Pulse

by Michael Harvey

  Simon picked up a stick and began to draw in the sand. “Remember I told you about entanglement, that it works temporally as well as spatially, that all measures of yourself exist at the same time, in the same space.”

  Daniel fixed on the swell of the sea and the waves, one after another, covering everything that came before.

  “This planet will quickly become a smaller place, the gap between the few that have and the billions that don’t growing wider and wider. Hatred will see its opportunity, stoking the fires while religion takes hold, evil, black, divisive religion, the worst kind, carried like a virus on the back of the technology we’ve spoken about.

  “Our leaders will be leaderless, old wounds of race reopening and bleeding all over again. Money and greed will hold sway, everyone grabbing what they can as the politics of hatred spur us forward through an ever-telescoping window of time. Until finally it all falls apart, the center collapsing and the rest with it.”

  Simon tossed the stick away. Daniel glanced down at a tangle of lines that looked like two towers.

  “I’m more or less a messenger,” Simon said. “A harbinger of what’s to be. Or what might be.”

  “And me?”

  “You’re connective tissue, a way for many to be one. But only if you’re free.”

  “Free from what?”

  “You lived her death, Daniel. Right here on this beach. You looked in her eyes and stroked her face and sobbed and prayed and watched your mother choke on her own blood. And then you walked away, mourning as only a child can mourn, but knowing also, in the quietest rooms of your soul, that you were rid of her. Rid of the shame you’d felt for how she lived. Rid of her pain and her suffering. Her anxiety and her touch. Her needs, her limitations, her shackles, her sores, her all-consuming fears. And even deeper, in a room you never visit, a room you might not even know exists, you were happy. No more watching as ‘dates’ came and went, no more listening while you lay in your bed. No more trying, desperately trying, to make it all smooth, to fix what was so unfair, so far beyond the reach of a child. And when the darkness came after the crash, you welcomed that. And when you awoke, it was just you and Harry.”

  “Harry’s dead.”

  “You said it yourself. Your brother was that rarest of things, pure love. His heart beats within you now. As does your mother’s.” Simon pointed a finger back toward the unseen body. “There’s only ever been two choices, Daniel. Bury yourself deeper or dig your way out.”

  “How? By killing him?”

  “By deciding not to.”

  “He was my father.”

  “And mine as well.” Simon winked and in that wink Daniel saw himself, twenty years in the future, fifty years in the past, a hundred years forward and another hundred back and he knew he didn’t understand, but knew he didn’t need to. The circle never explained itself. It just was.

  Simon wiped the sand smooth with his foot. He was wearing a pair of Tiger racing flats, identical to Daniel’s right down to the yellow laces, but battered and torn from decades of use.

  “Bad sneakers?” Daniel said.

  “But great for a run.” Simon grinned and opened his palm. Daniel traced the creases there. His own. Flesh and blood. Bone and sinew. Real and not. Then he watched as Simon went softly, stepping carefully in the footprints he’d already made. A gray wave crested, blowing a spray of salt and brine across Daniel’s vision as it crashed ashore. When he wiped his eyes, the beach was empty, sea and sky woven into a seamless, stillborn haze. A gull cried, dipping its wings as it skimmed the edge of the water before flicking away.

  High up on the ridge, a car with a blue bubble on its roof rolled into view. A black man got out and slammed the door, the sound echoing in the well where water met land. Daniel watched as the detective named Barkley made his way down the road of cinders to where Daniel sat. The detective stopped at the body, crouching over it in much the same way he’d crouched over Harry in the alley, like a predator picking over the bones of his latest meal. Daniel crept forward as Barkley turned.

  “Stay there, son.” The detective had a radio in his hand and was calling for an ambulance. Daniel shuffled to his left, suddenly anxious for a last look at his father. Nick Toney was sitting up, shaking his head and rubbing his neck. No splintered skull, no blood, no corpse. Toney was alive. Groggy, but very much alive. Daniel slumped to the sand as Barkley’s radio crackled and the sun split a mass of thunderheads, bathing the three of them in a slant of eternal, eclipsing light.

