by Matt Richtel
“Ringer’s busted,” the landlady says, pauses, adds: “Broken infrastructure means I have the right to peek in to see if everything’s okay.”
She reaches onto her belt loop where I notice both the ring of keys and the pronounced blue veins on the back of her thin hands. It’s not a medical condition but a genetic bonus; plump, visible veins give nurses easy access for intravenous lines. She extends a key from her ring and unlocks the door.
She pokes her head into the apartment.
She screams.
15
I instinctively nudge Faith away from the door. The landlady’s still peering inside, frozen.
“Alan. Mr. Parsons!”
I move the door open and gently put my hand on her shoulder. She flinches. I nudge her to her left, causing the door to open most of the way. A large man lies facedown. The soles of his heavy boots face us, the heel of the right one graced by a circle of dirt-encrusted pink gum. His beefy corpus stretches along a hallway nearly too narrow to accommodate him. His head rests at the foot of a square table stacked neatly with mail and magazines. Blood pools around his shaggy hair.
Even from here, I recognize the man from the subway, decidedly felled, and fetid. It smells of infant feces and rotten food, just like a dead person.
“What’s going on?” Faith asks. She brushes against me, and then whispers: “Oh my God.”
I want to look at her to see if I can trust this reaction but I can’t take my eyes off him. I step inside.
“Wait.” The landlady produces a phone.
I walk to the body and squeeze along the wall trying not to touch Alan. I kneel by the head. The death smell commingles with aroma from the frothy vomit near his mouth. The scent saturates my blood-brain barrier. I wobble. I cover my nose and mouth with my right hand.
“I said ‘wait,’ ” the landlady repeats.
“We have to see if there’s anything we can do.” I’m muttering through my fingers, knowing damn well we can’t help Alan unless we’ve got a time machine to go back more than thirty-six hours ago.
And bring a nitroglycerin tablet.
Despite what the landlady might think from the sticky pooled blood, I’m looking at a heart-attack victim. The blood, matting his forehead and beard, didn’t flow from anything sinister. It came from a laceration just beneath his right eye, right on the orbital bone. It’s where, as he fell, his face smashed the corner of the table.
His head, flattened on the cheek, is turned to the right and for the first time I see his eye. It’s open. Red from hemorrhage floods the corner. I can still make out the dull blue retina.
My own vision flashes sudden light. When did I last see a dead body? I inhale and taste his decaying vomit. It’s edgy and sharp, like battery acid. Where am I? I’m dreaming. My legs weaken. I fall to my right knee, then my left.
“The police are coming,” a voice says.
I blink.
“He’s too young,” I say.
“What?”
“Give him his dignity,” I hear myself plead. I manage to put a foot beneath me, even as a voice inside my head screams: lie down. But there’s another voice, the journalist, the overly curious and aggrieved, the father nearly turned subway smoothie.
“I’ll get a sheet,” I muster.
“Please get out.”
I stumble into the apartment. I make out a doorway to my left and two to my right. I peer into the one to the left. Just a couch. Covered in blankets. It faces a wall bearing a huge TV. Pinball-like, I bounce to the doorway on the right. Kitchen. Sink stacked with pots and dishes. I glance at the fridge. No magnets hold pictures or phone numbers. I stumble to the second door on the right.
“Get back here!”
“Coming.” I’m not sure if I say it aloud.
The last doorway is shut. I pull it open. Bedroom. Spartan. There’s a queen-sized bed, piled at its foot with a comforter, along with two plastic fifths with red labels: vodka, I guess. Both are empty. Then I see the desk, sitting along the right wall. It’s jerry-rigged; cinderblocks stacked on each side holding up plywood. Atop it stands a computer monitor, big, maybe twenty-six inches. In the bottom right corner, a light blinks green. The monitor’s getting power but the screen is dark. Where’s the computer it’s connected to? Where’s the. . my head pulses. I focus. I see for the first time the stack of papers and folders to the right of the monitor. I walk to the desk. Scribbled notes and phone numbers cover a yellow-lined sheet on the top of the stack of papers. I pick it up and stuff it into my back pocket. I see a folder beneath it. It’s labeled with two Chinese characters.
