The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Sean Doolittle Summa Malhematica

From Crime Spree

Somehow, no matter what the variables, the last customer always seemed to come in three minutes before closing.

It was uncanny: a chaos theorem that yielded takeout orders. There had been a time when Stephen Fielder, Ivan and Adele Stremlau Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematics, would have been compelled to consider such a peculiar phenomenon in terms of statistical models and probability curves.

But Stephen Fielder, fry cook, only straightened his kink-riddled back and sighed. He put down his grill brick, wiped his hands on the last clean corner of his apron, and hauled himself up front to face the man squinting at the backlit menu marquee.

“Welcome to Bronco Burger,” Fielder told him across the register. “Can I take your order?”

“Gimme the Bacon Double Bronco Buster,” said the man. “And some fries. And a Diet Coke also.”

“That’s one Wrangler?”

“One what again?”

“Wrangler Meal Deal.” Fielder pointed behind his head without looking at the board.

“Sure, whatever. Just make it a Diet Coke.”

“Do you want to Chuckwagon-size that?” Wearily, Fielder waited with his finger poised over the color-coded keypad. When no answer came, he looked up to find the customer glancing around the empty store.

A thick fellow. Not tall. An oil drum, Stephen thought, in a wrinkled linen suit. The man wore the sleeves of his sport jacket pushed up to the elbows. If he noticed Fielder watching, he didn’t show it.

“Chuckwagon-size that order, sir?”

The guy looked at him blankly.

“Look, it’s a large fry and extra-large Coke. Thirty-five cents extra.”

“Diet Coke,” the man said. He now seemed to be checking the deserted seating area behind him.

“Sir?”

Finally the man rolled his stocky shoulders, turning to Stephen with a companionable grin. “So they got you holdin’ down the whole place by yourself tonight, huh?”

In retrospect, Stephen Fielder would recognize that he probably should have heard warning bells then and there. But he was new to the late-night rhythms of the food service industry. He felt weary in his bones. It was midnight; he had raw hamburger in the creases of his palms. He only wanted to finish scraping the grill and go home.

But the kid with all the earrings was out back sweeping the parking lot; Veronica, the cute teen who worked the night shift drive-through window, camped in the break room, smoking cigarettes. Which made Stephen the only hand on deck.

So he shrugged and said, “Slow night. Will that be all, sir?”

“Sure,” said the guy. “Pretty much.”

Then he did something that caught Fielder by surprise. The man took a step toward the register, lifting his right hand as he moved. Fielder followed the slim gold bracelet dangling from the dark hairy overgrowth of the man’s wrist.

So distracted was Stephen by the strange gesture, in fact, that he never saw the customer’s other fist cross his jaw.

All Fielder saw was a blooming nova of cool blue light, followed by a hazy descending screen. He thought: hey.

Then he realized he was being dragged over the counter by the apron, which had somehow become tangled in the man’s knuckle-bound grip.

“You two. Scramola.”

Fielder heard the words as if from a great distance. His eyelids creaked open to a painful light. Stainless steel loomed up around him on all sides; dimly, Fielder realized he was prone on the greasy back-kitchen floor. He didn’t remember being deposited there.

His workmates, David and Veronica, didn’t need to be told twice. As they high-tailed it out the back door, Fielder lifted his pounding head. Eventually, he managed to raise himself enough to lean against the bun warmer. Only then did he look at his assailant, who picked stale curly fries from an unemptied fryer basket.

“Are you from the foundation?” It was a ridiculous question. Fielder realized he must still have been dazed by the punch. His jaw-felt knocked off its hinges.

“Yeah,” said the guy. He nodded right along, munching cold fries. “Sure. I’m from the We Stomp the Crap Outta Deadbeats Foundation. This is an outreach typa thing.”

Fielder closed his eyes and probed his jaw gingerly. The room see-sawed around him. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake.”

“Yeah? I’d feel awful bad.” The man produced a small black notepad from inside his jacket. “Fielder? Works at the Bronco Burger on Davenport, is what I got here. This is the Bronco Burger, right?”

Fielder nodded without speaking. The man pantomimed a sigh of relief by moving the back of one hand across his brow.

“I don’t understand,” Fielder said.

“I’m kinda gettin’ that.”

“I don’t... what do want from me?”

“Me? Hey, I don’t want anything. It’s my boss.” The guy gestured with the notebook. “He wants the money you owe him.”

Fielder absorbed these words. Dookie Weber? He couldn’t believe it. This guy worked for Dookie Weber?

“You work for Dookie Weber?”

“You’re serious. I look like I work for a turdball like Dookie Weber to you?” The man placed a hand over his heart. “Hey. Ouch.”

