Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  Hanrahan’s mood darkened with the night.

  Cure deafness? Hardly, he told himself. Yes, it could allow the deaf to “hear” and also restore hearing to the sick and the elderly, he supposed, but that could hardly be called a cure. Just an expedient alternative.

  But what about when the nondeaf wanted it, too? And they would. The bright boys in marketing called it the youth demographic. Kids. They’d buy anything and spend billions. And now, Hanrahan believed, those billions would go to ANT.

  Hanrahan’s entire multibillion-dollar company was built on the reality that people needed ears to hear—that before getting to the brain, sound had to travel through the outer ear and through those bones and nerve endings that Doug always complained about. That’s how God created man, Hanrahan repeated to himself, to hear through ears, not the brain.

  Doug’s breakthrough would make Hanrahan Worldwide obsolete, and it wouldn’t take years to do it. His investors would vanish at the first scent of trouble.

  Doug had to be stopped. Hanrahan could feel a swell of righteousness in his chest. He wasn’t thinking just about himself. What about his employees? Thousands of them worldwide. They considered him their father, and he considered them his family. A father protects his family, he told himself.

  Doug had to be stopped. And it wasn’t just God and Hanrahan Worldwide that were insulted by Doug’s breakthrough. What about the telephone companies and phone manufacturers? All those people who depended on sound moving from one mechanical device to another and then through the human ear? How many millions of jobs and trillions in investments would be lost if Doug managed to refine his discovery?

  And even worse, what about the enemies of the United States? If Doug could put a song directly into a man’s mind—“O Canada” for God’s sake—what would happen if America’s enemies got hold of the technology? Could they put an idea into the head of the president or members of Congress? Or other leaders of the free world?

  To Hanrahan, the mere fact that ANT was based in California meant the technology was halfway into the wrong hands—liberals who wouldn’t know what to do with it.

  Doug had to be stopped; Hanrahan nodded in the darkness. And in the name of all that was great, Hanrahan knew at that moment that he was the one who had to do it.

  A determined look came over his face. Over the years, he had dealt with many kinds of people, not all of whom possessed thousand-dollar suits and handmade silk ties. Sometimes suppliers were undisciplined. Sometimes distributors got greedy. Sometimes Hanrahan had to employ hard people to handle hard situations.

  He picked up the telephone on his desk, then put it down. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and found a disposable cell phone that he kept for emergencies such as this. He punched in a number and a few seconds later heard a flat voice on the West Coast say, “Yes.”

  “I have an ANT problem,” Hanrahan said. “I need an exterminator.”

  BY 3 A.M., the batteries fed by the solar panels on the warehouse roof were nearly drained and Doug had turned off everything in the building except his desk lamp and his computer. He pretended to work but was brooding.

  Why hadn’t Hanrahan called? And why was it so important to him that he should? Why did he feel he had to prove anything to Hanrahan at all? Why was it so important that he hear Hanrahan say the word congratulations?

  Because Hanrahan never believed. Never believed Doug was more than a spoiled California surfer boy. Never believed in his genius. Never believed in the goal. All Hanrahan cared about was the money.

  Somewhere on the other side of the warehouse, Doug thought he heard something fall in the darkness. He looked up, but at almost the same moment, his BlackBerry vibrated on his desk.

  A smile spread across his face as he looked at the caller ID. He was elated and hated himself for it.

  “Christian!” he answered it. “Awfully early on the East Coast. Well, what did you think? ‘O Canada’! Did you hear it all right? Are you excited? I always told you that when we got our breakthrough, I’d make you listen to ‘O Canada’! There it was!”

  He stopped talking and waited, and when Hanrahan said it—“Congratulations, Doug”—Doug silently leaped out of his chair and jabbed a fist into the air. Victory!

  The word had been said evenly and without enthusiasm. Hanrahan sounded somber, and Doug thought there might even be a hint of jealousy. But the word was all he needed.

  “It was Ohashi at Keio University in Tokyo who had the answer,” Doug bubbled. “And the people at Weizmann in Israel. They had a big piece of it. Then Columbia and the University of New Mexico. I mean, they built the computer and—they played tic-tac-toe, Christian—and when they did that…”

  “Doug, what are you talking about?”

