Mania (3 page)

After leaving the coffee shop, Nick headed downtown. He parked his car at the
Telegraph
, then cut back a few blocks on foot to Fourth Avenue to stake out the address the senior editor had given him over the phone. The rain had let up, but a drizzle was soaking through his clothes. Across the street from his target, he took his camera from his bag, checking its settings as he killed time, brushing water off its lens, scoping out the neighborhood. A few pedestrians were wandering in and out of some of the storefronts, but for the most part this section of town was abandoned in the middle of the day. A wind whipped up for a few seconds, scattering cold raindrops in its wake. Nick turned his back to it, waiting for it to die.

The address belonged to a nondescript three-story brick building. A massage parlor occupied the second and third floors, above a rundown store selling vitamins and health supplements. A small neon sign glowed feebly in a curtained window on the second floor, spelling out MASSAGE in dusty red letters. The heavy blackout curtains in the windows had been sitting undisturbed so long they were streaked and faded. One or two had come loose from their rods and had been tacked back into place with nails.

After ten minutes, the flimsy, worn door leading up to the second floor hadn’t been disturbed. Except for the glow of neon, there wasn’t any sign of life upstairs. The clerk in the vitamin shop on the ground floor had spotted Nick, leaning against a street lamp half hidden by an old and rusty, junked car, and every so often the greasy-haired man would glance at him, trying to figure out what he was doing there. Nick looked up at the sky, measuring the light. It was dark, but he wasn’t going to have to worry about the resolution of the photographs. He made a few adjustments to the camera’s settings, then snapped a picture, examining it for shadow on the LCD screen. Satisfied, he raised the camera back to his eye and took a few pictures of the neon sign and the front door.

Some minutes later, an unmarked squad car slowed in front of the parlor before continuing down the street. Nick watched it slow again at the end of the block and come to a stop at the curb in front of a fire hydrant. The brake lights glowed bright red, seeming to streak the heavy air with their color, then went dark. All four doors swung open. Nick zoomed the camera in a few notches, then snapped several pictures of the street cops as they stepped from the car.

An unmarked white van with wired windows followed half a minute behind the cops, pulling to a stop just in front of the car. The lead officer went over to the side window and said a few words to the driver of the van, then turned to face the other three uniformed policemen. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get this done.” He let his eyes travel the length of the street. Nick was aware when the officer’s gaze paused on him, taking him in. The policeman gave Nick a nearly imperceptible nod, then, checking his watch, led his squad toward the parlor. “Me ’n Wilkins’ll do the honors upstairs. Horace, you stay out here in the street. Murphy, you take a run down the alley there and find the back of the building. Radio in when you’ve got the rear covered.”

“You got it,” one of the cops said.

The officer glanced at the sky. “Hoof it, why don’t you, Murph. It looks like it’s going to pour again in a few minutes here.”

The cop disappeared down a narrow alley halfway down the block. Nick could hear the scrape of his footsteps echoing off its close walls, then the rattle of a metal gate in a chain-link fence.

When his radio squawked a few moments later, the officer checked his gun, then led another of the cops through the scarred, peeling door to the second floor, leaving the fourth patrolman behind them on the sidewalk. Nick took a quick snapshot of the two policemen disappearing into the building.

They were standing barely twenty feet apart on an otherwise empty street, and it didn’t surprise Nick when the remaining cop addressed him. “You with the paper?”

“With the
Telegraph
,” Nick replied.

“You drew the short straw, huh?”

Nick shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s a pretty routine bust,” the cop offered. “We don’t expect any trouble.”

“It’s not so often you close these places down.”

The cop slid his hands beneath the edges of his utility belt and squared his shoulders. “No, not so often,” he conceded.

“What makes this one worth the trouble?”

The cop shook his head. “They say the girls are underage, I guess.”

Nick nodded, remembering that Daly had told him the same thing on the phone.
They say they’re trafficking in young girls from China
. Laura Daly had spoken the words strangely, without much feeling—like this was something that might go down every day. Her lack of emotion had surprised Nick a little, and the words stuck with him.

From upstairs, a single, truncated shriek rent the silence. The cop twisted to look up at the curtained windows. “That’ll be one of the girls,” he said. “Sounds like they probably caught her in mid-session.” He smirked at Nick. “Shouldn’t be long now.”

Five minutes later, the flimsy door swung back open. Nick raised his camera to his eye. The first person into the street was an old Chinese woman dressed in a robe and slippers, her hands cuffed in front of her. She was followed closely by the lead officer. “Why don’t you get over here, Horace”—he said to the cop, yanking the door all the way open—“give me a hand with this.”

