Devil's Plaything - Matt Richtel [106]
“I’ve got a random question,” I offer.
“I’m shipping out soon.”
“It’ll be quick. I was wondering what kind of car your father drives?”
He looks up at me. His eyes are snake holes, dark and deep.
“A van. What the fuck do you care? You’re writing about cars now?”
Snake alert.
“My grandfather drove a Chevrolet.” The other grandfather, Irving.
“Good for him.”
From what I can tell, this guy is not programmed like Grandma. He’s an uncooperative tinderbox, and maybe he doesn’t know a damn thing anyway.
“Where?” I ask.
“What?”
“Where are you shipping off to?”
“Trip to China.”
“China?”
His eyes glance down at the desk. I follow the gaze to a brochure for the Pan-Asian Games. It looks to be some kind of quasi-Olympic athletic competition held in Beijing, just like the actual Olympics but with a lot less TV coverage.
“They say everything’s changed over there. I’d like to see that with my own eyes. I sure would like to see things different over there.”
He looks back at me, his eyes softer.
“In 1970 or 1971, I got interviewed by Rolling Stone. They were doing a story about a band that was popular with the guys coming back. I spent two hours talking to the writer. And you know what? He used one sentence of mine and it didn’t sound like me at all. It sounded like some asshole who was pissed off at the world.”
“I’m not going to do that to you.”
“Exactly. Because I’m asking you to leave me alone. Please.”
The way he says “please” makes the word sound aggressive. Like he might feel justified giving me a hand through the plate glass window.
Another dead end.
My next stop is Noe Valley, and Chuck’s house. It’s raining—hard. It would be a desultory and depressing moment but I’ve just spent a blog item’s worth of income on a quadruple shot from Starbucks and I feel like I’m wired enough to fly by flapping my arms.
I pull up to his house, and I’m thinking about what strategy to employ, or what I hope to accomplish, when Chuck walks outside under an umbrella. He sees me. He nods. He puts up a finger, asking me to wait a minute. He goes back into the house and returns a few moments later. This time he carries a manila folder under his arm.
He opens the passenger door, then closes the umbrella, slides in and sits in one smooth motion.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Why?”
“I figured you’d want this.”
He starts to hand me the folder, then pauses. “You can look, but you can’t take.”
I nod.
I open it, and feel a wave of nausea bubble through my caffeine-churning belly.
The picture is of the hooded man. On his face are lacerations. He looks decidedly pale.
“Apparent heart attack victim,” Chuck says.
“He’s dead?”
“Found near Sea Cliff.”
The picture has no labeling on it, nothing to suggest this is an autopsy or other official photograph.
“I didn’t read about it in the papers.”
“Sometimes the deaths of foreign nationals don’t get reported.”
“Who killed him?”
“Taco Bell and In-and-Out Burger.”
“This stinks.”
“Agreed. But there’s nothing more to be done about it.”
“You think I’m going to just let this all go?”
“As opposed to what?”
“You’re a government agency and you’re involved with killing people, or at least their brains.”
“We did everything in our power to stop this. Now we’ve shut down an unprofitable, unwise investment.”
I’ve been down this road before. I need a new tack.
“You seduced Vince and got him to use the Human Memory Crusade.”
“Now you’re condemning me for having a fling with someone? You should be so lucky now that . . .”
“What?”
“Parenthood makes serious demands on a person.”
“You’re a dangerous man.”
Chuck says: “Let’s go over it again: we support a project that lets us record memories and that we hoped would stimulate recall. And you know what? For some people it did just that. They used the Memory Crusade to focus on great stories from the past and record them. But a few old folks saw their dementia accelerated.