by Tim Tigner
Now he just had to pump enough booze into them to dull their edge.
Fortunately, he had just the ticket.
Once Emmy retook her seat, Farkas asked, “Did you make up your mind? Do you want me to tell you what I know about your tragic backgrounds, or would you rather let sleeping dogs lie?”
“Tell us,” Emmy said. “The good, the bad, and the ugly.”
“As you wish. But first I’m going to freshen up our drinks. Trust me, you’re going to need them.”
After pouring healthy measures of rum and wine, Farkas said, “Ladies first,” and began the unlikely task of telling Emmy her own story. There was no percentage in lying to her, no need to spice things up. He just told it like it was. “Back in 2005, having worked for years as an upscale psychic in L.A., you moved into the Beverly Hills estate of one of your former customers, a man named Bo Beaulieu, with whom you were in love.
“Bo was much older than you, and very wealthy. Needless to say, his relatives were displeased to see anyone without her own money coming between them and their inheritance. To make a long story short—your words, not mine—they pressured him not to marry you and he never did. That did not bother you because you were happy just to be with Bo, much happier than you had ever been before. You were a good ‘wife.’ That situation lasted for a year and a half, until Bo was killed while jogging in a hit and run.
“Adding insult to injury, Bo’s family moved into his estate and kicked you out before the body was cold, claiming that you were just domestic help on par with the maid and gardener.”
“Shall I continue?” Farkas asked, wanting to appear empathetic.
Emmy nodded as he knew she would.
“You did the only thing you could, not having any money of your own. You went back to working as a psychic. It was hard going. You had gotten used to living the good life and felt that your discontent affected the quality of your readings. Furthermore, all your old, hard won clientele had moved on during your eighteen-month hiatus, and so it was pretty rough going.
“You brought a civil suit against the man who was allegedly behind the wheel of the killer Porsche Cayenne, but you lost when the only witness to the crime developed amnesia and could not testify.
“After that you were back on the streets.”
Farkas watched Troy reach over and pull Emmy toward him with both arms, using one to hold her tight, the other to stroke her hair. She looked limp as a rag doll, staring forward, her cheeks dry but expressionless.
One down, one to go.
Farkas turned toward Troy and said, “That’s Emmy’s story. Are you ready for yours?”
Chapter 48
Leapfrog
HONEY RETURNED to his office after four long hours at the bank. Getting nowhere was exhausting. He was hungry too.
“Any luck?” Molly asked.
“Luck? What’s that?”
“Are they bank robbers? A new Bonnie and Clyde?”
“No,” he said, wondering if she had peanut butter crackers in her big beige handbag today. “Their intentions remain a mystery. She spent fifteen minutes talking to one of the account managers, but then didn’t open an account when the number she wanted wasn’t available.”
“That’s weird.”
“It gets weirder. She spent five of those minutes reading the account manager’s aura. Did a hell of a job too, he said.”
“What was her partner doing?”
“He was chatting up the other senior banker about mortgage rates. I’m guessing that they were waiting for Jacobs to arrive.”
“You think maybe it was personal? Johnson and Jacobs both?”
“I don’t know what else to think. Maybe they’re just complete psychopaths. But then there’s that anonymous tip …” Honey shook his head. “How we doing with the blue brotherhood?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Got over fifty confirmations with more coming in all the time. Coast Guard will have them here around midnight.”
“Great. I want them in place when the air and sea ports open. With the ports manned, our guys will be free to sweep the interior en masse.”
“How can I help?”
“Oscar is getting us new mug shots off the bank’s security cameras. They’re much sharper than the old ones and in color. I’ll need you to make up new wanted posters and several thousand flyers. Then I need you to get on the phone with channel 9 and the radio stations. I want them all broadcasting the description I gave you.”
“Okay. I take it you’re going to be leading the chase?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I’m done chasing. This time … I’m going to get out in front of them.”
Chapter 49
Agent Simms
TROY STUDIED FRITZ for a long minute, trying to decide if he wanted this to be the man who narrated his life. Despite all appearances and what they had been through, he did not trust their reporter friend. In the end, however, he simply had to know.
“I’m ready. Give it to me straight.”
Fritz nodded and took another sip of his drink. “I know quite a bit more about you than Ms. Green. I was planning to make you the subject of a separate human interest story.”
“Just give me the highlights,” Troy said, knowing that exposing his past would be like ripping a Band-aid off his heart—a very big and sticky Band-aid. Best to be quick.
“Very well. Three-and-a-half years ago you married an international correspondent for CNN. Her name was Sabrina Trevino. The two of you had met on several occasions in Afghanistan and then dated throughout two years of coincidental service in Iraq. When she got a job with CNN’s Washington bureau, you resigned your commission, married her, and went to work at Bethesda Medical Center as a civilian.
“You sure you want to hear this?” Fritz asked.
“I am,” Troy replied.
“As you wish.
“Sabrina got pregnant on your Hawaiian honeymoon. She gave birth to Alisandra nine months later. That was about two-and-a-half years ago.” Fritz paused to let Troy digest this while he drained his tumbler of rum.
