Hooked (5 page)

12

C
ole Valley is situated just above Haight-Ashbury, famed home of the 1960s love-in turned semicommercial zone for hawkers of tie-dyed T-shirts. Cole Valley, by contrast, owns up to its yuppiedom. There are more than a few Audi A4s owned by holders of Pottery Barn credit cards.

It was also home to Andy’s apartment, a mélange of milk crates used as bookshelves, mismatched and multicolored furniture, and a hammock. On the wall above a television from 1970 was a poster of Einstein. Garage-sale chic. Fashion du Math Professor. Erin served us tea in plastic drinking glasses with logos from the annual Bay to Breakers 10K run.

Erin explained that she had a key to Andy’s place and that she was getting the time and courage to clean it out.

She held out a photograph. He sat at a campsite. The sun seemed brilliant overhead, but it was almost outshone by Andy’s goofy grin. He had scruffy blond hair, and his clothes looked like quick pickups from the Salvation Army. Andy was easygoing.

“I’m not a doctor,” I said, repeating my earlier admonitions.

“You finished medical school. And you’re obviously smart. I just want to understand what happened. Listen to my story.”

I suddenly didn’t have the heart, or the patience.

I fumbled in my breast pocket. I felt the picture. I put it on the table. It was 3-by-5, the way they used to make them, with a white border. Annie was standing on a rock, with Lake Tahoe behind her.

“She’s beautiful,” Erin said. “Is that the woman who handed you the note?”

I told her I didn’t know. She picked up the photo.

“I’ve never seen her.”

“You’re absolutely sure?”

“Sorry.”

Our eyes briefly met but Erin looked quickly away. I picked up Annie’s picture and slipped it into my pocket. I felt the need to escape the memory. I turned my gaze to the Bic pen.

“It’s not that tough to chew through a pen.”

I regretted it the moment I said it. I sounded sarcastic. What did I mean? It wasn’t tough to chew through a pen, but why would anyone do so—stress or an aggressive oral fixation?

“Andy rarely had a bad mood. He was the kind of guy who could fall asleep on the floor watching TV and not get up until morning. But about two months ago, he came into the café saying he’d had a sleepless night. He talked about watching infomercials. He was hyper. He did a pretty funny impression of a guy selling mood-improvement tapes for dogs.”

Then it stopped being funny. He didn’t sleep the next few nights.

“Was he doing anything differently? Was he drinking more caffeine? Was he stressed out about something? Did he change his exercise regimen?” I asked.

“No. He got pretty scientific about it too. We were reading the nutrition labels on everything he ate.”

“What about his daily routine?”

“He did seem more intense.”

“Intense? Like agitated—from lack of sleep?”

Erin took a sip of her tea. “I guess he was really focused on his research.”

I noticed Erin had a way of not answering some of my questions directly.

Andy was finishing a master’s project about the habits of kids who are in joint custody of divorced or separated parents. He was looking at the impact on kids of moving between homes each week. He wound up amassing a decent group of students he corresponded with over the Internet.

“You’re telling me that a grown man was corresponding via e-mail with kids? Did Andy tick some parent off? Could he have been threatened?”

Nope, Erin said. She said Andy had asked for and received permission from every family he worked with, under the auspices of the university.

Besides, she asked, how could that possibly explain the headaches?

I considered her question. Why Andy had been sleepless was not clear. The fact that he was agitated and had headaches was easier to understand. It was simple physiology. When a body doesn’t get enough rest, its systems don’t regenerate. To function, it relies increasingly on adrenaline. A kind of fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in. The body loses rhythm, and the mental functions follow.

When I looked up again, Erin had put a laptop on the table. She turned the screen in my direction. On it was a single word, “ping,” typed thousands of times.

“One night when he was feeling sick, I came over to watch a movie, and wound up spending the night on the couch. I found Andy on the front stairs, typing away. He was typing the word ‘ping’ over and over. He said he’d been at it for hours, just passing time.”

I noticed that the laptop’s space bar was indented and cracked.

“I asked Andy about that, and he said that he must have been pressing too hard on it,” she said.

I wondered if Andy had written any diary entries that might explain his frame of mind.

“That’s what I want to know,” Erin said, suddenly animated. “There’s a diary file, but I don’t know the password to get in.”

That’s what Erin really wanted from me—to get some help looking at Andy’s private thoughts. I was always struck by people’s carelessness around technology. We e-mail off-color jokes and naked political views across a medium that records every conversation forever. Even when we try to erase what we’ve done, we leave traces and footprints. Or, in public settings, we talk on our cell phones about the most intimate matters. Maybe we really don’t care. Or maybe we all secretly just want to get caught—at being ourselves.

I fiddled around with the computer for a moment, trying to open the file. The guy was dead, so I wasn’t infringing upon his privacy. As it turned out, I couldn’t have infringed upon it if I’d wanted to; I lacked the expertise to open the file.

