Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  “Why?” he stopped her.

  “Rumors… distribution problems in China.”

  “True?”

  “No and yes,” she said. “Dockworkers’ strike in Argentina delayed some headphone pins. More an assembly problem than a distribution problem.”

  “Fixed?”

  She shrugged. “Extra shifts at the Hanoi plant. We’ll make it up.”

  Hanrahan said nothing, which Maryann knew was a bad sign. “Don’t screw with it, Christian. The SEC’s got eyes everywhere, and you don’t need the money.”

  He blinked, then looked away. “Just a thought,” he said dismissively.

  The routine continued. He asked. She answered. He ordered. She took notes.

  Finally he said, “Anything else?”

  “Two things. Larry… your golf buddy?”

  Hanrahan nodded.

  “He called to say he’s getting married this weekend.”

  “Again?”

  “Apparently. Some nice waitress from the country club. He wants to know if he can borrow the Gulfstream and a flight crew.”

  “Where the hell is he getting married?”

  “Italy,” Maryann said. “Odescalchi Castle. Where Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got married. He wants to impress his new bride.”

  Hanrahan looked at her in disbelief. “That’s stupid,” he said, then paused and shrugged. “Tell him to consider it my wedding present. What’s the other thing?”

  Maryann hesitated. “Doug’s executive assistant called this morning. Doug wants to know if you got his present.”

  Hanrahan gave her a quizzical look. “Present? From Doug?”

  She returned his confusion. “No idea.”

  “Did something arrive?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  He looked down at the newspapers and absently tapped his left index finger on his desk. “Well, if something shows up, send it back. I don’t want anything from the boy genius. Besides, what can he give me that I can’t buy a dozen of myself? Whatever it is, I don’t want it.”

  “Aye-aye,” she said as she closed the door behind her.

  He swiveled to look out at the skyline, a children’s choir singing in his head.

  “O Canada…”

  DOUG SEARCY FROWNED. The sun behind him was getting higher but the waves in front of him weren’t. There were some things money couldn’t buy. He checked his BlackBerry again. No response. He dug his bare feet into the sand.

  “Elvis, please,” he said aloud and the handheld lit up. The “please” wasn’t gratuitous. His more promising research suggested higher-order machines could develop emotions. Be nice to them, and they’ll be nice to you.

  A voice sprang from the BlackBerry. “Yo, dude! What’s happenin’?”

  Doug cringed. “Would it kill you to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ just once? Or maybe, ‘Good morning, boss,’ or something like that?”

  “Screw you. My McMuffin’s getting cold. Whaddaya want?”

  Not for the first time, Doug wished he had stayed at Cal Poly long enough to take a business course on How to Fire Your Mother’s Friend’s Son Named Elvis, Who You Shouldn’t Have Hired in the First Place, but he hadn’t. “Did Hanrahan call?”

  “Whaddaya mean, ‘call’?”

  “He wouldn’t text. He’d call. Probably on a telephone… from his desk. Did he call?”

  “How the fuck should I…”

  “All I need is a yes or a no.”

  “No.”

  “Thank you, Elvis.”

  “I got a headache. Can I go home?”

  “No,” Doug said and took a wild guess. “And Elvis, don’t smoke that stuff in the office.” There was an audible gasp as his assistant clicked off.

  Doug pressed the End key. Last night’s computer code should have worked. Something must have gone wrong. He announced aloud, “Paul, please.”

  “Hi, Doug,” came a voice. “How are the waves?”

  “Not so hot, actually. Thanks for asking. Hey, did the program run all right last night?”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Yes, I think so. I don’t see any anomalies.”

  Doug rocked forward in the sand and stood as a young man with a surfboard brushed by. “Dougie boy, you coming in?”

  “Can’t. Gotta go to work.”

  “What?”

  “Work,” Doug repeated.

  “What?”

  “Work… where they give me money.”

  The shirtless man shrugged and ran into the waves. Doug watched and longed for irresponsibility. “Paul, you still there?”

