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  “Believe me, I’ve been trying to get them to. I’ve made calls.”

  “The hospital expenses will eat everything up,” he said. “She’s better off being insolvent. You should disburse the funds and make me—and yourself—whole before the bill collectors come after her. If you want to make a contribution to her daughter, do it later.”

  “Will you do that?” Fremmer asked.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, I want my advance back. I’ll give you ’til the end of the day to write me a check for $50,000. Or I can give you a PayPal account to transfer to right now if you want the miles on your credit card, though you’ll have to pay the transaction fee.”

  “Are you kidding me? She won’t see the royalties for over sixty days. And what are you doing paying her fifty grand? I could have got you someone for half that.”

  “If she were to die from her injuries, which I understand is still a strong possibility, it would complicate things. This needs to be done now.”

  “Or what? You gonna break my legs?”

  “Not my style.”

  Fremmer laughed nervously. He didn’t know what to think. If Braden was bluffing, he was pretty good at it. There was also some perverse logic to his demand.

  “What if I find this manuscript?” he asked.

  “So you do have it?”

  “Did I say I have it? I asked what if I found it?”

  “I’d take that into consideration, of course, depending on the condition it was in.”

  Fremmer chewed on that for a moment, then decided the whole thing was ridiculous. He told Braden as much.

  “No, you’re ridiculous,” Braden shot back, showing some real temper for the first time. “First, you tell the police that I threatened Candace and then you told a reporter that Candace was advanced money to write a book about The Center but didn’t deliver the book. You got me tangled up in this mess.”

  OK, so this is where all the hostility is coming from, Fremmer thought. “No, no,” he said. “I just told the detectives that erotica wasn’t the only thing she wrote. I gave that as an example. And as far as telling the police you threatened her, that never happened. I said she appeared to feel threatened but she didn’t tell me by whom. They must have played you. That’s what detectives and prosecutors do. They play people against each other. They take shots and watch for the reaction.”

  “I’m well aware of their methods,” Braden replied more calmly. “Speaking of which, I see your attorney friend, the one I met, is now defending this homeless person who pushed Candace.”

  “Allegedly pushed.”

  “Whatever. Why would you encourage him to do that? You call me crazy.”

  “Look, the fact is someone was threatening her. She told me that someone had done something very bad that she knew about. Doesn’t it seem strange that she would then get pushed in front of a car by a random homeless guy?”

  “Chance,” Braden said. “Bad luck. As you know, she could be very charming. But she also had her delusional moments. You know her fiction wasn’t always fiction. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “That’s what makes it good,” Fremmer said. “If you felt she was so unstable, why’d you give her an advance to write this book for you? I thought she was just doing some accounting work for you.”

  “Did I say she was unstable? A little delusional, but then so are about fifty percent of Americans, particularly all the religious fanatics. Look, you say she told you someone was threatening her. Well, she told me you had her manuscript. If you’re inclined to believe her, so am I.”

  The guy had a point, Fremmer thought. And it turned his stomach to think about it. If she was lying, then he’d made a grave error and sent Carlos on a fool’s errand. Christ, he thought. Maybe she was lying. Then again, maybe Braden is. But why?

  “You see it cuts both ways,” Braden said.

  Fremmer scanned his repertoire for a snappy comeback but before he could find one they were interrupted by a teakettle’s low whistle emanating from the other end of the room—or rather beyond it.

  “Come,” Braden said, heading in the direction of the noise. “Let me at least offer you something to drink so I don’t come off as completely rude.”

  Fremmer didn’t really want anything to drink but he did want to ask Braden a few more questions, so he followed him but paused to look at the fish tank. It was a beautiful microcosm of a saltwater ecosystem, a miniature reef.

  Braden was at the stove when Fremmer caught up with him. The kitchen was huge. Modern. White-tiled. High-end appliances. An island in the center, it looked like something you’d see in the suburbs or on The Food Network.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, how’d you lose your hand?” he ventured.

