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  “Jake mentioned he saw you at the memorial service. Awfully nice of you to come.”

  “I didn’t know that Susan had passed. I got a phone call in Hong Kong and caught the next plane out as soon as I heard,” Peter replied honestly.

  “Still the world traveler, eh?”

  “Some things never change.”

  “You said it, not me,” Steve replied with bite.

  Miles Davis filled the void in conversation.

  “Still in the roofing business?” Peter asked.

  “When my body lets me. Bad back, worse knees. Some mornings I can barely get out of bed.”

  “Looks like your liver is still working,” Peter retorted, gesturing in the direction of the bottle in Steve’s hand.

  For a brief second it was just like old times, two brothers-in-law taking jabs at one another. But time has a way of making strangers out of even brothers, and another moment of awkward silence fell on the two.

  “Could we not do this today?” Peter asked. “I just stopped by to say that I‘m sorry for your loss. I know you and Susan were close.”

  “Yes we were, but not as close as your son was to his mother.”

  “May I come in?”

  Steve considered the request but didn’t move. It was a battle of wills between Uncle Steve, a blue-collar roofer with dirt under his nails, and Peter Winthrop, GQ magazine cover model with manicured nails.

  “Just for a minute. I won’t stay long.”

  “You never did,” Steve replied. He took a swig of his beer, fully opened the door with his left hand, and motioned his ex-brother-in-law into his home.

  Peter advanced slowly through the living room, past an old upright piano littered with pictures of people he knew a lifetime before. Uncle Steve followed behind, observing Peter as he took in the ghosts of his past. Peter nodded to an elderly couple on the couch. The white haired husband and wife nodded back at the well-dressed stranger.

  Peter stopped at the entrance to the kitchen. Jake was at the back door, talking to a vaguely familiar face whose name Peter had long since forgotten. The crowd ripping through the hors d’oeuvres and working on food preparations took notice of the intruder, held their breaths, and exited the room as if someone had discovered a bomb in the refrigerator.

  Jake felt the vacuum created around him and turned toward the far doorway to the kitchen. As the whispers grew in the next room, father and son stood at opposite sides of the kitchen like heavyweights in their respective corners of the ring before a fight. Uncle Steve stepped back to give the two some privacy, while remaining close enough to intervene if they needed a referee.

  “Hi son,” Peter offered first.

  “Hi Dad,” Jake replied. It felt normal to call him Dad, but it was a title he used without any emotional attachment.

  “How are you holding up?” Peter asked, out of his element in the role of a father.

  “Been better.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Sorry to hear about your mother.”

  “I’m sorry too,” Jake replied. He wondered if his father was as uncomfortable as he was.

  A long pause interrupted the stalling conversation.

  “I wish there was something I could have done.”

  “You could have stopped by and visited her. She was your wife at one point. And the mother of your only child.”

  “I didn’t think she wanted to see me.”

  “She was dying, Dad. She wasn’t in the mood for a fight.”

  “Well if she wasn’t in the mood for a fight, then I‘m sure she didn’t want to see me.”

  Jake forced a small, brief smile. “Mom didn’t share your problems with me and she never uttered a bad word about you when I was around. She didn’t walk around singing your praises, but she never badmouthed you either.”

  “She was a good woman.”

  “The best.”

  “You’re right. I should have come to see her.” Peter didn’t believe his own words, but hoped they would provide some comfort to his son.

  The resemblance between father and son was unmistakable. The broad shoulders, the brown hair, the chiseled face. The smile. The walk. Jake was casually mesmerized, staring into the paternal mirror at what he expected to look like in another thirty years. He hoped he looked as good as the man in front of him when he reached his fifties. Genetics are a strange thing, he thought. And while he looked at his father, he felt nothing. Jake didn’t hold a grudge because his father was an alcoholic, workaholic, or womanizer. He may have been all of the above, but Jake didn’t know. And it is hard to be upset about something you don’t know or can’t remember. He wasn’t angry, hurt or disappointed—he wasn’t close enough to the man in front of him to have any of those emotions. Everything happens for a reason and Jake tried to leave the past in the past, a skill he learned from his mother. All Jake knew was that he could expect a hundred dollars for Christmas and another hundred for his birthday. The money arrived in generic cards, usually a week or two late, his father’s signature probably forged by a secretary.

