Megan's Cure (8 page)

Chapter 15

GRAY AXMANN LEFT Eileen snoring softly in his bedroom and took a bowl of Muesli, fresh bananas and raisins along with a mug of black coffee to the back deck that overlooked the 16
^th
fairway of the Arroyo Verde Golf Course.
 
Thankfully, he was on the left side of the fairway greatly reducing the number of errant balls heading his way.
 
Many evenings he’d sat out with a bottle of Bordeaux watching hacker after hacker slice their tee shots into the side of the house across from him.
 

He picked up the cell phone on the table next to the Financial Times and dialed.

“Hello,” said the man on the other end.
 
Axmann knew that he wouldn’t recognize the incoming number.
 
It was his third phone of the month.

“Jerry,” said Axmann.
 
“It’s Gray.”

“Christ,” said Jerry in a low whisper.
 
“I can’t believe you’re calling me here.
 
Let me call you back.
 
Five minutes.”

Axmann had figured out most of the daily adjustments he would make to his stock portfolio – mostly reducing exposure to the possible devaluing of currencies in Latin America – by the time his phone rang.

“We really shouldn’t be doing this,” said Jerry.
 
“Can’t you call me at home?”

Axmann pictured Jerry, a middle-aged clerk in the FBI’s office in Las Vegas, standing out on the back balcony of his office next to a waist-high ashtray filled with sand and scores of cigarette butts.

“No time, Jerry,” said Axmann.
 
“We need this…pronto, buddy.”

“It’s like I told you,” said Jerry.
 
“It’s a two-step process.
 
First we identify the ISP which in this case is a cable television company – Cox to be specific.
 
Then, the ISP breaks down the IP information from the database session.
 
It should identify the gateway – probably someone’s wireless router – and Cox can match that to an address.”

“Timing?” asked Axmann.

“It’s a 24-hour turnaround,” said Jerry.
 
“Tomorrow morning at the latest.
 
Any higher priority and it needs supervisor approval.
 
And we’re fucked.”

Gray Axmann said nothing.
 
He knew the silence would unnerve Jerry.
 
He preferred applying pressure without threats if he could.
 
He found that the imagination came up with more frightening scenarios than any he could concoct.
 
He wanted his informant to be totally on top of this one.
 
Every minute was crucial.

“Look,” said Jerry, finally.
 
“I’m doing everything I can.
 
I’ll get the information to you as soon as I can.”

“Okay,” said Axmann.
 
“Jerry, you know what I’m going to say about your performance the past six months.”

“I know.
 
I know,” said Jerry quickly.
 
“I haven’t done jack shit.
 
I’ve had a lot of…uh…distractions.
 
You know what I mean?
 
I’m back on it.
 
Just let me know what you need and I’ll do my best.”

Gray Axmann knew Jerry and his wife had a swimming pool, summer trips to Italy and two expensive foreign sports cars they could only afford because of the monthly, tax-free payments Jerry received from an offshore company that Axmann controlled.
 
He had been careful to describe half of the payments as “loans” knowing Jerry could never repay them.
 
If he ever needed to, he could squeeze the informant like a juicy lemon by demanding repayment to an organization which, in the not-so-distant past, had been famous for arranging one-way trips to the Nevada desert.

When he finished the call, he dialed another number.

“Yes,” answered Murph Murphy, his voice always nasal due to the pounding other boxers had given his nose.

“Hey,” said Axmann.
 
“Where are you?”

“Knoxville,” said Murphy.
 
“They seemed to be heading in this direction.”

“Okay,” said Axmann.
 
“And what’s your plan?”

“Disappear them both,” said Murphy.
 
“If there’s a problem, the fallback is the girl asked for help, Novak pulled a gun and they both got nailed in the…uh…mayhem.
 
I’ve got a throw down.”

“Good,” said Axmann.
 
“We should have an address by tomorrow morning.
 
I’ll let you know.”

The sun was just winning its battle over the morning chill when Gray Axmann felt Eileen’s hands running through his hair.
 

She shifted to his right side and he saw she was wearing his Runnin’ Rebels T-shirt as she guided his face into her chest.
 
He rubbed his face against her and nipped her left breast through the fabric, making her giggle.
 
He hungrily inhaled the scent of sex, sweat and last night’s perfume.
 
Then he ran his hand up the back of her thigh to see what she had on underneath.
 
Nothing.
 

Chapter 16

IT WAS A little before 6:30 a.m. when Enzo Lee ran past Washington Square in North Beach.
 
As he passed the twin spires of Saints Peter and Paul Church, he paid silent homage to Joe DiMaggio a fellow San Francisco boy who was married in the church and had had his funeral there just a few years earlier.

