The Doomsday Equation

CHAPTER 24

Jeremy presses himself against the building, wants to withdraw his head into his slicker, turtlelike.

Alternatively, he wants to sink his teeth into an attack, a drooling, take-no-prisoners, savage attack.

He knows he wasn’t imagining things. Knows that cocky gait, the too-cool for an umbrella or a jacket, the iPad case tucked under his arm.

What the hell was Evan doing climbing out of a sport utility vehicle across the street?

But that’s only the setup. Jeremy’s staring now around the corner of the building at the punch line.

The SUV dropped off Evan, then sped off, and seconds later appeared around the corner and parked at the valet stand at Perry’s.

The door opened.

One sheer leg, the hem of a knee-length skirt, the other leg. Deliberate, practiced, careful, seductive. Andrea.

He’s watching her now, as she hands the keys to the valet, curtsies a flirtatious little thank-you. All while looking around, swiveling her head, craning her neck to look inside.

I’m right here, Andrea, Jeremy thinks. Watching you lie.

She was the one driving the big sport utility vehicle that dropped off Evan. He’s almost positive, but not positive positive. The big car dropped off Evan and sped around the block, out of sight. Then it, or one virtually identical, appeared at the front of Perry’s. Hard to imagine, almost impossible to imagine, it was two different cars.

Andrea opens the rear door, pulls out a handbag off the backseat. Which for some reason makes Jeremy think: handgun. She’s licensed to carry. She once flirted with him by suggesting she’d purchased a pink holster bra.

“Packing a concealed gun is like wearing lingerie,” she told Jeremy. “Even if you’re the only one who knows you’re wearing it, it still makes you feel different.”

“What if you’re wearing both — a gun and lingerie?”

She laughed that syrupy laugh. “Exactly my point.”

She walks into the restaurant. Jeremy looks at the revolving doors of the hotel, then back. Evan barely knew Andrea, right? And what little they knew of each other, they professed to hate.

“We call someone like him an instigator,” Andrea once told Jeremy of Evan. Meaning: he tries to disrupt things so that he can find market opportunities in the rubble. “A business terrorist.”

Jeremy’s not sure of the time, but can safely assume it’s a little past five, the hour of his planned meeting with Andrea.

The rain is intensifying, not yet a downpour but now a challenge to the limits of his cheap slicker. A bus passes, flush with passengers, including one woman Jeremy can see with a cheek matted against the window in a post-work nap. Behind it, a taxi. Its driver reaches the intersection just in front of Jeremy and makes a sharp U-turn. On any other day, Jeremy lets the driver have it, threatens to call 911, maybe does so.

The driver pulls into the circular entrance of the hotel. Seconds later, Evan slips through the revolving doors. He’s not alone. Next to him, two people: an elegant man in a gray suit, wisps of gray hair to match, tall but slightly bent at the shoulders, weathered, dark-hued skin; and a woman with a pink suit and short, fast steps. Jeremy recognizes them, sort of. People in the high-tech world, big dogs. He pulls himself into the building, close as he might. Wishes for invisibility. Evan and the pair climb into the taxi, and it speeds away.

Jeremy takes a deep breath, looks down, inhales deeply again.

He reaches behind him, feels his backpack. It’s damp but not soaked. He sees the coffee stand across the street, an awning shaking in the wind and three tables beneath umbrellas. Mild shelter but the vantage point he’s looking for.

He decides he must stop thinking. There’s too much to think about, and not enough: not enough data to conclude anything. He must act. He needs more data.

He sneaks a look at the iPad, the clock.

26:40:40.

He shoves the device back into the bag.

Two minutes later, he stands against the side of the coffee hut across the street, a vantage point from which he can look right into the front of Perry’s. He can see someone standing right inside the door, beside the maître d’ stand. Might well be Andrea, a woman almost certainly, given the person’s height, but hard to be sure it’s her because of the drizzle on the windows. He can see the woman glance at something in her hand, probably a phone. She noodles with it — dialing; reading a text? — then puts it to her ear.

Jeremy scrambles to pull his phone from his pocket. She’s got to be calling him, naturally; that’s what you do when your friend is late. Even if the woman at the front of the restaurant isn’t her, even if Andrea’s sitting at the bar, or at a table, she’s got to be calling him, or she will soon. He turns on his iPhone. He’ll keep it brief, he promises himself, hoping to forestall anyone tracking him as the device comes to life.

The screen flickers and so does a hard truth. Jeremy can’t go to the police, not to Harry, or Evan or Andrea. The media? Who can he turn to for help?

