Suspicion

1

Sometimes the smallest decision can change your life forever.

Abe Lincoln’s bodyguard decides to stay for another drink at the bar at Ford’s Theatre during intermission.

The archduke’s driver makes a wrong turn in Sarajevo because he refuses to ask for directions. (Men, right?)

You finally listen to your know-it-all brother-in-law and invest everything you have with a guy named Bernie Madoff. Steady returns, dude. A no-brainer.

The tyranny of small decisions, someone once called it. The gate of history turns on small hinges.

Danny Goodman’s nightmare began with a quick handshake and a friendly smile.

Whenever he drove up to his daughter’s private school, the Lyman Academy, Danny couldn’t help thinking of stately Wayne Manor, the baronial mansion outside Gotham City where Batman lives as Bruce Wayne. If only he were driving the Batmobile instead of a 1997 Honda Accord.

Lyman was the most exclusive private girls’ school in Boston, and most of the other cars in the pickup line were gleaming luxury SUVs: Range Rovers or Mercedes-Benzes or Land Cruisers. Today, though, Abby would be spared the public humiliation of an Accord sighting, because her father had arrived twenty minutes early for the afternoon pickup. He had an appointment with the head of the Upper School, Tinsley Thornton, whom everybody called Lally.

Lally. No wonder the place made Danny uncomfortable.

He parked in the side lot, where the teachers parked, and where his dented old Honda didn’t look quite so out of place.

The office of the head of the Upper School was at the end of a long corridor next to the headmaster’s office and Admissions, which might as well have been labeled REJECTIONS. You either had to know someone-several someones-to get into Lyman or be able to write a check sizable enough to build a new library. Danny had been fortunate: The foundation his late wife, Sarah, had worked for was endowed by a guy who also happened to be chairman of Lyman’s board of trustees.

Lally Thornton welcomed him to her large, oak-paneled office with a concerned look, clutching his hand in two of hers. Her steel-gray hair was held back with a black velvet headband. She wore a black turtleneck, a double strand of pearls, and perfume with the strong floral smell of urinal cake. Her air of lethal graciousness always reminded Danny of that socialite girls’-school headmistress who shot the diet doctor years ago.

“Is everything all right with Abby at home?” she asked with hushed concern, settling into a low brocade chair while Danny sat on the couch at a right angle to her.

“Oh, yeah, she’s-doing well.” He swallowed hard.

“It must be so difficult for her.”

He nodded. “But you know, Abby’s a strong kid.”

“Losing a mother at her age. What a terrible thing.”

Danny nodded. She must have just reviewed the file. “I had a quick question about the Italy trip,” he said.

She lit up. “It is such a profound experience,” she said. “You’ll see. It changes them. They come back different people-more aware of the world, more appreciative of different cultures, and, well, it seems to just dissolve all those cliques, all those silly tensions between the girls. I’d even call it transformative. Abby-oh, she’s going, isn’t she?”

“Well, see, that’s the question.”

“She must. She absolutely must. It’s the trip of a lifetime.”

He blotted his damp palms on the knees of his suit pants. “Right, I know, I’ve heard… But Abby-well, you know how idealistic these girls can be at that age. She’s sort of concerned that some of her classmates might find it difficult to go.”

“Difficult?”

“The five thousand dollars, I mean. Not everyone can afford it, and, you know, that bothers her.” Danny tried to sound casual. As if he were a hedge fund tycoon with a social conscience. Instead of a writer whose advance on his latest book had run out months ago.

What Lally apparently didn’t know was that he was more than a month late with this semester’s tuition. He had no idea how he could possibly come up with it-let alone five thousand bucks for a trip to Italy on top of that. Lyman had the biggest endowment of any private school in the United States. He was fairly certain they’d squeak by a bit longer without his lousy sixteen thousand dollars.

He imagined her reply: Why, that five-thousand-dollar fee, that’s merely a suggestion, a recommendation. Of course it’s waived if it’s a hardship for any family.

He felt a single fat bead of sweat trickle down behind his left ear, then down the side of his neck, and under his shirt collar.

“Isn’t that thoughtful of her? Well, you tell Abby that if any of her friends aren’t going to Italy because of the money, their parents should say something to Leah Winokur right away. We have scholarships for deserving minorities.”

“Of course.” He’d come here to try to finagle something that might enable Abby to go to Italy. A price break, maybe. A loan. Something. A scholarship for minorities didn’t exactly help. The only minority that Abby Goodman, blond-haired and blue-eyed, belonged to at this school was Girls Whose Parents Didn’t Have a Summer House. “You know, I do wonder whether it might be difficult for other parents, too-not minorities but not, you know, the very wealthy. To pay that kind of money on top of everything else.”

“I doubt most Lyman parents would consider that a hardship. After all, no one has to go to Italy.”

With a smile as cold as a pawnbroker’s, she said, “Was there anything else?”

2

The halls were crowded with teenage girls. It rang with squeals and shouts and laughter. Some of them walked arm in arm or hugged one another. Danny often marveled at how affectionate girls that age were and couldn’t help contrasting them with teenage boys, who smelled like old gym socks and zit cream and expressed affection by punching one another on the shoulder.

He waited for Abby with a deep sense of dread.

Not going on the Italy trip, she’d said, would be social death. She’d be a pariah. He’d told her he’d think about it. He’d see what he could do.

Meeting with Lally Thornton had been a desperation move, a Hail Mary pass that didn’t complete. No need to let Abby in on just how bad things were. How they were basically living on fumes. He wanted her life to be as normal as possible, given the circumstances.

She was doing better than a lot of girls her age would have done. She was strong, but her mother’s death had hit her hard. For months, her default expression had been a Darth Vader mask of anger. Who could blame her?

He didn’t look forward to giving her the bad news about the one thing she was looking forward to.

From behind him came a rumbling basso profundo. “Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes,” sang a school security guard, Leon Chisholm. He was a black man of about sixty with close-cropped white hair and a wide, open face. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had a gap between his front teeth; the vibe was part professor, part prizefighter. He’d spent twenty years with the Boston Police Department, so he was probably able to handle a few mean girls in Lululemon yoga pants.

“Officer,” Danny said with a grin, and clapped him companionably on the shoulder. When Leon’s oldest daughter, Rebecca, had graduated from Bunker Hill Community College-the first in the family to go to college-Danny had helped her get a job with a publisher in Boston. Leon liked Danny, one of the few Lyman dads who said hi and actually chitchatted with him. To most other Lyman parents, Leon was invisible.

Then Danny caught a glimpse of Abby near the front lobby-her silvery metallic fringed scarf, then her face. Smiling, which surprised him. He couldn’t remember when he’d last seen her smile. She was walking arm in arm with her new BFF, Jenna Galvin.

Jenna Galvin seemed to be Abby’s polar opposite: She was small and dark-haired and chubby, where Abby was slender and graceful and blond. Jenna seemed sour, aloof, even arrogant, whereas Abby was sweet-natured and sociable. Or had been, anyway, until six months ago. Jenna had just transferred to Lyman as a junior, which was unusually late to start a new school, and had apparently been an outcast there. Abby, empathic as ever, and maybe also a bit rebellious, had felt bad for the new girl and befriended her. Now they were inseparable.

Abby’s face lit up when she saw her father, which was disorienting-was she smiling at someone else? She maneuvered nimbly through the teeming horde of girls and threw her arms around him.

First uncoerced hug in eleven months, Danny thought. But who’s counting?

“Oh my God, Daddy, thank you!”

For what? he wanted to say.

She hugged him even harder. He still hadn’t gotten used to how tall she’d grown. “Thank you thank you thank you. I just saw my name on the Italy trip list. I knew you’d let me go. You are so awesome.”

“Abby, honey-”

Jenna touched her arm. “My dad’s here, come on.” A sleek silver-haired man in an expensive-looking camel-colored suit entered the lobby and gave Jenna a kiss.

“Abby, wait-what are you talking about?” Danny said.

But Abby didn’t hear him. She’d turned around and was talking to Jenna. Abby said, “I know, right?” before turning back to her father.

“Daddy, is it okay if I go home with Jenna?”

He felt a flash of irritation. She never seemed to want to spend time at home. But he said only, “Well, I don’t know. I’d rather not have to drive out to Weston to pick you up.”

“Esteban will take her home,” Jenna said.

Esteban was the Galvins’ driver. Jenna’s father was some kind of investor and had a lot of money, even by Lyman standards.

“Abby,” Danny said, but then someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned.

The silver-haired man. Thomas Galvin.

He appeared to be in his late forties. His blue-gray eyes were like steel against his deep tan. His suit was exquisitely cut, his pale blue shirt perfectly pressed, his tie neatly knotted. Everything in place. Danny’s crappy sport coat, which he’d bought off the discount rack at the Men’s Wearhouse Black Friday sale, felt itchy.

“Just wanted to introduce myself,” the man said, offering his hand. “Tom Galvin.”

“Dan Goodman.”

Abby was already out the front door with Jenna.

“Nice to meet Abby’s dad. She’s terrific.”

“Most of the time,” Danny said with a grin.

“Jenna couldn’t ask for a better friend.”

“Well, it’s great to meet you, too.”

“Listen, thanks for letting me kick in on that Italy thing.” He had the accent of a kid out of Southie.

“Kick in?”

“Abby has been a lifesaver for our Jenna. You have no idea.”

“Hold on a second. You paid for Abby’s trip to Italy?”

“For totally selfish reasons, trust me.” He lowered his voice to a confidential mutter. “This is Jenna’s fourth school in three years. She was already begging to leave until she started hanging out with Abby. And she sure as hell doesn’t want to go with the class to Italy if Abby’s not going.”

Danny’s cheeks grew hot. He was astonished, and embarrassed. And angry, though he rarely let anyone see his anger.

How much had Abby told her friend? She couldn’t possibly know how bad their financial situation was, but she must have said something. This was beyond embarrassing; it was demeaning. This rich guy was treating them like a charity case.

“That’s extremely generous of you,” he said, “but I can’t accept it.”

“Please. It’s for my daughter.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll call the bursar and set them straight. But I really do appreciate the thought.” He smiled, then turned and pushed through the front doors.

The sun dazzled his eyes. A gleaming black Maybach limousine was parked at the curb. It had to belong to Galvin. A man in a uniform of black suit, white shirt, and black tie approached Abby and Jenna with a cardboard Starbucks take-out tray and handed them each a cup. Galvin’s chauffeur must have gone on a Starbucks run.

“Thanks, Esteban,” Abby said. She turned as Danny emerged, beaming excitedly, her eyes shining. “Everything okay, Daddy?”

He beckoned her over. “Boogie,” he began quietly, using the pet name he never used around anyone else.

“Oh God, I’m so so so excited,” she interrupted. Then followed a torrent of words-pasta and gelato and shopping-that Danny couldn’t quite follow. She grabbed both of his elbows. “I’m going to Italy!” she almost sang.

He hadn’t seen her this happy in years. Dimples had appeared on her cheeks, her smile so wide it looked like her face might crack in two.

Now what? Tell her there’d been a mix-up?

Danny had once made the mistake of opening a link a friend had sent him. It was something called a crush video. It showed a woman stepping on a tiny kitten with her stiletto heels. It was one of the sickest, most disturbing things he’d ever seen, and he wished he could unsee it.

