by Matt Richtel
There is no drunk, or homeless man, or whatever genus and species of modern man toppled over me near the tracks. And there are no fellow travelers. In other words: no witnesses, except, potentially, the man shuffling papers in the glass cage.
I hobble to the turnstiles. Beyond them, a set of majestic stone stairs leads in and out of the station and promises a much more elegant experience than the underground train service typically provides.
I walk to the top of the stairs. Outside, I take in a couple of breaths of cool air, grateful for it, and peer into the darkness dotted by red brake lights, headlights and a stop light at the corner just to my right. It’s just past 10 p.m., rainy, cold, windy. Poor conditions under any circumstances, that much worse for trying to find someone who is trying to slip away in the darkness. There’s an empty bus parked for the night in front of the subway terminal, and a Volvo in the passenger pickup zone; its driver sits behind the wheel mesmerized by whatever is on his iPhone. But there’s no sign of a fleeing jerk.
Maybe he didn’t leave through the exit. Maybe he hobbled down the stairs to the tracks heading the other direction. If so, he probably hopped on the last outbound train. Is there another possibility? A bathroom?
I return to the turnstiles and knock on the glass cage. The blue-capped man takes a deliberate few seconds to look up, communicating his superiority over the unwashed subway goers.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I was attacked—on the inbound platform.”
This perks him up. In his beefy hand, a Snickers. He swallows a bite that causes a hitch in his throat. He gestures with the half-eaten candy bar to the side of the cage opposite where I’m standing and swivels around in his chair.
He lets me back through the turnstiles. I walk to the other side of the cage and find a small opening in his glass that allows verbal communication, albeit a labored version that forces us nearly to shout to hear one another.
“What happened?” the man asks. He’s trying to sound interested but projects weariness. He’s still got chocolate and nougat on the tips of his front teeth, the rest of which are yellowed from smoking or practiced disregard of the toothbrush.
“Did someone just come through here? Big guy wearing a leather jacket? He had a beard and maybe a limp.”
“You were mugged?”
Was I mugged? I paw my right front jeans pocket and feel the outline of my phone. My wallet is still in the right back pocket. The urbanite’s reflex.
Not mugged.
“Your bag is open,” the agent says.
It takes a second for me to realize that he means my backpack. I turn around and see a few papers have scattered on the ground in the station.
I also see Faith. She’s scooped up several of the straggling pieces of paper and is fast approaching. Where has she been? I turn back to the agent.
“Some guy nearly pushed me into the tracks. Can you call the police?”
“Nothing’s missing?” he asks. He clearly hates the idea of the bureaucratic time sink involved with reporting a non-mugging.
“You must have cameras,” I say.
I’m thinking of the surveillance cameras must have seen the incident and maybe got a good look at the falling mountain.
I turn to Faith, who stands just a few feet away, holding my papers. Part of me is wondering what she’s doing, why she followed me, and where she came from, why she’s wearing a skirt after dark in rainy mid-January. I’ve got a more pointed question.
“You must have seen him,” I say.
“You should sit down. You look a little green.”
I’m sure she’s right. It doesn’t take a former med student to recognize I’ve got a head contusion and maybe a concussion.
“I’m okay. I’ll get to a doctor,” I say. Even as I say it, I know I’m unlikely to get it checked.
“Your backpack has taken a mortal blow. It’s bleeding papers,” she says, then pauses. “Seen him?” she asks. “Who?”
“The guy who toppled me over. You passed him in the tunnel, or he passed you. You each appeared out of nowhere, simultaneously.”
She looks momentarily stricken. “I didn’t get a good look. I’m sorry.”
Even under these circumstances, I am conflicted about whether to press this gorgeous and empathic woman, or flirt. I split the difference. I take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I usually don’t interrogate a woman when I first meet her. Usually, it’s cup of coffee, or a beer, maybe dinner, and only then do I start treating her like a witness or suspect.”
She laughs. “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she says. For a millisecond, she lowers her brown eyes and then looks back up. She smiles, reassuringly.
“What’s on your sweatshirt? Did you get sick?”
I look down at the green splotch just above the left shoulder on my gray sweatshirt.
“Or did your baby get sick?” she asks.
What’s with this woman? Does she know something about me?
“I’ve got a nephew,” she explains. “When he was a baby, that’s right about the spot where he liked to press his face when I fed him.”
I look again at the splotch on my shoulder, and feel light-headed again, momentarily unreal. I shake myself back into the strange moment. This prescient woman is right. I’ve got feeding casualty on my shoulder. Isaac. My son. I’ll see him again. I manage a smile.
“Masticated avocado,” I say. “From the mouths of babes. Right onto my shoulder.”
“I take it your son is not in his 20s.”
I feel my eyes mist. “Eight months, give or take. Spits up like an Olympian.”
