Mania (12 page)

At five that afternoon, Nick was standing on First Avenue, across the street from a rundown transient hotel. Night had begun to engulf the city. A group of women dressed in miniskirts and tight jackets had gathered at the entrance to the hotel, huddling together under its small rusting canopy to escape the drizzle. Trails of cigarette smoke wafted into the dark, misty air above their heads. Nick raised his camera to his eye and took a couple quick snaps of them, wondering if they had known Claire Scott. There weren’t that many streetwalkers left in Seattle. Prostitution had moved to the Internet and into the strip clubs. Nick listened to their hard voices.
That’s right, girl. Keep it covered in plastic. Swallow at your own risk, baby.
The string of nonsensical words dissolved into cackling laughter.

One of the women clicked open an umbrella and, craning her head toward the heavy sky, ventured onto the sidewalk. The others followed her in a pack. Nick waited until they had disappeared, then, glancing up at the five-story hotel’s grim brick façade, crossed the street to its entrance.

Nick entered the fluorescent-lit lobby, aware of the floor’s worn linoleum through the soles of his shoes, taking in the dark water stains on the walls. The clerk at the front desk eyed him from behind a greasy partition of bulletproof glass. “I got no rooms,” the old man said. “I’m full up.”

Nick rested his hands on the stainless-steel counter in front of the window. “I’m not looking for a room.”

“We don’t got any,” the man said again.

“I’m looking for someone. A man named Blake Werner.”

“He expecting you?”

“No.” Nick noticed the tiny pieces of crust around the man’s eyelids and the black gap in his mouth where a front tooth was missing. “Is he here?”

“He’s here, okay. I don’t figure he could be anywhere else.”

Nick pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the small, grimy steel tray at the base of the window. “What room is he in?”

“Take the elevator.” The green bill disappeared from the tray, and a raspy buzzer sounded behind the doors leading from the lobby into the hotel. “Fifth floor. Down to the left. Room four.”

The elevator opened onto a narrow, unlit hallway. Nick could hear voices through the hotel’s flimsy walls as he made his way down to Werner’s room. The number 4 was tacked to an old painted wooden door, dangling askew. He stood for few beats, listening. When he knocked, the number rattled, then dropped back into place. Nick could hear someone sitting up on a bed inside the room, followed by the hack of a man coughing.

“Blake?”

Farther down the hallway, another door opened. Nick glanced down the close corridor, aware of the eyes looking at him from a tight crack in a doorway. He knocked again.

“Who’s it?”

The words were slurred and forced. Nick hesitated, then placed a hand on the knob and tried the door.

“Who’s there?” the man inside repeated, panicked, when the locked door rattled in its frame.

“We met a couple of years ago,” Nick said. “You worked with my brother.”

Werner paused, absorbing the information. “What d’you want?”

“Nothing. Just to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Go away.” Nevertheless, the bed groaned beneath the man as he stood up, and the floorboards creaked as he moved across the small room.

Nick waited. The smell of alcohol nearly overwhelmed him when the man pulled the door open. Dressed in jeans and a grubby shirt, unshaven, his hair in a greasy heap on top of his head, Werner was barely the shadow of the man Nick remembered.

“Not quite what you were expecting,” the man said with a knowing, bleary-eyed smile. He reached a hand toward Nick. “Blake Werner,” he said unnecessarily when Nick clasped his hand. “But I guess you know that already.
Dr.
Blake Werner.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “I remember. We met.”

Werner shrugged. Even as pathetic as he was, he was a beguiling man. Nick understood from his eyes that he was painfully aware of his own failure. He took a few halting steps back toward his bed, so incapacitated that he nearly fell before reaching it. “Help yourself to a drink,” he said, pointing at an open bottle of whisky on top of a beaten-up bureau. “Sit down. My home is your home. So you’re Sam’s brother—right?”

Ignoring the alcohol, Nick pulled a chair over from the desk. “Yeah. Sam’s brother.”

“How is it the old saying goes? Any brother of Sam’s is an enemy of mine, or something like that.”

Nick smiled uncomfortably. “I haven’t heard that one,” he said.

“I don’t sleep anymore,” Werner said, as though he were answering a question Nick had posed. “I dream all the time. I can’t seem to stop dreaming. Goddamn it. But I can’t sleep.”

