by A. B. Jewell
“Stop!”
This did pause them.
“I need your address. I’m almost out of battery life and I have news.”
Tess, Mrs. Donogue, spat out the address and said, “When you get to the gate, push the button and I’ll let you in. You do realize it’s late.”
“Oooooh,” Lester said sarcastically, “I didn’t realize you could read a clock.”
“Get off the phone!”
“It’s my phone. And so is the wireless modem.”
“We have joint custody of the Wi-Fi!”
“So you can troll the Internet for young-tech ass?”
“Lester!”
“Trollop!”
I hung up.
Ten minutes later, I was at their gate.
Eleven
BEFORE I HIT the buzzer on the massive wrought iron gate, I took a moment to reflect on the long day, trying to add things up. That morning, Tess Donogue had barged in and told me her dad was tweeping from the grave after he was murdered. The aggrieved daughter pointed me to her son, Captain Don’s beloved grandson, who played coy. Mrs. Donogue also urged me to meet with Alan Klipper, Klipper the Shipper, who was working with Captain Don to build something called the Spirit Box. It somehow created a digital afterlife.
No sooner had I started poking around than the Tarantulas showed up and left Da Raj taking his last breath.
Too many pieces to make sense of. Especially with all the noise erupting. From somewhere on this expansive estate burped the sound of gears and pumps. It sounded like there was some massive industrial process at work. I couldn’t determine the source of the sound but gathered that it was coming from the direction I was facing, over a hill behind the iron gate. The powerful sound must have made the neighbors murderous, unless they were acres away, which was possible; this estate stood isolated, down a narrow road in the Los Altos Hills, just fifteen miles south as the crow flew from Elron and Honey’s place but a whole different planet. Money lived here. Money took long luxurious baths here, after it touched down on the helipad at the end of a long day counting more money.
I rang the bell.
“Donogue-Wollop residence,” a female’s voice said. “Visitor or life coach?”
“Visitor—for Mrs. Donogue.”
“Mr. Fitch?”
“Fitch.”
“You’re expected. Come in.”
The gate opened and I took a slow drive up a long, paved access road lined with tall, decorative streetlamps. The motion-sensor lights clicked on as I moved along. The terrain was tasteful nothingness; to my immediate left and right, open fields. Farther out on both sides, if my eyesight didn’t deceive, groves of trees. Dead ahead, a slight rolling hill that hid what was on the other side. As I neared the undulation in the land, the industrial sound got louder, then softened, then increased again; its origin was still unclear. I rose over the crest and then had to stop at the magnitude of it all: what came into view was not one gargantuan home but two megawatt residences. One stood on the left flank, one on the right. They couldn’t have been more different from one another.
The one to the left was a rustic, I guess you’d say, wooden structure, a log cabin of sorts, but, well, I had trouble putting any sense to it. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen. The logs were stacked at various angles, as if designed by a kid with Lincoln Logs and a sugar high. The house sloped upward to an apex in the middle, where a single room seemed like an observation tower. It was three stories in all, though if you’d have asked me to wager, I might’ve said the left side had four stories. It was that haphazard.
If this was what passed for modern architecture, I could’ve made a mint designing houses.
I looked over to the right at an entirely different façade. This one looked like a classic plantation—right from the pages of Gone with the Wind, while the log one was designed by the patients from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
“Grotesque,” a voice said.
I looked and realized that Mrs. Donogue was standing next to me. I hadn’t heard her, evidently, over the industrial sound.
“Where did you come from?”
“The tunnel system,” she said. “We’re tearing that down.” She gestured to the southern-looking mansion. “Hardly fit for Lester to live in. You can leave your bike here. Come on in. Feel free to keep your shoes on. We’re using the tunnel entrance.”
“Because the front door is . . .”
“Lost. We’re having trouble finding it.” She took a step into a circular opening in the ground, a veritable manhole entrance. “C’mon, Fitch. There’s something you really should see.”