“Then I don’t... I don’t understand.”

“Okay, see, here’s how it is. Dookie Weber, like myself, works in the employ of a man named Joseph King. You’ve heard of Happy Joe King?”

Fielder shook his head. He honestly had not.

“Fair enough. But you’re gonna want to remember the name, and I’ll tell you why.” The man crossed his arms and leaned back against a clean stretch of stainless steel. “Dookie Weber, I mentioned, works for Happy Joe King. Except Dookie’s problem — his biggest one, anyway — is that lately he’s been forgetting who he works for. And Happy Joe? He’s none too happy, if you get what I mean. So Dookie Weber, let’s put it this way, ain’t working for Happy Joe King anymore. And that’s where Dookie’s problem becomes your problem. You following?”

“I think I’m starting to.”

“Atta boy.” The man returned to his notebook. “Now I know what you prolly gotta be thinking, so don’t worry. Happy Joe understands these things. You work with him, make an honest effort, he’s actually a whole lot more flexible than a lot of folks give him credit. So let’s you and me see where we are.”

While Stephen sat, massaging his aching jaw with one hand, the guy who worked for somebody named Happy Joe King flipped a page in his notepad and ran a finger down the next. Soon he gave a low whistle.

“Took a bath on the playoffs, huh?”

Fielder closed his eyes and nodded.

The man flipped a page. “ ’Course, you ain’t been doing too hot at the track, either.”

Fielder sighed. “Not too.”

The man flipped another page. He glanced at Fielder.

“I know,” Fielder said. “I know.”

“No offense, but you must be the unluckiest fuckin’ guy I seen all year.”

“You might say the numbers haven’t been falling my way lately.”

“You might say it a couple times.” The guy flipped another page in his notepad, then closed it. “Okay. I can see we got our work cut out for us, here. Tell you what: you got some markers out at the casino that go back more than ninety days. We’ll start there and work our way forward. That sound fair enough?”

“The casino?” The amount of information in this guy’s notepad was beginning to fill Stephen Fielder with a deep sense of despair. “The Nugget?”

“No, the MGM Grand. Yeah, the Nugget. You know of another one on this river?”

“But Dookie had nothing to do with the casino.”

“No,” said the guy. “No, he didn’t. But Happy Joe King, see, he does. And since he’s consolidating the books, so to speak, it tends to put everything right there in one place, if you know what I mean. Certain patterns become visible where they might, otherwise, maybe not. Sorry to be the bringer.”

Fielder didn’t know what to say. So he just sat there.

“Hey,” said the guy. “Chin up, partner. This is all gonna work out fine.” He stepped forward, leaned over, and stuck out his hand. “Up we go.”

Before Fielder could decline the offer, he felt himself being pulled to his feet. The room wobbled again. He blinked, suddenly enveloped by an invisible nimbus of cheap cologne.

“How you feeling? Chomper okay?”

“I think it’s broken.”

“Aww, come on. I didn’t hit you that hard.”

“If you say so.”

The guy just chuckled, reaching inside his jacket to retrieve a pen. He scribbled something in the notebook, tore out the page, folded it once and stuck it in Fielder’s shirt pocket.

“That’s your number,” he said. “We’ll start out easy. That sound okay by you?”

“I...” Fielder had no words. “Yes.”

“Then we’re all set. I’ll be back in a week.” The guy grinned. Then he nodded darkly toward Fielder’s pocket. “Have it, okay?”

Fielder wanted to look at the paper, but he didn’t have the nerve. So he just nodded.

“Atta boy. I can see we’re gonna get along fine.”

Stephen nodded again. He felt a rough hand clap him on the shoulder.

“Now how about that burger?” the collector said.

The morning after began inevitably.

With telephone calls.

The first came from Fielder’s brother-in-law, Ned, managing owner of six Bronco Burger locations citywide. Fielder let Ned harangue the answering machine while he fed Rhombus, the Labrador he’d owned since his undergraduate days.

Renee rang in by 8:30, close on her brother’s heels.

Hello? Are you okay? Oh, no. Not Renee. The first words out of his ex-wife’s mouth were, I don’t know what you’ve done this time, but you’ve definitely got a hell of a lot of nerve. I told Ned it was a terrible idea, hiring you.

Stephen decided to let the answering machine take that one, too.

Finally, around 10:30, Fielder heard the answering machine pick up for the third time. By now he sat at the folding card table in the kitchenette, reading yesterday’s newspaper and sipping today’s first Stoli.

“Dad? You’re screening, aren’t you?”

This time, he snatched up the cordless receiver the minute he heard the voice on the other end of the line.