As the cop joined him, the officer reached back into the building to lead the next person out—one of the prostitutes. Nick snapped a picture as she stepped into the street. She was anything but underage. She was short and squat, wearing tight black pants that failed to hide her lumpy legs, a pink shirt streaked with stains. She bent her head forward as she emerged from the stairwell, covering her face with her hands in shame. Four more women followed, all of them Asian. None of them was attractive, and, like the first one out the door, not one of them was young.

Three customers stepped outside behind the prostitutes. Nick took a picture of each of the men as they stepped into the street. The first was an awkward young man with a pimply red face. The second, a tall man in a plaid shirt and jeans, looked like a construction worker. Finally, dressed in a cheap dark blue sports jacket and a pair of ill-fitting khaki pants, a stout, mustached man with a thick head of wiry hair was escorted through the doorway by the last cop. His eyes drawn to a flash of gold in the weak light, Nick zoomed in on the heavy wedding band encircling the stout man’s pudgy finger and pressed down on the shutter.

The lead officer spoke a few words into his radio, and the driver swung the white van around and met them in front of the building. Nick took pictures of the police helping the prostitutes and their johns into the van. The cop had been right. It had been a routine bust. There was nothing spectacular here, but Nick figured he had captured the tawdry color Daly wanted for the spread. The van pulled away to take the offenders to the station to be booked.

About to return his camera to his shoulder bag, Nick was surprised to see the stout man in the blue sports jacket still engaged in a conversation with the lead officer.
Why hadn’t they arrested him like everyone else?
Nick snapped a quick picture of the officer unlocking the handcuffs from the man’s wrists, then at last continued down the street toward the
Telegraph
.

Nick was staring at his computer in the cavernous newsroom. The room was bustling with reporters. The desks were all occupied, and messengers were running down the aisles and corridors. The editors were hunched over copy, laying it out and readying it for the next edition. After turning in his pictures of the raid, Nick had caught the second half of the staff meeting late that morning. Afterward, though, he hadn’t sat down to begin his new assignment. Instead, he Googled Sara Garland on his computer, and he spent the rest of the day sorting through the few images he found.

“What a beauty,” Laura Daly said over Nick’s shoulder.

Nick hadn’t heard the senior editor approach over the din of the newsroom, and he swiveled in his chair to look up at the tall, gray-haired woman. Despite the fact that she was large boned and dressed in a predominantly masculine wardrobe, there was something unmistakably feminine about Laura Daly. She ran the paper on a shoestring, and she demanded the respect of the entire staff, from her editors down to the clerks. Nevertheless, she rarely raised her voice. She never tried to dominate at all. Instead, her authority derived from her character. She led because people wanted to follow. Nick tracked her eyes to the screen of his computer. “I met her today.”

“Did you now?” Daly studied the screen. “There’s something curious about her eyes. She looks like she’s seen a lot.”

“How much you think someone like her can earn acting?” Nick asked. “Bit parts, I mean, on a few TV shows.” He was thinking of the gold and platinum Rolex on Sara’s wrist.

Daly considered the question. “I have no idea. They don’t earn all that much, though. A few hundred dollars—a thousand dollars—an episode if they’re lucky. I don’t recognize her. You?”

“No.” Nick imagined that he would have remembered her if he had ever seen her on the screen, even in a small part. She was that beautiful. “Her name’s Sara,” he said. “Sara Garland.”

“Garland?” Daly let a quiet whistle sneak out through her teeth.

“You know her?”

“Not her,” Daly said. “Her dad. You work for him.”

Nick looked up at his boss, perplexed.

“Her stepfather is Jason Hamlin. That’s Jillian’s daughter. Now I say it, she even looks like Jillian, doesn’t she?”

Nick had seen Jason Hamlin in the office a few times, but never his wife. “I’ve never met Jillian.”

“Google her, too, why don’t you?” Daly chuckled dryly. “So it doesn’t really matter how much she earns acting.”

“She said she’s living with her parents in Bellevue.”

“That’s the Hamlins,” Daly confirmed. “Their house is on Lake Washington. Right on the lake, with its own pier. It’s a place Jay Gatsby would have found impressive.”

“I’m having dinner with her tonight.” Nick regretted the note of pride in his voice.

