Saving Jason Read online

  “Don’t hit the log-in button, it’s an alarm. Go to the top right and click on the logo of the little fat man.”

  He walked me through the sign-in procedure—which required not one, but three log-in pages, each with a long password and a CAPTCHA box. “To deter the bots.” The whole process took minutes—an eternity in computer time.

  “At the prompt, I want you to start talking. It doesn’t matter what you say. Read the newspaper or give the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s just to give an imprint for the voice recognition software. Then hit the video button so the system can do facial recognition. It’s not perfect—I could scam it—but it’s good enough.”

  “Good enough” was computer-speak for “top-of-the-line.”

  “You created a facial recognition program? From scratch?”

  “I borrowed it from a Disney app. It works better than anything I could have written.”

  “Talking to you, I often get the feeling that I am standing on a promontory, looking at a future that I do not understand.”

  “Ain’t that always the way. Keep talking. I’ll stop you when the program is ready.”

  I recited the words to “Friend of the Devil,” stopping when I got to the line “I’ll spend my life in jail.”

  “That’s fine,” Hannay said. “You’re done.”

  A new window opened and I was looking at Hannay on the screen. It was like Skype, but with two bar-graph monitors along the border that registered both facial and vocal recognition. They flickered up around the ninety-five percent mark.

  “Very cute,” I said. “And no one can eavesdrop?”

  “They’d have to be better than I am. Or have a lot more resources. NSA or Homeland Security could do it, if they knew where to look.”

  “So, what do you have for me? Anything new?”

  “Two more companies with similar number combinations. Nothing more.”

  “Then hold up on it. I need to find another angle.” I thought for a moment. “Did you ever get a chance to check that name I gave you? James Nealis.”

  “You said it wasn’t a priority.”

  An idea came to me. “Did I? See what you can do. But I do have another name I would like you to research for me first. Scott, first name Joseph. He works for Becker out on Long Island.”

  “Want to take a guess on how many Joseph Scotts there are in the greater New York area?”

  “He’s young. Early thirties, tops. At least mid-twenties. He’s a broker, he’s licensed.”

  “That helps. When do you need this?”

  “How’s tomorrow morning?”

  “Hah! You’re looking for real depth.”

  “Anything. I want to have something to hold over this guy when I talk to him. Then give me Nealis.”

  “Check in with me around nine.”

  I stayed there in the chair, running one search after another, jumping from James Nealis to number series to Joseph Scott and back again. Hours later, all I had accomplished was to run down the battery on the laptop. I plugged it in to recharge and closed my eyes.

  24

  A small hand plucked at my shirt.

  “Breakfast.”

  The Kid was up and must have been standing next to me for the last few minutes. Sunlight had replaced the reflected light from down on Broadway. It was morning.

  “Breakfast. Right.” What day was it? The Kid had put on a pair of blue jeans and a bright yellow sweatshirt that was a recent favorite and a major change in his likes and dislikes—the year before, he would never wear yellow. In fact, yellow was now his number-one favorite color in almost all things. Red was now banished. The outfit made him look like a miniature suburban dad ready for the weekend chores, but he had done it himself and that was what mattered. Bright Colors = Thursday. The Kid and I kept a calendar on the door in his room and he started every day by placing a big black X on the day just finished. He never forgot.

  Breakfast was also in transition. Skeli had somehow persuaded him to try yogurt and it had been an immediate hit, throwing his whole weekly schedule into chaos. Scrambled eggs—no spots—once eaten on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were now only to be served on Tuesday and Thursday. Cereal was no longer allowed, it being “for babies.” Syrup, and either pancakes or French toast, was for the weekend. Once I made the proper adjustments, I found that my life was greatly improved by this. I never had to struggle to keep the syrup off his clothes before school, and preparing lemon yogurt meant nothing more than tearing off the foil cap and giving the Kid a spoon. Exactly the kind of food preparation at which I excelled.

  “I’m on the case, my boy. Go sit down and I’ll get your juice and vitamin.”

  I jumped up too quickly and my screaming back reminded me that sleeping in an ancient broken-spring armchair was a dumb thing to do at any age. I began putting his meal together, feeling both rushed and chagrined. Two eggs—both spotless—whisked to a golden froth and poured over a single pat of melted butter.

  “You want cheese today?”

  He smiled.

  Neither of us smiled often enough. I smiled back.

  I grated a sprinkling of cheddar cheese over the eggs while they cooked—another of the new culinary extravagances the Kid allowed—and in minutes had redeemed myself as father of the year.

  “Here you go.” I put the plate in front of him and returned seconds later with a glass of water, a thimble-sized serving of no-pulp orange juice, his vitamin, and his morning meds. “I’m going to take a quick shower. You eat up and maybe we’ll have time to play a game or read a bit before we leave.”

  I cheated and stayed in the shower a full minute longer than necessary, letting the hot water soothe the muscles in my lower back. The Kid took a yoga class every Saturday morning; maybe I should consider it. Maybe I would start it over the summer. Or next fall. Later, at any rate.

