Flashback

by Gary Braver

  Moy stared at the pill for a telescoped moment.

  And in Jack’s head he heard that voice: “Die, goddamn you, die.”

  Moy raised his face again. He settled into his chair and stared at Jack for several seconds. “So, I knew your mother,” he said, as if in a trance. His body seemed almost to deflate into the confession.

  And the sound of the words sent a cold flush through Jack. His hand reflexively slid up the front of his jacket to the lump under his arm.

  “But no pill will conjure up the truth.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “She tried to blackmail me.” Moy stopped and waved his hand in the air. “I’ve said enough.” He straightened up in his chair. “I want you out of here. You’ve got nothing on me.”

  “Except my memory.”

  “Get out of here before I call security.” And he picked up the desk phone.

  “She discovered the toxin, and you ran off with her patent.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Jack reached into his briefcase and pulled out the downloaded stack of articles and abstracts. “Her name is all over these, until you killed her and appropriated her discovery.”

  Moy looked at the pile as Jack fanned out the collection.

  “She was on the ground floor of your wonder drug.”

  “And what do you think you can prove by these, huh? You going to take me to court after thirty years?”

  “It’s evidence of a motive for murder. I saw it all, but you didn’t think I’d remember. I was too young—just a toddler. But it all came back because of your magic jellyfish. Pretty funny, huh? What goes around comes around.”

  Moy’s face was bright red. “She fell and hit her head … We had a fight, and she fell and hit her head.”

  “And you finished her off with a hammer because you feared she’d report you—report that she was the one who discovered the toxin and saw the potential benefits and demanded equal billing with you.” Jack pulled one of the articles from the pile. “She was the one who determined how the stuff stimulated the adrenal medulla to activate the brain’s beta-receptors on neurons that receive noradrenaline, resulting in an enhanced emotional memory. It’s all in here—her experiments with mice. She’s the one who should be celebrated down there, not you, you son of a bitch. You killed her. You killed her.”

  Moy’s face looked as if it would explode. “Yeah, I killed her and she deserved it. You happy now? I killed her. She tried to extort money from me. And it wasn’t because of the goddamn science. It was because of you. You!”

  Jack’s breath caught in his throat.

  “I was married, and just starting all this, up to my ass in debts, and she was threatening to destroy everything. She wanted me to leave my wife and marry her. And when I said that wasn’t going to happen, she started threatening to sue for child support.”

  “Child support?”

  “Yeah, child support. You.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t.” Moy started around the desk toward him.

  “This is pure bullshit.”

  Moy pointed to his face and pressed toward Jack. “Yeah, then look at these eyes and look in a mirror.”

  Jack stared at Moy’s eyes, and a sensation slithered through his body that left him thinking how the universe had just shifted on its axes.

  “The fuck’s going on?”

  A voice behind them.

  Jack turned, and a thick, short man in a tuxedo entered. Behind him was another, taller man.

  The Mr. Fixit guy from Greendale—the guy who came to repair the blinds. Theo.

  Behind him was some physician Jack had met outside. A Dr. Jordan Carr. And Mr. Fixit was holding a shiny silver pistol on Jack.

  JACK HAD BEEN GONE FOR OVER twenty minutes, and René was beginning to worry.

  As she looked around the crowd, she spotted Louis Martinetti. He had slipped away from her and his daughter and wife, who were now talking to some FDA officials. They were laughing over something. Meanwhile, René tracked Louis moving through the crowd toward the rear of the hall and corridor leading to the staircase to the executive offices.

  She excused herself from the people she was with, saying she was going to find a rest room. She scanned the crowd, but Louis had disappeared.

  CORPORAL LOUIS MARTINETTI SLID BEHIND a tall bush growing out of a pot. The entire headquarters staff was assembled. It was like a Who’s Who of the North Korean General Command. Operation Buster. The big payoff.

  He surveyed the crowd—most of them officers of the 23rd Brigade, a few regulars standing guard, ready for some grunt command. He didn’t know how much time had passed as he remained staked out—ten minutes, twenty, an hour. But suddenly his body clenched.