  Braden didn’t answer right away. He went to the cupboard and took out a mug.

  “Antibiotic-resistant staph infection,” he said, placing the cup on the island counter. “Long time ago. Going on twenty-five years. I got a fairly deep cut on one of my fingers. When I saw that it was getting infected I tried to treat it myself. A couple of days later I got a very high fever and had to go to the hospital. They treated it but nothing worked. I went from having this little cut to having to choose between amputation and death. They took most of my forearm to be safe. I’m lucky it was just that and not the whole arm. And that it wasn’t my dominant hand.”

  Rochelle removed a tea packet from a box and tore it open. Handing Braden the sachet she said, “I think you’re well acquainted with the illogical emotional ecosystem of tragedy, Mr. Fremmer.”

  Braden dropped the tea bag in the coffee mug and poured the steaming water over it.

  “After you have something like this happen you can either think you’re cursed or blessed,” he said. “I went with the latter. What I want you to understand is that what we’re doing here is potentially groundbreaking. Your mind is the greatest virtual-reality machine. Nothing can touch it. Not in our lifetimes anyway. And we’ve developed proprietary techniques and technology that allow us to safely and affordably live out our fantasies in a way that’s virtually indistinguishable from reality.”

  “I personally prefer the real thing,” Fremmer countered.

  “We’re not just talking about sex,” Braden said, “though that’s certainly one of the primary applications.”

  “Weightlessness,” Rochelle offered. “Flight. The Superman experience. You want a cup?”

  “No thanks,” Fremmer said. He went over to the sliding glass door and looked outside at the walled-in backyard. Even a tiny outdoor space was a huge luxury in Manhattan. This one had a wooden deck off the kitchen overlooking a small Japanese garden with gravel paths, a water fountain, sculptures, well-manicured shrubbery and a couple of small trees. In the reflection of the glass, he could see Rochelle mouthing some words and gesturing with her hand, having a silent discussion behind his back.

  “Very Zen,” he said, then turned around and headed back to the island. “I bet you guys do a kick-ass barbecue. Veggie burgers on the grill. A little Enya on the outdoor speakers.”

  Braden laughed. “Despite appearances, we’re less new-agey than you think. The garden is the way it is because it’s easier to maintain. We don’t get much light back there, which limits our landscape selection.”

  “How long have you known Candace?” Fremmer asked. “She told me she’s been dabbling in this stuff for a while. She was also into psychics. Sorry, check that. She called them intuits. I told her they were the same thing, that they just changed the name for legal latitude. Which is kind of brilliant if you think about it.”

  Braden didn’t answer right away. He fished out a half-used packet of artificial sweetener from a small bowl on the counter and sprinkled its remaining contents into his tea.

  “A long time,” he finally said. “Maybe twenty years. I’d just bought this place.”

  “OK. So now if I were your lawyer, or a detective for that matter, the next question would be what sort of relationship
did you have with her?”

  “But you’re not my lawyer or a detective.”

  “Well, let’s pretend I’m both. Did you ever Bill Clinton her?”

  Rochelle laughed. Getting an actual laugh out of her was surprisingly gratifying. Braden wasn’t so amused.

  “Is that some sort of hip-hop term?” he asked.

  “No, it’s my own,” Fremmer said. “Sorry, I’ve been trying to make that a verb for a while.”

  “Look,” Braden said, “I have a reputation at stake. We have financial backers. We have a product coming out—”

  “What kind of product?”

  “A transcranial electrical stimulation sleep mask. Using electric currents, we can increase or decrease the intracerebral current flow in specific areas of the brain. The change in neuronal excitability is what helps facilitate lucid dreaming. We can significantly increase the odds of having a lucid dream.”

  “Really? And there’s some sort of app that goes with it?”

  “Yes. Android and iOS.”

  “Sweet,” Fremmer said. “And you have clinical studies to back it?”

