He never blew up. Just sat there and listened and didn’t show a thing, and it took Grady back to those first few conversations in the house in Kenilworth and made his cowardice and corruption play through his eyes again, everything here so damn similar except that this time Frank was an adult and Grady was telling the truth.
“I know,” Grady said. “Frank, I know. You were a child, and one who’d suffered a loss, and we—”
“Turned me into a gun.”
“What?”
“That’s what you said he wanted to do. My father. That he’d raised me to kill. And while you were saying that about him, you were loading me up and pointing me at Devin.”
“We didn’t want you to go after him. We thought that you might know something, and we needed to push the right buttons to see if . . .” Grady stopped talking and shook his head. “Shit, you’ve got me defending it now. I’m not going to. It’s like I said, Frank, I’m telling the truth now, and it had to start with you.”
Frank stood up and walked to the window, looked out at the lake. There was a flat-bottomed boat within sight, divers adjusting their masks before going back in, still searching for Atkins.
“You are a bastard,” Frank said, but it was without any venom at all, or even energy.
“I’m going to resign.”
“I don’t care about that. Why would I care if you kept your damn job?”
Grady didn’t say anything.
“I’d just turned eighteen,” Frank said, “when I called Ezra Ballard and begged him to go to Miami with me to kill Devin. Begged him. He said he wouldn’t, so I said I’d go alone, and he made a compromise with me. Said as long as Devin stayed down there, the hell with him, let him rot. But we’d never let him come back here. Never.”
Grady was sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees, staring up at Frank, who hadn’t turned from the window, didn’t even seem to care that Grady was still in the room.
“Kudos,” Frank said, “on a job well done, Grady. You set out to convince me that Devin deserved retribution, get me fired up about it, consumed by it, right? Well, you got the job done. Yes, sir, you got it done.”
“I want you to know,” Grady began, but Frank continued talking as if he hadn’t heard him.
“I was relieved when Ezra told me the prick was coming back. Well, not at first. At first I had some sense. But then this fat bastard professor asked me if I’d write a memoir, and it was like fate, right, confirmation that there would be no getting away from this legacy, ever. Then I was relieved, Grady. I was absolutely relieved. Because I could finally welcome it.”
He stopped looking at the search boat then, turned to face Grady. “Devin was important to me. He gave me somebody to hate, somebody to blame, who wasn’t my father. I’m not saying he was enough for me to give the old man a pass, but he was enough to distract me. To redirect some things.”
“I understand that.”
“I came up here to kill the guy for no reason, is what you tell me now. But he’s still a piece of a shit. You know that. They’re looking for one of his bodies out there right now. So maybe I should have gone ahead and done it.”
Grady shook his head. “No.”
“It would have made sense to me then,” Frank said, “because I had my reasons. Now I don’t. But other people have still got theirs, right? So maybe I should have done it for their reasons. Why are they any less valid than mine?”
Grady was quiet. Frank said, “How many sorts of crimes has Devin been involved with, you think?”
“Plenty.”
“No, give me a number.”
“I don’t know, Frank. What, dozens?”
“Dozens,” Frank said, nodding. “And deaths? How many deaths?”
“The same. There’s a reason we wanted him so bad, Frank.”
“Yeah. That’s my point. There were plenty of reasons.” He looked around the cabin. “I had him here yesterday with a gun in his mouth and my finger on the trigger. And if the son of a bitch hadn’t been so sick, if he hadn’t looked like he was dying, I probably would have pulled it.”
“It’s good that you didn’t.”
“Is it?” Frank said. “I don’t know about that, Grady. I don’t know. But I don’t want to be the one who has to decide. I do not want to play that role.”
They stayed in the living room for a long time without speaking, and eventually Grady stood and said he was leaving.
“Devin didn’t give my father up,” Frank said. He wasn’t looking at Grady.
“No.”
“Somebody did.”
Grady was silent.
“It was an anonymous tip, says the legend. From someone close to him.”
Grady had given his word never to reveal that source. There were divers out in that lake who were proof that Grady’s word wasn’t worth a damn, though, and maybe Frank was entitled to it by now. Surely he was entitled to it by now.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, “and this time it’ll be the truth.”
Frank was shaking his head. “No,” he said, and Grady would always remember the awkward way he finished it—“I would like not to know.”
Grady nodded, and he left, and he did not tell him. Would never tell him, or anyone, about that day when an attractive woman whose dark hair and skin were contrasted by striking blue eyes came into his office and said, I would like to talk with you about my husband.
When they’d finished that day, he’d praised her bravery, lauded her for doing the right thing. She’d looked at him as if he were insane. Brave? she said. Doing the right thing? It’s got nothing to do with that. I’d never have told you anything. I love him. But he’s going to ruin my son, Mr. Morgan. And I cannot let that happen.
39
__________
They let Ezra out of the hospital seven days after he went in, and Frank picked him up in his own truck, drove south from Minocqua with the windows down and fresh air blowing in, the highway filled with cars towing boats, the first weekend of fishing season under way.
“How’ve the dogs been?” Ezra asked.
“Disgruntled.”
“Good. Nice to see some concern on the home front.”
“The doctors say when you’ll be able to get back out on the boat, back to work?”
“They might have, but I don’t recall listening to it. I think it’ll be soon.”
Frank had already tried offering apologies to Ezra, tried to explain how he’d have handled things differently if he’d understood the situation, how he should never have believed Vaughn. Ezra had cut him off every time, not interested in hearing it, not needing to hear.
“What about Devin?” Ezra said. “Any word?”
Frank just shook his head. During the first few days he’d been sure news about Devin was on its way. The memory of his face there at the end left Frank convinced he’d turn up in a hospital somewhere—or dead. That was the preferred option, that he would turn up dead and Frank would able to shake his head and think about just how little would have been accomplished if he’d pulled the trigger, realize that he’d have removed nothing more than a few days of pain from Devin’s existence. Yes, that was what should happen.
It hadn’t happened, though. The days ticked by and no word came, Devin and Renee still gone.
“He’s got the right sort of friends for this,” Ezra said. “People who can help him disappear.”
“He does,” Frank agreed, and he could feel his finger on the trigger again, see that circle he’d traced in Devin’s hair with the gun barrel.
“You talked to Nora?” Ezra said.