  48

  MIKE RIPP drew on his cigarette and exhaled, smoke boiling up into the circle of a fan that beat overhead. “Walk me through the beach again.”

  Barkley grimaced. They’d been at it most of the day. Cat McShane had come in for the last half hour. Otherwise, just Barkley and the assistant DA for Suffolk County. No one else wanted any part of the sad tale they were cooking up. Who the fuck could blame ’em?

  “I went through it three times, Ripper. You got all the statements. Nothing’s gonna change.”

  “Once I sign off, it’s my ass, too. Correct?”

  Barkley nodded.

  “All right, then. Give it to me again. Just the bare bones.” Ripp was like that. Nice guy, but a survivor. Smart, tough, with a keen understanding of the slushy world and shitbag people homicide investigators dealt with on a daily basis. Ripp would work with you on the facts. But if things went south and it was you or him, you’d best believe it was gonna be you.

  “I got out of the car and saw the two of them on the beach.”

  “Daniel Fitzsimmons and the guy we’re calling his father?”

  Barkley nodded. “Daniel was sitting on the seawall. Toney was lying on his side. I marked it all up on one of the maps.” Barkley pointed vaguely toward a wreck of files strewn across the conference table. Ripp didn’t give a fuck about Barkley’s drawings and kept his hound-dog, smoke-filled prosecutor’s eyes fixed on the detective.

  “Toney wasn’t moving when you first saw him?”

  “Not until I got closer.”

  “How close?”

  “Had the gun out and was maybe ten feet away when he first moved. I holstered my piece, checked his vitals, and helped him to a sitting position.”

  “Where was the boy?”

  “Behind me. Starts to come closer and I tell him to stay where he is. He sees Toney and passes out.”

  “Passes out?”

  “Falls to his knees, then down for the count. Backup comes in and goes to work on him. I cuff Toney and we stick them both in ambulances.”

  “Why cuff Toney?”

  “At that point I had reason to suspect him in at least two murders. Turns out I was right.”

  Ripp took another drag and crushed out his cigarette, blinking against the smoke and carefully pushing away the full ashtray like he wanted nothing to do with it and how the fuck did it get there in the first place.

  “Beach doesn’t matter,” Barkley said. “We got the confession.”

  “Famous last words, fucko. Give me the boy’s story again.”

  “He insisted Toney was dead.”

  “Didn’t he see him alive? Ten fucking feet away?”

  “That’s why he fainted. Swore he watched Toney get popped in the head.”

  “And the boy claims the gun was fired by this mysterious Simon?”

  “Simon Lane. Daniel says he rented a room from him. Claims Simon was down on the beach and shot Toney at point-blank range.”

  “Because Toney was gonna shoot Daniel?”

  “That’s what the boy said, yes.”

  “And we found no guns anywhere, on anybody?”

  Barkley shook his head.

  “Nor did we find any Simon?”

  “Had both ends of the beach blocked off, as well as the road. If anyone was there, we would have picked him up.”

  Ripp leaned back, ham hands locked behind his head, heft of his belly testing the springs in his chair. “Maybe he went for a swim? Maybe we should be looking for him
at the bottom of the harbor? What do ya think?” The assistant DA chuckled, a luxuriously smoky sound that jiggled his cheeks and punched a hole in the balloon that was Barkley’s carefully constructed tale. “Sorry, Bark. If I don’t laugh at some of this shit, I might as well take a gun and blow my own fucking brains out.”

  Cat McShane cleared her throat. “I think someone should offer some context for the boy.”

  Ripp raised an eyebrow. “You an expert in this area?”

  “No, but I am a doctor. And I’ve talked at length to the mental health professionals who interviewed Daniel. You have their reports. They’re all in agreement.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The boy saw his mother killed when he was a child. Years later he sees his brother murdered. He’s admitted to not taking his meds and, as a result, suffered a series of hallucinations.”

  “You mean his stories about the animals?” Ripp said.

  “Yes. He’s experienced a number of breaks with reality over the past month or so, culminating with what he thinks he saw on the beach. As far as he’s concerned, that is his reality.”