  “Still here.”

  “Can you give me some Mozart?”

  “Sure. What would you like?”

  “Something calming. Piano Concerto No. 21.”

  As Doug carried his surfboard back to his car, his head filled with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra.

  HANRAHAN’S INTERCOM BUZZED.

  “Lunch, Christian?”

  “I’ll take it here, Maryann. By the way, did Doug’s present show up?”

  “Not yet. His freak assistant called back a little while ago asking the same thing.”

  “Did he tell you what’s coming?”

  There was a long pause. Hanrahan could tell Maryann’s finger was still pressed down on the intercom. “Maryann,” he repeated, “did he tell you what was coming?”

  “A bug.”

  Now it was Hanrahan who paused. “A bug?”

  “Elvis said it was a bug.”

  A moment later, Hanrahan opened his door and frowned down at his assistant. “He’s sending me a bug? Some kind of creepy-crawly thing? Are you kidding me?”

  Maryann shrugged. “Why don’t you just call Doug and find out what’s going on. What’s it been? Fifteen years? Come on. You guys used to be friends.”

  “We weren’t friends. You were there, Maryann. We were partners. We all were. Hell, we still are, on paper anyhow. We worked together… then we didn’t. End of story. If he wants to talk to me, he can call me.”

  “Well, he obviously wants to interact with you, or he wouldn’t be sending you something. Want me to try to get him on the phone?”

  “No… and I’ve changed my mind. I’m going out to lunch. Tell Susan, Chuck, and Amir they’re coming with me and bring their reports.”

  “None of them are ready with their reports, you know that.”

  Hanrahan allowed himself a small smile.

  THE SCENT OF something illegal hung over his assistant’s desk, but that didn’t bother Doug nearly as much as what he was hearing.

  “For God’s sake, Elvis, you said I was sending him a bug?”

  “Well…”

  “Earworm, Elvis. Or orhwurm to be more precise.”

  Elvis flashed a malicious smile. “Right… one of those things that crawls into your ear and starts eating your brain.”

  Doug stared with dismay, wondering again why Elvis was on the payroll. “That’s an earwig, Elvis. And it doesn’t eat your brain, and it usually doesn’t even go in your ear and, oh, for Christ’s sake, never mind.”

  Doug retreated to the other end of the vast warehouse floor, nodding to coworkers as he went. There were no walls or cubicles at AudioNeuroTech—commonly known as ANT—nothing to limit creativity or interchange between the CEO and even the lowest member of the staff. “Ideas can come from everywhere and everyone,” he reminded his “collaborators,” who he refused to call “employees.”

  ANT was a place of open spaces and open minds—with the possible exception of Elvis… and, of course, when Christian Hanrahan had worked there.

  Doug walked back to his Thought Center (not his “office”), thinking Hanrahan probably assumed he was crazy—just as he had, what, could it really have been fifteen years ago?

  It was a match made on Wall Street. Doug, a touted West Coast genius with unlimited potential. Christian, a small-time East Coast manufacturer with a knack for making money. What could go wrong? Everything.

  Doug was young and lib
eral and invested in social purpose. Christian was older, conservative, and invested in the Fortune 500.

  The memories haunted Doug even now. “This isn’t working out.” Hanrahan came to him. “We’ve got millions in venture capital tied up here, but I just don’t think you—we—can deliver a product.”

  In the end, and in a voice louder than Doug had ever used before or since, it was decided Christian would stay long enough to secure mezzanine financing; then the company would divide.

  Christian would spin off the hardware division. Doug would stay and develop software.

  “Hanrahan’s going to build stereo speakers for the rest of his life,” Doug had laughed to his friends.

  Christian had warned his golf buddies, “That guy’s going to give people brain cancer someday.”