Telling Abby the Italy trip wasn’t going to happen would feel a bit like that.

“Dan,” Galvin said by way of greeting as he came out the front door, lowering his BlackBerry.

Danny approached and said, in a low voice, “I can only accept this if you’ll let me pay you back.”

Galvin’s eyebrows shot up. He nodded solemnly. “If you don’t, I’ll send my goons after you.” He gave Danny a wry smile.

“I mean, no offense, but it’s a little awkward. We don’t even know each other.”

“Which is crazy, right? Given how close Abby and Jenna are? Listen, come over for dinner tomorrow night, wouldja? The boys are home from college, and they love Abby, and Celina is making her famous arroz con pollo.”

What could he say? The guy was shelling out for his daughter’s trip to Italy. Dinner with his family was the least he could do.

Much later, he’d replay that moment over and over again in his head.

He thrust out his hand and smiled. “Sounds great,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

3

When Danny opened the door of the two-bedroom on Marlborough Street, he was greeted by the loud thumping of a dog’s tail against the floor. Rex, their arthritic chocolate Lab, struggled to get up from his bed near the kitchen.

“That’s okay, buddy, no need to get up for my sake,” he said, coaxing Rex back down onto the plaid dog bed, stroking his graying coat, massaging his haunches. Rex was thirteen years old, which was old for the breed. His muzzle had gone silver, his amber eyes clouded with an opaque cataract haze. He’d belonged to Sarah, went with her after the divorce, and then had moved in with Abby. The old boy, profligate with affection, had heroically gotten Abby through her mother’s death.

The red message light on Danny’s phone was blinking.

Eight voice mails. Seven from one particularly odious and persistent collections agent named Tony Santangelo of Asset Recovery Solutions, who seemed to have trained at the Bada Bing school of debt collection. His “solution” was to “garnish” Danny’s wages.

Garnish. Such a benign-sounding word. Like parsley sprigs and radish roses.

And what wages?

He’d replayed, over and over, that odd exchange with Tom Galvin. Thanks for letting me kick in on that Italy thing. Who was the guy, really? In the age of the Internet, the information had to be out there, and Danny, if nothing else, was an ace researcher.

Sitting at his desk in the small alcove off the living room that was now his “study”-his office had become Abby’s bedroom-Danny opened a browser on his old MacBook Pro. LinkedIn had a long list of Thomas Galvins. Halfway down that roster was a Thomas X. Galvin who’d graduated from Boston College, worked for Putnam Investments, and was the founder, chief executive, chief investment officer, and managing director of Galvin Advisers on Saint James Avenue in Boston.

Bingo.

Rex, who was now curled atop Danny’s shoes, heaved a long soulful sigh and nuzzled even closer.

Galvin Advisers of Boston, Mass. The website was nothing more than a secure portal, a page showing an overhead view of Boston’s Financial District, and a log-in box that asked for user name and password. Above it, the words: This website is intended solely for the employees and investors of Galvin Advisers.

Danny’s girlfriend, Lucy Lindstrom, arrived with dinner in a white plastic bag. Takeout from a place on Newbury Street: a salad for her and linguine with shrimp scampi for him. He could smell the garlic, the warm olive oil, oregano, a vinegary bite.

She leaned over to stroke Rex’s face, causing him to close his eyes in bliss. Then she gave Danny a squeeze and a kiss. Her hair gave off a faint whiff of cigarette, which told Danny she’d spent the day doing outreach. She was a psychiatrist for the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, and she spent two days a week on the streets of Boston, trying to bribe and wheedle homeless people to come in and get treated.

She wore a pale gray turtleneck under a blue V-neck sweater with black jeans and a great old pair of black leather boots that Danny loved seeing her in. She was wearing her chunky black glasses, which Danny was convinced she used to make herself plainer, and thus less vulnerable, at work. It gave her a sort of winsomely studious look.

They’d been going out for three years, but they’d known each other since freshman year at Columbia. Back then, before life had kicked them both around, Lucy Lindstrom seemed unattainable. To Danny, she was the It Girl of his college class. She had blond hair that came down in unruly ripples to her shoulders, a sharp nose and chin, blue-gray eyes, a dazzling smile, an endearing overbite.

Back then, she’d been way out of his league. Frankly, she still was.

The two decades since college had etched faint lines around her mouth and vertical worry lines between her pale eyebrows. It wasn’t just the years; she’d also survived an unhappy first marriage.

Danny knew she was overly sensitive about the signs of aging, indoctrinated like most women by fashion magazines.

Danny couldn’t care less. He thought Lucy was more beautiful now than when she was a freshman.

She set the round foil take-out pans on the dining table and eased off their cardboard lids.

“Hard day?”

“Mostly a lot of walking around. I need a shower.” Lucy never complained about her work. He admired that.

“Glass of wine first?”

“Sure, why not?”

He pulled the cork out of a chilled bottle of Sancerre and poured them each a glass. They clinked. The wine was crisp, citrus and chalky.

“Street outreach?”

She nodded. “There was this guy at South Station today, sleeping on a bench. He looks like he’s seventy, but he could be ten years younger-you know how the street ages them. Well, the police tried to take him to one of our day shelters, but he refused to go. Really fought with them. So I tried.”

She looked pained, as if reliving the moment. And at the same time tender, transported. She felt a deep connection with the homeless guys. As far as Danny was concerned, they were vagrants and bums, but they were Lucy’s children, her wards, not her patients.

“I told him it’s getting to be really cold at night and he should sleep at the Night Center, not out on the street. But he said people were tampering with his food and they’ll get to him if he goes to sleep. He started babbling-all kinds of nonsense. Word salad.”

He nodded. “Paranoid schizophrenic.” He found her work fascinating but also fundamentally baffling: How could she bear taking care of people who didn’t want her help?

“Probably. We need to get him on Risperdal, but first I need to get him to talk. So I asked if I could sit with him and he said no. I said I just wanted to help. He said, ‘What the hell can you do for me?’ So I said, ‘Well, I have cigarettes.’ And he said, ‘Oh, okay.’” She took a sip of wine.

Danny laughed. “Suddenly you couldn’t shut him up.”

“I gave him a five-dollar gift certificate for McDonald’s, a cigarette, and a pair of white tube socks.”

“So he’s coming in to see you?”

She shook her head. “Later, maybe. First I have to get him to trust me. But you know, there’s something really… moving about this guy.”

“How so?”

“There’s an intelligence in there. A really great, interesting mind locked away, deep inside. It’s sort of heartbreaking.”

The phone rang.

No, he thought. Don’t let it be Tony Santangelo from Asset Recovery Solutions again. He was about to let it go to voice mail when he checked the caller ID: 212 area code and the name of his literary agency, Levitan Freed Associates.

His agent, Mindy Levitan, rarely called except when she was in the middle of negotiating a deal for him.

It couldn’t be good news.

“How’s life in the salt mines?” Mindy said. She had a raspy voice from years of smoking, which she’d only recently been able to quit with the help of a Russian hypnotist.

“Excellent,” he lied. “Deep into it.” For several years now, he’d been working on a biography of a nineteenth-century robber baron named Jay Gould.

“Good, good. That’s what I like to hear.” She said it without enthusiasm. “So listen, Danny. Sorry to call you at suppertime, but I just got into my country house and checked my messages. And I got a call from Louisa.” Louisa Penniman was Danny’s editor. She was a legendary editor of “serious” nonfiction. She’d made her bones on “inside the Beltway” books about politics and a couple of presidential memoirs. She was widely feared and even more widely disliked.

“You’re breaking up,” Danny said. “I’m losing you.”

“Nice try. We’re both on landlines. Listen, this is serious, Danny. She wants to cancel the book.”

4

Danny felt his mouth go dry. “She wants to cancel because I’m a few months late?”

“First, kiddo, it’s not ‘a few’ months, it’s fifteen months-”

“Okay, but-”

“You know how bad things are in the industry. Publishers are all freaking out about e-books. They’re looking for any excuse to cancel contracts these days.”

“Was there ever a time when things weren’t bad in publishing?”

Mindy gave a quick, rueful laugh, more a bark. “Louisa Penniman doesn’t screw around.”

“This isn’t just a threat? I mean, you think-she’s actually serious?”

“As cancer,” Mandy said. Then, quickly, she added: “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

Mindy Levitan had gotten him a bigger advance for his biography of Jay Gould than he’d ever expected. It helped that his first book, The Kennedys of Boston, had been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, even though it didn’t sell particularly well. Or actually win the Pulitzer, for that matter.

Also, he had to admit that his proposal had been damned good. Even better was Mindy’s pitch to publishers: No one knows who Jay Gould is anymore, she’d written in her cover e-mail. Yet no one had heard of some Olympic track star shot down in World War II, but Unbroken was a massive bestseller. Nor had anyone heard of a serial killer who menaced Chicago during the World’s Fair, which didn’t stop readers from buying The Devil in the White City: It’s all in how the story is told.

And Danny knew how to tell the story. Jay Gould was a railroad speculator and a strikebreaker and one of the richest men in America, an inside trader and a virtuoso at bribery, a scammer and a liar who actually bragged about being “the most hated man in America.”

Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster had all bid, but Louisa at Triangle had topped them all. The money sounded good at first-until you subtracted Mindy’s fifteen percent and spread the payments out over the three years, at least, it would take him to write the book. Plus, a big chunk of the money wouldn’t come in until the trade paperback was published, at least a year after the hardcover. Not that he was complaining: He got to do what he loved, and if he lived frugally and didn’t go on any trips to the Caribbean, he could have made it.

But then came the call from Sarah.

His ex-wife had just gotten the results of a biopsy. There’d been no lump, nothing on a mammogram. Just a little warmth and redness in one breast she noticed one day. The skin felt different, hard and taut like an orange. Her lymph nodes were enlarged. Her doctor had told her it was probably an insect bite, and he’d prescribed antibiotics.

Her doctor was wrong.

The survival rates for inflammatory breast cancer weren’t great. She was a single mom, and she was frightened.

One minute Danny was researching the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886, and the next he was Googling estrogen receptors. Sarah’s second husband had taken a job at a firm in Manhattan, and their eventual breakup had been acrimonious. And the guy was a jerk, as Sarah had finally come to realize. She needed Danny’s help.

He began eating a lot of cafeteria meals at the Dana-Farber cancer center.

For the first time in years, his daughter actually seemed to need him around, too. She needed a steadying presence. She also needed someone to drive her to dance practice and play rehearsals and sleepovers. While he waited in the cramped back room of the dance studio, he researched chemotherapy and radiation and hyperthermia and raw apricot seeds and vitamin B17.

And Jay Gould moved to the back burner.

Because Mr. Gould, as fascinating as he was, wasn’t as important as Danny’s daughter, or his ex-wife, whom he’d never stopped loving even when she stopped loving him.

“Danny?”

“What?”

“I said, we need to figure out what’s next. How soon can you get me a hundred, hundred fifty pages? To see if we can keep them on the reservation. Keep her from canceling.”

“You think that’ll do it?”

“Might. Who knows? It’s the only card I have to play. So you’ll do it?”

Danny wasn’t even close to having a decent hundred-plus pages, and he wouldn’t be for at least a month. But if the book was canceled, there went his entire income stream.

