Before the Fall

Chapter 2

When he was six, Scott Burroughs took a trip to San Francisco with his family. They spent three days at a motel near the beach: Scott, his parents, and his sister, June, who would later drown in Lake Michigan. San Francisco was foggy and cold that weekend, wide avenues rolling like tongue tricks down to the water. Scott remembers his father ordering crab legs at a restaurant, and how, when they came, they were monstrous, the size of tree branches. As if the crabs should be eating them instead of the other way around.

On the last day of their trip Scott’s dad got them on a bus down to Fisherman’s Wharf. Scott — in faded corduroys and a striped T-shirt — knelt on the sloped plastic seat and watched as the flat, wide stucco of the Sunset District turned to concrete hills and wide-plank Victorians lining the serious incline. They went to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum and had their caricatures drawn — a family of four comically oversize heads bobbling side by side on unicycles. Afterward, they stopped and watched the seals splay themselves on salt-soaked docks. Scott’s mother pointed at flurries of white-winged gulls with wonder in her eyes. They were landlocked people. To Scott, it was as if they had taken a spaceship to a distant planet.

For lunch they ate corn dogs and drank Coke out of comically large plastic cups. Entering Aquatic Park, they found a crowd had gathered. There were dozens of people looking north and pointing toward Alcatraz.

The bay was slate gray that day, the hills of Marin framing the now defunct prison island like the shoulders of a guard. To their left the Golden Gate Bridge was a hazy, burnt-orange giant, suspension towers headless in the late-morning fog.

Scott could see a mass of small boats circling out on the water.

“Was there an escape?” Scott’s father asked aloud to no one.

Scott’s mother frowned and pulled out a brochure. As far as she knew, she said, the prison was closed. The island was just for tourists now.

Scott’s father tapped the man next to him on the shoulder.

“What are we looking at?” he asked.

“He’s swimming over from Alcatraz,” the man said.

“Who?”

“The exercise guy. What’s it? Jack LaLanne. It’s some kind of stunt. He’s handcuffed and pulling a goddamn boat.”

“What do you mean, pulling a boat?”

“There’s a rope. This is off the radio. See that boat there. The big one. He’s gotta drag that thing all the way over here.”

The guy shook his head, like all of a sudden the world had gone insane on him.

Scott climbed to a higher step where he could see over all the adults. There was indeed a large boat out on the water, bow pointed toward shore. It was surrounded by a fleet of smaller boats. A woman leaned down and tapped Scott’s arm.

“Here,” she said, smiling, “take a look.”

She handed Scott a small pair of binoculars. Through the lenses he could just make out a man in the water, wearing a beige swim cap. His shoulders were bare. He swam in surging forward lunges, like a mermaid.

“The current is nuts right there,” the man told Scott’s father. “Not to mention the damn water is, like, fifty-eight degrees. There’s a reason nobody ever escaped from Alcatraz. Plus, you got the sharks. I give the guy one shot in five.”

Through the binoculars Scott could see that the motorboats surrounding the swimmer were filled with men in uniforms. They were carrying rifles and staring down into the chop.

In the water the swimmer lifted his arms from the surf and surged forward. He was bound at the wrists, focused on the shore. His breathing was steady. If he was aware of the deputies or the risk of shark attack, he didn’t show it. Jack LaLanne, the fittest man on earth. His sixtieth birthday was in five days. Sixty. The age where anyone with sense slows down, puts up their feet, and lets a few things slide, but, as Scott would later learn, Jack’s discipline transcended age. He was a tool constructed to complete a task, an overcoming machine. Around his waist, the rope was like a tentacle trying to pull him down into the cold, black deep, but he paid it no mind, as if by ignoring the weight he was pulling he could take away its power. Jack was used to it anyway, this rope. At home he tied himself to the side of the pool and swam in place for half an hour a day. This was in addition to ninety minutes of weight lifting and thirty minutes of running. Looking at himself in the mirror afterward, Jack didn’t see a mortal man. He saw a being of pure energy.

He had done this swim before too, back in 1955. Alcatraz was still a prison then, a cold rock of penitence and punition. Jack was forty-one, a young buck already famous for being fit. He had the TV show and the gyms. Every week he stood in simple black and white wearing his trademark jumpsuit, tailored skintight, his biceps bulging. Every so often without warning he would drop to the floor and punctuate his advice with a hundred fingertip push-ups.

Fruits and vegetables, he’d say. Protein, exercise.

On NBC, Mondays at eight, Jack gave away the secrets of eternal life. All you had to do was listen. Towing the boat now, he remembered that first swim. They said it couldn’t be done, a two-mile swim against strong ocean currents in fifty-degree water, but Jack did it in just under an hour. Now nineteen years later he was back, hands tied, legs bound, a thousand-pound boat chained to his waist.

In his mind there was no boat. There was no current. There were no sharks.

There was only his will.

“Ask the guys who are doing serious triathlons,” he would later say, “if there are any limits to what can be done. The limit is right here [in your head]. You’ve got to get physically fit between the ears. Muscles don’t know anything. They have to be taught.”

Jack was the puny kid with the pimples who gorged himself on sweets, the pup who went sugar-mad one day and tried to kill his brother with an ax. Then came the epiphany, the burning bush resolve. In a flash it came to him. He would unlock his body’s full potential. He would remake himself entirely, and by doing so change the world.

And so chubby, sugar-brained Jack invented exercise. He became the hero who could do a thousand jumping jacks and a thousand chin-ups in ninety minutes. The muscle that trained itself to finish 1,033 push-ups in twenty minutes by climbing a twenty-five-foot rope with 140 pounds of weight strapped to his belt.

Everywhere he went, people came up to him on the street. It was the early days of television. He was part scientist, part magician, part god.

“I can’t die,” Jack told people. “It would ruin my image.”

Now, in the water, he lunged forward using the flopping butterfly stroke that he’d invented. The shore was in sight, news cameras massing by the water. The crowd had grown. They spilled over the horseshoe steps. Jack’s wife, Elaine, was among them, a former water ballerina who had chain-smoked and lived on donuts before she met Jack. “There he is,” someone said, pointing. A sixty-year-old man pulling a boat.

Handcuffed. Shackled. He was Houdini, except he wasn’t trying to escape. If Jack had his way he would be chained to this boat forever. They’d add a new one every day until he was pulling the whole world behind him. Until he was carrying all of us on his back into a future where human potential was limitless.

Age is a state of mind, he told people. That was the secret. He would finish this swim and bound from the surf. He would leap into the air, like a boxer after a knockout. Maybe he’d even drop and knock off a hundred push-ups. He felt that good. At Jack’s age, most men were stooped over, whining about their backs. They were nervous about the end. But not Jack. When he turned seventy he would swim for seventy hours pulling seventy boats filled with seventy people. When he turned a hundred they would rename the country after him. He would wake every morning with a boner of steel until the end of time.

On shore, Scott stood on tiptoes and stared out at the water. His parents were forgotten. The lunch he hadn’t liked. There was nothing on earth now except the scene before him. The boy watched as the man in the swim cap struggled against the tide. Stroke after stroke, muscle against nature, willpower in defiance of witless primal forces. The crowd was on its feet, urging the swimmer on, stroke by stroke, inch by inch, until Jack LaLanne was walking out of the surf, newsmen wading out to meet him. He was breathing hard, lips turning blue, but he was smiling. The newsmen untied his wrists, pulled the rope from his waist. The crowd was going crazy. Elaine waded out into the waves, and Jack lifted her into the air as if she were nothing.

The waterfront was electrified. People felt like they were witnessing a miracle. For a long time after, they would find themselves believing that anything was possible. They would go through their day feeling elevated.

And Scott Burroughs, six years old, standing on the top step of the bleachers, found himself undone by a strange surge. There was a swelling in his chest, a feeling — elation? wonder? — that made him want to weep. Even at his young age he knew that he had witnessed something unquantifiable, some grand facet of nature that was more than animal. To do what this man had done — to strap weight to his body, bind his limbs, and swim two miles through freezing water — was something Superman would do. Was it possible? Was this Superman?

“Hell,” said his father, ruffling Scott’s hair. “That was really something. Wasn’t that something?”

But Scott had no words. He just nodded, his eyes fixed on the strong man in the surf, who had picked a news reporter up over his head and was mock-throwing him out into the water.

“I see this guy on TV all the time,” his dad said, “but I thought it was just a joke. With the puffed-up muscles. But man.”

He shook his head from wonder.

“Is that Superman?” Scott asked.

“What? No. That’s — I mean, just a guy.”

Just a guy. Like Scott’s dad or Uncle Jake, mustached and potbellied. Like Mr. Branch, his gym teacher with the Afro. Scott couldn’t believe it. Was it possible? Could anyone be Superman if they just put their mind to it? If they were willing to do what it took? Whatever it took?

Two days later, when they got back to Indianapolis, Scott Burroughs signed up for swim class.

Chapter 3. Waves

He surfaces, shouting. It is night. The salt water burns his eyes. Heat singes his lungs. There is no moon, just a diffusion of moonlight through the burly fog, wave caps churning midnight blue in front of him. Around him eerie orange flames lick the froth.

The water is on fire, he thinks, kicking away instinctively.

And then, after a moment of shock and disorientation:

The plane has crashed.

Scott thinks this, but not in words. In his brain are images and sounds. A sudden downward pitch. The panicked stench of burning metal. Screams. A woman bleeding from the head, broken glass glittering against her skin. And how everything that wasn’t tied down seemed to float for an endless moment as time slowed. A wine bottle, a woman’s purse, a little girl’s iPhone. Plates of food hovering in midair, spinning gently, entrées still in place, and then the screech of metal on metal and the barrel roll of Scott’s world ripping itself to pieces.

A wave smacks him in the face, and he kicks his feet to try to get higher in the water. His shoes are dragging him down, so he loses them, then forces his way out of his salt-soaked chinos. He shivers in the cold Atlantic current, treading water, legs scissoring, arms pushing the ocean away in hard swirls. The waves are quilted with froth, not the hard triangles of children’s drawings, but fractals of water, tiny waves stacking into larger ones. Out in the open water they come at him from all directions, like a pack of wolves testing his defenses. The dying fire animates them, gives them faces of sinister intent. Scott treads his way into a 360-degree turn. Around him he sees humps of jagged wreckage bobbing, pieces of fuselage, a stretch of wing. The floating gasoline has already dissipated or burned down. Soon everything will be dark. Fighting panic, Scott tries to assess the situation. The fact that it’s August is in his favor. Right now the temperature of the Atlantic is maybe sixty-five degrees, cold enough for hypothermia, but warm enough to give him time to reach shore, if that’s possible. If he’s even close.

“Hey!” he shouts, turning himself in the water. “I’m here! I’m alive!”

There have to be other survivors, he thinks. How can a plane crash and only one person survive? He thinks about the woman sitting next to him, the banker’s chatty wife. He thinks about Maggie with her summer smile.

He thinks about the children. Fuck. There were children. Two, yes? A boy and a girl. How old? The girl was bigger. Ten maybe? But the boy was small, a toddler still.

“Hello!” he shouts, with added urgency, swimming now toward the biggest piece of wreckage. It looks like part of a wing. When he reaches it, the metal is hot to the touch and he kicks away hard, not wanting to get swept onto it by the waves and burned.

Did the plane break up on impact? he wonders. Or did it crack open on the way down, spilling passengers?

It seems impossible that he doesn’t know, but the data stream of memory is clogged with indecipherable fragments, pictures with no order, and right now he has no time to try to clarify anything.

Squinting in the dark, Scott feels himself rising suddenly on a heavy wave. He struggles to stay on top of it, realizing he can no longer avoid the obvious.

Straining to stay afloat, he feels something in his left shoulder pop. The ache he endured post-crash becomes a knife that cuts through him whenever he raises his left arm above his head. Kicking his legs, he tries to stretch the pain away, like you would a cramp, but it’s clear something in the socket is torn or broken. He will have to be careful. He still has partial motion — can manage a decent breaststroke — but if the shoulder gets worse he could find himself a one-armed man, adrift, injured, a tiny fish in the saltwater belly of a whale.

It occurs to him then that he may be bleeding.

And that’s when the word sharks enters his mind.

For a moment there is nothing but pure animal panic. Higher reason evaporates. His heart rate soars, legs kicking wildly. He swallows salt water and starts to cough.

Stop, he tells himself. Slow down. If you panic right now, you will die.

He forces himself to be calm, rotating slowly to try to get his bearings. If he could see stars, he thinks, he could orient himself. But the fog is too thick. Should he swim east or west? Back toward the Vineyard or toward the mainland? And yet how will he even know which is which? The island he has come from floats like an ice cube in a soup bowl. At this distance, if Scott’s trajectory is off by even a few degrees he could easily swim right past it and never even realize.

Better, he thinks, to make for the long arm of the coast. If he keeps his stroke even, Scott thinks, rests occasionally, and doesn’t panic, he will hit land eventually. He is a swimmer, after all, no stranger to the sea.

You can do this, he tells himself. The thought gives him a surge of confidence. He knows from riding the ferry that Martha’s Vineyard is seven miles from Cape Cod. But their plane was headed to JFK, which means it would have flown south over the open water toward Long Island. How far did they travel? How far are they from shore? Can Scott swim ten miles with one good arm? Twenty?

He is a land mammal adrift in the open sea.

* * *

The plane will have sent a distress signal, he tells himself. The Coast Guard is on its way. But even as he thinks this, he realizes that the last flame has gone out, and the debris field is scattering with the current.

To keep himself from panicking, Scott thinks of Jack. Jack, the Greek god in his swim trunks, grinning, arms flexed into rippling towers, shoulders hunched forward, lats popped out. The crab. That’s what they called it. Snapping a crab. Scott kept his poster on the wall throughout his childhood. He had it there to remind himself that anything was possible. You could be an explorer or an astronaut. You could sail the seven seas, climb the tallest mountain. All you had to do was believe.

* * *

Underwater, Scott folds himself in half, peeling off his wet socks and flexing his toes against the cool deep. His left shoulder is starting to tighten up on him. He rests it as much as he can, pulling his weight with the right, settling for fifteen minutes at a time into a child’s dog paddle. Once more, he recognizes the sheer impossibility of what he must do, choose a direction at random and swim for who knows how many miles against strong ocean currents with only one working arm. Panic’s cousin, despair, threatens to settle in, but he shakes it off.

His tongue is already starting to feel dry in his mouth. Dehydration is another thing he will have to worry about, if he’s out here long enough. Around him the wind is picking up, roughing the seas. If I’m going to do this, Scott decides, I need to start swimming now. Once more he looks for a break in the fog, but there is none, so he closes his eyes for a moment. He tries to feel west, to divine it like the iron filling feels the magnet.

Behind you, he thinks.

He opens his eyes, takes a deep breath.

He is about to take his first stroke when he hears the noise. At first he thinks it’s gulls, a high-pitched ululation that rises and falls. But then the sea lifts Scott a few feet, and at the wave’s peak he realizes with a shock what he’s hearing.

Crying.

Somewhere a child is crying.

He spins, trying to pinpoint the sound, but the waves rise and fall unevenly, creating bounces and echoes.

“Hey,” he calls. “Hey, I’m here!”

The crying stops.

“Hey,” he shouts, kicking against the undercurrent, “where are you?”

He looks for the wreckage, but whatever pieces haven’t sunk have floated off in any number of directions. Scott strains to hear, to find the child.

“Hey!” he yells again. “I’m here. Where are you?”

For a moment there is just the sound of the waves, and Scott starts to wonder if maybe it was gulls he heard. But then a child’s voice comes, sharp and surprisingly close.

“Help!”

Scott lunges toward the sound. He is no longer alone, no longer a solitary man engaged in an act of self-preservation. Now he is responsible for the life of another. He thinks of his sister, who drowned in Lake Michigan when she was sixteen, and he swims.

He finds the child clinging to a seat cushion thirty feet away. It is the boy. He can’t be more than four.

“Hey,” says Scott when he reaches him. “Hey, sweetie.”

His voice catches in his throat as he touches the boy’s shoulder, and he realizes he is crying.

“I’m here,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

The seat cushion doubles as a flotation device with arm straps and a cinch belt, but it is designed for an adult, so Scott has a hard time getting it to stay on the boy, who is shivering from the cold.

“I threw up,” the boy says.

Scott wipes his mouth gently.

“That’s okay. You’re okay. Just a little seasick.”

“Where are we?” the little boy asks.

“We’re in the ocean,” Scott tells him. “There was a plane crash and we’re in the ocean, but I’m going to swim to shore.”

“Don’t leave me,” the boy says, panic in his voice.

“No, no,” says Scott. “Of course not. I’m taking you with me. We’re just going to — I have to get this thing to stay on you. And then I’ll — you’ll lie on top and I’ll pull you behind me. How does that sound?”

The boy nods, and Scott gets to work. It’s hard with only one working arm, but after a few torturous moments he manages to tie the flotation device straps into a weave. He slips the boy into the harness and studies the results. It’s not as tight as he’d like, but it should keep the boy above the water.

“Okay,” says Scott, “I need you to hold on tight and I’m going to pull you to shore. Can you — do you know how to swim?”

The kid nods.

“Good,” says Scott. “So if you fall off the cushion I want you to kick real hard and paddle with your arms, okay?”

“Dog and cat,” says the boy.

“That’s right. Dog and cat with your hands, just like Mommy taught you.”

“My daddy.”

“Sure. Just like Daddy taught you, okay?”

The boy nods. Scott sees his fear.

“Do you know what a hero is?” Scott asks him.

“He fights the bad guys,” the boy says.

“That’s right. The hero fights the bad guys. And he never gives up, right?”

“No.”

“Well, I need you to be the hero now, okay? Just pretend the waves are the bad guys and we’re gonna swim through them. And we can’t give up. We won’t. We’ll just keep swimming until we reach land, okay?”

The boy nods. Wincing, Scott loops his left arm through one of the straps. His shoulder is screaming now. Each swell that lifts them adds to his sense of disorientation.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

Scott closes his eyes and tries once again to feel which way to swim.

Behind you, he thinks. The shore is behind you.

He rotates carefully around the boy in the water and starts to kick, but just as he does moonlight breaks through the fog. A patch of starry black is briefly visible overhead. Scott searches desperately for constellations he recognizes, the gap closing quickly. Then he spots Andromeda, and then the Big Dipper, and with it the North Star.

It’s the other way, he realizes with a sickening vertigo.

For a moment Scott feels an overwhelming urge to vomit. Had the sky not cleared, then he and the boy would have set out into the Atlantic deep, the East Coast receding behind them with every kick, until exhaustion overtook them and they sank without a trace.

“Change of plans,” he tells the boy, trying to keep his voice light. “Let’s go the other way.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. That’s good.”

Scott kicks them into position. The farthest he has ever swum is fifteen miles, but that was when he was nineteen, and he had trained for months. Plus the race was in a lake with no current. And both of his arms worked. Now it’s night, and the water temperature is dropping, and he will have to fight the strong Atlantic current for who knows how many miles.

If I survive this, he thinks, I’m going to send Jack LaLanne’s widow a fruit basket.

The thought is so ridiculous that, bobbing in the water, Scott starts to laugh, and for a moment can’t stop. He thinks of himself standing at the counter of Edible Arrangements, filling out the card.

With deepest affection — Scott.

“Stop,” says the boy, afraid suddenly that his survival is in the hands of a crazy person.

“Okay,” says Scott, trying to reassure the boy. “It’s okay. Just a joke I thought of. We’re going now.”

It takes him a few minutes to find his stroke, a modified breaststroke, pulling water more with the right hand than the left, legs kicking hard. It is a noisy mess, his left shoulder a bag of broken glass. A gnawing worry settles into his gut. They will drown, both of them. They will both be lost to the deep. But then somehow a rhythm presents itself, and he begins to lose himself in the repetition. Arm up and in, legs scissoring. He swims into the endless deep, ocean spray in his face. It’s hard to keep track of time. What time did the plane take off? Ten p.m.? How much time has passed? Thirty minutes? An hour? How long until the sun comes up? Eight hours? Nine?

Around him the sea is pockmarked and ever changing. Swimming, he tries not to think about the great tracts of open water. He tries not to picture the depth of the ocean or how the Atlantic in August is the birthplace of massive storm fronts, hurricanes that form in the cold troughs of undersea gorges, weather patterns colliding, temperature and moisture forming huge pockets of low pressure. Global forces conspiring, barbarian hordes with clubs and war paint who charge shrieking into the fray, and instantly the sky thickens, blackens, an ominous gale of lightning strikes, huge claps of thunder like the screams of battle, and the sea, which moments ago was calm, turns to hell on earth.

Scott swims in the fragile calm, trying to empty his mind.

Something brushes against his leg.

He freezes, starts to sink, then has to kick his legs to stay afloat.

Shark, he thinks.

You have to stay still.

But if he stops moving he’ll drown.

He rolls over onto his back, breathing deeply to inflate his chest. He has never been more aware of his tenuous place on the food chain. Every instinct in his body screams at him not to turn his back on the deep, but he does. He floats in the sea as calmly as he can, rising and falling with the tide.

“What are we doing?” the boy asks.

“Resting,” Scott tells him. “Let’s be real quiet now, okay? Don’t move. Try to keep your feet out of the water.”

The boy is silent. They rise and fall with the swells. Scott’s primal reptilian brain orders him to flee. But he ignores it. A shark can smell a drop of blood in a million gallons of water. If either Scott or the boy is bleeding they’re done. But if not and they stay completely still the shark (if it was a shark) should leave them alone.

He takes the boy’s hand.

“Where’s my sister?” the boy whispers.

“I don’t know,” Scott whispers back. “The plane went down. We got separated.”

A long beat.

“Maybe she’s okay,” Scott whispers. “Maybe your parents have her, and they’re floating someplace else. Or maybe they’ve already been rescued.”

After a long silence the boy says:

“I don’t think so.”

They float for a while with this thought. Overhead the fog begins to dissipate. It starts slowly, the clearing, first a hint of sky peeking through, then stars appear, and finally the crescent moon, and just like that the ocean around them becomes a sequined dress. From his back, Scott finds the North Star, confirms that they’re going in the right direction. He looks over at the boy, eyes wide with fear. For the first time Scott can see his tiny face, the furrowed brow and bowed mouth.

“Hi,” says Scott, water lapping at his ears.

The boy’s expression is flat, serious.

“Hi,” he says back.

“Are we rested?” Scott asks.

The boy nods.

“Okay,” says Scott, turning over. “Let’s go home.”

He rights himself and starts to swim, certain that at any moment he will feel a strike from below, the razor grip of a steam-shovel mouth, but it doesn’t come, and after a while he puts the shark out of his mind. He wills them forward, stroke after stroke, his legs moving behind him in figure eights, his right arm lunging and pulling, lunging and pulling. To keep his mind busy, he thinks of other liquids he would rather be swimming in; milk, soup, bourbon. An ocean of bourbon.

He considers his life, but the details seem meaningless now. His ambitions. The rent that is due every month. The woman who has left him. He thinks of his work, brushstrokes on canvas. It is the ocean he is painting tonight, stroke by stroke, like Harold and his purple crayon, drawing a balloon as he falls.

Floating in the North Atlantic, Scott realizes that he has never been more clear about who he is, his purpose. It’s so obvious. He was put on this earth to conquer this ocean, to save this boy. Fate brought him to that beach in San Francisco forty-one years ago. It delivered to him a golden god, shackled at the wrists, battling the ocean winds. Fate gave Scott the urge to swim, to join first his junior high swim team, then his high school and college crews. It pushed him to swim practice every morning at five, before the sun was up, lap after lap in the chlorinated blue, the applause of the other boys’ splashing, the kree of the coach’s whistle. Fate led him to water, but it was will that drove him to victory in three state championships, will that pushed him to a first-place medal in the men’s two-hundred-meter freestyle in high school.

He came to love the pressure in his ears when he dove down to the pool’s apple-smooth bottom. He dreamed of it at night, floating like a buoy in the blue. And when he started painting in college, blue was the first color he bought.

* * *

He is starting to get thirsty when the boy says:

“What’s that?”

Scott lifts his head from the water. The boy is pointing at something to their right. Scott looks over. In the moonlight Scott sees a hulking black wave creeping silently toward them, growing taller, gathering strength. Scott measures it instantly at twenty-five feet, a monster bearing down. Its humped head sparkles in the moonlight. A lightning bolt of panic hits him. There is no time to think. Scott turns and starts swimming toward it. He has maybe thirty seconds to close the gap. His left shoulder screams at him, but he ignores it. The boy is crying now, sensing that death is near, but there isn’t time to comfort him.

“Deep breath,” Scott yells. “Take a deep breath now.”

The wave is too big, too fast. It is on them before Scott can get a good breath himself.

He pulls the boy from the flotation device and dives.

Something in his left shoulder pops. He ignores it. The boy struggles against him, against the madman dragging him down to his death. Scott grips him tighter and kicks. He is a bullet, a cannonball streaking down through the water, diving under a wall of death. The pressure increases. His heart pounds, his lungs tick — swollen with air.

As the wave passes overhead, Scott is certain he has failed. He feels himself being sucked back up to the surface in a maelstrom of undertow. The wave will chew them up, he realizes, rip them apart. He kicks harder, holding the boy to his chest, fighting for every inch. Overhead the wave crests and topples into the sea behind them — twenty-five feet of ocean falling like a hammer, millions of gallons of angry surge — and the updraft is replaced in an instant by a churning rinse cycle.

They are spun and dragged. Down becomes up. Pressure threatens to rip them apart, man from boy, but Scott holds on. His lungs are screaming now. His eyes are burning from the salt. In his arms the boy has stopped struggling. The ocean is pure blackness, no sign of the stars or moon. Scott releases the air in his lungs and feels the bubbles cascade downward across his chin and arms. With all his strength he flips them over and kicks for the surface.

He emerges, coughing, his lungs half full of water. He screams them clear. The boy is limp in his arms, his head lying inert against Scott’s shoulder. Scott turns the boy until his back is against Scott’s chest, and then, with all his strength, compresses the boy’s lungs in rhythm until he too is coughing up salt water.

The seat cushion is gone, chewed up by the wave. Scott holds the boy with his good arm. Cold and exhaustion threaten to overwhelm him. For a time it’s all he can do just to keep them afloat.