“Andrea?”

“Dad. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, sweetie. Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“I’m between classes. And don’t dodge me. What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“My friend Derek told me you got beat up.”

“Who?”

“Derek. You worked late shift together last night. He just told me some guy came in and clobbered you! Dad, is that true?”

Listening to her, Fielder felt something collapse in his chest. He thought it might have been the last of his pride. “The kid with all the earrings? I thought his name was David.”

“Dad!”

Fielder sighed into the phone.

“Everything’s fine, sweetie. Really. There was a guy, but it was nothing. Some lunatic, that’s all.”

“Derek said he heard the guy say you owed somebody money. Are you in some kind of trouble? Tell me the truth.”

“I’m fine, Andie. Okay? Do me a favor. Tell your friend Derek to mind his own goddamned business.”

“I’m coming over during lunch period.”

“We’re on opposite sides of town. Don’t waste your gas.”

“I’m coming over. Do you even have anything to eat in the apartment?”

“Andie...”

“Never mind. I’ll stop and get something on the way.” She paused theatrically. “Bronco Burger okay with you?”

“That’s not funny.”

“Who’s laughing?” Andrea said, and hung up the phone.

For the next hour or so, Fielder sat at the crappy folding table, listlessly watching the ice cubes melt in his booze. At some point, Rhombus padded over and stood with his big doggy head in Fielder’s lap. Fielder scrubbed him between the ears. They looked at each other. So. What’s new with you?

When Andie finally knocked around 11:30, Stephen drew himself together and prepared himself to play the role of World’s Most Disappointing Dad.

It was demoralizing, but Stephen could live with that. Since the divorce became official seven months ago, any moment he was able to spend in his daughter’s company was a happy gift. Despite the mess he and Renee had made of the family, Andie just kept on growing into this extraordinary human being who never stopped impressing or delighting him. Stephen could live with her disappointment a thousand times more easily than her absence.

So he dumped the last of the Stoli down the sink, rinsed out the glass, stowed the bottle in the cupboard above the refrigerator, and hustled to the door.

Only it wasn’t Andie.

“Stephen Fielder?” said the guy with the tool belt.

Fielder sighed, propping an arm on the edge of the door. “Now what?”

The guy pointed a finger at the manifest in his hand. “Fielder?”

Stephen recognized the cable company logo stitched on the guy’s shirt. “Yeah. But I think there’s been a mistake. My cable’s working fine.”

“Hey, great,” said the dirty imposter, grinning cheerfully as he handed Stephen a fat business envelope embossed with the corporate seal of the university’s law firm. “It’s been a pleasure serving you.”

Sometimes Stephen thought back to last year, just before the holidays, when one of his oldest friends had gone in for a routine physical that turned up brain cancer. Jesus, he’d thought then. How do you handle a thing like that? The poor damned guy had been dead by New Year’s Day.

On the bright side, at least a cerebral lesion the size of a silver dollar was an explanation. Stephen had stopped seeking explanations for his own condition months ago. Each day he simply woke up, took a shower, dressed himself, and shambled off into the same waking dream his life had become — each day a vast Mobius treadmill that began where it ended and traveled nowhere in between.

Was this his mid-life thing? Fielder had heard of guys his age getting impotent or religious. He’d heard about guys who got earrings and sporty convertibles. He didn’t know about any of that.

All Stephen Fielder knew was that one morning last November, he woke up to find he couldn’t do math anymore.

It was a morning every bit like the last. All seemed normal; everything occupied its regular place. Except that when he went to warm up his oatmeal in the microwave, he just couldn’t manage to decipher the keypad, somehow.

Later, standing in front of his undergraduate calculus seminar, he simply went... blank. Grease pen in hand, Fielder stood there in the echoing auditorium, staring at the empty whiteboard until one of the regular front-row students actually approached the stage to inquire gently if everything was okay.

The rest of that day was a warp in Stephen’s memory. He remembered sitting in his office for three consecutive hours, unable to make heads or tails of the same scientific calculator he’d been using now for more than half his lifetime; the pressure-worn numbers and symbols inscribed on the keys appeared to him as impenetrable hieroglyphs.

He’d finally given up and turned to work. But his own research notes from the previous day mystified him.

Later, in the car on the way home, he’d tried quizzing himself with rudiments, just to get the juices flowing. But it was as if even the multiplication tables had simply fallen out of his brain while he wasn’t looking.

Fielder had gone to bed early that night, somewhere between concerned and amused.

Because he had been working inhuman hours for weeks on end. He hadn’t been eating well, and he hardly ever exercised. Hell, his marriage of twelve years had recently crashed and burned, and the smoke hadn’t even cleared.

