He looked up at me, face straining a smile. “I don’t know how to approach this yet. I thought I did, but…I’m under a lot of stress.”
“Sure. No problem. Gimme a call.” I pulled out a pen, then remembered. “You have the number.”
“Yeah.”
He took out a card and handed it to me. It was a thick white rectangle, embossed with the words Tetra Biologics, and a logo that involved a blue semicircle fading to a spray of tiny blue dots. Underneath was Paul Murphy, Principal Scientist, Research, along with his contact information.
“See ya, Murph,” I said.
“Nate, I got to say something.” His eyes darted away, then settled on me, drilled me. “I’m sorry about that situation way back when.”
“Don’t sweat it—”
“No.” He gripped my wrist again, painfully. “I am sorry. I’ve been sorry about it for ten years. I had a stick up my ass back then, but…but people change, right?”
“People change, Murph.”
“So, why’d you shut me out, then?”
I didn’t want to tell him I shut him out because I couldn’t stomach what I thought was a glaring lapse in loyalty. I didn’t want to resurrect that Nate McCormick from the grave. I gave him an answer to his question without really giving him an answer. “I’m sorry for that.”
“Okay. Good. I’m sorry, you’re sorry. Can we call it even?”
I wanted to get out of there. Murph’s almost desperate attempts to make amends, his clutching my wrist, his pleading, knocked me off balance. This ain’t really how the menfolk act with each other.
“I wish we’d had the chance to reconnect,” he said.
“We’re reconnecting now.”
“Yeah, I guess we are.”
Still, I could see, plain as day, that something much greater than making good with an old friend raged hotly behind the blue eyes. That tough situation.
On the way out of the café I looked back. Murph was staring after me: 220 pounds slouched in a chair, surrounded by a motley crew of San Franciscans, every inch of him—every pound—fracturing.
6
BECAUSE HE WAS A FRIEND, because he had come up with some sort of apology to me, Murph and his worries occupied some mental space. But that only lasted for a few minutes. The pressing concerns of hearth and home reared their ugly heads.
“I think the second place was cute,” Brooke remarked as we made our way south on 280.
“You’re kidding me.”
“It was kind of cozy.”
“My mother’s womb was cozy. That place was molecular.”
I pushed the Bimmer to ninety, getting more and more annoyed at Brooke’s subtext. Annoyed at being jacked back and forth over the past few hours between intimacy and distance. Wind whipped and I almost had to shout. “So you went out shopping and had a chance to think and…?”
“I just don’t think you’ve been trying very hard to find a place.”
“I wasn’t sure how hard you wanted me to try and find a place.”
“Now you know.”
“Jesus, Brooke. Because I yelled at Ann’s guy at the party? That’s what started all this?”
“That and a hundred other things. Your friend obviously didn’t want me around—”
“He was preoccupied—”
“—And he’s not the only one. You’re miserable, Nate. You mope around all—”
“Oh, God. I’ve sent out résumés.”
“How many?”
“Four, I think. Three…Look,” I said, “I’m not going to justify myself to you.”
“This is what I’m talking about!” she shouted. She stabbed at the damned iPod, which started to take on a lot more significance than its role as a music player.
“What?”
“It’s not justifying,” she barked. “We’re living together, Nate. Supposedly, we’re a couple. Supposedly, we’re in love. Couples talk about things, couples support each other. It’s not justification. You were the one talking about communication. Well, freaking communicate. You’re so half-assed about being here. All your shit in boxes. It’s like you’re waiting for things not to work out so you can just pack up and leave. Get back to your real life.”
“That’s bullshit, Brooke,” I said. But, of course, it wasn’t.
We blew past those spectacular mountains, those golden hills. The two feet between us could have been a thousand miles. Brooke said, “I love you, Nathaniel McCormick.” It sounded like a good-bye.
