a yellow taxi briefly hitting ninety in the Back Bay neighborhood.
We’re about to enter the E.R. when Jack Delancey screeches to a halt in his big Lincoln, activates his blinking parking lights and joins us.
“Told you I could beat a damn taxicab,” he says, straightening his tie as we step through the sliding door.
“But you didn’t.”
“Close enough,” he says. “Who was that on the phone? Who gave you the heads-up?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Naomi says, avoiding his gaze as she quickens her pace. “We haven’t much time. The police will figure it out soon enough.”
“The Benefactor,” Jack confides to me. “Mr. Big, whoever he is. That’s my guess.”
Naomi Nantz in full order-issuing mode is a thing to behold. Just as the taxi driver found himself obeying her commands to dart through city traffic, the duty nurse, a hardened soul who looks like she herself could direct battalions without flinching, is soon escorting us to a curtained cubicle, where an E.R. doc is attempting to assess the condition of the huge slab of a man more or less unconscious on the gurney, eyelids fluttering.
So far as I can tell Shane is wearing the same clothes he had on when they kicked in the windows and took him down. His shirt has been opened for examination, revealing his enormous chest and diaphragm. There are no obvious bruises, but who knows what they’ve done to him inside? His complexion is a sickening shade of gray and his eyes have sunk so deeply into his skull that he looks to have aged a decade, at least. Wherever he’s been, whatever has been done to him, it’s taken a terrible toll.
“Bastards,” Jack growls, his voice catching.
The startled doctor, a blonde, cherub-cheeked female who at first glance appears to be about twelve years old, wants to know what connection we have to the patient.
“Are you the ones who dumped this man at the curb with a note pinned to his shirt?”
Naomi soon sets her straight, without sharing any of the more interesting details. “The patient is our associate. We have reason to believe he was abducted for purposes of interrogation.”
“Interrogation?” the young doc shoots back. “More like tortured, from the look of him.”
“The note pinned to his shirt,” Naomi says. “What did it say?”
At first the young doctor seems determined not to share information but, under Naomi’s persuasive gaze, soon changes her mind. “Just three words, one of them nonsense. The first two were ‘Randall Shane,’ I’m assuming that’s his name. I put him into our database, but he’s never been admitted here.”
“The third word?”
The doc shrugs. “‘Gaba,’ whatever that means.”
“Gaba,” I say. “Like baby talk?”
“No,” says Naomi, remaining focused on the doctor. “As a matter of fact, ‘gaba’ explains it. Gamma- aminobutyric acid. If the word had been ‘GABA analogue’ or ‘GABAergic’ you’d have understood immediately, as you were intended to.”
The young E.R. doc has turned crimson. “Of course! He’s been drugged with some sort of barbiturate, or benzodiazepine.”
“Possibly both,” Naomi suggests. “He was taken down with a very powerful tranquilizer dart, just for starters.”
The doc’s jaw drops. “What! What the hell is going on here? Who is this guy?”
Before anyone can form a reply, Shane’s head lolls to one side and his sunken eyelids open. Instantly, Jack is there, crouching beside the gurney. “Randall? Can you talk? We don’t have much time, old friend. Cops are on the way.”
Shane gives him a loopy grin and says, “Bah-doo.” Working his lips, struggling to form a word.
Jack looks up. “Whatever they drugged him with, it’s starting to wear off.”
“Anything you can give him?” Naomi asks the doc. “To bring him around quicker?”
The E.R. doc looks deeply offended by the suggestion. “No way. Not without a full assessment. This man needs to be admitted and monitored.”
“He may know the location of a missing child,” Naomi says, pressing. “A five-year-old boy.”
The doc remains adamant. “I can’t treat him until I know what he’s been drugged with.”
“We’ve established that,” Naomi reminds her patiently. “One of the GABAergics.”
The doctor shakes her head, crosses her arms defensively. “Because ‘gaba’ was scrawled on a piece of paper? Not good enough. We need to determine the specific drug. Child or no child, I will not put this patient’s life at risk because you want to chat.”
“Fine,” says Naomi, turning her attention to the man on the gurney. “Mr. Shane? The clock is ticking. Very soon you’ll be taken into custody. Do you know where the boy is? Or who took him?”
Still unable to raise his head, or keep his eyes focused, the big guy is obviously concentrating, devoting all of his energy to the task of making his mouth and tongue function. “Joey,” he manages to say. “Joey Keener. Five years old.”
“Joey, yes,” says Naomi. “Is he alive?”
Shane manages to nod. “Yes,” he says. “Alive.”
“Where is he? Can you guess? Anything, Shane. Give us something to work with.”
He desperately tries to form another word, and then his eyes lose focus and he lapses back into semiconsciousness, totally spent.
Ten seconds later the cops arrive.
Part 2
Chapter Nineteen
More than anything, Joey wants to escape. Not only from the finished basement where he and New Mommy have been banished, and which is like a real house except without windows, but from the inside of his own head. It hurts to think about Mi Ma, his real mommy, because worrying about her puts a painful lump in his throat, makes it hard to breathe. In his short life Joey has often been moved from place to place, had to get used to new rooms and even new caregivers, but in all that time his real mommy was always there. They had never been separated for more than a day or so, and then she would come rushing back and sweep him into her arms, and it was almost worth it, her being away, because it’s so wonderful when she comes back. It feels like music bubbling up from everywhere, not just from the keyboard into his earphones, but from the walls and the air and from somewhere deep inside. That’s what being happy feels like, and he longs for it. At such times, when she has had to be away, Mi Ma sings for him, whole songs almost perfectly in key-bad notes make him grimace, even when he’s trying to be polite-but his mother has a very good voice, almost as true in timbre as the notes emitting from his keyboard, the measured chords and octaves that flow from his small fingertips.
Sometimes the music comes through his fingers in a kind of tickle, like he’s touching something soft and alive, a little kitten made of music, and he just keeps stroking the keys without having to think about it. What Mi Ma calls “Joey music,” because it belongs to him. Other times, like today, he looks at notes on paper and the music enters through his eyes and comes out through his hands, again without him having to think about it very much, but the experience is very different. As if he’s tuning to a different channel inside his head, the channel where Mozart is always playing. Joey loves the way the numbers and key signatures of the early Mozart sonatas flow so perfectly, bringing themselves to life, each note exactly the right note, all bubbling up into a stream of living music. Sonata no. 1 in C Major, Sonata no. 2 in F Major and then of course the Third Sonata in B-flat Major. Perfect. It could be no
