Box Nine (6 page)

He pauses, reaches down, and shuffles the photos back into an ordered pile. “We've seen the method of execution before. Definitely gangland. Definitely immigrant. There's some dispute as to whether we're talking Hong Kong or Panama.”

He pauses again, like he's learned an important lesson from Welby, then says, “The tongues were cut out of both their heads. My people came in on the heels of the bureau. We sent a team in, sealed off the house, and spent two days combing it over. We found two of these”—he reaches into his windbreaker pocket—“hidden inside a spice jar labeled ‘garlic salt.'”

He pulls from his pocket a small plastic ball, like a bubble, like one of those clear round containers found in the candy-dispenser machines at discount stores. Sealed inside it and held solidly in place by some kind of clear gel, is a small, scarlet-colored pill, cut in the shape of the letter
Q.
Lehmann places the bubble on the table and gives it a roll. All their eyes follow it as it spins down an awkward, wobbly path and finally drops off the table's edge and into Lenore's lap.

She looks around the table at everyone, then picks it up, weighs it in her hand, holds it up close to her eyeball like it was a jeweler's loupe. Whatever the gel is inside the bubble, it makes everything she sees seem hyper-clear, more colorful, solid, more real than her normal vision. She turns her head till she's looking at Zarelli's pleading, anxious face popping from the knifelike collar of his shirt. She pulls the bubble away, places it back on the table, and gives it a small push. It rolls across to Dr. Woo, who lets it drop over the edge into his waiting palm.

As if taking this as a cue, Lehmann says, “The doctor can give you some idea of what's inside the container,” and starts wiping the lenses of his sunglasses on the fleecy inside of his jacket.

Dr. Woo nods and puts the bubble back on the table in front of him and stabilizes it with his hand. It sits like some weird egg, some freak produced by a marriage of nature and technology. He lifts his satchel onto the table and takes out a stack of papers that he hands to Miskewitz, indicating that they should be passed around. Each handout has a couple dozen pages. The lieutenant takes one for himself and hands them down the table.

Lenore takes her copy and thumbs through it. The printing is too small, she thinks, it'd give anyone a headache by page two. There are also graphs, charts, columns of numbers, and illustrations. The last page is filled with a large and very intricate picture of a brain. The page is crammed with writing and dozens of black lines that stretch between areas of the brain and definitions of what the areas are called. Lenore thinks the odds are pretty good that she won't read a single word. If the doc can't give her the basics in conversation, he's in trouble. She's got a backlog of reading of her own at home, stuff that could refine the direction of her life, give her even more of an edge than she's already got.

Dr. Woo prepares to speak by making his hand into a fist, bringing it up in front of his mouth, and forcing himself to cough a few times. Lenore interprets this to mean that he'll speak too softly and be a boring pain in the ass. But as soon as the first words flow from his mouth, she knows she's completely wrong. He's got a beautiful speaking voice, low, distinct, strong but rich with hints of emotion and emphasis.

“As Mayor Welby said, my name is Frederick Woo, and I've been asked to come here today for two reasons. First, to try to give you a brief and intelligible explanation of what the small red pill that you see inside this capsule can do to the human brain. And second, because I consulted briefly with Leo and Inez Swann during their tenure with the Institute.”

He gives this sly, almost mischievous grin, and stares directly at Lenore. For a second, it seems like he's got nothing more to say, but then he slaps the table with a flat palm and, without taking his eyes off her, continues.

“Well, let's give it a shot.” He reaches into his satchel again, like a magician going for a rabbit, and he pulls out a plastic model of a brain. Like the kind you'd see in some high school science class, all color-coded and with parts that can be removed. It's about the size of a softball, maybe a little smaller. Woo puts it out on the table in front of him and Lenore thinks it suddenly resembles a small pet, something the doctor needs for companionship.

“I was formally trained as a specialist in linguistics, then took a detour at the end of my training and went back to square one to get a second degree in neuropsychology. This,” and he places his long index finger on the top of the model brain, “is where those two fields intersect. What I've been asked to do this morning is quite impossible. So let's get started.”

