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“So why did you come all the way over here to show it to me?”

“You’ve got two brothers,” Seth Dowd said. “And I happen to know that the younger one was with the late DeLavarious Harmon in the trainer’s room before the game on the day Harmon died.”

Dowd paused and added, “Alone.”

Then he paused again, just briefly.

“That doesn’t mean he gave him the fentanyl, of course.”

Jack Wolf smiled broadly at Seth Dowd.

“But then who gives a shit?” Jack said.

Twenty-Nine

“THIS ISN’T EXACTLY OURhouse in Pacific Heights,” Ted Skyler said.

“I’ve discovered I’m much happier here,” I said.

“Without me, you mean.”

I sipped some wine. I hadn’t offered him anything to drink.

“You sold me out to that cockroach Seth Dowd. And for a story that wasn’t even about you.”

“I am here to try to make that right.”

“Why? Because I’m your boss now and have the ability to trade you to Cincinnati?”

He gestured at the sofa. I shrugged and sat down across from him in one of the Perigold armchairs my mother, in a rare display of maternal instinct, had bought for me as a housewarming present.

“Because I feel shitty about what I did, and because I don’t like what your brothers are trying to do to you.”

“Theodore, I’ve got to hand it to you. No one fakes sincerity better than you do.”

I was almost certain that not even his parents still called him that.

“Is there any Scotch?” he said.

“No. Tell me about the sale. Who toldyouabout it?”

“I honestly can’t say.”

“You’re not Seth Dowd,” I said. “You don’t have to protect your source.”

“In this case I do. You’ve got to trust me on that.”

“Trustyou?”

“I know I deserve that. I’m just here to tell you that this shit was always about to get real once your dad was out of the way.”

“And Danny was going to sell us all out to the person my father hated the most?”

Ted nodded. “You always said that Danny was the one who hated Joe the most.”

“And what better way to get even?”

“But now his problem is that he needs control of the team back,” Ted said.