Exact Revenge

1

THERE WAS A TIME when people wished that they were me. The only boundaries I had were the limits of my imagination. Now my world is six feet wide, eight feet long, and eight and a half feet high. It’s less than you think. The only thing between the concrete floor and me is a narrow three-inch mattress. I don’t need blankets or sheets because it’s always warm. My shirt and pants were once gray. Now they are the color of oatmeal. They are no longer stiff with sweat and I can’t smell them even though the guards angle their faces away whenever they try to let me out.

My days are full. They last one hour. It is the hour that they give me light. There are pests to be hunted and killed. Cracks in the walls need to be filled with a mortar I compose from loose pebbles and sand. My body needs inspection. My nails need to be filed down against the block wall. An ingrown hair scraped clean. Small ways that bring some order to my life.

When my work is through, I allow myself to languish and think about the times when I was a boy. I like to tilt my face to the light and close my eyes. I can feel the heat of the sunlight then and hear the swish of waves lapping the stones and the trees whispering secrets. I can feel the planks of wood beneath my towel. I hang my arm over the edge of the dock and press just the tips of my fingers into the water’s pliant skin without breaking its surface.

I can smell the woodsmoke from the cobblestone fireplace in our small cabin and an occasional whiff of balsam. I can hear the bang of aluminum against the dock and my father asking me to go for a canoe ride. I say yes so as not to disappoint him even though I don’t want to leave my mother’s side. Her fingertips slide down the back of her page and her thumb snaps its edge as she turns to the next. I can hear the rattle and clang of the dinner bell.

Then my day ends.

I begin by allowing myself to vent, having somehow latched on to the notion that it’s good for me. I have screamed myself mute. I have cried myself dry. I have laughed until my stomach convulses in painful knots. I have jabbered insanely to myself, reasoning with, arguing, begging, scolding, and mocking God. Eventually, I grow tired and I am ready to behave. Then I’m like everyone else, struggling to stay busy enough with what I have so I won’t think about all the things I don’t.

I still take pride in the long hard muscles, taut beneath the bronze skin of my six-foot frame. I have more positions for push-ups than a sex manual has for copulation. Push-ups on my fingertips. Push-ups upside down. Push-ups with my feet braced halfway up the wall. There is a thin metal seam above the door casing. I have calluses on my fingertips that fit nicely into that groove. I do pull-ups four different ways. Frontward with a narrow grip. Frontward with a wide grip. Same thing backward.

I can do five thousand sit-ups. I can run in place. I can jump on one leg and jump on two. I can shuffle from side to side the length of my world six thousand times without stopping. I know eighteen katas from Okinawa and I can do them all, ten times in succession without stopping. Then I sleep.

When I wake up, it’s still night. Always. If I can, I go back to sleep. If I can’t, I exercise my mind to keep from thinking of her. The velvety handfuls of dark hair in a curtain over my bare chest. The smooth pencil-line scar on her hip.

I can multiply and divide seven-digit numbers in my head. I can integrate and differentiate formulas I make up at random. I can regurgitate the meaning behind every mnemonic device from Pieper’s New York State Bar Review.

I need to be strong.

Every sixty days, they come for me. Sixty days is as long as they can put someone into solitary confinement without giving him the opportunity to show that he is ready to behave. When they come for me, I will attack the first person I can get my hands on. I will do as much damage to him as I can because I know I’ll get it all back and then some whether I spit in someone’s face or tear out an eyeball.

At first, they try to beat it out of you. One at a time, the meanest guards get a chance to claim you from the hole. Then, when they realize that you are strong and that you will never stop, they begin to send the rookies. They will watch from behind the bars and laugh until they’ve had enough or until they get nervous. It takes six years to work through the digestive system of a maximum-security prison in New York. I am in my third different prison. After today, I believe they will send me to a fourth.

My life didn’t used to be like this. There was a time when I had everything.

2

THE MIND IS LIKE a screen in a water pipe. It collects the impurities of the past in random ways, a fragment of conversation, a snippet of color. A smell. I smelled like money that day in the cab when I passed through the tunnel into New Jersey to see Congressman Williamson at Valley Hospital. He smelled like death, old copper pennies, and bleached bedsheets.

I was the youngest partner at Parsons amp; Trout, with a suite at Donald Trump’s Plaza Hotel and on the verge of a multimillion-dollar deal that would save my firm. It was the height of the Reagan era. There was a war on drugs. Russia was still an evil nation, and there was no shame in wanting to be rich.

But Roger Williamson only wanted to talk about duck hunting. He talked about the first double he ever shot with those tubes coming out of his nose, coughing into the air, like somehow he was handing me a small wooden box filled with life’s secrets.

Then, I knew how to nod my head, respect my elders. But I didn’t listen. Only fragments remain.

Roger had come from Syracuse and attended Princeton like me, only about forty years earlier. He lettered in basketball. I lettered in soccer. After he graduated, he went to Albany to work for Nelson Rockefeller. I went to law school to try to be Nelson Rockefeller.

I remember looking at the lines in his face. Road maps for my own future. Yes, I saw them. I recognized them without a thought.

It took Roger thirty years of kissing other people’s asses before he was elected to Congress. At twenty-five, I hadn’t even patted an ass and people were talking about having me be his replacement. That must not have seemed fair to Roger. But that’s only if he was aware of it.

I was surprised that none of Roger’s family was there. Two men in three-piece suits were. They didn’t talk to me and I didn’t really care. Roger had other tubes besides the one coming out of his nose. There was one in his stomach and another down below, collecting his urine in a clear plastic bag that was hooked to the stainless steel rail of his bed. There was a heart monitor beeping pleasantly and clear liquid dripped from an IV bottle.

“You aren’t smiling,” Roger said. His voice was strained and it came from the far reaches of his throat. “Every day you have your health is a good day. You should smile.”

His skin had a blue cast to it and was sunken around the eye sockets and into the other depressions of his skull. His hair was wispy and gray. Only the very tips were still dark from dye. I thought I smelled the contents of the plastic bag and I cleared my throat.

“I’m fine.”

“They say you might be the one to replace me. I’m glad. I wish they asked me, but I’m glad anyway.”

I nodded and reached out to touch the back of his hand. The veins were pale and green and riddled with scabbed-over needle holes. His skin was cool, but dry. I regretted touching him anyway. The men in suits were watching.

“Hey,” I said, “this might be like the ’82 election. Remember that bounce-back?”

He started to laugh, but it ended in a painful-sounding choke that set the monitor off like a small guard dog. When he recovered, he turned his hand over and clutched my fingers in his own with an awkward grip. His nails needed a trim.

“My family left me two days after the first time I was elected,” he said. “That was my second wife.”

I nodded.

“Why?”

I shook my head.

“Duck hunting,” he said, again. “Standing in those cattails, remember? The sun not even up. The birds swarming in on us like insects. Clear your head, Raymond. As often as you can. You grow cobwebs inside you until you die. They only clear for those last few weeks? Why would He do that to us?”

His lips kept moving, but little sound came out. I leaned closer.

“… promise…”

“You want me to promise?” I asked.

He nodded and I moved even closer.

“You take this,” he said, squeezing tight. “Only you. I wrote it myself. Here. In New Jersey. Remember that. You give it to her. As soon as you get back. Right away, Raymond. No one else. You tell no one. Will you promise me that?”

In his other hand was a legal-size envelope. He held it out to me. A woman’s name and address were scrawled on the front: Celeste Oliver. I looked into his milky green eyes, red-rimmed and brimming with moisture, and took it from him. His eyes closed and his head went back into the pillow. The men in suits seemed to be oblivious to our arrangement, so I said good-bye to Roger, even though he was already asleep.

3

AT ELEVEN IN THE MORNING on Friday, the directors from Iroquois National Bank signed a seven-year retainer agreement for Parsons amp; Trout to be both their national and regional counsel in twenty-two different states. I threw my suit coat over my arm and jogged back to the Plaza. I threw everything into a suitcase, checked out, and left New York City for the first time in over four weeks.

The drive home took me just over four hours with a stop for gas and a drive-thru burger. The door of my black wedge-shaped Celica Supra stayed open when I jumped out into the brick flagpole circle in front of Parsons amp; Trout. Sunshine glared down from between the clouds. The agreement was clutched between my fingers and it ruffled in the warm breeze. I skipped the steps, leaping right to the threshold between the thick soaring columns that supported the pediment of the old post office.

Parsons amp; Trout bought the building cheap in the late seventies, then renovated it as a historical site with tax-free dollars all through the coming years. Now it was the most impressive office space in the state outside New York City. Inside, as I climbed the marble steps to the second floor, I realized that the firm would be able to keep it now. The brass banisters. The oriental rugs. The Tiffany fixtures.

Dan Parsons was my mentor, and I loved him almost as much as my own dad. He was tall and husky with curly white hair and a round florid face that changed colors easily. Three years without a cigarette had left him with a small potbelly. His nose was bulbous, but not big, and his eyes had crow’s feet from smiling so much. He was the kind of man who smiled even when he was raving mad. He had two kids my age whom he didn’t speak to and a young son with his second wife. She was a former Miss New York with false breasts and eyelashes and great muscular legs. But she also laughed at Dan’s jokes and stood by him in the worst of financial times.

Dan’s office was just off the old courtroom. His secretary kept people out, but I sprinted right past. I made a hard left and pushed through the leather-upholstered doors into the old courtroom. Fluted columns rose twenty feet to the ceiling. Gilt molding shone down on the crystal chandeliers and the parquet floors. Dan sat at the head of the long burl wood table at the other end of the room, under the shadow of the old mahogany judge’s bench. Next to Dan sat Bob Rangle, only twenty-seven but already the chairman of the Onondaga County Republican Party.

Rangle could be a twit, but he was so damn ingratiating that I couldn’t bring myself to dislike him, even though a lot of other people did. He was a thin man with big beetle-black eyes set close to a sharp little nose and well below the receding brown hair that he liked to slick back. His fingers were long and narrow and he liked to grasp all four with his other hand and crank his hand back and forth as if he were throttling a motorcycle or winding himself up. When he smiled, the pointed tips of his small white teeth made him look even more like a weasel. He wore a dark suit with padded shoulders, an electric blue tie, and a white shirt with big silver cuff links. A conservative Huey Lewis.

The two of them looked up at me like I’d forgotten my pants.

“Hey,” Rangle said, “Raymond.”

“I got the deal,” I said, waving the agreement in the air.

Dan jumped out of his seat and snatched the papers from my hand, scrutinizing the signatures as if he suspected a fake. He wore yellow suspenders and his blue shirtsleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up to his elbows. He plopped down into one of the leather swivel chairs, laughing, with his thumb and index finger spread across his forehead.

“He did it,” Dan said to Rangle, looking up.

“You did it,” Dan said again, this time to me.

The corners of my face were beginning to hurt.

“This is thirty million a year,” Dan said, snapping his fingernails against the paper. “Minimum. Your bonus will be over two… closer to three if I get my way. How’s that?”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

Dan stood and put his arms around me. He clapped me on the back before holding me at arm’s length to grin some more. Rangle sat looking at us with his head bouncing around like it was attached by a spring. He said “Congratulations” with that toothy smile of his.

“Goddamn, you’re cool. Cool under pressure. You know what I’m going to do?” Dan said. “Make you a congressman.”

“I just saw Roger on Monday,” I said, subduing my voice to a level I thought appropriate for a man who had just died.

