Ditto Naavah/Mrs. Babcock. She had stopped coming in as well. N.K. was the only one he saw out with the Dobermans. Portia tried another email. It went unanswered. He decided it would be too forward to call the consulate and speak with N.K. If she wanted to make herself known, she would.
Lenny was in a funk. He liked sleuthing. It got his juices going. But he had little to go on. With the exception of the analysis of Sammy's white powder and the minor surveillance at FDU by Snorri, there was only speculation. Still, he was intrigued: something was going on. He had no purchase on this tough nut. No way to crank it.
8.
He was surprised when he got a call from his son Barry. They were not in frequent contact, not that they were estranged. It was more that they were busy with their own lives. Barry Weeks was his child, Lenny's only child, from an affair with his first wife Samantha's sister Wendy. It was a torrid affair that not only destroyed his marriage, but shadowed him. He was in love with both the women and married to the one who didn't have his child. Over the years, especially when Barry was young, he had been an active father. Barry was now in, what? his thirties, Lenny was startled to recall.
Barry's number came up on his phone, and before Lenny could speak, Barry said, "I need your help. Something terrible has happened. We have to talk."
When he showed up at Lenny's door, he was a sight. His eyes were red and teary face puffy. He looked like he had not slept in a week. He half stumbled into the living room, collapsed on the couch, and took out a handkerchief to stench the sobbing. "Give me a minute to get it together." Lenny brought a box of Kleenex and some water. "It's terrible…. I, ah, not me, ah, Edie, she died in a fire, and my little Leon, God, Leon was with her." He blew his nose and took in a deep, ratchety breath. "I was, San Francisco, I was there, away, when the fire broke out."
"Oh, Barry, I'm so deeply sorry," and he pulled his son to his feet and hugged him. It had been years since he had hugged him this way. "Oh, my God, this shouldn't happen to anyone. You want something stronger than water?"
"No, nothing," and he started crying again.
Lenny led him to the kitchen and put on some coffee. He had never seen his son like this. He pulled two chairs from he kitchen table and motioned Barry to a seat.
"I've waited to tell you because, because I wasn't sure. No, I was sure, but I was hoping it was a mistake. I'm still not sure, I mean we don't have positive identification. They are doing dental records, but I'm sure. It was our apartment."
"Back up a little. What happened?"
"I was away on business in San Francisco. I talked to her. She was bushed, Leon was sick, and they turned in early. Funny, the last thing we talked about was Machu Picchu. She made me promise to take her there. And then when I got home the next day, Jesus, there was no building where our apartment had been, only smoldering rubble. I didn't know what to do. I didn't call mom. I didn't call you. I tried to understand. I rented a hotel room and tried to sleep. I called FDU the next morning. They confirmed the fire and told me about a dead adult and an infant, and that that was all they knew. When I pressed them about other renters, they said that everyone but the tenants of the third floor apartment were accounted for."
"Does your mom know now?"
"No, I couldn't bear to tell her. I called you."
"It can't be anybody else. Everybody but Edie and Leon are accounted for. We can wait for the forensics, but they'll only confirm what we know."
"What caused the fire? Do they have any ideas? Not that it really matters."
"FDU said the fire department is still investigating, but their best guess is a faulty gas stove in the second floor apartment. No one was home. But it's only a guess. A couple of grad students, guys, lived there."
"Would you like to stay with Portia and me? It might help to have company, family. Or your mom, I'm sure she'd be glad to have you."
"That would be hard for me just now. But, thanks, that's very kind of you. I need to be alone, at least to live alone while I sort through what to do."
After Barry had gone, Lenny sat alone in an armchair. How utterly, unredeemably sad to lose your partner and your son, his grandson, without warning. Life was fucking capricious. He didn't have the strength to call Portia. He could tell her at dinner. He texted Barry to tell him again that he was welcome to stay with them. They had plenty of room. Life really was a bitch and then you died.