“That was a big bad guy,” the boy says finally.

For a moment Scott doesn’t understand the words, but then it comes back to him. He told the boy that the waves were bad guys and they were the heroes.

So brave, Scott thinks, amazed.

“I could really go for a cheeseburger,” he says, in the calm between waves. “What about you?”

“Pie,” the boy says after a moment.

“What kind?”

“All of them.”

Scott laughs. He cannot believe that he is still alive. He feels giddy for a moment, his body thrumming with energy. For the second time tonight he has faced certain death and lived. He looks for the North Star.

“How much longer?” the boy wants to know.

“It’s not far,” Scott tells him, though the truth is they could still be miles from shore.

“I’m cold,” says the boy, his teeth chattering.

Scott hugs him.

“Me too. Hold on, okay?”

He maneuvers the boy onto his back, working to stay above the spray. The boy hugs Scott’s neck, his breath loud in Scott’s ear.

“Finish strong,” Scott says, as much for himself as the boy.

He gives one more look to the sky, then starts to swim. He uses a sidestroke now, scissoring his legs, one ear submerged in the salty murk. His movements are clumsier, jerky. He can’t seem to find a rhythm. Both of them are shivering, their core temperature falling with every passing second. It is just a matter of time. Soon his pulse and respiration will slow, even as his heart rate increases. Hypothermia will quicken its pace. A massive heart attack is not out of the question. The body needs warmth to operate. Without it, his major organs will start to fail.

Don’t give up.

Never give up.

He swims without pause, teeth chattering, refusing to surrender. The weight of the boy threatens to sink him, but he kicks harder with his rubbery legs. Around him the sea is bruise purple and midnight blue, the cold white of the wave caps glimmering in the moonlight. The skin of his legs has started to chafe in the spots where they rub together, the salt doing its insidious damage. His lips are cracked and dry. Above them, seagulls chatter and glide like vultures waiting for the end. They mock him with their cries, and in his mind he tells them all to go to hell. There are things in the sea that are impossibly old, astonishingly large, great undersea rivers pulling warm water up from the Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic Ocean is a nexus of highways, of undersea flyovers and bypasses. And there, like a speck on a dot on a flea, is Scott Burroughs, shoulder screaming as he fights for his life.

After what feels like hours, the boy shouts a single word.

“Land.”

For a moment Scott isn’t sure the boy actually spoke. It must be a dream. But then the boy repeats the word, pointing.

“Land.”

It seems like a mistake, like the boy has mixed up the word for survival with the word for something else. Scott lifts his head, half blind with exhaustion. Behind them, the sun is starting to rise, a gentle pinkening to the sky. At first Scott thinks the landmass ahead of them is just some low-hanging clouds on the horizon, but then he realizes that he is the one who’s moving.

Land. Miles of it. Open beach curving toward a rocky point. Streets and houses. Cities.

Salvation.

Scott resists the urge to celebrate. There is still a mile to go at least, a hard mile against riptides and undertow. His legs are quivering, his left arm numb. And yet he can’t help but feel a surge of elation.

He did it. He saved them.

How is that possible?

* * *

Thirty minutes later a graying man in his underwear stumbles out of the surf, carrying a four-year-old boy. They collapse together onto the sand. The sun is up now, thin white clouds framed against a deep Mediterranean blue. The temperature is somewhere around sixty-eight degrees, gulls hanging weightless in the breeze. The man lies panting, a heaving torso ringed with useless rubber limbs. Now that they’re here he cannot move another inch. He is done.

Curled up against his chest, the boy is crying softly.

“It’s okay,” Scott tells him. “We’re safe now. We’re gonna be okay.”

There is an empty lifeguard station a few feet away. The sign on the back reads MONTAUK STATE BEACH.

New York. He swam all the way to New York.

Scott smiles, a smile of pure, joyous fuck you.

Well, hell, he thinks.

It’s going to be beautiful day.

Chapter 4

A walleyed fisherman drives them to the hospital. The three crowd together on the worn bench seat of his pickup, bouncing on battered shocks. Scott is pantless and shoeless, without money or ID. Both he and the boy are racked with bone-deep chills. They have been in sixty-degree water for almost eight hours. Hypothermia has made them slow-witted and mute.

The fisherman speaks to them eloquently in Spanish about Jesus Christ. The radio is on, mostly static. Beneath their feet wind whistles into the cabin through a rust hole in the floor. Scott pulls the boy to him and tries to warm him through friction, rubbing the child’s arms and back vigorously with his one good hand. On the beach, Scott told the fisherman in his limited Spanish that the boy was his son. It seemed easier than trying to explain the truth, that they are strangers drawn together by a freak accident.

Scott’s left arm is completely useless now. Pain knifes through his body with every pothole, leaving him dizzy and nauseous.

You’re okay, he tells himself, repeating the words over and over. You made it. But deep down he still can’t believe they survived.

“Gracias,” he stutters as the pickup pulls into the crescent driveway of the Montauk hospital emergency room. Scott bucks the door open with his good shoulder and climbs down, every muscle in his body numb with exhaustion. The morning fog is gone, and the warm sun on his back and legs feels almost religious. Scott helps the boy jump down. Together they limp into the emergency room.

The waiting area is mostly empty. In the corner, a middle-aged man holds an icepack to his head, water dripping off his wrist onto the linoleum floor. On the other side of the room an elderly couple holds hands, their heads close together. From time to time the woman coughs into a balled-up Kleenex she keeps clutched tightly in her left hand.

An intake nurse sits behind glass. Scott limps over to her, the boy holding on to his shirttails.

“Hi,” he says.

The nurse gives him a quick once-over. Her name tag reads MELANIE. Scott tries to imagine what he must look like. All he can think of is Wile E. Coyote after an ACME rocket has exploded in his face.

“We were in a plane crash,” he says.

The words out loud are astonishing. The intake nurse squints at him.

“I’m sorry.”

“A plane from Martha’s Vineyard. A private plane. We crashed into the sea. I think we’re hypothermic, and my — I can’t move my left arm. The collarbone may be broken.”

The nurse is still trying to work through it.

“You crashed in the sea.”

“We swam — I swam — I think it was ten miles. Maybe fifteen. We just came ashore maybe an hour ago. A fisherman drove us here.”

The words are making him dizzy, his lungs shutting down.

“Look,” he says, “do you think we could get some help? At least the boy. He’s only four.”

The nurse looks at the boy, damp, shivering.

“Is he your son?”

“If I say yes will you get us a doctor?”

The nurse sniffles.

“There’s no need to get surly.”

Scott feels his jaw clenching.

“There is actually every need. We were in a fucking plane crash. Get the damn doctor.”

She stands, uncertain.

Scott glances over at the ceiling-mounted television. The sound is down, but onscreen are images of search-and-rescue boats on the ocean. A banner headline reads, PRIVATE PLANE FEARED LOST.

“There,” says Scott, pointing, “that’s us. Will you believe me now?”

The nurse looks at the TV, images of fractured wreckage bobbing in the sea. Her reaction is instantaneous, as if Scott has produced a passport at the border crossing after pantomiming a frantic search.

She pushes the intercom button.

“Code Orange,” she says. “I need all available doctors to intake immediately.”

The cramping in Scott’s leg is beyond critical. He is dehydrated, potassium-deficient, like a marathoner who has failed to give his body the nutrition it demands.

“Just,” he says, buckling to the floor, “one would do, probably.”

He lies on the cool linoleum looking up at the boy. The boy’s face is sober, worried. Scott tries to smile reassuringly, but even his lips are exhausted. In an instant they are surrounded by hospital personnel, voices shouting. Scott feels himself being lifted onto a gurney. The boy’s hand slips away.

“No!” the boy shouts. He is screaming, thrashing. A doctor is talking to him, trying to make the boy understand that they will take care of him, that nothing bad will happen. It doesn’t matter. Scott struggles to sit up.

“Kid,” he says, louder and louder until the boy looks at him. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

He climbs down off the gurney, his legs rubbery, barely able to stand.

“Sir,” a nurse says, “you have to lie down.”

“I’m fine,” Scott tells the doctors. “Help him.”

To the boy he says: “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

The boy’s eyes, in daylight, are startlingly blue. After a moment he nods. Scott, feeling light-headed, turns to the doctor.

“We should do this fast,” he says, “if it’s not too much trouble.”

The doctor nods. He is young and smart. You can see it in his eyes.

“Fine,” he says, “but I’m getting you a wheelchair.”

Scott nods. A nurse wheels over the chair and he falls into it.

“Are you his father?” she asks him as they roll to the exam room.

“No,” Scott tells her. “We just met.”

Inside the exam bay, the doctor gives the boy a quick once-over, checking for fractures, light in the eyes, follow my finger.

“We need to start an IV,” he tells Scott. “He’s severely dehydrated.”

“Hey, buddy,” Scott tells the boy, “the doctor needs to put a needle in your arm, okay? They need to give you some fluids, and, uh, vitamins.”

“No needles,” the boy says, fear in his eyes. He is one wrong word away from losing his mind.

“I don’t like them either,” says Scott, “but you know what? I’ll get one too, okay? We’ll do it together. How about that?”

The boy thinks about this. It seems fair. He nods.

“Okay, good,” says Scott. “Let’s — hold my hand and we’ll — don’t look, okay?”

Scott turns to the doctor.

“Can you do us together?” he asks.

The doctor nods, issues orders. The nurses ready the needles and hang IV bags on metal arms.

“Look at me,” Scott tells the boy when the time comes.

The boy’s eyes are blue saucers. He flinches when the needle goes in. His eyes tear up and his bottom lip quivers, but he doesn’t cry.

“You’re my hero,” Scott tells him. “My absolute hero.”

Scott can feel the fluids entering his system. Almost immediately the urge to pass out dissipates.

“I’m going to give you both a mild sedative,” the doctor says. “Your bodies have been working overtime just to stay warm. You need to downshift.”

“I’m fine,” Scott says. “Do him first.”

The doctor sees there’s no point in arguing. A needle is inserted into the boy’s IV line.

“You’re going to rest a little bit,” Scott tells him. “I’ll be right here. I may go outside for a minute, but I’ll come back. Okay?”

The boy nods. Scott touches the crown of his head. He remembers when he was nine and he fell out of a tree and broke his leg. How he was brave through the whole thing, but when his dad showed up at the hospital Scott started bawling. And now this boy’s parents are most likely dead. No one is going to walk through the door and give him permission to fall apart.

“That’s good,” he tells the boy as his little eyes start to flutter shut. “You’re doing so good.”

After the boy is asleep, Scott is wheeled into a separate exam room. They lay him on a gurney and cut off his shirt. His shoulder feels like an engine that has seized.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asks him. He is maybe thirty-eight with smile lines around his eyes.

“You know,” says Scott, “things are starting to turn around.”

The doctor does a surface exam, checking for obvious cuts or bruises.

“Did you really swim all that way in the dark?”

Scott nods.

“Do you remember anything?”

“I’m a little fuzzy on details,” Scott tells him.

The doctor checks his eyes.

“Hit your head?”

“I think so. On the plane before we crashed…”

The penlight blinds him for a moment. The doctor clucks.

“Eye response looks good. I don’t think you have a concussion.”

Scott exhales.

“I don’t think I could have done that — swim all night — with a concussion.”

The doctor considers this.

“You’re probably right.”

As he warms up and his fluids are replaced, things start to come back to Scott, the world at large, the concept of countries and citizens, of daily life, the Internet, television. He thinks of his three-legged dog, staying with a neighbor, how close she came to never eating another under-the-table meatball again. Scott’s eyes fill with tears. He shakes them off.

“What’s the news saying?” he asks.

“Not much. They say the plane took off around ten o’clock last night. Air traffic control had it on their radar for maybe fifteen minutes, then it just disappeared. No mayday. Nothing. They were hoping the radio was broken and you made an emergency landing someplace. But then a fishing boat spotted a piece of the wing.”

For a moment Scott is back in the ocean, treading water in the inky deep, surrounded by orange flames.

“Any other…survivors?” he asks.

The doctor shakes his head. He is focused on Scott’s shoulder.

“Does this hurt,” he says, gently lifting Scott’s arm.

The pain is instantaneous. Scott yells.

“Let’s get an X-ray and a CAT scan,” the doctor tells the nurse.

He turns to Scott.

“I ordered a CAT scan for the boy too,” he says. “I want to make sure there’s no internal bleeding.”

He lays a hand on Scott’s arm.

“You saved his life,” he says. “You know that, right?”

For the second time, Scott fights back tears. He is unable, for a long moment, to say anything.

“I’m going to call the police,” the doctor tells him. “Let them know you’re here. If you need anything, anything, tell the nurse. I’ll be back to check on you in a few.”

Scott nods.

“Thanks,” he says.

The doctor stares at Scott for a moment longer, then shakes his head.

“Goddamn,” he says, smiling.

* * *

The next hour is filled with tests. Flush with warm fluids, Scott’s body temperature returns to normal. They give him Vicodin for the pain, and he floats for a while in twilight oblivion. It turns out his shoulder is dislocated, not broken. The procedure to pop it back into place is an epic lightning strike of violence followed immediately by a cessation of pain so intense it’s as if the damage has been erased from his body retroactively.

At Scott’s insistence, they put him in the boy’s room. Normally, children stay in a separate wing, but an exception is made given the circumstances. The boy is awake now, eating Jell-O, when they wheel Scott inside.

“Any good?” Scott wants to know.

“Green,” the boy says, frowning.

Scott’s bed is by the window. He has never felt anything as comfortable as these scratchy hospital sheets. Across the street there are trees and houses. Cars drive past, windshields flashing. In the bike lane, a woman jogs against traffic. In a nearby yard, a man in a blue ball cap push-mows his lawn.

It seems impossible, but life goes on.

“You slept, huh?” says Scott.

The boy shrugs.

“Is my mommy here yet?” he says.

Scott tries to keep his face neutral.

“No,” Scott tells him. “They’ve called your — I guess you have an aunt and uncle in Westchester. They’re on their way.”

The boy smiles.

“Ellie,” he says.

“You like her?”

“She’s funny,” the boy says.

“Funny is good,” says Scott, his eyelids fluttering. Exhausted doesn’t describe the kind of heavy-metal gravity pulling at his bones right now. “I’m going to sleep for a bit, if that’s okay.”

If the boy thinks otherwise, Scott never hears it. He is asleep before the kid can answer.

* * *

He sleeps for a while, a dreamless slumber, like a castle dungeon. When he wakes the boy’s bed is empty. Scott panics. He is half out of bed when the bathroom door opens and the boy comes out wheeling his IV stand.

“I had to tinkle,” he says.

A nurse comes in to check Scott’s blood pressure. She’s brought a stuffed animal for the boy, a brown bear with a red heart in its paws. He takes it with a happy sound and immediately starts to play.

“Kids,” the nurse says, shaking her head.

Scott nods. Now that he’s slept he is anxious to get more details about the crash. He asks the nurse if he can get out of bed. She nods, but tells him not to go far.

“I’ll be back, buddy, okay?”

The boy nods, playing with his bear.

Scott puts a thin cotton robe over his hospital gown and walks his IV stand down the hall to the empty patient lounge. It’s a narrow interior room with particleboard chairs. Scott finds a news channel on TV, turns up the volume.

“…the plane was an OSPRY, manufactured in Kansas. On board were David Bateman, president of ALC News, and his family. Also confirmed now as passengers are Ben Kipling and his wife, Sarah. Kipling was a senior partner at Wyatt, Hathoway, the financial giant. Again, the plane is believed to have gone down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York sometime after ten p.m. last night.”

Scott stares at the footage, helicopter shots of gray ocean swells. Coast Guard boats and rubbernecking weekend sailors. Even though he knows the wreckage would have drifted, maybe even a hundred miles by now, he can’t help but think that he was down there not that long ago, an abandoned buoy bobbing in the dark.

“Reports are coming in now,” says the anchor, “that Ben Kipling may have been under investigation by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and that charges were forthcoming. The scope and source of the investigation aren’t yet clear. More on this story as it develops.”

A photo of Ben Kipling appears on the screen, younger and with more hair. Scott remembers the eyebrows. He realizes that everyone else on that plane except he and the boy exist now only in the past tense. The thought makes the hair on his neck flutter and stand, and for a moment he thinks he may pass out. Then there is a knock on the door. Scott looks up. He sees a group of men in suits hovering in the hallway.

“Mr. Burroughs,” says the knocker. He is in his early fifties, an African American man with graying hair.

“I’m Gus Franklin with the National Transportation Safety Board.”

Scott starts to stand. A reflex of social protocol.

“No, please,” says Gus. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Scott settles back onto the sofa, pulling the cotton robe closed over his legs.

“I was just — watching it on TV,” he says. “The rescue. Salvage? I’m not sure what to call it. I think I’m still in shock.”

“Of course,” says Gus. He looks around the small room.

“Let’s — I’m gonna say four people max in this room,” he tells his cohorts. “Otherwise, it’s gonna get a little claustrophobic.”

There is a quick conference. Ultimately, they agree on six, Gus and two others (one man and one woman) in the room; two more in the doorway. Gus sits beside Scott on the sofa. The woman is to the left of the television. A trim, bearded man to her right. They are, for want of a better word, nerds. The woman has a ponytail and glasses. The man sports an eight-dollar haircut and a JCPenney suit. The two men in the doorway are more serious, well dressed, military haircuts.

“As I said,” says Gus, “I’m with the NTSB. Leslie’s with the FAA and Frank is with OSPRY. And in the doorway is Special Agent O’Brien from the FBI and Barry Hex from the Treasury’s OFAC.”

“The OFAC,” says Scott. “I just saw something about that on the TV.”

Hex chews gum silently.

“If you feel up to it, Mr. Burroughs,” says Gus, “we’d like to ask you some questions about the flight, who was on it, and the circumstances leading up to the crash.”

“Assuming it was a crash,” says O’Brien. “And not an act of terrorism.”

Gus ignores this.

“Here’s what I know,” he tells Scott. “As of now we’ve found no other survivors. Nor have we recovered any bodies. A few pieces of wreckage were found floating about twenty-nine miles off the coast of Long Island. We’re examining them now.”

He leans forward, placing his hands on his knees.

“You’ve been through a lot, so if you want to stop just say so.”

Scott nods.

“Somebody said the boy’s aunt and uncle are coming from Westchester,” he says. “Do we know when they’ll get here?”

Gus looks at O’Brien, who ducks out of the room.

“We’re checking that for you,” says Gus. He pulls a file folder from his briefcase. “So the first thing I need to do is confirm how many people were on the flight.”

“Don’t you have, I mean, an itinerary?” Scott asks.

“Private jets file flight plans, but their passenger rosters are pretty unreliable.”

He looks over his paperwork.

“Am I right in saying your name is Scott Burroughs?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind giving me your Social Security number? For our records.”

Scott recites the number. Gus writes it down.

“Thanks,” he says. “That helps. There are sixteen Scott Burroughs in the tristate area. We weren’t sure exactly which one we were dealing with.”

He offers Scott a smile. Scott tries to work up an encouraging response.

“From what we’ve been able to piece together,” Gus tells him, “the flight was crewed by a captain, a first officer, and a flight attendant. Would you recognize the names if I said them?”

Scott shakes his head. Gus makes a note.

“Passenger-wise,” says Gus, “we know that David Bateman chartered the flight and that he and his family — wife, Maggie, and two children, Rachel and JJ — were on board.”

Scott thinks of the smile Maggie gave him when he boarded. Warm and welcoming. A woman he knew in passing, small talk at the market—How are you? How are the kids? — the occasional conversation about his work. That she is dead right now at the bottom of the Atlantic makes him want to throw up.

“And finally,” says Gus, “in addition to yourself, we believe that Ben Kipling and his wife, Sarah, were on board. Can you confirm that?”

“Yes,” says Scott. “I met them when I got on the plane.”

“Describe Mr. Kipling for me, please,” asks Agent Hex.

“Uh, maybe five-eleven, gray hair. He had, uh, very prominent eyebrows. I remember that. And his wife was very chatty.”

Hex looks at O’Brien, nods.

“And just so we’re clear,” says Gus. “Why were you on the plane?”

Scott looks at their faces. They are detectives scrambling for facts, filling in missing pieces. A plane has crashed. Was it mechanical failure? Human error? Who can be blamed? Who is liable?

“I was—” says Scott, then starts again, “—I met Maggie, Mrs. Bateman, on the island a few weeks ago. At the farmers market. I would — I went there every morning for coffee and a bialy. And she would come in with the kids. But sometimes alone. And we started talking one day.”

“Were you sleeping with her?” asks O’Brien.

Scott thinks about this.

“I wasn’t,” he says. “Not that it’s relevant.”

“Let us decide what’s relevant,” O’Brien says.

“Sure,” says Scott, “though maybe you can explain to me how the sexual interactions of a passenger in a plane crash are relevant to your — what is this? — investigation.”

Gus nods quickly three times. They are getting off course. Every second wasted takes them farther from the truth.

“Back to the point,” he says.

Scott holds O’Brien’s eye for a long antagonistic moment, then continues.

“I ran into Maggie again Sunday morning. I told her I had to go to New York for a few days. She invited me to fly with them.”

“And why were you going to New York?”

“I’m a painter. I’ve been — I live on the Vineyard and I was going in to meet with my rep and talk to some galleries about doing a show. My plan was to take the ferry to the mainland. But Maggie invited me, and, well, a private plane. The whole thing seemed very — I almost didn’t go.”

“But you did.”

Scott nods.

“At the last minute. I threw some things together. They were actually closing the doors when I ran up.”

“Lucky for the boy you made it,” says Leslie from the FAA.

Scott thinks about it. Was it lucky? Is there anything lucky about surviving a tragedy?

“Did Mr. Kipling seem agitated to you?” Hex interjects, clearly impatient. He has his own investigation and it has little to do with Scott.

Gus shakes him off.

“Let’s do this in order,” he says. “I’m leading this — it’s my investigation.”

He turns to Scott.

“The airport log says the plane took off at ten oh six.”

“Sounds right,” says Scott. “I didn’t look at my phone.”

“Can you describe the takeoff?”

“It was — smooth. I mean, it was my first private jet.”

He looks at Frank, the OSPRY rep.

“Very nice,” he says. “Except for the crashing, I mean.”

Frank looks stricken.

“So you don’t remember anything unusual?” Gus asks. “Any sounds or jostling out of the ordinary?”

Scott thinks back. It happened so fast. Before he could even get his seat belt on they were taxiing. And Sarah Kipling was talking to him, asking him about his work and how he knew Maggie. And the girl was on her iPhone, listening to music or playing a game. The boy was sleeping. And Kipling was—what was he doing?

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I remember — you felt the force of it more. The power. I guess that’s what a jet is. But then we were off the ground and rising. Most of the shades were closed and it was very light in the cabin. There was a baseball game on the TV.”

“Boston played last night,” says O’Brien.

“Dworkin,” says Frank in a knowing way, and the two feds in the doorway smile.

“I don’t know what that means,” Scott says, “but I also remember music. Something jazzy. Sinatra maybe?”

“And did there come a time when something unusual happened?” Gus asks.

“Well, we fell into the ocean,” says Scott.

Gus nods.

“And how exactly did that happen?”

“Well — I mean — it’s hard to remember exactly,” Scott tells him. “The plane turned suddenly, pitched, and I—”

“Take your time,” says Gus.

Scott thinks back. The takeoff, the offered glass of wine. Images flash through his mind, an astronaut’s vertigo, a blare of sounds. Metal shrieking. The disorienting whirl. Like a movie negative that has been cut and reassembled at random. It is the job of the human brain to assemble all the input of our world — sights, sounds, smells — into a coherent narrative. This is what memory is, a carefully calibrated story that we make up about our past. But what happens when those details crumble? Hailstones on a tin roof. Fireflies firing at random. What happens when your life can’t be translated into a linear narrative?

“There was banging,” he says. “I think. Some kind of — I want to say concussion.”

“Like an explosion?” asks the man from OSPRY, hopefully.

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. It was more like — a knocking and then — at the same time the plane kind of — dropped.”

Gus thinks about saying something then, a follow-up question, but doesn’t.

In his mind, Scott hears a scream. Not of terror, but an involuntary expulsion, a reflexive vocal reaction to something unexpected. It is the sound fear makes when it first appears, the sudden, visceral realization that you are not safe, that this activity you are engaged in is deeply, deeply risky. Your body makes the sound and immediately you break out in a cold sweat. Your sphincter clenches. Your mind, which up until this moment has been moving along at pedestrian speeds, suddenly races forward, running for its life. Fight or flight. It is the moment when the intellect fails and something primal, animal takes over.

With a sudden prickling certainty, Scott realizes that the scream came from him. And then blackness. His face pales. Gus leans in.

“Do you want to stop?”

Scott exhales.

“No. It’s fine.”

Gus asks an aide to bring Scott a soda from the machine. While they’re waiting Gus lays out the facts he’s managed to assemble.

“According to our radar,” he says, “the plane was in the air for eighteen minutes. It reached an altitude of twelve thousand feet, then began to descend rapidly.”

Sweat is dripping down Scott’s back. Images are coming back to him, memories.

“Things were—flying is the wrong word,” he says. “Around. Stuff. I remember my duffel bag. It just kind of levitated off the floor, just calmly floated up in the air like a magic trick, and then, just as I reached for it, it just — took off, just disappeared. And we were spinning, and I hit my head, I guess.”

“Do you know if the plane broke up in the air?” Leslie from the FAA asks him. “Or was the pilot able to make a landing?”

Scott tries to remember, but it’s just flashes. He shakes his head.

Gus nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s stop there.”

“Hold on,” says O’Brien. “I still have questions.”

Gus stands.

“Later,” he says. “Right now I think Mr. Burroughs needs to rest.”

The others stand. This time Scott gets to his feet. His legs are shaking.

Gus offers his hand.

“Get some sleep,” he says. “I saw two news vans pull up outside as we were coming in. This is going to be a story, and you’re going to be at the center of it.”

Scott can’t for the life of him figure out what he’s talking about.

“What do you mean?” he says.

