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Nutty Neddie, a.k.a. Special Ed, continued on Broadway and hooked a left onto Powell, following it up to the top of Nob Hill, until one of his favorite flight paths was in view.
The cable car tracks turned from Jackson onto Powell, and Neddie waited for the car to rattle to a stop. He grabbed the bar and swung himself up, handed his Muni pass to the conductor.
The conductor looked at Neddie’s pass, not his face. He was working, and this was one of six hundred tickets and passes he would check that night. Neddie was onboard, ready for takeoff. He worked his way to the front of the car and mentally urged the car to the crest of the hill—and then the car dropped over the top.
He loved this gliding feeling as the car plunged downward. Union Square was on the left, the Macy’s sign was across the way, and the monument to Admiral Dewey stood centered in the square.
Moments later, too soon, the car squealed to a halt, and Neddie jumped off and headed east. His feelings of shame and loss at the cop stop near the patio were abating.
He had made his greatest strides from his biggest mistakes.
Notably, there was the “crime” that had turned his life into this.
Blazing light poured through the entrance of the Admiral Dewey Hotel. A taxi pulled up, and a doorman opened the taxi door for a couple dressed for a gala. The doorman walked them to the glass doors and opened them. As Neddie passed the hotel, he was struck by the sight of a woman standing alone forty feet away from the front of the hotel.
She looked to be in her late thirties, with light-brown hair in a long braid. She had a bland face that reminded him of the Beige Woman.
He would give her a test.
He walked toward her and heard himself say, “Hi, I’m Neddie.”
Her gaze passed over him as she turned away without speaking.
Her disrespect, her disgust, sent a shiver through Neddie, and he saw that this was how he would rectify his earlier mistake. He turned toward the wall and loaded his sharp.
The woman with the braid was staring off into the distance when Neddie jabbed her in the buttock, delivered the payload, pulled out the syringe, and sidestepped out into the street.
He heard a short bark and turned to see the dead woman walking, her arms reaching out as she silently mouthed, “HELP.”
“Sorry, no,” Neddie said, passing her. “Good-bye,” he said. “Almost nice knowing you.”
A crowd of people piled out of the hotel, and immediately someone noticed the woman lying in the street. He heard a panicky male voice saying, “Hang on. I’m getting help.” Then, “Oh my God. She’s gone.”
As the crowd dispersed, Neddie glimpsed the dead woman and sighed with pleasure. Job well done. And now, he had to go.
He walked at a normal pace up Stockton Street, crossed Union Square, nondescript in his hoodie and jeans in the dark. He ditched out onto Post Street, only dimly lit at this hour, and then Saint Vartan’s loomed. He walked fast but not rushed, and ten minutes later the brick walls of the Hyde and Seek Loony Bin were in view.
The Admin block was dark. There was an even darker void between the walls of the North Tower and the Walgreens, and Neddie slipped inside that shaft of blackness. He was as good as invisible. But inside his body Neddie was glowing like a neon-lit night.
Mission accomplished.
Neddie was Safe. And Neddie was
Good. Very, Very Good.
CHAPTER 61
I WAS WITH Claire in the autopsy suite, staring down at a human heart in a stainless steel surgical bowl.
The victim, Sarah Summers Nugent, was lying nearby on a table, chest opened from her clavicle down, her face in repose.
Claire was saying, “This heart could run a marathon by itself.”
“I’ll take your word for it. What do you know about the circumstances?”
“Last night around ten she was waiting outside the Admiral Dewey Hotel for her husband to check out. They had a plane to catch. Going to Chicago. Husband came outside with their bags, saw a crowd in the street and his wife on the ground in the middle of it. First responders arrived within five minutes and found her nonresponsive. Mr. Nugent went with Sarah in the bus.
“Emergency room at Metro made it official. Mrs. Nugent was DOA, looked like cardiac arrest. The husband told the attending physician that his wife was only forty-one. That she had just aced a full checkup. As far as he or she knew, she did not have any indications of heart disease.”