Stress, he’d begun to think. Sometimes you just didn’t notice when your own levels crossed into the red zone. A good night’s sleep could do wonders.

But then he woke up the next morning. And the next morning, and the morning after that. He was not restored. Two plus two did not equal four. And Fielder started to worry.

He made appointments with his physician, who found nothing wrong with him and wrote a referral to a neurospecialist. They threw the full battery of acronyms at him: PET, CAT, MRI. He was discovered to be thirteen pounds overweight but otherwise shipshape for a fellow his age.

Meanwhile, Fielder’s amusement gave way to panic. On the recommendation of his physician, he began twice-weekly sessions with the nearest psychiatrist on his PPO list. The shrink prescribed a powerful test-market antidepressant that gave Fielder chronic diarrhea and made him dizzy all the time. But that was all.

Final diagnosis: Nonspecific Acalculia. Nonspecific Acalculia!

Translation: Beats us, chum.

Citing divorce complications, Stephen put in for emergency personal leave from work, letting his graduate assistants cover his classes for the remainder of the term. He was already scheduled to spend the following semester on a paid research sabbatical, funded by a prestigious annual fellowship sponsored by the university’s Burkholder Foundation.

So he had time, Fielder had reasoned. Time to sort this thing out on his own.

Because no matter what else plagued him in life, he could not remember a time when numbers did not make sense. As a youth, Fielder had reveled in them. While the other guys in his class drew fart balloons in the margins of their textbooks, Stephen constructed elaborate Fibonacci sequences that went on for pages at a time.

As an adult, suddenly trudging toward middle age ankle-deep in the rubble of a wrecked marriage, numbers seemed to be the only thing in Stephen Fielder’s world that still added up. They fit and resonated; they created mysteries and revealed unassailable truths. Unpredictable yet consistent, fluid yet fixed, intractable yet endlessly recombinant. People were somehow beyond him. But numbers he could understand.

And suddenly, inexplicably, just when he’d needed them the most... even the numbers had left him.

It was Gudder who said, “The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.” For years, Fielder had used that quote in the introductory header of all his class syllabi.

But these days, the only quote he felt he understood was Darwin’s: “A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there.”

Fielder’s world had become a dark, dark room. And all he had was a dog.

He began drinking heavily, late into the nights. He slept through most of his days. He couldn’t work. And he found himself adrift, without strength to paddle, as the tide of his own malaise carried him farther and farther from shore.

The final slide began by accident. Or perhaps it was an inevitable point in some cause/effect chain. Fielder didn’t know. Personally, Stephen Fielder had ceased to acknowledge order in the world.

All he knew was that one night, on a bender, he found himself at The Nugget, across the river. Only because the bar there stayed open two hours later than any place in town.

But it was here, amidst the color and lights and carnival noise, that Fielder experienced the kind of shimmering insight only clinical depression and vast quantities of alcohol can reveal.

For here — before him and above him, around him on all sides — was the essence of mathematics. Here was the complicated wonderment of odds and order. All reduced to the simplicity of a toss of dice, a spin of a wheel.

Stephen remembered sitting back on his stool, turning his face to the light, and experiencing a strange sense of peace.

Because if the odds still thrived in a place like this, by god, maybe there was still hope for him in this orderless world.

“That feels about right,” said Happy Joe King’s collector, hefting the envelope containing the five-hundred-dollar paycheck advance Fielder had secured from his ex-brother-in-law. “I don’t guess I need to count it, huh?”

“It’s all there.” Stephen had asked Ned to count it in front of him, just to be sure.

“You know what? I trust you. Good faith goes both ways, am I wrong?”

“Trust is important,” Fielder agreed.

“We speak the same language, my friend.” The collector smacked Fielder on the shoulder. He wore the same suit as last week. “Future reference, you can call me Shorty. Nickname I sorta picked up on account of my height.”

Fielder looked down at the parking lot. “Okay.”

“Call me Shorty, but don’t short me. That’s what I always tell ’em.” The collector’s laugh sounded like a diesel engine shifting gears.

Fielder turned toward the Bronco Burger’s back door, but a firm hand fell on his shoulder just as he began to move.

“Cool your heels a minute.”

Stephen felt his blood chill. “It’s all there.”

“Easy, Professor. I got a little surprise.”

Fielder tensed.

Shorty the collector just laughed again. “Buddy, you are one jumpy bag a nerves, you know that? You should learn to relax.”

To Fielder’s bewilderment, Shorty reached over to tuck the envelope full of cash into his apron strings.

“Let’s take a little walk.”

Fielder looked at Shorty and went numb.

