Promptly at six, the time once mandated by his father, Adam had dinner with his mother, Jack, and Teddy. At first he did not say much, nor did anyone mention that Clarice had prepared Benjamin Blaine’s favorite dinner-lobster and Caesar salad, with a bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet.
Facing Adam across the table, Jack said, “I sense you have something to tell us.”
“Several things. I read the will this afternoon. It’s been a while since I studied estates and trusts law, so I’m no expert. But I think Mom can attack it.”
Teddy glanced at Clarice, then told Adam dryly, “Then you’ll be glad to know we’re seeing a real lawyer.”
“Good. So let me suggest what he might look at.”
“Please,” his mother interposed with a trace of humor. “I’d like to think that year at NYU wasn’t completely wasted.”
This touched a sore point, Adam knew-for his mother, the pain of his abrupt departure was deepened by his failure to pursue a career for which he seemed well suited. Facing her, he said, “First there’s his behavior-whether caused by brain cancer or something else. That calls into question his mental capacity to execute a valid will.” Adam looked at the others. “Before Mom sees this lawyer, all of you should write down anything he said or did that seemed peculiar-”
“Can we make things up?” Teddy interjected wryly.
Adam shrugged. “Our father did. Just remember that you lack his gift for make-believe.” He faced his mother again. “Then there’s Carla Pacelli. If Dad wasn’t right in the head, she could have pressured him to make changes he otherwise wouldn’t have.”
“Maybe she did,” Jack said. “But what interest would Carla have in Ben leaving Jenny a million dollars?”
Adam had pondered this himself. “None, on the surface. Probably it was his idea. But a truly clever woman might have obscured her role by suggesting Dad leave money to someone else outside the family. Anyhow, it’s worth a shot. At least maybe Mom can force a settlement that gives her back the house and enough to live on.
“There also may be a problem with how Dad passed on his money. He created a trust in favor of Pacelli, taking the proceeds outside his estate and, as a result, outside the property Mom can claim a share in. Under the law, that may not hold up.” Adam turned to his mother again. “Finally, there’s the postnuptial agreement. Are you absolutely certain, Mom, that he gave you nothing for signing it?” He paused, concluding quietly, “Or, at least, that no one can prove he did?”
His mother flushed, then nodded stubbornly. “I’m sure.”
“Then the law may protect you from yourself.” Adam glanced around the table. “Then there’s George Hanley. George is a smart man, and he’s playing this close to the vest. But I’m pretty sure he thinks that one of you pushed my father off that cliff.”
His mother’s face became expressionless. “Why would he think that?” Jack demanded. “Hasn’t Clarice been through enough?”
His uncle wore an expression Adam had seldom seen, angry and defensive. “It’s not personal,” he answered calmly. “As to the why, my guess is that George believes that one or more of you knew about this will.”
“Then we’d be fools,” Teddy cut in. “Unless we can break the will, his death locked in our disinheritance.”
Adam stared at his brother. Since Ben’s death, it was clear, the members of his family had considered their positions more deeply than they acknowledged. “A good point,” Adam responded. “Assuming that murder is a rational act. But our father had a way of provoking hatred, didn’t he.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Studying their expressions, now quite composed, Adam felt a frisson-at the least, he sensed, someone at this table knew more than they wished to tell him. “In any event,” he said, “Dad named me executor of his will. That means I’m staying for a while.” His voice chilled. “He wanted to drag me into this. So now I’m in.”
Clarice gave him a complex look of worry and relief. After a moment, she reached across the table, touching Adam’s hand. “Whatever the reason,” she said in a husky voice, “I’m glad you’re not disappearing. The last time was hard enough.”
After dinner, Jack sat with Adam on the porch. It felt familiar and companionable, reminding Adam of the evenings they had spent a decade ago or more, when Ben was off-island and his uncle would come for dinner. Adam always cherished them, not least for the release of tension from his father’s oversized presence, the pleasant contrast of Jack’s solicitude and calm. Sometimes they would talk for hours.
