The Syndrome

by John Case

  Who saw, at a glance, that it was his own death certificate. A somewhat blurry photocopy, but nonetheless, a Certificate of Death for

  Jeffrey Aaron Duran

  Date of Birth: Aug. 26, 1968

  Place of birth: Washington, D.C.

  Date of Death: April 4, 1970

  Place of death: Carlisle, Pennsylvania,

  Occupation: N/A

  The cause of death was listed as “Massive trauma (auto).” The physician of record: Willis Straight, M.D. There was more, but Duran stopped reading.

  “In case you’re wondering,” Bonilla taunted, “you’re buried in Rock Creek Cemetery. ‘Sometimes Heaven Calls To Its Breast Those Loved Best.’”

  Duran was stunned. The only explanation for the documents he’d been shown was that they were a hoax, and yet—who would go to such lengths? Was Adrienne Cope so disturbed that she was trying to kill him off symbolically? Maybe, but—what about Bonilla?

  “The man you’re impersonating never grew up,” Adrienne told him. “He died as a baby. But you know that, of course.”

  “I know you’re distraught about your sister’s death,” Duran said calmly, “and I can make a lot of allowances for that. But this… the effort that went into this… “ He tossed the death certificate onto the coffee table. “You’re a very disturbed person. I hope you get some help.” Then he turned to Bonilla with a ferocious look. “And you—” he began.

  “‘Get some help?!’“ Adrienne sputtered. “‘The effort that went into it’—the effort that went into it involved about five hours of Mr. Bonilla’s time. And the diplomas took even less. And that’s a crime, by the way—having those diplomas on your wall. It’s criminal possession of a forged instrument. And for hacking into the universities’ computers—that’s another crime.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Duran told them. “This goes way beyond providing closure—”

  “‘Closure’?!” Adrienne growled.

  Duran took a step back as Adrienne lunged at him, only to be intercepted by Bonilla, who seized her by the arms and murmured, “It’s okay…”

  “Talk about sick!” Adrienne muttered, her voice rising in volume. “You’re the one who needs a shrink! The people you see are desperate—they’re dying inside—and they come to you for help, and what do they get? Some phony-baloney therapy—”

  “Take it easy,” Bonilla murmured. “We’ll see him in court—and you can write to him in jail. He’ll have lots of time to read.”

  Duran was dumbfounded by her anger. “I feel like I’ve stepped through the looking glass,” he said, to no one in particular.

  Bonilla chuckled as he steered Adrienne toward the door. “Is he good or what?” the detective asked. “I mean, you deal with a con man, a little acting talent shouldn’t surprise you. But this guy! You gotta hand it to him.” He shook his head in a rueful way, stepped into the hallway with his client, and pulled the door closed behind him.

  Duran remained where he was, standing in the foyer, staring at the door. In irons.

  Chapter 13

  It was insane.

  Sitting at the computer, unnerved by his confrontation with Nico’s sister and her doberman, Duran read over the last few entries in Nico’s file:

  15 October

  Trance state. Encouraged client to recall “shadow night.” Initial resistance overcome, but blocking persisted. Recollection of “black mass” traumatic, even under hypnosis. New detail: participation in Eucharistic ritual with semen and blood.

  20 October

  Nicole Sullivan dead. Younger sister, Adrienne Cope, burst into session with de Groot to say she blames me for her sister’s suicide. (This grief-to-anger transference may be a healthy one if it facilitates closure for Ms. Cope.)

  Paging down to the bottom of the file, Duran made a new entry:

  5 November

  Second visit from Adrienne Cope (accompanied by a P I. named Bonilla). Served with summons in a $10 million civil action (!), alleging intent. inflict. of mental distress, fraud & imposture. Incredibly, the PI. presented forged letters and docs. in support of allegation.

  It was crazy. If the documents had been genuine, it might have made sense to confront him with them. But they weren’t. So what had Nico’s sister hoped to accomplish?

  It made you wonder about lawyers and private eyes.

  Getting up from the computer, Duran crossed the room to an antique wooden cabinet that held a selection of single malt whiskies and a rack of Waterford tumblers. Pouring two fingers of Laphroaig in one of the glasses, he swirled it for a moment, and sipped. You could create any kind of document you wanted with desktop publishing, he thought. Birth certificate. Death certificate. Whatever. But that wasn’t the point—that wasn’t what was bothering him. What was bothering him was the fact that Bonilla and Cope had nothing to gain by confronting him with phony documents.

  Duran took a second sip of Laphroaig, and wandered over to the window. Looking out toward the cathedral, he thought, Maybe this guy, Bonilla, fabricated it all, and sold the package as a bill of goods to Nico’s sister. Maybe he figured he’d make a few bucks, jack up his hours…

  It was possible, of course, but… how hard up would a guy like that have to be?

  He shook his head, uncertain what to think. It was irritating, on the one hand—disconcerting on the other. To have someone get in your face and deny something as fundamental as your own identity—and to do it in your own living room was… Well, it put you off-balance.