  But Jake did know that his father was successful, and if he hadn’t already known, the thousand-dollar suit his father was wearing would have been a clue. He knew his father ran a company or two and lived in a house with a pool. But the talk of private jets, beach houses in the Caribbean, and a garage full of German and Italian sports cars was hearsay. He knew his father had paid child support when his mother had requested it, but she had done her best to keep his money out of her life and the life of her son.

  Peter looked at Jake, and as his son had looked at him and seen his own reflection, Peter saw images of himself as a young man. He remembered his son as an infant and had spotty recollections of his son’s pre-teen years, but he had missed most of the major milestones. He never met his son’s dates, never went on vacation together, missed his son’s all-star dominance as the pitcher of the year for the high school city champions, and passed on an invitation to his son’s college graduation in favor of a week in Fiji with some floozy whose name he had long since forgotten.

  For the first time in his life he felt a fleeting moment of remorse. Then it was gone. Peter Winthrop was a user, always had been. It was a by-product of his upbringing and the neverending chase for more money, more toys, and more women. People were objects, to be used as objects and discarded once their usefulness was exhausted. He didn’t set out to act the way he acted, it was just the way he was. Like a leg-humping dog that is never reprimanded, he didn’t know any better. When he was younger, no one ever told him there was another way. As he got older, no one dared to.

  He knew he was a shitty father, as his own father had been to him. There was nothing he could do to make amends for the past, and he didn’t even bother to hope to repair the relationship with his only child. All he could wish for was that his son would have a child of his own and break the vicious cycle of poor fathers that ran through the Winthrop family tree.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Jake asked, breaking the silence.

  “No thanks. I have to get going.”

  “Are you sure? You’re welcome to stay,” Jake said, assuming the role of the adult.

  “No, I’m sure,” Peter replied. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card. He plucked a Waterford pen from his breast pocket and scribbled some numbers. “If there is anything you need, I’m a phone call away. Anything at all. You can reach me at any of those numbers, day or night.”

  Jake stared at the card pinched between his father’s thumb and index finger. Behind his father’s shoulder, Uncle Steve looked on at the business-like exchange of information between a father and son acting like complete strangers.

  Jake accepted the card, slipped it into his jacket pocket and said, “Thanks.”

  As always, Peter concluded the business deal with a handshake. A hug was out of the question for both of them.

  “Maybe we can catch a Redskins game this season? I have box seats,” Peter said, his mind already out the door.<
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  “Yeah, maybe,” Jake replied. He knew better than to wait by the phone.

  Uncle Steve followed Jake and his father to the door. Peter smiled to the room of strangers, raised his hand slightly in a half-attempt at a wave, and exited the house. He hopped into his two-seater German roadster and drove out of the lower-middle-class neighborhood. He felt better as he worked his way home, back to a residential area with a population in a much higher tax bracket. His kind of people. ***

  The Day residence was a meticulously restored townhouse on the corner of P and Thirty-Fourth Streets in Georgetown. The renovated home with a historic lineage had been on the market for over a year when the senator and his better half offered $6.5 million. Papers were signed the following week and by the end of the month, the Days moved in. The garage stored a Mercedes S-class sedan and a Lexus SUV. A distant cousin of the senator’s wife, a Georgetown University graduate student, rented the small apartment on the second floor of the carriage house overlooking the heated pool.

  Mrs. Day was cooking spaghetti, one of her many “specialties,” none of which challenged the professionally accessorized kitchen. She hired a chef with an impressive résumé who came twice a week to give the appliances a thorough running through. He made whatever was requested and ad-libbed a few other gourmet meals that he left covered in plastic wrap in the refrigerator. The ever-changing dietary whims of the senator’s wife kept the chef on his toes. She wasn’t picky by nature, and it wasn’t her fault that she was bossy and oversensitive. It was the third-trimester hormones.

