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York, took the first parking spot I found, a mile from the station, and boarded the train to the city where I had enjoyed exciting years after the Navy, and ultimately destroyed my life. Or, at least, changed it.
    The train ride south toward Manhattan was like entering a funnel. It started in open land where northern Westchester enjoyed a great spread of blue reservoirs, rushing streams, broad swamps, and the green backsides of private estates. But soon a piece of estate land, marked by grand old trees, had been taken to build a school. Soon after, condos appeared through the trees, creeping closer and closer to the tracks the further south we went. A river bed was captured in a trench beside the rails. Suddenly an auto body shop came in view, a jarring sight surrounded by fenders, bumpers, and crumbling old houses; seconds later a street with new houses and old houses being fixed up. I saw a car dumped in a stream, a factory with fading paint, a warehouse with broken windows, some rusty backhoes, rail yards, and suddenly the shiny office towers at White Plains and an expensive-looking, high-rise glass condo topped with a sign that read, “If you lived here you’d be home now.”
    Now came the tight little downtowns of old neighborhoods that had once been villages, red brick tenements and apartment buildings, and more factories. A sudden green break marked the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx, then walls of old factories converted to storage facilities, factories advertising space, factories offering plastic, leather, iron work, a strip club, then homeless men sorting glass and metal in a recycling dump on the East River. Across a girder bridge and into Manhattan with a brief glimpse of midtown, the Chrysler Building shining. A gridwork of tenements, and just past the 125th Street station the train slipped underground and ran the last eleven minutes in a dark tunnel that ended in Grand Central Terminal.
    My consolation for leaving home was that on such a beautiful day New York was gorgeous, too, and as I walked across Vanderbilt to the Yale Club I hoped that my host would choose an outdoor terrace table at the restaurant on the roof.
    Mr. Kimball was waiting in the restaurant, I was told by the hall porter, who directed me to the elevator. I shared it with a quartet of lovely Ivy League lawyers who I gathered from their conversation were heading upstairs to celebrate trouncing the U.S. Attorney in court that morning. They were younger than I thought lawyers should be and far more attractive than I thought lawyers could be, and I found myself wondering where my life would be now if I had met them back when. Except that back then they’d still have been at Yale. Or in high school.
    I worked up a good smile as I entered the restaurant, and scanned the room while I waited for the lawyers to be seated. Before the maitre d’ returned, I knew I’d be eating indoors. Mr. Kimball had to be the tight-lipped, full-of-himself businessman seated with his back to the wall like a gunfighter. The maitre d’ walked me straight to him. He did not stand up when I introduced myself. That made him a peasant in my book, and I did not offer my hand. But I kept smiling because if I was going to do right by Ira Roth, I had better look confident.
    â€œWhat do you think of the kid?” he asked without preamble.
    â€œI’ve not met your son.”
    â€œYou haven’t met him? What the hell are you doing here?”
    â€œI’m here at your invitation.”
    Mr. Kimball gave me an unpleasant look. “I would have thought you’d make the effort to visit the kid in jail. Get his side of the story.”
    A wise shrink, who had helped me when I needed it, once told me that hotshot business types share essential personality traits with psychopaths. She explained that a high opinion of one’s own magnificence, manipulation in the service of greed, and an inability to care about, much less notice,