“We’ll try to shield your identity as long as possible,” Gus tells him. “Your name wasn’t on the passenger roster, which helps. But the press is going to want to know how the boy made it to shore. Who saved him. Because that’s a story. You’re a hero now, Mr. Burroughs. Try to wrap your mind around that — what it means. Plus, the boy’s father, Bateman, was a big deal. And Kipling — well, you’ll see — this is a very messy situation.”

He extends his hand. Scott shakes it.

“I’ve seen a lot of things in my day,” says Gus, “but this—”

He shakes his head.

“You’re a hell of a swimmer, Mr. Burroughs.”

Scott feels numb. Gus herds the other agents out of the room with his hands.

“We’ll talk again,” he says.

After they’re gone Scott sways on his feet inside the empty lounge. His left arm is in a polyurethane sling. The room is buzzing with silence. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. He is alive. This time yesterday he was eating lunch on his back porch and staring out at the yard, egg salad and iced tea. The three-legged dog was lying in the grass licking her elbow. There were phone calls to make, clothes to pack.

Now everything has changed.

He wheels his IV over to the window, looks out. In the parking lot he sees six news vans, satellite dishes deployed. A crowd is gathering. How many times has the world been interrupted by the cable buzz of special reports? Political scandals, spree killings, celebrity intercourse caught on tape. Talking heads with their perfect teeth ripping apart the still-warm body? Now it is his turn. Now he is the story, the bug under the microscope. To Scott, watching through tempered glass, they are an enemy army massing at the gates. He stands in his turret watching them assemble their siege engines and sharpen their swords.

All that matters, he thinks, is that the boy be saved from that.

A nurse knocks on the door of the lounge. Scott turns.

“Okay,” she tells him. “Time to rest.”

Scott nods. He remembers the moment from last night when the fog first cleared, and the North Star became visible. A distant point of light that brought with it absolute certainty about which direction they should go.

Standing there, studying his reflection in the glass, Scott wonders if he will ever have that kind of clarity again. He takes a last look at the growing mob, then turns and walks back to his room.

Chapter 5. List of the Dead

David Bateman, 56

Margaret Bateman, 36

Rachel Bateman, 9

Gil Baruch, 48

Ben Kipling, 52

Sarah Kipling, 50

James Melody, 50

Emma Lightner, 25

Charlie Busch, 30

Chapter 6. David Bateman, April 2, 1959–August 23, 2015

It was the chronic chaos that made it interesting. The way a story could spark from a cinder and race through a news cycle, changing speed and direction, growing wilder, devouring everything in its path. Political gaffes, school shootings, crises of national and international import. News, in other words. On the tenth floor of the ALC Building the newsmen rooted for fires, both literal and metaphoric, betting money on them like a back-alley dice game.

Anyone who could guess the length of a scandal down to the hour got a salad spinner, David used to say. Cunningham would give you the watch off his wrist if you could predict a politician’s apology word for word before it happened. Napoleon offered sex with his wife to any reporter who could get a White House press secretary to curse into an open mike. They spent hours establishing the ground rules on that one — what constituted a curse? Fuck, sure. Shit or twat. But what about damn? Was hell enough?

“Hell will get you a handjob,” Napoleon told them, feet stacked up on his desk, left over right, but when Cindy Bainbridge got Ari Fleischer to say it, Napoleon told her it didn’t count because she was a girl.

If you were lucky, what started as a brush fire — a governor’s name found on the client list of a call-girl ring, for example — quickly became a raging inferno, exploding in backdraft share points and swallowing all the oxygen out of the broadcast market. David used to remind them constantly that Watergate started with a simple B&E.

“What was Whitewater, after all,” he’d say, “but a bush-league, Podunk land scandal?”

They were twenty-first-century newsmen, prisoners of the cycle. History had taught them to dig for scandal in the fringes of every fact. Everyone was dirty. Nothing was simple except for the message.

ALC News, with a staff of fifteen thousand and a viewership that hovered around two million a day, was founded in 2002 with a hundred-million-dollar investment by an English billionaire. David Bateman was its architect, its founding father. In the trenches they called him The Chairman. But really what he was was a general, like George S. Patton, who stood unflinchingly as machine-gun fire strafed the dirt between his legs.

David had worked on both sides of the political scandal racket in his day. First, in his role as a political consultant running to stay ahead of the gaffes and missteps of his candidates, and then, after he retired from politics, in constructing an upstart twenty-four-hour news network. That was thirteen years ago. Thirteen years of outrage and messaging, of jeering chyrons and knock-down, drag-out war; 4,745 days of constant signal; 113,880 hours of sports and punditry and weather; 6,832,800 minutes of tick-tock air to fill with words and pictures and sound. The sheer, endless volume of it was daunting sometimes. Hour after hour stretching out to eternity.

What saved them was that they were no longer slaves to the events they covered. No longer held hostage by the action or inaction of others. This was the Big Idea that David had brought to the table in constructing the network, his masterstroke. Sitting down for lunch with the billionaire all those years ago, he laid it out simply.

“All these other networks,” he said, “they react to the news. Chase after it. We’re going to Make The News.”

What that meant, he said, was that unlike CNN or MSNBC, ALC would have a point of view, an agenda. Sure, there would still be random acts of God to cover, celebrity deaths and sex scandals. But that was just gravy. The meat and potatoes of their business would come from shaping the events of the day to fit the message of their network.

The billionaire loved this idea, of controlling the news, as David knew he would. He was a billionaire, after all, and billionaires get to be billionaires by taking control. After coffee they settled it with a handshake.

“How soon can you be up and running?” he asked David.

“Give me seventy-five million and I’ll be on the air in eighteen months.”

“I’ll give you a hundred. Be on in six.”

And they were. Six months of frantic building, of stealing anchors from other networks, of logo design and theme music composition. David found Bill Cunningham throwing snark on a second-tier newsmagazine show. Bill was an angry white guy with a withering wit. David saw past the small time of the program. He had a vision of what the guy could become with the right platform, a godhead from Easter Island, a touchstone. There was a point of view there that David felt just might personify their brand.

“Brains aren’t something they hand out in Ivy League schools,” Cunningham told David when they met for breakfast that first time. “We’re all born with them. And what I can’t stand is this elitist attitude that we’re all, none of us, smart enough to run our own country.”

“You’re doing a rant now,” David told him.

“Where’d you go to college anyway?” Cunningham asked him, ready to pounce.

“Saint Mary’s Landscaping Academy.”

“Seriously. I went to Stony Brook. State school. And when I got out, none of those fucks from Harvard or Yale would give me the time of day. And pussy? Forget it. I had to sleep with Jersey girls for six years until I got my first on-air.”

They were in a Cuban-Chinese place on Eighth Avenue, eating eggs and drinking paint-brown coffee. Cunningham was a big guy, tall with a deliberate loom. He liked to get in your face, to unpack his suitcase and move in.

“What do you think of TV news?” David asked him.

“Shit,” said Cunningham, chewing. “This pretend impartiality, like they don’t take sides, but look at what they’re reporting. Look at who the heroes are. The working stiff? No way. The churchgoing family man who works a double so his kid can go to college? It’s a joke. We got a guy in the White House getting blowjobs from those guys’ daughters. But the president’s a Rhodes Scholar so I guess that makes it okay. They call it objective. I call it bias, pure and simple.”

The waiter came and left the check, an old striped carbon sheet torn from a pocket-size pad. David still has it, framed on the wall of his office, one corner discolored by coffee. As far as the world was concerned Bill Cunningham was a washed-up, second-rate Maury Povich, but David saw the truth. Cunningham was a star, not because he was better than you or me, but because he was you or me. He was the raging voice of common sense, the sane man in an insane world. Once Bill was on board, the rest of the pieces fell into place.

Because at the end of the day, Cunningham was right, and David knew it. TV newsmen tried so hard to appear objective when the truth was, they were anything but. CNN, ABC, CBS, they sold the news like groceries in a supermarket, something for everyone. But people didn’t want just information. They wanted to know what it meant. They wanted perspective. They needed something to react against. I agree or I don’t agree. And if a viewer didn’t agree more than half of the time, was David’s philosophy, they turned the channel.

David’s idea was to turn the news into a club of the like-minded. The first adopters would be the ones who’d been preaching his philosophy for years. And right behind them would be the people who had been searching their whole lives for someone to say out loud what they’d always felt in their hearts. And once you had those two groups, the curious and the undecided would follow in droves.

This deceptively simple reconfiguration of the business model turned out to bring a sea change to the industry. But for David, it was simply a way to relieve the stress of waiting. Because what is the news business, really, except the work of hypochondriacs? Anxious men and women who inflate and investigate every tic and cough, hoping that this time it might be the big one. Wait and worry. Well, David had no interest in waiting, and he had never been one to worry.

He grew up in Michigan, the son of an autoworker at a GM plant, David Bateman Sr., who never took a sick day, never skipped a shift. David’s dad once counted the cars he’d built over the thirty-four years he worked the rear suspension line. The number he came up with was 94,610. To him that was proof of a life well lived. You got paid to do a job and you did it. David Sr. never had more than a high school diploma. He treated everyone he met with respect, even the Harvard management types who toured the plant every few months, sluicing down from the curved driveways of Dearborn to slap the back of the common man.

David was an only child, the first in his family to go to college. But in an act of allegiance to his father, he declined the invitation to go to Harvard (full scholarship) in order to attend the University of Michigan. It was there that he discovered a love for politics. Ronald Reagan was in the White House that year, and David saw something in his folksy manner and steely gaze that inspired him. David ran for class president his senior year and lost. He had neither a politician’s face nor charm, but he had ideas, strategy. He saw the moves like billboards in the far distance, heard the messages in his head. He knew how to win. He just couldn’t do it himself. It was then that David Bateman realized that if he wanted a career in politics, it would have to be behind the scenes.

Twenty years and thirty-eight state and national elections later, David Bateman had earned a reputation as a kingmaker. He had turned his love of the game into a highly profitable consulting business whose clients included a cable news network that had hired David to help them revamp their election coverage.

It was this combination of items on his résumé that led, one day in March 2002, to the birth of a movement.

Chapter 7

David woke before dawn. It was programmed into him now after twenty years on the campaign trail. Marty always said, You snooze you lose, and it was true. Campaigns weren’t beauty contests. They were about endurance, the long, ugly blood sport of gathering votes. Rarely was there a first-round knockout. It was usually about who was still standing in the fifteenth, shrugging body blows from rubbery legs. It’s what separated the something from the something else, David liked to say. And so he learned to go without sleep. Four hours a night was all he required now. In a pinch he could get by with twenty minutes every eight hours.

In his bedroom, the wall-size windows across from the bed framed the first glow of sunlight. He lay on his back, looking out, as downstairs the coffee was making itself. Outside he could see the towers of the Roosevelt Island tramway. Their bedroom — his and Maggie’s — faced the East River. Glass as thick as an unabridged copy of War and Peace blocked the endless roar of the FDR Drive. It was bulletproof, along with all the other windows in the town house. The billionaire had paid for the installation after 9/11.

“Can’t afford to lose you to some jihadi cabdriver with a shoulder rocket,” he told David.

Today was Friday, August 21. Maggie and the kids were out at the Vineyard, had been all month, leaving David to pad the marble bathroom floors alone. Downstairs he could hear the housekeeper making breakfast. After a shower, he stopped at the kids’ rooms, as he did every morning, and stared at their perfectly made beds. The decor in Rachel’s room combined scientific gadgetry and horse worship. JJ’s was all about cars. Like all children, they tended toward chaos, a juvenile disorder the house staff erased systematically, often in real time. Now, staring at the sterile, vacuumed order, David found himself wanting to mess things up, to make his son’s room look more like a kid’s and less like a museum of childhood. So he went over to a toy bin and kicked it over with his foot.

There, he thought. That’s better.

He would leave a note for the maid. When the children left town she was to leave their rooms as she found them. He would tape them off like a crime scene if he had to, anything to make the house feel more alive.

He called Maggie from the kitchen. The clock on the stove read 6:14 a.m.

“We’ve been up for an hour,” she said. “Rachel’s reading. JJ is seeing what happens when you pour dish soap in the toilet.”

Her voice was muffled as she covered the mouthpiece.

“Sweetie,” she yelled. “That is not what we call a good choice.”

In New York, David mimed drinking and the housekeeper brought him more coffee. His wife came back on the line. David could hear the frazzled energy she got in her voice when she spent too long parenting by herself. Every year he tried to get her to bring Maria, the au pair, with them to the island, but his wife always refused. Summer vacation was for them, she said, family time. Otherwise, Rachel and JJ would grow up calling the nanny Mommy, like all the other kids in their neighborhood.

“It’s super foggy out,” his wife said.

“Did you get the thing I sent?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, sounding pleased. “Where did you find them?”

“The Kiplings. They know a guy who travels the world collecting old-world clippings. Apples from the eighteen hundreds. Peach trees no one’s seen since McKinley was president. We had that fruit salad at their place last summer.”

“Right,” she said. “That was yummy. Were they — is it silly to ask? — were they expensive? This seems like something that you’d hear on the news is the price of a new car.”

“A Vespa, maybe,” he said.

It was just like her to ask price, as if part of her still couldn’t fathom their net worth, its implications.

“I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Danish plum,” she said.

“Me either. Who knew the world of fruit could be so exotic?”

She laughed. When things were good between them, there was an easiness. A rhythm of give-and-take that came from living in the moment, from burying old grudges. Some mornings when he called, David could tell that she had dreamed about him in the night. It was something she did from time to time. Often she told him afterward, biting off her words, unable to look him in the eye. In the dream he was always a monster who scorned and abandoned her. The conversations that followed were chilly and brief.

“Well, we’re going to plant the trees this morning,” Maggie told him. “It’ll give us a project for the day.”

They made small talk for another ten minutes — what his day looked like, what time he thought he’d be out tonight. All the while his phone chimed, breaking news, schedule changes, crises to be managed. The sound of other people’s panic reduced to a steady electronic hum. Meanwhile the kids buzzed in and out of Maggie’s end of the line like yellow jackets scouting a picnic. He liked hearing them in the background, the melee of them. It was what set his generation apart from his father’s. David wanted his children to have a childhood. A real childhood. He worked hard so that they could play. For David’s father, childhood had been a luxury his son could not afford. Play was considered a gateway drug to idleness and poverty. Life, Dad said, was a Hail Mary. You only got one shot at it, and if you didn’t train every day — with wind sprints and grass drills — you would blow it.

As a result, David had been burdened with chores at an early age. At five, he was cleaning the trash cans. By seven he was doing all their laundry. The rule in their house was that homework was done and chores were completed before a single ball was thrown, before a bike was ridden or army men were dumped from the Folgers can.

You don’t become a man by accident, his father told him. It was a belief that David shared, though his was a milder version. In David’s mind, the training for adulthood began in the double digits. At ten, he reasoned, it was time to start thinking about growing up. To take the soft-serve lessons about discipline and responsibility that had been fed to you in your youth, and cement them into rules for a healthy and productive life. Until then you were a child, so act accordingly.

“Daddy,” said Rachel, “will you bring my red sneakers? They’re in my closet.”

He walked into her room and got them while they were talking so he wouldn’t forget.

“I’m putting them in my bag,” he told her.

“It’s me again,” said Maggie. “Next year I think you should come out here with us for the whole month.”

“Me too,” he said immediately. Every year they had the same conversation. Every year he said the same thing. I will. And then he didn’t.

“It’s just the fucking news,” she said. “There’ll be more tomorrow. Besides, haven’t you trained them all by now?”

“I promise,” he said, “next year I’ll be there more.” Because it was easier to say yes than to dicker through the real-world probabilities, lay out all the mitigating factors, and try to manage her expectations.

Never fight tomorrow’s fight today, was his motto.

“Liar,” she said, but with a smile in her voice.

“I love you,” he told her. “I’ll see you tonight.”

* * *

The town car was downstairs waiting for him. Two security contractors from the agency rode up in the elevator to get him. They slept in shifts in one of the first-floor guest rooms.

“Morning, boys,” said David, shrugging on his jacket.

They took him out together, two big men with Sig Sauers under their coats, eyes scanning the street for signs of threat. Every day David got hate mail, apoplectic letters about God knows what, sometimes even care packages of human shit. It was the price he paid for choosing a side, he reasoned, for having an opinion about politics and war.

Fuck you and your God, they said.

They threatened his life, his family, threats he had learned to take seriously.

In the town car he thought about Rachel, the three days she was missing. Ransom calls, the living room filled with FBI agents and private security, Maggie crying in the back bedroom. It was a miracle they got her back, a miracle that he knew would never happen twice. So they lived with the constant surveillance, the advance team. Safety first, he told his children. Then fun. Then learning. It was a joke between them.

He was driven cross-town through the stop-and-go. Every two seconds his phone blorped. North Korea was test-firing missiles into the Sea of Japan again. A Tallahassee policeman was in a coma after a car stop shooting. Nude cell phone photos of a Hollywood starlet sent to an NFL running back had just dropped. If you weren’t careful it could feel like a tidal wave bearing down, all this eventfulness. But David saw it for what it was, and understood his own role. He was a sorting machine, boxing the news by category and priority, forwarding tips to various departments. He wrote one-word replies and hit SEND. Bullshit or Weak or More. He had answered thirty-three emails and returned sixteen phone calls by the time the car pulled up in front of the ALC Building on Sixth Avenue, and that was light for a Friday.

A security man opened the back door for him. David stepped out into the bustle. Outside, the air was the temperature and consistency of a patty melt. He was wearing a steel-gray suit with a white shirt and a red tie. Sometimes in the mornings he liked to veer away from the front door at the last second and wander off to find a second breakfast. It kept the security guys on their toes. But today he had things to do if he was going to make it to the airport by three.

David’s office was on the fifty-eighth floor. He came off the elevator at a fast clip, eyes focused on his office door. People got out of the way when he walked. They ducked into cubicles. They turned and fled. It wasn’t the man so much as the office. Or maybe it was the suit. The faces around him seemed to get younger every day, David thought, segment producers and executive administrators, online nerds with soul patches and artisanal coffee, smug with the knowledge that they were the future. Everyone in this business was building a legacy. Some were ideologues, others were opportunists, but they were all there because ALC was the number one cable news network in the country, and David Bateman was the reason.

Lydia Cox, his secretary, was already at her desk. She had been with David since 1995, a fifty-nine-year-old woman who had never married, but had never owned a cat. Lydia was thin. Her hair was short, and she carried a certain old-school Brooklyn chutzpah that, like a once thriving Indian tribe, had long since been driven from the borough by hostile gentrifiers from across the sea.

“You’ve got the Sellers call in ten minutes,” she reminded him first thing.

David didn’t slow. He went in to his desk, took off his jacket, and hung it on the back of his chair. Lydia had put his schedule on the seat. He picked it up, frowned. Starting the day with Sellers — the increasingly unpopular LA bureau chief — was like starting the day with a colonoscopy.

“Hasn’t somebody stabbed this guy yet?” he said.

“No,” said Lydia, following him in. “But last year you did buy a burial plot in his name and send him a picture of it for Christmas.”

David smiled. As far as he was concerned there weren’t enough moments like that in life.

“Push it to Monday,” he told her.

“He’s called twice already. Don’t you dare let him blow this off, was the gist.”

“Too late.”

There was a hot cup of coffee on David’s desk. He pointed to it.

“For me?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s the pope’s.”

Bill Cunningham appeared in the doorway behind her. He was in jeans, a T-shirt, and his trademark red suspenders.

“Hey,” he said. “Got a sec?”

Lydia turned to go. As Bill stepped aside to let her pass, David noticed Krista Brewer hovering behind him. She looked worried.

“Sure,” said David. “What’s up?”

They came in. Bill closed the door behind them, which wasn’t something he normally did. Cunningham was a performance artist. His whole shtick was built on a rant against secret backroom meetings. In other words, nothing he did was ever private. Instead he preferred to go into David’s office twice a week and yell his head off. About what didn’t matter. It was a show of force, like a military exercise. So the closed door was a concern.

“Bill,” said David, “did you just close the door?”

He looked at Krista, Bill’s executive producer. She seemed a little green. Bill dropped onto the sofa. He had the wingspan of a pterodactyl. He sat, as he always did, with his knees spread wide so you could see how big his balls were.

“First of all,” he said, “it’s not as bad as you think.”

“No,” said Krista. “It’s worse.”

“Two days of bullshit,” said Bill. “Maybe the lawyers get involved. Maybe.”

David got up and looked out the window. He found the best thing you could do with a showman like Bill was not look at him.

“Whose lawyers?” he asked. “Yours or mine?”

“Goddammit, Bill,” said Krista turning on the anchor. “This isn’t a rule you broke, Don’t spit in church. It’s a law. Several laws probably.”

David watched the traffic go by on Fifth Avenue.

“I’m going to the airport at three,” he said. “Do you think we’ll have reached the point by then, or are we going to have to finish this by phone?”

He turned and looked at them. Krista’s arms were crossed defiantly. Bill’s gotta say it, was her body language. Messengers get killed for delivering bad news, and Krista wasn’t going to lose her job for another one of Cunningham’s dumb mistakes. Bill, meanwhile, had an angry smile on his face like a cop after a shooting he’ll swear on the stand was justified.

“Krista,” said David.

“He tapped people’s phones,” she said.

The words hung there, a crisis point, but not yet a full-blown crisis.

“People,” David echoed cautiously, the word bitter on his tongue.

Krista looked at Bill.

“Bill has this guy,” she said.

“Namor,” said Bill. “You remember Namor. Former Navy SEAL, former Pentagon intel.”

David shook his head. In the last few years Bill had taken to surrounding himself with a bunch of Gordon Liddy kooks.

“Sure you do,” Bill said. “Well, we’re drinking one night. This is maybe a year ago. And we’re talking about Moskewitz, you remember the congressman who liked smelling black girls’ feet? Well, Namor is laughing and he says wouldn’t it be great if we had those phone calls on tape? Broadcast gold, right? A Jewish congressman telling some black chick how he wants to smell her feet? And so I say, yes, that would be good. And whatever, we order couple more seven-and-sevens and Namor says, You know…”

Bill paused for dramatic effect. He couldn’t help it. It was in his nature to perform.

“…You know…it’s not hard. This is Namor. In fact, he says, it’s a fucking cinch. Because everything goes through a server. Everyone has email, cell phones. They’ve got voice mail passwords and text messaging user names. And that shit is all accessible. It’s crackable. Hell, if you know somebody’s phone number you can just clone their phone, so every time they get a call…”

“No,” said David, feeling a hot flush climb up his spine from his asshole.

“Whatever,” said Bill. “It’s two guys in a bar at one in the morning. It’s just bullshit cocksmanship. But then he said, pick a name. Somebody whose phone calls you want to hear. So I say, Obama. And he says, That’s the White House. Not possible. Pick somebody else. Lower down. So I say, Kellerman — you know, that piece-of-shit liberal reactionary on CNN. And he says Done.”

David found himself in his chair, though he couldn’t remember sitting. And Krista was looking at him like, It gets worse.

“Bill,” said David, shaking his head, his hands up. “Stop. I can’t hear this. You should be talking to a lawyer.”

“That’s what I told him,” said Krista.

Cunningham waved them off like they were a couple of Pakistani orphans at an Islamabad bazaar.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Picked a name. And who cares anyway? We’re two drunks at a bar. So I go home, forget about the whole thing. A week later, Namor comes to the office. He wants to show me something. So we go into my office and he takes out a Zip drive, puts it in my computer. It’s got all these audio files on it. Fucking Kellerman, right? Talking to his mother, his dry cleaner. But also to his producer about cutting some bits from a story to make it skew a different way.”

David felt a moment of vertigo.

“Is that how you…” he said.

“Shit yes. We found the original footage and ran the piece. You loved that story.”

David was standing again, fists clenched.

“When I thought it was journalism,” he said. “Not…”

Bill laughed, shaking his head with wonder at his own inventiveness.

“I gotta play these tapes for you. It’s classic.”

David came around the desk.

“Stop talking.”

“Where are you going?” Bill asked.

“Don’t say another fucking word to anyone,” David told him, “either of you,” and walked out of his office.

Lydia was at her desk.

“I’ve got Sellers on line two,” she said.

David didn’t stop, didn’t turn. He walked through rows of cubicles, sweat dripping down his sides. This could be the end of them. He knew it in his bones, didn’t even have to hear the rest of the story.

“Move,” he yelled at a group of crew cuts in short-sleeved shirts. They scattered like rabbits.

Mind racing, David reached the elevator bank, pushed the button, then, without waiting, kicked open the door to the stairs, went down a floor. He stalked the halls like a spree killer with an assault rifle, found Liebling in the conference room, sitting with sixteen other lawyers.

“Out,” said David. “Everybody.”

They scrambled, these nameless suits with their law degrees, the door hitting the last one on the heels. Sitting there, Don Liebling had a bemused look on his face. He was their in-house counsel, mid-fifties and Pilates fit.

“Jesus, Bateman,” he said.

David paced.

“Cunningham,” was all he could say for a moment.

“Shit,” said Liebling. “What did that wet dick do now?”

“I only heard some of it,” David said. “I cut him off before I could become an accessory after the fact.”

Liebling frowned.

“Tell me there isn’t a dead hooker in a hotel room somewhere.”

“I wish,” David said. “A dead hooker would be easy compared to this.”

Looking up, he saw an airplane high above the Empire State Building. For a moment his need to be on it, going somewhere, anywhere, was overwhelming. He dropped into a leather chair, ran his hand through his hair.

“The fucktard tapped Kellerman’s phone. Probably others. I got the feeling he was going to start listing victims, like a serial killer, so I left.”

Liebling smoothed his tie.

“When you say tapped his phone…”

“He has a guy. Some intel consultant who said he could get Bill access to anybody’s email or phone.”

“Jesus.”

David leaned back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling.

“You have to talk to him.”

Liebling nodded.

“He needs his own lawyer,” he said. “I think he uses Franken. I’ll call.”

David tapped his fingers on the tabletop. He felt old.

“I mean, what if it was congressmen or senators?” he asked. “My God. It’s bad enough he’s spying on the competition.”