Danny swallowed hard. “No problem,” he said.

5

Lucy looked at him, arched her brows, and smiled sadly. “How bad?”

“Very.”

He told her what Mindy had to say. And about his meeting with the head of school.

And then about the surprise loan from Thomas Galvin.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s generous.” She didn’t sound enthusiastic.

“Lucy.”

She avoided his eyes.

“Let’s hear it,” he said.

“Well, are you sure that’s really a good idea?”

“Why not?”

“I just think it’s weird for this guy who doesn’t even know you to pay for your daughter to go on a trip.”

“It’s unusual, I’ll give you that. Though he invited us over for dinner tomorrow night.”

“I work tomorrow night. I mean, if I was even invited. Does Abby know about this?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Never underestimate teenage girls. They notice everything. And they can be manipulative. Believe me, I used to be one.”

“Maybe.”

“I just think it’s not a good idea to borrow money from this guy you barely know. It just-well, it sends up a red flag.”

“You know what’s not a good idea? Charging five thousand bucks for a friggin’ school trip to Italy. The way this school just takes for granted that parents can shell out that kind of money.”

“You’re just figuring this out?”

“No, but it still annoys me. What it’s doing to Abby.”

“So we’re really talking about Abby’s new friend.”

“Abby gets driven home from the Galvins by a Hispanic servant wearing a chauffeur’s uniform, okay? There’s something wrong with that.”

“I wouldn’t mind it.”

“She’s a kid. And it’s not her life. It’s someone else’s.”

“Exactly. That’s not her life, and she knows it. That kind of thing isn’t going to turn her head.”

“How could it not? It’s like when someone says to you, ‘Doesn’t that tag inside the neck of your T-shirt bother you? Doesn’t it itch?’ And all of a sudden, what do you know?-it does itch. That tag starts driving you crazy.”

“The itch being-what? Living with a father who adores her but doesn’t happen to be a zillionaire?”

They heard the squeak of the front-door hinges, the thud of Abby putting down her backpack, the thump-thump-thump of Rex’s tail against the floor. Abby was talking to the dog as if he were either a young child or a moron. “How was your day, Rex? Have you been a good boy? Oh, why is your collar still on?” The dog’s prong collar jingled. “Let’s ask Daddy if he remembered to take you out for a walk.”

When she walked to the kitchen, she looked more like a woman, less like a girl. In the couple of months since she’d become best friends with Jenna, she’d started dressing differently. Instead of her everyday uniform of light blue Juicy sweatpants and a plaid fleece-lined flannel shirt, untucked, she’d wear preppy-looking twin sets and leggings. She’d started using makeup. He wanted to tell her to stop, slow down. You have your whole life to be a grown-up. You only get to be a girl for a few years.

“For you.” She pulled an envelope from the pile and dropped it on the table. He recognized the cream-colored paper stock of a Lyman Academy envelope. “Looks like another bill,” she said. “Are we behind on the tuition again?”

“We’re fine,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. You have dinner yet? I’ve got some shrimp and linguine left, if you want it. Or I could make, I don’t know, macaroni and cheese?”

“No, thanks,” she said, her tone softening a bit. “I ate at the Galvins’.”

“Great,” he said, trying to sound upbeat. Lately she’d been having dinner most nights with Jenna and her family. Who could blame her? Dinner with just the two of them was often strained, punctuated by long silences. But still…

“I guess I get to meet them tomorrow night.”

She nodded. “I know. You’ll like them a lot.”

“Hey, Abby,” said Lucy, coming up from behind and giving Abby a quick peck on the cheek. “I love those flats. Tory Burch?”

Abby looked uncomfortable but, at the same time, pleased. “I guess.”

Danny used to worry about how his daughter would get along with his girlfriend. But she and Lucy seemed to be friends. Maybe it was because Lucy never tried to take Sarah’s place. Maybe it was because Abby wanted another mother figure in her life. Maybe it was because Sarah had married a man Abby didn’t like.

“They’re so cute,” Lucy said.

“Are they new?” Danny asked.

Abby’s face reddened. She looked around theatrically and said, “What is this, like, the Style Network? Um, can I go do my homework now, please?”

“In a moment,” Danny said. “We’re talking.”

Abby folded her arms and compressed her lips, making it clear how much talking she planned to do.

“I asked, are those shoes new?”

Abby looked at him steadily for a long moment, as if deciding how to reply. Finally, she said, “They’re a gift from the Galvins, okay?”

“That’s so nice,” Lucy said, trying to calm the waters. She busied herself at the dining table, which was piled with books and papers and junk mail. She was smart enough not to get involved any further.

“A gift? For what occasion?”

“Occasion?” Abby’s eyes widened. “I mean, for standing there like a dork, watching Jenna buy stuff when we were at the Natick Mall this afternoon, because I don’t have a credit card and I don’t have any money, and she probably just felt sorry for me.”

“She felt sorry for you?”

“She has her own Platinum American Express card and I don’t even have, like, a debit card.”

“That’s terrible. How can a girl show her face if she doesn’t have a Platinum AmEx card?”

Abby smoldered silently.

“If you wanted to buy something, you could have called me. You know that.”

“And you would have said no.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. But at least you should have asked.”

“Oh yeah, sure, I could see that. Like, ‘Hi, Dad, I just saw the cutest pair of Tory Burch flats and Jenna just bought a pair and can I have two hundred dollars to buy them, too?’ Like you would have said yes? At least why don’t you be honest with yourself?”

“Two hundred dollars?” Danny said. “You’re damned right I would have said no.”

“See?”

Obviously, his daughter didn’t mind receiving charity from the Galvins. “You girls spent the afternoon at a shopping mall? What about your homework?”

“I didn’t have my laptop with me.”

“Why not?”

“You’re talking about that MacBook that weighs, like, a thousand pounds? I don’t think so.”

“You carried it around all last year and didn’t mind.”

“And the year before and the year before and the year before. It’s a dinosaur. It should, like, be on Antiques Roadshow or whatever.”

He tried not to laugh. “If you need a new laptop, we can talk about it,” he said. “Until then, why don’t you invite Jenna over here sometime? Maybe you two can actually get some homework done.”

Abby stared with incredulity. “Are you serious?”

“If you’re concerned about privacy, I can go out and work somewhere while you girls are here. Find a Starbucks, whatever.”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“What am I not getting?”

“You think I want her to see this… this veal cage we live in?”

Danny couldn’t help bursting out laughing.

“It’s not funny!” she protested.

“Of course it’s not, sweetie,” Danny said. When her mother was well, before her second marriage broke up, Abby had lived in a rambling old six-bedroom Victorian in Chestnut Hill that belonged to her stepfather, a partner in a big Boston law firm. Now she had no stepfather-not that she minded that-and no rambling house, and no mother.

He came closer, tried to put his arms around her, but she bucked away. “I just want to make sure you give yourself enough time to do your homework. This is a really important year. You know that. This fall, you’ll be applying to colleges, and-”

“Seriously?” she said, stiffening. “Seriously?” Then, yelling: “I don’t believe this!”

She spun around and ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.

Lucy glanced up from the dining table, gave a sad smile. She didn’t need to say anything. She felt bad for both father and daughter; she understood the complexity. Her marriage, to an architect, had broken up, though amicably; her son, Kyle, was a sophomore at Bowdoin. She’d been through all this.

She ran her fingers through Danny’s hair. “No one ever said teenagers were easy,” she murmured.

6

Lucy woke early and made coffee for the two of them before leaving for work. Danny managed to get in a solid hour of writing before he heard the music coming from Abby’s room.

Thumping, floor-vibrating bass, some kind of hip-hop. It wasn’t so long ago that Abby awoke to some sweet twangy ballad by Taylor Swift or one of her many clones. Now everything she listened to sounded the same: Auto-Tuned vocal tricks and rants about being “on the floor” in “the club.”

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting at the dining table reading The Boston Globe and sipping coffee from an oversize white mug that said I

My Daddy in the spindly printing of a five-year-old. The Y looked like Poseidon’s trident. Abby had made it at a friend’s birthday party at a clay workshop in Brookline where kids decorated ready-made pieces of ceramic pottery. More than a decade ago, and he remembered it as if it were a few months.

Abby emerged from the bathroom in a steam cloud, wearing a bathrobe, hair wet from the shower. She came over to the small kitchen without acknowledging his presence and poured herself a bowl of Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats, doused it with Lactaid milk, and brought it over to the dining table.

“Any left for me?” she asked as she sat down.

“Any what?”

“That.” She pointed at his coffee mug.

He grinned. “You’re too young to get hooked on caffeine.”

She slid the pile of mail in front of her and began flipping idly through the envelopes. “I mean, it’s so not a big deal when I sleep over at the Galvins’. Celina always makes café con leche for Jenna and me.”

“Celina is their housekeeper? Or their cook?”

“Keep up, Dad. She’s Jenna’s mom.” She picked up the cream-stock envelope from Lyman and slid a finger under the flap. He didn’t want her looking at the reminder note-no need for her to worry-but he also didn’t want to make too big a deal of it, so he said nothing.

“Well, you’re not at the Galvins’, are you?” he said, and he couldn’t hide his smile.

He’d solemnly sworn, when Sarah and he first saw that whooshing heartbeat on the fetal monitor, never to say all those trite, predictable things that all parents seem to say. Like: As long as you live under my roof, you’ll live by my rules and Because I said so and I don’t care what the other kids do and Don’t make me stop this car.

He put the milk away in the refrigerator, and then he heard a high-pitched sound, a stifled cry, and he whirled around.

Abby was holding the Lyman letter in a trembling hand. The paper rattled. Her face had gone pale.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he said. “The check’s a little late. I have to move some money around.”

She was crying with an abandon that Danny had seen her do only once before, in the hospital room right after Sarah had died. There was barely any sound. Like she was gasping for breath. Or hiccupping. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open and downturned. She looked almost in shock. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Danny felt his insides clutch. She was overreacting, but he couldn’t stand seeing her in pain. “Boogie,” he said softly, coming over to her and circling his arms around her shoulders from behind. “Abby. Baby, what’s wrong?” He glanced at the letter and felt his stomach drop. Even though he glimpsed only fragments of sentences, it was enough to understand:

… regret to inform… leave us no choice… immediate payment is received… Abigail’s school records… assist in the transfer to another school…

Unless Lyman Academy received sixteen thousand dollars by five P.M. on Friday-three days from then-Abby would have to leave the school.

He squeezed her tight, her tears scalding his forearm, her chest heaving.

“Listen,” he said, softly yet firmly, “that’s not going to happen, okay?”

Then came a rush of words in one terrible anguished sob, most of which he couldn’t make out. Just the words all my friends and Daddy.

The shape of her mouth when she’d let out a cry was precisely the same as it had been seconds after she’d been born, when the nurse had taken her, all of six pounds, from the obstetrician’s gloved hands, swaddling her expertly in a blanket, and put her down on the warming table. Then this tiny infant had curled her tiny hands into fists and let out a great big gusty cry, the first of her life, announcing, Hey, I’m here!

And he knew he’d always do everything in his power to protect this little creature.

“Sweetie,” he said. “Listen to me. Don’t even think about it. That is not going to happen. You have my word.”

But he knew his assurances were hollow, his promises empty, and he wondered whether she knew it, too.

