Pop

  “Mac?” Definitely Charlie. “Is that you?”

  The voice seemed to be coming from above.

  His gaze gradually focused on a murky form, tall and angular, atop the Paper Airplane. Of course. He should’ve known that Charlie would be lurking where he felt most comfortable—twenty feet up.

  He began to climb, negotiating the steep incline using a combination of memory and blind faith. As Marcus’s ascent progressed, Charlie came into shadowy relief, perched near the sculpture’s summit, for all the world like he was relaxing on a lazy afternoon and not the subject of a frenzied late-night manhunt. “What are you doing, Charlie? Why are you sitting here in the pitch black?”

  “What took you so long?” the former linebacker demanded. “Where’s the ball?”

  Marcus was thunderstruck. “It’s the middle of the night! People are searching for you!”

  Charlie looked nervous. “You talked to my dad?”

  His dad? Marcus frowned, and then posed the question he had never asked before yet suddenly seemed very relevant. “How old are you, Charlie?”

  “Bite me,” Charlie replied in annoyance. “Like you don’t know.”

  “Seriously—I forget.”

  The King of Pop snorted. “Three weeks younger than you. Quit fooling around, Mac.”

  Marcus let out a tremulous breath. How many nights had he spent wondering why a retired NFL vet had nothing better to do with his time than play football with a teenager. The answer? For some reason, he thought he was a teenager, too.

  How was that possible? Charlie knew he’d had an entire pro sports career, didn’t he? Come to think of it, Marcus had been the one who’d mentioned the NFL, not Charlie. And while the guy never denied having a wife and children, he never talked about them.

  How can he believe he’s my age when he knows he’s got two kids who are my age?

  Or did he know?

  “Chelsea and Troy are worried about you,” Marcus ventured carefully. When there was no reply, he added, “You know who they are, right?”

  “Course I do,” Charlie muttered almost belligerently.

  Marcus didn’t dare push it. He wasn’t sure how much he should try to reason with Charlie, who was obviously confused. Whatever was wrong with the guy, it was a job for a doctor or a shrink, not a second-string quarterback. The important thing was to get the man back to his anxious family.

  “Why don’t you let me give you a ride home?”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s time to call it a night.”

  Squeezing two football players onto the Vespa’s small seat took some engineering.

  “When did you get this thing, Mac?” Charlie asked, impressed. “You been holding out on me?”

  “Just hang on,” Marcus advised. He picked up his helmet and, after a moment’s deliberation, set it into place on his passenger’s head. He wasn’t even certain he’d be welcomed by the Popovich family when he returned their missing person to them. The last thing he wanted to do was risk the package being damaged in transit.

  He started the bike’s motor and turned left out of the park onto Poplar Street, the direction Charlie usually headed after their training sessions.

  All at once, Charlie emitted a roar of mirth, waving and pointing.

  Marcus struggled to keep the scooter in balance despite the shifting weight. “What’s so funny?”

  “Looks like Old Man Dingley finally got what’s coming to him!”

  “Who’s Dingley?” Then he remembered. It was the name Charlie had once called Kenneth Oliver. He gazed at the exterminator’s shop.

  The storefront had been completely plastered with toilet paper, and loose streamers of tissue were fluttering in the breeze.

  Marcus was wide-eyed. “Did you do that, Charlie?”

  “Wish I had,” the former linebacker replied heartily. “We should find whoever did it and shake his hand.”

  Marcus noticed the shreds of toilet paper sticking out of Charlie’s sleeves. The hand the old guy wanted to shake was his own. Why would he lie about it to Marcus, of all people—his co-conspirator in the sugaring?

  He sighed. “Okay, where to?”

  “Oh—you know.”

  “No, I don’t,” Marcus said seriously. “Where do you live?”

  “It’s just up the road.”

  “Up what road?” Marcus persisted. “Poplar Street?”

  “You can’t miss it.”

  Marcus twisted on the bike to regard his passenger. The former linebacker looked uncomfortable and completely lost at sea.

  “Hey.” Eyes narrowed, Marcus gestured toward the TP’d K.O Pest Control. “Remember when we sugared that place?”

