Noah Hawley is a good father. Read The Good Father online in full - Noah Hawley - MyBook. Noah Hawley good father

Hoah Hawley

THE GOOD FATHER

* * *

Kyle and Guinevere - as proof that life is good

He bought a gun in Long Beach, at Lucky's Pawnshop. 9mm Trojan. This is from the police report. Since the trigger was rusty, he replaced it using a set he bought online. It was in May. He still lives in Sacramento, a squinting boy with chapped lips, poring over books about famous assassins in the public library all day. Prior to that, he lived in Texas, Montana, and Iowa. Never spent more than four months anywhere. Sometimes I slept in the car. So he traveled. Every mile of the journey brought him closer to the end.

The Troyan is one of three pistols he bought in the last months before the event. He kept them in the trunk of his car, a yellow Honda that the police would later find in the parking lot of the Staples Sports Complex in suburban Los Angeles. The odometer showed 210,000 miles. He had hit a lot in the fifteen months since he left college. Sometimes he worked for cash: day work in fast foods or at construction sites. Didn't go online. Everyone said with one voice: he was quiet, closed in on himself, a little stubborn. It was only later, after a multi-toothed investigation, that the tabloids documented his path, carefully recreating each step. Now there are tables, preparing for the release of the book. But in the first hours after the event, no one knew anything. What kind of young man? Where did it come from? They say nature abhors a vacuum, but CNN hates it even more. Moments after the first shot, journalists were already rummaging around in search of background, scrolling through the records again, analyzing angles and trajectories. We got a name and pictures right away. A young man, shining eyes, milky white skin, squints in the sun. Nothing as revealing as Lee Harvey Oswald cleaning his rifle. But through the prism of what happened, these pictures looked prophetic, like childhood photographs of Hitler. Predatory eye gleam. But can you say for sure? After all, they were just photographs. The closer you bring them to your eyes, the grainier they are.

As in any event that deserves to be called historical, some details remain an impenetrable mystery. Even now, months later, there are empty spaces, days of which nothing is known—sometimes whole weeks. We know that in August, the year before, he was volunteering in Austin, Texas. The organizers remembered him as a smart, hardworking guy. Ten months later, he was fixing roofs in Los Angeles, walking around skinny with pitch-black nails, clinging to sloping roof sheets, and breathing smoke.

By that time he had spent more than a year wandering. One of the tanned hobos lost in the great American indifference. Somewhere along the way he changed his name. He began calling himself Carter Allen Cash. He liked the sound of the name, its taste on the tongue. His first name was Daniel Allen. He was twenty years old. As a boy, he never leaned into mindless male aggression. I didn’t collect toy pistols, I didn’t turn everything that fell into my hands into weapons. He saved the chicks that had fallen from the nest. Shared. And yet he found himself in a small shooting range, zeroing in an automatic pistol on one of two narrow firing lines littered with cigarette butts.

On clear May nights, he probably sat in motel rooms, collecting his thoughts. He took cartridges in his hands, opened boxes, crunched them. He was an arrow man, flying towards the inevitable. The news showed politicians speaking at provincial banquets and the dusty farms of the west. There was an election war going on, voters and candidates, advisers and money, merged into a great democratic tsunami. The primaries season has ended. Party congresses loomed ahead. Sitting on the floor of his motel room, Carter Allen Cash imagined how he would vote with a bullet.

At the age of seven, he lived for the swings. He straightened his legs and lifted his heels to the sky, yelling: "More, more!" It was always not enough for him, he did not know how to stop, and his restlessness caused seasickness or stupor in those around him. At night, he lay on a tumbled bed, in his pajamas, his forehead furrowed and his fists clenched like a completely exhausted dancer. Who was that boy and how did he become the man playing bullets in the motel room? What made him give up a comfortable life and turn to violence? I read the messages, watched the reports, but the answer was not given to me. And I wanted to understand more than anything.

You see, I am his father.