I cannot possibly be connecting with a woman, not under these circumstances, not given my track record in relationships. I’m a romantic Hindenburg; promising take-offs, brief smooth sailing, splat. It’s probably not the time to blurt that out, or disclose my dysfunctional personal life and worldview. I’m no longer with Isaac’s mom, and he’s with her. And I’m far from at peace with the whole thing.
“They’re out of town,” I say. At her parents for a visit.
“Who?”
“Never mind.” Good job, Nat. Instead of confessing your romantic failings, you mutter non-sequiturs.
“Anyhow,” says Faith. “I’ve got to catch a cab and get home.”
“Wait. Please.” I’m coursing with a dozen questions, chiefly: what did Faith see? I ask her if she can spare five more minutes to help me deconstruct what happened on the platform. She acquiesces, with a light flavor of impatience, denoted by fidgeting fingers and diminished eye contact. She tells me that she made a quick phone call, then headed down to the tracks to get the K. When she arrived, she saw the “big man” fall down towards me. She couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or not, but she could tell it was a major impact. “He squished you,” she says.
It’s not particularly helpful. And I’m definitely testing her patience when I ask her again if she doesn’t remember seeing the man or can tell me anything about his physical demeanor. I observe that he was clutching his chest as he departed; did she see notice? Was he limping?
Finally, I ask her about the piece of paper that fell from the man’s pocket, the one with my name on it and the other name—Sandy Vello. Did she see it fall?
She shrugs. “Maybe it yours,” she says. “Maybe it fell out with all the rest of this stuff.”
“Meaning what?”
“Your backpack droppings are everywhere. You’ve got a mishmash of things.”
She looks at some of the scattered pieces of paper from my backpack, still on the ground.
She shrugs. “You took a pretty good hit to your head. It can shake your sense of reality.”
She smiles, the same compassionate but sad smile I’d seen her give the beggar when I first saw her at the turnstile. She turns to go.
I blurt out. “Please take my card, in case you think of anything about that guy. And can I at least have your info, in case I need to follow up?” I tug two business cards ou
t of my wallet.
She looks at my card. It reads ‘Nat Idle: By the Word.’ She glances at it and tucks into her coat pocket. She scribbles something on the back of the other card and hands it back.
“Can I offer you cab fare?” I ask.
“I’m good. Take care of yourself.”
She walks through the turnstiles and into the night.
I look at the scrap of paper I’ve been clutching this entire time, the one with my name and the other one, Sandy Vello.
I don’t recognize the handwriting. It’s certainly not mine. I doubt this came from my backpack. Still, am I making more of this than it is? But, if so, isn’t that my stock and trade? As a journalist, I’ve built a business and a life pursuing mysteries—little, medium and occasionally big. Just like Isaac; everything is a curiosity to be examined, touched, tasted, understood. I’m a toddler with a pen.
But there’s something else: real anger. I could’ve died.
I’m wondering about this Sandy Vello. What if she’s a target too? What if she has a kid, spouse, partner, or general desire to live?
I walk back to the top of the majestic stairs and pull out my phone. It’s a first generation iPhone, which in these parts makes me a Luddite. I call up an Internet browser and finger in Sandy Vello’s name. In the customary minute it takes for the results to load, I watch a man on a bike peddle by, undaunted in the rain, a dog in his back saddle wearing a yellow slicker. Watching makes my knee ache and I wonder when I’ll get back on a basketball court, my 37-year-old joints and weather permitting.
Google returns its wisdom, 171,000 related web pages. Big help, Google.
I run the same search but for recent news. I get a hit. Sandy Vello has been in the news lately. Ten days ago, she was hit by a car in Woodside, a suburb in the hills a half an hour south of San Francisco. She was killed.
I’m reading an obituary.
What the hell is going on?
About the Author
MATT RICHTEL is a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times technology journalist and novelist. His first book, Hooked, was a critically acclaimed bestseller. His fiction, like his journalism, focuses on the impact of technology on how people live, behave, and love in the 21st century. He won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for his series on distracted driving. He lives in San Francisco with his family. Please visit him at www.mattrichtel.com.
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Praise
“Matt Richtel [is] the absolute master of crafting amazing fiction around cutting edge science…. This is an utterly absorbing read—gripping, exciting, touching and terrifying. ”
DAVID LISS, New York Times bestselling author of Whiskey Rebels
“A story both rich in character and riotously exciting. So get comfortable . . . you’ll be reading this in one sitting.”
JAMES ROLLINS, New York Times bestselling author of Altar of Eden
By Matt Richtel
DEVIL’S PLAYTHING
HOOKED
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Copyright © 2011 by Matt Richtel
Excerpt from The Juggler copyright © 2012 by Matt Richtel
ISBN 9780061999697
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9780062091321
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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