Chapter 2 - THE MOLECULAR CLOCK
The human body is an exquisite, brutal machine. It does not know about emerald dresses, seventy-floor apartments on Park Avenue, or real estate portfolios worth nine hundred million dollars. When presented with a foreign chemical compound designed to suppress cardiac electrical signals, it simply obeys the laws of biology.
For the first fifteen minutes, the dining room at L’Étoile d’Or remained undisturbed.
Richard maintained the theater. He spoke about the acquisition of the rail yards in Long Island City. He mentioned the rezoning permits for the Williamsburg waterfront. He watched Vanessa’s face with the intense, cold fascination of an entomologist watching an insect under a microscope.
At 10:14 PM, the first change occurred.
Vanessa was in the middle of a sentence about her mother’s garden club in Greenwich when her left eyebrow twitched. It was a subtle, involuntary spasm—the nervous system flickering like a loose lightbulb.
She stopped talking mid-word, her hand rising to her left temple.
"Darling?" Richard asked, setting his spoon down. "Is something wrong?"
"No," she said quickly. Her voice was slightly lower than usual, thick at the edges. "Just... a sudden headache. The champagne, perhaps. It’s a bit dry."
"Would you like some sparkling water?"
"Yes. Please."
Richard signaled the waiter. As the man poured the San Pellegrino, Richard observed Vanessa’s right hand. Her fingers were no longer smooth and controlled. They were curled into a claw against the white tablecloth, the knuckles white, the pink fingernails pressing so hard into the fabric that the linen bunched up.
At 10:22 PM, her respiration changed.
It wasn't the deep, relaxed breathing of a woman enjoying an evening out. It was shallow, rapid, and raspy—the breath of a person who had just run three flights of stairs in a heavy coat. A fine, glittering sheen of sweat had broken out across her upper lip, ruining the matte finish of her designer foundation.
"Richard," she whispered.
Her eyes were wide now. The pale green irises were almost swallowed by her pupils, which had dilated into two huge, black voids despite the bright candlelight.
"Yes, Vanessa?"
"I... I feel very strange."
"Strange how?" He reached across the table and took her hand. Her skin was no longer cool and dry; it was clammy, cold, and dripping with a cold, oily perspiration. Her pulse under his thumb was frantic—a wild, irregular fluttering like a bird trapped in a cardboard box.
"My chest," she gasped. She pulled her hand away from his and pressed it against the center of her emerald dress, right over her sternum. "It feels... heavy. Like someone is standing on it."
"We should go," Richard said. He did not sound panicked. He sounded like a man announcing a change in the weather.
"No," she said sharply. Her head snapped toward him, her auburn hair slipping from its combs and tumbling over her shoulders in messy, damp strands. "No... don't make a scene. Please. Just... give me five minutes. I just need... to sit..."
Her head dropped forward. Her forehead nearly struck the edge of her empty dessert platter.
The dining room around them began to dissolve into murmurs. A couple at an adjacent table turned around, the woman raising a jeweled opera glass to her eye. Pierre, sensing a social disaster that no amount of hundred-dollar bills could fix, came gliding toward them with a face like a tombstone.
"Mr. Blackwood? Is Mademoiselle unwell?"
"Call 911," Richard said.
"Richard, no!" Vanessa hissed, her voice slurring now, her tongue thick against her teeth. "No police... no doctors... just... take me home..."
She reached for her designer clutch—a small, hard-shelled purse made of polished alligator skin that sat beside her water glass. Her fingers fumbled with the clasp, unable to find the push-button.
Richard reached out and took the purse before she could open it.
"What are you doing?" she rasped, her eyes rolling upward toward the ceiling.
"Looking for your medicine, darling," Richard murmured. "In case you have something for your heart."
"Nothing... there’s nothing in there... give it to me..."
He didn't give it to her. He slipped his hand into the small, silk-lined interior. His fingers brushed against a lipstick, a compact, a platinum credit card, and a smartphone.
He pulled her smartphone out and slipped it into the left pocket of his cashmere jacket.
Then he reached into his own pocket, pulled out his black-leather wallet, dropped his Corporate Black Card onto the table, and looked up at Pierre.
"Clear the room," Richard commanded. "Now."
"S-sir?"
"You have thirty seconds to get these people into the lounge before I tear this dining room apart," Richard said, his voice dropping into a register that made the floor manager’s knees knock together. "Call an ambulance. Tell them it’s an acute cardiac event secondary to unknown toxin ingestion."
