Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 823 & 824, March/April 2010

It all Adds Up by Thomas Kaufman

Shortly after readers receive this issue, Thomas Kaufman’s first novel, Drink the Tea, will be published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. The book was a winner of the yearly St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel contest. For his EQMM debut, the Maryland writer decided not to employ the private eye from that novel. Instead, he follows the exploits (and misadventures) of a life-coach for adult sufferers of ADD.

That first day, Colin was ready to kill Royce. When he walked into Royce’s house, he nearly turned and walked out again. Setting off a bomb would be an improvement. Burning the place to the ground, with its stacks of newspapers, pizza boxes, rat turds, fast-food wrappers — that would be an improvement.

Colin just stared, then sighed. Well, he’d known about Royce already. Why act surprised? Early on Colin had decided on four clients at a time — tops. Sure, he could have more, but you had to weigh safety against the money you might make to come to the right decision. His four clients were Royce, Joanie, Gupta, and Clarice.

Royce and Joanie had government jobs, which was good. They’d have to really try to get themselves fired. Gupta worked as a lab assistant in a medical practice. And Clarice? Well, Clarice was different.

What did they have in common?

They all had ADD.

Lots of people think ADD is just something kids get, that adults aren’t affected. That’s wrong. And while ADD has been misdiagnosed — that happened frequently in Colin’s opinion — it was very real for his clients. A kid acting out in class — interrupting, forgetting his work, talking nonstop — may get a trip to the principal’s office. An adult does this, he’s fired.

How can you tell who has ADD? If a person has trouble paying close attention to details, makes careless mistakes, can’t focus on work, has trouble listening when someone talks to them — they could have ADD.

Likewise, folks with trouble organizing their lives, folks who are always losing things, folks who get distracted by just about anything — you get the idea.

The adults Colin saw needed help. They needed a doctor to prescribe meds. They needed to take their meds every day. Dosage was critical — too little and they’d get discouraged. Too much and they’d have a heart attack. A lot of them needed coaches.

Like Royce, a guy in his mid thirties who didn’t know he had ADD. In school he just couldn’t focus. His grades were terrible. It didn’t help that his dad was a jerk-ass who would slap Royce whenever he brought home his report card. Colin hated when parents made things worse. Royce went through life screwing up one job after another. His mother cried and his father yelled. Portrait of a family.

Then Royce heard a friend talking about ADD. Sounds like me, he thought. So he got a book and read it, then went to see a doctor, who confirmed what Royce read in his book — that he was not stupid, not lazy, he could function if he had the right tools. This doctor said Royce was going through life with his vision all blurry. He just needed a good pair of glasses.

Well, for Royce this was huge. It meant his dad was wrong — Royce wasn’t stupid or lazy, he just had ADD. It was almost too good to be true.

So Royce got his meds. In this case, it was time-released Ritalin, which is like speed, and you’re probably thinking that’s the last thing a guy like Royce needs, a guy who flits from project to project, never finishing anything. It’s counter-intuitive, but people who have ADD generally do better with some kind of amphetamine medication.

Meds alone won’t do it. He had to get organized. He needed a coach. That’s where Colin came in. He’d run an ad in Bethesda magazine, offering his services as an ADD coach. Colin didn’t work with kids because that required more patience than he had. Plus, when he coached adults, the money was better. Colin went to their homes, spent all day with them, and pored over every little detail they needed to talk about. Royce’s life was like a bowl of spaghetti. Colin had to untangle all the pieces. This took time, but at seventy-five dollars an hour, Colin had the time.

At first Royce was guarded. Colin couldn’t blame the guy. After all, until recently Royce was, in his own mind, America’s number one screw-up. So there was an embarrassment factor. Then there was his house, with its stale smell of decay and desperation. The floor gritty beneath Colin’s feet.

Fortunately Colin knew how to hide his feelings. Plus he’d gone to the trouble to place an ad, and this poor schmuck went to the trouble to answer it, and now Colin was gonna walk? That didn’t make sense. So Colin sighed, smiled at Royce, and said, “Let’s just start at the beginning, okay?”

Well, a few more visits and things started looking better. Royce’s house wasn’t a candidate for House Beautiful, but at least now he knew where things went.

Colin helped him develop a system so he could locate the things he needed when he needed them. For instance, the IRS had sent Royce some nasty letters. The guy hadn’t paid taxes in years, though he had the money. Colin helped him with that mess, got him an accountant. Royce invented a part of a search engine, and the monthly royalty checks came to ten, twelve thousand. He kept them in a desk drawer. See, he knew he should deposit them but just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Colin said it had to do with Royce’s relationship with his father, that because his father didn’t understand what was wrong with Royce, Royce felt unworthy. Now everything was different, Colin said.

“Because I’m taking drugs?” Royce asked.

