Win

Chapter 27

I hate that I care about Ema so much.

I never wanted children because I never wanted this feeling, this feeling of horrendous vulnerability, where someone else’s welfare has the ability to destroy me. I can’t really be harmed, except via my biological daughter Ema. To have her in my life now — she sits across from me as we dine in my apartment overlooking Central Park — is to know worry and pain. Some would say this feeling, this parental worry, makes me more human. Whatever. Who wants to be more human? It’s awful.

I had no children because I wanted no fears. I had no children because attachment is a hindrance. I worked this out analytically, so let me explain: I list the possible positives of having Ema in my life — love, companionship, someone to care for, all that — and I list the negatives — suppose something happens to her?

When I review this equation, the negatives win out.

I don’t want to live in fear.

“You okay?” Ema asks me.

“Groovy,” I say.

She rolls her eyes.

Her real name is Emma, but she always wears black clothes and black lipsticks and silver jewelry, and in middle school some dumb kid noted that she looked goth or “Emo” and so her classmates started calling her “Ema” and thought they were being clever and perhaps mean, but Ema turned the tables on them and embraced it. Ema is a high school senior now, but she’s also taking classes in art and design in the city.

When Ema’s mother, Angelica Wyatt, became pregnant, she didn’t inform me. She didn’t inform me upon Ema’s birth. I wasn’t angry or the slightest bit annoyed when Angelica finally told me. She understood how I felt about kids and respected it, but a few years back, she came clean, so to speak, for three reasons. One, she figured that enough time had passed (meh reason); two, I deserved to know the truth (ugh reason — I don’t deserve anything); and three, if something happened to Angelica — she had a breast cancer scare at the time — I would be there should Ema need me (decent reason).

What’s my point in telling you this?

I don’t deserve this relationship with Ema. I wasn’t there when it mattered, and if I had been given the choice, I wouldn’t have been. That is why I call her, even in my head, my “biological” daughter. Ema is magnificent in every way, and I can take no credit for that. I do not have the right to bask in the parental glow of her greatness.

I didn’t ask for this relationship. I don’t really want it either — I explained to you the pros and cons — but for now, this is Ema’s choice, and I need to respect that.

So, like it or not, we do meals like this.

Addendum: Ema gets me.

“I have a boyfriend,” she says.

“I don’t want to know.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“It’s what I’m like.”

“No advice?”

I put down my fork. “Boys,” I say, “and by boys I mean ‘all boys’ — boys are creepy.”

“Duh, like who doesn’t know that. What’s your take on teenage sex?”

“Please stop.”

Ema stifles a laugh. She likes teasing me. I don’t know how to behave around her because I feel like the blood is leaving my head sometimes. At some point, Angelica decided to tell Ema about me. No great plan on Angelica’s part. Perhaps Ema had reached an age. Perhaps Ema had simply asked who her father was. I don’t know and it’s not my place to ask.

Angelica is some mother.

You hear the following a lot: When your child is born, your life changes forever. That’s why I avoided fatherhood. I don’t want something in my life I care about more than me. Is that wrong? When Ema finally told me she knew — when she asked me to dance at Myron’s wedding — I was knocked off-balance. It was hard to breathe. When Ema and I stopped dancing, the feeling didn’t totally go away.

It still hasn’t.

In the vernacular of a teenager: That suuucks.

I think about my own parents now, especially my mother, what she must have gone through when I cut her out of my life, but dwelling on past mistakes is not good for anyone, so I move on. Ema puts her fork down and looks at me, and while this is obviously some kind of projection, I swear that I see my mother’s eyes.

“Win?”

“Yes?”

“Why were you in the hospital?”

“No big deal.”

Ema makes a face. “Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re going to lie to me?” She stares at me hard. When I don’t say anything, she adds, “Mom says you never wanted to be a father, right?”

“That’s true.”

“So don’t start being one now.”

“I’m not following.”

“You’re lying to protect me, Win.”

I say nothing.

“That’s what a father does.”

I nod. “True.”

“You never know how to act with me, Win.”

“Also true.”

“So cut it out. I don’t need a father, you don’t need a daughter. Just tell me: Why were you in the hospital?”

“Three men tried to kill me.”

If I’d expected her to recoil in horror, I would have been disappointed.

Ema leans forward. Her eyes — my mother’s eyes — light up. “Tell me everything.”

And so I do.

I start with my attacking Teddy Lyons after the NCAA Final Four and my rationale for doing so. I move on to the Ry Strauss murder, the Jane Street Six, the recovery of the Vermeer, the monogrammed suitcase, Uncle Aldrich, Cousin Patricia, the Hut of Horrors, being attacked by Trey and Bobby Lyons. I talk for a full hour. Ema sits rapt through all of it. I confess that I am not this good a listener. I lose focus after a while and drift off. I get bored easily, and people see it on my face. Ema is the opposite. She is a great listener. I don’t know how much I planned to tell her — I do want to be honest because, well, why not? — but something in her mannerisms, in her eyes, in her body language, makes me more open than I intended.