The lanky man had huge dark circles underneath his eyes. His hands were trembling uncontrollably.

“Yeah,” Werner said, following Nick’s gaze, “it’s like I’ve got Parkinson’s disease, isn’t it? I used to run marathons. Honolulu. New York.” His eyes lit. “You remember the Seattle marathon, right? What was that, just two years ago? Seven forty-five a mile. I finished with your brother, and you know what a good runner Sam was. Today”—Werner shrugged—“I couldn’t even find the starting line.”

Nick took a quick look around the room. A small TV in the corner was switched off, its screen blank. The cramped space was littered with fifteen or twenty books, scattered around the floor as if they had been thrown there, their spines broken, their covers torn, some half-buried in heaps of soiled clothes. Above the bureau, Werner had tacked his Harvard diploma to the dirty wall. “You’ve been here a long time,” Nick said.

“Too long.”

“How long?”

Werner shook his head. “I really don’t remember.” He tracked Nick’s eyes to the bureau. “Say, friend,” he said, alert. “Do me the favor of handing me that bottle, would you?”

Nick reached for the whisky.

“I don’t need a glass,” Werner said. “There’s no one here to impress. Just Sam’s brother. One of my sworn enemies.” He took a large swig, then handed the bottle back to Nick. “Put that back where you got it, would you? Or I’ll finish the whole thing. Then what’ll I do, huh?”

“Listen, Blake,” Nick said. “There’re a few questions I want to ask you, okay?”

Blake shrugged his acquiescence.

“About Matrix Zarcon.”

“You were a reporter, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“So why not ask your brother, then? If you’ve got so many questions. I don’t want to revisit that sorry piece of history.”

It took Nick a moment to understand what Werner was saying. “You haven’t heard yet, have you?”

“Heard what?”

“Sam’s dead,” Nick said.

Werner looked confused, then broke into an odd smile. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Nick shook his head.

“What, someone finally kill him?”

“Why do you say that?” Nick asked, stung by the offhand remark.

“You mean, how do I know?” Werner laughed, then began to cough. He held his crooked elbow up to his mouth, and when he brought it away Nick was aware that his forearm was freckled with blood. “Chalk it up to wishful thinking.”

“You really didn’t like my brother.”

Werner seemed not to hear. He took a crumpled cigarette from his shirt pocket and stuck it between his lips. “You’re a smoker, right?”

Nick shook his head. “I quit.”

“Once a smoker, always a smoker. It’s like riding a bike. You never forget how.” Werner harrumphed, half to himself. “You got a match?”

Nick ignored the interruption. “You didn’t like Sam,” he repeated, mastering his annoyance.

“Sam? Nobody liked Sam.”

“Why?”

Werner squinted at Nick, a slightly amused expression lighting his otherwise dark eyes. “Let me ask you something, friend.” He stuffed the unlit cigarette back into his pocket.

“Sure.”

“How well did you know him?”

“What?”

“I really mean it, friend. How well did you know your brother?”

Nick had taken shelter beneath the metal bleachers set up inside Memorial Stadium. He had arrived at the park next to the Space Needle early, two hours after the start of the race, in time to catch the first elite runners crossing the finish line. It had been raining earlier, and the marathoners were drenched and miserable as they entered the stadium. Their determination was audible in their footsteps over the excited cheers of the onlookers.

An hour later, the runners’ footsteps weren’t so emphatic anymore, and the crowd had become subdued. The sun peeked through the clouds, even as a few sprinkles chased the slower, spent runners into the stadium. Nick leaned under the edge of the bleachers to light a cigarette, then, squinting, taking a deep drag, stepped out into the momentary burst of sunlight. He didn’t want to miss Sam crossing the finish line. Sam must have repeated his instructions ten times.
Be there with your camera, bro’. Don’t be late.
He had made Nick promise.

Nick was aware of the girl’s giggles. She was sitting on the bleacher above him, just out of his sight. His attention, though, was drawn to the man in the cowboy hat in front of him, who had turned around to berate him. “Look where you are,” the man said to Nick. “You’re at a marathon, for Christ’s sake. And you want to light a cigarette?”

Nick took another deep drag before dropping the cigarette to the ground. The lit ember tumbled through the air, then drowned in a puddle at his feet.

