Thank you to all of the people who read ReWire in its rough form. Your feedback helped tremendously
Chapter 2
Buy ReWire today on Amazon for only $3.99
The City looked different in daylight, dirtier, and less organized as if something changed in the weeks he had been away. The already weak rain slowed to a lazy drizzle. Jack loved the rain, but today something about it reminded Jack of a bad hotel shower, not wet enough to get you clean, just wet enough to move the dirt around.
Even in this part of San Francisco some of the signs weren’t in English. He saw Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Farsi. The rain thinned the morning crowd. Thin crowd in the City was a relative term. As he jogged, weaving through the crowd, their hopes and fears rolled over him. He heard many different tongues, some from tourists, but mostly from immigrants. He heard Afrikaans, Korean, Persian, Arabic, Swahili, and Japanese. He heard Cantonese, Mandarin and Spanish. Hell, for all he knew, he heard Inuit.
His people had been immigrants too, once. They’d been mostly white and Anglo-Saxon, but immigrants still. A few had met the boat. Most had been forced from the Highlands during the Clearances, making room for more profitable sheep. Some had faced signs that said, No Irish Need Apply! Historically, each new wave of immigrants brought strengths and weaknesses, like now.
The Vietnamese brought the brutal work ethic of the oppressed. Eastern Europeans brought their hatred of bureaucracy and a complete disregard for The Man’s rules. The Chinese were traders first and communists second. Pent-up pressure of thousands of years of trader’s blood pulsed through the City. Jack loved the mix of cultures, races, languages and food. Mostly he loved the energy immigrants brought-everything but the hatred too many of them met.
The melting pot’s energy was missing today. He felt as if he ran through castoffs from a hundred lands, not the strong that left to better themselves, but the weaklings that couldn’t get a handout anywhere else. There seemed to be a high-pitched background whine to their feelings today. The City reminded him of something and he couldn’t pull it from his jet-lagged memory.
He breathed in, thanking the breeze in off the ocean for air clean enough to smell the wonders of his city. He inhaled the scent of curry and sesame oil and garlic. He smelled peanut oil and searing beef and bacon. He very much looked forward to breakfast. He stopped suddenly as a Chinese girl, no more than ten, darted in front of him. She carried a market bag with hot peppers in her left hand and red and green cabbage in the bag in her right.
“Baoquian,” she said quickly over her shoulder. He smiled at her and at the old Amah in the doorway of his favorite Dim Sum place. The Amah shook a finger at the little girl, but couldn’t keep the smile out of her eyes.
He jogged a little further and then stopped at the sign, looking down at his iPhone to confirm this was the right shop, the one where Lee said he should stop. The shopkeeper looked like he was a million years old and spoke Cantonese with such a thick regional accent Jack could barely make out that it was Cantonese. Jack pulled out the piece of paper Lee had used to write down his order and pushed it across to the old man.
The ancient man looked at the note and rattled off more Cantonese. Jack thanked the gods he didn’t believe in that the written language was the same for all of the languages and dialects. He quickly jotted down that he didn’t speak Cantonese.
The old man smiled, showing amazing teeth for someone his age and wrote back asking Jack if his back hurt. Jack nodded. The old man pushed through the curtain behind the counter and was gone. Jack stretched, trying to stay loose after his run to the Embarcadero and back. The old man was gone for a good ten minutes before he came out with a small wooden box. He shoved a set of instructions across to Jack who read them and nodded. Jack rubbed his fingers together in the universal symbol for money and shrugged. The old man wrote down $475 very neatly. Jack wrote down $200 and the negotiations began. They quickly settled on $325, the price Lee said he should pay. Jack pulled the money out of his belt and handed it across. The old man wrote out a receipt out by hand.
“Dodze!” Jack stashed the small box inside the change of clothes in his running pack and headed out the door.
He floated in and out among the people on the streets, finally finding a rhythm. Something, somewhere shouted danger. He turned off of Grant on to Pacific. His headset buzzed. He didn’t usually welcome the sound, but put up with it as necessary for business. He smiled as he answered, knowing who it was, not because of any technological marvel, but just because.
“Good morning my fine chui!”
Hong Lee laughed as he called her his hammer, and asked, “Did the office call and tell you they were forwarding my call?”