  “We’re working on that.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “We had to lay out a lot of upfront money to produce enough to bring our cost per unit down. So I’ll just say this: You do harm to me I will do harm to you. I can’t have malicious rumors spread about this center or me. Candace was a good woman—”

  “Is,” Fremmer corrected him.

  “Yes, is. And I’m sorry about what happened. But she took money from me and she’s going to give it back.”

  “I was kind of hoping you’d reconsidered,” Fremmer said.

  “There’s nothing to reconsider.”

  “Well, at least give me a chance to see if I can find the manuscript.”

  “You have ’til the end of the day. You can make arrangements with Rochelle. She’ll let you out.”

  With that Fremmer followed her back to the front door and picked up his scooter.

  “I guess I don’t get a ride back,” he said to her.

  “One-way ticket,” she said. “I’ll see you later at ‘Cesca.”

  “Better make it eight. I may need the extra time.”

  “Don’t forget your checkbook,” she said.

  16/ Snake in a Jar

  MADDEN COULDN’T STOP STARING AT THE CONTENTS OF THE GLASS jar. A snake, remarkably well preserved, maybe three feet long, curled up at the bottom of the transparent container they’d pulled out of the ground. The jar was now sitting on the patio table next to the bagel and lox platter.

  The snake’s name was Freddy. A kid named Darren Frankel had buried him in 1973. They knew this because Darren had also buried a note explaining who he was and how, not long after he put Freddy to rest, he’d created a time capsule as a part of a fifth-grade history project at Jordan Middle School.

  In a separate jar Darren had buried some newspaper clippings, including articles about Nixon’s inauguration, the launch of the Pioneer 11 spacecraft, the Skylab space station, and the opening of the Sears Tower in Chicago and World Trade Center in New York. That time-capsule jar also held a dozen unopened Wacky Packs that contained a set of collectible product parody stickers and a stick of gum, a mangled Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, and an eight-page short story depicting his vision of the future circa 2073.

  Two years after Darren buried the time capsule Darren’s father buried the animal who’d left the teeth marks on Evel Knievel. According to a short note found in a glass bottle, the dog’s name was Finnegan, an Irish wolfhound so big that Darren’s younger brother had ridden him on occasion. Finnegan had died at six of lung cancer, and now, much to Madden’s dismay, he looked across the yard to see his skull in J.J.’s hand.

  “I’ve always wanted to do this,” J.J. announced, taking a knee next to the hole they’d dug, Hal Shelby and the technician looking on: “I was in Hamlet in college but I played Horatio.”

  He extended his hand out in front of him, the skull facing toward him. “Alas, poor Finnegan,” he projected in his best Shakespearean lilt. “I knew him, Hal. A dog lacking in intelligence yet most excellently loyal and good-natured. A giant for his species, he bore me on his back numerous times. How abhorred in my imagination it is. Here hung the tongue that licked me I know not how oft. Where is your ferocious bark? Your pricked up ears? Your frenzied, futile chase of the bushy-tailed squirrel?”

  J.J. couldn’t hold a straight face any longer. He lowered the skull and started laughing. Hal Shelby, who’d been reading Darren’s short story, tucked it temporarily under his arm to give him a brief but rousing ovation. He then returned to the text.

  “This is mind-blowing,” he declared after a moment. “He writes about self-driving cars. But they’re on tracks, like slot cars. I’m going to give this to Elon when I see him next week. He’ll get a kick out of it. Maybe he can use it in an ad. We have to find this kid. He’s gotta be fifty now.”

  Now that he had a consolation prize he seemed less annoyed that the remains in the hole weren’t Stacey’s. Madden found it amazing that a guy who clearly had a sadistic streak always seemed to find the good in everything. What Madden wrote off as an adolescent’s mundane seventies sci-fi musings Shelby saw as potential marketing gold and a way to curry favor with Elon, whom Madden could only assume was Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors. It became clear to him why Shelby was worth half a billion dollars and he wasn’t.

  “So, what’s our next move?”

