Suspicion (5 page)

T
he two Galvin sons appeared from wherever they’d been hiding to join the family at dinner. Both of them were tall and rangy and good-looking: dark-haired and light-eyed, heavy brows and strong jaws. Brendan, the younger one, wore a Boston College sweatshirt, Old Navy sweatpants, and flip-flops. Ryan wore scruffy jeans and a Ron Jon Surf Shop T-shirt and was barefoot. He looked almost like Brendan’s fraternal twin, only he was somehow more finished, more refined, his jawline sharper and his face more angular. Apart from the eyes, they both looked a lot more like their mother than their father.

“Brendan comes home once in a while to get a decent meal,” Galvin said. He’d removed his jacket and wore gold suspenders over his white shirt. He’d loosened his tie. “Ryan, what’s your excuse? Laundry piling up?”

“Very funny,” Ryan said.

“I told him he can bring home all the dirty clothes he wants,” said Celina, “but Manuela’s not going to do it for him. He can do his own laundry. We’re not a hotel.” She clapped her hands together briskly in front of her a few times to emphasize her point.

Brendan was a sophomore at BC, and Ryan had graduated the year before and was doing some sort of scut work at a TV station. It sounded to Danny like he was supporting himself. His father, the gazillionaire, wasn’t paying the rent. That was interesting.

Abby seemed to fit right in, as if she were the Galvins’ second daughter. She and Jenna whispered about something, and Abby giggled. Their plates were piled high with chicken and rice and beans, the most delicious
arroz con pollo
Danny had ever tasted.

“So you’re a writer, huh?” Galvin said.

“Yup.”

“Very cool.” Galvin sat at one end of the long oak farm table in the kitchen, his wife at the other. The sons sat across from the two girls. They shifted in their chairs and feigned interest. The dogs slept under the table.

“Well, I don’t know about
cool
, but . . . it’s a job.”

“You write under your own name, or do you have a pen name?”

“Under my name. Daniel Goodman.” Danny got asked that a lot. It was a polite way of saying
I’ve never heard of you.

“I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I can never find the time. I got stories to tell. Maybe when I retire.”

Danny was always amused when people told him they’d love to write if only they had the time. As if the only thing that held them back from a successful writing career was a lack of leisure.

“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just lucky enough to have all this free time on my hands,” he said.

Galvin chuckled. “Ya got me there. So, you write novels or what?”

“Nonfiction.” He clarified: “Biography.”

Galvin held up the bottle of wine Danny had brought and waggled it. “No, thanks,” Danny said. Galvin topped off his own glass.

“Anything I’ve read?” Galvin said.

“
The Kennedys of Boston
.”

“Huh. That sounds familiar. About Jack Kennedy and his family?”

“More about Jack Kennedy’s grandfather, ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, who used to be mayor of Boston a hundred years ago. The founder of the Kennedy dynasty. A colorful character.”

“
Colorful
usually means corrupt,” Galvin pointed out.

Danny smiled. “Exactly. Corrupt yet beloved.”

“Working on one now?”

“Always.”

“What’s it about?”

Danny hesitated. The phrase
robber baron
might not sound so good to Galvin’s ears. Especially if Danny were about to ask him for a loan. “A biography of a nineteenth-century businessman.”

“Yeah? When can I get my copy?”

“Mom, will you tell Brendan to give me back my shoe?” Jenna said.

“Give your sister her shoe,” Celina said.

“I don’t have it,” Brendan said, poker-faced.

“He, like, took it off with his feet,” Jenna said. “He’s like a
monkey
.”

“All of you,
ya basta
!” Celina said. “Are you six year old?”

Danny was grateful for the interruption, but Galvin didn’t give up: “When’s your new book go on sale? Maybe I’ll pick up a copy.”

“You’ll have to wait a while,” Danny said. “I’m still writing it.”

“Going well?”

“A little slow, frankly. Life gets in the way sometimes.”

“You ever get writer’s block?” asked Ryan, the older son.

