Although he was born two decades or more before some of the original big names in the tech world, Richard O’Neil hadn’t been quite as stellar an empire builder as Gates, Jobs, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, and it had taken him until the ripe old age of sixty-four before he passed the billion-dollar mark. He didn’t focus on flashy consumer products, and so tended to run beneath the radar. One of his companies was solely responsible for the AI substructure used by almost a quarter of Fortune 500 companies and the US Navy. As a result, he had incredible influence, from Wall Street to the White House, and he courted politicians in both parties, or rather they courted him.
But here he was, cute as any guy on the planet could possibly be, trying to charm the pants off my boss and calling his own son a violent racist.
“You look surprised,” O’Neil said.
“It’s the tea.”
He laughed his beautiful laugh, and his eyes sparkled at her. “I find that hard to believe.”
Jen took a bite of the cookie.
“Good?”
She nodded and didn’t speak until she had swallowed.
“You see, Mr. O’Neil—”
“Jennifer, it’ll ruin my day if you don’t call me Richard.”
And to my total surprise, she said, “Richard … I was kind of guessing that since you got him off his first charge of assault, you countenanced his behavior and his views.”
Richard looked stunned. “You’re kidding. Racism is repugnant to me. I mean, why would I be flirting with you if I was a Nazi like my son?”
Bold move, that. Even I know that admitting you’re flirting with the person you’ve just met and most definitely shouldn’t be flirting with is like clearing out a pawn and then leading your chess game with the king. Guess it can be done, but you’re probably going to go down hard and fast.
But instead of a rebuke, Jen smiled. “That’s sweet, Richard.”
“Jennifer, I got him off that charge because he’s my son, and that’s what you do for your kids. He promised to get his shit together.”
I could feel a gleam coming into Jen’s eyes. “Your strategy didn’t quite grab you Olympic gold, did it?”
He looked at us thoughtfully and raised one eyebrow. “No, it didn’t.”
He smiled and his eyes warmed Jen right to her heart and made me cringe. He looked at the side of her mouth. “Oops,” he said, “you have a crumb stuck here,” and with two fingers brushed it away, then studied her to make sure he’d done his job. “Perfect.”
Without missing a beat, he went on, “I tell you what I’d like right now, Jennifer. I’d like to see my son get sentenced to prison. I’d like to see him stuck face to face with the consequences of his despicable actions. I’d like to see him, for once, shaking in those storm-trooper boots of his.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because that’s not what’s going to happen. I can’t let it happen, simple as that. It would hurt my reputation, lessen my clout, and hurt me personally. And it would kill his mother.”
“You two still together?”
“No, not really. I wouldn’t be flirting with you if I was. But I don’t want to see her getting hurt. She’s a really decent person.”
“There’s nothing I can do. It’s up to the DA to drop the charges.”
“If I had wanted that, it would have happened already. No, I want to see him scared, but I don’t want him convicted.”
“Then bribe the judge.”
“You’re suggesting I bribe a judge.”
“You know I didn’t mean it.”
“Jaisha.”
A recording of Jen saying, “Then bribe the judge,” came through the pink radio on the counter.
“Don’t worry. I know you didn’t mean it.” Without even looking at them, O’Neil said, “Jaisha, Rob, erase that line, will you?” He smiled his biggest smile.
He paused as if this nano-second task still required rewinding magnetic tape, finding the exact spot, and mashing down hard on two switches to record over it.
“But there is one other problem I want to avoid,” O’Neil said. “If you testify against him, we’ll have to demand a charge against you for beating up my son.”
Jen started to speak, but he cut her off. “Jennifer, I don’t want that at all, especially now that I’ve met you. But my son says you slapped him hard in the face.”
Damn you, Chandler.
“He was resisting arrest.” Don’t, I screamed at her, you’re admitting we hit him. But it was too late. “I needed to subdue him.”
O’Neil didn’t seem to notice her admission. “That’s not what James says.”
“It’ll be his word against mine.”
“I’m looking forward to what your synth unit has to say about this in court. I believe you do have one, don’t you?” His eyes had lost any glimmer of warmth. “There you have it.”
“Fuck you, Richard.” She lurched to her feet, and I worried she was going to smack him.
He didn’t flinch, but his eyes held hers. His voice, his whole bearing, seemed at once to be kindly, entreating, and utterly sure of himself when he said, “Please, Jennifer. Detective Lu. Please, sit down.”
Leave, I said.
She didn’t budge. But damn if those years of humiliation and humbling and obedience didn’t kick in once again. No, she didn’t plunk back onto the chair, but then again, she didn’t walk out like she should have.
O’Neil said, “I thought I was being clever with that recording bit, but it was inappropriate, probably illegal, and just plain stupid. And I’m too damn used to threatening people to get what I want. You don’t have to accept it, but I give you my unconditional apology.”
Jen glared at him but still did not move.
And then, out of the blue, Richard O’Neil started going all Sigmund Freud on us.
“Fuck. My son killed himself because I cared more about money than him. That’s what his note said. ‘You care about money more than you do about me, more than Mom, more than Jill, more than anyone.’”