A few minutes later, we emerged into the Lincoln Log house, which my host described as the perfect mix of indoor and outdoor environments, open-air rooms conjoined with covered ones. “It’s what makes the front door so elusive because you’re not sure whether you’re going inside or outside. That’s what Daddy says. It’s what he wanted.”
“Mrs. Donogue, please—”
“He called it the troll house. Called it. He’s mostly dead. It’s ridiculous—this house, not Daddy,” she said. Then, perhaps to herself: “Oh, Daddy, I’m so sorry. You loved this place.” To me: “Would you like a tour?” She practically had to shout over the mechanical din.
“Pass. Let’s get down to business.”
“What do you have to tell me?” she asked.
“What?”
“On the phone, you said you had news—about the case.”
I told her about Da Raj—in broad brushstrokes. I watched her face for reaction. Did she already know?
She said: “I’m sorry he’s gone. He was a creepy kid.” Then added: “I told you there was nasty business going on. What does this have to do with Daddy?”
“I’m working on that.”
“I need to show you something,” she said. “It’s all teed up for you in the media complex.”
She led me through a series of rooms, some open-air to the sky, others roofed, some with stairs leading up, others down. Finally, we reached a fully indoor entertainment room, practically twenty-foot-high wood ceiling beams and, back down here on earth, a comfortable-looking S-curved couch in the middle. On each of the four walls hung massive flat-panel television screens. On each of the screens, the frozen face of a man I recognized: Captain Don. He looked frumpy.
Tess Donogue picked up a remote control and clicked it, and in an instant, the industrial sound disappeared.
“Sorry about the noise!” she shouted, and realized she no longer needed to. She lowered her voice. “We’re starting work on the other house.”
I recalled what I’d read: the ample land had two houses, and Tess Donogue alternately lived in one while she tore down and updated the other, and then switched. In this case, she explained, she was adding a desalination plant. Piping water in from the Pacific, sending it through tight membranes that leached out the salt, then putting it into the toilets.
“Because of the drought,” I said.
“Oh, that’s an interesting way to think of it.” It hadn’t dawned on her. “A lot of people think it’s a nice-to-have amenity, but I think it’s a great-to-have. Design-wise, I think of it as future-proofing the place for the next three to five years, plus or minus.” When she said “future proof” she did air quotes with her hands.
“What do you have to show me, Mrs. Donogue? It’s late.”
“You’re the one who showed up here unannounced.” She paused. “If the night wears on”—she lowered her voice—“I’m sure I can find you a place to bed down.”
“Trollop!” A man’s voice rang out.
In a doorway to the right, the man stood wearing a yellow rain slicker. Just when it couldn’t get any weirder.
“He’s a private dick, Lester,” Mrs. Donogue said.
“Aha!”
“I mean an investigator. That’s just a turn of phrase. A slip of the tongue.”
“Aha!”
“Oh, give me a break. He’s looking into Daddy’s death. Speaking
of absurd, what are you doing out here in your pajamas?”
“Somebody turned off the desalination plant. You know that sound is the only thing that puts me to sleep.”
“It’s in your head, Lester!”
“Oh, that’s rich. It’s an actual desalination plant. It’s plain to see.”
“I mean the insomnia. You sleep fine whenever we’re on vacation.”
I couldn’t resist. “Maybe it’s the damned rain slicker, making it hard to sleep.”
Lester looked at me. He was round, but not super round, a muted version of Jackie Gleason in The Hustler, the original, from the early 1960s. Terry had made me watch it a dozen times if we’d watched it once. A round face topped Lester’s round body. Nearly plump legs stuck out the bottom of the slicker, stumpy toes stuck into flip-flops. He had a mustache. Beneath his arm, a pliant, plump cat.
“What rain slicker?”
“Your pajamas—”
“State-of-the-art indoor-outdoor sleepwear. Jesus, Tess, you’d think you could sleep with someone who knows which direction is up.”
“He’s just a dick!”