I looked at Rangle. His smile thawed and he blinked at us.

“What about experience?” he said, cranking up his fingers.

“We were just talking about it,” Dan said to me. “Bob thinks it should be him.”

Rangle’s face turned blotchy. He folded his arms across his chest and shifted in his seat.

“Experience is going to be crucial,” he said. “Politics is my world. It was my father’s world.”

“That’s what’s perfect about Raymond,” Dan said, raising his hands into the air like a five-year-old, palms up, fingers splayed. “People don’t necessarily want insiders. They want an everyman. Like Jimmy Stewart… The governor agrees.”

“The governor?” Rangle asked.

“I talked to him,” Dan said. “You know how much money I’ve given him. He wants to announce it tomorrow night.”

Rangle’s mouth fell open and his head tilted at an odd angle.

“The committee will have to vote on it,” Dan said. “That’s why I wanted to see you. You’ll have to call an emergency meeting.”

“The governor?” Rangle asked, his eyes drifting off toward the beam of sunlight poking through the tall arched window by the old judge’s bench. “Of course, and Raymond’s an Indian…”

“Being part Native American isn’t the reason,” Dan said. “It doesn’t hurt, but that’s not why.”

Rangle recovered his wits, rose, and walked down along the conference table. His breathing was shallow, but he extended his hand. I took it.

“Congratulations, Raymond,” he said, wrapping those long fingers around my hand.

“Thank you.”

The leather doors swung behind him. Dan picked up a Mont Blanc pen off the table and twisted it open and shut. He shook his head.

“What are you going to do?” he said. “His old man was an asshole.”

“Dan,” I said, “we like to do favors for people who help us, right?”

“The world is round,” he said. “We both know that.”

“Dan, you know me,” I said. “Do I want this? Of course I do. It would be incredible. Part of me knows I don’t even deserve it, but if I do it, I want to be careful.”

“Careful? Of course.”

“I mean, I can’t just run around making decisions based on favors,” I said. “I have to represent the area. Do what I think is best.”

“Well, there are two sides to every issue,” he said.

“Exactly,” I said. “And I don’t want to choose the wrong side just because someone did me a favor.”

“You can’t forget your friends,” Dan said. His smile was big now, but in an angry way.

“I don’t mean that,” I said. “I just want to be my own man.”

The smile stayed, but the scowl left.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. “We both will. Go see that girl and get her a new dress or something for tomorrow night, will you? I’ve got a conference call with the Chicago office, and if you don’t mind, I want to be the one to tell them about Iroquois. Trout’s been all over my ass for sending a kid. That’s what he calls you. But I told him. The hotter it is, the cooler you get.”

Outside, Rangle sat on the low wall by the entrance to the circle. His long legs were crossed and his arms were folded. A half-smoked cigarette dangled from his lips as he squinted at the fountain and the reflecting pool across the street. The fingers of his left hand were clutched in the right. I eased shut the door of my Supra and took Roger Williamson’s letter out of the inside pocket of my blazer. Pretending to study it, I walked quickly for the front of the circle. If I could make it to the sidewalk, I could lose myself in the swarm of office workers milling their way toward the bars. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rangle jump up.

“Raymond,” he said, pitching the cigarette to the ground and pumping his arms to catch up. “Wait up.”

The light was against me. I had to wait. Rangle grinned and held out his hand again.

“I meant it,” he said.

“What?”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks, Bob. I appreciate it.”

The light changed and I started to walk, feigning interest in the envelope.

“Celeste Oliver?” Rangle said, his nose poking around my shoulder, his big close-set eyes blinking.

“It’s for a friend,” I said, stuffing the envelope back into my jacket. “Do you know what end of Lodi Street is 1870?”

“The wrong end,” Rangle said. “I’m meeting Paul Russo at the Tusk. Have a drink with us.”

“Maybe later. I have someone I have to see first.”

“Before the wrong end?”

I nodded.

He smiled back in that sharp-toothed smile.

4

THE DOOR THAT LED up to the second-floor condo complex where Lexis lived was just down the wide brick alley that bordered one side of the Tusk. I stepped into the shadow of the alleyway, leaving Rangle to search the crowd that had spilled out from the bar and into the railed-off section of tables and chairs.

The condos were high-rent, and I had to punch in a code just to get into the common area. As I started up the steps, my heart began to thump. I hadn’t seen Lexis in four weeks. We hadn’t even spoken on the phone.

On New Year’s Eve, she threw a drink in the face of a partner’s wife. The next day we took a long walk and I tried to hint around that maybe she should get some help to stop drinking.

When she figured where it was I was going, she got hot and started to yell. I tried to keep cool, but pretty soon we both said some things we shouldn’t have. Stupid things neither of us meant. Then I got tabbed to go down to the city and salvage the Iroquois deal and we agreed to take a break and see how we really felt about each other. A test.

I knew how I felt. I felt like shit. Going up those steps, I suddenly didn’t care about the Iroquois deal. I didn’t even care about the United States Congress.

I stood there thinking about how to say I was sorry. Then I heard a voice through the door, deep and rumbling. My gut knotted up. It was her old boyfriend. A guy I knew whose dad was head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. No surprise he was the youngest detective in the department.

My hands clenched into fists and I hammered on the door.

“Son of a bitch,” I said between my teeth.

There was a pause, then footsteps, and the door swung open.

“Raymond?”

It was Lexis. I wanted to punch my fist through the wall. My face burned and my stomach felt sick.

Her dark hair hung in long smooth sheets that only made her blue eyes more striking. Her skin was from another age, a Victorian painting. China skin with a straight nose and high cheekbones. The hair around the fringes of her face was damp.

She wore a white cotton dress with a blue flower print that matched those eyes. Her legs were long and lean. Her waist was narrow.

“What are you doing?” she said.

I said, “What are you doing?”

“I didn’t even know you were back,” she said. “Frank is here. His mother is sick.”

“Right,” I said. My hands were jammed in my pockets and I stood glowering at her with my attention fixed on the interior of the apartment.

Lexis stepped toward me. She put a hand on my cheek and kissed me lightly on the lips. Her lips were full and soft, she smelled of strawberries.

“Missed you,” she said. Her voice was hushed, tender.

I didn’t kiss her back.

She sighed as if to say it was nothing more than she expected out of me and said, “Come in here.”

She turned and walked down a narrow hallway into the towering loft that served as both living room and studio. Frank was standing by the glass doors next to an unfinished canvas. Outside was a balcony overlooking the hickory trees that lined the street below. The sunlight streaming in through the leaves dappled the scarlet silk of his shirt. It hung loose around his waist, but I could still see the bulge of his police-issued Smith amp; Wesson.

I despised him. He was like a giant from a children’s story, with a mop of dark curly hair, flaring nostrils, and hands like slabs of meat. Most women thought he was handsome. So did Frank. He had this shiny olive skin, small fat red lips, and pale blue eyes with lashes like a girl.

“Sorry to hear about your mom,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“Heart attack,” he said. “She’ll be okay. She’s pretty tough.”

“Yeah,” I said, “they say those aren’t as serious as they used to be.”

I circled toward the kitchen, keeping my body sideways to him the way I did when I was sparring.

“Still working on that kung-fu stuff, Big Chief?” he said.

“Some people might be offended by a stupid comment like that,” I said. “But they might not understand about people who are mentally challenged.”

Frank laughed.

“You gotta be careful out there,” he said. “It’s a dangerous world.”

“Same for you, Frank. Don’t try to walk and chew gum at the same time.”

“Tell your mom I send my best,” Lexis said, taking Frank by the arm.

He looked up at me and, showing his teeth, said, “Make sure you treat this girl right.”

I forced a smile.

When he was finally gone, Lexis closed the door and came back into the living room. Almost every flat surface was covered with photos of her and me in delicate silver and wood frames. Us at Disney in front of the castle. Her sister’s wedding in L.A. Camping. Our first-anniversary dinner. She moved slowly across the room, stopping to straighten the picture frames as she came.

“Oh, Frank,” I said. “I’m so glad you could console his delicate spirit.”

“He’s gone.”

“But he’ll be back,” I said. “An asshole boomerang.”

“He’s nothing,” she said. “Don’t waste your time.”

I smelled the musky sweetness of Oriental lilies and looked for the source. In a glass vase beside the couch was a fresh-cut flower arrangement. The paintings on the high brick walls were the same as they’d been a month ago. Surreal, with electric blue skies and inanimate objects with bloody teeth. No new work. Even the canvas on her easel had seen little progress. I couldn’t help feeling glad.

Across the room was the door that led to her bedroom. I studied the big king-size sleigh bed in the middle of the wood floor. It was neatly made.

Lexis was in front of me now. In her hands was an inlaid mahogany frame that held a picture of just me. My neck, shoulders, and chest were bare and tan, the lines of muscle and bone clearly drawn. My hair was a dark tangle. My eyes were half shut, but you could still see the yellow slivers set deep in their brown.

“Remember when I took this?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

I did remember. A seaside cottage on Cape Cod. She said after sex was the only time I ever really relaxed. She said she liked me that way.

“Yes,” I said in a raspy tone.

She traced a fingertip up the front of my thigh.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“Me too.”

I could feel her touch through the leg of my pants, up over my waist, then through my shirt, sharp and tingling, ascending my abdomen, over my chest and coming to rest just above my collarbone, where she moved it back and forth in a gentle rhythm. It got hard to breathe. I stepped toward her and let my hand slide down the muscular ridge along her spine to the shelf of her round bottom, where I took hold and pulled her close, pressing her hips against my own and kissing her.

Lexis stripped off my coat and frantically unbuttoned my shirt. They both slipped to the floor. The corner of the white envelope poked out from the inside pocket. I started to bend down to tuck it back in, but her dress fell to the floor-came up over her head and down over the top of it. We began to kiss again, holding it as we moved sideways toward the bedroom. One of my hands slipped beneath her bra, the other under the waistband of her lace underwear, finding the small smooth scar at her hip. My belt buckle jingled and came undone.

By the time we reached the bed, we were both naked. She pushed me onto my back, and then, everything stopped.

5

I STARTED FROM MY SLEEP and, for a moment, didn’t know where I was. Then I saw the deep web of Lexis’s hair spilled across the pillow next to me. I breathed deep the familiar hint of incense she sometimes burned. I felt refreshed, but less than a half-hour had gone by. Outside, the sun’s beams were still thick, although slanted nearly flat. They drew long shadows from the windowsills of the building across the street. Out on the studio floor, my suit coat still lay beneath her dress, but the corner of the envelope jutted up into the thin material, casting a small shadow of its own.

I sat up, and the cotton sheets slid easily from my legs.

Lexis groaned and reached for me.

“Where are you going?” she said, her face still buried in the feather pillow.

“I’m sorry,” I said, running my fingers through her hair. “I haven’t even spoken to my father. His phone was disconnected last week. Crazy coot. I’ve got to stop by. I was thinking I could do that, go home and change, and then we could meet for dinner…”

I looked at my watch.

“It’s almost seven-thirty,” I said. “How about nine-thirty?”

Lexis rolled over and I kissed her lips.

“I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t him.”

She touched my lips with her fingertip and said, “I like that you care about him like that.”

When I left Lexis’s apartment, I decided I was going to ask her to marry me. I already had the ring. I’d been waiting to be sure. Waiting to see what the break would do to us. Now I knew. This was it.