  Corporal Martinetti raised his field glasses and adjusted the sights. And his heart leapt up. Colonel Chop Chop had stepped out from the masses. And he was heading for private consultation with Blackhawk.

  “THE REAL QUESTION IS: WHAT DO I do with you now?” Moy said. “You are my son.”

  “A mere technicality.”

  “Ah, yes, a slip of biology. But I still can’t let you go, you know.”

  “What’s this?” Carr looked confused. “I thought Teddy was—”

  “He is also, and it’s a long story,” Moy said. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “He hasn’t got anything on you,” Teddy said to his father.

  Jack looked at his half-brother or whatever the hell he was. His overly developed body was pressed into a tuxedo, making him look like a small orca. And it all came clear to Jack as he stared into the stolid eye of the gun barrel: this Teddy had visited him at Greendale in his Mr. Fixit role under the cover name Theo Rogers so the staffers wouldn’t connect him to Gavin Moy. (He probably even used a false ID.) And his purpose was to determine if Jack remembered anything because Moy must have told him that Jack was his blood son out of wedlock; and Theo/Teddy here was checking up on Jack’s recall, maybe in protection of his father, maybe sweating potential conflicts over who was rightful heir to the Moy fortune. Whatever, the guy had come out to spy on him.

  “No, but he’s the type who won’t let go. Unfortunate, but it’s in the blood.”

  “If I suddenly disappear,” Jack said, “people are going to wonder, and there are a hundred of them downstairs who saw me.”

  “I’ll get the boat,” Teddy said.

  “Oh, look at that,” Jack said. “A chip off the old block, bro.”

  “Fuck you, asshole.”

  “And silver-tongued at that.”

  “Yes,” Moy said. “The boat.”

  “Another replay, right? First your lover, now her son.”

  Moy looked point-blank at Jack. “I don’t care who you are. I don’t like you. And I’m not going to let you fuck things up for me. I’ve worked more friggin’ decades to get here than you’ve been alive. And you mean nothing to me. Nothing.”

  “Wait a minute,” protested Carr. “I don’t think this is a good idea.” And he looked from Moy to Teddy. “Really. He suddenly disappears, and people are going to get suspicious.”

  Teddy snapped at Carr. “No time to turn chickenshit.”

  Carr flashed a look at Jack. “But he’s right—a lot of people saw him tonight.”

  Teddy nodded toward a rear door. “He went for a stroll on the rocks and slipped. It worked in Bryce.”

  “Get him out of here,” Moy said.

  Teddy jabbed the pistol at Jack. “Move it.”

  “Freeze!”

  Jack turned. Behind them in the shadows was an older man aiming something barrel-like at them. “Hold it right there. Hands behind your heads, legs spread, and don’t move.” He stepped into the light.

  Louis Martinetti.

  He must have been wearing his tux over his fatigues, because he was dressed for combat, with a chest full of medals, including a Purple Heart. When they turned, Louis dropped down to a squat behind a table with flowers shooting out of a huge Chinese porcelain
vase. The problem was that he was holding a furled umbrella on the gunman. Suddenly Louis began shouting over his shoulder for his men to advance on the eastern flank of the compound. They had the colonel and Blackhawk cornered.

  “What the fuck?” Teddy said. He began to swing his gun arm toward Louis, who ducked behind the table making shooting noises.

  Someplace in the shadows of the outer office Jack heard a scream. “Louis, no!”

  René.

  A shot rang out, and instantly Jack heard a grunt as Louis fell backward. He had dropped his umbrella and was clutching his arm.

  Before Teddy could get off a shot at René, Jack flew at him, knowing instantly that in his condition he was no match for Teddy. So he sunk his teeth into Teddy’s wrist. The guy screamed and released the gun, but not before catapulting Jack off of him. But Jack grabbed the pistol and rolled away, his muscles paining him with the effort. It passed through his mind that he had not held a gun for a couple years, since target practice with Vince at the police range. But now a gun felt good in his grip.

