I stood by the Picasso in Daley Plaza and watched busy people hustle by, heading someplace else, scattering the dirty pigeons pecking at dropped bits of bread and bedraggled French fries from the McDonald’s across the street. I glanced up at the towering cubist monstrosity above me and wondered what illegal substance good old Pablo had been on when he came up with the idea for the thing. I didn’t know a lot about art, only what I liked, and this wasn’t it. This looked like something conjured up out of a sick man’s fever dream. City Hall stared at me from across the street. I let it.

I dialed Bucky T.’s cell phone, still looking for a line on Jung, but no one answered. The flashing light told me I had a voice mail waiting, and I dialed in for it, hoping it was Jung, only it wasn’t. The message was from someone inquiring about my apartment for rent. Already. I slid the phone into my pocket, my stomach suddenly queasy. “Nope. Not today.”

I swept my eyes over the plaza just in time to see a determined-looking man in a Burberry trench heading straight for me. It was Ayers. I recognized him from his depressing family portrait. I watched as he powered forward on angry heels, his back straight, his defiant chin set. He looked like a man used to running things, making things happen. He looked an awful lot like his mother. He wouldn’t meet in his office, likely because I had initiated it. This meet was his, and by the sureness of his stride and the iron in his spine, it looked like he meant to shut it down quick. I glanced at my watch. It was eleven-thirty, straight up. I braced for the confrontation.

“I’ll ruin you,” he said when he reached me. “I should have you arrested for harassment. You come to our home? My business? Who do you think you are? If I see you again after today, you’ll regret it.”

I watched as his pale, narrow face began to color over. He couldn’t have been more than five or six years older than Tim, yet his hairline was receding, his hair was starting to turn gray, and he looked like he ate stress and anxiety for breakfast and drank his lunch, the remnants of highballs or martinis or whatever showing in the mottled sag beneath glacial blue eyes. It couldn’t have been easy following in your father’s footsteps when your father was a business titan and family legacy was all. And then there was Elizabeth Ayers and her inability to forgive Tim’s bold grasp for a life of his own, and Tim himself, who despite the shunning, lived life on his own terms, leaving his brother shackled to the family name.

“Well?” Ayers barked. “Did you hear me?”