Hooked

by Matt Richtel

  Compared to Valley people, the robber barons were suckers. Sure, they were financial titans. But every time they built a new car or railroad, it cost them money. They spent money to make it.

  This is Silicon Valley’s genius. The most successful companies have almost zero manufacturing costs. Once they create a computer program, they can re-create it with the press of a button, just like printing greenbacks.

  As we entered the highway, I was plugged into my mobile phone. I’d put in a call to Leslie Fernandez, a friend of mine from medical school who had since become a neurologist. I figured she could put me in touch with Murray Bard, the doctor who had treated Andy. The best way to get to a doctor was through another doctor.

  As luck would have it, Leslie immediately took my call. It probably didn’t hurt that we’d spent a few nights during medical school playing doctor.

  “Nat. Long time,” she said. “My first question is: Is everything okay? My second question is: Can I buy you dinner?”

  I’d forgotten how direct she could be.

  “I’m good. Are you still hooking electrodes up to people’s brains just to make their limbs flop about?”

  “Ooh, Nat. I love when you talk dirty.”

  Even from her side of the car, Erin could sense Leslie’s voice thick with flirtation.

  Leslie and I spent a moment catching up. Then I got to the point and asked if she knew Dr. Bard and could give me an introduction. I told her I’d heard he was doing some interesting work with electrical signals of the brain. Leslie knew I was doing medical journalism; she’d draw her own conclusions about my request.

  “Just your luck. I know Murray quite well.”

  “Well, like . . . well?”

  “Gross. I’ll put in a call to him. Try his office this afternoon,” Leslie said. “So, I’m guessing we’re not going to get drunk this weekend and take the sleeping bag back to Golden Gate Park.”

  “Rain check.”

  She laughed. “Okay, gotta go.”

  I smiled sheepishly at Erin. “Old flame.”

  “How long ago did you two date?”

  Her question sounded rhetorical. The next one didn’t.

  “So, tell me about the person you lost.”

  We were passing the exit to Atherton, the chichi community Annie’s parents called home. Unlike the surrounding municipalities, Atherton referred to itself not as a city, but a township.

  On the frequent occasions when Annie’s dad and stepmom were out of town, we got the run of the Atherton mansion. We always gave the night off to the staff—the cook, a maid, and the guy whose sole purpose seemed to be to watch the cars sit in the garage. Then Annie and I would see how many rooms we could kiss in for at least ten minutes, removing only one piece of clothing after completing a room. One night, I showed up wearing six layers of ski gear as a joke, and Annie permanently amended the rules by undressing me in the entryway, where we wound up spending the night.

  One time when we had the mansion for a week, Annie and I vowed we’d try to keep our entertainment novel by trying a new activity every night. We managed drunk bowling, followed by a Lenny Kravitz concert, but gave up when, on Wednesday, with nothing to do, we somehow wound up at a Palo Alto city council meeting. Midway through a presentation to the redevelopment board, we were giggling in the last row when a city staff member asked us our business. I earnestly declared, “I demand a national holiday in this woman’s name.”

  The staff member asked us to leave.

  Outside, a local chess club was holding a nighttime tournament under lights in the city green. Contestants eliminated from the tournament played one another or deigned to accept challenges from the stragglers looking on. Annie and I challenged a toothy fourteen-year-old. He pasted us in about ten minutes—twice in a row.

  “No chess for our son. Too dangerous,” Annie announced as we walked off. “Just football, and heli-skiing.”

  “Sons—plural.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Really.”

  “And daughters.”

  “Two of each, and one hybrid. Half man, half woman, half turtle.”

  “You’re not saying anything?”

  The voice was coming from Erin.

  “You’re thinking about her.”

  For the second time, I almost jumped into the conversation, but again was interrupted. Again by my phone. It was Sergeant Danny Weller.

  “How are you doing, Nat?” he asked. I’m not sure he was too interested in the answer, given how quickly he spoke again. “Can you spare a moment?”

  “Sure.”

  “I wanted to let you know that they found a red Saab.”

  “Where?” It came out sharp.

  “They pulled it out of an isolated inlet near Half Moon Bay,” he said. It is a small coastal town. “A fisherman hooked the bumper.”

  I was speechless. Danny laughed.

  “Dad and I never caught anything that big.”

  “Danny. Did they find a body—in the car?”

  “Nope.”

  Silence again. This time I filled it in. “I didn’t read about the car in the morning paper.”

  Earlier, I had glanced at the Chronicle. It didn’t have much new about the investigation. Lots of speculation and “no comment” from the cops. At this point, the reporters either knew far less than I did, or they were reporting less than they knew.

  “You’re not going to,” Danny explained, referring to what I would continue not to see in the newspaper. “We never tell the good stuff to the press.”

  Why was he telling me this?

  “Have you heard from the investigators?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  He coughed, then cleared his throat.

  “How about you? Have you learned anything else—have you talked to your waitress friend?”

  I glanced at Erin.

  “Want to get together later?” I responded. “I liked that bar—it was dingy, dark, and the glasses seemed particularly dirty.”

  “See you at six,” he said. “I’ll bring the soap.”

