The Shadow Box (37 page)

Doctors and shrinks write a ton of prescriptions for it
because it works, it's not addictive, and it's cheap. The
biggest side effect is weight loss, and even that is good.
It doesn't zone you out like, say, heroin or Quaaludes. It's
not a supercharger like cocaine or crystal meth but you
don't come crashing down from it either and you don't
get holes in your nasal passage. All it does is let you be
at your best.

This, says Yahya, is what makes it too good to last. Guaranteed, he says, that whenever that many people are
having a nice time, someone will rain on their parade.
Maybe the Fed, the AMA, or even the religious right.
They'll say hold it. Life is a vale of tears, right? You're
supposed
to have ups and downs. What's all this
up
shit
all the time?

It's already happening, says Yahya. More and more doc
tors are getting nervous. They say maybe this is too good to be true. They say screwing around with the brain's
chemistry too long has got to be bad so they start weaning
their patients off it. What does the patient say? He says
fuck you, Doc. Next party I go to, I'm damned if I'll be
the only wallflower there. Next time I have to speak before
an audience, or I have a job interview lined up, or I want
to strike up a conversation with the lady down the bar, I don't want to freeze up anymore. You won't renew the prescription? Okay. I'll ask some high school kid to point
me to his pusher. I'll load up with a year's supply.

The more Julie thought about this, the less wrong it
seemed.

There are drugs that do bad and drugs that do good.
Even Pop wouldn't argue with that. Offer him heroin, he'd slap your face. But the morphine he took for the pain that
last month, that was just liquid heroin, right? Did he care
where it came from? If his doctor wouldn't give him
enough, and his sons said don't worry, we'll go pick up
some more on the street, would he have said no?

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe he would have.

The bartender was waving at him. The one who was
wired.

Wired or not, he seemed a nice kid. The customers all
like him and he doesn't dip into the till. Julie had no idea what agency he worked for but it had to be federal. Local cops don't have the patience to plant a guy full-time. They
don't have the budget, either.

“Call for you, Mr. Giordano.” He's holding up the
bar phone.

“Who is it, Jimmy?”

“Man named Parker. Says he wants to check a
reference.”

No shit?

“Get a number. Say I'll call him right back.”

“You can take it right here, Mr. G. I'll give you
some privacy.”

Kid . . . don't push it, okay?

“Five minutes, Jimmy. I'll call him from back in the
office.”

Privacy, huh?

Christ! That means the kid has the whole fucking bar
wired.

Chapter 23

Megan knew,
somehow, that it wasn't Bronwyn
he'd been thinking about.

You must have a different look in your eyes, thought
Fallon, a different kind of smile, when the memory is an
old one. And Megan was definitely jealous. Jealous and a
little sad.

   
He had a sense that, in her life, relationships never
lasted very long. It wasn't the frigidity thing. They would
last until the guy found out whatever it is in her back
ground that she's in no big hurry to reveal. Like her father
was the commandant of Auschwitz or she used to drink
the blood of sleeping children.

It was hard to imagine what she could possibly tell him
that would make him want to back off. She was such a terrific woman in so many ways that it was hard even to
feel the need to reassure her. Or explain about Mary Beth.
About how there's nothing wrong with leaving room in
your heart for special people.

On that subject, come to think of it, he was feeling a
little guilty himself about how quickly he was getting over
Bronwyn. Another remarkable woman. One in a million.
He would never forget her. But Megan
was
. . .
he
didn't know
...

Fresher.

Softer.

And if she likes you, she lets it all hang out. That's how
some women get hurt. But he would never hurt Megan.

She took the helm as they approached the Woods Hole
Race. The race was a narrow channel with very strong
and tricky currents. Most sailboats powered through.
Need
less to say, not Megan.

He stood behind her, his arms around her chest and
shoulders, smelling her hair. Getting through the tidal rip
took all her concentration. That was good. It was nice, for
a change, to be able to think about other days without feeling like he was on a party line.

He never became a bully.

But he did, he supposed, become something of a snob. It happened very gradually.

He learned to play tennis and golf
be
cause Uncle Jake
insisted and paid for the lessons. He would tell the instruc
tors, “Keep on him until he's good.” He joined a sailing club and learned the basics because his uncle thought
yachting was classy. His yacht was a Sunfish but you have
to start somewhere. And he liked it.

He learned to play bridge but drew the line at joining
a classical music appreciation club that Jake had spotted in the Notre Dame catalog.

“You don't want to know about opera? Ballet?”

“Uncle Jake, have you ever been to either one?” ,

”I was deprived. You aren't.”

“Well, I'm sorry. There are only so many hours in
the day.”

“How about Rugby? Nothing like a good scrum to get
your juices flowing.”

A good scrum?

It's not always easy to know when Jake is pulling
your leg.

But overall, he'd been a pretty good student, top ten
percent, a well-rounded if not stand-out jock, and people
thought he was good-looking, especially in his ROTC
uniform.

Add to this that dumb reputation. It was more than just
those two episodes during his freshman year. His subse
quent disdain for the karate club could only mean that he
was far more advanced than anything they could teach
him. He was rumored to be an expert in several disciplines
of the martial arts. Denying it had no effect.

There was more. Add four years of whispers about cer
tain powerful and mysterious New York connections, add
being orphaned by some equally mysterious tragedy, and
you had a young guy who was almost irresistible to the
more vacuous young ladies of the country club set. Their
fathers, oddly, seemed to like him just as much. He'd get
invitations to their clubs whether he was actively seeing
their daughters or not. It went to his head for a while.

One of the fathers actually proposed to him. Told him
he could do a lot worse than marrying into the Johnson
family. The Winnetka, Illinois, Johnsons. Princes of the
automotive aftermarket industry. He and Tracey would
make a beautiful couple. Or he and Kimberly. Michael
couldn't remember. They were
all
named Tracey or
Kimberly.

He majored in international marketing and minored in
finance. This had been Uncle Jake's suggestion.

“International's the future, Mike. You remember when
it was a big deal to say a thing you bought was
‘imported’?”

”Uh . . . no.”

“Trust me. But now
everything's
imported. Moving
goods in and out and moving money. Those are two things
you should know about.”

He graduated with honors, won a prize or two, lettered
in football, and was commissioned a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves. After stateside training, he would be join
ing an armored unit in Germany. Michael's first choice
had been flight training in attack helicopters. Too danger
ous, said his uncle. Stay on the ground. Michael applied
anyway and was promptly rejected. He wondered aloud
whether the army chief of staff, per chance, owed
Big
Jake Fallon a favor.

“Count your blessings,” was all his uncle would say.
“If you're going to crash something, crash a tank.”