Why the hell’s he doing this? Jen said to me.
“Jill didn’t live nearly long enough,” O’Neil continued. “I’ve had three disastrous marriages. I’ve got a fuckup son. I’m rich beyond belief, and I have this.” He gestured down at his body. “I’ve learned to buy my way into whatever the hell I want. But that isn’t me, Jennifer.” Then he waved his arms at the old farm kitchen around us. “This is me. This place is me.”
If this skinny-dip into psychoanalysis was some sort of performance or another weird chess move, it was certainly not in any psych book I’d ever read. I looked at the robots. Both seemed unconcerned.
“I’m a fucking old man, Jennifer. I don’t look it, I don’t sound it, but, please, just let my boy off. I’ll put him on such a short leash he’ll need my permission to brush his teeth. You can do it. Testify you may have been mistaken, that you assumed he committed the assault because you saw him running, but you’re now uncertain he was the assailant.”
“And then I catch shit.”
“You won’t. In fact, it’ll be the opposite. That much I can promise. Please, Detective Lu.”
And only then did I notice his eyes. I suddenly saw eyes that were 112 years old. Not rheumy or clouded. They were, like the rest of him, young and clear. Perfect. But I saw through it all. One hundred and twelve years had been enough. His eyes weren’t flirty, they weren’t warm, they weren’t cold. They were dead.
* * *
With the SUs trailing, O’Neil escorted us to the front foyer of the club. A small group of men and women were coming in as we arrived. Jen asked if she could use the restroom before she left. Rob, the other SU, guided her.
When we returned, a smiling O’Neil was holding court with the group. He seemed back to his old self—that is, his young self. He smiled right and left and straight ahead and then reached forward and patted the shoulder of one woman—we could only see her from behind—who, judging by her gray hair, slightly rounded shoulders,
and wrinkly white hands, seemed old enough to be O’Neil’s mother, although she was probably young enough to be his granddaughter.
The older woman spread her hands, palms up, and said, “People want it. People get it.” She gave them a life’s-a-bitch-but-it’s-all-pretty-simple shrug and said, “And then people pay for it.”
Everyone laughed. O’Neil noticed us and came over to say goodbye, polite and proper as could be, but he once again lightly cupped Jen’s elbow as they shook hands.
I called up a squad car. Nothing available. No motorcycles, no scooters. I called a regular civilian car and it arrived in one minute, the windows still blacked out from the previous passengers. The seats were folded down like a bed, and it smelled of recent sex. God, humans can be gross.
As we drove, I could feel Jen buzzing, as if she had stuck her fingers into an electric socket. I tried to talk to her about O’Neil and our strange visit, but she said, “I need some peace and quiet,” and dropped a blanket over her thoughts.
Only when we reached the station did she speak to me. “Chandler, is there data, research, even stories about erratic behavior among Timeless who’ve gotten the treatment?”
When I said there was, she asked me to make sense of it all and let her know tomorrow. Two minutes later, she signed out and sent me into oblivion.
10
“I had the weirdest hour of my life this afternoon.”
Jennifer and Zach were walking down 14th, not far from Les and Christopher’s place, heading for ice cream.
He smiled indulgently. “I’ve heard that one before.”
“Well, this time really was. A 112-year-old billionaire hit on me, big time.”
Zach laughed, “Go for it!”
They reached the ice cream shop and joined the line.
She added, “He looks about thirty-five. Nicest laugh you can imagine. He was naked.”
“Uh, mind if I ask what you were doing naked with this guy?”
“I wasn’t naked, silly.”
A woman and two men, lined up in front of them, turned and shot not-at-all-surreptitious looks at Jen.
Much more quietly, Jen briefly told Zach what had happened, ending with, “I have to say, though, he was pretty impressive.”
Jen watched Zach sample three flavors, but all the while she was thinking about Richard. In spite of his arrogance, his obvious attempt to charm her, and his bullying, she hadn’t been able to exile him from her mind.
They sat outside at one of the small tables, and she watched him eat quickly before his ice cream melted.
He held out the cone. “Want a taste?”
She shook her head.
He said, “You’re the only person in the world who doesn’t like ice cream.”
“I worry I’ll freak out.”
He laughed. And then saw she was not laughing.
She said, “Something my mother did when I was a kid.”
“Wh—”
She shook her head. “Another time.”
Jen wiped the memory from her thoughts, just the way she had been doing all her life.
“So,” she said when enough time had passed, “what weird or not-weird things happened to you today?”
“Absolutely no one of any age or financial bracket hit on me.”
“Poor baby. I could check if my pal Richard is interested in guys.”
“But I am thinking of turning my business into a co-op.”
“A co-op. Like …”
“Yeah, kind of. I’d have partners who’d own it with me. We’d share the work. And we’d look after each other. What do you think?”
“I think you should take out some good fire insurance.”
After finishing at the ice cream shop, they went next door to the supermarket.
“What do you think of this cauliflower?” he said.
“I would say it has three florets too many.”
Jen rarely went into a grocery store, and if she did, she was in and out in four minutes. Zach could fritter away an hour in there.
