Prodigy

by Dave Kalstein

  “I do. Tell me what you need and you’ll have it.”

  “Stella Saltzman, Class of 2033. She’s the key. I need to get to her ay-sap. I’m betting you’ve got the address for her that no one else does.” A long silence followed. Pete could hear Bloom breathing, contemplating, while he heard the sound of another set of breaths that sounded unfamiliar. They were probably his own. “Sir?”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to—”

  “You’ve got to believe me,” Pete interrupted loud enough for the echoes to return. “I need to get to her before they do. All I need to do is find her, and I guarantee the vote will be delayed, maybe even deep-sixed.” Another long pause.

  “She’s at 565 West Miller Avenue, apartment 2309,” said Bloom. “Southwest San Angeles.”

  “At 565 West Miller, apartment 2309,” Pete repeated, writing it down on his notepad. “Got it.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got a rendezvous with my inside source coming up in about twenty minutes. Then I’m paying Miss Saltzman a visit.”

  “Make it happen.” Bloom clicked off the call. Pete put his phone back inside his jacket pocket and felt the wet sweat marks seeping through his button-down shirt. He moved for the door to the elevator bank, before deciding that he preferred the cover of darkness the stairwell afforded him.

  He ran up the stairs, taking two at a time, missing the sight of Miss Camilla Moore II quietly lurking in the shadows just a few feet from where he was standing, her brain processing the wealth of information she had just received.

  * * *

  Goldsmith programmed his Tabula to broadcast the alumni files on the Nature & Co. window in Oates’s room and took Cooley through the details. The names of the ex-specimens, their subpar careers at Stansbury, their lack of a truly common bond, and Miss Stella Saltzman, the distinguished, disillusioned non sequitur in the group. The non sequitur that also happened to be the only one still breathing. Goldsmith watched Cooley’s eyes the whole time, observing him trying to keep up. As he suspected, Riley was the only dead alumnus that Cooley knew personally.

  “The only place Saltzman would’ve met the rest is in an examination room,” Cooley said.

  “The same place where I met you.” Goldsmith watched Cooley lean in and study the file photos. They matched the head shots in the yearbook, minus the red X’s. “Riley knew they were all being targeted,” Goldsmith continued. “Which leads me to believe they were killed by the same person. I’ve been trying to formulate a theory as to what would have gotten them in a room together in the first place, but this has proved difficult. I’m starting to think that Stella Saltzman isn’t as connected to the others as I first thought. I’ve seen no evidence that the school is even aware that she’s tied into this. Her name hasn’t been mentioned once, while the others’ have been. Riley wasn’t the brightest guy, after all.” Goldsmith looked over Stella’s file. No listed phone number, no known address, no active e-mail accounts. If he could just get a word out to her.

  “If she’s the next to go—,” Cooley said.

  “It’ll be my fault.”

  “It doesn’t have to happen that way.”

  “Riley could have been wrong when he included her photo with the others,” said Goldsmith.

  Cooley glanced up from the photos and looked at Goldsmith. “He wasn’t. She was recruiting a gang.”

  Goldsmith laughed out loud. “What?”

  “Stella Saltzman went after these people specifically. Out of all the specimens she graduated with, she picked them.”

  “You think Miss Saltzman, a former valedictorian, is a gang leader?”

  “Slow down. I’m not saying she was putting together a gang because she wanted to break the law. Look at these kids,” he said, pointing to their photos. “They’re not criminals. They’re like any other delinquents. Scared, insecure … looking for someone to save them from … something, I don’t know. They were all lost, just waiting to be taken in, waiting for someone to, like, convert them and make them believe. They look just like…”

  “What?”

  “… like the kind of kids that’ve been following me ever since I got here.” Goldsmith looked at Cooley in silence, knowing he wasn’t finished yet. “Like the eleven friends of mine you expelled yesterday. These five,” he said, pointing at the files, “they were all Indians looking for a chief.”

  “And you’re saying that Miss Saltzman is it?”

  “She’s a valedictorian. She can’t be anything else.”

