The bistro boys will be back from the Riviera tomorrow, and I don’t have another house-sitting job for several weeks. That’s almost an eternity in my little apartment. Lily Rudolph’s phone number is tucked away in my desk drawer.
I think the fear of getting caught is starting to mess with me. The other day when I was pulling out of the gas station in the Miata, I could have sworn I saw that chubby Gavin guy from Nesler across the street at an espresso cart. I even circled around the block to double check. It wasn’t him, it was another chubby guy in a dark suit, but it could have been him. I could start running into people who recognize me. That would suck.
Does everyone go through the hair-brush-celebrity phase? I really don’t think it was just me. I think everyone has, at least once, grabbed a brush and belted out a song into the mirror or accepted an Oscar with humility and a few witty remarks for the press. You imagine how awesome it would be to be famous, people clamoring for your autograph, recognized wherever you go. I bet in real life it’s annoying and beyond creepy.
I don’t want to be known. I don’t want to suffer that double-take moment when someone realizes he’s seen you before, but in an entirely different capacity. At its heart, my hobby makes me a liar. People don’t like liars. Sometimes I can convince myself I’m simply expanding on the truth, borrowing a few facts to shape an improvised anecdote, one that could be true given the right circumstances. But that’s just the bureaucratic definition. Strip away the legalese, and I’m a liar. Liar, liar pants on fire . . . that doesn’t sound like a very good outcome. Maybe it’s time to take up kayaking or skydiving or some other, less dangerous hobby.
A picture of Lily Rudolph is frozen in my brain. Her dark eyes, the trail of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and her feet—tiny feet in black ballerina flats. She took my hand and her fingers were a cool breeze against my sweaty palm. She smiled at me and one side of her mouth curved up a little higher than the other. She wrote down her number and asked me to call. I must have really thrown her for a loop with that crazy story about the book. A nice lady like her doesn’t deserve to be led down the primrose path by the likes of me.
"Hey there, big guy."
My boss, Dennis looks at me over the top of my cubicle and the top of his glasses. He’s a big, gushy guy, soft and white, like bread dough on the rise. I give him points for trying to reverse this trend; he’s always starting some new diet that’s going to change his life. The problem is, he can’t seem to get past the first week before the Call of the Oreo drags him back to reality. Dennis pushes his glasses up onto his head, like a pair of sporty shades. But they are not sporty shades, they are steel-rimmed aviators from the seventies.
"Hey, Dennis."
"Just wondering what’s next for our star investigator."
"Dennis, that LeMoine thing was dumb luck. You want star-quality work, take a look at the file Draper’s put together on the Wosnieck case."
"Modesty will get you nowhere, Sandors. Gotta grab for the limelight when you can. Besides, Draper’s case is a slam-dunk. For you, I get the true rock crawlers."
Rock crawlers. That’s what Dennis calls the people we investigate. He likens them to the slimy bugs that squeeze out from under rocks at night to chomp on your vegetable garden. Sneaky, slippery, something you’d step on given the opportunity. I guess it helps to have a healthy dose of disdain for people you’re trying to get arrested.
"Who do we have this time?" I finally ask.
"Hugh Klein. Guy’s fallen down more times than a drunk at last call. He’s trying to collect double. Medical claim for a back and knee injury and a property claim against the Dunkin' Donuts he went down in front of. Several people saw him fall. He says it was improper sidewalk maintenance."
"Sounds like a classic slip-and-fall, Denn, couldn’t Ernie handle it?"
Dennis steps around the wall of the cubicle and whips his glasses from his forehead to punctuate the rest of his lecture.
"Klein’s gotten enormous property settlements over the last seven years from Kroger’s, West Island Health Systems, and Providence. He’s a professional."
The steel frames come dangerously close to whacking my nose on every popping P in his diatribe.
"I need my best people on this one."
With this final appeal to my hubris, Dennis dumps three large file folders on my desk and leaves. Each folder is labeled "Klein, Hugh" and rubber banded to control its bulging contents. There’s a date stamp and a case number and a routing slip. No one else’s name is on the routing slips, which means it’s my baby … my problem.
