“Did you used to be a cop?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Well, what did you do before you worked for Jasper Roberts?” I asked, not willing to give up until I understood this man a little better.
“Different things,” he said. “I worked for a newspaper as a junior reporter, and then I sold insurance, and then I got a license to be a private investigator. I was good at it, discreet, and I started running in political circles. And I did some work for Jasper, looked into the life of someone of interest to him, and I did a good job, I guess. He hired me to work for him full-time.”
“Do you like working for him?” I asked.
“It’s better than running down deadbeat dads,” he said. “I grew up in a rough place. Sometimes I feel so far away from there that it seems like I must have done the right thing.”
“I grew up in a rough place, too,” I said, suddenly feeling tenderness for Carl, shocked that he had actually confided in me. I knew that we were nothing alike. He was too buttoned-up, too afraid to fuck up. I’m sure he thought I was a disaster waiting to happen, a problem that he was going to have to constantly manage. But for a moment, I could see him. He was good at his job, even if that job probably sucked. He handled things. You could depend on him.
“Oh, I know all about you,” he said, and then he turned back into a starched suit, the way he tensed his jaw. So, okay, we wouldn’t be best friends after all. Fine with me. “Where the fuck is this house?” he said, looking around, and he made a quick U-turn.
We finally pulled up to a cabin with all kinds of strange windows, the shape of it a triangle, and the front door was wide open. “Oh, Jesus,” Carl said, removing his sunglasses and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Do I just stay here in the van?” I asked, like, Please just let me stay in the van. Carl got out, opened the side door, and retrieved a cooler that was stocked with bottles of what looked like Kool-Aid and bars of Hershey’s chocolate. I was kind of upset that all I’d had the whole trip were some dusty granola bars and weak coffee when there was this cache of sugar.
“This juice is laced with a sedative,” he said. “It’ll make things easier if we can get them to drink at least one of them on the drive home.”
“We’re gonna drug them?” I asked.
“Don’t start, please,” Carl said. “We’re sedating them. Mildly. They are in a fragile state.”
“Then why didn’t Jasper come get them? I mean, he’s their dad. That would calm them down.”
“I don’t know that it would,” Carl admitted. “And Senator Roberts has work in D.C. right now. This is our job. You and me.”
“Well, I don’t want to drug them,” I said. “That seems bogus.”
“Have it your way,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We walked into the cabin, which was dark, not a single light on, but we could see activity in the backyard. The sofa, some flowery abomination with plastic covering it, was burned black on one side, the ceiling above it dusted with soot. Carl slid open the glass door, and we saw Mr. Cunningham in a tiny swimsuit and some flip-flops, cooking a steak on a rickety old charcoal grill. His wife was dead asleep in a lawn chair.
“Carl!” Mr. Cunningham said. He was in his seventies, but he had curly gray hair like a wig. He looked like he was in the process of melting, his skin sunburned and sagging everywhere, hanging in folds. He had a huge dimple in his chin.
“What’re you doing there, Mr. Cunningham?” Carl asked, adopting a very friendly tone.
“Living the life!” Mr. Cunningham said. “Cooking a steak.”
“Looks good,” Carl replied.
“Well, a man can’t live entirely on blue-green algae, Carl,” Mr. Cunningham continued. “Steak is a kind of superfood, I suppose.”
“The kids in the pool?” Carl asked.
“Been there since this morning,” he told us. “They like the water. Jane, you know, couldn’t swim. But she made sure the kids knew how. That’s the kind of mom that she was, giving her kids what she didn’t have.”
“She was an amazing woman,” Carl replied.
“If Jasper hadn’t fucked everything up . . .” But then Mr. Cunningham simply looked at his steak, which was sizzling, popping, just a single steak on the grill.
“He’s going to take care of these kids,” Carl reassured the man, but Mr. Cunningham wasn’t listening.