  Goldsmith hit some buttons, flipping through the files. Each of them had a coroner’s report attached at the end, which was not in itself unusual (Stansbury’s estimable alumni office kept close tabs on all of its graduates), except for the fact that each of these reports bore the insignia of the San Angeles Police Department, since they were all murdered. Alvarez: electrocuted to death after being knocked unconscious and thrown into a bathtub along with a plugged-in radio. Miller: bludgeoned to death in an alley, ruled by the coroner as a likely mugging victim. Riley: death by overdose, not self-inflicted. Santana: bled to death after suffering fatal stab wounds to the neck and chest. Smith: shot to death. Each report was filled with descriptions of wounds, the conditions of bodily organs, various foreign food and drink present in the body at the time of death. Reams of pages and information. Goldsmith pulled his favorite keepsake from his blazer’s pocket and looked at it for comfort, for encouragement: his golden valedictorian’s medal. Its surface was cold.

  “That’s what they gave you after you won Selmer-Dubonnet?” Cooley asked. Goldsmith nodded.

  “Can I see it?”

  He handed it to Cooley, who felt the weight of it in his palm and looked at the engraved lettering. “Nice,” he said, handing it back.

  Goldsmith brought it over to the bed and sat down, feeling the medal’s ridges with his fingers, remembering how it felt when the headmaster placed it around his neck during a special assembly in the coliseum in front of the whole school. What seemed like hundreds of holographic renderers snapped around them, recording their images forever in a lifelike three dimensions. Goldsmith had wanted to wear the thing to sleep, and he almost did before realizing that he might smudge it in the middle of the night. His finger rubbed against the gold. It felt nice and solid. He rubbed it harder. And then harder. He dug the nail of his thumb into the metallic sheen and felt it give way without too much effort. He dragged his nail across the medal’s face and saw the gold peel away, revealing an underbelly and insides made of dull, tinny steel. Goldsmith did a fine job of holding back the tears welling up in his eyes.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything,” said Cooley, doing him the dignity of looking in another direction. “But I knew the moment I held it in my hands.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Open the door, Mr. Goldsmith.” It was Camilla.

  Goldsmith shut off the Nature & Co. window. Cooley looked panicked, and in response Goldsmith gestured for him to sit down and relax, moving his hand down in a soothing motion. He opened the door.

  “How did you find us?” asked Goldsmith.

  “Simple strategic anticipation,” she said. “You needed a place to hide, somewhere private, a place not equipped with surveillance. You were smart enough to know that your own suite wasn’t safe, so you improvised, reasoning that no one would look in the rooms of one of the unbalanced specimens you had expelled just yesterday. I only had to search three other rooms before I found you.”

  “Did you tell the security detail?”

  “No. But they’ll figure it out soon enough, and then you’ll be on the run.” She glanced over at Cooley. “I’m here to take him into custody. I don’t know what you’re doing with him, but I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “President Lang personally asked me to join in the investigation. He’s here with her sanction.” Sure, it’s bullshit, Goldsmith thought, but she’s still green at this job and isn’t going to go and ask Lang herself right now. He looked over at Cooley. The expression on
his face said: Do something, we’re running out of time.

  He and Camilla locked eyes. Goldsmith felt like it was a high-noon showdown. She opened her mouth first. “I’d suggest that—”

  “Tell me why you’ve been giving information to Pete.”

  She stopped short, her eyes filled with shock giving way to anger. “What?”

  “I know you’re his off-the-record source.” He moved closer to her. “Tell me why the fuck you’ve been talking to him!” Her breath fogged up his glasses.

  “I … I haven’t said anything to him…”

  “Then who—”

  “… Because I’ve been spending all my time making excuses for you!” she snapped.

  He stepped back. “What?”

  “Gibson told me about the police officers you assaulted in San Angeles. Half of the school’s talking about some dodgeball match the two of you played. There was a fire alarm right afterward. The security detail’s asking me what you’re doing running around with a … serial killer.”

  “They could have arrested me hours ago.”

  “Headmaster Latimer won’t let them do anything. He says … he says he trusts you.”