7
AFTER WE GOT HOME THAT night, Brooke and I made love. I use that term deliberately; I’m not a vulgarian when it comes to sex, but neither do I usually go for mawkish euphemisms. Anyway, love was made, and it was pretty damned sad. I couldn’t shake the feeling we were shuffling toward some denouement. Or maybe we were already there. In any case, to figure it out—or to avoid figuring it out—I took off the next day, a Sunday. I drove south to Big Sur, along Route 1, that ribbon of asphalt grafted to the edge of the continent. I S-curved from stunning vista to stunning vista, the Toyota taking well to the road. So what if it wasn’t a BMW? I loved the Corolla. Screw Bavarian Motor Works. Screw Brooke Michaels. Screw our relationship, which was turning out to be more high maintenance than her car.
I spent the day hiking around the hills by my lonesome. Each time my thoughts drifted to Brooke, I reoriented, tried to focus on myself. I came West to be with her. No other reason. And I’d done nothing but be with her for the previous month. I mean, what else should I have done? She was the reason I came, and I had her.
And having her was not enough. So, why stay in the Bay Area? Why be there even later that afternoon? Part of it was that I had no other place to go. Part of it—a significant part, if I was being honest with myself—was that something had been poisoned, so insidiously that I hadn’t noticed it was happening. But I wasn’t sure the doctor had pronounced just yet.
After the hike, I got a room in a rambling motel composed of little log cabins. Someplace called “The Pines.” I bought a six-pack of a random microbrew and polished off four before I drifted to sleep.
Monday, I drove back to Palo Alto. Brooke was, thank God, at work. From the laptop, I sent out four more résumés. I made appointments to see three apartments. Then, since I was feeling lonely, since I had nothing better to do than sit around and pet the cat, I dialed the guy who several lifetimes ago had been my best friend.
8
CHITCHAT, CHITCHAT. IT TOOK ME five minutes to pop the question, to open myself to some rejection. I mean, come on, I didn’t want to seem desperate, right? Finally, I went for it: “So, Murph, you up for grabbing that beer?”
“Uh, sure. Hey, listen, let me call you back in five minutes.”
He hung up. Three minutes later, my phone rang.
“That’s better,” Murph said. “Just wanted to step out of the office. Walls with ears and all that.” I could hear wind hitting the receiver of his cell phone. “So, yeah, it would be great to get together.”
“Okay. You name the time. I got nothing but it, lately.”
“What?”
“Time.”
“Right. Unfortunately, I don’t. Deadline at work. PTA meeting for my son’s school tonight—”
“Like I said, my schedule’s free.”
“We do need to talk, man. Really. Okay with you if I kill two birds with one stone? I got something being delivered, and I was wondering if you want to meet me there. A place in South San Francisco.”
“We’re not talking meth shipments or anything?”
Murph laughed. “More fun than that. When’s the last time you blew a hole in something?”
When I stepped through the glass doors into the Mid-Peninsula Regional Gun Club two hours later, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect—twitchy, nervous guys dressed in camo, pictures of Osama with Ka-Bar knives stuck into the forehead, some of those “Kill ’em All Let God Sort ’em Out” T-shirts. But this place seemed pretty tame: racks of hunting jackets, pants, and gloves. Eye
protection. Silhouette targets. Except for all the firepower in the locked glass cases, I could have been at a shoe store…well, that and the periodic explosions from somewhere in the back.
Murph was standing to my left, staring at something on top of one of the glass cases. The guy across from him looked like a shoe salesman, actually, except for a cocksure smile on his face. He nodded to me when I entered. Murph looked up.
“Hey, Nate. Come here.”
I did. And I saw what was occupying Murph’s attention.
“This, my friend, is a Smith & Wesson 686, Distinguished Combat Magnum.” He held the lump of gleaming metal lightly in his hands. The revolver was brushed steel—no bluing—and looked like it could kill even without firing a shot.
“Pretty handgun,” the shoe salesman said.
Dale nodded. “Nate, this is Dale Connolly. Dale, Dr. Nate McCormick.”
Two can play at the nonverbal, my-dick-is-bigger game: I nodded back.
