“This is what Fayza did to me. She hired a hacker and got all the details on me.”
“This isn’t hacking, it’s data mining.” She pointed at the big wall, where dozens of pastel spheres pulsed and shifted. “Everybody leaves a trail. It’s almost impossible not to leave footprints all over the online world, and that easily maps to your location in the real world. Unless you’re rich—and Edo Vik is very, very rich. He’s got a top-notch reputation company scrubbing his tracks. His personal footprint is null, as far as recent data goes. But you can infer a lot from second- and third-degree associates. Like this guy.”
She gestured toward one of the smaller circles, and it expanded. “The husband of one of his assistants is a twenty-five-year-old amateur foodie microfamous for his restaurant reviews. He lives in New York, but two nights ago he raved about a meal he’d just had at the 8-Ball, an Uzbek mobile restaurant in Hampstead. That’s north London.”
“So maybe they’re on vacation,” I said.
“Maybe. But you have to look at the data in aggregate. I’ve got the org chart for Edo’s whole company, and I can keep track of most of them. The handful of people who assist Edo and Junior are in the UK right now, but they’re leaving soon.”
I touched one of the spheres, and it shrank. The graphics told me nothing. “Are you telling me you know where Edo will be, and when?”
“I can make a pretty good guess.”
I breathed in. “When is he coming back to the US?”
“Next Thursday. Afternoon. New York City.”
“Holy shit!” I laughed. “How can you possibly know that?”
“I asked.” She allowed herself a smile. “That foodie husband? I friended him and asked him if he was going to be home in time for the Taste of New York festival, and he said he was out of town for the first day, but he’d be back in time for Friday. All the commercial flights are arriving in the afternoon.”
Five days.
“I have to be there,” I said.
Ollie said, “Where? New York?”
“Yes, New York. I’m hunting him, right?”
“So … you want to cross the border.”
“That’s right.”
“Lyda, if they catch you on the other side, you could end up in prison—American prison, not some nice Canadian hospital.”
“You said people do it all the time. I’ll just hop over, then hop back before the devil knows I’m there.”
She put out a hand. “I know you don’t want anyone to make the drug, but it’s not worth doing time for.”
“You don’t know how dangerous this stuff is,” I said.
“Try me.”
I took a breath. “Okay. The problem is not that it causes these hallucinations; it’s that it’s so damn convincing—and you stay convinced. Look at Rovil. He knows the chemistry, yet he still thinks that fucking Ganesh is there guiding him. Numinous not only installs a supernatural chaperone, it makes you believe in it.”
“Even you?” Ollie asked.
“I know, in the deepest recesses of my ‘heart,’ that Dr. Gloria is real, that she was sent by God to save me from killing myself. It’s a Wonderful Life, courtesy of an overactive temporal lobe.”
“But you’re handling it,” Ollie said. “You can keep track of what’s real.”
“Barely,” I said. “I know, in an abstract way, that she’s a symptom of an overdose, but that doesn’t feel true. Half the time I can’t stop myself from talking back to her. Every day I tell myself, ‘Think like a stage magician.’”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Know it’s a trick and don’t forget it’s a trick,” I said. “The rabbit is already in the hat. Do not clap for fucking Tinkerbell. Believe nothing.”
“Sounds tiring.”
“Exactly. How many people can do that every day? Rovil can’t. Gil can’t. Not even Mikala. And what about—?” I started to say What about kids? “What happens if this spreads? The planet’s already too full of fanatics. Numinous could convert millions of people into true believers—each of ’em one hundred percent certain they’ve been personally handed the fucking stone tablets.”
Ollie stared at me. I said, “I’m sorry, was that too ranty?”
“You’ve been rehearsing this speech,” she said.
“What? No. Well, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. But you get what I’m saying, right?”
“Sure,” Ollie said. “You’re saving the world.”
“It sounds dumb when you say it like that.”
She shrugged.
“This really is a dangerous drug,” I said.
“I believe that part. I just don’t think that’s why you’re doing all this—breaking out of the hospital, crossing international borders…” She shook her head. “Is this about the girl?”
I flinched without moving. Yes, that is possible.
“What girl?” I asked.
“Francine,” she said. “The girl who killed herself.”
Oh, I thought. Her. “I barely knew her,” I said.
Ollie squinted at me. “All right,” she said. “But someday you’re going to tell me why you’re really doing this.”
And I thought, No. No I’m not.
“I’m not asking for much,” I said. “I have no idea how to get through customs, and I just need you to point me in the right direction. You know what I mean—fake passports, documents…”
“Lyda, you have a tracking device installed in your arm. There is no way you’re crossing the border with that thing.”
“I thought maybe you could help with that, too.”
“What makes you think I can do any of this?”
“You told me. You said criminals did it every day.”
“I’m not a criminal,” Ollie said. She almost managed to say it with a straight face.
Ollie went away to think for a while, by which I mean she sat on the couch and stared at the wall for half an hour. Then she said, “The first thing we have to do is find you a pet.”
“What kind of pet?”
* * *
“Which one do you like?” the Cat Lady asked.
The house swelled and pulsed with felines. They breathed on the bookshelves, prowled the backs of the couches, swirled in currents around our ankles. The atmosphere was an acrid funk of inadequately suppressed urine and dander. Bobby and I sat on the couch, surrounded. A big orange tabby had jumped onto his lap and was eyeing the treasure chest with a predatory eye. Ollie had refused to come with us, said she had other calls to make, so she gave us directions to this house in Markham and sent us off to choose.
“Does it matter?” I asked.
The Cat Lady scowled. She was a large, dark-skinned woman in her sixties, dressed in a red tank top and purple stretch pants. Her arms were sleeved in densely crowded tattoos that had blurred into paisley. “Fine,” she said. “Just grab any old cat, why not.”
I pointed to the orange monster on Bobby’s lap. “Okay, this one.”
“Shandygaff? Don’t be ridiculous; he’s too old.”
“A kitten then.”
“What?”
“Look, why don’t you just pick one out for me?”
She closed her eyes, as if regretting ever letting me in the house. “Fine,” she said.
She set down the two cats on her lap and began to look around the room. I could see fifteen, twenty cats, and no telling how many were in the kitchen and bedrooms.
Bobby yelped. He was clutching his treasure chest. “It clawed me!” he said.
“Settle down,” I said.
The cat batted at Bobby’s closed hands. “Lyda, please, get it off me.”
“Let him play with your toy,” the Cat Lady said.
“It’s not a toy!”
She rolled her eyes. We were scoring no points with the Cat Lady. She put her hands on her hips, looked around at the bookshelves. “Ah! There you are!” She nabbed a black cat and pointed his face at me. He looked morose. “This is Lamont,” she said.