2. The Colony in the Walls

The office of Atlas Fumigation Incorporated occupied the entire third floor of the Holliday Building, a six-story art deco tower in downtown Port Azura that Arthur Holliday had purchased in 1946 for a sum that, according to the framed newspaper clipping in the lobby, was "the largest single commercial real estate transaction in county history." Eddie had read that clipping three times on his first morning, standing in the marble-floored lobby with his dead man's hat in his hands, trying to memorize the details of a triumph he had not earned.

The elevator operator, a thin Negro man in a burgundy uniform, touched his cap. "Morning, Mr. Holliday."

Eddie nodded. He had learned, in those first days, that Arthur Holliday did not speak to elevator operators. He did not speak to janitors or secretaries or the men who washed the windows. He moved through the world like a ship cutting through water, leaving wakes but never looking back.

"Three," Eddie said, because he could not help himself.

The operator's eyes flickered. A tiny breach in protocol. Arthur Holliday never announced his floor.

"Of course, sir."

The elevator rose with a mechanical groan that Eddie felt in his teeth. He was wearing Holliday's gray suit, a Brioni that had cost more than Eddie had earned in his best year. The shoes were handmade in England, the watch was a Patek Philippe, the signet ring was heavy on his finger like a manacle disguised as jewelry. Every item was armor, and every item was a lie.

The doors opened onto a reception area designed to intimidate. The carpet was deep burgundy, the walls were paneled in dark mahogany, and the receptionist sat behind a desk the size of a small automobile. Her name was Doris, according to the brass nameplate, and she had been with the company for eleven years.

"Good morning, Mr. Holliday." She held up a sheaf of pink message slips. "Mr. Ackerman from the insurance company called. He says it's urgent. And Mrs. Holliday telephoned from San Francisco. She wants you to call her back about the Tahoe property."

Eddie took the messages without looking at them. "Hold my calls."

He walked past her desk and into the corner office, closing the heavy door behind him. The room was enormous, with windows on two sides that looked out over the harbor and the hills beyond. On clear days, you could see all the way to San Rio Verde, where Eddie had once owned a house with a lemon tree in the backyard and a wife who still believed in him.

He sat down in Arthur Holliday's chair. The leather was soft and smelled of money. The desk was covered in papers, contracts, invoices, letters from lawyers. The mess of a man who had stopped caring, who had let the rot spread while he drank in waterfront bars and pretended his empire was not crumbling.

There was a photograph on the desk. Margaret Holliday, taken perhaps ten years ago, her hair dark and her smile genuine. And beside her, a boy of about fifteen, tall and awkward, wearing a blazer that didn't quite fit. Thomas. The son who was somewhere on a ship, pretending he didn't have a father.

Eddie turned the photograph face down.

The door opened without a knock. Eddie looked up, ready to snap at the intrusion, and found himself facing a woman he had never seen before.

She was perhaps fifty, with iron-gray hair pulled back in a tight bun and eyes the color of slate. She wore a plain navy dress that was twenty years out of fashion, and she carried a leather-bound ledger against her chest like a shield. Her face was thin, all angles and disapproval, and when she looked at Eddie, he felt something cold move through him.

"Mr. Holliday," she said. "You're early."

It was not a question. It was an observation, delivered in a tone that suggested early was simply another word for suspicious.

"Gloria," Eddie said, because he had memorized the names of every employee, every client, every creditor. Gloria Finch. Office manager. Thirty-two years with the company. The woman who actually ran Atlas Fumigation while Arthur Holliday drank and womanized and drove his empire into the ground.

She placed the ledger on the desk. "The quarterly reports. You asked for them last month. I assumed you'd want them before the board meeting."

The board meeting. Eddie's blood went cold. He had not known about a board meeting.

"Of course," he said.

Gloria did not move. She stood there, studying him with those slate-colored eyes, and Eddie had the sudden, vertiginous feeling that she could see through him. Not through his suit or his skin, but through the very architecture of his deception, into the hollow place where Eddie Santoro was still hiding.