Lee was aware, of course, of DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak for the Yankees – a still unbeaten record.
 
But, it was his Marilyn Monroe streaks that seemed even more impressive to him.

The marriage between the movie star and sports legend lasted barely a year.
 
Seven years later, DiMaggio had reportedly proposed to Monroe a second time mere days before she died of a drug overdose.
 
He sent roses to her grave steadily for the next two decades.
 
Six flowers arrived three times a week.
 
Then DiMaggio went to his grave at the age of 84 steadfastly refusing to ever talk about Monroe.
 
He even got his close friends to keep their lips sealed after he was gone.
 
Those
were the streaks and what they represented that impressed Lee – the Yankee Clipper’s iron will standing guard over a broken heart.

As usual on this route, Lee started trying to calculate in his head exactly how many roses DiMaggio had sent during those 20 years.
 
He knew that before he would finish the math in his head a changing traffic light, a bad driver, a pretty girl or some other distraction would derail his train of thought.

He continued down Columbus and then turned down Mason to the waterfront.
 
He ran west on Jefferson past the crab stands that would be jammed with food and tourists in a couple of hours.
 
He continued by Ghirardelli Square to Fort Mason, the old army base before its transformation to civilian uses.
 
He traversed the upper part of the Fort and took one of the dirt trails to the lower level.
 
He continued to the Marina Green, did a shortened loop, and began to retrace his route.

He cut the return short with a half mile jaunt to the end of the Municipal Pier, a decaying concrete structure that juts out from the shore toward the middle of San Francisco Bay with amazing views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.
 
He stopped at the end of the pier, walked in slow circles and let the strong winds blowing off the Bay dry his sweat.
 
He inhaled the ocean smell and listened to the sound of surf washing up on the shore behind him.

Then Lee headed back and slowly jogged the few blocks to the Hyde Street cable car stop.
 
It was one of his luxuries – a four-mile run with the uphill return trip courtesy of the city’s old cable car line.

When he got back to his second-floor flat in North Beach near the border with Chinatown, Lee started the coffee maker working on a pot of Peet’s Sumatra and popped open his laptop.
 
Attached to a series of emails that Lorraine Carr had sent to him, were eight articles from an assortment of technical journals, all authored or co-authored by Walter Novak.

The earliest were published in the late 1970s and had all appeared in math journals.
 
Lee had no idea what they meant: Triangulations In Hyperbolic Geometry; Random Flows For Incompressible Fluids; Arithmeticity of Holonomy Groups.

Then there was a gap of several years, and the next papers appeared in journals devoted to molecular biology:
 
Evolution of DNA Restriction; Antigenic Structure and Immune Response; Transcriptional-Related Factors in Selected Human Proteins.
 
These made slightly more sense to him.
 
Carr had also found a short summary of a conference held three years ago that mentioned a presentation Novak had given about his research.
 
It had excited the attendees.

Lee could trace Novak’s geographical movement at least through academia.
 
First Harvard and then Duke University for mathematics.
 
Then, MIT and Johns Hopkins for the molecular biology work.
 
But he found no articles or other references to Novak since the conference three years earlier.
 
However, Lee noticed that Novak had coauthored the last two articles with the same person – someone named Roxanne Rosewell.

He ran a search on his laptop for Rosewell, adding the term “biology,” and found a listing that showed her as a senior researcher at the Merrick & Merrick pharmaceutical company based in San Francisco.

When he called the company, Lee was quickly patched through to Rosewell.

“Hello?” she said.
 
Rosewell sounded older.
 
Lee placed her as middle-aged.

“Uh…hello,” he said.
 
“My name is Enzo Lee.
 
I’m looking for Walter Novak and I’m wondering if you know how I can reach him.”

“You’re who?” she said.
 
“Why do you want him?”

“My name is Enzo Lee.
 
I’m a reporter for the San Francisco News.
 
But, I’m actually calling on a private matter.
 
My grandmother is ill.
 
She has leukemia.
 
And I just wanted some information about the drug that…uh…Mr. Novak was working on.
 
Her doctor…my grandmother’s…remembered hearing about it.
 
I guess she heard Mr. Novak speak about it and…”

“I can’t talk about that,” she said.
 
“I can’t talk about that.
 
And you’re with who?
 
The media?”

Lee could hear the rising stress in Rosewell’s voice.

“Look,” he said.
 
“I’m just trying to get a phone number or email address.
 
My grandmother’s sick.
 
I just want to know what’s out there.”

There was silence on the other end.
 
But Lee could hear her breath.
 
It was coming fast.
 
Her heart was pumping.
 
He could feel her indecision.
 
Then, he heard the phone bang against something as if she missed the cradle the first time before she hung up with a loud click.