“Nope. It’s a job like any other. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, right?”

“I like that,” Galvin said. “You hear that, kids? That’s called a work ethic. No one tells him to work. He just sits down every day and makes himself write, whether he likes it or not.”

Danny nodded uneasily.

A sudden blast of music came from somewhere. Danny recognized the opening guitar riff from “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, rendered tinnily as a ringtone. Galvin got up and took a BlackBerry out of the breast pocket of his suit coat hanging on a peg. He glanced at the number, answered it. “I’m at dinner,” he said abruptly. A long pause. “It’s dinnertime. I’m having dinner with my family.” Another pause, then he snapped: “I
said
 . . . I can’t.”

Danny had the feeling he’d just seen a side of Galvin he didn’t like to show.

Galvin jabbed at the BlackBerry to end the call. “Man oh man, ever have one of those days when it feels like everyone wants something from you?”

Danny swallowed hard. “All the time.”

Maybe asking him for a loan wasn’t such a good idea after all.

“How’s the job search going, Bren?”

Brendan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Let me know if I can make some calls for you.”

“It’s okay.”

“You don’t want to spend the summer on the beach in Nantucket again, do you?” his father said, a glint in his eye. “Be one of those losers in wet suits who spend all their time surfing?”

“I’m trying,” Brendan said sullenly.

“Aw, he’s in college, Tommy,” Celina said. “He can play. It’s okay for him to get a job after college.”

“What’s wrong with spending the summer on the beach in Nantucket?” asked Jenna, indignant. “Why does he
have
to get a job?”

“That’s right,” said Celina, “why?”

Galvin grinned. “Now the girls are ganging up on me. Help me out here, Danny. Give me some cover.”

Danny shook his head, unwilling to be lured into a family tiff. “Sorry, man, you’re on your own.”

“Danny, you guys go to the Cape for the summer, right?” said Galvin. “How long have you had a house in Wellfleet?”

“Wellfleet?” Danny didn’t remember telling Galvin that his parents lived in Wellfleet, that he’d grown up there. And he definitely hadn’t said anything about summers.

“Your summer place. Abby told us all about it.”

“Summer place in Wellfleet?” he said sardonically. “Yeah, I wish—”

Then he caught a glimpse of Abby twisting uncomfortably and blushing.

He realized she’d been trying to impress the Galvins by turning her grandparents’ modest tract house in Wellfleet into something it wasn’t, the place where she “summered” every year.

And then he quickly finished the sentence: “—wish it didn’t take so long to get there.”

“Cape traffic’s brutal on the weekends,” Galvin agreed.

But Danny could see the amused detachment in his eyes and knew that Galvin had picked up on his slip.

Galvin didn’t miss a thing.

 • • • 

After dinner, Galvin excused himself to take another call in his study. There was no kitchen help in sight. Danny wondered whether this was the maid’s night off or something. Then Abby and Jenna tried to teach Brendan some kind of complicated dance as a song came blasting over speakers concealed throughout the kitchen, something about “party rock” being “in the house tonight.”

Brendan and the two girls hopped up and down, running in place, pivoting from one side to another, dipping low and then high. They shuffled and slid and moonwalked. Brendan scooped up one of the dogs and tried to manipulate its paws around to simulate dancing, but it struggled and growled menacingly, and Abby and Jenna dissolved in a fit of laughter.

She seemed genuinely happy here. Danny finally understood why she was so drawn to the Galvins. It wasn’t their wealth. It was the big and warm, chaotic and welcoming Galvin clan that she longed to be part of.

She wanted to be a member of a family.

Galvin returned to the kitchen after a few minutes. He stood next to Danny for a moment, watching the kids dance.

“Cute, huh?”

Danny nodded.

“She’s such a good kid, your daughter. She brings out something in Jenna we haven’t seen before. In years, anyway.”

“Hmm,” Danny said and nodded again. “They both seem happy.”

“That’s what I mean. Hey, how about we step away? Feel like a single malt?”