He is my son.

1. At home

On Thursdays, the Allens had pizza. My last appointment that day was at eleven in the morning, and at three I had to sit on the train to Westport, look through patient cards and answer calls. I loved the way the city retreated, the brick buildings of the Bronx sliding back along the tracks. Trees grow slowly, sunlight bursts in triumphantly, like shouts of cheer at the overthrow of an old tyranny. The canyon becomes a valley, the valley turns into a field. In the train I felt space, the word fled from the fate that seemed inevitable. Strange, because I grew up in New York, a child of asphalt and concrete. But for a long time I began to suffocate among right angles and the eternal howl of sirens. So ten years ago I moved my family to Westport, Connecticut. We settled in the suburbs, having the dreams and hopes of a suburban family.

I was a rheumatologist, head of the department of rheumatology at Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Few people understand my specialty - it is too often associated with watery eyes and a wet cough from acute pollen allergies. But in fact, rheumatology is a subsection of therapy and pediatrics. The term comes from the Greek roots "rheuma", meaning "fluid like a river or stream", and "logos", meaning "teaching". Rheumatologists deal with diseases of the joints, soft tissues and related complications on the connective tissues. We often turn out to be the last bastion, patients come to us with inexplicable symptoms that cover entire body systems - nervous, respiratory, circulatory. A rheumatologist is called when a diagnosis cannot be made.

I was a diagnostician by profession, a medical detective: I analyzed symptoms and test results, looked for persistent consequences of diseases and forgotten injuries. In eighteen years, this work never bored me, and I often took it to bed with me, rereading case histories in the moments between waking and sleeping, finding meaning in the chaos of symptoms.

June 16 was sunny, not too hot, but the threat of a New York summer hung in the air. The stuffy moisture rising from the paths was already felt. Soon any breeze will be like the hot breath of a stranger. Soon, car exhausts can be stretched out and smeared across the sky like oil paint. But so far it was only a threat: a slight stuffiness, sweat under the armpits.

I came home late that day. The afternoon reception dragged on longer than usual, and I got off the train at almost six o'clock. Walked nine blocks to the house between rows of manicured lawns. American flags hung over the mailboxes. The white picket fence, both hospitable and aloof, flashed at the edge of the field of vision like bicycle spokes. The feeling of movement - one clicks past, another ... Wealthy people lived here, and I was among them: a specialist doctor, lecturer, teacher from Columbia.

I defended my diploma in the era before GMOs, before the devaluation of the medical title, and I completely succeeded. Money provided some freedom and luxury. A four-bedroom house, several acres of rolling land with weeping willows and a faded white hammock that swayed lazily in the breeze. On such warm evenings, as I walked through the quiet suburbs, I felt peace and completeness - not petty complacency, but a deep human feeling. The triumph of the marathon runner after the race, the triumph of the soldier at the end of the long war. The man accepted the challenge, coped with it, and from this he became better, wiser.

Fran was already working on the dough when I came in, rolling it out on the marble countertop. The twins grated the cheese and picked up the crumbs of the filling. Fran is my second wife: tall, red-haired, with the smooth curves of a lazy river. After forty, her beauty from the athletic brilliance of a volleyball player turned into a languid voluptuousness. Thoughtful and self-confident, Fran liked to plan everything in advance, approaching any problem without haste. In this she resembled my first wife, although she was impulsive and carried carriages of emotions. I like to think that I can learn from my mistakes. And if Fran proposed marriage, it was because, for lack of a more romantic notion, we are compatible in the best sense of the word.

Fran worked as a virtual secretary, that is, from the comfort of her home, she coordinated meetings and booked flights for people she had never seen. Instead of earrings, she wore Bluetooth headphones - put them in as soon as she woke up, and took them out only when she went to bed. For most of the day, she looked like she was having a long conversation with herself.