“Nine months ago,” Fritz continued, “you were driving home from dinner when you were clipped by a drunk going sixty in a Hummer. The road was icy and your 3-series BMW spun out of control. It flipped over a railing and fell down into a ravine where it landed upside down on some boulders. The roof of the car caved in, killing your wife and daughter. The steering column shielded you from the brunt of the impact, and you walked away with a couple of gashes on your forehead and a smashed up arm.
“The drunk, Russell Rankin, never even slowed down.”
Troy felt the room begin to spin. This could not be happening. He looked over at Emmy and saw tears rolling down her cheeks. She reached over and put her hand atop his.
Mercifully, Fritz kept talking, not allowing Troy to dwell. “You were pulled out of the car by an FBI Agent on his way home from work. Agent Simms witnessed the accident and saw the driver clearly, but did not get the license number. He lost his memory the day before the trial and could not testify, forcing the prosecution to drop the case.”
“They dropped the case?” Emmy said. “What about the physical evidence, the drunk’s Hummer?”
“It turns out that Rankin’s wife had a matching black Hummer. When the police showed up the next morning and asked to see his vehicle, Rankin produced his wife’s. Before the police figured out that they had been duped, Rankin reported his own stolen. He also had a group of friends willing to provide him with an alibi.”
“And the man who killed my boyfriend?” Emmy asked. “What happened to him?”
“Similar story, I gathered. You didn’t give me the details.”
“Yet no one connected the dots?” Emmy pressed.
“Drunk drivers kill over ten thousand people a year in the US. You would have to be looking pretty hard to distinguish those two dots.”
Troy slumped forward with his elbows on his knees and his palms on the back
of his head. If more were coming, he did not want to see it telegraphed by slanted eye or crinkled brow. He wanted a blindfold for the execution.
Apparently Fritz was out of ammunition, because Emmy asked, “How did Troy and I meet?”
There was a long pause, during which Troy guessed that Fritz and Emmy were passing silent signals. Then Fritz cleared his throat, reloading so to speak, and took the next shot. “Troy lost more than his family in the accident. The nerve damage to his right arm cost him his ability to operate. With no job to pour himself into as he worked through the stages of grief, he devoted himself to obtaining justice. His first stop was Agent Simms, whom he assumed Rankin had bribed. But after a thorough interrogation and a month of follow-up detective work, Troy became convinced that Simms’ amnesia was real.
“His next move was to look for similar instances.”
“He connected the dots,” Emmy interjected.
Troy looked up to see Fritz nodding. “He dug up an article on your case that made the society pages. He flew out to L.A. and the two of you clicked. While your situation was not as dire as Troy’s, you were also very motivated to get to the bottom of what happened and eager for a break from L.A. So you joined forces.
“I don’t know the specifics of how you ended up on Grand Cayman, other than that you were following the trail of payments made by the unconvicted murderers. I got the impression that you were using illegal means—stealing financial records, hacking into banking networks, things like that—because you avoided revealing your methods. That’s about all I know.”
“I see,” Troy heard Emmy say. “Well, I think that’s enough for one sitting. I’m going to put our friend here to bed.”
Chapter 50
Recipe
LUTHER STARED at Arlen with his mouth agape as the number replayed in his mind. Five-hundred-and-eleven million dollars. Half-a-billion. Talk about life changing on a dime. After repeating the musical number five or six times to himself, however, the lawyer in him regained control and he settled back into the plush armchair. “What’s the catch?”
Arlen spread his hands, palms up. “There’s no catch, Luther. Just a few conditions.”
“I see … Do tell; I’m all ears.”
“Is that an espresso machine I see over there?” Arlen asked.
Luther stood, more pleased to have an excuse to walk off some tension than irritated by the delay. “Single or a double?”
“I’d love a double,” Arlen said, standing as well.
They walked over to the granite bar where Arlen leaned with one elbow on the countertop. After Luther ground the beans, Arlen began. “There’s one thing we need to agree on up front. It will help everything else fall into place.”
“Go ahead.”
“Given the amount of attention that your history-making performance will garner, and the corresponding size of your payout, I trust you can see that it would be in everyone’s best interests for this to be your swan song. After successfully wiping the entire United States Supreme Court, you, the compound and your five hundred and eleven million dollars are to retire permanently. Hell, let’s make it an even five fifty, agreed?”
Luther’s knee-jerk reaction was no way. He was not going to let a client dictate his life. But after a moment’s thought, he realized that retirement was the only sensible move. After this job, the FBI would forever be on the lookout for new occurrences of wiped minds. Meanwhile, with Who shot JFK? getting old, conspiracy buffs would look at the amnesic Supreme Court as tigers do red meat. Thousands of closet nerds would begin digging through past cases, sifting the minutia for clues. Yes, Luther thought, he would be well advised to be living on a distant island when that happened—his own private island.
And it wasn’t as though he enjoyed his work.
Feeling a profound if unexpected sense of relief, he said, “Agreed.”
“Excellent, my friend. I’m glad we’re of like mind. Now, let’s discuss tactics.”