Liebling thought about that. David closed his eyes and pictured Rachel and JJ digging holes in the backyard, planting old-world apple trees. He should have taken the month off, should be there with them right now, flip-flops on, a Bloody Mary in hand, laughing every time his son said, What’s up, chicken butt?

“Could this sink us?” he asked, eyes still shut.

Liebling equivocated with his head.

“It sinks him. That’s for sure.”

“But it hurts us?”

“Without a doubt,” said Liebling. “A thing like this. There could be congressional hearings. At the very least you’ve got the FBI up your ass for two years. They’ll talk about pulling our broadcast license.”

David thought about this.

“Do I resign?”

“Why? You didn’t know anything. Did you?”

“It doesn’t matter. A thing like this. If I didn’t know, I should have.”

He shook his head.

“Fucking Bill.”

But it wasn’t Bill’s fault, thought David. It was his. Cunningham was David’s gift to the world, the angry white man people invited into their living rooms to call bullshit at the world, to rail against a system that robbed us of everything we felt we deserved — the third-world countries that were taking our jobs. The politicians who were raising our taxes. Bill Cunningham, Mr. Straight Talk, Mr. Divine Righteousness, who sat in our living rooms and shared our pain, who told us what we wanted to hear, which was that the reason we were losing out in life was not that we were losers, but that someone was reaching into our pockets, our companies, our country and taking what was rightfully ours.

Bill Cunningham was the voice of ALC News and he had gone insane. He was Kurtz in the jungle, and David should have realized, should have pulled him back, but the ratings were too good, and the shots Bill was taking at the enemy were direct hits. They were the number one network, and that meant everything. Was Bill a diva? Absolutely. But divas can be handled. Lunatics on the other hand…

“I’ve gotta call Roger,” he said, meaning the billionaire. Meaning his boss. The boss.

“And say what?” said Liebling.

“That this thing is coming. That it’s out there, and he should get ready. You need to find Bill and pull him into a room and beat him with a sock full of oranges. Get Franken here. Get the truth, and then protect us from it.”

“Does he go on tonight?”

David thought about this.

“No. He’s sick. He has the flu.”

“He won’t like that.”

“Tell him the alternative is he goes to jail or we break his kneecaps. Call Hancock. We put it out there this morning that Bill’s sick. On Monday we run a Best Of week. I don’t want this guy on my air again.”

“He won’t go quietly.”

“No,” said David. “He won’t.”

Chapter 8. Injuries

At night, when Scott dreams, he dreams of the shark, sleek-muscled and greedy. He wakes thirsty. The hospital is an ecosystem of beeps and hums. Outside, the sun is just coming up. He looks over at the boy, still asleep. The television is on at low volume, white noise haunting their sleep. The screen is split into fifths, a news crawl snaking across the floor. Onscreen, the search for survivors continues. It appears the navy has brought in divers and deep-sea submersibles to try to find the underwater wreckage, to recover the bodies of the dead. Scott watches as men in black wet suits step from the deck of a Coast Guard cutter and vanish into the sea.

“They’re calling it an accident,” Bill Cunningham is saying from the screen’s largest box, a tall man with dramatic hair, thumbing his suspenders. “But you and I know — there are no accidents. Planes don’t just fall out the sky, the same way that our president didn’t just forget that Congress was on vacation when he made that hack Rodriguez a judge.”

Cunningham is smoky-eyed, his tie askew. He has been on the air for nine hours now delivering a marathon eulogy for his dead leader.

“The David Bateman I knew,” he says, “—my boss, my friend — couldn’t be killed by mechanical failure or pilot error. He was an avenging angel. An American hero. And this reporter believes that what we’re talking about here is nothing less than an act of terrorism, if not by foreign nationals, then by certain elements of the liberal media. Planes don’t just crash, people. This was sabotage. This was a shoulder-fired rocket from a speedboat. This was a jihadi in a suicide vest on board the aircraft, possibly one of the crew. Murder, my friends, by the enemies of freedom. Nine dead, including a nine-year-old girl. Nine. A girl who had already suffered tragedy in her life. A girl I held in my arms at birth, whose diaper I changed. We should be fueling up the fighter jets. SEAL teams should be jumping from high-altitude planes and sharking up from submarines. A great patriot is dead, the godfather of freedom in the West. And we will get to the bottom of things.”

Scott turns down the volume. The boy stirs but does not wake. In sleep he is not yet an orphan. In sleep his parents are still alive, his sister. They kiss him on the cheeks and tickle his ribs. In sleep it is last week and he is running through the sand, holding a squirmy green crab by the claw. He is drinking orange soda through a straw and eating curly fries, his brown hair bleached by the sun, freckles splashed across his face. And when he wakes up there will be that moment when all the dreams are real, when the love he carries up with him is enough to keep the truth at bay, but then the moment will end. The boy will see Scott’s face, or a nurse will come in, and just like that he will be an orphan again. This time forever.

Scott turns and looks out the window. They are meant to be discharged today, Scott and the boy, expelled from the looped loudspeaker of hospital life, BP checked every half hour, temperature taken, meals delivered. The boy’s aunt and uncle arrived last night, red-eyed and somber. The aunt is Maggie’s younger sister, Eleanor. She sleeps now in a hard-backed chair beside the boy’s bed. Eleanor is in her early thirties and pretty, a massage therapist from Croton-on-Hudson, Westchester. Her husband, the boy’s uncle, is a writer, squirrelly about eye contact, the kind of knucklehead who grows a beard in summer. Scott doesn’t have a good feeling about him.

It has been thirty-two hours since the crash, a heartbeat and a lifetime. Scott has yet to bathe, his skin still salty from the sea. His left arm is in a sling. He has no ID, no pants. And yet, despite this, his idea is still to head into the city later as planned. There are meetings on the books. Career connections to be made. Scott’s friend Magnus has offered to drive out to Montauk and get him. Lying there, Scott thinks it will be good to see him, a friendly face. They are not close really, he and Magnus, nothing like brothers, more like drinking buddies, but Magnus is both unflappable and relentlessly positive, which is why Scott thought to call him last night. It was essential that he avoid talking to anyone who might cry. Keep things casual. That was his goal. In fact, after he’d finished telling Magnus — who didn’t own a TV — what had happened, Magnus said weird, and then suggested they should grab a beer.

Looking over, Scott sees that the boy is awake now, staring at him unblinking.

“Hey, buddy,” says Scott quietly, so as not to wake the aunt. “You sleep okay?”

The boy nods.

“Want me to put on some cartoons?”

Another nod. Scott finds the remote, turns channels until he finds something animated.

“Sponge Bob?” Scott asks.

The boy nods again. He hasn’t spoken a word since yesterday afternoon. In the first few hours after they reached shore it was possible to get a few words out of him, how he was feeling, if he needed anything. But then, like a wound swelling shut, he stopped speaking. And now he is mute.

Scott spies a box of powdery rubber exam gloves on the table. As the boy watches, he pulls one out.

“Uh-oh,” he says, then quietly fakes the big buildup to a sneeze. With the achoo he hangs the glove from his left nostril. The boy smiles.

The aunt wakes, stretches. She is a beautiful woman with a blunt bang haircut, like a person who makes up for driving an expensive car by never washing it. Scott watches her face as she regains full consciousness, as she realizes where she is and what has happened. For a moment he sees her threaten to collapse under the weight of it, but then she sees the boy and forces a smile.

“Hey,” she says, smoothing the hair back from his face.

She looks up at the TV, and then at Scott.

“Morning,” he says.

She brushes her own hair off her face, checks to make sure her clothes are on properly.

“Sorry,” she says. “I guess I fell asleep.”

It doesn’t feel like a comment that deserves a response, so Scott just nods. Eleanor looks around.

“Have you seen…Doug? My husband?”

“I think he went to get some coffee,” Scott tells her.

“Good,” she says, looking relieved. “That’s good.”

“You two been married a long time?” Scott asks her.

“No. Just, uh, seventy-one days.”

“But who’s counting,” says Scott.

Eleanor flushes.

“He’s a sweet guy,” she says. “I think he’s just a little overwhelmed right now.”

Scott glances at the boy, who has stopped watching the TV and is studying Scott and his aunt. The idea that Doug is overwhelmed given what they’ve been through is mystifying.

“Did the boy’s father have any family?” Scott asks. “Your brother-in-law?”

“David?” she says. “No. I mean, his parents are dead, and he’s, I mean I guess he was an only child.”

“What about your parents?”

“My, uh, mom is still around. She lives in Portland. I think she’s flying in today.”

Scott nods.

“And you guys live in Woodstock?”

“Croton,” she says. “It’s about forty minutes outside the city.”

Scott thinks about this, a small house in a wooded glen, easy chairs on a porch. It could be good for the boy. Then again, it could be disastrous, the isolation of the woods, the glowering drunken writer, like Jack Nicholson in the winter mountains.

“Has he ever been there?” Scott asks, nodding toward the boy.

She purses her lips.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “but why are you asking me all these questions?”

“Well,” says Scott, “I guess I’m just curious as to what’s going to happen to him now. I’m invested, you could say.”

Eleanor nods. She looks scared, not of Scott, but of life, what her life is about to become.

“We’ll be fine,” she says, rubbing the boy’s head. “Right?”

He doesn’t answer, his eyes focused on Scott. There is a challenge in them, a plea. Scott blinks first, then turns and looks out the window. Doug comes in. He’s holding a cup of coffee and wearing a misbuttoned cardigan over a checked lumberjack shirt. Seeing him, Eleanor looks relieved.

“Is that for me?” she asks, pointing.

For a moment Doug looks confused, then he realizes she means the coffee.

“Uh, sure,” he says, and hands it to her. Scott can tell from the way she holds it that the cup is almost empty. He sees her face get sad. Doug comes around the boy’s bed and stands near his wife. Scott can smell alcohol on his clothes.

“How’s the patient?” Doug asks.

“He’s good,” says Eleanor. “Got some sleep.”

Studying Doug’s back, Scott wonders how much money the boy stands to inherit from his parents. Five million? Fifty? His father ran a TV empire and flew in private planes. There will be riches, real estate. Sniffling, Doug hikes up his pants with both hands. He pulls a small toy car from his pocket. It still has the price tag on it.

“Here you go, slugger,” he says. “Got this for you.”

There are a lot of sharks in the sea, thinks Scott, watching the boy take the car.

Dr. Glabman enters, eyeglasses perched on top of his head. He has a bright-yellow banana sticking out of his lab coat pocket.

“Ready to go home?” he asks.

They get dressed. The hospital gives Scott a pair of blue surgical scrubs to wear. He puts them on one-handed, wincing as the nurse maneuvers his fragile left arm into the sleeve. When he comes out of the bathroom the boy is already dressed and sitting in a wheelchair.

“I’m giving you the name of a child psychiatrist,” the doctor tells Eleanor, out of earshot of the boy. “He specializes in post-traumatic cases.”

“We actually don’t live in the city,” says Doug.

Eleanor shushes him with a look.

“Of course,” she says, taking the business card from the doctor. “I’ll call this afternoon.”

Scott crosses to the boy, kneels on the floor in front of him.

“You be good,” he says.

The boy shakes his head, tears in his eyes.

“I’ll see you,” Scott tells him. “I’m giving your aunt my phone number. So you can call. Okay?”

The boy won’t look at him.

Scott touches his tiny arm for a moment, unsure what to do next. He has never had a child, never been an uncle or a godfather. He’s not even sure they speak the same language. After a moment Scott straightens and hands Eleanor a piece of paper with his phone number.

“Obviously, call anytime,” he says. “Not that I know what I can do to help. But if he wants to talk, or you…”

Doug takes the number from his wife. He folds it up and jams it in his back pocket.

“Sounds good, man,” he says.

Scott stands for a minute, looking at Eleanor, then at the boy, and finally at Doug. It feels like an important moment, like one of those critical junctures in life when you’re supposed to say something or do something, but you don’t know what. Only later does it hit you. Later, the thing you should have said will be as clear as day, but right now it’s just a nagging feeling, a clenched jaw and low nausea.

“Okay,” he says finally and walks to the door, thinking he will just go. That that’s the best thing. To let the boy be with his family. But then as he steps into the hall he feels two small arms grab his leg, and he turns to see the boy holding on to him.

The hall is full of people, patients and visitors, doctors and nurses. Scott puts a hand on the boy’s head, then bends and picks him up. The boy’s arms encircle his neck, and he hugs hard enough to cut off Scott’s air. Scott blinks away tears.

“Don’t forget,” he tells the boy. “You’re my hero.”

He lets the boy hug himself out, then carries him back to the wheelchair. Scott can feel Eleanor and Doug watching him, but he keeps his eyes on the boy.

“Never give up,” he tells him.

Then Scott turns and walks off down the hall.

* * *

In the early years, when he was deep in a painting, Scott felt like he was underwater. There was that same pressure between the ears, the same muted silence. Colors were sharper. Light rippled and bent. He had his first group show at twenty-six, his first solo show at thirty. Every dime he could scrabble together was spent on canvas and paint. Somewhere along the way he stopped swimming. There were galleries to commandeer and women to fuck and he was a tall, green-eyed flirt with a contagious smile. Which meant there was always a girl to buy him breakfast or put a roof over his head, at least for a few nights. At the time this almost made up for the fact that his work was good, not great. Looking at it, you could see he had potential, a unique voice, but something was missing. Years passed. The big solo shows and high-profile museum acquisitions never happened. The German biennials and genius grants, the invitations to paint and teach abroad. He turned thirty, thirty-five. One night, after several cocktails at his third gallery opening of the week to celebrate an artist five years younger than himself, it occurred to Scott that he would never became the overnight success he thought he’d be, the enfant terrible, the downtown superstar. The heady exhilaration of artistic possibility had become elusive and frightening. He was a minor artist. That’s all he’d ever be. The parties were still good. The women were still beautiful, but Scott felt uglier. As the rootlessness of youth was replaced by middle-aged self-involvement, his affairs turned quick and dirty. He drank to forget. Alone in his studio, Scott took to staring at the canvas for hours waiting for images to appear.

Nothing ever came.

He woke up one day and found he was a forty-year-old man with twenty years of booze and debauchery ballooning his middle and weathering his face. He had been engaged once and then not, had sobered and fallen from the wagon. He had been young once and limitless, and then somehow his life became a foregone conclusion. An almost was, not even a has been. Scott could see the obituary. Scott Burroughs, a talented, rakish charmer who had never lived up to his promise, who had long since crossed the line from fun-loving and mysterious to boorish and sad. But who was he kidding? Even the obituary was a fantasy. He was a nobody. His death would warrant nothing.

Then, after a weeklong party at the Hamptons house of a much more successful painter, Scott found himself lying facedown on the living room floor. He was forty-six years old. It was barely dawn. He staggered to his feet and out onto the patio. His head was pounding and his mouth tasted like a radial tire. He squinted in the glare of sudden sunlight, his hand rising to shield his face. The truth about him, his failure, came back as a throbbing head pain. And then, as his eyes adjusted, he lowered his hand and found himself staring into the famous artist’s swimming pool.

It was there that the artist and his girlfriend found Scott an hour later, naked and swimming laps, his chest on fire, his muscles aching. They yelled at him to come for a drink with them. But Scott waved them off. He felt alive again. The moment he entered the water it was like he was eighteen again and winning a gold medal at the national championship. He was sixteen, executing a perfect underwater pivot. He was twelve and getting up before dawn to slice the blue.

He swam backward through time, lap after lap, until he was six years old and watching Jack LaLanne tow a thousand-pound boat through San Francisco Bay, until that feeling returned — that deep boy certainty:

Anything is possible.

Everything is gettable.

You just have to want it badly enough.

Scott wasn’t old, it turned out. He wasn’t finished. He had just given up.

Thirty minutes later he climbed out of the pool and, without drying off, put on his clothes and went back to the city. For the next six months he swam three miles a day. He threw away the booze and the cigarettes. He cut out red meat and dessert. He bought canvas after canvas, covering every available surface with an expectant white primer. He was a boxer training for a fight, a cellist practicing for a concert. His body was his instrument, battered like Johnny Cash’s guitar, splintered and raw, but he was going to turn it into a Stradivarius.

He was a disaster survivor in that he had survived the disaster that was his life. And so that’s what he painted. That summer he rented a small house on Martha’s Vineyard and holed up. Once again the only thing that mattered was the work, except now he realized that the work was him. There is no separating yourself from the things you make, he thought. If you are a cesspool, what else can your work be except shit?

He got a dog and cooked her spaghetti and meatballs. Every day was the same. An ocean swim. Coffee and a pastry at the farmers market. Then hours of open time in his studio, brushstrokes and paint, lines and color. What he saw when he finished was too exciting to say out loud. He had made the great leap forward, and knowing this he became strangely terrified. The work became his secret, a treasure chest hidden in the rocky ground.

Only recently had he come out of hiding, first by attending a few dinner parties on the island, and then by allowing a Soho gallery to include a new piece in their 1990s retrospective. The piece had garnered a lot of attention. It was bought by an important collector. Scott’s phone started ringing. A few of the bigger reps came out and toured the studio. It was happening. Everything he had worked toward, a life’s pursuit about to be realized. All he had to do was grab the ring.

So he got on a plane.

Chapter 9

A dozen news vans are parked outside the hospital, camera crews assembled and waiting. Police barricades have been erected, half a dozen uniformed officers keeping things orderly. Scott spies on the scene from the hospital lobby, hiding behind a potted ficus. This is where Magnus finds him.

“Jesus, man,” he says. “You don’t do anything half-assed, do you?”

They man-hug. Magnus is a part-time painter and full-time ladies’ man, with just a trace of Irish lilt in his voice.

“Thanks for doing this,” Scott tells him.

“No worries, brother.”

Magnus gives Scott the once-over.

“You look like shite.”

“I feel like shite,” Scott says.

Magnus holds up a duffel bag.

“I brought some skivvies,” he says, “a fetching frock and some panties. You want to change?”

Scott looks over Magnus’s shoulder. Outside, the crowd is growing. They are there to see him, to get a glimpse, a sound bite from the man who swam for eight hours through the midnight Atlantic with a four-year-old boy on his back. He closes his eyes and pictures what will happen once he is dressed, once he steps through those doors, the spotlight and questions, his own face on TV. The circus of it, the blood frenzy.

There are no accidents, he thinks.

To Scott’s left is a long hall and a door that reads LOCKER ROOM.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Scott says. “But it involves you breaking the law.”

Magnus smiles.

“Just one?”

Ten minutes later, Scott and Magnus walk out a side door. They are both in scrubs now, wearing white lab coats, two doctors going home at the end of a long shift. Scott holds Magnus’s cell phone to his ear, talking to the dial tone. The ruse works. They reach Magnus’s car, a seen-better-days Saab, with a sun-bleached fabric roof. Inside, Scott reaffixes the sling over his left shoulder.

“Just so you know,” Magnus tells him, “we’re definitely wearing these out to the bar later. Ladies love a medical man.”

As they drive out past the press line, Scott shields his face with the phone. He thinks about the boy, hunched over and tiny in his wheelchair, an orphan now and forever. Scott has no doubt that his aunt loves him, no doubt that the money he inherits from his parents will insulate him from anything close to ruin. But will it be enough? Can the boy grow up to be normal, or will he be forever broken by what has happened?

I should have gotten the aunt’s number, Scott thinks. But as he does, he wonders what he would do with it. Scott has no right to force his way into their lives. And even if he did, what does he have to offer? The boy is only four, and Scott is a single man approaching fifty, a notorious womanizer and recovered alcoholic, a struggling artist who’s never been able to keep a single lasting relationship. He is nobody’s role model. Nobody’s hero.

They take the Long Island Expressway toward the city. Scott rolls down the window and feels the wind on his face. Squinting into the sun, he can half convince himself that the events of the last thirty-six hours were just a dream. That there was no private plane, no crash, no epic swim or harrowing hospital stay. With the right combination of cocktails and professional victories he could erase it all. But even as he thinks this, Scott knows it’s bullshit. The trauma he suffered is part of his DNA now. He is a soldier after an epic battle, one he will inevitably return to fifty years from now on his deathbed.

Magnus lives in Long Island City, in a condemned shoe factory that’s been converted into lofts. Before the crash, Scott’s plan was to stay there for a few days and commute into the city. But now, changing lanes, Magnus tells Scott that things have changed.

“I’ve got strict fecking instructions,” he says, “to take you to the West Village. You’re moving up in the world.”

“Strict instructions from who?” Scott wants to know.

“A new friend,” says Magnus. “That’s all I can say at this moment.”

“Pull over,” Scott tells him in a hard voice.

Magnus gives Scott a double eyebrow lift, smiles.

Scott reaches for his door handle.

“Chill, boyo,” says Magnus, swerving slightly. “I can see you’re in no mood for mystery.”

“Just tell me where we’re going?”

“Leslie’s,” says Magnus.

“Who’s Leslie?”

“Geez, did you crack your head in the crash? Leslie Mueller? The Mueller Gallery?”

Scott is at a loss.

“Why would we go to the Mueller Gallery?”

“Not the gallery, you tosser. Her house. She’s a billionaire, yeah? Daughter of that tech geezer who made that gizmo in the ’nineties. Well, after you called me I maybe shot my mouth off a bit about how I was coming to get you and how you and me were gonna hit the town, get some ladies’ numbers — you being a shit-you-not hero and all — and I guess she heard, ’cause she called me. Says she saw what you did on the news. Says her door is open. She’s got a guest suite on the third floor.”

“No.”

“Don’t be stupid, amigo. This is Leslie Mueller. This is the difference between selling a painting for three thousand dollars and selling one for three hundred thousand. Or three million.”

“No.”

“Perfect. I hear you. But think about my career for a minute. This is Leslie fucking Mueller. My last show was at a crab shack in Cleveland. At least let’s go for dinner, let her rub up against that giant hero boner of yours, commission a few pieces. Maybe throw in a good word for your boyo. Then we make excuses.”

Scott turns to look out the window. In the car next to them a couple is arguing, a man and woman in their twenties, dressed for work. The man is behind the wheel, but he isn’t looking at the road. His head is turned and he is waving one hand angrily. In response, the woman holds an open lipstick, half applied, and jabs it in the man’s direction, her face lemoned with distaste. Looking at them, Scott has a sudden flash of memory. He is back on the flight, seat belt on. Up front, at the open cockpit door, the young flight attendant — what was her name? — is arguing with one of the pilots. Her back is to Scott, but the pilot’s face is visible over her shoulder. It is ugly and dark, and as Scott watches the pilot grabs the girl’s arm tightly. She pulls away.

In the memory, Scott feels the seat belt clasp in his hand. His feet are flat under him, his quads tensed as if he is about to stand. Why? To go to her aid?

It comes in a flash and then it’s gone. An image that could be from a movie, but feels like his life. Did that happen? Was there some kind of fight?

In the next lane the furious driver turns and spits out the window, but the window is up. A frothy rope of spit runs down the curved glass, and then Magnus speeds up and the couple is gone.

Scott sees a gas station ahead.

“Can you pull in here?” Scott asks. “I want to get a pack of gum.”

Magnus digs around in the center console.

“I’ve got some Juicy Fruit somewhere.”

“Something mint,” Scott says. “Just pull over.”

Magnus turns in without signaling, parks around the side.

“I’ll just be a second,” Scott tells him.

“Get me a Coke.”

Scott realizes he’s wearing scrubs.

“Lend me a twenty,” he says.

Magnus thinks about this.

“Okay, but promise we’re going to Mueller’s. I bet she’s got scotch in her cabinets that was bottled before the fecking Titanic.”

Scott looks him in the eye.

“Promise.”

Magnus pulls a crumpled bill from his pocket.

“And some chips,” he says.

Scott closes the passenger door. He is wearing disposable flip-flops.

“Be right back,” he says, and walks into the gas station convenience store. There is a heavyset woman behind the counter.

“Back door?” Scott asks her.

She points.

Scott walks down a short hall, past the restrooms. He pushes open a heavy fire door and stands squinting in the sun. There is a chain-link fence a few feet away, and behind that the start of a residential neighborhood. Scott puts the twenty in his front pocket. He tries to climb the fence one-handed, but the sling gets in the way so he ditches it. A few moments later he is on the other side, walking through a vacant lot, his flip-flops slapping against his heels. It is late August, and the air is thick and broiled. He pictures Magnus behind the wheel. He will have turned on the radio, found an oldies station. Right now he’s probably singing along with Queen, arching his neck on the high notes.

Around Scott, the neighborhood is lower-class, cars on blocks in driveways, aboveground pools sloshing in backyards. He is a man in hospital scrubs and flip-flops walking through the midday heat. A mental patient for all anybody knows.

Thirty minutes later he finds a fried chicken joint, goes inside. It’s just a counter and stove with a couple of chairs in front.

“You got a phone I could use?” he asks the Dominican guy behind the counter.

“Gotta order something,” the guy tells him.

Scott orders a bucket of thighs and a ginger ale. The clerk points to a phone on the wall in the kitchen. Scott takes a business card from his pocket and dials. A man answers on the second ring.

“NTSB.”

“Gus Franklin, please,” says Scott.

“Speaking.”

“It’s Scott Burroughs. From the hospital.”

“Mr. Burroughs, how are you?”

“Fine. Look. I’m — I want to help — with the search. The rescue. Whatever.”

There is silence on the other end of the line.

“I’m told you checked out of the hospital,” says Gus, “somehow without being seen by the press.”

Scott thinks about this.

“I dressed up like a doctor,” he says, “and went out the back door.”

Gus laughs.

“Very clever. Listen. I’ve got divers in the water searching for the fuselage, but it’s slow going, and this is a high-profile case. Is there anything you can tell us, anything else you can remember about the crash, what happened before?”

“It’s coming back,” Scott tells him. “Still just fragments, but — let me help with the search. Maybe being out there — maybe it’ll shake something loose.”

Gus thinks about this.

“Where are you?”

“Well,” says Scott, “let me ask you this — how do you feel about chicken thighs?”

Chapter 10. Painting #1

The first thing that catches your eye is the light, or rather two lights angled toward a single focal point, becoming a figure-eight flare at the center of the canvas. It is big, this painting, eight feet long and five feet high, the once white tarpaulin transformed into a smoky gray glitter. Or maybe what you see first is calamity, two dark rectangles slicing the frame, jackknifed, their metallic skeletons glowing in the moonlight. There are flames on the edge of the picture, as if the story doesn’t end just because the painting stops, and people who view the image have been known to walk to the far edges looking for more information, microscoping the framing wood for even a hint of added drama.