The twins, Alex and Wally, are ten years old this year. Friendly brothers, but very different. Wally has a cleft lip and looks slightly menacing, like the boy is just waiting for you to turn your back on him. In fact, of the two, he is the sweeter child and the more ingenuous. Due to a genetic error, he was born with a cleft palate, and although the operation corrected it, the face was left imperfect, inaccurate, vulnerable. His brother Alex, with a comparatively angelic appearance, has recently been in trouble for fighting. For him, this problem is not new - even in the sandbox, he immediately entered into battle with anyone who mocked his brother. Over the years, the protective instinct has evolved into an irresistible need to defend the outcasts: fat people, "nerds", children with braces on their teeth. A few months ago—after I had been called to the directorate for the third time in half a year—Fran and I, while treating him to lunch at a cafe, began to explain that we approved of protecting the weak, but that he needed to learn to act with more than one force.

“If you want bullies to learn their lesson,” I said, “you have to teach them something. And, believe me, nothing can be taught by violence.

Alex has always had a sharp mind and a well-spoken tongue. He very quickly became the first debater in the class. Now he turned every request to finish the vegetables or help with the cleaning into an Aristotelian dispute.

I had no one to blame but myself.

This is our primary family. Father, mother and two sons. Daniel, the son of my first barque, lived with us for a year in his difficult adolescence, but departed as abruptly as he appeared: he woke me up one day at dawn and asked for a ride to the airport. When his mother and I separated, he was seven, and when I went east, he stayed with her on the west coast.

Three years after a short stay with us, eighteen-year-old Danny entered college. But he quit before he even studied for a year, got into a car and drove west. Later, he will say that he wanted to "see the country." He did not inform us of his departure. I myself sent him a postcard to the hostel, which came back with a stamp: "The addressee no longer lives." That's how he's been since childhood. Little Danny never lingered where he was left, but surfaced in the most unexpected places. We now had occasional phone calls and e-mails through Internet cafes in the Midwestern plains. In moments of summer nostalgia, he could scribble a postcard. But always as it was convenient for him, not for me.

The last time I saw him was in Arizona. I flew there for a medical conference. Daniel was passing through, on his way north. I treated him to breakfast at a hipster cafe near my hotel. He let his long hair down and ate the pancakes without pause, the fork moving from the plate to his mouth like a locomotive rod.

He said that he lived a lot in tents in the southwest. During the day he walked, at night he read by the light of a flashlight. He looked happy. When you are young, there is no idea more attractive than freedom - the unlimited confidence that you can be where you want and do what you want. And while it still bothered me that he'd dropped out of college six months ago, knowing him, I wasn't too surprised.

Daniel grew up on the road. As a teenager, he, like a gypsy, dangled between me and my mother, Connecticut and California. Children of divorced parents, by the very nature of the divorce agreement, are independent. How many Christmas evenings he spent in airports, how many summer holidays he shuttled from mom to dad! Daniel didn't seem to be hurt by this, but I was still worried, as parents tend to be. I can’t say that I didn’t sleep at night, but every day this anxiety added a little doubt, a feeling of loss, a feeling that I forgot something important. Although he was always self-sufficient and also an intelligent, charming boy. And I convinced myself that no matter where he went, nothing would happen to him.

Last fall, sitting opposite me in that Arizona coffee shop, Daniel chuckled at my jacket and tie. I did not understand why it was necessary on Saturday.

“I'm at a conference,” I reminded him. - Must maintain a professional reputation.

This thought made him laugh. For him, adult uncles and aunts, obediently imitating the behavior and clothes of the generally accepted ideas about professors, looked ridiculous.

When I said goodbye, I gave him five hundred dollars, but he did not take it. He said that he had enough money - he was working a little, and that he was not used to having so much money with him.

“It will throw me off balance, you know?

He hugged me goodbye - tightly and for a long time. Unwashed hair smelled of musk, like all hobos. I asked again if he would change his mind about the money. He just smiled. I looked after him with a feeling of complete impotence. He was my son, but I no longer had power over him—if I ever had. I became an outsider, a spectator following his life from the edge of the field.

