Paranoia (36 page)

He said something else, and his audience laughed as if he were Jay Leno and Eddie Murphy and Rodney Dangerfield all rolled into one. To one side of him was Paul Camilletti, in neatly pressed, faded jeans and a white button-down shirt, also with the sleeves rolled up.
He’d
gotten the appropriate-dress memo, even if I hadn’t—I had on a pair of khaki shorts and a polo shirt.

Facing him was Jim Colvin, the COO, his sandpiper legs pasty-white under plain gray Bermuda shorts. A real fashion show this was. Goddard looked up, caught my eye, and beckoned me over.

As I started toward him, someone came out of nowhere and clutched my arm. Nora Sommers, in a pink knit shirt with the collar standing up and oversized khaki shorts, looked thrilled to see me. “Adam!” she exclaimed. “How nice to see you here! Isn’t this a
marvelous
place?”

I nodded, smiled politely. “Is your daughter here?”

She looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Megan’s going through a difficult stage, poor thing. She never wants to spend time with me.” Funny, I thought, I’m going through the exact same stage. “She’d rather ride horses with her father than waste an afternoon with her mother and her mother’s boring work friends.”

I nodded. “Excuse me—”

“Have you had a chance to see Jock’s car collection? It’s in the garage over there.” She pointed toward a barnlike building a few hundred feet across the lawn. “You
have
to see the cars. They’re
glorious!
”

“I will, thanks,” I said, and took a step toward Goddard’s little gang.

Nora’s clutch on my arm tightened. “Adam, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I am
so
happy for your success. It really says something about Jock that he was willing to take a chance on you, doesn’t it? Place his confidence in you? I’m just so
happy
for you!” I thanked her warmly and extricated my arm from her claw.

I reached Goddard and stood politely off to one side until he saw me and waved me over. He introduced me to Stuart Lurie, the exec in charge of Enterprise Solutions, who said, “How’s it going, guy?” and gave me a soul clasp. He was a very good-looking guy of around forty, prematurely bald and shaved short on the sides so it all looked sort of deliberate and cool.

“Adam’s the future of Trion,” Goddard said.

“Well, hey, nice to meet the future!” said Lurie with just the slightest hint of sarcasm. “You’re not going to pull a coin from
his
ear, Jock, are you?”

“No need to,” Jock said. “Adam’s always pulling rabbits out of hats, right, Adam?” Goddard put his arm around my shoulder, an awkward gesture since I was so much taller than him. “Come with me,” he said quietly.

He guided me toward the screened porch. “In a little while I’m going to be doing my traditional little ceremony,” he said as we climbed the wooden steps. I held the screen door open for him. “I give out little gifts, silly little things—gag gifts, really.” I smiled, wondering why he was telling me this.

We passed through the screened porch, with its old wicker furniture, into a mudroom and then into the main part of the house. The floors were old wide-board pine, and they squeaked as we walked over them. The walls were all painted creamy white, and everything seemed bright and cheery and homey. It had that indescribable old-house smell. Everything seemed comfortable and lived-in and real. This was the house of a rich man with no pretensions, I thought. We went down a wide hallway past a sitting room with a big stone fireplace, then turned a corner into a narrow hall with a tile floor. Trophies and stuff were on shelves on either side of the hall. Then we entered a small book-lined room with a long library table in the center, a computer and printer on it and several huge cardboard boxes. This was obviously Goddard’s study.

“The old bursitis is acting up,” he apologized, indicating the big cartons on the library table, which were heaped with what looked like wrapped gifts. “You’re a strapping young man. If you wouldn’t mind carrying these out to where the podium’s set up, near the bar. . . .”

“Not at all,” I said, disappointed, but not showing it. I lifted one of the enormous boxes, which was not only heavy but unwieldy, unevenly weighted and so bulky that I could barely see in front of me as I walked.

“I’ll guide you out of here,” Goddard said. I followed him into the narrow corridor. The box scraped against the shelves on both sides, and I had to turn it sort of sideways and up to maneuver it through. I could feel the box nudge something. There was a loud crash, the sound of glass shattering.