Suddenly they were reduced to squabbling. I wanted to strangle both of them. I closed my eyes and pictured the check that Tess was going to write me.
“I’m leaving,” I whispered.
This instantly shut everyone up.
“Lester! Go. To. Bed!”
“I’ll stay, thank you.”
“Fine.”
And so, with Lester sitting on one end of the S-curve couch and Mrs. Donogue on the other, facing opposite directions, looking at screens on opposite walls, it was time for the show. Mrs. Donogue hit play on her remote control.
In the video, Captain Don started laughing. Laughing and laughing. It wasn’t clear that he was aware that the videotaping had begun. He was lost in a private joke.
“Cap’n,” a voice said. It was high-pitched, girlie almost. Hard to determine gender.
“We’re on, then?” Captain Don looked straight ahead, mostly. Maybe owing to generational issues—he wasn’t raised with a camera always on him—he was not looking exactly into the camera. But enough. His flop of white hair made him appear sage, not cartoonish, almost dazzling vivacity in his blue eyes, despite the ring of wrinkles and sagging skin. He was round too, like his son-in-law, Lester, a Freudian enough physical likeness.
“Much as I hate clichés,” he started, “this is one.”
He shook his head, closed his eyes, displeased with himself in some way. Then opened his eyes again, took on the camera directly. “This is the standard if-you’re-watching-this-I-am-already-dead or dead-ish video.”
Mrs. Donogue burst out a sob.
“I have a rare form of something-or-other. I can’t even remember the name of it. It doesn’t matter. It’s gonna be something-or-other that gets us all in the end, one way or another. Tess, stop your bawling. It’s going to be okay. And Lester!” Captain Don looked right into the camera. “Pet your goddamned cat yourself, will you?”
We all looked at Lester and saw that the cat he was holding was being stroked by a mechanical arm that extruded from the couch.
“It’s like he’s still here,” said Mrs. Donogue.
“This was your innovation!” Lester yelled at the screen.
“I know, I know,” Captain Don said, shaking his head, eyes nearly closed again. “I know it was mine. But it was no innovation. It was not, I repeat—NOT—an innovation. That word, that terrible, terrible word—”
“Stop the video,” I heard myself say.
Mrs. Donogue pressed pause and looked at me. “What’s the matter? Did you get rained on? I think we might have a leak. Do you want some pajamas?”
I ignored her. “Was this video made before he died? If so, how does he know what you’re going to say?”
“Oh. That. He just kind of knew how everyone acted. We’re fairly predictable—especially Whiner over there.” She went on to say that Captain Don absolutely made the video weeks, maybe months, before his death. She found it on his bedside table.
“He lived here?” I asked.
“After Mama died, I took him in.”
“Like every other man on the block,” Lester said.
“Look who’s stroking his cat,” Mrs. Donogue said.
“So he lived here until the day he died.” I brought things back on track. “Go ahead with the video.”
Mrs. Donogue pressed play.
“Innovation. Innovation.” Captain Don let the word roll around in his mouth like a marble. “Abomination!”
“Daddy!” Mrs. Donogue seemed to recoil as if seeing this for the first time. “He was out of his head, delirious with some sort of disease.”
“When did merely naming something become the equivalent of having an innovation?” the Captain said on the video. “Marketing is not innovation. Saying the word ‘innovation’ is not an innovation. Making things more efficient Is. Not. An. Innovation!”
I realized what I’d understood when this video began: I liked this guy. He was speaking some earth-toned truth.
“Listen here,” Captain Don said, jabbing a round finger. “I’m as guilty of it as anybody. I’m not pointing fingers.”
“You are too pointing a finger,” Lester said.
“I know that, Lester,” said Captain Don. “I’m making a point. I’m as guilty as anyone, at least for the last quarter century of my blessed life. I stopped innovating and I started incrovating.”
“Daddy! Good word.”
