Canary

Anselm Varga had told three lies that week, and he had told each of them to a person he loved.

He had told the first on Wednesday, to Dunne, in the garage, over the hood of the pickup. He had said it low and casually, the way a man mentions the weather. The exchange will happen at the house. October third, eleven at night. She wants it in the library, on her own ground. Dunne had nodded, wiped his hands on a rag, and said Yes, sir, in the humble, apologetic voice of a man who has been hit on the head with a pipe and has not yet forgiven himself.

He had told the second on Thursday, to Mrs. Tate, over the breakfast tray. If I should be called away that weekend, you'll see to the Bay Ridge house. The exchange is set for the third of October. At the Calder house, in the front room, where her mother kept the piano. And Mrs. Tate had put down the sugar spoon and looked at him for a long moment with her small, shrewd, kindly eyes and said, "Mr. Varga, you have not been sleeping."

"No."

"Whatever it is, it will keep. It always does." She had patted his hand. "The house changes the man, you know. But sometimes the man changes the house."

He had told the third on Friday, in the study, with the door shut and the green lamp lit, to the large quiet man who stood before the desk with his hands folded. He had said: The Anchorage. The old loading hall, under the flood line. October third, eleven o'clock. Mrs. Varga will bring the notebook herself.

And Cormac Ruddick had looked at him, with the creased, red-rimmed, anxious eyes of a man who has stood outside a great many doors, and said: "Yes, Mr. Varga. I'll see that the hall is secured."

I'll see that the hall is secured.

Anselm had said, "Thank you, Cormac." And had turned back to his papers. And had sat for a long time after the door closed, with his hand over his mouth, looking at nothing.

…

At half past five on Saturday the library was full of strangers.

It had never held so many. Linnea sat at the long table with her legal pad squared in front of her and a headset round her neck, pale and quiet and perfectly composed, in the navy suit. Perry Lindqvist sat at her right hand with a coffee and a legal pad of his own. At the end of the table was a lean, brisk, dark-haired woman in a gray blazer who had introduced herself as Special Agent Maren Tolliver of the FBI's New York field office, and who was now crouched on the carpet beneath the window, patiently threading a cable through the back of Linnea's phone.

"It's a clean tap," she said, without looking up. "Court-authorized. Title Three. Anything he says goes straight onto the drive in the next room, with a time-stamp. I'll hear it live on this." She tapped her ear. "You'll have maybe four seconds of delay. If you need to stall, say 'one moment.' People believe in one moment."

"Understood," said Linnea.

"You don't have to talk him into anything. You don't have to sell. Let him do the work. Keep your sentences short and your voice flat. If he asks a question you don't want to answer, ask one back." Tolliver sat back on her heels. "He's a talker. The talkers are the easy ones."

"I've read the profile."

"You've read the profile." The agent smiled faintly. "Of course you have."

Stahl stood at the door, upright, silent, hands clasped behind him. Greer, out of the hospital that morning and in a wheelchair she had refused to be seen in, sat by the window with a rib-belt and an enormous cup of tea and the look of a woman who has fought for her place in a room. She had been wheeled in by Mrs. Tate, who stood behind her with one hand on the chair, stout and stern in her black cardigan, with the air of a woman delivering a parcel she had personally inspected.

And in the corner, in the shadows by the shelves, with a small brass thing in his fist, stood Anselm.

He had not been invited to speak. He had not been asked to sit. He had been given one instruction, by Lindqvist, in a low dry voice: Be there, and say nothing, and don't look like a man who's about to do something. So he stood against the books and watched the woman he loved prepare to talk to the man who had killed his father.

She's so calm, he thought.

She's so terribly calm.

He clicked the counter once, softly. Thirty-one. Ruddick had been sent to Poughkeepsie at four, with a sealed envelope and a list of errands that would take him until seven. Dunne was on the gate, with a pistol in his belt. The camera in the east wing had been switched back on. The house was as quiet as the inside of a drum.

At six o'clock exactly, the phone rang.

…

"Hello?"

Her voice was level. She had answered on the second ring, as the book says. She sat very straight with her left hand flat on the pad and her right holding the receiver an inch from her ear, and Tolliver, on the carpet, held up a finger.

Wait.

"Mrs. Varga." The voice came through the speaker, warm, unhurried, in the room. "Do forgive the hour. I do hate to disturb a lady on her Saturday. I trust you're recovered?"

"I'm well, Mr. Brannock."

"I'm so glad. It was a most distressing business. I hope you won't think it unkind that I've had to resort to what I'm told are called measures. I should so much rather have been invited to tea."

"I'm sure you would."

A low chuckle. The clink of a cup. It was a sound Anselm knew like a bruise, a small domestic china sound that he had heard on a telephone in a dark study at three in the morning, and it went through him like a blade. He gripped the counter harder.

"I won't waste your time," said Hollis Brannock. "I think we both know why I'm calling. Your friend, the little reporter, has been so very brave. I'm told she has a fine story. I shouldn't dream of interfering with the freedom of the press. But the book, my dear. The book is another matter."

