He shook his head. “Because the editors and news directors—even the reporters—who might bring this woman’s nonsense to public attention are all human beings, Dr. Knox. And as such they operate according to their own self-interests. They have assets they wish to protect, secrets they wish kept, loved ones they wish to safeguard, and when they understand what they must do to achieve those ends, they will act accordingly. I promise you, faced with a situation like the one you are in, none of them would take as long to make the only rational decision.”
“There are other ways her story could get out—social media, blogs….”
Bray shook his head. “Publicly held social media companies, doctor, blogs hosted by publicly held firms and written by human beings. I’m afraid it all comes back to risk, reward, and self-interest.”
“Risk, reward, and self-interest—is that how you dress it up?”
Bray took up his highball glass again, tapped a finger on his family crest, and drained it. He sighed and looked at me. “Dress what? It’s all about self-interested actors competing in a free marketplace, nothing more. It’s the way of the world.”
“This is theatre, right—for my benefit? You can’t really believe that crap.”
Bray barked out another laugh. “Your immaturity is amazing. What I do find hard to believe is that you spent time in Africa, yet apparently find these concepts so alien. The continent provides so many splendid models of the power of unfettered markets.”
“If by that you mean the power of warlords and child soldiers over unarmed men, women, and children, then, yes, I’m well acquainted. Except that what you call pursuit of self-interest I call intimidation, coercion, extortion, rape, and murder.”
“A distinction without a difference.”
I let out a long breath and shook my head. “You set a new benchmark for arrogance, Mr. Bray.”
He straightened up. “And you, doctor, are smug and superior even by the standards of your profession. So certain you know what’s best for the world—precisely how to improve it. Honestly, do you think you’re the first scruffy man to stumble out of the jungle with fantasies about changing the world? Your story is unoriginal, doctor—old, boring, and fundamentally wrongheaded. The world is what it is—what it’s always been. It doesn’t want changing; it doesn’t accept it. And it’s the height of hubris to think you’re at all qualified to try.
“In any event, I’ve indulged this pointless rambling for too long. You have twenty-four hours. Tiger will give you your phone back and give you a number you can call. Or don’t call. You know the outcome. Sine missione, doctor.” Then Bray took his suit jacket from the peg, crossed the room, and disappeared through a paneled door.
Conti tapped my shoulder. “Ride’s waitin’, doc,” he said. He went to the patio and I followed. Outside, the sun was lower over the ocean and the air was cooler. The gulls were closer and more angry.
CHAPTER 43
The noodle shop was on Sawtelle, not far from Bray Consolidated. It was a new place—sharp-edged and colorful, like something made from Legos—and I’d pulled in when I noticed that my hands were shaking and I had no idea at all where I was driving. I took a table near the open kitchen and called Sutter. Then I spent the next half-hour drinking iced matcha and watching steam rise from the shiny ranges. A narcotic flow of electronic music seeped from speakers in the ceiling, and the comforting aromas of soy and ginger and simmering broth washed over me, and by the time Sutter sat down across from me, I’d managed to purge a few of the visions of Lydia and Arthur getting hauled off to jail from my head.
Sutter squinted at me and looked as if he might ask something, but then the waitress came. Sutter ordered a Kirin and I finished my matcha and ordered the same. Then I told him about my day. The story carried us through one round of beers and part of the next.
“The evil emperor himself,” Sutter said when I finished, “and he brings you to the Death Star. Awesome.” He made room on the table for the steaming bowls of ramen that were approaching.
“It was more San Simeon Lite than Death Star,” I said, “though I saw a few storm troopers.”
“Probably more you didn’t see.” Sutter picked up chopsticks and turned the ramen in his bowl. A thicker cloud of steam rose up. He looked at me through it. “You read him as serious?”
“As cancer.”
“So you’ve got a decision to make.”
“I’m not giving him the kid.”
“Which means?”
“I don’t know what the fuck it means,” I said. It was louder than I meant it to be, and the other customers turned to look. Sutter smiled and lifted some noodles from his bowl. We ate and drank in silence for a while, and then Sutter drained his second beer and sighed.