  “And you think I think he’s lying?”

  “I just want to provide some context.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Ripp glanced at Barkley.

  “There’s no record of a Simon Lane ever teaching at Harvard,” the detective said. “And the room Daniel claims to have rented from him has been vacant for more than a year. We think the kid must have been squatting in there. Brought in some furniture, whole fucking nine yards.”

  “So, what you’re telling me, what you’re both telling me, is there’s no way, six months from now, after we put this thing to bed and my name’s all over it, there’s no fucking way asshole Simon Lane is gonna pop up with some fucked-up story about who knows what?”

  “I don’t see it, Mike.”

  Ripp glanced at Cat.

  “He lives in Daniel’s head. Nowhere else.”

  The prosecutor grunted and rubbed his lower lip with his thumb. Barkley had seen him do the same thing in the courtroom, usually as a signal to the jury that he was about to shift gears.

  “Let’s say I accept your version for the moment. Explain to me what did happen to Toney. EMTs found a small puncture wound on his neck. Fast-acting barbiturate in his system. Are we saying the kid did that?”

  “We searched his person,” Barkley said. “Searched the beach. No evidence of a syringe, needle. Nothing.”

  “He was seeing a doctor every other week. Not a stretch to think he might have lifted something.”

  “Like I said, we found nothing on the beach.”

  “What does Toney say?”

  “He and Daniel were talking. And then the world went black. Says Daniel’s hands were empty.”

  “Why does Toney say he was down there?”

  “Just wanted to talk to his son.”

  “And now?”

  “Doesn’t want anything to do with the kid. Says he’s haunted.”

  “Haunted?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “Fucking beautiful.” Ripp did a little dance in his chair, using his feet to pull himself closer to the table, then picking up a set of papers and weighing them in his hand. “Asshole confessed to killing Violet Fitzsimmons in ’68, as well as his son, Harry. Correct?”

  “He had no choice.”

  “Because of the tape recorder Daniel had in his pocket?”

  “It cuts in and out, but there’s plenty there. And everything Toney said on the tape fits with the case we were developing.”

  “You and your partner?”

  “Yes.”

  Ripp dropped the confession back onto the table. “Let’s talk about that for a minute.”

  This was what the meeting was really about. The dead cop in the room and how it was gonna play.

  “You and Dillon suspected Toney of running a drug operation out of the Combat Zone?”

  “We didn’t have all the pieces, but that was the idea.”

  “And Dillon was working on one of Toney’s alleged accomplices. The other Harvard kid, Sanchez.”

  “Tommy tracked Sanchez to Chelsea while I went after Toney.”

  “That’s how you two divvied up the case?”

  “Tommy had the address in Chelsea. Must have walked in on them drowning Sanchez.”

  “Them?”

  “We believe Sanchez was getting cold feet and thinking about going to the police. Toney sent someone over to kill him.”

  “Toney admit that?”

  “He’s not gonna cop to anything that’s not on the tape. What we know for sure is there was a shoot-out and Tommy got hit.”

  “Five times?” Ripp held up five accusing fingers and glanced at Cat for confirmation.

  “Three in the chest. One in the arm, one in the head. It’s all in my report.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a hell of a good thing, Doc, since no one from my office actually got a look at Dillon’s body.”

  “My mistake,” Barkley said. “Tommy’s wife wanted the body cremated. I thought we had everything we needed and gave the go-ahead.”

  “Seems like your partner should be in line for some kind of medal.”

  “You want to recommend that, Mike?”

  “I want to be up in Vermont, in some fucking lodge, skiing all day and sitting by the fire at night, getting shitty on good booze and thinking about all the assholes down here, stuck in meetings discussing fucked-up cases like this one with lying sack-of-shit detectives. But that’s not you, right, Bark?”

  “Tommy had two little girls. We’d like to make sure they get taken care of.”

  “So give ’em the benny package and fuck the medal is what you’re saying.”

  “Fuck it all, Counselor. Or not. Your call.”

