So the timing could not have been more inconvenient for the two unwelcome shocks that had started and ended his week. The first shock (Monday) was that Gilbert Ogden, the bank embezzler, whom J. Ellis had been paying a private investigator not to find, had not only been found, but had received a “spray of lead justice,” “shot down in the street like the dog he was.” The newspaper description had been overly theatrical and had made J. Ellis feel ill.

The second shock (Friday) was the one that threatened to kill J. Ellis himself, right there in his shiny leather chair behind his desk at City Hall. The shock of seeing his name alongside Gilbert Ogden’s on the front page of The Daily Record, not only tying him to a criminal, but exposing his long-held lie. His firstborn son. The son he had abandoned, because he didn’t fit with what J. Ellis thought his life should look like.

Gilbert Ogden’s last name was actually Jacobs. His first driver’s license had been issued in Syracuse by the state of New York, as had been his second. It was the second license that had been typed up by a distracted office clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles, who erroneously listed him as “Gilbert Ogden,” mistaking Gilbert’s middle name for his surname. Gilbert, usually obsessively detailed and precise, had been tapping his shoe and gnawing at his fingernails impatiently waiting for the distracted clerk to hurry up and give him the license so that he could make it to the bathroom before disaster struck. Gilbert’s groaning intestines (anxiety and undercooked chicken) forced him to snatch the card (without first reviewing it), tuck it in a pocket, and race to the nearest bathroom. Later, as he’d frowned at the driver’s license, displeased at the prospect of having to return to the motor vehicle office to rectify the error, he’d had a peculiar thought. Perhaps the error might actually work in his favor. Pave the way for something else. Anonymous entry into the world of J. Ellis Reed in Wooster, Ohio.

J. Ellis Reed hadn’t recognized the surname Ogden. He hadn’t recognized Gilbert, either. A grown, bespectacled man he had never before met, who seemed extremely bright, with an aptitude for numbers. Perfect for the Wayne Building & Loan. It wasn’t until after the robbery that he’d begun to put the pieces of that puzzle together.

J. Ellis stared at the front page of The Daily Record. He could no longer play the role of the magnanimous, trustworthy mayor after this goddamned story. The floodlights had suddenly turned on and were blinding him. He stared at the headline, the words blurring as he grew dizzy and felt a hot churning in his bowels. “MAYOR REED, FATHER OF WAYNE BUILDING & LOAN EMBEZZLERS.” A great heat rose inside him and he gripped the arms of his leather swivel chair. The telephone on his desk began ringing, as did the one outside his office.

“Sir?” Darla Adams, his faithful secretary, poked her head into the office.