Daly pursed her lips. “That reminds me, Nick. I’ve been meaning to ask you something about your brother. Sam’s behind that biotech start-up, isn’t he? Matrix Zarcon, right? He and that fellow from Harvard—Blake Werner—started the company a couple of years ago.”

“That’s right.”

“There’s a rumor going around town the company’s knee-deep in Hamlin’s money—about to go public. You might want to ask your brother for details. With all the stem cell research floating around, there’s bound to be a controversy there. I bet it’s something we’re going to want to cover.” Daly smiled. “You might even ask Sara about it tonight. Maybe she’s heard something we can use.”

“No problem, Laura,” Nick said sarcastically. “I’ll work it into the conversation in between where were you born and what’s your favorite color.”

Laura Daly rapped her knuckles lightly on Nick’s desk before moving on. “Atta boy, Nick,” she said. “It gets into your bones, the newspaper, doesn’t it?” She was two or three steps beyond Nick’s desk when she turned back around. “Just don’t forget the spill on Elliott Bay,” she said, referring to the assignment she had given Nick earlier. “The EPA’s saying over fifty thousand gallons of toxic sludge spilled into the bay before Hanzin Shipping caught the leak. I want to see photographs on my desk—front-page stuff for Sunday—within the week.”

Nick waited until Daly had taken another few steps, then turned his attention back to the screen in front of him.

At four o’clock, sitting in his apartment on the edge of a threadbare sofa he had bought as a student, his cell phone in his hands, Nick was lost in a daydream. He lived north of the University of Washington, in the same cheap studio he rented during his last year in graduate school. The apartment was shabby and small, but it was all he could afford. Unaware of his surroundings, he let his eyes wander out the window, down to the parking lot three stories below. He couldn’t stop thinking about Sara. Not since he had first seen her that morning. About her eyes and the ivory color of her skin and how long and delicate her fingers were. About the way her hips had swayed as she crossed the café.

Rousing himself, he glanced at the clock next to his bed, then brought up the number Sara had keyed into the phone’s memory. It took a few seconds to find the courage to press the call button. Waiting through three long rings before she picked up, he almost lost his nerve. He hadn’t been sleeping well for the past week, and it had been an early morning. He felt dizzy, fatigued almost. He couldn’t find his voice when she answered.

“Hello?” Sara said a second time.

“Sara? It’s me, Nick.” He steadied himself. He didn’t want to blow his chance. “From the coffee shop. From the table in front of the fireplace.”

“I remember you, Nick. Even without the fireplace.”

Relieved to find her receptive, Nick felt himself relax. He had been picking absently at the leather bracelet on his right wrist, and he let it go and straightened up. “I was just wondering whether you still thought dinner would be a good idea.”

“I’m glad you called,” Sara said. “I was hoping you would. I’ve been thinking about you today, too.”

A wave of adrenaline passed through him without warning, upsetting his balance. He attributed it to his nerves. It took a couple beats to regain his composure.

“That’s a
yes
, Nick,” Sara said into the silence.

“I kind of figured that.”

There was a beep on the line, and Nick took the phone from his ear to look at its LCD display. Sam was trying to call through. Nick brought the phone back to his ear, ignoring the interruption. He would call him back.

“So what are you thinking for dinner? ” Sara was asking him.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I can afford the dinner you expect.”

“What makes you think I expect something specific?” she asked, teasing.

“I don’t know.” Nick didn’t want to admit that he had spent the afternoon at the paper researching Sara and her family.

“Maybe I just want to spend a little time with you, Nick—wherever we end up. And maybe I’m thinking about more than just the dinner anyway.”

“You give her an inch and she takes a yard,” Nick said in response to the innuendo.

Sara laughed. “Touché.”

“I have something unusual in mind.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up.” Nick laughed, realizing that his attack of nerves had passed. “I’ve got this assignment.”

“From the paper?”

“What would you say about a trip on the ferry over to Bainbridge Island? I’m supposed to take photographs to complement this story the
Telegraph
is doing. If we go quickly enough, we could catch the five-thirty ferry, and maybe we’ll get lucky and I can get a dramatic shot or two of the crossing at sunset.”

“Will you pick me up?” Sara asked.

“Just tell me where you are, and I’ll be there.”

Nick forgot that Sam had tried to call him, and he was on his way down the concrete staircase to the parking lot when the phone rang again. “Hey, Sam,” he said, raising the cell phone to his ear without slowing his step. “What’s up?” His voice echoed hollowly in the stairwell.

