As I stepped back into the waiting room, the doctor and Thomas were emerging from her office. Dr. Grigorin was saying, “Don’t be such a stranger. You need to come see me more often. It’s good that we stay connected.”
Thomas pointed to me. “So you’ll talk to him.”
“I will.”
“Tell him to stop telling me what to do.”
“You got it.”
Dr. Grigorin—her first name turned out to be Laura—had fiery red hair that would have fallen to her shoulders if she hadn’t spun it up into a bun, and stood about five-four in her heels, which I guessed added at least three inches. She was a striking woman in her early sixties. Rather than wearing typical doctor garb, she wore a red blouse and a straight black skirt that came to just below her knees.
“Mr. Kilbride,” she said to me. “Won’t you come in.”
“Ray,” I said. “Call me Ray.”
She told Thomas to take a seat in the waiting room while we spoke.
“I’m supposed to prescribe you something,” she said, smiling and motioning for me to take a chair. Rather than sit behind her desk, she took a chair across from me and crossed her legs. They were nice legs.
“To keep my controlling nature in check,” I said.
“That’s right.” I liked her smile. She had the tiniest gap between her front teeth. “How does he seem to you?” she asked.
“It’s hard to tell. I know my father’s death has to have affected him, but he’s not showing it.”
“I can tell he’s upset, even though he keeps things bottled up,” Dr. Grigorin said.
“Except with Maria,” I said.
“Who’s Maria?” she asked. I explained and she shook her head with amusement. “Your father was very concerned about how much time Thomas’s preoccupation was taking up. Thomas said he’s cutting back and watched a movie with you the other night.”
“That’s not true. It was all I could do to get him to leave the house to come here today. He didn’t want to leave his work.”
“Has he explained it to you?”
“I didn’t know there was anything to explain,” I said. “He likes to explore the world’s cities online. It’s his thing.” I shook my head and grinned. “Although he did mention the other day that I needed a security clearance to see what he was up to.”
Dr. Grigorin nodded. “Thomas said it would be okay if I told you what he’s been doing.”
I sat up slightly in my chair. “What do you mean, what he’s been doing?”
“Thomas believes he’s working for the CIA. Consulting for them.”
“I’m sorry. The what? The Central Intelligence Agency?”
“That’s right.”
“Working how? What’s he doing—what does he think he’s doing for them?”
“It’s somewhat complicated, and not everything fits together quite right, not unlike dreams where you have different elements bumping up against one another. First of all, Thomas believes there’s going to be a cataclysmic event, some kind of digital, electronic implosion or explosion. I’m not sure which. Perhaps a global computer glitch, or even something orchestrated by some foreign power—an ingenious computer virus—that will cripple this country’s intelligence-gathering ability.”
“Oh, man.”
She continued. “When this happens, the first thing that will go down will be online maps. They’ll all vanish instantly. Poof, gone. All the people in the intelligence community who depend on those will be scrambling, because they’ve been under orders from on high to save paper costs—” She must have noticed my eyebrows going up and she smiled. “Really, paper costs. Budget cuts are even hitting delusions now.” She looked a bit sheepish, like maybe she shouldn’t have made the joke. “Anyway, the point is, the government no longer has any hard copies.”
My shock was giving way to fascination. Knowing Thomas as I did, it all made sense, in a bizarre kind of way.
“And when that happens,” Laura continued, “who do you suppose the CIA is going to be turning to?”
“Let me guess.”
She nodded. “He’ll be able to draw for them, from memory, all the street plans of all the major cities in the world. He’s got them all up here.” She tapped her temple with her index finger. She wore red nail polish.
“But hang on,” I said. “There’d still be old maps around. On paper, in libraries, in people’s homes. Millions of school atlases, for crying out loud.”
“Now you’re being logical,” Laura Grigorin chastised me. “The way your brother visualizes this apocalyptic event, those resources have already been destroyed. Libraries everywhere got rid of them and went digital. Every household has put their old maps out with the newspapers in the recycling and now relies solely on the computer. That’s why this is going to be such a catastrophe. It’ll be a world without maps, and the only person who will know how to reproduce them will be Thomas. And not just maps, but how each and every street in the world looks. Every storefront, every front yard, every intersection.”
I shook my head in wonderment. “So he’s getting ready for if and when this happens.”
“Not if,” she said. “It’s coming. That’s why he’s spending every moment in his room traveling the world, memorizing as many cities as he can before this event. I had a patient—this was several years ago—who worked at a paper in Buffalo, and every night when he went home he took all the various editions of that day’s paper with him because he was convinced that one day the entire newspaper would burn down, and he’d be the only one with a complete record of the paper’s history—at least for the period that he was there.”
“Unbelievable.”
“His house, every hallway, every room, every surface, was filled with newspaper. He had to squeeze his way through stacks of newsprint to get anywhere.”
“Sounds like one of those hoarders shows,” I said.
“The interesting thing is,” Laura said, “the newspaper did burn down.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
She shook her head. “And they found the gas can that started it in the patient’s house.”
