“I wish it were so,” the man continued, “but it is. Don’t worry, Doctor Starks. Our investigators will track the transactions. We’ll get to the bottom of this. And your accounts are insured, at least in part. Eventually, we’ll get this all straightened out. It’s just going to take some time, and, as I said, we may have to involve the police or the SEC, because it seems that what you’re saying is that a theft of some sort is involved.”
“How much time?”
“It’s summertime and some of the staff is on vacation. I’d guess no more than a couple of weeks. At the most.”
Ricky hung up the phone. He did not have a couple of weeks.
By the end of the day he was able to determine that the only account that he owned that hadn’t been raided and eviscerated by someone who’d gained access was the small checking account he kept at First Cape Bank up in Wellfleet. This was an account purely designed to make summer matters easier. There was barely ten thousand dollars in the account, money that he used to pay bills at the local fish market and grocery store, the liquor store and hardware store. He paid for his gardening tools and plants and seeds with that account. It was money to make his vacation run smoothly. A household account, for the month he spent in the vacation household.
He was a little surprised that Rumplestiltskin had not assaulted these funds as well. He felt toyed with, almost as if the man had left this parcel of money alone to tease Ricky. Regardless, Ricky thought he needed to find a way to get the funds into his hands, before they, too, disappeared into some bizarre financial limbo. He called the manager of the First Cape Bank and told him that he was going to need to close the account and was going to want the balance of the money in cash.
The manager informed Ricky that he would have to be present for that transaction, which was fine with Ricky. He wished some of the other institutions handling his money had had the same policy. He explained to the manager that there had been some trouble with other accounts, and that it was important that no one other than Ricky access the money. The manager offered to have the funds written into a cashier’s check, which he would personally keep for Ricky’s arrival. This was acceptable.
The problem was how to get the money.
Ignored in his desk was an open plane ticket from La Guardia to Hyannis. He wondered whether the reservation he’d made was still intact. He opened his wallet and counted out about three hundred dollars in cash. In the top drawer of his bedroom dresser he had another fifteen hundred dollars in traveler’s checks. This was an anachronism; in this era of instant cash from automatic teller machines seemingly everywhere, the idea that someone would keep an emergency fund in traveler’s checks was obsolete. Ricky took a small amount of pleasure in thinking that his antique ideas would prove helpful. He wondered for a moment whether that wasn’t a concept he should embrace more fully.
But he didn’t really have time to consider this.
He could get to the Cape. And get back, as well, he thought. It would take at least twenty-four hours. But in the same moment, he was overcome with a sudden sense of lethargy, almost as if he couldn’t move his muscles, as if the synapses in the brain that issued commands to sinew and tissue throughout his body had abruptly gone on strike. A black exhaustion that mocked his age flowed through his body. He felt dull, stupid, and filled with fatigue.
Ricky rocked in his desk chair, his head leaned back, staring at the ceiling. He recognized the warning signs of a clinical depression as quickly as a mother would know a cold coming on when her child sneezed. He held out his hands in front of him, looking for some quiver or palsy. They were still steady. How much longer? he wondered.
Chapter Eleven
Ricky got an answer in the following morning’s Times, but not in the manner he’d expected it. His paper was delivered to his apartment door as it was every day except Sunday, when his usual habit was to walk out to the neighborhood delicatessen and buy the bulky paper before heading to a nearby coffee shop, just as Rumplestiltskin had so carefully observed in his opening threat. He had had more difficulty sleeping the night before, so when he heard the faint thump of the delivery service dropping the paper outside his apartment, he was alert, and within seconds had seized the paper and flung it open on the kitchen table. His eyes dropped immediately to the small ads on the bottom of the front page, only to see an anniversary greeting, a come-on for a computer dating service and a third small single-column box ad: specialized opportunities, see page b-16.
Ricky threw the paper across the small kitchen in frustration. It made a sound like a bird trying to fly with a broken wing as it slapped against the wall. He was enraged, almost choking and spitting with a sudden outburst of fury. He had expected a rhyme, another cryptic, teasing reply, at the bottom of the front page, just as his inquiry had been. No poem, no answer, he snarled inwardly. “How do you expect me to beat your damn deadline when you don’t reply in timely fashion?” he almost shouted, raising his voice to no one physically present but certainly occupying a significant space.
He noticed that his hands were shaking slightly as he made himself some morning coffee. The hot liquid did little to calm him. He tried to relax himself with some deep breathing exercises, but those only slowed his racing heart momentarily. He could feel his anger soaring through his body, as if it were capable of reaching into every organ beneath the surface of his skin and tightening every one. His head pounded already, and he felt as if he was trapped inside the apartment that he’d known as home. There was sweat dripping beneath his armpits, his brow felt feverish, and his throat was dry and sandy.
He must have sat at his table, outwardly immobile, inwardly churning for hours, almost trancelike, unable to imagine what his next step was. He knew that he needed to make plans, decisions, to act in certain directions, but not getting a reply when he expected one had crippled him. He thought he could hardly move, as if, suddenly, each of his joints in arms and legs had become immobile, unwilling to respond to commands.