When I saw Rangle at his table on the corner of the sidewalk and the alleyway, I was too cheerful to dip my head and walk on by. He was on his feet, waving to me and calling my name. Besides, I thought I owed his buddy Paul Russo a favor. Not my favorite guy, but the vice president at a local bank, and before I left for New York City he had promised to put together that small business loan for my dad.

The world is round.

The Tusk boasts a glass storefront with over five hundred kinds of beer behind a bar decked out in brass. Its doors stay open in the summer so you can smell the yeasty richness even on the sidewalk, and above the bar in gold carved letters are the words: Reality is an hallucination brought about by the lack of good beer. On the wall, in old-world letters, is another sign: Est. 1978.

It was an after-work crowd of lawyers and accountants, along with a handful of skilled tradesmen whose rates were high enough to afford five dollars for a pint of beer. People sat on tapestry stools or stood leaning against the high oak tables. But the best seats were where my friends were, outside in the line of tables that ran down the sidewalk and halfway up the alley.

It wasn’t until I was inside the railing that separated the patrons from the foot traffic, and halfway to their table, that I realized Frank was hiding behind the brick corner of the building. He ended his conversation around the corner and sat down with the other two before looking up at me. He set his mouth in a flat line, then forced a smile. I did the same.

“My man,” Rangle called out in a slurred voice, holding up his hand for a high five. “You know Paul… and Frank I know you know. Hey, we’re all friends here. The future movers and shakers…”

The two of them were dressed for success with glimmering silk ties, white shirts, and suit coats with sharp-angled padded shoulders. In a mean way Rangle did have style, but Russo was shorter and such a potato-head that the clothes just couldn’t compensate. Everyone else sitting around was in shirtsleeves at best. The women wore big-shoulder tops and high moussed hair and we all listened to Wham! U.K. and the theme music to St. Elmo’s Fire.

“Hey, Paul,” I said. “Thanks for helping out my dad.”

“God, I’ve been wicked swamped,” Russo said. His shoulders were broad but thin, like a paper doll’s. His big hooked nose and protruding ears jumped right out at you from a chinless face that was otherwise flat as a pie tin. Pale gray crescents hung beneath his dark, pink-rimmed eyes. His head was mostly bald except for the buzzed-down patches around his mushroom ears that matched the shadow on his chin and jaw. He had a confident spark to him. “He and I have been trading calls. But we’ll get it done for sure.”

“You need a beer, Raymond,” Rangle said.

“That’s okay I-”

“Just one,” Rangle said, holding up his long hand. “Paul, how about another round of Rogue Ales and whatever Raymond wants.”

“Me?”

“Your name’s Paul, right?”

He flipped Russo his credit card.

To me, he said, “You can’t not have at least one with me. People will think I’m not happy for you. People will think I’m holding a grudge or something if we don’t have a drink. You and I have to work together. We’ve got politics to talk. I’ve decided to run for mayor. Frank will be my chief of police, ‘buckling down’ on all the bad guys. Please… sit.”

He grinned. “We’re going to own this fucking town.”

I did sit, as much as anything to spite Frank and his dark look. I winked at him. Best way to piss off an asshole is to ignore him.

“I’ll have a Hefeweizen,” I said to Russo, trying to sound glib. “A Franziskaner.”

“And cigars, Paul,” Rangle said, raising his finger. “They have some Montecristo No. 2s behind the bar. Just tell them it’s for me…”

Russo, with sweat beaded on his round brow and pit stains bleeding through his suit coat, stood swaying for a moment, puffed his thin lips, and then hurried off.

“You’ll have to start getting used to good cigars, Raymond,” Rangle said, finishing off the pint in front of him and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “You’ve already got a fine woman.”

I pressed my lips together and stared flatly at him.

“Lucky in life and lucky in love,” Rangle said, his teeth glinting.

I cast a look at Frank to see if he was in on the fun.

“In today’s politics, the first lady is essential,” Rangle said, belching quietly and loosening his tie before he clutched his fingers. “That’s insider information. The kind of stuff my father taught me. The kind of stuff I’m going to share with you during the campaign and even when you’re in Washington…”

Russo returned, staggering like a goblin slave with a quartet of glasses and a pocketful of cigars stuffed in with the burgundy handkerchief that matched his tie. I passed on the Montecristo, but drank half of the Hefeweizen before setting the glass down on the metal mesh tabletop.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, looking at my watch. “But I’ve really got to get going.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Rangle said with a wink, “that little secret errand to run, right? Secret’s safe with me, that’s for sure…”

Rangle started to chuckle. It infected Russo, who wheezed through that big nose. Frank just stared down at the pint glass between his thick hands.

“I guess you don’t get to where you are without doing some favors, eh?” Rangle said, clipping the end off his cigar. One eyebrow crept upward and he narrowed his big dark eyes.

“Meaning?”

“Nothing bad,” Rangle said, looking up from behind the flame and smoke. Puffing. “We all do favors for people. Look at us…”

He pointed the butt of his cigar around the table and said, “Four CBA grads. Did anyone think of that? You wore the purple and gold too. A little behind us, but a brother is a brother. The next generation… We have to stick together, no matter what our differences. That’s what the Brothers taught us.”

Christian Brothers Academy was a parochial high school. Almost every Italian American family in Syracuse, as well as others that could afford it, wanted their kids to go there. It was also a sports power and I attended on a soccer scholarship.

I drained my beer and stood up. The first half had already gone to my head.

“You’re right. Thanks for the beer,” I said.

“But we’re just starting,” Rangle said, rising up, reaching for my sleeve.

“No, I’ve got to.”

“Leave it to Raymond,” he said to the others, “to worry about keeping his promise to a guy who’s already dead.”

“Leave it to me,” I said, forcing a smile as I backed away, wishing I hadn’t asked Rangle about the address. “Keeping your word is an odd concept for some people.”

I ducked between two parked cars and waited for a motorcycle to sputter by before crossing. One of the lawyers from my firm walked out of a bar across the street and I was forced to politely accept his congratulations on the Iroquois deal. When I got to the corner, I looked back at the sidewalk table where Rangle, Frank, and Russo still sat. They weren’t looking at me anymore. Instead, the three of them held their glasses high and touched them together in a toast.

6

I KNOW THEY THINK I’m crazy, and maybe that’s true. Sometimes they take the punishment I give them in order to subdue me. It takes five men. After a time, though, strong as I am, they are able to chain me up and fasten a leather mask over my face to keep me from biting. Then they’ll carry me to a room and chain me down to a chair that’s bolted to the floor.

The first time they did this, I thought they were going to torture me. But all they did was bring in a psychiatrist. I still have to fight them when they come for me with the mask, otherwise they might not keep me here. But the truth is, I enjoy talking to the doctors. Four other times they gave me to a priest.

My point is this: I may very well be crazy, and maybe it’s just crazy for me to believe that I know what happened all those years ago when I wasn’t even there. But there were scraps of things I later heard. Before the trial. And for the rest… Well, I’ve had plenty of time to think.

These things are never clear during the night. It’s during my one hour of daylight that they come to me. I don’t want to know them. They just come, intruders lurking in the woods around the cabin of my boyhood Adirondack vacations.

And when these intruders commandeer my thoughts, what really happened comes to me in a way that leaves me as certain of the truth as if I were there myself. Listening. Seeing…

“That was cute,” Frank said, his bulk shifting forward, his olive skin reddening. “I hope you enjoyed yourself, asshole.”

The smell of spilled beer and laughter and smoke whirled around them. Rangle leaned across the table with his cigar stuck deep into the corner of his mouth and said, “I mean, how does a guy like you lose that girl to a guy like him?”

“Yeah,” Russo said.

“Shut up.”

Russo scratched the stubble surrounding his bald head and looked away with his ears sticking out from the sides of his head like two hunks of cauliflower.

“Who understands pussy?” Frank asked. He upended the rest of his old pint and started in on the new one.

The shadow of the building had shifted with the sun. They were in darkness now and their metal table was cooling rapidly. Only the smoke from Rangle’s cigar drifted toward the street and into the sunlight, a twisting shimmering cloud.

“Hey,” Rangle said, raising his hands, palms up. A strand of slicked-back hair had fallen from its ranks, and it hung limp from his high hairline. “No problem. We’re friends.”

Frank’s thick fingers were clamped around the glass. His knuckles pale. His cigar lay there in front of him, untouched. Russo held his between his thumb and forefinger, caressing the Montecristo between his upper lip and the overhang of his nose. Sniffing it. Rangle leaned forward again, his silver cuff links clinking against the metal tabletop.

“How much do you hate him?” he asked. “What does it feel like in your chest and in your crotch… when you think about him fucking her?”

Frank’s jaw went taut. He shoved the glass away from him with waves of beer sloshing up and over its rim. He picked up the cigar, crushing and twisting it until small brown flecks of tobacco fell to the table like snowflakes.

“That could be you,” he said. His mouth was pulled down at the corners and his pale eyes bored into Rangle. The veins in his bull neck bulged. “I’ll buckle down all over your ass, mayor or not.”

“Hold that thought,” Rangle said, showing Frank his sharp teeth without the smile. “But now think Raymond. It’s him, not me. What if we did something about him?”

“Someone could find his head in a Dumpster with three slugs in it,” Frank said. He was leaning forward too, speaking barely above his breath.

“Arrogant bastard,” Russo said. “Guy thinks I’m his personal fucking banker.”

“No one asked you,” Frank said.

Russo frowned and said he was sorry.

“What if you could do something even worse than that?” Rangle asked, slicking back his thin hair. His eyes glittered. “Would you?”

“What’s worse?”

“What if it was Raymond that had to think about you fucking Lexis?”

Frank’s hand darted across the table, latched on to Rangle’s tie, and yanked him across the table until his face smashed into the cluster of empty glasses. Frank’s thick lips brushed up against Rangle’s forehead.

Overhead, Bryan Adams sang “Cuts Like a Knife.”

“You don’t ever talk about her,” Frank said in a throaty whisper. “Never ever again. Her name doesn’t come out of your filthy mouth or I’ll beat you to a fucking pulp and throw you in jail for assaulting an officer. You got that?”

“Yes,” Rangle said, choking and blinking the fallen hair from his eyes.

Frank let him go and Rangle collapsed back into his seat, tugging at his tie, loosening the collar and sucking in his breath.

“Good,” he said, slicking his hair again and clearing his throat. “I want you angry. I want you sick with fucking hatred. Now, you dumbass, think Raymond, not me. I know a secret, and we have a chance to change everything. All three of us…”

The three of them leaned close and spoke in whispers that no one could hear. Russo’s pink-rimmed eyes shifted around the sidewalk and he gulped his beer. Frank wore a scowl. Rangle’s eyebrows were knit tight, but his teeth shone in a jackal-like smile. It was a simple plan. Quick and easy. Effective.

In less than a minute, the three of them sat back in their chairs and raised their drinks. They brought the rims of the thick pint glasses together with a clink that rang out loud and clear.

I hear that clink. I can smell their smoke. And I see those arrogant smiles every day of my life.

7

MY DAD’S PLACE was in the opposite direction of mine, half an hour east of Syracuse. The home I had recently bought was half an hour to the west, out in Skaneateles. I don’t like to think of myself as running from my roots as the son of a rock man and a displaced Native American mom. Yeah, I heard my share of red man jokes in school, but I had only two real fistfights in my life.

