Receptor Read online

  He stares at me, but doesn’t say anything. It’s as if he’s waiting for me to catch up.

  Thankfully, there’s some movement at the top of the room. A man is approaching the podium, and although he’s clearly the author, he looks a lot older than he does on the poster. Someone else places a bottle of water on a small table next to him and starts fiddling with the microphone cable. If the event gets going soon, I should be able to inch away from Proctor and leave.

  But it doesn’t.

  The author takes a call on his cell and begins pacing back and forth off to the side.

  I have a tight knot in my stomach now. Proctor hasn’t moved.

  “Look,” I say eventually, “I never met him, but I believe my grandfather was also a Ned. Actually, Edward, but he was known as Ned.”

  “Isn’t that something. What did your grandfather do, Ray?”

  “I don’t really know. He died young.” I swallow. “I think he was in advertising or something?”

  Proctor nods along at this. “Yes, I reckon I knew him. Ned Sweeney.” He takes a sip from his glass. Without looking at me directly, he adds, “He was one of the most extraordinary men I’ve ever met.”

  What?

  The knot in my stomach tightens into a spasm. I lean forward slightly. “Excuse me?”

  “I mean it. He was truly extraordinary.” He pauses. “I can see that now.”

  Proctor looks away and seems lost in thought. This gives me a quick chance to reckon with a thought or two of my own. Am I being played here? Is this all a coincidence? How do I not know that my grandfather was anything, let alone extraordinary?

  “To be honest, Mr. Secretary,” I say in a loud whisper, drawing his gaze back to me, “the only thing I knew about my grandfather growing up was that he killed himself.”

  Someone taps the microphone, clears their throat. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thanks so much for coming…”

  There’s a general shuffling to attention and facing forward, but I don’t move a muscle. I continue to stare at the old man.

  Not moving either, Proctor just gives a gentle shake of his head. “No, son,” he says, also in a whisper, but a barely audible one, “you’ve got it wrong. Ned Sweeney didn’t kill himself.”

  3

  When he opens his eyes, everything is gray and colorless, the ceiling, the walls, the drapes.

  What time is it? What day?

  He turns his head to look at the clock on the nightstand.

  9:40.

  What?

  Please let it be Saturday, and not a workday. It is Saturday. It has to be. Laura wouldn’t let him sleep in like this, not on a workday.

  He stares up at the ceiling. His brain feels leaden. Thoughts start to form, then dissolve. His mouth is dry. His limbs ache. Was he at a party or something last night? Was he drinking? Because—

  He closes his eyes.

  Marilyn Monroe …

  Her image overwhelms him, the intimacy of it, lingering like a strong fragrance. This is the power of dreams, he guesses, of the big screen, the way an image can lodge deep in your mind and hold fast there. He saw her in How to Marry a Millionaire recently, and before that in … what? It was probably Monkey Business, last year, with Cary Grant—

  He opens his eyes.

  But this happened.

  He scrambles to get out of the bed, awkwardly kicking back the covers, as though under sudden attack from a swarm of insects. But then he just stands there, in his bare feet, facing the blank, gently rippling screen of the drapes, his mouth open in shock.

  “Ned, are you all right?”

  He turns and sees Laura. She’s framed in the doorway. She looks worried, anxious even, but he doesn’t answer. He has no idea what to say. He stares at the floral pattern on her quilted housecoat.

  It must be Saturday.

  * * *

  Sweeney maintains his silence over eggs and coffee. He gazes vacantly at the wall, at his plate, avoiding eye contact with Laura. In the living room, Tommy is on the floor, busily muttering to himself, playing with his toy train set, surrounded by it—locomotives, passenger cars, freight cars, a signal box, loose sections of track. He’s at that age where he can conjure up an entire world all on his own. Sweeney wants to engage with him—and Laura, too—but it’s as if he has forgotten how. Every time he starts to say something it immediately strikes him as absurd and he can’t proceed, or his mind just blanks over.