Ricky did not have any idea how long he sat like that before lifting his eyes just slightly and fixing on the Times lying in a fluttered heap in disarray where he had flung it. Nor was he aware how long he stared at the clutter of pages before he noticed the small streak of bright red just ducking out from underneath the pile. And then, after taking notice of this abnormality—after all, in the past the Times was not called the Gray Lady for nothing—that he connected it to himself. He fixed on this small streak, and finally said to himself: There is no flagrant red ink in the Times. Mostly sturdy black and white delivered in seven-column, two-section format, as regular as clockwork. Even their color photographs of the president or models displaying the latest Parisian fashions seemed to automatically take on the drab and dull tinge of the paper’s past.
Ricky picked himself up out of his chair and crossed the room, bending over the mess of newspaper. He reached for the splash of color and pulled it toward him.
It was page B-16. This was the obituary page.
But written in dramatic, glowing fluorescent red ink across the pictures, stories, and death notices was the following:
You’re on the right track,
as you travel back.
Twenty certainly covers the base.
And my mother is the right case.
But her name will be hard to find,
unless I give you a clue in kind.
So I will tell you this, you would have
known her as a miss.
And in the days that came after,
you would never have heard her laughter.
You promised much, but delivered none.
That’s why revenge is left to her son.
Father left, mother dead:
that is why I want your head.
This is where I end this rhyme,
Because I note you have little time.
Beneath the poem was a large red R and beneath that, this time in black ink, the man had drawn a rectangle around an obituary, with a large arrow pointing at the de
ad man’s face and story, and the words: You will fit perfectly right here.
He stared at the poem and the message it contained for a moment that stretched into minutes and finally close to an hour, digesting each word the way a gourmand might a fine Parisian meal except that Ricky found this taste to be bitter and salty. It was well into the morning, another day x-ed away, when he noted the obvious: Rumplestiltskin had gained access to his paper in the moments between arrival outside his brownstone and delivery at his door. His fingers flew to the telephone, and within minutes he’d obtained the number for the delivery service. The phone rang twice, before being answered by an automated selection recording:
“New subscribers, please press one. Complaints about delivery or if you did not receive your paper, please press two. Account information, please press three.”
None of these options seemed to him to be precisely on target, but he suspected a complaint might actually draw a human response, so he tried two. This created a ringing, followed by a woman’s voice:
“What address, please?” she said without introduction.
Ricky hesitated and then gave the address of his home.
“We show all deliveries made to that location,” she said.
“Yes,” Ricky said, “I received a paper, but I want to know who delivered it . . .”
“What is the problem, sir? You don’t need a second delivery?”
“No . . .”
“This line is for people who didn’t get their paper delivered . . .”
“I understand,” he said, starting to become exasperated. “But there was a problem with the delivery . . .”
“They were not on time?”
“No. Yes, they were on time . . .”
“Did the delivery service make too much noise?”
“No.”
“This line is for people with complaints about their delivery.”
“Yes. You said that. Or, not exactly that, and I understand . . .”
“What is your problem, sir?”
Ricky paused, trying to find a common language to deal with the young woman on the line. “My paper was defaced,” he said abruptly.
“Do you mean it was ripped or wet or unreadable?”
“I mean that someone tampered with it.”
“Sometimes papers come off the press with errors in pagination or folding, was this that sort of mix-up?”
“No,” Ricky said, sliding away from his defensive tones. “What I mean to say is that someone wrote offensive language on my paper.”
The woman paused. “That’s a new one,” she said slowly. Her response almost turned her into a real person, rather than the typical disembodied voice. “I’ve never heard of that. What sort of offensive language?”
Ricky decided to be oblique. He spoke quickly and aggressively. “Are you Jewish, miss? Do you know what it would be like to get a paper that someone drew a swastika on? Or are you Puerto Rican? How would you feel if someone wrote ‘Go back to San Juan! ’? Are you African American? You know the word that triggers hate, don’t you?”
The clerk paused, as if trying to keep up. “Someone put a swastika on your paper?” she asked.
“Something like that,” Ricky answered. “That’s why I need to speak to the people in charge of the delivery.”
“I think you better speak with my supervisor.”
“Sure,” Ricky said. “But first I want the name and then the phone number of the person in charge of deliveries to my building.”
The woman hesitated again, and Ricky could hear her shuffling through some papers, and then there was a series of computer keys clicking in the background. When she came back on the line, she read off the name of a route supervisor, a driver, their phone numbers and their addresses. “I’d like you to speak with my supervisor,” she said, after giving the information.
“Have him call me,” Ricky replied before hanging up the phone. Within seconds he had called the number she had provided. Another woman answered.
“Superior news delivery.”
“Mr. Ortiz, please,” he asked politely.
“Ortiz is out by the loading dock. What’s this about?”
“A delivery problem.”
“Did you call the dispatch . . . ?”
“Yes. That’s how I got this number. And his name.”
“What sort of problem?”