Her voice, a soft brush-stroke of a Cantonese accent under well-educated European English, touched him.
“They didn’t tell me. I just knew.”
There was a small silence, just a few seconds, because the answer might mean so much, before she asked the next question. “Does your ESP, intuition, magic, whatever, usually tell you who is calling?”
“Nope.”
She chuckled low in her throat, sensual and eager. “Very good! I did more checking. I know there is something going on, but…”
“Hold on!” He turned off the wireless headset, cupped his hand over the phone, and ducked into a doorway, turning his face away from the street.
He disabled the blue-tooth on his phone and said, “Sorry my tian. I was on a wireless headset. An eight-year-old with twenty bucks’ worth of toys from Radio Shack could listen. Go ahead, please?”
“I quietly checked on ReWire and the other stocks we talked about. My intuition is nothing like yours, and I’m still absolutely certain something is going on. But, and it’s a big, fat, hairy butt, none of my investment contacts know anything. Just hints of rumors and even if they’ve heard those it seems they are…frightened or perhaps forbidden to talk.”
“Do you mean scared as in politically connected or really frightened of Yakuza, Tong, or Mafia?”
“Jack, you are naive. We live in a modern world. There is no distinction between Yakuza, Mafia, Tong and government. I simply don’t know. Any questions I ask in the future will come from a cousin, through an Uncle, by way of a hint. If anything were substantial, I would have heard more than rumors about gossip. You are breathing hard. I hear many voices. Are you at the dojo?”
“No, jogging to Meghan’s.”
His sister had called to invite him for breakfast. How could it only be a day ago? He’d been in the car on the way back to the airport in Hong Kong. Meghan McDonald, his very own younger sister, was Chief Scientist for ReWire, Inc., and the youngest biotech chief scientist he’d ever heard of. He could tell she was excited and nervous and, for some reason, trying to hide her excitement.
Jack, I didn’t ask you to ask me about breakfast. Sometimes a meal is simply a meal, and you have been avoiding us, whether it’s because you are busy, or for some other reason, which I am going to be nice and not go into now. We have not gotten together in weeks and weeks. And why you need to stay in that ridiculously expensive hotel when we have two, that is one plus one, empty guest rooms is beyond me. As usual, there is only one, or one plus zero, of you. Dvora promises her famous frittata and I will walk down to the café for your damned mocha. Get your big brotherly ass over here on the fifth of November around nine-thirty, but certainly not before nine. Have to go. Important, complicated, scientific things to do!”
So he didn’t have a choice about breakfast. Dvora was the reason he didn’t want to sleep under their roof. He had been on his fourth date with Dvora when he introduced her to Meghan. He’d never believed in love at first sight until they met.
He retold the message to Lee, except the part about Dvora. Lee had met his sister a few times and heard way too many proud big brother stories. Still, she laughed in the right places.
“It’s a shame you had to leave. More nights like that and you will have to take vitamins and eat many, many oysters. Should I make an appointment for you to see my herbalist the next time you are here?”
Jack smiled at the eagerness in her voice and the invitation. Mostly he smiled at the tiny change in inflection. Could it be that the most wonderful woman in the world was a bit worried he might not be back?
“I don’t remember any complaints,” Jack said.
“Absolutely none,” Lee purred with contentment.
“I remember a woman who wasn’t capable of speech for much of the night. Although I do remember you making quite a few enthusiastic sounds. Has it only been twenty-six hours since I’ve seen you?”
They talked, not saying very much, and saying everything. They teased and laughed and said things that would only mean something to them as they enjoyed their private, eager, new lover’s knowledge. He had always kept her at a distance-until now. Now he wanted to be with her. Maybe for… He didn’t complete the thought. He didn’t believe in jinxes, but who knew?
Beginnings were fragile things. After he hung up, which he couldn’t do until long minutes after he planned to say goodbye, he missed her so much. But…but, it felt as if a part of him that had been missing, that he didn’t know he didn’t have, was back. His future felt less certain and, in spite of that, infinitely better.
Pedestrian traffic thickened. He had to stop often. He was pumped full of endorphins and infatuation and eager to see his sister. A guilty little part of him wanted to see Dvora. Still, something lurched in the background and dragged at him more than gravity and jet lag. Danger waited and the closer to his sister’s house, the stronger the danger felt. He picked up his pace.
