"f.u.c.k you, Max. f.u.c.k you for the rest of your s.h.i.ta.s.s life. f.u.c.k you and Lily and all the lies and everything about you two. You want me to do something for you? You're gonna pay for it. You're going to pay for everything now, c.o.c.ksucker."

"How do you feel?"

He thought a moment. "I feel... I feel weird. Like my life, um, has been lived on another planet tillnow and it just landed here. Something along those lines. I'm sure you can understand what I'm saying, Dad ."

"Yes, I understand."

"I bet. Well, good. I wanted to tell you that, Max. But I don't think I want to inform your wife for a while because, um, one 'parent' at a time's enough."

I didn't understand what he meant but had no time to ask. A beautiful silver Mercedes pulled up across the street and stopped. The horn honked. Lincoln waved to it. "Gotta go now. I'll, like, talk to you later, okay?"

"Where are you going?"

"Got some stuff to do with Elvis."

"Elvis? That's him in the car? He doesn't own a Mercedes."

"It's a friend's."

"Lincoln, don't! We have to talk"

"The f.u.c.k we do!" He ran into the street without looking. Yelling over his shoulder, he stopped in the middle of traffic, turned to me, then to the Mercedes, to me. "Now we do things my way, Daddyo.

Now that I know the big secret . Just today. It's like my friggin' bar mitzvah! Today I became a man !"

He threw up both arms, hands in fists, and, waving them at the sky, howled like a wolf. Cars slowed to look. One driver howled back at him. Another sped away from this raving punk. Elvis honked and honked the horn. I stepped into the street but was stopped short when a motorcycle came zooming by.

On the other side, Lincoln rounded the Mercedes, ducked, disappeared, and the silver car roared off before I heard the pa.s.senger's door close.

Running back into the restaurant, I told Lily I had to go home right now, no explanation why. I had to get to his gun. What might he do on the day he discovered who he was? Maybe go crazy. Or do something crazy. Forget what Mary said. I had to get to that gun before him and put it someplace safe.

Then we would talk. Talk and talk until I'd made things as clear as I could to him.

There was a bad accident on Wilshire Boulevard, and the familiar ominous mix of whizzing lights on police cars and ambulances, plus a sputtering orange flare lying on the ground, made the earlyevening scene even more neon and ugly. For the first time in years I remembered a day from childhood. On a summer Sunday before Saul was born, my parents took me to Palisades Park in New Jersey. I was about seven and had never been to an amus.e.m.e.nt park before. The day was a complete success and should have been one of those cherished memories of childhood because I had enough fun and excitement to exhaust ten boys. But fun isn't often as memorable as death.

On the ride home, once across the Tappan Zee Bridge we were immediately stopped by a giant traffic jam. The line went on for miles and was so slow moving that several times my father turned off the engine to keep it from overheating. But there was a baseball game on the radio, my mother had her knitting, and if anyone got hungry there were still a couple of sandwiches left in the picnic basket. We were happy. Dad and I listened to the game for a while, but tired from the day and the sunburn it had given me as a goingaway present, I lay down on the wide back seat and fell asleep.

I don't know how long I was out, but I awoke to the sound of Mom's voice. "Just don't make any noise and he won't wake up."

Dad made a long quiet whistle. "I haven't seen one that bad in years."

I opened my eyes, but with a child's intuition knew a moment before she turned that Mom was about to check me. When she did, I pretended to be fast asleep.

"Max's all right. Still snoozing. Oh my G.o.d, Stanley! Oh my G.o.d !"

I couldn't stand the mystery. What was happening? It probably wouldn't have made any difference if I had sat up and exclaimed too, because both parents were transfixed by the scene outside. I slid across the seat and, peeking through the window, saw a smoking battlefield of wrecked cars, flashing lights, fire engines, people running around. Police blue, firemen yellow, doctors white.

There were bodies. First I saw two together covered by a blanket, their feet sticking meekly out.

