Alexander Jablokov - Brain Thief

by Alexander Jablokov

  “Funding agency, my ass! Muriel funds this. You’re just her gopher.”

  “If you don’t leave, I’ll have to call the police.”

  “You call that a solution?” She sounded outraged. “Interpersonal problem starts to get a bit hairy, you decide you don’t need to bother yourself with conflict resolution, you call the cops? We . . . they can’t be solving everything. Not and do their job, which is to guarantee your personal physical safety. Not your emotional wellbeing, for crissakes.”

  “You were a cop?” He thought about that for a second. “But you’re not anymore.”

  “Don’t you worry about my career path. That’s my misfortune.”

  “That’s too bad. For a second there I thought you were going to actually answer a question. Are you going?”

  Charis took a long look around at all the rover parts. “I’m going. You have yourself a good time with this stuff.”

  “Oh, and one more thing. . .”

  “What?”

  “I’ll want your key card.”

  “You . . .” Charis thought about that one. “Why don’t you recode the entry if you don’t want me coming in?”

  “I just want your card. You shouldn’t have one.”

  She was back to being amused. “Because you don’t have a clue as to where Madeline Ungaro is, and she doesn’t even know you’re in here. You have no idea of how to rekey the entry. And Muriel hasn’t clued you in. You should bring that up with her at your next performance review. No way to get productivity out of yourl employees, keeping them in the dark like that.” She handed him the card. “Good luck figuring out what the hell is going on here.”

  _______

  The Hummer’s engine roared up. There was a loud clunk as something engaged. It lurched forward a few feet and then died. Charis ran the starter several times, but the vehicle refused to respond any further.

  “Damn it!” She got out and stalked around it, looking as if she wanted to kick it. “Bought this thing from Greenpeace. Jesus! Thing’s falling apart. Those whale-chasing nimrods didn’t do even the most basic maintenance, but they sure enough took me for a ride. They’re all about publicity, not mundane crap like changing the oil.”

  “It just stopped?” Bernal didn’t believe her.

  “Yes! What, you think I crapped out my engine on purpose?”

  “I interrupted you, didn’t I? Maybe you want to stick around. But I’m not letting you go back into'Ungaro’s lab.”

  “I have no interest in going back in, and I got nothing to accomplish. Muriel and her stupid-ass schemes.... Can’t make up her mind, that girl. ‘She’s good, stay away, she’s bad, get right over here.’ Like I got nothing better to do than save her from her own messes. Like I don’t have me a legitimate mission of my own.”

  “What is your mission?”

  “Right now, my mission is to get the hell out of here. You think I’m faking it? Tell you what. You get the damn thing started for me. You think you could do that?”

  Bernal was about to refuse. Then he realized something; a quick look around the front of her vehicle might tell him something about her, since she wasn’t going to give up anything on her own.

  The inside of the Hummer was decorated with decals of cute animals: baby seals, koala bears, even a crocodile with what looked like an ingratiating grin. There were some signs that Charis had tried to scrape them off, but they had resisted her efforts. There were a lot of papers, maps, and magazines piled on the passenger seat. The cup holder held a new-looking stainless steel travel mug with a logo made out of an intersecting S and P. A photograph of a skinny man with glasses standing in front of an open door and gesturing into it with a grin was attached above the gear shift. He looked South Asian.

  “Well?” Charis said outside.

  He made as much noise with the keys as he could, rattled the gearshift. “No, you’re right, nothing.”

  The top map on the passenger seat showed a couple of twisting roads crossed by three parallel lines made up of straight segments that changed direction every time they were interrupted by a row of Xs. Wind directions? The plan for some game? Her big leather purse was on the floor. And there was probably a mess of stuff in the glove compartment.

  “Yes.” She was on her phone. “Shepard Road, toward Dana. Thanks.” She put her head in the window. “No luck, right?”

  “No.”

  “Good thing I paid my Triple-A bill this year.”

  Bernal refused to say anything that would make it seem like a normal conversation. He just got out of the car.

