New York

I caught a glimpse of him as he was leaving the office, though I’d been trying to avoid him. The building security man, in blue blazer, stood off to his left, hands folded respectfully in front of him like a funeral director receiving the bereaved, but ready to reach out and steer his charge if necessary. Bartleby shuffled forward unsteadily, as if suddenly, after sixteen years, unsure of the way out. His large, rounded shoulders were hunched, seemingly weighted down by his dull khaki raincoat. One hand held a canvas briefcase bulging with personal items; the other gripped an umbrella that abruptly opened up in front of his knees. Mumbling apologies to his escort, he fumbled to close it, and I cringed for him—one more indignity before he’d even reached the elevator bank. Then they turned a corner and he was gone.

excerpted from the forthcoming novel Summer of Hate

PART ONE: 2005

1/CATT: HER KILLER

There are some people who like feeling like they’ve arrived at the end of the earth, the opacity of an alien place.

Catt stands outside her room at the Villa Vitta Motel. A slight western breeze off the Gulf flavors the desert morning with promise – a promise Catt knows will seem like a distant memory in the harsh glare of 11 a.m. She’s wearing the same clothes she dropped on the floor after arriving last night – a brown gathered skirt and a cardigan sweater, her “Mexican” clothes – not that these clothes are especially ethnic, but when she’s in Mexico she puts on whatever things she pulls first out of her bag. Catt drove down here in a rush. Her black shoulder-length hair is pulled off her face with a sweatband she found in the gym bag she forgot to unload from her car.

excerpted from the forthcoming novel The Man With the Divided Back

There are only three cities in North America which can claim to be the location of a presidential assassination and Buffalo is one of them. In 1901, Buffalo hosted the Pan-American Exposition, and instead of being remembered for its exciting display of electric lights, its fabulous exhibition posters which have since become vintage collectors items, or its carefully designed buildings, gardens and walkways, it became known as the place where President McKinley was shot twice and subsequently killed by a very thin and quite angular anarchist from Detroit named Leon Czolgosz.

Tonight, before they cross the street to their neighbors’ house, Tommy and Margo wrap their seven-year-old boy, Caleb, in his winter coat and mittens and hat until he is not their son but a bundle of clothes in the shape of a boy. The wind carries the snow across the yard, thin, powdery curls snapping in the air, an angry cold. “It’s just a short walk,” Margo tells her son, who squirms inside the clothes, embarrassed that this much fuss is being made over him. “And it’ll be worth it,” his father says, patting the boy’s coat to reassure himself that his son is inside. “We’re gonna have fun.”