Under Pressure: A Lucas Page Novel

by Robert Pobi

  Laurie didn’t say anything; she knew she was busted.

  Lucas turned off the water, pulled the brush out from between his metal joints, and wiped his hands on a towel. “So we go for a walk. When we get back, I’ll read with Laurie, and Hector can go nuts with the super glue.”

  Lemmy was moving in tight excited circles at this point—or at least as tight as a hundred and twenty-five pounds of Great Dane mixed with Mastiff possibly can. His tail hit the cabinet door on each rotation, rattling it on its hinges.

  Erin shook her head. “The last time Hector used super glue, I had to pry his fingertips off the dining table with a butter knife. I’ll read with Laurie and you can watch Captain Sticky here.”

  Maude held up the ladle triumphantly. “Therefore we go for a walk!”

  * * *

  Lucas had changed out of his suit and was in jeans and a pair of Chucky Ts—the only sneakers he liked beside Vans that he didn’t kill in a few days; it was amazing how his prosthetic foot chewed through shoes. Erin walked beside him, her arm around his waist and her thumb threaded through his belt loop. They walked like this sometimes, but only for short stretches—she usually gave up after he stepped on her foot the second time.

  The kids were moving with enough energy to burn off their supper calories and Lemmy was in mosey mode, stopping at every third or fourth lamppost for a sniff—the doggy version of social media. Lucas often wondered how he chose where to stop—it seemed completely random—but he had long ago decided that this was one of the mysteries of the universe that he just wasn’t smart enough to unravel.

  They hit Fifth and turned south. The kids preferred walking on the west side of the street, but the roots under the cobblestones turned that stretch of sidewalk into an ankle-breaking stunt for Lucas. He did it every now and then, but it really slowed them down.

  The sun was setting beyond the park, and the green oxidized schooner atop the clubhouse on the sailing pond looked like it was on a sea of fire. The seasons seemed a month behind this year, and most of the leaves in the park still clung to the trees. The warm wind blowing up Fifth gave the false impression that winter might not make it, and Lucas allowed himself to enjoy the illusion.

  But most of his mental universe was occupied by their guy. That both the Guggenheim and Makepeace’s apartment were on the same street he was now walking along with his family wasn’t lost on him, and with each step they took down Fifth, neither crime scene felt far enough away.

  How was the string of bombings laced together? How did the attempt on Saarinen, Makepeace’s murder, and the Hockneys mesh into a cohesive pattern?

  Then there was their boy Frosst. Had he really walked by a bank of security cameras, planted a bomb in Makepeace’s humidor, then walked out? If he had, it wasn’t at the Hockneys’ orders, because they could be called a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them. At least not William.

  The only thing that was a given was that the Hockneys were part of the formula, even if they didn’t know it.

  This was not about a revolution. It was not about abandoning technology. Or turning your back on the system. It was about something else. Maybe money. Maybe some other plot point. But it wasn’t a revolution.

  “Would you stop working?” Erin said.

  “Sorry.” Lemmy had his nose to the base of a tree, intently picking up esoteric information with the deep sniffs of a sommelier.

  The kids were waiting at the light at 72nd. When it went green, they looked back. Erin glanced up the street, then nodded, and they headed across Fifth, Maude holding Laurie’s hand, and Laurie holding Alisha’s hand. Damien and Hector ran ahead.

  Lucas, Erin, and Lemmy followed them across Fifth, into the park. Terrace Drive was closed, and the kids ran off for the playground.

  Erin grabbed Lucas’s hand and her fingers were warm. “Okay. So talk to me. How’s work?”

  “Pointless.”

  “That’s not the confidence I fell in love with.”

  They walked through the gate to the 72nd Street playground, which was technically closer to 71st, something that the kids loved pointing out almost every time they came. They circled the little concrete tower and Lucas headed for the green painted benches set down in a spectator semicircle around the cubist concrete playground.

  The space was empty, which was anomalous for a warm night in the fall. Evidently the bombings, and the television reporters crying wolf 24/7, were having an effect on the population.

