“The doctor will be down to see you in a moment,” the nurse told him.
“We can’t just go visit Mark?”
“No.”
“But they said he was much better.”
“You’ll have to wait for the doctor,” said the nurse firmly.
The doctor arrived a few minutes later, a portly man with woolly white hair and a sad, friendly look on his face. “Mr. Crew?”
Gideon leapt up. “Yes, Doctor, that’s me. How is he?”
“And the lady is—?”
“A friend. She’s here to support me.”
“Very well,” he said. “Please come with me.”
They followed the doctor into another, smaller waiting room, more like an office, empty of people. The doctor closed the door behind them.
“Mr. Crew, I’m very, very sorry to tell you that Mr. Wu passed away about half an hour ago.”
Gideon stood thunderstruck.
“I’m very, very sorry.”
“You didn’t call me — to be there at the end.”
“We tried to reach you at the number you gave us.”
Damn,thought Gideon; his cell phone had not survived the swim.
“Mr. Wu gave signs of stabilizing, and we had hopes for a while. But he was severely injured, and sepsis set in. This is not uncommon with severe injuries. We took every possible measure and did the best we could, but it wasn’t nearly enough.”
Gideon swallowed. He felt Orchid’s comforting hand on his shoulder.
“I have here some paperwork, unfortunately necessary, which you as next of kin will need to fill out regarding the disposition of the remains and some other details.” He proffered a manila packet to Gideon. “You don’t need to do this right away, but we would like to know as soon as possible. In three days, Mr. Wu’s remains will be moved to the city morgue to await your instructions. Would you like me to arrange for you to see the body?”
“Um, no, no, that won’t be necessary.” Gideon took the folder. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for all your help.”
The doctor nodded.
“By any chance…did Mark say anything before he passed? When I talked to the nurse this morning, she said she thought he was becoming lucid. If he said anything, anything at all, even if it seemed nonsensical, I’d like to know.”
“He showed signs of regaining lucidity, but it never actually rose to the level of consciousness. He said nothing. And then the sepsis set in.” He looked at Gideon. “I’m terribly sorry. For what it’s worth, he didn’t suffer at all.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
The doctor nodded and left.
Gideon threw himself into a chair. Orchid sat down next to him, her face creased with concern. He reached into his pocket, removed a sheaf of bills, and handed them to her. “This is for you. When we leave the hospital, we’ll get in a cab together, but after a while I’ll get out of the cab while you continue on to wherever you want to go.”
She didn’t take the money.
“Thanks for your help,” he said. “I really appreciated it.”
“Creighton, or Crew, or whatever your name is, I can guess this isn’t really about some Method acting gig. You’re a nice guy, and it’s been a long time since I met any nice guys. Whatever you’re doing, I want to help.” She pressed his hand.
Gideon cleared his throat. “Thanks, but I’ve got to do this alone.” He knew how lame that sounded even as he said it.
“But…will I see you again? I don’t care about the money.”
Gideon glanced at her and was shocked at the look he saw on her face.
He thought about lying, but decided the truth was ultimately less painful. “No. I’m not going to call you. Look, the money’s yours. You earned it.” He gave the bills an impatient shake.
“I don’t want it,” she said. “I want you to call me.”
“Look,” said Gideon as coldly as he could. “This was a business arrangement, and you did your job well. Just take the money and go.”
She reached out, snatched the money. “You’re an asshole.” She turned to leave and he tried not to notice she was crying.
“Good-bye,” he said, cringing inwardly.
“Good-bye, jerk-off.”
27
Gideon Crew strolled up Fifth Avenue and entered Central Park at the 102nd Street gate. He felt absolutely awful. It was early evening, and the joggers were out in force. He couldn’t get Orchid’s lovesick look out of his head. And now that Wu was dead — and his assignment had crashed and burned — he found himself replaying Glinn again and again in his mind, pulling out the medical file with a sorrowful look on his face. Arteriovenous malformation.The more he thought about it, the less probable it seemed: this mysterious illness that would just happen to strike him dead in a year with no warning, no treatment, no symptoms, nothing. It smelled phony, smacking of psychological manipulation. Glinn seemed the type to tell any kind of fantastic story if it got him what he wanted. Gideon walked aimlessly, not knowing where he was going, cutting across the baseball diamonds, heading west.
This is crazy,he thought, just forget about Orchid and the file and move on. Focus on the problem.But he couldn’t forget. He pulled out a new cell phone he’d bought—a cheapie with preloaded minutes—and called Tom O’Brien as he walked.
“Yo” came the abrasive voice after an inordinate number of rings.
“Gideon here. What news?”
“Jeez, you told me I’d have twenty-four hours.”
“Well?”
“Well, the credit card and passport are just that. No hidden data. The cell phone’s the same. It’s a brand-new SIM card phone, probably just purchased.”
“Damn.”
“All that’s left on it are the contacts you already got, a few recent calls — and that’s it. No other hidden data, no secret microchips, nothing.”
“What about the string of numbers I gave you?”
“Those are a lot more interesting. I’m still working on them.”
Gideon turned south. It was now dusk, and the park was emptying.
“Interesting why?”
“Like I told you before, lot of patterns in here.”
“Such as?”
“Repeated numbers, rows of decreasing numbers, stuff like that. Right now it’s hard to say what they mean. I just started in on them. It’s definitely not code.”
Central Park Reservoir loomed ahead, and he stepped onto the jogging path. The water lay dark and still. Far to the south, over the tops of the trees, Gideon could see the skyline of Midtown, the lights in the buildings glowing against the fading sky.
“How do you know?”
“Any decent code yields a string of numbers that look random. They aren’t, of course, but all the mathematical tests for randomness will show that they are. In this case, even the simplest test shows they’re not random.”
“Test? Such as?”
“Tallying up the digits. A truly random string has roughly ten percent zeros, ten percent ones, et cetera. This one is way heavy on the zeros and ones.”
There was a silence. Gideon took a deep breath and tried to speak casually. “And the CT scans I gave you?”
“Oh yeah. I passed them along to a doctor like you asked.”
“And?”
“I was supposed to call him this afternoon. I forgot.”
“Right,” said Gideon.
“I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”
“You do that,” said Gideon. “Thanks.” He wiped his brow. He felt like shit.
And then all of a sudden — for the second time that day — he had the distinct impression he was being followed. He looked around. It was almost dark, and he was in the middle of the park.
“Hello? Anyone home?” asked O’Brien.
Gideon realized he hadn’t hung up. “Yeah. Listen, I’ve got to go. See you tomorrow.”
“Not before noon.”
He closed the phone and stuck it in his pocket. Maintaining a brisk stride, he headed west past the tennis courts, still keeping to the jogging path. What made him feel he was being followed this time? He hadn’t heard or seen anything…or had he? Long ago, he’d learned to trust his instincts — and they’d saved his ass again just that morning.