Untitled Document

Chapter One

Someone was sobbing—no, shrieking. The sound hit me like a full-fisted punch in the stomach. I hurried down the stairs, banged on the door, shoved it open.     Jimmie stood inside his room, his red hair soaked—he’d just emerged from the shower. He held a wet T-shirt, his favorite; printed on it in dripping crimson letters were the words TOXIC AVENGER.
     I hung there, just a few feet from the doorway, transfixed. The sound had come from Jimmie’s computer. Something surged on the dark screen, something white and bloated that curled and writhed.
     It was a naked human being. His skin had the pallid cast of someone who never ventured outdoors. Huge, baggy flanks, a grotesquely swollen belly—he was fat to the point of obscenity.
     Porn?
     But…
     Gay porn?
     A white silken cord dropped over the man’s head. When it tightened around his neck, pulling him backwards, I could see his face. It was contorted. Ecstasy or pain? I couldn’t tell. There was blood in his mouth; he seemed about to pass out.
     The cord slackened, he fell to his knees. Boots started kicking him. He rolled over, licked the boots.
     Mother of God, I thought, and had to take a deep breath and look away.
     Jimmie walked over, abruptly shut down his computer. He didn’t meet my eyes, and when I asked him what he’d been watching he made a sort of choked sound.
     “What was that?” I asked again. A vein pulsed in my forehead, but I kept hold of my temper, because I damn well had to. Any teenager on earth can beat you at whipping themselves up into a fury; but if you keep your ability to reason, the advantage is yours.
     “Are you downloading porn off the internet?”
     “It’s not porn,” my brother said. “You think I’m a total zip, don’t you? A stupid, pathetic little loser. Someone no one would—”
     He stopped. Crossed the room and leaned into his window, his hot breath fuzzing the windowpane.
     His T-shirt was dripping. I took it away from him, draped it over the shower curtain rod. Up close, Jimmie reeked of some ammonia-laden soap, like he’d been scrubbing himself furiously and hadn’t fully rinsed off. I stood a moment, reminding myself to stay calm.
     I went back into the bedroom, stared morosely around me. Dirty clothing littered the floor—underwear, sleeveless T-shirts, jeans, all flung down in heaps or kicked around the room. The room was a running commentary on my brother’s explosive moods.
     Jimmie had moved in after Mom and Pa died, and ever since, his emotions had been pretty much confined to degrees and types of rage. Happiness rarely appeared on his face, and when it did looked like a guest who had shown up at the wrong party—out of place and uncomfortable. It would hang around for a few moments then flee.
     A half-grown black-and-white cat padded into the room, tail in the air. Jimmie snagged her around her belly, tipped her over like a roller skate. She was his pet, but he’d been rough. She struck out, digging in her claws, plowing three bloody tracks down his arm.
      He flung her on the floor. Stared at the blood. A moment later, he made a fist with his other hand, struck the wall. The cheap fiberboard barely withstood the blow. He struck it again; chips flew, a hairline crack appeared.
      Blood dripped on the carpet; the cat was yowling; I had a hole in my house.
      I took hold of Jimmie’s arms, gave him a hard shake. “What’s the matter?”
     He just stood there, faintly trembling, like a wire strung too tight. His eyes looked exhausted—it was clear he hadn’t slept. But then, Jimmie hardly ever slept. In happier days I’d joked with Mom that we should rig something up and feed him intravenously. Hooked up to a couple gallons of glucose, he’d never have to leave his beloved computer and videogames. He could just sit and toggle a joystick for the rest of his life.
     “What’s the matter with him?” my mother had asked me once. “He’s such an odd kid. He never sleeps. How come he never sleeps?”
     “Maybe he takes after Pa,” I’d said.
     Mom raised her head. “Cooper O’Brien, what are you talking about?”
     Calling me by my full name meant nothing, but her eyes were blistering me.
     I bit down on the words I wanted to say. Made a joke instead.
     “Pa told me once he could never sleep through the night for fear the human species might not survive until morning without him.”
