takes out a business card from his pocket and a pen from the table, scrawls the number on the back. Calls the airlines to book a flight, then drives Peter back to the airport himself.

All the way down, from the Merritt across the Whitestone Bridge to the Grand Central Parkway to LaGuardia, Henry wants to tell him the rest of it, about why nobody talks to each other anymore. His and Muriel’s fight over Petey. The fight over what to do with Jackie. The big one, in August 1966, when the patriarch died and the smoke still seemed to be rising from Hough after the riots. The Cuyahoga County grand jury was pinning everything on the Communists, Henry remembers. That would have made Dad laugh. It’s always the fucking Communists with them, he would have said. But for his family, it was something else. That there was so much—so much and not enough—to squabble over. That they all were who they were, Rufus in particular. And then the split the paterfamilias had driven into the family before they were ever born. It’s not that Henry blames him for the way the family is now; he’s nobody’s victim, and they’ve all held up their ends pretty good since their father died. But when he takes in the whole of the life of his father, the first Peter Henry Hightower, from his first days in Tremont to his last days in Bratenahl, he can see how they’ve come to this. The family breaking apart, over him and everything he left behind. His grand and ruinous legacy. And Henry looks over at the young man in the passenger seat, thinks about the thug with the same name. Thinks of everything that both the cousins carry of the men and women who came before them. They’re all caught up in their crooked family history. Maybe the two Peters together will straighten it all out, drag everything into the light, and all that’s toxic will wither and die, and the things that are strong will grow. But where they’ll all be by then, he has no idea.

The flight is in the evening, and it’s dark by the time Henry gets back to his house. Holly’s asleep on the couch, sitting up, her head back, mouth open. A book splayed on the floor near her feet. She was trying to wait up for him. He marks the page with a scrap of paper from his wallet, puts the book back on the coffee table, then goes to the study and calls Alex. It’s too late to call most people, but he knows his daughter will be up, and working.

“Hello?” Sure enough.

“Alex. It’s me.”

“Hi, Dad. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Why?”

“You don’t usually call this late.”

“No, no, everything’s fine.”

“So what are you calling about?”

“I’m planning a surprise party for Holly’s birthday,” he says. “I had to wait until she was asleep to invite you.”

“That’s in, like, two months, right?”

“Well, yes, but I have a lot of calls to make. You’re the first person I’m inviting.”

“I’d love to come,” Alex says, “if I can get out of work in time.”

“That’d be great. It’d mean a lot to her.”

“Happy to do it, Dad. Is that all?”

Henry feels like a child. Something is rising in him, overwhelming him, and it takes away his voice, makes him helpless. He wants to tell his daughter how much he loves her, how proud he is of everything she’s done, of the kind of woman she’s turned out to be. But there’s too much between them now. The frayed wires at the end of the divorce are still sparking a little; maybe they’ll never stop. The plain fact that he’s never said anything like it before. I love you so much. I’m so proud. He’s tried to show it, a hundred thousand times, it seems, but he’s never sure the message gets through. Never sure that Alex isn’t doing the same thing, struggling to say something neither of them has the words for, at least not for each other. Alex doesn’t hate him; he knows that much. There was a time, right after Henry divorced Alex’s mother, that Alex was always out of the house when he called, always away from her desk. She’s around more often now, almost every time Henry tries to reach him, and it’s enough, at least for now.

“Yeah, that’s it, Alex,” he says. “It’s good to talk to you.”

“Good to talk to you, too, Dad. See you soon.”

“All right. Bye-bye.”

My daughter is so much better than me, Henry thinks. So much better.

He’s still standing there with the phone in his hand, the phone having cycled through the silence at the end of the call, the dial tone, the buzzing off-the-hook signal, the silence after that. Holly’s still asleep on the couch. He puts the phone back in its cradle, walks over and gets his wife on her feet. Leads her to the bed without her waking all the way up, and tucks her in. Then goes to his closet, where there’s a long, tall safe installed in the back. Peeks over his shoulder to make sure Holly isn’t stirring, then does the combination fast. Opens it up and takes out a shotgun. He loads it there, looking at Holly the whole time; he doesn’t want her to see any of this. Then moves across the carpet without a sound, goes outside to the end of his driveway. There are three men out there, guys he hired from a security agency; he called them before he left for the airport. They’re big, half again as big as he is, but their guns are smaller. None of them has much to say to each other. Two of the guys are talking about sports. They wait in the dark, bored and tense.

At last, a car pulls up, going slow, and Henry knows it’s not any of his neighbors, anybody just passing through the area. Nobody does that around here, not down this part of the road. They only come if they have business to attend to. It’s why Henry bought the house in the first place. Even then, he was done with seeing people unless there was a reason.

“What’s the move?” one of the men says.

“I’ll talk,” Henry says. “Do what I do.”

The hired guns nod, and they all get out their weapons so whoever’s driving the car can see them in the headlights. The car stops, and for one second, Henry prays. It’s what his grandmother would have done, his father’s mother, and what his uncle Stefan would do. Stefan taught him the Our Father, which everyone knows. Taught him how to pray the rosary. Henry stumbled over the Hail Mary as a child, blurred the words together, but it comes to him clear and strong now. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

The man on the passenger side of the car opens the door and the light in the car goes on. Two young men are in there, looking at them, and Henry breathes again. It’s just two local guys. Subcontractors. Someone made a call to someone else, who then made a call. Some small favors exchanged. Enough to make these two drive over from Danbury, or somewhere in upstate New York, maybe up from the city. But they’re not getting paid enough to take a bullet. They just need to say they showed up. Henry takes one hand off his shotgun, makes a gesture in the air. Turn off your engine. The driver does, and the light goes out. They keep the headlights on.