  Lucas tied Lemmy’s leash to the bench and was about to sit down when his phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, intentionally ignoring Erin’s arched eyebrow, and saw that it was Kehoe. He walked away for some privacy.

  “Dr. Page here.”

  “Page, have you got a minute?”

  Lucas turned back to the park, to the kids ripping around the cement clubhouse and Erin sitting alone with Lemmy. “One minute.” He wondered if Kehoe had slept at all in the past two days.

  “I want you to go talk to Saarinen. He was in this afternoon and we took his statement, but it was all useless. I know that his wife and housekeeper were blown up today—”

  “And his dog.”

  Kehoe ignored him. “But he’s the only targeted survivor we have, and he might have some information without knowing it. You were right, and this thing is starting to hang together, but none of the analysts can figure out how. If anyone knows which knobs to fiddle with after something like this, it’s you.” Kehoe was going for the direct approach, something he did only when expediency was important.

  “The guy didn’t look like he was interested in talking. What do I do, show up with flowers and candy?”

  “Maybe not flowers and candy, but you can show up with something. His favorite sandwiches or something—drop by unannounced just to check up on him. Tell him you were wondering how he was doing. Play the kindred spirits card, use your injuries as an in.”

  “Jesus fuck, where do you come from?”

  “I’m sorry if your sensibilities are hurt, but we need this to move forward. And we need it to happen now. Drop by his place. Have a coffee. Hold his hand. Take him a little gift. And do it tonight.”

  Lucas looked over at Erin, who was eyeing him suspiciously. Then she turned away.

  Lucas said, “Text me the address,” and hung up.

  41

  Lighthouse Park, Roosevelt Island

  Jody Pinkerton and her sister Marny watched Frederick Dobel read the letter from the Machine Bomber.

  Dobel was a tall black man in his … forties? fifties? Jody had no way to tell; everyone over twenty looked the same to her—ancient. But Dobel did a lot with what he had. He was dressed in a classic trench coat that he had topped off with a frayed Paul Smith scarf and accented with polished Frye harness boots. His look was vintage and, like, so modern at the same time. And Jody would know—she had a street fashion gram called Urban Wearfare. She wasn’t rolling in money yet—but she did have almost a thousand followers, and one of her posts had been liked by Selena Gomez, so she was going places. But until she made it, she was working at the Gap.

  Dobel was standing on a bench, holding the letter at the top and bottom, reading it as if it were a royal decree. It was from the guy—the revolutionary guy—who had been blowing things up because he was so sad for humans. Because machines were doing everything.

  And, when she thought about it, they kinda were.

  Because the world was getting really techy. Scary true. Last week there had been a power outage, and they couldn’t operate the cash registers at work. People wanted to buy things, but they couldn’t ring up the sales. And even if they could, the credit card machine had been down. And she had seen this show on Netflix about how a self-driving car had killed a guy—just killed him—because he was reading a book instead of driving. But it was a self-driving car, so what was he supposed to do? So no, technology was most definitely becoming a problem. She had spent the day reading about it on her phone.

  And her sister, Marny, h
ad texted her that they should go to this demonstration to learn what they could do. And they were committed to helping out any way they could. Last year, her and Marny had done the ice bucket thing. Twice! Both times she had worn a nice little Alfred Sung top and she had looked so cute because she had bangs back then (she looked great in bangs, all of her friends said so). And her and Marny had dumped buckets of ice water on their heads twice. Well, actually, only Marny had done it twice; Jody figured that once was good enough. Apparently, every time you dumped ice on your head, some guy gave a bunch of money to some charity in your name. But it was a really good cause. Which was why everyone was doing it. Well, everyone except her upstairs neighbor. His name was Mr. Warren and he had some disease he liked to blame for not going out—it was Parkin’s son’s disease—but he was just lazy. Probably a drunk, too—he was shaking all the time. Just a drunk old man too lazy to help out crippled kids by dumping a little ice on his head. Probably thought it was too cold. Boohoo, sucks to be him.

