Final Theory

by Mark Alpert

  The detective, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agents arrested Swift at St. Luke’s Hospital in Morningside Heights. At the time, Swift was visiting Dr. Hans Kleinman, a Nobel laureate physicist who was hospitalized for injuries suffered in an apparent burglary earlier that evening. Kleinman died from his injuries shortly after Swift arrived.

  * * *

  The vice president was too incensed to read any further. This was a fuckup of the first order. “How the hell did this happen?”

  The SecDef swiveled his square head. “Typical cop stupidity. The detective was pissed at the feds for taking the Kleinman case away from him. So he gets his revenge by squealing to the Times.”

  “Can we shut him up?”

  “Oh, we took care of that already. We figured out who he was—Spanish fellow named Rodriguez—and brought him in for questioning. But the bigger problem is Swift’s ex-wife. She’s the one who prodded the Times into doing the story.”

  “Well, can’t we shut her up, too?”

  “We’re trying. I just got off the phone with her boyfriend, Amory Van Cleve, the lawyer who raised twenty million for your last campaign. Apparently, their affair has cooled off in the past twenty-four hours. Now he says he won’t object if we bring her in.”

  “So go ahead and do it.”

  “The agents tailing her say she and her son spent the night with the reporter who wrote the Times article. Swift’s ex is a clever girl. She knows we can’t detain her while she’s with the reporter. We have enough trouble with the Times as it is.”

  “One of their reporters is sheltering her? And they call themselves unbiased!”

  “I know, I know. But we’ll get her soon enough. We have half a dozen agents staking out the apartment. As soon as the reporter leaves for work, we’ll move in.”

  The vice president nodded. “And what about West Virginia? How’s that progressing?”

  “No worries there. One squadron of the Delta Force is in place and two more are en route.” He began edging toward the Situation Room. “I’m going to check with the commanders right now. They may have captured the fugitives already.”

  The veep gave him a stern look. The SecDef had the unfortunate habit of declaring victory too soon. “Keep me informed, please.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I’ll call you later today from Georgia. I’m going to Fort Benning this morning to give a speech to the infantrymen.”

  DAVID AWOKE IN THE BACK of Graddick’s station wagon and found Monique sleeping in his arms. He was a bit startled; when they’d dozed off several hours earlier, they’d carefully positioned themselves at opposite ends of the cargo area. (Luckily, the car was a huge Ford Country Squire that had survived at least twenty West Virginia winters.) But Monique had evidently squirmed toward David in her sleep and now her back was against his chest and her head under his chin. Perhaps she’d snuggled against him for warmth. Or perhaps she’d instinctively backed away from the rattlesnake crates, which were concealed under a tarp below the rear window. Whatever the reason, she lay there in his arms, her ribs gently rising and falling with each breath, and David was struck by an almost painful feeling of tenderness for her. He remembered the last time he’d held her like this, on the sofa in her tiny grad school apartment nearly two decades before.

  Trying his best not to wake her, David raised his head and looked out the window. It was early morning and they were traveling down a highway bordered on both sides by southern pines. Graddick was in the driver’s seat, whistling to a gospel tune on the car radio, and Michael was stretched out on the backseat, fast asleep but still clutching his dormant Game Boy. After a while David saw a sign: I-185 SOUTH, COLUMBUS. They were in Georgia, probably not too far from their destination.

  Monique began to stir. She twisted around and opened her eyes. Surprisingly, she didn’t pull away from his embrace. Instead she simply yawned and stretched her arms. “What time is it?”

  David looked at his watch. “Almost seven.” He found it remarkable how nonchalant she was, lying beside him as if they really were a married couple. “You sleep all right?” he asked. He kept his voice low, although he doubted that Graddick could hear anything over the sound of the radio.

  “Yeah, I’m better now.” She rolled onto her back and clasped her hands under her head. “Sorry about last night. I got a little testy, I guess.”

  “Don’t mention it. Being chased by the U.S. Army could make anyone irritable.”

  She smiled. “So you’re not upset about all the nasty things I said about Einstein?”