I couldn’t really imagine what Andy, or his laptop for that matter, had to do with the explosion at the café, but I also could understand Erin’s desperate curiosity—and I wasn’t much above grasping at straws myself.

“Mind if I borrow it for a day or two?” I said. “I have someone I can show it to. A wiz at technology.”

I told her about the story I was working on—about the impact of cell phone radiation and the brain. I’d been consulting Mike Thompson at Stanford Technology Research Center. He could speak to that topic and just about any other thing having to do with technology.

“Is there anything else you think I should know?” I asked.

Erin seemed so sure something had gone wrong. Was there something else driving her instincts? Something she was purposefully holding back?

Erin had a faraway look. She shook her head no.

“My husband was an alcoholic.”

“Your husband?” I asked, trying to make sense of her apparent non sequitur.

“Ex,” she said. “When he was on the bottle, he became a different person. Like night and day. It was the same thing with Andy.”

“Like he was drunk?”

“No. That’s not what I mean. I just mean that Andy turned into a different person over the last six weeks of his life. I knew him. Even if he was getting sick, he wasn’t the same person. He was . . . hijacked.”

“I don’t mean to dismiss your instincts, Erin, but I do know that tumors can really impact mood. So can changes in brain chemistry. That’s the essence of depression.”

I asked her for the name of Andy’s neurologist. She handed me a business card for Murray Bard, MD, and said he’d been recommended to Andy by Simon Anderson. Andy had become good friends with Simon at the café, and sometimes would babysit Simon’s kids over in West Portal.

“Simon could get anyone to do whatever he wanted,” Erin said. There was a quickening in her voice, like the way I’d sound when making an excuse to an editor.

“And Simon was friends with a neurologist?”

“Simon knew everyone.”

I offered to take a cab back to my car, but Erin insisted on driving me back to the cemetery. I grabbed the Dell laptop, and we headed out the door. Just two paces out, I nearly tripped on my face. A workman was fixing the lights in the apartment hallway, and I was so distracted and tired I hadn’t noticed his wires. I shouldn’t have overlooked him. He was a burly man with an overgrowth of curly hair for a beard. He grunted dissatisfaction at me.

“Walking is not for the meek of heart,” Erin said.

Suddenly she let out a big laugh, and the mood brightened. I hadn’t heard a laugh that pure in a long time.

But laughs like that can be deceiving. Recovering my balance, I was struck by an idea—after dropping off the laptop, I could take a detour that might bring Erin and the café into better focus.

13

E
rin decided to join me on a drive to Stanford Technology Research Center to drop off the laptop. I needed to go there anyway to pick up some papers for my dreaded cell phone/brain story. The deadline taunted me.

I’d gotten used to being on time for everything—Silicon Valley had a way of doing that to you. There were timepieces everywhere. Not watches or clocks necessarily, but cell phones, PDAs, pagers—every one of them gave you an up-to-the-minute digital readout. One friend of mine claimed he didn’t wear a watch, as if to suggest he was too mellow to be constrained by time. The real reason was he had seventeen other gadgets to keep him honest.

Erin and I faced a forty-minute drive directly south to Palo Alto, the heart of the Valley. It’s made up of people with a wicked combination of two seemingly disparate skills: math and marketing. They’ve managed to get their inventions into every home, car, pocket, and company in every industrialized nation.

Compared to Valley people, the robber barons were suckers. Sure, they were financial titans. But every time they built a new car or railroad, it cost them money. They spent money to make it.

This is Silicon Valley’s genius. The most successful companies have almost zero manufacturing costs. Once they create a computer program, they can re-create it with the press of a button, just like printing greenbacks.

As we entered the highway, I was plugged into my mobile phone. I’d put in a call to Leslie Fernandez, a friend of mine from medical school who had since become a neurologist. I figured she could put me in touch with Murray Bard, the doctor who had treated Andy. The best way to get to a doctor was through another doctor.

As luck would have it, Leslie immediately took my call. It probably didn’t hurt that we’d spent a few nights during medical school playing doctor.

“Nat. Long time,” she said. “My first question is: Is everything okay? My second question is: Can I buy you dinner?”

I’d forgotten how direct she could be.

“I’m good. Are you still hooking electrodes up to people’s brains just to make their limbs flop about?”

“Ooh, Nat. I love when you talk dirty.”

Even from her side of the car, Erin could sense Leslie’s voice thick with flirtation.

Leslie and I spent a moment catching up. Then I got to the point and asked if she knew Dr. Bard and could give me an introduction. I told her I’d heard he was doing some interesting work with electrical signals of the brain. Leslie knew I was doing medical journalism; she’d draw her own conclusions about my request.

“Just your luck. I know Murray quite well.”

“Well, like . . . well?”

“Gross. I’ll put in a call to him. Try his office this afternoon,” Leslie said. “So, I’m guessing we’re not going to get drunk this weekend and take the sleeping bag back to Golden Gate Park.”