Danny hesitated for a moment—he’d already had a glass of bad red wine and had to drive home on the turnpike—but before he could reply, Galvin said, “I need to ask you a favor.”

T
om Galvin poured them each a few fingers of whiskey from a bottle whose label read
THE MACALLAN
1939. He stood at a wet bar in his study. The walls were lined with leather-bound volumes that were probably purchased by the yard and had never been read. Everything smelled like cigar smoke.

“Not everyone gets the good stuff, you know.”

A quiet knock at the door. They both turned. It was Esteban, the driver. Danny realized he’d never heard him speak.

“Eh, Mr. Galvin, will I be driving your guests home?” Esteban’s voice was soft, his speech halting. He was unusually tall and broad, but his black suit fitted him perfectly. He had a large head, pockmarks on his high cheeks, and Bambi eyes. A large mole on the right side of his neck in the shape of Australia. A strange-looking fellow, neither ugly nor attractive, but somehow gentle and kindly seeming.

“Go to bed,
mi amigo
.”

“Thank you, sir.” Esteban made a slight bow, more a nod of the head, and was gone.

Galvin finished pouring and handed Danny a cut-glass tumbler. They clinked glasses. “Here’s to our wives and girlfriends,” he said. “May they never meet.”

Danny smiled and nodded. In the back of his mind he wondered what “favor” Galvin could possibly want from him.

“Your daughter is Jenna’s only friend, you know,” Galvin said.

“I know they’re close.”

“She’s such a good influence on Jenna. I mean, Jenna’s actually doing the assigned reading for school without bitching and moaning about it. Like, she actually read
To Kill a Mockingbird
, and we didn’t have to nag her once.”

“I read it out loud to Abby when she was probably too young for it, but . . . yeah, she’s a reader. Nice to know they talk about books, not just hip-hop or dubstep or whatever.”

“It’s like . . . if you surround yourself with good people, it makes you a better person. Brings out the best in you. Surround yourself with bad people, it brings out your worst. Every other school she’s gone to, last couple of years, she always seemed to fall in with the druggy, no-good kids. Bad influence. But Abby brings out the best in her. You have no idea how amazing that is.” Galvin’s eyes shone, as if they might be moist.

“That’s great,” Danny said, not knowing what else to say, surprised by the unexpected intimacy of the moment.

“You’re doing something right, brother.”

“Me? Nah, I just try not to get in her way too much. I don’t know what I’m doing. I screw up all the time.”

Galvin smiled. “So you’re raising Abby yourself? How the hell do you do it?”

“Hmm,” Danny said, half smiling, scratching the side of his face. He looked up and said musingly, “You know those old disaster movies when the airline pilot has a heart attack and the flight attendant has to fly the plane?”

He smiled. “Karen Black in
Airport 1975
? Or maybe it was
Airplane!
and it was Julie something. . . .”

Danny smiled back. “Exactly. Whatever. You know, suddenly I’m supposed to know how to fly this thing? But you don’t have a choice.”

Galvin shook his head. “Man, I gotta hand it to you. If it wasn’t for Celina, I can’t even imagine . . .”

He beckoned Danny over to a couple of overstuffed leather chairs in front of a cluttered antique desk, where they sat. From a low table next to his chair, he lifted a glossy black lacquer box with gold lettering on top that said
COHIBA BEHIKE
. He lifted the lid and pulled out a couple of cigars, fat as sausages, and offered one to Danny.

Danny nodded, and the solemn ritual began. Galvin handed him a cigar cutter. Danny snipped the end of his cigar, then handed the cutter back. Galvin lit his cigar with a lighter whose hard blue flame looked like it could cut steel. He took a few puffs, and handed the lighter to Danny.

They smoked silently for a minute or so. Danny remembered why he never liked cigars. He thought about complimenting Galvin on the cigar. But what could he say, that it made him only mildly nauseated? Instead, he pointed his cigar at a wooden presentation case on the desk. Seated in a bed of red velvet flocking was a bronze medal that said
COLL
EGIUM BOSTONIENSE
.