7

Danny had been late with the tuition once before: last semester, in fact. But the bursar’s office had let him slide for a few weeks. They must have gotten marching orders from the administration to be compassionate, since Abby’s mother had died over the summer.

But Lyman’s compassion apparently had its limits.

He had no pull at the school. The guy whose foundation Sarah had worked for, who’d been chairman of the Lyman board, had died of a stroke a couple of years ago.

So he decided to go straight to the top.

“I’m having sort of a silly little problem I thought you might be able to help me with,” he told Lally Thornton when he finally got her on the phone. “Seems I’m a bit late with this semester’s tuition-it’s mostly a matter of liquidity. Moving money around and such. But I should have it cleared up in a week or so.”

He paused, waited for her to say something reassuring. But there was only silence. Then she said, “And?”

Finally, he went on: “I thought you might be able to reassure the bursar’s office for me.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“You know, we got a form letter about Abby having to leave Lyman if the bursar doesn’t receive a check by Friday or whatever. They’re being pretty hard-line about it.”

“Well, I’m not sure I understand why you called me, Mr. Goodman. This is a matter for the bursar’s office. Not for the head of the Upper School.”

“I’ve already spoken with them-”

“So I understand.” Her tone had become downright icy. “You’re not asking that an exception be made for you, I trust.”

“Not an exception per se, but-well, a little leeway is all. A little compassion, really.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Goodman. I wish I could help. Please ask Abby to send me a note once she’s settled at her new school, tell me how she’s doing. I really am so fond of her.”

Even if he could bring himself to ask Lucy to lend him money, he knew she didn’t have it to lend. She was barely getting by herself. So that was out.

His parents, Helen and Bud, lived modestly and always had, in the same small house in a development in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, where Danny had grown up. His dad was a contractor and a finish carpenter and a decent man, but he was irascible. He was a man who didn’t take guff. He was always pissing people off. At the same time, he was a good person; he always paid his construction crew better than anyone else. Whenever any of them ran into trouble, he’d bail them out, lend them money and not keep track of what he was owed.

When he retired, he had hardly any savings. He and Danny’s mother lived off Social Security.

Danny had no one to borrow the money from. At least, no family or friends.

He tried to remember why he was so uncomfortable about accepting a loan from Thomas Galvin for the Italy trip. Pride? That didn’t seem like such a compelling reason anymore. He imagined a balance scale with his pride on one side-looking like some raw, shapeless, pulsing, purplish internal organ-and Abby’s happiness on the other; he imagined Abby as a chubby, laughing baby wearing only a diaper. The chubby baby easily outweighed the pulsing blob. What had he been thinking? If he had jewelry to pawn, or anything of value to sell, he’d do it in a split second. If he knew a Vinny Icepick, he’d borrow sixteen large.

He had to find some money somewhere, somehow… and soon.

8

The town of Weston, ten miles west of Boston, was where a lot of the really rich Bostonians lived. Some of the houses out there were true McMansions, but the biggest ones were hidden from view by great swaths of forest, marked by nothing more than a street sign or a mailbox.

Danny drove past the entrance to Galvin’s property three times without seeing it. There were no lights or stone columns or pillars or plaque. Just a simple aluminum mailbox with a number painted on it, not particularly large.

He turned down an unmarked road and followed its winding path through the woods until a set of tall wrought-iron gates, filigreed with ornate scrollwork and attached to tall stone columns, appeared in a clearing. He came to a stop. The gates were closed. Mounted to a column were a call box and a CCTV camera.

He cranked down the car window and pressed the CALL button. After a few seconds, a woman’s voice crackled over the intercom, “Please come in.”

The gates swung inward as low lights came on, illuminating another stretch of driveway, here paved with cut stone. The road curved gracefully around until suddenly an immense house loomed into view, like a castle appearing out of the mist.

It was Georgian, built of fieldstone with a slate roof. Its façade was perfectly illuminated by floodlights on the ground. It had graceful lines and was three stories high and almost half as long as Danny’s block on Marlborough Street. Danny had been expecting a gaudy McMansion. But Galvin’s house, though vast, was actually beautiful.

Off to one side was a full basketball court. Danny remembered clearly the day his father had installed an in-ground basketball hoop on a pole next to the blacktop of their driveway. How all the neighbor kids thought that was as cool as it got and wanted to use it at all times of day.

In front of the house was a circular drive. He pulled around, got out, slammed the door. Its rusty hinges squeaked.

The front door came open. It was a huge slab of ancient-looking oak that looked like it came from a castle in Spain. Galvin, in suit and tie, stood there with his wife. She was dazzling. She had glossy straight black hair and big brown eyes and a radiant smile and reminded him of Penélope Cruz, only a few years older. She was small and slim and wore a clingy, deep blue sheath that showed off a long waist and the swell of a voluptuous bosom. She didn’t look old enough to have a kid who’d graduated from college.

Behind them, a couple of little rat-dogs skittered and yapped. They were tiny, hairless, and dark gray with outsize ears like a bat’s. “Loco! Torito! Quiet!” the woman said. “I’m so sorry. They think they’re protecting us, they’re keeping us safe. I’m Celina.”

Danny had expected a servant to open the door, a butler in livery. Not the hosts themselves. He introduced himself and handed her a bottle of wine in a metallic-looking red Mylar gift bag that someone had left in his apartment a couple of years ago when he still had people over for dinner.

Celina pulled the wine out of its bag and admired it as if it were a rare and expensive Bordeaux instead of an $8.99 special from the bargain bin at Trader Joe’s. At least he’d sprung for the one with the fancy label instead of the Two-Buck Chuck.

“Châteauneuf-du-Pape!” Tom said. “Nice!” He nodded and gave Danny a sly smile. “That’s red, right?”

“Not sure,” Danny said, smiling back.

“Like I can tell Château Whatever from Welch’s grape juice, right?” Galvin said. “But I can tell the fancy kind, because they’re in French.” He put a hand on Danny’s shoulder, guiding him in, while Celina took his coat.

“Your daughter is in the kitchen, helping cook,” Celina said.

“She knows how to do that?”

“Oh, Abby is a fantastic helper,” Celina said, half scolding. “She does everything. She’s like I have another daughter. I’m sorry, but you can’t have her back.” Her smile was dazzling. “We’re keeping her.”

“We do have an attractive long-term leasing plan,” Danny said.

“Lina’s always wanted another daughter,” Tom said. “After two sons, she feels she’s earned it.”

Celina gave him a playful swat.

“No problem getting here?” Tom said.

“Actually, I think I might have made a couple of wrong turns on your driveway,” Danny said. “Thank God for GPS.” The Accord didn’t actually have a nav system, but whatever.

Galvin cracked up. “Come say hi to the girls.” The rat-dogs yapped and pranced alongside as they headed to the kitchen.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen dogs like that before,” Danny said. “What’s the breed?”

“Xoloitzcuintli,” Celina said.

“I’m sorry, what?” All he could make out was something that sounded like show and maybe queen.

“Xolo,” she said slowly. She pronounced it like show-low. “They’re extremely rare. Mexican hairless. The ancient Aztecs thought they had magical healing powers.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“They also ate them,” her husband said.

“That is not true,” Celina said sharply. “Why do you always say this?”

“It’s true,” Galvin said. “There are these Spanish accounts of huge banquets with platters heaping with Xoloitzcuintlis. I read it somewhere.”

“Oh,” she said. She sniffed. “Will you excuse me? I think they burn the garlic.” She hurried down the hall.

“Probably tasted like chicken,” Danny said.

Galvin roared with laughter. “I’m going to do you a big favor and not tell Lina you said that.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Hey, you didn’t need to bring wine.”

Danny shrugged. “Not a problem.”

In a low, confiding voice, Galvin said, “Man, I love Trader Joe’s. Ever try the Two-Buck Chuck? Not bad at all.”

9

Busted.

Danny smiled, but winced inwardly.

It wasn’t as if he’d tried to pass off a nine-dollar bottle of wine as a two-hundred-dollar Bordeaux, but now it looked like he’d been somehow sneaky about it. Anyway, how the hell did Galvin know about Trader Joe’s? No way did a man who had his own home basketball court buy two-dollar bottles of wine.

But maybe that was the point. Maybe Galvin wanted to show he was just a regular guy.

Or maybe he was just ribbing Danny, the way guys do with their buddies.

In any case, Galvin obviously didn’t miss a trick.

“I figure our girls are spending all this time together, we ought to get to know each other,” he said.

Somewhere deep within the house, someone was practicing a classical piano piece, imperfectly but well. He heard Abby’s laugh, smelled garlic and maybe fried chicken.

“Love your house,” Danny said. “The layout is perfect.”

“That’s Celina. She worked with the architect. Made all the decisions. I didn’t do squat.”

Yeah, right, Danny thought. All you had to do was shell out fifty million bucks for it.

“Hey, so Abby says you guys live right in the city.”

“Yep.”

“You’re lucky, man. Back Bay, huh? I’ve always wanted to live there. Walk to work. All that scenery. The college girls walking around in shorts.”

“It’s not bad.”

“Celina likes the whole suburban thing. I just do what I’m told.” He shrugged broadly.

Their kitchen was magnificent, bigger than any restaurant kitchen he’d seen. Copper pots hung from racks over two large islands topped with black stone. There were several wall ovens, and an enormous, gleaming burgundy commercial gas range with copper trim, looking like an antique steam engine. Danny’s father had built a house in Wellfleet for a software magnate who’d specified this same La Cornue range.

The vaulted ceiling was crisscrossed with hand-hewn beams that could have come from a medieval castle. The floor, ancient-looking limestone scarred and worn to a velvety patina, might have been salvaged from the same castle.

Jenna stood over a giant round skillet that was sputtering and smoking.

“¡Ay, Dios mío!” Celina said, rushing over to her daughter. “Don’t burn the chicken, mija! Just brown it.” The dogs scrabbled around the kitchen, yapping hysterically.

“I’m not burning it!” Jenna protested.

“Hey, Daddy,” Abby said. Her smile faded a bit when she saw him. She avoided his eyes. She stood at one of the islands, mashing something in a bowl. Obviously, she was still upset or angry or both, still worrying about whether she’d have to leave school. She didn’t believe her father had things under control, and he couldn’t blame her.

“Hey, baby.” Danny entered the kitchen, gave Abby a hug. “What’re you making?”

“Guacamole. Nice kitchen, huh?”

If she intended a dig at their own, minuscule kitchen, he chose to ignore it. “Amazing.” Bravo could film Top Chef here with room for a studio audience. “Make sure and mash those lumps out, huh?”

“No, Celina says it’s not supposed to look like you used a blender.”

Celina quickly came over, placing her hands on Abby’s shoulders from behind. “In Mexico we make our guacamole always with little chunks in, just like she’s doing.” Danny could smell her perfume, something spicy and exotic. “That’s perfect, mi hija. Ooh, I want to keep this girl! Can we have her?”

The second time it wasn’t quite so funny, Danny thought.

Furtively, Danny ran a hand along the edge of the island. This wasn’t granite. Its surface had the delicate crazing pattern of Pyrolave, glazed lava stone, ridiculously expensive. The software magnate in Wellfleet had ordered Pyrolave. Galvin’s stone fabricator had done an awfully slick job, because you couldn’t see a seam anywhere. Then he realized there was no seam because it was one huge slab. Holy crap, what that must have cost.