  The question came from Dupuy, now fully clothed and standing behind him.

  “We dig a few more holes and then put the yard back together,” Madden responded quietly.

  “There’s nothing here,” she said.

  “Don’t insult my friend Freddy. He looks great for his age.”

  “I had a pet snake,” she said.

  “Of course you did.”

  “My older brother was afraid of snakes so I got one. I named it Scorpion.”

  “Sounds like a bit of overkill.”

  “We always named our animals with some other animal’s name. Kind of an inside family joke. Our dog’s name was Bear, for instance.”

  “At least they were both mammals,” Madden commented.

  “You have a dog?” she asked.

  “For a little while. And then he got hit by a car. I remember being upset about it but I think my parents were more traumatized by having to tell me. It was my mother’s fault. It happened during the day while I was at school. I had a weird childhood. With the polio, I was spoiled in a lot of ways. I was treated like this special person. Every once in a while horrible things happened to me. Like my dog getting killed. Even the sexual abuse. That was an isolated incident. It wasn’t like I had a stepfather or uncle who was abusing me for years. The guy was my doctor. There was some lead-up. He tested the boundaries over a few visits, but when he really did it, when he raped me, it only happened once. I didn’t go back to that office. I didn’t tell my parents why I wouldn’t go back. I just refused to go back.”

  Dupuy took a step forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “Did you write that in your book?”

  “No, I didn’t get to that part yet.”

  “Well, that’s a good way to say it. A good way to get into it. I don’t think you have to be that explicit. You just need to talk about how it impacted you.”

  She was right, he thought. Ultimately, what he needed was to talk to someone like her and just record the conversation, then transcribe it. He was kind of doing that already some evenings. But he wasn’t talking to a person, just his phone.

  “I’ve been kind of keeping a record of what we’re doing here,” he said after a moment. “I don’t write anything down. But I come home and put my phone on the kitchen table and hit the record button and talk about what happened. Sometimes it’s short, sometimes it’s longer.”

  “That’s good,” she said, distracted. “It’s good to get something down. What are they doing?”

  The radar t
echnician was now taking a picture of J.J. holding the dog’s skull.

  “I think I heard someone say something about an album cover,” Madden said.

  “When you saw the bones, did you think about the money?” she asked.

  “I didn’t, actually.”

  “Me neither,” she said not altogether convincingly.

  They sat in silence for a moment. Then he said: “At this point I think we have to shift our focus to finding Ross. He has close family members still alive. And a daughter.”

  “They all think he’s dead, though. You spoke to them.”

  He had. But their conversations had been brief. As far as they were concerned, the case was closed. They had moved on with their lives—or at least they said they had.

  “I’m going to have to go see them in person.”

  “And after that, what, you go to Vietnam?”

  “Maybe. My wife and I have been talking about taking a trip. The only time I’ve been out of the country the last ten years is to Nicaragua, to visit her family.”

  Shelby saw them talking and walked over, Darren’s story in hand.

  “Nice little adrenaline rush there, eh?” he said, approaching the table. He made his left hand into a fist and banged it gently against his chest a few times. “Got the heart pounding, right? Digging up the pet cemetery while keeping the police at bay. Nice way to start the day. You look a little tuckered out there, Detective.”

  Shelby was being polite. He was exhausted. He’d be lucky if his back was only half shot tomorrow.

  “I’m alright,” he said. “Just sorry we didn’t find her.”

  “Sounds like your boy Bronsky was misled.”

  “When you got no favorites, you bet the long shot,”

  Madden said. Shelby responded with what sounded like a cross between a snort and a laugh. “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I’m an angel investor. All we do is bet long shots.”

  Madden knew Shelby had a fund. Not a big one, but big enough. All these guys did.

  “You want a bagel?” Madden asked.

  “Nah, I’m out. Got a conference I need to pop into. They’re interviewing me. On stage. My landscapers will be here soon to start cleaning up this mess. Or they can keep digging if you want.”