“Nothing much,” Sam said. “You sound happy.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah. It sounds like you’re running. Where are you?”

“I’m at home. On my way out.”

“I thought maybe we could get together.”

“I can’t right now. Maybe tomorrow?”

“Just for a minute,” Sam insisted.

Nick had reached the ground floor, and he pushed the door open and stepped outside onto the small gravel lot where his old, rusty Corolla was parked. Huge cumulus clouds had gathered in the sky, hovering just beyond the Olympic Mountains. The afternoon was fading, and the clouds were darkening at their base, like cotton balls dipped in black ink. “I really can’t right now,” he said. “Sorry. I’m getting into my car. I’ve got to go.”

“I’m just around the corner,” Sam said. “Wait for me. There’s something I want to show you.” He hung up the phone before Nick could object.

Nick was standing, restive, at the side of his old Toyota when Sam pulled into the lot in a car Nick didn’t recognize. The tinted, smoky driver’s-side window slid down.

“So what do you think, bro’?”

Nick wasn’t sure what his brother was referring to.

“About the car,” Sam explained, smiling and lifting his Ray-Bans. “Didn’t you even notice?”

Nick took a step backward to take in the Arctic silver BMW. He could smell the scent of its rich new leather through the open window. He knew that Sam was doing well at Matrix Zarcon. He had started the company two years ago with an old friend of his, Blake Werner, and Nick knew that Sam was integral to the development of a new drug to treat schizophrenia. Sam was even talking of taking the company public if the drug was approved for testing by the FDA. If the company was being funded by someone like Jason Hamlin, as Daly had told him, Sam stood to make serious money. Still, Nick hadn’t appreciated that his brother had cash to spend on such an expensive car.

“Would you ever have imagined me in a ride like this back in Madison?” Sam asked, content with his brother’s reaction.

Nick shook his head. “It’s a beautiful car, Sam. Things must be going pretty well for you and Werner.”

A shadow briefly darkened his brother’s face. “Didn’t I tell you, bro’? Blake and I parted ways months ago.”

“What?” The news surprised Nick. Blake Werner and Sam had been friends for years, and as far as he knew, the company belonged just as much to Werner as Sam. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” Sam glossed over his unease with a smile and a shrug. “Blake didn’t have faith. He wanted to move on. Anyway, it’s his loss. Things keep getting better and better. With any luck, I’ll be parking this in front of my own house in another few months.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Why don’t you hop on in?” Sam suggested. “I’ll let you drive if you want. There’s actually a house for sale just north of here I’d like you to see.”

Nick smiled. “Tomorrow, okay? I’ve got to run.”

“Not even ten minutes? You should feel the way this thing handles. And I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “I’m busy now.”

Sam looked at his brother carefully for the first time since pulling into the lot. “What’s up?” he asked. “You look like shit.”

“Do I?”

“You’ve got black circles around your eyes.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Nick admitted.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s been a long day.”

Sam turned the key in the ignition, smothering the purr of the BMW’s powerful engine. “It’s not money you’re worrying about, is it?”

“No.” Nick was impatient. “It’s nothing. Really. And I do have to go, Sam.”

Ignoring Nick’s anxiety, Sam stood up out of his new car. He gave his brother a quick hug, then leaned back on the hood. He glanced down at his watch—the same stainless-steel Citizen quartz that his parents had bought him as a high school graduation gift. “Take a minute, Nick. Tell me what’s going on. If you need a loan, just tell me. I’m doing okay now, and you know I’d do anything for you.”

Nick was overcome with a welter of emotions. Stress from being kept against his will, when Sara was waiting for him. Gratitude at Sam’s generosity. And then a sudden resentment he didn’t understand. “It’s always money with you,” he muttered. “That’s your answer for everything. So long as you’ve got it, you’re good. Without it, your life’s a mess.”

“What the hell would you say something like that for?”

It took Nick a few seconds to realize that Sam was simply looking at him. He had to battle the sense that his brother was in his face, grabbing him by the wrists, pinning him backward against something hard and sharp. The sensation seemed to fly away from him with the same frustrating elusiveness that a dream will escape upon waking.

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to calm himself. The words tripped off his tongue. “I didn’t mean that. I know how generous you are.”

Nick
did
know precisely how generous Sam was. He knew that he was forever in his older brother’s debt. After their parents died—in a car accident, when Nick was seventeen years old—the two brothers had sold the house in Wisconsin and liquidated most of the family’s assets. The entire fortune hadn’t amounted to much—less than $55,000 each. Sam had saved his half of the inheritance. He had consulted a financial advisor, but opted just to bank it conservatively into a savings account bearing a few percent interest. After finishing his last year of high school with barely a C average, Nick, on the other hand, had blazed through his share.