I reach into the top drawer for a note pad. There’s Michael Rudolph’s memorial folder with Lily’s private number in loopy handwriting across the top. She’s probably forgotten all about me already. Probably not. If someone reveals, out of the blue, that he’s writing a secret book about your dead husband you’re likely to remember. She must be wondering what happened to me. She’s probably starting to think I’m a flake. She does not know how very right she is.
Lily Rudolph is not funeral fling material. She is way out of my league. Claudia, Mia, the other women over the years have been much more realistic, easier. More, okay I’ll say it, more gullible. That’ll get me twelve years in feminist purgatory, but sometimes you gotta call ‘em like you see ‘em. Something tells me Lily Rudolph can spot genuine cashmere at fifty paces and smell a rat at ten. If she spent any time with me at all, she’d no sooner believe I was Michael’s old school chum than I believe Hugh Klein is just clumsy.
This whole situation is ridiculous. Shifting out of character and moving on has always been easy. Clap on. Clap off. If you’re not a real person then there aren’t any real connections. You just shake hands, a heartfelt hug where appropriate, and you leave. Like Pat Romano’s funeral, right before all this insanity. It was perfect. Pat got taken out in a bizarre construction accident. A trench collapsed, burying him under a couple tons of dirt and gravel. He was only twenty-nine and most of the guys in the crowd were that or younger with huge muscles packed inside their wrinkled white dress shirts. Must’ve closed the gym early so they could all come. They split as soon as the service ended and there wasn’t anyone interesting left to talk with except a dusty old woman with a large purse. She stank of tuna casserole and I half suspect was only there to get out of the cold. Nice to meet ya, gotta go.
There have been a couple of times when it was a little harder than usual to shake it off. Jimmy Peters was tough. Cute kid whose father died in a boating accident. He followed me around for the whole reception. Every time I made a break for the door, he was right there with his big, brown eyes boring into my soul. He drew me a picture of a rabbit on one of the dessert napkins. I had to wait until some relative took him to the bathroom to escape. I saw those eyes in my dreams for weeks. But, all in all, it’s been nothing I couldn’t handle. Nothing I couldn’t erase. I do think about my old funeral friends sometimes, wonder what’s happened to them. Maybe some of them have had their own funerals by now. I wonder if they ever think about me, about that nice young man who moved in and out of their lives like a summer breeze through the trees. Nah, too poetic. More like a blip on the radar screen. A moving target is almost impossible to hit.
Those loopy numbers stare up at me. I should just call her and make an excuse, any excuse. Then I’ll find myself a new funeral and new friends and everything will go back to the way it was.
I’ll just pick up the phone and call her.
I’ll just organize my paper clips.
I’ll just pick up the phone and call her.
I’ll just finish reading my computer manual.
I’ll just . . .
"Hello, this is Lily."
"Lily, it’s Albert. Albert Mackey."
"Mr. Mackey. I thought you’d forgotten about me. Are you done with your travels?"
"Travels?"
"I believe you said you were going to be traveling, but perhaps I’m mistaken."
"Oh, travels. We must have a bad co
nnection. I thought you said trials, and I haven’t had any trials lately. Some tribulations, but no trials."
I make a strange sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, but at least it stops the words from hurtling out of my mouth.
"I am very anxious to speak with you, Mr. Mackey. I think it’s so exciting that Michael was working on a book."
"Please don’t call me Mr. Mackey. It reminds me of that guy who designed all of Cher’s outfits. Albert’s good, or even Al. Some people call me Al."
"I like Albert."
"Albert it is."
There’s a bit of a pause, which I think I am supposed to fill but can’t.
"When would you like to get together, Albert?"
"Soon, soon."
"I’m free next Tuesday."
"Tuesday’s good."
Why don’t I just grab a shovel and start digging? Maybe I can slide even deeper into this pile of shit. The call is not going at all the way it supposed to. I’m supposed to be coming up with an excuse to drop my current façade not setting an appointment to see her again.