“Dale helped me choose this monster,” Murph said. “Double-action. Takes .357 or .38 Special.”
“Your friend was leaning toward a Glock 18. Nine millimeter. Big guy like him, though, you need a big gun. Glock’d be like a peashooter.”
“Glock was automatic, though,” Murph said.
“Automatics, they’re for…”
You could tell what Dale Connolly thought of automatics.
From the banter, I guessed neither Dale nor Murph sensed that I didn’t know jack shit about Glocks or 686s or double-action.
Murph popped open the cylinder, spun it; it moved silently. “Want to hold?”
“Sure,” I said. Not that I really wanted to, but one has to keep up appearances.
The gun was surprisingly heavy. Two and a half to three pounds, probably. I turned it over in my hands. Very solid. Very deadly.
In the range, it became obvious that I didn’t know the action from the cylinder from my elbow. Now that Dale was out of the picture, I didn’t have to worry about keeping up the façade. And I was worried now that I might kill myself or kill Murph.
I said to Murph—shouted to him, since we both had on ear protection—“I don’t know what I’m doing!”
Murph heard it. So, it seemed, did the folks in the lane next to us. Some Latino guy and his white girlfriend. They watched me out of the corners of their eyes.
“I thought you knew how to shoot,” Murph said. “There was an article in the paper about that thing last year—”
“That doesn’t mean I know how to use a gun. Besides, I didn’t have to load the bullets.”
The Latino guy and his lady were definitely spooked now. They ran the target back and began to pack up.
A cannon at the end of the range went off a few times.
Murph showed me how to load the Smith & Wesson, how to squeeze the trigger slowly on exhalation. He showed me how to put the big silhouette target in the target retriever and run it to five, ten, fifteen yards. He took the loaded gun in his hand. “Watch me.”
The cannon downrange went off again. “Jesus,” I said. “What’s that guy shooting?”
“Probably the same thing we are. Watch.”
Murph ran the target to ten yards, took his shooter’s stance, and blasted the black silhouette figure. I could feel the concussion in my chest each time the gun went off. After six shots, Murph hit a switch next to him and the retriever slid toward us. He pulled off the target.
Three shots in the center field, two just outside, one at the right shoulder. “Need to get used to this,” he said, then looked at me. “Knock ’em dead, McCormick.”
He handed me the gun.
In the parking lot, after an hour of pumping hot lead through cold paper, I was still a little jazzed. As I said, I was never comfortable with guns. That changed, though, after forty-some rounds and eight mutilated targets. Both of us had loosened up with each other. Nothing like firepower to fertilize a little male bonding.
“Not bad for a fem-bot,” Murph said. “You keep the targets.”
“You’re damn right I’m keeping them. I’m papering my bathroom with these babies.”
My hands still tingled. I opened and closed the left—my bad hand—which was stiff from gripping the living daylights out of the Smith & Wesson.
“‘Dead-Eye,’” I said. “What do you think of ‘Dead-Eye’?”
“Christ, McCormick. I’ve created a monster.”
“Now, if I could just put the little holes in the middle of the paper more often…”
We arrived at Murph’s Mercedes SUV. He put the gun case on the backseat and slammed the door. Murph hadn’t kept his targets.
“Now, as a public health doctor, I have to warn you about guns and children…” I was half kidding. Half.
“Lockbox in my bedroom, under the nightstand. Kids never go in the bedroom.”
“Kids always go in the bedroom. Kids find keys.”
“These kids are less than four feet tall, Dr. Public Safety. Key’s on top of the wardrobe, seven feet up.”
“Smart.” I looked around the parking lot, which was sandwiched between a road that fronted the highway and the long, low building that housed the gun club. Other tenants included an auto glass shop and a rug importer. I guess it made some business sense: if there was ever a serious run on Persians, at least they would be well defended.
“So,” I said, gearing up to ask the question I’d wanted to ask for the past hour, “why the gun?”
“Man’s got to defend himself in this day and age.”
“Right. Where do you live again?”
“Woodside.”
