UCSF’s state-of-the-art medical machinery provided a background of muted whirs, clicks, and beeps. A heavyset nurse searched through the wall cabinets.
I shifted in the bed. “How’d it go?” A spasm of soreness pulsed through my throat. I massaged my neck and licked my lips.
She came over to the bed. “Ah, Dr. Beckman, welcome back to the land of the living. Let me get Dr. Porter for you.”
Twenty minutes later, Craig bustled into the room. As I mentioned, he’s the only one who knows of my talent. It’s not that I trusted him with the knowledge. He figured it out. Tricked me, in fact.
Even though he wasn’t a believer in things such as aromatherapy, ESP, or reincarnation, our frequent association in grad school had led him to the improbable conclusion that I could sense other people’s thoughts. So, he set a trap. Nothing complicated. In the dorm after a post-exam bender, when my thinking was compromised, he put a clear thought in his head. <
Jesus. There’s a rat in the toaster oven.
>
I opened my eyes, twisted around, and looked at the oven. I turned to him. He wore a knowing smirk and nodded his head. <
Got you.
> I swore him to secrecy, and so far he’s kept his knowledge private. I never even had to remind him that I knew his deepest secrets.
Craig came over to the bed. “Hey, guy.” He checked my chart and vitals.
As a normal patient, I’d have been concerned about his worried looks. But he always looked worried. Plus, he wasn’t thinking any dire thoughts.
He put one hand on the bed’s railing. “Did you know you’re famous?”
I rubbed the polymer cast on my shoulder. “Famous?”
Craig tapped his tablet and turned it to me. It displayed the front page of the Chronicle: Batboy Attacked on Baseball Field.
I chuckled. “Stupid and not quite right, like most news headlines. How’d the surgery go?”
“About as well as could be expected. The bones in a bat’s wing are analogous to the bones in the human forearm, wrist, and fingers. The carpals are much smaller, but the meta—”
“Craig …”
“Right, sorry. Dr. Lachman performed blunt dissection along the lengths of all the bat bones and slid them out. Like deboning a chicken. As we’d expected, the bones had merged with your tissue, so we were removing part of you as well.”
“So I’m good to go.”
“Well, hold on, there’s more.” He raised a finger. “The tricky part was the wing membrane.”
“Is that living tissue?”
Craig nodded. “Apparently so. We brought in a comparative physiologist for consultation. The membrane is a homologue of our skin, extended. Long story short, Lachman teased out a lot, but some tissue is still inside you.”
“Is that going to be rejected?”
“Yes, duh. C’mon guy, you want it to be rejected. It’s not an organ transplant. Maybe you’re still under the influence of the anesthetic.” He shined his penlight into my eyes. “But it’s all good. We’ll monitor you for infection, but you should be fine. Lachman infused your shoulder with Hyperfix, so you’ll feel good soon, despite all the muscle damage. The cast comes off tomorrow morning.”
Hyperfix had been all over the news, the biggest breakthrough of the decade. A direct result of stem cell research, it could speed up healing by a factor of forty.
“It wasn’t a vampire bat, was it?”
“That’s kind of interesting. It was what’s called a pallid bat.”
“Fascinating.” I smirked.
Craig held up his hand. “Hold on. The interesting thing is those bats aren’t found around here any longer. They all died out around 2013 due to something called white nose syndrome. And, by the way, we’re checking the bat for rabies. But no, not a vampire bat.”
“So, there won’t be any blood sucking in my future.”
“Not unless you want that.” He emphasized the word “want.”
I stared at him. “What does that even mean, Craig? That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
He shrugged. Craig was a genius in most areas, but when it came to jokes, he was a savant idiot—the opposite of an idiot savant. He’d say something that had the rhythm and feel of a joke, but with no actual humorous content.
After he went back to work, a nurse wheelchaired me to a semiprivate room with a view of Golden Gate Park. I spent the day sitting up in bed, generating some billable hours, researching for the case of the disappearing hubby.
After that, I opened the photo I’d taken of the mysterious mademoiselle’s tattoo. I photoshopped the missing ink back into it and flipped it horizontally to undo the mirror image change. It still looked a bit like a fish to me.
I posted the image on several tattoo websites. Most respondents said it was a pretty lame tattoo, not done by a professional. They didn’t recognize it. But I finally got a hit from TattooGeezer29: HEY, MUSHBRAIN, IT’S NOT A HEAD OR A FISH, IT’S A MAP.
A map. Of course. Why hadn’t I noticed that? It probably wasn’t a treasure map since it didn’t have an “X marks the spot.” Plus, what would be the point of tattooing a treasure map on your waist?
It looked like the outline of a country but not one I recognized. I Googled country maps. Based on her appearance, I started with Central Europe, then moved to Eastern Europe.
I found it. To the right of Hungary and below Ukraine: Romania. Bingo. A perfect match.
In the afternoon, Craig pushed a wheelchair into my room. “How you feeling now?”
“Not bad.” I rolled my neck and showed him the result of my brilliant detective work.
“Nice. Good match. Up for a field trip?”
“Not to Europe—are you joking?”
“No, no, much more local.” He set the brakes on the wheelchair and flipped down the footrests.
I shrugged my good shoulder. It probably looked more like a dance move than a shrug, so I said, “Sure. Where to?”
“We’ll pay a visit to Miss Romania.”
I raised my eyebrows. “She awake?”
“Not yet, but she’s doing well. For someone in a coma.”
She was on the neurology floor, in a room shared with another comatose woman. Miss Romania was much improved, thought-wise. Her thinking was still in another language, probably Romanian, but the dream-state fragments were longer and more organized. And faster.
She looked good, with a dimpled Mona Lisa smile as if enjoying a private joke. Someone had brushed her thick hair, and it lay dark and lustrous against the pillowcase. I got out of the wheelchair, reached over, and felt it.