“Rain check.”

She laughed. “Okay, gotta go.”

I smiled sheepishly at Erin. “Old flame.”

“How long ago did you two date?”

Her question sounded rhetorical. The next one didn’t.

“So, tell me about the person you lost.”

We were passing the exit to Atherton, the chichi community Annie’s parents called home. Unlike the surrounding municipalities, Atherton referred to itself not as a city, but a township.

On the frequent occasions when Annie’s dad and stepmom were out of town, we got the run of the Atherton mansion. We always gave the night off to the staff—the cook, a maid, and the guy whose sole purpose seemed to be to watch the cars sit in the garage. Then Annie and I would see how many rooms we could kiss in for at least ten minutes, removing only one piece of clothing after completing a room. One night, I showed up wearing six layers of ski gear as a joke, and Annie permanently amended the rules by undressing me in the entryway, where we wound up spending the night.

One time when we had the mansion for a week, Annie and I vowed we’d try to keep our entertainment novel by trying a new activity every night. We managed drunk bowling, followed by a Lenny Kravitz concert, but gave up when, on Wednesday, with nothing to do, we somehow wound up at a Palo Alto city council meeting. Midway through a presentation to the redevelopment board, we were giggling in the last row when a city staff member asked us our business. I earnestly declared, “I demand a national holiday in this woman’s name.”

The staff member asked us to leave.

Outside, a local chess club was holding a nighttime tournament under lights in the city green. Contestants eliminated from the tournament played one another or deigned to accept challenges from the stragglers looking on. Annie and I challenged a toothy fourteen-year-old. He pasted us in about ten minutes—twice in a row.

“No chess for our son. Too dangerous,” Annie announced as we walked off. “Just football, and heli-skiing.”

“Sons—plural.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Really.”

“And daughters.”

“Two of each, and one hybrid. Half man, half woman, half turtle.”

“You’re not saying anything?”

The voice was coming from Erin.

“You’re thinking about her.”

For the second time, I almost jumped into the conversation, but again was interrupted. Again by my phone. It was Sergeant Danny Weller.

“How are you doing, Nat?” he asked. I’m not sure he was too interested in the answer, given how quickly he spoke again. “Can you spare a moment?”

“Sure.”

“I wanted to let you know that they found a red Saab.”

“Where?” It came out sharp.

“They pulled it out of an isolated inlet near Half Moon Bay,” he said. It is a small coastal town. “A fisherman hooked the bumper.”

I was speechless. Danny laughed.

“Dad and I never caught anything that big.”

“Danny. Did they find a body—in the car?”

“Nope.”

Silence again. This time I filled it in. “I didn’t read about the car in the morning paper.”

Earlier, I had glanced at the
Chronicle
. It didn’t have much new about the investigation. Lots of speculation and “no comment” from the cops. At this point, the reporters either knew far less than I did, or they were reporting less than they knew.

“You’re not going to,” Danny explained, referring to what I would continue not to see in the newspaper. “We never tell the good stuff to the press.”

Why was he telling me this?

“Have you heard from the investigators?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He coughed, then cleared his throat.

“How about you? Have you learned anything else—have you talked to your waitress friend?”

I glanced at Erin.

“Want to get together later?” I responded. “I liked that bar—it was dingy, dark, and the glasses seemed particularly dirty.”

“See you at six,” he said. “I’ll bring the soap.”

When we got to Stanford Technology Research Center, Mike wasn’t around, so I dropped off the laptop with a note asking him to check under the hood. Nothing specific, and nothing urgent.

On the way back, I suggested we take a detour to Simon Anderson’s house. Maybe mourners would still be there and we could talk to his wife. Erin didn’t seem interested but I pressed her into duty. She knew the location. We drove in silence until we were almost there.

“You didn’t like Simon much,” I said.

“He was a player, or so he thought. He figured there wasn’t anyone he couldn’t seduce.”

“Despite his marriage?”

I remembered something from the funeral. Simon’s brother had mentioned that things had been rough toward the end of his life. I asked Erin what he might have meant.

She shrugged. “I don’t really know. Things might have been tense with his wife, or he was sick or something. You hear rumors. Trust me, this is not worth dwelling on,” she said, then changed tone, and topic.

“His true passion was wizards.”

“Well, really—whose isn’t?”

“He was writing a fantasy book for teenagers.”

“Like Harry Potter?”

“He went
crazy
when people said that,” Erin said. “It became a running joke at the café. We would sometimes bring up Harry Potter just to watch his face contort.”

“They got pretty close,” she said.

It sounded distant, and very much like a non sequitur.

“Who did?”

“Andy and Simon. Andy watched Simon’s kids. It was a big responsibility, since his youngest son is pretty sick,” Erin said, sounding focused again. “The Andersons have an exquisite place.”

Had an exquisite place.

As we turned the corner, we saw the home of the deceased aspiring novelist Simon Anderson on fire.