He leans forward, places his whole hand over the top of the brain, and begins to talk rapidly and in a friendly, joking manner.

“Okay. We've all got one of these, I'm pretty sure. It's a very useful piece of equipment. There's a lot we don't know about it. A lot we thought we knew that was proved wrong. We guess a lot about this organ. I personally think it scares us a bit. Because so many answers are buried inside it. And we don't know if those answers will free us up, prove us to be the supermen we really secretly hope we are. Or if the answers will limit us, show us to be animals that know a lot of impressive parlor tricks and little more.”

He takes his hand off the brain and points to a specific area on the left side of the model.

“This little town here is called the anterior speech cortex. That's its official name. You, like me, can call it Broca's area. It's a hell of a town. Got quite a little industry going here. But, you know, like any growing industry, every now and then you have some kind of rough industrial accident …”

Under his breath, Richmond whispers to Lenore, “What the Christ is this dickhead talking about?”

“Guess what happens when Broca's area has one of those industrial accidents?”

The table is silent. The mayor looks uncomfortable. He stares down at his folded hands like he was praying.

Woo looks at Lenore and says, “Detective …”

“Thomas.”

“Detective Thomas, any idea?”

Lenore sighs and says, “Planeload of lawyers flies in the next day.”

The table laughs and Woo loves it. He gives a huge smile, then moves his tongue in a circle, licking his lips.

“A wonderful guess by Detective Thomas. Close, but no. You have an accident in this area, you can't speak. You're an instant mute. You don't have any choice in the matter.”

He moves his index finger to an area toward the back of the model.

“This is another hot little town call Wernicke's area. They have an industrial accident here, bingo, you can't understand language, spoken to you, or written down for you to read, though you might be able to babble, make incomprehensible languagelike noise that no one else can understand.”

“You're an instant idiot,” Peirce says.

Woo shakes his head. “No, not exactly, though you might be mistaken for one. At this point you're all asking yourselves why you had to get up this morning to listen to all this.”

He grabs the bubble and places it next to the brain.

“As Agent Lehmann told you, two red pills were found in the course of searching the Swanns' home. This is the second one. The first one we tested the hell out of. Both in the lab and—” he pauses, smiles—“up at Spooner Correctional Institute …”

The Mayor interrupts and says, “None of you heard that, please,” and Woo goes on.

“Because of the constraints of time and other factors, I'm forced to do some inexcusable generalizing right now. Broca's area is that part of your brain where language is produced. Wernicke's area is that part of your brain where language is understood and interpreted. When you swallow that red pill, it does something very interesting to you. It makes a crazy dash straight for both of those parts of your brain. Most drugs can't do that. Your brain is usually protected by a curtain of protein that acts like a moat. Some things can get through. Like a lot of items from your line of work. Alcohol, cocaine, heroin. This red pill gets through with a vengeance, with an ease I've never seen before. And then it seems to know exactly where it wants to go. It seems to have heard all about these places called Broca and Wernicke. It seems to want to move right in, make itself at home. It gets busy right away. What I'm saying is that the drug somehow supercharges those two areas. It gives them a kind of speed and strength and flexibility, if you will, that they just don't normally have.”

Woo lets his eyes roam around the table, trying to read faces and gauge understanding.

“Now, in its quest to upgrade your standard-issue language equipment, Lingo exhibits some side effects. It sends a few fellow travelers off to the pleasure centers of the brain. I'd consider this an inherent perk in the drug's main business trip. There's a big adrenaline release, like a solid amphetamine rush, but it's very controlled, very regulated, an incremental buildup. It would most likely lack any of the jaggedness or anxiousness produced by the badly processed street speed that you people deal with.”

Woo pauses, takes a breath and smiles slightly.

“We gave a sample of the drug to two”—he pauses—“volunteers at Spooner Correctional. I don't think I'm overstating the case to say that what I observed in one hour could have a revolutionary impact on fields as diverse as brain biochemistry and neuropsychology, cybernetics, linguistics, all the semiological disciplines, both hard and soft …”

His words trail off as he realizes the futility of trying to make this group share his reverie.

