The Giants went on to sweep the Indians by winning the second, third, and fourth games as well, a miraculous upset that brought much happiness to the seven-year-old Ferguson, but no one was happier with the results of the 1954 World Series than Uncle Lew. His father’s oldest brother had suffered his ups and downs as a gambler over the years, consistently losing more than he won but winning just enough to keep himself from drowning, and now, with the smart money all on Cleveland, it would have made sense for him to follow the herd, but the Giants were his team, he had been pulling for them through good seasons and bad since the early twenties, and for once he decided to ignore the odds and bet with his heart rather than his brain. Not only did he put his money on the underdogs but he wagered they would win four in a row, a hunch so preposterous and delusional that his bookie gave him odds of 300 to 1, which meant that for the modest sum of two hundred dollars, the sharp-dressing Lew Ferguson walked off with a pot of gold, sixty grand, an enormous amount back in those days, a fortune. The haul was so spectacular, so startling in its ramifications, that Uncle Lew and Aunt Millie invited everyone to their house for a party, a celebratory blowout with champagne, lobster, and thick porterhouse steaks that featured a viewing of Millie’s new mink coat and a spin around the block in Lew’s new white Cadillac. Ferguson was out of sorts that day (Francie wasn’t there, his stomach hurt, and his other cousins barely talked to him), but he assumed that everyone else was having a good time. After the festivities ended, however, as he and his parents were on their way home in the blue car, he was caught by surprise when his mother started bad-mouthing Uncle Lew to his father. He couldn’t follow everything she said, but the anger in her voice was unusually harsh, a bitter harangue that seemed to have something to do with his uncle owing his father money, and how dare Lew splurge on Cadillacs and mink coats before paying his father back. His father took it calmly at first, but then he raised his voice, which was something that almost never happened, and suddenly he was barking at Ferguson’s mother to stop, telling her that Lew didn’t owe him anything, that it was his brother’s money and he could do anything he goddamned pleased with it. Ferguson knew his parents sometimes argued (he could hear their voices through the wall of their bedroom), but this was the first time they had fought a battle in front of him, and because it was the first time, he couldn’t help feeling that something fundamental about the world had changed.
Just after Thanksgiving the following year, his father’s warehouse was emptied out in a nighttime burglary. The warehouse was the one-story cinder-block building that stood behind 3 Brothers Home World, and Ferguson had visited it several times over the years, a vast, dank-smelling room with row upon row of cardboard boxes containing televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, and all the other things the brothers sold in their store. The stuff on display in the showrooms was merely for the customers to look at, but whenever someone wanted to buy something, it would be taken out of the warehouse by a man named Ed, a big fellow with a mermaid tattooed onto his right forearm who had served on an aircraft carrier during the war. If it was a small thing like a toaster or a lamp or a coffeepot, Ed would hand it to the customer, who could drive it home in his or her own car, but if it was a big thing like a washing machine or a refrigerator, Ed and another large-muscled vet named Phil would load it into the back of the delivery truck and drive it to the customer’s house. That was how business was conducted at 3 Brothers Home World, and Ferguson was familiar with the system, old enough to understand that the warehouse was the heart of the operation, and so when his mother woke him up on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving and told him that the warehouse had been robbed, he immediately grasped the dreadful significance of the crime. An empty warehouse meant no business; no business meant no money; no money meant trouble: the poorhouse! starvation! death! His mother pointed out that the situation wasn’t quite that desperate because all the stolen goods were insured, but yes, it was a tough blow, especially with the Christmas shopping season about to begin, and since it would probably be weeks or months before the insurance company paid up, the store wouldn’t be able to survive without an emergency loan from the bank. Meanwhile, his father was in Newark talking to the police, she said, and because every article had a serial number on it, maybe there was a chance, a small chance, that the robbers would be hunted down and caught.
Time passed, and no robbers were found, but his father managed to get the loan from the bank, which meant that Ferguson and his family were spared the dishonor of having to relocate to the poorhouse. Life went on, then, more or less as it had been going for the past several years, but Ferguson sensed a new atmosphere in the household, something grim and sullen and mysterious hovering in the air around him. It took a while before he could identify the source of that barometric shift, but by observing his mother and father whenever he was with them, both singly and in tandem, he concluded that his mother was essentially the same, still full of stories about her work at the studio, still producing her daily quotient of smiles and laughter, still looking him directly in the eye whenever she spoke to him, still up for fierce games of ping-pong in the winterized back porch, still listening to him intently whenever he came to her with a problem. It was his father who was different, his normally untalkative father who now said almost nothing at the breakfast table in the morning, who seemed distracted and barely present, as if his mind were concentrating on some dark, grievous thing he wasn’t willing to share with anyone. Sometime after the beginning of the new year, when 1955 had turned into 1956, Ferguson summoned up the courage to approach his mother and ask her what was wrong, to explain why his father looked so sad and distant. It was the burglary, she said, the burglary was eating him alive, and the more he thought about it, the less he could think about anything else. Ferguson didn’t understand. The warehouse had been broken into six or seven weeks ago, the insurance company was going to pay for the lost goods, the bank had come through with the loan, and the store was still on its feet. Why would his father worry when there was nothing to worry about? He saw his mother hesitate, as if struggling to decide whether to take him into her confidence, not sure if he was old enough to handle the facts of the story, doubt flickering in her eyes for no more than an instant, but palpable for all that, and then, as she stroked his head and studied his not-yet-nine-year-old face, she took the plunge, opening up to him in a way she had never done before, and let him in on the secret that was tearing his father apart. The police and the insurance company were still working on the case, she said, and they had both come to the conclusion that it was an inside job, meaning the burglary had not been committed by strangers but by someone who worked at the store. Ferguson, who knew everyone on the staff of 3 Brothers Home World, from the warehouse men Ed and Phil to the bookkeeper Adelle Rosen to the repairman Charlie Sykes to the janitor Bob Dawkins, felt the muscles in his stomach clench into a small fist of pain. It wasn’t possible that any of those good people could have done such an evil thing to his father, not a single one of them was capable of such treachery, and therefore the police and the insurance company must be wrong. No, Archie, his mother said, I don’t think they’re wrong. But the person who did it wasn’t any of the people you just mentioned.