“You’re a distinguished alum of BC?”

He nodded. “President’s Medal for Giving a Shitload of Money.”

Danny laughed. Galvin was self-effacing about it, but he still kept the medal on display.

“Wanna know something?” Galvin finally said, contemplative. “I’m just a lucky son of a bitch. I know that sounds like some kind of bullshit false modesty, but believe me.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Ever drive somewhere and you’re pressed for time, but you just hit all the green lights, one after another? You know, boom boom boom—you just hit ’em all right? You just luck out?”

Danny nodded.

“Well, that’s me. God’s honest truth. Hand to heart.” He placed a palm over his heart. “Look up
right place, right time
in the dictionary, you’re gonna see my picture.”

“I doubt that, but . . . okay.”

“Now, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. But listen to me when I tell you: I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor.”

“Let me guess which one’s better.”

“Not gonna argue with you there,” he said with a grin. He pulled something out of his inside breast pocket and handed it to Danny: a folded slip of paper.

“Here’s the favor,” Galvin said. “Take this without giving me a hard time.”

It was a check for fifty thousand dollars, written on Galvin’s personal account at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

Danny looked up. “What’s this?”

“A year’s tuition at that damned overpriced girls’ school, plus some breathing room.”

“What—what are you . . . ?” Danny was momentarily at a loss for words.

“Lyman is Jenna’s fourth school in three years. We’ve pulled her out of Winsor and Milton and BB&N and—jeez Louise, I can’t keep ’em straight. She always falls in with a bad crowd. Or they all think she’s stuck-up. . . . The word gets out that her daddy has some money, and the kids go all
Mean Girls
on her. I don’t get it. Now, finally, she has a close friend who’s a really good person, and I don’t want anything to screw that up.”

“But . . . but what made you . . . how do you know . . . ?”

“I have my sources.”

Danny’s head was spinning. A few minutes ago he was weighing whether to ask Galvin for a fraction of this, and now . . . Abby must have said something to Jenna; that had to be what happened. “I can’t possibly accept this. I mean . . . and anyway, this is way more than I need.”

“So don’t spend it all.”

“I don’t know when I can pay you back. I mean, I have some money coming from my publisher . . . at some point, but I—”

“Pay when you can.”

“I—I don’t know, I’m uncomfortable about this.” Not so uncomfortable, of course, that he’d turn it away. But it seemed like the right thing to say. He recalled how upset Abby looked earlier, in the kitchen. How she’d cried when she’d opened the letter from Lyman telling her she’d have to leave school.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t get all, like, WASPy and uptight on me. You and me, we’re not like that. Believe me, I deal with guys like that all the time. I could buy and sell most of these snotty a-holes in the Financial District, but God forbid they should let me into the country club, right?”

Danny smiled and nodded. He assumed Galvin was talking about an exclusive place actually called The Country Club, outside of Boston. It sounded like he’d applied and been turned away, or been blackballed or something.

Danny nodded. “When someone told Mark Twain that Andrew Carnegie’s money was tainted, he said, it sure is—’tain’t yours and ’tain’t mine.”

Galvin guffawed. “There you go. Yeah, we come from the same place, you and me. My dad busted his butt to raise ten children. Your dad was a contractor. Neither one of us was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“This is incredibly generous of you.”

“Way I see it, this fifty thousand bucks won’t even fill the fuel tanks of my boat, okay? If Abby leaves Lyman, I really don’t know what the hell Jenna’s gonna do. So if you don’t think I’d spend fifty thousand dollars to ensure my daughter’s happiness, well, you don’t know me.” His stare burned into Danny’s eyes. He looked almost angry. His tone was grave. “I would consider it an honor if you would accept this.”

Danny studied the pale blue check. Tears welled up in his eyes, which usually only happened when he remembered Sarah’s last days. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

His cheeks were burning. “Do you think you could wire it instead?”