The Cloud

30

I slip into the driver’s seat and coax the keys from Faith.

“It’s off-limits.”

“What’s off-limits?”

I don’t answer as I take a left from El Camino Real onto University, a swanky commercial strip. Here, entrepreneurs with full hearts sketch business plans to fill garages first with start-ups and then with BMWs those start-ups eventually afford. Back-of-the-napkin central.

The energy here is so vibrant and so enervating. The entrepreneurs reject propositions that aren’t “game changers” or aren’t “fundamentally disruptive,” then turn ones and zeroes into dollar signs, then, upon realizing their dreams, settle into a stifling and predictable suburban lifestyle; they raise children who can feel like failures if they don’t take full advantage of the advantages. At the main high school in Los Altos, there was a suicide and two copycats by accomplished students, all heading to the best colleges. Now I remember. When their peers were asked why, they responded: every time we accomplish something it feels mostly like a doorway to the next test.

“What’s off-limits, Nat?”

“Isaac. My family, such as it is.”

“Okay, but. .”

“No.”

“We already talked about him.” Muttered.

I assume she is referring to the idea that we, apparently, spoke about Isaac during the blur that was last night. No more-no more blur, no more offhand or concussion-fueled personal revelations, the information exchange now goes in only one direction. I’m laser-focused, I tell myself. I’m in total control of the only thing I’ve ever been halfway decent at, pulling up rocks people don’t want unearthed. My personal rocks will remain entrenched.

“That’s him.” I gesture with a nod.

“Isaac?”

“Andrew Leviathan.”

He sits at a table in the sun at a corner cafe. As we pass, he sips a drink and flips newspaper pages.

I take a right on Cowper and pull into a parking spot.

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

“No.” Faith’s arms are crossed. “Do you remember hearing about Timothy and the music triangle?”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. With a locked stare, she reminds me that Timothy is her nephew and that she and I had discussed him briefly last night.

“I told you about the argument he got into with a music teacher who said Timmy wouldn’t stop hitting the triangle. He’s got Asperger’s. They know that. The teacher grabbed him by the arm and shook him.”

“I remember.” I don’t, mostly.

“To Timmy, that kind of discipline comes out of the blue. So I went to the school, to the teacher’s office and I took her by the arm to show her what it feels like to be physically handled when we don’t understand what’s going on.”

“And so you’re not willing to wait fifteen minutes?”

“I’m here to protect myself and my family, not because you’re a great lover. If you want me to keep waiting for you then you need to start telling me what’s going on in these mystery meetings.”

“You’re after information.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ll tell you about my meetings and you tell me more about Alan Parsons, and about whoever keeps calling you on your phone, and what is motivating you to stay so close to an investigation that seems to be making your life more dangerous, not less.”

“Fifteen minutes.”

I open the car door.

“Nathaniel.” She forces me to catch her eye. “Even with a head wound, you are, in fact, a really great lover.”

The main thing that this brunette is fucking is my head.

In the half second between the moment that I reach Andrew Leviathan and he looks up to greet me, I realize I have absolutely no plan.

“Nathaniel.” He seems unsurprised and to slightly recoil, the Palo Alto Daily News open on his table.

“I figured you for an iPad.”

“Too much of that stuff will burn out your brain. What happened to your eye?”

“Fell down the stairs.”

He blinks, furrows his brow, purses his lips-the pantheon of mildly disbelieving facial expressions. He wears a stark white-collared polo shirt that shows biceps I’m guessing were sculpted by a personal trainer.

“You want to grab a coffee?”

I shake my head. I pull out a chair, seeking conversational footing.

“I was mugged. Maybe someone heard I won the journalism award and figured I was carrying a bunch of cash.”

“Mugged? C’mon.”

I tell him the truth; I got slugged in Chinatown.

“Just a random attack?”

“I’m being followed.”

He looks at me, then around us. It’s a natural reaction, and I follow his gaze. Parked cars line the street. None of them a black Mercedes.

“You’re being followed now?”

I shake my head. “Earlier, last night. By someone who was at your awards luncheon.”

He takes me in.

I tell him there was a man sitting at one of the front tables at the lunch. He stuck in my memory because he had a shiny bald head and an interesting, elongated walk. I explain that I noticed him twice outside my office, and then he followed me in a black Mercedes.

“How can I help, Nathaniel?” He must be used to getting all manner of weird questions from people who work for him and think he has the power to change their lives.

I tell him that I’d like to get a list of attendees, particularly anyone whose name he doesn’t recognize.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.” Before I can respond, he adds that he’ll look into it. I doubt he’ll be much help, but it’s not really, or exclusively, what I’m looking for in this meeting. I’m here to look into his eyes.

