Devil's Plaything - Matt Richtel [77]
It’s 8:05.
I’m desperate.
Plan B.
Chuck.
Twenty minutes later, I park in Noe Valley, a swanky neighborhood with million-dollar two-bedroom flats where I’m supposed to meet the suspiciously informed venture capitalist.
He stands in front of Coq Au San Francisco. He’s wearing a sport coat, slacks, his neck wrapped in a dark scarf.
I’m half a block from him, closing fast, when a man steps in front of me wearing an angel’s wing protruding from the right side of his back. He holds a Bible. He reads a passage about sinners smoldering in purgatory. I step around him.
“Guess who I am and get a Snickers,” he says.
“Some other time.”
I see Chuck pull out his cell phone. I pause to watch him.
“You’re the Right Wing,” I say.
“Candy for you,” the man says gleefully.
Next to him stands a man wearing a rubber gorilla mask. The man removes his mask.
“This fucking thing is giving me heat stroke.”
Chuck talks on the phone. He looks around him—up and down the street. I duck behind the Right Wing so Chuck can’t see me.
Chuck has information I need. But so much about Chuck seems uncomfortably coincidental—the timing of his appearance in my life, and his sudden breadth of knowledge about Adrianna, Biogen, the Human Memory Crusade.
I look at the guy who removed the gorilla mask. He’s sweating profusely.
“Five bucks for the gorilla mask.”
“Are you serious?”
“As a gorilla with a heart attack, or heat stroke.”
We make the trade.
Chuck hangs up his phone. He starts walking in my direction. I pull on the sweaty mask, and sidle up against the wall next to a guy playing guitar, singing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.”
Seconds later, Chuck walks past. I wait a few seconds, and I turn and follow.
Chapter 42
G.I. Chuck snakes past a drag queen on stilts, a three-headed dog, and a throng of not-costumed but drunken revelers, albeit polite ones. Noe Valley is the upscale, label-conscious neighborhood adjacent to the Castro, where the revelers generally are more unruly, and less dressed.
I’d like at this moment to cultivate Grandma’s two skills: the ability to stay calm and, if necessary, do karate. Screw Pauline’s admonitions that I’m melodramatic. I’m feeling entitled.
When we’re four blocks off the main drag, Chuck takes a sharp right, and disappears from view. I pick up speed. Moments later, I’m at the spot where Chuck disappeared from view. It’s the entrance to an alley, more like a narrow one-way street that bisects a handful of million-dollar attached row-houses. Light from the back door of one flat that is halfway down the block provides me meager vision. I can make out the trash and recycling bins parked neatly behind each residence, but no Chuck.
Maybe he made it to the other side of the alley/street. I start hustling to follow his tracks. I make it two steps when I’m pulled violently backwards.
My mask is knocked off, and I feel something soft but tight around my neck.
“I didn’t spend a lifetime in the military without learning how to tell when I’m being followed by a gorilla,” my attacker says in my ear. Chuck.
He loosens his grip on what I’m guessing is his scarf, now around my neck, not his.
“Mr. Idle, whom do you work for?”
“Medblog. Eventually, you,” I manage to squeak out.
“No one else?”
“I do some other freelance work.”
This conversation is ridiculous.
“Why are you following me? I agreed to meet you,” he says.
“My grandmother’s been taken.”
“What?” Alarm.
“Let go of my neck.”
He doesn’t. “What did you say about your grandmother?”
“Someone took her. Knocked me out and kidnapped her. Does it seem all that unlikely, given how easily you subdued me with cashmere?”
He pulls the scarf away. I crane my neck to look at him.
“I think they’d teach journalists better surveillance techniques.”
“Look, I don’t trust anyone at this point. No offense. On the bright side, you got the