  Doug tried to calm down. He knew he was rambling and nearly yelling, the excitement overwhelming him.

  “DNA computers, Christian. That’s what they did in Tokyo. They were able to re-engineer bacteria DNA and inject binary code into it. Then the Weizmann Institute built a biomolecular computer. And when Columbia and UNM built a DNA computer that could play tic-tac-toe, it dawned on me. Tic-tac-toe, Christian. That’s digits. Zeros and ones. Computer code. We could map our technology into DNA, digitize it, and transmit it to receptor cells with cerebral cortex characteristics. Of course, then we had to develop an interrupter code so it wouldn’t replicate and keep looping and looping and…”

  Hanrahan was lost in the science, but it didn’t matter.

  “The DNA was the key,” Doug said. “I had figured out how to bypass the ear, but I couldn’t figure out how to send sound so it would be received by just the person it was intended for. DNA was the answer. Everybody’s DNA is different. Just like everybody’s phone number. Just like you call from one telephone number to another, we can transmit DNA to DNA. ‘O Canada’! Eh, Christian!”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Doug thought he saw a movement in the shadows, but when he peered into the darkness, there was nothing.

  “How did you get my DNA?” Hanrahan said.

  “I tried it on my DNA first, of course,” Doug said. “And when we got it to work—well, I wanted you to be second. I’ll do Maryann next. I mean, we’re all partners, remember? Did you know we still have your old desk here? It took a long time, but you know what I found? One of your gray hairs. That’s all I needed. And we’ve got Maryann’s desk, too, and I think we found one of her long blonde hairs.”

  There was a motion off to the left, Doug was sure of it. He kept talking to Hanrahan, but something was wrong.

  “The point is, Christian, we can implant sound into the audio nerve or straight into the cortex. We can circumvent hearing loss. And who knows, with a little more research, maybe we can bypass the optic structure—no more blindness….”

  Doug abruptly stopped talking. A large figure emerged from the darkness, and Hanrahan could hear the fear on the other end of the phone.

  “What the…? Who are you…? We’re closed…. How did you get in…? What are you doing…? Don’t touch that. What… what… what do you mean a present… Mr. Hanrahan?… What are you talking about…? I’m talking to Mr. Hanrahan right now.”

  Doug’s voice was suddenly loud into his BlackBerry. “Christian… there’s a guy here…. He broke in…. He says you sent…”

  Sitting in his office in New York, Hanrahan heard the gunshot. Victory.

  MARYANN HADN’T BEEN in for two days. There had been no phone call, not even an e-mail. Hanrahan was concerned but not worried. Such a tragedy. She needed time to deal with it.

  The story in the popular press was minor for most of the world—young genius, working late, shot in a bungled burglary. Building set ablaze to try to cover the crime. No suspects. Police investigating. “Wrong place at the wrong time.” These things happen.

  It was a bigger story in the financial press, if only for a few days. ANT stock plunged, but then recovered on the basis of a pipeline of royalties from existing patents. Plus, ANT’s surviving partners
stepped forward to assume control—globally known entrepreneur and financier J. Christian Hanrahan and a relatively unknown woman named Maryann Shannon.

  Hanrahan was contacted by a few Wall Street reporters. “Yes,” he lamented, “we started out together years ago…. Yes, incredibly bright… a loss to the entire world.”

  Then, “Yes,” he confirmed, “ANT’s research was destroyed in the fire,” and “The company will be absorbed by Hanrahan Worldwide. Yes, of course, the revenue stream, too.”

  He hung up the phone and swiveled to take in his view of New York, pleased that all had worked out so well. Then he heard it, inside his head, softly, a children’s choir.

  “O Canada!

  “Our home and native land!”

  Then it seemed to get louder.

  TEN MONTHS LATER on a sunny beach in the Caribbean, Maryann Shannon watched the waves lap the shoreline and run up almost to her toes. It had taken a few weeks for the stockholders to realize that Christian was incapable of running the company any longer—a constant, loud singing inside his head, he pleaded, put there by a dead man.

  Obviously he had gone mad.