He was nearly to the corner of Pacific and Jones when his phone sounded with the emergency signal. Robert E. Lee White, head of security said, “We lost connection to your sister’s alarm, so we were monitoring police chatter in the area. There has been an injury robbery in her building and it’s locked down. We can’t access the cameras and the building’s alarm system has been hacked. We have a team on the way, but in this traffic…”
“Bob, I am a minute away. I’ll call.”
He picked up his pace. He didn’t try calling Meghan’s mobile. She never answered her fucking phone. She probably didn’t know where it was. Dread washed over him like pounding surf. He rounded the corner of Pacific and Jones. He could see the flash of lights of the emergency vehicles as he went into a kick, stretching his stride, pumping his arms and leaning into the run. A swelling, gawking crowd, thick with cops, blocked the street. The crowd surged inward toward Meghan’s building as the police held them back. He plowed through the crowd.
A big man he threw out of his way yelled, “Hey! What the fuck…”
Some primeval sense of self-preservation made the man step back. A uniform cop moved in front of him as he ducked under the bright, yellow, crime-scene tape. Her nametag said Crowley.
“Sir, move back under the tape. Now! This is a crime scene.”
He smiled as if nervous, let air out of his lungs, bent his knees, and slumped to make his body seem smaller. He clumsily ducked back under the tape. Crowley moved to head off a surge by another tentacle of the crowd. He slid back under the tape, staying low, and floated over the ground toward Meghan’s building. Three more cops, one of them with sergeant’s stripes, moved to intercept him, all with hands on holstered weapons.
He forced himself out of combat mode, softening face and stance. It wouldn’t do any good to hurt cops. “My sister lives here,” he said.
The young sergeant stepped forward, bulging from years in the weight room under his carefully tailored uniform, and said, “The building is sealed, Sir. There has been a violent robbery. The perpetrator may still be inside. Would you tell me your sister’s name, please?”
Jack opened his mouth to answer. How could his mouth be so dry? He heard his name shouted in a cracking voice. “Mr. McDonald! Mr. McDonald!”
It was Thomas the doorman, standing just outside the tape less than fifty feet away.
Jack moved toward him. The sergeant stopped him with a gentle hand.
“Excuse me, Sir, may I see some ID?”
Jack’s stomach tried to empty. The sergeant carefully checked his ID against the printout on his clipboard, rain barely spotting the clear plastic cover, and told him what he already somehow knew and absolutely didn’t want to hear. There had been a violent robbery, details still sketchy, Meghan seriously injured and rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, Dvora injured as well. When he was sure of the hospital, he turned and ran by staring people and through those who wouldn’t get out of his way.
He’d covered less than a block, turned right onto Sacramento and cut out into the street in front of the first cab he saw. The driver locked up the brakes, the dented bumper coming to rest against his wind pants. Russian curses streamed through the barely cracked driver’s window along with an acrid cloud of cigarette smoke.
“A hundred bucks when you get me to St. Francis Hospital Emergency room in less than three minutes,” he said as he jumped into the back seat.
“Show me the cash,” the cabbie said. He held the bill through the slot. The driver’s ID said “Dmitri.” The Russian hit the gas. He fishtailed around the corner of California and Hyde, and punched two reds that didn’t have cameras. Jack grabbed the door handle, thinking, Hold on, Meghan! He still had too much time to think in the two minutes before the cab drifted the corner of Hyde and Bush and skidded to a stop in front of the emergency room.
“Where’s Meghan McDonald?” He asked the young nurse standing at the terminal outside the emergency room.
“We only give information to next of kin, Sir.”
He pulled out his ID again. The nurse reached for the ID and punched in the name and asked, “Her address?”
Jack told her. The nurse keyed in the name and address. As the nurse scanned the screen, the nurse’s face tightened. When he looked up, Jack could see the effort it took to keep his face supportive and neutral.
“Meghan is in operating room six. Take the elevator to the third floor, first left and second right.”
