Secret of the Seventh Son

JUNE 25, 2009

W ill started flirting at sea level and was still going strong at 34,000 feet. The flight attendant was his type, a big shapely girl with pouty lips and dirty-blonde hair. A wisp of it kept falling in front of one eye and she was constantly and absently brushing it aside. After a while he began to imagine lying beside her naked, brushing it aside himself. A little wave of guilt inexplicably washed over him when Nancy intruded into his thoughts, proper and reproachful. What was she doing mucking up his fantasies? He willfully fought back and reverted to the stewardess.

He had followed standard TSA security procedures for checking onto the US Airways flight with his service weapon. He was preboarded in coach and had settled into an aisle seat over the wing. Darla, the stewardess, immediately liked the looks of the brawny guy in a sport coat and khakis and draped herself over the cross aisle seat.

“Hey, FBI,” she chirped, knowing as much because of the security procedures he’d undergone.

“Hey yourself.”

“Get you something to drink before we get invaded?”

“Do I smell coffee?”

“Coming up,” she said. “We’ve got an air marshal in 7C today, but you’re way bigger than he is.”

“You want to tell him I’m here?”

“He already knows.”

Later, during the beverage service, she seemed to lightly brush his shoulder or his arm whenever she passed. Maybe it was his imagination, he thought as he drifted to sleep, lulled by the low rumble of the engines. Or maybe not.

He awoke with a startle, pleasantly disorientated. There were green crop fields stretching to the horizon so he knew they were somewhere over the middle of the country. Loud angry voices were coming from the rear near the lavs. He undid his seat belt, turned around and identified the problem: three young Brits spanning a row, drinking buddies in full lager-lout mode, getting prelubed for their Vegas holiday. Ruddy-faced, they were gesticulating like a three-headed monster at a willowy male flight attendant who had cut off their flow of beer. As alarmed passengers looked on, the Brit nearest the aisle-a taut bundle of muscle and tendon-rose up and stood eyeball-to-eyeball with the crew member and shouted emphatically, “You heard my mate! He wants another fuckin’ drink!”

Darla quickly moved up the aisle to assist her colleague, deliberately seeking out Will’s eyes as she flew by. The air marshal in 7C held his seat, standard operating procedure, watching the cockpit, on guard for a diversion. He was a young guy, blanched with nerves, sucking it up. Probably his first real incident, Will thought, leaning into the aisle, studying him.

Then, a sickening thud, skull on skull, a Glaswegian kiss. “That’s what ya get, ya fuckin’ bastard!” the assailant screamed. “Ya want another one?” Will missed the act but saw the aftermath.

The head butt opened the attendant’s scalp and knocked him yelping to his knees. Darla involuntarily let out a short shriek at the sight of flowing blood.

The air marshal and Will rose as one, locked onto each other and started to perform like a team that had drilled repeatedly together. The marshal stood in the aisle, drew his weapon and called out, “Federal agents! Sit down and place your hands on the seat in front of you!”

Will showed his ID and slowly advanced toward the rear holding the badge above his head.

“Oh what tha fuck is this, then?” the Brit called out as he saw Will closing. “We’re just trying to get our hols started, mate.”

Darla helped the bleeding attendant to his feet and led him forward, scooting by Will, who gave her a reassuring wink. When he was five rows from the troublemakers he halted and spoke slowly and calmly. “Take your seat immediately and place your hands on top of your head. You are under arrest. Your vacation is over.” Then the staccato punctuation mark, “Mate.”

His friends implored him to back off but the man would not stand down, crying now with rage and fear, cornered, his jugulars distended purple. “I will not!” he kept repeating. “I will not!”

Will pocketed his badge and unholstered his gun, double-checking the engaged safety. At this, the passengers became terrified; an obese woman with an infant started blubbering, which started a chain reaction throughout the cabin. Will tried to erase the drowsiness from his face and look as badass as possible. “This is your last opportunity to end this well. Sit down and put your hands on your head.”