"Are you feeling well, Mr. Holliday?" she asked.

"Fine."

"You seem different."

"Different how?"

She paused. "I'm not sure. Your handwriting has changed. The checks you signed yesterday, the signatures were... off. And you're drinking your coffee black now. You've taken cream for twenty-three years."

Twenty-three years. This woman had been cataloging Arthur Holliday's habits for nearly a quarter of a century, and Eddie had betrayed himself with a coffee order.

"I'm trying something new," he said.

Gloria nodded slowly. "Change can be good. But the board meeting is Thursday. We should review the Carr case before then. It's become a problem."

The Carr case. Eddie had seen the name in Holliday's papers. A family in the Harbor Heights neighborhood, working people who had signed a guaranteed protection contract with Atlas three years ago. Their house was now infested with termites, the foundation so thoroughly eaten that the structure was on the verge of collapse. Atlas had denied their claim, citing "acts of nature" and "improper maintenance," but the Carrs had hired a lawyer. A determined lawyer, according to the increasingly frantic memos from Atlas's legal department.

"Tell me about them," Eddie said.

Gloria opened the ledger. "Vincent Carr. Works at the cannery on Pier Street. His wife, Maria. Three children. They bought the house in 1952, financed through the GI bill. The infestation was discovered by a city inspector last month. The damage is extensive. Repairs will cost more than the house is worth."

"And our contract with them?"

"A standard barrier treatment, guaranteed for five years. They've paid every premium on time. Our inspector, a man named Perkins, filed reports showing the property was clean as recently as February." She paused. "Perkins no longer works for us. He was terminated in March for reasons that are unclear from his personnel file."

Eddie leaned back in the chair. "What does our lawyer say?"

"Mr. Finch—my brother—believes we can delay the case for two years, perhaps more. But the publicity would be damaging. The Carrs are sympathetic. He's a veteran. She volunteers at St. Joseph's. The newspapers would love this story."

Eddie closed his eyes. He was thinking about the man he had been three weeks ago, drinking kerosene-tasting whiskey in a bar that smelled of failure. He was thinking about the truck he had lost, the license he had lost, the years he had spent crawling under houses just like the Carrs', injecting poison into the earth while men like Arthur Holliday collected the checks. He had been the one who signed the false reports. Not here, not at Atlas, but at Griswold's operation, back when he still believed that cutting corners was just how business worked. He had been Perkins. He had been everyone who had ever looked at a rotting foundation and written the word "clean" on a clipboard because telling the truth would cost too much.

And now he was supposed to destroy a family to protect a dead man's empire.

"No," Eddie said aloud.

Gloria's expression didn't change. "No?"

"Pay them."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Pay the claim. Full amount. Repairs, temporary housing, whatever they need. And fire the lawyer. I don't want this going to court."

There was a long silence. Gloria Finch stared at Eddie with an expression he could not read, something between suspicion and something else entirely. Respect, perhaps. Or fear.

"Mr. Holliday," she said carefully, "the company does not have the liquid assets to pay a claim of this size. The insurance coverage was reduced last year, at your instruction. If we pay the Carrs, we won't make payroll next month."

The walls of the office seemed to close in. Eddie could feel the trap tightening around him, a trap that Arthur Holliday had built with his own hands, year by year, decision by decision. The watered-down chemicals. The reduced insurance. The forged inspection reports. The money siphoned into offshore accounts that were now frozen by the divorce proceedings. Everything was connected, and everything was rotting.

"Then we find the money," Eddie said.

"How?"

He didn't have an answer. He sat in the dead man's chair, wearing the dead man's clothes, surrounded by the dead man's mistakes, and tried to think. Somewhere in the building, a telephone was ringing. Outside the window, a ship was pulling into the harbor, its horn low and mournous across the water.

"Schedule a meeting with the Carrs," he said finally. "I want to meet them in person."

Gloria raised an eyebrow. "You've never met with a client in person. That's what the claims department is for."

"Schedule it anyway."