When Portia came home and he told her, she said, "Lenny, hold me tight, you never know what will happen." She came around the table, pulled him to his feet and hugged him. "Your poor, poor son. And Edie, to die so young, so full of promise. I feel bad for you, Lenny. Leon was your namesake. And my God, Barry, he must be a wreck." They sat in the living room, not saying much. Then they went through the whole senseless story once more, as if the replay might help them understand the tragedy. "Give him a day or two. Then reach out to Barry again. He would be better off with us, with family for a while."
He couldn't bring himself to call Snorri, who was still preoccupied with Sammy. Portia made the call. "Nothing to be done really," he said, "Let time heal, that and wait for the inevitable conformation. As for the other, the barista, he seems to have vanished. Not a trace on the FDU campus as far as I can tell, not even his Vespa."
The next morning, Lenny called Barry, and when he got no answer, he left a voice mail, "Please come stay with us. It will help to be with those who love you."
Later that day, Barry texted: Thanks, Dad, I'm touched. If you will have me, I'm coming. Thank you.
That night he joined Lenny and Portia for dinner.
A small consolation: pain brought father and son closer together, changed what had become almost a transactional relationship into real caring. Barry moved into a spare bedroom. Simple proximity helped ease his loss. Most nights, if he did not have some work-related function, he ate with Lenny and Portia.
They waited for the inevitable, the final details of Edie and Leon's deaths. Barry went through the motions: he got himself to work everyday, tried to dig into the details of his projects, to submerge his grief. When his boss offered his condolences, Barry thanked him. "Don't worry. I've got it under control," which of course is what his boss wanted to hear. He got himself back to Lenny's each night. But mostly he waited for some opening that would provide closure: he needed to know exactly how Edie had died and who was responsible. And, if there was a score to be settled, he needed to settle it.
One evening at dinner, mostly by way of small talk, Lenny said, "I don't exactly understand what you do for UVL. Can you explain it in simple terms?"
"We exploit financial opportunities globally. Wherever we can find an opening, we seize it. We come to the table and play." It was vague and hardly sufficient. When Lenny pushed him about his current project, he was evasive. "I'm helping to arrange financing for the Chinese to buy a hotel in San Francisco." He made it sound as if he was a loan officer. In fact, he was the lead partner in a much larger deal with international consequences. His recent trip to San Francisco capped a huge commitment from two hedge funds. If the deal went through, he would become rich or maybe very rich. Not that he shared any of this with Lenny and Portia. "Let's just say, my job is to use my wits to ensure the deal goes through. Whatever it takes. (He did not elaborate.) It can be a lot harder than it sounds."
Then the news came that Edie's dental records had confirmed her death. There were no records for Leon, but the ME certified the body as that of Leon Villanueva. Barry, Lenny, and Portia struggled to find a plan. None of them had a religious bone in their body, and legally, the decision was Edie's parents'.
"Honestly, I'll leave it to her parents. To cremate their remains would be macabre. I need to mourn them privately. It's not something I know how to share."
"Maybe it would help to tell me again what happened. At least I'd feel better if I knew more about Leon," Lenny said.
Rehashing the tragedy held no interest for Barry, but he loved his father. "As best they can tell, the fire broke out aro
und 2 a.m. in the second floor apartment. Either it was started by a faulty stove or a gas leak. The gas fed the fire and it spread though the walls and stairwell. The sprinkler system engaged, but it could not do a thing for a blaze like that. It was a wooden structure and by the time the fire department arrived it was over."
"Did they consider arson or foul play?"
"They said there was no reason to. It was a simple fire, and the occupants of the apartment weren't home."
"Do you believe them?"
"I'm not sure," Barry said.
"So one more time, just to satisfy your dad, tell me who lived there besides the three of you."
"So on the first floor was Randolph Crapo and his wife Marlene. He is working on a Ph.D. in religion. They are born agains on their way to a mainstream life. He is going to teach, and she, well, I'm not sure about her interests. But if you’re thinking hidden secrets, that's not the place to start."
"And the guys on the second floor?"