“Or what?” the man taunted, his nose thick with mucus. “You going to shoot me and put a hole through the bleedin’ plane?”

“We use special ammo,” Will said, lying through his teeth. “The round’ll just rattle around inside your head and turn your brain into pudding.” An expert shot who had spent his youth picking off fox squirrels in the Panhandle brush, at this range he could place a round anywhere he wanted within a few millimeters, but it would exit, all right.

The man was speechless.

“You’ve got five seconds,” Will announced, elevating the pistol from a chest shot to a head shot. “I honestly don’t care if I pull the trigger at this point. You’ve already given me a week of paperwork.”

One of his friends cried out, “For fuck’s sake, Sean, sit down!” and tugged his companion by the tail of his polo shirt. Sean hesitated for a few long seconds then let himself be pulled onto his seat, where he meekly raised his hands over his head.

“Good decision,” Will told him.

Darla rushed up the aisle with a handful of plastic wrist restraints, and with the help of other passengers, the three friends were cuffed. Will lowered his weapon and slid it back under his coat then called out to the marshal, “We’re clear back here.” Breathing heavily, he lumbered back to his seat to the accompaniment of thunderous applause from the entire cabin. He wondered if he’d be able to get back to sleep.

The taxi pulled away from the curb. Even though it was evening, the desert heat was still stunning, and Will welcomed the frosty interior.

“Where to?” the cabbie asked.

“Who do you think’s got the better room?” Will asked.

Darla pushed at his ribs playfully. “An airline room or a government one, it’s probably the same.” She leaned in and whispered, “But honey, I don’t think we’re going to notice.”

They were looping around the perimeter of McCarran heading toward the Strip. Parked next to a remote hangar, Will noticed a cluster of three white 737s, unmarked except for red body stripes. “What airline is that?” he asked Darla.

“That’s the Area 51 shuttle,” she replied. “They’re military planes.”

“You’re joking.”

The cabbie needed to participate. “She ain’t kidding. It’s the worst-kept secret in Vegas. We got hundreds of government scientists who commute there every day. They got alien spaceships they’re trying to make work, that’s what I hear.”

Will chuckled. “I’m sure whatever it is, it’s a waste of taxpayer money. Believe it or not, I think I know a guy who works there.”

Nelson Elder presided over a culture of fitness. He vigorously exercised every morning and expected members of his senior management team to do likewise. “No one wants to see a fat insurance guy,” he’d tell them, least of all him. He had a gold-plated prejudice against the unfit that bordered on revulsion, a vestige of growing up poor in Bakersfield, California, where poverty and obesity commingled in his hardscrabble mobile home park. He didn’t hire obese people, and if he insured them, he made damn sure they paid hefty risk-adjusted premiums.

His bronzed skin still tingled from his three-mile run and stinging steam shower, and as he sat in his corner office, with its fine view of chocolate-brown mountains and an aquamarine finger of Lake Mead, he felt as well physically as a sixty-one-year-old man could. His tailored suit form-fitted his tight frame and his athletic heart beat slowly. Yet mentally he was in turmoil, and his cup of herbal tea was doing little to settle him.

Bertram Myers, Desert Life’s CFO, was at his door panting heavily and sweating like a racehorse. He was twenty years younger than his boss, his hair wiry and black, but he was a lesser athlete.

“Good run?” Elder asked.

“Excellent, thanks,” Myers answered. “Had yours yet?”

“You bet.”

“How come you’re in so early?”

“F.B. fucking I. Remember?”

“Jesus, I forgot. I’m going to hop in the shower. Want me to sit in?”

“No, I’ll handle it,” Elder said.

“You worried? You look worried.”

“I’m not worried. I think it is what it is.”

Myers agreed. “Exactly, it is what it is.”

Will had a short cab ride to the Desert Life headquarters in Henderson, a bedroom town south of Vegas near Lake Mead. To him, Elder looked like something out of central casting, a prototypical silver-fox CEO, easy with his wealth and station. The executive leaned back in his chair and attempted to lower Will’s expectations. “As I said on the phone, Special Agent Piper, I’m not sure if I can help you. This may be a long trip for a short meeting.”