Next, and most amazing, was the child launched halfway through the windshield of a car. This was in the time before unbreakable safety gla.s.s was standard in automobile windows. It was a child; I was sure ofthat because despite being almost entirely covered by a coating of shiny blood, the visible part of the body was short and thin. The upper torso stuck up through the windshield like it had been shot from the back seat but stopped halfway out. A small arm wearing a wrist.w.a.tch hung down. I could see the white watch face. That small spot of white in all the streaked, glaring red. A perfect white circle. The rest was blood and crushed, formless chaos. I absorbed it all in seconds. When my mother began turning around again, I zipped back to my sleeping position and wasn't caught. I was too scared to try for another look, and a short while later we were past the wreck and sped up.

"Roll it up, pal." Four decades later, a helmeted policeman held a flashlight and waved it across my face. "You've seen the show. Move on." I accelerated, thinking about my sevenyearold self in a back seat, the dead child through the windshield, and my son.

When I got home there were no cars in the driveway or in front of the house. Good, but that didn't mean anything. He could have been dropped off already and could be inside. I parked on the street and, standing next to the car, took several long, deep breaths before moving. What should I say if he was there?

I started for the house, running questions and answers through my mind, readying myself for whatever he might ask. But would anything give him clarity, or comfort, now that he knew?

I was almost to the door when I saw them. The front of our house is a couple of steps up to a large porch and the front door. There are metal chairs on the porch set back a ways where Lily and I often sat in the evening and chatted when she returned from work.

Two little boys were sitting on these chairs. I stopped, startled to see anyone up there, knowing our family was gone.

"Hi, Mr. Fischer!"

"Hey, Mr. Fischer!"

It was two of the Gillcrist boys from down the street. Nice kids, about nine and ten years old. You always saw them hanging around together.

"Hi, guys. What're you doing up there?"

"Edward dared me to come and sit on your porch."

"What did he dare you?"

"A quarter."

I reached into my pocket, took out one, and handed it to him.

"How come you're paying? Ed lost!"

"Shut up, Bill! If he wants to pay, he can."

"Did anyone come into the house since you two've been here?"

"No, sir. We've been around, I don't know, half an hour?"

"You didn't see Lincoln?"

"Nope."

"Okay. Well, I guess you'd better head on home now. It's getting pretty late."

Edward got up and gave Bill a shove when his brother was slow in rising. Bill poked him back.

Edward poked "Hey, guys!"

"He's always starting!"

"'Cause you're stupid!"

"I know you are, but what am I?"

I watched and thought what if they were Lincoln and me? Kids, brothers, two years apart. I blurred my vision and made believe. My brother Lincoln. Little brother Lincoln, who followed me around and was a pain but also was my best friend. Oddly, when I brought my eyes back into focus, the Gillcrists still looked like us. I had to blink and blink to make the picture go away.

Edgy, I unlocked the front door and walked in. Quiet, still, the rooms smelled warm and stale. The normal wonderful comfort one feels walking in the door of your own home was gone. I lived here, but so did he. Everyday objects, the things I knew and normally used without thought, seemed larger and all c.o.c.ked at strange angles. Like a picture that's been b.u.mped crooked and needs straightening. Ourwhole house felt crooked and... expectant. Was that the right word? As if it were waiting to see what I would do next. A car drove by out on the street. Freezing, I waited to hear if it would stop or pull into our driveway. It didn't. I figured I had about half an hour before Lily returned.

"Lincoln? Are you here?" Walking slowly through the house, turning on lights, I was full of the absurd idea that if he were here, he'd be hiding from me, ready to jump out and pounce when my back was turned. Although that was more Greer's style than his, still I moved cautiously, waiting for him to spring out of wherever. My son the JackintheBox.

I did a general careful look around before feeling a little more at ease. I smiled at myself for having checked behind the couch in the living room and in a too small closet in the laundry room. But fear comes from noticing the normal has suddenly grown fangs. After today's revelations, that s.p.a.ce behind our couch was no longer the innocent place where Greer's tennis ball had fallen.