  The senator got out of the car and waved to his personal driver. Briefcase in hand, he stepped through the iron gate that enclosed the short brick walkway and made his way to the door. He passed through the small study, throwing his briefcase, the day’s Washington Post, and a stack of mail he brought home from work on the leather club chair in the corner. He followed his nose to the kitchen.

  “Smells great.”

  “You might want to wait until you taste it before you throw out too many compliments,” she replied.

  The senator kissed her on the cheek and touched her protruding stomach.

  “Any action today?” he asked, hand just above her stretched navel.

  “No, he’s been quiet. Must not be in the mood to treat his mother’s bladder like a soccer ball.”

  The senator bent over and put his ear on the top of the protruding mound. It was six weeks before the due date.

  When dinner was finished, the senator cleared the table. The maid would take care of the dirty dishes and the laundry in the morning. Mrs. Day waddled upstairs for a shower.

  The honorable senator from Massachusetts grabbed the paper and the mail off the chair in the study. He poured a double bourbon in a glass of the finest Austrian crystal and slipped out of his black Italian leather shoes. He flipped through the stack of mail he brought home and sorted the envelopes into three piles. The “must reads” went on his lap, a few letters from his constituents went on the corner of his desk, and the remainder went into the wastebasket.

  He sipped his bourbon, read the paper, and opened his mail with CNN on in the background. He looked at the last piece of mail in his hands, an eight by eleven inch envelope with no return address. His full name and title was written in impeccable penmanship across the front.

  He reached for his letter opener; a gold-plated blade with a bald eagle mounted on the end, and cut the top off the envelope. The neatly typed letter was short and to the point. It was also completely unnecessary. The photographs told him all he needed to know. A nice shot of his hand on the upper thigh of a beautiful Asian woman in the quiet corner of a classy restaurant. Another picture of the senator leaving the restaurant, his hand on his female companion’s ass.

  The rules were clear. The price for silence was one hundred thousand dollars.

  Senator Day picked up the phone.

  From a mobile bed on the fifth floor of George Washington Hospital, the senator’s chief-of-staff tugged at the cord of the wall-mounted phone. His swollen knee screamed with pain. A tube ran from the IV stand to a vein in the crook of his right arm. The skin was raw, irritated. The adhesive used to keep the needle in place was a constant source of annoyance. Even more annoying was being out of the political loop, away from the schmoozing necessary to get things done. He had been in the hospital for over a week, and it was now nearly three since he had felt his ACL snap, an out-of-control water ski twisting his leg to an unnatural angle.

  “Scott? How’s the knee?”

  “Senator… The knee is fine, as long as I don’t move and the Oxycontin bottle still rattles when I shake it. The staph infection, well, that’s a different story.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He hasn’t been listening,” Scott replied, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Any word on when you’ll be released?”

  “Not yet. MRSA is a bit of a wild card. At least the doctors have stopped talking about the possibility of losing the leg.”

  “I’ll take that as good news.”

  “My leg seems to think so.”

  The senator paused and then continued. “Business question for you. What do you know about international wire transfers?”

  Scott took a pensive breath. “Wire transfers? From what angle? Got a bill in the works I haven’t heard about? The legislative director hasn’t mentioned anything.”

  “No, it’s of a more personal nature. Hypothetically speaking, is it possible to do an anonymous wire transfer?”

  “How hypothetical are we talking?”

  “A hundred grand of hypothetical.”

  Scott sat up in his bed and grimaced. “Well, the current statute flags the IRS for any wire transfer over ten thousand dollars. Meaning that if you wire an amount ten grand or over, you have to fill out paperwork that goes to the IRS. In theory, anyway.”

  “So if you wanted to do a wire transfer without notifying the IRS, you could send, say, nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine?”