“I work alone. Always have, always will,” Luther replied. He was a proud man, the California Bar Association’s Man of the Year for chrissake. He had to show some spine. He drew a line, and vowed not to let Arlen cross it.
To Luther’s chagrin, Arlen’s expression remained as cordial as could be. “Have you ever wiped anyone as high profile as a US Supreme Court justice?”
“My client list is confidential.”
Arlen took a sip of his espresso and then set the cup back down on the saucer. “I’ll take that as a no. Tell me this then; have you ever done more than two wipes for a single case?”
“No. Multiple wipes are just too dangerous. Despite the higher pay, I prefer sticking to singles.”
“I see. So now that we’ve determined that the size and scope of your experience are both but a fraction of the task at hand, do you still find it reasonable to ask me to part with half-a-billion dollars without some kind of oversight?”
Luther recognized Arlen’s tactic as one of his own courtroom favorites: framing. Luther had reduced the world of possibilities to a yes or no based upon an overly simple set of parameters. Luther also realized that Arlen had just run him through a subroutine. Luther had routinely prepared dozens of similar argumentative loops before his courtroom appearances. If the prosecutor says A, get the jury back on track with subroutine X, if he says B, use Y. Luther hated being on the receiving end of such tactics. Their use implied that Arlen was currently holding him in intellectual contempt. He resolved not to end up there again, and tossed out a framing question of his own. “Do you really want to involve yourself so deeply in something so risky?”
Arlen smiled as if to say touché, then changed his tack. “When I was negotiating with Landis, Aridon was on their 243rd compound. How much further did he get?”
Luther decided to play along. “All the way to 456.”
Arlen raised his brows at the implied progress. “I trust that the compound still requires UV-C activation after implantation?”
“That’s right.”
“Is the amount of memory erasure constant?”
Luther could think of no reason to hold back that detail. “No. We can vary it from a minimum of around four weeks up to about the last twenty percent of a person’s total episodic memory.”
Arlen looked off into space for a minute, then nodded and asked, “Do you know why twenty percent is the limit?”
The pharmacology of 456 was a testy topic for Luther. He was embarrassed not to understand it. Landis had been Luther’s only source for such information, but he flaunted his PhDs in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology every time he opened his mouth. No doubt that was part of the reason he had trouble getting financing. Initially, Luther had not given a crap about the science—he was in it for the money—so he had let Landis’s explanations fly over his head with little more than a contemplative nod. Now that Compound 456 was the sun in his universe, however, Luther was very curious indeed. He sensed an opportunity, swallowed his pride, and said, “No.”
Arlen gave an understanding nod and said, “Landis wanted to cure Alzheimer’s. While the biochemistry of the disease remains largely mysterious, we know that the formation of plaque clusters in the neuron forest is key. The plaque clusters strangle nerve cells—like weeds in a garden. Landis’s strategy was to devise a compound that destroyed the plaque.
“He had a patent on an enzyme that fluoresced with heat when exposed to ultraviolet-C radiation. So his tactic was to develop a carrier for that enzyme that would bind uniquely to plaque—a guided missile to deliver his heat bomb, so to speak. Once in place, he planned to expose the enzyme to UV-C via the optic nerve, and destroy the plaque. With the plaque gone, the progression of Alzheimer’s should be halted if not reversed.
“Incidentally, this is exactly the kind of treatment the pharmaceutical industry loves, because you have to keep coming back at regular intervals to have the weeds pulled.
“Landis’s problem was finding a carrier that would bind only to plaque—a very smart missile.
Unfortunately, the plaque in question, beta amyloid, is a peptide comprised of the same amino acids that are the building blocks of the nerve cells storing memories. Thus after 456 attempts, he still had nothing that attached to plaque and only plaque.”
Luther knew that last point all too well. An announcement to that effect had marked the second worst day of his life. He said, “Landis thought he had it with 456. It worked in monkeys—but not in humans. When 456 destroyed the memory of the first volunteer, he threw in the towel.”
“Hard to get more volunteers after that,” Arlen agreed. “Now, you said that you can wipe memories from a minimum of about four weeks up to around the last twenty-percent of a person’s life, right?”
“Right.”
“Do you regulate that interval based on the quantity of 456 injected, or the exposure to UV-C?”
“The exposure to UV-C.”
Arlen nodded as though this was the answer he expected. “And the higher the frequency, the longer the erasure, right?”
“Right. So how does it erase memory?” Luther asked.
“Memory is another gray area—pardon the pun. We still know surprisingly little about how memories are created and stored. The building blocks of memory are neurons, and you have billions of them. Each neuron has myriad branches, called dendrites, which conduct the flow of information. Over time, the dendrites become more stable, like the branches on a tree growing thicker. You follow?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Now, there are also different types of dendrites, and again they are not fully understood. But nonetheless, given your explanation, it’s obvious to me that in addition to attaching to beta-amyloid plaque, 456 attaches to dendrites associated with episodic memory. When activated with UV-C, it heats up. The heat fries the more fragile dendrites, the thinner branches so to speak.”
“And at the most powerful setting, the heat is high enough to fry the most fragile twenty percent of branches,” Luther said. “Got it.”