  Dobel finished reading and held up the letter. “And now we burn our phones!” he said. He pulled out a lighter and touched the flame to the letter. When it was burning, he dropped it into the garbage can beside the bench, which went up with an angry whump!

  And people began chucking their phones into the fire. Like, brand-new and everything! Some were on. Some were turned off. Some were old flip phones. One lady scuttled forward and dumped a whole shoe box of phones into the fire, then spat on them.

  Jody looked over at Marny, who had her new iPhone clamped to her chest. Their eyes met and Jody could tell that Marny thought these people were insane.

  Jody and Marny got the fuck out of there.

  Immediately.

  42

  The Upper West Side

  The doorman looked like a scarecrow dressed in a uniform stolen from a marching band; all that was missing was straw sticking out of his collar and a pair of cymbals. He eyed the box and paper bag Lucas placed on the desk as if they were contaminated with the coronavirus, but he called up, then nodded at the elevator at the back of the foyer. “Penthouse.”

  When Lucas picked up the box, the Windex came out and the scarecrow began furiously spraying the marble top.

  The hallway to the penthouse matched the foyer downstairs, with a strong period Art Deco flair expressed with black lacquered paneling and chrome fixtures. It was easy to find the apartment—it was the only one with a federal agent in front of the door.

  The bureau man was a twenty-first-century off-the-shelf variant of Joe Friday. He smelled of Old Spice and looked like he spent his weekends in the garage tinkering with his boat. Lucas had to put the box and bag down to pull out his badge, and the man examined it, called it in, then handed it back with zero fanfare. He rapped on the door with the back of his knuckles and stepped aside.

  Saarinen opened the door and took a step back, visibly surprised. He stared for an indecisive second before saying, “Come in.” He held a glass half filled with ice cubes and, judging by his breath, vodka.

  The apartment was outfitted with straight lines, a lot of beiges, and a collection of art glass spread out on every flat surface. There were ten-foot ceilings and a view of the American Museum of Natural History across the street. The patio doors were open and the sounds of the city supplied the ambient noise.

  The focus of the room was a bottle of Finlandia and a glass ice bucket on the coffee table. The bottle looked like it wouldn’t make it to midnight. Saarinen had two framed photographs out—one that had to be his wife, the other presumably his son. Lucas suddenly wished he hadn’t let Kehoe talk him into coming.

  Saarinen nodded at the glass in his hand. “A drink?” Three separate prescription bottles—painkillers for the shrapnel wounds—were on a side table, two knocked over and their pills spilled out. An open copy of Lucas’s last book lay open beside the pills, text side down.

  Lucas sat down on the sofa, still holding the box. “A water would be great.” There was something missing in the space, and it took him a few seconds to realize what it was—there were no bonsai.

  “I am usually distrustful of anyone who doesn’t drink.” Saarinen pulled a bottle of water from a Knoll console and handed it to Lucas. “But tonight it means that there is more for me.”

  Lucas wondered if the man was intentionally morphing into a Bergman character but when he factored the two photos on the coffee table into the conversation, he decided that he had no right to pass judgment.

  Saarinen moved around the coffee table, and for a man who was well on his way to killing a quart of vodka, his footing was better than Lucas’s. “So…”—he topped up his cocktail, then put the bottle down on the table with a percussive thud—“why are you here?”

  Lucas thought about lying, but it wasn’t in him. Not with a man who had spent the night looking at photographs of his dead family. “My boss asked me to come by and talk to you. See if you knew anything that might be helpful to us.”

  Saarinen eyed him for a moment. “That is very transparent of you.”

  Lucas put his hands on top of the box. “And I thought this might have some meaning for you.”

  Saarinen just stared at him.

  Lucas peeled back one of the flaps of the box and lifted out a little bulldog puppy that was snoring tiny piglet snores.

  At the sight of the dog, Saarinen did the last thing Lucas expected—he smiled.

  Lucas held the little guy out. “Sometimes a dog is the best medicine. But if you don’t want him, he goes back—he has a nice family waiting, so he’s going to have a good life one way or the other.”

