Chapter 4

He brought out a white envelope. It was sealed, slightly creased at one corner, and it looked like it had been carried in a jacket pocket for a few days. He laid it on the white linen, next to the bread basket, and stepped back.

"They asked me to bring it," Curtis said. "Three hundred of your classmates signed it."

Marcus looked at the envelope. He didn't touch it.

"Roosevelt is renaming the gym," Curtis said. "They wanted you to know. They asked me to deliver it because - well. Because of the drawing. Because I was there."

Sloane's mouth opened. Nothing came out. He was still holding the empty wallet, the rubber band dangling from his fingers like a broken bracelet. Nobody had told him to put it down. Nobody had told him to do anything. He stood at the edge of the head table, and the candlelight caught the gold name tag on his lapel, and for the first time that evening, he looked like what he was: a man in a suit, holding a stranger's wallet, in a room where he had just made the worst decision of his career.

Two tables away, the owner of The Alderwood had risen from his chair.

His name was Emmett Halloran. He was sixty-two, silver-haired, and he had spent thirty years building a restaurant that politicians and oilmen brought their wives to. He had seen everything. He had never seen this. He was already walking over, weaving between tables, his face unreadable.

Marcus turned his head and looked at him. They knew each other. Halloran had hosted Whitfield Freight's holiday party for a decade. Marcus said six quiet words. Nobody at the head table heard them. Priya, standing closest, caught the shape of them - the way Marcus's jaw moved, the way Halloran's eyebrows went up, the way Halloran nodded once and turned to Sloane.

"Mr. Sloane," Halloran said. "My office. Now."

Sloane's face went through three colors in two seconds. "Mr. Halloran, I can explain. This man-"

"Now," Halloran said.

Sloane looked around the room. Forty people looked back. He set the wallet down on the linen, very carefully, as if it might bite him. Then he walked. He walked past the tables he had been performing for, past the servers he had bullied into perfect posture, past the maître d' station with its neat row of reservation cards. He did not look back.

The jazz kept playing. Somewhere near the kitchen, a plate dropped.

Marcus pulled out the chair at his right hand. He looked at Curtis Bell.

"Please," he said. "Sit."

Curtis didn't sit.