'No,' he agreed. 'I am not starving.' He looked past me for a moment, probably at a seascape. He said,
'My daughter Stacy went through a difficult period in her life. In the course of it, she had a very unfortunate accident.'
'A little boy died.'
'A little boy died. At the risk of sounding callous, I'll point out that that sort of thing happens all the time.
Human beings—children, adults, what does it matter—people are killed accidentally every day.'
I thought of Estrellita Rivera with a bullet in her eye. I don't know if anything showed in my face.
'Stacy's situation—her culpability, if you want to call if that—stemmed not from the accident but from her response after the fact. She didn't stop. If she had stopped, it would not have helped the boy at all.
He was killed instantly.'
'Did she know that?'
He closed his eyes for a moment. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Is that pertinent?'
'Probably not.'
'The accident… if she had stopped as she should have done, I'm sure she would have been exonerated.
The boy rode his tricycle right off the curb in front of her.'
'I understand she was on drugs at the time.'
'If you want to call marijuana a drug.'
'It doesn't matter what we call it, does it? Maybe she could have avoided the accident if she hadn't been stoned. Or maybe she would have had the judgment to stop once she hit the kid. Not that it matters any more. She was high, and she did hit the boy, and she didn't stop the car, and you managed to buy her off.'
'Was I wrong to do that, Scudder?'
'How do I know?'
'Do you have children?' I hesitated, then nodded. 'What would you have done?'
I thought about my sons. They weren't old enough to drive yet. Were they old enough to smoke marijuana? It was possible. And what would I do in Henry Prager's place?
'Whatever I had to do,' I said. 'To get them off.'
'Of course. Any father would.'
'It must have cost you a lot of money.'
'More than I could afford. But I couldn't have afforded not to, you see.'
I picked up my silver dollar and looked at it. The date was 1878. It was a good deal older than I was, and had held up a lot better.
'I thought it was over,' he said. 'It was a nightmare, but I managed to straighten everything out. The people I dealt with, they realized that Stacy was not a criminal. She was a good girl from a good family who went through a difficult period in life. That's not uncommon, you know. They recognized that there was no reason to ruin a second life because a horrible accident had taken one life. And the experience—it's awful to say this, but it helped Stacy. She grew as a result of it.
She matured. She stopped using drugs, of course. And her life took on more purpose.'
'What's she doing now?'
'She's in graduate school atColumbia . Psychology. She plans to work with mentally retarded children.'
'She's what, twenty-one?'
'Twenty-two last month. She was nineteen at the time of the accident.'
'I suppose she has an apartment here in town?'
'That's correct. Why?'
'No reason. She turned out all right, then.'
'All my children turned out well, Scudder. Stacy had a difficult year or two, that's all.' His eyes sharpened their focus suddenly. 'And how long do I have to pay for that one mistake? That's what I'd like to know.'
'I'm sure you would.'
'Well?'
'How deep did Jablon have the hook in you?'
'I don't understand.'
'What were you paying him?'
'I thought he was your associate.'
'It was a loose association. How much?'
He hesitated, then shrugged. 'The first time he came I gave him five thousand dollars. He gave the impression that one payment would be the end of it.'
'It never is.'