  “If he still does, can’t you?” he asked, stepping back. Her eyes glanced downward, avoiding his gaze. It was obvious: she did still trust him, and there was something else she wanted to say. “I’m talking to Camilla right now,” he said softly. “I’m done with Miss Moore. So tell me, okay? Just tell me what’s going through your head.”

  “On my way here I overheard Pete. He was standing in the stairwell talking on his Tabula. I was there, too … I wanted to get here quickly, and the elevator pods were all packed in gridlock after the riot on the warehouse level and the fire alarm, so I took the stairs. Pete thought … he thought he was alone, but the echoes carried his voice and I heard him.”

  Goldsmith leaned closer, giving her a tender look to coax it out of her. “Please, Camilla, tell me.”

  “He was talking about Miss Stella Saltzman. She was valedictorian from—”

  “I know who she is.”

  “The person on the other end of the phone call was giving him her address. Pete was saying that he needed to get to her before ‘they’ do. He never said who he was talking about.”

  Goldsmith’s eyes darted to Cooley. “Saltzman’s gonna be next,” Cooley said.

  Goldsmith looked Camilla in the eyes. “Did Pete mention the address out loud?”

  “No.”

  “You might be a better valedictorian than me, but you’re an awful liar.”

  She blinked, hesitating, not even bothering to come up with another denial, because she knew her face had already given her away.

  “You’ve got to give it to me, Camilla.” She looked away, like she was starting to realize whatever it was she was involved in had suddenly become bigger than she ever imagined. She shook her head. “Camilla, please.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t … remember.”

  Goldsmith slammed his palm against the wall just an inch away from her head. She flinched. “The freak with the photographic memory doesn’t remember? Listen to me. If you don’t tell me the address, Stella Saltzman will be dead like the rest of them! Okay?”

  “But Mr. Cooley’s—”

  “Cooley’s innocent, goddamn it!” He smacked the wall again. After a moment, she slowly opened her eyes.

  “She’s at 565 West Miller Avenue, apartment 2309.”

  “Southwest San Angeles. That’s only twenty minutes from here,” said Cooley. Goldsmith stepped back from Camilla.

  “Thank you,” he said to her. “I mean that.” She just looked at him. He walked over and flipped the Nature & Co. window back to life. The five coroners’ reports were scattered on the screen, an orgy of information. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  “I haven’t slept in almost two days,” Cooley yawned. “Sometimes I think that if I just took my meds like everyone else, I wouldn’t be in this position. I’d be ready to go off to good schools in the outside world like you guys, you know?”

  “You are who you are, Mr. Cooley,” said Camilla.

  “She’s right,” said Goldsmith. “Meds are just … chemical combinations with fancy names.” Through the blur of his vision without glasses—orphans couldn’t afford corrective eye surgery—he saw a black holographic flash card projector sitting on the floor. He smiled at it, remembering the study session he and Camilla had only last night. It felt so much longer than twelve hours ago. Then he put his glasses back on, stepped toward the files, and immediately saw it.

  Amidst the overflow of coroner mumbo jumbo, he spied something that looked warm, familiar, and friendly. It was ADM+5, an abbreviation for a biochemical compound. It was rare and man-made—Goldsmith had no idea what properties it had, but there it was on Alvarez’s and Miller’s postmortem reports: ADM+5. Adamite-5. He scanned the other files. Riley: ADM+5. Santana: ADM+5. Smith: ADM+-fucking-5.

  “What is it?” asked Cooley.

  Goldsmith moved for the door, his heart pounding. “Camilla, please … stay here with him, don’t let anyone take him anywhere. This will only take ten minutes, tops.”

  “Where are you—,” she started.

  “Please! Just do this for me. I swear I won’t be long.” Goldsmith grabbed the doorknob.

  “Goldsmith!” Cooley said. “What is it? What did you see?”

  Goldsmith opened the door and looked back at him. “Maybe everything.”

  * * *

  Up on the disciplinary level several dozen specimens sat around in a cramped holding cell. Most were still jittery from the meth, and would be for the next day or so. Bunson sat by himself in a corner: nobody wanted to get in his space and face the consequences. His head was still throbbing from Officer Jamison’s boot to the skull. Footsteps echoed past the cell’s barred door down the corridor. They got closer and closer. Everyone looked over. It was Officer Tannen with a clipboard. He looked at it.