I prefer to think that I’m in Skaneateles not because it’s the priciest real estate in upstate New York, but because I’m actually closer to nature there. I put out nest boxes for bluebirds, martins, and swallows, and usually fill half of them in a season. Lots of my neighbors are farmers. They let me roam their woods during hunting season, and I can throw a fishing line in the water about a hundred feet from my back door.

From the law office, it was easy for me to hop on the interstate and get out to my dad’s spot of countryside between Fayetteville and Chittenango. I kept the windows down, inhaling the cool smell of cut hay and trees and the soil of farm fields that were buzzing with insects. The letter sat on the passenger seat beside me, jammed into the crack between the seat and the backrest. In my rearview mirror, I could see the oblong orange sun settling into a blanket of glowing clouds. By eight o’clock, the long shadows made the woods surrounding the driveway nearly dark.

My father lived alone in the house where I grew up, a small brown ranch nestled in the woods. I could see its lines, even through the trees. The place once belonged to my grandfather. Like my dad, he operated the small quarry out back his entire life, blasting stone from the backbone of the earth, constantly struggling to survive in a world ruled by international conglomerates.

As I pulled up alongside the house, I heard a blast rebound over the lip of the hill that loomed in the near distance. I shook my head and kept going along the gravel drive, past the house, out of the woods, around the towering escarpment of jagged stone, and up over the hill into the purple shadows of the quarry.

In the headlight beams of a faded old dump truck, my father stood talking with another man. Dust from the explosion swirled in the glow of the light. I pulled right up beside the battered dump truck and hopped out.

“Dad,” I said, raising my voice to account for his loss of hearing. “It’s practically dark out.”

That was as far as my complaint about blasting after dark could go.

“I can see that,” he said. He wore the faded jeans, white T-shirt, and the jean jacket of a teenager, but the skin on his hands as well as his face was craggy and weather-beaten.

I walked up with my back straight and shook his granite hand the way he taught me that real men do. A bat swooped down from the shadows, flitting softly into the beam of light.

“Tried calling you last week,” I said, ducking. “What happened to the phone? They said it was disconnected.”

“Don’t need no damn phone,” my father said.

“Everyone needs a phone, Dad.”

“Money-sucking corporate monkeys.”

“What about business?”

“You do yours, I’ll do mine. A rock man don’t need no phone,” he said. “The trucks keep coming and I keep giving them their stone. Been at it for two weeks without a phone.”

“It’s summertime, Dad,” I said. I doubted he could carry on like this when things got slow.

“You ain’t said hello to Black Turtle.”

I turned and said hello to the ancient Onondaga Native American who had worked on and off for my dad since I was a boy. We shook hands and I was jolted by a clap on the back from my dad. He asked me if I cared for a man’s meal. He and Black Turtle had their sights set on some venison steaks and a game of nickel poker.

“I’m having dinner with Lexis, Dad,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay and tell you that you’ve got to get a hold of that guy Paul Russo at the bank and get that loan set up. I saw him today. He said you were trading calls.”

“I don’t need a loan.”

“Dad,” I said, “your phone was turned off.”

“I called that asshole anyway, and he never called me back,” he said, as he worked on a quid of tobacco in the side of his cheek.

“Well, he probably couldn’t get through, Dad.”

“If he tried, why didn’t he tell you that?” he said. “I called him for two weeks before that phone got turned off. His secretary always told me he wasn’t in. Bullshit.”

“Well, you’ve got to try again, Dad,” I said, thinking that Russo was a lot more likely to shake a stick now that he knew I was going to be a congressman. “I spoke to him today and he said it’s all set.”

“How about tomorrow night for venison steaks?” my father said, stroking his mustache. “Black Turtle and I can save ’em and go get us a plate of spaghetti and meatballs at Angotti’s.”

His drooping mustache and his blue Buffalo Bills cap were white with dust from blasted rock, making his dark blue eyes seem almost black.

“I’ve got a political thing tomorrow night, Dad,” I said. “A fund-raiser. How about Sunday night?”

“Political shmitical,” he said, taking off his hat and slapping it against his leg before putting it back on.

“They want me to be the next congressman.”

“To Washington?”

“I’ve got to win a special election, but with the Republican endorsement…” I said. Everyone knew that in this district that’s all you needed. “I imagine I could help get you some good road contracts…”

My father put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“I know you want to help,” he said, his voice sounding choked. “But I got all the work I need. You just do like I taught you. You don’t take any favors, you don’t owe any…”

I turned to Black Turtle and said, “Don’t you two blast at night anymore, will you?”

He shrugged at me the way he always had, knowing as well as I did that my words were meant for my father.

“I appreciate it,” I said. “Otherwise, I worry.”

My father held up a small blue blasting cap in the waning light. It was no bigger than a cigarette.

“You wouldn’t think a little thing like this could destroy twenty tons of hard rock,” my father said, “but it does. The well-placed little things are the ones that can move mountains.

“All right, Black Turtle,” he said, gripping my shoulder, then letting go. “We got work to do. Sunday night it is.”

My dad climbed up into the cab of the dump truck. Black Turtle faded into the darkness and fired up the cranky old payloader. The two monster machines rattled off, leaving me in a fresh swirl of dust, the blue-white lights of the Supra, and a low rumble that continued on like thunder.

I got into my car and wound my way through the rocks, past the stone crusher and the sagging office trailer, and back to the main road. My hands turned the wheel without thinking, taking me back to deliver the envelope that sat beside me. In the scheme of everything that was happening in my world of business, love, and politics, it was undoubtedly a very little thing.

8

THE ORANGE SKY in the west had faded to russet. It was after eight-thirty by the time I got back to the city and the north end of Lodi Street. Pinpoints of light, stars, planets, and airplanes winked overhead as I rolled down the dusty street with my windows open. People in broken porch chairs and others who slouched in rusty cars along the curb craned their necks for a better look at my gleaming car and its sparkling silver rims.

The homes were crammed together and in need of repair. Screens, bent and torn, hung loose from open windows. Roofs sagged. The leprosy of peeling paint and rotted gray wood had stricken every post, step, and shingle. The broken driveways and crumbling sidewalks were peppered with weeds, and the hush of dusk was disrupted by the thumping of boom boxes.

House numbers were a luxury and only a few had them. Celeste Oliver’s place was missing the first two, but I could still see the faded images of where the one and the eight had once been. I pulled up into the driveway behind a red Honda Civic with a crushed rear quarter panel and got out. The envelope was in my hand. In the fading light, I saw the curtain drop and a face disappear.

I climbed the steps and knocked.

The door opened almost immediately and she stood there, pouting. I had to take a breath. She was tall enough so that even in bare feet she was almost eye-level with me. She wore tight stonewashed jeans and an aqua blue halter top that showed off breasts that were neither too big nor too small. Her midriff was honey-colored and molded with curves. Her lipstick was pink. Delicate eyebrows matched her straight blonde hair. Her eyes were powder blue.

“I’m a friend of Roger’s,” I said, when I could speak.

She moved aside and I stepped in. When she turned and walked into the small living room, my eyes followed a perfect bottom. The hammering in my chest and the current running through my center triggered a pang of guilt.

“You can sit down,” she said, plopping down on the couch and picking up a pack of Newports off the glass coffee table. She slipped one into her mouth.

I laid the envelope down on the table in front of her.

“That’s from Roger,” I said, straightening. Unable to sit, but unable to get my feet moving toward the door.

“Did he tell you about me?” she asked, squinting up from the flame of her Bic.

“No.”

“I belonged to Roger,” she said, blowing smoke toward the curtained window. “Not for money. I’m not like that. I dance, but I never fucked a man for money. I loved being with Roger. Do you know he took me inside the White House? I met Reagan.”

I shook my head no.

“And now you’re going to have everything that he had…” she said, looking directly at me with a small smirk. “You’re the one who’ll get to vote on the Star Wars bill this fall. You’ll have the swing vote on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Highways. They want to redo the interstate bridges between here and Canada. Did you know that? The governor will be calling you on that one and you can get him to come do a fund-raiser for you. There’s a real nice bunch around here who’ll pay a thousand a head to have lunch with the governor…

“Anyway, you’ll have me too,” she said, sitting back on the couch and placing her arms along its back with her legs crossed and a little arch in her spine. “If you want that…”

I glanced at the envelope. The feeling in my legs was beginning to return. The smoke from the cigarette helped. I started to back toward the door.

“I kind of have someone,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s standard,” she said. “A wife?”

“Maybe.”

She dashed her cigarette into an ashtray and hopped up off the couch. She came toward me with a bubbling giggle and took hold of my hand, pressing it up against her breast before I could react.

“Yeah, well, this is politics,” she said, her voice dropping into a husky whisper, her fingers tracing up the inside of my thigh. “So she’ll get used to it. They all do…”

I pulled my hand back. Her other hand groped my crotch.

“You’ll need a release,” she said, her pink lips barely moving. “It’s a brutal job. I can keep your mind clear. We all need to clear our minds.”

I knocked her hand away and pushed her harder than I meant to. She tripped and fell to the floor, her head thudding up against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to help her up. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Asshole,” she said, swatting at me, then pushing a long strand of the blonde hair from her face.

I turned, yanked open the door, and jumped down off the porch, skipping the steps. I edged past the wreck of a Honda. My suit pants caught and tore on a wild metal shred protruding from the smashed bumper.

As I climbed into my Supra, I looked around. Halfway up the block was an unmarked police car. In the shadows of the front seat, a nickel-size ember-about the size of a cigar-glowed then faded out. That didn’t seem unusual to me. In a neighborhood like this, the police probably knew everybody by their first name.

I never thought much of it back then.

9

I NEVER HATED MY MOTHER for what she did. Maybe it was because my father refused to blame her. “I knew what your mother needed,” he once said, “and I knew I didn’t have it.”

My mother was a pretty woman who liked to laugh and read books. She was a Mohawk raised on the Onondaga Indian Reservation. That meant that even among the disenfranchised, she was disenfranchised.

As loving as she was to me and to my father, my mother had an insatiable desire for things. I can still remember the one trip we took to Florida over a winter school break. We stayed at a cheap motel across the street from the beach in St. Petersburg. One day, the three of us took a long walk and found ourselves in an exclusive neighborhood on the bay. I can still see the glimmer in my mother’s dark eyes and hear her delicate gasps at the size and intricate architectural detail of the homes. The shiny cars in their driveways. The yachts moored to the docks that jutted out from the swimming pools in their backyards.

When my mother wasn’t reading a book, she was studying magazines like Architectural Digest, Vogue, or Town amp; Country. Every cent my father let her have, she spent on things that were irrelevant to the Native American wife of a quarry man. Irrelevant, but fine. Lalique figurines. A Cartier bracelet. A Chanel evening gown she could never wear.

I was ten when she left to marry a man who drove a black Mercedes coupe. A man who owned a large paving company and who bought crushed stone from my father. A man who smelled like peppermint and wore a gold Rolex. He was for real, though. He even took her to Greece on their honeymoon.

My mother told me then that I was a man already. Ahead of my years and that I would be fine. I was like Running Deer, my namesake, the boy chief who led his people to victory over the Hurons when he was only eleven. I tried to make her words come true, to be a man.

I remember that Christmas, tramping off into the dark winter woods after school and sawing down a tree to surprise my father. Something he had always done for the three of us. I remember the quiver in my lip when I refused to give up my seat on the bus to the eighth grader who regularly taunted me. Him walking away. I remember my fingers going numb around a wrench and the smoke of my breath, lying on the cold concrete floor and looking up at the oil pan of my father’s truck as it bled a thick black ribbon into a cut-down Clorox bottle. My first oil change.

