Miles had been reluctant to leave his brother a large part of his estate because he feared Caroline would get her hands on it. And he’d felt no small measure of guilt because of that. Gilbert was forty-five, the older brother by three years. He’d looked out for Miles when they were younger. Ran interference for him, protected him from their parents’ tirades. Like the time Miles, too young to have a driver’s license, took out the father’s Oldsmobile for a joyride and backed into a fire hydrant, knocking the bumper right off and sending a geyser of water into the sky. Gilbert knew their father would kill him, so he confessed to the crime. Gilbert was nearly six feet tall at age fifteen, and had enough weight on him that their father would never dare take a belt to him the way he might have when Gilbert was younger. But Gilbert bore the brunt of his anger, which was considerable.
It was interesting how Gilbert was better at standing up to their father back then than he was at standing up to Caroline now.
Miles had set up a trust for Gilbert, without his knowledge, that would pay him twenty thousand dollars a month once he’d passed. Given what Miles had, it was a token amount, and there was nothing he could do, in death, to stop Gilbert from handing it over to his wife, but at least it would keep Caroline from getting her hands on a massive inheritance.
But now, there were other people to consider.
“I have to sort some things out,” he told Dorian, “while I’m still able.”
“Go on.”
“This disease isn’t going to kill me overnight. It may be long and drawn out and pretty fucking horrible. If I’m going to leave money to my children, whoever they are, I need to do it now. Give it to them while they have time to enjoy it.”
“That’s what you want to do,” Dorian said, seeking clarification. “Distribute your wealth... now... to these biological children, whoever and wherever they may be.”
He nodded.
“I see,” Dorian said. “No others you’d want to consider?”
“I’ll still allocate some to charities,” he said.
The look on Dorian’s face suggested she had been hoping for a different answer.
Miles said, “I need to find out who they are. My children. How many there are. Names, addresses.”
“Jesus, Miles, think about this a minute,” Dorian said. “What if they don’t even know they owe their existence to a fertility clinic? That their father isn’t their real father? You gonna send them an email with ‘Guess what?’ in the subject line? Call them up and say, ‘Hey, I’m your dad. I donated sperm at a clinic more than two decades ago, your mom got it, and here you are! And you’re about to become a multimillionaire! Wanna grab a beer? Oh, and by the way? I’ve got a fatal genetic disease, and there’s a chance — nothing to get alarmed about — you might develop it, too. So whaddaya say about that beer?’ Miles, there’s a lot to consider here.”
Miles closed his eyes briefly. “Shit,” he said.
“Exactly.”
He opened his eyes. “They’re entitled to know.”
Six
New York, NY
The police had closed off Seventieth Street at Park. A massive crane truck sat dead center in the street about halfway between Park and Lexington, and not a car, not a cab, not even a cyclist, was going to get through here for the next few hours.
Parked on the street, just behind the crane truck, was a Winnebago, a mid-1970s recreation vehicle from the company’s Brave series. Eighteen feet long, as aerodynamic as a box car, with that distinctive W painted down the side. The RV was wrapped in an assortment of straps and braces, and the man in the small, glass-enclosed cockpit was moving the crane’s hook into position above the vehicle.
The sidewalk in front of three brownstones had been blocked off, and up on the third floor of the one on the right was a gaping hole about twenty feet wide and twelve feet high. Two large panes of glass that would have filled that space were hung on either side of the opening from straps that came down from the roof.
A large crowd had formed in the street to watch. It wasn’t every day one got to see an RV placed on the third floor of a New York brownstone. But as everyone knew, this was where Jeremy Pritkin lived, and if Jeremy Pritkin wanted a Winnebago in the top floor of his residence, that was exactly what Jeremy Pritkin was going to get.
Several news crews were there to cover the event, and a reporter from NY1 had managed to pull Pritkin away from supervising the project to ask him a few questions. Pritkin, six feet tall, trim, looked at least a decade younger than his sixty-five years. He stepped well away from the crane for the interview and took off his yellow hard hat, revealing short, salt-and-pepper hair. He had not chosen the rest of his outfit with an engineering project in mind. He was in his trademark midnight blue suit, crisp white shirt, and dark blue tie decorated with hundreds of minuscule golden dollar signs.
“Angie Warren here on East Seventieth,” the reporter said, “talking to New York notable Jeremy Pritkin about a somewhat outlandish decorating project. Are you really putting a Winnebago inside your house?”
Pritkin smiled, showing off a set of Hollywood-perfect teeth. “It’s going into my office, up on the third floor.”
“That’s kind of where you allow your eccentricities to run free,” Angie said.
“Well, I don’t know about that. We all have our idiosyncrasies, don’t we?”
“Why a Winnebago?”
“First of all, it’s an iconic American design, a symbol of exploration. Thousands of Americans got into these vehicles and set forth on adventures of exploration, a little like early settlers who moved westward across the nation. They’re beautiful machines, in an ugly kind of way.” He chuckled.
“But there’s something personal about them for you, isn’t there?”
Pritkin nodded. “When I was in my teens, my parents bought one of these — a slightly longer model — and when my dad got his summer holidays, we’d hit the road. Saw everything from Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon. I think it was those trips that really sparked my interest in national infrastructure, highways and bridges and the like.”
“And prompted you, eventually, to create a multi-billiondollar highway engineering firm.”
“Which I sold fifteen years ago, which allows me certain indulgences such as this,” Pritkin said, grinning. “The Winnebago will be a mini-office within my much larger study. A little retreat, if you will.” He pointed to the open space that had been created in the side of the building. “And with any luck, in a few hours, it will be in place, the windows back on, all in time for tonight’s party.”
“Will you be giving tours of the new addition?”
Pritkin shook his head. “The third floor is my private place.”
“While we’ve got you, Mr. Pritkin, you wrote an op-ed in the Times yesterday very critical of the mayor’s budget cutbacks, suggesting he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.”
Pritkin shrugged. “I’m not sure that he does. But I don’t imagine my opinion will stop him from coming to my party.”
Angie smirked. “You have so many strings to your bow. Industrialist, author, opinion columnist, philanthropist, financier — can we now add interior decorator?”
“Yeah, I’m sure this will start a trend. Everyone’s going to want an RV in their living room. I can imagine one now being added to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.” He chuckled again.
Pritkin saw that the crane had hooked onto the Winnebago, and the vehicle’s tires were losing their grip on the pavement as it began its ascent.