     Mom dropped her eyes.“Your pa’s restless at night sometimes, worrying about the family,” she’d muttered.
     Worrying about the family, my ass.
     I thought of all the nights in my childhood Pa had left the house in the wee hours. He’d slip out the side door, telling the dog to be quiet. I’d hear him, although he thought I was asleep. He’d slip back a few hours later. He thought he had us all fooled…
     The accident happened ten months ago. My pa’s Chrysler LeBaron was clipped from behind, went right off a cliff. I never saw Pa again. A coroner upstate told me he was thrown from the car, which then rolled on him. Pa was crushed; they could identify him from his dental records, no need to see his body. When I disagreed, he hung up.
     Mom was still alive when the paramedics got there. They put her in a helicopter, and she made it to Stanford Hospital.
     Beside her bed, on the sticky visitor’s chair, I’d watched her die. Her face had been the gray of an old carp, her lips almost black. Her eyes, wide-open but unseeing, were the color of mud. Hitching, strangling noises came from her throat, but no words.
     She died with me sitting there willing every struggling breath until, finally, she just didn’t take the next one. We had never talked about what was wrong with our family. Why talk about it? There was no fixing it. With her death, there would never come a dawn when the damage could be undone.
     The drunk had slithered away from the accident unharmed. He was a weepy bastard; he’d cried a lot at the trial. He hadn’t meant to do it, of course. He hadn’t meant to kill anyone. He just had this crippling gene that kept him sucking the bottle long past infancy.
     Jimmie was looking out the window. A sea wind had peeled away the Golden Gate Bridge’s usual shroud of mist. She was a-wing above the still dark city, towers seven hundred feet above the water, enough cable to circle the globe three times, eleven men dead raising her, and another lured every two weeks since into using her as a gangway to the void.
     She was so beautiful that morning she was otherworldly, eerie—part elegy, part nightmare. A bridge in a dream.
     Jimmie pointed at an alley opening into the street.
     “That’s where it happened. Remember?”
     I didn’t say anything. The night before the car accident, just after midnight, there’d been a commotion on the street. Two men had waylaid a woman, tried to rape her. My pa had been in the house. He’d heard screaming and raced out with a baseball bat.
     “You can’t beat two of us, old man,” one of the woman’s attackers said.
     “Yes, I can,” Pa replied.
     He hit the first man a strong blow to the face with the bat. The man reeled backward, eyes full of disbelief. Took off, fingering his hemorrhaging mouth.
     The one who had spoken hung behind, waving a blade. Too bad for him—Pa had pounded him to mincemeat with the bat, then slung him in the alley dumpster.
     “When the cops showed up, they all wanted to shake Pa’s hand,” Jimmie said. His face turned reverential. “That was the last time I saw him. Pa was like…an awesome great person. A hero.”
     “He crushed a man’s spine,” I muttered. “Some hero.”
     The tip of Jimmie’s nose flattened.
     “Pa believed there were things you had to fight for, even things you had to be willing to die for, when the time came.” He hesitated, said the rest of it in a rush. “He told me once that a true son of his would never let himself be called a coward.”
     There was something curious in his voice—urgent, perhaps frightened. I went to get antiseptic from the bathroom, spread it meticulously on his scratches. Wiped the metal threads clean and screwed the cap back on the tube.
     “Look, Jimmie, Pa never would have wanted you to go around trying to choke people. If you did that because you were trying to qualify as brave in his book, you made a mistake.”
     “I didn’t choke him,” Jimmie said. “I hit him with a pizza tray. He called me a pitiful orphan. I did it to make him shut his ugly trap.”
     The incident had happened a month ago. The boy complained to the principal, and Jimmie had paid him back double with his fists after school. Drawing a week of suspension hadn’t done anything to cool Jimmie’s jets, either. He’d gone back touchy and moody, looking for the next skirmish.
     He leaned forward on the windowsill, eyes traveling up and down the street. I considered the tight expression that had entered his face, the gathering current of intensity that filled his gaze.
