Eye Sleuth (26 page)

“Goin’ up steps.” It was the one who’d growled at me in the car.

Keys jangled, and a door was unlocked. We entered a building where the air was still and dank. I was hustled up more stairs, not straight flights like those in my apartment building but a gently curving series of steps. Another wait to the sound of a second door being unlocked then we tramped across bare boards, me stumbling on debris underfoot that I couldn’t see.

We came to a stop and I was pushed onto a hard seat and the scarf unwound from my head. Dry-mouthed, I stared at the two men. The woolen hats were really ski masks, now these were pulled down to cover their faces. They didn’t want me to recognize them. Good. That meant they weren’t planning on killing me, didn’t it? One was tall, about six foot, the other was a head shorter. Both were thickset. The tall guy pulled a neatly folded piece of paper out of a pocket. He waved it at the shorter man, who extracted a small tape recorder from his coat pocket and set it on the dusty bench next to me. What the hell? I risked a quick glance around. We were in a cavernous space more like an auditorium than a room. The short man’s pudgy fingers hovered indecisively over the controls of the tape recorder. Eventually, he stabbed at a button and nodded at the tall guy.

“Tell us about the equipment Anders developed,” the tall guy said, reading carefully from the slip of paper in his hand.

For this I was blindfolded and dragged off? On the other hand, it finally proved what I’d suspected. Someone wanted the prototypes. The why was obvious. Take your pick: power, control, cool hard cash. The who was the puzzler––who was the mastermind? But why bother with me, why not go to where the prototypes were being manufactured? Something was definitely out of wack.

“Dr. Anders? But he’s…you know he’s dead?”

My question was ignored. Thug One shuffled impatiently. His sidekick glared at me. Uh oh, hostile body language. Talking couldn’t hurt.

“I wasn’t involved in the actual development of the prototypes, you know, the physical creation of them. All of that was the work of Dr. Anders. Mostly, I was helping him write his paper, really just taking his handwritten notes and putting them on the computer.”

I hoped I sounded convincing. I did have a rough idea of the other uses the prototypes could be used for, nothing to do with vision therapy, but I was not about to share that with the two thugs. If the equipment was that valuable, I had to try to stop it falling into the wrong hands.

“I did a lot of research on current equipment to compare the efficiency of the prototypes.”

“What equipment?”

“Some is for myopia reduction, you know, when people are near-sighted. There’s a lot of different vision therapy equipment for that already but Dr. Anders was taking the science one step further. A lot of steps further.”

I stopped my explanation and waited.

Thug One said, “Go on. What about the, um, scalar microscope?”

“Let’s see. Dr. Anders was improving on the scalar hand-held microscope, the type of unit that’s self-contained. It’s like a digital camera. You download the pictures to a computer and can put them on a disk. You can have a micro-lens attachment so it’s capable of recording near-infrared light. This unit can be used to see through people’s cloudy corneas and even some fabrics or different inks. It’s infrared reflectography with conventional IR film. Dr. Anders was increasing the range of what can be examined.”

“Keep talking––what about the schedule?”

“When I was at the conference in England, I heard from Bernell, the manufacturer, that the new units are almost built. They were running into delays because there’s no one to answer questions now Dr. Anders is dead. Even when they’re complete, they have to be tested.”

The two stared at me, their eyes more puzzled than angry. I’d bet good money they’d been called delinquents when they were juveniles. Somehow, I had to persuade them that now Fred was dead, the manufacturer knew more than anyone. That really was the truth. Thug One looked at his slip of paper again. Someone knew he needed a crib sheet.

“You’re the one who had his notes. Talk about the changes.”

That was a sticky point, I really didn’t have much of a handle on the changes Fred had thrown into the mix at the last moment. But beyond that, it was obvious that whoever had these two grab me off the street had something to do with the college. The logical choice was Matt Wahr. His wife had obviously told him of my visit. He must have known I’d make the connection from his cousin, Lou Kralle, to him. This was industrial espionage, corporate America or a foreign faction. One of the men fidgeted. God, time to focus. I thought about the struggle I’d had trying to grasp where Fred Anders was headed with his innovations.