  Charlie’s blank face was suddenly alight with diabolical excitement. “That’s a great idea! It’ll serve him right after all the times he’s been on our case.”

  It was exactly the response Marcus was expecting, yet it was jarring nonetheless. Charlie didn’t remember the elaborate planning and execution of Bug Day. He had already forgotten TP’ing the shop, which must have taken place in the past few hours. He couldn’t even seem to explain where he lived.

  Marcus rode back up Seneca Hill, figuring that if all else failed, he could return to Luke’s party. Surely somebody there knew where Troy’s house was. It wasn’t his first choice, though. Troy and Chelsea’s whispered powwow in Luke’s basement and their hostility toward anybody who nosed around their father added up to one inescapable conclusion: Charlie’s problem was strictly hush-hush.

  Marcus kept his eyes on the mirrors to better decode what Charlie meant by muttered orders like “Turn here!” and “This way!” He was pretty sure they were wandering in circles.

  Charlie’s mumbled monologue didn’t exactly inspire confidence. “Whose stupid idea was it to make every single house look exactly the same? What a way to run a town—Watch out!”

  There was a terrified bark, and Marcus swerved to avoid a collision with a light-haired dog. The animal bounded over to Charlie.

  “How’s it going, Boomer? You miss me?”

  “Daddy!” Chelsea exploded out the front door. Without acknowledging Marcus on the Vespa, she took her father’s hand and led him to the house. “Everyone was so worried!”

  Charlie was mystified. “What for? Where do I ever go? Down, boy,” he added to the dog, who was clawing at his pant leg.

  “Silky’s a girl,” Chelsea reminded him quietly.

  Mrs. Popovich met them at the door. She hugged her husband and told her daughter, “Call Troy on his cell and let him know everything’s okay.” She noticed Marcus parked at the curb and waved.

  “If it happens again, try Three Alarm Park,” Marcus advised.

  “Thanks for bringing him home,” she called, her voice catching.

  Those were the first civil words Marcus had ever heard from a member of the Popovich family.

  Two A.M. found Marcus in the kitchen, pounding the keyboard of the computer. Despite the exhaustion of a long and wild night, sleep was eluding him. He couldn’t relax—not until he’d solved the puzzle.

  He scoured the internet, using keywords like forgetfulness, confusion, and memory loss, but those always seemed to lead him to sites selling vitamin supplements, “miracle drugs,” and subscriptions to health magazines. On www.wellnessweb.usa, his search parameters led him to the subtopic Senility, but that couldn’t be right. Old people went senile; Charlie was only fifty-four.

  He tried different combinations of his keywords on the WellnessWeb site, generating articles on everything from mental illness to hypertension to drug addiction to amnesia. The problem was that his search parameters were too general. Millions of people were confused or forgetful, probably for millions of different reasons. What he needed was something specific to Charlie.

  Beside memory loss he typed three letters: NFL.

  The link that appeared led to an article in the North American Journal of Medicine:

  * * *

  NEW DATA TIES CONCUSSIONS TO ALZHEIMER’S

/>   The NFL is studying a report suggesting that athletes who suffer multiple concussions are at increased risk of developing early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Recent findings indicate that repeated head trauma injuries, common in high-contact sports such as football and boxing, can cause permanent neurological damage, resulting in a gradual and irreversible decline in short-term memory, language skills, perception of space and time, and eventually the ability to care for oneself.

  While Alzheimer’s is ordinarily associated with the elderly, the rare early-onset form of the disease has been known to affect patients as young as thirty. The investigation of a link to sports injuries began after the autopsy of Philadelphia defensive back Andre Waters showed signs of the disorder. Concussions have long been suspected in the Alzheimer’s cases of NFL veterans Ralph Wenzel, John Mackey, and Ted Johnson....

  * * *

  The piece went on to describe a condition that destroys memory in an oddly selective way. A patient might forget what he had for breakfast ten minutes earlier, but retain clear recollections from decades before. The effect was that many Alzheimer’s sufferers appeared to be living in the past.

  Like a retired athlete who thinks he’s a teenager.