“Don’t worry about that, sir,” Will replied. “I had to come out here anyway.”

“I saw in the news that you’d made an arrest in New York.”

“I’m not at liberty to comment about an ongoing investigation,” Will said, “but I think you can assume if I thought the case was wrapped up, I probably wouldn’t have come out here. I wonder if you could tell me about your relationship with David Swisher?”

According to Elder, there wasn’t all that much to tell. They had met six years earlier during one of Elder’s frequent visits to New York to meet with investors. At the time, HSBC was one of multiple banks courting Desert Life as a client, and Swisher, a senior managing director at the bank, was a rainmaker. Elder had gone to HS BC ’s headquarters, where Swisher led a pitch team.

Swisher followed-up aggressively by telephone and e-mail over the next year and his perseverance paid off. When Desert Life decided to place a bond offering in 2003 to fund an acquisition, Elder chose HS BC to lead the underwriting syndicate.

Will asked if Swisher had personally traveled to Las Vegas as part of that process.

Elder was certain he had not. He had a firm recollection that the company visits were handled by more junior bankers. Apart from the closing dinner in New York, the two men didn’t see each other again.

Had they communicated over the years?

Elder recalled an occasional phone call here and there.

And when was the last?

A good year ago. Nothing recent. They were on each other’s corporate holiday card lists but this was hardly an active relationship. When he read about Swisher’s murder, Elder said, he had of course been shocked.

Will’s line of questioning was interrupted by his Beethoven ring tone. He apologized and switched off the phone, but not before recognizing the caller ID number.

Why the hell was Laura calling?

He picked up his train of thought and fired off a list of follow-up questions. Had Swisher ever talked about a Las Vegas connection? Friends? Business contacts? Had he ever mentioned gambling or personal debts? Had he ever shared any aspect of his personal life? Did Elder know if he had any enemies?

The answer to all these was no. Elder wanted Will to understand that his relationship with Swisher was superficial, transient and transactional. He wished he could be more helpful but plainly he could not.

Will felt his disappointment rise like bile. The interview was going nowhere, another Doomsday dead end. Yet there was something niggling about Elder’s demeanor, a small discordant something. Was there a note of tension in his throat, a touch of glibness? Will didn’t know where his next question came from-maybe it sprung from a well of intuition. “Tell me, Mr. Elder, how’s your business doing?”

Elder hesitated for more than an imperceptible moment, a long enough pause for Will to conclude that he’d struck a nerve. “Well, business is very good. Why do you ask?”

“No reason, just curious. Let me ask you: most insurance companies are in places like Hartford, New York, major cities. Why Las Vegas, why Henderson?”

“Our roots are here,” Elder replied. “I built this company brick by brick. Right out of college, I started as an agent in a little brokerage in Henderson, about a mile from this office. We had six employees. I bought the place from the owner when he retired and renamed it Desert Life. We now have over eight thousand employees, coast-to-coast.”

“That’s very impressive. You must be very proud.”

“Thank you, I am.”

“And the insurance business, you say, is good.”

That tiny hesitation again. “Well, everybody needs insurance. There’s a lot of competition out there and the regulatory environment can be a challenge sometimes, but we’ve got a strong business.”

As he listened, Will noticed a leather pen holder on the desk, chock-full of black and red Pentel pens.

He couldn’t help himself. “Could I borrow one of your pens?” he asked, pointing. “A black one.”

“Sure,” Elder replied, puzzled.

It was an ultrafine point. Well, well.

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper in a clear plastic cover, a Xerox copy of the front and back of Swisher’s postcard. “Could you take a look at this?”

Elder took the sheet and retrieved his reading glasses. “Chilling,” he said.

“See the postmark?”

“May eighteenth.”

“Were you in Las Vegas on the eighteenth?”

Elder was palpably irritated by the question. “I have no idea, but I’d be happy to have my assistant check for you.”

“Great. How many times have you been to New York in the past six weeks?”