  The next moment exploded with a scream from René as Teddy made a move to stomp Jack. Without thought, Jack took aim and squeezed the trigger. And Teddy hit the floor with a huge grunt, grabbing his leg. The bullet had hit him in the calf.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Moy pick up a crystal sculpture of his company’s logo to hurl at him. But Jack flashed the gun at him. “Drop it or you’re dead,” Jack said.

  Moy dropped it and Jack pulled himself to his feet, holding the pistol in both hands.

  “I should have taken care of you, too,” Moy said.

  “Yeah, you should have.”

  From the shadows behind them Louis sprang up. His injured arm didn’t stop him from flying at Jordan Carr and pulling him to the floor and flailing at him with his elbow and good hand. Louis was muttering odd syllables and swearing at Carr and saying something about Fuzzy. Jack didn’t understand, but Louis had Carr pinned to the floor.

  René shot over to him to pull him up to tend his wound. But Louis kept pummeling Carr, who yelled for help. René shouted for Louis to stop and managed to pull Louis off him. She removed Louis’s shirt and fashioned a tourniquet for his arm with the bow tie. His shirt was soaked in blood, but Louis insisted she put it back on him.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine. Just had a little—” Louis cut himself short, seeing Jack tying Moy’s hands behind him. Louis’s face lit up. “We got ‘em both, Fuzz. Hear that? We got’em.”

  Jack didn’t know what Louis was saying, but he seemed pleased. He pushed Moy on his front while René bound his hands and Jack fanned the gun from Moy to Theo to Jordan Carr, who had pulled himself to his feet again.

  Jack aimed the gun at him. “Playing both ends against the middle, right?”

  René looked at Jack. “What are you doing?”

  “He’s with them.” With his free hand Jack knocked a small lamp off Moy’s desk, pressed his foot on it, and tore the electrical cord off it. He tossed it to Carr. Then he pulled telephone wires out of the phone and wall. “Tie him,” he said, nodding to Teddy Moy, who was writhing on the floor. “Good and tight.”

  “Jack!” René said, glaring at him for an explanation.

  “I think they had something to do with Nick’s death.”

  “The fuck you doing?” Teddy protested as Carr began to tie him up. “Get the gun.”

  Carr looked back at the gun in Jack’s hands and began binding Teddy Moy’s arms behind him, then his legs to the thousand-pound marble table.

  “What are you saying?” René asked as she came over to Jack. She glared at Jordan Carr on his knees tying a tourniquet on Teddy’s left leg. Then she looked back at Jack for confirmation. Jack nodded, and René flew to Jordan. She grabbed Jordan by his shirt. “You killed Nick? You killed Nick?”

  “I didn’t. He did.”

  Teddy swore at Carr from his facedown position. “And you were right there calling the shots.”

  “But why?” René cried, and she whacked Jordan in the face.

  Jordan put his hand to his cheek, which looked branded. “Because he was in the way, that’s why. Because he wanted to stop something that was good. And maybe before you go sanctimonious on me again, you can ask yourself this: If you could have saved your father, wouldn’t you have done anything? Wouldn’t you?”

  René said nothing.

  “Sure you would, even if it meant eliminating anyone who stood in the way of his cure, right? You would have done the same—anything to keep him from dying layer by layer, even if it meant a few flashbacks. Right? Right?”

  For a stunning moment René could not respond, as if she did not know how to answer the questions. But she backhanded Jordan in the face.

  The moment was broken when Moy’s cell phone cut the air. Jack reached into Moy’s jacket pocket and pulled it out. It was someone identifying him as GEM’s executive vice president.

  “Yeah, everything’s just dandy,” Jack said. “We’re on our way down.”

  When Jordan Carr was finished binding Theo, he looked at Jack and René. “So now what?” he asked, trying an ingratiating smile on Jack.

  Louis was sitting in a chair muttering to himself. But he looked okay. Just a flesh wound.

  Moy was in his chair, his hands bound behind him. Theo was tied to the marble table and going nowhere. Jack aimed the gun at Jordan Carr’s chest. “You’ve got thirty seconds to tell us about Bryce or I’m going to start shooting holes in you.”