  While I shaved, I planned out the day. First order of business was to send Heather a text. The Kid had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon. Next, I needed to get to the bank for some cash to pay Carolina, the housekeeper. Then I had to rescue Virgil and the firm. Maybe when I was done, I could end war, fix climate change, and save the planet from an alien invasion.

  It was time to confront the broker—Scott. Joseph Scott. I would call his branch manager and insist that Scott come into Manhattan for a sit-down. He wouldn’t be on his own turf. He’d be easier to trip up. If I needed to bring in Virgil or Aimee as heavy artillery, they’d be an elevator ride away. And I would be at least two steps ahead of Blackmore.

  Showered, shaved, and dressed for battle with the forces of evil in a blue custom suit from Saint Laurie, white shirt, and solid red tie, I was back to the Kid in ten minutes.

  I found him with the missing iPad propped up in front of him. The eggs were untouched and congealed into a dull lump. His juice was exactly as I had left it, the vitamin beside it. He had taken his medicine. Small miracles keep me sane.

  A cartoon was playing on the small screen. Disney. Mickey and Goofy. A female version of Goofy in a polka-dot dress was terrorizing Mickey. I didn’t see much humor in it, but I accept that I was not the target audience. The Kid, however, wasn’t laughing, either. He was rapt, barely blinking often enough to keep his eyeballs moistened, with his mouth slightly agape. But he was not reacting to any of the antics. I felt like the machine had just stolen my child’s brain and replaced it with straw.

  The female Goofy was supposed to be Goofy’s grandmother. I realized that if I had figured that out, I was already much too involved in the show. It had me. Another few minutes and I would be as slack-jawed and zombie-eyed as my son. I pulled my eyes away and took a deep breath.

  Only then did I put together the chain of events that must have preceded this moment. In the few minutes that I was out of the room, my son had retrieved my iPad, searched for and found this cartoon featuring his favorite Disney chara
cter, Goofy, and had made it play. He had done this without being able to read, as far I knew. Could he have accessed the cartoon without reading or writing? Or had he been hoarding his skills until he found some use for them other than keeping his teacher happy—a goal that would not have motivated him in the slightest?

  “Hey, Kid. Eat your breakfast.” When faced with the inexplicable, retreat to your last known point of reference.

  He ignored me. Of course.

  I wanted to tell someone. Skeli. My father. Roger. His uncle Tino. But what would I say? I had no idea what had happened. The Kid was watching a cartoon on my iPad. And???

  “Come on, son. It’s a school day. Finish up.” I had to address, at least, the cartoon. We did not own a television—upon a doctor’s recommendation. “You can watch the cartoon later.” I reached across and put my hand between his staring eyes and the small screen. For a moment he did not react, then he calmly took hold of my hand and gently moved it to the side.

  The timer beneath the image showed only another minute and thirty-two seconds. The smart move was to wait. Intervention might prove costly. The Kid could easily explode if I tried to remove the iPad. Rather than watch, and make myself crazy in the process, I retreated to the kitchen and washed up the bowl and pan. I deliberately took my time.

  When I came back to the table, the vitamin and juice were gone and the Kid was eating eggs with his left hand—sans fork—and swiping at the screen with his right index finger.

  “How did you learn how to do that?” I asked.

  He gave me the scowl that meant he thought I was acting “stupid.” Maybe so.

  “Okay, I’m stupid. But teach me. I want to learn how you did that.” I reached over and hit the button at the bottom of the screen. The image disappeared and the home screen appeared. It was covered with apps, most of which I routinely ignored. “Go ahead. Let me watch how you do it.”

  He sighed. Obviously, I was too stupid for words. He swiped the screen and the second page of apps came up. He pointed to an icon of a frowning face. He touched it and opened a new screen showing images of cartoon characters. He scrolled through. Found Goofy and touched it. A page came up listing Goofy cartoons and other images and their address on the Web. I noticed that many of them were highlighted. He had visited here often. I watched him scroll through to the next page, where he stopped and chose. He poked and another Goofy cartoon began. I let my breath out. I was stunned. The app was some variation of the same image recognition that Hannay had built into his security system—possibly the same one he had “borrowed.” But the Kid had discovered it and learned how to use it all on his own. Amazing. I knew that children on the spectrum were using computers to learn, to communicate, and to play. I knew that the iPad had once been heralded as a breakthrough device for the ASD community and had, in fact, improved the lives of many. What I didn’t know was that my son was capable of showing interest in any technology that didn’t have to do with cars. I was stunned.

  And a little scared. Thoughts of what else he might come across while perusing the Internet stopped me dead. I needed to either lock the damn machine in a safe and hope the Kid wasn’t also an intuitive safecracker or find some way to childproof the thing. I vowed to get Heather’s help with it, just as soon as I cleaned up the other few thousand issues demanding my immediate attention.

  The Kid held a last morsel of scrambled egg in his hand through the next four minutes. I watched with him. Goofy encountered various annoyances while on vacation, some of disaster quality, but none life-threatening. The Kid laughed this time. I did not. Well, I chuckled once.

  Eventually, the end credits began to roll and the last of the eggs disappeared. I grabbed the iPad and closed it. The Kid did not object. He was in a good mood. I had anticipated a meltdown.