"It's not a matter I can resolve by telephone."

"Quite. Quite. Which is why I propose to resolve it in person."

"When?"

"I'd imagined sooner than you'd like. Say, Monday." A pause. "Tuesday, if you're feeling stubborn."

Linnea did not reply.

Anselm watched her. He watched the faint tightening in her throat, the stillness of her hand on the pad. He saw her glance, not at Tolliver, not at Lindqvist, but straight across the room into the shadows, and for one half-second her eyes met his.

Steady, he thought at her, with all the force of his body.

Steady.

"I can't do Tuesday," said Linnea.

"Oh?"

"It isn't in my possession." Her voice was cool and clear and a little bored. "You didn't think I'd keep it in a drawer? I put it in a vault. A private one. Under a time-lock, on instructions I left with an attorney in the city, to open on the third of October at eleven in the morning, and not before. I can't get to it. Neither can you. If you want it, you wait."

Silence.

It lasted so long that Tolliver's pen stopped. Greer, by the window, had gone quite white. Lindqvist leaned slowly forward with his hand over his mouth.

"The third of October," said Brannock slowly.

"That's right."

"An eleven o'clock opening."

"A.M."

"How very precise." There was a rustle on the line, as of a man shifting in a chair. "I confess I'm impressed. It's the sort of thing your father would have done. He was always fond of a lock." A pause. "And I suppose that in the meantime I'm to sit and wait, and trust that you won't give it to Mr. Lindqvist."

"You can trust whatever you like."

"Ah." The warm voice acquired an edge, very faint, like a thread of silver in a wool coat. "You've told Lindqvist, haven't you? He's there now. I can hear him breathing."

Lindqvist went rigid.

Linnea didn't blink. "I'm in my husband's library," she said. "With my husband. The only person breathing is Anselm."

"Is he?" said Brannock. "Do give him my regards. I've been meaning to ask him something. About a watch."

Anselm's whole body went cold.

He did not move. He did not breathe. In the corner of the room the brass counter, which he held in his fist so tightly that it cut his palm, clicked once, loudly, in the silence, and every head in the room turned.

Brannock laughed.

"There he is," he said softly. "There's my boy. Hello, Anselm. I did think you'd be listening."

…

It was the longest minute of Anselm's life.

He stood in the shadows with his heart going like a drum, and the voice of Hollis Brannock poured over him from the speaker in the middle of the table, warm and rich and amused, and he thought: Not now. Not here. If I speak I'll lose it, and she'll lose it, and the whole thing will fall.

Count.

Count honestly.

Linnea's eyes were on him. They were wide and dark and bright. She gave the smallest shake of her head. And then, with a deliberate, extraordinary, crushing coolness, she leaned toward the receiver.

"Mr. Brannock," she said. "I believe you called to discuss an exchange."

"So I did."

"Then let's discuss it. Where?"

"Oh, I leave that to you, my dear. I'm a guest." The cup clinked. "Though if I might venture a suggestion. I've always had a fondness for the Anchorage. A fine old building. A very handsome flood line. I'm told your husband proposed it, in fact, in his last night's deliberations."

Anselm stopped breathing.

Across the table Lindqvist looked up, and for the first time since he'd come into the room his face was naked. A hard, dazed, glittering satisfaction.

The Anchorage.

The old loading hall under the flood line.

Told to Cormac Ruddick, and no one else, on a Friday afternoon.

Linnea did not glance at him. She did not move a muscle. She said, in the same level, indifferent voice: "That was one option. I've since decided against it."

"Have you?"

"I'd rather not be where he proposes. It's too much the home ground of an interested party." She inclined her head toward the phone. "Where would you suggest?"

A long pause. When the voice came again, it was soft and thoughtful, and very, very pleased.

"Port Newark," said Hollis Brannock. "Berth Twelve. I believe there's a little green door on the east side of the warehouse. It would be most appropriate. It's where you did your wonderful bit of paper in March, you know. I've never forgotten it."

"Berth Twelve."

"Eleven at night. The third of October." The warmth had returned. "I'll bring the tea."

"I'll bring the book."

"Then we understand each other." A rustle; a sigh. "Do take care of yourself, Mrs. Varga. And of your husband. I should so regret it if anything were to disturb you before the day."

The line clicked.

For perhaps three seconds, nobody in the library moved.

Then Special Agent Maren Tolliver pulled the earpiece from her ear, and sat back against the wall, and said in a quiet, awed voice: "Well. That's what a confession of knowledge sounds like."

…

He found Ruddick in the garage at nine.

He had not meant to. He had gone down for air, for the cool of the night, with a tumbler of whisky he did not drink, and found the big side door ajar and a light on over the pickup. The big man sat on an upturned crate with a rag in his hand and a half-cleaned spark plug in his lap, and he looked up at Anselm's step with an expression of simple, boyish, grateful relief.

