But as he calmed, he considered. He’d been in this basement hundreds of times, and he had never seen the thing, had never even caught a glimpse. Had he simply not noticed it? Possibly. Or maybe it hadn’t been hidden among the refuse where he could easily have spied it. Maybe it had been so well hidden that it eluded even the maniacal grasp of the money-mad bankers.
He began to pace the edge of the moldy drywall. It seemed to track quite closely the contours of the basement. From an opening for the radiator, he could see that the framer had left only a small space between the wood and the flaking stone walls to maximize the size of the playroom. But there was something about the wall on the opposite side of the radiator that bothered him.
He walked up to it. At this point on the floor above, the living room zagged a bit for an open window well with a bench seat that his mother had upholstered in purple paisley. But this part of the dry wall was simply straight. And there was something about the mold. On the space right where that window well should have been, it was spottier than on the other sections, as if the paint that was used was somehow of a different quality than that on the rest of the walls and the mold couldn’t get a purchase here. Or maybe the drywall was simply farther away from the damp stone.
He stepped forward and tapped the wall gently, listening for the hollow sound. The register went up and the echo died when he reached the stud, then lowered and hollowed again when he passed it.
Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap.
CRASH.
His fist ripped through the drywall. When he pulled his hand back, grabbing hold of the now-jagged edge while jerking hard with his shoulders, a piece the size of a small dog pulled off. Behind that newly formed hole, blackness. He pulled away more of the drywall, tugging and yanking as it came off in his two large hands.
When the space was big enough, he leaned in with the flashlight and turned on the beam.
His shout echoed like a shot through the empty house.
For there it stood, caught in the flashlight’s stare, still as death and glowing dully in the surrounding darkness like a dimly lit sarcophagus in some long-buried crypt.
CHAPTER 27
IT DIDN’T TAKE much time for Kyle to clear out the drywall from stud to stud and gain access to the damp and closed-in alcove behind the wall. The file cabinet was big and brown, with the fake wood grain and stainless-steel handles on the four drawers, just like the other three he had seen in his father’s office.
And it was locked. As he assumed it would be. The locking mechanism in the top corner was pressed in, and no matter how hard he yanked, the drawers wouldn’t budge.
Kyle stared at it for a moment and then took out a key.
“I swiped this sucker from one of the other file cabinets in your father’s office,” Skitch had said when he gave the key to Kyle.
“What the hell good is that?” Kyle had said.
“Look at it. See the way I filed it down?”
“So?”
“So? What am I good at, Kyle?”
“It’s not hitting a softball, that’s for sure.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. I pretty much suck at everything except for drinking, sex—”
“Not what I heard.”
Pause. “What did you hear? Have you been talking to Allison? Because I was drinking tequila that night, and you know what happens when—”
“Skitch.”
“Okay, look, the only things I know are drinking, sex when I’m somewhat sober, stealing cable, and picking locks. So when I’m talking about locks, you should be listening. This is a bump key. When you bump, all you’re doing is setting the lock’s pins into their proper places with a little pop.”
“A pop?”
“That’s it. Just a little pop. Nice and easy. Pop.”
Now, in his old basement, with the flashlight in his mouth, Kyle slipped the key into the lock, pressed the key all the way in before pulling it out slightly, exactly as Skitch had shown him. Then he took a small rubber hammer out of his pocket. He twisted the key in the lock with just the slightest of pressure, popped the key lightly with the hammer, and at right that moment twisted the key a little harder.
The key turned, the lock jumped out.
“Yo, Skitch,” said Kyle aloud after dropping the flashlight into his hand, “three out of four’s not too shabby.”
Then he yanked open the top drawer and discovered a lost world.
The cabinet was filled with the leavings of Liam Byrne’s legal career, dusty old files from long-dead disputes, wills for long-dead clients, contracts no longer valid, letters referencing matters no longer mattering, useless notes on lifeless cases in handwriting barely legible. And as he quickly rifled through these files, thick with aged documents, each carefully named with a typewritten label—Loughlin v. Ginsberg, Parvin v. United Amalgamated, In re Arco Industries, Doddson v. Fogg—Kyle felt a wave of sadness. His father’s life had been consumed by one after another of these fights between aggrieved souls over nothing more than money. These were the vital matters that kept Liam Byrne from his son’s baseball games, band concerts, class shows. He had come in second to Doddson v. Fogg, and if his father had lived, he always would.
Among the files in the first three drawers, there was nothing that had O’Malley on the label, and in the letters he had checked in the midst of his rifling, he had seen nothing addressed to or referencing any O’Malley at all. With each failure his frustration grew. In the bottom drawer was a group of expanding files with their flaps sealed, each labeled with a different tax year. Kyle couldn’t help himself. He knelt down plucked out one, Taxes: 1990, opened the top, gave it a quick search. Among the receipts and canceled checks he found the 1990 Form 1040 for Liam Byrne and Cecile Byrne. It wasn’t the business income he was interested in—although it was less than he would have expected—or the total income, or the adjusted gross income, or the taxes due or the taxes paid. Instead the first thing he checked was the exemptions. And smack there, in carefully typed text, was his own name, Kyle Byrne, with his own Social Security number and the word “son” under the heading “Dependent’s relationship to you.” Well, then, at least he wasn’t illegitimate in the eyes of the IRS, which meant something, he supposed. But it ticked him off that he was claimed as a dependent on the French wife’s taxes. If Kyle’s father was taking the exemption, it meant his mother wasn’t able to. Screwing her again? So many mysteries in that relationship, it was impossible to unbind them all.
There were tax files going all the way to 1994, the year Liam Byrne died. Feeling a great wave of disappointment, Kyle was about to close the final drawer and start looking through the first three for anything O’Malley when he realized that the 1994 taxes wouldn’t have been filed until 1995, in which case the file, along with all the receipts and canceled checks, should have been somewhere at the widow’s house. So what was this file doing there?