  When we got to Stanford Technology Research Center, Mike wasn’t around, so I dropped off the laptop with a note asking him to check under the hood. Nothing specific, and nothing urgent.

  On the way back, I suggested we take a detour to Simon Anderson’s house. Maybe mourners would still be there and we could talk to his wife. Erin didn’t seem interested but I pressed her into duty. She knew the location. We drove in silence until we were almost there.

  “You didn’t like Simon much,” I said.

  “He was a player, or so he thought. He figured there wasn’t anyone he couldn’t seduce.”

  “Despite his marriage?”

  I remembered something from the funeral. Simon’s brother had mentioned that things had been rough toward the end of his life. I asked Erin what he might have meant.

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know. Things might have been tense with his wife, or he was sick or something. You hear rumors. Trust me, this is not worth dwelling on,” she said, then changed tone, and topic.

  “His true passion was wizards.”

  “Well, really—whose isn’t?”

  “He was writing a fantasy book for teenagers.”

  “Like Harry Potter?”

  “He went crazy when people said that,” Erin said. “It became a running joke at the café. We would sometimes bring up Harry Potter just to watch his face contort.”

  “They got pretty close,” she said.

  It sounded distant, and very much like a non sequitur.

  “Who did?”

  “Andy and Simon. Andy watched Simon’s kids. It was a big responsibility, since his youngest son is pretty sick,” Erin said, sounding focused again. “The Andersons have an exquisite place.”

  Had an exquisite place.

  As we turned the corner, we saw the home of the deceased aspiring novelist Simon Anderson on fire.

  14

  Notwithstanding the wild coi
ncidence that another structure was ablaze, it seemed momentarily innocuous, like watching it unfold on CNN. Whatever had happened had just started. A wisp of flame jutted out from a front window. The house was three-story beige stucco, with black trim and a bright red front door. It looked to be intact and sturdy.

  Then I heard a throaty boom. A surge of heat coursed across the yard. Fire burst out windows on the first floor. A man in athletic gear stood on the sidewalk holding a tennis bag and a cell phone. I scrambled over to him. He was on the phone with the fire department. “Thank God they’re all at the memorial service,” he mumbled.

  Small miracles, but just small ones. No sooner had we concluded that the family wasn’t home than the man pointed to a window on the second story. A heavyset woman opened the window and waved her arms. She had a look of sheer panic.

  “Back door,” he yelled.

  “I’m gonna die up here.”

  “The fire department’s on its way,” he chimed back. “Stay calm.”

  “You stay fucking calm!”

  Two boys on bikes jutted around the front and screeched, “The back porch is on fire!” Then I noticed the woman again. She gulped big fast breaths, hyperventilating. Not from fire, but fear.

  Like a lot of San Francisco homes, the garage level was partially belowground. The effective second floor wasn’t more than twenty feet above terra firma.

  “Just open the window all the way and slide your butt onto the ledge. Then let yourself down and we can grab your feet. You can hold on to the drainage pipe,” I found myself saying. “I promise you this will be very simple and easy and safe.”

  The pace of her breathing increased. She was lost in her fear, and not hearing me. Panic attack. From what I could see, the worry here was less that she’d be engulfed by flames and more that she’d pass out and be helpless. I could see the physiology unfold; eventually the airways would clog with dark soot, constricting oxygen to the blood, heart, and brain.

  The decision to quit medical school still haunted me. Partly because I sometimes found myself defensive when challenged by people with a résumé-centric view of existence. More so because of the periodic weight of a responsibility I couldn’t really bear. I could see a medical problem, or evidence of one, but not have the expertise to fully grasp or do anything about it. It turns out doctors aren’t generally lifesaving heroes, but I couldn’t even muster the illusion anymore.

  What could I do here? It didn’t take a neurosurgeon to see she needed to stay calm.

  “Put your head out the window,” I said. “Slow, deep breaths.”

  She remained paralyzed.

  “Hey!”

  Nothing.

  I took a step toward the house.

  “Boost me.”

  Instinctively, the man standing next to me grabbed my arm. Don’t be an idiot, he was thinking.

  But then, he didn’t understand it was not nearly as idiotic as I was capable of being. That was spending my twenty-first birthday climbing Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, a 23,000-foot, highly challenging high-altitude ascent amid wicked winds.

  I looked at the water drainage pipe running up the side of the house next to the window. This didn’t qualify as a particularly treacherous climb. And the woman was now slumped. If someone didn’t get up there to calm her down, she was going to suffocate at the summit and get cremated.

  I looked around at the gathering of neighbors. No one seemed to know what to do. The first-floor doors and windows weren’t options.

  I moved under the window.

  I grabbed the pipe, and tested a foot against the stucco. It slipped off. I looked at my feet. Not an ideal time for the slippery black leather shoes I’d worn to the funeral. I pulled myself onto the pipe again. The man I’d been talking to, and one other, perched underneath me, and the pair hoisted my feet. With their help, standing on their hands, I’d have to pull myself only a yard on my own to reach the window’s ledge.

