Chapter 7

Fabian Cross caught her in the corridor by the restrooms, where the marble gave way to carpet and the noise of the lobby fell off.

He was charming for about eleven seconds. He said he'd read her book. He said his atelier was putting together a heritage advisory council and there was a seat on it, with a stipend, and her name would look very good on the letterhead. Then he stopped being charming.

"You're about to make a mistake," he said, "in front of the people who fund this building."

Iris held the folder against her chest and said nothing at all, which is the only way to win that particular conversation.

In the alcove, meanwhile, a lawyer named Ellis Vaughn was on speakerphone, and Cross's offer had already been made. Fifty thousand dollars. A signed statement admitting to damage of the ceiling panels. A bus ticket, or a plane ticket, or a car - whatever he wanted. Charges withdrawn by morning.

Emmett listened to the whole thing with his hands on his knees.

"Mr. Doyle," Vaughn said through the phone, "you're sixty-six years old. Do you understand what eleven months would look like for a man your age?"

Emmett looked at the ceiling through the arch, at the corner panel, which he could just see from this angle if he leaned.

"I'll finish the corner," he said.

They took that as a refusal, because it was one.

At 9:28, Cross went to Roland Tritt and said the evening was becoming a circus, and that the accused man should not be in the room when the donors raised their glasses. Tritt, who had signed every invoice and had spent the last twenty minutes staring at his own phone, nodded slowly, and told Officer Pryor that Mr. Doyle could wait outside.

Pryor took Emmett's elbow. They walked him toward the front doors, past the coat check, past Marta, past the racks of wet umbrellas. The doors were glass and the rain was coming down on the other side of them, and beyond that, in the dark, was the bus.

The sound technician brought the house lights down a step, and the room turned toward the small stage at the foot of the marble stair, and Dr. Iris Falk stepped up to the microphone with her folder under her arm.

"Before I talk about 1927," she said, "I have to correct something about tonight."

Pryor stopped walking.