I got my key to his room from its hiding place taped to the bottom of an unused kitchen drawer. In stockinged feet I walked the long hall to the back of the house. At his door I knocked and again called out his name a few times to see if he was in there. No answer. I had no more time to waste. Opening it, I reached in and switched on the light. Once again the stark white emptiness and order of Lincoln's room was in such sinister contrast to what had probably gone on in there and what was hidden, like the infected peace of an empty prison cell or room at an asylum.

His chest of drawers was five or six inches out from the wall. Squatting down, I tilted my head and slid my hand along the back of the thing. Bingo, there it was. Smooth flat wood for a foot, then a suspect curl of tape peeling up off an edge. Further, the hard angles of a gun.

"Thank G.o.d. Thank G.o.d." I pulled it off and slid it over. Other than what I've seen in movies, I know nothing about guns, but I did recognize the shape of this oneit was a fortyfive. Whether it was real or not was the next question. I knew the j.a.panese made remarkable fullscale models of guns detailed enough to fool the experts. This one was surprisingly light and either coated or constructed of some kind of rubber or plastic. A plastic gun? How could that be? Engraved on the left side was "Glock 21 Austria 45 AUTO." On the right was the name "Glock" another time, a serial number, the address of the firm in Smyrna, Georgia. It was so light. I've never felt comfortable around guns, but this one was compelling in its simple roughness. I turned it around and around. Carefully, after much figuring and noodling, I managed to release the clip from the bottom. It was full of twelve beautiful gold bullets. It was real.

Nothing was more real than that gun.

Before doing anything else, I picked up the phone on his desk and called Mary Poe. While it rang, I held the Glock in my hand and turned it from side to side, sighting down my arm at it from different angles. What an instrument. What a singular piece of machinery. Bang. That's it. That's all it was made to do. Bangone big hole. Mary wasn't home, but I told her tape I'd found the pistol, that it was very f.u.c.king real, and read the serial number off the side. I'd be home for a few more hours in case she wanted to get back to me.

Then I did a queer thing. I put the clip of bullets in my pocket, the pistol in the middle of the floor.

Why not just shove the whole thing in my pocket? Because I didn't want it in my pocket. The bullets were bad enough, but as the ugly heart of the gun, without them it could do nothing lying there but suck up all of the light and energy in the room like a black hole in s.p.a.ce.

The silence of heavy machinery turned off a moment ago, or of a major highway at three in the morning when no cars have pa.s.sed for minutes. The quiet of an airplane miles above you trailing its white thread of vapor. There is so much noise in these things that their rare stillness sounds a million times quieter. It is a hush of waiting, not completion. Any minute the noise that is the thing will come back with a roar. That was the silence in Lincoln's room after I put the phone down.

Closing my eyes tight, I made fists and lowered my head to my chest. "I hate this. I hate it." Then I began to search.

In one drawer were three packages of condoms. How wonderful! He took precautions! If only it were so tame and simple. I smiled, thinking that in the old days a parent would have had a fit finding rubbers in a son's drawer. Another held a b.u.t.terfly knife and a Polaroid photograph of Little White, topless. She had lovely small b.r.e.a.s.t.s and looked cute with both arms up, in the cla.s.sic "make a muscle"pose. What was her name? Ruth. Ruth Burnett? Burdette? What would her parents say if they saw this photo?

Here is what else I found. A postcard of a p.e.n.i.s and hairy b.a.l.l.s with a pair of black eyegla.s.ses over the d.i.c.k so that the combination looked like a man's face with a thick beard. Written on the back was: "L. You can suck my d.i.c.k when I'm dead." Another knife and bullet in his desk drawer, two blurry Polaroids of other handguns I a.s.sumed belonged to either Lincoln or his friends. Nothing else.