“Did you have something to do with Alan-with him dying?” I hear the landlady behind me. “Did you know he was hurt?”
I turn to see her standing in the doorway.
“I was looking for a sheet to cover him.”
“On his desk? Tell it to the police.”
Her arms are crossed. Resolute but frightened. I would be. I am. “Where’s Faith?”
“Who?”
“Where’s the woman who came with me?” I practically roar it.
She points down the hallway. “Gone.” I walk toward the landlady, gaining momentum as I reach her. I’m clearly going to push past her. She moves. “They’ll get your fingerprints.” She glares at me.
I chase Faith.
16
I tiptoe past the body, fly down the stairs, pause at the building’s stairwell, look left and see a man in a cap carting boxes piled high on a dolly slide into a grocery. No Faith in sight. I look right. I see her. She’s in a demi-jog, turning a corner two blocks down. I start sprinting.
I cross a street against a red light, prompting a tinny toot from a cyclist. I take two more quick steps in the direction Faith disappeared, and then stumble. I put my hand on a parking meter and am struck that the top of it looks like a face, frowning, melting. “Are you okay?” I’m not sure where the voice is coming from.
“I lost someone,” I say or think.
I put a second hand on the meter. It’s cold and damp.
“You had me fooled there for a second,” I mutter to the meter, my head clearing.
“Are you okay?” I hear the voice again. I turn to see a lumpy lady in a baseball cap.
I start walking again. I reach the corner where Faith turned. I look down the street. I don’t see her. It’s not immediately clear where she might have disappeared so quickly. The street is residential, with just a couple of pedestrians and one jogger paired with a large dog. Halfway down the right side of the street, a crew of three stands on scaffolding, retrofitting a three-story house, the tallest one on the block.
Maybe Faith disappeared between two houses, or climbed into a car or maybe I was disoriented longer than I imagined, giving her ample escape time. Escape from what?
My head pulses. I look behind me. An ambulance pulls up outside Alan’s building. No sirens. Paramedics hate dead bodies. No adrenaline rush, just paperwork.
I pull out my phone. I dial Faith. It rings once and goes to voice mail.
“Faith, it’s Nat. Talk to me or the police. Your call.”
I hang up and think: stupid. Faith’s reaction to seeing Alan might well have been natural. Is death why I left medical school? The loss? I guess I understand why Faith might flee, but she keeps leaving the scene.
I’m unsure what to do when I feel a familiar urge to check my email. It used to be I’d require a ping of an incoming message to prompt my curiosity, but now I’ve internalized the ping. I’m the dog without Pavlov’s whistle and I know psychologists know why. Email provides one of the greatest of addictive properties in that it’s randomly reinforcing. You never know when an interesting email is going to come so you feel compelled to check constantly, even though most of the stuff is worthless. It’s not a phone; it’s a pocket slot machine.
This time, mini-jackpot. There’s a message from Sandy Vello: “Sure, let’s meet. How about 2night? Call me to cordinate. My terms. No paparazzi!” She includes her phon
e number.
So she can spell “paparazzi” but not “coordinate”; that’s everything I need to know about this woman’s personality. But what are her secrets? What do they have to do with dead Alan and disappearing Faith?
I walk back in the rough direction I parked my car, having trouble placing which side street we parked on. The path takes me kitty-corner to Alan’s apartment building. The ambulance remains parked outside. Now there’s a squad car too. A little crowd has gathered. Still moving, I look over my shoulder to see the landlady wander out front and confer with a cop. He looks up and down the street. I drop my head.
Around the corner, I lean against a wall painted with a wilted cigarette nearly my height and spewing smoke, the progressive antics of an anti-smoking tagger. I reach into my pocket and withdraw the notes I took from a dead man’s desk. Stylistically, they look like they were written by a busy engineer-the handwriting precise, the letters written in small block font. Yet, various words and numbers are written at different angles across both sides. Scratch paper filled with artful scribbles.