At the corner, Daniel turned and waved to me. I waved back. Then he stepped into the passage and was lost in the crowd. I haven't seen him since.

Now, in the kitchen of our Connecticut home, Fran came over and kissed me on the lips. She kept her flour-stained hands out of the way, just as I did when I worked at the Columbia University clinic a few hours ago.

“Alex got into a fight again,” she said.

“I didn’t fight,” Alex corrected. - A fight is when you hit someone, and he hits back. It was more like a bunch.

“Mr. Egghead has been suspended for three days,” she told me.

“I'm going to get angry,” I said to Alex, “as soon as I'm drunk. And he took a beer out of the fridge.

Fran went back to pizza.

– We decided to make mushrooms and pepperoni today.

“I don’t care,” I remarked.

Fran, as if out of place, said:

“Yes, flight seven fifteen to Tucson.

Taxon? I just now noticed the blue light.

Yes, you need a car.

I wanted to speak, but Fran held up her finger.

- Wonderful. Let me know by email? Thanks to.

The light went out, the finger dropped.

- How can I help? I asked.

- Sit down at the table. And after ten minutes you take it out - I'm still afraid of this oven.

The TV in the corner was showing Deadly Risk. It was also our ritual at home to watch game shows. Fran believed that it was good for children to reach out for contestants. I never understood what the use of it was, but every evening after seven, a cacophony of unsubstantiated arguments erupted in our house.

- James Garfield! Wally said.

“Madison,” Fran corrected.

“It's a question,” Wally said.

Who is James Garfield? Wally asked.

“Madison,” Fran corrected.

Who is James Madison?

I was used to nightly skirmishes and even looked forward to them. The family is defined by everyday affairs. When to pick up, where to drop off. Football and debating club, a visit to the doctor and a foray into the country. Every evening you have to eat and clean up. Check if homework is done. It's your turn to turn off the lights and lock the door. On Thursdays we leave the cars on the track, on Fridays we drive them inside. Over several years, even quarrels become the same, as if you live the same day over and over again. It is both soothing and insane. Fran, like a virtual secretary, had a militant taste for order. We were for her not only a family, but also an entrusted unit. She texted us almost hourly, adjusting her schedule as she went. The dentist rescheduled. The gaming club was replaced with a skating rink. There is even less order in the army. The Allens had a habit of checking their watches twice a week, like the Special Forces in preparation for blowing up a bridge. The irritation that rose in me at times was humbled by love. Having survived a failed marriage, you begin to understand yourself deeper and without sentimentality. The veil of shame for your weaknesses, features comes down, and you freely choose a person who ideally suits your real, and not the ideal image created in your own head.

This is what led me to Fran after eight years of marriage to Ellen Shapiro. Although for a long time I considered myself a direct and open person, after our marriage broke up, I realized that in fact I was a supporter of order and routine. I could not bear the oversight and forgetfulness. The naive carelessness of the hippies, which attracted Ellen at first sight, soon began to infuriate. And Ellen was oppressed and bored by the very qualities that made me a good doctor: thoroughness, reinsurance, perseverance in work. It was not so much about my actions or her actions, but about ourselves. And the disappointment that we turned on each other was annoyance at ourselves for a bad choice. It was instructive. And although our marriage produced Danny, the union was one that was better off before the worst happened.

I took a glass from the sideboard and poured the rest of the beer into it. My head was busy with the patient who kept me in the clinic today, Alice Krammer. She came to me two weeks ago complaining of pain in her legs. “It burns like fire,” she said. Pain appeared two months before. A few weeks ago I started coughing. At first dry, then with blood in the sputum. She used to run a marathon, but now even a short walk would tire her.

She has gone to other doctors before me. I went to a therapist, a neurologist and a pulmonologist. But the final diagnosis could not be made. Despite our best efforts, her weakness and shortness of breath persisted.