  “Let me give you a piece of advice, friend.” Charis sat down on the front steps, leaned back, and spread her legs. Her thighs were thick in her jeans. Drying mud flaked off her leather boots. She looked completely relaxed. “I’ve known Muriel Inglis for a while. Smart gal. But not what you’d call trustworthy. Am I right? Oh, you trust her fine, because you need to, she’s your bread and butter, but I’m an independent. So, when she asks me to take a look-see into Madeline Ungaro, and I find Ungaro gone, and you wandering around, I got to wonder what she’s up to. Maybe you shouldn’t trust her quite so much. What did she tell you about Ms. Ungaro, anyway?”

  “Like I said, we’re her funding source.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Muriel keeps you on a short chain, does she? You look at what she puts in front of your nose, and nowhere else, am I right?”

  Bernal felt himself flush. He prided himself on his wide-ranging curiosity, so he felt like defending himself.

  “I don’t remember seeing any disbursements to you, though,” he said instead.

  “Oh, I’m a volunteer. A noble fighter for lost causes. Working pro bono. Muriel knew she could rely on that. That’s what pisses me off. Taking advantage of my dedication. I’d closed the file, and then—wow, that was quick.”

  A tow truck had pulled into the parking lot. It was a big one, used for heavy vehicles, and said it was from IGNACIO’S DEVICES & DESIRES.

  The driver’s door opened. She was a small woman, not much over five feet, and skinny into the bargain, but looked taut in her blue coverall. She slipped as she stepped out, and almost fell.

  Bernal was close enough to jump forward and steady her.

  She sucked in a startled breath, as if he was a statue that had suddenly revealed itself to be alive. Under her shoe-polish-black hair, her small nose, fine mouth, and pale eyes seemed to be notes scribbled to indicate future feature placement rather than features themselves. More prominent features were a scar on her forehead and what seemed like a depression in her skull.

  “What.. .” She looked around vaguely.

  “Are you okay?” Bernal now noticed the bruises that stood out on her pale skin, one on her cheek, another on the side of her neck. A fresh gash sliced across her jaw, held together with butterfly adhesive bandages intended lor some other type of cut. She looked like she had had a much rougher night than he had. The name PATRICIA was embroidered over her right breast.

  Her weight sprang off him, and she jumped to the ground. Newly energized, she moved lightly to look into the open loading dock and then back at the two of them.

  “What happened here?” Her voice was quiet.

  “Damn thing won’t start,” Charis said. “I need to get it out of here, now.”

  The woman, Patricia, walked around the Hummer. She knelt and glanced underneath. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Started up fine, then died.”

  “Okay. I’ll haul it over to the yard. Someone there can look at it.”

  “No. I need it back at my office.”

  “It won’t take more than a few minutes. You’ll be on your way in no time.”

  “Sorry. I don’t want it anywhere but back at my place.”

  “I have to tell you. Ten dollars per mile extra if we don’t go to Ignacio’s.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll cover it.” Charis glared at Bernal as if the whole thing was his fault. “I actually get some jobs that pay the bills.” Patricia hesi
tated, as if wanting to argue again, then pulled out chains.

  Another tow truck, this one from Frank’s Tow, rolled off the road. “Hey!” The driver leaned out of his window. “What you doing here?”

  Patricia didn’t even acknowledge his presence, but attached the chains.

  “I got a call. A Triple-A call. From here.”

  “I’ve got it under control.” She pulled her truck back and raised the Hummer’s front. Then she stepped out and checked the chains. She never looked at the other driver.

  “How much extra can you guys get, anyway? For God’s sake, we all got to make a living. Right? That’s all.”

  “Talk to Ignacio, if you want,” she said. “I don’t make these decisions.”

  “Ignacio . . .” The other tow-truck driver shook his head in disgust. “Sure. Sure thing. I love talking to that guy. This ain’t going to end well, miss. You know that, right?”

  “I know that neither of us is earning anything if we stand around arguing.”

  He didn’t say anything else, but backed with a screech and took off.

  “A long time since I’ve been fought over.”

  Charis hopped into the tow truck’s cab, moving surprisingly easily for a big woman. “Good luck, Bernal. If you’re smart you’ll forget all about Muriel and her stupid projects. That’s sure my plan. I doubt we’ll be seeing each other again.”