"Shall we say ten o’clock?"
"Ten works for me."
"You’re welcome to come out here to the house, or I’m happy to meet you somewhere. Where are you staying?"
Where am I staying? That’s a damn good question. I live in a furnished apartment consisting of two small rooms with a Playskool kitchen along one wall and a bathroom the size of a cereal box. Hardly acceptable lodgings for a successful writer working on a book about Michael Rudolph. I’ll be out of Roger and Ronnie’s condo by next Tuesday. Where the hell am I staying?
"I’m actually at a hotel right now until I can find myself something a little more permanent."
"We have several rentals around town. Nice ones. I’d be happy to see if any of them are vacant. You could stay there. No charge."
"That’s completely unnecessary. I’ll be fine."
"It’s no trouble, really. Besides, I can’t find you anywhere in Michael’s accounts."
"What?"
"Was he paying you in cash or did you have some other kind of arrangement?"
"We, ah, we hadn’t set down anything official yet, it was still preliminary. We needed to figure out the scope of the project."
"Then the least I can do is put you up somewhere until we get things back on track."
"I’m not worried about the money."
"Then you’re not much of a businessman. Michael hired you to do a job. I want you to finish it and I certainly plan on continuing to pay you for it."
This woman is really decent. I cannot take advantage of her. Albert Mackey has got to go.
But first, maybe I could have just one meeting with her. I’ll tell her, face to face, I can’t finish the project. That somehow all my notes were destroyed in a freak toaster oven fire. Why can’t I stop? You tell yourself not to look at the accident on the freeway, but you slow down, you gawk, you crane your neck for dismembered limbs.
"Well, when you put it that way," I hear myself say. "I’d be more than happy to accept your offer of accommodations."
"Great. I’ll make the arrangements. Let’s meet here on Tuesday and I’ll go over all the details. Did you and Michael ever get together at the house? Do you know how to get here?"
"No, I’m sorry, we never met there."
"Do you have a pen? I’ll give you directions."
I’ve made a horrible mistake. This is not how it goes. Who the hell do I think I am, Robert De Niro? I’ve got four days to concoct a believable identity as a brainy technical writer who had complete access to Michael Rudolph. Brilliant, successful, beloved Michael Rudolph. The tight rope from reality to insanity is becoming dangerously thin. I am 99% sure sane people don’t do what I do. Oh sure, everyone pretends to be something they’re not sometimes. But it’s usually harmless.
Do you water ski?
Are you kidding? I’m wicked good. Love the jumps – really love the jumps.
Awesome. You wanna go with me this weekend?
No.
I’m a step up from that. I’m stomping around in someone else’s life, leaving behind a big dirty mess. Who does that? I’ve made a horrible mistake, but I don’t seem to care.
The Internet seems like a good place to start. How the hell do you spell Alzheimer’s?
FOUR
The brain is a masterpiece. I think we’re too insignificant to even begin to understand its potential. Like a guy who gets a Ducati motorcycle and then uses it to tool around town. Something meant to go one-twenty or better should not be forced to putt along at thirty-five. Michael Rudolph was trying to rev up the brain’s speedometer.
The more I find out about him, the more I realize he had no business dying. No wonder everyone is so upset. I certainly haven’t been able to identify anyone else who has the imagination, let alone the cranial capacity, to pick up the pieces of his research. Maybe that’s too harsh. I’m sure there are plenty of people in the world as smart or even smarter. It’s just he was a true visionary. One of those people who can look at unrelated items and put them together into something unique and extraordinary. Admit it. You think regular folks like us could look at a sick cow and a cute milkmaid and come up with the idea for a small pox vaccine. Hell, we’d never get past the milkmaid.
My research is starting to pay off. The company computer system has access to every major database. Insurance companies are a lot like banks. They can find out just about anything on anyone: your contributions, your professional affiliations, your credit rating, where you shop, what you drive, outstanding warrants, your alimony payments, your shoe size. When big money’s at stake, privacy takes a holiday.