  He shook his head, smiling back at her. This is nice, he thought. He hadn’t had this kind of conversation with a woman in a long time. “No, not at all. In fact, you were right in some ways.”

  “You mean Einstein really was a coldhearted bastard?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. But sometimes he could be pretty callous.”

  “Oh yeah? What did the bastard do?”

  “Well, for one thing, he deserted his children after his first marriage fell apart. He left Mileva and their two sons in Switzerland while he went to Berlin to work on relativity. And he never acknowledged the daughter he and Mileva had before they were married.”

  “Whoa, hold the phone. Einstein had an illegitimate daughter?” “Yeah, her name was Lieserl. She was born in 1902, when Einstein was still a penniless tutor in Bern. Because it was a scandal, their families hushed it up. Mileva went back to her home in Serbia to have the baby. And then Lieserl either died or was put up for adoption. No one knows for sure.”

  “What? How come nobody knows?”

  “Einstein stopped mentioning her in his letters. Then Mileva came back to Switzerland and they got married. And neither of them ever talked about Lieserl again.”

  Monique abruptly turned away from him. Frowning, she stared at the shabby gray fabric that lined the floor of the cargo area. David was confused by the sudden change in her mood. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  Emboldened by their closeness, he cupped her chin in his palm and turned her face toward him. “Come on. No secrets between colleagues.”

  She hesitated. For a moment David thought she would get angry, but instead she turned away again and looked out the window. “When I was seven, my mother got pregnant. The father was probably one of the guys she bought heroin from. The day after she gave birth, she gave the baby away. She never told me anything about it except that the baby was a girl.”

  David slid his hand along the soft underside of Monique’s jaw until his fingers touched her ear. “Did you ever find out what happened to her?”

  Without looking at him, she nodded. “Yeah. She’s a crack whore now.”

  A tear pooled in the corner of her eye, then trickled down her cheek. Unable to stop himself, David leaned over and kissed it. He felt the moisture on his lips, tasted the salt. Then Monique closed her eyes and he kissed her mouth.

  For at least a minute they kissed silently on the floor of the cargo area, like a couple of teenagers hiding from the adults in the front seat. Monique wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him closer. The station wagon began to slow, obviously approaching the Columbus exit, but David didn’t lift his head, didn’t look out the window. He kept on kissing her as the car cruised down the exit ramp, going into a long swooping curve that made him think of seagulls wheeling over the ocean and got mixed up in his head with the slippery feel of Monique’s lips. Finally he pulled back and looked at her. They gazed at each other for several seconds, neither saying a word. Then the station wagon made a sharp right turn and came to a stop.

  They quickly disentangled themselves and looked out the window. The car was parked in front of a rundown strip mall facing an avenue that was already busy with traffic. David could tell they were near the entrance to Fort Benning because the names of all the stores shared a military theme. The largest was Ranger Rags, an army-navy surplus store with a window display of mannequins in camouflage. Nex
t door was a take-out place called Combat Zone Chicken and a tattoo parlor called Ike’s Inks. A few yards farther down was a windowless cinder-block building with a big neon sign on its roof. The sign’s orange tubing was twisted in the shape of a buxom woman reclining over the words THE NIGHT MANEUVERS LOUNGE. Contrary to its name, the lounge appeared to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation; at least two dozen cars were parked in front of the bar and a seedy-looking bouncer guarded the entrance.

  Graddick heaved himself out of the driver’s seat and lumbered around the station wagon. He opened the rear door but David was reluctant to leave the car. Kneeling beside the rattlesnake crates, he scanned both sides of the street, on the lookout for anyone in a uniform. Given their circumstances, this was a particularly risky place to be. “Where are we?” he asked.

  Staring at them with his crazed, unearthly blue eyes, Graddick pointed at the Night Maneuvers Lounge. “See the number over the door? That’s the address you gave me—3617 Victory Drive.”

  “No, this can’t be right.” David was bewildered. This was supposed to be Elizabeth Gupta’s address.