Come to think of it, her mother is a bit like that.

When I finish, Ema asks, “Do you have paper and anything to write with?”

“In the rolling desk, why?”

She rises and heads toward it. “I want to go through all this again in more detail and write stuff down. It helps me to see it on paper.” She opens the rolling desk. When she spots the legal pads and the number-two pencils, her face lights up.

“Whoa, sweet,” Ema says, grabbing a pad and three exquisitely sharpened pencils. She heads back toward me and pulls up. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you smiling at me like a dork?”

“Am I?”

“Stop it, Win. It’s creepy.”

We go through it again. She takes notes, just like, well, you know. She tears off sheets. She slides them around the table. We lose track of time. Her mother calls. It’s getting late, Angelica says. She is ready to pick Ema up.

“Not now, Mom.”

I say, “Tell her I’ll get you home.”

Ema relays the message and hangs up. We continue. After a while, Ema says, “We need to have a more structured plan.”

“What do you have in mind?” I ask.

“Let’s talk about Ry Strauss first.”

I sit back and look at her.

“What?” she asks.

“You’ve done this before.”

Ema sits back too. And — I kid you not — she steeples her fingers.

“When Myron found his brother,” I say. “With your relationship with Mickey. I wasn’t really around for all that. I’m sorry about that.”

“Win?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s focus on you right now. We can deal with my past some other time.”

I hesitate, pulse a-flutter, but then I acquiesce. “Okay.”

“Back to Ry Strauss.”

“Okay.”

“We need to focus on who killed him.” Ema releases the finger-steeple and starts sorting through her notes. “The CCTV picked up Ry Strauss in the basement with a bald guy.”

“Yes.”

“And the FBI techs can’t get more details than that?”

“No. Bad pixels or something. Plus he kept his head down.”

Ema thinks about it. “Interesting he’d show us he’s bald.”

“Pardon?”

“Why not wear a baseball cap?” she asks. “Maybe he’s not really bald. Last year, at the talent show, a bunch of guys pretended they were the Blue Man Group.”

“Who?”

“Not important. But they bought these skin caps that make you look bald. So maybe it’s just a disguise. Maybe he wants us to look for someone bald.”

I think about that.

“Also” — Ema starts shuffling through the legal pad — “that barmaid from Malachy’s...”

“Kathleen,” I say.

Quick clarification: While I did tell Ema about my conversation with Kathleen in Central Park, I did not tell her about Kathleen returning with me to this very apartment. There is being honest — and there is being ew-gross.

“Right. Kathleen.” Ema has found the applicable section in her notes. “So Kathleen tells you that Ry was panicked about a robbery at his bank.”

“Correct.”

“Except we know that Ry didn’t have any money there. His money came from that LLC your grandmother—”

“Your great-grandmother,” I add.

“Hey.” Ema stops and smiles at me. “That’s right.”

I smile too.

“Anyway” — the smile drops and Ema is all business again — “let’s get back to your conversation with Kathleen. Ry, we know, never leaves his apartment except at night to meet Kathleen in the park, but suddenly he goes out in the middle of the day.”

“And,” I add, “on the day he gets murdered.”

“Exactly. So you” — Ema grabs a yellow sheet from the upper right-hand corner of the table — “use your contacts as Mr. Super-Rich Guy and visit the bank. The manager tells you that the robbers broke into safe deposit boxes.”

“Yes.”

“Which is odd, don’t you think?”

I shrug. “There are a lot of valuables in those boxes.”

“Yeah, I guess that could be it...” Ema says slowly.

“But?”

“But I have another theory.”

I sit back and spread my hands, indicating I would like her to continue.

“Ry Strauss rented out a safe deposit box at the bank, probably under a pseudonym.”

“That makes sense,” I say, not yet letting on that I had figured out that much already. “Any theories on what was in it?”

“Something that identified him in some way,” Ema says, tapping the pencil eraser against the tabletop. “Look, Ry Strauss probably used several identities over the years, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“So he probably needed a safe place to keep the various IDs and, who knows, maybe his real passport and birth certificate too. You wouldn’t throw those things out.”

“No,” I say, “you wouldn’t.” I mull this over. “Are you saying that the bank robbers weren’t really after money — that they broke into those boxes because they wanted to find Ry Strauss?”

“Possible,” Ema says.

“But unlikely?”

“Unlikely,” Ema repeats. “I have another theory.”

I confess that I am enjoying this conversation tremendously. “I’m listening.”

“Your FBI mentor, PT.”

“What about him?”

Ema checks her phone for the time. “Is it too late to call him?”

“It’s never too late to call him. Tell me why.”

“PT said they caught one of the robbers.”

“Right.”

“Can you get to him?”

“Get to him?”

“Ask him questions,” Ema says. “Interrogate him. Can you use your Mr. Super-Rich Guy persona to get access to this bank robber?”

I frown. “I’ll pretend you didn’t ask.”

“Then that’s our first step, Win.” Her face breaks into a smile that reaches deep into my chest. “Call PT and set up the meet.”