“That’s it, then. I’ll talk to Mackey there. If he sounds amenable, I’ll set up a formal meeting, and we’ll figure a way to sting Presley.”

Dad lays his hands on his desk to steady them. “I can’t believe it. After all this time . . . to finally do something about it.”

“We’ve got to do something about it. Life’s too short to live like this.”

He closes his eyes, then opens them and stands up. “I feel bad about the Paytons. I feel like we’re buying me out of trouble by burying the truth about Del.”

This is true enough. But weighed against my father’s freedom, Del Payton means nothing to me. Blood is a hell of a lot thicker than sympathy. “You can’t carry that around on your shoulders.”

“Back during the sixties,” he says, hanging his stethoscope on a coat rack, “I was tempted to ask some of those Northern college kids over to the house. Give them some decent food, a little encouragement. But I never did. I knew what the risks were, and I was afraid to take them.”

“You had a wife and two kids. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“I don’t. But Del Payton had a wife and child too.”

“Mom told me you patched up two civil rights workers from Homewood after the doctor over there refused to do it. They were beaten half to death, she said.”

He looks disgusted. “I did take the Hippocratic oath, goddamn it.”

“I guess that Homewood doctor forgot it.”

Anger and shame fill his eyes. “It wasn’t enough. What I did was not enough.”

I stand and take my keys out of my pocket. “Nobody white did enough. Payton’s killers will pay sooner or later. It just won’t be me who makes them do it.”

Dad takes off his lab coat and hangs it on the rack. “If you don’t, Penn, I don’t think anybody else will.”

“So be it.”

CHAPTER 8

Dad and I are dressing for the Perry party—me in a sport jacket borrowed from his closet—when the phone rings beside his bed. He reaches for it without looking, the movement as automatic as scratching an itch.

“Dr. Cage,” he says, waiting for a description of symptoms or a plea for narcotics. His face goes slack, and he presses the phone against his undershirt. “It’s Shad Johnson.”

“Who’s that?”

“The black candidate for mayor.”

“What does he want?”

“You. Want me to say you’re not here?”

I reach for the receiver. “This is Penn Cage.”

“Well, well,” says a precise male voice in the middle register, a voice more white than black. “The prodigal son himself.”