  The bottom fell out of the stock. He was ousted by the board of directors and replaced as president and CEO.

  It took a few months more to have Christian declared mentally incompetent and to convince the courts to seize his personal assets and bank accounts and move them to the protection of his family—a collection of snarling ex-wives.

  And that was all okay with Maryann.

  On the day she had returned to work those many months ago, she found a package on her desk to be delivered to Hanrahan. It was an ANT box from California. But impossibly, the postmark was the day after the fire.

  Inside was a Personal Auditory Ultrawave Launcher (PAUL) with instructions on how to use it. Then she figured it out—she figured it all out. The package never made it to Hanrahan’s desk.

  She took all the money she had and borrowed more, and shorted Hanrahan stock. Then she pressed the on button. She harvested millions.

  On the beach in the Caribbean, she lifted her sunglasses and smiled down at the device.

  “Paul,” she said aloud.

  “Yes, Maryann, can I help you?” the device answered.

  “Current assessment?”

  “Christian’s DNA continues to replicate,” Paul said. “I’m afraid it’s becoming quite loud. We should send an interrupt code.”

  “No,” she said. “Not just yet.”

  She took a sip of margarita, then said aloud, “Elvis, please.”

  “Yo, babe.”

  “Could you put a little more lotion on my back?”

  “Sure thing, babe,” he said.

  IN A GRAY hospital just outside New York, an orderly stepped back from a heavy metal door, still peering through a wire-reinforced window.

  “Look,” he whispered. “He’s cryin’ again. He’s screamin’ and cryin’ at the same time. Lordy, what can be inside that man’s head?”

  BLING, BLING

  BY DAVID DELEE

  Mighty Mo’ Mac was not his real name. It was Myron Epps. He wasn’t born or raised in South Central LA. Not even in the South Bronx. He grew up in Granville, Ohio, a small, rural college town thirty-five miles northeast of Columbus. No, his mom wasn’t a crack whore selling herself out of a double-wide. She was a professor of English at Denison University. And no, his dad wasn’t serving five to fifteen in prison. He served on the Granville Board of Trustees.

  But being a young man growing up in a well-to-do family in Middle America did not sell rap albums. And ever since before he could remember, all Myron Epps ever wanted to do was be a rap star. And not just any rap star. Myron wanted to be the biggest, the baddest rap star there ever was.

  Rap stars grew up in LA and New York, even Detroit. Not places like Granville, Ohio. They had names like Tupac and Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent. Not Myron Epps. Most of all they had street cred. They had reps. They had juice.

  Mo’ Mac had credibility; he had a reputation. He had the juice. So what if it was all a lie. “Who’s this?” he asked.

  I offered him my business card. It read simply:

  Grace deHaviland

  Bail Enforcement Specialist

  Mo’ turned from the wall of windows where he stood, staring out at an Olympic-size pool surrounded by a landscaped patio with rock outcroppings and flowing waterfalls and tropical plantings with flowers and a wave slide and tiki torches and strung with lantern lights and a wet bar and a smoking BBQ pit, all overlooking the forested banks of the Scioto River below. Good-looking people in barely there bathing suits frolicked and drank and ate, all to the booming beat of rap music with bass so heavy it vibrated the glass and the whole house. It sounded like N.W.A. or maybe Public Enemy, but what did I know, rap’s not my thing.

  A short, rotund figure, Mo’ Mac took the card with pudgy fingers full of gold. He wore an open silk shirt with the sleeves rolled two turns up his arms and sweat rings darkening his armpits and enough gold draped around his neck to make King Midas jealous. Oh, and diamond studs the size of nickels in each ear.

  He scrutinized the card with a furrowed brow. I wondered if maybe he couldn’t read. Finally he looked to the man standing beside me, his attorney, Saul Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld answered the door when I rang, had led me into the vast living space in the rapper’s palatial mansion nestled on the banks of the Scioto River, north of Columbus.

  “Bail enforcement. What’s that?”

  I told him, “Bounty hunter.”

  He arched a thick black eyebrow. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Really.”

  The eyebrow still raised, he said to Rosenfeld, “She’s the one’s gonna get Jimmy?”