On the front, there are two phone numbers. One in the 650 area code, which means Palo Alto and its surrounding cities. Next to it, a name: Kathryn Gilkeson. I thumb the number into my phone but don’t call it. The other number is in the 415. I recognize it; it’s already in my phone. It belongs to Faith.
On the top right corner of the yellow-lined sheet are five sets of numbers: 8:47, 9:06, 9:11, 9:35, 9:50.
Times. I make this assumption not just because of the obvious syntax but also the phrase just below the numbers. It reads: “Dr. Jurgenson-7:45-8:40.”
Dr. Wilma Jurgenson. I flash on her image: thin, praying mantis-like in the crooked way she collapses her long legs beneath her when she sits, plain face, straight black hair, prematurely aged hands from hyperthyroidism. I got together with her at 7:45 the night of the incident at the train station, just a few minutes before I nearly died on the subway tracks.
I feel another light-headed flash, warmth flooding across my brow, an acid scent in my nostrils. How does Alan Parsons know my schedule?
I’m having trouble focusing on the piece of paper. It’s not my eyesight; my hand is quivering, like I’ve got late-stage Parkinson’s.
I start walking down the block, away from Alan’s apartment. I pause next to a Mexican bakery. I’m trying to remember where I parked my car. I again picture Dr. Jurgenson. She’s a brain specialist, friend and a great journalistic source who has been invaluable in helping me understand the human mind. But I can’t seem to remember what Wilma and I discussed when I last saw her. It was nothing special, I think, not substantive at all, not much science, maybe about family, more catch-up than interview.
I shake my head. I remember where I parked the Audi-on a lightly trafficked street just off the main drag, two blocks from the cafe. A few minutes later, I climb inside. I place Alan’s scrap paper on my knee. In a carefully etched box on the left of the paper there is a list of groceries: “Oreos, bacon, Tater Tots, soy milk, Tylenol PM.” So he’s a bad sleeper, maybe lactose intolerant, not a health nut.
To the left and a few lines below the list, there are math equations. At the top is the dollar amount $14,000, from which he’s subtracted $3,500, and then, from the $10,500 that remains, he’s subtracted $1,500. The figure that’s left is $9,000, and it is, in turn, multiplied by 1,000. It leaves $9,000,000, which is circled several times with neat zeal.
It’s a neither-here-nor-there sum, maybe big for an individual like Alan but small for a corporation or a major conspirator. In Silicon Valley, money is measured in billions, with a B.
On the other side of the paper, there are two Chinese characters. I’ve seen them before, I remember, on a manila folder on the dead man’s desk. As I look at the characters, my eyes glaze, the character outlines getting fuzzy. One looks like a horse with wings and the other like a piano standing on a mouse. Beside the characters, there’s what appears to be a date: “2/15.”
It’s February 3. The fifteenth is in two weeks. My first thought is that Valentine’s Day falls on the fourteenth; I picture Polly a year ago in fishnet stockings. My head pulses. I need to rest.
One thing to do first. I should wait until I’m clearheaded to bull-rush into this evidence, the 650 phone number, Palo Alto.
I dial.
17
The evidence remains inconclusive that radio signals cause tumors. Believe me, I’ve looked. I got obsessed with the idea after Isaac was born at a hospital built under the shadow of Sutro Towers, the huge radio and TV transmitter poking totem-like through the fog on Twin Peaks.
But my real paranoia came from the phones. I picture Polly, her BlackBerry nestled by her head. She looks like a baby bird taking manna from the maw of the device, or maybe it’s the other way around. She once told me she favored headsets because the psychology of deal making could be undone by poor sound quality, like wind gusts. For a brief period, I couldn’t get it out of my head that a barrage of radio signals was hurting her head but my foray into that investigative realm came up empty. Over the years, the cell phone makers, terrified they’d be sued for killing everyone on the planet, moved the radio chips nearer the mouthpiece and away from the part of the headset closest to the brain. No critical mass of science had yet given a plaintiff’s lawyer enough to mount a reasonable case.
Still, the old fear surfaces as I bring my phone to my ear. After the third ring, I hear it answer.
“Hello, this is Jill.” For a second, I can’t tell if it’s an actual person or her answering machine, a confusion that happens to me more often lately. Once, during happier times, I launched into a full-throated romantic poem before realizing I was talking to Polly’s voice mail.