Elder frowned and replied testily, “Zero.”

“I see,” Will said. He pointed to the photocopy. “Could I get that back, please?”

Elder returned the sheet, and Will thought, Hey, buddy, for what it’s worth, I’ve got your fingerprints.

After Will departed, Bertram Myers wandered in and sat down in the still warm chair. “How’d it go?” he asked his boss.

“As advertised. He was focused on David Swisher’s murder. He wanted to know where I was the day his postcard was mailed from Las Vegas.”

“You’re joking!”

“No I am not.”

“I had no idea you were a serial killer, Nelson.”

Elder loosened his tightly knotted Hermes tie. He was starting to relax. “Watch out, Bert, you may be next.”

“So that was it? He didn’t ask a single troubling question?”

“Not one. I don’t know why I was worried.”

“You said you weren’t.”

“I lied.”

Will left Henderson to spend the rest of the day working out of the FBI field office in North Las Vegas before his scheduled return to New York on the red-eye. Local agents had been working up unidentified fingerprints on Doomsday postcards. By cross-tabbing with prints taken from postal workers at the Las Vegas Main Office they managed to ID a few latents. He had them throw Elder’s prints into the mix then settled into the conference room to read the newspaper and wait for the analysis. When his stomach started rumbling he took a walk down Lake Mead Boulevard to look for a sandwich shop.

The heat was blistering. Doffing his jacket and rolling up his shirtsleeves didn’t help much so he ducked into the first place he found, a quiet, pleasantly air-conditioned Quiznos manned by a crew of desultory workers. While he waited at a table for his sub to toast he called his voice mail and cycled through the messages.

The final one set him off. He cursed out loud, drawing a dirty look from the manager. A snot-nosed voice informed him his cable was about to be cut off. He was three months overdue and unless he paid today he’d be coming home to a test pattern.

He tried to remember the last time he’d paid any of his household bills and couldn’t. He visualized the large stack of unopened mail on his kitchenette counter-he needed this like head lice.

He’d have to call Nancy; he owed her one anyway.

“Greetings from Sin City,” he said.

She was cool.

“What’s going on with Camacho?” he asked.

“His diary checked out. He couldn’t have done the other murders.”

“No surprise, I guess.”

“Nope. How was your interview with Nelson Elder?”

“Is he our killer? I seriously doubt it. Is there something fishy about him? Yeah, definitely.”

“Fishy?”

“I got a sense he was hiding something.”

“Anything solid?”

“He had Pentel ultrafines on his desk.”

“Get a warrant,” she said, bone dry.

“Well, I’ll check him out.” Then, sheepishly, he asked her to help with his little cable problem. He had a spare key in his office. Could she stop by his apartment, pick up the overdue bill, and give him a call so he could take care of it with a credit card?

Not a problem, she told him.

“Thanks. And one more thing.” He felt he had to say it: “I want to apologize for the other night. I got pretty loaded.”

He heard her taking a breath. “It’s okay.”

He knew it wasn’t but what more could he say? When he hung up, he looked at his watch. He had hours to kill before his red-eye back to New York. He wasn’t a gambler so there was no tug toward the casinos. Darla was long gone by now. He could get loaded, but he could do that anywhere. Then something occurred to him that made him half smile. He opened his phone to make another call.

Nancy tensed up as soon as she opened the door to Will’s apartment.

There was music.

An open travel bag was in the living room.

She called out, “Hello?”

The shower was running.

Louder. “Hello?”

The water stopped and she heard a voice from the bathroom. “Hello?”

A wet young woman hesitantly emerged wrapped in a bath towel. She was in her early twenties, blond, lissome with a prepossessing naturalness. Puddles were forming around her perfect, small feet. Awfully young, Nancy bitterly thought, and she was blindsided by her initial reaction to the stranger-a tug of jealousy.

“Oh, hi,” the woman said. “I’m Laura.”

“I’m Nancy.”

There was an uncomfortably long pause until, “Will’s not here.”

“I know. He asked me to pick something up for him.”

