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“I’ll lose every game on purpose.”
    “Don’t do that. Please.”
    “Why not?” he demanded. “They deserve it.”
    I was silent for a while, and then I spoke in a soft voice, staring straight ahead at the spire of the Empire State Building that had just become visible in the distance, poking up across the Hudson River. “I’m not exactly the most popular kid at school,” I confessed.
    “Who is?” Dad asked.
    “Chisolm and Kinney are superstars,” I told him. Dad tried to point out something, but I waved for him to be silent, and he took the hint. “In fact, I’m kind of low man on the totem pole in a lot of areas,” I went on. “You might have been too busy with tax season to notice, but my midterm grades weren’t great, I didn’t make the freshman basketball team, and cute girls aren’t exactly lining up to date me.”
    “All perfectly normal for a high school freshman,” Dad noted. “Listen, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ve got plenty of time. You’re a great kid.” He tried to put his hand on my shoulder again, but I shrugged it off. “I was busy during tax season, but I should have taken more of an interest in how you were doing,” he admitted.
    “Let’s not have too many mushy moments,” I muttered.
    “Fine. But do you hate this private school?” he asked. “Did your mother and I make a mistake sending you there?”
    “No, it’s a fine school,” I told him. “And there are some nice kids. I just haven’t made friends with them yet. Doing well in this chess tournament with these two—world beaters—wouldn’t hurt my popularity. And I’d like to win at something just once. Okay?”
    “I still think it’s screwy, but okay,” Dad said. “If I can help you out and raise your stock, I’ll do my best. The truth is I don’t think I could lose a chess game on purpose, even if I wanted to.” He drove for a while in silence. “What about the fathers of these boys?” he asked uncomfortably. “I assume the apples didn’t drop far from the rich and conceited trees?”
    “Dr. Chisolm is a surgeon,” I told him. “He spoke to our chess club once. He’s a little on the competitive side.”
    “What about Kinney?”
    “Owns his own hedge fund. The school pool is named after him. Eric says he’s an expert player, and if he has a strong tournament he might make the master norm like his son.”
    “Great,” Dad said. “Terrific.” He was silent as we headed down the long ramp to the Lincoln Tunnel. Finally he said: “Tell you what, Daniel.”
    “What?”
    “We’ll do this, because it’s too late to stop, but the only way it makes sense is if we do it for us.”
    “How do you mean?” I asked. We paid a toll and drove into the long tunnel beneath the Hudson River.
    “Well, we don’t get away on father-son trips to New York all that often,” he pointed out.
    “Like never.”
    “Right. So let’s try to have some laughs and good times together.”
    “Sounds fine to me,” I told him. “And, since we’re being totally honest, I know you didn’t want to do this. Sorry I got you into it.”
    “It still might be marginally better than going on a shopping trip with your sister,” Dad grunted, and then we passed a dividing line on the wall of the tunnel and a sign announced that we had entered New York City.

 
    7
     
    The Palace Royale Hotel was smack in the middle of Midtown, a gleaming new tower of glass and steel that rose high above Broadway. We drove past it and parked the car in a garage two blocks away. “Thirty bucks a day,” Dad muttered, tucking the garage ticket away in his wallet and shaking his head. “We should have taken the train.”
    I didn’t get into Manhattan all that often, and the pace of the city was as dizzying as I remembered—people exploded off curbs when lights changed to green, insane taxi drivers honked at one another and nearly clipped pedestrians as they wove in and out of traffic, while crowds surged outside the glass