“Don’t worry, Professor,” Shorty said. “I think your luck’s about ready to change.”

Shorty led him to a dark gravel lot in back of a secondhand furniture store. Amidst a shadowed clutter of scrap springs and broken wood frames sat a dusty black limousine. The big car’s engine was silent, headlights off, dark glossy windows raised. Shorty opened one of the rear doors; no interior light came on.

“After you,” he said.

Fielder didn’t move.

“Will you calm down? I swear.” Shorty nodded toward the open door.

“I should get back to the restaurant,” Fielder said. “I think I left the broiler on.”

“Get in the fucking car, Professor.”

Fielder gazed at the dark portal waiting from him. He looked at Shorty. He released a ragged breath and sagged.

Shorty followed him in and slammed the door. Leather creaked beneath him as Fielder scooted over in the seat to make room. Shorty reached up and flicked a switch above their heads. On came an overhead light, yellow and blinding.

“You two smell like french fries,” said the voice from the seat across from him.

The voice belonged to a slim man. Gray hair, impeccably trimmed, an angular face with shallow crow’s-feet at the corners of the eyes. The man wore a western-cut suit with ostrich boots. He sat with one arm draped across the back of the seat, a drink in a cut-glass tumbler resting at his knee.

“Professor Fielder,” the man said, leaning forward to extend a hand. “My name is Joseph King. How do you do?”

Fielder looked at Shorty, who tossed him a wink.

He shook the man’s hand and said, “Mr. King.”

“Call me Joe. My father was Mr. King, as the saying goes.” King grinned and gestured toward a cabinet built into the side panel of the limo. “Care for a drink? Whatever you like, we probably have it around here somewhere.”

“No, thank you.” Stephen cleared his throat.

“Professor, I sense that you’re uncomfortable. I’d guess you’re probably wondering why we’re all here.”

“How do you people know I’m a professor?”

“Actually,” said Happy Joe, “if I’m not mistaken, that verb is now past tense, isn’t it?”

Suddenly Fielder felt supremely conscious of his filthy apron.

“I know a fair amount about this and that,” Happy Joe King said. “For example, I know you are forty-four years of age. I know you fared poorly — let’s face it — in a divorce settlement some months ago. You have one child, a girl, sixteen, name of Andrea, goes to Northeast High. Straight A’s. College prep.” Ice clicked against glass as King sipped his drink. “As for college, you were tenure track yourself, but are now in breach of your contract with the university here. I infer that you’re too proud to let the utilities get shut off but not too proud to take a job flipping burgers for minimum wage. You’re also being sued over some money. Burkholder Foundation, is it?” King glanced at Shorty.

Shorty nodded. “Right. Burkholder.”

“I understand they’re less than pleased with the product of some research they funded. Or lack thereof, as the case may be.”

Stephen felt a cold knot behind his breastbone. “How do you know all of this?”

“Let’s just say I make it a point to thoroughly background all potential employees.”

“I’m sorry,” Fielder said. “I don’t understand.”

“It would seem,” said Happy Joe King, sipping again from his glass, “that you and I are in a position to help each other.”

Fielder said nothing.

“On the one hand,” King continued, “you’ve managed to accrue a somewhat unfortunate debt to me. On the other, it so happens that I find myself in need of a person with your specialized skills.”

“You need a fry cook?”

Shorty laughed beside him. Even Happy Joe King seemed amused. He crunched an ice cube. “I’m afraid those aren’t the particular skills to which I was referring.”

“Oh.” Stephen sat, feeling like an idiot. He hadn’t been trying to be clever. He truly didn’t understand.

“Allow me to clarify. As you may know, I’m something of an entrepreneur. My holdings are — well, let’s say my holdings are somewhat diversified. Being diversified, as they are, my professional success depends to a considerable degree on what some might consider a sophisticated accounting system. Don’t misunderstand: I realize the workaday bookkeeping we’re talking about here is a dip in the kiddie pool to a man of your training. But you’d be surprised how difficult it is to find qualified personnel in this area.”

“Mr. King...”

“Professor. Please. I’ve told you: call me Joe.”

“But I don’t...”

“Bottom line,” Happy Joe King went on, “this is what I’m able to do for you. I’m able to settle your unfulfilled obligation with the Burkholder people. I’m able to buy out the remainder of your contract with the university. Finally — and from your perspective, perhaps most importantly — I’m able to set aside your not-inconsiderable monetary arrearage to me. I’m able to offer all of these things in exchange for your exclusive service in the position of Chief Financial Officer of my various business ventures.” King gestured with his drink. “I think you’ll agree that I offer an extremely competitive benefits package.”

