I Let Him Finish Laughing First

him.

“This,” I said into the microphone, “is the real reason for tonight.”

A stir went through the ballroom. Linen rustled. Somebody at table eleven laughed once, short and stupid, because he thought it was some private joke he hadn’t been let in on yet.

It wasn’t.

Six months earlier, my office had been handed a file from a regional bank in Hartford. Routine continue reading …