Devil's Plaything

Remarkable. For once, my penchant for snap diagnoses has actually helped me.

He starts to rise again. I leap towards him as I pull the wine opener out. I aim for the top of his back, piercing the tender, nerve-filled skin between his scapulae.

“AHHH. FUCK!”

He flails his arms behind his back, reaching for the opener.

It is the strangest moment for me to think: Canadian accent. Not Swiss. Canadian.

Then I see that the knife has spun free. It is a few feet to the intruder’s left, at the base of the bookshelves. I rush to it. I grab the warm handle, slick with sweat.

I walk to the would-be killer. He’s craning his neck my direction, looking now at me. Despite having the opener still in his back, he’s responding to the more immediate danger. He inches away from me.

I hear sirens. Police, maybe an ambulance, headed in our direction.

I look at the electrical lamp cord still wrapped around the man’s knee. I follow the cord where it leads — to the stubby porcelain lamp lying next to Pete. It survived the fall from the desk. It won’t survive the next impact. Without taking my eyes from him, I set down the knife beside Pete and lift the lamp.

I walk to the assassin and hold it over his head, as he struggles to scoot away and extricate the protruding wine opener.

“Where’s my grandmother?”

“He doesn’t know,” Pete rasps. “He asked me.”

“How can he not know? He’s the bad guy!”

The man has succeeded in dislodging the wine opener. He’s getting his bearings, looking around for a weapon.

“Lights out,” I say.

I slam the lamp over the man’s head. The porcelain shatters. The intruder slumps, unconscious.

“DSM,” Pete mutters.

“Thank you, Pete. Unbelievable teamwork. Hang on. The ambulance is almost here.”

“DSM.”

He’s jutting his pale chin across the room. I follow his gaze to a small, round coffee table with ornate legs. On top of the table sits a hefty medical book. The DSM — The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The intruder moans.

I look back at Pete. He nods.

I hustle over to the manual. I look back at Pete. “Dementia,” Pete says.

I open the book to D. I flip through pages, until I come to the loose piece of paper.

The sirens are nearing. They’ve certainly reached Sea Cliff, maybe our block.

Pete says something I can’t understand. He’s too weak to make his voice heard. I step closer to him and can make out his meaning. “Get them,” he whispers. “Stop them.”

“Who is them? Who is this man? Who does he work for?”

His head lolls. He’s fading.

“Pete!”

His chin droops. I feel his pulse. It’s weak, but blood continues to pump.

I take the piece of paper, and fold it into my pocket.

I look at Pete’s attacker, who is blinking on the edge of consciousness. The police will be here soon enough. I hate to leave, but I can’t stay. There is little I can do for Pete.

I slip out the back door into the moonlight.

Chapter 48

If I hop over the white picket fence, I’ll find myself in the strobe lights of local law enforcement. That means getting detained, explaining the mess inside, losing the piece of paper Pete gave me, and, most important, not following up on my impulse: I know where I can find Grandma. Or, at least, I have an idea who might have taken her. And the extraordinary reason why.

I shuffle two houses down to a residence that has the lights off. I hoist myself onto its lawn. I edge along the side of the house.

Minutes later, I climb into the Cadillac, start the engine, and drive out of Sea Cliff.

Six blocks later, I pull over. I turn on the car’s inside light. I pull out the piece of paper from Pete’s DSM.

What I see is a laundry list of items:

1/0

Yankees/Dodgers

Cursive/Block

12/7; Radio/Word-of-Mouth

Chevrolet/Cadillac

Standard/Automatic

Paternal car; Chevrolet/Cadillac

Slaughter Self/Butcher

Kennedy/Nixon

Married uniform/tie

Husband married uniform/tie

Saw moon landing/word-of-mouth

Union/non-union

Polio in family/No polio

Pink Cadillac/Blue Cadillac

Purple Chevrolet/Orange Chevrolet

One sibling/no sibling

Two sibling/three sibling

Procrastinator/punctual

Audited/Meticulous with books

If cursive, then “saw moon landing”

If union, then Yankees

If Procrastinator, then Polio

As I look at the list, the first thing that comes to mind is that I’ve heard Grandma Lane talk about some of these things, both in her conversations with me and in her conversations with the Human Memory Crusade. For instance, on more than one occasion, she’s mentioned to me that her father drove a Cadillac. I recall that she told the Crusade that she heard about Pearl Harbor on a radio. One of the items on the list reads: “12/7; Radio/Word- of-Mouth.”

12/7—December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor.

I study the whole list again. On its face, this looks like a list of possible memory options. Some people supported Kennedy, others Nixon. Some drove a standard car, others an automatic. But the list also seems so discrete, narrow, and confining. After all, some people probably supported neither the Yankees nor the Dodgers.

Grandma wasn’t a big baseball fan.

The word equations at the end of the list are another curiosity—“If union, then Yankees.” “If Procrastinator, then Polio.”

I do recognize the syntax as basic computing language, The “if… then” statement. Bullseye can make more sense of it.

It is almost midnight. I fold up the piece of paper and start the car.