But this evening Jack was quiet, the coffee cup untouched beside him. Finally, he asked, “You’re very worried about the police, aren’t you?”
Adam weighed his answer. “I don’t care if he was murdered, Jack. I just don’t want anyone in this family to pay for it. He did enough harm when he was alive.”
Jack studied him. “Teddy’s on to something, you know. Why would anyone kill a man whose death would ruin them?”
A shadow of memory crossed Adam’s mind. “Because sometimes hatred is enough. But you’re right, of course-motive is important. And there are people outside this family who stand to profit from his death. Mom certainly hasn’t.” Adam paused to sip his coffee, eyeing Jack over the rim. “Do you know why she signed that postnup?”
For a moment, Jack’s thoughts seemed to turn inward, and then he looked at Adam intently. “I know what your mother says. I think you should accept that. The shame she feels whenever you bring it up is painful to watch-”
“Not as painful as its consequences.”
“I can see that.” Jack paused. “I also understand why you’d want to help her. But will your firm allow you to stick around that long?”
“I’m not giving them a choice.”
The worry in Jack’s eyes deepened the gravity of his expression. “As your uncle, let me speak my piece. No matter what you say about it, I’m not happy with you going back to Afghanistan. But all of us except you got sucked into Ben’s orbit. At least you escaped-”
Richard North Patterson
Fall from Grace
“This is different, Jack.”
“So it is. But I don’t think you can change what happens here. Maybe you should go back to the life you’ve created for yourself. Or better, start a new one.”
Adam contemplated the coffee cup, cool now in his hands. “I can’t,” he answered simply. “I need to bury him for good.”
Before sunset, Adam climbed down the wooden stairway from the promontory to the beach. Gazing up at the cliff, he imagined the trajectory of his father’s fall. Beneath it he found a rock with a faint rust-colored stain that, a week before, must have been a pool of his father’s blood.
Adam closed his eyes. If someone had pushed him, they could be certain that he could not live to say who, or why. Perhaps no one but the murderer would ever know.
He sat down on a rock, contemplating a vivid sunset Ben would have loved, which now began to cast a shimmering orange glow on the darkening waters. Seeing his mother, uncle, and brother had reminded Adam, if he needed this, how deeply he loved them. But that did not mean he believed everything they said, any more than he would tell them the entire truth about himself and what he meant to do here. The last ten years had created a duality in his nature-he had learned the uses of dissembling, and how to wall off his emotions to survive. He could feel love and practice deceit in the same moment.
Glancing around him, he took out the untraceable cell phone he had not used since coming back. He punched in the number, imagining the man at his desk noting which telephone he had called on. When his superior picked up, he said, “It’s Blaine.”
“Where are you?”
“Still on the island. I have to stay here for a while. My father seems to have disinherited my mother.”
A moment’s pause. “Isn’t it a little late to change his mind?”
“There’s something off here, Frank. Several things. Don’t tell me a man of your broad interests doesn’t read the National Enquirer.”
Svitek laughed. “I have, actually. Sounds like your father’s interests were very broad indeed. But we need you back there, my son.”
The orange disk, Adam noticed, was swiftly vanishing. “They need me here much more,” he replied. “While I’m gone, you’ve got other people to do the work.”
“Starting from scratch? Come off it, Adam. We can’t just clone an operative with your exceptional skills-”
“Which are?”
“Deception. Manipulation. Withholding information. Knowing whom not to trust. Getting those who trust you to take risks on your behalf. And, of course, pretending to be someone you’re not.” His superior’s tone changed from ironic to practical. “The Afghans like you. You have a knack for inspiring confidence while telling your prey only what they need to know.”
Adam’s laugh was hollow. “As I consider it, Frank, those are the attributes of a sociopath.”
“In our line of work we call them ‘survival skills.’” Svitek paused, his voice admitting a note of compassion. “You’re hardly a sociopath, Adam-you care about people too much. That weakness aside, you’re the best we have.”
“By which you mean they haven’t killed me yet. Despite a dead man’s best efforts.”
“True enough. But that makes my point, doesn’t it?”