And that crazy little idea that had been tickling the back of his mind, drifting like tumbleweed way back there, suddenly lodged itself front and center.

He thought: The guy probably spends sixteen thousand bucks a month on ties.

I already owe him five thousand. What’s sixteen thousand more, really?

Seriously. Why not?

What was there to lose?

He looked up and caught Galvin watching him. Their eyes locked. Galvin smiled. Danny smiled uncomfortably back.

“Hey, were you feeling up my countertop?”

Embarrassed, Danny said, “I didn’t know lava stone came that thick.”

“You just do a renovation or something?”

“My dad was a contractor. I used to work for him.”

“Yeah? My dad was a plumber.”

“In Southie?”

“How’d you know?”

“I used to see those trucks around. Galvin Brothers Plumbing, right? The green shamrock?”

“See, I knew I liked this guy,” Galvin said.

10

The two Galvin sons appeared from wherever they’d been hiding to join the family at dinner. Both of them were tall and rangy and good-looking: dark-haired and light-eyed, heavy brows and strong jaws. Brendan, the younger one, wore a Boston College sweatshirt, Old Navy sweatpants, and flip-flops. Ryan wore scruffy jeans and a Ron Jon Surf Shop T-shirt and was barefoot. He looked almost like Brendan’s fraternal twin, only he was somehow more finished, more refined, his jawline sharper and his face more angular. Apart from the eyes, they both looked a lot more like their mother than their father.

“Brendan comes home once in a while to get a decent meal,” Galvin said. He’d removed his jacket and wore gold suspenders over his white shirt. He’d loosened his tie. “Ryan, what’s your excuse? Laundry piling up?”

“Very funny,” Ryan said.

“I told him he can bring home all the dirty clothes he wants,” said Celina, “but Manuela’s not going to do it for him. He can do his own laundry. We’re not a hotel.” She clapped her hands together briskly in front of her a few times to emphasize her point.

Brendan was a sophomore at BC, and Ryan had graduated the year before and was doing some sort of scut work at a TV station. It sounded to Danny like he was supporting himself. His father, the gazillionaire, wasn’t paying the rent. That was interesting.

Abby seemed to fit right in, as if she were the Galvins’ second daughter. She and Jenna whispered about something, and Abby giggled. Their plates were piled high with chicken and rice and beans, the most delicious arroz con pollo Danny had ever tasted.

“So you’re a writer, huh?” Galvin said.

“Yup.”

“Very cool.” Galvin sat at one end of the long oak farm table in the kitchen, his wife at the other. The sons sat across from the two girls. They shifted in their chairs and feigned interest. The dogs slept under the table.

“Well, I don’t know about cool, but… it’s a job.”

“You write under your own name, or do you have a pen name?”

“Under my name. Daniel Goodman.” Danny got asked that a lot. It was a polite way of saying I’ve never heard of you.

“I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I can never find the time. I got stories to tell. Maybe when I retire.”

Danny was always amused when people told him they’d love to write if only they had the time. As if the only thing that held them back from a successful writing career was a lack of leisure.

“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just lucky enough to have all this free time on my hands,” he said.

Galvin chuckled. “Ya got me there. So, you write novels or what?”

“Nonfiction.” He clarified: “Biography.”

Galvin held up the bottle of wine Danny had brought and waggled it. “No, thanks,” Danny said. Galvin topped off his own glass.

“Anything I’ve read?” Galvin said.

“The Kennedys of Boston.”

“Huh. That sounds familiar. About Jack Kennedy and his family?”

“More about Jack Kennedy’s grandfather, ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, who used to be mayor of Boston a hundred years ago. The founder of the Kennedy dynasty. A colorful character.”

“Colorful usually means corrupt,” Galvin pointed out.

Danny smiled. “Exactly. Corrupt yet beloved.”

“Working on one now?”

“Always.”

“What’s it about?”

Danny hesitated. The phrase robber baron might not sound so good to Galvin’s ears. Especially if Danny were about to ask him for a loan. “A biography of a nineteenth-century businessman.”

“Yeah? When can I get my copy?”

“Mom, will you tell Brendan to give me back my shoe?” Jenna said.

“Give your sister her shoe,” Celina said.

“I don’t have it,” Brendan said, poker-faced.

“He, like, took it off with his feet,” Jenna said. “He’s like a monkey.”

“All of you, ya basta!” Celina said. “Are you six year old?”

Danny was grateful for the interruption, but Galvin didn’t give up: “When’s your new book go on sale? Maybe I’ll pick up a copy.”

“You’ll have to wait a while,” Danny said. “I’m still writing it.”

“Going well?”

“A little slow, frankly. Life gets in the way sometimes.”

“You ever get writer’s block?” asked Ryan, the older son.

“Nope. It’s a job like any other. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, right?”

“I like that,” Galvin said. “You hear that, kids? That’s called a work ethic. No one tells him to work. He just sits down every day and makes himself write, whether he likes it or not.”

Danny nodded uneasily.

A sudden blast of music came from somewhere. Danny recognized the opening guitar riff from “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, rendered tinnily as a ringtone. Galvin got up and took a BlackBerry out of the breast pocket of his suit coat hanging on a peg. He glanced at the number, answered it. “I’m at dinner,” he said abruptly. A long pause. “It’s dinnertime. I’m having dinner with my family.” Another pause, then he snapped: “I said… I can’t.”

Danny had the feeling he’d just seen a side of Galvin he didn’t like to show.

Galvin jabbed at the BlackBerry to end the call. “Man oh man, ever have one of those days when it feels like everyone wants something from you?”

Danny swallowed hard. “All the time.”

Maybe asking him for a loan wasn’t such a good idea after all.

“How’s the job search going, Bren?”

Brendan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Let me know if I can make some calls for you.”

“It’s okay.”

“You don’t want to spend the summer on the beach in Nantucket again, do you?” his father said, a glint in his eye. “Be one of those losers in wet suits who spend all their time surfing?”

“I’m trying,” Brendan said sullenly.

“Aw, he’s in college, Tommy,” Celina said. “He can play. It’s okay for him to get a job after college.”

“What’s wrong with spending the summer on the beach in Nantucket?” asked Jenna, indignant. “Why does he have to get a job?”

“That’s right,” said Celina, “why?”

Galvin grinned. “Now the girls are ganging up on me. Help me out here, Danny. Give me some cover.”

Danny shook his head, unwilling to be lured into a family tiff. “Sorry, man, you’re on your own.”

“Danny, you guys go to the Cape for the summer, right?” said Galvin. “How long have you had a house in Wellfleet?”

“Wellfleet?” Danny didn’t remember telling Galvin that his parents lived in Wellfleet, that he’d grown up there. And he definitely hadn’t said anything about summers.

“Your summer place. Abby told us all about it.”

“Summer place in Wellfleet?” he said sardonically. “Yeah, I wish-”

Then he caught a glimpse of Abby twisting uncomfortably and blushing.

He realized she’d been trying to impress the Galvins by turning her grandparents’ modest tract house in Wellfleet into something it wasn’t, the place where she “summered” every year.

And then he quickly finished the sentence: “-wish it didn’t take so long to get there.”

“Cape traffic’s brutal on the weekends,” Galvin agreed.

But Danny could see the amused detachment in his eyes and knew that Galvin had picked up on his slip.

Galvin didn’t miss a thing.

After dinner, Galvin excused himself to take another call in his study. There was no kitchen help in sight. Danny wondered whether this was the maid’s night off or something. Then Abby and Jenna tried to teach Brendan some kind of complicated dance as a song came blasting over speakers concealed throughout the kitchen, something about “party rock” being “in the house tonight.”

Brendan and the two girls hopped up and down, running in place, pivoting from one side to another, dipping low and then high. They shuffled and slid and moonwalked. Brendan scooped up one of the dogs and tried to manipulate its paws around to simulate dancing, but it struggled and growled menacingly, and Abby and Jenna dissolved in a fit of laughter.

She seemed genuinely happy here. Danny finally understood why she was so drawn to the Galvins. It wasn’t their wealth. It was the big and warm, chaotic and welcoming Galvin clan that she longed to be part of.

She wanted to be a member of a family.

Galvin returned to the kitchen after a few minutes. He stood next to Danny for a moment, watching the kids dance.

“Cute, huh?”

Danny nodded.

“She’s such a good kid, your daughter. She brings out something in Jenna we haven’t seen before. In years, anyway.”

“Hmm,” Danny said and nodded again. “They both seem happy.”

“That’s what I mean. Hey, how about we step away? Feel like a single malt?”

Danny hesitated for a moment-he’d already had a glass of bad red wine and had to drive home on the turnpike-but before he could reply, Galvin said, “I need to ask you a favor.”

11

Tom Galvin poured them each a few fingers of whiskey from a bottle whose label read THE MACALLAN 1939. He stood at a wet bar in his study. The walls were lined with leather-bound volumes that were probably purchased by the yard and had never been read. Everything smelled like cigar smoke.

“Not everyone gets the good stuff, you know.”

A quiet knock at the door. They both turned. It was Esteban, the driver. Danny realized he’d never heard him speak.

“Eh, Mr. Galvin, will I be driving your guests home?” Esteban’s voice was soft, his speech halting. He was unusually tall and broad, but his black suit fitted him perfectly. He had a large head, pockmarks on his high cheeks, and Bambi eyes. A large mole on the right side of his neck in the shape of Australia. A strange-looking fellow, neither ugly nor attractive, but somehow gentle and kindly seeming.

“Go to bed, mi amigo.”

“Thank you, sir.” Esteban made a slight bow, more a nod of the head, and was gone.

Galvin finished pouring and handed Danny a cut-glass tumbler. They clinked glasses. “Here’s to our wives and girlfriends,” he said. “May they never meet.”

Danny smiled and nodded. In the back of his mind he wondered what “favor” Galvin could possibly want from him.

“Your daughter is Jenna’s only friend, you know,” Galvin said.

“I know they’re close.”

“She’s such a good influence on Jenna. I mean, Jenna’s actually doing the assigned reading for school without bitching and moaning about it. Like, she actually read To Kill a Mockingbird, and we didn’t have to nag her once.”

“I read it out loud to Abby when she was probably too young for it, but… yeah, she’s a reader. Nice to know they talk about books, not just hip-hop or dubstep or whatever.”

“It’s like… if you surround yourself with good people, it makes you a better person. Brings out the best in you. Surround yourself with bad people, it brings out your worst. Every other school she’s gone to, last couple of years, she always seemed to fall in with the druggy, no-good kids. Bad influence. But Abby brings out the best in her. You have no idea how amazing that is.” Galvin’s eyes shone, as if they might be moist.

“That’s great,” Danny said, not knowing what else to say, surprised by the unexpected intimacy of the moment.

“You’re doing something right, brother.”

“Me? Nah, I just try not to get in her way too much. I don’t know what I’m doing. I screw up all the time.”

Galvin smiled. “So you’re raising Abby yourself? How the hell do you do it?”

“Hmm,” Danny said, half smiling, scratching the side of his face. He looked up and said musingly, “You know those old disaster movies when the airline pilot has a heart attack and the flight attendant has to fly the plane?”

