Receptor

by Alan Glynn

  Sweeney nods, then something occurs to him. “I don’t have any money.”

  Sutton throws his eyes up. “Holy shit, you’re a mess, you know that?” He digs into his pocket, takes out a roll of bills, peels off a twenty, and hands it to Sweeney. “Now, go on, get out of here.”

  Sweeney wanders off. He goes into Penn Station, gets change for the twenty, and finds a telephone booth.

  Where else can he go except home?

  He calls Laura.

  But he doesn’t know if she’ll be there or not. She could have moved. Maybe she’s still in Philadelphia with her sister.

  He doesn’t know what he’ll do if she isn’t there.

  It rings. “Hello?”

  “Laura? It’s Ned.”

  There is silence.

  “Laura?”

  The silence continues, but out of it rises a low whimper. Then, “Ned?”

  “Yes, it’s me. I’ll … I’ll be home on the next train.”

  * * *

  When he arrives, Laura is agitated and angry and possibly even a little drunk. She’s clearly ready to slit his throat and ask questions later. But when she sees him standing in the doorway, she goes pale and has to fight back tears. The questions she’s been carefully formulating for months, the arguments and the counterarguments, the case for the prosecution—it all evaporates, and within minutes she’s running a bath and putting his clothes into the washing machine and heating up some dinner while hushing Tommy, who can barely contain his excitement.

  Sweeney keeps offering to explain, but Laura just shakes her head at him, no, no, no … be quiet, be still … there’ll be time for that later.

  He’s not aware of it himself, but it emerges soon enough that he has lost a lot of weight and looks gaunt. And he seems … slow.

  That part he understands, that part he feels.

  But damn, he thinks, you should have seen me a few weeks ago.

  “Your father’s not well.” This is what he hears Laura telling Tommy. “But he’s home now.”

  “Yes.” Tommy snuffling, fighting back tears.

  “And he’ll be well again very soon.”

  “I know. He will.”

  Sweeney almost believes it himself.

  The days pass. He sleeps well and eats well. Looking around, he notices that a few changes have been made. The place has had a paint job. Some of the furniture is new. Laura’s hair is different.

  It’s all nice.

  He and Tommy spend lots of time together, playing in the yard, horsing around, and talking—about trains, about baseball, about the future. But he and Laura haven’t really talked yet. It takes them about a week to work up to it.

  Laura explains, finally, that when she came home from Philadelphia and Ned wasn’t there, she got angry. She stayed that way for a while, but then she started to worry. She was on the point of contacting the police when the first payment came through. Someone from the bank got in touch and advised her that five hundred dollars had been transferred into their savings account. She didn’t know what to make of it, but had to assume that it was from Ned, and that therefore he was okay. The second payment, a couple of weeks later, was for a thousand dollars. Where was he and what was he doing? At that point her imagination ran away with her and she began to picture all sorts of lurid possibilities. But once her anger reestablished itself, and the money kept coming, and in ever larger amounts, she just let it slide.

  For his part, Sweeney doesn’t have as coherent a story to tell.

  “I went to California…”

  This is how he starts, and more than once—but it’s also as far as he ever gets. If he was going to tell the truth, he could talk for hours, but he’s rehearsed telling the truth in his mind, over and over, and it doesn’t sound good. He doesn’t think Laura or anyone else would believe it.

  “I went to California…”

  And he wouldn’t blame them.

  So he goes with amnesia.

  “… and after that I really don’t remember very much at all.”

  * * *

  On several occasions, he takes out the typed manuscript he had in his travel bag and reads short sections from it. He knows he wrote this stuff himself, but it’s as if he’s seeing it for the first time, and he’s intimidated by it, by the fluidity of its prose and the complexity of its ideas. When he’s feeling stronger, he intends to read the whole thing, and maybe do something with it, but for the time being he decides to just store it away. The manuscript is about four or five hundred pages long, so he divides the pages up and fits them into three separate padded envelopes. He puts these into a bag, which he puts on a shelf in the garage.