The lights that flare out the center of the image are the headlights of an Amtrak passenger train, its caboose having come to rest almost perpendicular to the twisted iron track that bends and waves below it. The first passenger car has disconnected from the caboose and now makes the trunk of a T, having maintained its forward momentum and smashed the engine dead center, bending its bread-box contours into a vague V.

As with any bright light, the headlight glare here obscures much of the image, but upon further examination a viewer might discover a single passenger — in this case a young woman — dressed in a black skirt and torn white blouse, her hair tousled across her face, matted by blood. She is wandering shoeless through the jagged wreckage, and if you squint past the illusion of light you can see that her eyes are wide and searching. She is the victim of disaster, a survivor of heat and impact, cantilevered from her resting position into an impossible parabola of unexpected torture, her once placid world — gently rocking, click clack, click clack — now a screeching twist of metal.

What is she looking for, this woman? Is it merely a way out? A clear and sensible path to safety? Or has she lost something? Someone? In that moment, when gentle rocking turned into a cannonball ricochet, did she go from wife and mother, from sister or girlfriend, from daughter or paramour to refugee? A fulfilled and happy we to a stunned and grieving I?

And so, even as other paintings call to you, you can’t help but stand there and help her look.

Chapter 11. Storm Clouds

The life vest is so tight it’s hard to breathe, but Scott reaches up and pulls the straps again. It is an unconscious gesture. One he’s been doing every few moments since they got on the helicopter. Gus Franklin sits across from him, studying his face. Beside him is Petty Officer Berkman in an orange jumpsuit and glassy black helmet. They are in a Coast Guard MH-65C Dolphin racing over the wave caps of the Atlantic. In the distance Scott can just make out the cliffs of Martha’s Vineyard. Home. But this is not where they’re going. Not yet. Sneeze, the three-legged dog, will have to wait. Scott thinks of her now, a white mutt with one black eye. An eater of horse shit, a connoisseur of long grass, who lost her back right leg to cancer last year and was climbing stairs again within two days. Scott checked in with his neighbor after he got off the phone with Gus this morning. The dog was fine, his neighbor told him. She was lying on the porch panting at the sun. Scott thanked her again for watching the dog. He said he should be home in a couple of days.

“Take your time,” his neighbor said. “You’ve been through a lot. And good for you. What you did for that boy. Good for you.”

He thinks of the dog now, missing a limb. If she can bounce back, why can’t I?

The helicopter bucks through chunky air, each drop like a hand slapping a jar, trying to dislodge the last peanut. Except in this case Scott is the peanut. He grips his seat with his right hand, his left arm still in a sling. The trip from the coast takes twenty minutes. Looking out the window at the miles of ocean, Scott can’t believe how far he swam.

Scott was at the barbecue joint sipping water for an hour before Gus arrived. He drove up in a white sedan—company car, he told Scott — and entered the restaurant with a change of clothes in hand.

“I took a guess at the size,” he said and threw the clothes to Scott.

“I’m sure they’ll be great. Thanks,” said Scott and went into the bathroom to change. Cargo pants and a sweatshirt. The pants were too big in the waist and the sweatshirt too tight in the shoulders — the dislocated shoulder made changing clothes a challenge — but at least he felt like a normal person again. He washed his hands and pushed the scrubs deep into the garbage.

On the helicopter, Gus points out the starboard side. Scott follows his finger to the Coast Guard Cutter Willow, a gleaming white ship anchored in the sea below.

“You ever been on a helicopter before?” Gus yells.

Scott shakes his head. He is a painter. Who would bring a painter on a helicopter? But then again, that’s what he thought about private planes, and look how that turned out.

Looking down, Scott sees the cutter has company. Half a dozen ships are spread out on the ocean. The plane, they believe, has crashed into an especially deep part of the sea. The something trench. That means, Gus tells him, it may take weeks to locate the submerged wreckage.

“This is a joint search-and-recovery operation,” Gus says. “We’ve got ships from the navy, the Coast Guard, and the NOAA.”

“The what?”

“National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

Gus smiles.

“Sea nerds,” he says, “with multibeam and side scan sonar. Also the air force lent us a couple of HC-130s, and we’ve got thirty navy divers and twenty from the Massachusetts State Police ready to go into the water if and when we find the wreckage.”

Scott thinks about this.

“Is that normal when a small plane goes down?” he asks.

“No,” says Gus. “Definitely a VIP package. This is what happens when the president of the United States makes a phone call.”

The helicopter banks right and circles the cutter. The only thing keeping Scott from falling out the open door and into the sea is his seat belt.

“You said there was wreckage on the surface when you came up,” yells Gus.

“What?”

“Wreckage in the sea.”

Scott nods. “There were flames on the water.”

“Jet fuel,” says Gus. “Which means the fuel tanks ruptured. It’s lucky you weren’t burned.”

Scott nods, remembering.

“I saw,” he says, “I don’t know, part of a wing? Maybe some other debris. It was dark.”

Gus nods. The helicopter drops with another quick jerk. Scott’s stomach is in his throat.

“A fishing boat found pieces of wing near Philbin Beach yesterday morning,” Gus tells him. “A metal tray from the galley, a headrest, toilet seat. It’s clear we’re not looking for an intact aircraft. Sounds like the whole thing came apart. We may see more wash up in the next few days, depending on the current. The question is, did it break up on impact or in midair?”

“Sorry. I wish I could say more. But, like I said, at a certain point I hit my head.”

Scott looks out at the ocean, endless miles of open water as far as his eye can see. For the first time he thinks, Maybe it was good that it was dark. If he had been able to see the vastness around him, the epic emptiness, he may never have made it.

Across from him, Gus eats almonds from a ziplock bag. Where the average person appreciates the beauty of surf and waves, Gus, an engineer, sees only practical design. Gravity, plus ocean current, plus wind. Poetry to the common man is a unicorn viewed from the corner of an eye — an unexpected glimpse of the intangible. To an engineer, only the ingenuity of pragmatic solutions is poetic. Function over form. It’s not a question of optimism or pessimism, a glass half full or half empty.

To an engineer, the glass is simply too big.

This was how the world looked to Gus Franklin as a young man. Raised in Stuyvesant Village by a trash collector father and a stay-at-home mom, Gus — the only black kid in his AP calculus class — graduated summa cum laude at Fordham. He saw beauty not in nature, but in the elegant design of Roman aqueducts and microchips. To his mind, every problem on earth could be fixed by repairing or replacing a part. Or — if the operational flaw was more insidious — then you tore the whole system apart and started again.

Which is what he did to his marriage after his wife spit in his face and stormed out the door on a rainy night in 1999. Don’t you feel anything, she’d shouted moments earlier. And Gus frowned and thought about the question — not because the answer was no, but because he so clearly did have feelings. They just weren’t the feelings she wanted.

So he shrugged. And she spit and stormed out.

To say his wife was emotional would be an understatement. Belinda was the least engineering-minded person Gus had ever met — she once said the fact that flowers had Latin names robbed them of their mystery. This, he decided (spit running down his jaw), was the fatal error in his marriage that could not be fixed. They were incompatible, a square peg in a round hole. Instead, his life required a systemic redesign, in this case a divorce.

He had tried in the lonely year of their marriage to apply practical solutions to irrational problems. She thought he worked too much — but in truth he worked less than most of his colleagues, so the term too much seemed misplaced. She wanted children right away, but he believed they should wait until his career was more established, meaning his pay had increased, resulting in an expanded living allowance, ergo a bigger apartment — in finite terms: one with room for children.

So Gus sat with her one Saturday and walked her through a PowerPoint presentation on the topic — complete with bar graphs and spreadsheets — which concluded with an equation proving that their perfect moment of conception (assuming, of course, a set of givens — his hierarchical advancement, graduated income, et cetera) would be September 2002, three years in the future. Belinda called him an unfeeling robot. He told her that robots, by definition, were unfeeling (at least currently), but he was clearly not a robot. He had feelings. They just didn’t control him the way they controlled her.

Their divorce proved much simpler than their marriage, mostly because she hired an attorney driven by a bottom-line desire for monetary gain — that is, someone with a clear and rational goal. And so Gus Franklin went back to being a solitary human being, who — as he had projected in his PowerPoint presentation — advanced quickly, rising up the ranks at Boeing, and then accepting a lead investigative role at the NTSB, where he had been for the last eleven years.

And yet, over the years, Gus found his engineer’s brain evolving. His previously narrow view of the world — as a machine that operated with dynamic mechanical functionality — blossomed and grew. Much of the change had to do with his new job as an investigator of large-scale transportation disasters — which exposed him to death and the urgency of human grief on a regular basis. As he had told his ex-wife, he was not a robot. He felt love. He understood the pain of loss. It was just that as a young man those factors seemed controllable, as if grief were simply a failure of the intellect to manage the body’s subsystems.

But then his father was diagnosed with leukemia in 2003. He passed away in 2009, and Gus’s mother died of an aneurysm a year later. The void their deaths created proved to be beyond the practical comprehension of an engineer. The machine he believed himself to be broke down, and Gus found himself immersed in an experience he had witnessed for years in his job with the NTSB, but never truly understood. Grief. Death was not an intellectual conceit. It was an existential black hole, an animal riddle, both problem and solution, and the grief it inspired could not be fixed or bypassed like a faulty relay, but only endured.

And so now, at fifty-one, Gus Franklin finds himself leaving simple intelligence behind and approaching something that can only be described as wisdom, defined in this case by an ability to understand the factual and practical pieces of an event, but also appreciate its full human import. A plane crash is not simply the sum total of time line + mechanical elements + human elements. It is an incalculable tragedy, one that shows us the ultimate finiteness of human control over the universe, and the humbling power of collective death.

So when the phone rang that night in late August, Gus did what he always did. He snapped to attention and put the engineer part of himself to work. But he also took the time to think about the victims — crew members and civilians, and worse: two small children with their whole lives ahead of them — and to reflect on the hardship and loss that would be endured by those they left behind.

First though, came the facts. A private jet—make? model? year built? service history? — had gone missing—departing airport? destination airport? last radio transmission? radar data? weather conditions? Other planes in the area had been contacted—any sightings? — as had other airports—has the flight been diverted or contacted another tower? But no one had seen or heard from the flight since the precise second that ATC at Teterboro lost track of it.

A daisy chain of phone calls were made, a Go Team assembled. In daylight, telephones rang in offices and cars. In the middle hours of the night, they rang in bedrooms, shattering sleep.

By the time he was in the car, a passenger manifest had been assembled. Projections were made—this much fuel × maximum speed = our potential search radius. At his command the Coast Guard and navy were contacted, helicopters and frigates deployed. And so, by the time Gus reached Teterboro, a nautical search was already under way, everyone still hoping for a radio malfunction and a safe landing somewhere off the grid, but knowing better.

It would be twenty-two hours before the first wreckage was found.

Chapter 12

For all the drama of its descent, the helicopter lands gently, like a toe testing the water. They jump out, rotors rotating overhead. Ahead, Scott can see dozens of seamen and technicians at their posts.

“How long after we went missing—” he starts to say, but before he can finish, Gus is already answering.

“I’ll be honest. ATC at Teterboro fucked up. For six minutes after your flight dropped off radar, nobody noticed. Now, that’s a dog’s age in flight control time. It opens up a huge search grid in every direction. Because maybe the plane crashed instantly, or maybe it just dropped below radar and flew on. Over water anything below eleven hundred feet is off radar, so a plane could easily drop below that and keep going. Then there’s what if the plane changed direction? Where should we look? So the controller realizes the plane is missing and first he tries to raise it on the radio. That’s ninety seconds. Then he starts calling other planes in the area to see — maybe they have a visual. Because maybe your plane just has an antenna problem or the radio’s broke. But he can’t find anyone who sees your plane. So he calls the Coast Guard and says, I’ve got a plane off radar for eight minutes. Last location was this, heading in so-and-so direction at such-and-such speed. And the Coast Guard scrambles a ship and launches a helicopter.”

“And when did they call you?”

“Your flight went into the water at approximately ten eighteen p.m. on Sunday. By eleven thirty I was on my way to Teterboro with the Go Team.”

An air force HC-130 plane roars past above him. Scott ducks reflexively, covering his head. The plane is a lumbering beast with four propellers.

“He’s listening for transponder signals,” says Gus, of the plane. “Basically, what we’re doing is using all these ships, helicopters, and planes to do a visual search in an ever-expanding grid. And we’re bouncing sonar off the seabed, looking for wreckage. We want to recover everything we can, but especially the plane’s black box. Because that plus the cockpit voice recorder will tell us second by second what happened aboard the plane.”

Scott watches the plane bank and maneuver into a new search approach.

“And there wasn’t any radio contact?” he asks. “No mayday? Nothing.”

Gus pockets his notebook.

“The last thing the pilot said was GullWing Six Thirteen, thanks much, a couple of minutes after takeoff.”

The ship rises on the back of a wave. Scott grabs the rail to steady himself. In the distance he can see the NOAA ship moving slowly.

“So I landed at Teterboro at eleven forty-six,” says Gus, “and downloaded the facts from ATC. I’ve got a private plane with no flight plan and an unknown number of passengers missing over water for an hour and twenty minutes.”

“They didn’t file a flight plan?”

“It’s not mandatory for private flights within the US, and there was a passenger roster, but it was just for the family. So crew plus four. But then I hear from Martha’s Vineyard that they think at least seven were on board, so now I have to figure out who else was on the plane, and did that have anything to do with what happened — which at this point we still don’t know what that is — did you change course, fly to Jamaica? Or land at a different airport in New York or Massachusetts?”

“I was swimming at that point, me and the boy.”

“Yes, you were. And by now there are three Coast Guard helicopters in the air, and maybe even one from the navy, because five minutes before I walk into ATC I get a call from my boss who got a call from his boss saying David Bateman is a very important person — which I know — and the president is already monitoring the situation — which means no fuckups under any circumstances — and there’s an FBI team meeting me and potentially someone high up in Homeland Security.”

“And when did you find out about Kipling?”

“So the Office of Foreign Assets Control calls me while I’m in the air between Teterboro and Martha’s Vineyard and says they had a tap on Ben Kipling’s phone and they think he was on the flight. Which means, in addition to the FBI and Homeland Security, I’ve got two agents from the Treasury joining the team and now I’m gonna need a bigger helicopter.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Scott asks.

“You asked.”

“And is that why you brought me out here? Because I asked?”

Gus thinks about that, human truth versus strategic truth.

“You said it might help you remember,” he says.

Scott shakes his head.

“No. I know I’m not supposed to be here. This isn’t how you work.”

Gus thinks about that.

“Do you know how many people survive most plane crashes? None. Maybe being here will help you remember something. Or maybe I’m just tired of going to funerals. Maybe I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you did.”

“Don’t say for the boy.”

“Why not? You saved his life.”

“I…was swimming. He called out. Anybody would have done what I did.”

“They might have tried.”

Scott looks out over the water, chewing his lip.

“So because I was on the high school swim team I’m some kind of hero?”

“No. You’re a hero because you acted heroically. And I brought you out here because that means something to me. To all of us.”

Scott tries to remember the last time he ate.

“Hey, what did he mean?”

“Who?”

“In the hospital. When the guy from the feds said Boston played last night. The guy from OSPRY said something about baseball.”

“Right. Dworkin’s at bat. He’s a catcher for the Red Sox.”

“And?”

“And on Sunday night he broke the record for the longest at bat in baseball history.”

“So?”

Gus smiles.

“He did it while you were in the air. Twenty-two pitches in just over eighteen minutes starting the moment you took off and ending within seconds of the crash.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Longest at bat in baseball history, and it lasted the exact length of your flight.”

Scott’s eyes return to the water. Heavy gray clouds are massing on the horizon. He remembers a game being on, that something remarkable seemed to be happening — at least the two other guys on board were getting worked up about it. Take a look at this, hon, and Can you believe this fucking guy? But Scott was never one for sports and he barely looked over. Now, though, hearing the story — the coincidence of it — he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand. Two things happen at the same time. By mentioning them together they become connected. Convergence. It’s one of those things that feels meaningful, but isn’t. At least he doesn’t think it is. How could it be? A batter in Boston fouling pitches into the stands while a small plane struggles through low coastal fog. How many millions of other activities begin and end at the same time? How many other “facts” converge in just the right way, creating symbolic connectivity?

“Early reports on the pilot and copilot look clean,” says Gus. “Melody was a twenty-three-year veteran who flew with GullWing for eleven years. No black marks, no citations or complaints. Kind of an interesting childhood, though, raised by a single mom who took him to live with a doomsday cult when he was little.”

“Like a Jim Jones Guyana cult?” asks Scott.

“Unclear,” says Gus. “We’re doing some digging, but most likely it’s just a detail.”

“And the other one?” asks Scott. “The copilot?”

“A little bit more of a story there,” says Gus. “And obviously none of this is to be repeated, but you’ll probably see a lot of it in the press. Charles Busch was Logan Birch’s nephew. The senator. Grew up in Texas. Did some time in the National Guard. Sounds like he was kind of a playboy. A couple of citations, mostly for appearance — showing up to work unshaven. Probably partied too hard the night before. But no red flags. We’re talking to the airline, trying to get a clearer picture.”

James Melody and Charles Busch. Scott barely even saw the copilot, has only a vague memory of Captain Melody. He tries to commit the details to memory. These are the people who died. Each had a life, a story.

Around them the sea has turned choppy. The Coast Guard cutter ramps and banks.

“Looks like a storm is coming,” says Scott.

Gus holds the rail and stares out at the horizon.

“Unless it’s a class four hurricane,” he says, “we don’t abandon the search.”

* * *

Scott has a cup of tea inside while Gus manages the search. There is a TV on in the galley, pictures of the ship he is on from a news helicopter, the search in progress live. Scott feels like he’s in one of those mirrored rooms, his image reflecting off into infinity. Two sailors on break drink coffee and watch themselves on TV.

The image of the search party is replaced by a talking head — Bill Cunningham in red suspenders.

“—watching the search as it progresses. Then at four p.m. don’t miss a special broadcast, Are Our Skies Safe? And look — I’ve held my tongue long enough — but this whole thing smells more than a little fishy to me. ’Cause if this plane really did crash, then where are the bodies? If David Bateman and his family are really — dead — then why haven’t we seen the — and now I’m hearing, and ALC broke this story just hours after the event, that Ben Kipling, the notorious money manager rumored to be on board the flight — that Kipling was about to be indicted by the Treasury Department for trading with the enemy. That’s right, folks, for investing money illegally obtained from countries like Iran and North Korea. And what if this disaster was an enemy nation tying up loose ends. Muzzle this Kipling traitor once and for all. So we have to ask — why hasn’t the government characterized this crash for what it is — a terrorist attack?”

Scott turns his back to the TV and sips his tea out of a paper cup. He tries to tune out the voices.

“And just as important, who is this man? Scott Burroughs.”

Hold on, what? Scott turns back. Onscreen is a photo of him taken sometime last decade — an artist portrait that accompanied a gallery show he did in Chicago.

“Yes, I know, they’re saying he rescued a four-year-old boy, but who is he and what was he doing on that plane?”

Now a live image of Scott’s house on the Vineyard. How is that possible? Scott sees his three-legged dog in the window, barking soundlessly.

“Wikipedia lists him as some kind of painter, but has no personal information. We contacted the Chicago gallery where Mr. Burroughs allegedly held his last show in 2010, but they claimed never to have met him. So ask yourself, how does a nobody painter who hasn’t shown a painting in five years end up on a luxury plane with two of the richest men in New York?”

Scott watches his house on TV. A shingled, single-story home rented from a Greek fisherman for nine hundred dollars a month. It needs a paint job — and he waits for Cunningham’s inevitable joke, the painter’s house that needs a paint job — but it doesn’t come.

“And so now, live on this network, this journalist is asking — if there’s anyone out there who knows this mystery painter, please call the station. Convince me that Mr. Burroughs is real and not some sleeper agent posing as a has-been who just got activated by ISIS.”

Scott sips his tea, aware of the stares of the two soldiers. He feels a presence behind him.

“Looks like going home is out of the question,” Gus says, having wandered up behind Scott.

Scott turns.

“Apparently,” he says, feeling a completely foreign disconnect — who he is inside versus this new idea of him, his new identity as a public persona, his name pronounced with vitriol by a famous face. And how if he goes home he will walk out of his life and onto that screen. He will become theirs.

Gus watches the TV for a moment, then goes over and turns it off.

“You got anywhere you can crash for a few days,” he says, “under the radar?”

Scott thinks about it, comes up blank. He has called the one friend he has and ditched him in a gas station parking lot. There are cousins somewhere, an old fiancé, but he has to believe that these people have already been discovered in the Google search of modern curiosity. What he needs is someone nonlinear, a name generated seemingly at random, that no private eye or computer algorithm could ever predict.

Then a name enters his head, some cosmic synapse firing. Two words spoken with an Irish lilt that paint a picture: a blond woman with a billion dollars.

“Yeah, I think I know who to call,” he says.

Chapter 13. Orphans

Eleanor remembers when they were girls. There was no yours and mine. Everything she and Maggie owned was communal, the hairbrush, the striped and polka-dot dresses, the hand-me-down Raggedy Ann and Andy. They used to sit in the farmhouse sink, facing the mirror, and brush each other’s hair — a record on in the living room — Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie or the Chieftains — the sounds of their father cooking. Maggie and Eleanor Greenway, eight and six, or twelve and ten, sharing CDs, swooning over the same boys. Eleanor was the younger, towheaded and spritely. Maggie had a dance she did, twirling with a long ribbon until she got dizzy. Eleanor would watch and laugh and laugh.

For Eleanor there was never a time where she thought in terms of I. Every sentence in her head began with we. And then Maggie went to college and Eleanor had to learn how to be singular. She remembers that first three-day weekend, spinning in her empty room, listening for laughter that never came. And how that feeling, of being alone, felt like bugs in her skeleton. And so on Monday, when school started, she threw herself off the cliff of boys, opening her eyes for the first time to the idea of couplehood with someone else. She was going steady with Paul Aspen by Friday. And when that ended three weeks later, she switched to Damon Wright.

It was the lightbulb behind her eyes guiding her, this idea — never be alone again.

Over the next decade there was a series of men, crushes and infatuations, surrogates. Day in and day out Eleanor dodged her central defect, locking the door and rolling up the window, eyes doggedly forward, even as its knocks became louder and louder.

She met Doug three years ago in Williamsburg. She had just turned thirty-one, was working a temp job in Lower Manhattan and doing yoga in the evenings. She lived with two roommates in a three-story walk-up in Carroll Gardens. The most recent love of her life, Javier, had dropped her a week earlier — after she found lipstick stains on his boxers — and most days she felt like a rain-soaked paper bag. Her roommates told her she should try being alone for a while. Uptown, Maggie said the same, but every time she tried Eleanor felt that same old feeling, those bugs climbing back into her bones.

She spent the weekend with Maggie and David. Helping with the kids is how she remembers it, but really she just lay there on the sofa staring out the window and trying not to cry. Two nights later, she was out with some work friends at a blue-plate hipster joint near the L train when she spotted Doug. He had a heavy beard and wore overalls. She liked his eyes, the way they crinkled when he smiled. When he came up to the bar for another pitcher, she struck up a conversation. He told her he was a writer who avoided writing by hosting elaborate dinner parties. His apartment was full of obscure food prep machinery, vintage pasta rollers and a three-hundred-pound cappuccino machine he’d rebuilt screw by screw. Last year he started curing his own sausage, buying bung from a butcher in Gowanus. The trick was controlling the humidity so botulism didn’t set in. He invited her over to try some. She said that sounded dicey to her.

He told her he was working on the great American novel or maybe just a paperweight made entirely out of paper. They drank Pabst together and ignored their friends. She went home with him an hour later and learned he slept on flannel sheets, even in the summer. His decor was lumberjack meets mad scientist. There was a vintage dentist’s chair he was rebuilding with a television mounted on the arm. Naked he looked like a bear and smelled of beer and sawdust. She felt like a ghost lying under him, watching him work, as if he were making love to her shadow.

He told her he had boundary issues and drank too much. She said, Hey, me too. And they laughed about it, but the truth was she didn’t drink that much, but he did, and the great American paperweight called to him at odd hours, inspiring in him fits of self-pity and rage. She’d wake sweating under his flannel top sheet and find him tearing his desk (an old door laid across two sawhorses) apart.

But during daylight hours he was sweet, and he had a lot of friends who dropped by throughout the day and night, which meant Eleanor never had the chance to be alone. Doug welcomed the distraction, and he’d drop everything to go on a culinary adventure — tracking down a cherry pitter on Orchard Street, or riding the subway to Queens to buy goat meat from some Haitians. He was such a big presence that Eleanor never felt alone, even when he stayed out late. She moved into his apartment after a month, and if she ever felt lonely she put on one of his shirts and ate leftovers sitting on the kitchen floor.

She got her masseuse license and started working at a high-end boutique in Tribeca. Her clients were movie stars and bankers. They were friendly and tipped well. Doug, meanwhile, did odd jobs — random carpentry and the like. He had a friend who remodeled restaurants and would pay Doug to track down and refurbish vintage stoves. In Eleanor’s mind they were happy and doing what young couples should be doing in the modern age.

She introduced him to David, Maggie, and the kids, but she could tell that Doug didn’t enjoy being around a man as accomplished and moneyed as David. They ate in the dining room at the town house (it was easier for the kids than going out) at a table for twelve, and she watched Doug drink a bottle of French wine and inspect the top-of-the-line kitchen appliances (an eight-burner Wolf range, a Sub-Zero fridge) with envy and disdain (“you can buy the tools, but you can’t buy the talent to use them”). On the subway home, Doug railed against her sister’s “Republican sugar daddy” and acted as if David had rubbed their faces in their inadequacy. Eleanor didn’t understand. Her sister was happy. David was nice, and the kids were angels. And no, she didn’t agree with her brother-in-law’s politics, but he wasn’t a bad person.