He smiled. “Karen Black in Airport 1975? Or maybe it was Airplane! and it was Julie something…”

Danny smiled back. “Exactly. Whatever. You know, suddenly I’m supposed to know how to fly this thing? But you don’t have a choice.”

Galvin shook his head. “Man, I gotta hand it to you. If it wasn’t for Celina, I can’t even imagine…”

He beckoned Danny over to a couple of overstuffed leather chairs in front of a cluttered antique desk, where they sat. From a low table next to his chair, he lifted a glossy black lacquer box with gold lettering on top that said COHIBA BEHIKE. He lifted the lid and pulled out a couple of cigars, fat as sausages, and offered one to Danny.

Danny nodded, and the solemn ritual began. Galvin handed him a cigar cutter. Danny snipped the end of his cigar, then handed the cutter back. Galvin lit his cigar with a lighter whose hard blue flame looked like it could cut steel. He took a few puffs, and handed the lighter to Danny.

They smoked silently for a minute or so. Danny remembered why he never liked cigars. He thought about complimenting Galvin on the cigar. But what could he say, that it made him only mildly nauseated? Instead, he pointed his cigar at a wooden presentation case on the desk. Seated in a bed of red velvet flocking was a bronze medal that said COLLEGIUM BOSTONIENSE.

“You’re a distinguished alum of BC?”

He nodded. “President’s Medal for Giving a Shitload of Money.”

Danny laughed. Galvin was self-effacing about it, but he still kept the medal on display.

“Wanna know something?” Galvin finally said, contemplative. “I’m just a lucky son of a bitch. I know that sounds like some kind of bullshit false modesty, but believe me.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Ever drive somewhere and you’re pressed for time, but you just hit all the green lights, one after another? You know, boom boom boom-you just hit ’em all right? You just luck out?”

Danny nodded.

“Well, that’s me. God’s honest truth. Hand to heart.” He placed a palm over his heart. “Look up right place, right time in the dictionary, you’re gonna see my picture.”

“I doubt that, but… okay.”

“Now, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. But listen to me when I tell you: I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor.”

“Let me guess which one’s better.”

“Not gonna argue with you there,” he said with a grin. He pulled something out of his inside breast pocket and handed it to Danny: a folded slip of paper.

“Here’s the favor,” Galvin said. “Take this without giving me a hard time.”

It was a check for fifty thousand dollars, written on Galvin’s personal account at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

Danny looked up. “What’s this?”

“A year’s tuition at that damned overpriced girls’ school, plus some breathing room.”

“What-what are you…?” Danny was momentarily at a loss for words.

“Lyman is Jenna’s fourth school in three years. We’ve pulled her out of Winsor and Milton and BB &N and-jeez Louise, I can’t keep ’em straight. She always falls in with a bad crowd. Or they all think she’s stuck-up… The word gets out that her daddy has some money, and the kids go all Mean Girls on her. I don’t get it. Now, finally, she has a close friend who’s a really good person, and I don’t want anything to screw that up.”

“But… but what made you… how do you know…?”

“I have my sources.”

Danny’s head was spinning. A few minutes ago he was weighing whether to ask Galvin for a fraction of this, and now… Abby must have said something to Jenna; that had to be what happened. “I can’t possibly accept this. I mean… and anyway, this is way more than I need.”

“So don’t spend it all.”

“I don’t know when I can pay you back. I mean, I have some money coming from my publisher… at some point, but I-”

“Pay when you can.”

“I-I don’t know, I’m uncomfortable about this.” Not so uncomfortable, of course, that he’d turn it away. But it seemed like the right thing to say. He recalled how upset Abby looked earlier, in the kitchen. How she’d cried when she’d opened the letter from Lyman telling her she’d have to leave school.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t get all, like, WASPy and uptight on me. You and me, we’re not like that. Believe me, I deal with guys like that all the time. I could buy and sell most of these snotty a-holes in the Financial District, but God forbid they should let me into the country club, right?”

Danny smiled and nodded. He assumed Galvin was talking about an exclusive place actually called The Country Club, outside of Boston. It sounded like he’d applied and been turned away, or been blackballed or something.

Danny nodded. “When someone told Mark Twain that Andrew Carnegie’s money was tainted, he said, it sure is-’tain’t yours and ’tain’t mine.”

Galvin guffawed. “There you go. Yeah, we come from the same place, you and me. My dad busted his butt to raise ten children. Your dad was a contractor. Neither one of us was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“This is incredibly generous of you.”

“Way I see it, this fifty thousand bucks won’t even fill the fuel tanks of my boat, okay? If Abby leaves Lyman, I really don’t know what the hell Jenna’s gonna do. So if you don’t think I’d spend fifty thousand dollars to ensure my daughter’s happiness, well, you don’t know me.” His stare burned into Danny’s eyes. He looked almost angry. His tone was grave. “I would consider it an honor if you would accept this.”

Danny studied the pale blue check. Tears welled up in his eyes, which usually only happened when he remembered Sarah’s last days. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

His cheeks were burning. “Do you think you could wire it instead?”

12

The fifty thousand dollars hit Danny’s bank account by noon the next day.

He checked the balance online. Refreshed his browser a few times. He wanted to make sure it was really there. That it wasn’t an illusion. It was there, and it stayed there.

It was real. Tom Galvin was as good as his word.

Fifty thousand dollars. A lot of money. Not enough to pay off everything he owed, certainly. That would be like trying to put out a house fire with a glass of water. But it would quench enough of the fire to clear a path out of the house, to let him escape the burning wreckage.

Most important, to protect Abby.

He called the Lyman Academy and asked to speak to the bursar, Leah Winokur. The woman whose calls he’d been avoiding for weeks.

She sounded surprised to hear his voice, and not pleased. He told her he was going to drop off a check when he picked Abby up in a few hours.

Haltingly, Leah Winokur replied, “I’m sorry, but today’s the deadline. Five o’clock today.”

“And I’ll see you at two thirty.”

“I’m afraid that’s going to be too late, Mr. Goodman. Technically, the funds have to be received in the school’s bank account by five o’clock today. A personal check won’t clear in time. Unless it’s a cashier’s check, or-”

“I’ll wire it to you right now,” he said. “Will that do?”

On the way home from school, he said, “Abby, I wanted to set your mind at ease. I got things straightened out with the bursar’s office.”

She let out a breath. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh, thank you, Daddy. Oh my God. Thank God.”

No, thank Galvin, he thought but didn’t say.

“I love you, Daddy,” she said in a small voice, barely audible.

“I love you, Boogie.”

At home, Abby disappeared into her room to do homework, while he sat at his laptop and tried to work on the book. Distracted, he Googled the name of the cigar Galvin and he had smoked in his study. A limited edition Cohiba Behike from Cuba. Maybe he’d buy Galvin a box as a thank-you gift.

He did a double take. Only four thousand of these particular cigars had been produced.

They cost over four hundred dollars each.

He had smoked a cigar that cost four hundred dollars, and he didn’t even like it.

Then he Googled the single malt Galvin had poured, the 1939 Macallan 40 Year Old. And did another double take.

Over ten thousand dollars per bottle.

Abby emerged from her bedroom around seven. “What’s for supper?” she said.

“How’s pasta?”

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

The phone rang, and Abby picked it up.

“Daddy, it’s for you.” She covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “Someone from something to do with… stamps?”

He took the phone. “Yes?”

“Is this Daniel Goodman?” A man’s voice, cordial and professional.

“Who’s this?”

“Mr. Goodman, my name is Glenn Yeager. I’m with the United States Postal Service in Boston.”

“Um… yes?” he said warily. “What’s this about?”

The man laughed. “I’m with the postmaster general’s office, and one of my responsibilities is administering something called the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee. You may have heard of it?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Well, I’ll keep this brief. The committee meets four times a year to decide what goes on postage stamps.”

“There’s a committee for that?”

“Quite an illustrious committee, in fact. It’s made up of fifteen prominent citizens-artists, musicians, writers, corporate leaders, historians. Public figures. The meetings are held in Washington, and of course all your expenses are covered. And there’s a generous per diem for expenses.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What does this have to do with me?”

“Well, Mr. Goodman, Doris Kearns Goodwin had to drop out at the last minute-a tight book deadline, I think it was-and your name came up. We wanted a writer with expertise in American history.”

“You’re kidding.”

“The reason I’m calling at this late hour is that we need to fill this vacancy immediately. We were wondering whether you might be able to come by our offices in Boston tomorrow morning.”

“I-tomorrow?” Danny paused. “Sure, that’s fine. What time?”

“Say, eleven. And it won’t take more than half an hour. Just some routine questions for the press release and forms and what have you. I know this is terribly last-minute, but if it’s at all possible…”

“Sure,” Danny said. “No problem.”

“Wonderful,” Mr. Yeager said. “We’re all excited to meet you. I’m a big fan of your Kennedy book, by the way.”

“So you’re the one,” Danny said, one of his standard jokes.

Mr. Yeager chuckled, and gave directions. “One last thing,” he said. “I need to ask you to keep all this confidential until the official announcement. The government, you know.”

When he hung up, Abby said, “What was that all about?”

“Some-government committee,” he said. “They want my input on who gets put on postage stamps.” He shrugged.

Maybe the old saying was right: Good news really did come in bunches.

When it rains, it pours.

13

The next morning, Danny wrote more than he had in a year. He was on fire. His fingers flew at the keyboard, the sentences spewing out of him like tape out of one of those old stock tickers. By the time he stopped, at a few minutes after noon, he’d written eighteen pages.

It was that drink with Galvin that did it.

The way Galvin had talked about how those snooty blue-blood types had looked down on his money. Galvin, the plumber’s son who’d made a fortune, thought of himself as an outsider and always would.

Something had flicked a switch in his brain, because he finally understood Jay Gould. The problem had been that he didn’t like his subject. Because he didn’t quite understand him. But Gould was no worse, really, than any of the other business titans of his time. He gave to charity, gave money to his employees and to all sorts of people in need. He just didn’t publicize it. Jay Gould’s career was your classic rags-to-riches story. He was born on a farm in upstate New York and went to New York City with five dollars in his pocket. After he hit it big, the newspapers of the time trashed him, and he didn’t bother to defend himself. He let his enemies write his biography. That was his strategic blunder.

Buzzing with satisfaction, Danny called a taxi and got a ride to downtown Boston, to the big ugly building called One Center Plaza, where the stamp commission had its offices, along with a bunch of other government agencies. He got there fifteen minutes early. He had his laptop with him in a shoulder bag, in case he needed to do some work.

The offices were on the second floor. There was no sign on the door, just a number: 322. The gray wall-to-wall carpeting was soiled, a large blob of a stain at the threshold of the office door.

A pretty young African American secretary was sitting at a cheap-looking government-issue L-shaped mahogany-laminate reception desk. She smiled and held up an index finger to signal she’d be with him shortly. After a minute or so she said, “I’m sorry, Mr… Goodman, right?”

He nodded, smiled.

“Would you like to have a seat? I’ll let them know you’re here.”

He sat in one of a row of chairs against one wall under the DEA seal, which showed a stylized eagle’s head in gold on black. Most Wanted posters lined the walls, offering MONETARY AWARDS for MAJOR TRAFFICKERS.

