Devil's Plaything

by Matt Richtel

  “Guns, fire, sharp objects,” I say. “You’re multi-talented.”

  “In this economy, it pays to be versatile.”

  “And a razor-sharp sense of humor.”

  I need to buy time so the emergency operator can hone in on the phone signal and send the cavalry. The hooded man steps forward.

  “You ever been to Davos?” I ask.

  “Where?”

  “You’re not from Switzerland.”

  “Get ready to say gutenacht.”

  “That’s German.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Am I allowed a weapon?” I ask.

  “You can fight back with your face.”

  He steps forward and I stumble back. I move right, behind the desk. This, I realize, constitutes a strategic error. If I try to use the desk as a barrier, it means putting Pete directly in the middle of the fray.

  I slide further to my right, away from the desk. But into the open. Behind me, bookshelves. Further to my right, the library’s interior doorway, leading to the rest of the house, but the door is closed. The international man stands next to the desk, not far from Pete. He seems amused by my indecision and the apparent futility of my escape maneuvers. If I run for the interior door, he’ll get me from behind.

  He takes a step forward, confident but cautious and strategic, cutting off my angles. He’s not breathing hard, but sweat glistens in the widow’s peak of his brow. I notice a slight wobble in his left leg. I take another step to my right and so does he. Wobble.

  “ACL,” I say.

  This pauses him.

  “You’ve got a tear in your left knee. It’s weak. I’m not an orthopedist, but it looks to me like one wrong step and that thing could go.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  He takes two big steps towards me and swings his knife. I leap to my left, edging back behind the desk and out of the way of his swing. I turn to face him and see his new look of intense determination.

  I back away, feeling in my pocket for the wine opener. I pass Pete to my left. I speed up my backpedaling. In my peripheral vision, I see a low-backed reading chair, maybe small enough that I can throw it, or big enough to duck behind. But my window to decide and act is slamming.

  The man runs at me, knife held high. He swings it downward. I turn my back away in hopes of avoiding razor on flesh. I lurch, and stumble forward, flailing and falling. Behind me, I hear a yelp, and a thud.

  “Motherfucker!”

  Scrambling back to my feet, I turn to look. The assailant is on the ground, facedown. He looks at me, starts to rise, grimaces, grabs his knee.

  I can see why: around the knee is a cord of some kind. An electrical cord.

  In an instant, I understand. Pete somehow has wrapped the lamp cord around the killer’s leg and tripped him, aggravating the knee injury.

  Remarkable. For once, my penchant for snap diagnoses has actually helped me.

  He starts to rise again. I leap towards him as I pull the wine opener out. I aim for the top of his back, piercing the tender, nerve-filled skin between his scapulae.

  “AHHH. FUCK!”

  He flails his arms behind his back, reaching for the opener.

  It is the strangest moment for me to think: Canadian accent. Not Swiss. Canadian.

  Then I see that the knife has spun free. It is a few feet to the intruder’s left, at the base of the bookshelves. I rush to it. I grab the warm handle, slick with sweat.

  I walk to the would-be killer. He’s craning his neck my direction, looking now at me. Despite having the opener still in his back, he’s responding to the more immediate danger. He inches away from me.

  I hear sirens. Police, maybe an ambulance, headed in our direction.

  I look at the electrical lamp cord still wrapped around the man’s knee. I follow the cord where it leads—to the stubby porcelain lamp lying next to Pete. It survived the fall from the desk. It won’t survive the next impact. Without taking my eyes from him, I set down the knife beside Pete and lift the lamp.

  I walk to the assassin and hold it over his head, as he struggles to scoot away and extricate the protruding wine opener.

  “Where’s my grandmother?”

  “He doesn’t know,” Pete rasps. “He asked me.”

  “How can he not know? He’s the bad guy!”

  The man has succeeded in dislodging the wine opener. He’s getting his bearings, looking around for a weapon.

  “Lights out,” I say.