“Go ahead, I’ll be right out,” Laura said, retreating into the bathroom.

Nancy tried to find the cable bill and get out before the woman reemerged but was too slow and Laura was too fast. She was barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair in a towel turban. The kitchenette was uncomfortably small for the two of them.

“Cable bill,” Nancy said weakly.

“He sucks at ADL,” Laura said, then at Nancy’s incomprehension, added, “Activities of daily living.”

“He’s been pretty busy,” Nancy said in his defense.

“And you know him-how?” Laura asked, fishing.

“We work together.” Nancy steeled herself for her next response-no, I’m not his secretary.

Instead, surprisingly, “You’re an agent?”

“Yeah.” She mimicked Laura. “And you know him-how?”

“He’s my dad.”

An hour later they were still talking. Laura was drinking wine, Nancy, iced tap water, two women with a maddening bond-Will Piper.

Once their roles were clarified they took to each other. Nancy seemed relieved the woman wasn’t Will’s girlfriend; Laura seemed relieved her father had an ostensibly normal female partner. Laura had taken the train up from Washington that morning for a hastily arranged meeting in Manhattan. When she couldn’t reach her father to ask if she could stay the night, she decided he was probably out of pocket and let herself in with her own key.

Laura was shy at first but the second glass of wine uncorked an agreeable volubility. Only six years separated them and they quickly found common ground beyond Will. Unlike her father, it seemed to Nancy that Laura was a culture hound who rivaled her own knowledge of art and music. They shared a favorite museum, the Met; a favorite opera, La Boheme; a favorite painter, Monet.

Spooky, they agreed, but fun.

Laura was two years out of college, doing part-time office work to support herself. She lived in Georgetown with her boyfriend, a grad student in journalism at American University. At a tender age, she was on the verge of crossing what she considered to be a profound threshold. A small, but prestigious publisher was seriously considering her first novel. Although she had written since puberty, an English teacher in high school starchily upbraided her not to call herself a writer until her work was in print. She desperately wanted to call herself a writer.

Laura was insecure and self-conscious but her friends and mentors had urged her on. Her book was publishable, she’d been told, so naively she sent the manuscript, unsolicited and unagented, to a dozen publishers then proceeded to write the screenplay version because she saw it as a film too. Time passed and she became acclimated to heavy packages at her door, the boomeranged manuscript plus a rejection letter-nine, ten, eleven times-but the twelfth never arrived. Finally, a call instead, from Elevation Press in New York, expressing interest and wondering if, absent a commitment, she’d make some changes and resubmit. She readily agreed and did a rewrite in accordance with their notes. The day before, she’d received an e-mail from the editor, inviting her to their offices, a nerve-wracking but auspicious sign.

Nancy found Laura a fascination, a glimpse into an alternative life. Lipinskis weren’t writers or artists, they were shopkeepers or accountants, or dentists or FBI agents. And she was interested in how Will’s DNA could possibly have produced this untainted charming creature. The answer had to be maternal.

In fact, Laura’s mother-Will’s first wife, Melanie-wrote poetry and taught creative writing at a community college in Florida. The marriage, Laura told her, had lasted just long enough for her conception, birth, and second birthday party, before Will smashed it into smithereens. Growing up, the words “your father” were spat as epithets.

He was a ghost. She heard about his life secondhand, capturing snippets from her mother and aunts. She pictured him from the wedding album, blue-eyed, large and smiling, locked in time. He left the sheriff’s department. He joined the FBI. He remarried. He divorced again. He was a drinker. He was a womanizer. He was a bastard whose only saving grace was paying child support. And he never so much as called or sent a card along the way.

One day Laura saw him on the news being interviewed about some ghastly serial killer. She saw the name Will Piper on the TV screen, recognized the blue eyes and the squared-off jaw, and the fifteen-year-old girl cried a river. She began to write short stories about him, or at least what she imagined him to be. And in college, emancipated from her mother’s influence, she did some detective work and found him in New York City. Since then they’d had a relationship, of sorts, quasifilial and tentative. He was the inspiration for her novel.