Other than the cough, she seemed healthy. The lungs are clear. Moderate weakness of the muscles of the right thigh, but the joints, skin and muscles are normal. The symptoms suggested disturbances in the nervous and respiratory systems. It's unusual. Is it Sjögren's Syndrome? In this disease, the immune system attacks its own fluid-producing glands. However, Sjögren's patients usually complain of eye pain and dry mouth, and she didn't.

Or sclerodermatitis caused by an overproduction of collagen? In this condition, thickening of the skin occurs, and other organs may suffer. I sent her for a blood test and, while waiting for the results, went back to the medical history. As the physician of last bastion, the rheumatologist must take a fresh look at all the details. I studied the axial tomography and MRI scans. On the tomogram of the chest, he noticed a slight opacity in both lungs. By itself, it meant nothing, but in the context of the rest, it made sense. As I reviewed the pictures, another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

I ordered a lung tissue biopsy. The result showed inflammation. When the tissue sample returned, I reviewed the slides with the pathologist under the binoculars. And on them I saw the key to the riddle: a granuloma is a cellular formation, the cells of which are a hundred times higher than the normal size. These are found in the lungs in very few diseases. Most often with sarcoidosis and tuberculosis. And since the patient had no symptoms of tuberculosis, I no longer doubted that she was suffering from sarcoidosis, a chronic disease accompanied by inflammation of the tissues.

I told her the diagnosis this afternoon. Alice burst into tears. More than one month has passed since the first manifestation of symptoms. She went to a dozen doctors, many of them said that the disease was in her head. But my job is to believe the patients who come to me, take the fragments that don't fit, and put the puzzle together.

The TV contest was interrupted by a news report. Huge announcement, disturbing colors. At first, none of us paid any attention to it. We were consumed by the ritual over pizza. The dough rolled out. Layers of cheese and sauce were added. Children were reproached for excesses in terms of filling.

“I'm not an engineer,” I said, “but not a single circle can withstand such a weight.

Wally began to tell what he had learned during the day: Frederick Douglass was a freedman slave. George Washington Carver invented the peanut.

“I don’t think he invented,” Fran said.

- Did you open it?

“I think you should look in your notebook,” I advised as I finished my beer and reached for another bottle.

Fran was the first to catch on. I turned to the TV, and there, instead of malicious presenters and gambling participants, they showed a broadcast of some kind of rally. The camera shook.

- What? she asked.

We all began to look. The screen was filming some kind of political meeting in Los Angeles. We saw footage of the crowd, red-white-blue banners on the walls. The presidential candidate was making a speech on stage. There was no sound: the children were accustomed to turning off the sound while they were playing commercials, leaving the actors to praise the product with pantomime. In front of our eyes, the politician flinched and swayed back. Behind him, two Secret Service agents drew weapons.

- Sound! Fran said.

- Where is the remote control? - I rummaged around.

The search took precious seconds, it took a lot of time to find the button. The children yelled in my ear - press that, press that. When we finally turned on the volume, the announcer said: “... it is reported that an unknown person fired two shots. Seagram was taken to the nearest hospital. The severity of the injuries has not yet been reported."

The same footage was repeated on the screen. The candidate on the podium, the sound of shots from the crowd. This time the frames were delayed for a long time, they gave an approximation.

“We're trying to find the best angle,” the host said.

I changed the channel. It's the same on CNN. Both ABC and NBC.

“We repeat: half an hour ago, Jay Seagram, Democratic Senator from Montana and leader of the presidential race, was shot by an unknown person.

“Thad, we heard that Senator Seagram is in the operating room. He has at least two bullet wounds - in the chest and neck. The forecast is not given yet.

This is how it happens: nothing - and suddenly something. The family is cooking dinner, laughing, and suddenly the outside world bursts in.

Fran sent the children to the living room. It's too early for them to see it. She got upset. She listened to Seagram's performance in our city. He was young, handsome, spoke with authority. She believed that this one was, as she put it, “real.”

