The God Gene

  “No novels,” she muttered. “A whole bookcase and no fiction. You’d think he’d have at least—wait a sec.”

  “What?” Rick said from over by the printer.

  She lifted a pile of half a dozen DVDs off a shelf. “Looks like he’s got movies here.”

  “Monkey porn?”

  They were hand-labeled with a green Sharpie. “They look homemade.”

  “No King Dong?”

  She looked at him. “Seriously?”

  “Hey, you never know.”

  “The first one says ‘Conan.’”

  “You’re kidding. The Schwarzenegger movie?”

  “No, wait. The second says ‘Fallon.’ Must be TV shows.” And then she knew. “He had a big bestseller. I’ll bet his publisher booked him onto these shows. I’m going to take these.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see him live, so to speak. You grew up with him but all I’ve seen is a passport photo. I want to get a feel for him.”

  “Good luck. Like I said: There’s no there there.”

  She wandered over toward Rick where he had the printer’s back open and was fiddling inside.

  “You know, I’m leaning more and more toward the foul-play scenario,” she said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it’s getting harder and harder to counter it. He doesn’t appear to have taken anything with him but the clothes on his back.”

  “And maybe a handful of photos.”

  Laura shook her head. “If the missing photos are of his monkey—and I think they are—I don’t see him taking them with him. If he shredded his drives, he shredded the photos too.”

  “None of this makes one goddamn bit of sense,” Rick said as he detached the hard drive. He held it up. “But maybe this has answers. Let’s see if Hari’s gal can find anything on it.”

  2

  Rick drove down Broadway thinking about his brother. Yeah, his disappearance was looking more and more like an abduction. But why, damn it? What possible reason could anyone have to snatch Keith?

  He found a garage on Twenty-first near the Flatiron Building and parked. As they came up the ramp, he did a quick look-around as they hit the sidewalk. Skateboarder, long hair, skinny tattooed arms poking from the sleeves of his T, rolling their way. Gonna pass close, maybe close enough to grab Laura’s shoulder bag.

  Rick stepped out and eyed him, making him swerve curbward, out of reach.

  “Hey, watch where I’m goin’, asshole!” the kid shouted, flipping the bird as he rolled away.

  “That was close,” Laura said.

  “But at least I made a new friend.”

  “Really? How can you tell?”

  “He thinks I’m number one.”

  “Is that what that means?” she said, grinning, then glanced around. “Which way to this Hari’s office?”

  He looked at Hari’s card and pointed uptown. “Right around the corner on Twenty-second.”

  A few minutes later they entered the offices of Hari’s firm. Rick had called ahead and Casey was waiting for them.

  “Gift for you,” he said, handing her the apartment keys and the hard drive.

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Your brother had another computer?”

  “From his printer.”

  Her eyes lit. “Ah! Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll get right on it.”

  “Hari around?”

  “Yeah. She wanted to talk to you.” She pointed to a door. “Go right in.”

  Hari had a fair-size office overlooking Twenty-second Street. She was dressed in a dark green pantsuit. Rick introduced Laura.

  “No sari?” he said.

  “Hardly ever. Only for certain clients.”

  “Like my mother?”

  A nod. “It fits her narrative.”

  As Laura and Hari engaged in some get-acquainted chitchat, Rick stepped over to a large, well-lit fish tank filled with crystalline water. A number of rugged lava rocks nestled on a thick layer of white sand, but that was it. Not a single fish or plant in sight.

  He turned to Hari. “Did Doctor Serizawa stop by recently, by any chance?”

  “Who?”

  He could see the reference had zipped right past her.

  “Not a Godzilla fan, I take it?”

  “What? That old movie with a guy in a rubber suit stomping on Tokyo? Not likely.” She stared at him. “Ruthless People and The Wizard of Oz yesterday, Godzilla today. You some kind of movie nut?”

  “Me? Nah. Just seen a bunch.”

  After Düsseldorf, during the endless debriefing and psychiatric sessions, he’d found himself alone. A lot. So he’d watched movies. A lot.