But Doug had the same clichéd overreaction to wealth that defined most bearded men his age. They defamed it, even as they coveted it. He launched into a monologue that ran from the 6 train, through the change at Union Square, and all the way to their bedroom on Wythe Avenue. How David was peddling hate to white people with guns. How the world was worse off now than it had ever been, because David trafficked in extremism and hate porn.

Eleanor told him she didn’t want to talk about it anymore and went to sleep on the sofa.

They moved to Westchester in May. Doug had gone in on a restaurant in Croton-on-Hudson with some friends, more of an empty space really, and the idea was that they would move up there and he and his friends would build the place out from scratch. But money was tight, and one of the friends pulled out at the last minute. The other put in six months of half time, then knocked up a local high school girl and fled back to the city. And now the space sat half built — mostly just a kitchen and some boxes of white tile rotting in a spray of standing water.

Doug drives over there in an old pickup truck most days, but just to drink. He’s set up a computer in the corner and will work on his paperweight if the mood strikes him, which it usually doesn’t. The lease on the space expires at the end of the year, and if Doug hasn’t managed to turn it into a functional restaurant (which feels impossible at this point), they will lose the space and all the money they’ve invested.

At one point, Eleanor suggested (just suggested) that David could maybe lend them ten grand to finish the space. Doug spit at her feet and went on a two-day rant about how she should have married a rich asshole like her fucking sister. That night he didn’t come home, and she lay there feeling the old bugs crawling back inside her bones.

For a time it seemed their marriage would be just another houseplant that had failed to thrive, choked to death by the lack of money and the death of dreams.

And then David and Maggie and beautiful little Rachel died, and they found themselves with more money than they could ever spend.

* * *

Three days after the crash they sit in a conference room on the top floor of 432 Park Avenue. Doug, under protest, has put on a tie and brushed his hair, but his beard is still shaggy and Eleanor thinks he may have gone a day or two without a shower. She is wearing a black dress and low heels, and sits clutching her purse. Being here, in this office tower, facing a phalanx of lawyers makes her teeth itch — the import of it. To unseal their last will and testament, to be read the provisions of a document meant to be read in the event of death, signifies with irrefutable evidence that someone you love is dead.

Eleanor’s mother is watching the boy upstate. Eleanor felt a twist in her stomach as they were leaving. He looked so vacant and sad as she hugged him good-bye, but her mother assured her they’d be fine. He was her grandson, after all, and Eleanor forced herself to get in the car.

On the ride in, Doug kept asking how much money she thought they were going to get, and she explained to him that it wasn’t their money. It was JJ’s and there would be a trust and as the boy’s guardian she would be able to spend the money to care for him, but not for their own personal gain. And Doug said, Sure, sure, and nodded and acted like Of course I know that, but she could tell from the way he drove and the fact that he smoked half a pack of cigarettes in ninety minutes that he felt like he’d won the lottery and was expecting to be handed an oversize novelty check.

Looking out the window she thinks about the moment she first saw JJ in the hospital, then flips to the moment three days earlier that the phone rang and she found out her sister’s plane was missing. And how she sat there under the covers long after the call was over, holding the receiver while Doug slept beside her, on his back, snoring at the ceiling. She stared into the shadows until the phone rang again, sometime after dawn, and a man’s voice told her that her nephew was alive.

Just him? she asked.

So far. But we’re looking.

She woke Doug and told him they had to go to a hospital on Long Island.

Now? he said.

She drove, putting the car in gear before Doug, his fly undone, sweatshirt half on, had even gotten the door closed. She told Doug there was a plane crash somewhere in the ocean. That one of the passengers had swum miles to shore, carrying the boy. She wanted him to tell her not to worry, that if they survived, then the others had survived as well, but he didn’t. Her husband sat in the passenger seat and asked if they could stop for coffee.

The rest is a blur. She remembers jumping out of the car in a loading zone at the hospital, remembers the panicked search for JJ’s room. Does she even remember hugging the boy, or meeting the hero in the bed beside him? He is a shape, a voice, flared out by the sun. Her adrenaline was so high, her surprise at the magnitude of events, at how big life could get — helicopters circling wave caps, naval ships deployed. So big that it filled the screens of three million televisions, so big that her life was now a historic mystery to be discussed, the details viewed and reviewed, by amateurs and professionals alike.

Now, in the conference room, she makes her hands into fists to fight off the pins and needles she’s feeling, and tries to smile. Across from her, Larry Page smiles back. There are two lawyers on either side of him, split by gender.

“Look,” he says, “there’ll be time for all the minutiae later. This meeting is really just to give you an overview of what David and Maggie wanted for their children in case of — in the eventuality of their death.”

“Of course,” says Eleanor.

“How much?” asks Doug.

Eleanor kicks him under the table. Mr. Page frowns. There is a decorum he expects in dealing with matters of extreme wealth, a studied nonchalance.

“Well,” he says, “as I explained, the Batemans established a trust for both children, splitting their estate fifty — fifty. But since their daughter—”

“Rachel,” says Eleanor.

“Right, Rachel. Since Rachel did not survive, the entirety of the trust goes to JJ. This includes all their real estate holdings — the town house in Manhattan, the house on Martha’s Vineyard, and the pied-à-terre in London.”

“Wait,” says Doug. “The what now?”

Mr. Page presses on.

“At the same time, their wills both earmarked a large sum of cash and equities to a number of charitable organizations. About thirty percent of their total portfolio. The remainder lives in JJ’s trust and will be available to him in stages over the next forty years.”

“Forty years,” says Doug, with a frown.

“We don’t need much,” says Eleanor. “That’s his money.”

Now it’s Doug’s turn to kick her under the table.

“It’s not a question of what you need,” the lawyer tells her. “It’s about fulfilling the Batemans’ last wishes. And yes, we’re still waiting on the official pronouncement of death, but given the circumstance I’d like to free up some funds in the interim.”

One of the women to his left hands him a crisp manila folder. Mr. Page opens it. Inside is a single piece of paper.

“At current market value,” he tells them, “JJ’s trust is worth one hundred and three million dollars.”

Beside her, Doug makes a kind of choking noise. Eleanor’s face burns. She’s embarrassed by the clear greed he’s showing, and she knows if she looked he’d have some stupid grin on his face.

“The bulk of the estate — sixty percent — will be available to him on his fortieth birthday. Fifteen percent matures on his thirtieth birthday, another fifteen percent on his twenty-first. And the remaining ten percent has been set aside to cover the costs of raising him to adulthood from this point forward.”

She can feel Doug beside her, working out the math.

“That’s ten million, three hundred thousand — again as of close of market yesterday.”

Outside the window, Eleanor can see birds circling. She thinks about carrying JJ from the hospital that first day, the heft of him — so much heavier than she remembered, and how they didn’t have a booster seat so Doug piled up some blankets in the back and they drove to a Target to buy one. Car idling in the parking lot, they sat there in silence for a moment. Eleanor looked at Doug.

What? he said, his face blank.

Tell them we need a booster seat, she said. It should be front facing. Make sure they know he’s four.

He thought about arguing—Me? In a Target? I fucking hate Target—but to his credit he didn’t, just shouldered the door open and went in. She turned in her seat and looked at JJ.

Are you okay? she asked.

He nodded, then threw up onto the back of her seat.

The man to Page’s right speaks up.

“Mrs. Dunleavy,” he says, “I’m Fred Cutter. My firm manages your late brother-in-law’s finances.”

So, thinks Eleanor, not a lawyer.

“I’ve worked out a basic financial structure to cover monthly expenses and education projections, which I’d be happy to review with you at your convenience.”

Eleanor risks a look at Doug. He is, in fact, smiling. He nods at her.

“And I’m—” says Eleanor, “—I’m the executor of the trust. Me?”

“Yes,” says Page, “unless you decide you do not wish to carry out the responsibilities afforded to you, in which case Mr. and Mrs. Bateman named a successor.”

She feels Doug stiffen beside her at the idea of passing all that money on to some kind of runner-up.

“No,” says Eleanor, “he’s my nephew. I want him. I just need to be clear. I’m the one named in the trust, not—”

She flicks her eyes toward her husband. Page catches the look.

“Yes,” he says. “You are the named guardian and executor.”

“Okay,” she says, after a beat.

“Over the next few weeks I’ll need you to come in and sign some more papers — and by come in, I mean we can come to you. Some will need to be notarized. Did you want the keys to the various properties today?”

She blinks, thinking about her sister’s apartment, now a museum filled with all the things she will never need again — clothes, furniture, the refrigerator filled with food, the children’s rooms heavy with books and toys. She feels her eyes well with tears.

“No,” she says. “I don’t think—”

She stops to collect herself.

“I understand,” says Page. “I’ll have them sent to your house.”

“Maybe somebody could collect JJ’s things, from his room? Toys and books. Clothes. He probably, I don’t know, maybe that would help him.”

The woman to Page’s left makes a note.

“Should you decide to sell any or all of the properties,” says Cutter, “we can help you with that. Fair market value for the three combined is around thirty million, last time I checked.”

“And does that money go into the trust,” says Doug, “or—”

“That money would fold in with the current funds available to you.”

“So ten million becomes forty million.”

“Doug,” says Eleanor, more sharply than she intended.

The lawyers pretend not to have heard.

“What?” her husband says. “I’m just — clarifying.”

She nods, unclenching her fists and stretching her hands under the table.

“Okay,” she says, “I feel like I should get back. I don’t want to leave JJ alone too long. He’s not really sleeping that well.”

She stands. Across the table, the group stands as one. Only Doug is left in his chair, daydreaming.

“Doug,” she says.

“Yeah, right,” he says and stands, then stretches his arms and back like a cat waking from a long nap in the sun.

“Are you driving back?” Cutter asks.

She nods.

“I don’t know what car you’re in, but the Batemans owned several, including a family SUV. These are also available to you, or can be sold. It’s whatever you want.”

“I just—” says Eleanor, “I’m sorry. I can’t really make any decisions right now. I just need to — think or take it all in or—”

“Of course. I’ll stop asking questions.”

Cutter puts his hand on her shoulder. He is a thin man with a kind face.

“Please know that David and Maggie were more than just clients. We had daughters the same age, and—”

He stops, his eyes filling, then nods. She squeezes his arm, grateful to find something human in this moment. Beside her, Doug clears his throat.

“What kind of cars did you say again?” asks Doug.

* * *

She is quiet on the ride home. Doug smokes the other half of the pack, window down, making calculations with his fingers on the steering wheel.

“I say keep the town house, right?” he says. “A place in the city. But, I don’t know, are we really going to go back to the Vineyard? I mean, after what happened?”

She doesn’t answer, just lays her head against the headrest and looks out at the treetops.

“And London,” he says, “I mean, that could be cool. But how often are we really going to — I say we sell it and then if we want to go we can always stay in a hotel.”

He rubs his beard, like a miser in a children’s story, suddenly rich.

“It’s JJ’s money,” she says.

“Right,” says Doug, “but, I mean, he’s four, so—”

“It’s not about what we want.”

“Babe — okay, I know — but the kid’s used to a certain — and we’re his guardians now.”

“I’m his guardian.”

“Sure, legally, but we’re a family.”

“Since when?”

His lips purse and she can feel him swallow an impulse to snap back.

He says:

“I mean, okay, I know I haven’t been — but it’s a shock, you know? This whole — and I know for you too. I mean, more than me, but — well, I want you to know I’m past all that shit.”

He puts his hand on her arm.

“We’re in this together.”

She can feel him looking at her, hear the smile on his face, but she doesn’t look over. It’s possible that in this moment she feels more alone than she’s ever felt in her life.

Except she isn’t alone.

She is a mother now.

She will never be alone again.

Chapter 14. Painting #2

If all you looked at was the center frame, you could convince yourself that nothing was wrong. That the girl in question — eighteen perhaps, with a wisp of hair blown across her eyes — is just out for a walk in a cornfield on an overcast day. She is facing us, this woman, having only seconds before emerged from a tight labyrinth of towering green. And though the sky atop the cornfield is a somewhat ominous gray, the woman and the front row of corn behind her is lit by a feverish sun, febrile and orange, so much so that she is squinting through her hair, one hand rising, as if to make out an object in the distance.

It is the quality of light that draws you in, makes you ask—What combination of colors, applied in what order, with what technique, created this thunderstorm glow?

To her left, in a canvas of equal size, separated by an inch of white wall, is a farmhouse, set at an angle to the field across a wide expanse of lawn, so that the woman in the foreground appears to dwarf the house, so powerful is the trick of perspective. The house is red clapboard, two stories with a slanted barn roof, shutters closed. If you squint, you can see the wooden flap of an earth-bound storm door flipped up from the ground on the side of the house, revealing a dark hole. And from that hole emerges a man’s arm, clad in a long white sleeve, the tiny hand grasping a tethered rope handle, tense, frozen in motion. But is he opening the door or closing it?

You look back at the girl. She is not looking at the house. Her hair is across her face, but her eyes are visible, and though she faces forward her pupils have danced to her right, drawing the viewer’s eye across the intricate splay of leafy green, across another inch of white gallery wall, to the third and final canvas.

It is then you see what this girl has just now noticed.

The tornado.

That swirling devil’s clot, that black maelstrom of cylindrical majesty. It is a swirling gray spider egg unspooling, filled with rotten teeth. A biblical monster, God’s vengeance. Whirring and churning, it shows you its food, like a petulant child, houses and trees cracked and spinning, a gritty hail of dirt. Viewed from anyplace in the room, it appears to be coming right at you, and when you see that you take a step back. The canvas itself is bent and fraying, its top right corner bent inward, cracked and twisted, as if by the sheer power of the wind. As if the painting is destroying itself.

Now you look back to the girl, eyes widening, hand rising, not to pull the hair from her face, you realize, but to shield her eyes from the horror. And then, hair rising, you look past her, to the house, but more specifically to that tiny storm door, that black pit of salvation, and within it a single man’s arm, his hand grasping the frayed rope tether. And this time, as you take it in, you realize—

He is closing the storm door, shutting us out.

We are on our own.

Chapter 15. Layla

The things money can’t buy, goes the famous quote, you don’t want anyway. Which is bullshit, because in truth there is nothing money can’t buy. Not really. Love, happiness, peace of mind. It’s all available for a price. The fact is, there’s enough money on earth to make everyone whole, if we could just learn to do what any toddler knows — share. But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself, eventually creating the black hole that we know as wealth. This is not simply the fault of humans. Ask any dollar bill and it will tell you it prefers the company of hundreds to the company of ones. Better to be a sawbuck in a billionaire’s account than a dirty single in the torn pocket of an addict.

At twenty-nine, Leslie Mueller is the sole heir to a technology empire. The daughter of a billionaire (male) and a runway model (female), she is a member of an ever-growing genetically engineered master race. They are everywhere these days, it seems, the moneyed children of brilliant capitalists, using a fraction of their inheritances to launch companies and fund the arts. At eighteen, nineteen, twenty, they buy impossible real estate in New York, Hollywood, London. They set themselves up as a new Medici class, drawn to the urgent throb of the future. They are something beyond hip, collectors of genius, winging from Davos to Coachella to Sundance, taking meetings, offering today’s artists, musicians, and filmmakers the seductive ego stroke of cash and the prestige of their company.

Beautiful and rich, they don’t take no for an answer.

Leslie—“Layla” to her friends — was one of the first, her mother a former Galliano model from Seville, Spain. Her father invented some ubiquitous high-tech trigger found in every computer and smartphone on the planet. He is the 9th richest person in the world, and even with only one-third of her inheritance vested, Layla Mueller is the 399th. She has so much money she makes the other rich people Scott has met — David Bateman, Ben Kipling — look like working stiffs. Wealth at Layla’s level is beyond the fluctuations of the market. A sum so big she could never go broke. So great that the money makes its own money — growing by a factor of 15 percent every year, minting millions every month.

She makes so much money just being rich that the annual dividends her savings account earns make it the seven hundredth richest person on the planet. Think about that. Picture it if you can, which of course you can’t. Not really. Because the only way to truly understand wealth at that level is to have it. Layla’s is a path without resistance, without friction of any kind. There is nothing on earth she can’t buy on a whim. Microsoft maybe, or Germany. But otherwise…

“Oh my God,” she says, when she enters the study of her Greenwich Village home and sees Scott, “I’m obsessed with you. I’ve been watching all day. I can’t take my eyes off.”

They are in a four-story brownstone on Bank Street, two blocks from the river, Layla and Scott and Magnus, whom Scott called from the navy yard. As he dialed, Scott half pictured him still sitting in his car outside the gas station, but Magnus said he was in a coffee shop putting the make on some girl and could be there in forty minutes, faster once Scott told him where he wanted to go. If Magnus was offended at being ditched before, he didn’t say so.

“Look at me,” he tells Scott after the housekeeper lets them in and they’re sitting on a sofa in the living room. “I’m shaking.”

Scott watches Magnus’s right leg bounce up and down. Both men know that the audience they’re about to have could change their artistic fortunes irrevocably. For ten years Magnus, like Scott, has nibbled at the fringes of artistic arrival. He paints in a condemned paint warehouse in Queens, owns six stained shirts. Every night he prowls the streets of Chelsea and the Lower East Side, looking in windows. Each afternoon he works the phones, looking for invitations to openings and trying to get on the guest list for industry events. He’s a charming Irishman with a crooked smile, but there is also an air of desperation in his eyes. Scott recognizes it easily, because until a few months ago he saw it every time he looked in the mirror. That same thirst for acceptance.

It’s like living near a bakery but never eating any bread. Every day you walk the streets, the smell of it in your nose, your stomach growling, but no matter how many corners you turn, you can never enter the actual store.

The art market, like the stock market, is based on the perception of value. A painting is worth whatever someone is willing to pay, and that number is influenced by the perception of the artist’s importance, their currency. To be a famous artist whose paintings sell for top dollar, either you have to already be a famous artist whose paintings sell for top dollar, or someone has to anoint you as such. And the person who anoints artists more and more these days is Layla Mueller.

She comes in wearing black jeans and a pre-wrinkled silk blouse, a brown-eyed blonde, barefoot, holding an electronic cigarette.

“There they are,” she says brightly.

Magnus stands, holds out his hand.

“I’m Magnus. Kitty’s friend.”

She nods, but doesn’t shake. After a moment, he lowers his hand. Layla sits on the sofa next to Scott.

“Can I tell you something weird?” she asks Scott. “I flew to Cannes in May with one of your pilots. The older one. I’m pretty sure.”

“James Melody,” he says, having memorized the names of the dead.

She makes a face—holy shit, right? — then nods, touches his shoulder.

“Does it hurt?”

“What?”

“Your arm?”

He moves it for her in its new sling.

“It’s okay,” he says.

“And that little boy. Oh my God. So brave. And then — can you believe? — I just saw a thing about the daughter’s kidnapping, which — can you imagine?”

Scott blinks.

“Kidnapping?” he says.

“You don’t know?” she says with what seems like real shock. “Yeah, the boy’s sister back when she was little. Apparently, someone broke into their house and took her. She was gone for, like, a week. And now — I mean to survive something like that and then die so horribly — you couldn’t make this stuff up.”

Scott nods, feeling bone-tired all of a sudden. Tragedy is drama you can’t bear to relive.

“I want to throw a party in your honor,” she tells him. “The hero of the art world.”

“No,” says Scott. “Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” she says. “Everybody’s talking. And not just about the rescue. I saw slides of your new work — the disaster series — and I love it.”

Magnus claps his hands together suddenly at great volume. They turn and look at him.

“Sorry,” he says, “but I told ya. Didn’t I tell you? Fecking brilliant.”

Layla draws on her electronic cigarette. This is what the future looks like, Scott thinks. We smoke technology now.

“Can you—” she says, “—if it’s okay, what happened?”

“To the plane? It crashed.”

She nods. Her eyes sober.

“Have you talked about it yet? To a therapist, or—”

Scott thinks about that. A therapist.

“Because,” says Layla, “you’d love my guy. He’s in Tribeca. Dr. Vanderslice. He’s Dutch.”

Scott pictures a bearded man in an office, Kleenex on every table.

“The cab didn’t come,” says Scott, “so I had to take the bus.”

She looks puzzled for a moment, then realizes he’s sharing a memory with her and leans forward.

Scott tells her he remembers his duffel bag by the door, faded green canvas, threadbare in places, remembers pacing, looking for headlights through the window (old milky glass), remembers his watch, the minute hands moving. His duffel held clothes, sure, but mostly it was full of slides, pictures of his work. The new work. Hope. His future. Tomorrow it would begin. He’d meet Michelle at her office and they’d review their submission list. His plan was to stay three days. There was a party Michelle said he had to go to, a breakfast.

But first the cab had to come. First he had to get to the airfield and get on a private plane — why had he agreed to that? The pressure of it, to travel with strangers — rich strangers — to have to make conversation, discuss his work or, conversely, be ignored, treated like he didn’t matter. Which he didn’t.

He was a forty-seven-year-old man who had failed at life. No career, never married, no close friends or girlfriends. Hell, he couldn’t even handle a four-legged dog. Was that why he had worked so hard these last few weeks, photographing his work, building a portfolio? To try to erase the failure?

But the taxi never showed, and in the end he grabbed his bag and ran to the bus stop, heart beating fast, sweating from the thick August air. He got there just as the bus was pulling in, a long rectangle of windows lit blue-white against the dark. And how he climbed on, smiling at the driver, out of breath. He sat in the back, watching teenagers neck, oblivious to the domestic houseworkers riding beside them in tired silence. His heart rate slowed, but his blood still felt like it was racing. This was it. His second chance. The work was there. It was good. He knew that. But was he? What if he couldn’t handle a comeback? What if they gave him another chance and he choked? Could he really come back from the place he was? Napoleon in Elba, a beaten man, licking his wounds. Did he even want to — deep down? Life was good here. Simple. To wake in the morning and walk on the beach. To feed the dog scraps from the table and scratch her floppy ears. To paint. Simply to paint, with no greater goal.

But this way he could be somebody. Make his mark.

Except, wasn’t he somebody already? The dog thought so. The dog looked at Scott like he was the best man who ever lived. They went to the farmers market together and watched the women in yoga pants. He liked his life. He did. So why was he trying so hard to change it?

“When I got off the bus,” he tells Layla, “I had to run. They were gonna close the airplane doors, right? And, you know, there was part of me that wanted that, to get there and find the plane was already gone. Because then I’d have to get up early and take the ferry like anyone else.”

He doesn’t look up, but he can feel them both looking at him.

“But the door was open. I made it.”

She nods, her eyes wide, and touches his arm.

“Amazing,” she says, though what she means isn’t clear. Is she speaking of the fact that Scott nearly missed the fateful flight, or the fact that he didn’t?

Scott looks up at Layla, feeling self-conscious, like a small bird that has just sung for its supper and now waits for the seed.

“Look,” says Scott, “it’s very nice of you, to see me, to want to throw me a party, but I can’t handle that right now. I just need a place to think and rest.”

She smiles, nods. He has given her something no one else has, insight, details. She is part of the story now, his confidante.

“You’ll stay here of course,” she says. “There’s a guest apartment on the third floor. You’d have your own entrance.”

“Thank you,” he says. “That’s very — and I don’t want to be blunt, but I feel like I should ask — what’s in it for you?”

She takes a hit off her e-cigarette, exhales vapor.

“Sweetie, don’t turn it into some kind of thing. I’ve got the room. I’m impressed with you and your work, and you need a place to be. Why can’t it be simple?”

Scott nods. There is no tension in him, no desire for confrontation. He just wants to know.

“Oh, I’m not saying it’s complicated. You want a secret maybe, or a story to tell at cocktail parties. I’m just asking so there’s no confusion.”

For a moment she looks surprised. People don’t usually talk to her this way. Then she laughs.

“I like finding people,” she says. “And the other thing is — fuck this twenty-four-hour news cycle. This people eater. Just wait, they’re all on your side now, but then they turn. My mom went through it when my dad left her. It was all over the tabloids. And then when my sister had that problem with Vicodin. And last year I had that thing when Tony killed himself, and just because I showed his work they painted this whole picture of us, how I was, like, a gateway drug or something.”

She holds his eye, Magnus forgotten on the other sofa, waiting for his chance to shine.

“Okay,” says Scott after a moment. “Thank you. I just need — they’re outside my house, all those cameras, and — I don’t know what to say other than I went for a swim.”

Her phone bloops. She takes it out, looks, then looks at Scott, and there’s something on her face that makes him shrink inside.

“What?” he says.

She flips her phone around and shows him the Twitter app. He leans forward, squinting at a row of colorful rectangles (tiny faces, @ symbols, emojis, photo boxes) without a hint of comprehension.

“I’m not sure what I’m looking at,” he says.

“They found bodies.”

Chapter 16. Ben Kipling

February 10, 1963–August 23, 2015

Sarah Kipling

March 1, 1965–August 23, 2015

People use the word money like it’s an object. A noun. Which is — that’s just ignorance.”

Ben Kipling stood at a tall porcelain urinal in the wood-paneled bathroom of Soprezzi. He was talking to Greg Hoover, who stood beside him, swaying, pissing against the concave sheen that shielded his dick from view, speckles of piss drizzling down on his six-hundred-dollar tasseled loafers.

“Money is the black vacuum of space,” Ben continued.

“The what?”

“The black — it’s an easement, yeah? A lubricant.”

“Now you’re talking my—”

“But that’s not—

Kipling shook his dick, zipped. He went to the sink, put his hand under the soap dispenser, and waited for the laser to sense his warmth and spritz foam into his palm. And waited. And waited.

“It’s friction, right?” he said without pausing. “This life of ours. The things we do and are done to us. Just getting through the day—”

He made increasingly insistent circular gestures under the sensor. Nothing.

“—the job, the wife, traffic, bills, whatever—”

He raised and lowered his hand, looking for the mechanical sweet spot. Nothing.

“—come on with this fucking thing already—”

Kipling gave up, moved to the next sink, as Hoover stumbled over to a third.

“I talked to Lance the other day,” Hoover started.

“Hold on. I’m not — friction, I’m saying. Drag.”

This time, when he put his hand under the sensor, foam fell gently into his hand. Kipling slumped with relief, rubbed them together.

