They talked until almost two in the morning. Ms. Tanaka took a full statement, in Japanese and in English, and had Asha sign each page. Ryo Mori, who had recovered some of his color and most of his composure, spent an hour on his phone in the corner of the alcove speaking rapidly and quietly with someone in Tokyo, where it was already the afternoon of the next day. And Mr. Nakamura, near the end, asked Asha one more question.
"The families," he said. "In Lindenwald. The ones who did not sign. The Garcias, and the old woman. You said your father's friend lives there."
"Eddie Pruett. On Pleasant Avenue. He's a retired machinist. He was in the Navy with my dad."
"Does he drink from a well?"
Asha's stomach went cold. "I don't know. I don't think so. I think he's on city water. But some of the older houses aren't."
Mr. Nakamura turned to Ryo Mori and spoke in Japanese, quietly but very firmly. Ryo nodded and began typing on his phone.
"Tomorrow morning," Mr. Nakamura said to Asha, "before anything else, before any lawyers, before any agencies, my company will pay for every house in Lindenwald within one kilometer of the Hamilton factory to have its water tested by an independent laboratory. Every house. Whether they signed his paper or not. And until the results come back, we will pay for clean bottled water to be delivered to every one of those houses." He paused. "This is not about the deal. The deal is finished. This is about the families. If we had signed tomorrow, they would have been our families. They were going to be drinking our water. I will not wait for a court to tell me to bring them something clean."
Asha stared at him.
"Mori-kun will arrange it tonight," Mr. Nakamura said. "But it would help us very much, Reynolds-san, if someone they trusted could go with our people tomorrow. To explain. In English. Plainly. These are working people. They will not trust three strangers from Tokyo in suits knocking on their doors." He smiled slightly. "They may trust a young woman whose father was a Navy machinist."
"Yes," Asha said. "Yes, sir. I'll go."
At 2:10 in the morning, the guests from Kanazawa climbed the curving stone stairs of Vault 1887 and went out into the cold Ohio night, where a black car was waiting on Moore Street to take them back to their hotel. Asha and Mr. Okada stood in the open oak doorway at the top of the stairs and watched the car's taillights disappear down the empty street.
"Okada-san," Asha said, in Japanese. "The rule. Discretion. I broke it. In front of guests. In your restaurant."
Mr. Okada was quiet for a while. The cold air came in through the doorway and stirred the candle flames behind them.
"Forty-four years ago," he said, "in Paris, I poured wine for a man who was planning to ruin another man's life. I said nothing. I told myself it was discretion. I told myself it was the rule." He turned and looked at her through his round wire glasses. "It was not discretion, Asha-san. It was fear. I was afraid of losing my job. I was afraid of being a small, foreign waiter who made trouble for an important guest. I have known that for forty-four years." He put his hand, very lightly, on her arm. "Tonight, you were not afraid. Or if you were, you did it anyway. That is the difference. Discretion protects the guest's privacy. It was never meant to protect a crime." He smiled. "I think my old teacher in Paris would have bowed to you too."
Twenty-two miles to the north, at 2:30 in the morning, Carter Holbrook was sitting in his car in the parking lot of the Mercy Health Senior Care facility in Fairfield, Ohio, with the engine off and the lights off, staring at the dark windows of the building.
He had been sitting there for almost two hours.
He had left Vault 1887 and driven without knowing where he was going. He had driven north on I-75, past the exit for his house in Indian Hill, past the exit for the office, past the exit for the airport. He had called Phil Danziger four times. Phil had not answered. He had called his own personal lawyer twice. He had called his ex-wife, once, for reasons he did not understand, and hung up before it rang. And somewhere near the Butler County line, without deciding to, he had taken the exit for Fairfield, and driven to the care home where his father had lived for the past three years.
Walter Holbrook was seventy-nine years old. The Parkinson's disease had taken most of his ability to walk and much of his ability to speak, but not, as far as the doctors could tell, very much of his mind. He lived in a small private room on the second floor, with a window that looked out over a parking lot and a strip of trees. Carter visited him once a month, on the first Sunday, for thirty minutes. He had not missed a visit in three years. He had also never once, in three years, stayed longer than thirty minutes.
At 2:41, Carter got out of the car.
The night nurse at the front desk, a heavyset older woman named Gail, looked up in surprise when he came through the sliding doors. Visiting hours had ended at eight. She opened her mouth to tell him so. Then she saw his face, and the suit, and the fact that his hands were shaking, and she closed it again, and buzzed him through without a word.
His father was awake. He usually was, at night. The disease had broken his sleep into small, restless fragments. He was lying propped up in the hospital bed by the window, in a pair of blue flannel pajamas, with the small reading light on and a large-print paperback Western lying open on his chest, his hands trembling slightly on top of it. When the door opened, he turned his head slowly toward it, and his eyes, which were the same dark gray as his son's, widened in surprise.