“You don’t give him the kid, you’re going to war with him, and he’s got the tactical advantage. He rolled out the shock and awe today to tell you that—to tell you that your choices are surrender or suicide.”
“I got that. I just can’t believe those are my only options. Maybe I don’t want to believe it.”
“Maybe they’re not.”
I looked up. “Then what?”
Sutter caught the waitress’s eye and held up his empty glass. “I’m not saying you’ve got good options. But maybe you can run the clock a little, distract Bray, give him some other things to worry about for a while.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “In another part of the world, or another part of town, you could blow up some of his shit. But here—maybe the niece.”
I sat up. “Mandy? You’re not thinking of—?”
Sutter laughed. “Wrapping her in duct tape and throwing her in the trunk of my car? No, but I’m thinking maybe we wire you up and send you back to talk to her some more. You whisper some bullshit in her ear, whatever, and get her to threaten you—get it on tape. Then we turn the recording over to some wannabe Glenn Greenwald, and turn him loose on Mandy.”
“Which accomplishes what?”
“Throws her off balance, scares her, makes her go running to Uncle. Best case, the recording makes Bray reassess, or at least pause. It buys you some time.”
“Time for what? Nothing I heard today leads me to believe he isn’t going to make good on his threats.”
“Time to prepare, time to mitigate, time to think of something else. A holding action’s the best you can do, brother. Of course, you want to go another way—I always have a few spare rolls of duct tape around. But I don’t think you want to go that way.”
“Give me a minute.”
Sutter frowned. “Seriously, that’s what this boils down to. The old man is going to war. Unless you are too, a little extra time’s all you’re going to manage.”
I finished my beer and took a deep breath. “I’ve got to tell them. Lydia and Lucho and Arthur—I’ve got to tell them what’s happening. What could happen to them.”
He pushed his chair back from the table and shook his head. “That won’t be pretty.”
“No. They didn’t sign up for any of this, didn’t want any of it. Lydia has thought that we should stay the hell away from this since the day Elena and Alex turned up, and she’s made no secret of it. Lucho has mostly kept his own counsel, but I know he thinks our day jobs are hard enough without the extracurricular shit. And Arthur—half of what he does for me is on a pro bono basis, and now…Shit.”
“Noncombatant casualties. Collateral damage. It sucks.”
I looked at my empty beer glass and thought about having another one, maybe ten more, but didn’t. “I don’t even know how to tell them,” I said.
Sutter nodded. “While you’re figuring that, work out what you’re going to tell Elena too.”
“Shit,” I said again. “Shit.”
CHAPTER 44
Sutter drove to El Segundo, and neither of us said a word the whole way. It was nearly dark when we got there, and another one of Sutter’s mercs, a sinewy black woman with scarred forearms and a Glock on her hip, spoke to him in Fre
nch.
Shelly was at the kitchen table, working on a burrito the size of a cat, and Alex was just finishing a plate of enchiladas verdes. Alex smiled and waved and Shelly said “Yo” through a mouthful of rice. Elena was curled on the sofa, eating yogurt from a cup, and she rose when she saw me, as if she knew I had news.
“Let’s talk in back,” I said to her. She shuttered her face, put her yogurt cup on the kitchen counter, and walked down the narrow hall to the rear bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed. Her feet were flat on the floor, and her mouth was a straight line.
“So?” she said.
I nodded and told her about my meeting with Mandy, its interruption, and my visit to Malibu. I didn’t go into the details of Bray’s threats, but I did say that I thought he was serious.
“He wants Alex returned, and he wants it on his terms,” I said, limping to conclusion. “He left no room for negotiation.”
Elena’s silence was long and heavy, and neither Shelly’s pitchy laughter from the other room, nor Alex’s giggles made a dent in it. Her gaze was fixed on the window behind me, and the darkness beyond.
“So you meet the old man, face-to-face,” she said finally. “What you think?”