Craig laughed. “What are you doing?”
“Just curious. Should I be here? I feel like a voyeur.”
“You’re a consultant, despite undergoing treatment for the bat thing. Don’t worry about it.”
I looked at him. This was new. Craig telling
me
not to worry. He was the worrier.
I sat back down. “We’re on schedule. I expect her to come out of it any day. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” I admired her high cheekbones and smooth skin. What story would she tell us when she woke up? Could she really have traveled here from the past?
* * *
The docs took off my cast and released me the next morning. I didn’t even need a sling. The Hyperfix was amazing. I felt as if I’d been healing for several weeks. Three cheers for modern medicine.
While waiting in the pharmacy for Vicodin pills I wouldn’t need, I watched the news. The mysterious mademoiselle was still the top story. CNC was interviewing an intense-looking man who claimed the government had been experimenting with a transporter device.
With my painkillers in hand, I headed off for some good old-fashioned detective work on the case of Donny the vanished husband. Old-fashioned work supplemented with incisive mind reading.
The first five of Donny’s “haunts” revealed nothing. Beatrix had listed the places he frequented. She knew of them because he’d bragged about how much he’d won at this place or that: “Hey, Bea, I won 200 bucks over at the Moonshine Lounge.”
But something wasn’t adding up. No one recognized him. I didn’t get a hit until I checked a lounge in his neighborhood. The bar was dark, with chairs up on the tables for cleaning. The bartender, a solidly built tough guy with a no-hair zone above his eyebrows, was counting bottles and writing on a clipboard.
I climbed onto a barstool and showed him Donny’s photo. “Seen this guy?”
He grabbed it with a ham-sized fist and angled it to catch the light. <
Oh crap, the sex club.>
“Nope. Don’t recognize him.”
Sex club? This was interesting. The bartender was a good liar. Nothing in his manner told me he’d recognized Donny. Sam Spade would have struck out here. I walked toward the door, then, feeling like Columbo, turned and went back to the bar. “Uh, maybe you could help me. He, um, told me about an unusual club he was in. Wanted me to join up, but I lost track of him. Know anything about it?”
“No, asshole. I just told you I don’t know this guy. How am I supposed to know what clubs he belongs to?” <
And like I’d mention Marty anyway.>
I took out a folded twenty and put it on the bar. How does it go? Maybe this will refresh your memory? “Maybe you’ve heard of the club, even if you don’t know this guy. The guy who runs it is Marty something. I forgot his last name.”
He angled his face away and squinted at me as if I told him I’d grown up on Pluto. <
Finkelstein? No way he forgot that.>
Like shooting fish in a barrel. A little research on the net, and I discovered a Marty Finkelstein, a janitor. Also a lawyer named Martina Finkelstein.
At Marty’s home, his wife talked to me through a locked screen door. She wrung her hands while speaking and occasionally glanced back into the apartment.
Her mind was quiet. Some people are like that. They don’t put their thoughts into words much. Perhaps they think in pictures. But she told me the information I needed: the address of the place Marty worked.
I found him sweeping up at a construction site. He knew nothing. Wrong guy. Worse, he had the impression I wanted him to join my personal sex club. Sorry, buddy.
Finkelstein, Prashker, Feldman and Gartner was on the top floor of Embarcadero One in San Francisco’s financial district. I stepped out of the elevator and through a set of glass doors. Plush and quiet, the law firm gave off the scents of new office and old money.
The receptionist was professional but firm. “I’m sorry, sir, unless you have an appointment—”
“Please tell her I have a few quick questions about her special club.”
The secretary frowned but did as I asked, and I was soon stepping into Ms. Finkelstein’s office. “Marty” sat at her desk with a stunning backdrop of Alcatraz and San Francisco Bay seen through floor-to-ceiling windows. She stood and shook my hand. Mid-forties with salt-and-pepper hair, her glasses gave her the vibe of a sexy librarian. Her open-necked blouse and pencil skirt did nothing to detract from that image.
She sat and put her glasses on the desk. “How may I help you, Mr. Beckman?”
“Are you the owner or manager of a club of an unusual nature?” I put it as delicately as I could.
She examined my card some more, turning it over and back, then put it on her desk and looked me in the eye. “I am indeed.” <
Careful, here.
>
She cleared her throat. “I have a legal club that caters to the needs of consensual adults. Most of the adults are wealthy and powerful. There is nothing shady about it. I don’t advertise, for obvious reasons. Membership is by referral only.”
Had she put a slight emphasis on the word “powerful”? A subtle warning? I put my hands up. “I’m sure that’s fine. I’m not after you in any way, and I’m not a judgmental guy.” I pulled Donny’s picture from my pocket and handed it across her desk. “I’m looking for this man.”
“Why did you assume that?”
She smiled. “Well, uh, maybe because you said you’re looking for him.” <
Wow, maybe it really happened.>
“Did something happen?”
She revolved her chair toward the view. <
It was just a rumor. I’m in the clear. Just hearsay.>
She revolved back, picked up my card, and tapped the edge against her desktop. “I heard a rumor that a Mr. Roman McCrea was going to kidnap Donny for ransom. Just a rumor. I didn’t put much credence in it. Not enough to take to the police. McCrea was a bad man, and I have to admit I was glad when he died.”
“Donny died?”
“No, no. Mr. McCrea.”
Man Dies Stealing Electricity
A woman who lives on Rivera Street in the Sunset district called 911 Friday night and reported a man on fire on a telephone pole. Deputies said a Mr. Roman McCrea was electrocuted while trying to steal electricity from a power line. Mr. McCrea had removed insulation from the wires and attached jumper-style cables to the power lines, apparently intending to bypass his electric meter.