The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(44)

Like today.

He wanted to hit Jack Wolf with the affair with his stepmother—what else could Cantor call her, his nanny?—and see how he reacted, especially now that he was distracted by what had happened at the paper over the past forty-eight hours and by the new website, which Cantor thought was dumber than a bag of hammers.

He was saving the stepmother, what would be round 2 with her, until later. Rachel Wolf seemed to hate Joe Wolf—now that he was dead, anyway—as much as his sons had when their father was still alive. She’d clearly thought she was getting more in the will, even with their prenup and even though Cantor knew the house in which she was still living was worth plenty. But it was like a lot of things. It was worth plenty only if she put it on the market and decided to downsize her living situation, at least when she wasn’t shacking up with her stepson.

Somehow Cantor didn’t think she was the type.

But Rachel really was for later. The way another interview with Elise Wolf was. Somebody could be lying. Maybe somebody did know the contents of the will before the reading. Maybe they were all lying their asses off. Maybe Cantor would never know what happened to old Joe Wolf that night and give this up, move on. He just wasn’t there yet. Not even close.

His focus today was on Jack Wolf out on the water, getting himself some after-work exercise. Maybe blowing off some steam after what his sister had done to him.

There were a lot of rowers out there, even in the early evening, some of them in the longer boats looking as if they belonged to school teams, to the point where sometimes Jack Wolf’s boat looked like a solitary flyspeck in the distance. He had been out there awhile. Cantor waited. He really did believe he could teach a master class in waiting.

Seeing how far out Jack was, Cantor was considering a quick ride up the street to the Starbucks he’d passed on his way here when Jenny Wolf showed up, her car screeching to a halt on the other side of the parking lot.





Fifty-Two



I WAITED FOR HIM on the dock, having come straight here from our late practice at Hunters Point. I’d hoped that perhaps being on the field with the kids would make me less angry at my brother than I was.

It had not. I had been working up to this confrontation all day, from the time I’d entered the tedious portal for Wolf.com.

Jack pulled himself out of the water and then the scull, which he had on his shoulder when he saw me. He stopped where he was. I walked down to him.

“I can’t believe it took you this long to come looking for me,” he said.

“I still had real jobs to go to.”

He laid the long, thin boat down next to him. I pointed to it.

“Shame that somebody couldn’t fall out of one of these and drown.”

“Where do you want to do this?” he said. “I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

“Hell?”

Then I added, “Right here is fine. All the privacy we need.”

“And if I do mysteriously end up in the water like our father did, I’m pretty sure I can make it safely back to the dock,” he said.

He sat down on the dock, cross-legged, and leaned back against the side of the scull. I stood over him, a few feet away. Already feeling the powerful urge to knock the smug look off his face. It was a feeling I’d largely, if not entirely, managed to keep under control our whole lives.

“Just out of curiosity,” he said, “which story did you hate more?”

The story about Ryan and Donna Kilgore and me carried the headline GOING TO THE MATTRESS, giving him and Dowd the chance to revisit the story about Ryan Morrissey’s coming to my house the night Danny had told him to resign.

“You know Donna Kilgore lied in that first statement,” I said. “You know it; Danny knows it; I know it. The New York Times eventually blew it out of the water. So did ESPN.com. They treated it like the bullshit that it was.”

Jack grinned up at me. “At Wolf.com, we prefer to let the readers, many, many of whom don’t read the Times, decide.” He whistled now. “And, oh, man, Sis, have they ever decided. Have you checked out the comments section in the last hour? I thought it would take a while for people to start weighing in. But it’s a hotter platform than Reddit. Turns out they can’t get enough of you.”

“I’d check it out, but I haven’t had my shots.”

“I actually thought Thomas would be the one to show up,” Jack said. “But it’s just like it was when we were kids. He’s still letting you fight his battles. Thomas never knew our little secret, did he, Jen? How scared you’ve always been of me.”

“You wish.”

“Bullshit.”

“The bullshitter is you,” I said. “You know Thomas doesn’t go anywhere near drugs now.”

“Do I?” he said in a singsong voice.

“You’ve done a lot of really lousy things in your life, Jack. But putting him out there as some kind of pusher might be the lousiest.”

We had gone at each other like this, often to the delight of our father, for as long as I could remember. But Jack was right about something: there was a part of him that did scare me. Even as a kid, I knew he was the meanest one of all of us. I’d never considered Danny a true rival. I’d never thought of him as being smart enough or strong enough to beat me in any kind of fair fight. And even though Thomas and I had had our share of scraps, he’d always been, always would be, my baby brother.