  An older, conservative fellow, Saul Rosenfeld wore a dark blue suit with a white shirt and red tie. A man with a thin build and darkly tanned features, he had a full head of white hair and sparkling white teeth. He shrugged. “I guess.”

  Mo’ grinned. “No shit?”

  “No shit,” I said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. Get some background information on Jimmy Dolens.”

  “A sweet sista like you, darling. Ax me anything.”

  Being half Latina, I have dusky brown skin, long, wavy, black hair, and my eyes are dark brown like my mom’s were, so I get that sista stuff a lot. I didn’t bother to correct him.

  Mo’ hooked an arm out, aiming to drape it over my shoulder.

  I sidestepped out from under, smiling politely.

  He frowned, not amused.

  But his wife was. LaKendra sat on one of two facing couches by the fireplace. She flipped noisily through a copy of Variety magazine draped on her lap, snapping her gum, and snickered. Big, gold hoop earrings dangled from her ears. She wore silver, glittery short shorts and a white sleeveless shirt tied between her notable boobs to reveal her bare, brown belly and the diamond stud in her navel that exactly matched the one in her nose.

  LaKendra had a music career of her own before teaming up with Mo’ Mac a few years back. A duet that led to a tumultuous marriage: think Whitney and Bobby on that one. By all accounts, neither the marriage nor the partnership had done anything to stop the tailspin their careers were in. Not unlike the rest of hip-hop and the music business in general.

  “You better watch yourself, Mo’,” LaKendra said, nodding at me. “This cat’s got claws, baby. And a bite, too. Am I right, honey?”

  “Ain’t you got something to do?” Mo’ asked. “Paint your nails or something equally as important?”

  “Better than watching you make a fool of your own damn self?” She snapped her fingers and shook her head. Her gold hoops caught the light, winking. “I don’t think so.”

  Mo’ raised his arms, then slapped them down to his sides, gazing around the gargantuan living room, as if looking for help. He settled on Rosenfeld. “Saul. Do something with her, wouldcha?”

  They were like squabbling siblings.

  Rosenfeld tried to not look put upon. H
e failed. “Kendra, perhaps now would be a good time to look at those contracts the studio sent over. I have them in the kitchen.”

  LaKendra slapped her magazine down. “Fine. Whatever.”

  Rosenfeld put a hand to the small of her back, hovering just above her glittery spandex-encased bubble butt, and guided her out of the room.

  “We don’t pay you enough for what you put up with, Saul,” LaKendra said. “You know that?”

  Rosenfeld sighed. “I know it.”

  If Mo’ heard the exchange or cared, he didn’t show it. He led me toward the front foyer. The ceilings throughout the house were twelve feet high, the walls painted a creamy white with expensive-looking blond wood trim and bleached wood floors. The foyer was laid with tile so white I thought about putting my sunglasses back on. We started down a hallway. Memory lane. The walls were covered with framed CD covers and professionally shot photographs of Mo’ and LaKendra on tour in various concert venues. Each cover and each photo was individually lit with its own spotlight.

  “Whaddya wanna know about Jimmy? Besides he’s a thieving, slimy, backstabbin’ dawg. That he ripped me off for over forty million bucks. That he left me high and dry with egg turd on my face. That if I ever got my hands on him, I’d choke him ’til his eyes popped and his sockets bled. That’s what I know about Jimmy Dawg Dolens.”

  Colorful.

  What I knew about Jimmy Dolens was that he was a financial management guru by trade, specializing in the entertainment industry. That he spent the last seven years as Mo’ Mac’s business manager until Mo’ fired him for, among other things, negligence, breach of contract, misdirecting funds, and dereliction of fiduciary responsibility.

  I also knew that the state’s attorney general’s office had him arrested six months ago, charging him with fraud, theft of services, and grand larceny.

  Now out on bail and countersuing Mo’ Mac for hundreds of thousands of dollars, his criminal trial was scheduled to start next week. The day before yesterday Jimmy Dolens missed a pretrial court appearance. That caused the judge to issue a bench warrant. The ink on the warrant wasn’t dry before Dolens’s bail bondsman—on the hook for a hundred thousand dollars—called me to “track his worthless ass down.”