- Who could do it? she asked.

As a doctor, I knew Seagram would not be able to get through the night. According to reporters, the first bullet pierced the lung, the second damaged the carotid artery. Ambulance quickly took him to the hospital, but such injuries lead to massive blood loss. Loss of blood will disrupt circulation, making breathing difficult for already affected lungs. It takes a skilled surgeon to repair such damage in time.

We ate pizza in different rooms - each stuck to his screen. Fran sat at the kitchen table, surfing the Web on her laptop for the latest gossip. The kids in the living room watched the Disney pirates looking for adventure on rough seas and wondered how long we'd been hanging on to our news. I checked in every few minutes to see if they were all right. This is always the case in difficult times - you want to check if everything is fine with those you love.

A witness on the screen said: "I was looking at them, and suddenly - blah blah blah ..."

Three shots? There were two on the news.

“Two hours,” Fran said, “but you'll have to change trains in Dallas.

Sitting at the computer, she combined two things. The lights on the headphones were on, and on the monitor in one window was the website of the airlines, in the other - a live political program.

“Turn on MSNBC,” Fran called to me as she looked up from her monitor. I switched the channel and managed to see a frame taken from a different angle. A regular video camera from the far right corner of the stage.

“What you are about to see is very visual and could harm children.

I checked to see if the guys were in the living room. The camera on the screen zoomed in, focusing on the face of the talking Seagram. The audio recording was fuzzy, amateurish. This time I jumped at the sound of the first shot. The filmmaker seemed to be standing right next to the stage. The senator staggered, blood spattering from his chest. The filmer turned around and for a fraction of a second we saw a gun rising above the crowd. The shooter was wearing a white button-down shirt. The movement blurred his face. The people in the background ran away screaming. Before our eyes, the gunslinger turned around and began to push his way to the door. Secret Service agents jumped into the crowd, rushing after him.

“He looks like someone,” Fran said. - For some actor? Does this happen to you? Feeling like you've seen the person before. Or he reminds someone. Maybe just deja vu.

The camera panned wildly. Spectators grabbed the shooter. Agents and police arrived. The camera has lost them.

I moved closer to the screen, but it was even harder to see up close.

“We were told,” the announcer said, “that the police had identified the shooter.

The doorbell rang.

Fran and I looked at each other. I mentally went over all the misfortunes of my life. The death of a father, a car accident in high school and three operations after it, the breakup of the first family, every death of a patient. I weighed each and compared. It was a warm spring evening, I was content with life and happy. Lucky, accustomed to waiting only for good news. I wiped my hands with a napkin and went to open it.

There were two men in suits in front of the door, and a few more on the lawn. On the path I saw several cars: the beacons flashed either red or blue, the sirens were silent.

“Paul Allen,” one of the men spoke up.

A tall white man, incredibly clean-shaven. A plastic-insulated wire ran from his collar to his left ear. The one next to him was black and broad-shouldered. Perhaps once played in midfield.

"I'm Agent Moyers," the white man said. This is Agent Green. We're from the Secret Service. Please ride with us.

What I saw made no sense. And in his words.

“Excuse me,” I said, “are you sure you didn’t get the wrong house?”

Fran came up quietly from behind and stood in the hallway, her eyes wide. She took the bluetooth out of her ear. Captain Jack Sparrow's orchestral break reached us from the living room.

“They say it's Daniel,” Fran said. - On TV. They say he shot.

I took a look at the secret agents. They looked at us impassively with steely eyes.

“Mr. Allen,” Moyers repeated, “you should come with us.

I felt like a boxer getting an uppercut from an invisible opponent.

"Wait, I'll take my jacket," I said.