     He’s a walking Hindenburg, I thought. Pure disaster in the making.
     Out of the low-lying fog and gloom on the streets, two SFPD squad cars blasted, lightbars flashing. A pedestrian wrapped in a raincoat waited for them to pass then crossed the street. When the squad cars reached Park Presidio, they turned north, heading toward the bridge and the waterfront.
     By the time the sirens faded, Jimmie had left the room, the cat at his heels. I kept watching the pedestrian until I was sure he was a cross-dresser from the whorehouse a block down the street. I knew the tilt of his head, caught sight of the frilly split-crotch fin du siècle unmentionables when a gust lifted his loosely wrapped raincoat.
     The prostitutes never worked the streets on Monday mornings, but this one would be wanting a pint very badly, and heroin even worse. I’d talked to him—he chattered like a bird. Had eyes like the clear blue sweets the Mexican children sucked.
     I stayed in front of the window, thinking about my pa. Was he still out there? Hovering like a ghost in the darkness?
     I was always looking…not for pa, but for his clothes. The disguise that concealed his identity. A dark suit and a crisp white shirt wrapped around a kind of inner madness. A silver-studded wristband fastened around a clenched fist. An appallingly fake blond wig sheltering eyes that had seen horrors. Two-tone leather shoes that had walked into thousands of strange hotel rooms.
     Rambo-in-wingtips, I’d called him that time. To his face even. He’d smiled, which in itself had been a shock. He almost never smiled.
     Just in case, I sent him a mental message. Listen, old man. If you’re still alive, it’s time to come home. While you’re mucking around, trying to save the world, your son is about to blow apart.
     A moment later, I shut my thoughts away. Went upstairs to dress.

*            *            *

      The morning drive was maddening, as usual. I got stuck in a jam near the Wong Tai Sin Temple. Squeezed through an alley behind an earthquake shack, backtracked a few miles. Spun out in front of an electric bus on Geary and floored it.
     When we got to George Washington High School, I expected Jimmie to jump out, but he sat without moving, his hands clenched. Someone in the line of cars at the drop-off curb tapped their horn. His head jerked.
     He turned toward me, blinking rapidly, tearful, eyes not quite in focus.
     “I’m scared, Sis,” he said in a desperate way.
     The horn went off again.
     “Quit popping people in the jaw with pizza trays, and you won’t have anything to be scared of,” I said harshly. “Otherwise, the whole school is gonna be laying for you.”
     Giving me an angry look, he got out and slammed the door.
     I watched him head through the swarming students. Those long, straight legs, that shock of red hair—he was a handsome boy, really. But he was walking with his usual self-protective hunch, and I knew he felt as ugly as a clod of dirt. His school counselor had recommended I take him to a psychologist. It hadn’t seemed to help; the shame and self-loathing and enormous rage that had consumed him ever since the accident hadn’t eased. Somewhere along the way, Jimmie had developed a desperate fixation on not being thought a coward. I couldn’t fathom where that was coming from. Neither could the shrink.
     “Jimmie!” I was out of the car, yelling. The stupid kid had left his knapsack behind.
     He’d already disappeared, but a girl was passing by—Lauren, his biology lab partner. Her hair was fawn-colored, sleek. She wore it loose to the shoulders.
     “Lauren, take Jimmie’s backpack to him, would you?”
     She tensed, her shoulders bunched. “No. I can’t—”
     “Really, it’s okay.” I glanced at my watch. Oh, shit. “Just take it.”
     I shoved it into her hands.
     “It’s dripping,” she said.
     I flipped open the buckles. Jimmie had stuffed his Toxic Avenger T-shirt inside. The front was stiff with soap scum. What a freaky-ass kid, I thought. Why’d he do that?
     Lauren grabbed the T-shirt, stuffed it in the backpack. “I’m outta here…late!” she hollered as she ran off.
     I made reasonably good time until I reached the Financial District. At the corner that held Shotwell’s, where the city moguls congregate for after-hours brandy and cigars, the traffic congealed again. Complete gridlock—skyscrapers above, car bumpers below, as far as the eye could see.