“Oh, shit,” I blurted out.

I twisted the box so I could see what had just happened. I stared: I must have knocked one of the trophies off a shelf. It lay in a dozen golden shards all over the tile floor. It was the kind of trophy that looked like solid gold but was actually some kind of gilt-painted ceramic or something.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” I said, setting down the box and crouching down to pick up the pieces. I’d been so careful with the box, but somehow I must have knocked against it, I didn’t know how.

Goddard glanced around and he turned white. “Forget it,” he said in a strained voice.

I collected as many of the shards as I could. It was—it had been—a golden statuette of a running football player. There was a fragment of a helmet, a fist, a little football. The base was wood with a brass plaque that said 1995
CHAMPIONS—LAKEWOOD SCHOOL—ELIJAH GODDARD—QUARTERBACK
.

Elijah Goddard, according to Judith Bolton, was Goddard’s dead son.

“Jock,” I said, “I’m so sorry.” One of the jagged pieces sliced painfully into my palm.

“I said, forget about it,” Goddard said, his voice steely. “It’s nothing. Now come on, let’s get going.”

I didn’t know what to do, I felt so shitty about destroying this artifact of his dead son. I wanted to clean the mess up, but I also didn’t want to piss him off further. So much for all the goodwill I’d built up with the old guy. The cut in my palm was now oozing blood.

“Mrs. Walsh will clean this up,” he said, a hard edge to his voice. “Come on, please take these gifts outside.” He went down the hall and disappeared somewhere. Meanwhile, I lifted the box and carried it, with extreme caution, down the narrow corridor and then out of the house. I left a smeary handprint of blood on the cardboard.

When I returned for the second box, I saw Goddard sitting in a chair in a corner of his study. He was hunched over, his head in shadow, and he was holding the wooden trophy base in both hands. I hesitated, not sure what I should do, whether I should get out of here, leave him alone, or whether I should keep moving the boxes and pretend I didn’t see him.

“He was a sweet kid,” Goddard suddenly said, so quietly that at first I thought I’d imagined it. I stopped moving. His voice was low and hoarse and faint, not much louder than a whisper. “An athlete, tall and broad in the chest, like you. And he had a . . . gift for happiness. When he walked into a room, you just felt the mood lifting. He made people feel good. He was beautiful, and he was kind, and there was this—this
spark
in his eyes.” He slowly raised his head and stared into the middle distance. “Even when he was a baby, he almost never cried or fussed or . . .”

Goddard’s voice trailed off, and I stood there in the middle of the room, frozen in place, just listening. I’d balled up a napkin in my hand to soak up the blood, and I could feel it getting wet. “You would have liked him,” Goddard said. He was looking toward me but somehow not
at
me, as if he were seeing his son where I was standing. “It’s true. You boys would have been friends.”

“I’m sorry I never met him.”

“Everybody loved him. This was a kid who was put on the earth to make everybody happy—he had a spark, he had the best sm—” His voice cracked. “The best—smile. . . .” Goddard lowered his head, and his shoulders shook. After a minute he said, “One day I got a call at the office from Margaret. She was screaming. . . . She’d found him in his bedroom. I drove home, I couldn’t think straight. . . . Elijah had dropped out of Haverford his junior year—really, they kicked him out, his grades had gone to shit, he stopped going to classes. But I couldn’t get him to talk about it. I had a good idea he was on drugs, of course, and I tried to talk to him, but it was like talking to a stone wall. He moved back in, spent most of his time in his room or going out with kids I didn’t know. Later I heard from one of his friends that he’d gotten into heroin at the beginning of junior year. This wasn’t some juvenile delinquent, this was a gifted, sweet-natured fellow, a good kid. . . . But at some point he started . . . what’s the expression, shooting up? And it changed him. The light in his eyes was gone. He started to lie all the time. It was as if he was trying to erase everything he was. Do you know what I mean?” Goddard looked up again. Tears were now running down his face.

I nodded.