But I think I did more than try to be the man my mother said I already was. I think too that I tried to fill the void she left behind. I remember making my father’s breakfasts, breaking the yolks like her and peppering them so thick it looked like they fell in the road. Coffee in the tall gurgling percolator. The oily smell of sardines laid out over a bed of tuna salad, capped with a fat slice of onion, wrapped in tinfoil, and lowered carefully into his dented blue lunch pail. Breaking from the math homework spread out over the kitchen table and uncapping two longneck bottles of Budweiser for him and Black Turtle. Setting them down without being asked on the porch railing where the two of them sat rocking in the darkness-the way she had always done.

While my mother said I would be fine, my father said the marriage wouldn’t last long.

They were both right.

My life became a storybook of success-scholarship offers, valedictorian, All-America soccer player-and she moved on to marry one of the heirs to the DuPont fortune before I turned fourteen. Two years later, she and her third husband died when their private jet went down over the Atlantic Ocean. They were on their way to Bermuda for the season.

I tried not to cry. To be a man. But I guess all those eggs and coffees and lunches and beer caps had undermined my efforts at manhood. Sixteen and I bawled hysterically right in front of Black Turtle and my father and ran off into the woods to hide.

I only tell you all this because I want you to understand the significance of the next twenty-four hours I’m going to tell you about. Back then, I didn’t stop to think about why I felt that I had experienced some kind of spiritual ascension, I only knew that I had. Everything was right.

I had grown up afraid of being my father. I was happy to have his rugged looks, his strong back, and his quick mind. But I was determined to have more. I was going to be rich and powerful. That was the lesson of my childhood.

When I resisted Celeste Oliver’s temptation-my own forty days in the desert-I couldn’t help congratulating myself. I felt not just worthy of everything that had been placed at my feet, but entitled. I had worked and planned my whole life to be in the path of some fantastic destiny. Finally, on that summer day, I knew that it was in my grasp.

I had this amazing house that everyone wondered how I got my hands on. One of those deals you only hear about. It belonged to the family of a friend I knew at Princeton. They came to me to help work out the estate after the death of their grandmother. When I saw this place, I told them they wouldn’t even have to put it on the market.

It was an old Tudor cottage tucked into a small cove on Skaneateles Lake. You couldn’t see it from the road or even very clearly from the water because of the massive oaks and towering spruce that surrounded it. It had a prominent rubblework chimney flanked by stucco walls and brunette half-timbering. Gingerbread gableboards and diamond-pane window casements gave it a fairy-tale quality, and it had a thick slate terrace out back that overlooked the water.

The master bedroom upstairs was my favorite spot. It had a set of arched French doors in the peak of the roof that led out onto a small balcony. In the summer, the moon came up over the eastern ridge beyond the lake like a big pumpkin. From there, I could see all the way to the south end of the lake, into the next county where the tree-lined slopes descend almost a thousand feet from the ridge to the deep green water below.

By the time I got home from delivering the envelope to Roger Williamson’s mistress, dusk was on its last breath. I quickly changed my clothes and fished the velvet ring box out of the bottom of my sock drawer. Lexis agreed to meet me at Kabuki, a sushi restaurant in town at the head of the lake. During the drive to my dad’s I had called for a nine-thirty reservation at the front table overlooking the water.

My buddy’s grandmother had planted a bed of orange daylilies under the front windows and I stopped to cut half a dozen of them to give to Lexis. I got there late, but not enough to subdue the glow in Lexis’s eyes when I handed her the flowers. I drank seltzer water with Lexis, but I felt drunk anyway, and by the time we got our molten chocolate cake with green tea ice cream, I had asked her to marry me. She cried and said yes, then we drove back to my place, where I carried her across the threshold and we giggled like kids.

Upstairs, I opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. Water lapped the smooth shale beach below and a broad swath of moonlight sparkled on the lake’s surface. As I turned, Lexis slipped her dress off her shoulder and it fell to the floor. I stepped inside, fumbling with my belt, then the zipper. My jeans hit the wood floor and we twined ourselves together on the four-poster bed.

It was deep in the night when I woke up. The breeze had a bite to it and the moon had either gone down or was clouded over. Beyond the balcony now was only blackness. I got up to use the bathroom and shook two aspirin out of a bottle. My water glass clinked against the tap as I filled it with lake water. I swallowed my medicine, then felt my way back into the bedroom, sliding under the warm tangle of sheets and pulling Lexis’s naked body close.

I was suddenly and inexplicably overwhelmed by an irrational fear. One day, we would die. Then we would be apart forever. Insane, I knew, but still my heart pushed up into my throat. The rest of my chest felt empty. I never wanted to be without her. Not then. Not for eternity.

“Lexis,” I whispered. “I love you.”

She stretched, and I could see her smile even in the darkness.

“I love you too,” she said without opening her eyes.

“I just don’t ever want to be without you,” I said, sick with this crazy fear.

“Go back to sleep,” she said, turning toward me and wrapping her arms and legs tight around my body. “That could never happen.”

10

IN THE MORNING, I took a ten-mile run in the drizzling rain. I was drenched and slick with sweat and sucking in air. I shucked off my sneakers and clothes on the end of the dock and plunged into the cold water. After looking around for any fishermen drifting in from the mist, I climbed naked onto the dock, grabbed a towel from the boat, and wrapped it around my waist.

Halfway up the slate walk to the house, I smelled food. Lexis had cooked up my favorite breakfast: broccoli and cheese omelets. We had buttered toast made from thick-cut Italian bread and coffee made from the beans of an espresso blend. We ate outside on the slate terrace even though the air was still damp from the rain. When I finished eating, I sat back and inhaled the curling steam from my coffee mug. Out on the lake, a fishing boat floated past, appearing and disappearing on the fringe of the morning mist. The laughter of the two fishermen rang out across the still water.

We moved inside and sat on the couch by the empty fireplace, reading our books until noon, then took my nineteen-foot Sea Ray into town for fried fish sandwiches at Doug’s. By the time we came out, the clouds had thinned and the sun had begun to boil off the dampness. We stopped at Riddler’s for the paper.

Someone had leaked the news of my impending nomination and my picture was on page one. I looked around the store and folded the paper in half before buying it with my head down.

Back at the house, we toweled off the deck chairs on the end of the dock and lay reading in the sun. When it got hot enough, we went in the water and played our usual game. I’d take a deep breath and crouch down on the rocky bottom. She’d fit her insteps into my palms, then I’d stand up fast and push for the sky. Lexis would launch into the air and do a flip. I loved seeing her do that and we’d laugh until we couldn’t catch our breath.

Dan Parsons sent a long black limousine for us at five-thirty, and by the time we arrived at the convention center, the crowd converged around us, fawning as if we were a museum exhibit. And, me being a Republican with a Native American mother, I guess in a way we were. Cameras flashed at odd intervals. I saw Lexis stare at a tray of champagne being offered to her by a waiter, but she smiled at me and shook her head no to him. We drifted through the swirl of congratulations. Congratulations when they saw her ring. Congratulations on the Iroquois deal. Congratulations for my nomination. Love. Money. Power.

We sat at the head table with the governor and his wife on one side and the Parsonses on the other. On the opposite side of the dais, Bob Rangle was red-faced and drinking a glass of white wine that seemed to be bottomless. The one time we found ourselves face-to-face during cocktails, he scowled and quickly turned away. I wasn’t surprised that he was finally showing his true feelings, but I was disappointed that he had chosen to show them here.

I had only one Budweiser before I switched to Perrier, but I was as light-headed as if I’d kept drinking beer. I took a few bites of my prime rib, then lost my appetite. I had refused to prepare some long-drawn-out speech. That was part of doing it my way. Still, I knew enough to at least jot down some notes for what I was about to say. My stomach felt light and queasy, and I was wiping the sweat from my palms on the legs of my pants, concentrating on taking slow deep breaths when a waiter tapped my shoulder.

“Mr. White?” he said. “Those men asked to speak with you.”

Standing at the bottom of the steps that led up onto the dais were two uniformed police and a man with an auburn mustache wearing a navy blazer. On either side of them were the stone-faced state troopers who protected the governor.

Lexis saw me looking at them. When I stood up, she said, “Raymond?”

She touched my arm. At that moment, all of it-the adulation, the glamour, the power-began to melt away, and the only thing that mattered to me was her.

I was suddenly struck by the feeling that I’d done something wrong, even though I hadn’t. I should have told Lexis about Roger Williamson and the letter and the girl. Why hadn’t I?

It was too late. My legs were numb, but I was already at the steps.

The man in the blazer and the orange mustache took a paper out of his inside pocket. He handed it to me.

“Raymond White?” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Would you please come with us?”

“Why?”

He looked out at the crowd that was beginning to crane their necks. A murmur rose up.

“Because you’re under arrest,” he said. “For the murder of Celeste Oliver.”

11

FOR A LONG TIME I was blinded by my raging hatred for Frank. I would scream his name in the dark. Shout the things I would do to him. Dream about the pain I would inflict. But over the years that hatred settled into my bones, its ache less sharp, but also more complete.

It was a year and a half before I realized Frank was not the only one responsible. I don’t mean that weasel-faced Rangle or even that potato-headed insincere drunk, Russo.

There was also someone else.

Daylight was gone, but Dean Villay could still make out where the expansive canopies of the old chestnut trees ended and the night sky began. He could see better than most in the dark. He could see the small triangular sail of the Laser nearly two miles to the south out in the middle of the lake.

Soon the moon would be up. Until then, his fiancée was taking a ridiculous chance. As if on cue, the drone of a speedboat passed by, heading to the south. No navigation lights on. Another drunken fool or a kid who didn’t know better. Villay clenched his hands. His chubby lip curled.

Allison had no business doing this to him. Taking chances. He understood her need to get away. She was upset about her father, even if she barely knew the man. And the party had been a bore, with her mother droning on about the good old days when their mansion on the lake was the center of society for central New York. Now it needed paint, new window casements, and another bathroom.

He had enough people to prosecute already without having to worry about some errant boater and a criminally negligent homicide. He ground his teeth and turned away, walking up the lawn beneath the chestnuts toward the big house. The last of the cars were pulling away down the gravel drive, their tires crunching. Older people mostly, the kind who still tried to look young. Friends of his mother-in-law-to-be.

He threw his gray blazer over his shoulder and climbed the back steps, careful to avoid the rotted one that was second from the top. The screen door screeched and he stepped into the steamy kitchen. Allison’s mother wiped her hands on the sides of her pale green chiffon dress while she bitched at two of the caterer’s people.

“In my day, to flaunt yourself like that was a disgrace,” she was saying. “People would call you lewd. A hussy. You’ll not be paid. Not out of my pocket.”

The mother had insisted that the help for the evening wear black dresses with white aprons and matching headpieces. This particular girl hadn’t buttoned her collar all the way to the neck. Villay rolled his eyes.

“Dean,” Allison’s mother barked. “Where were you? There are two police officers looking for you. They’re in the salon. I gave them lemonade.”

Villay excused himself, thankful for the distraction. The two city cops sat on the big musty couch with their hats on the coffee table. They jumped to their feet and set the tall clear glasses back on the doilies Allison’s mother had provided for them.

“She told us to wait here, sir,” the older one said, pulling his hat over his iron gray crew cut. The blond one nodded.