  “I know this place,” Graddick drawled. “Before I was saved, I was a soldier in Satan’s army. I was stationed here at Benning and we used to go to Victory Drive every time we got a weekend pass.” With a fierce scowl, he spat on the asphalt. “VD Drive, we called it. It’s a cesspool of harlotry.”

  David nodded. Now he was beginning to understand. He remembered what Professor Gupta had said about his drug-addict daughter. Making contact with her was going to be harder than he’d expected. “The woman we need to see, I think she works in that bar.”

  Graddick narrowed his eyes. “You said this woman is kin to your wife?”

  Nodding again, David gestured toward Monique. “That’s right, they’re cousins.”

  “Harlotry and fornication,” Graddick muttered, frowning at the cinder-block building. “Thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredom.” He spat again as he stared at the lascivious neon sign. It looked like he wanted to tear the thing down with his bare hands.

  It occurred to David that this hefty West Virginia mountain man might prove useful. At the very least they could use his station wagon. “Yeah, we’re heartbroken about what’s happened to Elizabeth,” David said. “We’ve got to try to help her somehow.”

  As David had hoped, the idea seemed to appeal to Graddick. He cocked his head. “You mean you want to save her?”

  “Absolutely. We’ve got to convince her to accept Jesus Christ as her personal savior. Otherwise she’s going straight to hell.”

  Graddick thought it over, stroking his beard and glancing at the tarp-covered rattlesnake crates. “Well, I don’t have to be in Tallahassee till five o’clock. That leaves me some time to kill.” After a few seconds he smiled and threw his arm around David’s shoulders. “All right, brother, let’s do the Lord’s work! Let’s go into that den of iniquity and sing His praises! Hallelujah!”

  “No, no, I’ll go into the bar alone, okay? You drive around to the back and wait there until we come out the back door. If she starts making a fuss, you can help me carry her to the car.”

  “Good idea, brother!” Graddick cheerfully slapped him between the shoulder blades.

  Before sliding out of the station wagon, David squeezed Monique’s arm. “Keep an eye on Michael, all right?” he said. Then he headed for the Night Maneuvers Lounge.

  He smelled spilled beer before he even reached the door. The old feeling of disgust clogged his throat, just as it had when he’d entered the bar in Penn Station two nights ago. But he took a deep breath and managed to smile as he handed the ten-dollar cover charge to the bouncer.

  Inside, the room was blue with cigarette smoke. The old ZZ Top song “She’s Got Legs” blared from the speakers. On a semicircular stage, two topless dancers stood in front of an audience of hopelessly drunk GIs. One of the women slowly twined around a silver pole. The other turned her back to the audience and bent over until her head hung upside down between her knees. A soldier staggered forward and dangled a five-dollar bill near her mouth. She licked her lips, then clamped the bill between her teeth.

  At first, the sight of all the uniforms made David nervous, but he quickly realized that these particular soldiers posed no danger. Most of them had probably been drinking for twelve hours straight, trying to enjoy every minute of their forty-eight-hour weekend passes. He edged closer to the stage and focused his attention on the dancers. Unfortunately, neither one looked like she could be related to Professor Gupta. The pole dancer was a freckled redhead and the woman with her head between her legs was a lily-white blonde.

  David wandered over to the bar and ordered a Budweiser. Keeping the bottle at arm’s length, he surveyed the three women doing lap dances for the soldiers on the bar stools. Two more blondes and another redhead. All of them were quite attractive, with firm, round breasts and taut behinds that they moved in slow circles for the soldiers’ amusement, but David was looking for someone else. He began to worry that Elizabeth had gone home already; it was seven in the morning, after all, and the strippers most likely worked in shifts. Or maybe she’d started dancing at a different club. Or moved out of Columbus altogether.

  Just as he was about to give up hope, he noticed someone in an olive-green army jacket slumped over a table in the far corner of the room. At first David thought it was a GI who’d passed out in his chair, but as he moved closer he saw a lustrous fan of black hair radiating from the figure’s motionless head. It was a woman sleeping with her face pressed to the tabletop and her long, slender legs splayed underneath. She wasn’t wearing a shirt under the army jacket, or any pants either; just a bright red bikini bottom and a pair of knee-high white boots.