  Fifteen years ago. Since then, Hanrahan’s speaker-manufacturing business had evolved into headphones and earbuds, multiplex cinema speaker systems, and Broadway soundstages. Hanrahan speaker components were in car radios and televisions, laptops and telephones. There were deals with Japanese consortiums and assembly plants around the world. Hanrahan Worldwide was worth $15 billion and change and going up.

  ANT had grown, too, of course, but differently. Doug’s research papers had found their way into all the scientific journals, and there were ever larger research grants from the National Science Foundation. There were lectures at prestigious universities worldwide and, of course, more than a few lucrative patents here and there.

  Doug shook his head at how far they had both come separately. He collapsed onto his green oversized beanbag chair. Aloud, he said, “Maryann Shannon, please.”

  MARYANN’S SMILE CARRIED coast to coast. “Way too long,” she said. “Are you in… Oh, still out there? No, I was hoping for a free lunch…. Oh, you know. He’s surly as ever…. No… no… Actually he should be back in a few minutes…. Nope, no scions today, just a couple of newbies on the accounting team…. Yes, he’ll probably make them pay for their own lunches….”

  Doug came to the point, and Maryann barely kept from laughing.

  “… Yes, a couple of times this morning…. Well, I’m sure Elvis means well…. Yes, a bug, that’s what he said…. Of course, I’ll take a message…. That’s it? That’s all? That’s a little cryptic even for you, isn’t it…? Okay. No problem, as soon as he walks in…. You want me to have him call you…. All right, if you say so…. Okay, bye.”

  Maryann looked down at the message. Boy genius, indeed. From the far side of the office, she heard the distinctive ding of Hanrahan’s private elevator. Like a wake behind an ocean liner, Hanrahan moved toward her, barking orders to subordinates as he bulled by offices. Apparently, lunch hadn’t gone well.

  She pushed open his office door, Doug’s message in her hand, and stood aside as he approached.

  He stopped abruptly. “What are you smiling at?”

  “I just talked to Doug. He left a message.”

  “What? No present?”

  “I guess not.”

  “What’s the message?”

  She handed it to him and watched him read, expecting a smile or even a chortle. But nothing.

  “Anything else?” he said.

  “No. Just that.”

  An irritated look came over his face.

  “Christian, I don’t understand. First a bug. Now this. What’s going on?”

  Hanrahan lifted his eyes toward her, wondering how much she knew and how much she could figure out and how long it would take her. In a deadly calm and controlled voice, he said, “What’s going on is that you need to cancel my appointments this afternoon. And make sure I’m not disturbed.”

  Maryann watched him go into his office, softly closing the door, taking the message with him.

  All it said was, “O Canada.”

  FOR A LONG time, Hanrahan stared out his office window at the skyline, seeing nothing but his own thoughts. If he called his personal financial manager right now… but no, he couldn’t do that. The New York attorney general’s office would have a record of the call within two weeks, and he’d be in jail within two years. Insider trading. Not a good solution.

  Or he could call Doug and congratulate him on his breakthrough. Doug might even invite him back into ANT—office of the CFO, just like the old days. Young science genius in the number one job, older money guy down at number two.

  Hanrahan studied the skyscrapers around him and Wall Street down below. Doug could never survive here, he told himself. From nothing, Hanrahan had built his company into an international giant. He had battled the barracudas and won. He had worked for it. He deserved it.

  In one corner of Hanrahan’s office, there was an antique stock ticker machine given to him by the president of the New York Stock Exchange. On the walls were pictures of himself with the world’s great leaders—Bush Senior, Clinton, and Bush Junior; Thatcher and Blair; Gorbachev and Putin; Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao; and more.

  Now Doug was back in the picture, and he wondered how long it would take to unravel. He read the message again. “O Canada.” An inside joke between him and his Canadian-born partner from years ago. Former partner, he corrected himself.

  There was a rap at the door, but Maryann didn’t wait for a response to enter.

  “I think I’ve got it,” she said, holding a dictionary in her hands. “Elvis kept saying ear bug, did you get the ear bug. But you know what I think he was talking about? I think he meant to say earworm. Christian, you know what an earworm is?”