For a long, echoing minute, Stephen just sat, smelling like french fries, staring at some vague point between himself and Happy Joe King. Shorty said nothing. Happy Joe King said nothing.

All Fielder could think to say was, “Don’t you already have an accountant?”

“I did, yes. For many years.” King’s tone conveyed regret. “I’m sorry to say that your predecessor is no longer able to fulfill his duties due to health reasons.”

“Health reasons?”

“He got something in his eye,” Shorty explained.

Fielder looked at the collector. “He got something in his eye?”

Shorty shrugged. “Manner of speaking.”

“The important thing,” Joe King said, “is that your eyes are perfectly fine. And I don’t just go around offering executive positions to every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a mark in the books. The important thing is that you have something to offer me. And that I have something to offer you. We can help each other.” King raised his glass. “So. Professor Fielder. Can I get you that drink?”

It was as if Fielder’s lips formed the words without his permission.

“I can’t,” he heard himself say.

Happy Joe King’s eyes darkened. “Pardon?”

“I... Mr. King, I can’t. I would. But I just... I just can’t.”

King glanced at Shorty again. He looked at Fielder. He did not look happy. “Forgive me for saying so, Professor, but that’s a dumbfuck answer for a fellow in your position. I don’t mind admitting I didn’t expect such dumbfuckery from you. Shorty?”

“Yup.”

“Did you?”

“I gotta say,” Shorty said, sounding amazed, “no.”

“You don’t understand,” Fielder said quickly. “It’s not... I wouldn’t... I’m just unable. Truly.”

A quiet, awful minute passed.

“It’s the numbers. I don’t know how to explain it.” He looked at King with a feeling of impending doom. “I’m not your man.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Joe King finally said.

“I really am sorry.”

King sat quietly. He swirled his drink. “Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like to reconsider?”

“I don’t... it’s not that...” Fielder sighed. “I have a condition known as Nonspecific Acalculia.”

“Forgive me, but what did you just say?”

“Says he has nonspecific genitalia,” Shorty told him, then narrowed his eyes at Fielder. “You some kinda homo?”

“Acalculia,” Fielder repeated. “It means that I can’t...” He struggled, gave up. What was the use?

Happy Joe King said nothing.

“Mr. King,” Fielder said, “please don’t think the generosity of your offer is lost on me.”

King nodded along, appraising him.

Fielder drew in a breath and forced himself to ask the question he didn’t want Happy Joe King to answer. “What happens under these circumstances? Being the case that I’m unable to accept the... position?”

In reply, Joe King shrugged unimportantly, as if bygones were bygones as far as he was concerned. But he leaned forward to pluck the envelope from Fielder’s apron strings.

“This feels light,” he commented.

Fielder looked quickly to Shorty, who did not return his glance. “But it’s all there. I swear it is. You can count it.”

“I count five hundred.”

“Yes. Five hundred. It’s all there.”

“The installment is eight.”

“But I was told... Shorty said five.” Fielder looked at Shorty again, desperate for aid. Shorty offered none. “Five. It’s all there.”

“Five? Yes,” King said. “Last week, five. This week, eight.”

“But that’s...” Fielder’s stomach did a queasy roll. “I don’t understand.”

“In an accelerated economy such as ours,” King explained, “sometimes lending institutions — and that’s, in a sense, how you can think of me from now on — are forced to raise interest percentages in order to keep expansion in line. It’s a systemic necessity, Professor. Please understand, these are market forces we’re up against. I don’t make the rules.”

Fielder felt himself deflating.

“Shorty?” said King.

“Yup.”

“I’ll need you to explain the matter of penalty fees to Professor Fielder. Bear in mind he has a condition.”

As Shorty opened his door, and Stephen felt the collector’s heavy hand descend on his shoulder, it was as if time stopped, then accelerated. He looked at Shorty, hoping unreasonably for some slim possibility of shelter, finding only hard, dutiful eyes.

Later, on the long but limp-free walk home to his building, Stephen told himself he’d made the only reasonable decision, under the circumstances.

First, there was only sick fear, accompanied by visions of compound fractures, in his very near future.

But several blocks after parting Shorty’s company, a giddiness came upon Fielder. There arose within Stephen’s breast a vague but euphoric tremor; a quick breath escaped him.

And as he walked on — moving between pools of sodium light cast by the streetlamps overhead, narrowing the distance to his apartment stride by lengthening stride — Stephen Fielder began to feel something he hadn’t felt in as long as he could remember.

Lucky.

Maybe it was the delayed adrenaline rush of surviving a dicey situation. Maybe there was nothing like the hand of a professional motivator at your elbow to jolt you out of an unproductive frame of mind.