  David approached the table, trying to get a better look at her, but the corner was dimly lit and the woman’s hair veiled her face. There was no getting around it: he had to wake her. He sat in the chair opposite hers and gently rapped his knuckles on the table. “Uh, excuse me?”

  No response. David rapped a little harder. “Excuse me? Can I talk to you for a second?”

  The woman slowly lifted her head, pawing at the curtain of hair in front of her eyes. She pulled a few black strands out of her mouth, then squinted at David. “What the hell do you want?” she croaked.

  Her face was a mess. A smear of crimson lipstick ran from the corner of her mouth to the center of her left cheek. The pouches under her eyes were puffy and gray, and one of her false eyelashes had partially detached from the lid, so that it flapped like a bat’s wing every time she blinked. But her skin was caramel brown, the exact same shade as Michael’s, and her tiny, doll-like nose looked just like Professor Gupta’s. She looked about the right age, too: mid to late thirties, noticeably older than the other dancers in the club. Breathing fast, David leaned across the table. “Elizabeth?”

  She grimaced. “Who told you that name?”

  “Well, it’s a long—”

  “Don’t call me that again! My name’s Beth, you hear? Just Beth.”

  She curled her upper lip and David got a look at her teeth. Each one had a brown stain near the gum line. Meth mouth, the addicts called it. As they smoked the drug, the vapors corroded their enamel. Now David was certain that this woman was Elizabeth Gupta. “Okay, Beth. Listen, I was wondering—”

  “What do you want, a blow job or a fuck?” The left side of her face twitched.

  “I was hoping we could just talk for a minute.”

  “I don’t have time for this shit!” She suddenly stood up and her army jacket flapped open, giving David a glimpse of a gold locket swinging on a chain between her breasts. “It’s twenty for a blow job in the parking lot, fifty for a fuck at the motel.”

  Her face twitched again and she started scratching her chin with scarlet fingernails. She must be in withdrawal, David thought. Her whole body was yearning for another hit of methamphetamine. He rose to his feet. “All right, let’s go to the parking lot.”

  He tried
to steer her toward the back door but she slapped his hand away. “You gotta pay first, dickhead!”

  David took a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it over. She slipped the bill into the inside pocket of her jacket and headed for the emergency exit. Walking behind her, David noticed she had a limp, which was the final confirmation of her identity. Elizabeth Gupta had been hit by a car as a young girl, breaking her left leg in three places.

  Once she was outside she strode toward a grimy alcove between the club’s cinder-block wall and a pair of Dumpsters. “Drop your drawers,” she ordered. “We’re gonna do this fast.”

  He looked over his shoulder and spotted the station wagon. Graddick had already stepped out of the car. Now David had some backup, just in case things turned ugly. “Actually, I don’t want a blow job. I’m a friend of your father, Beth. I want to help you.”

  Her mouth opened and she gazed at him blankly for a moment. Then she clenched her rotting teeth. “My father? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “My name’s David Swift, okay? Professor Gupta told me where I could find you. We’re trying to—”

  “That fuck!” She screamed the words across the parking lot. “Where is he?”

  David held out both hands like a traffic cop. “Hey, hey, calm down! Your father’s not here. It’s just me and—”

  “FUCKER!” She rushed toward him, aiming her long nails at his eyes. “COCKSUCKING MOTHERFUCKER!”

  He braced himself, hoping to catch her by the wrists, but before she could get close enough, Graddick grabbed her from behind. Moving much more quickly than David would’ve thought possible, the mountain man immobilized Elizabeth by twisting her arms behind her back. “Mother of abominations!” Graddick shouted. “Raise your eyes to your Lord Jesus Christ! Repent before judgment falls!”

  After a moment of surprise, Elizabeth lifted her right knee and smashed her boot heel down on Graddick’s toes. He let go of her, howling in pain, and she instantly sprang on David.