The Analyst (21 page)

Virgil bent down and lifted the small leather portfolio that she’d carried beneath her arm when she’d first approached Ricky, and which she’d subsequently placed on the floor. She deliberately opened the satchel and removed a manila envelope, similar to others Ricky had seen. She handed this across the table to him. “Open it up,” she said. “It’s just filled with motivation.”

He undid the clasp and opened the envelope. Inside were a half-dozen eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs. He removed these and examined them. There were three different subjects, each in the center of two photographs. The first shots were of a young woman, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, wearing blue jeans and sweat-stained T-shirt, with a carpenter’s leather belt around her waist, wielding a large hammer. She appeared to be working at some construction site. The next two photographs were of another child, younger, a girl perhaps twelve years old, seated in the bow of a canoe, paddling across a lake in a wooded region. The first shot seemed slightly grainy, the second, seemingly taken from a distance with an extremely long lens, was a close-up, near enough to show the girl’s braces as she grinned with the exertion of paddling. Then there was a third set of another teenager, a boy with longish hair and an insouciant smile, gesturing with a street vendor in what appeared to be a street in Paris.

All six pictures seemed to be taken without the knowledge of the subjects. It was clear that the photographer had snapped them off unnoticed by the three young people.

Ricky examined the pictures carefully, then looked up at Virgil. She no longer smiled.

“Recognize anyone?” she asked coldly.

He shook his head.

“You live in such splendid isolation, Ricky. It makes all this so damn simple. Look harder. Do you know who those young people are?”

“No. I do not.”

“Those are pictures of some of your distant relatives. Each one of those children is on the list of names Mr. R. sent you at the beginning of your game.”

Ricky looked again at the pictures.

“Paris, France, Habitat for Humanity, Honduras, and Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Three kids on their summer vacations. Just like you.”

He nodded.

“Do you see how vulnerable they are? Do you think it was hard to take these photographs? Could one replace a camera with a high-powered rifle or a handgun, perhaps? How easy would it be to simply remove one of these children from the benign environment they’re enjoying? Do you think any of them has any idea how close to death they might be? Do you imagine any of them have even the vaguest notion that life might just come to a sudden, bloody, screeching halt in seven short days?”

Virgil pointed at the photographs.

“Take another long look, Ricky,” she said. She waited while he absorbed the images. Then she reached across the table to take the pictures from his hands. “I think all that we need to leave you with are the mental portaits, Ricky. Put the smiles those children wear into your head. Try to imagine the smiles they might enjoy in the future as they grow into adulthood. What sort of lives might they lead? What sort of people would they grow into? Will you rob the future from one of them-or someone like them-by obstinately clinging to your own pathetically few years remaining?”

Virgil paused, then with snakelike speed, she grabbed the photographs from his hands. “I’ll take these,” she said as she returned the photographs to her satchel. She pushed back from the table, simultaneously dropping a single hundred-dollar bill on top of her half-eaten plate of food. “You’ve stolen my appetite,” she said. “But I know your financial situation has deteriorated. So I’ll pay for dinner.”

She turned toward the waitress, hovering at a nearby table. “Do you have some chocolate cake?” she asked.

“A chocolate cheesecake,” the woman replied. Virgil nodded.

“Bring a piece for my friend, here,” she said. “His life has suddenly turned bitter and he needs some sweetness to get him through the next few days.”

Then she pivoted and walked out, leaving Ricky alone. He reached for a glass of water and noticed that his hand shook slightly, rattling the ice cubes in the glass.

He walked home in the growing city darkness, his isolation nearly complete.