     I flipped open my laptop and started working. Soundtrack bombast filled the car—the roar of a truck engine, the squishing sound of tires on a wet street, a car door slamming, a woman screaming…
     The traffic drifted a few yards forward; I moved with it. Refocused.
     Up until a few months ago, I worked as a special effects artist at a large production studio north of the bay. It was a childhood fantasy of mine to work in films, and a child’s dreams are not idle fancies; they are the means by which he creates the person he is going to become. At least, that’s the line they fed us when we graduated from USC film school. In my case, I’d achieved my dreams, and all it meant was that my life had started to reek of desperation. Sometimes I thought if I had to work on one more bad movie I would tear my eyeballs out with my fingernails.
     Two months before, personal injury attorney Rick Capra had talked me into getting out of the film business, going to work for him instead. Rick wanted me to create animated reenactments of accidents he could use in personal injury trials. According to him, these reenactments would help him overcome one of a personal injury attorney’s biggest problems—how a jury can handle only so much yammering before they zone out, lose track of what’s going on.
     It wasn’t just that. There’s always at least one juror who has the intellectual capacity of a cauliflower. Wheeling a TV into the courtroom and showing a decapitated body, with the camera lovingly doting on bones poking through and arteries spurting, is sometimes the only way to get them to understand that this is personal injury, goddamnit. Someone really got injured.
     I don’t think I would have gone for it, but Rick hit me at a vulnerable time. My mother’s dying, the drunk slithering off with a hand-slap—it had left me possessed by fury. And the studio had lent me out to Hideo Siri, a director who had the subtlety of a walrus with gas. In his last film he’d insisted that all the fast camerawork had to be done at an angle, an effect that made me want to get down on my knees and crash my skull against the floor. If I stayed any longer, I figured I’d have Hideo’s brand on me, and that was closer to cinematic sodomy than I ever wanted to get.
     Meanwhile, Rick kept pounding on me. My mother was past help, he’d point out, showing about as much subtlety as Hideo, but maybe I could help some other victim.
     Sure, why not? What else was I going to do? Get a job at Sears shooting family portraits?
     Only…Rick—Rick himself—was the stinger.
     Seven years ago, Rick and I had agreed to keep our distance. It was an emergency measure, kind of like removing a blue flame from a test tube that is emitting clouds of yellow stuff, because otherwise it is going to blow up. We’re both older, wiser—that’s what you tell yourself when you go back to toxic relationships. We’ll handle it better this time, isn’t that what you say?
     Yeah, right.
     I snapped my car into a slot in the basement parking garage. Twisted the mass of red curls on my neck into a ponytail and fastened it up with a clip. There was a limo—regal-looking, white, with dark-blue leather—blocking my way to the elevator. The customized license plate said: LUDLOW.
     I circled the limo, feeling my heart sink. When I got to the elevator, the owner was waiting for me. My gait faltered, but it was too late. Walter Ludlow took a step forward and pulled me inside.
     He punched in the thirty-second floor. Then he added the privacy code that prevented the door from opening until it reached its destination. Then he made a single cry of distress and pain and wrapped his arms around me.
     I didn’t have the guts, or the presence of mind, to push him away. Once upon a time, Walter and I had a fling. A short fling, not very memorable, but still, I clearly remember seeing the Grand Old Man naked in a post-coital moment, running his fingers through his thick silver hair.
     The affair had affected me in strange ways. Something vital in me had died afterwards; something had been irrevocably finished. My destiny—that goddamn human destiny we all think we can elude—had been further and irretrievably complicated.
     Right now, the Grand Old Man had a queer glassy look in his eyes. He smelled as if he’d neglected his morning shower, as well as his usual spritz of $400-an-ounce cologne, an almost unthinkable omission. His crown of silky smooth hair was awry and disheveled.