“Yeah, you’re at a marathon, for Christ’s sake,” he heard the girl say.

Nick took another step out from beneath the bleachers, craning his neck to see who was teasing him. “Do I know you?” he asked the girl.

“Yeah.” Her face flushed. “Media and Politics? Professor Rigby’s seminar?”

“Oh.” Nick felt silly. He placed her now from his class Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”

“You’re not running in the race?”

“My brother’s the athlete.” Nick held his camera up for the girl to see. “I’m just here to take a few pictures.”

“Assuming he makes it.”

“He’ll make it,” Nick said. “If I know Sam, he’ll cross the finish line one way or another.” Nick realized that the girl was wearing running shorts. “You finished already?”

“Yeah. I beat your brother, I guess.”

Nick squinted toward the finish line, searching for Sam’s face among the runners coming into the stadium for the final lap of the long race. “He’s not going to like that,” he said.

“You’re Nick, right?”

“Yeah. Nick Wilder.”

“I like the things you say. Your comments, I mean, in class. Like what you said last week, about the way networks turn news into entertainment.”

Nick took a small step back to get a better view of the girl, doubly embarrassed now that he hadn’t recognized her. “Thanks,” he said.

“You have another of those cigarettes?” she asked him.

Nick gauged her. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

She smiled. “After twenty-six miles, I deserve a little vice, right?”

Nick noticed Sam enter the stadium as he lit their cigarettes. Even from this distance, Nick recognized Sam’s aggravation. His brother was scanning the bleachers, looking for him, worried that he hadn’t shown with his camera. “There,” Nick said. He pointed across the field. “That’s my brother now.”

The girl followed Nick’s direction. “He looks like you, doesn’t he?”

“He’s better looking than I am,” Nick said.

“I wouldn’t say so,” the girl said.

“You haven’t seen him up close yet.” Nick raised the camera to his eye. He brought Sam’s sweaty face into focus through the powerful telephoto lens and snapped a picture, then held the digital camera up for the girl to see.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she said glibly. “He’s much better looking.”

“That’s what all the girls end up saying,” Nick said.

Nick raised the camera back to his eye, this time bringing Blake Werner into the picture, too, next to Sam. Sam had thrown an arm over Werner’s shoulders, and the two men were running in step. Nick saw the tension on Sam’s face. He waited for him to smile, then snapped a picture of the two friends. Werner had come in from Boston the day before, just for the race.

“You’re a good brother,” the girl said. “My brother wouldn’t brave the cold to take my picture.”

“I owe Sam a lot,” Nick said. “He’s not just better looking, he’s putting me through graduate school.”

Nick was still smoking the same cigarette when he jostled his way through the crowd at the track to get a picture of Sam crossing the finish line.

“Jesus, bro’,” Sam said, arm in arm with Werner, stumbling toward his younger brother, “those things’ll kill you. Don’t you know that?”

Nick let the cigarette drop to his feet. He tucked his equipment back into his camera bag.

“You get the pictures?”

Nick snapped the camera bag shut. “What do you think?”

Relaxing, Sam gave his brother’s shoulder a squeeze. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get a beer. Blake’s buying.”

“You play with fire, you get burned. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”

Werner was rocking on the bed, too drunk, Nick realized, to remain sitting up much longer.

“Tell me what you mean, Blake,” Nick said.

“Sam knew how dangerous Zarconia was.”

“What do you mean, dangerous?”

“It’s unstable. It’s a new drug. Genetic. You know how small a dose is? You just take a grain of the stuff. You can hardly measure it. It works on a molecular level. In your brain. It acts on certain receptors—basically, it supercharges your dopamine. You ever take Ecstasy, friend?”

“Sure.”

Werner raised his hands, then let them drop into his lap. “It was mine. All mine.”

“What are you saying?”

“I was the one, not your brother. I was the one who made it. It was my research. My baby.”

Werner was starting to ramble. Nick wanted to back him up to the beginning. “I never heard how you ended up working with Sam,” he said.

“Hmmm? We met at the university, the year before I went back to Boston to get my master’s. He was a lousy student, did you know that? A damn lousy excuse for a scientist. But he was good with money, you know? And I wasn’t.”