“Ah, yes, a slip of biology. But I still can’t let you go, you know.”
“What’s this?” Carr looked confused. “I thought Teddy was—”
“He is also, and it’s a long story,” Moy said. “I’ll tell you later.”
“He hasn’t got anything on you,” Teddy said to his father.
Jack looked at his half-brother or whatever the hell he was. His overly developed body was pressed into a tuxedo, making him look like a small orca.
And it all came clear to Jack as he stared into the stolid eye of the gun barrel: this Teddy had visited him at Greendale in his Mr. Fixit role under the cover name Theo Rogers so the staffers wouldn’t connect him to Gavin Moy. (He probably even used a false ID.) And his purpose was to determine if Jack remembered anything because Moy must have told him that Jack was his blood son out of wedlock; and Theo/Teddy here was checking up on Jack’s recall, maybe in protection of his father, maybe sweating potential conflicts over who was rightful heir to the Moy fortune. Whatever, the guy had come out to spy on him.
“No, but he’s the type who won’t let go. Unfortunate, but it’s in the blood.”
“If I suddenly disappear,” Jack said, “people are going to wonder, and there are a hundred of them downstairs who saw me.”
“I’ll get the boat,” Teddy said.
“Oh, look at that,” Jack said. “A chip off the old block, bro.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
“And silver-tongued at that.”
“Yes,” Moy said. “The boat.”
“Another replay, right? First your lover, now her son.”
Moy looked point-blank at Jack. “I don’t care who you are. I don’t like you. And I’m not going to let you fuck things up for me. I’ve worked more friggin’ decades to get here than you’ve been alive. And you mean nothing to me. Nothing.”
“Wait a minute,” protested Carr. “I don’t think this is a good idea.” And he looked from Moy to Teddy. “Really. He suddenly disappears, and people are going to get suspicious.”
Teddy snapped at Carr. “No time to turn chickenshit.”
Carr flashed a look at Jack. “But he’s right—a lot of people saw him tonight.”
Teddy nodded toward a rear door. “He went for a stroll on the rocks and slipped. It worked in Bryce.”
“Get him out of here,” Moy said.
Teddy jabbed the pistol at Jack. “Move it.”
“Freeze!”
Jack turned. Behind them in the shadows was an older man aiming something barrel-like at them. “Hold it right there. Hands behind your heads, legs spread, and don’t move.” He stepped into the light.
Louis Martinetti.
He must have been wearing his tux over his fatigues, because he was
dressed for combat, with a chest full of medals, including a Purple Heart. When they turned, Louis dropped down to a squat behind a table with flowers shooting out of a huge Chinese porcelain vase. The problem was that he was holding a furled umbrella on the gunman. Suddenly Louis began shouting over his shoulder for his men to advance on the eastern flank of the compound. They had the colonel and Blackhawk cornered.
“What the fuck?” Teddy said. He began to swing his gun arm toward Louis, who ducked behind the table making shooting noises.
Someplace in the shadows of the outer office Jack heard a scream. “Louis, no!”
René.
A shot rang out, and instantly Jack heard a grunt as Louis fell backward. He had dropped his umbrella and was clutching his arm.
Before Teddy could get off a shot at René, Jack flew at him, knowing instantly that in his condition he was no match for Teddy. So he sunk his teeth into Teddy’s wrist. The guy screamed and released the gun, but not before catapulting Jack off of him. But Jack grabbed the pistol and rolled away, his muscles paining him with the effort. It passed through his mind that he had not held a gun for a couple years, since target practice with Vince at the police range. But now a gun felt good in his grip.
The next moment exploded with a scream from René as Teddy made a move to stomp Jack. Without thought, Jack took aim and squeezed the trigger. And Teddy hit the floor with a huge grunt, grabbing his leg. The bullet had hit him in the calf.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Moy pick up a crystal sculpture of his company’s logo to hurl at him. But Jack flashed the gun at him. “Drop it or you’re dead,” Jack said.
Moy dropped it and Jack pulled himself to his feet, holding the pistol in both hands.
“I should have taken care of you, too,” Moy said.
“Yeah, you should have.”
From the shadows behind them Louis sprang up. His injured arm didn’t stop him from flying at Jordan Carr and pulling him to the floor and flailing at him with his elbow and good hand. Louis was muttering odd syllables and swearing at Carr and saying something about Fuzzy. Jack didn’t understand, but Louis had Carr pinned to the floor.
René shot over to him to pull him up to tend his wound. But Louis kept pummeling Carr, who yelled for help. René shouted for Louis to stop and
managed to pull Louis off him. She removed Louis’s shirt and fashioned a tourniquet for his arm with the bow tie. His shirt was soaked in blood, but Louis insisted she put it back on him.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. Just had a little—” Louis cut himself short, seeing Jack tying Moy’s hands behind him. Louis’s face lit up. “We got ‘em both, Fuzz. Hear that? We got’em.”