Fielder didn’t know. He didn’t know if night birds always sang like this in this part of town, or if he’d simply never noticed them before now.

All Stephen Fielder knew was that something important had happened this last half-hour. Something transformative.

Because people lost limbs, for heaven’s sake. He understood that, now. Accidents maimed but did not kill. Careers in roaring environments slowly obliterated the ability to hear; viral infections robbed people of their eyesight. Awful diseases of the nervous and muscular systems impeded, immobilized.

Time and time again over the course of this strange affliction, Stephen had returned to thoughts of his friend with brain cancer. And for the first time, he realized he shouldn’t have been thinking about his dead friend at all.

He should have been thinking about a French magazine editor he’d once read about.

The journalist’s name was Bauby. Jean-Dominique Bauby. In the middle part of his life, Bauby had suffered a massive stroke that left him quadriplegic. And at forty-four — Fielder’s very age — the man had written his own memoirs, nearly two hundred pages worth, by blinking his left eyelid.

Two hundred pages, all dictated in code. Character by character, one blink at time.

People survived. Plenty of people survived unimaginable horrors each and every day. And then they woke up and survived them all over again the day after that. People adapted; they overcame. They developed tools and engineered workarounds. They persevered and recalculated. They plugged in variable after variable until their personal equations finally produced a gain.

Fielder found himself awash in a tide of inspiration by the time he reached his apartment building. He was thinking in terms of visual recognition. How hard could it be to relearn the sight of a numeral? A symbol’s unique lines and curves? He thought in terms of computer aid: spreadsheets, graphing applications, microprocessors with far more raw calculating power than any human mind. He thought of tools he’d once taken for granted. Marvels of human engineering designed for the express purpose of taking the complicated... and making it simple.

So lost in these thoughts was Fielder as he climbed the stairwell to his floor that it took him a moment to register that Rhombus waited for him in the hallway outside his door.

“Rhombie,” he said, leaning down to scratch the dog behind the ears. “How did you get out here?”

Rhombus just looked up at him with soulful brown eyes. Don’t look at me. Ask them.

That was when Fielder noticed that his apartment door stood ajar.

Four men waited for him inside. Two wore suits. One wore a sport jacket with jeans. One had doffed his sport jacket and draped it over the back of the couch, exposing a shoulder holster. Fielder noted the badge clipped to the man’s belt.

“Professor Fielder,” said one of the men in suits. He met Fielder at the door with one hand extended, the other flipping open an ID wallet. “Forgive the intrusion. My name is Special Agent Corrigan.”

Fielder shook the man’s hand robotically. Rhombus hung back, out in the hall.

Agent Corrigan pointed around the apartment. “That’s my partner, Agent Klein. Detective Reese. Detective Carvajal.”

The man in the shirtsleeves and shoulder holster raised his hand.

Fielder looked at them. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

“Professor Fielder,” said Agent Corrigan, “it would seem we’re in a position to help each other.”

That night, Fielder dreamed he was playing checkers with Andie at a folding card table in an unfamiliar room. They were laughing and having fun together.

He was about to say, King me! when a door opened, and a team of Burkholder’s lawyers jogged in. Fielder looked up, wondering how in the world they’d found him; the lawyers, all with matching briefcases, filed into a row.

Just as he was about to demand an explanation for this interruption of his personal time with his daughter, another door opened. Happy Joe King appeared with Shorty in tow.

They saw the lawyers. The lawyers saw them. Shorty snarled.

And all at once, a third door burst off its hinges; Agents Corrigan and Klein rushed into the room, sidearms drawn. Detectives Reese and Carvajal hustled in after them.

Fielder tried to stand out of his chair, but he couldn’t move.

FBI! shouted Corrigan, leveling his gun at Shorty across the checkers table.

Still snarling, Shorty reached inside his jacket and drew a gun of his own. Back off, asshole, he said. The math man’s ours.

Fielder felt a hot salty lump in the back of his throat. He tried to speak. He tried again to stand. Andie looked at him, shaking her head. She said, You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve.

At that moment, the row of lawyers simultaneously dropped to their knees, popped latches, and dove into their briefcases. They stood up armed with guns of all shapes and sizes.

Sorry, said one of the lawyers, suddenly crisscrossed over his suit with ammo belts. But we’ll be taking the professor with us.

I’m not a professor anymore! Fielder wanted to shout. But his mouth was stuffed full by some unidentifiable wad. Looking down, he saw an empty Bronco Burger wrapper in his hands.

But before he could expel the foul obstruction, everybody opened fire.

Pinned down with Andie in the center of the triangle, Stephen noticed that the guns fired mathematics instead of bullets; numbers left muzzles in a flash of flame and floated slowly, as if weightless, across the room.