"Mr. Varga."

"Cormac."

"Is it a bad night?"

"A quiet one." Anselm leaned in the doorway. "Did you get Greer's papers?"

"Yes, sir. And the cat food for Mrs. Halloran. They had to special-order the kind." He nodded to a paper bag on the workbench. "I thought I'd drive it over tomorrow. She'll be wanting it."

"That's kind of you."

"It's no trouble. Miss Halloran's a good woman." The big hands turned the plug over. "I've been sorry about her. About all of it. I'd have gone out on that road myself, you know, if I'd been here. I'd have put my body in front of the car."

Anselm looked at him.

He looked at the broad, pale, decent face, and the faint tremor in the hand, and the red rim of the eye. He thought: This is a man who will sell me out on the third of October and weep at the hospital. He thought: This is a man who has stood at the head of my father's grave with me every year since I was twenty, with a cigarette he never lights.

He has a daughter. She is eleven years old. He loves her.

Hollis owns him. And I am the one who is going to take him.

"Cormac," he said.

"Sir?"

"If you ever needed something. If there was ever a thing you couldn't bring to me. I'd want you to know that I'd listen."

Ruddick went still.

The plug slid slowly from his lap and fell to the concrete with a small bright ring.

"Mr. Varga—"

"I'm not asking you anything. I'm only saying." Anselm held his eyes. "I've done a great many things I couldn't forgive. I've had people stand in front of me, in this house, with a face like yours, and say that they were sorry. And I've sometimes been able to say, I know." His throat was tight. "I would try, Cormac. If it came to that. I would try."

For a long moment the garage was absolutely silent.

A moth was beating against the bulb. The smell of oil and gasoline hung in the warm air. And the large man on the crate sat with his hands hanging between his knees and his head bowed, and his shoulders began, very slowly, to shake.

"I know you would, sir," he said hoarsely.

"Good."

"I know you would."

He did not say anything more. He bent, and picked up the plug, and turned it over and over in his thick fingers like a rosary. And Anselm stood there in the doorway watching him, and thought, with a pain so sharp that he could not breathe: Tell me. Tell me now. Tell me and I'll make it right.

Ruddick did not tell him.

He looked up, and smiled a small, weary, crooked smile, and said, "Good night, Mr. Varga."

"Good night."

He went out into the dark.

…

Stahl was waiting on the terrace.

He stood by the stone balustrade with his umbrella hooked over one arm and the lights of the Hudson glittering below him like spilled coins. He did not turn. He had a way of standing very still, that Anselm had come to understand over the years, when something had been completed that he would rather not have seen.

"You spoke to him," he said.

"Yes."

"You gave him a chance."

"I did."

"And he did not take it."

"No." Anselm leaned on the stone. His hands were shaking. He looked at them, and put them in his pockets. "Emmerich. The account. Has it gone?"

"This afternoon." Stahl took an envelope from inside his coat and turned it in his fingers. "Memorial Sloan Kettering. A restricted gift to the Pediatric Leukemia Fund, in the amount of two million dollars, on condition that it cover the full costs of one named patient for the duration of her treatment. The patient's name is Maeve Ruddick. The donor is anonymous. The paper trail leads, through four shells, to a family foundation in Zurich that does not exist."

"He'll know."

"He will receive a letter on Monday morning. It will inform him that his daughter's care has been underwritten in full by a private benefactor, and that the benefactor wishes no acknowledgment." Stahl paused. "He will then understand that the markers, the debts, the tithe he pays to Hollis Brannock each month, are no longer a necessity. He will understand that he has been, in effect, set free."

"And what will he do?"

"I have no idea." The thin, tired, clever face turned at last. "That is the point of a gift, Anselm. It is the one thing a man cannot calculate."

Anselm was silent.

Far below, a tug sounded its horn on the river, a low mournful note that rolled across the water and died against the Palisades. The stars were out. A light wind lifted the leaves of the beech.

"He's my father's friend," he said.

"I know."

"He's the closest thing I have had to an uncle."

"I know that, too."

"Do you think I'm doing the right thing?"

"No," said Emmerich Stahl, quietly. "I think you are doing a decent thing. I have come to understand that they are not the same." He tucked the envelope away. "But I think that she would approve. And I think that in the end that is the only audit that matters."

Anselm closed his eyes.

Count honestly.

On the third of October, at eleven o'clock at night, at a green door in a warehouse in Port Newark, a man he had loved would be in a car on a gravel road, with a telephone in his hand and a choice to make. And there was nothing, in the whole vast clanging ledger of the world, that Anselm Varga could do to make it for him.

All he could do was give him the chance.

He opened his eyes. Behind him, in the lit window of the library, he saw Linnea standing at the glass with her arms folded and her face turned toward him. She raised one hand.

He raised his.

And in the silence, somewhere on the long black road below the house, a pair of headlights came on, and a car pulled away from the curb, and slid, unhurried, into the night.