“The pressure brought to bear on a man just getting out of bed in the morning,” he said. “Money is the cure. It’s a friction reducer.”

He moved his hands under the water faucet, blindly expecting (once more) the sensor to do its job and send a signal to the switch that turns on the tap. Nothing.

“The more money you have — goddammit — the more—”

Enraged, he gave up entirely, shaking soap from his hands onto the floor — let someone else clean it up — and moved to the paper towel dispenser, saw it too was operated by a sensor, and didn’t even make the attempt, choosing instead to wipe his hands on his eleven-hundred-dollar suit pants.

“—money you have, do you see what I’m — it alleviates the drag. Think of the slum rats in Mumbai crawling around in the muck versus, like, Bill Gates, literally on top of the world. Until, ultimately, you have so much dough your whole life is effortless. Like an astronaut floating free in the black vacuum of space.”

Hands clean and dry finally, he turned and saw Hoover has had zero trouble with any of the sensors, soap, water, paper towels. He tore off more sheets than he needed, dried his hands vigorously.

“Sure. Okay,” he said. “But what I’m saying is, I talked to Lance the other day, and he used a lot of words I really didn’t like.”

“Like what? Alimony?”

“Ha-ha. No, like FBI, for one.”

A certain unpleasant clenching sensation hit Kipling right around the sphincter.

“Which is,” he said, “—obviously — not a word.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a — never mind — why the fuck is Lance talking about the FBI?”

“He’s hearing things,” Hoover said. “What kind of things? I asked. But he won’t go into it on the phone — we had to meet in a park. At two o’clock in the goddamn afternoon, like the great unemployed.”

Kipling, nervous suddenly, went over and checked under the stall doors to make sure there were no other designer-suit types crapping in silence.

“Are they — did he say we should be—”

“No, but he may as well have. You know what I — because why else would he — especially when — especially because if you think of the trouble he could get in—”

“Okay. Okay. Not so—”

He couldn’t remember suddenly if he’d checked under the last stall, checked it again, straightened.

“Let’s table this,” he said. “I wanna hear it, obviously, but — we need to finish with these guys. Not leave them hanging.”

“Sure, but what if they’re—”

“What if they’re what?” said Kipling, the scotches working like a time delay on a 1940s long-distance phone call.

Hoover finished the sentence with his eyebrows.

“These guys?” said Kipling. “What are you — they came from Gillie.”

“That doesn’t mean — shit, Ben, anyone can be got to.”

“Got to? Is that — are we in The Parallax View suddenly and no one bothered to—”

Hoover worked the wet wad of paper like it was a ball of dough, kneading and squeezing.

“It’s a problem, Ben. That’s all I’m — a major fucking—”

“I know.”

“We need to — you can’t just—”

“I won’t. Don’t be such a girl.”

Kipling went to the door, pushed it open. Behind him, Hoover balled up his wet paper towel and fired it at the garbage can. It went in clean.

“Still got it,” he said.

* * *

As he approached the table, Kipling saw that Tabitha was doing her job. She was lubricating the clients with booze and telling the men — two Swiss investment bankers vetted and referred by Bill Gilliam, a senior partner at the law firm that handles all their deals — inappropriate stories about men she blew in college. It was two thirty on a Wednesday. They’d been at this restaurant since noon, drinking top-shelf scotch and eating fifty-dollar steaks. It was the kind of restaurant men in suits go to to complain that their pools are too hot. Among the five of them, there was a net worth of almost a billion dollars. Kipling himself was worth three hundred million on paper, most of it tied up in the market, but there was also real estate and offshore accounts. Money for a rainy day. Cash the US government couldn’t track.

Ben had become, at age fifty-two, the type of man who said Let’s take the boat out this weekend. His kitchen could be used as backup if the power ever went out at Le Cirque. There was an eight-burner Viking range with grill and griddle. Every morning he rose to find half a dozen onion bagels laid out on a tray with coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice, along with all four papers (Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Post, and the Daily News). When you opened the fridge at the Kiplings’, it was like a farmers market (Sarah insisted they eat only organic produce). There was a separate wine fridge with fifteen bottles of champagne on ice at all times, in case a New Year’s Eve party broke out unexpectedly. Ben’s closet was like a Prada showroom. Wandering from room to room, one wouldn’t be wrong to assume that Ben Kipling rubbed an urn one day and a genie popped out, and now all he had to do was say I need new socks out loud anywhere in his apartment and the next morning a dozen pairs would appear out of fucking nowhere. Except in this case the genie was a forty-seven-year-old house manager named Mikhail, who majored in hospitality at Cornell and had been with them since they moved into the ten-bedroom estate in Connecticut.

The TV over the bar was showing highlights from the Red Sox game last night, sportscasters running the odds of Dworkin breaking the single-season hit record. Right now the man was on a fifteen-game hitting streak. Unstoppable was a word they used, the hard consonants of it following Ben to his seat.

In forty minutes, he’d head back to the office and sleep off the meat and the booze on his sofa. Then at six the driver would take him up the parkway to Greenwich, where Sarah would have something on the table — takeout from Allesandro’s probably — or no, wait, shit, they’ve got that dinner tonight with Jenny’s fiancé’s parents. A meet-and-greet kind of thing. Where were they doing that again? Someplace in the city? It’s gotta be in his calendar, probably written in red like a twice-prolonged appointment for a barium enema.

Ben could picture them now, Mr. and Mrs. Comstock, he the portly dentist. His wife with too much lipstick, in from Long Island—Did you take the Grand Central or the BQE? And Jenny would sit there with Don or Ron or whatever her fiancé’s name is, holding hands, and telling stories about how she and her parents “always summer on the Vineyard” without realizing how privileged and obnoxious that sounds. Not that Ben was one to talk. This morning he’d found himself debating the estate tax with his personal trainer and he’d said, Well, look — Jerry — wait till you’ve got a hundred million plus in mixed assets that the government wants to tax twice and see if you still feel the same.

Kipling sat, exhausted suddenly, and picked up his napkin reflexively, even though he was done eating. He dropped it into his lap, caught the waiter’s eye, and pointed to his glass. Another one, he said with his eyes.

“I was just telling Jorgen,” said Tabitha, “about that meeting we had in Berlin. Remember when the guy with the John Waters mustache got so mad he took off his tie and tried to strangle Greg?”

“For fifty million, I woulda let him,” said Kipling, “except it turned out the fucking guy was broke.”

The Swiss smiled patiently. They had zero interest in gossip. Nor did it seem that Tabitha’s exaggerated cleavage was having its usual effect. Could be they’re queer, thought Kipling with zero moral judgment, just a computer recording facts.

He chewed the inside of his cheek, thinking. What Hoover said to him in the men’s room was ricocheting around in his brain like a bullet that had missed its target then took an unlucky hop off the pavement. What did he know about these guys, really? They’d come recommended from a reliable source, but how reliable was anyone when you get right down to it. Could they be FBI, these boys? OFAC? Their Swiss accents were good, but maybe not great.

Kipling had a sudden impulse to drop cash on the table and walk away. He tamped it down, because if he was wrong, it was a hell of a lot of money to walk away from, and Ben Kipling wasn’t a man to walk away from—what did the Swiss say? Potentially a billion dollars in hard-to-convert currency? Fuck it, Ben decided. If you’re not going to retreat then you’ve got to charge. He opened his mouth and gave them the hard sell without getting too specific. No hot phrases that could be used against him in court.

“So, okay with the small talk,” he said. “We all know what we’re doing here. The same thing cavemen did in the age of the dinosaur, sizing each other up, seeing who you can trust. What’s a handshake, after all, except a socially acceptable way to make sure the other guy doesn’t have a knife behind his back.”

He smiled at them. They looked back, unsmiling, but engaged. This was the moment they cared about — if they were who they said they were. The deal. The waiter brought Kipling his scotch, put it on the table. By habit, Ben moved it deeper toward the center of the table. He was a hand talker and had spilled his fair share of cocktails in the middle of a good monologue.

“You have a problem,” he said. “You’ve got foreign currency you need to invest in the open market, but our government won’t let you. Why? Because at some point that money found its way to a region they keep on a list in some federal building in DC. As if the money itself had a point of view. But you and me, we know that money is money. The dollar a black guy in Harlem uses to buy crack with today is the same dollar a suburban housewife uses to buy Hamburger Helper tomorrow. Or that Uncle Sam uses to buy weapons systems from McDonnell Douglas on Thursday.”

Ben watched plays of the day on the television — a string of towering home runs, shoestring catches, and baseline rundowns. It was more than a passing interest. Ben was an encyclopedia of arcane baseball figures. It was a lifelong passion, one that had taught him (coincidentally) the value of a dollar. Ten-year-old Bennie Kipling had the premier bubble-gum card collection in all of Sheepshead Bay. He dreamed one day of playing center field for the Mets and every year tried out for Little League, but he was small for his age and slow on the base path and couldn’t hit the ball out of the infield, so he collected baseball cards instead, studying the market closely, exploiting the amateur mind-set of schoolmates — who focused only on players they liked — tracking rare cards and playing the rise and fall of each player. Every morning Bennie would read the obituaries, looking for signs that the recently deceased were baseball fans, and then he’d call the widows, saying he knew their husbands (or fathers) from the trading card circuit and how so-and-so had been a mentor to him. He never asked for the decedent’s collection outright, just played up his saddest little-boy voice. It worked every time. On more than one occasion he took the subway into the city to collect a once prized box of baseball nostalgia.

“We come to you, Mr. Kipling,” said Jorgen, the dark-haired Aryan in the cotton-weight suit, “because we hear good things. Obviously these are sensitive subjects, but my colleagues agree you are a straight man. That complications do not arrive. Additional expenses. The clients we represent, well, these are not people who appreciate complications or attempts to take advantage.”

“And who is that again?” said Hoover, sweating at the brows. “Say without saying, if you can. Just so we’re all clear.”

The Swiss said nothing. They too feared a trap.

“The deal we make is the deal we keep,” said Kipling. “Doesn’t matter who’s on the other side. I can’t tell you exactly how we do what we do. That’s our proprietary advantage, right? But what I will say is, accounts are opened. Accounts that cannot be connected back to you. After that, the money you invest with my firm gets a new pedigree and is treated like any other money. It goes in dirty and comes out clean. Simple.”

“And how does it—”

“Work? Well, if we agree now, in principle, to move forward with this thing, then colleagues of mine will come to Geneva and help you set up the systems you’ll need using a proprietary software package. My operative will then stay on site to monitor your investments and navigate the daily password and IP address changes. He doesn’t need a fancy office. In fact, the less attention he draws the better. Put him in a men’s room stall or in the basement next to the boiler.”

The men thought about this. While they did, Kipling grabbed a passing waiter and handed him his black Amex card.

“Look,” he said, “pirates used to bury treasure in the sand and then row away. And the minute they left, in my opinion, they were broke, because money in a box—”

Outside the window, he watched a group of men in dark suits approach the front door. In an instant Ben saw the whole thing unravel: They would come in fast, guns out, wallets high, a sting operation, like a tiger trap in the jungle. Ben saw himself flipped on his belly, cuffed, his summer suit stained beyond repair, dirty footprints on his back. But the men kept walking. The moment passed. Kipling breathed again, finished his scotch in a single draft.

“—money you can’t use has no value.”

He sized them up, the men from Geneva — no bigger or smaller than a dozen other men he had sat across from, making this same pitch. They were fish to be caught on a hook, women to be flattered and seduced. FBI or no FBI, Ben Kipling was a money magnet. He had a quality that couldn’t be put in writing. Rich people looked at him and saw a vault with two doors. They visualized their money going in one door, and coming out the other multiplied. A sure thing.

He slid his chair back, buttoning his jacket.

“I like you guys,” he said. “I trust you, and I don’t say that to just anyone. My feeling is, we should do this, but in the end it’s up to you.”

He stood.

“Tabitha and Greg are gonna stay behind, get your details. It was a pleasure.”

The Swiss stood, shook his hand. Ben Kipling walked away from them, the front door opening before him as he exited. His car was at the curb, back door open, driver standing at attention, and he slid inside without slowing.

The black vacuum of space.

* * *

Across town, a yellow cab pulled up in front of the Whitney Museum. The driver had been born in Katmandu, had stolen down into Michigan from Saskatchewan, paying a smuggler six hundred dollars for fake ID. He slept in an apartment now with fourteen other people, sent most of his pay overseas in the hope of one day bringing his wife and boys over on a plane.

The woman in back, on the other hand, who told him to keep the change from a twenty, lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, and owned nineteen televisions she didn’t watch. Once upon a time she was a doctor’s daughter in Brookline, Massachusetts, a girl who grew up riding horses and got a nose job for her sixteenth birthday.

Everyone is from someplace. We all have stories, our lives unfolding along crooked lines, colliding in unexpected ways.

Sarah Kipling turned fifty in March — there was a surprise party in the Cayman Islands. Ben picked her up in a limo to go to Tavern on the Green (she thought), but took her out to Teterboro instead. Five hours later she was sipping rum punch with her toes in the sand. Now, outside the Whitney, she climbed out of a cab. She was meeting her daughter, Jenny (twenty-six), to tour the biennial and get a quick download on her fiancé’s parents before the dinner. This wasn’t so much for Sarah’s benefit, because she could talk to anyone, as it was for Ben’s. Her husband had a hard time with conversations that weren’t about money. Or maybe that wasn’t it exactly. Maybe it was that he had a hard time talking to people who didn’t have money. Not that he was aloof. It was just that he’d forgotten what it was like to have a mortgage or a car loan. What it was to be getting by, to go to a store and have to check the price of something before you buy it. And this could make him seem vulgar and aloof.

Sarah loathed the feeling she got in those moments — watching her husband embarrass himself (and her). There was no other word for it, in her mind. As his wife she was irrevocably tied to him — his opinions were her opinions. They reflected poorly on her, perhaps not because she held them exactly, but because by choosing Ben, by sticking with him, she showed herself (in the eyes of others) to be a poor judge of character. Though she grew up with money, Sarah knew that the last thing you did was talk about it. This was the difference between new money and old. Old-money kids were the ones in college with bed head and moth-hole sweaters. You found them in the cafeteria borrowing lunch money and eating off their friends’ plates. They passed as poor, affecting a disposition that they were beyond money—as if one of the riches wealth had bought them was the right never to think about money again. In this way they floated through the real world the way that child prodigies stumbled through the daily travails of human existence, heads in the clouds, forgetting to wear socks, their shirts misbuttoned.

This made her husband’s tone-deafness on the subject of money, his need to constantly remind others how much they had feel so gauche, so rude. As a result it had become her tired mission in life to soften his edges, to educate him on how to get rich without becoming tacky.

So Jenny would fill her in about her future in-laws, and Sarah would send Ben a text. You can talk about politics with the husband (he votes Republican) or sports (Jets fan). The wife went to Italy last year with her book group (travel? reading?). They have a son with Down syndrome in an institution, so no retard jokes!

Sarah had tried to get Ben to show more of an interest in people, to be more open to new experiences — they’d gone to counseling about it for two weeks, before Ben told her he’d rather cut off his ears than “listen to that woman for another day”—but eventually she’d done what most wives do and just gave up. So now it was she who had to make the extra effort to ensure that social engagements went well.

Jenny was waiting for her outside the main entrance. She had on flared slacks and a T-shirt, with her hair in the kind of beret the girls were wearing these days.

“Mom,” she called when Sarah didn’t see her right away.

“Sorry,” her mother said, “my eyes are shot. Your father keeps telling me to go to the eye doctor, but who has time?”

They hugged briefly, efficiently, then moved inside.

“I got here early, so I got us tickets,” said Jenny.

Sarah tried to shove a hundred-dollar bill in her hand.

“Mom, don’t be silly. I’m happy to pay.”

“For a cab later,” her mother said jabbing the bill at her like a flyer to a mattress store they shoved at you on the street, but Jenny turned away and handed their tickets to the docent, and Sarah was forced to put the bill back in her wallet.

“I heard the best stuff is upstairs,” said Jenny. “So maybe we should start at the top.”

“Whatever you want, dear.”

They waited for the elevator and rode up in silence. Behind them a Latin family talked in animated Spanish, the woman berating her husband. Sarah had studied Spanish in high school, though she hadn’t kept up. She recognized the words for “motorcycle” and “babysitter,” and it was clear from the exchange that something extramarital may have occurred. At their feet, two young children played games on handheld devices, their faces lit an eerie blue.

“Shane’s nervous about tonight,” Jenny said after they exited the elevator. “It’s so cute.”

“The first time I met your father’s parents, I threw up,” Sarah told her.

“Really?”

“Yes, but I think it might have been the clam chowder I had at lunch.”

“Oh, Mom,” said Jenny, smiling, “you’re so funny.” Jenny always told her friends that her mother was “slightly batty.” Sarah knew it, or sensed it on some level. And she was — what’s the word? — a little absentminded, a little, well — sometimes she made unique connections in her head. And didn’t Robin Williams have the same quality? Or other, you know, innovative thinkers.

So now you’re Robin Williams? Ben would say.

“Well, he doesn’t have to be nervous,” said Sarah. “We don’t bite.”

“Class is a real thing,” Jenny told her. “I mean again. The divide, you know. Rich people and — I mean, Shane’s parents aren’t poor, but—”

“It’s dinner at Bali, not class warfare. And besides, we’re not that rich.”

“When was the last time you flew commercial?”

“Last winter to Aspen.”

Her daughter made a sound as if to say, Do you hear yourself?

“We’re not billionaires, dear. This is Manhattan, you know. Some of the parties we go to, I feel like the help.”

“You own a yacht.”

“It’s not a — it’s a sailboat, and I told your father not to buy it. Is that who we are now, I said, boat people? But you know him when he gets an idea.”

“Whatever. The point is, he’s nervous, so will you please — I don’t know — keep it light.”

“You’re talking to the woman who charmed a Swedish prince, and boy was he a sourpuss.”

With this they entered the main gallery space. Oversize canvases lined the walls, each a gesture of will. Thoughts and ideas reduced to lines and color. Sarah tried to let her daily brain go, to quiet the constant natter of thoughts, the chronic to-do list of modern life, but it was hard. The more you had, the more you worried. That was what she’d decided.

When Jenny was born, they’d lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. Ben earned eighty thousand a year as a runner at the exchange. But he was handsome and good at making people laugh, and he knew how to seize an opportunity, so two years later he had graduated to trader and was pulling in four times that amount. They’d moved east to a co-op in the sixties and started buying groceries at Citarella.

Before motherhood, Sarah had worked in advertising, and after Jenny was in preschool she’d flirted with the idea of going back to it, but she couldn’t stomach the idea of a nanny raising her daughter while she was at work. So though she felt like she was giving up a piece of her soul, she’d stayed home and made lunch and changed diapers and waited for her husband to come home and do his share.

Her mother had encouraged her to do it, becoming — as her mother described it — a lady of leisure. But Sarah didn’t do well with unstructured time, possibly because her mind was so unstructured. And so she’d become a woman of lists, a woman with multiple calendars who left sticky notes on the inside of their front door. She was the kind of person who needed reminding, who would forget a phone number the second after someone recited it to her. She’d known it was bad when her three-year-old daughter started reminding her of things, even went to see a neurologist, who’d found nothing physically wrong with her brain and suggested Ritalin, suggesting she had ADHD, but Sarah hated pills and worried they would turn her into a different person, so she’d gone back to her lists, to her calendars and alarms.

On nights that Ben had worked late — which became increasingly frequent — she couldn’t help but think of her mother in the kitchen when Sarah was young, washing up after dinner, supervising the end-of-day arts and crafts while packing lunches for the next day. Was this the cycle of motherhood? The constant return. Someone had told her once that mothers existed to blunt the existential loneliness of being a person. If that was true then her biggest maternal responsibility was simply companionship. You bring a child into this fractious, chaotic world out of the heat of your womb, and then spend the next ten years walking beside them while they figure out how to be a person.

Fathers, on the other hand, were there to toughen children up, to say Walk it off when mothers would hold them if they fell. Mothers were the carrot. Fathers were the stick.

And so Sarah had found herself in her own kitchen on East 63rd Street, packing preschool lunches and reading picture books during warm baths, her body and her daughter’s body one and the same. On those nights when she’d fall asleep alone, Sarah would bring Jenny into bed with her, reading books and talking until they both nodded off, intertwined. This would be how Ben found them when he came home, smelling of booze, his tie askew, kicking his shoes off noisily.

“How are my girls?” he’d say. His girls, as if they were both his daughter. But he said the words with love, his face brightening, as if this was his reward for a long day, the faces of the women he loved looking up at him with sleepy eyes from the comfort of the family bed.

“I like this one,” said Jenny, now a woman in her twenties, five years from children of her own. They’d managed to stay close through her divisive teen years, despite all odds. Jenny never was one for drama. The worst you could say now was that she didn’t respect her mom the way she used to, the curse of the modern woman. You stay home and raise daughters, who grow up and get jobs and then feel pity for you, their stay-at-home mothers.

Beside her, Jenny was going on about Shane’s parents — Dad fixed up old cars. Mom liked to do charity work for their church — and Sarah tried to focus, listening for red flags, things Ben would need to know, but her mind wandered. It struck her that she could buy any of the art in this room. What was the most these pieces by young artists could cost? A few hundred thousand? A million?

On the Upper West Side, they’d lived on the third floor. The condo on East 63rd was on the ninth. Now they owned a penthouse loft in Tribeca, fifty-three stories up. And though the house in Connecticut was only two floors, the zip code itself made it a space station of sorts. The “farmers” at the Saturday farmers market were the new breed of hipster artisans, championing the return of heirloom apples and the lost art of basket weaving. The things Sarah called problems now were wholly elective—There are no first-class seats left on our flight, the sailboat is leaking, et cetera. Actual struggle — they’d come to turn off the gas, your kid was knifed at school, the car’s been repossessed — had become a thing of the past.

And all of this left Sarah to wonder, now that Jenny was grown, now that their wealth had exceeded their needs by a factor of six hundred, what was the point? Her parents had money, sure, but not this much. Enough to join the nicest country club, to buy a six-bedroom home and drive the latest cars, enough to retire with a few million in the bank. But this — hundreds of millions in clean currency stashed in the Caymans — it was beyond the boundaries of old money, beyond even the boundaries of what was once considered new. Modern wealth was something else entirely.

And these days — in the unstructured hours of her life — Sarah wondered, was she staying alive now just to move money around?

I shop therefore I am.

* * *

When Ben got back to the office, he found two men waiting for him. They sat in the outer office reading magazines, while Darlene typed nervously on her computer. Ben could tell from their suits — off the rack — that they were government. He almost spun on his heels and walked out, but he didn’t. The truth was, he had — on the advice of his lawyer — a packed bag in a storage unit and a few untraceable millions offshore.

“Mr. Kipling,” said Darlene too loudly, standing. “These gentlemen are here to see you.”

The men put down their magazines, stood. One was tall and square-jawed. The other had a dark mole under his left eye.

“Mr. Kipling,” said Square Jaw, “I’m Jordan Bewes from the Treasury Department. This is my colleague, Agent Hex.”

“Ben Kipling.”

Kipling forced himself to shake their hands.

“What’s this about?” he asked as casually as he could.

“We’ll do that, sir,” said Hex, “but let’s do it in private.”

“Of course. Whatever I can do to help. Come on back.”

He turned to lead them into his office, caught Darlene’s eye.

“Get Barney Culpepper up here.”

He led the agents into his corner office. They were eighty-six stories up, but the tempered glass shielded them from the elements, creating a hermetic seal, a sense that one was in a dirigible, floating high above it all.

“Can I offer you anything?” he said. “Pellegrino?”

“We’re fine,” said Bewes.

Kipling went to the sofa, dropped into the corner by the window. He had decided he would act like a man with nothing to fear. There was a bowl of pistachios on the sideboard. He took a nut, cracked it, ate the meat.

“Sit, please.”

The men had to turn the guest chairs to face the sofa. They sat awkwardly.

“Mr. Kipling,” said Bewes, “we’re from the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Are you familiar with that?”

“I’ve heard of it, but honestly, they don’t keep me around for my logistical know-how. I’m more the creative thinker type.”

“We’re an arm of the Treasury Department.”

“I got that part.”

“Well, we’re here to make sure that American businesses and investment firms don’t do business with countries our government has deemed off limits. And, well, your firm has come to our attention.”

“By off limits you mean—”

“Sanctioned,” said Bewes. “We’re referring to countries like Iran and North Korea. Countries that fund terrorism.”

“Their money’s bad,” said Hex, “and we don’t want it here.”

Ben smiled, showing them his perfectly capped teeth.

“The countries are bad. That’s for sure. But the money? Well, money’s a tool, gentlemen. It’s neither good nor bad.”

“Okay, sir, let me back up. You’ve heard of the law, yes?”

“Which law?”

“No, I’m saying — you know we have this thing called laws in this country.”

“Mr. Bewes, don’t patronize me.”

“Just trying to find a language we both understand,” said Bewes. “The point is, we suspect your firm is laundering money for — well, shit, just about everyone — and we’re here to let you know we’re watching.”

At this, the door opened and Barney Culpepper came in. Wearing blue-and-white seersucker, Barney was everything you’d want in a corporate attorney — aggressive, blue-blooded, the son of the former US ambassador to China. His father was pals with three presidents. Right now, Barney had a red-and-white candy cane in his mouth, even though it was August. Seeing him, Kipling felt a wave of relief — like a kid called to the principal’s office who rebounds when his dad arrives.

“Gentlemen,” said Ben, “this is Mr. Culpepper, the firm’s in-house counsel.”

“This is a casual conversation,” said Hex. “No need for lawyers.”

Culpepper didn’t bother shaking hands. He leaned his backside against the sideboard.

“Ask me about the candy,” he said.

“Pardon?” said Hex.

“The candy. Ask me about it.”

Hex and Bewes exchanged a look, as if to say I don’t want to. You do it.

Finally Bewes shrugged.

“What’s with the—”

Culpepper took the candy cane out of his mouth, showed it to them.

“When my assistant said two agents from Treasury were here, all I could think was — it must be fucking Christmas.”

“Very funny, Mr.—”

“Because I know my old racquetball buddy Leroy Able — you know him, right?”

“He’s the secretary of the Treasury.”