“How about I discuss that with Mr. Ortiz.”
The woman hesitated. “Maybe he’s gone home,” she said.
“Why don’t you take a look,” Ricky said coldly, “and that way we can all avoid some unnecessary unpleasantness.”
“What sort of unpleasantness?” the woman asked, still protective.
Ricky bluffed. “The alternative would be me showing up with a policeman or two and perhaps my attorney in tow.” He spoke, adopting the most patrician “I’m a rich white male and I own the world” tone.
The woman paused, then said, “You hold. I’ll get Ortiz.”
A few seconds later a Hispanic-accented man picked up the phone. “This is Ortiz. Wha’s this about?”
Ricky didn’t hesitate. “At approximately five-thirty this morning you delivered a copy of the Times outside my door, just as you do most every weekday and Saturday morning. The only difference was that today someone needed to place a message inside that newspaper. That’s what I’m calling about.”
“No, this I don’t know about . . .”
“Mr. Ortiz, you haven’t broken any laws here, and it is not you that I am interested in. But if you do not cooperate with me, I will make a significant stink over this. In other words, you do not have a problem yet, but I will make one for you, unless I start hearing a few more helpful responses.”
The deliveryman paused, digesting Ricky’s threat.
“I didn’t know there was a problem,” he said. “The dude said there wouldn’t be no problem.”
“I think he lied. Tell me,” Ricky said quietly.
“I pull up the street, we got deliveries in six buildings that block, me and Carlos, my nephew, that’s our route. There’s a big ol’ black limo parked outside, middle of the street, motor running, jus’ waiting for us. Man gets right out, soon as he sees the truck, asks who’s going into your building. I asks ‘Why?’ and he tells me none of my business, then gives a little smile, says it’s no big deal, just wants to make a little birthday surprise for an old friend. Wants to write something in the paper for him.”
“Go on.”
“Tells me which apartment. Which door. Then takes out the paper and a pen and writes right on the page. Puts the paper down flat on the hood of the limo, but I can’t see what he’s writing . . .”
“Was there anyone else there?”
Ortiz paused, considering. “Well, got to be a driver behind the wheel. That’s one, for sure. Windows of the limo all blacked out, but maybe there’s somebody else there, too. Man looked back in, like he was checking with someone was he doing it right, then finished up. Hands me back the paper. Gives me a twenty . . .”
“How much?”
Ortiz hesitated. “Maybe it was a hundred . . .”
“And what then?”
“I did like the man says. Toss that paper right outside the right door real special.”
“Was he waiting for you outside when you finished up?”
“No. Man, limo, all gone.”
“Can you describe the man you dealt with?”
“White guy, wearing a dark suit, maybe blue. Tie. Real nice clothes, got hisself plenty of cash. Peeled that hundred off a roll like it was a quarter you gonna drop in some homeless guy’s cup.”
“And what did he look like?”
“He had those tinted glasses, not too tall, hair that’s pretty funny, like it was sitting on his head screwy . . .”
“Like a wig?”
“Yeah. That’s right. Coulda been a wig. And a little beard, too. Maybe that’s a fake, too. Not a big guy. Definitely had a few too many meals, though. Maybe thirty years ol
d . . .”
Ortiz hesitated.
“What?”
“I remember seeing the streetlights reflecting off those shoes. They was real polished. Real expensive. Those loafers with the little tassels on the front. What you call those?”
“I don’t know. Think you could recognize him again?”
“I dunno. Maybe. Probably not. Real dark on the street. Streetlights, that’s all. And maybe I was lookin’ at that hundred a little closer than I was at him.”
This made sense to Ricky. He tried a different tack.
“Did you by any chance get a plate number on the limo?”
The delivery driver paused, before replying.
“No, man, didn’t think of it. Shit. That woulda been smart, right?”
“Yeah,” Ricky said. But he knew this was not necessary, because he’d already met the man who had been in the street that morning waiting for the delivery truck after Ricky had placed the ad in the newspaper. Ricky was certain that it was the lawyer who’d called himself Merlin.
Midmorning, he received a telephone call from the vice president of the First Cape Bank, the same man who was holding his remaining cash in a cashier’s check for Ricky. The bank executive sounded nervously upset on the telephone. As he spoke, Ricky tried to place the man’s face, but was unable, although he was sure that he’d met him before.
“Doctor Starks? This is Michael Thompson at the bank. We spoke the other day . . .”
“Yes,” Ricky replied. “You’re holding some funds for me . . .”
“I am. They are locked in my desk drawer. That’s not why I’m calling. We had some unusual action on your account. An event, one might say.”
“What sort of unusual action?” Ricky asked. The man seemed to mentally fidget for a second or two before answering.
“Well, I don’t like to speculate, but it seems there was an unauthorized effort to access your account.”
“What sort of unauthorized effort?”
Again the man seemed hesitant. “Well, as you know, just in recent years we’ve gone over to electronic banking, like everybody else. But because we’re a smaller institution and more localized, well, you know we like to consider ourselves old-fashioned in a lot of ways . . .”
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