  The next morning over breakfast, Laura suggests that maybe he should make an appointment to go see a psychiatrist, that it might be of some benefit to him.

  Sweeney’s initial reaction to this is defensive, but he quickly backtracks. He sees that she’s probably right.

  “Wouldn’t it be very expensive, though?”

  “Yes, I’m sure it would, but…”

  “But what?”

  Laura seems surprised. “Ned, don’t you know how much money there is in our savings account?”

  He remembers his trips to the bank all right, but there were so many of them.

  He shakes his head.

  Laura looks around, as though someone—one of the neighbors, perhaps—might be within earshot. Then she leans toward him and whispers, “It’s over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  * * *

  Although he maintains the pretense of amnesia, Sweeney finds his sessions with Dr. Lazlo Rothmann very helpful. The weekly trips into the city are enjoyable—he’s not on his way to work, he’s not anxious, he’s not under pressure.

  But because he has so much time on his hands, he does a lot of thinking and reflecting. The one thing he keeps circling back to in his mind is what happened at the New York State Psychopathic Hospital with Dr. Bill Cordell and those fucking cigarettes. What was that all about? And who was Cordell working for anyway?

  Sweeney is strolling along Park Avenue one morning, after a session with Dr. Rothmann, when something occurs to him. Mike Sutton once said in passing that he had occasional dealings with Eiben Laboratories. Maybe that was who he got his supply of MDT-48 from. And maybe Eiben Laboratories was also who Bill Cordell was working for.

  In which case, Cordell probably heard from Sutton about how MDT kills the desire to smoke and was putting it to the test in a sort of limited clinical trial. Cordell got Sweeney into a pattern of regular smoking, administered some MDT, then checked to see if the pattern would be interrupted. Not only was it interrupted, Sweeney threw up and is unlikely to smoke again as long as he lives.

  All of which is fine, as far as it goes. But what about MDT’s many other and far more interesting properties? Cordell showed no interest in those whatsoever.

  In fact, he showed no awareness of them.

  Sweeney stops at the corner of Sixty-Fourth Street.

  Is it possible that no one at Eiben Laboratories is actually aware of just what a powerful drug MDT is? More to the point—at least as far as Sweeney is concerned—do they still have a supply of the stuff?

  He gazes down Park at the Helmsley Building.

  But of course they must. Because even a drug that did nothing else but eliminate nicotine cravings would surely be worth millions, if not tens of millions, to a company like Eiben. So at the very least—Sweeney imagines—they have to have it in development, right? And with a view to launching it on the market as soon as they possibly can.

  The very prospect stirs rapid, spiky changes in his body chemistry.

  * * *

  That evening, he and Laura are having cocktails at a neighbor’s house across the street when Sweeney picks up a copy of Time magazine from a few months back. It has an article in it stating that “tars from cigarette smoke” have now been proven “beyond any doubt” to cause cancer in mice. Some of the big tobacco companies are pretty spooked and
are starting to put a lot of money into medical research. The cancer cat, it seems, is now clawing its way out of the tobacco-industry bag. There’s been a lick of panic on Wall Street, too, apparently, with stocks falling sharply in recent months—American Tobacco losing about 6 percent of its value and Reynolds closer to 10 percent.

  As Jerry pours martinis and Samantha passes around canapés, Sweeney notices that everyone is smoking. No doubt this scene is being replicated in living rooms, bars, and hotels across the country. And that’s when it hits him. Dr. Bill Cordell doesn’t work for Eiben Laboratories. It’s much more likely that he works for one of the big fucking tobacco companies. Or for all of them. Because Cordell was angry that day. He snarled at Sweeney and stormed out of the room. Why would he do that if he’d just had it confirmed that the substance he was testing actually worked, that it was the pharmaceutical equivalent of pure gold?