She nodded, made a note in her ledger, and turned to leave. At the door, she paused. "Mr. Holliday. The signature issue. The bank called this morning about a withdrawal request from the Tahoe account. They said the signature didn't match the card on file."

Eddie felt his heart stop. "Did they honor it?"

"No. They froze the account pending your personal verification. You'll need to visit the branch manager." She held his gaze for a moment longer than necessary. "Before Thursday, if possible. The board will want to know why the chairman can't access his own money."

She left. The door clicked shut. Eddie sat alone in the cavernous office, staring at the face-down photograph on the desk.

The signature. Of course. He had practiced for hours, but there were limits to what practice could achieve. Arthur Holliday had signed his name ten thousand times, on checks and contracts and the backs of menus and the foreheads of strippers, probably, and every signature had been slightly different, the product of a lifetime of unconscious habit. Eddie could forge the broad strokes, but the small things—the pressure of the pen, the angle of the flourish, the way the "y" in Holliday trailed off into nothing—those were beyond him.

He needed help. He needed someone who knew the business, someone who could teach him to be Arthur Holliday from the inside out. Gloria was too dangerous. She saw too much, understood too much. The board members were worse. They had known Holliday for years, had drunk with him and golfed with him and probably conspired with him in whatever schemes had brought the company to this precipice.

There was only one person left.

Eddie picked up the photograph from the desk and turned it over. Margaret Holliday, elegant and cold, her arm around her gawky son. The wife was a threat. She knew her husband's body, his habits, his history. If she came back from San Francisco, if she saw through the deception, everything would collapse.

But the son. Thomas. The boy who had run away to sea, who had spent years pretending his father didn't exist. He had not seen Arthur Holliday in eighteen months, according to the letters Eddie had found in the study. He would not know the small things. He would not notice a changed signature or a different coffee order. He would see only what he wanted to see: a father who had finally become the man Thomas had always wanted him to be.

Eddie opened the bottom drawer of the desk, the one that had been locked when he first arrived. He had found the key in Holliday's pocket, along with the wallet and the watch and the signet ring. Inside was a stack of letters, all from Thomas, all postmarked from ports with names like music. Honolulu. Singapore. Barcelona. He read them one by one, absorbing the voice of a son who hated his father but could not stop writing to him.

The last letter was dated three weeks ago. Thomas would be in San Francisco next month. He wanted to come home. He wanted to talk about the business, about the future, about all the things they had never said to each other.

Eddie picked up the telephone and asked the operator to connect him with the Port of San Francisco, the harbormaster's office. He was on hold for fifteen minutes, listening to static and distant voices, while the afternoon sun moved across the office floor.

When the harbormaster came on the line, Eddie spoke in Arthur Holliday's voice, the one he had practiced in the bathroom mirror a hundred times. "I'm trying to reach my son. Thomas Holliday. He's a merchant marine, due in port next month. I need to know when his ship arrives."

There was a pause. Papers rustling. "The SS Catalina, scheduled to dock October fifteenth. Is this an emergency, sir?"

"No," Eddie said. "It's just family business."

He hung up the phone and sat in the gathering darkness. October fifteenth. Three weeks away. Three weeks to learn how to be a father, how to run a business, how to sign his name so perfectly that no one would ever question it again.

Outside the window, the harbor lights were coming on, one by one, like stars falling into the sea. Somewhere in the building, a vacuum cleaner was running, a janitor working late. Somewhere in the harbor, a ship was preparing to sail. And somewhere in the walls of the Holliday Building, in the wooden beams and the plaster and the hundred-year-old timber, termites were eating, patient and invisible, turning everything solid into dust.

Eddie picked up the pen and began to practice the signature again. Arthur Holliday. Over and over. Until the name stopped looking like a forgery. Until the name stopped looking like a name at all and became simply the truth.

The next morning, when Gloria Finch arrived at the office, she found him still there, still signing, a pile of paper a hundred sheets deep on the desk beside him. The sun was rising over the harbor, and the man who called himself Arthur Holliday was writing his name as if his life depended on it.

Because it did.