“Really?”

“Yeah. Maybe you ought to find out what the hell is going on. Maybe you owe it to your mother. And yourself.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, who the hell knows? Did I ever tell you I saw that girl Tricia again?”

“Tricia? Wasn’t she the—”

“Yeah.”

“The one who blew you off when you were in Vietnam?”

“Yeah, that’s her. Tricia, right. So last year I scored some tickets to the ball game, in one of them fancy lounges, and as I’m walking to my seat, I see her. Tricia.”

“How’d she look?”

“Pretty good. She always looked pretty good. She didn’t look great, mind you—we’re all getting older now, and so none of us look all that great, me included—but still she looked . . . pretty damn good.”

“It must have been hard.”

“You’d think, right? I mean, I got to tell you, that broad she messed me up but good. Enough tears to baptize the whole fricking neighborhood. I mean, I was a mess when I first came back, and that was like the final push. And everything what happened to me along the way after that, I couldn’t help thinking it would have been different I was still with Tricia. But then I saw her. And she recognized me, too, so we stopped and chatted.”

“And she looked good.”

“Yeah, but not that good. And the guy she married, he’s a schlub. And she was talking about her kids like they was the most fascinating things in the world. And she was dressed like she was going to church. I mean, it’s a ball game. And the schlub, he’s dressed, too, like it was her that set out his clothes. And you want to know something, Kyle? After I saw her, and we had our nice little talk, and I said goodbye, and I walked along to my seat, I got to tell you, despite my aching back I had a hop in my step.”

“She must not have looked that good.”

“No, I’m telling you, she looked good, not great. I mean, compared to the porn, she looked like a fifty-four-year-old in turquoise slacks, but it wasn’t that. It was like I had dodged something.”

“Okay, Tricia.”

“Look, I don’t know what I’m saying, but what I’m saying is, sometimes it can do you good to find out the truth.”

“Like about my dad.”

“To put the legends to rest.”

“Okay.”

“But where would you even start? What questions would you ask, and who would you be asking?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll start by grabbing hold of that file for that O’Malley fellow and seeing what he has to say.”

“Sounds screwy.”

“Yes, it does.”

“But what could it hurt, right?”

“Okay,” said Kyle. “Maybe I’ll do it.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, good.” Kyle paused, took a sip, looked at his Uncle Max. Kyle had always felt a little sorry for him, living alone in his mom’s old house, drinking his nights away at the Olde Pig Snout, but Kyle wouldn’t feel sorry for him anymore. Uncle Max was living the life he chose, which was more than Kyle could say about himself.

Uncle Max caught Kyle staring. “What?” he said.

“Turquoise slacks?”

A slight chuckle. “Yeah.”

“Man, oh, man,” said Kyle, “that Tricia, she must have looked like shit.”

CHAPTER 11

LIAM BYRNE HAD BEEN many things: faithless lover, indifferent father, but more than anything he had been a devoted and passionate lawyer. And the holy of holies within the temple of Liam Byrne was always the office.

Kyle Byrne had often passed the stone town house with the sign bolted to the wall, and his heart had always skipped a beat at seeing his father’s name still outlined in raised brass letters on the Byrne & Toth sign. But for all the times he had passed the building, he hadn’t once stepped inside. His father had never invited him in while he was alive, and Kyle had never mustered the courage to enter after his father had died. Maybe it was the apprehension of running into the ferocious Laszlo Toth that had kept him at bay. If so, at least that fear had been buried.

So now, instead of staring up at the second-floor windows and wondering what strange and mystical clues to the truth about Liam Byrne lay inside, he moseyed up the stairs, rubbing his finger across his father’s name as he passed the sign. A quick yank to open the door, and in he stepped onto sacred ground.

The woman sitting behind the desk of the ground-floor lobby gave him a who-the-hell-are-you look that was so fetching it almost made Kyle forget why he was there.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“Maybe you can,” said Kyle, glancing around the fancy room. There were prints of birds on the walls, there was a wood-paneled elevator at the far end with an ornate wooden staircase wrapping around it. Kyle was wearing his usual outfit—cargo shorts, high-top black sneakers, and a ringer T-shirt—and where he usually felt at home in his clothes, here, in his father’s territory with its ornate furnishings and its air of officialism, he felt strangely underdressed. He turned his attention back to the woman, who was actually quite beautiful, with short dark hair, big brown eyes, lashes. Suddenly unsure of what he was doing there, he fell into his most comfortable pattern.

“Who do you think are more inherently honest,” he said as he leaned an arm on her desk and played out his lines, “men or women?”

“Excuse me?”

“I was having this bet with a friend, and I said women are more inherently honest.”

“That’s what you said?”

“I’m the trusting sort.”

“Well, however much you bet,” she said, “it was too much. But if you want me to hold the stakes . . .”

He laughed.

“Is that why you came in?” she said. “To settle a bet?”

“You have something there.” He touched his own face as he leaned toward her. “Right there on your cheek. Yeah, that’s it. Good. No, I need to see someone from that law firm upstairs.”

“Byrne & Toth?”

“That’s the one.”

“I’m sorry, but the law firm of Byrne & Toth is closed for the time being.”

“Vacation?”

“It’s a little more serious, I’m afraid. I’m sorry to have to tell you the news, but Mr. Toth passed away.”

“Really? How?”

She looked at him with sincere brown eyes. “Heart attack,” she said.

“Maybe I am going to lose that bet,” said Kyle. “How many lawyers are left working there?”