  I slam the lamp over the man’s head. The porcelain shatters. The intruder slumps, unconscious.

  “DSM,” Pete mutters.

  “Thank you, Pete. Unbelievable teamwork. Hang on. The ambulance is almost here.”

  “DSM.”

  He’s jutting his pale chin across the room. I follow his gaze to a small, round coffee table with ornate legs. On top of the table sits a hefty medical book. The DSM—The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

  The intruder moans.

  I look back at Pete. He nods.

  I hustle over to the manual. I look back at Pete. “Dementia,” Pete says.

  I open the book to D. I flip through pages, until I come to the loose piece of paper.

  The sirens are nearing. They’ve certainly reached Sea Cliff, maybe our block.

  Pete says something I can’t understand. He’s too weak to make his voice heard. I step closer to him and can make out his meaning. “Get them,” he whispers. “Stop them.”

  “Who is them? Who is this man? Who does he work for?”

  His head lolls. He’s fading.

  “Pete!”

  His chin droops. I feel his pulse. It’s weak, but blood continues to pump.

  I take the piece of paper, and fold it into my pocket.

  I look at Pete’s attacker, who is blinking on the edge of consciousness. The police will be here soon enough. I hate to leave, but I can’t stay. There is little I can do for Pete.

  I slip out the back door into the moonlight.

  Chapter 48

  If I hop over the white picket fence, I’ll find myself in the strobe lights of local law enforcement. That means getting detained, explaining the mess inside, losing the piece of paper Pete gave me, and, most important, not following up on my impulse: I know where I can find Grandma. Or, at least, I have an idea who might have taken her. And the extraordinary reason why.

  I shuffle two houses down to a residence that has the lights off. I hoist myself onto its lawn. I edge along the side of the house.

  Minutes later, I climb into the Cadillac, start the engine, and drive out of Sea Cliff.

  Six blocks later, I pull over. I turn on the car’s inside light. I pull out the piece of paper from Pete’s DSM.

  What I see is a laundry list of items:

  1/0

  Yankees/Dodgers

  Cursive/Block

  12/7; Radio/Word-of-Mouth

  Chevrolet/Cadillac

  Standard/Automatic

  Paternal car; Chevrolet/Cadillac

  Slaughter Self/Butcher

  Kennedy/Nixon

  Married uniform/tie

  Husband married uniform/tie

  Saw moon landing/word-of-mouth

  Union/non-union

  Polio in family/No polio

  Pink Cadillac/Blue Cadillac

  Purple Chevrolet/Orange Chevrolet

  One sibling/no sibling

  Two sibling/three sibling

  Procrastinator/punctual

  Audited/Meticulous with books

  If cursive, then “saw moon landing”

  If union, then Yankees

  If Procrastinator, then Polio

  As I look at the list, the first thing that comes to mind is that I’ve heard Grandma Lane talk about some of these things, both in her conversations with me and in her conversations with the Human Memory Crusade. For instance, on more than one occasion, she’s mentioned to me that her father drove a Cadillac. I recall that she told the Crusade that she heard
about Pearl Harbor on a radio. One of the items on the list reads: “12/7; Radio/Word-of-Mouth.”

  12/7—December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor.

  I study the whole list again. On its face, this looks like a list of possible memory options. Some people supported Kennedy, others Nixon. Some drove a standard car, others an automatic. But the list also seems so discrete, narrow, and confining. After all, some people probably supported neither the Yankees nor the Dodgers.

  Grandma wasn’t a big baseball fan.

  The word equations at the end of the list are another curiosity—“If union, then Yankees.” “If Procrastinator, then Polio.”

  I do recognize the syntax as basic computing language, The “if . . . then” statement. Bullseye can make more sense of it.

  It is almost midnight. I fold up the piece of paper and start the car.

  I start driving across town to what I imagine will be a bizarre confrontation, one that has been a lifetime in the making.

  The funniest teacher I had in med school was Dr. Eleanor Fitzgerald. She taught anatomy. We called her El Fitz.