  It explained everything about Charlie’s confusion and odd behavior. No wonder Chelsea and Troy were so touchy about their father. They were trying to keep his condition a secret. That’s why Mrs. Popovich made regular visits to all her husband’s usual haunts around town to pay his tabs. As a local hero, Charlie was cut a lot of slack, so long as the stores got their money eventually. Because he was a larger-than-life character around Kennesaw, people assumed he was just idiosyncratic, colorful, quirky. No one realized how sick he was.

  Yet.

  Marcus was aware of a lump in his throat the size of a cannonball. According to wellnessweb.usa, Alzheimer’s disease never got better. Right now, Charlie had enough memory and mental capacity to function within the small, protected universe he had carved for himself. But that wouldn’t last forever. The article said the deterioration might be slow, but it would be relentless. Eventually, poor Charlie’s mind would be wiped practically clean.

  What then?

  On Sunday, Marcus was at the desk in his room, gazing blearily at the Raiders’ playbook and struggling to keep his eyes open, when he was startled by a sudden clatter at the window. As he went to investigate, a handful of gravel machine-gunned against the glass.

  He looked beyond it at the Volvo wagon parked at the curb. He didn’t recognize the car, but the girl loading up another handful of rocks was perfectly familiar. Alyssa.

  He opened the window and called down, “We have a doorbell.”

  She smiled up at him. “Sorry.”

  She wasn’t sorry. She didn’t have to be. Her get-out-of-jail-free card had no limitations and no blackout dates. Must be nice, thought Marcus. He went downstairs and let her in.

  “I thought your mom might be home or something,” she explained. “I’m not sure how much she knows about me.”

  “She’s out in the Gunks, shooting.” He added, “Pictures, not deer.”

  Alyssa beamed. “Works for me either way.” She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his.

  He didn’t push her away, but he didn’t kiss her back, either.

  She retreated a step. “You’re mad.”

  “I’m not,” he replied honestly. “That’s the problem. I should be chewing rusty nails after last night. What would have happened if I couldn’t throw a good block? Would you still visit me in intensive care?”

  She was unrepentant. “Don’t I get points for being right? I told you they’d come around.”

  “It damn near didn’t go that way. What if Ron hadn’t been there? Or if Gary hadn’t let go? Or if Luke didn’t mind bloodstains on his laundry-room floor? What if Chelsea hadn’t stormed the basement in time to distract the psycho-in-chief?”

  “We didn’t do anything wrong,” she insisted. “You had every right to be there—as a Raider and as my date.”

  “Being right doesn’t unfracture your skull,” Marcus reminded her. “At a certain point you have to forget about what’s right and do what makes sense. Face it—you and me makes no sense.”

  “It made sense last night,” she protested, “until we got ambushed.”

  “I’m not going to pretend I’m not into you,” Marcus said. “But what does that mean? How many guys aren’t?”

  “I don’t want those guys; I want you.”

  “This whole town sees you as Troy’s,” Marcus told her. “And there’s a part of you that still sees yourself the same way.”

  “That’s great news for me. You can find another girlfriend, but I belong to Troy till the end of time. Maybe we should try fixing him up. Would I be off the hook then?”

  He grinned appreciatively. “I only know one other girl in town, and she’s his sister.”

  “This sucks,” she pronounced dejectedly. “Couldn’t we just—I don’t know—hate each other and still fool around?”

  “We don’t hate each other. We’re friends.”

  “With benefits?” she probed.

  The staccato blurp of a police siren drew their attention outside. The cruiser pulled up to the curb, flashers on intermittent.

  Alyssa pointed. “Isn’t that the cop who busted you last time?”

  Marcus had a vision of cascades of toilet paper draped over the metal cockroach, filling the doorway of K.O. Pest Control. He knew then that a lousy weekend was about to get worse.

  Officer Deluca peered over his desk. “You know, Marcus, we could take a drive over to the county lockup and see about six hundred innocent men just like you.”

  “I am innocent,” Marcus said stubbornly.

  “Never said you weren’t,” the policeman agreed. “But if you don’t give me the name of the person who’s guilty, this time you’re going to get due process, just like I warned you.”