“Hello,” I venture.
“May I ask who is calling?”
Split-second decision. “Hey, Jill.” Always repeat the name. “I’m about to make a complete fool of myself.”
“You’re in good company.” She laughs. “Can I help you?”
“I’m not a telemarketer. I’m a journalist. Nathaniel Idle. I promise: not selling.”
“Okay.” Wary.
“I might have the wrong number, though. I’m looking for Kathryn.”
Silence. Then: “You’re joking.” Mildly alarmed.
“I. . Kathryn Gilkeson,” I stammer, reading the name from the piece of paper.
“You’re a mean man.”
“No, I’m. .”
“I know who you are. I can find you.”
“Find me?”
“Your number’s on my caller ID. I’m in the middle of something. Please don’t bother me again.”
“I want you to find me. I want to find you. I. .”
“I’m getting off now.” Click.
I droop my head. What the hell was that? And what was I expecting? My forethought was nonexistent. Maybe, no surprise; a concussion stuns the frontal lobe, the part of the brain involved in planning and setting priorities.
Time for a different tack. I etch out a text. “It’s Nat Idle. Again. Sorry for foot-in-mouth. Have? about Alan P. I’m on up-and-up. Google me.”
I look at it. If this person is bad news and associated with dead Alan, it’ll come to her as no surprise that I’m Nat Idle, the journalist, trying to track her down. She’ll dump the text and that’ll be that.
If, on the other hand, she’s completely uninvolved, I’ll do no harm by sending a text referring to Alan P.
But if she, or someone named Kathryn, has some indirect role in any of this, I might pique her curiosity and prompt her to answer my phone call at some future point. In other words, I send the text and risk putting her off, or don’t send and risk that I already have.
I hit send. I stare at the phone, conditioned for immediate response, but knowing that none is forthcoming.
I consider my hasty decision to call the phone number on the piece of paper, and the bouts of wooziness. I picture Alan’s body, squeezed into a hallway, likely felled from natural causes bu
t who knows?
People are dying-and being reported as dead in fake obituaries-strange happenings to digest even if I were in my right mind, which I’m not.
Still slumped in the car, I peer out the driver’s-side window. On the foot of the stairs of a faded purple Victorian, a toddler stuffed into a winter coat draws on the ground with a piece of chalk nearly as thick as her arm. The girl puts the green chalk in her mouth and looks up at a woman sitting on the stair above, expecting or seeking admonition. But her mom is fiddling with her cell phone, too distracted to engage. The girl looks my direction, perhaps sensing my gaze, and starts drawing again. I think back to Polly. Even when we were together, she spent so much time on her phone. Was that the problem? She ultimately didn’t want to or couldn’t fully connect with me?
I shake my head to send the memory scurrying. I look at the dashboard’s digital clock. It’s almost two. I’m both nauseous and craving something salty.
Brain blank, I drive back to my office. Three doors down is a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint where the dyspeptic Chinese proprietor with a world-class comb-over and perpetual laryngitis doubles as a holistic healer, offering five-minute neck massages in a chair near the brick oven for $10. In Hollywood, everyone aspires to be an actor or writer. In San Francisco, a healer. I’ve run into a lawyer doubling as a yoga instructor and a schoolteacher who spends her weekends organizing silent retreats in frenetic Union Square, the idea being to learn to listen to yourself amid chaos and, apparently, shopping.
For his part, the pizza guy’s subspecialty is shiatsu pressure points. I’ve never experienced his handiwork, but I find his mushroom and pepperoni to have spiritual properties.
I plop onto a cheap metal stool at the ancient yellow Formica counter. Heat from the brick oven makes this tiny place unforgivably hot on many days but is just right today with foggy chill seeping into everything. Steam smudges the glass door and the waist-high windows where I can see passersby passing by. From my pocket, I pull the paper I found on Alan’s desk and spread it on the counter. I gesture to the proprietor, who is half glancing at a TV airing a reenactment of a sea battle between two ancient ships, the story subtitled in Chinese.
