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“This shouldn’t take long,” Cantor said.
“Bullshit.”
They ended up in the stateroom. Thomas Wolf had a bottle of Heineken Zero in his hand. Nonalcoholic, Cantor knew. He’d heard the guy had been on the wagon for a while, but who the hell ever knew for sure?
“Should I have a lawyer present?” Thomas said.
“Do you need one?”
Everybody talked about Thomas Wolf as if he were an aging frat boy. Cantor thought it was a pose, especially after the first time they’d spoken. There was intelligence in his eyes, an almost cool sort of irony to his general attitude, as if the joke was on you. Cantor had already decided he would not make the mistake of underestimating him.
Or believing him.
“Is this where you ask if Daddy loved me?” Thomas said. “Spoiler alert—he didn’t. One night I overheard him and a friend getting sloshed in the study. And the friend wanted to know how many sons Joe Wolf had wanted.
“‘Two’ was his answer.”
“Something like that would sure piss the hell out of me.”
“You mean, enough to throw him over the side?” Thomas shook his head. “Nah. As much fun as it sounds like, and as many times as I thought about it, I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t do well in prison.”
“Hardly anybody does.”
“So what do you want to talk about, really?”
“Your brothers and your sister.”
Thomas grinned. “Oh. You want me to throwthemover the side.”
He likes having an audience.Cantor imagined him as the kid at the family dinner table who didn’t get to talk and had been making up for lost time ever since.
“Things certainly worked out great for Jenny. She just turned into the wealthiest and most powerful schoolteacher in America.”
“Smartest, too. She asked me to be her right-hand man with the Wolves.”
“Sounds like more responsibility than your father ever gave you with the team,” Cantor said.
“He didn’t want me to have any real responsibility. Behind my back, he told his friends he just needed me to have an office to go to. He didn’t believe I’d turned my life around even when I had.”
None of them needs much encouragement to talk about their daddy issues.
“Is there any way your sister could have known he was going to leave the store to her? Two stores, actually.”
“I was in the room that day,” Thomas said. “She sure looked as if the news shocked the shit out of her.”
“Maybe she’s a good actress.”
“Aren’t they all?”
Cantor waited.
“You really think somebody might have killed him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t have to,” Thomas said. He took another sip of fake beer. “Well, if you’re asking me, if one of them finally decided they’d had enough, it wouldn’t have been her. What did she have to gain if she didn’t know howmuchshe had to gain beforehand?”
Let him think you’re leaving him out of it.