  He pointed to the aquarium. “Why an empty tank?”

  “It’s not empty.”

  “Coulda fooled me. Oh, wait—you’re gonna tell me it’s not empty because it has water in it.”

  “Not at all. Hang on a sec.”

  She opened a door in a wall cabinet, revealing a tiny refrigerator. She pulled out a resealable pouch of tuna and removed a few small chunks.

  “Watch.”

  She dropped them into the water. As the pieces began to sink, a six-inch blue crab popped out of the sand.

  Laura gave a little jump. “Didn’t expect that.”

  “Meet Pokey,” Hari said.

  The crab darted through the water and snagged the biggest chunk with a claw. Then it settled to the bottom and began feeding bits into its busy little mouth.

  “A lot of tank for one crab,” Rick said.

  “Y’think? Let me tell you, it didn’t start out this way. I had a whole tankful of fish and plants—not the junk kind, I’m talking high-end tropicals. Everybody getting along and thriving. Then I’m at the beach with my nephew last summer and he shows me this cute little two-inch crab he’s caught. For laughs I bring her home, name her Pokey, and drop her in the tank. You know, just to see how she’d get along.”

  Rick could see what was coming. “And she’s all that’s left?”

  “You got it. I was feeding her chunks of sushi-grade tuna and she started molting, getting bigger and bigger each time. Then I made the mistake of going away on vacation. I had my usual someone come in to feed the fish while I’m away but she neglected the tuna for Pokey.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Damn right, ‘uh-oh.’ She ate every living thing in sight. Gobbled up a couple thou worth of tropical fish. Since then she’s uprooted all the plants because she likes to dig. She even rearranges the goddamn rocks.”

  Rick couldn’t help giving Laura a knowing look.

  “So, you had a tropical paradise going and you introduced a foreign element to shake things up.”

  Hari said, “I wasn’t looking to shake things up, just figured they’d all adapt.”

  “But the result was Paradise Lost.”

  Laura rolled her eyes and Hari caught it.

  “Am I missing something?”

  “Just a weirdo theory Rick has,” Laura said.

  Rick said, “But we don’t need to get into that here.”

  Hari looked from one to the other, then shrugged. “Whatev.” She jabbed her index finger at the tank. “Anyway, she cost me a fortune.”

  “Then why do you keep her?”

  “Because she’s got a few more molts to go. And pretty soon, right after one of those molts, she’s going to wind up the world’s most expensive sautéed softshell crab sandwich.”

  She glared at the oblivious Pokey for a few heartbeats, then headed back to her desk, saying, “You learn anything new at the apartment?”

  Rick shrugged and told her about giving Casey the printer’s hard drive and their growing conviction that the monkey was an important piece of the puzzle.

  He finished with, “Any progress on the money trail?”

  “I’ve started the rigmarole of opening my Cayman account.”

  Frustration gnawed at Rick. “So there’s not much for me to do but wait and see how that pans out?”

&nbs
p; “If you think the monkey is a player, then you might want to drop in on Keith’s NYU colleagues. I didn’t bother because I saw no way it would help with the money trail, but they’re all biologists and could maybe shed some light on the mystery monkey.”

  Rick liked the idea. “You wouldn’t happen to have any contact numbers, would you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  As Hari checked her computer, Casey arrived, grinning and waving a sheet of paper. “Did someone say ‘monkey’?”

  She handed Rick a low-res photo on ordinary printer paper.

  “He looks a little chunkier than he did in his passport photo,” Laura said, leaning in for a look, “but that’s your brother, right?”

  “Right. And chunky was his default mode. Keith liked his carbs.”

  Damn, why was he using past tense?

  “Don’t we all?” Laura said.

  “Yeah, but Keith never met a dessert he didn’t like—twice.” Rick’s attention was drawn inexorably to the little blue-eyed monkey perched on Keith’s shoulder. It sported dark brown fur all over except on its throat and belly, where it was almost white.

  “And that must be Mozi,” Laura said.