  One day, she brought in a picnic lunch for everyone that included beer. After lunch, she announced we would finally start dissecting the brain.

  “No need to be totally sober for this,” she said. “We have no real idea what’s going on in there, or how it works. Come back in seven thousand years and we’ll have something to teach you.”

  It is truly a wonder how we think, process information, store memories, and recall them.

  Computers are a mystery too, at least to me. But, in general, I know that we know how to build them, and we know how information moves. We know that data gets held in a certain piece of hardware that is controlled by a certain piece of software. We know that tiny transistors attached to only slightly less tiny pieces of silicon transmit and calculate information when we ask our device to calculate a math problem or place a phone call. We write software that performs certain tasks, all dictated and understood by a computer’s creators.

  Similarly, we know that various regions in the human mind have a lot to say about certain activities. The visual cortex and sight are linked. Injure the frontal lobe and emotional retardation follows, and so on. But most activities don’t just rely on a discrete region of the brain. Even a relatively simple task—picking up a pencil—might involve dozens of nooks and crannies; neurons firing in just the right amounts, cascading and cooperating in an organic alchemy that is truly one of life’s great mysteries.

  But unlike a computer, we can’t well measure or dictate what’s happening. Our mind often has a mind of its own. Witness depression, joy, hand-eye coordination, ability to make music, or love. Or the sudden emergence of a memory, the synthesis of a complex idea, a brainstorm, or revelation.

  Say, for instance, a revelation about the life of your grandmother.

  Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, a theory bubbles to the surface. I have a feeling I know what triggered it: When I found Pete lying on the floor in a pool of blood, he confessed to me that he was living a “double life.”

  Double life.

  Why did that phrase trigger a theory about my grandmother? Who knows. But it did.

  It made me think about her distant relationship with my father, and the yearning for freedom that has always been laced through our conversations, even when I was a child. It made me think about Lane’s childhood in Denver, the stranger nicknamed Pigeon, the way I always felt such kinship with Grandma even though she kept a distance from me, held something back.

  The mysteries of my mind. The mysteries of my grandmother.

  I drive by Magnolia Manor. The front entrance is dark. Only a handful of the windows inside are lit. I’m struck by the peacefulness of the place; I’m always so critical of Magnolia Manor but now it seems like a refuge of solitude and a quiet place to spend a few years playing bridge and watching reruns.

  For good measure, I park three blocks away.

  I walk along the quiet streets to the retirement home’s entrance. I slink along the side of the gardens that lead from the gates to the front doors. To get inside, I’ll need to convince the desk guard to buzz me in. More likely, he’ll not do so, or he’ll call the cops.

  There’s an alternative. Vince lives in a flat detached from the Manor, on the right side of the property. His residence is a two-story brownstone that looks like it belongs in a swanky Boston or New York neighborhood. Like Vince, it is well kept and austere. From the porch light, I can see the grass cut precisely along the stone path that leads from gate to front door.

  I walk to the red-painted door. I reach for the handle, and I find it open. I enter.

  Vince sits in a deep, upholstered recliner in his living room. There is a book across his lap. The Human Asparagus doesn’t look surprised to see me.

  He is surprised, however, when I bullrush him. Without a word, I hurl myself toward the chair as he reaches for the telephone sitting next to him.

  I smack the phone out of his hand and reach for his throat, then pull back, gulping for air, standing over him. I have the upper hand, physically. He cannot match my anger or drive.

  “If you hurt me, you won’t find your grandmother,” Vince says, trying to stay cool.

  “You took her.”

  “I protect my residents.”

  “Where is she, Vince?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit. You just said . . .”

  “Plausible deniability. I helped take her. To protect her. but I don’t know where they put her.”

  “Who?”

  I’m asking the question, but I already know who Vince is referring to.

  A voice confirms my suspicions.

  “She’s safe,” the gravelly bass voice says. It comes from behind me.