  “Brush your teeth, pal, and we’ll go.”

  He jumped up and ran to the bathroom. If that was what ten minutes of Goofy in the morning led to, I was prepared to rethink the whole ban on watching television. What do doctors know anyway?

  The Kid was back, Velcro-lace shoes in hand, in much too short a period of time.

  “Did you brush?” I said. “Two minutes?”

  He nodded quickly. Much too quickly.

  “You have nice teeth. You need to keep them that way.”

  He threw his shoes. One went across the living room and hit the wall. The other flew at me, but without much conviction. If he had thrown it harder, I would have believed it was on purpose. As it was, it barely reached me and ended up sliding under the table.

  “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.” While he did not sound in any way sorry, he did jump up and retrieve both shoes. He plunked himself down on the floor and pulled them on.

  “Teeth,” I said when he was done.

  He stomped into the bathroom, where he began to sob loudly. I followed him in and put toothpaste on his brush and handed it to him. He glared at me.

  “If you do a good job brushing your teeth, we can watch two more Goofy cartoons tonight after dinner.”

  He thought about it. Making deals was usually a self-defeating exercise with him. His memory did not work in such a way that I could demand performance after the reward. And he would promise anything, say anything, agree to anything, to fill an immediate need. He had no control. But this time, with the promise of reward for a chore that was a basic requirement anyway, he gave it serious consideration. He nodded once and began to brush.

  I noticed that his hair was looking a bit shaggy in the back. Time for another haircut. Each one was torture. For me, for the stylist, but mostly for the Kid. The day had just started and I was exhausted.

  25

  Roger called as I was starting the dishwasher—my last act of housekeeping before taking the Kid to school.

  “I’ve only got a minute,” I said. “I’m on my way out the door.”

  “You’re famous all over again.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You made the paper. Front page.”

  I understood. “The Post or the News?” Roger never read anything but the tabloids. The differences between them might not have been apparent to the tourist or casual visitor to town, but they were obvious to every New Yorker. If you made the front page of the Daily News, you had a chance, though slight, of being treated fairly in the story.

  “The Post.”

  “Great. What’s it say?”

  “There’s a not-so-nice picture of you. You got your usual scowl. You look like somebody’s idea of a hit man or something.”

  “What’s the headline?” I waved the Kid out into the hall and locked the door behind us.

  “One word. ‘RAT’ with three question marks.”

  “Rat? What the hell does that mean?”

  “You want me to read you the article?”

  “No. I’ll get a copy downstairs.” I was already moving down the hall to the elevator. “Just give me the gist.”

  There was no answer. The Ansonia had originally been designed to house musicians. The halls were big enough to move grand pianos, and the walls thick enough to dampen the sounds of neighbors practicing scales at all hours. There were spots in the building where cell service dropped out completely.

  “Roger? Roger? You still there?”

  A sharp crackle answered me. I stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the first floor. “Stay with me,” I said into the dead phone. I repeated it twice more, giving my faith in technology over to a more primitive reliance upon the power of threes.

  The elevator doors opened, and being careful not to step on any of the black tiles, I ran across the lobby, the Kid hopscotching behind. We did not walk on black tiles. Kid’s rules.

  “Can you hear me, Roger?”

  “Yeah. Did you get all that?”

  “Yeah. No. No. Just tell me, why are they calling me a rat?”

  “It says you’re go
ing to testify before a grand jury.”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  “Sorry. But it’s still bullshit. I’ve got to go. Thanks for the warning.”

  Raoul, the day doorman, held the door open with one hand while waving the newspaper at me with the other. “Front page of the Post, Mr. Staffud!” He was impressed and excited, and no doubt thought that I should be as well. Other tenants of the building had made the front page from time to time, but Raoul had always treated my notoriety as something even greater than their celebrity. I was not the has-been villain of a four-year-old fraud that no one cared about anymore; I was evil enough for the Post.

  I handed him a five. “Get us a cab, Raoul. We’re in a hurry today.”

  “Sure thing.” He ran to the corner and stuck his hand in the air.

  My phone rang again.

  26

  Good morning, Jason.” It was Larry, sounding calm and relaxed. I felt neither. I wanted to strangle him, because he wasn’t as frantic as I was. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the Post yet today . . .”

  “What the hell is this? We had a confidential meeting with that son of a bitch. I never agreed to testify. This is crap. Who talked to the press?”

  “It’s just noise, Jason. Relax. You have your immunity, and if you come up with something for Blackmore, we’ll talk before turning anything over. He’s just applying pressure.”

  “Blackmore? The goddamn U.S. Attorney did this?”

  Raoul came huffing back up the block, a yellow cab following slowly.

  “Based on my years of experience facing off against the worm? Yes, I would say he’s the one who did this.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “There’s an unappetizing thought.”

  “Don’t make jokes. I want to kill the guy.” Unfortunately, this came out of my mouth just as I was settling into the backseat of the taxi next to the Kid. I saw in the rearview mirror the cabbie’s eyes widen. “It’s a figure of speech,” I told him. I gave him the address of the Kid’s school and sat back.