"Right here. More congested spleen being vented. It says some high school teacher in Jackson Heights tossed two unruly students out a second-story window."
"Probably a physics lab and they were having trouble with the concept of gravity."
"One's got a broken arm, the other a broken leg. Four cops it took to arrest the teach. Know what he said when they finally subdued him? 'They were talking while I was talking! Nobody talks when I'm talking! Next time they'll listen!'"
"Somehow I doubt there'll be a next—hey, what are you doing?"
Abe had just dumped a mass of black papaya seeds and their gooey matrix on the sports section of the Times.
"What? I should dump them on my nice clean counter?"
Jack wasn't going to get into that—the counter was anything but clean. "What if I wanted to read that?"
"Suddenly you're Mr. Yankee Fan? A jock you're not."
"I used to be a star hitter in Little League. And what if I wanted to know who won the Knicks game?"
"They didn't play."
"All right. The Nets, then."
"They lost to the Jazz, one-oh-nine to one-oh-one."
Jack stared at Abe. He believed him. Abe listened exclusively to talk radio. He'd probably heard the scores a dozen times already this morning. But Jack wasn't giving up. He rarely read a sports section outside of World Series time or Super Bowl season, but a principle was at stake here. He wasn't sure which one, but he'd come up with something.
"But sometimes I like to read about a game."
Abe had freed up the orange papaya fruit but left the crescents lounging in their rinds. Now he was cross-slicing the crescents into bite-size pieces.
"You know the score already. You need more? For why? You're going to read some self-styled mavin's postulations on why they won or why they lost? Who cares unless you're the coach. Team A won; Team B lost; end of story; when's the next game?" He gestured at the papaya with his knife. "Eat."
Jack popped a piece into his mouth. Delicious. As he reached for another piece, Abe gestured to where Parabellum was eyeing the gloppy mass on the sports section. The parakeet cocked his head left and right with suspicion, hungry for the seeds but not sure what to make of the goo.
"Such a fastidious bird I've got."
"You kidding?" Jack said. "You plopped that stuff down on George Veczy's column, and now he can't read the end."
Abe fixed him with a silent, over-the-reading-glasses stare.
Jack sighed. "All right then, hand me the Post, will you—unless you've messed up its sports section too."
Abe's hand started toward it then stopped. "Well, well, well. Here's something that might interest you."
"Something about the Mets, I hope," Jack said.
"A different kind of sportsman—your preppy rioter friends are in the news again."
"Sent to Sing-Sing, I hope."
"Quite the contrary. They're walking—all of them."
Jack's mood suddenly darkened. "Let me see that."
Abe gave the Metro Section a one-eighty spin and jabbed his finger at a tiny article next to the lottery numbers box. Jack scanned it once, then, not quite believing his eyes, read it again.
"None of them booked! Not one! No charges against any of them!"
"Due to 'a new development' in the case, it says. Hmmm… what do you think that could mean?"
Jack knew what Abe was getting at: Well-to-do guys, some of them undoubtedly with a connection or two in City Hall or Police Plaza, get a few strings pulled and sail home as if nothing had happened.
And one of them was Robert B. "Porky" Butler. The bastard who'd damn near killed Vicky hadn't spent a single night in jail—wasn't even being charged with anything.
"I've got to make a call."
Abe didn't offer his phone and Jack wouldn't have used it if he had. Not with so many people using caller ID these days.
Jack had retrieved Butler's phone number from his wallet by the time he reached the pay phone on the corner. He plunked in a few coins and was soon connected to the home of Robert B. Butler, alumnus of St. Barnabas Prep and attacker of little girls on museum steps.
When the maid or whoever it was answered the phone and asked in West African-accented English who was calling, he made up a name—Jack Gavin.
"I'm an attorney for the St. Barnabas Prep Alumni Association. I'd like to talk to Mr. Butler about the unfortunate incident Wednesday night and his injury. How is he doing, by the way?"
"Very well," the woman said.
"Is he in a lot of pain?"
"Hardly any."
Damn. He felt his jaw muscles tense. Have to fix that.
"May I speak to him a minute?"
"He's with a physical therapist right now. Let me check."
A minute later she was back. "Mr. Butler can't come to the phone right now, but he'll be glad to see you anytime this afternoon."
Keeping his voice even and professionally pleasant, Jack said he'd be over around one.
Scaring Vicky, endangering her life, and then skating on any charges…
He and Mr. Butler were going to have a little heart-to-heart.
4
Nadia sat in the sealed, dimly lit room and stared at the 3-D image floating in the air before her. The first thing she'd done upon reaching the GEM Basic lab was light up the imager and call up the Loki structure from memory: the Loki molecule—or rather its degraded form, which she'd begun thinking of as Loki-2—had appeared.
Changed, just like her printout.
OK. That could be explained by someone tampering with the imager's memory. But she had an ace up her sleeve. Before leaving yesterday she had scraped a few particles of the original Loki sample from the imager.
She removed the stoppered test tube from her pocket and dumped the grains into the sample receptacle. Something about the color… she couldn't say exactly what, but it wasn't right. She sat back and waited, then punched up the image. Her mouth went dry as the same damn molecule took shape before her.
The dry lab lightened, then darkened again as the door behind her opened and closed.
"Are you a believer yet?"
She turned at Dr. Monnet's voice. He stood behind her, looking as if he hadn't slept last night.
She swallowed. "Tell me this is a trick. Please?"
"I wish it were." He sighed. "You have no idea how much I wish this were some sort of hoax. But it is not."
"It has to be. If you were simply asking me to believe that this molecule alters its structure during the course of some 'celestial event,' I could buy that. I'd want to know how the 'event' effected the change, but I could imagine gravitational influence or something equally subtle acting as a catalyst, and I could handle that. But what we've got here—if we haven't been flim-flammed—is a molecule that not only mutates from one form to another but substitutes its new structure for all records of its original structure. In effect, it's editing reality. And we both know that's impossible."
"Knew," Dr. Monnet said. "That was what we assumed was true. Now we know different."
"Speak for yourself."
He smiled wanly. "I know how you feel. You are utterly confused, you are frightened and suspicious, yet you are also exhilarated and challenged. And the tug-of-war between all these conflicting emotions leaves you on the brink of tears. Am I right?"
Nadia felt her eyes begin to brim as a sob built in her throat. She wiped them and nodded, unable to speak.