Colin Harrison - Afterburn

"Any calls?" he asked Karen when she came back on the phone.

"None that are important," she said.

His head was full of Teknetrix details, but there were other things he needed to remember. "I might get a call from someone named Melissa Williams."

"No one by that name has called," said Karen.

"Fine." As they'd agreed.

"You sound really good, Charlie."

"I am."

Next he called Jane in London.

"Charlie!"

"Just caught you."

"Yes. I haven't spoken to you in weeks."

"Did you get that car?" he asked.

"No, I can't do that."

"If you say so."

"You have another play?"

"No," he answered. "I want you to transfer those GT proceeds to my private banker in New York."

"That's Ted Fullman at Citibank?"

"You got it."

"All or some?" Jane asked.

"All."

"It'll be there in an hour. You seem kind of up, Charlie."

On top here, he told himself, in the game. Eight million after-tax from a dead man's mouth, sex with a twenty-seven-year-old woman, and I'm drinking tea made out of sea horses.

Next he called Fullman, who was excited to hear that sixteen million dollars were arriving in Charlie's account. "What am I doing with this huge nugget, Charlie?"

"Two things, Ted. First, wire half to my accountant. The capital gains on this are all short-term. Now, with the remaining half I want to buy my wife a house."

"You want me to handle that?"

Always helpful, the private banker. "Yes, as a matter of fact. It's a retirement community in Princeton called Vista del Mar. Even though the ocean is nowhere near. Ellie has a deposit down on a property. Please call them up and get the balance and just close on it. It'll be a million or two. You have that power of attorney still."

"If it's a cash deal, this can go quickly."

"I'd like to surprise her."

"That's a hell of a gift, Charlie."

"Yeah."

"You must love her to pieces."

"Daddy?" came Julia's voice early the next morning. He had a headache upon waking and immediately wanted some of the odorous tea. "There's something wrong with Mom. Somehow she got past the elevator man and tried to hail a cab in her bathrobe."

"What?"

"She was standing out there with a little suitcase."

"Where was she going?"

"I don't know. The doorman brought her back inside and called me and I ran up there and we went straight to Dr. Berger's. He looked at her right away and gave her some anxiety medication and said she shouldn't be left alone tonight. I brought her to our place."

"Can I talk to her?"

"She's sleeping in the guest room. I don't think I should wake her, Dad."

"What does he think is wrong with her?"

"He can't tell yet. She's anxious. I know she's been thinking about Ben a lot…" Julia sighed at the sadness of it. "She's been taking too many sleeping pills, but she also has indications… They got her to sleep-basically knocked her out-and will do some blood work. Dr. Berger has some blood results from a year ago, and tomorrow they're going to test the protein deposits in her blood and see if there's a change. They can make some guess about how fast it's going."

"How fast what is going?"

"Alzheimer's."

"I really don't-"

"Don't fool yourself, Dad. Mom isn't the same as she was a couple of months ago."

"She was clever enough to buy a retirement home in New Jersey without me knowing about it," he responded. "Seems like someone who is thinking all right."

"You've just proved my point." Julia, ever the lawyer, slicing his logic into piles and rearranging it into her own truth. "Yes, a month or so ago she was able to do that, though of course they're very good at walking older people through this process, and now, now, she is hailing cabs in nothing but a bathrobe!"

"Okay," he said.

"She had lipstick on, too."

"What does that matter?"

"It explains a lot — oh, you wouldn't understand."

"Try me, dammit."

"It's just so heartbreaking."

"The lipstick?"

"Yes! It shows she thought she was fine, she thought she was ready to go out, that she wanted to go out."

"Where was she going?"

"By the time we got to Dr. Berger's, she was sort of tired and hostile, so she didn't say much, but I think she was trying to go to you."

"Me?" He staggered out of bed and found the packet of tea.

"She said she was going to China."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I couldn't understand it. She said some papers came messengered to you at home and she opened them and thought you needed them."

"What papers?"

"I don't know. I haven't been up to your apartment yet."

The report from Towers, the investigator? What else could it be? I meant send it to me here, Charlie thought, didn't I say that? What else could upset Ellie so much? She would have picked the pages off the front table by the elevator, Lionel going up and down in his circular window, and opened it, thinking perhaps it was urgent, since it had been messengered, and, reading it, gotten the shock of a lifetime.

"Are you going back to the apartment?" he asked Julia anxiously, dumping some of the dry tea into a glass of cold water. Maybe it had opium or cocaine or something in it, but he had to have it now.

"In about an hour, yes, to get her sleeping gown and stuff. The doctor expects her to sleep for about ten or twelve hours. She'll feel more comfortable if she has her usual things."

"Right," he groaned. He looked at the concoction. It had dry bits floating on top. Why did he crave it so much? He jolted the whole glass of thick brown liquid down his throat.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You sounded funny."

"I was drinking something, sweetie." Julie would prowl through the apartment looking for clues to her mother's mental condition. If Ellie had left the investigator's report out, Julia would find it.

"Daddy?"

"Yes."

"Can you come home right away?"

He'd have to figure out how to accelerate negotiations with Mr. Lo. "I think I can take a plane tomorrow, sweetie."

"How's your back?"

"Amazing."

"I don't understand."

"I got some Chinese medicine. They made it right in front of me. Really quite-"

"Dad?" Julia said suddenly. "I have someone on the other line. I'll expect you home in about forty-eight hours?"

"Yes." He thought of the investigator's papers lying on the kitchen counter or wherever Ellie opened them. "Mom'll be at your place tonight?"

"I think so."

"Maybe she should stay a night or two."

"I can't. Brian is in L.A. until next week, and I'm leaving for London tomorrow."

"So," Charlie asked, his mind flying in front of the conversation, "Mom'll get back into our apartment sometime tomorrow morning or afternoon?"

"Morning. I mean, she's got pills that should calm her."

Not if she reads the investigator's report again, he told himself. "Tell her not to worry about anything and that I'm coming home."

He retrieved Towers's number and then stood in front of the bathroom mirror. He took off his shirt, looked at his stomach. A horror. Like his father's twenty years ago. Melissa Williams must have been out of her mind. He sat down on the toilet thinking that he was starting to smell Chinese to himself. Happened on every trip.

He called Towers. "You sent me a package?"

"You got it? Good."

"I'm in China," Charlie told him bitterly.

"I don't understand," said Towers. "You called me at six o'clock this morning, said send it to me, but not at the office."

"Yeah," said Charlie. "I did."

"I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Ravich."

"Me too. What was in it?"

"Just the usual basic information."

"Yeah?"

"Also, I'm getting some good stuff on that Melissa Williams."

For a moment Charlie considered telling Towers to forget about Melissa Williams. Maybe that would be better. But he was curious about her. "Do me a favor," he finally said.