  My feet balancing me on the house, I clung to a metal strap holding the drainage pipe to the building. I reached for a similar strap a foot above, and felt my grip loosen. I started sliding down the pole. I landed on my feet, then my butt.

  I yanked myself up again and got a boost from the men. And I hung there, three feet below the ledge, looking less and less like Spider-Man every second.

  Who was I kidding? I wrote medical stories for a dollar a word, played recreational hoops two days a week, and faced such hero-inspired challenges as eating tuna sandwiches with mayonnaise that was nearing the end of its freshness date. I didn’t even play a doctor on TV.

  But I felt a surge of adrenaline, an almost foreign urge to act. Maybe it was Annie inside my head. I pulled myself within two feet of the window’s ledge and realized I wasn’t going to get closer. I could hear nearing sirens. I looked up to see the woman’s head against the window frame. Her lumpy chin rested on the sill, still rapidly gasping for air.

  “Hey!” I shouted to her. “You ever see a guy fall and break his neck?”

  “What?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Agnes.”

  “You’re going to be fine, Agnes.”

  She turned her head to the side and threw up. Her head rolled back. She was so panicked that, given her weight, I was afraid she might arrest. Her blood pressure had to be skyrocketing. Her eyes were open. “I don’t want to die.”

  Suddenly, an explosion rocked us. I barely was able to hold on to the pipe, my feet were blown away from the house, my legs waving out like a tattered flag. I pulled desperately to keep from falling. A howl of heat blew out the window, the flames near.

  She started breathing quickly again. She was tremulous and crying. I had to get her talking. I had to get her to focus on me.

  “What happened, Agnes?”

  No answer.

  “Agnes! I need you to tell me what happened here.”

  Something in her eyes snapped open. “I’m just the housekeeper. It’s not even my regular day,” she said, pausing. “I was . . . I was cleaning. It got hot. Then everything . . . so goddamned fast.”

  “Did you smell gas. Was there . . . anything strange?”

  I heard the thump on the windowsill. I had been so entranced, I hadn’t noticed the arrival of the firefighters.

  “Gas, maybe. I don’t know. There was an electrician when I got here. The house was empty because of the funeral. The electrician said she was doing some wiring in the basement . . . ”

  She was cut off by another explosion, just as the firefighters made their ascent. One wrapped his arms around her. I felt a hand on my shoulder, guiding me down a second ladder.

  On the ground, I swam through a growing crowd in search of Erin. She was still sitting in the car, looking stunned.

  “Oh.”

  That was all she said, as if the ability to express more complex emotions had left the building.

  “Bad news, worse news,” I said.

  “What?”

  “All of this—the explosion. Andy, Simon. The fire. It’s all somehow connected to Sunshine Café,” I said. “The café is . . . at the center of all this violence.”

  That was a revelation, at least to me. Up until then, I had no pattern I could discern.

  She touched her palm to the side of my face. “What happened?” she finally said.

  I told her what the woman said. Maybe someone had sabotaged the Andersons’ electrical system.

  The electrical system.

  I jerked forward.

  “Andy’s place,” I said.

  Erin sniffled. “What about Andy?”

  “Outside his apartment. Someone was working on the lights. A worker, or an electrician. They’re going to try to burn it down.”

  I turned the keys in the ignition.

  “We have to go,” I said. “Now!”

  15

  Erin dialed 911 and I flew down Laguna Honda, a secret passage to Cole Valley—and Andy’s apartment.

  I pulled around a Windstar minivan, eli
citing an orchestra of honks.

  “I’d like to report a possible fire,” Erin said.

  I heard her end of the conversation.

  “No. No flames. No smoke.”

  The operator slowed her down, and asked her a couple of questions. She gave Andy’s address. I gave the accelerator a punch. The tires squealed. The odometer hit 50.

  “Please, his place may be . . . a target.”

  Erin closed the phone and said they were sending an officer by.

  I sped into the Haight-Ashbury, then screeched the brakes. Half a block ahead was a logjam. Or, rather, a peace jam—about a dozen twenty-somethings imitating peaceniks had gathered on the corner and were slapping tambourines and hoisting signs. They were for something. Or against something. You live in San Francisco long enough, you quit reading the placards. All I knew was they were standing between us and the next block.

  I pressed palm onto horn. Big mistake. There’s no better way to antagonize a group of informal protesters. They had the look of people who had gotten stoned, watched Fox News, become angry, made signs, and headed down for the corner between pizza slices. They needed a common enemy, and they’d found me.

  A couple paused in crossing the street to approach my window. The woman wore a flowing white skirt from the 1960s and a trendy windbreaker from North Face. “You’re polluting the earth with your death machine,” she said.

  I rolled down the window. “You know the trouble with these big SUVs,” I said. “You barely feel it when you run over someone’s foot.”

  I turned the wheel sharply and drove onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing the back of a Saturn and evading the protesters.

  “What are you doing?” Erin cried.

  In my new worldview, there were no longer stop signs, or anything close to speed limits.

  “Nat! Look out!”

  A teeny-bopper on a foot-fueled scooter appeared from outside my vision and laid rightful claim to the crosswalk. I slammed on the brakes. Erin and I lurched forward.