Nancy asked its title.

“ The Wrecking Ball,” Laura replied.

Nancy laughed. “The shoe fits, I guess.”

“He is a wrecking ball, but so are booze, genes, and destiny. I mean Dad’s father and mother were both alcoholics. Maybe he couldn’t escape it.” She poured herself another glass of wine and waved it in a toast. By now her speech was a little heavy. “Maybe I can’t either.”

Nelson Elder was arriving at the foot of the driveway of his home, a six-bedroom mansion at The Hills, in Summerlin, when his mobile phone rang. The caller ID registered PRIVATE CALLER. He answered and pulled the large Mercedes up to one of the garage bays.

“Mr. Elder?”

“Yes, who is this?”

The caller’s voice was pinched with tension, almost squeaky. “We met a few months ago at the Constellation. My name is Peter Benedict.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t recall.”

“I was the one who caught the blackjack counters.”

“Yes! I remember! The computer guy.” Strange, Elder thought. “Did I give you my cell phone number?”

“You did,” Mark lied. There wasn’t a phone number in the world he couldn’t grab. “Is it okay?”

“Sure. How can I help you?”

“Well, actually, sir, I’d like to help you.”

“How so?”

“Your company is in trouble, Mr. Elder, but I can save it.”

Mark was breathing rapidly and visibly shaking. His cell phone was on the kitchen table, still warm from his cheek. Each step of his plan had taxed him, but this was the first requiring human interaction, and his terror was slow to dissipate. Nelson Elder would meet with him. One more chess move and the game was his.

Then his doorbell jolted him into the next level of autonomic overdrive. He rarely had unannounced visitors, and in fear he almost bolted for his bedroom. He calmed himself and hesitantly went to the door and opened it a crack.

“Will?” he asked incredulously. “What are you doing here?”

Will stood there with a big easy smile on his face. “Weren’t expecting me, were you?”

Will could see that Mark was unsteady, like a tower of playing cards trying to maintain a composure. “No. I wasn’t.”

“Hey, look, I was in town on business and thought I’d look you up. Is this a bad time?”

“No. It’s fine,” Mark said mechanically. “I just wasn’t expecting anybody. Would you like to come in?”

“Sure. For a few minutes, anyway. I’ve got a little time to kill before I head to the airport.”

Will followed him to the living room, reading tension and discomfort in his old roomie’s stiff gait and high voice. He couldn’t help profiling the guy. It wasn’t a parlor trick-he always had the knack, the ability to figure out someone’s feelings, conflicts, and motivations with lightning speed. As a child, he’d used his natural acumen to fashion a protected triangulated space between two alcoholic parents, saying and doing the right things in the right aliquots to satisfy their neediness and preserve some measure of balance and stability in the household.

He’d always wielded his talent to his advantage. In his personal life, he used it in a Dale Carnegie way to win friends and influence people. The women in his life would say he used it to manipulate the hell out of them. And in his career, it had given him a tangible edge over the criminals who populated his world.

Will wondered what was making Mark so uncomfortable-a phobic, misanthropic kind of personality disorder or something more specific to his visit?

He sat down on an unyielding sofa and sought to put him at ease. “You know, after we saw each other at the reunion, I kind of felt bad I hadn’t gone to the effort to look you up all these years.”

Mark sat across from him, mute, with tightly crossed legs.

“So, I hardly ever come out to Vegas-this is just a onenighter-and on my way to the hotel yesterday someone pointed out the Area 51 shuttle and I thought of you.”

“Really?” Mark asked with a rasp. “Why’s that?”

“That’s where you sort of implied you worked, no?”

“Did I? I don’t recall saying that.”

Will remembered Mark’s odd demeanor when the subject of Area 51 came up at the reunion dinner. This looked like a no-go zone. In fact he didn’t care, one way or the other. Mark clearly had a high-level security clearance and took it seriously. Good for him. “Well, whatever. It doesn’t matter to me where you work, it just triggered an association and I decided to drop in, that’s all.”