“He’s not here,” Henry says.

“He got in a taxi that headed up here.” The voice is from the passenger side, even and deadpan.

“That’s true,” Henry says. “He was here. But he didn’t stay long.”

“Any idea where he was going?”

“Nope,” Henry says. In a narrow way, he’s not lying.

There’s a half minute of silence from the car, and Henry’s fear returns. In the headlights, he makes a little show of tightening his grip on the shotgun, like he’s ready to point it at the car. The guys he’s hired do the same. They’re putting on a good act. If the men in the car want to fight, they can, but one of them won’t make it off this road. The engine coughs a few times, revs up. Then the car goes down the road in reverse, twenty yards, backs into Henry’s neighbor’s driveway, turns out, and leaves the way it came. They wait until they can’t hear the engine anymore.

“All right,” Henry says. “You can go.”

“You bought us for the night,” one of them says.

“Go home. I don’t want my wife to know this happened, understand?”

One of the guys almost looks hurt, but the other two put their guns away, head for their cars. Henry takes the shells out of the shotgun, puts them in his pocket. Goes inside, back to his bedroom, nice and quiet, and puts gun and shells away in the safe. Closes it. Makes sure Holly’s still asleep. Then goes to the phone again.

“Sylvie,” he says.

“Yes, Henry?” She’s wide awake.

“Muriel’s Petey’s in some real trouble.”

“Yes?” she says. Her voice is soothing, almost sweet. She knows already, Henry thinks. How does she know?

“It involves Peter, too. He just showed up on my doorstep.”

“I think it would be safest if you send him to me,” Sylvie says.

“I already did.”

“Good.” She knew that already, too, Henry thinks. She wasn’t giving me a suggestion; she was giving me her blessing. Somehow, every time he talks to her, he has to learn all over again that Sylvie is way smarter than he is. Always at least four steps ahead.

“He’ll be at the airport in an hour or so,” Henry says.

“I’ll have Muriel pick him up. He can spend the night there. Then I’ll have her bring him over to me in the morning,” Sylvie says.

“Good.” Still the businessman. Drop it, Henry says to himself. For God’s sake, drop the act for once in your sorry life. A few seconds go by. Sylvie’s still on the other end, waiting.

“Sylvie?”

“Yes?”

“What’s going on?”

Now it’s Sylvie’s turn to pause. Henry can hear her let out a long sigh. Then: “I think there’s just been some amazing misunderstanding, Henry. But it’s okay. I think I know how to fix it.”

“How are you going to do that?” Henry says.

“Well, to begin, we’re going to make sure Rufus’s Peter doesn’t stay in the same place for long.” She doesn’t have to say why: If they catch him, they’ll kill him, Henry thinks. “There’s much more to it than that,” she says, “but do you really think you want to know what the rest of it is?”

There were men with guns outside my house tonight, Sylvie, and they weren’t police, Henry wants to say. But he knows what Sylvie’s saying. The question’s personal, legal, familial, all at once. She’s trying to protect him.

“You’re right,” he says. “I don’t need to know.”

“Good. I might need you, Henry. If I do, I’ll call. But there’s a chance that, when I’ve fixed it, you’ll just know. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He can hear her smile. “It’s good to hear your voice, big brother,” she says.

“You, too, Sylvie.”

“I know you’re always looking out for us,” she says.

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He wants to say so much, but it won’t come out.

“All right,” he says. “Take care of yourself.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

He hangs up the phone, walks to his side of the bed. Strips to his underwear and gets under the covers. His wife turns toward him, puts a hand on his chest. She’s snoring. He can’t sleep. He’s thinking about the place he’s from, the people who raised him. The things he knows they did, that he did to get here, to this house. Its exquisite woodwork, in mahogany, cypress, the kind of wood you can’t get anymore because we’ve chopped it all down. When he’s at his most brutal and self-lacerating, it’s all exploitation to him, people selling out other people, using them up, until there’s nothing left of them. His father was so good at it. It’s easy for Henry to think sometimes that it was all the man did, the only way he saw other people—how they could be useful to him—and he took everything he could get, body and soul, and threw away the rest. He never seemed to show any remorse for it, either; didn’t seem to have the mind Henry has, that makes him feel guilty for his success even though it was all he craved.

Maybe it was all a question of where his father came from, though. Because the factories killed his father’s father when the patriarch was a boy, and maybe his father thought he’d be damned if he let them get him, too. Maybe he thought he owed his own father that, to play the game as hard as he could. Like it was a kind of revenge to succeed as he did, and did he ever. But look at the cost. The hidden dead. The people killed inside but still walking. Henry’s sure he’s doing it to someone out there, somewhere in the world, every time he makes a buck. Every dollar he gets for playing with big numbers in an office in lower Manhattan is a dollar someone in a factory, in a field somewhere didn’t get, right? He’s selling them out until there’s nothing left. Just like I’m taking everyone in this book and selling them out to you, dear reader. Cracking open their heads to show you what’s inside. Telling you things about them they would never tell anyone, not their wives, or husbands, or best friends. We’ll get as much of them as either of us can stomach, and when we’re done with them, we’ll just leave behind what remains. I hope you’re satisfied.