Adam’s tone hardened. “Given all that, I’ve earned myself a leave. As you suggest, working under cover gives us certain skills. One is a gift for changing outcomes in ways that can’t be seen. For the next little while, I mean to use those talents on behalf of the three people I most care about.”
Svitek was silent. “You’ve made a commitment to us,” he replied at length, “and your work is essential. Whatever you mean to do there, wrap it up in one month’s time. And don’t get yourself in trouble.”
“I won’t,” Adam said flatly. “Whomever or whatever I’m dealing with, at least it’s not the Taliban.”
He got off, then walked to the stairway. As he looked up, the promontory was shrouded in darkness. All he could see was the moon and stars.
That night Adam could not sleep. He tried to purge his mind and imagine himself as Benjamin Blaine in the last months of his life.
Brain cancer.
Did he know? If so, this could account for much of his behavior-in his son’s estimate, Ben’s deepest fear was of his own mortality. The spectre of death could explain his writing schedule-frenzied, drunken, and nocturnal-as he felt his powers flagging and his gifts slipping from his grasp. A desperate race against the last, eternal night.
The manuscript was locked in his desk.
Adam reached into the drawer for the Luger he had concealed, then attached the silencer to its barrel. Leaving his room, he crept past the bedroom where, he suspected, his mother slept as fitfully as he. Then he took the stairway to the first floor and entered his father’s study, gun in hand.
Turning on the desk lamp, he found the drawer where his father kept his final work in progress. Then he aimed the gun at its lock and fired. With a pneumatic hiss, the lock vanished.
Opening the drawer, Adam put the manuscript on the desk, and sat in his father’s chair. The title page read “Fall from Grace” and, beneath that, “A Novel by Benjamin Blaine.” Then he turned to the dedication page, and his hand froze.
“For Adam,” it said, “the missing son.”
Fingertips steepled, Adam stared at the words. Then he turned the page and forced himself to read.
Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three, Adam had read Body Count and the rest of his father’s novels to that date. He had admired their force, their craftsmanship, the sturdy architecture of the narrative and the strength and vigor of Ben’s prose. And so this work began. But as Adam turned the pages the writing became flatter, the scenes less fully realized. But this did not obscure the arc of the story, or lessen Adam’s disquiet.
He stopped, recalling another night from their last summer as father and son.
The evening after the Fourth of July, Ben had picked up on Adam’s suggestion that they go fly-fishing at Dogfish Bar.
Striped bass were nocturnal, and so Ben and Adam arrived at nightfall. The moon rose behind them, its silver light glistening on the surf at their feet. Together, they cast as Ben had taught him since the night on which, when Adam was six, his father had first awakened him to fish in darkness. Adam had not complained; he cherished this initiation into what he imagined as his father’s secret world. “It’s wonderful and mysterious,” his father had told him, “to cast a line into dark waters, hoping to connect with something you can’t see.” And so Adam discovered. For years, he worked to emulate the skill and grace his father brought to the art of casting a weightless line, his stiff arm tracing and retracing the same perfect arc. Now they cast together; in the darkness, Adam knew, no one could tell the father from the son.
Behind them, he heard voices in the night. On the rise that descended to the water, four more fishermen appeared, wearing boots and carrying fly rods, their outlines backlit like some shadowy militia come to occupy the beach. When Adam tried this simile on his father, Ben replied, “I may steal that from you, son. Did you ever consider writing yourself?”
“Compete with you? No thanks.”
Ben looked at him sharply. “If you’re afraid of that, all the more reason to try: fear exists to be mastered, not bowed to. Still, maybe you’re right-where is it written that you can do what I’ve done? And I can hardly blame you for choosing your own path. Thank God I didn’t follow my old man like he followed his.”
Though he could not see Ben’s face, Adam heard a note of satisfaction mixed with dread, as though Nathaniel Blaine might still pull Ben by the collar into the life he had fought to escape. “What was he like?” Adam asked. “I can’t remember much.”