  ALL THE WAY DOWN THE STAIRS and through the corridor they could hear the chant of the crowd initiated by his management team: “Gavin! Gavin Gavin!”

  They paraded into the hall, Gavin leading the way, his hands bound behind him, Jordan Carr in tow, also bound. And behind him came Jack with the gun and flanked by Louis and René. Teddy was back in Moy’s office enjoying a view of the underside of his father’s pink marble table.

  For a moment, cheering flared up as people at the rear of the hall spotted Moy. But instantly it began to mute as people saw the spectacle of him being led at gunpoint to the podium. In the distance the sound of police sirens from Jack’s 911 call. But he had plenty of time before they arrived.

  At the microphone, he introduced himself, then said he would like to make an announcement. He felt for the lump in the breast pocket of his sportcoat and he removed the small silver MP3 recorder that Vince had given him. He held it up to the microphone and pressed Play.

  “You killed her. Admit it.”

  “Yeah, I killed her and she deserved it. You happy now? I killed her.”

  Epilogue

  Homer’s Island · Seven Weeks Later

  A SMALL SIGN ON THE beach read BEWARE OF JELLYFISH!

  “Nice timing,” Jack said, and handed René a plate.

  They sat on beach chairs by the water’s edge picnicking on shish kebab, stuffed grape leaves, pilaf, and stewed vegetables.

  “In the late sixties, she was on a marine science panel in Cambridge with Jacques Cousteau—something about the threat of industrial pollution and global warming on the oceans of the world. Thaddeus Sherman was impressed, and they started talking. One thing led to the next, and he invited her to stay here because it was the only place in the northeast where Caribbean sea life shows up. One visit, and she fell in love with the place and started collecting specimens.”

  Jack poured two glasses of chardonnay.

  “Sounds like she was a very special woman.”

  “I think she was.” They clicked glasses.

  Today was the thirty-first anniversary of Rose Sarkisian’s death.

  “She apparently had an affair with Gavin Moy, who was more her type—academically speaking—than the man she married. Who knows? Records say they were in divorce proceedings before he was killed in a plane crash. They hid that fact on the gravestone to save face.”

  Jack also learned that Rose had specialized in the therapeutic properties of marine toxins. After having bagged some Solakandjis, she had chemical
assays done on the toxin and found that the compound demonstrated beneficial properties on the neurological system. When Moy decided to start researching these neurological properties, Rose went to work with him as a partner. They apparently became lovers. And when she became pregnant with Jack, she insisted that he either marry her or provide financially for Jack’s upbringing. Moy refused. They fought, and she was killed. Moy and his people went on to develop an FDA application of the compound for the treatment of dementia. But Rose Sarkisian was the prime mover. She had identified the agent and its therapeutic properties with lab mice.

  Mookie. Where’s Mookie?

  And that stuffed animal was what she had made for her little boy.

  Jack looked out over the water to Skull Rock and the glittering azure expanse beyond. And for a moment he thought he heard thunder.

  “I didn’t know that Nick knew your mother. He never said anything.”

  “Except he must have suspected when he saw me on his MRI patient list. Then he did some name and date checks.”

  “He must have suspected foul play all along, since she had identified the toxin’s benefits, then mysteriously disappeared.”

  “My guess. And then Moy appropriated the discovery and slapped his name on the patents.”

  “Which is why Nick kept pressing to discover whether you remembered anything.”

  “He even sent you after me. Kind of glad he did.”

  She smiled. “Me, too.” He felt a flush of warmth as she took his hand.

  Because there was no statute of limitations in Massachusetts, Gavin Moy had been indicted for murder, the evidence being his own confession on tape. Likewise, Jordan Carr and Teddy Moy were also indicted for the murder of Nick Mavros. After the discovery of Nick’s body, the film in his camera had been developed. At first it had meant nothing in the investigation of the accident. But when the police heard the tape of the exchange recorded in Moy’s office, they went back to the film to discover on the last frame a face staring out from a clutch of dark bushes. When blown up, the face in the dark looking directly at the camera was Jordan Carr’s.