“You want a coffee?”

Jeremy looks up to see a short man with a mustache and an East Indian accent, gleaming teeth in a crescent smile, holding out a coffee in a tall white to-go cup.

“On the house,” the man says in a high voice. “I’m done for the day. Take a pastry, too. Even the pigeons aren’t buying in this shit.”

Jeremy looks at the counter, with a spread of pastries, crumbly muffins, a gooey lemon bar wrapped in plastic, croissants, a half sandwich. “Take a couple,” the man says, cleaning the nozzle of the milk steamer on his industrial espresso maker.

Jeremy pockets the tuna sandwich, bites into a muffin, tasting cranberry, turns to look back at Perry’s.

“A simple thanks would be nice,” the man mutters.

Jeremy almost says: I thought you said they were free. Instead he looks back and says: “I really appreciate it.” But stops short of a completely human truth: I’m having a really bad day. That would be tantamount to an apology for not saying thanks.

His phone rings. With a mouthful of half-chewed muffin, he fumbles the phone and looks at the screen. A 202 area code. He answers.

“You’re late, Atlas.”

He swallows, a strategy forming. “You know how it is.”

“How what is?”

“Having the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

She laughs. “It never fails to amaze me, even surprise me, how you communicate. It’s like Ping-Pong,” she says. “Volleys, deep shots and chip shots, spin, things that keep the other person off balance, even in the most innocuous exchange. Then the occasional overhead smash. Maybe it’s more like Ping-Pong meets chess meets javelin throw.”

“New plan, Andrea.”

“Case in point.” She hesitates. “I like spontaneity.”

“It’s a little weird.”

“Even better.”

“I want you to come outside but stay on the phone with me.”

Finally, silence. Then: “It’s raining.”

“When you get out here give the guy your valet ticket.”

More silence. He can hear her brain clicking and he can guess what she’s thinking: how does he know I parked my car with the valet? It’s a logical assumption that I did so, but still. For his part, Jeremy wants to make sure she stays on the phone, that she can’t alert someone she might be in cahoots with, whoever that might be, or for whatever reason.

“I’m watching you,” Jeremy says.

“What?”

He lets loose a small laugh, to keep her off balance. “I know, Andrea.”

She clears her throat. “Okay, you’re right.”

“About what?”

“This is weird. It’s downright kinky.”

He has to smile. She’s good. She’s not giving an inch, just like his mother.

“What happens after I give my ticket to the valet guy?” She pushes open the door at Perry’s. She had indeed been the woman at the front, near the maître d’ stand. He takes a big slug of coffee, looks around. Is there a place to hide? If not, he’ll soon be in plain sight when she starts looking around.

She walks outside, takes a step, then steps back against the building, remaining mildly protected by the blue awning.

“Is that you, a vision in red?”

“I’m down the block, to your right, around the corner.”

“Bullshit, Jeremy. I’m looking right at you.”

“Are you packing?”

She holds her hands up in the air, the phone away from her head, looking in his direction, as if to say: what the fuck? She brings the phone back to her head.

Jeremy says: “You’re not wearing cargo pants so I’m guessing it’s in your purse.”

“I can’t carry a gun on an airplane.”

“All the same, I want you to give the valet guy your ticket, put your purse in the trunk and then climb into the passenger seat. Tell the man that he’s going to give the keys to your husband.”

“Okay, enough. What the hell is going on, Jeremy?”

“Andrea, I know you’re lying to me. And I know you want something from me. And if you want it, you’re going to have to do it my way.”

She hesitates, looking his way, shaking her head.

“I’m leaving,” he says.

She sighs. “You’re an asshole, Jeremy. You know that. I deserve to be treated better. But then, so do you.”

“Meaning?”

“I owe you one. I’m here to pay my debt. But after that I’m done.” She gestures to a valet who stands beneath the awning, arms crossed. He hustles over and grabs her ticket, says something into a walkie-talkie. She walks back into the restaurant.

Mere seconds later, the sport utility vehicle with the black tinted windows pulls up. Andrea walks to it, opens the back, puts her purse inside, waves the man off when he offers her the keys and points to Jeremy, who is walking across the street.

She climbs into the passenger seat. Jeremy, having reached the other side of the street, scopes his surroundings, unsure what he’s looking for, clicks to power off his phone. He takes the keys of the car, pulls off his rain slicker and hands it and his nearly drained coffee to the bewildered valet, and climbs inside.