I was stunned, briefly, and then laughed. “You’re not suggesting Thomas is going to arrange a global map-destroying virus, are you? Because I think that’s a bit beyond him.”
“I only mention the other story to show you that your brother’s obsession, while unusual, is not entirely unique. Just different in its shadings.”
“My God,” I said. Something occurred to me. “McLean.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that where the CIA has its headquarters? Thomas wanted to program a route into my car’s GPS system to get there, then thought better of it. Maybe because I didn’t yet have clearance.” I laughed. “I guess, now that he’s letting you tell me all this, I have it now.”
“Your brother trusts you. That’s a plus. People with schizophrenia often lose trust in those closest to them. They’re fearful of everyone.” She took a breath. “Now, I started off telling you there were different elements to this.”
“Okay.”
“In the meantime, before this map-destroying incident happens, Thomas believes the CIA may call on him for other help. For example, let’s say they have an agent in jeopardy in, I don’t know, Caracas or someplace. The bad guys have found him and he’s on the run, and he doesn’t know which way to turn. The CIA will put in a call to Thomas, ask him for an escape route. He’ll be able to give them one, faster than they could get it on a computer.”
I ran my palm from my forehead to the back of my neck. “He just might be able to do it, too.”
“Thomas mentions escape routes quite often, about being able to help people who are trapped, cornered in some way.”
I shook my head slowly, trying to imagine being in his head.
Grigorin continued, “And governments might also want him for help in disasters. Natural or otherwise. Think about all the tornadoes we’ve been having lately, or the earthquakes in Chri
stchurch, in Haiti, the tsunami in Japan. Entire communities wiped out, vanished. Or, God forbid, another 9/11 kind of event. Rescuers could call Thomas, tell him that they’re at such and such a corner, and he could tell them what was there, what they should be looking for.”
“Anything else?”
Grigorin smiled sadly. “That about covers it.”
I rested my palms atop my thighs. “So where does this leave us?”
“I’m not sure. I understand, as a result of your father’s death, there may be a need to change Thomas’s living arrangements.”
I discussed my concerns about his living in the house alone.
“Your concerns are valid,” she said. “He should be living in town, in an environment where he can be checked in on. Not in a repressive kind of way, just someone watching out for him. I can recommend a place you might want to take a look at.”
“Do you think he’d go?”
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I think, if you introduce him to the idea gradually, he might. He’d be able to keep his computer. He could still maintain his…hobby. But it’s important you get him out of the house more. Take him on a picnic. A movie. The grocery store. To the mall. The more he’s out of his bedroom, the more comfortable he becomes, the easier it will be to move him into a new environment. I take it you don’t want to move back to your father’s house and look after your brother full-time.”
“I don’t…I don’t want you to think I don’t care about him.”
She shook her head. “Not at all. In fact, I’m not sure that would be the best thing for him. We need him to be more independent. Your father meant well, but he allowed Thomas to become totally dependent on him. He did everything for him. In many ways, he enabled your brother’s obsession by freeing him of all responsibilities.”
“I think Dad figured it was just easier to do everything himself,” I said. “Do you think Thomas is worse? Since Dad died?”
“I don’t know. I asked him if he still hears the voices—often associated with schizophrenia—and he says occasionally. He talks to former president Bill Clinton, who’s acting as his liaison with the CIA. Thomas’s medication keeps the voices to little more than a whisper, and I don’t want to up his dose. He does take his medication every day, yes? You’ve seen him? Olanzapine?”
“Yes.”
“A higher dosage would make Thomas sluggish. It could also cause some dizziness, weight gain, dry mouth, a number of things he wouldn’t like. What we’re looking for is a good balance. With your support, we can continue to manage the situation adequately.”
“Yesterday, he got all worked up because he’d seen what he thought was some minor traffic mishap in Boston. He wanted me to do something about it, try to get in touch with some anonymous driver who had his headlight broken probably months ago.”
“You need to be patient,” she said. “It’s easy to become discouraged. I think, considering everything, Thomas is doing well. He has his troubles, some of which he won’t talk to me about, but—”
“Like what troubles? What’s he not talking about?”
“Well, if he’d talk about them I’d know,” she said. “I know there’s something, from his childhood, that haunts him, but he’s never opened up about it.”
I thought about that infamous car trip, where Thomas bloodied his head against the window. I told her the story, wondering whether she’d heard it.
“I have,” she said, so that wasn’t it.
She moved on. “The good thing is, Thomas thinks the world of you. He’s brought me clippings of your illustrations to show me.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“I think he’s always been envious of your talent, of being able to take a picture that’s in your head and put it on paper.”
“It’s what he does with maps,” I said.
“You have similar gifts, but they manifest themselves in different ways,” Laura Grigorin said.
“Did you talk to my father when he came in with Thomas?”
“Yes,” she said.
“How did he seem to you?”
“What are you asking?”
“I don’t know, exactly. When I was talking to Harry Peyton, the lawyer handling the estate, who was also a friend of Dad’s, I got the idea Dad might have been depressed.”
