Chapter 4: Decaf

Brooks knocked twice and came in without waiting.

He had on the navy suit and the heavy steel watch.

He carried two coffees from the lobby machine.

"Decaf," he said, setting one on the desk. "They won't let you have the real stuff in here, I guess."

"They'll let me have it," I said. "I've just stopped asking."

He laughed, a short one, and sat in my desk chair with his knees apart.

I stayed on the edge of the bed.

The door was open an inch behind him.

Through the gap I could see a slice of the hallway and the edge of a blue sleeve.

Maura had said she would be on the floor, and she was.

"I wanted to see you without Ros," Brooks said. "She cries, and then you feel bad, and then nothing gets said."

"What do you want to say?" I asked.

"That I'm sorry how it went." He rubbed his thumb along the lid of his cup. "I mean it."

He shook his head.

"Nobody planned three years. You kept being not well, and Ros kept signing the forms. It got away from us."

"Not well," I said.

"You have to admit you were intense, buddy. Eighteen-hour days. You put a fist through the dispatch wall once."

"One time," I said. "The wall had a bad drywall job, and you were the one who ordered it."

He grinned despite himself.

For a second he looked like the man who had split a pizza with me in a rented garage fourteen years ago.

Then the grin went flat.

"Here's the real thing," Brooks said. "I've got an envelope for you."

He took it from his inside pocket and laid it on the blanket beside me.

"Two hundred thousand, cashier's check. You sign Friday, you walk out of that office, and you get on a plane."

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