The phone rang. I shuddered and had to lick my lips before answering. "h.e.l.lo?" They hung up.

Whipping it from my ear, I shouted into the receiver, "f.u.c.k you, a.s.shole! f.u.c.k you !" People like that should apologize! Say something. Say, "Excuse me, sorry, wrong number." Something at least so I'd know"

"Mine. Oh G.o.d, my room!" Looking through the house before, I'd ignored my study, taking it for granted Lincoln wouldn't go in there because he never did. Putting the phone down, I looked at my watch, checked around to be sure I'd not disturbed anything so he'd know I was in here. He was so secretive and scheming that I was sure he'd placed hairs across doors or other traps to find out in a minute if anyone had been snooping in his room, but I couldn't worry about it. Things looked good enough. One last eye check around. Drawers closed. Photos back. Closet door closed. Nothing on the desk. Okay, let's go. Whoops, the pistol! I'd forgotten the G.o.dd.a.m.ned gun on the floor and was seconds away from leaving it there and turning out the light.

"Smart, Max. Very smart." Picking the Glock up, I flicked the light and left the room. Outside, I locked the door again and walked down the hall. How dangerous and wrong that must have looked.

What's wrong with this picture? Why is Max Fischer charging through his house with a .45 pistol in his hand? Who does he plan on shooting?

Where were Lily and Greer now? At the market. She'd said they were going to stop at the market first and then come home. But I'd been so nuts when I ran in to tell her I had to leave, she might have panicked and would return much sooner than planned. I hoped not. I hoped she'd stay away. I hoped the phone wouldn't ring yet. I hoped my room was still only a room and not a whole new crisis.

The house had grown even bigger since I'd gone through Lincoln's room. A small picture on the wall I'd drawn for Lily loomed, a yellow rug glowed so much on the floor that I stepped over to avoid touching it. You grow smaller. You lose perspective, control. Something is eating you from inside out and there is nothing you can do about it. It's your own fear.

At the door to my room I put a hand on the k.n.o.b, paused a breath, turned it. Clicked the light on.

Nothing.

Nothing had been touched. The neatness that was my room, that always was the room, was there.

Until I noticed the smell. s.h.i.t. The place was clean and tidy and reeked vilely of s.h.i.t. The smell owned the room.

It was on my desk. Two things were on my desk: one of Lily's favorite dinner plates piled with s.h.i.t, a photograph stuck in the top. Next to it was a green manila folder. I owned only one green folder.

Purposely. I kept it in a locked strongbox at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet. In that box was the green file along with copies of my will, insurance policies, and important bank certificates. Lily did not know about the box but our lawyer did. No one but me knew the contents. If I were to die suddenly, he would inform her and give her the extra key. I hadn't told her because I knew she would have objected furiously to the existence of the file. It was dangerous and incriminating, but I believed a fundamental artifact of our life and relationship. I envisioned a day when we were older, going through the papers together. I believed experiencing it all again through sixtyyearold eyes and hearts would matter very much to both of us.

The file was thick. It held ninetythree pages of information gathered by the detective about Anwen and Gregory Meier. It also held the diary I'd kept from the day I went to visit the Meiers in New Jersey until the day before Lily confessed to kidnapping her son. Once she had told me the truth, I felt no need to write about what I thought was the truth anymore. I felt no need to write about anything at all. It had changed from being what was feared to what was from that moment on.

As Lincoln grew older and more untrustworthy, I'd twice moved the box to a safetydeposit box atour bank. But having it there made me extremely uneasy and both times I'd brought it back. To lessen the risk of discovery, I put the "Lily doc.u.ments" at the bottom and covered them over with stock certificates and other boring papers that had no immediate value or interest to a snooper or a thief.

Even reading through the papers from the detective agency, one would have thought I simply had an inordinate interest in a couple named Meier. People who had tragically gone through one harrowing experience after another and only barely survived to crawl out on the other sh.o.r.e of life. Those Xerox copies alone said nothing.

