He nodded silently, seeming to lapse into thought. I didn’t mention the green Cadillac or his last talk with Lydia. Finally I stood. “You know where to find me. If you need to talk, anything at all.”

“Thank you.” He still stared ahead. I started across the patio.

“Adam.”

I glanced back. He had turned. “I’m pleased you read Aeschylus,” he said.

I smiled. “You lent me that, remember?”

Henry gave a faint answering smile. “I remember.” He turned back to the grounds.

I went home. Two reporters with a camera were filming Henry’s drive.

Ten

TEN

At six o’clock Monday morning I acted out my fear of growing older: running four miles, doing push-ups and sit-ups and lifting weights, punching the heavy bag I’d hung in the basement, and generally battling what Kris Ann had smilingly identified on my thirtieth birthday, before leading me upstairs to forget it all, as the instinct we’d never be back in college. The instinct drove me harder than usual. Then I showered and dressed, kissing Kris Ann hastily as she uncurled from sleep. She awoke suddenly to say that the funeral was at two, as if recalling a bad dream. I checked the locks again on the way out.

The city was hot and drowsy. Bankers and businessmen in lightweight suits ambled toward new glass towers or older cement ones with dime stores, jewelers, and one-story diners squatting in between. I passed a newsstand, saw the headline, DISCREPANCY IN CANTWELL STATEMENT, and stuffed the dollar I’d reached for back in my pocket. In front of our building a wizened black man with no body below the hips lolled in a wagon, begging. I gave him the dollar, pushed through the revolving door, and caught an elevator.

The fifty-one lawyers of Cantwell, Brevard, Winfield, and Cade rented the top two floors of the brown bank building, which had housed them for sixty years. It was the partnership’s pride that there was no need to move: as Cade had put it, over bourbon at the club, we were beyond showing off. Our reception area featured oak paneling with the firm name lettered in discreet gold script, a linen-suited receptionist, wing chairs for clients, and Business Week to read. Framed oils of the sacred dead—Messrs. Cantwell, Brevard, and Winfield—presided over the room like guarantors of probity. Coming off the elevator, I thought again that Cade had worked thirty years to be suitable for framing.

The receptionist looked up at me, vaguely flustered. She was a bony, middle-aged widow with a kind of fading elegance, a proprietary air, and a low, husky voice. I said good morning.

She gave a quick nod, like a hiccup. “It’s horrible about Mrs. Cantwell,” she managed.

“Yes, it is. She was here just last Friday, wasn’t she?”

She glanced toward a wing chair. “Right over there, waiting for Mr. Cade. It’s strange now to think about.”