“We administered small amounts of the drug to two inmates and then sequestered them in a lab under absolute physiological and neurological monitoring. After approximately five minutes, we began to perceive certain changes in their general conditions, reflexes and motor responses, this type of thing. Their heart rates increased, but not alarmingly. Their brain activity was slightly elevated. But to cut to the chase, ladies and gentlemen, the evidence that something quite significant was happening within the confines of their skulls came straight from their own mouths.”

He stops speaking, pauses for any questions or comments, making sure curiosity has peaked. Then he reaches once again into the satchel and withdraws a tape recorder. He places it next to the brain model and the bubble, adjusts a volume knob, then hits a button. The cassette inside starts turning and there's a hiss of noise from a small speaker.

First, Woo's own voice is heard, in a whisper, saying,
“Tape three. Two-fifteen p.m.”

Then there's a moment of quiet with the exception of some vague rumbling noise, caused, most likely, by the recorder being moved around. There's some coughing, followed by the slightly echoing sound of a metal door being opened and closed.

Woo says,
“James Lee Partridge, age twenty-four, scoring for the WAIS-R—verbal, eighty-one; performance, eighty-four; full scale, eighty-two. Scoring for the WRAT—reading, grade three-point-two; arithmetic, grade four-point-eight; spelling, grade three-point-nine. ”

There's a pause, then Woo's voice, quietly.

“All right, now, are you feeling okay, Jimmy Lee?”

A
new voice, young, nervous, says,
“Just the headache is all.”

“Do you think you can read this? Here, just take a look … Yes, that page there, fine.”

Jimmy Lee Partridge goes through some awful, phlegmy throat-clearing, takes a deep breath in through a clogged nose and reads:
“When … the … day … of …”

He reads in small, short blasts, word by word, as if they were meant to stand separately from one another. He reads them without any accent or intonation, in the manner that a sobbing, breath-grabbing child tries to speak.

On the tape, Woo's voice whispers,
“Start over, and concentrate, Jimmy Lee.”

There's another pause and Lenore imagines the convict is trying to read the words to himself, before saying them aloud. She doesn't like listening to the tape. For one reason or another, it makes her uncomfortable. But she makes herself, tells herself that, like a lot of uncomfortable things, it's an important part of her job.

Jimmy Lee Partridge starts again, and this time the words flow together without any noticeable pause or effort:
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven …”

Jimmy Lee breaks off into something of a cackle, his voice gets loud and thrilled and surprised and he says,
“Pretty goddamn good, huh, Doc?”

Woo just says,
“Once again, Jimmy Lee.”

And he reads:
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tonguesasoffiredistributedandrestingoneachoneofthemandtheywereallfilledwiththeholyspiritandbegantospeakinothertonguesasthespiritgavethemutterancenow …”

Something happens. Lenore listens and stares at the recorder. She thinks something must be wrong with the recorder. But then she notices the same expression on all the other faces at the table.

Jimmy Lee is reading so fast that it seems like a joke, like those TV ads where the pitchman tries to cram as many words of salesmanship into thirty seconds as is humanly possible. And then some. Jimmy Lee's voice is going so fast he's starting to sound like one of the Chipmunks from that cartoon.

“
AndresidmtsofmesopotamiajudemndmppadociapmtusandasiaphrygiaandpamphyliaegyptandpartsoflibyabelongingtocyreneandvisitorsfromromebothjewsandproselytescretansandarabianswehearthemtellinginurowntonguesthemightyWorksofgodandallwwereamazezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …
”

And the voice turns into something like the sound of a common summer insect recorded at a loud volume with a sensitive microphone. Something you'd hear on a nature show as you switched the channels on the TV on a lazy weekend. It's just an ongoing buzz, a harsh, nervous-making, buzzing sound, and after a while Lenore can't tell whether it's really out there or just in her ear, in her head, a product of her own sinuses and faulty eustachian tube.