  “They call that smurfing. It was a practice popularized by drug dealers in the eighties and now used by myriad elements of the regulation-avoiding public. I would stay away from nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. It’s an overly suspicious number.”

  “So maybe eight grand here, nine grand there.”

  “That’s what I would do,” Scott said. “From different accounts.”

  The senator considered the advice before his chief aide continued. “There’s another option I can think of.”

  “I’m still here.”

  “I might know someone in banking who could arrange to do the wire transfer without the paperwork.”

  Senator Day thought aloud. “How much would that cost me?”

  “Monetarily…nothing. Politically, it would be a debt. We wouldn’t get it for free.”

  The senator loved it when his chief-of-staff used the word “we.” As far as he was concerned, it was a term of endearment. Good help was hard to find.

  The senator didn’t think long. “Make the call and see what your contact says.”

  “I’ll get back to you later this evening.”

  “And Scott…keep this quiet. No one finds out. I mean no one. Especially the staff.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The senator read the letter and the explicit directions again. He drained his glass, filled another, and tilted the bottom toward the ceiling. Images of former presidential candidate Senator Hart with a blonde on his lap, sitting on a yacht appropriately named Monkey Business, flashed in his mind.

  The sound of his wife’s footsteps on the floor above shook him from his momentary daze. He stuffed the pictures into his briefcase and reread the letter. One hundred thousand dollars to a bank account in Hong Kong. For a senator with ambition, a hundred grand seemed like a reasonable sum to pay to keep his career on track. Hiding a six-figure payout to a Hong Kong bank was easy. His wife didn’t keep track of the money. As long as the credit cards weren’t declined at Saks Fifth Avenue and the
checks didn’t bounce, she would never notice. Calming the sea of revenge brewing in the senator’s head was more difficult. He would pay the money, and then he would see to it that the owner of the bank account in Hong Kong understood that John Day was not a person who could be squeezed without repercussions. He was a senator, a Harvard Man, and a member of one of the most influential families in the history of the Northeast. He had power, wanted more, and nothing was going to stand in the way of his ambitious plan to one day reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Chapter 3

  Jake got out of his car and eyed the mailbox at the end of the driveway. It was only a ten second walk across a small patch of grass that masqueraded as a front lawn, but it was a trip that was growing more painful by the day. Jake reached the end of the yard, shoved his hand in the standard issue black box with its red flag, and pulled out the day’s torment. He carried the thick stack of mail across the grass, past the “For Sale” sign that he and the real estate agent had pushed into the soft ground a week ago, and up the four stairs of the front porch.

  The days were numbered for the house where he had grown up. The sadness he felt added to the burden he now faced. For the majority of his life the house had been a source of good memories—the normal stuff of childhood and the teenage years. Birthday parties, holiday gatherings, pictures on prom night. He got his first kiss on the very porch where he now stood, the same porch where his mother had sat him down and broke the news of her cancer.

  He fumbled for the key to the deadbolt, balancing the stack of mail in the crook of one elbow. He stepped across the threshold of the foyer, threw his wallet and keys on the small table resting at the foot of the stairs, and made his way through the living room. The mail went on the coffee table, next to the disaster area of bills that already waited for his attention.

  He changed clothes in the laundry room off the back of the house, grabbed the last beer bottle from the fridge, and made his way to the sofa. He sipped the cold suds and stared at the pile of mail.

  The stack of envelopes stared back.

  His mother’s medical treatment, which ultimately failed, had cost a fortune. It was a fortune she didn’t have. Health insurance covered the initial diagnosis and treatment, but when she reached the maximum lifetime limit of the policy, the debt outpaced the ability to pay by roughly the speed of light. When the house sold, if it sold, it would bring in enough money to cover almost half her debt. The rest was unrecoverable. It was a deal his mother had agreed to, giving up everything she had worked for in exchange for more time with the only thing that mattered. The collectors were already on the hunt, and Jake hadn’t answered the home phone in three days.