About two minutes later, she said, “He’ll be right out.”

The door to the inner offices opened and a squat, slump-shouldered man in an ill-fitting navy suit emerged. He had a large bald head a size too big for his body, almost no neck, and a fringe of wispy gray hair that reached his collar. With his thin downturned mouth, he vaguely resembled a frog. He had a bristly mustache and a face that bore the scars of serious teenage acne. He wore steel-rimmed bifocals and looked to be around fifty.

“Mr. Goodman, thank you for coming,” the man said. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Special Agent Glenn Yeager.”

Danny rose slowly, and they shook hands. “Did you say ‘Special Agent’…?”

“Come on in. We’ll have a talk and I’ll explain. This shouldn’t take long at all,” the man called Yeager said, holding the door open for Danny.

They went down a long corridor. Yeager seemed to have a slight limp. The walls were curved, following the curve of the building’s façade, and painted government-agency white. The floor was covered in ugly gray indoor-outdoor carpeting.

Yeager stopped at the first open door. A man was sitting at a round conference table in a small windowless room, talking on the phone, papers and folders spread out in front of him. He put down the phone’s handset when he saw the men, and got to his feet.

“Mr. Goodman, this is Special Agent Philip Slocum.”

Slocum was slim and had shoe-polish-black hair parted on one side and an athlete’s wiry build. He was whippetlike. His face was sharp and inquisitive, foxlike, lean and lined, with a heavy five-o’clock shadow. He looked coiled, compact and restless. Instead of offering his hand, he showed Danny a black leather badge holder.

The badge was gold-colored metal. The words DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE over an eagle and, below it, the words US DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION and SPECIAL AGENT and a number.

“You guys are DEA?” Danny said. “Now I’m totally confused. What’s this got to do with postage stamps?”

“I trust you haven’t mentioned this meeting to anyone,” said Yeager. He spoke in a precise, almost scholarly tone you wouldn’t expect to emanate from that froglike mouth. He sat at the round table, and beckoned Danny to do the same.

Danny remained standing and gave a barely perceptible nod. “What’s going on?”

“It’s for your own protection.”

“My protection? The citizens’ stamp committee-”

“Was a pretext to get you in here, Mr. Goodman,” said Yeager. He glanced at his colleague, who slid a sheet of paper across the table to Danny.

“Do you know what this is?” Yeager said. He seemed to be the one in charge.

The paper was covered with columns of figures. At first glance it meant nothing. When he looked closer, he saw his name and his bank’s name and his checking account number.

Then: WIRE IN and a series of numbers and the words T. X. GALVIN and more numbers and $50,000.00.

“Is that your bank account?” Yeager said.

“Yes.”

“This record is accurate? Thomas Galvin paid you fifty thousand dollars?”

“He didn’t ‘pay’ me anything. It’s a loan. Anyway, what the hell kind of invasion of privacy-?”

“Do you have paperwork for this ‘loan’?”

“Paperwork? A guy lends a friend some cash, he doesn’t make you go to a notary.”

“Thomas Galvin gave you fifty thousand dollars without any paperwork?”

“He’s a friend. He trusts me.”

“I’ll bet he does,” the other one, Slocum, said. His raspy tenor had the harsh sound of metal grinding against metal. His right leg vibrated, pistoned.

“You mind telling me what this is all about?”

“Thomas Galvin is the target of a DEA investigation.”

“Drugs? You seriously think…? He’s an Irish Catholic guy from Southie, for Christ’s sake.”

“Ever hear of the Sinaloa cartel?” said Yeager.

“Mexican drug ring? What about it?”

“We have reason to believe that Thomas Galvin is working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel.”

Danny stared in disbelief. Then he erupted in laughter. “Ah, now I get it. The Mexican wife. Sure. He’s married to a Mexican woman, so he must be connected to a drug cartel. Because, of course, all Mexicans work for the drug cartels, right?”

“Celina Galvin’s father was Humberto Parra Fernández y Guerrero,” Yeager said.

“Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“The former governor of Michoacán, one of the Mexican states, and later on a major player in the narcotics trade.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. This is insane. Galvin’s an Irish guy from Southie. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d get involved in the drug business. Not at all.”

“And you know this… how?”

Danny paused for a long moment. “He just doesn’t seem the type.”

Yeager gave him a long stare. “Neither do you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Please sit down, Mr. Goodman.”

Danny’s heart was beating crazily, though he wasn’t sure whether out of panic or out of anger. He stood with his arms loosely folded. “What’s this all about?”

“You are directly and financially linked to the international narcotics trade.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Danny.

“That money links you,” Slocum said. “You are now officially a coconspirator.”

“Hold on a second,” Danny said, raising his voice. “Tom Galvin was nice enough to lend me money for my daughter’s goddamned private-school tuition!” He paused, looked at each agent one at a time, then went on more quietly. “Two hours after I received the money from Galvin, I wired sixteen thousand dollars to the Lyman Academy. So maybe you can tell me how that fits into your theory.”

“It makes no difference what you did with the funds,” Slocum said. “I don’t care if you gave it all to an orphanage in Rwanda. You received a wire transfer of dirty money, which means you’re implicated.”

“Yeah?” said Danny. “And how was I supposed to know that?”

“Look up ‘willful blindness’ or ‘conscious avoidance,’” Yeager said. “The court assumes you didn’t ask any questions because you didn’t want to know where Galvin’s money came from. You deliberately closed your eyes to the crime.”

“Which means,” Slocum said, “you can be prosecuted even if you claim you didn’t know a thing.”

Danny swallowed hard. The room seemed to tilt one way, then the other. “Prosecuted? For what? For innocently accepting-”

“Please listen closely,” said Yeager. “We are a phone call away from making an appointment with the US Attorney. Once that happens, the toothpaste’s out of the tube.”

“What the hell is this?” Danny’s mouth had gone dry. He was having difficulty getting the words out.

Slocum gave a small, nasty smile. “This is conspiracy to commit money laundering, mail and wire fraud, and bank fraud. And that’s just for starters. You’re looking at thirty to forty years in prison.”

“That’s federal time,” said Yeager. “Know what that means? No parole.”

“Then again,” said Slocum, “I don’t think you’d last very long in prison. Our Mexican friends are going to worry about how much you know, whether you’re going to start cooperating. They have guys in our prisons everywhere. We can’t protect you.”

“You don’t seriously think you can prosecute me on these bogus, trumped-up charges, do you?” said Danny.

“I like our odds,” said Yeager.

Slocum shrugged. “Even if these charges don’t hold up in court? You really want to spend the next five years of your life fighting the system? We’re the government. We’ve got hot-and-cold running lawyers and all the time in the world. You, on the other hand? You hire a half-decent lawyer to try to get you out of this, your legal bills could reach a couple million dollars by the time all’s said and done. Doesn’t look like you have that kind of money in the bank.”

“And I wouldn’t count on your friend Galvin to bankroll your defense,” said Yeager.

“Not once we seize his assets,” said Slocum. “And yours. Your condo, your crappy car, and that thirty-two K in retirement money? Gone. Poof.”

“Sure, in the end, you might be able to persuade a judge and jury to acquit you,” Yeager said. “Though I wouldn’t want to bet on it, since the Department of Justice rarely loses a case. In the meantime, you and your family will be dragged through the gutter. Good luck trying to get your good name back. Your poor daughter-Abigail, right?-having to live under that shadow? Terrible thing to do to a kid.”

Dazed, his head reeling, Danny sank down into a chair. “What the hell do you want?” he said.

14

“Your help, that’s all. We just want your cooperation,” Yeager said.

“On what?” Danny said.

“Access to Galvin. You seem to be one of the few people he spends time with.”

“I barely know the guy,” Danny said. “Before last night, I don’t think I’d said ten words to him.”

“Yeah?” said Slocum. “What happened to ‘he’s a friend, he trusts me’?”

“Your daughter certainly spends a lot of time with his daughter,” said Yeager.

“Keep my daughter out of this.”

“I wish we could. But if you refuse to cooperate, we’ll have no choice.”

Danny felt nauseated. “Meaning what? What kind of cooperation are you talking about?”

Yeager looked like he was about to reply, but then he fell silent. He slid a piece of paper across the table toward Danny.

Then Slocum said, “As soon as you sign the cooperation agreement, we’ll get into the weeds.”

Danny scanned it quickly. It said Confidential Source Agreement and DEA form 473.

It felt almost unreal, as if he’d stepped out of his ordinary life and into another world. Confidential source. The Drug Enforcement Administration.

It was sickening.

He tried to steel himself, to gather the resources necessary to fight back. “What do I get if I sign this?”

Yeager said slowly, “A pass on prosecution. A chance for a happy ending.”

Danny’s heart thudded and he felt acid rising in his gullet. Was there actually a way out of this nightmare? “But… what do you want me to do?”

Yeager turned to Slocum, who nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Slocum said, “We need an ear inside Galvin’s house.”

Danny looked at him for a few seconds. “Jesus Christ… You want me to wear a wire?”

“Sign the form and we’ll talk specifics,” said Slocum.

He shook his head. “I want to talk to a lawyer. I have that right.”

Yeager shrugged, palms up. “Be our guest. But one word of warning?”

Danny looked at him and waited.

“You might want to be careful who you talk to.”

“Actually, I’ll talk to whoever the hell I please.”

Yeager shrugged. “Of course you will. But there’s a reason we brought you in the way we did. These cartels have eyes and ears everywhere. If the word gets out that you’ve been meeting with the DEA, your value as a CS is blown.”

“CS?” asked Danny.

“Confidential source,” said Yeager.

“If they find out you met with us,” said Slocum, and he sliced a finger across his throat. He gave a leering smile. “So you might wanna be careful who you confide in.”

For a long moment, Danny examined the floor, the worn gray industrial carpet. His head swam. He needed to gather his thoughts, get some top-notch legal advice, be very careful about his next move. Whichever way he decided to go, the consequences were serious and permanent.

“If I decide to sign this,” he said, “how do I get in touch with you? Just… come back here?”

“Absolutely not,” said Yeager. “This is a satellite office for our group. A gray site. Undisclosed working location.”

“Think about it like this,” Slocum said. “The cartel keeps a close watch on the main DEA headquarters in the JFK Federal Building-who comes and goes. They see someone associated with Galvin going in for a meeting at DEA? They’re gonna do something about that.”

Yeager wrote a number on the back of his business card and handed it to Danny. “Call this number when you want to come back.”

Slocum said, “You really don’t want to take your time about it.”

“Or what?”

“Or the deal’s off the table. And we come after you with handcuffs.”

15

Danny stumbled out of One Center Plaza into the blazing sunlight. He felt numb.

He found a Starbucks and got a coffee and sat for a while and thought. He was, it seemed, well and truly screwed.

He signed on to the Internet. Googled “sinaloa cartel.”

Google’s autocomplete feature suggested a few similar searches:

sinaloa cartel chainsaw

sinaloa cartel members

sinaloa cartel news

Unable to stop himself, he selected “sinaloa cartel chainsaw.” He clicked on that link and clicked ENTER to confirm he was eighteen years of age or older, and a video started to play.

It showed a couple of paunchy shirtless guys in Mexico. Talking in Spanish. Probably dope dealers or hit men for the Sinaloa cartel. Very bad guys, looking scared as children, tied up on the ground, against an adobe wall.