  He raised a hand to Charis and Patricia as they drove off, but neither of them looked back.

  6

  Bernal had an innate sense of privacy. He’d never snooped in his sister’s diary growing up, despite the fact that she left it neatly centered on her desk, and his worst girlfriend hadn’t even bothered to come up with a strong password to hide all the meticulously kept records, written and photographic, of her cheating on him. She knew he would never try to break into her account, no matter how suspicious he became. He’d found it all when he cleaned up the hard drive before getting rid of the thing, over a year later, long after he broke up with her because he couldn’t stand her. So, even if he’d had a better chance, he might not have dug into Charis’s purse. That might have been regarded as a weakness, a refusal to stoop down to pick up information lying out in the open, but he was just as glad he’d never read Marcy’s erotic messages to her economics professor, her boss at the copy shop, or her downstairs neighbor, the lawyer, while it was all going on. He didn’t read much of it then either, but let it vanish along with the other files on the hard drive as he destroyed it.

  But as far as Madeline Ungaro was concerned, he thought he had more reason to pry. Muriel had headed over here, saying something significant was up. Chances were that Muriel had picked Madeline up in the stolen Mercedes last night and gone elsewhere. But that was just a guess. In any event, there had to be something here that would give him a clue as to where he should look next. It still made him uncomfortable.

  Behind the office with the SQUID, past a tiny modular bathroom, was Ungaro’s private living area. A ridged sleeping pad, rolled and tied with multicolored nylon webbing, a deflated air pillow, and a folding sling chair were all the furniture. Folded sweaters, slacks, and shirts, sensible but high-quality, were stacked on metal shelving next to canned goods and ramen packets. There were three pairs of shoes on the bottom shelf: white sneakers, sensible black pumps, and loafers. A gap between sneakers and pumps marked where whatever shoes Ungaro was wearing now had been. Given the person and the airrangement, Bernal guessed hiking boots or maybe trail runners.

  A total of four pairs of footwear? Bernal thought of Muriel’s hundreds of shoes, each stranger looking than the next. It seemed odd that these two would have gotten along.

  The kitchen was a stainless-steel sink and two burners with a propane tank. A copper-bottomed Revereware saucepan stood upside down on the grooved drainboard. It was completely dry.

  The one piece of visible luxury was a lacquer case with ornate handles that looked like a China-trade antique. The case was locked. He pulled out the multitool on his keychain, opened the tiny pliers, and delicately manipulated the keyhole. In a moment, he had it open. He looked closely to make sure he hadn’t scratched anything. Inside was a bundle of high-end cosmetics and other grooming equipment. He found a silver-framed hand mirror that showed a slight bloom in the backing, and a hairbrush that looked like it was really made of tortoiseshell. It was worn, the bristles well used, but there wasn’t a single hair in it.

  In the bottom drawer was a piece of Belgian extra bittersweet chocolate, 80 percent, one-third finished and carefully wrapped back up in its foil. Bernal looked for bite marks, but each piece had been snapped off neatly by hand. He thought about that chocolate. It looked rationed. She’d been so precise about her fractions that she hadn’t even finished a row, leaving two squares sticking out, despite the fact that that made it harder to rewrap. I

  There were other gaps on the shelves, he saw now: next to an old tent, next to a headlamp, a few other places among her impressive collection of camping gear. He glanced to see if something had been shoved back and saw a couple of framed photographs. One showed a group of smiling people in white lab coats sitting around a table in front of some vending machines. The other showed another group of people, this one on a mountain trail, all with expensive-looking boots, aluminum trekking poles, and internal frame backpacks. The only person in common between the two groups was a beautiful woman with chin-length blond hair. In neither photograph did she look directly at the camera, and in both she was with the group and not of it, giving the impression of having been Photoshopped in later. Madeline Ungaro. His guess was that each member of both of those groups had received the same photo as a souvenir. From the dust on them, Bernal wondered if Ungaro had even remembered that she had them. They had been stuffed behind whatever had been here on the shelf.

  Something lay on the floor by the shelf. Bernal knelt and tugged it out.

  It was the pink sash from Muriel’s nightgown. Wherever else she had gone the previous night, she had definitely come here.