A few slow seconds ticked by before he went on. “He was searching for something, I guess. He needed something the world couldn’t give him. Or maybe he cared too much, and he decided he needed to kill that part of him.” His voice thickened again. “And then the rest of him.”

“Jock,” I began, wanting him to stop.

“The medical examiner ruled it an overdose. He said there was no question it was deliberate, that Elijah knew what he was doing.” He covered his eyes with a pudgy hand. “You ask yourself, what should I have done differently? How did I screw him up? I even threatened to have him arrested once. We tried to get him to go into rehab. I was on the verge of packing him off there,
making
him go, but I never got the chance. And I asked myself over and over again: Was I too hard on him, too stern? Or not hard enough? Was I too involved in my own work?—I think I was. I was far too driven in those days. I was too goddamned busy building Trion to be a real father to him.”

Now he looked directly at me, and I could see the anguish in his eyes. It felt like a dagger in my gut. My own eyes got moist.

“You go off to work and you build your little kingdom,” he said, “and you lose track of what matters.” He blinked hard. “I don’t want you to lose track, Adam. Not ever.”

Goddard looked smaller, and wizened, and a hundred years old. “He was lying on his bed covered in drool and piss like an infant, and I cradled him in my arms just like he was a baby. Do you know what it’s like seeing your child in a coffin?” he whispered. I felt goose bumps, and I had to look away from him. “I thought I’d never go back to work. I thought I’d never get over it. Margaret says I never have. For almost two months I stayed home. I couldn’t figure out the reason I was alive anymore. Something like this happens and you—you question the value of everything.”

He seemed to remember he had a handkerchief in his pocket, and he pulled it out, mopped his face. “Ah, look at me,” he said with a deep sigh, and unexpectedly he sort of chuckled. “Look at the old fool. When I was your age I imagined that when I got to be as old as I am now I’d have discovered the meaning of life.” He smiled sadly. “And I’m no closer now to knowing the meaning of life than I ever was. Oh, I know what it’s
not
about. By process of elimination. I had to lose a son to learn that. You get your big house and your fancy car, and maybe they put you on the cover of
Fortune
magazine, and you think you’ve got it all figured out, right? Until God sends you a little telegram saying, ‘Oh, forgot to mention, none of that means a thing. And everyone you love on this earth—they’re really just on loan, you see. And you’d better love ’em while you can.’” A tear rolled slowly down his cheek. “To this day I ask myself, did I ever know Elijah? Maybe not. I thought I did. I do know I loved him, more than I ever thought I could love someone. But did I really
know
my boy? I couldn’t tell you.” He shook his head slowly, and I could see him begin to take hold of himself. “Your dad’s goddamned lucky, whoever he is, so goddamned lucky, and he’ll never know it. He’s got a son like you, a son who’s still with him. I know he’s got to be proud of you.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” I said softly.

“Oh, I am,” Goddard said. “Because I know
I’d
be.”

PART SEVEN
C
ONTROL

Control
: Power exerted over an agent or double agent to prevent his defection or redoubling (so-called “tripling”).

—The International Dictionary of Intelligence

66

The next morning I checked my e-mail at home and found a message from “Arthur”:

Boss very impressed by your presentation & wants to see more right away.

I stared at it for a minute, and I decided not to reply.

A little while later I showed up, unannounced, at my dad’s apartment, with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. I parked in a space right in front of his triple-decker. I knew Dad spent all his time staring out the window, when he wasn’t watching TV. He didn’t miss anything that was going on outside.

I’d just come from the car wash, and the Porsche was a gleaming hunk of obsidian, a thing of beauty. I was stoked. Dad hadn’t seen it yet. His “loser” son, a loser no more, was arriving in style—in a chariot of 450 horsepower.

My father was stationed in his usual spot in front of the TV, watching some kind of low-rent investigative show about corporate scandals. Antwoine was sitting next to him in the less comfortable chair, reading one of those color supermarket tabloids that all look alike; I think it was the
Star
.

Dad glanced up, saw the donut carton I was waving at him, and he shook his head. “Nah,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure there’s a chocolate frosted in here. Your favorite.”