Jack didn’t know what Louis was saying, but he seemed pleased. He pushed Moy on his front while René bound his hands and Jack fanned the gun from Moy to Theo to Jordan Carr, who had pulled himself to his feet again.
Jack aimed the gun at him. “Playing both ends against the middle, right?”
René looked at Jack. “What are you doing?”
“He’s with them.” With his free hand Jack knocked a small lamp off Moy’s desk, pressed his foot on it, and tore the electrical cord off it. He tossed it to Carr. Then he pulled telephone wires out of the phone and wall. “Tie him,” he said, nodding to Teddy Moy, who was writhing on the floor. “Good and tight.”
“Jack!” René said, glaring at him for an explanation.
“I think they had something to do with Nick’s death.”
“The fuck you doing?” Teddy protested as Carr began to tie him up. “Get the gun.”
Carr looked back at the gun in Jack’s hands and began binding Teddy Moy’s arms behind him, then his legs to the thousand-pound marble table.
“What are you saying?” René asked as she came over to Jack. She glared at Jordan Carr on his knees tying a tourniquet on Teddy’s left leg. Then she looked back at Jack for confirmation. Jack nodded, and René flew to Jordan. She grabbed Jordan by his shirt. “You killed Nick?
You killed Nick?”
“I didn’t. He did.”
Teddy swore at Carr from his facedown position. “And you were right there calling the shots.”
“But why?” René cried, and she whacked Jordan in the face.
Jordan put his hand to his cheek, which looked branded. “Because he was in the way, that’s why. Because he wanted to stop something that was good. And maybe before you go sanctimonious on me again, you can ask yourself this: If you could have saved your father, wouldn’t you have done anything? Wouldn’t you?”
René said nothing.
“Sure you would, even if it meant eliminating anyone who stood in the way of his cure, right? You would have done the same—anything to keep him from dying layer by layer, even if it meant a few flashbacks. Right? Right?”
For a stunning moment René could not respond, as if she did not know how to answer the questions. But she backhanded Jordan in the face.
The moment was broken when Moy’s cell phone cut the air. Jack reached into Moy’s jacket pocket and pulled it out. It was someone identifying him as GEM’s executive vice president.
“Yeah, everything’s just dandy,” Jack said. “We’re on our way down.”
When Jordan Carr was finished binding Theo, he looked at Jack and René. “So now what?” he asked, trying an ingratiating smile on Jack.
Louis was sitting in a chair muttering to himself. But he looked okay. Just a flesh wound.
Moy was in his chair, his hands bound behind him. Theo was tied to the marble table and going nowhere. Jack aimed the gun at Jordan Carr’s chest. “You’ve got thirty seconds to tell us about Bryce or I’m going to start shooting holes in you.”
ALL THE WAY DOWN THE STAIRS and through the corridor they could hear the chant of the crowd initiated by his management team:
“Gavin! Gavin Gavin!”
They paraded into the hall, Gavin leading the way, his hands bound behind him, Jordan Carr in tow, also bound. And behind him came Jack with the gun and flanked by Louis and René. Teddy was back in Moy’s office enjoying a view of the underside of his father’s pink marble table.
For a moment, cheering flared up as people at the rear of the hall spotted Moy. But instantly it began to mute as people saw the spectacle of him being led at gunpoint to the podium. In the distance the sound of police sirens from Jack’s 911 call. But he had plenty of time before they arrived.
At the microphone, he introduced himself, then said he would like to make an announcement. He felt for the lump in the breast pocket of his sportcoat and he removed the small silver MP3 recorder that Vince had given him. He held it up to the microphone and pressed Play.
“You killed her. Admit it.”
“Yeah, I killed her and she deserved it. You happy now? I killed her.”
Homer’s Island
·
Seven Weeks Later
A SMALL SIGN ON THE beach read BEWARE OF JELLYFISH!
“Nice timing,” Jack said, and handed René a plate.
They sat on beach chairs by the water’s edge picnicking on shish kebab, stuffed grape leaves, pilaf, and stewed vegetables.
“In the late sixties, she was on a marine science panel in Cambridge with Jacques Cousteau—something about the threat of industrial pollution and global warming on the oceans of the world. Thaddeus Sherman was impressed, and they started talking. One thing led to the next, and he invited her to stay here because it was the only place in the northeast where Caribbean sea life shows up. One visit, and she fell in love with the place and started collecting specimens.”
Jack poured two glasses of chardonnay.
“Sounds like she was a very special woman.”
“I think she was.” They clicked glasses.
Today was the thirty-first anniversary of Rose Sarkisian’s death.
“She apparently had an affair with Gavin Moy, who was more her type—academically speaking—than the man she married. Who knows? Records say they were in divorce proceedings before he was killed in a plane crash. They hid that fact on the gravestone to save face.”