“No, it’s not. Incremental nonsense. It’s not an innovation. It’s language. And I’ll tell you something else. I’ll tell you the goddamned truth. I am afraid. I’m just as afraid as anyone, from any era, from any time and place. No matter how much stuff we come up with, no matter how much faster and more efficient we get. No matter how many e-things and i-things, it’s still scary when the end gets closer. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. My greatest innovation. The thing I can best give you is a chance to pull away all these distractions, free yourself of the warp-speed ideas, sucking more time and money from everything.” He paused, and he chewed on what he was going to say next. “Speed is not peace. Speed is speed.”
“Dementia,” his daughter muttered, and let out a sob. “You were right. I wasn’t there for him.”
The man on-screen went silent and he looked right at us, then dropped his eyes, shook his head. It seemed he was saying: I’m not sure anyone understands what I’m saying, at least not this audience.
“Turn it off,” he said.
“Grandpa?” It was a voice from the person holding the camera.
“Turn it off!” Captain Don repeated.
The screen went black.
Twelve
TEARS ROLLED DOWN Mrs. Donogue’s cheeks. Real? Crocodile? And Lester snored. Deep zzzz’s.
“Was that Danny who said ‘Grandpa’ while taping the video?” I asked.
“Yes. I assume.”
“You assume.”
“He’s not in it, not visible. But I’m pretty sure it’s him. I’d recognize our little baby’s voice anywhere. Wouldn’t you, Lester?”
Lester snored on.
“Lester, get up!” she screamed at him.
He sprang awake. “What’s happening?!”
She chuckled haughtily. “See, you sleep just fine. It’s all in your head.”
He looked dazed.
“Did Danny take that video of Daddy? You can hear his voice.”
“I guess so.”
“You’re not sure, Mr. Wollop?”
“It sounds like him.”
Weird, I supposed, this moment of mild uncertainty. Maybe. More generally, the video had me sideways. Not what I expected from Captain Don. Not the evidence I anticipated. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why it was so unexpected. This anti-innovation tirade wasn’t characteristic of the Captain Don that had so long been advertised. A deathbed conversion? How long ago was the video made? Had he expected
to die?
“Can you e-mail me a copy of that?”
“Sure,” said his daughter. “Of course you’ll need to sign an NDA.”
“You just showed it to me.”
Lester guffawed. “Careful, or she’ll get you signing a prenup too.”
She took two steps in his direction and pointed the remote control at him as if it were a gun. “Are you saying I asked you to sign a prenup?”
“Nice try.” He smirked. Then looked at me: “If—if, hypothetically—I had signed a prenup and if—if, hypothetically—I had signed an NDA about such a hypothetical prenup, then I’d be in violation of my hypothetical prenup and hypothetical NDA if I said anything about it. Then, POOF, she sues me and, poof, the divorce settlement goes poof.” He looked back at her: “How stupid do you think I am? You think I’ll fall for your petty tricks?”
“Very.”
“What?”
“I think you’re very stupid.”
“Stupid enough to sign a prenup?”
“Yes, I think you’re—” She paused. “Nice try, Lester!”
“Ha. You were almost in violation of the NDA. I mean hypothetical NDA, if there were one. Oh yeah. Woot! I’ve got Snozzwanger, Veruca and Gloop on speed dial.”
“His divorce-slash-patent attorneys,” his wife explained to me, sounding bored.
“I’m not signing anything,” I said. “You want me to get to the bottom of your father’s death or not?”
Things got quiet.
“Death-ish,” Lester said. “Have some respect in front of his daughter, will you?”
“Thank you, baby. You want some tea to help you sleep?”
“Yes, and turn on the desalination plant, snookums.”
“You said he stayed here, your father. I need to see his room.”
His daughter cleared her throat. “It’s a mess.”
“So?”
“You want to see it now?”
“Yes, now.”
She chewed on this.
“What’s the problem? You got something to hide?” I’d had enough.
“No.”
“No, there’s no problem, or no, you don’t have something to hide?”
“You don’t have crampons,” she said.