“Limited,” Ben said flatly. “They all were. Granted, they had a certain mulish persistence that might have passed for character-through a century of lobstering, they stuck with it, no matter how hard the life. Their problem was tunnel vision. Each took those same traits of character and did the exact same thing, generation upon generation. From the age of five, I set out to be different.”
Something in Ben’s claim of uniqueness nettled Adam. “So did Jack,” he said.
Ben laughed under his breath. “Jack? All he managed was getting out of the water.”
It was always like this, Adam thought-his father determined to have him perceive his uncle as smaller than Ben himself. “He did more than that, Dad. Jack’s woodworking is special. He’s an artist, like Teddy.”
“Yes,” Ben answered tartly. “On a rock off the coast of Massachusetts, fifty square miles. This is a place to come back to, not to define the boundaries of a life. The world has too much to offer.”
Adam felt the familiar stab of ambivalence mixed with admiration. His father was ever on the lookout for places that bared the nature of man at its noblest and most terrible-in Vietnam, Cambodia, Kosovo, Nigeria, the West Bank, Lebanon, the Sudan. He had embedded himself with American troops during the Gulf War, followed the Afghan rebellion against the Soviets, forging lifelong bonds with a legendary operative for the CIA. It was as though he were engaged in a worldwide game of dare-danger, tragedy, and war had always drawn Benjamin Blaine.
But equal to Ben’s hunger for experience was his iron will to record it with merciless clarity. “Whatever you do,” his father continued, “dream big, take risks, and work harder than whoever else is doing the same thing. Do you know why I’ve succeeded? Not because of talent-I’ve known writers more gifted than I am. But I was driven to wring every molecule out of whatever talent I possessed. Success is not something you aspire to-you have to grab it by the throat.
“There’s a story about Bobby Kennedy I’ve always loved. When Bobby was attorney general, he set out to jail the crook who ran the Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa. One night Bobby worked on the Hoffa case until two a.m. Driving home, he passed the Teamsters Building, and saw the light on in Hoffa’s office. So he turned around and drove back to work.” Chuckling with fondness for the image, Ben concluded firmly, “There’ll be people better and smarter than you, Adam. There always are. Your strength must be to want it more, and let nothing get in the way. They called Robert Kennedy ruthless. But for a few months before he died, when I joined his campaign, I knew Bobby very well, and I can tell you he was most ruthless with himself. That’s how you should be.”
In this story, Adam knew, lay a key to his father’s psyche, part of which was his deep admiration-even love-for Robert Kennedy. But he could as easily have recounted his night on Chappaquiddick, fly-fishing in a bitter wind that drove his competitors off the beach. Ben held out until dawn, lips blue with cold, at last catching a forty-three-pound bass that set a world record. But the best example was his writing. No doubt Ben was ruthless there-Adam firmly believed he could bury his wife and sons in the morning, and write a chapter in the afternoon. No writer could steal the march on Benjamin Blaine.
Now, ten years later, Adam stared at his father’s final work.
Where is it written that you can do what I’ve done?
Reading on, Adam felt anew the full weight of those words. Ben could not stand the thought of anyone besting him-especially Adam, the one most like him, the one he had always feared. And now this.
On the page, the language revealed Ben’s deterioration. Now and again a lucid, vigorous passage evoked Benjamin Blaine as readers knew him. But the last pages were so poorly written that they resembled Cliffs Notes of the novel that might have satisfied his father. The man Adam had known would have ripped them up in disgust. Unless he had been so rushed or drunken or impaired that he had not paused to read the story of his own decline.
Adam forced himself to finish.
The story was set in the nineteenth century, its principal characters a family of lobstermen. Though incomplete, the narrative focused on the father’s fraught and ultimately tortured relationship with his younger son, the subject of its most piercing passages. At times, the son resembled Adam; at other times, Ben himself. There was similar confusion between Ben’s father as Adam understood him and the father Adam himself had known. Though the pages ended abruptly, marking his father’s death, Adam could grasp the tragedy ahead. By the end of this novel, he understood, one of these men, father or son, was meant to kill the other.