“Right.”
“We get trespassers in the area, they hunt for mushrooms. Chanterelles.” He was smiling, but the smile faded. “I’m serious about defending myself, Nate.”
The jocularity was gone now, replaced by the edginess I’d seen in the café. Murph scanned the parking lot, the glass shop, the rug importer. “There’s some bad stuff going on, man. Really bad stuff. I don’t know how I got into it.”
“Got into—?”
“I mean, of course I know. But I never thought it would go this far.”
“What are you talking about, Paul?”
“I need your help. I really, really do.”
“Okay, buddy. You have my help, but you need to tell me—” I stopped myself when I saw an awful look cross Murph’s face. “What?”
“Shit. Shit.” He was staring over my left shoulder.
I began to turn my head. Murph hissed, “Don’t look, for Chrissake.” He opened the back door of the SUV again. “I can’t believe they’re here. It’s going too fast, Nate. It’s going way too fast.”
“Who’s here?” I was shooting looks all over the lot now, Murph be damned. I saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Murph opened the gun case, took the Smith & Wesson in his hand, slammed the back door.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked. Murph didn’t answer, just opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. He dropped the gun into his lap.
“The white Cadillac at the end of the lot,” he said. I looked and, sure enough, there was a white Caddy idling in front of the rug importers. I hadn’t noticed it before. “They want me to know they know. Shit.”
“Murph, you have to tell me—”
“Stop by my house. Late tonight, eleven or so. I’ll show you what I have. Make sure no one’s following you.” He smiled, a big forced thing obviously aimed at whoever sat in the white car.
“Don’t call me, okay?” Murph said, grinning at me. “Just show up at the house. Google the address.”
He told me the address in Woodside—a small horse-obsessed town for rich cowboy-wannabes—located on the Peninsula not far from where Brooke lived.
“I need help here, Nate. I really need help.” He racked the transmission into reverse, then backed out of the parking space. Surprisingly, Murph pointed the nose of the Mercedes toward the end of the lot where the Cadillac idled. The Mercedes crawled across the asphalt
and I saw Murph shift in his seat. I saw him lift his right hand to the window. There was something in it—the gun, I assumed—darkly silhouetted through the glass. He wasn’t aiming, he was just holding. The Mercedes’s left blinker went on, and he rolled through the stop sign at the end of the lot, motored up the road.
The Caddy arced a wide turn, and I caught a glimpse of two figures inside. Left blinker flashed, and it disappeared along the frontage road in the same direction as Murph’s SUV.
Nerves now. Feelings I hadn’t experienced in a year and never wanted to experience again. I scanned the parking lot: just a bunch of middle-aged, middle-tier cars and trucks.
It’s nothing, I told myself. Murph’s just freaking out. Maybe the white Caddy was skippered by a geezer who had a thing for rugs. A geezer and his wife who were now so scared by Murph waving a gun at them they were taking themselves to the cardiologist’s office for a quick checkup on the tickers.
But no. Murph knew that car. He knew who was driving it. And its presence scared him out of his mind.
9
AS I PARKED IN FRONT of Brooke’s place, I tried to figure out what Murph had gotten sucked into and why he’d gotten sucked into it.
The “why,” actually, was easy: if Murph couldn’t let a little data-fudging slide, he certainly hadn’t crossed any lines. But neither could he let “really bad stuff” go unaddressed. Because Murphy was a fucking Boy Scout.
But sometimes being a Boy Scout can be dangerous. Ask any whistle-blower.
By the time I settled into Brooke’s couch, I’d managed to quash my paranoia. How could I be paranoid with a neurotic cat assaulting a dust bunny on the carpet? Besides, lightning doesn’t strike twice. I’d already paid my dues when it came to lightning.
So, I spent the rest of the afternoon squarely in the banal: tooling around the Internet, looking for more housing and job opportunities. In a moment of weakness, I nearly called Brooke and asked her to sniff around the local health departments to find out if there were any openings. But I didn’t. I still had something of an ego left.
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