"I don't know much about them. What little interaction we had was Edie's. One was a curly-haired guy who kept to himself. He looked Middle Eastern, maybe. The other was much taller and pretty nondescript. Now that I think of it, I don't even know their names. The only thing I can say for sure it that the curly-haired guy rode a Vespa."
Portia looked at Barry and then at Lenny, "A curly-haired guy on a Vespa?"
"So what? That's about a million people," Barry said.
"Yeah, but there is or rather was a curly-haired guy who rode a Vespa at our Starbucks. He's gone. And he used to deal drugs. I know for certain he was dealing PCP."
"Angel dust?"
"We're absolutely sure. Look, like father, like son. You and I both assess probabilities, and it's not very likely that two curly-haired guys driving Vespas exist and disappear simultaneously."
"So where does that leave us?" Barry was not quite following.
"It means that this guy on purpose or by accident may have caused the fire which killed Edie and Leon. My guy was manufacturing and dealing and was an FDU student. In any case he needs to be found and questioned. Maybe it's manslaughter or murder."
"I'm in. It's worth a shot. So we can go to fire marshal and have him test for flammables, solvents, that sort of thing. We can go together."
"We can do that," Lenny said, "but I have a better idea. My friend Snorri, he's the bartender out at Ferndale's who helped with the PCP, has some contacts who do first class chemical analysis—and will do it for Snorri, no questions asked."
Barry was about to say that he knew a few folks of his own, but decided it was best to leave UVL out of the picture.
"If the site is accessible, we can go over there and see if we can take some samples ourselves."
"I'm sure the fire department is much better at this than we are," Barry said.
In the end, they agreed to do both: they'd ask the fire department to look for flammables and drugs, and they'd take some samples of their own and have Snorri send them off.
That night in bed, Portia said, "You okay with this? Now it's become very personal. It's not an academic deal with an Egyptian student selling home brew. It's about your son, his partner, and your grandson. You're really not equipped for this kind of thing, but I don't suppose there's any stopping you."
"I have to see this through, Portia. There is no choice."
Lenny couldn't sleep. He was already playing out a scenario. It didn't matter what the chemical analysis showed. Sammy A. was involved and directly or indirectly had a hand in Edie and Leon's death. The GC-mass spec results might strengthen their suspicions, but that was all. They still needed a way in, a handle. And you could be sure that if Sammy was on the run, the last people who would find him were the police. He was smart and had a head start, and who knew if he was even in the country? Lenny spent a restless night trying to sort through the possibilities.
The next morning, he skipped the gym and headed for the firing range. It was a real stress reliever, and his life had him in knots. It gave him a headache just to list the events and problems piling up. He didn't know how to tackle any of them—Barry's grief; his interest in Emma Meripol aka Miracle Meripol; Mrs. Babcock; Sammy A. with his drug dealing and murky background—for starters. He punted.
A visit to Paul seemed in order. Today Lenny passed on the machine pistol, "his joystick experience." For Lenny the stress of focusing on skill building reduced the stress in the rest of his life. He chose to shoot the Glock.
"Remember, spread your legs a little, one foot behind the other for maximal stability," Paul said. "Good, Lenny, move your front foot forward a bit…a little more. And squeeze the trigger, gently, don't hurry it. Try not to jerk the gun as you fire."
Lenny emptied the clip.
"Good. This time try to lead with the shoulder of your support hand a little more. A little less flexion in the knees. Your weight distribution looks good. By God, we're going make a marksman of you, yet."
Lenny decided not to work with the Ruger this morning. It would keep for another time. Once home he locked both guns in the safe he kept in their bedroom for personal papers and extra cash.
9.
As he looked back on the hectic last few days, Sammy thought he was going to be okay, but…it was one of those crazy thoughts: you're a smart person, but you did a dumb thing. And all for a pretty face. Sammy had had to get a look, a last look at Mrs. Babcock, one last look at that face, before he skipped. That left him, bandages and all, identifiable by employees and customers. The Starbucks security cameras would certainly have him on video. How long did they keep footage? Still, there were a lot of dots to connect. Samuel Anderson was a Faro-Drake University student who did not work. Sammy A. did not exist at FDU. He regretted telling the old guy, the stockbroker, that he was in Chem. E. there. It's true that he was in biomedical engineering, but it was close enough. Still, it would be hard to find him. And Sean Abernathy was treated for burns from a gas grill explosion that evening. No one was going to connect the dots and draw a smoking gun.