  This continues all day, but Laura doesn’t push him on it, there’s no third degree. She probably assumes he’s hungover. After all, he got in late last night and must have been in a pitiable condition. In the afternoon, he sits with Tommy and they play checkers. Tommy asks a seemingly endless series of questions: Who was Commodore Vanderbilt? Are we Presbyterians? Why do they call them TV dinners? Sweeney does his best to provide answers, but he finds it taxing.

  “How do you know so much stuff, Dad?”

  Sweeney smiles. “Oh, I wish, Tommy. Believe me, there’s an awful lot I don’t know.”

  “I bet you know more than Jim Sullivan’s dad, and he’s a scientist.”

  The way he feels now, Sweeney doubts he knows more than Jim Sullivan, let alone his dad. But he’s not going to say that to Tommy.

  When he doesn’t appear to be any better over breakfast the following morning, Laura finally loses her cool.

  “Jesus Christ, Ned, what’s the matter with you?”

  He looks at her, but doesn’t say anything.

  “You’re beginning to scare me, you know that? Because I—” She stops suddenly. It’s as if she’s just realized something, and is trying to work it out. “Where are your cigarettes? You’re not smoking. I knew there was something odd. I didn’t see you smoking once yesterday…”

  This is delivered like an accusation. But she’s right. Sweeney would normally get through at least one pack of Camels over the course of a day, maybe a pack and a half, and he hasn’t had one since …

  “Ned?”

  Since …

  Staring past Laura, he struggles to form the memory. Not since he was sitting in that apartment on West Fourth Street with Matt Drake and … what was the guy’s name? He can’t remember. But he can visualize the scene clearly now.

  “Ned?”

  This has been eluding him since he woke up yesterday. He’s had fleeting glimpses of it—and glimpses of other stuff, too, other people, other places, images both realistic and impossible, like photographs one second, and wisps of a dream the next. But that fucking apartment. That’s where it started. He looks at Laura, the smoke from her own cigarette rising in a slow plume between them.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m feeling pretty lousy. I think I picked up a bug or something at work.”

  It’s only half a lie, because the condition he’s in now is a close enough approximation to being sick, to being infected with something, that once he’s said it, it starts to feel true.

  “You sure don’t look well,” Laura says. “Should you go back to bed?”

  Sweeney thinks this is probably a good idea, though if he has to wait another twenty-four hours to see Matt Drake and compare notes with him, he’s not sure how happy he’ll feel lying on his back all day staring up at the ceiling.

  As it turns out, he sleeps for most of it, and that evening there’s a slight improvement. He and Laura have dinner and then watch Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour. Sweeney normally finds these guys funny, but not tonight. Also, it’s now been over forty-eight hours since his last cigarette and he can sense Laura staring at him.

  He knows she’s bewildered, but—in his own way—so is he. And all he’s doing, or trying to do, is put a jigsaw puzzle together in his head. It’s just that some of the pieces don’t fit, they’re too big … and the more he focuses on these, the bigger they seem to get. There are different locations, different bars, different drinks, and all of that makes sense, but Peacock Alley? Robert Moses? Marlon goddamned Brando? And the biggest p
iece by a long shot, the most vivid one—if he closes his eyes, even for a second—is still Marilyn Monroe …

  * * *

  On the train to work the next morning, Sweeney sits in his usual seat, but he doesn’t read a newspaper or talk to anyone. He looks around, struck by the notion that after eight hours of desk-bound tedium in the city, every suit on the train here (himself included) will be yo-yoing right back to Long Island and a Sheetrock-and-plywood housing unit like the one he’s just left. The subway ride from Penn Station to Forty-Second Street isn’t much better. Sweeney has a rising sense of dread about what awaits him at the office—the meetings, the phone calls, the casual interactions that punctuate a working day. Out on the street, there’s a chill in the air, and a strange quality to the light, and as he joins the torrents of people and traffic, a throbbing sensation takes hold in the pit of his stomach.

