“But could you,” Nolan said.

I have thought many times about what it is in my son that makes people say yes to him. I don’t think it’s charm.

I think it’s that he asks for things exactly once, without any performance in it, and then waits.

Emil Petrosian went in the back for eleven minutes.

The rest belongs to Nolan, and I’m going to tell it the way he told it to me, over about six weeks, in pieces, mostly at the kitchen table:

The box number led to a dealer’s name. The dealer, in Maryville, had bought two hundred and six pieces of scrap and estate gold at that sale and had sold most of it on within the year, some to a refiner — which is how gold usually ends, melted, which I made myself understand early so it wouldn’t take my legs out later.