  Sweeney feels weak. It seems so obvious now. Cordell works for American Tobacco or R. J. Reynolds or Philip Morris. And Sutton works for everyone. Or anyone. The FBI, the CIA, whoever.

  He drains his martini and takes another one from a passing tray.

  Mike Sutton had at least twenty different vials in his freezer—all supplied, presumably, by Eiben Laboratories. He also had that long list of abbreviated chemical names in his notebook, and when Sweeney lied to him about the effects of MDT, telling him that all it did was make him not want to smoke, Sutton immediately crossed it off his list. But if he then chose to take this information to Cordell, it’s probably safe to assume that he said nothing about it to Eiben, or to anyone else.

  Which still means Eiben has a drug in its labs somewhere that not only eliminates the craving for nicotine, but actually has the potential to transform society at a fundamental level. They just don’t know it. They don’t know any of it.

  Someone needs to tell them.

  * * *

  Sweeney’s initial attempts are not encouraging. He finds the number for Eiben Laboratories at the local post office the next morning and telephones them, but his request for a meeting is met with bewilderment. He tries a few more times over subsequent days and is eventually told to stop calling them.

  The next week, carrying a briefcase and wearing a new suit, he takes a cab out to the Eiben Laboratories plant in Hoboken. The irony is that if he were actually on MDT, this would be a whole lot easier. Unannounced, he asks to see Lloyd Buntin, a vice president of sales whose name was mentioned on one of the phone calls. There is a little confusion and eventually Buntin appears, but things don’t go well. Sweeney plays his hand too soon and when he mentions MDT-48 by name, alarm bells start ringing.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Sweeney, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave at once.”

  On his way back, Sweeney curses himself for his stupidity. How did he think that was going to go?

  Then he has an idea. That journalist fellow he once met—it was on the very first night—what was his name? Vance Packard. He writes for American Magazine. Surely a story like this would be right up his alley—pharmaceutical company harbors drug that could help millions kick the smoking habit?

  A cure for alcoholism, even? Addiction?

  That’s Pulitzer Prize territory.

  Sweeney gets on the phone with American Magazine at once and asks to speak with Packard. Again, there is a little confusion, but Packard eventually remembers Sweeney, and when he does, he gets excited.

  “Why, yes … Ned Sweeney, right? I remember. That was a fascinating conversation we had—in fact I’ve been working on some of those ideas we discussed. Yes, I’d love to meet, so long as you don’t disappear on me again.”

  They make an arrangement for the next day. Sweeney says he’s free any time. Packard suggests early evening. He has a few appointments so, say, where they went before, Peacock Alley at the Waldorf, 7:00 p.m., is that good?

  Absolutely.

  And it is. Because Sweeney is excited, too. He sees this as a way of possibly extracting some MDT-48 from Eiben Laboratories. Or as a first step, at any rate. Sweeney’s only worry is that Packard won’t find him as convincing as before.

  He arrives at the Waldorf early. He enters the vestibule, goes up the short flight of stairs, and crosses the main foyer. The last time he was here he remembers registering a flood of visual data—colors, textures, architectural details. It was effortless. This time he is oblivious to pretty much everything, except for the drumming in his ears and the thumping of his heart.

  Peacock Alley is fairly busy, but he sees Packard immediately. He’s not far away, standing over to the left, between a table and one of the glass display cabinets. He’s talking to a tall man with slicked-back hair and a mustache. Beside this man is a small boy, maybe seven or eight years old. He’s got wavy blond hair, a pudgy face, and a ruddy complexion. While continuing to listen intently to the man, Packard spots Sweeney, and with a deft movement of his eyebrows, indicates that he’ll be with him in a minute.

  Although there is a babble of voices in the room, Sweeney still manages to catch certain words and phrases from the conversation. “Luna Park … FHA … Capehart…”

  But none of it means anything to him.

