numbers. I stumble to the second door on the right.
“Get back here!”
“Coming.” I’m not sure if I say it aloud.
The last doorway is shut. I pull it open. Bedroom. Spartan. There’s a queen-sized bed, piled at its foot with a comforter, along with two plastic fifths with red labels: vodka, I guess. Both are empty. Then I see the desk, sitting along the right wall. It’s jerry-rigged; cinderblocks stacked on each side holding up plywood. Atop it stands a computer monitor, big, maybe twenty-six inches. In the bottom right corner, a light blinks green. The monitor’s getting power but the screen is dark. Where’s the computer it’s connected to? Where’s the. . my head pulses. I focus. I see for the first time the stack of papers and folders to the right of the monitor. I walk to the desk. Scribbled notes and phone numbers cover a yellow-lined sheet on the top of the stack of papers. I pick it up and stuff it into my back pocket. I see a folder beneath it. It’s labeled with two Chinese characters.
“Did you have something to do with Alan-with him dying?” I hear the landlady behind me. “Did you know he was hurt?”
I turn to see her standing in the doorway.
“I was looking for a sheet to cover him.”
“On his desk? Tell it to the police.”
Her arms are crossed. Resolute but frightened. I would be. I am. “Where’s Faith?”
“Who?”
“Where’s the woman who came with me?” I practically roar it.
She points down the hallway. “Gone.” I walk toward the landlady, gaining momentum as I reach her. I’m clearly going to push past her. She moves. “They’ll get your fingerprints.” She glares at me.
I chase Faith.
16
I tiptoe past the body, fly down the stairs, pause at the building’s stairwell, look left and see a man in a cap carting boxes piled high on a dolly slide into a grocery. No Faith in sight. I look right. I see her. She’s in a demi-jog, turning a corner two blocks down. I start sprinting.
I cross a street against a red light, prompting a tinny toot from a cyclist. I take two more quick steps in the direction Faith disappeared, and then stumble. I put my hand on a parking meter and am struck that the top of it looks like a face, frowning, melting. “Are you okay?” I’m not sure where the voice is coming from.
“I lost someone,” I say or think.
I put a second hand on the meter. It’s cold and damp.
“You had me fooled there for a second,” I mutter to the meter, my head clearing.
“Are you okay?” I hear the voice again. I turn to see a lumpy lady in a baseball cap.
I start walking again. I reach the corner where Faith turned. I look down the street. I don’t see her. It’s not immediately clear where she might have disappeared so quickly. The street is residential, with just a couple of pedestrians and one jogger paired with a large dog. Halfway down the right side of the street, a crew of three stands on scaffolding, retrofitting a three-story house, the tallest one on the block.
Maybe Faith disappeared between two houses, or climbed into a car or maybe I was disoriented longer than I imagined, giving her ample escape time. Escape from what?
My head pulses. I look behind me. An ambulance pulls up outside Alan’s building. No sirens. Paramedics hate dead bodies. No adrenaline rush, just paperwork.
I pull out my phone. I dial Faith. It rings once and goes to voice mail.
“Faith, it’s Nat. Talk to me or the police. Your call.”
I hang up and think: stupid. Faith’s reaction to seeing Alan might well have been natural. Is death why I left medical school? The loss? I guess I understand why Faith might flee, but she keeps leaving the scene.
I’m unsure what to do when I feel a familiar urge to check my email. It used to be I’d require a ping of an incoming message to prompt my curiosity, but now I’ve internalized the ping. I’m the dog without Pavlov’s whistle and I know psychologists know why. Email provides one of the greatest of addictive properties in that it’s randomly reinforcing. You never know when an interesting email is going to come so you feel compelled to check constantly, even though most of the stuff is worthless. It’s not a phone; it’s a pocket slot machine.
This time, mini-jackpot. There’s a message from Sandy Vello: “Sure, let’s meet. How about 2night? Call me to cordinate. My terms. No paparazzi!” She includes her phone number.
So she can spell “paparazzi” but not “coordinate”; that’s everything I need to know about this woman’s personality. But what are her secrets? What do they have to do with dead Alan and disappearing Faith?
I walk back in the rough direction I parked my car, having trouble placing which side street we parked on. The path takes me kitty-corner to Alan’s apartment building. The ambulance remains parked outside. Now there’s a squad car too. A little crowd has gathered. Still moving, I look over my shoulder to see the landlady wander out front and confer with a cop. He looks up and down the street. I drop my head.
Around the corner, I lean against a wall painted with a wilted cigarette nearly my height and spewing smoke, the progressive antics of an anti-smoking tagger. I reach into my pocket and withdraw the notes I took from a dead man’s desk. Stylistically, they look like they were written by a busy engineer-the handwriting precise, the letters written in small block font. Yet, various words and numbers are written at different angles across both sides. Scratch paper filled with artful scribbles.
On the front, there are two phone numbers. One in the 650 area code, which means Palo Alto and its surrounding cities. Next to it, a name: Kathryn Gilkeson. I thumb the number into my phone but don’t call it. The other number is in the 415. I recognize it; it’s already in my phone. It belongs to Faith.
On the top right corner of the yellow-lined sheet are five sets of numbers: 8:47, 9:06, 9:11, 9:35, 9:50.
Times. I make this assumption not just because of the obvious syntax but also the phrase just below the numbers. It reads: “Dr. Jurgenson-7:45-8:40.”
Dr. Wilma Jurgenson. I flash on her image: thin, praying mantis-like in the crooked way she collapses her long legs beneath her when she sits, plain face, straight black hair, prematurely aged hands from hyperthyroidism. I got together with her at 7:45 the night of the incident at the train station, just a few minutes before I nearly died on the subway tracks.
I feel another light-headed flash, warmth flooding across my brow, an acid scent in my nostrils. How does Alan Parsons know my schedule?
I’m having trouble focusing on the piece of paper. It’s not my eyesight; my hand is quivering, like I’ve got late-stage Parkinson’s.
I start walking down the block, away from Alan’s apartment. I pause next to a Mexican bakery. I’m trying to remember where I parked my car. I again picture Dr. Jurgenson. She’s a brain specialist, friend and a great journalistic source who has been invaluable in helping me understand the human mind. But I can’t seem to remember what Wilma and I discussed when I last saw her. It was nothing special, I think, not substantive at all, not much science, maybe about family, more catch-up than interview.
I shake my head. I remember where I parked the Audi-on a lightly trafficked street just off the main drag, two blocks from the cafe. A few minutes later, I climb inside. I place Alan’s scrap paper on my knee. In a carefully etched box on the left of the paper there is a list of groceries: “Oreos, bacon, Tater Tots, soy milk, Tylenol PM.” So he’s a bad sleeper, maybe lactose intolerant, not a health nut.
To the left and a few lines below the list, there are math equations. At the top is the dollar amount $14,000, from which he’s subtracted $3,500, and then, from the $10,500 that remains, he’s subtracted $1,500. The figure that’s left is $9,000, and it is, in turn, multiplied by 1,000. It leaves $9,000,000, which is circled several times with neat zeal.
It’s a neither-here-nor-there sum, maybe big for an individual like Alan but small for a corporation or a major conspirator. In Silicon Valley, money is measured in billions, with a B.
On the other side of the paper, there are two Chinese characters. I’ve seen them before, I remember, on a manila folder on the dead man’s desk. As I look at the characters, my eyes glaze, the character outlines getting fuzzy. One looks like a horse with wings and the other like a piano standing on a mouse. Beside the characters,