Jack also learned that Rose had specialized in the therapeutic properties of marine toxins. After having bagged some Solakandjis, she had chemical assays done on the toxin and found that the compound demonstrated beneficial properties on the neurological system. When Moy decided to start researching these neurological properties, Rose went to work with him as a partner. They apparently became lovers. And when she became pregnant with Jack, she insisted that he either marry her or provide financially for Jack’s upbringing. Moy refused. They fought, and she was killed. Moy and his people went on to develop an FDA application of the compound for the
treatment of dementia. But Rose Sarkisian was the prime mover. She had identified the agent and its therapeutic properties with lab mice.
Mookie. Where’s Mookie?
And that stuffed animal was what she had made for her little boy.
Jack looked out over the water to Skull Rock and the glittering azure expanse beyond. And for a moment he thought he heard thunder.
“I didn’t know that Nick knew your mother. He never said anything.”
“Except he must have suspected when he saw me on his MRI patient list. Then he did some name and date checks.”
“He must have suspected foul play all along, since she had identified the toxin’s benefits, then mysteriously disappeared.”
“My guess. And then Moy appropriated the discovery and slapped his name on the patents.”
“Which is why Nick kept pressing to discover whether you remembered anything.”
“He even sent you after me. Kind of glad he did.”
She smiled. “Me, too.” He felt a flush of warmth as she took his hand.
Because there was no statute of limitations in Massachusetts, Gavin Moy had been indicted for murder, the evidence being his own confession on tape. Likewise, Jordan Carr and Teddy Moy were also indicted for the murder of Nick Mavros. After the discovery of Nick’s body, the film in his camera had been developed. At first it had meant nothing in the investigation of the accident. But when the police heard the tape of the exchange recorded in Moy’s office, they went back to the film to discover on the last frame a face staring out from a clutch of dark bushes. When blown up, the face in the dark looking directly at the camera was Jordan Carr’s.
But that was not the only evidence for the prosecution undercutting Carr’s insistence that he had not been at Bryce Canyon. Teddy Moy had decided not to go down alone. He confessed that Jordan had been complicit with him and Gavin Moy, although Teddy had done the actual dirty work of pushing Nick off the cliff. There was suspicion that Teddy was also responsible for Peter Habib’s death, now being investigated as a possible homicide.
“How’s Louis doing?”
“Fine. I was out to their place the other day. He sends his regards.”
“He was a real hero.”
“Yes. He really was. No,
is.”
As René had explained it, that night at Moy’s estate Louis had apparently
experienced a memory-induced hallucination, believing he was engaged in a long-anticipated assault on North Korean military high command including individuals who had participated in the torture and execution of members of his platoon. And although he had experienced no more such hallucinations since, he could not be taken off the drug, of course. But he was being more closely monitored and treated with different doses of medications that would block his flashbacks and possible hallucinations without sending him into a stupor. His short-term memory continued to improve, and he was living almost a normal life again.
But understanding why some patients like Louis Martinetti were susceptible to flashbacks clearly required more research. The problem was that after four to six months of regular dosing, sixty percent of the patients showed cognitive and functional improvement; yet, for some reason, nearly half of those experienced disturbing flashbacks. As a result, the Memorine’s FDA application was withdrawn. Those trial patients already on the compound would be continued and closely monitored and properly treated for flashback seizures. Meanwhile, the FDA had mandated that GEM Tech scientists in conjunction with outside research groups make aggressive efforts to determine what genetic, chemical, or demographic factors might account for the phenomena before reapplication of Memorine or any refashioned compound for approval.
Understandably, thousands of AD patients, caregivers, and health-care workers were disappointed at the news. But Orman-Witt, the director of the FDA, said that this was medical progress. “This initiative is going to push drug companies to be more thoughtful when testing their products and not rush them to market or cover up damaging evidence.” The hope was for a safe and efficacious treatment within two years.
Alas, the world would have to wait. And when some safe variation of Memorine eventually reached the market, Rose Sarkisian would share credit for its discovery.
Jack’s own flashbacks and related nightmares had also faded, as if on some deep level a ghost had been laid to rest. He was back at the gym with Vince and pumping chrome once again. And next month he’d be back in the classroom at Carleton Prep and helping Vince out hosting Yesterdays on weekends.
Jack got up and took René’s hand as they walked to the water’s edge.
Fifty yards out, Skull Rock sat glistening in the golden sun. And hanging
over the sea like a pale ghost was a crescent moon that smiled down on them.
“You know, for all the jelly I took in, I still don’t remember what it’s like to kiss a woman.”
“I bet it’ll come back to you.”
“Well, you can’t tell.”
She pulled his face to hers and kissed him.
“I never told you, but I was always a slow learner.”
“You goof,” she laughed, and kissed him again.
He closed his eyes real hard. “Getting warm.”
She kissed him again.
“Warmer still.”
“This could go on all day.”
“I hope so, and into the night.”