Curtis Sobel met me in a coffee shop on Brant Street the next morning, at a table near the window, and he was exactly the kind of man who suggests that nothing about the world has ever surprised him.
He was fifty-two, gray at the temples, in a windbreaker, with a cheap watch and expensive shoes. He ordered black coffee and drank it in three swallows.
"I heard what happened at your wedding," he said. "I hear everything in this town. I've got a cousin who works at the Wexford Point. She was on the floor that afternoon."
I said, "What do you want?"
"I want to tell you something," he said. "And then I want to ask you a question, and then I want to leave, because I don't like this town and this town doesn't like me."
I waited.
"Grant Hollis came to me in 2021," Sobel said. "He had a proje