  What was the phrase she’d used? the man you’re impersonating. A ridiculous accusation but, even so, it made him feel as if she’d shone a flashlight into his soul—and found a structural flaw that ran from his forehead to his feet. She was wrong, obviously, but her accusation went to the heart of what had been bothering him so much of late: the alienation that he felt, and the feeling that… how to put it?

  In his heart of hearts, there was no heart of hearts.

  Finishing his scotch, Duran turned from the window and wandered into the hall. There, he picked up the photo of his mother, sitting on the porch swing, head thrown back in laughter. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember her as she really was. And what he remembered was… the photograph. Mom in the swing…

  Which was the trouble with memory—or his memories, at least. There was nothing “eidetic” about them. He’d been reading up about it, and that was the word Ernst Young used to describe memories of a “Proustian” character, referring to the scene in which the bedridden Proust is suddenly immersed in a fully textured past by a single bite of tea-soaked, madeleine.

  Not so Duran, whose own long-term memories were almost entirely visual and matter-of-fact. There was no sense of color or smell, no taste or sound. There was just the image, and only the image. Or to put it another way: he remembered his mother in the same way that he remembered… Eleanor Roosevelt. (Or Marilyn Monroe—or Pocahontas).

  Eddie Bonilla’s predatory grin floated before him, like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. And the private eye’s crazy accusation filled his hearing: The man you’re impersonating…

  How could he remember things—words—and not remember his mother’s voice? If asked, he could recite chapter and verse of her life: where she was born, the time she got lost in the woods, how she’d fallen from a horse at seventeen and broken her collarbone—which kept her from the senior prom. But the truth was he didn’t remember his mother as a mother. She was part of his “database”—along with James Dean, the Baltimore harbor, and long division.

  Going over to his desk, he looked up the number for the D.C. Office of Vital Records and punched it out on the telephone keypad. Then he listened through a long and well-organized voice-mail menu outlining procedures for obtaining birth and death certificates. The voice noted that disclosure of these documents was limited under privacy statutes. Birth certificates did not become publicly available for one-hundred years. Death certificates did not become releasable until fifty years had passed. The only exceptions t
o these rules were the individuals whose records they were, and next of kin.

  And, if the recording was to be believed, these people would have to provide a valid photo ID before anything would be released to them. Which proved Bonilla’s documents were forgeries. Except… he was a detective. And from what Duran had seen on television, and read in books, private eyes seemed to make their living through “contacts” and pretexts. That a P.I. should finesse a death certificate out of the Office of Vital Records was not beyond the realm of possibility.

  On the other hand, Duran thought, you’d think I’d know who I am—and whether I’m dead or not. The predicament would have been amusing, if it weren’t for the fact that his client had committed suicide, and now he was being sued for millions.

  But there was something else, something that Bonilla had said. It took a moment—then Duran remembered: the Social Security Death Index. The detective had gone to the Office of Vital Records after accessing the Social Security Internet site.

  And maybe that explains things, Duran thought. Maybe the private eye found someone with a similar name—or even the same name—and confused it with me and mine.

  Sitting down at the computer, Duran logged onto AOL and searched for the site that lists the names of Social Security recipients who have died. It only took a moment, and then he found it. The page was a link on half a dozen URLs devoted to genealogy. He tried Ancestry.com, and was soon connected.

  There were three fields of entry in the search engine: first name, last name, and state. Duran typed his names in the appropriate fields, and clicked on the District of Columbia. A few seconds later, the results materialized on the monitor. There was a single entry:

  Name: Jeffrey Duran

  Born: Aug. 25, 1968

  Died: April 4, 1970

  Residence: 20010 (WDC)

  SSN: 520-92-0668

  It was him.

  He almost fainted.

  The cabdriver had no idea how to get to Rock Creek Cemetery, even though both of them could see it on the hillside as they cruised along the parkway, gravestones, statues, and vaults stepping down the hill. They tried three exits: Calvert, Cathedral, and Massachusetts Avenue, but as soon as they left the parkway, the cemetery disappeared.

  “I’m gon’ try P Street,” the driver said, heading downtown again. “You got kin buried here?”

  Duran nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Not my biz-ness,” the cabbie said, scolding himself. “Myself—I lost my mother eight years ago, and I ain’t seen her stone for quite a while.” He shook his head, and made a clucking sound as he leaned forward. Then he turned on the windshield wipers.

  Eight years ago… , Duran thought. That was about when his own parents had died—in the summer of ‘93, when he’d been in grad school.

  The driver swung onto the P Street exit ramp, but, once again, there was no sign of the cemetery. Soon, they were back on the parkway.

  “Have to be here someplace,” the driver said, “you can see it, from time to time.” Finally, he pulled into the tiny Exxon station that stood on the corner near the Watergate Hotel. Leaving the car, he went up to the jumpsuited attendant, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Mah man… ,” he said.

  The two of them disappeared into the gas station’s office. After a while, the driver emerged with a Post-it in his hand. Sliding behind the wheel, he clapped the yellow slip of paper to the dashboard, and declared, “Now we in bizness.”

  And so they were. The cemetery’s entrance was barely a mile away, though by the time they pulled up to the little building that served as its office, the rain was falling steadily.

  “Say, man,” the driver asked as Duran paid him. “You want an umbrella?”

