Chapter 4

Ruben took the paper out slowly, the way you take something out when you want the other person to know you mean no harm by it.

It was a wire transfer printout from a credit union branch on Harrison Avenue. The ink had gone the color of old newsprint. The folds had worn soft as cloth. He opened it with both hands and held it flat so the light from the chandeliers fell across the numbers.

"Four million, two hundred thousand dollars," he said. "Sent July fourteenth. Receiver: St. Bridget's Foundation."

Halloway's hand came up and took it. Not snatched. Took it, the way a man takes a bill he intends to examine and then hand back.

Ruben watched him read. He watched him get to the memo line - PEDIATRIC WING - IN MEMORY OF MARGARET COYLE - and he watched him get to the stub, where the blue-ink signature sat under the date, and he watched the man's throat move.

"This is a photocopy," Halloway said.

"It's a duplicate. The credit union mailed it to me because the original never came back acknowledged."

"Anybody can print a wire transfer."

"Anybody can't sign your name."

Halloway looked up. His eyes went past Ruben to the doors, and to the room behind him, and to the four hundred dollars' worth of champagne glasses being carried past on trays, and Ruben understood, with a kind of dull clarity, that the man was not deciding whether the paper was real. He was deciding whether it could be seen.

He tore it.

One clean rip, straight down the middle, right there in the doorway under the chandelier. The dry sound cut across the string quartet like a snapped wire. Two hundred heads turned.

Both halves went to the carpet.

"Ray," Halloway said into the radio, louder now, loud enough for the front of the room. "Trespasser at the main doors. Escort him out."

Ruben did not move. He looked down at the two halves of the last thing he had left, lying face-up on the red-and-gold carpet, and something in his chest went very quiet.

Then a woman in a navy sheath dress came across the ballroom carpet fast, knelt down in front of two hundred donors, and picked up both halves.