  Ripp wrinkled his nose at all the bad smells they’d laid out on the table and flipped a hand like he was sweeping out the trash. “Toney takes the fall on the two. Put the rest of it to bed.”

  Barkley and Cat got up as one, heads down, eyes averted, anxious for the deed to be done and it all to be gone. Ripp, however, wasn’t finished.

  “One more thing, Detective. Daniel Fitzsimmons.”

  “What about him?”

  “You left out a few details he offered up on Simon Lane.”

  “Most of that was just psychobabble . . .”

  “Simon Lane wasn’t just a guy he rented a room from. According to Daniel, Lane was, is, some future version of himself.”

  “Not exactly a future version,” Cat said. “Daniel believes it all runs simultaneously.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck that means, Doc, and, more important, I don’t care. The bottom line is this kid thinks Lane’s real and that he and Lane are actually the same fucking person. Correct?”

  “Correct,” Barkley said.

  “So the kid’s soft as puppy shit.”

  Barkley opened his mouth to respond when Cat jumped in. “He just needs to stay on his meds. Along with the counseling.”

  Ripp pulled out a loose sheet of paper. “You ever think about that name, Doc?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Simon Lane.” Ripp scribbled off a couple of lines and turned the sheet around so Cat could read it.

  S-I-M-O-N L-A-N-E

  F-I-T-Z-S-I-M-M-O-N-S D-A-N-I-E-L

  “It’s an anagram for Daniel Fitzsimmons,” Ripp said. “Last name becomes first, first becomes last.”

  “Actually, it’s an imperfect anagram, Counselor. Several letters missing in both names.”

  “So you think it’s a coincidence?”

  Cat shrugged and pushed the paper across to Barkley, who glanced at it and kicked it back to Ripp.

  “What do you want, Mike?”

  “Only one question that matters.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do we need to worry about him?”

  49

  HE COULD feel their weight in the empty apartment—cops, detectives, evidence techs, all
fingers and flashbulbs, notebooks and eye rolls, dusting, measuring, conjecturing. They’d all been looking for some trace of Simon Lane. And finding nothing. Daniel cracked a window and took a seat at the desk. They’d removed every stick of furniture in the apartment except the desk. Barkley told him it was just too big to get through the door. No one could figure out how it had gotten there in the first place. Daniel brushed his hand across the handle on one of the drawers. It was smeared with fingerprint powder and he felt the silk rub between his fingertips. The man who owned the apartment was named Stephen Maas. He was eighty-eight, lived in California, and had never heard of Simon Lane. As far as Maas was concerned, the flat was empty. Had been empty for a year and a half. How about Harvard? No professor named Simon Lane. No student. Not even a onetime visitor on a sign-in sheet. Ghosts. Crickets. The wind in the trees. Or so the police said.

  Daniel wandered down the hall to his old room and sat cross-legged on the floor. At the end of the day, what could they really charge him with? Being delusional? Maybe. But he hadn’t committed any real crime. And even if he had, Barkley knew better. Daniel felt the bottle of pills in his pocket. All new meds. All new doctors. These ones kept track. Appointments, three times a week. Monthly physicals. Blood work. They’d watch him. Keep his brain on a nice, low simmer. Maybe he’d take up drawing. Wouldn’t that be fun? Someone smiled in the corner of the room, long teeth and gums, gone as quickly as Daniel could turn his head. No matter.

  He walked out to the main room and sat again at the desk. Barkley had given him an hour alone. They were probably watching through the windows. Of course they were. He thought about Grace. She’d sworn up and down to the police that Simon Lane existed, except she’d never actually met him. Closest she came was a silhouette in a window, a shadow smoking a pipe on a street corner. And what was that? What was anything? Daniel pulled the pills from his pocket and shook out a couple, swallowing them dry as his eyes watered and his head fuzzed. He’d keep his distance from Grace. Like any respectable madman would. All in all, he was lucky to have the time he’d had. Friendships. Memories. He’d parcel them out like crumbs in the hungry days and years and decades ahead. He and Simon, alive inside his skull if nowhere else.