Looking back, Nick wasn’t sure where the money had gone. He had disappeared for nearly eighteen months. Most of that time, Nick spent backpacking in Asia and then South America. Finally, he ended up on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, shacked up with a Dutch girl, surfing, smoking pot, sleeping until noon—paying for both their expenses when he could barely afford his own.

Nick woke up one day by himself, flat broke, not a thing to his name except his digital camera and a silver chain he had worn as a talisman since he was a kid. He didn’t have two dimes to scratch together. He knew, though, that his brother had decided to attend the University of Washington a couple of years before, and, hitchhiking and working where he could for his meals, he began heading north to Seattle to find him.

One of things Nick had learned was how to get around without money. The roadways were buzzing with people in motion. He hitched rides in the back of trucks, often with migrant workers heading north looking for work. On one long stretch of highway, he even tied himself to the undercarriage of a big rig. He walked when there was no other alternative. Once back across the border in the United States, he jumped trains like the original hobos.

Nick traversed Central America on the Pan-American Highway, all the way from Nicaragua through Mexico, without incident. Then, walking down a side street in downtown El Paso, Texas, after midnight, looking for a hostel, he was jumped by two men. Nick knew that he was being followed. The streets were so empty, however, that he had nowhere to run. He ignored the first man when he called out after him. The second man, though, caught up to him before Nick understood the danger.

Nick didn’t have much the two men could steal, only a couple of dollars in his pocket. The two men took what they could. They tore the chain from his neck and pried the camera from his fingers. Then—though there was nothing to be gained by it—they beat him up pretty badly. Nick spent the next few nights on the street, forced for the first time in his life to beg. By the time he found himself on Sam’s doorstep, his hair was so long that Sam barely recognized him, and his lips were so cracked he couldn’t speak.

In the year and a half that he had been gone, Nick hadn’t contacted Sam once. Not knowing whether his brother was dead or alive, Sam had grieved for a time, then made his peace. Nevertheless, without once asking his brother what had happened to him or to his share of their parents’ small bequest, Sam had spent what remained of his savings to put Nick through college.

“I know you’re only thinking about me,” Nick said. He felt Sam’s eyes on his face, examining him. His hands felt cold. He opened and closed his fists, trying to feel his fingertips.

Sam’s face resolved itself into a grudging smile. “Don’t worry about it, bro’.”

“I’m just tired,” Nick apologized. “I keep waking up at the same time every night. I keep having this dream—the same dream every night.”

“What is it? What’s going on?”

Nick shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What’s the dream about?”

“It’s about you, Sam.”

An odd look passed across his brother’s face. A look of recognition, Nick thought later, not of surprise. As though his brother had caught glimpse of a ghost, but one that he was expecting to see.

“It’s about the lake,” Sam said. “Isn’t it? You’re dreaming about the day we went skating on the lake.”

“Tell me what happened that day.”

Sam’s lips pressed together.

“I remember being on the ice with you,” Nick said. “And I remember the ice breaking. You went into the water. You disappeared for thirty seconds, maybe more. I was scared to death. I skated to the edge of the hole, where the ice was broken. I remember lying down on the ice—the ice bending underneath me. The water was so cold, I didn’t think you were going to make it.” Nick was trying to hang on to the memory. “The thing is, I don’t remember anything after that.”

“Stop it,” Sam said.

“It’s just like that in my dream. I’m reaching into the water, looking for you. It’s so cold my hands are freezing, turning blue. But in my dream, there’s blood. The water turns red.”

“I’m telling you, stop it,” Sam said sharply.

“You climbed out of the water. That’s what you told me. I lay down and put my hands in the water and found you, and you pulled yourself up. That’s what happened, right, Sam?”

Sam placed a stiff hand on Nick’s shoulder. He made an effort to modulate his voice. “Just stop talking about it, okay? It’s a bad dream you’re having. That’s all.”

Nick turned, freeing himself from Sam’s grip. “I’ve been feeling so dizzy recently,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on. It’s been like this for a week now, every night. Ever since we had dinner last Friday.”

“Maybe it’s a touch of the flu,” Sam said. “The weather turned last week. It’s been pretty cold.”

Nick smiled wanly, recovering himself. “I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure it’s nothing.”