The Analyst

“No. We did not have children. Where is my money?” Ricky spoke sharply, demanding.

“Well, we’re searching. This may turn out to be a police matter, Doctor Starks. In fact, that’s what I’m beginning to think. That is, if someone managed to illegally access your account…”

“Where is the money?” Ricky demanded a second time.

The broker hesitated. “I can’t say precisely. We have our internal auditors going over the account now. All I can say is that there has been significant activity…”

“What do you mean activity? The money has just been sitting there…”

“Well, not exactly. There are literally dozens maybe even hundreds of trades, transfers, sales, investments…”

“Where is it now?”

The broker continued, “A truly extraordinary trail of extremely complicated and aggressive financial transactions…”

“You’re not answering my question,” Ricky said, exasperation filling his voice. “My funds. My retirement account, my cash reserves…”

“We’re searching. I’ve put my best people on it. I will have our head of security contact you as soon as they make some headway. I can’t believe with all the activity that no one here spotted something wrong…”

“But all my money…”

“Right now,” the executive said slowly, “there is no money. At least, none that we can find.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I wish it were so,” the man continued, “but it is. Don’t worry, Doctor Starks. Our investigators will track the transactions. We’ll get to the bottom of this. And your accounts are insured, at least in part. Eventually, we’ll get this all straightened out. It’s just going to take some time, and, as I said, we may have to involve the police or the SEC, because it seems that what you’re saying is that a theft of some sort is involved.”

“How much time?”

“It’s summertime and some of the staff is on vacation. I’d guess no more than a couple of weeks. At the most.”

Ricky hung up the phone. He did not have a couple of weeks.

By the end of the day he was able to determine that the only account that he owned that hadn’t been raided and eviscerated by someone who’d gained access was the small checking account he kept at First Cape Bank up in Wellfleet. This was an account purely designed to make summer matters easier. There was barely ten thousand dollars in the account, money that he used to pay bills at the local fish market and grocery store, the liquor store and hardware store. He paid for his gardening tools and plants and seeds with that account. It was money to make his vacation run smoothly. A household account, for the month he spent in the vacation household.

He was a little surprised that Rumplestiltskin had not assaulted these funds as well. He felt toyed with, almost as if the man had left this parcel of money alone to tease Ricky. Regardless, Ricky thought he needed to find a way to get the funds into his hands, before they, too, disappeared into some bizarre financial limbo. He called the manager of the First Cape Bank and told him that he was going to need to close the account and was going to want the balance of the money in cash.

The manager informed Ricky that he would have to be present for that transaction, which was fine with Ricky. He wished some of the other institutions handling his money had had the same policy. He explained to the manager that there had been some trouble with other accounts, and that it was important that no one other than Ricky access the money. The manager offered to have the funds written into a cashier’s check, which he would personally keep for Ricky’s arrival. This was acceptable.

The problem was how to get the money.

Ignored in his desk was an open plane ticket from La Guardia to Hyannis. He wondered whether the reservation he’d made was still intact. He opened his wallet and counted out about three hundred dollars in cash. In the top drawer of his bedroom dresser he had another fifteen hundred dollars in traveler’s checks. This was an anachronism; in this era of instant cash from automatic teller machines seemingly everywhere, the idea that someone would keep an emergency fund in traveler’s checks was obsolete. Ricky took a small amount of pleasure in thinking that his antique ideas would prove helpful. He wondered for a moment whether that wasn’t a concept he should embrace more fully.

But he didn’t really have time to consider this.

He could get to the Cape. And get back, as well, he thought. It would take at least twenty-four hours. But in the same moment, he was overcome with a sudden sense of lethargy, almost as if he couldn’t move his muscles, as if the synapses in the brain that issued commands to sinew and tissue throughout his body had abruptly gone on strike. A black exhaustion that mocked his age flowed through his body. He felt dull, stupid, and filled with fatigue.

Ricky rocked in his desk chair, his head leaned back, staring at the ceiling. He recognized the warning signs of a clinical depression as quickly as a mother would know a cold coming on when her child sneezed. He held out his hands in front of him, looking for some quiver or palsy. They were still steady. How much longer? he wondered.

Chapter Eleven

Ricky got an answer in the following morning’s Times, but not in the manner he’d expected it. His paper was delivered to his apartment door as it was every day except Sunday, when his usual habit was to walk out to the neighborhood delicatessen and buy the bulky paper before heading to a nearby coffee shop, just as Rumplestiltskin had so carefully observed in his opening threat. He had had more difficulty sleeping the night before, so when he heard the faint thump of the delivery service dropping the paper outside his apartment, he was alert, and within seconds had seized the paper and flung it open on the kitchen table. His eyes dropped immediately to the small ads on the bottom of the front page, only to see an anniversary greeting, a come-on for a computer dating service and a third small single-column box ad: specialized opportunities, see page b-16.

Ricky threw the paper across the small kitchen in frustration. It made a sound like a bird trying to fly with a broken wing as it slapped against the wall. He was enraged, almost choking and spitting with a sudden outburst of fury. He had expected a rhyme, another cryptic, teasing reply, at the bottom of the front page, just as his inquiry had been. No poem, no answer, he snarled inwardly. “How do you expect me to beat your damn deadline when you don’t reply in timely fashion?” he almost shouted, raising his voice to no one physically present but certainly occupying a significant space.

He noticed that his hands were shaking slightly as he made himself some morning coffee. The hot liquid did little to calm him. He tried to relax himself with some deep breathing exercises, but those only slowed his racing heart momentarily. He could feel his anger soaring through his body, as if it were capable of reaching into every organ beneath the surface of his skin and tightening every one. His head pounded already, and he felt as if he was trapped inside the apartment that he’d known as home. There was sweat dripping beneath his armpits, his brow felt feverish, and his throat was dry and sandy.

He must have sat at his table, outwardly immobile, inwardly churning for hours, almost trancelike, unable to imagine what his next step was. He knew that he needed to make plans, decisions, to act in certain directions, but not getting a reply when he expected one had crippled him. He thought he could hardly move, as if, suddenly, each of his joints in arms and legs had become immobile, unwilling to respond to commands.

Ricky did not have any idea how long he sat like that before lifting his eyes just slightly and fixing on the Times lying in a fluttered heap in disarray where he had flung it. Nor