“Andrew, to your knowledge was there anyone at the lunch associated with ties to the Chinese government or any Chinese investor groups?”

He tilts his head.

“I ran into a guy the other day named Alan Parsons. He wanted me to look into a story about some interesting technology coming out of China. I wonder if it’s connected to the guy who is following me.”

I’m mostly making this up or experimenting with logic. Andrew’s pupils constrict slightly, indecipherable.

“So some guy that wants to see what reporting you’re up to follows you into an awards banquet? Why not wait outside?”

“Maybe he heard they were serving salmon.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I’m not sure why I stepped on my own interrogation with a bad joke. Maybe I’m not asking a fair question, about how someone with ill intent could get into the lunch. After all, it was essentially open. It even served as easy hunting grounds for the rotund process server who chased me down to let me know I somehow owe back taxes.

Andrew shrugs. “Can you tell me more about the story you’re doing?”

“I wish.” I laugh, mostly genuinely. “This is one of those backward stories.”

“How do you mean?”

“Someone seems really upset at the idea of me learning something. I’m working backward from that point. The theory being that the more someone doesn’t want you to know something, the potentially more interesting it is.”

“But you don’t know what something you’re looking for?”

I let his question linger, then hear a buzzing. From a pocket, Andrew extracts a BlackBerry, looks at the screen, pauses, gives his device the thousand-yard stare. Is he thinking how to respond or using the opportunity to strategize about our conversation? He taps something back.

I have a sudden visceral reaction that I don’t want to overplay my hand, not yet. I’m deciding not to broach the issue of the dead girl and his charitable work with the schools, or Sandy Vello. I need some cards for future conversations with Andrew, and I’m feeling at this point there will be more. I’ve got him engaged, curious, even if he’s playing me too.

“Are you feeling okay?”

I realize I’ve been floating, mind wandering, my gaze resting on a newspaper rack.

“Dandy.”

He nods, lips pursed. “Off the record. Okay?”

I nod.

“You ever have your arms lifted behind your back?”

I shake my head.

“The first night when I was in prison, in Romania, two beefcakes spent the night pulling my arms over my head, proving their mettle by trying to tear off the scrawny arms of a computer geek.”

“That’s off the record?”

“I pissed myself. I was delirious with pain.” He clears his throat. “I had this plan to break out by getting help from one of the guards by promising I’d hack into a bank and wire his family a hundred thousand dollars. But the problem was that I got so delirious I couldn’t tell which guard was most likely to go for it. The question was, Which guard would show pity on me and which would more likely turn me in for a slightly larger apartment with a river view?”

“How’d you figure it out?”

“You know how computers make decisions?”

I shake my head.

“Simple math. Probabilities. Sure, the fancy ones, like Deep Blue, mix in some algorithms that calculate, if you will, the unpredictability of a human behavior. They factor for chaos. But it’s still ultimately about the numbers. What is the best probability of effecting a certain outcome?”

“Okay.”

“Do you know how children make decisions?”

I feel suddenly warm. Don’t talk, Nat, let him ramble.

“Their frontal lobes aren’t developed yet. So they can’t make long-term calculations. They don’t think in terms of goals or priorities, certainly not numbers. They react to primitive emotions, like what interests them on a sensory level, or what seems like a safe or trustworthy situation.” He pauses. “Or person. So as I’m sitting in my own piss, I tried to set aside a lifetime trying to think like a supercomputer and tried to think like a baby. I asked myself, which man feels to me like he’d be the best dad? Which would feel most comfortable for me to turn to were I his child?”

“And?”

“And I chose the other guy. I figured the guy most likely to care for his family would take the apartment with the river view. The other guy would see the situation more coldly.”

He doesn’t finish the story. History has shown he chose the right guy.

He stands. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

I let his allegory wash over me.

“Especially if you’re delirious.” I give voice to his apparent lesson. “You think I’m delirious?”

He smiles, all white teeth and trust, charisma incarnate, the friendly genius, the omnipotent, warning me that things don’t seem right with me.

“You’re an investigative journalist. Isn’t delirium an occupational hazard?”

He extends his hand. We shake, firm, but he avoids eye contact.

“I’ll be in touch,” he says.

Back at the car, I find a parking ticket on the windshield and Faith asleep in the passenger seat. A ribbon of brown hair cascades across her face, moving slightly with each exhale.

I gently open the driver’s seat door; she stirs but doesn’t wake up. In the cup holder, I spy her cell phone. At this point, all’s fair; with one eye on sleeping beauty, I lift her phone to explore her recent communications.