The world around him seemed a rebuke filled with connections, a near-constant tease of people meeting people in the commerce of existence. He felt almost invisible walking down the streets back to his apartment. In a curious way, Ricky realized, he was almost transparent. No one who walked or drove past him, not one person, would register him on their view of the world. His face, his appearance, his very being, did not mean anything to anyone except the man stalking him. His death, on the other hand, was of critical importance to some anonymous relative. Rumplestiltskin, and by proxy Virgil and the lawyer Merlin and probably some other characters he hadn’t yet met, were the bridges between living and dying. It seemed to Ricky that he had entered into the netherworld occupied by the people who are given the worst diagnosis by a doctor or assigned a date of execution by their judge: the few who know the date of their death. He could feel a cloud of despair hovering just over his head. He was reminded of the famous cartoon character he remembered from his own youth, Al Capp’s great creation of Joe Bflspk, doomed to walk beneath a personal rain cloud dripping dampness and bolts of lightning wherever he went.

The faces of the three young people in the photographs were like ghosts to him-vaporous, filmy. He knew he had to create substance around them, so that they would be real to him. He wished he knew their names, knew also that he had to take some steps to protect them. As he fixed their faces in the near part of his memory, his pace picked up. He saw the braces in one smile, the longish hair, the sweat of selfless exertion, and as he saw each photograph, as clearly as he had when Virgil thrust them across the restaurant table, his stride lengthened, his muscles tightened, and he began to hurry. He could hear his shoes slapping against the sidewalk, almost as if the sound was coming from somewhere outside his own life, until he looked down and saw that he was nearly running. Something loosened within him, and he gave in to a sensation he didn’t recognize, but to anyone stepping aside on the sidewalk to let him pass, must have seemed like a full-blown panic.

Ricky ran, breath heaving in his chest, rasping between his lips. One block, then another, not stopping as he crossed streets, leaving a blast of taxicab horns and obscenities in his wake, not seeing, not hearing, his head filled only with images of death. He did not slow until he was within sight of the entranceway to his home. He heaved to a stop, bending over, gasping for breath, stinging moisture dripping into his eyes. He remained like that, regaining his wind, for what seemed like several minutes, blocking everything out except the heat and the pain of sudden motion, hearing nothing except his own labored breath.

When he did lift his eyes, he thought: I am not alone.

This was no different a sensation than the other moments in the past few days when he’d been overcome by the same observation. It was almost predictable, based on nothing except abrupt paranoia. He tried to control himself, not give in to the sensation, almost as if he wanted to not indulge a secret passion, a craving for a sweet or a smoke. He was unable.

He pivoted sharply, trying to spot whoever was watching him, although he knew this action was useless. His eyes raced from candidates leisurely walking down the street, to empty windows in buildings nearby. He spun about, as if he could catch some telltale motion that might tip him to the person employed to watch him, but every possibility seemed slight, elusive.

Ricky turned back and stared at his own building. He was overcome with the thought that someone had been in his apartment while he was out bantering with Virgil. He leapt forward, then stopped. With an immense summoning of willpower, he forced himself to loop tendrils of control over emotions that were ricocheting around within him, telling himself to be calm, to be centered, to keep his wits about him. He took a long, deep breath and told himself that the likelihood was strong that any moment he emerged from within his apartment, regardless of the reason, Rumplestiltskin, or one of his henchmen, was slipping in behind him. That vulnerability couldn’t be solved with a request to a locksmith, and had been proven the other day when he’d come home to a house without lights.

Ricky’s stomach was tight, like an athlete’s in the moment after a race. He thought everything that had happened to him functioned on two levels. Every message from the man was both symbolic and literal.

His home, Ricky thought, was no longer safe.

Stopped on the street outside the apartment he’d lived most of his adult life within, Ricky was almost overcome by the recognition that there might not be even one corner of his existence that the man stalking him hadn’t penetrated.

For the first time, he thought: I must find a safe spot.

Not having any idea where he might uncover this location-either internally or externally-Ricky trudged up the steps to his home.