“I can’t offer an opinion as to whether he was clinically depressed,” she said. “I never treated him. But he did seem…weary. I think the strain of looking after your brother, alone, was wearing on him.”
“He had an accidental death insurance policy,” I said. “That, along with the some other things, would be enough to set Thomas up for a while, at least.”
Dr. Grigorin’s green eyes were piercing. “Are you suggesting something, Ray?”
I just shook my head. “I don’t know.” I waved my hand. “Let’s forget about it.”
“How about you?” she asked. “How are you doing?”
“Me?” The question took me by surprise. “I’m fine.”
Our time was up. I stood. “Oh,” she said. “I almost forgot. I’m supposed to give you something to deal with your bossiness.”
She reached into her desk and came out with an opaque prescription container filled with oversized pills in several different, brilliant colors.
“What are these?” I asked as she put them into my hand.
“M&M’s,” she said.
NINE
STUNNED after recognizing her new lover on television, Allison Fitch fires up her laptop to do some research.
“Son of a bitch,” she keeps whispering under her breath.
While Morris Sawchuck has his eye on the governor’s mansion, he already wields plenty of power as the state’s attorney general. (“Son of a bitch,” she says again.) He’s fifty-seven and Bridget is his third wife. He married her three years ago, and it’s still a subject of gossip among the chattering classes, what with her being twenty-one years younger, and quite a looker, too. There’s talk about the fact they take separate vacations, but Allison already knows that.
Sawchuck met his first wife, Katherine Wolcott, while attending Harvard. They married shortly after he got his BA, and she worked as a legal secretary to support him while he went on to Harvard Law. Five years later, he divorced her for Geraldine Kennedy (no relation to those Kennedys, or at least not close enough to spark invitations to the family compound at Hyannis Port, as one of the stories Allison finds suggests).
Sawchuck didn’t divorce Geraldine. She committed suicide, in 2001. Sits in her BMW with the garage door closed and the engine running and lets the carbon monoxide do its thing. She had, the stories said, been in and out of the hospital and diagnosed manic depressive. There’s one quote attributed to Katherine, which she denies ever making: “I don’t know why I didn’t do that. God knows, when I was married to the cheatin’ son of a bitch, I sure thought about it.”
There were stories. And puzzlement. Katherine was beautiful, and Geraldine had been a stunner as well. Why was it always the guys with gorgeous wives who ended up looking for something else?
Sawchuck never dignified the rumors with a response. He settled into an appropriate period of mourning, threw himself into his work as a prosecutor. He garnered a lot of attention, going after crooked union bosses, Russian mobsters, a gang of child pornographers. Of the last, Sawchuck reportedly said if he could find a way to get them strung up by their nuts in Times Square, he’d do it. Scored him points, although, according to one pundit, it would lose him the child pornographer vote.
Several death threats were made against him. He reportedly now carries a concealed weapon whenever he is out.
A couple of years after Geraldine’s death, he was spotted occasionally with a number of different, and very attractive, women. He got his picture in the papers at play openings, fund-raisers, political functions, usually with someone different on his arm each time. Some talking heads expressed concern that his eye for the ladies might, at some point, prove a
political liability. Everyone admired a player, to a point, but players had too many secrets that could rise to the surface and embarrass them later. Like that old Italian president with his harem of strippers, although that guy, man, he made philandering an Olympic sport. Those same pundits said that before Sawchuck pursued his ambitions for higher office, he’d have to settle down, or at least appear to.
And then came Bridget.
A onetime fashion model with jet black hair who stands five-ten in her stocking feet—she has a passing resemblance to Allison herself—she works for a prestigious public relations firm with offices in SoHo, London, Paris, and Hong Kong. She had organized an event to raise funds to build a kids’ baseball diamond in an underprivileged area—a favorite cause of the attorney general’s—and they appeared to hit it off from the get-go. A whirlwind courtship—as they say—followed, and before some kid who doesn’t have enough money for breakfast can run to first base, the two are engaged. Three months later, they’re married.
Sawchuck, Allison’s research finds, has powerful friends from across the political spectrum, but the majority of them are on the right. He knows two former vice presidents, one Republican, one Democrat, well enough to have them to dinner at his home whenever they’re in town.
Oh, and there’s something else that’s of particular interest to Allison. The dude is loaded.
Estimated worth falls into the “holy shit” category. Most of it inherited. You don’t make that kind of money working for the state, unless you are very, very dirty, and there’s nothing to suggest Morris Sawchuck is, even if his closest friend and adviser, Howard Talliman (nickname: Howard the Taliban) has been known to cut a few corners here and there. Morris’s father, Graham, had been a big-time real estate developer and owned a couple of dozen skyscrapers in Manhattan. Sawchuck inherited the business when his father died, which is now run at arm’s length to avoid any allegations of conflict of interest. Sawchuck doesn’t mind having property and more money than anyone like Allison can even imagine, but what he really craves is attention and influence and the high profile, and he’s found the best way to get it is through the relentless pursuit of those who break the law. Everybody loves a crusader.