“They tried to call,” he said. “The chief said you were here.”

Villay took the cell phone out of his pocket and turned it back on.

“My engagement party,” he said.

The older cop nodded as if he knew and said, “The chief said he was sorry to bother you, but that you’d want to know. There was a girl murdered on the North Side last night, some stripper, and we just arrested Raymond White…”

“Not the one in the paper? The one who’s going to be congressman?”

“They’re pretty sure,” the cop said. “The chief had Detective Simmons pick him up at the governor’s fund-raiser.”

Villay squinted his eyes. His mouth dropped open and he leaned his face toward the cop.

“Lady across the street has been complaining about this girl running a whorehouse,” the cop said. “She’s been collecting tag numbers. Anyway, she saw Raymond visit and leave last night. Picked him out of a photo lineup. Looks like they fought for a while. He cut her throat with a fishing knife. They found the knife under the backseat of his car and blood on the steering wheel.”

“Raymond White?” Villay said, more to himself.

“The chief thought you’d want to talk to him. We’re holding him at the Public Safety Building. The television stations are all there…”

Villay returned to the kitchen to tell Allison’s mother that he was being called away on an important murder case.

12

“I’M GOING,” I SAID, shaking the cop’s hand off my arm. The detective with the orange mustache grabbed my hand and pushed it up behind my back, slapping a cuff around my wrist. One of the uniformed cops pulled my other arm and pushed that back too. I felt the metal bracelet chafing the bone of that wrist as well. They shoved me out onto the sidewalk into the flash of blue lights. Television cameras, already there for the governor, were jostling for a shot, moving in. The white glare of their lights blinded me from every direction.

Someone shoved a microphone into my face. The foam windscreen bumped my nose.

“Get back,” the detective said, pushing the reporter away.

I ducked my head and they put me into the back of a car. The cameras bobbed up and down outside my window, following the squad car as it pulled slowly away from the curb. The Public Safety Building was just three blocks away, and the media were moving like a horde up the sidewalk as we entered the newly constructed six-story building. I had to wait to pass through the metal detector and I stood there next to a derelict wearing tattered jeans and a filthy shirt.

He looked up from his own pair of handcuffs and asked, “What’d they get you for?”

His breath stunk from whiskey and decay.

I turned my head away from him, swallowing hard to keep the bile down.

Upstairs, they chained me to a metal bench in a small interrogation room. Blue uniforms with different faces peeked in through the open door.

The cop with the orange mustache came in without his navy blazer. He had a fresh yellow pad and a pen in one hand and a tape recorder in the other. The armpits of his shirt were badly stained. He turned on the tape recorder, read me my Miranda warning for a second time, and started asking questions.

I didn’t want a lawyer, didn’t want them to think I was guilty, even though I knew the textbooks said not to talk once you got your Miranda. My instincts and my innocence were in control. The urge to convince them overwhelmed the distant lessons from my first-year criminal law class.

I told the cop what happened. I swore it was the truth. I had no idea how there could have been blood on my steering wheel. She had bumped her head. Lightly. I shoved her away. Not hard, no. I never saw blood, but maybe it was possible. Yes, I had a tackle box for fishing. I thought I had a fillet knife, why? No, I didn’t know her at all.

“Then why were you there?” he asked.

I opened my mouth and stopped. Outside the room, I could hear a muffled burst of laughter from somewhere over in the detectives’ offices. People’s lives going on as if mine didn’t matter. The detective clicked his pen. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. My face felt hot. My armpits were sweating.

“Can I take off my jacket?” I asked.

“Why were you there?” he asked again.

I closed my eyes. I could see Roger Williamson’s blue skin. Smell that hospital room.

You tell no one. Will you promise me that?

“I made a promise,” I said, opening my eyes.

The detective cocked his head and partially closed one eye. His lip and the mustache above it quivered slightly.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to think. I’d better talk to a lawyer. A criminal lawyer…”

“You can’t tell me why?” he said.

“Minnick v. Mississippi,” I said.

He tilted his head the other way.

“I asked for a lawyer,” I said. “You’re permanently barred from asking me another question. That’s the case law…”

“You’re gonna need it,” he said with half a smile.

I looked away from him. The red eye of the tape recorder stared at me until he clicked it off. He snatched it up and stood, holding it in his freckled fist so that the skin was stretched smooth across his knuckles.

He left and I sat for a long time. I was beginning to think about making some racket. They owed me a phone call. I was combing my brain. I never saw a statute or any case law that told me how long they could make you wait for your phone call. Then someone else walked in.

He was a well-built little man-like a gymnast-with curly blond hair, a tan furrowed brow, and hazel eyes. I’d seen him before somewhere, angry, and not looking quite so elfish. He smiled at me suddenly, as if someone had cued him to do it. When he held out his hand, I shook it.

“I’m Dean Villay,” he said. “District attorney.”

He turned the chair around and sat down, leaning toward me. He wore a gray double-breasted blazer with brass buttons and gray slacks with grass stains at the cuffs. If he had a tie, it was gone. On the collar of his white shirt was a small chocolate-colored stain.

“I asked for my own lawyer.”

He flicked his hand in the air, swatting the notion away.

“They told me you cited Minnick,” he said, smiling even more broadly now. The pupils of his eyes weren’t round, but torn on the edges, giving me the sense I could see deeper into his friendly soul.

I felt a wave of relief. Finally, someone with some sense, some understanding of just how ludicrous this all was. Wasn’t the DA an elected official? Yes. Political allies? Even from the other party, we very well could be…

I shook my head, smiling now.

“You don’t know how crazy this was getting,” I said with a laugh.

He laughed too. His round cheeks were flushed and I noticed that his tie was dangling from the side pocket of his blazer. I wanted to hug him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Cops are cops. But we’ve got to get this straightened out. They’ve got a bloody knife that they’re pretty sure was the murder weapon.”

“A fishing knife?”

“Yes.”

“They asked me about that. I have no idea. I have one in my boat, but…”

“Jesus, Raymond,” he said, rubbing one hand from his forehead down the length of his face. “This is not good.”

“But it wasn’t me,” I said, my hands clenched.

“I believe you, but what the hell were you doing there?” he said. “People are going to want to know.”

“You can keep this quiet, right?” I said, lowering my voice and leaning toward him. “I mean, if you check this out, you’re the DA, you can keep this part quiet, but push the investigation the other way and find out who really did this, right?”

“Of course,” he said, leaning still closer.

I looked around, even though the room was a five-by-ten-foot closet and the door was shut.

“I promised someone I’d give her an envelope,” I said, in a low tone. “I have no idea what was in it. It had nothing to do with me getting the nomination. But the girl, she said she was having an affair with Roger Williamson.”

When that news hit him, the legs of the chair hit the floor and squeaked. His mouth opened, but he quickly put his top teeth over his lip and leaned back toward me again, although not as close.

“He was the one who asked me to deliver the envelope,” I said, whispering. “I saw him the day before he died. He asked me not to say anything to anyone. Just give it to her as soon as I got back from New York.”

Villay looked away and slowly nodded his head as he chewed his lower lip. He stood up suddenly and held out his small hand again.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s it. That’s easy. I’ll go and find the envelope and that’s going to go a long way to help you here. You delivered the envelope and you left. The knife, I don’t know, maybe the real killer planted it.”

“And you can keep the fact that I told you about the letter between you and me?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he said, smiling and tapping the side of his head. “You don’t get to where I’m at without keeping a few secrets.”

13

EVEN IN SPECIAL HOUSING, which is the box, they will give you an hour of recreation. Time to breathe fresh air and walk in circles. Off by yourself. On a rooftop surrounded by a high fence crowned with concertina wire.

I don’t go there.

I don’t want to see the sky. I don’t want to feel the wind on the back of my neck or the chill of snowflakes pricking my face. I am like an alcoholic who can’t bear to have a single mouthful of drink. I don’t want to even think about freedom and so I don’t want to taste even the foam from that glass.

During the days before my trial I was out on bail, consumed with proving my innocence and trying to act like everything in my life was going to be just fine. I tried to work on the acquisition of a drugstore chain for a big client, but kept finding myself in the law library scrutinizing every detail of every murder case I could get my hands on. I pestered my own defense lawyer incessantly, pushing to keep the trial date from being moved out. I refinished the hardwood floors in my house to keep my hands busy. And my relationship with Lexis limped along in the no-man’s-land between the redemption and total destruction of my life.

The lawyers and private investigators I had hired figured it all wrong. Our focus was on finding out who would have wanted Celeste Oliver dead. Whoever really killed her had obviously taken advantage of my visit to divert the blame for the murder to me. The company she kept left us with an endless selection of possibilities. We tried to track them down. Drug dealers. Bikers. Businessmen cheating on their wives. Even some small-time mobsters. Our leads went nowhere. It wasn’t until too late that I realized that it wasn’t about Celeste Oliver at all. It was only about me.

I heard things during that time that I didn’t bother to process. I was in denial. Because I was innocent, I didn’t ever really believe I would be convicted. I kept waiting for that final dramatic moment when everything was explained. That envelope. I just knew it would turn up. Somehow. Some way. Now I know that just wasn’t possible.

And I’ve also figured out why.

This is the way it must have happened.

It was almost midnight before Villay’s Volvo coupe slowed down outside 1870 Lodi Street. There was a hush on the block that wasn’t unusual in the wake of a major crime. The good people counting their blessings and hoping they weren’t next. The bad ones keeping low profiles until the heat subsided.

Villay pulled into the driveway behind the red Honda. He stepped out into the night and listened. Crickets. He didn’t know crickets could survive in the scant weedy patches crammed between the North Side’s dilapidated buildings and blacktop. He scanned the street, up and down, then climbed the front steps, ducking under the yellow tape. The door was locked, but he had a key for the padlock to the hardware that had been bolted in place. He stepped inside and turned on the lights. The heat from the day still lingered and with it the smell of cooked carpet and cigarette ashes. Dark swatches of dried blood stared up at him from the shaggy gold carpet.

“Hello,” he said loudly. The sound of his own voice was intended to calm his nerves, but his hand still trembled as he began rifling through the papers that were crammed into the cubbyhole of an old roll-top desk whose broken top was leaning up against the wall.

Villay had a sense of what it was he was looking for, but began to doubt his instincts as he pulled out his third wad of papers. Then he recognized the wavering scrawl of a man who was ready to die. The fat fold of papers pushing out of the ripped-open envelope made his mouth go dry.

When he saw the scrawled handwritten letters, his breathing grew shallow.

Last Will and Testament

The paper shook so badly in his hands that it was difficult to read. He had trouble separating the pages to turn them.

Roger Williamson’s family had a little money to begin with, and he had used his position wisely. He had a beach condo in Florida, a big home in Manlius, partnerships in two trailer parks and a golf course, and a healthy portfolio of stocks and bonds. The man was worth about six million dollars.

It was a complete will, dated two days before Roger died. Written in his own hand from his hospital in New Jersey. A holographic will. Handwritten and signed. No witnesses, but completely valid in New York State.

It left everything to Celeste Oliver.

Roger Williamson had recently divorced for the third time. His only living child, a daughter, was the young woman Villay was about to marry. Under Roger Williamson’s old will, Villay’s fiancée, Allison, was to get everything. The house. The condo. The partnerships. The portfolio.

When Villay had heard how sick the congressman really was, he even began making up a guest list for a New Year’s party at the Florida condo. He had also begun to interview stockbrokers who would manage the stocks and bonds.

