I waited for someone to come out of the house. I was scared they would call the police on me before I could tell them. The first three days, only a lady came out. She drives a white car. She wasn't the one the man on the phone said." Richard went very still."
"What did the man on the phone say, Elijah? Say it exactly. Elijah took a breath. He took it the way children take a breath when they are about to recite something they have practiced in their head for days because they are afraid they will forget a word that matters. He said, "It's done.
The brake line is cut clean through and I drained most of the fluid. He won't notice in the driveway. The damage was designed to remain hidden until he reached the curve, when the brakes would fail completely." Then he listened for a long time. And then he said, "Don't worry about the kid. There's no kid.
There's nobody on this street at night. It's just me and the dog from the neighbor's house and the dog doesn't talk." And then he laughed. And then he said, "The wife's been gone six years. There's nobody to ask the right questions when he's gone. The estate goes to the trust.
You handle the trust. We split the difference. That was the deal. That's still the deal." And then he said, "Yes, sir, Mr. H, that's what he called him. Mr. H.
Richard did not move for a long time. He was a man who had spent the better part of his adult life learning to keep his face arranged correctly when difficult information arrived. He had received the news of his wife's death over a satellite phone in a boardroom in Frankfurt and had finished the meeting before excusing himself because the deal had affected 800 jobs and a man does not let 800 families absorb his grief. He had been trained by life and by long practice to receive blows without flinching. He flinched now.
A small flinch, just at the corner of his jaw, the kind of flinch only a child watching very carefully would see. Elijah saw it. "Sir, do you know who Mr. H is?"