And he returned to the kitchen, walking as if under water. I thought about the beer I had drunk, about the trip home. I thought about hedges, lawns, and neighbors I've known for years. How will they look at me now? On TV they showed a photo of my son. There are such speeds in our world: you do not have time to come to your senses, but everything has already happened. Less than an hour had passed since the shooting. Where did they get the photo? I didn't remember this one: Daniel was standing on the wide lawn in a sweater and jeans. He squinted, looking against the sun; He raised his hand to shield himself from the light. Appears to be eighteen years old. Maybe filmed in college? I remembered the day I took him to Vassar, a skinny boy who had packed all his possessions in a trunk. A boy who had grown a mustache since the age of fourteen, but only had a few cat hairs around the edges of his lips.

"What have you done?" I thought. But in asking, I didn't know if I was asking Daniel or myself.

I was alone in the back seat of an SUV. The smell of a new car added to the onset of nausea. Another car was in front, another behind. They drove fast, turning on the sirens and flashing lights. Agent Moyers and Agent Green were in the front, Moyers driving. In the first minutes, while we trudged through the streets of the village, jumping at speed on the speed bumps, they were silent.

I imagined Daniel the way I last saw him: long hair, bear hugs, a farewell wave of the hand, and my feelings, the feelings of a man watching a movie he didn't understand. Why did I let him go? I had to be dragged to the hotel, forced to return home with me. Wash, cut, feed. To live in a family, among loving people - is this not the deepest of human needs? And I just watched him go.

“Is my son all right?” I asked.

They didn't answer. I watched the houses of my neighbors run away with warm window lights. Families in their lairs, listening to music, watching TV. Have they seen Daniel's photo yet? Did you recognize him?

“My son,” I repeated. - How is he?

“Your son has a bullet in his thigh,” Agent Moyers replied.

- Which thigh? Is the femoral artery not affected? Please, I'm a doctor...

Green turned around from the passenger seat. I could see the earpiece in his ear. The color of a white man's skin. I wondered if it annoyed him that no one thought it necessary to customize the best technical means for people of his race.

“When Secret Service agents hear gunshots,” Greene began, “they stand up to their full height to be a good target.

I didn’t see the point in his words so much that I doubted whether he spoke English?

“We are trying to draw the fire towards us—away from the target,” he continued. “If you watch the tape, you'll see that the agents in Los Angeles did the same. They ran towards the shots.

“Unfortunately,” Moyers said, “your son was a good shot.

“Please,” I pleaded, “there must be some mistake.

Green turned away.

“We've been told to take you to the service location for questioning,” he said. The rest is none of our business.

- He is my son.

“Dr. Allen, your son killed the future President of the United States.

His words flashed and engulfed me in flames. I heard a hum - the blood beat in my ears.

- He died?

"We'll get you to your location," he repeated.

- My family…

“Your family is safe,” Moyers assured him. “Agents have been assigned to the house. In such cases, people lose their self-control. They act recklessly.

- In which cases?

- Political assassinations. Elections are hopes.

We have already left the highway, the howl of sirens drowned out the roar of the engine. The speedometer showed 106 miles per hour.

“Sorry,” I said. – Did you say “Elections are hopes”?

He didn't answer. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. During the years of work in emergency care I learned that in order to think clearly in chaos, you need to slow things down. Approach the problem step by step. As a scientist, I had to stay away, accumulate facts. I could not afford emotions, they cloud the mind, make reckless. I tried to reconsider the facts. My son is in Los Angeles. Arrested at a political rally and charged with attempted assassination of a senator. There are videos, but so far none have featured his face. The shooter fired two or three shots and disappeared into the crowd. Maybe the police were wrong. They didn't grab him.

Hoah Hawley

THE GOOD FATHER

* * *

Kyle and Guinevere - as proof that life is good

You see, I am his father.

He is my son.