He wanted to ask how his sister was, and asking anyone was the last thing he ever wanted to do. He stood by himself outside operating room six for a long time, years it felt like, yet he was only on his own for one massive hour. The adrenaline of battle coursed through him. He was aware of every sound, every feeling and every smell. The second hand on the clock moved slower with each tick. He came to know that clock very well. He got to be very familiar with the little squeak his running shoes made as he turned to the left while he paced up and down the hall outside operating room six.
It was too quiet by far in that lonely hall in that place of death and pain. He could hear his own breathing and feel a thumping deep in his chest. Soon he thought he could hear his heart. He wondered if his heart had always sounded that way? Within painful minutes he couldn’t focus on anything outside his head no matter how hard he tried.
Jack became intimate with regrets and “should haves” and “could haves.” The “should have” of spending more time with Meghan after he came back to the States to care for her. He had “shouldn’t haves” of spending too much time on business. Every time he thought of another thing he would do different, if he had a next time to do things different, he checked the time. He found that beating the shit out of himself about things he couldn’t change didn’t take much time.
Jack wanted to know if he would have a whole sister again.
Jack had a gift or a curse, depending. He could predict the future, often, not always. When doom waited, he mostly knew. Maybe it was his mix of ancestry. Perhaps his gift was a mutation, some roll of the DNA dice. He knew that not many had such gifts, or if they did, wouldn’t accept their gifts, feared them or didn’t know how to use them. His intuition, magic or whatever in the hell it was, wasn’t taking his calls today.
Dvora arrived in a wheelchair, pushed around the corner by an orderly.
“How is she?” Dvora asked.
His voice came out in a croak. He walked to the water fountain, having to think about swallowing. Had water always been this cold and difficult? When he found his voice he said, “She’s alive. Other than that I don’t know anything yet. Nothing. How are you?”
“They say I have a concussion, so that’s why the wheelchair. And, two cracked ribs, which is why the bandage.”
“What happened?”
She sat up, trying to get comfortable in the chair, wincing and sucking air. “I don’t know. Everything after I left for the studio this morning is gone, just gone. The doctor said that happens with head injuries. She said the memory could come back, probably would come back. I told the police I couldn’t remember. Apparently they see this kind of memory gap a lot. The policeman in charge, Captain Yan, said I should come by the station in a few days and he could help me remember.”
“Captain Yan?” The name was familiar. Jack thought back to the first time he heard Yan’s name. In his memory, he stood, drink in hand, dressed in a tux, at a fund-raiser by the San Francisco police for the families of their brothers lost on 9/11. Commissioner Ramirez was exchanging stories with the DA. He tuned out Ramirez as he exchanged what he hoped were meaningful looks with the fantastic-looking black woman in a pearl-white dress across the room. Ramirez’s tone startled him back.
“Yan is the best cop I have ever seen-a legend.”
“Why haven’t I heard of this legend?” Jack asked.
Ramirez laughed. He had a mean laugh. “He has no need for glory. Tell a career criminal Yan is interested in them and they’ll shit themselves.” Jack heard confusion and grudging respect. He remembered the conversation nearly word-for-word because he didn’t think Ramirez could admire anyone.
Dvora said, “They think thieves were in the house when Meghan came home from Yoga. She must have surprised them. They say I came upon the scene later. One of them must have hit me a glancing blow. I must have hit my panic button.”
Dvora tried to stand and Vince the orderly gently guided her back into the wheelchair. Finally, she stayed in the chair.
They waited. Mid-afternoon, another shift rotated into the OR. News came at 2:47 with the shift change.
Meghan had a fractured skull, hence the coma. Also a ruptured spleen, a dislocated hip, fractured ribs on her right side, and broken ribs, one that pierced her lung on the left, and too much more to think about. Dvora cried, quietly at first, then not so much. Soon her grief was a keening sound, as loud as Bedouin women made in those old National Geographic Specials, the sound of the women screaming their dead into heaven.
Jack didn’t try to quiet Dvora, but plucked her out of the chair and held her as he walked up and down the hall. She didn’t say words, just made that sound of anguish and beat on his back with her fists. Vince came back at a trot and finally did something useful. He scouted them a room, one of the little rooms they have in hospitals for people to pray and fall apart in.
Within minutes her wailing stopped, replaced by a quiet complaint about her ribs. He gently set her down in one of the chairs, sitting next to her. He left an arm across her shoulders, to comfort himself as much as her. They waited.