“Not really, no. I’m just the guy who wants to know how the story ends.”
A man stepped into the tent and Sculley put out his palm again, eyes flashing with anger.
“I said, leave us,” he barked.
The man didn’t move.
Rick saw the man in the blue FBI windbreaker, Special Agent Donovan, standing at the tent’s opening. Rick nodded and smiled and held up one finger, asking him to wait a minute.
“What the hell is this?” Sculley said. But he now seemed to understand. He turned and stared at Rick.
“I can’t finish my piece without some sort of response from you,” Rick said. “It’s sort of a policy of mine.” He took out his iPhone and unlocked it. “Otherwise, it’s all ready to go. And I mean, go live.”
Sculley’s face had gone deep red. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’ll just say that Mr. Sculley declined to comment.”
Rick hit a phone number, and when Dylan from Back Bay answered, he said, “Just as I wrote, Mr. Sculley declined to comment. We’re ready to rock ’n’ roll, Dylan. Go for it.”
“It’s done,” Dylan confirmed a few seconds later.
“If this is blackmail,” Sculley said, “it’ll never work. You wouldn’t dare.”
“I just did.”
“Lad, you just sealed your own fate.”
“Your fate, actually. And my friend in the windbreaker here is about to escort you to it.”
The words came from Sculley in a rasp: “You’ll never get what you want.”
“Yeah, well, I think I just did. At least I know how your story ends. Because I wrote it myself.”
One Year Later
Andrea wasn’t having any wine but wasn’t ready to tell people why.
Rick poured himself a plastic tumbler of wine from the box.
“I know it’s not up to your lofty standards, Rick,” she said.
He grinned. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations on wine jokes?”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re still fair game.”
The party was crowded with Geometry Partners staff and donors and potential donors. The occasion was the opening of Geometry Partners’ new Somerville location, which was called the Leonard Hoffman House, underwritten by an anonymous gift of one million dollars. There were Geometry Partners posters on the wall (DO THE MATH; KNOW THE ANGLES; IT ALL ADDS UP).
Evan was buzzed on grape juice and cookies, and when he wasn’t playing Minecraft he was careening through the party, knocking into guests, and spilling drinks.
Thomas Sculley was in federal prison and would be for another ten years. Eight with good behavior. Alex Pappas was in prison as well but would be out much sooner. He’d struck a plea bargain with government prosecutors: an eighteen-month sentence in exchange for full cooperation. For spilling all. Rick wasn’t surprised that Pappas had made a good deal for himself.
But he didn’t particularly care. After the Thomas Sculley exposé was published and was picked up by forty news outlets, Rick found himself weighing several job offers, including one from a nonprofit public interest website that funded investigative journalism projects and another from TheWall Street Journal. Eventually he went with the investigative journalism website, which gave him the flexibility to do his pieces in Boston. His current project was an investigation into corruption in the process by which the FDA approved pharmaceuticals.
It felt peculiar becoming a father-a stepfather, actually-stepping into the role instead of being promoted to dadhood through the usual system. But at the same time it felt right.
The house on Clayton Street was too badly damaged to be salvageable. Rick split the insurance proceeds with Wendy. Between the cash left over, after the Geometry Partners grant, and his salary from the nonprofit, money wasn’t a problem.
The reporter from Back Bay magazine approached them, a young woman named Lindsay who looked twelve, wearing a bulky cable-knit sweater and heavy tortoiseshell glasses. “Is now a good time to do this interview?” she said.
“Sure,” said Andrea, “but maybe we should sit down a little later. There’s a lot to get into in terms of our success rate, measured along a bunch of different axes, and-”
“You know what?” Lindsay said. “I only have nine hundred words so I’m not really going to be drilling down so much. It’s kinda more of a lifestyle piece about one of Boston’s Power Couples.”
“Okay,” Andrea said.
“Awesome. So you guys just got married, right?”
Andrea showed her the wedding ring. They’d done the deed only a month earlier, at city hall.
“So how do you guys do it all? That’s what I want to know.” She turned to Rick. “Your article on Thomas Sculley just won the George Polk Award for investigative journalism, right? And then there was your piece about kickbacks in the defense industry.” Looking at Andrea, she said, “And you guys have a little kid and Geometry Partners has got to be more than a full-time job. Plus it’s expanding so fast, right, with locations in Washington, DC, and New York City? How do you do it? What’s the trick?”
Rick and Andrea exchanged glances.
“The trick is,” Rick said, “there’s no trick.”
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to a number of people for their generous help in researching this book. For help with various medical details: my brother Dr. Jonathan Finder; Dr. Amy Goldstein of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh; Dr. Carl Kramer; Margaret Naeser, professor of neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Eileen Hunsaker of the Aphasia Center at Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions; Dr. Joan Camprodon; and especially Dr. Mark Morocco. For legal matters: Allen Smith and Nick Poser. On public relations: Doug Bailey and George Regan. On renovating the old family house: Bruce Irving; and Doug Hanna and Eileen Lester of S &H Construction.
On the Big Dig, Sean Murphy of The Boston Globe was a huge help; thanks as well to John Durrant of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Timothy Finley of Semke Forensic, and especially Gary Klein of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates. (Some particulars of this mammoth project were changed for fictional convenience.)
Eight-year-old Henry Buckley-Jones was a precocious and patient interviewee. Thanks as well to Harry “Skip” Brandon of Smith Brandon, Jay Groob of American Investigative Services, Lucia Rotelli, Bill Rehder, Bruce Holloway, and Declan Burke. For help with technological details: Jeff Fischbach, Mark Spencer of Arsenal Experts and Kevin Murray. On forensic accounting, Eric Hines of the StoneTurn Group. Zachary Mider of Bloomberg News provided intriguing information on secretive nonprofits. My gratitude once again to Clair Lamb, Karen Louie-Joyce, and the irreplaceable Claire Baldwin. At Dutton, my thanks to Amanda Walker, Christine Ball, Carrie Swetonic, Stephanie Kelly, and especially Ben Sevier. I’m grateful for the loving support of my wife, Michele Souda, and our daughter, Emma J. S. Finder. Thanks most of all to my agent, Dan Conaway of Writers House, and my brother Henry Finder.
About the Author
Joseph Finder is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven previous novels, including Suspicion,Vanished, and Buried Secrets. Finder’s international bestseller Killer Instinct won ITW’s Thriller Award for Best Novel of 2006. Other bestselling titles include Paranoia and High Crimes, both of which became major motion pictures. He lives in Boston.