One of the lawyers riddled Agent Corrigan with a salvo of spinning sevens. Shorty capitalized on the vulnerability and shot the attorney in the neck with a nine. Klein hit the floor and rolled; Detective Carvajal covered him, snapping fraction after fraction over the lawyers’ heads.

Andie watched the crossfire with an awe-dazed grin. Dad! Look at this! She reached up with an index finger and touched a passing greater-than/equal-to symbol, sending it spinning off course. They’re so beautiful!

She never noticed the lawyer over her left shoulder, drawing down on Detective Reese. By the time she turned to see the discharge floating her way, it was too late for her to react.

Able to move at last, Fielder sprang up, lurching forward to shield his daughter.

Just as he reached her, arms outstretched, he took one in the shoulder. The force of the impact spun him around toward Happy Joe King.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fielder saw Shorty’s gun buck, and he raised his hand defensively. But in the dream, somebody had turned off the slow motion, and he got a speeding pi in the face before he went down.

In the end, Fielder lasted almost two months before Shorty caught him wearing the wire.

It was a fluke. The collector had come to Bronco Burger to get Fielder for their weekly staff meeting in the back of Happy Joe’s limo. On the customary walk to the parking lot of the used furniture store, Shorty made some joke and followed up with a quick play jab to Fielder’s midsection. Stephen hadn’t been paying attention, and he failed to juke away in time. Shorty’s play fist brushed the transmitter device taped to Fielder’s ribcage.

He reached again to check.

Then his face darkened, and the fist exploded into Stephen’s belly for real...

... and when he could finally breathe again, Fielder found himself in the back of the limo — Bronco Burger shirt torn open, welts raising on the skin of his chest where the adhesive tape had been ripped away — facing Joseph “Happy Joe” King for what he knew would be the last time.

The old crook sat looking at the FBI-issue paraphernalia in his hand as though pondering some high-tech rune. Fielder could feel Shorty beside him, brewing like an electrical storm.

But Happy Joe just sat in silence for what seemed like ages.

At last, King spoke only two words: “How long?”

“A couple of months,” Stephen admitted, for there was no use playing games at this stage. “Six, seven weeks maybe.”

Joe King nodded. And Fielder couldn’t be sure, but he thought he recognized the expression on the man’s face. It was the look of a man who suspects he’s in the process of losing something. Something he’s always had.

Or maybe it was the look of a man on the verge of admitting to himself what he already knows he lost some time ago.

At last, Shorty could no longer contain himself. He erupted with a primal bellow of rage, and when the big gun in his hand connected with the middle of Fielder’s face, Stephen felt his nose give way.

Cheek against the opposite window, pressed there by the muzzle of Shorty’s gun at the hard bone above his opposite temple, Fielder gargled blood as the collector screamed at him, close enough to spray saliva in Stephen’s ear.

“We trusted you!” Shorty shouted. “We trusted you, you miserable fuckin’ fuck!”

Before he blacked out, Fielder saw Happy Joe King call off his collector with a slight shake of the head. Shorty roared again and gifted Stephen with one final, thunderous kidney punch.

Then chaos ruled.

Light flooded the world; doors came open, other doors slammed. Hard voices shouted commands. People appeared and scurried about; somebody had a megaphone.

Later, sitting in the open back end of the paramedic’s rig, holding a bloody ice pack to his split lips and broken nose, Fielder saw Andie break free from a uniformed cop, cross the yellow tape, and sprint his way.

She’d told him she might stop in and see him tonight. Until that moment, their unofficial date had completely slipped his mind.

For some reason, the sight of his daughter brought the memory of a movie they’d rented together a year or two ago. Stephen didn’t remember the name of the film. But it was all about how life as everybody knew it was really just a great elaborate computer program. And if you knew the program’s secrets, you could bend its rules: jump higher, run faster, float in the air, that kind of thing. If you were truly special, you could figure out how to transcend the program altogether.

For some reason, Fielder thought about the pivotal moment in the movie where the hero finally reaches enlightenment. From that point on, the hero saw everything around him in terms of the endless datastreams that created the illusion.

And it occurred to Fielder that if he were the main character in that movie, this would be the point where he’d observe the bustling chaos of this scene before him and begin to see the underlying patterns, and all would be revealed.

He thought about Happy Joe King. Wondered if the patterns were any clearer to him.

He wondered if he was the only one who seemed to be missing the point.

And then he felt his daughter throw her arms around him, asking him in breathless tones if he was okay.

Fielder stroked her hair, grinned in spite of the pain, and told her he was fine.