Mark continued to look skeptical. “How’d you find me? I’m not listed.”

“Don’t I know. I’ve got to admit it-I queried an FBI database in the local office when 411 didn’t do the trick. You weren’t on the radar screen, buddy. Must have an interesting job! So I called Zeckendorf to see if he had your number. He didn’t, but you must’ve given him your address so his wife could mail you that picture.” He waved at the reunion photo on the table. “I put mine on the coffee table too. I guess we’re just a couple of sentimental guys. Say, you wouldn’t have anything to drink, would you?”

Will saw that Mark was breathing easier. He’d broken the ice. The guy probably had a social anxiety disorder and needed time to warm up.

“What would you like?” Mark asked.

“Got scotch?”

“Sorry, only beer.”

“When in Rome.”

When Mark went to the kitchen, Will stood up and out of curiosity had a look around. The living room was sparsely furnished with characterless modern things that could have been in the lobby of a public space. Everything was neat, with no clutter and also no feminizing touches. He knew that decorating style cold. The shiny chrome bookcase was filled with academic-type computer and software books arranged precisely by height so the rows topped off as straight as possible.

On the white lacquered desk, next to a closed laptop computer, was a short stack of two thin manuscripts bound in brass brads. He glanced at the cover page of the one on top: Counters: a screenplay by Peter Benedict, WGA #4235567. Who’s Peter Benedict? he wondered, Mark’s nom de plume or some other guy? Beside the screenplays there were two black pens. He almost laughed out loud. Pentel ultrafines. The little peckers were everywhere. He was back on the sofa when Mark returned with the beers.

“In Cambridge, didn’t you mention you did some writing?” Will asked.

“I do.”

“Those screenplays yours?” he asked, pointing.

Mark nodded and gulped.

“My daughter’s something of a writer too. What do you write about?”

Mark started tentatively but progressively relaxed as he talked about his most recent script. By the time Will downed the beer, he’d heard all about casinos and card-counting and Hollywood and talent agents. For a reticent guy, this was almost a blue-streak topic. During his second beer, he got a taste of Mark’s postcollege, pre-Vegas life, a barren landscape of few personal bonds and endless computer work. During the third beer, Will reciprocated with details about his own past, sour marriages, busted relationships and all, and Mark listened in apparent fascination, with a growing amazement that the golden boy’s life, which he had assumed was perfect, was anything but. At the same time, creeping pangs of guilt were making Will uneasy.

After taking a leak, Will returned to the living room and announced he had to be going, but before he did, he wanted to get something off his chest. “I’ve got to apologize to you.”

“For what?”

“When I look back on freshman year, I realize I was a jerk. I should have helped you out more, gotten Alex to leave you alone. I was a dumb-ass and I’m sorry.” He didn’t mention the duct-taping incident; he didn’t have to.

Mark involuntarily teared up and looked profoundly embarrassed. “I-”

“You don’t have to say anything. I don’t want to cause any discomfort.”

Mark sniffed. “No, look, I appreciate it. I don’t think we really knew each other.”

“True enough.” Will dug his hand in his pockets for the car keys. “So, thanks for the beers and the chat. I’ve got to hit it.”

Mark inhaled and finally said, “I think I know why you’re in town. I saw you on TV.”

“Yeah, the Doomsday case. The Vegas connection. Sure.”

“I’ve watched you on TV for years. And read all the magazine articles.”

“Yeah, I’ve had my fill of media stuff.”

“It must be exciting.”

“Believe me, it’s not.”

“How’s it going? The investigation, I mean.”

“I’ve got to tell you, it’s a pain up my butt. I didn’t want any part of it. I was just trying to ease on down retirement road.”

“Are you making any progress?”

“You’re obviously a guy who can keep a secret. Here’s one: we don’t have a fucking clue.”

Mark looked weary when he said, “I don’t think you’re going to catch the guy.”

Will squinted at him strangely. “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. What I’ve read about it, he sounds like he’s pretty clever.”

“No, no, no. I’ll catch him. I always do.”