  He doesn’t know what’s the matter with him. He’s just going to work. He does it every day. There’s no reason to be anxious like this. He’s a rank-and-file executive. He has his clients and accounts. He gets along with people. He’s not tortured, or driven by demons. He doesn’t have secret ambitions, like a novel he wants to write. He’s not an alcoholic or a hophead. He likes a pretty girl when he sees one, sure, but he’s not one of those married guys who can’t keep his pecker in his pants. If there is anything—and he can’t even be sure he’s not making this up on the spot—it’s that he’s maybe a little smarter than he allows himself to believe, and this is because he’s afraid of what being smarter would involve, the things it might make him think.

  As he rides the elevator to the fourteenth floor, he avoids making eye contact with anyone. This will be difficult to keep up. Ridley Rogan Blanford is a sizable outfit and at 9:00 a.m. the reception area looks a lot like the atrium at Grand Central Station.

  “Good morning, Mr Sweeney.”

  “Hi, Phyllis.”

  He’s able to meet her eye, but that’s not so hard. She’s the receptionist, the friendly face of the agency. It’s her job to be nice.

  “By the way,” she adds, stopping him in his tracks. “Mr. Blanford would like to see you in his office.”

  “Oh.” Sweeney gazes at her desk, at the neat pile of manila envelopes, the mimeographed pages, the coffee mug filled with ballpoint pens. He feels sick. He taps the edge of her desk. “Thanks, Phyllis.”

  With his head down, he walks past the bank of secretaries and typists, then along the row of writers’ offices. He hears his name a few times but only grunts in reply. It’s all too much, the din of voices, the clacking of typewriters, the harsh light from the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. When he gets into his office, he shuts the door behind him and leans back against it. He stares over at the window. The blinds are drawn, not that there’s anything to see. It’s mostly brick, with just a sliver of a view on the left. The prized offices are all on the other side of the building. Or up on fifteen.

  He’ll pass Matt Drake’s on the way to see Dick Blanford and can stop in for a moment. The sooner he talks to Matt the better, but how should he broach the subject? Matt was still in the apartment when he left. Or so he thinks, but how long did Matt stay? Did he have a similar experience to Sweeney’s? And how much does he really know about this ex–army buddy of his? Mike Sutton. That was his name.

  Sweeney takes off his coat and hangs it on the hat stand. He goes over and sits at his desk. He stares at the door.

  The truth is he has no desire to speak to Matt Drake. At all. About anything. Or to speak to anyone else, if it comes to it. In fact, the thought of going back out through that door—or even picking up the telephone to make a simple call—fills him with dread.

  He looks at the stack of memos and call reports in front of him and feels another ripple of nausea. How is he supposed to do his job? How is he supposed to function? He should have stayed at home today. He should have called in sick. But if he is sick, what’s wrong with him? If he has a bug, what kind of a bug is it?

  It’s not a bug, though, because he’s actually starting to remember stuff. This Mike Sutton guy, for instance. He put something in their drinks. Sweeney figured that out at some point, calculated it from how Sutton … from how he moved. At the drinks cart. With his back to them.

  Is that even possible?

  Sweeney realizes he has absolutely no choice now but to go upstairs and talk to Matt Drake. However awkward or embarrassing their conversation might be, he needs to know that he hasn’t lost his mind. He gets up from the desk, goes over to a small cabinet in the corner, opens it, and takes out a bottle of vodka. As he unscrews the cap, he looks around, even though the door is closed and there’s no one else in the room. He takes a quick swig from the bottle, then replaces the cap and puts the bottle back in the cabinet.

  * * *

  As he approaches Matt’s office, Sweeney notices that the door is ajar. Next to it, Matt’s secretary, Miss Bennett, is at her desk. She looks up.

  “Is Matt free?” he says, nodding sideways at the door. “I need a minute with him.”

  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Drake isn’t in yet.”

  “Oh.” He looks at his watch. It’s nine-twenty. “Isn’t he normally here by now?”

  She consults her own watch. “I guess…”

  “Ned?”

  He looks up. Further along the hallway, Dick Blanford is leaning out of his office. He raises a hand and makes a beckoning gesture, then disappears inside, leaving the door open.

