He kept the computer on the kitchen counter. I took it out with me onto the porch. The wireless signal worked out there, and I wanted to get away from the noise of the vacuum. I took in Thomas’s technique as I walked past. He was stooped over as he wandered the floor, like he was actually hunting for the dust he had to suck up. He evidently believed the power head needed to rest atop each section of carpet for several seconds to do its job. At this rate, he wasn’t going to get up to his room until noon.
I sat in one of the wicker chairs, opened up the computer, and hit the power button. I probably could have used a sweater out there, but it wasn’t cool enough to make me want to go back inside and find one.
I entered the password to get into my e-mail program. Some junk, a couple of notes from Jeremy Chandler, a message from an editor at the Washington Post praising my last illustration, which depicted Congress as a sandbox full of children.
Inside, it sounded like the vacuum had just sucked up a squirrel. Thomas had undoubtedly caught the carpet fringe. He’d figure it out.
I found the Web site for the Promise Falls Standard. I couldn’t find a specific e-mail address for Julie, but under Contact Us it said you could reach a reporter by typing in their first initial followed by last name and then @pfstandard.com.
So I was able to write Julie:
Thanks for the beer, and making the time to talk. It was nice to see you again. Like I said, if you’re driving by, pop in and say hi to Thomas.
I hit “send.”
She’d been on my mind since our meeting at Grundy’s, and I was hoping she’d take me up on the invitation. I hadn’t spent much time with her, but it was long enough to realize she was easy to talk to. You could speak plainly to her, no bullshit. And I didn’t have many people to talk to these days. I really couldn’t talk to Thomas. I mean, could I? When all he really cared about was getting back to his Whirl360? He was more concerned with assisting the CIA with a nonexistent global catastrophe than he was with helping me figure out what to do with the house and him.
I sighed and opened up Safari. I wanted to look into the residence Laura Grigorin had suggested might be a good place for Thomas. I went up to the corner of the screen to enter some key words into Google.
As soon as I began to type, a list of previous searches popped up onto the screen. These would have been the things Dad was looking up the last time he used this computer. Before he died.
I glanced at the list. It was short. Three items.
smartphones
depression
child prostitution
I stared at the list a long time. Felt the world getting ready to open up and swallow me whole.
The door opened. “I think the vacuum’s broken,” Thomas said.
TWENTY-TWO
HOWARD Talliman is sitting on a bench in Central Park, just north of the Arsenal, south of Sixty-fifth, waiting for Lewis Blocker.
For years, Howard has employed the former New York police officer. It started as the occasional freelance job, but that meant there might be times when Howard needed Lewis when he was busy doing work for someone else. That didn’t work for Howard. So he put Lewis on an annual salary, twice what he’d made as a cop, so he could be confident that whenever Lewis’s skills were required, he would be available.
Howard needs Lewis right now more than he ever has before. He’s never had a crisis quite like this one.
Howard looks south, sees Lewis. The man is just under six feet, and if he had any hair on the top of his head he’d probably top out at six-one. Thick neck, broad shoulders, a bit soft in the middle. But that’s just padding over the six-pack. Howard knows that if he drove his fist into Lewis’s gut with everything he had, the guy wouldn’t move, and Howard would end up with a broken wrist. His eyes are small and penetrating, flanking a nose that’s bent slightly to the left. He’d had it broken years ago and chose not to get it fixed. It let people know he’d been hurt, and survived, and didn’t have any qualms about getting hurt again.
Lewis Blocker nods at Howard and sits down next to him.
“Well?” Howard asks.
“You could give her the hundred grand,” he says, “but that won’t be the end of your problem.”
“Go on.”
“I asked around,” he says. Howard does not have to ask Lewis whether he has been discreet. That’s what Howard pays him to be. Lewis knows how to find things out without drawing attention to himself.
“Allison Fitch owes money. She bounces checks. She borrows money and doesn’t pay it back. She hasn’t been paying her share of the rent and her roommate wants to kill her. When she gets money, instead of paying back the people she owes it to, she blows it on herself.”
“Okay.”
“I think, if you give her that money, it’ll blow her mind. She’ll go through it like shit through a goose. You ask me, that hundred grand will actually put her in deeper debt. She’ll get her own place, she’ll lease a flashy car, she’ll open a charge account at Bloomie’s. The hundred grand’ll be gone, and she’ll be on the hook for another hundred in no time.”