“It’ll be a while before anyone understands fully,” I began cautiously. “Dr. Anders had been working on these projects for some time but I didn’t start right when he did, I began much later. A lot of what I did was on comparisons. The changes were very technical, reductions or increases in measurements.”

The silence was scary. The nasty look on Thug One’s face was even scarier.

“I transferred his handwritten notes to the computer but that doesn’t mean I fully understood the work,” I repeated hastily, hoping I sounded convincing. It was almost true. “Dr. Anders was a genius, I’m not.”

Thug One shook his head at my stupidity. He grabbed my left arm and jerked my thumb back. Searing heat like knife blades scraped up my arm into my neck. He halted judiciously short of breakpoint, content with a series of parting twists to my hand that sent Technicolor flashes behind my tightly shut eyelids.

“Hey,” Thug Two said. “We were told no rough play.”

Thug One laughed spitefully. I bent over my hand, nursing the pain, feeling a physical spurt of anger but also a sense of relief. I’d learned I wasn’t supposed to be hurt.

“I’m not trying to avoid answering,” I said, surprised at how unwilling I still was to appease them. “The truth is I don’t know anything about the schedule. I don’t think even Bernell does.”

Maybe if I repeated the manufacturer’s name enough, that would distract the brutes.

Thug One shifted his feet and my cringe was Pavlovian. Words, give ’em words, I told myself. I dredged up more facts. They’d sound good.

“I compared Dr. Anders’ notes with existing equipment like biofeedback equipment, the Accommotrac for instance.”

Two pairs of eyes stared at me blankly. Somebody had the smarts to send them along with some basic questions and a tape recorder.

“Dr. Joseph Trachtman,” I added helpfully. “He’s a behavioral optometrist in Brooklyn. He used special equipment.” Just to fill dead air, I threw in some technicalities. “There was an infrared optometer. Dr. Trachtman reported an increase in unaided visual acuity––you know, someone could see clearly without glasses.”

This information had been around for years but the thugs didn’t know that.

Thug One looked at his slip of paper. “What about the process as the prototypes were assembled? How long did it take?”

He read the query in a monotone, like a kid called on to read in school and unhappy about it. His accent was not quite Brooklyn, perhaps the lower East Side, that undertone of middle Europe. He was heavy and strong and had enjoyed hurting me. Not a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. I couldn’t see faces or hair because of the ski masks but it struck me that their build and their voices might help me identify these two later. That thought made me hopeful.

“I don’t know. Dr. Anders was the person in touch with the manufacturer about that. I was on my way to see him the day he got back from the manufacturer but he was….”

My voice trailed off as I thought about the day Fred had been found dead. I still missed Fred Anders, hated that he was gone.

“Describe one of the prototypes and how long it took to manufacture.”

Yikes, someone had inside information but needed the dots connected. Or was there some problem with the manufacturer? For sure I didn’t know anything about that.

“One unit measures the focusing of the eyes. Also, there’s a thermal infrared imager that views the blood flow of the face and monitors temperature. And microwave imaging records gait and breathing. But I don’t know anything about how long that or any of the units took to manufacture.”

The thugs’ questions might dance around but the aim clearly was about the manufacturing schedule. The tape recorder whirred on softly and the two thugs looked at me, faces blank, waiting. I dredged up another useless tidbit, trying to look helpful.

“Dr. Anders told me the first stage of development was like the original Model T Ford but the next stage was more 21
^st
century, like when a photo-sensor is connected to a computer. He ran into a snag when the hard drive crashed and he had to upgrade.”

“Yeah?”

Tensely, I watched the two men. Thug Two stepped close to me and suddenly pushed me hard so that I sprawled sideways on to the floor.

“Get up. Talk. You better stop lying. When will the prototypes be ready?”

