Or is this a confession? Of something dark and transparently sinister? Is he admitting a role in her death? What if all the rumors were true, and our father killed our mother for breaking his heart and then used all of his strategic skill and money to cover it up? What if his last message to his children is a cry for absolution?
Or what if his last will is somehow to extinguish us all just like he extinguished her?
I shake off this dark feeling. In the same way that I know our father didn’t kill our mother, I know he didn’t kill Henley either. I know that he wasn’t the one who tried to kill Alistair and me at the aquarium.
“Is everything okay?” asks Mel as soon as he sees me walk out through the club’s front doors.
“I mean, as far as it can be,” I say and give him and Ed a wan smile.
There is a sudden noise right above us that sends all the trash in the street spinning. People scream and point, running out of the way. Are we being attacked?
I look up and see a helicopter breaking the law and heading right for the ground in the middle of the small triangular park.
Who is it? The fucking president?
No, it’s just my brother Bernard, trying to win twenty billion dollars.
People are running in all directions, pointing and taking pictures. How much money did Bernard spend to bribe the city into letting him land his helicopter wherever he wants in Manhattan without getting shot down? A few cops race to hold people back. I can hear them loudly explaining that everything is fine, everything is normal.
A trash can blows over and a cop races to put it back to rights. That is the only real damage done, except for some tulips that get flattened by the whipping air. Luckily, the Financial District is mainly closed to traffic and so there aren’t any car accidents as people stop and gawk.
Bernard’s security detail gets out first. They shake hands with the cops and check everything out from the park to the door of the gym. Finally, Bernard gets out, eating a Zero bar, wearing sunglasses and a red silk shirt under his suit jacket. He looks like the devil himself.
He walks right up to me, his hands held out at his sides as if in embarrassment. It’s like running into a friend at the same brothel.
“Hello, big sister,” he says. “This was an easy one, wasn’t it?”
“Bernard,” I say. “What took you so long?”
“I had to make a few calls before I could land the copter here. Do you know how hard it is to reach city officials on a Saturday? Fucking bureaucrats. I finally made it, though.”
Should I tell him that it won’t matter? That down in the gym basement someone will try and kill him? Would he tell me?
31
Bernard brushes past me, stabbing a finger at one of the cops. I almost let him go inside. I hate myself for doing it, but I almost let him jauntily run down the stairs to his doom.
“You are the last one,” I blurt out, right before he disappears inside. He stops on the threshold, then looks back at me. He takes off his sunglasses. A woman elbows past him on her way out of the gym. He returns to stand in front of me.
“You are the last one,” I say again. “If you go inside there and use your phone, something terrible will happen.”
“What?” he says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I wish I did.”
He stares at me for a long time before finally nodding.
“If it was any of the others, I wouldn’t believe them,” he says. “But you don’t like to win like that. You don’t pick favorites. You don’t lie or cheat. You like the feeling of everybody always knowing that you have beat them because you are better than they are. You get off on it. And for that to be true, you need to always be incorruptible and always play with perfect, hateful sportsmanship. So I believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” I say, showing him my phone. He looks at it, frowning.
“So what? What now?” he says, gritting his teeth.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “We all could have been coordinating before this. We could have all gone on strike.”
“Fuck that,” says Bernard. “I had a shot. I could have beat you. It was a fair game, not one of your dumb puzzles. I liked my odds. I got the helicopter.”
“Well, you’ve crapped out,” I say.
“You guys formed a cabal against me,” he says. “Despicable, though I will admit not technically cheating.”
“Yesterday we formed a cabal,” I say. “But not today. Today everyone was on their own. The stakes are just too high now, I guess.”
“I’m gonna get in that helicopter and fly away,” he says. “I don’t even know where I’m going to go. Nobody can find me if I don’t know where I am going myself. I’ll roll the dice against the alphabet and pick a random city. I’ll mail you a letter from wherever I end up. Then you can mail me back some money when you win. When this all blows over.”
I don’t know what to tell him. It actually sounds like a pretty good plan.
“We’ll catch whoever is doing this,” I say. “And then you can come back. If I win, I’m going to make sure that nobody goes broke and nobody starves. Like I said.”
He nods. He