To his astonishment, there were no obvious signs of disruption. The door wasn’t ajar. The lights functioned normally. The air conditioner hummed in the background. No overwhelming sense of dread or sixth-sense perception that someone had been inside. He closed and locked the door behind him feeling a momentary surge of relief. Still, his heart continued to race, and he also felt the quiver in his hand that he’d experienced in the restaurant when Virgil had left his side. He held up his hand in front of his face, inspecting it for twitching nervousness, but it was deceptively steady. He no longer trusted this; it was almost as if he could feel within the muscles and tendons of his body that a looseness had taken place, and that at any given second, he would lose control.

Exhaustion pummeled him, reaching into every crevice of his body and pounding away. He was breathing hard, but couldn’t understand why, because the demands on his own physique were modest.

“You need a good night’s sleep,” he told himself, speaking out loud, recognizing the tones that he might use for a patient, directed at himself. “You need to rest, collect your thoughts, and make progress.” For the first time, he considered finding his prescription pad and writing out a scrip for himself, some medication to help him relax. He knew he needed to focus, and it seemed to him that this was becoming increasingly difficult. He hated pills, but thought just this once they might be necessary. A mood elevator, he thought. A sleeping agent to get him some rest. Then, perhaps, some amphetamine to help him concentrate in the morning, and over the course of his remaining week before meeting Rumplestiltskin’s deadline.

Ricky kept a rarely used
Physician’s Desk Reference
guide to drugs in his desk, and he steered himself in that direction, thinking that the all-night pharmacy two blocks away would deliver anything he called in. He wouldn’t even have to venture out.

Sitting in his desk chair, quickly examining the entries in the
PDR
, it did not take Ricky long to determine what he needed. He found his prescription pad and called the pharmacy, reading off his DEA number for the first time, it seemed to him, in years. Three different drugs.

“The patient’s name?” the pharmacist asked.

“They’re for me,” Ricky said.

The pharmacist hesitated. “These aren’t real good medications to be mixing, Doctor Starks,” he said. “You should be very careful about the dosages and combinations.”

“Thank you for your concern. I’ll be careful…”

“I just wanted you to know that overdoses could be lethal.”

“I’m aware of that,” Ricky said. “But too much of anything can kill you.”

The pharmacist considered this a joke and laughed. “Well, I suppose so, but with some things, at least we’d go out with a smile on our face. My delivery guy will be over with these within the hour. You want me to put these on your account? It’s been a while since you used it.”

Ricky thought for a moment, then said, “Yes. Absolutely.” He felt an abrupt twinge of pain within him, as if the man had inadvertently sliced Ricky’s heart with the most innocent of questions. Ricky knew the last time he’d used the account at the pharmacy had been for his wife, as she lay dying, for morphine to help mask her pain. That had been at least three years earlier.

He stepped on the memory, trying to mentally crush it beneath his sole. He took a deep breath and said, “And have the deliveryman ring the doorbell in exactly this fashion, please: three short rings, three long rings, three short rings. That way I’ll know it’s him and open up.”

The pharmacist seemed to think for an instant, before asking, “Isn’t that Morse code for S.O.S.?”

“Correct,” Ricky answered.

He hung up the telephone and sat back hard, his head filling with visions of his wife in her final days. This was too painful for him, so he turned slightly and his eyes traveled down to the desktop. He noticed that the list of relatives that Rumplestiltskin had sent him was prominently placed in the center of his blotter and in a dizzying moment of doubt, Ricky did not recall leaving it in that location. He reached out slowly, pulling the sheet of paper toward him, suddenly filling with the images of the young people in the pictures that Virgil had thrust across the dinner table at him. He started to examine the names on the page, trying to connect the faces with the letters waving like heat above a highway in front of him. He tried to steel himself, knowing that he needed to make the connection, that this was important, that someone’s life might be in a balance that they knew nothing about.

As he tried to focus, he looked down.

A sensation of confusion slid through him. He started to look about, his eyes darting back and forth rapidly, as an unsettling surge quickened within him. He felt his mouth go dry and his stomach churned with sudden nausea.