  Saarinen pushed himself out of the chair and took the fat little biscuit into his arms. He spoke to the dog in his native Finnish, but there was nothing cutesy about his tone—he sounded like he was giving orders.

  “He’s ten weeks old and he’s housebroken and piddle-pad-trained. There are pads, a leash, and some food in the box—I wasn’t sure you’d be equipped.” He looked around. “But I might be wrong.” The place was obviously well stocked, even if there were no miniature trees. That there might be dog food in one of the cupboards was not much of a stretch. Lucas knew that the place belonged to the Hockneys—it was one of several hôtels particuliers they owned in the city.

  Saarinen nosed the dog. “I like living in Pelham Gardens. It’s close to the zoo and the botanical gardens; Bongo and I used to walk the park before closing every night.”

  Lucas held out the bag. “I also got you some food—soup. I Googled Finnish food, and apparently soup is a big thing. I couldn’t find any pickled herring.”

  Saarinen nodded at the bottle of Finlandia on the table. “I’ve been drinking my dinner.”

  “How very Teutonic of you.”

  Saarinen leaned back and put the puppy down in his lap. He stood on the man’s knees with wobbly legs, looking at the floor, which might as well have been three stories down. He mewled and Saarinen scratched him behind his ears.

  Lucas could blame this on Kehoe, but part of the reason he was here was because he understood what Saarinen was going through. After his own very personal Event he didn’t have much of a support group. Kehoe had visited once. Hartke, his old partner, had visited twice. His first wife, Nancy, had visited a handful of times until it became evident that he would live, then she had sent a bailiff with divorce papers. And that had been about it; no one wanted to be reminded of what could happen on this job. He had a sneaking suspicion that test pilots probably had a similar relationship with one another. “I just wanted to see that you were…” He paused, searching his lexicon for the appropriate phrase. “Not too terrible.”

  Saarinen smiled at that. “Are you now going to tell me that things will be fine? That I’ll get over this?”

  “You will never get over this.”

  “Honesty. A rare trait.”

  “You’ve been through this before.”

  “My son’s murder killed our entire family; my wife and I both died with him. Somehow it was worse for
her, I don’t know why. Maybe it was that maternal bond women speak of. For ten years I lived with a corpse. So did she, but at least the dead man in her midst got up, went to work, and tried to continue living.” His eyes unfocused, and Lucas could see him slip through the wormhole to yesteryear. “In a way, that bomb did her a favor this morning. I just wish it had done the same for me.” He upended the glass and stared at it, as if seeing it for the first time. “I’m sorry. It has been a long day.”

  Saarinen leaned back in the chair with the dog still in his lap. The pup had fallen back asleep, but wasn’t snoring this time. “I have spent my life trying to save nature for people who don’t care. And today at the scene of my wife’s murder, the crowd chanted that it was all a lie; that it hadn’t happened; that it was part of some elaborate fantasy and I was a crisis actor.” For the first time, emotion bled through his features, and it looked as if he would cry. But he swallowed, took another drink, then let out a sigh. “A crisis actor? It is the twenty-first century and we still have to deal with flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers and moon landing truthers. This is what you get when guns are more important than books—a nation of sociocultural primitives.” He stopped and focused on the glass in his left hand. “Please forgive me—like I said, it’s been a long day.” He took a swill of Finlandia. “Ask the questions you came here to ask, Dr. Page.”

  “What is your opinion of Mr. Frosst?”

  Saarinen scratched the puppy’s belly. “I don’t spend much time with him. He works for the Hockneys.”

  “Do you think he might have something to do with these bombings?”

  Saarinen shook his head. “Mr. Frosst is a lot of things, none of them very attractive, but he would protect the Hockneys with his life if it became necessary. He is not a man you want in your blind spot.”

  “And William Junior. What can you tell me about him?”

  Saarinen smiled at the question. “Edgar Bronfman once said that a wealthy family is shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations—if he had met William Junior, he would have changed it to two.”