He started in with something he had just heard. “My old company is about to take a fall.” Fitch had called him early that morning from the stairwell at work, breathless in his act of espionage, and brought him up to date. “The new salesman was sent back to San Diego without an explanation,” William told Karla. “Independent consultants have been to the offices at least twice, guys in dark suits who look like Secret Service and don’t talk much to anyone. Apparently, the company made false and misleading statements regarding their investment properties and didn’t vet investors properly. And that’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it is, there’s a paper trail.”
“Business, even immoral business, is distinguished from casual deception by the presence of records. My father used to say that all the time.”
“That’s a big thing to say all the time.”
She didn’t smile, not even a little. She fingered the collar of her blouse. “What were you thinking, William?” she said finally.
“About what?”
“About yesterday. A child in a mob scene like that?” She leaned forward, hands up underneath the tabletop as if she was weighing it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m sure you are.” She kept her eyes on him. “I’m just not sure it matters.”
“How’s his hand?”
“It’s okay. Soft cast. He can’t really eat or write, which is going to make it a rough week.” She put her head down. When she looked up, her eyes were wet. “I don’t think you should spend any more time with Chris.”
He slid his hand across the table, but Karla stiffened. “Stop,” she said. “I think partly I was using you to spend time with him so that I wouldn’t have to. As he gets older, I get more worried that I can’t do this alone. I can’t worry about that anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t help out now and then.”
“It does,” she said. “You’re not his father.”
“But this isn’t fair to him.”
“It’s not fair for him if you stick around this way,” she said. “This is something I mismanaged. Let’s change the subject.”
“There’s nothing to change it to.”
“Well, then we’re done here.”
William paid, desperately, as Karla stayed at the table. Her tears were already over. He walked her out to her car, and she got into the driver’s seat and put on her sunglasses. “You know you’ll have to forgive me,” he said.
“It’s not about me,” she said. “Also, you know that thing you did where you told Chris you knew his father?”
“Yes?”
She shook her head and said nothing, with an expression that made it look like there was nothing more to say.
At home, William went into the junk room and looked through pictures of Lareaux’s arraignment. One of them had been taken as Lareaux stepped out of his car in front of the courthouse. All the drama was in the right half of the frame, while the left was clotted with a disorganized mass of courthouse visitors, some fixed on the source of the tumult, others occupied with other business. At the leftmost edge of the photo, William spotted himself, with his arm around Christopher, coming through the fringe of the crowd. He printed a copy of the picture, folded it up, and put it at the bottom of the drawer of his bedside table.
FIVE
Tom was already jabbering as he got into the car: about how skillfully he had deceived Louisa, calling her Wednesday night to complain about a meeting with a cross-state curator that had been called for too early Friday morning (“I even made up a nickname for him to make it seem more real,” he said); about his calculated but entirely believable weariness as he explained that his car was in the shop again; about the silently counted pause before he proposed that William take the trip with him. “I copped to being a terrible driver,” he said, “although I admitted that I don’t mind your company. She gave her blessing. Go ahead, husband, go off with my crazy brother for a road trip where God-knows-what will happen. Who knows, maybe another boss will get punched.” He was looser than usual, almost happy.
The expressway was mostly clear, and the directions Tom gave were surprisingly direct: head north for an hour and west for a quarter of that, at which point there would be a lake and, just beyond it, a town. They passed through gridded suburbs, a large town studded with church spires, a designer village that seemed to be composed solely of historically preserved mansions and bespoke wine shops. They traced the curve of a river and split a grove of trees. The afternoon sun was still strong. “Don’t you want to know where we’re going?” Tom said.
“To see a cross-state curator,” William said. “At least that’s my understanding.”
“Ha ha,” Tom said. “The trip is art-related, actually. We’re going to see one of the greatest painters I know.” They were approaching their destination, and Tom seemed to be feeling the nearness of it. He rocked his weight against the armrest. He rubbed the tips of his sneakers together. He thumped a thumb into the pleat beside him.
“Hey,” Tom said. “I need a place where I can get a little present. Maybe when we stop for gas.” The gas station was next to a modest garden center; Tom settled on a dwarf bottlebrush, which he balanced in his lap like a child. The towns got smaller and the space between them larger. Houses crowded the winding roads. William focused past the windshield, tried to learn from the land, from the people who filled it, but everything seemed behind glass rather than beyond it.
Finally, they pulled up beside a modest, immaculate inn: two stories, a screened porch, a hard-carved sign overhanging the front door that showed two ducks in a pond. As they entered the lobby, heads rose to consider them, then settled back into the business at hand: conversation, magazines, chess. Tom walked to the back of the room, disappeared into a paneled office door, and returned with a tall, thick man, dark skinned and severe of feature. He wore a black poplin shirt with a black suit coat; a stickpin went diagonally through his green tie. “This is Kenneth,” he said. “He works here.”
“That’s a poor introduction,” Kenneth said. “I am the proprietor of this establishment.” His voice rose and fell in a gentle lilt.
“I got you something,” Tom said. He motioned to William to hand it over.
Kenneth took one of the blood-red blooms between his fingers appreciatively. “I like plants.”
“More than people, from what I recall.”
“Can you blame me?” Kenneth said. “Have you met people?”
“This is William,” Tom said.
Kenneth laughed. “Present company excepted, of course,” he said.
They sat at a long table in the lobby. A lamp watched over a stack of tourist brochures. A bottle held a browning mum. “I reread your message this morning,” Kenneth said. “I want you to know that I support this course of action.” His voice was low and level; he seemed like he spoke that way no matter who was in the room.
“I haven’t been able to reach Jesse for a day or two,” Tom said. “I assume things are still on.” His mouth got small when he spoke, as if he was nervous. Was Jesse the man Tom had mentioned on the drive?
“There’s a party tonight,” Kenneth said. “We’re expected to be there.” He turned to William. “You too,” he said.
Kenneth showed them to a room on the first floor, where William flattened himself on the bed. Pen-and-ink birds flew diagonally across the wallpaper, and William imagined them peeling away and circling the room. He must have fallen asleep, because he came awake with a start at the sound of the door opening. The birds went flat again. “Let’s go,” Tom said.
They all packed into Kenneth’s truck, Kenneth and Tom in the front, William in the back. “Sorry for the tight squeeze,” Kenneth said to William. “It’s only a mile.” But a mile meant something different in the country, something bumpier and more vertiginous, and by the time they came to a small house at the round end of a horseshoe driveway, William had to stagger out to steady himself against the truck.