He peeled off five pieces of bacon and dropped them in a cast-iron skillet as old and gnarly as he was. Soon the room was filled with greasy music.

That morning I realized that my father had never really gotten over the death of my mother. His heart wasn't in his construction company, and he had no desire to chase the biggest building boom in Hamptons history. He watched his fellow tradesmen move from pickups to Tahoes and leave him in the dust. Not that he cared.

My grandfather, on the other hand, had actually gained momentum as he got older. After retiring as an ironworker in his early sixties, he spent a summer reading and farting around. Then he went back to school and became a paralegal. In the past twenty years he had become something of a legend in courtrooms and firms all over the eastern half of Long Island. A lot of people believed he knew the law better than most circuit judges. He insisted that this wasn't nearly as impressive as it sounded.

His love of the law was half the reason I was at Columbia, and he was immensely proud I'd come that far. Sharing a couple of pints with him at the Shagwong included the repeated embarrassment of his introducing me as "the most overeducated Mullen in the history of Ireland and America." I could see by the way he looked at me that morning, however, that he considered all that hypothetical schoolboy stuff compared to this.

"There is no way Peter killed himself," I said. "Volpi is a moron."

"Or doesn't give a shit," said Mack.

To my father, the issue of how Peter died was almost moot. His last moments would have been less terrifying if it was suicide. To Macklin, it was everything.

"The kid got laid more than God. Why would he kill himself?"

Mack broke three eggs on top of the bacon and let them sizzle sunny-side up. When they started to blacken around the edges, he skillfully worked a spatula under it all and flipped the whole thing without spilling a yellow drop. He let it fry for another thirty seconds before sliding the whole greasy construct onto my plate.