The Risk Pool

gone, the town resembled a Hollywood back lot. In the gaps between buildings you could see things that weren’t supposed to be visible from the street—dirty side entrances to shops that kept up halfway decent appearances out front, full garbage dumpsters awaiting trash collection, a car or two on blocks—things that would havebeen secrets had the buildings along Main formed an unbroken line. No doubt the back alleys of every town were more or less the same, but it seemed a shame the town should be so transparent. Like people, communities deserved a facade, however flimsy. The old SHOP DOWNTOWN MOHAWK , Where There’s Always Plenty of Parking sign had faded into the bricks of the wall it had been painted on, and people must have seen the irony and just let it go. Since I didn’t know where my father was living, it made sense to go see my mother, who would surely take it as a betrayal if she discovered I’d gone someplace else first. Trouble was, I didn’t feel up to confronting her quite yet and besides, just walking in on her without warning with my longish hair and four-day beard might knock her for a hell of a loop.
    There was a phone booth in front of the Mohawk Trust, so I shouldered my duffel bag and made for that. It didn’t take me long to realize it would be useless. There was no listing for Sam Hall or Eileen Littler. My father had never had a phone. Eileen had always kept her number unlisted. I started to check on Wussy until, after a few moments of vague, dazed leafing, I remembered I didn’t know his last name. I had more or less the same problem with Skinny Donovan. There were about a dozen Donovans listed but, not surprisingly, no “Skinny.” (His real name—Patrick—I’d somehow forgotten.) It occurred to me as I stood outside the phone booth in the persistent drizzle that my knowledge of these people was incomplete, though this peculiar way of knowing—these nicknames, partial identities, aliases—represented standard commerce in Mohawk. Sign here, Tree.
    There was nothing to do but readjust my thinking, get back to local time and place. The clock above the Mohawk Trust flashed the former, and I synchronized my watch, which made me feel a little better. After all, I was a tough, worldly, steely-eyed twenty-four now, and college educated to boot. If I couldn’t locate my father in his own hometown, there was something wrong with me. The place to start was the Mohawk Grill.
    I never got there though. I hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps toward its buzzing neon sign, clearly audible in the late afternoon stillness, when a door opened between the Rooker Pharmacy and Lauria’s Men’s Wear and a large, well-dressed man stepped into the street, his back to me. He was in the act of struggling on with a new pair of leather gloves and I knew who it was before he even looked up.
    The door that locked shut behind him confirmed it: F. William Peterson, Attorney-at-Law, was one of the names listed there.
    When he looked up and saw me smiling at him, he gave me a curt nod and headed down the street in the direction I’d just come from. He got halfway to the bank before he stopped dead, stalled there for a second, then wheeled around. I’d stayed right where I was, duffel bag over my shoulder. “Ned?” he said.
    “Will?” I said.
    “Ned
Hall?
” He was coming toward me now, still tentatively, as if when he got there, he meant to touch my cheek to make sure I was real.
    “Pop?” I said, since the situation couldn’t have been much more absurd.
    He stopped right in front of me, his red face beaming. “Look at
you
,” he said, offering a gloved hand.
    “I can’t,” I said. “I’m looking at you.”
    Poor F. William Peterson never did have much of a handshake, and he still didn’t. Always soft, he was even softer now, a boneless roast of a man. He looked genuinely glad to see me as we shook, but then he stopped in midpump, his brow darkening. “You haven’t been home yet?”
    I told him I’d just that minute stepped off the bus.
    He looked up and down the deserted street then, as if to be sure we hadn’t been spotted. “Thank God,” he said. “Come with me.”
    A moment later we were upstairs in his second-floor office. We had the place to ourselves, half an hour past closing. Like the offices of many small-town lawyers, F. William Peterson’s could have passed for that of an insurance agent, with its cheap wood paneling and big metal desk.
    “I’d better call her,”