From the shadows behind them Louis sprang up. His injured arm didn’t stop him from flying at Jordan Carr and pulling him to the floor and flailing at him with his elbow and good hand. Louis was muttering odd syllables and swearing at Carr and saying something about Fuzzy. Jack didn’t understand, but Louis had Carr pinned to the floor.
Rene shot over to him to pull him up to tend his wound. But Louis kept pummeling Carr, who yelled for help. Rene shouted for Louis to stop and managed to pull Louis off him. She removed Louis’s shirt and fashioned a tourniquet for his arm with the bow tie. His shirt was soaked in blood, but Louis insisted she put it back on him.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. Just had a little—” Louis cut himself short, seeing Jack tying Moy’s hands behind him. Louis’s face lit up. “We got ‘em both, Fuzz. Hear that? We got’em.”
Jack didn’t know what Louis was saying, but he seemed pleased. He pushed Moy on his front while Rene bound his hands and Jack fanned the gun from Moy to Theo to Jordan Carr, who had pulled himself to his feet again.
Jack aimed the gun at him. “Playing both ends against the middle, right?”
Rene looked at Jack. “What are you doing?”
“He’s with them.” With his free hand Jack knocked a small lamp off Moy’s desk, pressed his foot on it, and tore the electrical cord off it. He tossed it to Carr. Then he pulled telephone wires out of the phone and wall. “Tie him,” he said, nodding to Teddy Moy, who was writhing on the floor. “Good and tight.”
“Jack!” Rene said, glaring at him for an explanation.
“I think they had something to do with Nick’s death.”
“The fuck you doing?” Teddy protested as Carr began to tie him up. “Get the gun.”
Carr looked back at the gun in Jack’s hands and began binding Teddy Moy’s arms behind him, then his legs to the thousand-pound marble table.
“What are you saying?” Rene asked as she came over to Jack. She glared at Jordan Carr on his knees tying a tourniquet on Teddy’s left leg. Then she looked back at Jack for confirmation. Jack nodded, and Rene flew to Jordan. She grabbed Jordan by his shirt. “You killed Nick?
“I didn’t. He did.”
Teddy swore at Carr from his facedown position. “And you were right there calling the shots.”
“But why?” Rene cried, and she whacked Jordan in the face.
Jordan put his hand to his cheek, which looked branded. “Because he was in the way, that’s why. Because he wanted to stop something that was good. And maybe before you go sanctimonious on me again, you can ask yourself this: If you could have saved your father, wouldn’t you have done anything? Wouldn’t you?”
Rene said nothing.
“Sure you would, even if it meant eliminating anyone who stood in the way of his cure, right? You would have done the same—anything to keep him from dying layer by layer, even if it meant a few flashbacks. Right? Right?”
For a stunning moment Rene could not respond, as if she did not know how to answer the questions. But she backhanded Jordan in the face.
The moment was broken when Moy’s cell phone cut the air. Jack reached into Moy’s jacket pocket and pulled it out. It was someone identifying him as GEM’s executive vice president.
“Yeah, everything’s just dandy,” Jack said. “We’re on our way down.”
When Jordan Carr was finished binding Theo, he looked at Jack and Rene. “So now what?” he asked, trying an ingratiating smile on Jack.
Louis was sitting in a chair muttering to himself. But he looked okay. Just a flesh wound.
Moy was in his chair, his hands bound behind him. Theo was tied to the marble table and going nowhere. Jack aimed the gun at Jordan Carr’s chest. “You’ve got thirty seconds to tell us about Bryce or I’m going to start shooting holes in you.”
ALL THE WAY DOWN THE STAIRS and through the corridor they could hear the chant of the crowd initiated by his management team:
They paraded into the hall, Gavin leading the way, his hands bound behind him, Jordan Carr in tow, also bound. And behind him came Jack with the gun and flanked by Louis and Rene. Teddy was back in Moy’s office enjoying a view of the underside of his father’s pink marble table.
For a moment, cheering flared up as people at the rear of the hall spotted Moy. But instantly it began to mute as people saw the spectacle of him being led at gunpoint to the podium. In the distance the sound of police sirens from Jack’s 911 call. But he had plenty of time before they arrived.
At the microphone, he introduced himself, then said he would like to make an announcement. He felt for the lump in the breast pocket of his sportcoat and he removed the small silver MP3 recorder that Vince had given him. He held it up to the microphone and pressed Play.
Epilogue
Homer’s Island
A SMALL SIGN ON THE beach read BEWARE OF JELLYFISH!
“Nice timing,” Jack said, and handed Rene a plate.
They sat on beach chairs by the water’s edge picnicking on shish kebab, stuffed grape leaves, pilaf, and stewed vegetables.
“In the late sixties, she was on a marine science panel in Cambridge with Jacques Cousteau—something about the threat of industrial pollution and global warming on the oceans of the world. Thaddeus Sherman was impressed, and they started talking. One thing led to the next, and he invited her to stay here because it was the only place in the northeast where Caribbean sea life shows up. One visit, and she fell in love with the place and started collecting specimens.”
Jack poured two glasses of chardonnay.
“Sounds like she was a very special woman.”
“I think she was.” They clicked glasses.
Today was the thirty-first anniversary of Rose Sarkisian’s death.
“She apparently had an affair with Gavin Moy, who was more her type—academically speaking—than the man she married. Who knows? Records say they were in divorce proceedings before he was killed in a plane crash. They hid that fact on the gravestone to save face.”
Jack also learned that Rose had specialized in the therapeutic properties of marine toxins. After having bagged some Solakandjis, she had chemical assays done on the toxin and found that the compound demonstrated beneficial properties on the neurological system. When Moy decided to start researching these neurological properties, Rose went to work with him as a partner. They apparently became lovers. And when she became pregnant with Jack, she insisted that he either marry her or provide financially for Jack’s upbringing. Moy refused. They fought, and she was killed. Moy and his people went on to develop an FDA application of the compound for the treatment of dementia. But Rose Sarkisian was the prime mover. She had identified the agent and its therapeutic properties with lab mice.
And that stuffed animal was what she had made for her little boy.
Jack looked out over the water to Skull Rock and the glittering azure expanse beyond. And for a moment he thought he heard thunder.
“I didn’t know that Nick knew your mother. He never said anything.”
