Tuesday Morning

The text came in overnight.

Peter Fallon read it when he got up around six thirty: "SFO to BOS. Redeye, boarding now. Early biz in town. Breakfast, Arbella Club, 7:30? JetBlue Flt 2034. LJ"

LJ was his son.

They had named the boy after his grandfather, who had been known in the Boston building trades as Big Jim Fallon. So it was only natural that they would call the first son of a new generation Little Jim. And when Little Jim topped six foot one, along about the time that Big Jim passed, they started calling the kid "LJ."

LJ Fallon was now an associate in the San Francisco law firm of Van Valen and Prescott. And he did not do things spontaneously. Every step he had ever taken — from the colonial in West Roxbury, where he grew up with Peter's ex and a stepfather, through Harvard, then law school, all the way to an office in the Transamerica Pyramid — had all appeared as part of a plan.

A surprise night flight across the country and an early breakfast with Dad? That defined "spur of the moment." Not like LJ at all.

Something was up.

So Peter showered and dressed, threw on a tweed sport coat, and grabbed his scally cap. Donegal herringbone, perfect for an autumn-crisp morning and the kind of cap that a smart-ass Boston guy might put on to proclaim his Irish heritage at Boston's oldest, most Yankee-fied social club, named for the ship that brought the Puritans to Massachusetts and renowned for its unrelenting prejudice against the children of the Irish potato famine, at least until the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

It puzzled Peter that LJ had joined the Arbella instead of some other Boston bastion, like the Harvard Club or the Somerset or even the Club of Odd Volumes. Something to do with a girl, or with impressing the girl's family, but the girl had left the picture when LJ left for Boalt Hall, the Berkeley law school. This disappointed Peter on two fronts. He liked the girl, and he did not like the distance between Boston and Berkeley. At least the kid had a real job. He'd also kept his club membership, so maybe he might move home someday to use it.

Peter hurried along Marlborough, across the Public Garden, up Beacon Hill to Louisburg Square, a living monument to the three "b's" of nineteenth-century Boston architecture — bricks, bowfronts, and black shutters — encircling a fenced park where locals with gate keys could clean up after their dogs while inhaling all the high-toned history, too. Charles Bulfinch, famous Federalist architect, had lived on the square. So had the Alcotts, William Dean Howells, Robert Frost, even former Secretary of State John Kerry. The last house to sell here went for twelve million.

Peter sometimes thought he should have gone after the big bucks in Boston real estate. But he never regretted the path he chose. He had a long list of adventures, a longer list of clients, and one of the great brokerages for rare books and documents in America.

When someone needed a volume appraised, they turned to Peter. When someone needed some cash and decided to sell a presentation copy of a Mark Twain or a signed Lincoln letter, they turned to Peter. When someone learned of a lost first draft of the U. S. Constitution or some other treasure that needed finding for the good of the country and the wider world, they turned to Peter, because Peter ... got it.

History mattered. The documents that let us touch it mattered. The buildings where it unfolded mattered. The whole parade of human beings in general and Americans in particular mattered. To study the past was to light the way to the future. That's what Peter liked to believe, anyway. That's why he did what he did. And he was good at it.

He was also good at going anywhere in Boston and looking like he belonged. He could stop for a quick shooter in some Southie bar, where they talked about sports, politics, and money and knocked back buck-a-bottle Buds at three in the afternoon, or he could visit the Arbella Club, where they talked about money, sports, and politics and sipped Far Niente Chardonnay at lunch, and he always fit in.

So he didn't bother to make a big flourish with the scally cap.

He climbed the Arbella Club stoop, rang the buzzer, and admired the polish on the brass door knocker. He also noticed a little hand-lettered sign in one of the sidelights: No soliciting. All deliveries in the rear. He imagined the No Irish Need Apply sign pasted discreetly into that spot a century before.

When the door opened, he removed the cap. But before he stepped in, three men pushed out. He made way. Exit before entry. Simple good manners.

He nodded, but they barely acknowledged him. This would not have surprised him with some members of the Arbella, except that these were not the usual Arbella types. One was black, one white, one Asian. All wore dark suits. Dark expressions, too. And the first two seemed, by their bulk and manner, to be working for the Asian. Security? At the Arbella Club?

Times, Peter concluded, were changing.

* * *

He stopped in the foyer to let his eyes adjust. The tall case clock chimed once for 7:30. In the library, two men and a woman were talking about something that sounded important. On the staircase, a waiter in a crimson jacket was carrying a coffee service. At the coat check under the stairs, a man was collecting his briefcase.

Peter approached the reception desk and said, "I'm a guest of Mr. Fallon." He liked referring to his son as "mister."

The maître d', in blue blazer and tie the same color as the waiters' jackets, gave a polite, "This way, sir," and led Peter into the dining room.

The sun poured through the east-facing bowfront, burnishing the mahogany furniture, illuminating the mural of old Boston on one wall and the portraits of old Bostonians on the other. Coffee cups and silverware chimed and chirped, but wall-to-wall carpet, patterned after the green and gold original, muffled the sound. So conversation merely murmured — business talk at some tables (but no work papers, please), leaf-peeping chitchat at others, where out- of-town reciprocals planned their foliage tours. It was morning in Boston. And there was no better place to enjoy it than the Arbella Club, or so this room would suggest.

LJ Fallon was sitting with his back to the door, reading The Globe sports page.

The waiter was clearing one round of plates and setting out another.

Peter said, "The Patriots need cornerbacks."

LJ looked up and brightened.

Peter remembered the expression. It said, Dad's here. It would always say that. And it would always give Peter a little twinge of pleasure and pain, because it was the face that greeted him whenever he came to collect the boy for a weekend visit. The divorce had been hard on LJ, and even now, after all these years, Peter still saw the same mixture of hurt and hope when he looked into his son's eyes.

He also saw the resemblance. From the day LJ was born, people said that he was a Fallon. He had the black hair, the strong brow, the wiry build. He was taller than his father, but that was as it should be. He was also smarter, as Peter would tell anyone. LJ could handle math and physics, subjects that Peter had ducked. So ... smarter, yes, but short on experience and maybe a bit light on common sense, as every father who'd ever taken pride in a son's brains had reminded the boy at least once.

LJ glanced at the...