He starts to hand me the folder, then pauses. “You can look, but you can’t take.”
I nod.
I open it, and feel a wave of nausea bubble through my caffeine-churning belly.
The picture is of the hooded man. On his face are lacerations. He looks decidedly pale.
“Apparent heart attack victim,” Chuck says.
“He’s dead?”
“Found near Sea Cliff.”
The picture has no labeling on it, nothing to suggest this is an autopsy or other official photograph.
“I didn’t read about it in the papers.”
“Sometimes the deaths of foreign nationals don’t get reported.”
“Who killed him?”
“Taco Bell and In-and-Out Burger.”
“This stinks.”
“Agreed. But there’s nothing more to be done about it.”
“You think I’m going to just let this all go?”
“As opposed to what?”
“You’re a government agency and you’re involved with killing people, or at least their brains.”
“We did everything in our power to stop this. Now we’ve shut down an unprofitable, unwise investment.”
I’ve been down this road before. I need a new tack.
“You seduced Vince and got him to use the Human Memory Crusade.”
“Now you’re condemning me for having a fling with someone? You should be so lucky now that…”
“What?”
“Parenthood makes serious demands on a person.”
“You’re a dangerous man.”
Chuck says: “Let’s go over it again: we support a project that lets us record memories and that we hoped would stimulate recall. And you know what? For some people it did just that. They used the Memory Crusade to focus on great stories from the past and record them. But a few old folks saw their dementia accelerated. So we dismantled it. We put it behind us. Now you’re going to dredge all that up — make the families distraught. In the pantheon of conspiracies, this one won’t hold the attention of the blogosphere for more than five minutes.”
Bullshit. I roll my eyes. “What about the precise nature of the questions — about people’s cars, and how they heard about Pearl Harbor, and whether they supported Kennedy?”
He shrugs and sighs, like I’m an incorrigible child. But I see him momentarily glance away.
“I didn’t get down to that level of detail.”
“Why did you approach Medblog for an investment?”
“So I could keep tabs on you.”
It’s a stark admission that prompts a thought. I open the compartment between our seats and I extract the rubber bullet. I hold it up.
“You arranged for us to be shot at by fake bullets.”
He nods. “How’d you figure that out?”
Chuck wouldn’t show me his wound. He never limped. I explain this.
“You were trying to gain my trust.”
“Guilty as charged. But I did really get nicked with the rubber bullet.”
“But I found spent shell casings.”
“I had to drop a few to throw you off.”
“Why do all that?”
“Nat, you know your own grandmother pushed for the retirement home to adopt the Human Memory Crusade?”
“What does that have to do with the fake shooting, or with your interest in Medblog?”
“When things went wrong, I didn’t know whom to trust. I saw that Adrianna was trying to reach out to you, maybe through your grandmother. I actually wondered if
“Me?”
“Your grandmother tries to get this put into the home, you’ve got a history of antagonizing the police, maybe you’re anti-authoritarian enough to experiment on people. As a businessperson, I needed to make sure I understood what was going on and who might be threatening my investment and the reputation of my limited partners, namely the U.S. Government.”
His words have the feel of a closing argument in a trial.
“You’re prepared to try to blame this on us?”
“Not at all,” he says, and it sounds disingenuous. “I’m just saying it all looked murky.”
I shake my head, and he continues.
“There are no records indicating the military’s involvement. Biogen’s project was off the books. Pete Laramer has already suffered plenty for his poor judgments. And, besides, what difference does it ultimately make?”
“How about that computers dull memory? Wouldn’t the world want to know that?”
“Trade-offs. Human memories dull a little but computer memory is more than compensating. We’re recording everything. We’re backing ourselves up. I just mourn that the system is not a little more stable.”
“What do you mean?”
“Computers get hacked, data gets compromised. Witness the attack on the Pentagon servers. We’re in an arms race — cryptologists against data thieves, rogue foreign agents who threaten to compromise our military secrets and streams of commerce with keystrokes. But we’ll figure out how to better protect and safely communicate our data. We’ve always been a country that has risen to the challenge.”
“Chuck, what’s happening in three weeks?”
“Thanksgiving,” he says, without a beat.
“Anything else?”
He shrugs. But he looks away again.
“Chuck, what if I don’t care about any of that stuff?”
“Meaning?”
“What if I forget about the whole ugly conspiracy — and you just tell me how to make my grandmother better?”
“Wish I could. She’s aging, Nat. Get used to it.”
We sit in silence for a moment. Then he glances at the Starbucks cup lying empty between us.
“Careful with the high-octane shit. It’s powerful. Could give you a heart attack.”
“Like Taco Bell or In-and-Out Burger.”
“Such a vivid imagination.”
He gets out of the car.
Chapter 60
It’s three in the morning and there are four creatures in my bed: me; Hippocrates; Polly; and a fledgling human being, cell-dividing at a frightening rate.
Of late, Polly has become a regular nighttime visitor, seemingly undaunted by my frayed sheets and towels. Or my restless imagination and the tossing and turning.
I go into the living room and sit with my imagination. It (my imagination) has been pulsing about something Polly said before she went to sleep when I’d asked her how this baby would manage to squeeze out of her body.
“First law of physics: What goes up must come down,” she explained.
“Who said that? Copernicus or Obama?”