It was my diary. I could quote specific, d.a.m.ning pa.s.sages from it here, but what would be the point? You have already heard my questions, alarm, and pain from that time. The diary Lincoln found and read said it all. Except for the one other thing I discovered the night of Lily's confession. But seeing the s.h.i.t and that deadly green folder so neatly side by side on the desk, I did not think of that one other thing.

The hideous smell got stronger, closer; it made me want to retch. I walked over and sat down in the chair. Breathing through my mouth, I bent forward and plucked the photograph out of the top of the glistening brown pile. It was of our son squatting on this desk, s.h.i.tting onto this plate. He was grinning at the camera and giving it the finger. Written in thick black marker across it was: "Look what I found!"

The telephone rang. I glanced at it. It seemed a hundred miles away on the other side of the desk. I didn't have the strength to reach across the few inches for it. It rang again. It rang again.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Dad !" His voice sounded so happy. "Now, I thought you'd be home. Get my message? It must be pretty ripe by now. What did you tell old Lil to get you home so fast? I bet you hightailed it over to see if I'd be there. Right?"

"Something like that. Lincoln"

"Shut up. I don't want to hear a word from you. I'll hang up if you start talking. I'm at the airport. I took your extra Visa card and am going to use it for a while. I already got a few hundred out of a money machine with it. Bet you didn't know I knew your code, didja? Do not call Visa and stop the card, understand?"

"Yes, use it, but listen"

His voice grew more confident. "Good, right. I'm catching a plane to New York in ten minutes.

Just so you and Mommy know, and don't worry. Then I'm going to get a car and drive out to visit Mr.

and Mrs. Meier. We need to have a good long talk together."

"Lincoln"

"Shut the f.u.c.k up! I'm going to talk to them and then I'll think about you. Maybe. Maybe I'll come back, maybe not. Don't try to follow me. Besides, there isn't another plane to New York for three hours. I checked. Even if you try, it won't do you any good.

"Stay away. You owe me that, a.s.shole. You and Lily owe me a lot more than that. Stay away until I get in touch with you. In the meantime, the only money I'll have will be from your credit card, so do not cancel it."

I had to say just one thing to him. I had to chance it. "Lincoln, the Meiers"

"Shut up!" The line went dead.

Before doing anything else, I took the plate from the desk, shook what was on it into the toilet, and flushed. Then I rinsed the plate in fresh water until it was clean again. Not good enough. Taking it to the kitchen sink, I poured on liquid bleach and let it sit in that chemical bath a few minutes before cleaning it off with scalding water and soap. Still unsatisfied, I put the plate into the empty dishwasher and turned the machine on. I wonder what Lily thought later, opening the door and seeing only one plate. Strange things afoot that night in the Fischer household.

I didn't want to be around to tell her what had gone on in the last hours. For a short time I considered admitting everything, including Lincoln knowing because he'd read the diary I'd kept hidden from her for years. But that would demand a discussion meant for a night when we had hours to weigh and argue and hopefully come to a peace with each other about my having kept the book around in the first place. There was no time now. Lincoln was about to board a plane to New York and do whatever the h.e.l.l he planned to do with the Meiers once he got there.I called flight information at Los Angeles Airport. The boy had told the truththe plane just now leaving for New York was the last for three hours. No, there were no flights to Newark either. One to Hartford in an hour, another to Philadelphia in two. Both cities were too far away to be of any help. I needed New York or New Jersey but neither was available for one hundred and eighty minutes, plus flight time. For a while I felt hopeful on realizing that even with a valid credit card, an auto rental place won't rent a car to a sixteenyearold. Right! He'll have to stay in the airport till he can figure a way out, which will buy me badly needed time. Yet this was also the young man who kept a loaded .45 pistol taped to the back of his dresser and had found my most secret of secrets. Which meant, of course, he was enterprising enough to find a way to Somerset, New Jersey, a lot sooner than I would.