Then someone comes out wearing military camo fatigues and starts up a chain saw, the kind you’d use to cut down a tree. In a few seconds, he beheads both of them. Once second they’re alive, the next they’re decapitated.

They were snitches, the caption said.

A confidential informant was a kind of snitch.

This video had a sound track. A type of Mexican folk song called narcocorrido: guitars and trumpet and accordion, set to a polka beat. Narcocorrido ballads were odes to the murderers and torturers of the drug cartels. The folk heroes.

Somehow that made it worse, the jaunty, galumphing happy narcocorrido sound track instead of the victim’s screams.

Within a couple of minutes he’d seen photographs of fourteen cartel soldiers chainsawed into sections, legs and heads and torsos, arrayed on the ground like the parts of an expertly carved Thanksgiving turkey.

Well and truly screwed.

He needed to talk to someone, an expert. A criminal defense lawyer. But he didn’t know any.

Sarah’s ex-husband was a lawyer. His ex-wife’s ex-husband. That was complicated and fraught enough to make his head hurt.

No, thanks.

Lucy’s college roommate was a corporate lawyer, a big shot in DC. Lawyers always knew other lawyers. Sometimes they knew only other lawyers. He took out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for Lucy.

Then hit END before the call went through.

Telling Lucy what kind of trouble he was in was a major decision, one he couldn’t undo. He needed to think that over.

Not yet.

He knew someone. A guy who’d lived across the hall freshman year. Jay Poskanzer spent most of his life in Butler, Columbia’s great library. Nerdy, tightly wound, brilliant, acerbic. He’d gone to Harvard Law and clerked for a Supreme Court justice and later became a hotshot lawyer in private practice.

His specialty, Danny was pretty sure, was criminal law.

He needed someone in criminal law. Someone really good.

He picked up his phone again and made the call.

16

Jay Poskanzer was considered one of the best criminal defense attorneys in Boston. He regularly appeared on Boston magazine’s list of the city’s Top Power Lawyers.

He was a partner at Batten Schechter, a powerhouse firm on the forty-eighth floor of the Hancock Tower. From the plate-glass windows of his office, you could see the Back Bay and the Charles River and the Financial District, arrayed in miniature like a raised-relief map. His office was cluttered with sports memorabilia: signed broken baseball bats, framed signed photos of Red Sox players in action, a framed piece of the old Boston Garden parquet floor.

Poskanzer had frizzy reddish-brown hair with a lot of gray in it, balding on top. He had tortoiseshell glasses, a nasal voice, and a caustic manner. He was a successful lawyer now, but he was still every bit the nerd he’d been as a freshman in college.

There was the obligatory small talk about their families. Poskanzer had a couple of sons a bit younger than Abby, one at Fessenden and the other at Belmont Hill, both private boys’ schools, “brother” schools to Lyman.

“Hey, listen, I owe you a thank-you,” Danny said.

“For what?”

“For… Sarah-you know, your contribution. Sorry I didn’t have my shit together enough to send you a note.”

At Sarah’s funeral, guests were asked to make donations to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, in lieu of flowers. Poskanzer had given something like a thousand dollars in Sarah’s name.

“Don’t worry about it. I mean, least I could do and all that. You still… seeing… Lucy Lindstrom?”

Danny nodded. He wondered if even Jay Poskanzer had privately lusted after the It Girl back in the day.

“Lucky guy.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“So,” Poskanzer said behind his glass-topped desk, tenting his fingers. “I can see you’re nervous, Danny. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

Danny took a deep breath, leaned forward in his chair, and started in, telling Poskanzer about the events of the past couple of days-his money troubles, the loan, the mysterious call, and the stunning discovery that the DEA was monitoring his bank records because of an ongoing investigation into Tom Galvin.

“Wait a second,” Poskanzer said. “Thomas Galvin?”

Danny nodded, unsettled by the urgency in Poskanzer’s voice.

“You know him?”

Danny nodded again.

“So they’re saying-so Galvin is suspected of laundering money for Sinaloa-a Mexican drug cartel?”

“Something like that.”

Poskanzer put a hand out like a traffic cop. “Sorry, I’m trying to wrap my mind around that.”

“It’s crazy, right?”

He gave a low whistle. “Oh, Jesus, Danny. This isn’t good, Danny. This is bad.”

Not what Danny wanted to hear. It hit him like a punch in the gut. Of course it was bad, but it was ominous to hear a criminal defense attorney say that. “What do you mean, exactly?”

“When Galvin transferred the funds, did you give him any kind of written understanding, a note, something?”

“It was a loan. I’m going to pay him back.”

“You have it in writing?”

Danny shook his head slowly. “A friend lends a friend money, you usually don’t sign a contract, right?”

“So the fifty thousand-it could be anything. A payment of some kind.”

“It could be, but it’s not.”

“You can’t prove it was a loan?”

“They can’t prove it wasn’t.”

“They don’t have to.” There was a long pause. “If the government suspects Galvin of laundering money for the Sinaloa cartel, or trafficking, or whatever-they’re going to use every weapon in their arsenal. Which means that sometimes the innocent bystander gets caught in the thresher.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You borrowed money from the wrong guy.”

“Okay, but I don’t know the first damned thing about drugs or Mexican cartels or… I didn’t do a damned thing wrong! Isn’t that all that really counts here?”

He exhaled slowly. “Unfortunately, no. You got caught in a major drug-trafficking investigation that has nothing to do with you. Like I said, the government’s gonna use every weapon they have, and in this case it means pressuring you until you agree to cooperate. The power, the advantage-it’s all on their side. It’s unfair, but there it is. You’re in a no-win situation. That’s the ugly truth.”

Danny swallowed hard. “Jay, you’re supposed to be the best lawyer in Boston.”

Poskanzer allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “Arguably.”

“So you’re saying, what, we can’t fight this?”

“Danny. Of course we can fight it. I’m here for you-whatever you want to do, I’ll do. But let me lay out the plain facts. The way the law works in this case, you do business with a criminal, the presumption is you’re a criminal. You can fight it, sure. But the odds are against you. When the US government decides to prosecute someone on narcotics charges? They almost always win. Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Do you know what the federal narcotics conviction rate is?”

Danny shook his head impatiently.

“Over ninety percent.” Poskanzer turned slightly and began tapping on his keyboard. “Here it is-ninety-three percent. That means ninety-three percent of people charged with ‘drug trafficking,’ however that’s defined, got convicted. Almost all of them did prison time. That means you have a nine in ten chance of ending up in prison. That’s the reality.”

Danny almost leaped out of his chair. “Prison?” he sputtered. “Did you say prison? Are you freaking kidding me?”

Poskanzer shook his head slowly. “Danny, come on, sit down, okay? All I’m saying is-if we choose to fight it in the legal system, the odds are extremely high you end up in prison.”

Bitterly, Danny said: “So basically, I can get prison time for… just accepting a loan from a guy?”

“When they call it a racketeering offense, you sure can.” Poskanzer swiveled his computer monitor around so Danny could read the screen. “Take a look.”

A table of some kind. Words and numbers. “What is it?” Danny asked.

“These are the federal sentencing guidelines for RICO offenses. Racketeering, as they call it. Given the amount of money involved-fifty thousand dollars-and the fact that it falls under the category of narcotics-related conduct, you could get three hundred twenty-four to four hundred months in prison.”

Danny stared in mute terror. “I don’t even know how long four hundred months is.”

Poskanzer didn’t even hesitate. “Thirty-three years.”

He swallowed. “This is bullshit!” He tried to summon indignant outrage, but instead it came out like a plea. “This is total bullshit.”

Poskanzer bowed his head for a moment, as if praying or lost in thought. Then he lifted his head and said, “Do you remember that time we got onto the roof of Low?”

Danny nodded. “Roofing”-getting onto the roofs of campus buildings-was a venerable Columbia tradition. You had to pick locks and shimmy through windows, and there was always a chance of getting caught, which could mean being thrown out of school. But that just gave it an illicit thrill. In their freshman year, he and Poskanzer had once sneaked onto the roof of Low Library in the middle of the night. The view was spectacular. Far below, the quad twinkled and sparkled.

Danny nodded, wondered what his point was.

“That was cool,” Poskanzer said.

“It was.”

“I hated freshman year. My roommates were assholes. You were one of my few friends.”

Danny was moved. He’d had no idea. He nodded and smiled. “I’m honored.”

“Listen to me. I could take your money. I’d be happy to. Well, my firm would be happy to. But we’re friends, you and me, so I’m not going to lie to you. Fighting the US government is an incredibly expensive undertaking. We’d need a retainer of two hundred fifty thousand dollars, to start.”

“Jay, I don’t have that kind-”

“And they know that, believe me. The fact is, a competent defense may end up costing you a million, maybe even two million, by the time all is said and done.” Danny recalled one of the DEA guys saying something like that. “Also, it’ll tie you up for years. And then, like I said, the odds are way against you. You’d have a nine-in-ten chance of going to prison. For up to thirty-three years.”

“Jesus.”

“Look, if you were my brother, my dad, my best friend, I’d tell you to cooperate. But you’re also a single dad. You’re Abby’s only parent. You gotta think about that. You’d be ruining your daughter’s life. I mean, have you appointed a guardian for Abby?”

“A… guardian?”

“In case you end up in prison. In case you have to go away. Because that’s probably what’s going to happen to you. Unless you cooperate with them. You really want to spin that roulette wheel? I don’t think you do.”

“I don’t believe this!”

“Go get a second opinion, Danny. And a third, and a fourth. Ask any lawyer experienced in dealing with the feds. They’ll all tell you the same thing-only maybe they’ll soft-pedal the odds against you. Plenty of lawyers would be happy to take your money and bankrupt you. But I don’t want to do that. I’m advising you-as a friend-to cooperate. You want to fight, I’ll fight for you. But I can’t recommend that course of action, not with a clear conscience.”

“But… say I do cooperate. Then what happens to me?”

“You sign a deal with the government…”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Let’s say I do whatever they want. I become a confidential informant, or confidential source, whatever they call it. Wear a wire or record my phone calls with the guy. And let’s say this leads to Tom Galvin’s arrest. Then what happens to me?”

Poskanzer hesitated. “You… you’re a free man.”

“Have you ever watched any of those videos of the Sinaloa cartel beheading snitches with a chain saw?”

Poskanzer shook his head.

“If information I provide sends Tom Galvin to prison, and if he really is working for the Sinaloa cartel, who the hell’s to say I don’t end up in one of those videos?”

There was a long, long silence.

“I don’t think you have a choice,” Poskanzer said. “I’m really sorry, but I don’t think you have a choice.”

Danny took the elevator down in a daze. He barely noticed the other passengers. Somehow he found himself in the lobby of the Hancock Tower and then out the revolving doors.

He had no doubt that Jay Poskanzer was giving it to him straight. If a lawyer like him-arrogant, brilliant, and with a chip on his shoulder the size of Nebraska-didn’t see any point in taking on the Department of Justice, what use was there in trying to fight a battle he couldn’t win?

Poskanzer was right, he was a single father. He had to think about Abby.

Standing outside the office building, blinking in the bright sun, he took out the business card that one of the DEA guys had given him and dialed the number.