I’ve dug up a few things about my two Nesler Pharmaceutical buddies from the funeral. They’re an interesting pair. It turns out Howard Stanich is Nesler’s top researcher. The guy’s got a real pedigree: graduated from Yale with twin degrees in pharmacology and psychology. He can probably tell if your problem is a bad cold or a bad psychosis. He’s been with Nesler almost thirty years and has been driving the wheel on the Alzheimer’s drug from day one.
Gavin VanMorten seems to be a minor player. It’s been hard to find much on him. If you can’t unearth anything on someone it usually means he’s either an incredibly dull goody-two-shoes or an incredibly crafty piece of shit. A rock crawler. The jury’s still out on VanMorten. All I know is he’s worked for Nesler for the last five years, since they went public with the Alzheimer’s drug. He’s not married, not divorced, donates regularly to the British Columbia Killer Whale Adoption Program, and likes to vacation in Branson, Missouri. That last fact alone is enough to scare the crap out of me. Branson is the only place in the known universe where you can see a John Wayne impersonator, the International Ventriloquist of the Year, and a troupe of circus acrobats from China. It’s like Las Vegas’ loopy stepsister.
I’ve also found a boatload of information on Alzheimer’s itself. I didn’t realize how prevalent it is: 4.5 million Americans. It can develop in people as young as their forties, although what they call "late-onset" Alzheimer’s is much more common. However, late is considered to be anyone older than sixty-five. In today’s baby-boomer society, that’s right around the corner for a huge number of people. By age eighty-five, there’s a nearly 50% chance you’ll develop the disease. Those don’t sound like terrific odds to me. That’s coin-flip territory.
What’s most fascinating about Rudolph’s research is his success rate. There are case histories on dozens and dozens of people with all levels of memory deterioration, from not being able to remember where they put their car keys to not being able to remember what a car is. The answer, according to Rudolph, was memory expansion.
Think of your brain like one of those old Rolodex business card wheels. When you’re young, you only have a few cards to keep track of and can easily flip through all the information. As you age, more and more cards get jammed in until the wheel is so full it can’t turn anymore. The newest cards fall out as soon as
you try to put them in while the old cards are firmly stuck in the back. This explains why most of us can’t remember what on earth we ate for breakfast yesterday but can sing the entire theme song to Gilligan’s Island at the drop of a hat.
What Michael Rudolph was working to develop was, in essence, an overflow valve, a way to kick open underutilized areas of the brain so all that old information had somewhere to go, freeing up space for new, incoming information. He was positive a certain combination of mental exercise, surgical intervention and drug therapy could open up new pathways in the brain. One controversial element of his theory was what he called "Cranial Calisthenics." Most people subscribe to the belief, You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Rudolph preferred the old typing exercise, The lazy, old dog jumped over the quick brown fox. He theorized we allow our brains to get lazy over the years. You’re getting by, why push it? With a little prodding, he was sure we could teach our brains to get up and jump over new ideas. That prodding came in the form of stem-cell injections. Stem cells can grow into various types of tissue, which means they have the potential to reproduce and replace ailing Alzheimer’s cells with healthy cells.
Early results showed amazing transformations. Michael’s patients seemed to not only regain their original mental capacity, they were better than before. Smarter. Brain connections were restored and new neurons generated. A few of Michael’s talk-show appearances were archived on some network web sites and the interviews of patients he brought with him were astounding. These people were vibrant, energetic and eloquent.
The experts in head trauma and mental retardation had rather strenuous objections to Rudolph’s research. They insisted their own experiences showed unbreakable limits to the brain’s ability to grow and heal. Rudolph countered that the brains of most Alzheimer's patients were essentially in good physical shape. There were some plaque issues, not unlike the clogged arteries that can lead to heart attacks. But the entire brain wasn’t compromised, just some of the connections. You wouldn’t total an engine because of a clogged fuel line.
The Eulogist Page 4