  A horn beeped outside.

  _______

  A Fleurs du Mall delivery van had pulled up next to his red Ram. A slender black man in a white uniform stood, one foot in the open front door, looking at a tablet PC. “You Bernal Haydon-Rumi?”

  “I am.”

  “Finally! I don’t usually deliver to vehicles, but I had to make an exception. . . . Wait a minute.”

  He climbed into the van and came out with a huge bouquet. “Get this in water as soon as possible. We’ve done our best—ball-peened the lilac, charred the monkshood stems—but there’s a lot of stuff in here that requires contradictory care—”

  The mass of flowers was almost intimidating. Lilac, tulips, Peruvian lilies, Bernal recognized those, but there were metallic, spiky blue ones, and ones with hoods, and a variety of fleshy orchids. The thick scent was halfway between funeral home and unmade bed.

  “People used to say to drop half an aspirin in the water,” the delivery man said. “Doesn’t really work, but for this stuff, a Prozac would be more appropriate.” He handled the bouquet carefully. “The greens are acanthus. These are the leaves on Corinthian columns. Not many places carry it, mostly because no one wants the damn fleshy things. That’s why Muriel uses us.”

  “Muriel Inglis sent this?”

  The delivery man checked his tablet. “One of our best customers. And most demanding. She’s real specific about what she wants.” He shook his head. “Between us, I think she should let us do the arranging, but often she has some . .. notion. And, by the way, she hasn’t paid for this.”

  Bernal peeled off a couple of bills, tipping him generously in his happiness at getting a message from Muriel.

  But wait. “When did you get the instructions to deliver?” It could have been before Bernal even came to Cheriton.

  “Some time this morning . . . yep. Six thirty. They got it done quick for her.”

  So, quite a while after he had seen Muriel run off. She was okay. Noth
ing bad had happened to her. The sense of relief was overwhelming.

  The van drove off. Bernal opened his van’s rear and wedged the flowers into a space against the wall. He pulled off the card.

  On it was a late-evening time, a GPS location, and a note: “A crew called Enigmatic Ascent will be here. Tell them you are a local. They don’t know me directly. I will be along a bit later, and all will be explained.” It wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be.

  His happiness faded. Muriel was alive, but she was still running around, making him miserable without good reason. She’d hired him because he was smart and because he knew how to figure things out. Maybe she’d been sorry for him too, but that had to have faded as he proved his value. In fact, lately he’d gotten the sense that she was getting a little competitive with him. This was a sign of it.

  So he’d be damned if he was going to show up at that rendezvous to be spoon-fed some information.

  She’d learned something the previous day. It had been significant enough for her to blow off her gallery opening and decide to go out and play DAR ninja. She had come here, scooped up Madeline Inglis, and vanished into thin air. What had she learned?

  When he saw her that night, he would know. He felt the pleasure of an unsolved puzzle. He would find out what she had learned and be able to explain to her why she should have waited for him.

  Boxes of shoes were piled up on the daybed in her bedroom. Shoes she had bought that day. He remembered the receipt.

  Given Muriel, it made sense that he would start with shoes.

  7

  'There’s a spiritual dimension to your feet.” The clerk reverently pulled a huge shoe out of a box. “Standard sizes don’t speak to it.”

  “I like my shoes to fit.” Bernal felt like an old fogy.

  “Of course, of course! You want to get at least within screaming distance of those physical specs, sure. But, think about it, the lines of qi, the pressure points, the chakras, everything that focuses through those poor stressed metatarsals. Your feet are the most specialized part of your anatomy, did you know that? An evolutionary kludge, something we came up with on the fly when God flicked us out of the trees for getting too good at picking apples. We’re stuck with these smushed-up hack jobs, fallen arches, bunions, and all. Believe me, you don’t find many creationists working in shoe stores. So, of necessity, post-somatic evolution happens through these. The iridescent niobium shoes dangling from his finger by their transparent laces did indeed look like some piece of orbital gear. The human race had lost space. All it had left were the shoes. “That’s why we here at DEEP leave the size for last. I mean, I can give you the length of every tendon in your foot down to the millimeter, and it still won’t let me grok the fullness of your needs.”