  Blanford is a legend in the business (aren’t they all) and knows everyone from movie stars and baseball players to senators and cardinals. Despite this, he doesn’t drink or smoke and has a reputation for being somewhat aloof. He’s about sixty years old, tall, thin, and very distinguished looking. On any normal day, Sweeney would probably have jumped at the opportunity to go in there and impress him, or try to, but this doesn’t feel like a normal day.

  In any case, the first thing Sweeney notices when he steps into the office is that they’re not alone. There’s another man he doesn’t recognize standing over to the left, by the window. The second thing is that the blinds are drawn. In his own office, that wouldn’t matter. In here, it does. It’s a corner office, and the view of Madison Avenue—if he remembers correctly—is fairly spectacular.

  “Come in,” Blanford says, “and close the door, would you?”

  Sweeney does as instructed, then turns back to face the room, another knot forming in his stomach.

  “Please, Ned, take a seat.”

  There are two olive-green leather chairs facing Blanford’s desk. He goes over and sits in one of them. Blanford is behind the desk now, but he remains standing. He runs a couple of the agency’s biggest accounts, and in front of him are the storyboards for various TV commercials.

  As Sweeney looks up, waiting for Blanford to speak, something occurs to him. Maybe he’s about to get fired.

  Blanford clears his throat.

  It sort of feels like it. Not that Sweeney can think of a valid reason. He hasn’t screwed up any of his accounts, or insulted a client, or spilled coffee on some precious piece of artwork. Though the way he feels today, give him an hour or two and he probably will.

  But Blanford doesn’t know that. “Now, listen to me, Ned.”

  Sweeney straightens up in his chair.

  “This gentleman here,” Blanford says, indicating the guy standing over by the window, “is Detective Jim Ferguson. He’s with the New York City Police Department.” The knot in Sweeney’s stomach tightens. He turns toward Ferguson and nods. Ferguson does the same. “Now here’s the thing,” Blanford continues. “What I’m about to tell you hasn’t gotten out yet, and we need it to stay that way, at least until…” He pauses and Sweeney can see that Blanford is actually nervous. “At least until certain facts have been established.” He pauses. “So look, I don’t suppose there’s any easy way to put this. Matt Drake is dead. He’s been killed.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, it’s awful, a tragedy. A
nd I’m sorry to have to break it to you so suddenly, but I only just found out myself, about what”—he looks at his watch—“thirty, forty minutes ago.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I know.”

  “What happened?”

  “That’s part of the problem,” Blanford says. “It’s not clear. Or, rather, what led up to it is not clear. What actually killed him is that he walked out in front of a passing car over on Broadway in the early hours of Saturday morning.”

  Sweeney leans forward in the chair. “Saturday morning? But that’s … that’s…”

  “I know,” Blanford says. “I know. The reason for the delay is that, well”—he nods in Ferguson’s direction—“seemingly Matt had no identification on him and was … half naked.”

  Sweeney turns to look at Ferguson. He swallows loudly, and what feels like incriminatingly, before turning to face Blanford again. “My God,” he whispers, “that’s so weird.”

  “Yes.” Blanford winces. “The body was only identified last night. Jessica’s been told, and naturally she’s devastated, but no one else knows.” He waves a hand at the door. “Certainly no one out there.”

  In the brief silence that follows, the significance of this hits Sweeney. And it’s obvious. Because why else is he here? It’s not as if he’s some kind of RRB insider. It’s not as if he was actually friends with Matt Drake. Did he even know that Matt’s wife’s name was Jessica?

  Sweeney knows there’s only one reason Blanford called him up here. He stares at the surface of the desk, feeling as if he could throw up on it at any second—though unless he wants to get fired for real, he probably shouldn’t do it all over these storyboards. He senses something to his left and turns slightly. Detective Ferguson is moving toward him. He stops by the side of Blanford’s desk.

  “So, Mr. Sweeney,” he says, “it’s my understanding that you’re one of the last people who may have seen Matt Drake alive. Is that correct?”