“Scary guy,” I said. “Maybe a little crazy.”
“No maybe. And not a little,” she said. “How he scare you?” Elena’s eyes were locked on mine now. I swallowed hard.
“He threatened to shut down my clinic, and to hurt some people I care about.”
She nodded. “But if you give him Alex, then everything’s fine. For you.”
“I’m not going to do that, Elena.”
She nodded again, slowly. Her gaze went back to the black glass. “So—what are you going to do?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m still working on that. Sutter had an idea about trying to get Mandy on tape, making the same threats her uncle did. That might give us some leverage.”
A smile flitted across Elena’s small mouth so quickly I wasn’t sure I’d seen it. She shrugged. “Sure, that could work, or maybe something else. You keep thinking.”
“I will. And you just sit tight. You and Alex are safe here.”
Elena’s eyes didn’t stray from the window, but the little smile came and went again. “Sit tight. Sure—what else I’m doing? Nothing but sitting.”
—
Sutter brought me back to my car. I drove home slowly and reluctantly, trying as I did to come up with a way of telling Lydia and Lucho and Arthur what Harris Bray had said that made his plans for them seem less disastrous than Godzilla’s for Tokyo. Trying and failing.
The clinic was dark when I got there, but I could feel Lydia’s irritation and exhaustion in every room, like background radiation, even before I found the note taped to my desk chair: Sent 7 to ER @ County this afternoon. Assume they went. Hope so. Assume you remember we’re open both days this weekend. Hope so. Her handwriting was firm, precise, and angry.
I dropped into my chair, and dust rose in the darkness. It settled around me as I debated not calling Lydia and Lucho and Arthur just then, and instead waiting until morning to tell them. Or perhaps crawling upstairs, into my bed, and not coming out again. Or perhaps never moving from this chair. What difference would a few hours make, with a giant radioactive dinosaur bearing down? Better to let the good citizens of Tokyo have a few hours more of sleep and blissful ignorance. Somebody should dream—why not them? Then I thought about the files Bray said were squirreled away on the servers of Arthur’s clients. God only knew what kind of sewage they contained, and a few hours might make the difference between finding and not finding them, between defusing the situation and having it detonate in Arthur’s face. I sighed heavily and reached for the phone.
—
Of course they knew it was bad news. Why else would I call Lydia and Lucho back in at nine in the evening? Why else would I ask Lucho to bring Arthur along? They looked vulnerable in the waiting room’s plastic chairs, in their after-hours clothes—tee shirts and sagging jeans, Lydia in a faded tracksuit—like our patients, pale, small, disheveled, and bewildered. Lucho brought coffee for me. I took it from him but couldn’t bear to drink it.
“It’s Kashmarian, right?” he asked. “He’s selling the place on us? We gonna shut down?”
I shook my head and told them, without preamble or pause, and without looking any of them in the eye.
The silence afterward was leaden and sickening, and went on for a long time. Then Arthur muttered “Motherfucker” and sprang up and disappeared down the hall. In a moment I heard the sound of rapid fingers on a keyboard. Lydia made a shuddering sigh, put her head in her hands, and murmured “Dios.” Lucho squinted at me and shook his head.
“What the fuck, doc? This asshole is the kid’s grandfather? And he bought my fucking apartment building—and this place too—just so he could kick us to the curb? Who does that? And what the fuck does he want from Artie? Artie never did anything to him, or to anybody—he doesn’t even work here, for chrissakes. What the fuck?”
Lydia looked up. “It’s got nothing to do with Arturo or you or me,” she said, her voice low and tight. “It’s got to do with him.” She pointed a blunt finger, and I thought she was about to stand, to come at me from across the room. But then the breath and everything else left her, and tears ran down her face. When she looked at me again she was a decade older. Her voice was quiet and beaten.
“I’m not even going to ask what you’ll do—I don’t want to hear it. Anyway, it’s always the same: you do what you want to do, like always, and the hell with what anybody else wants, or what it costs them.”
