Excerpt: "Never Enough" By Joe McGinniss

Prologue: Three Days In November 2003

IT WAS 8:00 P.M. MONDAY IN Hong Kong, 6:00 a.m. Monday in Chicago when Nancy Kissel called her father, Ira Keeshin. She was crying.

“Rob and I had a huge fight last night,” she said. “I’m pretty badly beaten up. I’m sure he broke some of my ribs. And I’m afraid. I’m afraid he’s going to come back and hurt me more.”

“Wait. He hit you?”

“He was drunk. It was horrible . . .” She started crying so hard she couldn’t talk.

“Where is he now?”

“I . . . I don’t know. He left. He could be anywhere.”

“How are you? Have you been to a doctor?”

“I’m going in the morning. My ribs are killing me. I’m all beat up.”

“And you don’t know where Rob is?”

“He could be anywhere. I’m scared he’ll come back.”

“How are the kids?”

“They’re fine. They don’t know anything.”

“Are Connie and Min there?”

“Yes, they’re here.”

“Make sure they stay with you. And keep the door locked. Doublebolt it. This is awful. What the hell happened?”

Instead of answering, Nancy broke down in tears again.

“Never mind. Listen, I’ll get down there as fast as I can. If he comes back, call the police. Stay safe. That’s the most important thing. Don’t go out anywhere he might be able to grab you. Keep Connie and Min with you. Call some friends to come over. I don’t want you alone until we know where he is.”

She was sobbing.

“Maybe he just lost it for a minute Maybe he’s ashamed, that’s why he left.”

“No. This wasn’t the first time.”

“What-”

“Just get here, please. I don’t know what to do.”

Ira was sixty years old, five seven, physically active, physically fit. He thought fast. He talked fast. He was impulsive. He was not a longterm planner. He had a quick sense of humor. He had a temper. He had a heart. He didn’t have much contact with his first ex-wife, Nancy’s mother, but he’d stayed on good terms with his second, even after he’d married for a third time.

He was the number two man at a specialty bread company that supplied bread and rolls of the highest quality to many of Chicago’s finest restaurants and huge quantities of lesser-quality product to such national chains as Chili’s, Cheesecake Factory, and TGIF.

He arrived in Hong Kong on Wednesday night. He had visited Nancy and Rob there before. Nancy had said she’d have a car and driver meet him at the airport, but he found no one waiting for him. He took a taxi to Parkview, the multitower luxury apartment complex where Rob and Nancy lived. He checked into the hotel on the grounds, walked to their building, and took the elevator to the twenty-second floor.

Nancy was thirty-nine but looked younger. She was short and blond, flashy and feisty. She had lively eyes and a brilliant smile. Her shapeliness did not suggest that she’d borne three children. Heads still turned when she entered a room. Normally. Now she looked haggard and scared.

“Has he come back?”

“No.”

“Has he called?”

She shook her head.

He started to hug her.

“Don’t! Didn’t I tell you he broke my ribs?”

Ira smelled scented candles. He glanced around the living room. Dozens of candles were burning. He thought he smelled lilac and vanilla. But he was too tired to smell straight, too tired to think straight, almost too tired to stand.

“Will you be okay overnight?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Then I’ll see you in the morning after I’ve had a little sleep. We’ll go to the police, file a missing persons report.”

“And an assault and battery complaint.”

“That, too.”

After kissing each of his three grandchildren as they slept, Ira went back to the hotel and to bed.