“We’d like to talk to him, get some details on the accident. Any idea what he was doing out there at that hour?”

Jack glanced down at the report. “What hour?”

“Around midnight.”

Jack shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

“Could your father have been mixed up in something he shouldn’t have been?”

“My dad? Into something shady? He’s like…”

Like who? Jack tried to think of a public figure who was a true straight shooter, whose integrity was beyond reproach, but came up blank. There had to be somebody. But no one came to mind. He almost said Mr. Deeds but Adam Sandler had screwed up that reference.

“He’s like Casper Milquetoast.” Jack saw no hint of recognition in Hernandez’s face. “He’s a regular everyday Joe who minds his own business and doesn’t take chances. My dad is not a risk taker.” Jack didn’t want to call him timid, because he wasn’t. Once he took a position he could be a bulldog about defending it. “He lived in Jersey most of his life, not fifty miles from Atlantic City, and in all that time I don’t think he once visited the casinos. So the idea of him being involved in something even remotely criminal is, well, crazy.”

Hernandez shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be criminal. He could have been fooling around with the wrong guy’s wife or—”

Jack held up his hands. “Wait. Stop. Not him. I promise you. No way.”

Hernandez was studying him.

Uh-oh. Here it comes.

“Do you live around here?”

“No. I’m still in Jersey.” Where did Tyleski live? All these identities…after a while they ran together in his head. “In Hoboken.”

“How often do you see your father? How many times a year do you visit him?”

“He hasn’t been here that long. Less than a year.”

“And?”

“And this is my first visit.”

“Do you talk often?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then you really don’t know that much about your father’s life down here.”

Jack sighed. There it was again. “I guess not. But I know what kind of man he is, and he’s not a sneak or a liar, and people who are have no place in his life.”

But how much more do I know? he wondered. What do you know about anyone, even someone who raised you, beyond how they act and what they’ve told you about themselves?

Anya’s comment from this afternoon stole back to him: Trust me, kiddo, there’s more to your father than you ever dreamed.

He hadn’t paid much attention to it then, but now with Dad the victim of a hit-and-run accident in the middle…

“Say, if he got hit in the middle of nowhere…” He turned to Anita. “Didn’t you say a call came in?”

She nodded. “It’s in the report.”

“But that means someone must have witnessed it.”