“I’m so glad you’re getting into this,” he said. He continued to poke through the stack of cauliflower. “You’ve never really told me what’s wrong with your mom.”
“Of course I have. Early onset dementia.”
“No, I mean when you were a kid.”
She became absorbed, Zach-like, in the green beans.
“She was awful, cruel, judgmental, and controlling,” Jen replied.
He stopped fondling vegetables. “Those are just adjectives.”
“Aren’t you clever today. Just adjectives. Zach, we’re in a damn grocery store and you’re asking about the most traumatic stuff in my life.”
And so Zach abandoned the nearly fully cart of his carefully chosen everything, grabbed her hand, and said, “Then let’s find a place where you can tell me.”
11
Thursday, July 11—20:47:58
Goddam it to hell! she screeched at me.
I love you, too, sweetheart.
Thursday, July 11, 20:48:21.
We were on the crumbling and crowded sidewalk outside the supermarket on P Street, just west of 14th. She was gushing feelings: anger, clearly directed at yours truly, and a flood of love, directed I presumed at Zach, whose hand I felt in ours and who was now in our sights and looking a bit mystified, presumably at her sudden distraction. And underneath it all was a core of fear that seemed strange given that all was calm around us.
They tried to reach you.
Normal protocol. She’s off duty, they need her, they get on the phone. If they don’t get through, they activate me, and I’m on it.
She dug into the pocket of her shorts, pulled out her phone, saw the missed call.
She signaled Zach with her index finger. “One second,” she said to him. Into the phone she said, “Dispatch,” and then whispered, “Cancel” as she walked away from him to talk to me while speaking into the phone. Humans make so much work for themselves.
“What is it?” she said.
“Les needs you. Two of our regular families involved in an altercation.”
“Can’t he—”
“It’s serious. He needs you.”
She wedged the phone into the pocket of her khaki shorts as she walked back to Zach.
“They need me.”
“Shit, no.” He took a breath and swapped a more accommodating voice for his momentary disappointment. “No prob, honey. I’ll wait up.”
“It might be late.”
“I’ll be up. This is important.”
Some big drama there. I called a car, and three minutes later we were tearing up the town. Good times.
* * *
Parents: Olive Ortega and Pancho Porter. Children: Manuel Porter, forty-one, and Archibald Ortega, forty-two. This family knew how to do names.
Two-story house, vegetable patch in the front yard. Tattered lawn sign on a stick: “We Support the DC18.” The eighteen women and men—Black, Latino, Asian and white—ten of them cops and eight civil rights, trade union, environmental, and feminist activists who led the mini-uprising in the police department nine years back. The focus was against police racism and police coming down on protestors like enthusiastic storm troopers. The protest got crushed, the rebel police officers lost their jobs, and all were tossed in jail. Didn’t reach the rotting in prison stage, though, because massive peaceful protests shut down the city until they were reinstated, the old bosses dumped, and the rules changed.
We’d been called here three times before. Hence, they’re officially one of our regular families. Tons of friction, no violence; we even brought in a social worker since our own talents only go so far. We threaten and soothe, chastise and sympathize. But, apparently, our finest police-slash-social-work efforts hadn’t panned out.
Neighbor from three doors down: Child’s Play. That’s his given name. Man, I wish I could be around when academics look back at the name thing that happened in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Could be a hobby for
me. My scholarly articles: “Subversion and Restoration: Given Names, 1995–2033,” and “Interrogating the Human/Natural Divide: Vegetable and Fruit Personal Names in Suburban DC.”
Anyway, Child’s Play definitely wasn’t. He was built like a weasel and acted like a snake. But the report was that, this time, it was the snake who’d gotten bitten.
Out front, two cherry tops. Another unmarked. Just as we arrived, an ambulance pulled away from the curb and shot down the street, its siren splitting the night.
One uniform guarded the front door. She looked down at Jen’s bare legs, gave an amused wink at Jen and waved us in. A second uniform was in the hallway, taking up space. He notched his head toward the back, paused as if formulating his thoughts and said, “Garage.” A regular Hemingway.
We’d been out here before. Every tool had its specialized holder or rack. Identical jars with color-coded tops—in eye-popping, no-nonsense primaries—showed off Pancho Porter’s carefully sorted nails and screws. Ladders gleamed. Garden tools looked like they’d come straight from the hardware store. I’d seen pictures of operating rooms dirtier than this joint.
The first thing I spotted was Pancho’s impressive face. The man had the biggest cheeks I’d ever seen, like he was either a professional trumpet player or was storing a couple of cantaloupes for safekeeping.
The second thing I saw was a burgundy puddle of blood glistening on the polished concrete floor. Pancho stared at it, obviously upset, although I couldn’t tell whether it was because his wife had spilled his neighbor’s blood or because said blood was now staining his pristine gray floor.
One of the officers was gripping Olive Ortega by the biceps, her hands cuffed behind her. Her leathery face was so deeply wrinkled it was collapsing in on itself. And those orange contact lenses were not only five years out of style but made her face look like the remnants of a carved pumpkin a week after Halloween. She was tearing a strip off her husband. “I told you not to trust that stupid man. Didn’t I tell you that? Didn’t I?”
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