  The big blue eyes gazed out from the photo, directly into the camera, deep into Rick. He wasn’t a zoologist, and he hadn’t had any more exposure to simians than the average American, but he’d never seen an animal like this one.

  He had a sudden strange feeling about this monkey.

  “Oh, he’s so cute!” Hari said, peeking at the photo. “I want one.”

  “Me too,” said Casey.

  “I’m told that what you’re calling a ‘he’ is a she.” He looked at Casey. “This the only photo on the drive?”

  “I found a good sampling of others, but if you checked out his walls, you’ve already seen them. This was the only one that was new to me.”

  “I’ll bet this was in that empty spot over the desk,” Laura said.

  Rick nodded. “Good bet. Mozi looks pretty healthy there. Wonder what she died of.”

  He turned his attention to Keith. The guy in the photo looked happy, actually smiling. Rick could count on one hand the times he’d seen his brother smile. The monkey was balanced on his left shoulder while his right arm was extended forward, mostly out of frame. Obviously a selfie.

  Keith had found a friend. No surprise to Rick that it wasn’t human.

  “Can I keep this?”

  Casey said, “Sure. I’ll pick up some photo paper and run off a hi-res glossy for you.”

  Hari gave him the numbers for the NYU Department of Biology. Since he and Laura were already in the city, and NYU was only a dozen blocks or so downtown from here, he figured right now would be as good a time as any to check out Keith’s office and his associates. But when he called he was told that everyone in the department had either gone home for the day or had meetings scheduled. So he wrangled an appointment to meet tomorrow with a Dr. Willard Salas, the head of the department; at first he was turned down, but when he said he was Keith’s brother, a late-morning time slot magically opened.

  “Our work here is done, I guess,” he said. “But before we go…” He turned to Hari. “When did Keith start liquidating?”

  “March second,” she said without hesitation. “Sold his first block of stock then, and kept on selling. Ran through his bonds, his retirement fund, his trust fund, everything except the apartment. By the eighteenth he’d turned it all into cash in various accounts. Then he started moving it around. By the twenty-third the whole caboodle landed in the Caymans.”

  He patted his pockets. Damn. Hadn’t brought a pen. “The second to the twenty-third. Could you write that down for me?”

  She jotted on a small square pad of yellow sticky notes and handed the whole thing to him. “Here. Keep it.”

  “Thanks. And the date he disappeared?”

  “Last seen April first—a Friday, so it was days before he was missed.”

  April Fool’s Day—easy enough to remember. And how appropriate.

  He looked at Laura. “What say we find us a bar and then head back?”

  “Why don’t we head back and then find a bar.”

  He had to admit that was probably a better idea. “Okay. Let’s do that.”

  She looked at him. “But can we make one teensy little stop along the way?”

  3

  NORTHPORT, NEW YORK

  Laura guided Rick to the VA Medical Center in Northport. Under different circumstances she would have enjoyed the alone time together, but the closer they got, the more tense she became.

  “What’s here?” he said as he pulled into a parking space.

  “I need to check on somebody.”

  “Relative?”

  She shook her head. “A new friend.”

  Should she tell him? She decided to hold off … wait until this was all a fait accompli. After all, he had strange ideas about the origins of the ikhar …

  He said, “I’ll wait here. Not a fan of hospitals.”

  “You’ve got plenty of company there. I won’t be too long.”

  Inside, the receptionist returned her wave as she entered the lobby and made a right turn for the elevators.

  “Happy Tuesday, Sarge,” Laura said after knocking on the doorframe to Emilie Lantz’s private room.

  Emilie smiled and mouthed hello. A nice smile. Her teeth were big and white, her skin a lighter brown than Laura’s—a Beyoncé shade—her hair done in neat cornrows. They took good care of her here.

  Laura wasn’t here as a doctor, simply a volunteer. She’d started using a few hours of one of her afternoons off to help out. Since she was heading for a neurology residency, she gravitated toward those patients with neurological disorders.

