“I went to jail, Trip. And then I was almost killed. Kinda threw me off.”
“And a couple of months later,” Trip said, ignoring me, “Wat Davenport kills himself and Frank Davenport retires. I met Wat once—everyone in D.C. does sooner or later. Full of life, full of himself. I don’t see him driving off a bridge. So either he was dying of cancer or AIDS or something and couldn’t face it, or somebody had something on him so bad, it was enough to make him want to kill himself rather than deal with it.”
“Trip,” I managed to get out, “you’re being paranoid. I don’t know why—”
“Matthias,” he said, “look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this.”
In Jackson Hole, Fritz had insisted on making the video. I’d thought it was risky, but he’d been adamant. If Kevin Kelly found me and you could find me, then it’s only a matter of time, he’d said. Fritz had gotten a handheld video camera and had me film him in my hotel room, a blank wall behind him as he talked into the camera. It was all of three minutes long, and it wasn’t Scorsese by a long shot, but it had obviously worked, albeit not in the way we had planned. Fritz’s demands were simple. Of his father Fritz required that, within a week of seeing the video, he deposit the same amount of money he had withdrawn from Fritz’s trust into a new, separate trust for Tommy. Fritz could access the interest but could not touch the principal, which would go to Tommy when he turned twenty-five or when Fritz predeceased him, whichever came first. Something good out of all that corruption, Fritz had said. Of his uncle, Fritz had said only that Wat was never to seek him out, or Tommy. If his father and uncle didn’t abide by these conditions, Fritz would send another video, addressed not to them but to the world, in which Fritz talked about how and why he had run away ten years ago and spoke in explicit detail about what Wat had done to him. That second video had taken far longer to film, and it had been excruciating to watch Fritz recount his story again. Fritz had included an excerpt from it on the jump drive I’d given to his father. This stays a secret, Fritz had told me. They’ll leave me alone if they think they can keep this covered up. I’ll keep it covered up if they pay the price. But we hadn’t figured on the price Wat Davenport would be willing to pay.
I looked at Trip, who was waiting for my reply.
“I had nothing to do with this,” I said.
He held me in a long gaze. Just when it was becoming unbearable, he closed his eyes and sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Sorry. I just . . . I got freaked out. These are powerful men, and it looks like somebody got to them, and I—”
“Hey, no,” I said. “I understand. Seriously. It’s all right. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what happened with Wat. It was a bust, actually.” I briefly outlined Wat’s story about the Chinese spies and Frank Davenport’s fears about losing the Pentagon contracts. As I was telling this to Trip, I was thinking about how I didn’t even have to make this part up—Wat Davenport had done that for me.
My phone started ringing. “Hang on,” I said to Trip, fishing my phone out of my pocket. He shook his head and waved, and headed across the tent for the bar. I looked at the phone display, which showed an unfamiliar number with a Virginia area code. I answered. “Hello?”
“Matthias?”
“Abby,” I said. Oh shit. “Hi.”
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
The band chose this moment to begin playing “Brown Eyed Girl,” and I had to hold my free hand over my other ear and shout at Abby to hold on while I made my way to the exit. Outside the tent, I welcomed the cooler air and walked off a little ways, phone to my ear, a boxwood hedge on my left. The back of Stilwell Hall loomed before me. “Sorry,” I said into the phone. “I’m at Blackburne, my reunion. There’s a band—”
“Do you know why my uncle killed himself?” she said.
“I . . . Trip just told me, Trip Alexander, he—”
“Does this have to do with Fritz?”
I stopped walking. “Fritz . . . What?”
“Does it have anything to do with Fritz?”
I looked up at the sky. The sun had set a while ago and was just a dull crimson smear in the west, but above the sky was a deep indigo and the first stars were shining, cold and remote and beautiful.
“Matthias?” Abby’s voice was insistent.
You can’t tell anyone else, Fritz had said. No one. Not my sister, my mother, our friends, anyone.
I drew a breath. “Abby, Fritz is gone,” I said. “Like you told me. He’s been gone for a long time.”
Silence on the other end. “I don’t believe you,” she said.
Jesus. Had her father told her something? Had he sought forgiveness by showing her the map tracing Fritz’s progress across the United States like some bizarre connect-the-dots puzzle? “You don’t believe that Fritz is gone?” I said.
“My father came home last night and announced that he was resigning from NorthPoint, and then he locked himself in his office,” Abby said. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or on the verge of tears. Probably both. “He wouldn’t talk to me or Mother. Then my uncle came over and went right into my father’s office. I thought they were going to kill each other. The last time I heard them like this was just before Fritz . . . disappeared.” There was a hitch in her voice, and she paused for a moment before resuming, in control but brittle. “I listened outside the office door. My father said something about being exposed, and then—then Wat said Fritz’s name. I couldn’t hear the rest of it, but Wat stormed out a while later, didn’t even say good-bye. And today they found him dead. They’re saying he drove off the bridge on purpose, Matthias.” Her voice wavered under the threat of tears, but she still held them in. “Why would he do that? My father won’t say anything. Do you know? Wat always liked you, Matthias. He respected you. Did—did you talk to him, about Fritz?” Ragged breathing, a sniff. “Please.”
I ground my teeth. Not telling Briggs or Trip the truth about Fritz had been simple; not telling Abby was something else entirely. Should I betray my friend, or the girl I once loved—still loved? My throat seemed to swell with the pressure of keeping this lie bottled up, another lie.
“Matthias?”
The Davenport family secret had festered and spread in the dark—it was sending out roots and tendrils like some nightmarish vine, clinging to everything and everyone involved, choking us all.
“Matthias, please.”
Don’t tell my sister.
“He had secrets, Abby,” I said. “Your uncle. They were awful, and he had to live with them.”
“What do you—?”
“I . . . Abby, I can’t explain. You’ll have to talk to your father.”
Pause. Now, ridiculously, the band was playing “Gimme Some Loving” by the Spencer Davis Group.