  Hanrahan knew but let her talk.

  “It’s a song that gets stuck in your head. You know, when you wake up in the morning, and you start humming a song for some reason and can’t get rid of it. I didn’t even know it had a name. Earworm.”

  Taken from the German ohrwurm, Hanrahan knew, but still said nothing.

  Maryann closed the dictionary. “Christian, Doug was really excited when he called this afternoon. He said he had finally done it. After all these years, he said he accomplished what he set out to do.”

  Hanrahan took a deep breath. “Possibly.” He shrugged. “Hearing loss. Deafness. He believed—well, he had a theory—that he could cure deafness. Conquer it. That’s what he used to say. ‘Conquer deafness.’ That was the original purpose of AudioNeuroTech.”

  “I remember,” she said. “His father, right?”

  “Yes. His father.”

  Maryann looked puzzled. “What do earworms have to do with deafness? And how could anybody ‘send’ you an earworm? Usually songs just pop into your head for no reason. Or you hear one and can’t get rid of it.”

  Hanrahan turned his palms up. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Doug.”

  “Was there a song in your head this morning?”

  Hanrahan shook his head and lied. “Nothing. If he intended to send me something, I’m afraid I didn’t get it.”

  Maryann’s excitement dimmed and she turned to leave. “Conquering deafness,” she said, closing the door. “Noble goal.”

  Hanrahan turned back toward the skyline. How many times had Doug attempted to explain the science to him? Sound waves move into the outer ear and cause the eardrum to vibrate. Vibrations go through the three smallest bones in the body—the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup—and then pass to the cochlea, filled with hairlike nerve endings that send signals through the auditory nerve to the cerebral cortex.

  “But it’s all so delicate,” Doug would rave. “Heredity. Measles. Meningitis. A loud noise. Some medicines. Aging. Hearing can be destroyed so easily. But”—Doug’s eyes would go wide—“what if you could bypass that whole auditory structure? What if you could implant sound right into the brain?”

  Back then, Doug made it seem so plausible, so hopeful, so… noble. Hanrahan was there to keep Doug’s feet on the ground.

  The reality was that the burn rate for Doug’s research was a half million dollars per month and going up with nothing to show for it. Venture capitalists put up another $10 million, but it seemed to vanish overn
ight. ANT moved from a small lab to a giant warehouse. The company went from Doug, Christian, Maryann, and a few technicians to dozens of additional collaborators.

  But Doug couldn’t get his idea to work. Finally, Hanrahan agreed to stay through the second-tier financing and even put together a red herring for the IPO. But if ANT couldn’t show something to the FDA soon… if it couldn’t bring something tangible to market, then…

  They decided to separate, Christian going back to the East Coast and Maryann going back, too. She’d stay with her family until she could find a job, or maybe Christian would hire her if he ever got his stereo-manufacturing business going.

  Doug insisted they remain partners, if only on paper. He promised they’d be happy someday that they did.

  THERE WAS A knock on the door, and Hanrahan looked up at the clock. How did it get to be six o’clock? Maryann appeared with her coat over one arm and leaned against the doorframe.

  “I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon,” she said. “If he did it…‘conquered deafness’… you get Nobel prizes for stuff like that.”

  Hanrahan nodded. “But that’s a pretty big ‘if.’ I don’t know where the line is between science and magic, but a lot of Doug’s ideas seemed to cross it.”

  “A lot of science is crossing that line these days,” she said.

  Hanrahan said nothing, wondering again how long it would take her to figure out the rest of it.

  Maryann moved to leave. “I think you should call him. Maybe he’d like to renew the partnership. Might be nice to be part of the company that came up with something like that.” She closed the door.

  Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, Hanrahan knew she’d figure out the rest.

  She’d figure out that if Doug’s theory worked for the deaf, it would work for those who could hear, as well. And if sound could be sent directly to the brain, of what importance were things like speaker systems, headphones, and earbuds?