  “Bunson, Thaddeus. Come with me.” He unlocked the door.

  Bunson stood and headed for the door.

  “Be strong, man,” called out White.

  “You watch, everyone,” said Stevenson to the younger specimens. “Bunson’s not gonna tell them anything.”

  Bunson followed Tannen down the corridor and through another door. Tannen disappeared somewhere into the shadows. President Lang walked out from an observation room and stood before him. They were the only two people around. She gave him her best camera-ready smile.

  “You’ve been a busy boy lately, Mr. Bunson.”

  “I’ve been doing what I have to do.”

  “Of course you have. Run along to progressions. I wouldn’t want you to be tardy and put off those nice Princeton admissions officers who are watching.”

  Bunson walked past Lang without a word, heading for the elevator bank. When he turned around and looked back down the hall, she was gone.

  * * *

  On Level 11, Sadie stood in her bathroom wearing only a towel, gargling with mouthwash for the fifth time in ten minutes. Her hair was still wet and starting to feel cold against her bare shoulders. She leaned down and rinsed with water, taking it straight from the faucet. When Sadie stood up and examined her face in the mirror, she saw something sitting on her bed in the reflection. It looked like a medium-size white envelope, a touch thicker than an average letter. Somehow, someone placed it there while she was in the shower. She walked over and picked the envelope up. In its top, left-hand corner, she saw familiar shapes: a rising sun piercing clouds above a coat of arms bearing four open books separated by the stations of a reddish-orange cross. The insignia of Brown University. Her heart began to race. She sat down, hair still dripping, and sliced open the envelope with the nail on her index finger.

  The first thing she saw were the words “Congratulations” and “your acceptance.” She didn’t get the chance to read the rest. The papers fell from her hands to the hard marble floor. Sadie’s smile melted into a twisted expr
ession of something less than the elation she was expecting to feel. The poking sensation welling up in her stomach moved into her chest and throat and shot up through her nose and into her eyes. At first, she choked, and then began to sob with abandon. Her lush, oft-admired lips trembled as she mouthed something over and over again. She tried to speak the words, but they struggled to come out.

  “I’m sorry,” those lips tried to say. “I’m sorry.”

  21

  “Just one minute, Mr. Goldsmith,” said Mrs. Elton, the headmaster’s faithful secretary. She projected a round, healthy figure of seniority, and her motherly presence helped to calm Goldsmith’s rattled nerves. She seemed to sense this effect on him and smiled. “Excited about graduation?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I understand you’re going to be a Harvard man.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Congratulations, sweetheart. But remember,” she said, leaning over her desk toward him as if revealing a secret, “you’ll always be a Stansbury man first.”

  “I couldn’t forget that even if I tried, Mrs. Elton.”

  She held up a finger, nodding in accordance with the instructions being passed through the small Tabula earpiece she wore around her ear. “The headmaster will see you now.”

  He walked down the hallway toward the headmaster’s office suite. The white marble floor common to the rest of the school gave way to a thick maroon carpet, while Stansbury’s trademark minimalist décor was replaced by walls carved of oak and the occasional cracked leather club chair placed along the corridor. As Goldsmith neared the office, he started to smell the familiar aroma of ten-year-old pipe smoke. Long before Goldsmith arrived at the tower, the headmaster and Dr. Stansbury were rarely seen without their matching mother-of-pearl pipes in hand, a plume of royal gray trailing behind them before disintegrating into the sterilized air. They were both very aware that it was a bad habit with potentially fatal consequences, but could not seem to bring themselves to quit. Stansbury, of course, died of old age, but the headmaster kept the tradition alive until 2026 on his sixtieth birthday, when an eleventh grade Pharmaceutical Engineering progression presented him with a fine gift indeed: a pill of their own creation that cured him of his tobacco addiction forever. Now, the headmaster’s pipe sat inside a glass case on a shelf behind his desk, in retirement. But the smell of its smoke still lingered. He would not permit the custodial crews to fumigate his area, because he believed the residual scent was a tribute to the ghost of the man who founded the school in the first place.