“Exactly. Well, I know my old racquetball buddy Leroy wouldn’t send agents down here without calling me first. And since he didn’t call—”

“This,” said Hex, “is more of a courtesy call.”

“Like where you bring over cookies and say welcome to the neighborhood?”

Culpepper looks at Kipling.

“Are there cookies? Did I miss the—”

“No cookies,” says Ben.

Bewes smiles.

“You want cookies?”

“No,” says Culpepper, “it’s just, when your friend said ‘a courtesy call,’ I thought—”

Bewes and Hex exchange a look, stand.

“Nobody’s above the law,” says Bewes.

“Who said anything—” says Culpepper. “I thought we were talking about dessert.”

Bewes buttons his jacket, smiling — a guy with a winning hand.

“A case is being built. Months, years. Sanctioned at the highest level. And you want to talk about evidence? How about you’d need two tractor trailers to haul it all to court.”

“File a suit,” said Culpepper. “Show a warrant. We’ll respond.”

“When the time comes,” said Hex.

“Assuming you guys aren’t parking cars in Queens after I make a phone call,” said Culpepper, chewing on his candy cane.

“Hey,” said Bewes, “I’m from the Bronx. You wanna call a guy out, call him out. But make sure you know what you’re buying.”

“It’s so cute,” said Culpepper, “that you think it matters the size of your dick. ’Cause, son, when I fuck someone, I use my whole arm.”

He showed them the arm, and the hand attached to it, at the end of which a single finger was raised in salute.

Bewes laughed.

“You know how some days you come to work and it’s a drag?” he said. “Well, this is gonna be fun.”

“That’s what they all say,” said Culpepper, “until it goes in past the elbow.”

* * *

That night at dinner, Ben was distracted. He reviewed his conversation with Culpepper in his head.

“It’s nothing,” Culpepper had said, dropping his candy cane in the trash after the agents left. “They’re traffic cops writing bullshit tickets at the end of the month. Trying to get their quotas up.”

“They said months,” Ben responded. “Years.”

“Look at what happened to HSBC. A fucking wrist slap. You know why? Because if they gave them the full extent of the law, they’d have had to take their banking license. And we all know that’s not gonna happen. They’re too big to jail.”

“You’re calling a billion-dollar fine a wrist slap?”

“It’s walking-around money. A few months’ profits. You know that better than anyone.”

But Ben wasn’t so sure. Something about the way the agents carried themselves. They were cocky, like they knew they had the high card.

“We need to close ranks,” he’d said. “Anyone who knows anything.”

“Already done. Do you know the level of nondisclosure paperwork you have to sign to even work the front desk here? It’s Fort fucking Knox.”

“I’m not going to jail.”

“Jesus, don’t be such a pussy. Don’t you get it? There is no jail. Remember the LIBOR scandal? A conspiracy worth trillions with a t. A reporter says to the assistant attorney general, This is a bank that has broken the law before, so why not be tougher? The assistant attorney general says, I don’t know what tougher means.”

“They came to my office,” Ben had said.

“They took an elevator ride. Two guys. If they really had something it’d be hundreds of guys, and they’d walk out with a lot more than their dicks in their hands.”

And yet sitting in a corner booth with Sarah and Jenny and her fiancé’s family, Ben couldn’t help but wonder if that was really all they’d walked out with. Ben wished he had videotape of the meeting so he could watch his own face, see how much he’d given away. His poker face was usually top-notch, but in that room he’d felt off his game. Did it come through in the tension around his mouth? A crinkle in his eyes.

“Ben?” said Sarah, shaking his arm. From the look on her face, it was clear a question has been thrown his way.

“Huh?” he said. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t catch that. It’s pretty loud in here.”

He said this, even though the place was dead quiet, just a few blue-hairs whispering into their soup.

“I said, we still think real estate is the way to go, money-wise,” said Burt or Carl or whatever Shane’s father’s name was. “And then I asked your opinion.”

“Depends on the real estate,” said Ben, sliding out of the banquette. “But my advice after Hurricane Sandy is, if you’re buying in Manhattan, pick a high floor.”

He excused himself, dodging Sarah’s disapproving look, and went outside. He needed some air.

On the curb he bummed a smoke from a late commuter and stood under the restaurant’s awning smoking. A light rain fell, and he watched the taillights sheen on the black macadam.

“Got another?” asked a man in a turtleneck, stepping out behind Ben.

Kipling turned, eyed him. A moneyed man in his forties, but with a nose that had been broken at least once.

“Sorry. I bummed this one.”

The man in the turtleneck shrugged, stood looking out at the rain.

“There’s a young lady in the restaurant trying to get your attention,” he said.

Ben looked. Jenny was waving at him. Come back to the table. He looked away.

“My daughter,” he said. “It’s meet-the-new-in-laws night.”

“Congrats,” said the man.

Kipling puffed, nodded.

“With boys you worry, will they ever leave the house?” said the man. “Find their way. In my day they kicked you to the curb the minute you hit voting age. Sometimes before. Adversity. It’s the only way to make a man.”

“That what happened to your nose?” said Kipling.

The man smiled.

“You know how on your first day in prison they say find the biggest guy and kick his ass? Well, like anything else, there are consequences.”

“That’s — you’ve been to prison?” said Kipling, feeling a tourist’s thrill.

“Not here. Kiev.”

“Jesus.”

“And later in Shanghai, but that was a piece of pie, compared.”

“Are we talking bad luck or—”

The man smiled.

“Like an accident? No, man. The world’s a dangerous place. But you know that, right?”

“What?” said Kipling, feeling a slight premonitory chill.

“I said you know the world’s a dangerous place. Cause and effect. Wrong place, wrong time. You could fill a thimble with the times in human history a good man did a bad thing without thinking.”

“I didn’t, uh, I didn’t catch your name.”

“How about my Twitter handle? You want to Instagram me?”

Kipling dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk. As he did, a black car pulled up to the curb in front of the restaurant and sat, idling.

“Nice talking to you,” said Ben.

“Hold on. We’re almost through, but not quite.”

Kipling tried to get through the door, but the man was in the way. Not blocking him exactly, just there.

“My wife—” said Ben.

“She’s fine,” said the man. “Probably right now thinking about dessert. Maybe have the meringue. So take a breath — or take a ride in the car. Your choice.”

Kipling’s heart was going a mile a minute. He’d forgotten this feeling existed. What was it? Mortality?

“Look,” said Ben, “I don’t know what you think—”

“You had a visit today. The party police. Señor Buzz Kill. I’m being obtuse deliberately. Except to say — maybe they spooked you.”

“Is this, like, a threat scenario or—”

“Don’t get excited. You’re not in trouble. With them maybe. But not with us. Not yet.”

Kipling could only imagine who us meant. The realities of the situation were clear. Though he had always dealt with factotums and middlemen (white-collar criminals at best), Kipling had made his bones at the firm by exploiting previously underutilized revenue streams. Revenue streams that — as his visit from the Treasury agents only reinforced — were of an extra-legal nature. Which is to say, in plain English, that he laundered money for countries that sponsor terrorism, like Iran and Yemen, and countries that murder their own citizens, like Sudan and Serbia. And he did it from a corner office in a downtown high-rise. Because when you deal with billions of dollars, you did it in plain sight, creating shell companies and disguising wire-transfer origin points six ways from Sunday, until the money was so clean it might as well be new.

“There’s no problem,” Ben told the man in the turtleneck. “Just a couple of young agents getting overeager. But upstairs from them we’ve got things locked down. At the level where it matters.”

“No,” said the man, “you’ve got a few problems there too. Changes in executive policy. Some new marching orders. I’m not saying panic, but—”

“Look,” said Ben. “We’re good at this. The best. That’s why your employers—”

A hard glare.

“We don’t talk about them.”

Ben felt something electric run down his back and pucker his asshole.

“You can trust us, I’m saying,” he managed. “Me. That was always my pledge. No one’s going to jail over — because of this. That’s what Barney Culpepper says.”

The guy looked at Ben as if to say, Maybe I believe you, maybe I don’t. Or maybe he was trying to say, It’s not up to you.

“Protect the money,” he said. “That’s what matters. And don’t forget who owns it. Because, okay, maybe you cleaned it so good it doesn’t connect to us, but that doesn’t make it yours.”

It took a second for Ben to translate the implication. They thought he was a thief.

“No. Of course.”

“You look worried. Don’t look like that. It’s okay. You need a hug? All I’m saying is, don’t forget the most important things. And that’s the following — your ass is of secondary importance. Only the money matters. If you have to go to jail, go to jail. And if you feel the urge to hang yourself, well, maybe that’s not a bad idea either.”

He took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one between his lips.

“Meanwhile,” he said. “Get the flan. You won’t regret it.”

Then the man in the turtleneck walked to the waiting black sedan and got in. Kipling watched as it pulled away.

Chapter 17

They went to the Vineyard on Friday. Sarah had a charity auction. Something about Save the Tern. On the ferry out she brooded about their failed dinner with the maybe in-laws. Ben apologized. A work thing, he told her. But she’d heard that too many times before.

“Just retire then,” she said. “I mean, if it’s stressing you out this much. We have more money than we could ever use. We could sell the apartment even, or the boat. Honestly, I could care less.”

He bristled at the words, the implication that this money that he’d made, that he continued to make, was somehow worthless to her. As if the art of it, the expertise he’d accumulated, his love of the deal, of every new challenge, was valueless. A burden.

“It’s not about the money,” he told her. “I have responsibilities.”

She didn’t bother arguing further, doesn’t bother saying, How about your responsibilities to me? To Jenny? As far as Sarah was concerned she’d married a perpetual motion machine, an engine that must keep spinning or never spin again. Ben was work. Work was Ben. It was like a mathematical equation. It had taken her fifteen years and three therapists to accept that — acceptance being the key to happiness, she believed. But sometimes it still stung.

“I don’t ask for much,” she said, “but the dinner with the Comstocks was important.”

“I know,” he said, “and I’m sorry. I’ll invite the guy to the club, play nine or eighteen. By the time I’m finished buttering, he’ll be president of our fan club.”

“It’s not the husband that matters. It’s the wife. And I can tell she’s skeptical. She thinks we’re the kind of people who try to buy their way into heaven.”

“She said this?”

“No, but I can tell.”

“Fuck her.”

She gritted her teeth. This was always his way, to dismiss people. It only made things worse, she believed, even as she was jealous of him for being so carefree.

“No,” she said. “It matters. We have to be better.”

“Better what?”

“People.”

An acerbic reply died on his tongue when he saw her face. She was serious. In her mind they were bad people somehow, just by being rich. It went counter to everything he believed. Look at Bill Gates. The man had committed half his wealth to charitable causes in his lifetime. Billions of dollars. Didn’t that make him a better person than what — a local priest? If impact was the measure, wasn’t Bill Gates a better man than Gandhi? And weren’t Ben and Sarah Kipling, by donating millions to good causes each year, better people than the Comstocks, who gave — at most — fifty grand?

* * *

Sarah was up early Sunday morning. She puttered in the kitchen, straightening, figuring out what they needed, then put on her walking shoes, grabbed her wicker basket, and walked across the island to the farmers market. It was muggy out, the marine layer in the process of burning off, and the sun magnified through airborne water molecules made the world feel liquid somehow. She passed the leaning mailboxes at the end of their turnoff and walked along the shoulder of the main road. She liked the sound of her shoes on the sand that lined the macadam. Her rhythmic soft shoe. New York was so loud with its traffic and subterranean subway clatter that you couldn’t hear yourself moving in time and space, couldn’t hear your breath sounds coming and going. Sometimes with the jackhammering and the explosive hiss of kneeling buses you had to pinch yourself just to know you were still alive.

But here, the steel chill of night giving way to the mug of a summer day, bubbling rainbows in the air, Sarah could feel herself breathing, her muscles moving. She could hear her own hair as it brushed against the collar of her light summer jacket.

The farmers market was busy already. You could smell the seconds fermenting in hidden baskets out of sight, bruised tomatoes and stone fruit boxed for cosmetic reasons, even though the mottled fruit was the sweetest. Every week the vendors set up in a slightly different order, sometimes the kettle corn at one end, sometimes another. The flower vendor favored the middle, the baker the end closest to the water. Ben and Sarah had been coming here for fifteen years, first as renters and then, when rich became wealthy, as owners of a modern concrete sleeve with an ocean view.

Sarah knew all the farmers by name. She had watched their children grow from toddler to teen. She walked beside weekenders and locals, not shopping as much as feeling part of the place. They were going to catch an afternoon ferry. It would be pointless to buy more than a single peach, but she couldn’t not come to the farmers market on a Sunday morning. Those weeks when it rained and the market was canceled, she felt rootless. Back in the city, she would wander the streets like a rat in a maze, looking for something, yet never knowing exactly what.

She stopped and studied some watercress. The fight she and Ben had had after the dinner — his cold shoulder, the mid-meal walkout — had been short but fierce. She let him know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t going to put up with his selfishness anymore. The world did not exist to satisfy the needs of Ben Kipling. And if that’s what he wanted — to surround himself with people that he could walk on as he pleased — well, then, he should find another wife.

Ben had been uncharacteristically apologetic, taking her hand and telling her she was right, that he was sorry and would make every effort to make sure it never happened again. It took her off guard. She was so used to fighting with the back of his head. But this time he looked her in the eye. He told her he knew he had taken her for granted, that he’d taken everything for granted. He’d been arrogant. Hubris was the word he used. But from here on out it was a new day. He actually looked a little scared. She took the fear to be a sign that her threat had actually landed, that he believed she would leave him and didn’t know what he would do without her. Later she would realize that he was already afraid — afraid that everything he had, everything he was, was on the verge of eclipse.

And so today, having witnessed her husband’s contrition, having lain with him in their marital bed, his head between her breasts, his hands upon her thighs, she felt a new chapter in her life begin. A renaissance. They had talked into the late-night hours of taking a month off and going to Europe. They would walk the streets of Umbria, hand in hand, newlyweds again. Sometime after midnight he had opened his mahogany box and they had smoked some pot, the first she’d smoked since Jenny was born. It made them giggle like kids, sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the open refrigerator, eating strawberries straight out of the crisper.

She wandered past English cucumbers and baskets of loose-leaf lettuces. The berry man had arranged his wares into a trinity — green baskets of blueberries grouped with blackberries and gum-red raspberries. She peeled back the rough husks of summer corn, her fingers hungry to feel the yellow silk below, lost in an illusion. Here on the Vineyard, at the farmers market, at this precise spot, in this moment in time, the modern world vanished, the unspoken division of our silent class wars. There was no rich or poor, no privilege, there was only food tugged from loamy earth, fruit plucked from sturdy branches, and honey stolen from the beehive bush. We are all equal in the face of nature, she thought — which was, in and of itself, an idea born of luxury.

Looking up, she saw Maggie Bateman in the middle distance. The moment was this: A young couple with a baby stroller passed through her center of vision and in their passing, Maggie was revealed in profile, caught in mid-sentence, and then — as the couple with the stroller cleared completely — the man she was speaking to was, himself, revealed. He was a handsome man in his forties, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, both paint-stained, the T-shirt covered by an old blue cardigan. The man had longish hair, swept back carelessly but creeping forward, and as Sarah watched he reached up and swept it back again, the way a horse swats flies with its tail, distracted.

The first thought that hit Sarah was simply recognition. She knew that person (Maggie). The second thought was context (that’s Maggie Bateman, married to David, mother of two). The third thought was that the man she was talking to was standing a little too close, that he was leaning in and smiling. And that the look on Maggie’s face was similar. That there was an intimacy between them that felt more than casual. And then Maggie turned and saw Sarah. She raised a hand and shielded her eyes from the sun, like a sailor searching the horizon.

“Hey there,” she said, and there was something about the openness of the greeting, the fact that Maggie didn’t act like a woman who’d just been caught flirting with a man who was not her husband, that made Sarah rethink her first assumption.

“I thought you might be here,” Maggie said. Then, “Oh, this is Scott.”

The man showed Sarah his palm.

“Hi,” said Sarah, then to Maggie, “Yeah, you know me. If the market’s up I’ll be here squeezing avocados, rain or shine.”

“Are you going back today?”

“The three o’clock ferry, I think.”

“Oh no. Don’t — we’ve got the plane. Come with us.”

“Really?”

“Of course. That’s what it’s — I was just telling Scott. He’s got to go into the city tonight too.”

“I was thinking of walking,” said Scott.

Sarah frowned.

“We’re on an island.”

Maggie smiled.

“Sarah. He’s kidding.”

Sarah felt herself flush.

“Of course.”

She forced a laugh.

“I’m such a ditz sometimes.”

“So that’s it,” said Maggie. “You have to come. Both of you. And Ben. It’ll be fun. We can have a drink and, I don’t know, talk about art.”

To Sarah she said, “Scott’s a painter.”

“Failed,” he clarified.

“No. Now that’s — didn’t you just tell me you have gallery meetings next week?”

“Which are bound to go badly.”

“What do you paint?” Sarah asked.

“Catastrophe,” he said.

Sarah must have looked puzzled, because Maggie said, “Scott paints disaster scenes from the news — train wrecks, building collapses, and things like monsoons — they really are genius.”

“Well,” said Scott, “they’re morbid.”

“I’d like to see them sometime,” said Sarah politely, though morbid is exactly how it sounded to her.

“See?” said Maggie.

“She’s being polite,” said Scott perceptively. “But I appreciate it. I live pretty simply out here.”

It’s clear he would say more if asked, but Sarah changed subjects. “What time are you guys going back?” she asked.

“I’ll text you,” said Maggie, “but I think around eight. We fly to Teterboro and then into the city from there. We’re usually home and in bed by ten thirty.”

“Wow,” said Sarah, “that would be amazing. Just the thought of Sunday-afternoon gridlock—eek—I mean it’s worth it, but that would be — Ben is going to be thrilled.”

“Good,” said Maggie. “I’m glad. That’s what it’s there for, right? If you’ve got a plane—”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Scott.

“Don’t be snarky,” said Maggie, turning to him. “You’re coming too.”

She was grinning, teasing him, and Sarah decided that this was just how Maggie was, a good sport, a people person. Scott certainly wasn’t giving off a vibe that the two of them were anything other than farmers market friends.

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Thanks.”

He gave them both a smile and walked off. For a moment it felt that all three of them would go their separate ways, but Maggie lingered a bit and Sarah felt the obligation to keep talking if she wanted to, so the two of them leaned away and then back.

“How do you know him?” Sarah asked.

“Scott? Just — from around. Or — he’s always at Gabe’s, you know, having coffee, and I used to bring the kids down all the time, just a place to go to get out of the house. Rachel liked their muffins. And we just got chatty.”

“Is he married?”

“No,” said Maggie. “I think he was engaged once. Anyway, the kids and I went out to his place once, saw his work. It really is terrific. I keep trying to get David to buy something, but he said he’s in the disaster business, so he doesn’t really want to come home and look at that. And to be fair, they are pretty graphic.”

“I bet.”

“Yeah.”

They stood there for a moment, out of words, like two rocks in a stream, the movement of the crowd a constant around them.

“Things are good?” said Sarah.

“Good, yes. You?”

Sarah thought about the way Ben kissed her this morning. She smiled.

“They are.”

“Great. Well, let’s catch up on the plane, huh?”

“Amazing. Thanks again.”

“Okay. See you tonight.”

Maggie gave her a quick air kiss and then she was gone. Sarah watched her go, then went to find some more strawberries.

* * *

At the same time, Ben sat on the deck — reclaimed wood, ivied trellis — and watched the waves. Laid out on the kitchen counter were a dozen bagels with lox, heirloom tomatoes, capers, and a local artisanal cream cheese. Ben sat on a wicker chair with the Sunday Times and a cappuccino, a light wind in his face off the ocean. He had traded texts with Culpepper all weekend, using an app called Redact that blacked out messages as you read them, then erased them for good.

Out on the ocean, sailboats inch across the wave caps. Culpepper wrote cryptically that he had been digging into the government’s case through back channels. He used emoticons instead of key words, assuming it would make the texts harder to use as evidence, were the government to somehow crack the app.

Looks like they have a key:-(feeding them dirt.

Ben wiped tomato runoff from his chin, finished his first bagel half. A whistleblower? Is that what Culpepper was saying? Ben remembered the man with the turtleneck outside Bali, his nose broken in a Russian prison. Did that really happen?

Sarah came out onto the porch with half a grapefruit. Where he’d just gotten up, she’d already been to a Spin class in town.

“Ferry leaves at three thirty,” Ben told her. “So we should be there at two forty-five.”

Sarah handed him a napkin, sat.

“I ran into Maggie at the farmers market.”

“Bateman?”

“Yes. She was with some painter. I mean, not with, but they were talking.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, preparing to tune out the rest of the conversation.

“She said there’s room on their plane tonight.”

This got his attention.

“She offered?”

“Unless you want to take the ferry. But, you know, the traffic Sunday night.”

“No, that sounds — did you say yes?”

“I said I’d talk to you, but assume we’re in.”

Ben sat back. He’d text his assistant to have a car sent to Teterboro. He was taking out his phone to do it when he had another thought.

David. He could talk to David. Not in detail, of course, but to the extent that he was having some troubles — one mogul to another. Was there a strategy David recommended? Should they hire a crisis manager preemptively? Start looking for a scapegoat? David also had close ties to the executive branch. If there really were new marching orders to the Justice Department, maybe David could get them some advance word.

He put his half-eaten bagel down, wiped his hands on his pants, stood.

“I’m gonna take a walk on the beach, sort some things out.”

“If you wait a minute, I’ll go with you.”

He started to tell her he needed the time to think, but paused. After the fiasco with Jenny’s boyfriend, he needed to go the extra mile. So he nodded and went inside to get his shoes.

* * *

The ride to the airport was short, the car picking them up just after nine p.m. They rode in the air-conditioned rear, moving through dimming twilight, the sun low on the horizon, an orange yolk dipped slowly into a cool meringue. Ben reviewed what he wanted to say to David, how to sidle up on the thing — not There’s a crisis, but Have you heard anything coming out of the White House that might affect the market in general? Or no, that’s too inside baseball. Maybe it was as simple as We’re hearing rumblings about some new regulations. Can you confirm or deny?

He was sweating, despite the sixty-eight-degree interior. Next to Ben, Sarah was watching the sunset with a whispered smile. Ben squeezed her hand encouragingly, and she looked over and gave him a big grin—her man. Ben smiled back. He could just about slay a gin and tonic right now.

Ben was getting out of the car on the tarmac when Culpepper called. It was nine fifteen, and balmy, a heavy fog hanging on the edges of the runway.

“It’s happening,” said Culpepper as Ben took his overnight bag from the driver.

“What?”

“Indictments. A birdie just told me.”

“What? When?”

“In the morning. The feds’ll come in force, waving warrants. I had a shitstorm call with Leroy, but he’s gotta side with the president on this one. We need to send a message to Wall Street, or some such shit. I’ve got a hundred temps in there right now taking care of things.”

“Things?”

“What does the cookie monster do to cookies?”

Ben was shaking. His creative reasoning center was closed.

“Jesus, Barney. Just say it.”

“Not on the phone. Just know that what Stalin did to the USSR is happening to our data. But you don’t know anything. As far as you’re concerned it’s just another Sunday night.”

“What should I—”

“Nothing. Go home, take a Xanax, sleep. In the morning put on a comfortable suit and moisturize your wrists. They’re going to arrest you at the office. You and Hoover and Tabitha, et cetera. We have lawyers on retainer standing by to bail you out, but they’ll be dicks and hold you the maximum time allowed.”

“In jail?”

“No. At Best Buy. Yes, in jail. But don’t worry. I’ve got a good lice guy.”

He hung up. Ben stood on the tarmac, oblivious to the warm wind and Sarah’s concerned stare. Everything looked different now. The creeping fog, the shadows below the plane. Ben half expected fast lines to drop from a helicopter sky, shock troops descending.

It’s happening, he thought. The absolute worst-case scenario. I will be arrested, indicted.

“Jesus, Ben, you’re like a ghost.”

Behind them the two-man ground crew finished gassing up the plane.

“No,” he said, trying to pull himself together. “No, it’s — I’m fine. Just — some bad news from the markets. Asia.”

The two men pulled the hose back, away from the fuselage. They were wearing khaki coveralls and matching caps, their faces darkened by shadow. One of them took a few steps away from the gas line, pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, the flame illuminating his face with an orange flicker. Ben squinted at him. Is that—? he thought, but the face went dark again. His fight-or-flight instinct was so strong right now it was as if every fear he had ever had was surrounding him in the fog. His heartbeat was thunderous, and he shivered despite the heat.

After a moment he realized that Sarah was talking to him.

“What?” he said.

“I said, should I worry?”

“No,” he told her. “No. It’s just — you know, I’m really looking forward to the trip we talked about. Italy, Croatia. I think it’ll be — I don’t know — maybe we should go tonight.”

She took his arm.

“You’re so crazy,” she told him, squeezing. He nodded. The first man finished securing the fuel hose, climbed into the cab of the truck. The second man dropped his cigarette, ground it out, walked to the passenger door.

“I wouldn’t wanna be flying in this,” he said.

And there’s something about the way he said it. An implication. Ben turned.

“What?” he said. But the man was already closing his door. Then the truck pulled away. Was that a threat of some kind? A warning? Or was he being paranoid? Ben watched the truck roll back to the hangar until its taillights were just two red spots in the fog.

“Babe?” said Sarah.

Ben exhaled loudly, trying to shake it off.

“Yeah,” he said.

Too Big to Jail. That’s what Barney had said. It was just a ploy. The government was trying to make an example, but when it came down to it — the secrets he had, the implications to the financial markets — he had to believe that Barney was right. That this thing would settle quietly for a few million dollars. The truth was, he’d prepared for this day, planned for it. He’d have been an idiot not to, and if there was one thing Ben Kipling wasn’t it was an idiot. He had insulated himself financially, hiding funds — not everything, of course, but a couple of million. There was a litigator on retainer. Yes, this was the worst-case scenario, but it was a scenario they had built a fortress to handle.

Let them come, he thought, surrendering himself to fate, then he squeezed Sarah’s hand, breathing again, and walked her to the plane.