  Seconds later, in any event, Packard is saying, “Okay, Fred, good, I’ll talk to you again.” Then the tall man and the boy turn away and move in Sweeney’s direction.

  As they pass around him, the boy sticks his tongue out at Sweeney, does a rapid pivot, and kicks him in the shin. The tall man just clips the boy on the side of the head and says, “Donnie, cut it out.”

  Sweeney does his best to ignore the sharp pain in his leg. Smiling, he takes a step toward Packard. They shake hands. Packard seems shocked.

  “Did that kid just…?”

  Sweeney shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

  But the incident has definitely thrown him off balance, and as they sit at a table and start talking, he finds it hard to concentrate. Also, unlike the last time, he finds himself a little intimidated by Packard.

  It’s not a good start.

  Packard listens, even asks a few questions, but Sweeney can soon tell that he’s perplexed, and then losing interest. “I’m not sure what you’re telling me, Ned, and honestly, without some kind of evidence, I don’t see there’s anything I can do.”

  Again, how did Sweeney think this was going to turn out? He manages to get away before things become too embarrassing and promises Packard that he’ll follow up. But even as he’s saying this he’s not quite sure what he means by it himself.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Sweeney is walking along Forty-Ninth Street toward Lexington Avenue when he hears a voice from behind call out his name. He stops and turns around. Mike Sutton is ten feet away and catching up.

  “Hey, Ned, I thought it was you.”

  Sweeney’s heart sinks. He’s already demoralized from the meeting with Packard, and now this?

  “Hello,” he says.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going home.” He studies Sutton for a moment. “What are you doing here?”

  “This and that, you know. I’m a busy guy. Between here and San Francisco I don’t know where I am half the time.”

  Sweeney senses that something isn’t right. “What do you want?”

  “What do I want? Nothing. Can’t a fella say hello?”

  “A fella like you doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere.”

  “Suspicious, aren’t you?”

  “Good night.”

  Sweeney turns and starts walking.

  “Don’t you want to hear what I have to say?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if it involves a fresh batch of MDT? Ten of those little vials?” He makes a kissing sound with his lips. “I could maybe do a little business on the side, Ned. If you’re interested.”

  Sweeney stops.

  He knows something still isn’t right, but he also knows he can no longer just walk
away.

  He turns around again.

  “I have a couple of things to do,” Sutton says, looking at his watch. “But meet me in an hour, say, at my hotel?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m at the Fairbrook, on Forty-Third Street. Room 1406.”

  22

  “No, not yet,” I say.

  But then I reach for the bottle. I take out one of the tiny pills and knock it back with some of the water.

  Even as I’m doing this, it strikes me as reckless and irresponsible. For a guy in his late teens or early twenties, it might be liberating, or even thrilling, but it definitely carries a different weight when you’re ten or fifteen years down the line, one that presses in on your chest, and presses hard. Because you realize there are only two possible outcomes from doing something this dangerous—either you get lucky and survive, or you don’t, in which case the last thing in life you’ll ever have to confront will be the immutable fact of your own stupidity.

  Still, if this is actual MDT-48, then the irony here is that not doing it would feel just as irresponsible.

  I can’t speak for Molly.

  She picks up the bottle and shakes one of the pills out into the palm of her hand. She reaches for the glass of water.

  “Look, Molly, you don’t ha—”

  “Shut up.”

  She takes the pill.

  And that’s it. We wait to see what happens.

  * * *

  Molly reads the manuscript in twenty-five minutes. While she’s turning the pages at flip-book speed, I deep-dive around the Web and quickly manage to locate a ten-second clip of my grandfather being interviewed at a gala event in some hotel.

  “And you, sir, your name is…?”

  “Monroe, Tom Monroe.”

  The film is grainy and slightly blurred, and the sound is hard to make out. Camera flashbulbs are going off in the background. I reckon this must be in Santa Monica, probably late 1953.

  “And are you a mathematician, sir, or a physicist?”