“No, because you know what your problem is and you’re doing something about it.” The poor guy started to cry. Colin hugged him, told him it was okay. That day Colin really earned his money. And Royce never noticed that every few weeks some of those endorsed checks went home with Colin.

Now Royce is straight with the IRS. He’s got money in the bank. His house is in better shape than it’s been in for years. He’s got a girlfriend. And in addition to the money he paid Colin, Colin got a little bonus.

See how this works out for everybody?

Joanie was twenty-eight, blond, cute, and worked for OMB. That’s Washington’s Office of Management and Budget. It was funny Joanie worked there — she was terrible at managing her time, and she never lived within her budget. Joanie lived at home with her mom and worked as an accountant.

ADD people are often good with numbers. Colin liked to tell his clients that ADD wasn’t all bad. In fact, when Colin dealt with a new client, he made sure they knew that ADD had a good side. Lots of important, creative people have had ADD — probably. Joanie’s face lit up when Colin told her that Einstein had ADD, as did Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, plus guys like Beethoven and Stevie Wonder.

Joanie had thought she could handle ADD by herself. She bought a smart phone, the type that keeps track of your schedule and gets e-mail and stores all your phone numbers and can synch up with your desktop computer.

So far so good, right?

Wrong. Because Joanie had a dozen alarms going off to remind her of stuff every hour. So, in a few days, she learned just to ignore the alarms because they hammered her all the time. Then she started leaving the phone at home. Like it’s gonna do her any good there.

So with Joanie, the first thing Colin did was to cancel out all her alarms. Every last one. Then they started from scratch. “What’s really important here?” Colin asked.

“Well, that I take my meds,” Joanie said.

“Good, let’s input that alarm. Anything else?”

“My mom, she needs her medication, too, and I have to give it to her every day.”

“Okay, put that in, too. Now let’s just stop there and see how it works.”

“Just two alarms?”

“Just two,” Colin said.

Joanie’s mom was really ill, she couldn’t care for herself. Or the things around her. She owned these Hummel figurines. If you’ve never seen them, they’re kinda kitsch, but look ’em up on eBay and you’ll see they’re worth a lot. The ones in Joanie’s house were from the 1940s. Worth over five thousand dollars each because they were in beautiful shape. Pristine. So a few left with Colin over a couple of weeks. They were never missed.

Joanie feels much better. She looks better, too. Now that she’s not so frenzied, she has time to groom herself. She told Colin a guy she works with asked her out. Colin was not surprised.

Gupta had another story altogether. He was smart enough to get through high school and college, even with ADD, but keeping a job was another matter. The poor slob lost three jobs simply by forgetting to show up for work.

Before he got fired from his last job, he started dating one of the secretaries, Betsy. She was hot. Five foot eight, auburn hair, big green eyes, high cheekbones with a sprinkle of freckles, and a figure that would give myocardial infarction to a moose.

Betsy liked Gupta, but she didn’t realize that she was marrying someone with ADD. Gupta would do things that would set Betsy off. Like, he’d decide that their dining room needed painting, start the job, then realize he needed more paint and go to the mall.

Problem was, he wouldn’t come back for the rest of the day. He would just lose track of time. Betsy was fuming when, at nightfall, Gupta finally showed up.

“What am I, his mother? I gotta look out for him every day?” she screamed at Colin.

In this kind of situation, Colin had to counsel both of them, together and separately. First, Colin talked to them as a couple. Let them air their feelings. Then Colin spent some time with Betsy. Colin offered to drive her someplace — the house, with its clutter and unpainted walls, was stifling her. She really appreciated his sensitivity. Plus, Colin knew this really cool motel.

After that, Gupta and Betsy seemed much better. Colin collected a check from Gupta every week for helping him get organized. And Colin still hooked up with Betsy at the motel afterwards.

See? Everyone’s a winner.

Now Clarice was a different kind of problem. If ADD exists on its own, that’s one thing. But when you couple it with other problems, it can be dangerous.

Clarice was thirty-six, lived alone, had an okay body with a plain face. Limp brown hair. No family in town. So Clarice was pretty much on her own. She had a nice house, off the always-busy Route 140. Far enough away you couldn’t hear the constant traffic. She had expensive furniture, oil paintings on the wall. That first day she gave him the tour, took him to the garage. Colin saw a Bugatti sports car.

Unbelievable. The Bugatti had a turbo-charged V12 engine, it could go zero to sixty in about four seconds. Top speed over 200 mph. Who knew how much the thing was worth? A million? Two? Colin had always wanted to drive a Bugatti. Too bad hers wasn’t running, hadn’t been driven in years. Colin figured to make that car a priority.

Apparently Clarice didn’t have to work. This might have been a good thing, but really it wasn’t. A job gets you out of the house, gives your day-to-day life a built-in routine. It’s harder to coach someone without a position.