“Lyd—”
She held up a hand, as if she were warding off the evil eye. “Don’t. Just don’t fucking bother.”
CHAPTER 45
It was quiet on the roof. The wind was small and soft in the rust-colored sky, the traffic was distant, and the usual nighttime soundtrack, of shattering bottles, shouted curses, sirens, was muted. Still, my head was full of a chanting chorus: Arthur and Lucho and Lydia, their anger, fear, and disappointment. Not that they’d said much more to me after I’d given them my news. Lucho had joined Arthur in the file room, and the two of them had spoken in low, tense tones while Arthur typed madly. Lydia hadn’t moved from the waiting room chair—had barely moved at all except to stiffen when I’d tried to talk to her again. When her shoulders began to shake I’d retreated to my office, and re-emerged only when I’d heard them heading for the door.
“I thought you guys should know about Bray,” I said. “But I don’t want you guys to—”
“You don’t want us to what, doctor?” Lydia said, turning. Her eyes were red and wet. “To worry?”
“Bray’s not…That stuff he talked about is not going to happen, Lydia. I’m going to make this right.”
Her mouth puckered, as if she’d tasted something spoiled, and then she left. Lucho and Arthur followed, and after I heard their cars pull away, and listened to the A/C push stale air through the vents for a while, I’d gone to the roof.
The little wind flicked at the lapels of my jacket, and I was surprised to find I was still wearing it. Like Parents’ Day at Choate, Mandy had said. I took it off and folded it over the low coping and rolled up my sleeves. I sat on the lawn chair, and its metal joints creaked. So did mine. I sighed, and life seeped from my bones.
The shaky, leaden, post-call feeling swept over me, and I closed my eyes. The nighttime city vanished and was replaced by jagged pieces of the very long day: the fish like ancient coins in Bray’s fountain; the thrum of chopper rotors running in my chest; the cut flowers in Amanda Danzig’s office, the sunlight on her desk and on her glossy blond head; Elena with her hands in her lap, staring out the bedroom window; Bray’s somber library; the shield and maces of the Bray sigil, the Latin motto; the look in Lydia’s eyes.
I rubbed a hand over my face, thought about Sutter’s words: The old man is going to war. He rolled out the shock and awe today to tell you that—to tell you that your
choices are surrender or suicide. No matter how long I stared at it, I still couldn’t see a third option—a way to make it right for Lydia and Lucho and Arthur that wasn’t paid for by Elena and Alex.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out my phone and the card Conti had given me. I looked at the number and wondered who would answer if I called, and what I could possibly say.
The old man is going to war.
Sutter’s words were loud in my ears, and as I listened I wondered: Why now? What had made Harris Bray decide on war today? Why not tomorrow? Why not yesterday, or last week? What had happened?
I sighed and called Nora again. And once again listened to the rings, and then her message. “You have reached…” It was the same message as always, but somehow her voice was unfamiliar to me, and impossibly remote. I hung up before the tone.
I looked at Conti’s card, and put my finger on the number. Why today? My phone chirped suddenly, and I nearly dropped it. I caught it and thought it must be Nora. I checked the screen, but didn’t recognize the number. I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice either, not at first.
“Doctor—you’re still alive!” she said. “That’s a nice surprise.”
“Mandy?”
Her laugh was bright and brittle, her speech overly precise. “One and the same, doctor. And so very glad to hear that Tiger didn’t misplace you out the chopper door.”
“Are you drunk, Mandy?”
“Not nearly enough. How about you?”
“Not at all, sad to say.”
“No? That is plain unacceptable, my good doctor—we’ll have to fix that. What do you like to drink? Do you favor rye whiskey? Do you perhaps like a good Sazerac? Because I mix a very fine one, and I’ve had lots of practice tonight.”
“I don’t know that I’ve had a Sazerac.”
“Well, that’s a real void in your education, doctor—one I’d be more than happy to fill, if you’d like to meet for a lecture and demonstration.”
“It’s late, Mandy. I think I’m fine where I am.”
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