Bingo. I was right, that had to be the prime question. My eyes were level with feet, big feet in big black sneakers, Reeboks. I scrambled up to my knees and started talking.

“I’m not lying,” I said quietly. “Everything I’ve told you is true. I don’t know when the prototypes will be ready.” Then I added, my voice deliberately helpful, knowing it was useless information and knowing the thugs didn’t––only the bastard who’d sent them would know it was useless, “What is done is my computer scan of published research. I’m going over the juvie files now.”

“Studies of delinquents in prison have shown they benefited from optometric vision therapy. Part of what I did was to analyze the equipment used on those prisoners.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if this twosome had juvie files some place. I sucked in air. I was running out of details, useless or otherwise.

Two sets of feet walked beyond my range of vision. Cautiously I raised my head. The tall thug was talking on the cell phone but I couldn’t catch what he was saying. They reached the door and left. A key grated as the door was locked. Was this a hideous dream? I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them slowly. I was still on a floor littered with fallen plaster, near a dusty bench in a cavernous, cobwebbed room. And my thumb still hurt. If this was a nightmare, it was a touchie-feelie Disney would envy.

I almost jumped out of my skin when the tape recorder on the bench clicked off. They’d left it behind because they planned to return. I sat on the floor and thought some more about the person intent on finding out about Anders’ work. Gus Forkiotis had written a paper about the use of doubles for Saddam Hussein when Hussein was in power. If security analysts were monitoring a foreign leader and trying to understand behavior, they could retrieve the refractive state and eye coordination from a distance and get a handle on how the individual was likely to react. It was all about the way the subject perceived space and time. The prototypes Fred Anders had created were quantum leaps ahead of any current equipment. If they were used in surveillance, an incredible amount of valuable information could be gathered. It was obvious now that my suspicions that the prototypes had been the key to the bizarre happenings of the last few weeks had been on target.

It was hellishly frustrating. Finally, I had confirmation and a cause of what Mary Sakamoto warned about, although how she fit in to the puzzle I still could not fathom, but right now I was in a dangerous situation. Why, I wondered, had the muscle been called away? What would happen when they came back? They hadn’t tied me up. They didn’t feel threatened. I don’t do push-ups and my weight hovers around a hundred and twenty-five pounds but the two who’d bamboozled me into the car had to weigh a good two hundred and fifty pounds each unless they’d cunningly bulked up with bubble wrap under their clothes. No, they wouldn’t consider me a threat.

I listened but couldn’t hear sounds to signal the men’s return. I looked around the huge space, it was a building from another era with its high ceiling. Nearby were rows of massive walnut benches, pushed together in uneven rows. The rest of the room was bare. Several simple light fixtures hung at crazy angles, broken chains dangling. On the height of a second-floor level, a balcony ran on three sides of the space. The dingy white walls were stained by water leaks. Grimed but graceful Palladian windows ran almost the full height of the room, easily thirty feet.

Why did I have a feeling of déjà vu? Then it dawned on me. This place was a duplicate of the Fifteenth Street Quaker Meeting House on Rutherford Place, facing Stuyvesant Square. It couldn’t be the Fifteenth Street place. Granted it was a few months since I’d been there to a Sunday meeting for worship but that building couldn’t have been abandoned since then. Quakers take time to come to consensus on weighty matters like closing one of their buildings. Besides, I often walked by the Fifteenth Street building and knew it was open. This place had been empty a long, long time.

Small differences were obvious. The Fifteenth Street meeting didn’t have walnut benches and the support pillars there had the benches built around them. Here the pillars soaring to the balcony were freestanding. Yet the sense of space and justness of proportion were true to the simplicity that is the beauty of many old Quaker buildings. New Jersey has some venerable Quaker Meeting Houses but my sixth sense insisted I was still in Manhattan. Slowly, I got up, intending to look out of a window. The din of a fire truck speeding by came and went, the siren wail muted by the massive masonry walls. New York was as active as ever. I was the one immobilized temporarily.