  “Sorry?”

  “No charge or nothin’. Every rainy day, two or three people leave they umbrella in the cab. So what I do, I try to redistribute things, know what I mean?”

  Duran was so taken aback by the man’s spontaneous kindness that he felt a jolt of sadness when the taxi drove away, as if he were bidding farewell to a friend.

  The shuffling cemetery attendant looked, to Duran’s eye, close to joining the ranks that he himself oversaw. His skin was papery white, his eyes red-rimmed and crusty. He was dressed in work clothes—a dark blue shirt, matching pants, and boots.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for a grave.”

  “Well, you came to the right place. What’s the name?”

  “Duran,” he replied, sounding foolish to himself. “Jeffrey Duran.” At the man’s request, he spelled it.

  The man listlessly punched the information onto a computer keyboard. After a moment, he withdrew a printed map of the cemetery from a shelf, circled an area marked P-3, and handed the sheet to Duran without a word.

  The umbrella was nice and big, with a bulbous wooden handle. When he stepped outside and opened it, the rain came down harder, as if on signal, peppering the fabric as he checked the landmarks on the map. He didn’t mind that it was raining—if anything, the diminished visibility softened the agoraphobia that was stirring in his gut.

  Standing within the umbrella’s drip line, studying the map, he could see that finding the grave was not going to be easy. And it wasn’t. Even with the map, it took him nearly twenty minutes. And despite the umbrella, his shoes and socks and pant legs were soaked when he finally found it.

  Jeffrey Aaron Duran’s gravestone sat on a small knoll under a towering Norway spruce. The ground around it was spongy with rain and covered with russet-colored needles that smelled like Christmas. Duran stared:

  Jeffrey Aaron Duran

  B. August 26, 1968

  D. April 4, 1970

  Sometimes Heaven Calls To

  Its Breast Those Loved Best

  The sight of the gravestone was like a body blow. It took his breath away and, for a moment, he was afraid to look around, afraid there would be emptiness on either side of him—that if he looked, he’d find himself stranded in a void with nothing to hang onto but the certainty that the world as he knew it was a mere hallucination, an artifact of his own disordered mind. Destabilized to the core, Duran was helpless as a gust of wind grabbed at the umbrella in his hand, and snatched it away. Reflexively, he turned and watched as the umbrella cartwheeled down the hill, grateful that there was a hill, an umbrella, a cemetery.

  By then, he was beyond surprise, or thought he was, until he realized what ought to have been obvious in the first place—that he was standing in a family plot, surrounded by the graves of several Durans. For the second time in a minute, the world lurched as his eyes fell upon a granite plinth from which an angel rose, wings folded, eyes downcast. Beneath the angel, the names of his parents were etched in the stone—and like him, they’d died in 1970.

  The words on the death certificate ran through his mind: Massive trauma (auto). Not carbon monoxide, then. And not Nantucket, but Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

  Turning, he walked slowly through the rain until he arrived, drenched, at the cemetery office, where he asked the attendant if he’d call him a cab. The man looked up from his desk in a slow, reptilian way and, seeing the look on Duran’s face, broke into a toxic grin, ripe with schadenfreude. “What’s a matter? Seen a ghost?”

  Chapter 14

  It was so unfair.

  For the past week, Adrienne had been at the office every night until midnight, preparing for depositions. And just this once, she’d come in late—and Curtis Slough’s secretary was all over her voice mail with progressively sarcastic messages. Culminating in: “Uhhh—are you coming in at all today?”

  Bitch!

  Adrienne glanced at her watch. It was ten in the morning—not two in the afternoon. Taking a deep breath, she counted to five, and pushed the button for Slough’s extension. The receptionist said that the line was busy, and put her on hold.

  While she waited, she looked through the file on Dante Esposito, one of the city’s asphalt “experts.” From what she could see, it looked as
if Esposito was going to testify that the asphalt in question was probably different from the mix they usually used. (Not good.)

  When Slough finally came on the line, it was obvious from his cheerful tone that he’d forgotten why (or even that) he wanted to talk to her. Which put the ball in Adrienne’s court, because Slough had a reputation for blaming people for his own shortcomings.

  “I got your messages,” she told him, “and I have the documents you wanted. Should I send them up?”

  “I guess so. Anything useful?”

  She hesitated. “Well… I found various inspectors’ reports—and they’re fine for us. As far as the inspectors are concerned, everything about the job was A-OK.”

  Slough grunted his approval, then qualified it. “Well, that’s great,” he said, “but we still have Esposito—”

  “Yes, but the final inspection was conducted by a man named McEligot. He’s retired now, but he’s the one who hired Esposito in the first place. I talked to him last night, and according to McEligot, the mix was fine. So—”

  “Excellent!”

  “And since Esposito didn’t even look at the asphalt until two years after it was laid down—”

  “I like it!” Slough boomed. “Makes Esposito look like he’s shooting from the hip. Outstanding! We’ll kill the bastards.”

  Eddie Bonilla picked her up for lunch at 12:30. He said he had a “bright idea” that he wanted to discuss with her—and, not only that, he’d buy her lunch.