Dr. Paul Allen has a great, well-paid job, a loving wife and two daughters. But his stable, planned life is shattered when a presidential candidate is assassinated during the presidential race, and the killer turns out to be Allen's son from his first marriage, Daniel. Paul cannot believe his son's guilt, but the moment of the assassination attempt was filmed, and the Secret Service has no doubts, Daniel is sentenced to death. Trying to save his son, Paul begins his own investigation. Deeper and deeper into the life of Daniel, a smart teenager who unexpectedly dropped out of school at the age of 19 and went to wander the country, his father finds himself in a dark world of secrets, homeless and eternal wanderers, government intelligence agencies and conspiracies. He begins to suspect that his son has become a pawn in someone else's game, that he was framed and someone is trying to hide the true perpetrators of the murder. But the search makes Paul take a different look at his own life: the past is revealed to him in a new light, and harmless misdeeds turn into ominous omens. Paul has always considered himself a good father, but what if he himself is to blame for what happened?

The work was published in 2011 by AST. This book is part of the Masters of Thriller series. On our site you can download the book "Good Father" in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format or read online. Here, before reading, you can also refer to the reviews of readers who are already familiar with the book, and find out their opinion. In the online store of our partner you can buy and read the book in paper form.

Hoah Hawley

THE GOOD FATHER

* * *

Kyle and Guinevere - as proof that life is good

You see, I am his father.

He is my son.

1. At home

“If you want bullies to learn their lesson,” I said, “you have to teach them something. And, believe me, nothing can be taught by violence.

I had no one to blame but myself.

Last fall, sitting opposite me in that Arizona coffee shop, Daniel chuckled at my jacket and tie. I did not understand why it was necessary on Saturday.

“I'm at a conference,” I reminded him. - Must maintain a professional reputation.

This thought made him laugh. For him, adult uncles and aunts, obediently imitating the behavior and clothes of the generally accepted ideas about professors, looked ridiculous.

When I said goodbye, I gave him five hundred dollars, but he did not take it. He said that he had enough money - he was working a little, and that he was not used to having so much money with him.

“It will throw me off balance, you know?

At the corner, Daniel turned and waved to me. I waved back. Then he stepped into the passage and was lost in the crowd. I haven't seen him since.

“Alex got into a fight again,” she said.

“I didn’t fight,” Alex corrected. - A fight is when you hit someone, and he hits back. It was more like a bunch.

“Mr. Egghead has been suspended for three days,” she told me.

“I'm going to get angry,” I said to Alex, “as soon as I'm drunk. And he took a beer out of the fridge.

Fran went back to pizza.

– We decided to make mushrooms and pepperoni today.

“I don’t care,” I remarked.

Fran, as if out of place, said:

“Yes, flight seven fifteen to Tucson.

Taxon? I just now noticed the blue light.

Yes, you need a car.

I wanted to speak, but Fran held up her finger.

- Wonderful. Let me know by email? Thanks to.

The light went out, the finger dropped.

- How can I help? I asked.

- Sit down at the table. And after ten minutes you take it out - I'm still afraid of this oven.

- James Garfield! Wally said.

“Madison,” Fran corrected.

“It's a question,” Wally said.

Who is James Garfield? Wally asked.

“Madison,” Fran corrected.

Who is James Madison?

Noah Hawley with The Good Father for download in fb2 format.

If you liked the summary of the Good Father book, then you can download it in fb2 format by clicking on the links below.

To date, a large amount of electronic literature has been posted on the Internet. The Good Father edition is dated 2017, belongs to the Thriller genre in the Thriller Masters series and is published by the AST publishing house. Maybe the book hasn't been released yet. Russian market or did not appear in electronic format. Do not be upset: just wait, and it will definitely appear on UnitLib in fb2 format, but for now you can download and read other books online. Read and enjoy educational literature with us. Free download in formats (fb2, epub, txt, pdf) allows you to download books directly to e-book. Remember, if you liked the novel a lot, save it to your wall in social network let your friends see it too!

home > Business ideas

Noah Hawley is a good father. Read The Good Father online in full - Noah Hawley - MyBook. Noah Hawley good father

* * *

1. At home

* * *

* * *

1. At home

We also recommend