Speaking of positions, Clarice knew a lot of them, as Colin found out on that first day. Still, she’d hired him to do a job, to help her. Colin just had to figure out how.

It took him awhile to see it, but Clarice was bipolar. Some days she’d be a tiger, ready to get it on. They’d wrestle in the bed, then take on her finances, her overdue credit-card bills, her late mortgage payments. Those were fantastic days. They even called a tow truck for the Bugatti, made out a list of things the car needed. She took the list to the dealership, all on her own. Colin felt proud of her. He could hardly wait to drive that car into the sunset. Beep-beep-’n’-yeah!

Other days he’d show up and she couldn’t get out of bed, hadn’t showered in a week. All the shades in her house were drawn. The first time, it was creepy — Colin thought she’d died.

Colin told all his clients to take one day at a time. Like the day of Clarice’s job interview. It was a busy day — the repair shop had just dropped off the Bugatti, she had to mentally and physically prepare for her first job interview in years, and she was a mess. Terrified, actually. Colin helped to calm her, told her it was all going to be fine.

“No, it isn’t. You say that, but it won’t be fine, Colin, I know it.” She sobbed.

“Tell me what you need help with.”

“Everything.”

“Okay, one thing at a time.”

“I don’t have time. I need to do my hair and get my dry cleaning and print out my resume.”

“How ’bout if I get your dry cleaning?”

She looked at him through the tears. “You’d do that?”

“Of course.” Colin kissed her hand, then her lips. “Anything, you know I’d do anything for you.” And for the Bugatti. How often does a guy get a car like that? Clarice had no way to trace him. Colin wasn’t his real name, she only had his cell-phone number, and if the cops tried to get him through that they’d find it was a burner, disposable. By that time, Colin and the Bugatti would be gone, gone, gone.

He was heading out when her phone rang. Colin picked it up for her. Some woman, saying she was Clarice’s mother, demanding to talk to Clarice. Clarice rolled her eyes but took the call. From across the room Colin could hear the voice, cracking and screeching through the phone. Clarice grimaced at Colin. He smiled at her. Then she remembered her mother was talking, giving her advice she didn’t want, telling her things she already knew. Clarice tuned her out long before she hung up the phone. But she still looked pretty agitated.

Colin shrugged on his jacket. “Who’s that?”

“My mom. God, that bitch is out to destroy me. Sorry, I usually let the machine pick it up when you’re over.”

“Well, I hope you didn’t miss anything important.”

She snorted. “You kidding? Everything’s important to her. She’s got nothing to do all day but lie on a couch, eat candy, watch her stocks go up, and think of things to call me about.”

“She sounds well-off.”

“Money’s not the problem, believe me. I’d spend a million just to have her go away for a while. Be worth every penny.”

Colin laughed. “I guess it would get pretty annoying at that.”

“You have no idea.” Clarice used her finger to trace a circle on the back of Colin’s hand. “I’m going to tell you something really terrible, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Sometimes, sometimes I wish the old bag would just push off already, you know? Her health is terrible, she’s got no quality of life. Does that make me a bad person? Saying things like that?”

“Of course not. You can’t control what you’re feeling.” Colin kissed her cheek. “I’ll get your clothes. By the time you finish showering, I’ll be back.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Fortunately, you’re stuck with me.”

“Oh crap! Look at the time.”

“Here I go.”

Opening the garage door, Colin shook his head. Here he’d been ready to skip, just for a car. Insane. Someday Clarice’s mom would shuffle off this mortal coil — if she needed help Colin would lend a hand. Then Clarice would inherit millions. She’d need help managing all that cash. Someone she trusted. All Colin had to do was stick around. When Mom headed for that big buffet in the sky, Clarice and Colin would get married.

Of course, Clarice had issues. If she had an accident? With her medical history, her background of depression and mania? Colin felt sure most people would just shake their heads and say, what a nice girl, it’s such a shame. Colin would be heartbroken.

But he’d get over it.

The Bugatti roared to life. Goddamn, what a car. He was sailing at over 120 down the country road, a half-mile from the junction with Route 140. He could see the semi crossing in front of him when his cell phone rang.

Clarice.

“Yes, honey?” Colin said.

She was screaming something awful, Colin really couldn’t understand a word.

“Dear, take a deep breath.”

“The garage, I forgot to tell you, they need parts for the car.”

“Parts?”

“Yes, dammit, they told me to tell you they’re having trouble getting parts.”

Well, naturally, the car was over twenty years old. Bugatti parts don’t grow on trees.

“What parts?”

Colin heard her scream, “Brakes. They need to replace the brakes.”

The Bugatti’s engine revved as it grabbed some air just before Colin plunged into Route 140 traffic.

The horn didn’t work either.