her down gently, simply saying that he didn’t invest in things like real estate. He put off most of the petitioners by saying that he’d get back to them, that he didn’t have any of his new fortune yet, which was true. His current therapist had warned him about giving money away recklessly. To resist seemed like the right thing to do, but it was painful saying no.
Like Tom, Paul had a knack for making money and didn’t seem very interested in keeping it. Now he had an absurdity of money. True, some things remained out of his reach. He was still a member of that 99.995 percent of Americans who can’t really afford a Gulfstream jet. But $120 million is exactly 120 times more than $1 million—a wholly different category of money for Paul, the kind of money that got one’s picture on the front page of the
Globe.
Seeing his face there was like waking from a troubling dream, the dream of the unnamed crime. You wake up knowing you didn’t do it, but the feeling lingers that you did.
When Paul first saw the article, his chest tightened, and it stayed that way as the emails and texts and calls kept coming. He had one main memory for explaining his discomfort, to himself and the therapists he’d seen over the years. He was five or six years old, and his ailing mother was in bed in the house on Perham Street, and his father was telling him and his six brothers and sisters that they were “all the same.” Some of his siblings scarcely remembered this, and some thought their father had been trying to tell them they were all equally valued and also that none of them should get big heads. But Paul never heard his father’s words that way. He felt his father was saying that Paul ought to
be
the same as everyone. His father’s telling him not to make noise in the house—“You’ll kill your mother”—meant that Paul should stop practicing the piano. Being
all the same
meant there might be something wrong in standing out, in trying to learn the piano at all, in trying to excel.
In a recurring fantasy, Paul was sitting in Tom’s Cambridge apartment, drinking gin and tonics, and he was saying, “I made the big score, Tom. Let’s figure out how to give it away.”
It was too late for that. Without Tom to advise him, Paul went looking for substitutes. About a week and a half after the announcement of Kayak’s sale, he drove to downtown Boston to visit a fellow member of the board of Partners In Health named Jack Connors. Jack was Boston born and bred like Paul, but a generation older and a great deal wealthier, a founding partner and former chairman of the huge advertising agency Hill Holliday. Jack had retired to a “family office,” a suite of offices devoted mainly to his family’s finances and charities, situated in the John Hancock Building. It is Boston’s tallest building, and Jack’s suite was at the top of it, on the sixtieth floor.
Paul arrived fifteen minutes early and lingered in the vestibule outside Jack’s inner office. Paul was dressed like a construction foreman, in jeans and boots. He looked out of place and restive in the expensive stillness of the hallway, surrounded by blond wood and beige carpeting. At the end of the corridor stood a giant floor-to-ceiling window. He walked over to it. From that elevation, the landscape was a diminutive model of itself. Off in the distance he could make out shapes of real mountains, in New Hampshire presumably, and closer in, Boston’s northern suburbs, and closer still, bridges, waterways, highways, railroad tracks, and finally, far down below his feet, the redbrick buildings and black-tarred roofs of the Back Bay. Gazing out was like looking at a painting, and Paul felt lost in it, until he realized again that he was looking through a window. Then he stepped back.
In this building windows had a notorious history. Soon after they were first installed, in the 1970s, they started falling out. Paul remembered the events well. He was probably seven years old
Like Tom, Paul had a knack for making money and didn’t seem very interested in keeping it. Now he had an absurdity of money. True, some things remained out of his reach. He was still a member of that 99.995 percent of Americans who can’t really afford a Gulfstream jet. But $120 million is exactly 120 times more than $1 million—a wholly different category of money for Paul, the kind of money that got one’s picture on the front page of the
Globe.
Seeing his face there was like waking from a troubling dream, the dream of the unnamed crime. You wake up knowing you didn’t do it, but the feeling lingers that you did.
When Paul first saw the article, his chest tightened, and it stayed that way as the emails and texts and calls kept coming. He had one main memory for explaining his discomfort, to himself and the therapists he’d seen over the years. He was five or six years old, and his ailing mother was in bed in the house on Perham Street, and his father was telling him and his six brothers and sisters that they were “all the same.” Some of his siblings scarcely remembered this, and some thought their father had been trying to tell them they were all equally valued and also that none of them should get big heads. But Paul never heard his father’s words that way. He felt his father was saying that Paul ought to
be
the same as everyone. His father’s telling him not to make noise in the house—“You’ll kill your mother”—meant that Paul should stop practicing the piano. Being
all the same
meant there might be something wrong in standing out, in trying to learn the piano at all, in trying to excel.
In a recurring fantasy, Paul was sitting in Tom’s Cambridge apartment, drinking gin and tonics, and he was saying, “I made the big score, Tom. Let’s figure out how to give it away.”
It was too late for that. Without Tom to advise him, Paul went looking for substitutes. About a week and a half after the announcement of Kayak’s sale, he drove to downtown Boston to visit a fellow member of the board of Partners In Health named Jack Connors. Jack was Boston born and bred like Paul, but a generation older and a great deal wealthier, a founding partner and former chairman of the huge advertising agency Hill Holliday. Jack had retired to a “family office,” a suite of offices devoted mainly to his family’s finances and charities, situated in the John Hancock Building. It is Boston’s tallest building, and Jack’s suite was at the top of it, on the sixtieth floor.
Paul arrived fifteen minutes early and lingered in the vestibule outside Jack’s inner office. Paul was dressed like a construction foreman, in jeans and boots. He looked out of place and restive in the expensive stillness of the hallway, surrounded by blond wood and beige carpeting. At the end of the corridor stood a giant floor-to-ceiling window. He walked over to it. From that elevation, the landscape was a diminutive model of itself. Off in the distance he could make out shapes of real mountains, in New Hampshire presumably, and closer in, Boston’s northern suburbs, and closer still, bridges, waterways, highways, railroad tracks, and finally, far down below his feet, the redbrick buildings and black-tarred roofs of the Back Bay. Gazing out was like looking at a painting, and Paul felt lost in it, until he realized again that he was looking through a window. Then he stepped back.
In this building windows had a notorious history. Soon after they were first installed, in the 1970s, they started falling out. Paul remembered the events well. He was probably seven years old
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