Pierre ran.
The next ten minutes moved in the strange, staccato rhythm of a crisis.
The dining room cleared as if an air-horn had been blown. Wealthy patrons were ushered into the bar area by terrified waiters. The lights were turned up, transforming the romantic, candlelit haven into a glaring, sterile operating theater.
Vanessa was no longer sitting upright. She had slid from her chair onto the herringbone floor, her emerald dress bunched around her knees, her body twisting in long, slow, agonizing contortions. She was moaning—a low, rhythmic sound that sounded less like a human voice and more like wind pushing through a broken pipe.
Richard sat on the chair beside her, leaning down, his hand resting on her shoulder.
He did not look like a grieving lover. He looked like a judge waiting for the jury to return.
"Richard..." she whimpered, her hands clawing at his pant leg. Her fingernails tore through the fine wool of his trousers. "Help me... please... it hurts..."
"Help is coming, Vanessa," he said softly.
"Why..." she gasped, her pale lips flecked with a thin, white foam. "Why aren't you... sick?"
Richard leaned down until his mouth was two inches from her ear. The smell of the raspberry sauce was still on her breath, mixed now with the metallic scent of gastric acid.
"Because I don't like chocolate," he whispered.
Her eyes opened wide. For one terrifying second, through the haze of the toxin, through the agony of her failing heart, a shock of pure, unadulterated terror cleared her vision. She looked at him—really looked at him—and realized what had happened.
"You..." she breathed.
The heavy double doors of the private elevator burst open.
Four paramedics in dark blue uniforms rushed into the room, hauling a heavy red gear bag and a folding stretcher. Behind them were two uniformed NYPD officers, their leather duty belts clanking rhythmically as they ran across the polished floor.
"Out of the way! Sir, step back!" the lead paramedic shouted, dropping to his knees beside Vanessa.
Richard stood up smoothly, stepping back three paces. He watched as they attached cardiac monitor pads to her chest, as the machine began to emit a high-pitched, frantic beep-beep-beep-beep that filled the empty restaurant.
"V-Tach!" the second paramedic yelled. "Pulse is 185 and thready! Blood pressure is 60 over 40! Charge the pads!"
"Sir!" the officer asked, stepping up to Richard. "Are you her husband?"
"Her partner," Richard said, his voice flat, steady, clear.
"What happened? Did she have a pre-existing heart condition?"
"No," Richard said. He turned his head and looked at the white tablecloth, at the single empty white ramekin sitting in front of Vanessa’s chair. "We were having dinner. She ate that chocolate soufflé. Within ten minutes, she developed diaphoresis, tachycardia, and altered mental status."
The officer looked at the table, then back at Richard. "Food poisoning?"
"I don't think so," Richard said, meeting the officer's eyes with an expression that froze the younger man in his tracks. "I suggest you secure that table as a crime scene, Officer. And I suggest you take a sample of that cake to the Bellevue toxicology lab immediately."
The lead paramedic yelled, "Clear!"
A dull thud echoed through the room as six hundred joules of electricity surged through Vanessa’s torso. Her back arched violently off the floor, her emerald gown catching the harsh fluorescent lights, before she dropped limp onto the stretcher.
"We have a rhythm! Let's move! Bellevue Trauma One! Go, go, go!"
They rolled her toward the elevator, the wheels of the stretcher squeaking against the floor, the cardiac monitor continuing its frantic, electronic cry.
The restaurant was quiet again.
The waiters stood huddled near the bar like frightened crows. The two police officers remained near the table, one of them pulling out yellow crime-scene tape and stringing it between the mahogany pillars.
Richard stood near the floor-to-ceiling window. Below him, eighty floors down, an ambulance pulled out of the basement garage, its red strobe lights painting the wet pavement of Fifty-Second Street in rhythmic flashes of blood.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out Vanessa’s phone.
His thumb pressed against the glass.
Passcode: 0-9-1-2. September 2012. The month she had graduated from her finishing school in Switzerland.
The screen unlocked instantly.
May you like
Richard walked past the police officers, past Pierre who was crying softly into a napkin, and pushed through the gray service door into the back hallway.
He sat down on a stainless-steel prep counter, surrounded by hanging copper pots and the smell of roasting garlic, and began to read.