  Emilie had been a military intelligence staff sergeant in Marine Air Control Group 1 during the first Gulf War. She’d accompanied her unit into Iraq itself. Her multiple sclerosis was diagnosed in 1991, shortly after the combat phase ended. In the decades since, her condition had gradually deteriorated to the point where she could no longer walk, no longer raise her arms, and barely speak.

  She was perfect.

  A woman who had feared nothing in her prime had been reduced to complete helplessness and chronic pain by an autoimmune disease that gnawed the insulation off her nervous system.

  The MS itself wouldn’t kill her. She’d die of a complication of some sort: pneumonia or a pulmonary embolism. To Laura’s mind, she deserved a whole lot better. Laura wasn’t a fan of her country acting as the world’s policeman; in fact, she flat-out hated the idea of spilling American blood on foreign soil. But none of that mattered where Emilie was concerned. She’d enlisted, and when called on to go fight, she’d gone. ’Nuff said.

  A special woman laid low.

  Well, Laura could fix that. Or rather, the ikhar could.

  Laura simply had to administer it without Emilie knowing she was being dosed. And she thought she’d found a way.

  “Thirsty?” Laura said.

  Emilie gave a tiny nod.

  Slipping the half ounce or so of the not-so-great-tasting liquid into a few ounces of juice had done the job before. She figured the trick was to choose just the right amount of juice—too much, she might not finish, too little and she’d taste the ikhar.

  By the next morning all signs of her illness would be gone, vanished as if they’d never been.

  Or so Laura hoped.

  “How about some apple juice?”

  Another tiny nod.

  “I brought you the healthy kind,” she said, pulling a sixteen-ounce bottle from her shoulder bag and holding it up. “It’s unfiltered. Supposed to be better for you.”

  The cloudy ikhar would change the clear look of the filtered and pasteurized juice they served here at the VA. The unfiltered kind was already cloudy.

  She stepped out of Emilie’s line of sight and found a six-ounce plastic cup. She pulled the snuff bottle from her pocket, removed the stopper, and emptied the ikhar
into the bottom of the cup. She swirled it as she half-filled the cup with juice, then held it up. Perfect. She grabbed a straw and approached the bed.

  “Here you go.” Laura fitted the straw between Emilie’s lips. “Okay. Drink.”

  Poor woman … couldn’t even hold a cup. This had to work.

  Emilie quickly sucked up the three or four ounces. She released the straw and made a sour face.

  “What? You don’t like it?”

  A meh expression.

  Laura got a fresh cup, poured in a few ounces of juice, and quaffed them.

  “Tastes okay to me. Maybe you were expecting something different. Try a bit more.”

  She poured a couple more ounces of juice into Emilie’s cup. She wanted her to get every drop of the ikhar. This time when Emilie finished it she gave a little nod of approval.

  “Good job.”

  Laura slipped Emilie’s cup into her bag. She’d leave the bottle of leftover juice behind.

  “All right. Reading time.”

  Emilie couldn’t hold a book, couldn’t even touch the screen of a Kindle. So Laura read to her. She knew Rick was waiting but she had to make this look like a routine visit.

  “What’ll it be? More Hammer’s Slammers?”

  Now a smile with the nod.

  Laura had learned that Emilie liked science fiction, specifically military SF. Since Laura didn’t come by often enough for them to get into a novel, she’d looked for a collection of short stories. She’d Googled around and found The Complete Hammer’s Slammers Volume One by someone named David Drake—twenty stories about a future tank war. Perfect.

  She pulled out a pair of reading glasses and turned to the table of contents. She could read without them, but had picked up a +1.5 diopter pair at a dollar store. She’d leave them behind when she finished here. All part of her plan.

  “Okay, ‘Hangman’ looks good. Let’s do that.” She thought of Rick outside. “Trouble is, I’ve got an appointment so I don’t think we can finish today.”

  Emilie said. “’S’okay. Bushed.”

  With a bittersweet pang Laura realized this would be her last reading session with Emilie. By tomorrow she’d be cured and would be able to hold a book on her own.