“Take your thief Reddman, for example,” he continued. “What kind of man would do all he did just for money? What had he become? I tell you what he became, an idolater, substituting money for the true King. What did the Lord tell Moishe on Mount Sinai when he gave him the two tablets and the commandment that thou shalt have no other gods before me. Shmot, Chapter Twenty, verse five. He said that those who bow down and worship a graven image, the sins of the father, it shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them, that is what He said. You tell me if this, it did not come true with this Reddman and his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

I stared at him and felt a chill just then rippling along my spine. It was as if I were in the middle of a biblical prophecy brought to life by the crimes of Claudius Reddman. I had been shown with utter clarity the cause and I was walking through the ruin-strewn landscape of the result. All that remained in shadow was the instrument of His will.

Morris looked at me and suddenly his face eased and he smiled. With a shrug he said, “So that is what I think, Victor. But it is just one man’s opinion. Alan Greenspan, he knows more than I ever will about money, maybe he thinks differently, I don’t know.”

A long shell with eight rowers and a coxswain slid by on the river in a smooth series of rushes. The coxswain was jerking back and forth with each stroke as she yelled and the eight rowers were following her commands with perfect timing, leaning forward as one, pulling back as one, becoming a single self under the sway of the coxswain’s voice. We sat in silence for a while, Morris and I, watching the boat, listening to the uneven notes of a lonely bird somewhere in the sycamores lining the river’s edge. Across the peaceful flow of the water I could see the helter-skelter madness of the Schuylkill Expressway.

“I’m in trouble, Morris,” I said.

“I know.”

“More trouble than you could imagine. I’m in the middle of something very dangerous that I don’t understand and can’t control.”

“Such is life for us all. Tell me, Victor, can I help?”

“Yes, I think so,” I said, and then I told him how.

It was dark when I came back to my apartment that night. First thing I did after I stripped off my jacket and tie was to place another call to the 407 area code to see if Calvi had yet come off his boat. There was no answer, there wasn’t even an answering machine. I stayed on the line for a desperately long time, long enough to realize that Calvi wasn’t ever going to help me, and then I hung up. The instant I replaced the handset my phone started ringing. It happened so quickly it was eerie, as if my call had been chased all the way from Florida. I let it ring for a moment and felt my heart speed its beat with fear and then I answered it.

“I have to get out of here,” said Caroline.

I let relief slide through me and then asked, “How was the funeral?”

“Funereal.”

“I’ll bet. Didn’t you drive?”

“They picked me up, but they want me to stay the night and I can’t. It’s unbearable.”

“I’ll be up in forty-five minutes,” I said, “but I won’t pick you up at the front of the house. Remember I told you I spoke to your father?”

“Yes,” she said in a whisper, as if her conversation was being overheard.

“He said he saw a light in the garden last week.”

“So?” she said. “We were there, then. Remember?”

“Yes we were. But he also said he saw a light in the house that had been deeded to the Pooles.”

“Why would anyone be in that old wreck?” she asked.

“Exactly,” I said.

I HID MY CAR IN A GROVE of bushes outside the entrance of the great Reddman estate. I took my backpack out of the trunk and made my way across the low bridge that forded the stream and through the wide-open gates with their forged vines and cucumbers and their now sardonic wrought-iron legend: MAGNA EST VERITAS. Past the two great sycamores I turned left, away from the driveway, and skirted clockwise around the hill. What remained of the moon was rather dismally lit but the big house was full of light. I could hear the tinkle of glasses and the hum of voices. It seemed rather festive at Veritas that evening, considering the circumstances. But if Edward Shaw had been a blood relative of mine I might have been rather festive too.

It was too chilly a night for the black tee shirt and jeans I was sporting and I shivered as I picked my way through sparse trees, always keeping to my right the lights of the house and to my left the quiet sluicing of the stream that surrounded the property like a noose. It was taking longer than I had expected to make my way around the grounds and I started to rush until I found myself stepping into the margin of a dense wood. Only shards of the moon’s light survived the canopy above and I had a hard time seeing what was now in front of my face. I stepped away from a branch that slapped my outreached hand and walked straight into the trunk of a tree, smacking my forehead. I hadn’t intended to use a light so soon, not wanting anyone to spot me prowling about the grounds, trespassing like a common thief when what I really was was a lawyer on the make, but the scrape with that malicious tree was enough to convince me to pull a flashlight out of my pack and click it on.

An animate circle of tree trunks immediately sprang into existence, surrounding me. The white light of my lamp slipped past the trees closest to me before dying in the night. I had the sensation of being in the middle of something that went on forever, only able to discern the first ring around me. I took a moment to regain my bearings, the gurgle of the stream to the left, the hill and the house to the right, and then continued on my way, my path weaving here and there to avoid the black furrowed trunks blocking my way, until I entered the clearing, thick with tall grasses, that surrounded the gray and decrepit Poole house. I quickly turned off the light and was stunned by what I encountered.

Fireflies sparked around the old ruin of a house, hundreds and hundreds of them, little fingers of light that swept low in the grass or high about the porch roof and the first-floor windows of the house, flashing in a slow seductive dance. There hadn’t been any fireflies on the hill leading to Veritas, or in the woods, but here they were gathering as if for some incantatory purpose of their own.

I held my breath for a moment and listened.

Just the desperate call of crickets and the hoots of a few scattered birds.

I stepped back into the darkness of the wood, leaned against a tree trunk, and waited.

Caroline came about fifteen minutes later, scrambling around the pond through the woods and into the clearing, looking around, searching. She was chic in black – black dress, black pumps, black lipstick, black motorcycle jacket covering her shoulders like a cape. As I watched her walk up to the house I thought of all the things I hadn’t told her yet, how her great-grandfather was a crook, how her grandmother knew it, how her father wasn’t her father. I would tell her most of it eventually, I figured, but not all of it and not now. I pushed myself off the tree and stepped toward her. She started when she saw me emerging from the darkness of the woods.

“Oh, Victor, you scared me for a moment. What are we doing here again? God, I can’t believe there’s anything of interest in this old wreck. I explored it all when I was younger and it was pretty dilapidated then. It must be completely falling apart by now. What did my father say he saw here? He must have been imagining it, God knows he…”

I walked up to her as she spoke and put my finger to her moving lips, quieting her immediately. I leaned my mouth to her ear and whispered.