“It’s a case.”

“You’re the one out busting your ass, aren’t you? I don’t get why you don’t just tell him to take a hike. Laguerre doesn’t say anything?”

North set his jaw. He popped the Bud and took a drink. And then another.

“His name’s Tucker, Dad.”

“I know what his name is.”

“My husband. His name is Tucker.”

“I goddamn know his name.” But David McKinney looked pleased with himself because, as usual, he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. He rocked back and forth until he managed to stand, and then he dragged the oxygen tank with him into the kitchen, the cigar in his hand trailing a black fuse through the air. North drank until the aluminum bumped his nose and he got nothing but air, and he imagined a spark running along that fuse and blowing the whole house to hell.

Not that he wasn’t already there, North thought as he peered through the scrim of smoke. Hell is a fucking state of mind.

“All right,” David McKinney called from the kitchen. North sprinted to the wall-mounted phone and accepted the receiver as his father added, “He’s not happy.”

“Uncle Ronnie?” North said.

“What do you need?”

“Mark Sevcik. Or Lee Brueckmann. Addresses, phone numbers, anything.”

Uncle Ronnie was in The Government. That’s how David McKinney had always explained it. Uncle Ronnie knew People. The capital letters when David McKinney talked about Ronnie were marquee-sized. North didn’t know Ronnie’s last name. North didn’t know where Ronnie worked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know because he thought, one day, it might get him into trouble. But he knew when he needed information, when the price was worth paying, he could get it.

“Give me a couple of hours.”

“Right. Thanks, Uncle Ronnie.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Thanks so much.”

“You owe me.”

North’s fingers clamped on the plastic receiver. That—that was new.

“Yeah. I owe you.”

“Couple of hours.”

Then Ronnie clicked off.

David McKinney shuffled past North, his cement-water eyes flicking across his son once. North followed him back to the TV.

“You got what you wanted. Go ahead and go.”

“I don’t mind staying. I’ll order us some pizza.”

“Pizza.” He jabbed at the air again like he was popping a balloon with the cigar. “Go. You’ve got a busy, important life. You’ve got all those fancy friends now. You and Laguerre do.”

“No, really. I haven’t seen you in a while. We can catch up. The Cards have a game this afternoon, right, and we can—”

North thought, at first, that it was another coughing fit. Then he realized his father was laughing.

“Strung you up, didn’t he? Told you he’d call back here, and you’ve got to stay put like a good little boy until he does, is that it?”

North sighed and closed his eyes. He’d have to find a place that would deliver pizza and beer. The beer was becoming the most important part of the afternoon.

“When you were seven years old,” David McKinney said, “you knocked out Joey Baker’s teeth because he called your old man a mick.” He punched the volume up again and blew out a long breath and didn’t say anything else. But that long breath said it. That long breath said, What the fuck went wrong with you?