  “That’s not fair!” Marcus exclaimed hotly. “I don’t know who did it, so that means it must have been me?”

  “You do know who did it. Why would you cover for somebody who lets you take the rap?”

  “Why would you call out the SWAT team over toilet paper?” Marcus countered.

  “It isn’t the toilet paper,” the officer explained. “It’s the pattern of harassment. Mr. Oliver wants to press charges, which is his right as a citizen. It’s not going to have a happy ending—not unless you tell me what you know.”

  It should have been easy. Marcus wasn’t familiar with the laws surrounding Alzheimer’s, but Charlie probably wasn’t even responsible for his actions.

  On the other hand, how could Marcus rat out a sick man? The family seemed obsessed with keeping a lid on the King of Pop’s condition. A court case would blow that up in their faces. Not that he particularly cared about the delicate sensibilities of Troy and his nasty sister. But there was Charlie to think about, too. The poor guy was on the precipice of a terrible deterioration. He had the right to hold on to his dignity—even if he would ultimately end up at the point where dignity wouldn’t mean much to him anymore.

  Marcus kept his mouth shut.

  Deluca sighed heavily. “Suit yourself.” And he began reading Marcus his rights.

  This time Mom was decidedly not cool about it. Her photo shoot had taken her deep into the mountains. Ninety feet up a cliff, her cell phone somehow managed to find a signal. There, surrounded by rocky peaks and glacial erratics, Barbara Jordan listened to Officer Deluca’s message that she was urgently needed in town to get her son out of a holding cell.

  When she finally arrived at the station, she was nearly hysterical. “You’ve been booked, Marcus. Booked! That’s on your record now! Who are you covering for? Is it that girl?”

  “What girl?” Marcus said bitterly. “That was never going to work.”

  “Why?” she demanded, the trail dust swirling around her hiking gear. “Why are you so determined not to have a normal life here?”

&nbs
p; “Well, for starters,” he shot back, “because every time I start to, I get arrested!”

  Officer Deluca appeared with a steaming mug of coffee and a stale-looking donut from the staff kitchen. “Sorry it isn’t fresher,” he said apologetically.

  Mrs. Jordan was distraught. “You’ve been great, Officer. I’m so sorry about all this. I guarantee this isn’t how Marcus normally behaves.”

  “Work on him,” the cop advised. “The worst part of this is that it’s unnecessary. There’s no serial killer here. But the longer he clams up, the deeper the hole he digs for himself.”

  Nor did the grilling end when Marcus and his mother left the station and got into her pickup truck.

  “All right, Marcus, you’ve got to meet me halfway. Do you think I want to be a character in a sitcom, nagging you because ‘what will the neighbors say’? Do you think I want to be a drill sergeant like your father—God, just the thought of telling him this turns my blood cold.”

  “I’ll tell him.” He didn’t feel guilty for any of it. But nobody should have to face off with Comrade Stalin over his problem—least of all Mom, who’d already endured enough of the good comrade to last a lifetime.

  “You—right. You won’t even return his phone calls.”

  “I’ll call this time,” Marcus promised. “I’ll explain everything.”

  “Then explain it to me!”

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even explain why he couldn’t. His silence upset her more than anything. They were a team—only child, single mom—cosurvivors of the Stalinist reign. He had always been completely honest with her. Yet now, with his future potentially on the line, he just couldn’t open up.

  By the end of the tirade, he was seated in her outer office at the Advocate, while she uploaded the shots from her interrupted trip to the Gunks. As if he were eight. She didn’t even trust him enough to leave him at home on his own.

  He slumped in a visitor’s chair, trying not to listen as his mother plowed through the yellow pages, using her cell phone to call lawyers who specialized in juvenile cases. To make matters worse, the newsroom was decorated with dusty black-and-white photographs of the town of Kennesaw over the decades. His chair was directly opposite a picture of the legendary chili cook-off that had given Three Alarm Park its name. The place looked exactly the same, except there had been no Paper Airplane back then—and the trees were smaller, so there was a clearer view of the buildings across the street.