     He was holding me tight, clinging to me, really, and I had no idea what to do. Why was it that Walter affected me so strangely? There seemed to be an inevitable doom in my relations with men; things always foundered. But Walter—there had been something in Walter that I’d never touched before in my life.
     Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different than you and me—F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t kidding. And even in the rarified financial air of San Francisco, Walter was something special. A powerful, supremely confident man, he owned a shipholding company that controlled half a dozen tankers as well as a hundred workboats that circled the globe. His home, five stories of glass perched on an ocean cliff, was as extraordinary a structure as I’d ever entered without paying admission.
     “Something terrible happened, Cooper.” Walter was breathing into my face. His breath smelled thick and fetid, as if he’d been vomiting. “Stephen is dead. The police found him just after six this morning. He had a bullet through his head.”
     He dropped his hands and stood there, not looking at me, not looking at anything. Everything stopped; even my heart seemed to stop beating. I put my hand out, braced myself against the elevator wall.
     Stephen was Walter’s son. A quiet kid. Shy, painfully underdeveloped for his age, never at ease, but a nice boy, really. Once you got him to open his mouth.
     Walter’s only child. Then came the thought; I couldn’t stop it—the heir to everything. Dead.
     I’d always liked Stephen. He hadn’t been a particularly bright kid. Crashingly average, in fact. But he’d been the kind of kid who sometimes develops a backbone. Ends up surprising everyone, joining the Peace Corps or Greenpeace. Refuses to just sit around and live off his old man’s money.
     “He shot himself?” I asked gently.
     It surprised me—and it didn’t. For poor little rich kid Stephen, there must have been plenty of daily torment in not being able to live up to his father’s expectations. In the presence of his awesomely impressive parent, Stephen had often seemed to me to be frozen with shame.
     Walter flexed his hands and looked at them, as if their impotence shocked him.
     “Not self-inflicted. At least I don’t have that on my conscience.”
     There was a jerk as the elevator came to a stop. The doors slid open with a hydraulic whoosh. We had reached the thirty-second floor, but Walter didn’t move.
     “Walter?”
     “I…need to tell you something, Cooper.”
     “Don’t. Please—”
     “The police aren’t going to get to the bottom of this. The way Stephen was killed, it’s the first time anyone has ever been killed that way.”
     I felt a twitch around my eyes. Tried to hide it, but he saw it.
     “Damn you! What are you thinking? You don’t think I had anything to do with Stephen’s death?”
     “No,” I lied.
     He followed me out of the elevator. “Why are you running away?”
     I stopped. “You said he was shot, Walter. You’re not making sense.”
     He started crying now, the way men rarely cry—no sobs, but the tears falling fast. “The…the world has just found a new atrocity, a brand new way of killing.”
     “What are you talking about?” Outta his mind, I was thinking.
     “What happened to Stephen, it’s not going to be easy to figure out. And it’s not over. No one is going to be safe.”
     I winced, shook my head. He’d lost his boy and he had a bad case of the crazies. Just like Bill Cosby. Just like John Walsh. Hell, just like a guy in a mobile home, hearing an unexpected knock at the door and answering it to find out his son was dead. Walter had turned into someone he probably didn’t even know inhabited the same planet as he did.
     An ordinary human being.
     Walter’s body tightened, his face flushed. He was trying to exert control over himself, doing his damnedest to bring the Grand Old Man back. It was his routine, his schtick, his mask—we all have one—and he did it like we all do, on autopilot.
     But he also had his secret place. There was more to him, as there’s more to any of us than we ever let on, and it was coming out now.
     “You have to help me, Cooper,” he said. “You’ve got to trust me; not—” He glanced at the door. “I need you. Before we go in, promise me you’ll help.”
     I pushed open the door to Rick’s suite and entered. Walter didn’t follow. When I turned, he was still on the other side of the closed door, gesturing for me to come back. He wasn’t asking, he was begging. Pleading. I stood, frozen into absolute stillness. Looking at upturned palms through whorls of smoky glass.
     It was so strangely out of character for this regal man, and so human, it almost broke my heart.