A small panicked whine escaped his throat. Nausea swept over him and he sat down in the desk’s chair, the air hissing out of the plastic cushion. The will was gripped so tightly in his hand that it curled in a funnel around his fist. He took a deep breath and laid it flat on the desk’s narrow ledge, smoothing it and scouring it again.

He was right. The will had no survival clause, so even though the stripper had only outlived the congressman by four days, the probate court would treat the estate as if it passed to her the moment Roger died. Roger Williamson’s money, his hard-earned fortune, would belong not to his own daughter, but to the heirs of the dead stripper.

There was another option, and Villay told himself it wasn’t just about the money. It was about the great man’s reputation and the memory his family would have of him. There was no need to sully all that so some white-trash relative of Celeste Oliver’s could become suddenly and undeservedly rich.

Villay stood and stuffed the will into the inside breast pocket of his blazer. He crammed the other papers back into the cubbyholes and looked around for a sign of his presence before he realized that he had every right to be there and that no one would ever question him about it. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

He left the house and shut the door. The padlock clicked and rattled against the hardware as Villay turned for the steps. He drove to the end of Lodi Street-near the highway entrance-and pulled into a weedy lot. It was a dark nook amid the glow of the city’s lights, and when he touched the cigarette lighter from his car to the edge of the will, its orange glow was hot and bright. Villay blew gently and the paper ignited, bursting into flame. Shadows morphed across his face as he tilted the burning document this way and that so that it would catch evenly.

The flame licked his fingertips and he dropped the burning sheets to the ground. The acrid scent, like smoldering leaves, filled the air. Villay raised his foot and stamped out what embers remained of the burnt paper, scattering black ash and small sparks that were quickly swallowed up by the shadows.

14

IT WAS AN EARLY TASTE OF SUMMER. The sun, a stranger through the months of gray, left me squinting. The snow had melted, but piles of grit and filth from a winter of plowing still dirtied the no-man’s-land where the sidewalk meets the street. The warm air, the sight of an irregular daffodil, and the smell of soggy grass left me lighthearted and eager. I swung my jacket over my shoulder and bounced along on my toes.

Against the wishes of the man hired to defend me, I had insisted on fast-tracking my trial. Emil Rossi, my lawyer, was old school and he believed in badgering the prosecution on every point. But I was an innocent man, anxious to have my life back. Now we were at the end. Tomorrow morning, both sides would make their closing arguments and then the jury would decide.

My father asked me to join him for a beer at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, a biker place that regular people go to. I could smell the slow-cooked ribs and chicken as I crossed the street and edged between two Harleys. Inside, a waitress in black T-shirt and push-up bra with a biker attitude asked me what did I want. Normally you had to wait an hour for a table, but it was just four o’clock and the place was half empty.

“All set,” I told her, unfazed and searching.

My father and Black Turtle looked ridiculous in their poorly cut blue suits, lizardskin boots, and short wide ties. I had seen them in the courtroom, but only nodded. It was like they knew what I was thinking, because as I passed the bar, they wrestled off the ties, shed their jackets, and began rolling up their sleeves. In front of them were three longneck bottles of Bud.

I sat down and raised my bottle before taking a long swig.

“What did you think?” I asked. A question that would have been unthinkable before Emil had begun to build me up. After three days of listening to Villay, the jury must have had a pretty bad impression of who I was and what I had done. Things were much better now.

“Good people,” Black Turtle said with a nod curt enough to toss his ponytail briefly into sight.

He meant the impressive list of character witnesses. Today Emil had conducted a parade of university professors, CEOs, and the director of the Red Cross office where I had been a volunteer since age fourteen. We could have had the congressman if we wanted. Bob Rangle magnanimously stepped forward to offer his help. For Rangle, it was a politically dangerous move. Emil voted to accept, but I flatly rejected it without knowing why.

My father finished his beer and leaned forward after wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. At the same time, he reached down under the table, producing a worn leather satchel that he thumped down next to the ketchup.

“You’re gonna take this,” he said in a whisper, “and go.”

“Dad?” I said with a short laugh.

“Run. Scat. Skee-daddle,” he said.

“They’ve got to prove the elements of the crime, Dad. The burden is on them and they haven’t done it.”

“This isn’t final exams, goddamn it,” he said. His pupils were wide and nearly swimming. His lips trembling beneath the wavy bristles of his gray mustache. His long gray hair was slicked straight back. “Black Turtle has some Mohawk friends up at the border who can get you across. We got you a Canadian passport and a ticket to Zurich. They don’t have no extradition from there.”

It was quiet among the three of us for a while. My head was buzzing and I was aware of the clashing sounds of Metallica in the background.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

My father’s face wrinkled and he quickly swiped at his eyes. His voice was broken.

“You know how many people died in jail that didn’t?” he said. “You gotta run.”

“Weren’t you at the same trial I was today?” I said.

“That’s just people talking. People that like you. I’m tellin’ you,” my father said, his leathery face reddening. “I’m not asking. There’s almost seven thousand dollars in here.”

“What did you sell, Dad?”

“That don’t matter,” he said. “You’re all I got. Everything…”

I reached across the table and grabbed hold of his hand. My father made a fist and I put my other hand on top too. My eyes were wet. I felt a flood of emotions inside me that I didn’t want coming out. We would have time to look back on it all. Soon. We could laugh and cry when it was all behind us.

“I know, Dad,” I said. “They’re gonna acquit me. He hasn’t proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“What the fuck does reasonable mean?” he said. “They got her blood. They got that knife. You see things the way you want to.”

“That’s what works, Dad,” I said. “Except for this: Look at me… look at my life.”

“This is everything and you don’t even see it. You got a charge in your hand. It’s gonna kill you and it’s gonna kill me too.”

“Black Turtle,” I said, “talk to him.”

But Black Turtle directed his blank look at me, not my father.

“I got two good men,” he said, signaling to the waitress. “We’ll get you across that river. This white court is a bad thing.”

“Dad,” I said, looking deep into his eyes. “I put up a two-million-dollar bond and I gave my word…”

My father looked back at me for a long time until the waitress brought three more bottles of beer.

He finally shook his head and said, “It don’t matter.”

“That’s all we got, remember?” I said, my voice frantic. “Your words.”

“I don’t give a damn,” he said, banging his fist on the table, rattling the bottles and drawing attention to us.

“Don’t you see the way that fat guy in the front row looks at you?” he said, hissing, and spraying flecks of white spit across the checkered tablecloth. “Or that scrawny flat-headed schoolteacher? They don’t believe you. They’re gonna get you. I see it. So does Black Turtle, goddamn it. It’s not just me. That jury is people whose cards have always been bad and all you ever did was break the house. They never got a chance to do what you’ve done or be what you are. They can’t wait to see you lose.”

“It’s not about that, Dad,” I said. “Did you see them when the Red Cross lady talked about me saving that little girl? The award they gave me?”

“You goddamned fool,” he said. He had my wrist now and he was squeezing it to the bone. “That made it even worse. You just don’t see it.

“And now you’re holding aces and eights,” he said. Card players’ talk for a dead man’s hand. “And you got to fold. I don’t care how big the pot is. You take this money and you get your ass across that river. Black Turtle’s takin’ you right now. I’m walking out that door and you’re going with him, son.”

My father stood up and put his hand on my cheek. A tear hung from the corner of his mustache, glimmered, and fell to the floor.

“I’m walking out of here,” he said again in a husky voice. He turned his face and wiped it on his shoulder. “You go now, boy. I love you. I’ll come and see you over there when this all settles down and you’ll have it all again. The royal flush. Now you go.”

I closed my eyes and he let his hand fall from my face. When I opened them, all I saw was his bowed legs and his broad back, hunched over and disappearing through the door, swallowed up by the sunlight. Black Turtle’s eyes darted from the door to me.

“I’m not going,” I said, looking down and pushing the leather satchel toward him.

“I know you ain’t,” he said in his low rumbling voice. “You’re too much like him.”

15

I DIALED LEXIS from a pay phone and told her I was waiting on the street. I saw the green door in the alley beyond the Tusk open and she appeared with a small wave. There were no tables on the sidewalk yet, even though it was warm enough so that people would have used them. I brushed away the thought of Rangle and Frank and Russo and the day I could have saved myself by simply staying and drinking with them.

My throat felt tight until I saw the glint of the diamond ring on Lexis’s hand. That ring had gone off and on several times over these past months. Rocky times where she talked more and more about taking just one drink to dull the edge. Did she believe me? Didn’t she? Finally she did.

I smiled at her as she opened the door and composed a smile of her own. I looked into her blue eyes. Her teeth shone white. The sheen of her hair made me want to touch it. Beauty, with a distinct undercurrent of sadness.

We kissed quickly and I slipped my fingers through that hair, taking it in both hands and kissing it like a vestment before turning the key to my new car. They had impounded my Supra, and in order to forget about it I treated myself to a red RX-7. Instead of taking my usual right at the end of the street, I went left.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“A surprise.”

We listened to the news on NPR. I switched it to music when the local announcer started talking about the trial. I wanted to talk, but I had to choose my words carefully. One of the things we had come to argue about most was the way I talked so freely about the future, as if it were set. For whatever reason, Lexis couldn’t stand to do that. So we talked about current events or things that had nothing to do with either of us. Or the past.

That’s why I knew she’d like my surprise. There wasn’t much about either of our pasts that we hadn’t discussed over the last nine months. But there was this place that we went to when I was a kid. It was my dad’s uncle’s place. The brother of the man I was named after, Raymond Edinger. They called it the Blue Hole. I had forgotten about it, to be honest.

I turned south off Route 20 and drove down into Otisco Valley. I hadn’t been to the place in years and wasn’t even sure who owned it anymore. I didn’t want to tell Lexis about it in case we couldn’t get in. But as I turned off the road and drove down through the colonnade of massive spruce, I was heartened by the shaggy edges of the gravel drive. The woods opened up and the old white house came into view. It was empty, and one black shutter hung at an angle, distorting the face of what I had remembered as a fussy, well-kept colonial.

“Do you know these people?” Lexis asked.

“Old relatives,” I said, swinging the wheel and driving down past the house and onto an overgrown grass trail.

Brown grass and dead weeds swished beneath us and an occasional branch thumped the undercarriage. We kept going down, and as the rocks and mud rattled in the wheel wells, I knew I’d have to keep my foot on the gas to get us out.

I kept going, though, down to the bend, where I stopped and got out at the head of a footpath. The sun was bright on the naked trees that climbed the far side of the steep ravine. The crashing water nearly drowned out all other sounds.

“What is it?” Lexis asked.

“The Blue Hole,” I said. “You gotta see it.”

She took my hand and I led her, slipping and catching ourselves on the midriffs of thin saplings, down the path and into the ravine. We pushed through a crowded stand of hemlock, then came out suddenly on a shale ledge that jutted out over the swirling pool of water below the falls. The brunt of the water shot through a narrow groove at the falls’ head before plummeting another twelve feet to a whirlpool that had the reputation of being bottomless.

No less than three people had died in that hole during my lifetime and I was barely eight years old before my great-uncle closed it to the curious public. Still, the Blue Hole’s reputation tempted trespassers of all kinds, and the last person to disappear into its depths was a high school kid who had failed his final exam in math.

