Much of who he was came from her. She read to him every night as a boy. Whitman and Frost and guileless Mary Oliver. “Tell me,” Oliver asked years after his mother was gone, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” When he first read the line it was his mother’s voice he heard asking the question. His first writing was poems he composed for her. He had a gift, she said, smiling at the images he created with his pencil. “Words don’t have to flow in order,” she encouraged. “Your life doesn’t, either.” If he didn’t want to follow in the family business, he was free to leave it. His father agreed, she said.

He wasn’t about to share any of that with his colleagues any more than he would reveal that he still wrote a poem a week in the Moleskine notebook he carried in his shirt pocket, something she taught him to do. His silent prayer to her.

With little to go on, his coworkers crafted their own narrative to explain Tom Klay. Some called him Eady’s pet. They wove a story together from his muttering, his clothes, his family’s business, his interest in crime. An incident in Mexico City provided his weavers a prominent thread. Klay had turned a corner and discovered his photographer pushed up against a wall by a police officer who wanted to impose a tax on the American with the big camera. Klay had walked toward the cop, his hands held in front of his chest with the palms facing out, patting the air, gently saying, “We are on an assignment for your president.” The officer pulled his Glock .45 and pointed it at Klay’s head. In a single motion, Klay snatched the pistol, ejected the clip, jacked the slide, depressed the slide lock, and with a twist of his wrist reduced the weapon to a pipe, a spring, and a piece of black plastic. “He’s with me,” Klay said, and handed the cop his deconstructed gun.

The photographer had ended his tale on that “He’s with me” line, cementing Klay’s reputation throughout the building, turning half of the staff into open admirers, but more than a few the other way.

Eady could have corrected the rumors, could have ensured that Klay’s reputation stayed within certain boundaries. But he hadn’t, and that told Klay a good deal about who Vance Eady was, too.