That afternoon when a young woman from the graduate school called Samuel Anderson's iPhone to find out if he was okay, he was surprised. He had not expected a call so soon. He improvised: he was fine, on his way to Colorado to ski with friends. He feigned shock when she explained that a fire had destroyed his apartment along with all of his clothing and personal effects. She was concerned because the people upstairs were unaccounted for. He thanked her and said that there was no reason for him to return or not to meet his friends, especially if everything was destroyed. He would be in touch when he got back.
He was sorry that nice woman and her baby died. Maybe if he had kept his head, he could have gone up and roused them. But he didn't. Probably just as well. The fire department might have arrived sooner, and there would have been more debris to cull though. He might have been busted. And then a lot more might have unraveled. No telling where it would have ended.
A problem, not a big one, but a problem: his cell phone. If he destroyed it, people might wonder, especially if anything unusual turned up in the investigation. He could buy some time. After his shift was over, he bought a burner, called the Aspen Inn, made a reservation as Stephen Alcott and told them to please hold a Fed Ex package for his arrival. He wiped the phone clean of prints, made sure it was powered up so that the GPS was active, and sent it Fed Ex. Probably overkill, but you couldn't be too careful, not when deaths were involved. At least for the next few days, he had a plausible excuse and location. Three cheers for fresh powder on Ajax Mountain.
Alcott got into the beige Taurus he had stowed at his house and drove to Navasota, paying cash when he stopped in Hempstead for gas. He bought groceries and beer, again with cash, and made his way to a gray ranch house a bit out of town. As he turned off the road and looked up the small rise to the front door and the picture windows, he reassessed his view back down and decided again that he liked the line of sight. He had tiny, concealed cameras, and the sight line was good, he repeated to himself.
Sammy wasn't one for surprises. He parked the car in the garage and sat down in the living room with a beer.
For the time being he was clean with FDU and the police. Sooner or later they might wonder. At present his problems were much more complicated. If Biggie discovered he was making and dealing, he would be a liability. He knew exactly what happened to liabilities in his line of work. Give Biggie the same version of the truth, Sammy decided, the same version as everyone else: tell him that he was out of town for a few days skiing, and he'd dig into the project in a day or two.
Anything else? Think, think. Any possible surprises? Who knows? Who might know? Who cares? The downstairs tenants were out their possessions, but the university had insurance, and maybe they did too. Who else? The woman and the baby were dead, so they had no beef. But the boyfriend, this Barry Weeks. What about him? He didn't honestly know, but for the moment he had other worries.
He let the plan sit for an hour. Don't jump in. Always, always, let things sit before you move. The rule had saved his bacon more than once. He reached for another beer and put it back. Keep your mind clear. After a time, he sent Biggie an email through a Tor-like stealth server—one that protected the user's identity and location—and settled in to let his wounds heal.
And his thesis project with Professor Bessnager? Much of what he had to do was data analysis, and that he could that do remotely. "He was skiing in Colorado," but an ambitious graduate student could spend a little time doing his thesis research—even on vacation. On the surface, his project was solid, almost guaranteed to produce enough data for a thesis. And then "Samuel Anderson" could graduate and find a job.
His advisor had asked him to help with a drug delivery system. The ostensible overall goal of the project Sammy was a part of was to develop methods to use nanoparticles to target cancer cells in the body for anticancer drug delivery. His piece was to use nanoparticles to target the nerve cells of a tiny worm, known as C. elegans. Since hitting the nerve cells might kill or paralyze the worm, it would be easy to determine if the targeting was working. The idea was to use it as a model system.
The Nano-Thief: A Lenny D. Novel (Lenny. D. Novels Book 1) Page 5