  I turn and am struck by the interloper’s lean face, serious, with thoughtful eyes, like you’d imagine from a troop commander whose squad took a few too many casualties.

  I look down at his feet. I see the toes turned just a tad inward.

  “Hello, Pigeon,” I say.

  “I haven’t been called that in many years.”

  “I have a strange question for you.”

  “Your grandmother is okay. She’s fine.”

  “I know that, Harry.”

  “I can take you to her.”

  “No,” Vince says.

  “It’s okay, Vince,” Harry responds. Harry has clearly led men.

  He looks at me. “What’s your question?”

  I clear my throat.

  “Are you my grandfather?”

  A tear wells in the corner of Pigeon’s eye.

  Chapter 49

  It’s a wonder I haven’t had my membership card in the Northern California Press Club revoked. For the last day, Grandma hasn’t been very hard to find. She’s been back at the home, in her own bed.

  I stand at its foot, watching her sleep. Next to me stands Harry. His agitation is evident only from the rhythmic grinding of his teeth. Betty Lou stands nearby in a terry-cloth robe, rocking on her feet.

  “It would be better if you’d wait outside,” Harry says to Vince.

  “I don’t trust him,” Vince says.

  “Trust me,” Harry responds. “If there’s a problem, you can always call the police.”

  Vince glowers at me. He walks out the door. He’s limping, but I let the observation go for the moment—along with a lot of other unanswered questions.

  Harry and I walked here in silence. So I still don’t know the crucial particulars. Right now, I feel mostly immense relief.

  I turn to Betty Lou. “I don’t blame you,” I say.

  “You’d have no right to. Laney needed to be safe,” she says, then takes the edge off with her addendum: “Friday night is crappy mac-and-cheese night at the Manor. You can’t deprive her of that.”

  She smiles thinly.

  I sit on the bed. Grandma lies on her side, her cheek against the pillow, face seemingly relaxed, her breathing regular, a
nd then she lets out an audible exhale, a demi-snore. Her eyes open, she blinks, and falls back asleep.

  I put my hand on the hump of her body.

  Tears stream down my cheeks and I do nothing to try to stop them.

  I sit this way for more than a minute, when I feel Betty Lou put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s lucky to have you,” Betty Lou whispers. We remain like this for another minute until the extent of my relief passes through me. Until I am convinced Grandma is really here—intact, safe and sound.

  On Grandma’s nightstand is a cell phone. Betty Lou sees me looking at it. “It’s mine,” she says. “Go ahead.”

  I nod. I take a deep breath, pick it up the phone, and dial. My heart thumps. The phone rings four times, then goes to voice mail. I call again. After the second ring, Polly answers.

  “Don’t say anything,” I say. “Just hear these words: I want to take you to dinner.”

  “Where are you?”

  “With my grandmother?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “More or less.”

  “Can you come see me?”

  “Yes. Soon.”

  “Tonight soon?”

  “Yes.”

  I hope I’m going to be able to be true to my word.

  We hang up.

  I turn to face Betty Lou and Harry.

  “It’s not very complicated, is it?” I say.

  When I’d first absconded with Lane, it made her friends nervous. This seems natural, given that I haven’t been so attentive in the past, but, more fundamentally, because they didn’t like to see Grandma away from her comfortable confines. Then I prompted further concern when I asked Betty Lou to steal Grandma’s care file.

  “You were acting strange, talking about conspiracies,” Betty Lou says. “It was like The X-Files, or the Nixon administration.”

  “But the sprinklers destroyed the recreation room,” I say, referring to the convenient deployment of fire sprinklers that destroyed the computers for the Human Memory Crusade.

  They don’t have an answer to this.

  “You trust Vince,” I say.

  Harry clears his throat. “We had a grunt in our platoon who did everything by the book,” he says. “A lot of guys razzed him for cleaning his weapon all the time and telling us to clean ours. He was a pain in the rear, if you want to know the truth. But in a beachside foxhole on some hot-as-hell island, he had the last working rifle.”