Reed Coleman - They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

Jeffrey, on the other hand, was Jeffrey. Operating according to some master plan the rest of us mere mortals were not privy to, Jeffrey acted like an escapee from the cast of Gotterdammerung. I have never been one to subscribe to the axiom that you can’t argue with success, but my brother’s list of achievements did make argument a difficult proposition. Summa cum laude at NYU, editor of the law review at Columbia, top litigator at Marx, O’Shea and Dassault, a seven-figure income, a beautiful wife, two healthy kids, and five acres overlooking the Hudson River, Jeffrey had reached about as high as most men dare to dream. If only he could have managed to tone down his imperious manner, I might have been able to share the same room with him for more than ten minutes. Don’t misunderstand, Jeff was my big brother and I loved him. I admired him in ways I could not express. I only wished I liked him a little more and loved him a little less.

MacClough was true to his word without trying. During the summer, when Sound Hill enjoyed a modest seasonal boom and benefited from the Hamptons’ overflow, the line at the Scupper’s bar would have been three deep at 9:30. Such was not the case during the last week of February. The locals were all done with their Budweisers by 8:00. The college crowd was all dart-and-eight-balled out by 9:00.

Johnny and I had earlier agreed that we would not waste our energies speculating about Zak. We were both sure that Jeffrey’s news would be taxing enough without us helping it along any. A few minutes before my brother’s scheduled arrival, MacClough put Patsy Cline on the juke and began rumbling around under the bar out of my sight. He only ever played Patsy when he was thinking about lost loves or absent friends. That was the thing about her voice, it just ached. And she always sounded as if she knew the next hurt was never more than a breath away.

Johnny reappeared. He put two glasses on the bar next to as fine a crystal bottle as I had every seen. It was nearly empty. Still, he poured two amber fingers full in each glass and waited for Patsy to finish her lament.

“Amen, Patsy. Amen.” He bowed his head. “Klein! Get your flat Jewish ass over to this bar.”

“What?”

“Do you know what this is?” MacClough pointed at the decanter as I came his way.

“Holy shit!” I could be so articulate. “That’s the Napoleon brandy your father-”

“-pinched from the dead bootlegger. That’s right, Klein. You remember. But I bet you a fin you don’t remember the bootlegger’s name.”

“Izzy Three Legs Weinstein,” I said without missing a beat.

Raising his glass: “Screw ya, ya Christ-killer. To your dad!”

“I hate brandy.”

“It’s the only proper way to send a man to meet his god.”

“You say the same thing when they polish the plaque on the lighthouse: ‘It’s the only proper way to celebrate the cleaning of the plaque’.”

“Klein!”

“John, I just can’t,” I was serious now. “There’s hardly another drink left in that bottle. You shouldn’t waste it on me. It’s part of your family.”

“So are you, you idiot. Drink.”

“To Harry Klein!” I knocked it back. “Feh.”

“Feh?”

“All due respect to family heirlooms, French emperors, and deceased bootleggers, but I can’t stand the stuff.”

“Fuckin’ neanderthal,” he chided and slapped a five-dollar bill on the bar. “Here’s the fin I owe you.”

I folded it up and slipped it into my jacket pocket next to the black skullcap from the funeral home. I don’t know why, but I hadn’t showered or changed clothes since getting off the plane that morning. The tops of my shoes were still powered with souvenir dirt from the grave site. When I looked up from my shoes, the crystal decanter and brandy glasses were gone. In their stead were a Black and Tan and a double of Old Bushmills.

I went for my pint: “To Three Legs and five dollars!”

Jeff walked in at precisely the wrong time.

“If you’re this convivial on the day we bury your father and discover your nephew is missing, you must be a scream on good days.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, counselor,” MacClough jumped to my defense.

“No, Mr. MacClough, I have it all right. I know my little brother.”

“Get to the point, Jeffrey,” I said. “What about Zak?”

He tossed a manila folder on the bar. MacClough grabbed it and skimmed through it as Jeffrey spoke.

“Zak didn’t call home the week before February break. We weren’t particularly alarmed. He’s nearly as irresponsible as his Uncle Dylan used to be.”

“Fuck you, Jeff. Just fuck-”

MacClough threw his Bushmills past my ear. It landed the hard way on the cobbles of the old fireplace. The flying glass got our attention.

“Either start acting more like brothers and less like a married couple or get the fuck out of me pub. Got it Klein?”

“Got it.”

“Counselor?” MacClough asked.

“Understood.”

“Go on then with what you’ve got to say, counselor.”

“Even when he didn’t show at home the Friday evening of his break week, Tess and I weren’t worried. It wouldn’t have been the first time.”

“Yeah,” MacClough smirked. “I got that impression.”

“But by late that Sunday,” Jeff continued, “I was concerned. Tess too. To allay her fears I told her that Zak and I had a falling out over his schoolwork and that by not showing he was just acting out.”

“I take it your wife had no problem believing you.”

“No problem at all, Mr. MacClough. In the meantime, I called around to his friends and roommates. No one seemed to know anything. I made some discreet inquiries through a close business associate who is a well-connected alum of Riversborough.”

“Zak goes to Riversborough College,” I said for no good reason. “Upstate, by the Canadian border.”

“I figured that out, Klein.” Turning to Jeff: “Any help?”

“None,” my brother sighed. “The next morning I went to the Castle-on-Hudson Police and reported Zak missing.”

“No ransom notes? No threatening phone calls?”

“I sort of wish there were,” Jeff said. “Then I’d have something to hold onto. I had to tell Tess eventually, but Zaks’s younger brother Lindsay doesn’t know.”

“He knows,” I said. “Maybe not all the details, but he knows. How’s Tess holding up?”

“She’s the strongest person I ever met. Until this thing with Dad, she barely showed any cracks. When the police came up empty, I hired Hench Security. That’s a copy of their case file to date.”

“Hench?” I puzzled.

“They’re good,” MacClough assured me. “All ex-FBI and ATF agents. They’re also supposed to have a few cybergeeks from the NSA on the payroll. But I thought their forte was industrial security, not missing persons.”

“So far, your assessment is correct. They’ve interviewed everyone but Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife and gotten no further than the Castle-on-Hudson police.”

“Have you called the papers?” I wondered.

“No press, for chrissakes! No press!”

“So,” John wanted to know, “what is it exactly that you expect me and your brother to do that the cops and the Mission Impossible crew can’t?”

“Though thankfully retired from fraud investigation, my brother Dylan isn’t an amateur and will know how to stay out of your way. On the other hand, he loves Zak and won’t be inclined to let you take chances with my son’s life that a law enforcement agency or security firm might be willing to risk. He and Zak also share a certain unspoken affinity, a sixth sense for what the other is thinking.”

“That’s right,” I said, “it takes one fuck-up to know another.”