When the stream was high, as it was now, curtains of water spilled off either side of the shoot, hissing across the face of the precipitous shale that was bronzed with mossy slime. The noise reverberated off the steep walls and it sounded like a giant fist pounding the earth.

“My God,” Lexis said.

I gripped her hand, lacing my fingers in between hers. Already I could feel the constriction in my chest and the bolts of electric thrill surging up from my core to the spot behind my ears.

“We used to jump from here,” I said, above the din.

Lexis wiped a strand of hair from her face and wrinkled the corners of her eyes.

“What?”

I began stripping off my shirt and untying my shoes.

“Raymond?” she said. “What the hell?”

For nine months I had existed in a place between heaven and hell, neither alive nor dead, neither happy nor sad.

“Goddamn,” I said, breathing deep the smell of mud and water and broken rock, the heady sound of pounding water filling my brain. “It’s like we were here like this before.”

I handed her my shoes with the socks stuffed inside them. I stripped off my pants and even my boxers, rolling them up into my shirt, wrapping them in my belt, and handing them to Lexis.

“That water’s got to be freezing,” she said, her eyes wide, but taking the clothes and clutching them tight to her chest. “Are you crazy?”

I took her hand and gripped it again, pointing to the shale path that did several switchbacks through the steep grass before it ended at the bedrock below at the foot of another pool that belonged to a second and smaller falls.

“I’ve done it a thousand times,” I said. “I’ll meet you.”

“Raymond, you’re out of your fucking mind,” she said, yanking me back toward her.

I put my arm around her waist and held her tight to my naked body, kissing her hard, letting my blood rise even higher. Then I pulled away.

“I love you,” I said, letting go of her hand.

I turned and leapt from the ledge. It was the same ravine. The same crashing water. The same trees that hung on by their bare roots, fighting to stay upright. The same narrow pool that looked so ridiculously small from up here. It was all familiar to me. A feat I had performed countless times. So why was I scared so bad that my heart froze and my adolescent war cry got jammed up in my throat?

The milky green water came up fast and it hit me hard enough to jar my breath away. Then everything was cold and black and I was fighting helplessly against the swirl with all my might. My arms were flipped this way and that, out of control, grazing the rough rock walls. My feet kicked insanely and I realized I didn’t even know if I was fighting my way up or down. My eyes were wide and full of water. The blackness turned green, then white with swirling bubbles, and just before my lungs burst, I shot clear of the surface, sucking in air and flailing like a drowning cat.

The water spun me some more, and I grabbed desperately for the slick ledge on the far side of the pool away from the sheer rock. Finally, I pulled myself up, where I rested, shivering on my hands and knees, until that war whoop finally busted loose.

I heard Lexis’s voice calling my name, small between the great rocky walls. It echoed up from the hissing below. It pierced the thundering roar of the water, and I stood to wave my arms at her. She held out my clothes, and beckoned for me to come down.

That night, after we were tangled together beneath the warm blankets in my bed, she asked me what the hell I did it for.

I wanted to give her a reason that was bigger than the one I really had, but the best I could come up with was that I had forgotten what it felt like to control my own destiny.

“If you could control it,” she said, “it wouldn’t be your destiny.”

We slept like spoons with her head on one of my arms and my other wrapped around her firm belly. I kept waking up and whispering the promise to her that everything was going to be all right. I told her that she was going to be my wife and that I’d take care of her until the end of time.

The next day we drove to the courthouse through a chill rain. By four-thirty, the jury convicted me of murder. My body went numb. My mind whirled. The bailiffs snapped handcuffs on my wrists and started to lead me away. As I neared the door, I came to my senses and I looked for Lexis. Her eyes were glassy. Her mouth hung open. She slowly raised her fingers to me and then Frank was there with that slab of a hand on her shoulder, his head bowed.

I called out to her and pushed back against the bailiffs, struggling, but they shoved me through the door and someone slammed it shut.

16

IT TOOK ALMOST THREE MONTHS of processing before they were ready for me at Attica, the state prison notorious for its deadly riot in the early seventies. During that time, I was in isolation at the Public Safety Building in Syracuse. I saw Dan Parsons several times. He swore he’d fight this thing all the way to the Supreme Court. He had retained the famous Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. But both of us knew enough about the law to realize that the judge hadn’t committed any reversible errors and no one could overturn a jury.

My father visited me as often as was allowed. Once a week.

He never mentioned my failure to escape when I could have. But just before they shipped me off, he appeared with his eyes puffy and red to tell me the news. Lexis had married Frank Steffano. She was pregnant with his child.

My father said he didn’t want me pining for her.

Because of the way I now live, in total isolation, and because I returned every one of her letters until they stopped coming, it is likely that I never would have known what happened with Lexis and Frank. Sometimes I think it would have been better not to know. Other times I’m thankful that I do. I don’t care what anyone says. I don’t care that she loved him for a couple of years. I know him. I know her. And I know this is what happened.

Frank’s hands were big, and he was careful to limit their touch to Lexis’s arms and shoulders. Nothing intimate. He was a friend she could count on. He guided her outside the courthouse and down the steps. His dark blue unmarked cruiser was parked half on the sidewalk and half off in the fire lane.

“Come on,” he said, opening the passenger door. “I’ll take you home.”

By the time he hurried around and climbed in, she was sobbing hysterically. Frank leaned over and pulled her to him, hugging her like a sister whose parents had died, patting her back, speaking softly.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “It’ll all be okay.”

“It can’t,” she said, her voice a shattered moan.

“I know,” he said, “but it will.”

Twice people put their faces up to the window and Frank glared at them until they went away. When she finally cried herself out, he let her go and started the engine.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go home,” he said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”

Lexis said nothing. She just stared straight ahead and Frank drove two blocks, where he pulled the cruiser up onto another sidewalk in front of L’Adours, a French restaurant across the street from the stone sandcastle that is City Hall. Frank helped Lexis out and led her by the arm inside to an intimate booth in the nook beneath the staircase. He sat her down and whispered something to Sebastian, the maître d’, before taking the seat opposite her.

It wasn’t a minute before she had a glass of Alsatian Riesling in front of her and Frank was wiping the froth off his lip from a mug of beer.

“Take a drink,” he said, nudging the glass toward her.

Lexis stared at it. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue.

“I stopped,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “This is a little different. After what you’ve been through I don’t think there’s anyone who wouldn’t give you special dispensation…”

Light from above glowed in the pale yellow wine. A small bead of condensation snaked its way down the side of the glass.

“I know I’ve got my issues,” he said with a sigh, “but the one thing you won’t get from me is any of this holier-than-thou crap. It’s okay, Lexis. One drink. You could use it.”

She reached out and touched the cool round glass. She pinched the stem between her fingers and ran them lightly up and down for a moment, then sighed and picked it up. She opened her mouth and filled it before setting the half-empty glass down on the table. She let the wine swish around gently inside her cheeks.

Frank smiled at her. Half a laugh spilled up out from his chest. Lexis looked at him and swallowed. Immediately she brought the glass to her lips again, finishing the glass before replacing it on the table without a sound. Frank upended his beer and pushed both glasses toward the edge of the booth. A grinning waiter quickly replaced them.

This time, Lexis took her time. She didn’t look at Frank, but his eyes peeked over the rim of his mug even when he was drinking. After she set down the third empty glass on the table, she cleared her throat.

“See,” she said, her face crinkling into a pathetic frown that suddenly darkened, “he promised me this wouldn’t happen.”

Frank took her hand, holding it tight and patting it softly with his other hand.

“I know,” he said, quiet and sad.

“Did he do it?” she said suddenly, her eyes locked onto his.

Frank looked down at the table and shook his head slowly from side to side. The waiter set down fresh drinks. He pushed the wine toward her.

“Three is enough,” she said. “It’s more than enough.”

“What’s the difference?” Frank said. “Stop worrying. It’s just me. Do you want something to eat? My mother always says it’s good for you to eat.”

“This isn’t a date, Frank,” Lexis said, her eyebrows knit together.

“I know,” Frank said in his best little-boy voice.

Lexis shook her head, looking down. Just the trace of a smile showed on her lips. She took a deep staggering breath and let it out.

“I’m drunk,” she said. “Is that good for me?”

“It’s not a cardinal sin,” he said. “Even the priests drink wine.”

“You eat,” she said, her words sloppy. “I’ll have just one more and then you can take me home.”

“I’ll order for both of us,” he said.

They talked quietly as they waited for the food. Frank led her into talking about how wonderful the past two years of her life had been. He kept going back and back until finally he got to them.

“You know, my mother still thinks you and I will end up together,” he said. “She thinks you’re the kind of woman who can forgive a mistake, but I don’t know.”

“You’re just a man, Frank,” she said with a crooked smile, taking a swig of wine, “and men lie. All of them…”

Frank just stared at her.

The food finally came and he ate it in big mouthfuls, but he was more intent on making sure Lexis’s wineglass was refilled. She didn’t even pick up her fork. After the waiter cleared the plates, he returned with a small tray of tall thin shot glasses. Smoky steam curled up and away from their frosted surfaces.

Frank took one and raised it toward Lexis.

“To forgetting,” he said.

She nodded and picked up a glass, letting it clink against his before she threw it down. They had two more each, and Lexis’s eyes were beginning to lose focus.

“I should get you back,” Frank said.

“Yes,” she said in a murmur.

Frank led her to the car by the arm again, helping her inside and dashing around the front. He pulled away from the curb fast and parked on the back side of the alley, away from the Tusk. As he helped her down the alley, she began to stagger.

“Do you have your keys?” he asked.

She fumbled with her purse and dropped it onto the bricks.

“Dizzy,” she muttered.

Frank scooped up the purse and tugged her to the green door. He punched in the code and half carried her up the stairs with one arm around her waist and the other holding her arm. They got to her door and he spilled the purse out on the step under the small carriage lamp. The brass key gleamed up at him. He bent down, holding her still, and scooped it up from the mess-one-handed-without bothering to pick up the rest. He jiggled the key and the door flew open.

Frank caught her over his shoulder and carried her in, where he laid her facedown on the big sleigh bed. He went back to the front door and with trembling fingers scooped up the contents of the purse while he scanned the common area. It was empty. He heard a loud group coming up the stairs as he pulled the door shut tight and bolted the lock.

When he returned to the bedroom, he wore a massive grin. His heart pounded as he stripped off his clothes. Lexis wore a skirt, and she swatted feebly at his hands as he unzipped it and slid it off over her shoes. He liked the shoes, dark high-heeled pumps, and he preferred that they stay on.

From his own pile of clothes, he removed a switchblade knife that snapped open with enough force to leave the knuckles on two fingers numb. He eased the blade up under her silk blouse and slid it up the length of her bony spine, exposing her back and pausing only to slice through the band of her bra.

Her head was sideways with her hair draped over her face. She began to blow it away so she could breathe, and Frank slipped his fingers underneath it, sweeping it aside and earning a smile from her.

“Raymond,” she said.

His own smile distorted slightly, but stayed big. He kissed the back of her neck, breathing into her ear, letting the stubble on his chin raise a strawberry on her skin.

“It’s me, baby,” he said.

“Frank?” she said, her body going rigid. Her breathing quickened and she shook her head no.

“Shh,” he said.

His fingers worked their way under the band of her dark red underwear. He slit through the silky material, exposing the round moon of her bottom to his thick probing fingers.

“Everything’s going to be okay now, baby,” he said in a husky whisper. “It’s Frank, and he’s gonna take care of you, just like he used to…”