A young, pretty man with a tie the color of tropical fruit greeted me and settled me down in the shiny glass-and-mirror reception area and grandly offered water (declined), then went back to a gleaming desk and picked up a gleaming phone. I sat on the sofa, watching the skyline, cranes pecking up and down like mechanical birds. Then I unfolded Amy’s final clue from my pocket. Five years is wood. Was that going to be the end prize of the treasure hunt? Something for the baby: a carved oak cradle, a wooden rattle? Something for our baby and for us, to start over, the Dunnes redone.
Go phoned while I was still staring at the clue.
“Are we okay?” she asked immediately.
My sister thought I was possibly a wife killer.
“We’re as okay as I think we can ever be again, considering.”
“Nick. I’m sorry. I called to say I’m sorry,” Go said. “I woke up and felt totally insane. And awful. I lost my head. It was a momentary freakout. I really, truly apologize.”
I remained silent.
“You got to give me this, Nick: exhaustion and stress and … I’m sorry … truly.”
“Okay,” I lied.
“But I’m glad, actually. It cleared the air—”
“She was definitely pregnant.”
My stomach turned. Again I felt as if I had forgotten something crucial. I had overlooked something and would pay for it.
“I’m sorry,” Go said. She waited a few seconds. “The fact of the matter is—”
“I can’t talk about it. I can’t.”
“Okay.”
“I’m actually in New York,” I said. “I have an appointment with Tanner Bolt.”
She let out a whoosh of breath.
“Thank God. You were able to see him that quick?”
“That’s how fucked my case is.” I’d been patched through at once to Tanner—I was on hold all of three seconds after stating my name—and when I told him about my living-room interrogation, about the pregnancy, he ordered me to hop the next plane.
“I’m kinda freaking out,” I added.
“You’re doing the smart thing. Seriously.”
Another pause.
“His name can’t really be Tanner Bolt, can it?” I said, trying to make light.
“I heard it’s an anagram for Ratner Tolb.”
“Really?”
“No.”
I laughed, an inappropriate feeling, but good. Then, from the far side of the room, the anagram was walking toward me—black pin-striped suit and lime-green tie, sharky grin. He walked with his hand out, in shake-and-strike mode.
“Nick Dunne, I’m Tanner Bolt. Come with me, let’s get to work.”
Tanner Bolt’s office seemed designed to resemble the clubroom of an exclusive all-men’s golf course—comfortable leather chairs, shelves thick with legal books, a gas fireplace with flames flickering in the air-conditioning. Sit down, have a cigar, complain about the wife, tell some questionable jokes, just us guys here.
Bolt deliberately chose not to sit behind his desk. He ushered me toward a two-man table as if we were going to play chess. This is a conversation for us partners, Bolt said without having to say it. We’ll sit at our little war-room table and get down to it.
“My retainer, Mr. Dunne, is a hundred thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money, obviously. So I want to be clear on what I offer and on what I will expect of you, okay?”
He aimed unblinking eyes at me, a sympathetic smile, and waited for me to nod. Only Tanner Bolt could get away with making me, a client, fly to him, then tell me what kind of dance I’d need to do in order to give him my money.
“I win, Mr. Dunne. I win unwinnable cases, and the case that I think you may soon face is—I don’t want to patronize you—it’s a tough one. Money troubles, bumpy marriage, pregnant wife. The media has turned on you, the public has turned on you.”
He twisted a signet ring on his right hand and waited for me to show him I was listening. I’d always heard the phrase: At forty, a man wears the face he’s earned. Bolt’s fortyish face was well tended, almost wrinkle-free, pleasantly plump with ego. Here was a confident man, the best in his field, a man who liked his life.
“There will be no more police interviews without my presence,” Bolt was saying. “That’s something I seriously regret you did. But before we even get to the legal portion, we need to start dealing with public opinion, because the way it’s going, we have to assume everything is going to get leaked: your credit cards, the life insurance, the supposedly staged crime scene, the mopped-up blood. It looks very bad, my friend. And so it’s a vicious cycle: The cops think you did it, they let the public know. The public is outraged, they demand an arrest. So, one: We’ve got to find an alternative suspect. Two: We’ve got to keep the support of Amy’s parents, I cannot emphasize that piece enough. And three: We’ve got to fix your image, because should this go to trial, it will influence the juror pool. Change of venue doesn’t mean anything anymore—twenty-four-hour cable, Internet, the whole world is your venue. So I cannot tell you how key it is to start turning this whole thing around.”