The Outlier #1: Beepers Read online

brought relief in the form of a third and definitive beeper dilemma. This one came from a middle aged man in Brooklyn, New York. The man was used to noises, he said. He knew them all, but this one was driving him crazy. Was it all in his mind? He'd thought so at first, but then he'd enlisted a friend to come and stay the night, and the friend could vouch for his sanity. The beeping was real, and it was coming from nowhere. There was nothing in the walls and nothing in the floors, and he could say that for certain, having built the whole place by hand by himself and having lived there for more than twenty years.

  “Here we go!” Dillon told his grandparents. “We got us a live one!”

  The next order of business was physical. Dillon kept his elliptical machine on the balcony and spent precisely one hour every morning performing his workout. He also used that time to dictate important business correspondence to his personal robot spider, which double-checked his grammar and corrected his vocabulary to make sure everything sounded as professional as possible. The spider also dispatched these messages in the appropriate formats to their proper destinations. To the boy in Texas Dillon requested that, if possible, he leave a Triscuit cracker somewhere near the spot where the beeping seemed to emanate from. A plain Triscuit was best, but a Rosemary Olive Oil flavored one was also acceptable in this instance. He also notified his acceptance of the case to the woman in Boston and asked her to place an empty truck-stop matchbook somewhere near the source of her own mysterious beeping. Also, if it were not too much trouble, to write, on the inside top flap of said matchbook, the words “tremulous quaking”.

  Dillon liked to work up a sweat during this regime, and after showering and starting up the laundry (he insisted on washing, drying and folding his own attire), he carefully inspected his current wardrobe. He had a subscription to Wearabulous Inc., the monthly fashion delivery service, which rotated his clothing on a regular basis. He was picky about what he wore. If it were up to his grandmother, he'd go around in nothing but vintage torn punk rock t-shirts, cut-off jeans and sandals (she was also continually presenting him with original ideas for butt tattoos, which he had so far successfully resisted), but Dillon preferred an East Coast metropolitan style, contemporary business formal, nothing too colorful but well-cut, sleek and suave. He could easily spend up to a half an hour selecting an outfit and admiring himself in it. This day he was eager to get going, though, and kept it down to twenty minutes. He calculated a fairly long day ahead.

  First he had to contact his personal transport system, his right hand woman, the spectacularly efficient Commander Bethany Rush. Ms. Rush had been acting in this capacity for several years, from even before the first time he had celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday. She lived in the building, one floor below, and as his driver and pilot had only to be available at any moment, day or night. Otherwise her extravagantly well-paid position gave her unlimited freedom and opportunity. Commander Rush was short and round, with a head and haircut to match, and the two made a comical appearance together. They would have fit that classical stereotype summed up in the children's rhyme “Fatty and Skinny went to bed. Fatty rolled over and Skinny was dead” were it not for the fact that they did not have that sort of arrangement.

  Dillon never inquired into the Commander's personal life. He had no idea whom she might have gone to bed with, or the consequences of her potential rolling over. Despite her shape, Commander Rush was strong and fit enough for any occasion. She was infallibly loyal, perfectly discrete, and kept her own abundant eccentricities to herself. She was also as blunt an instrument as could be desired. Her most frequently uttered phrase was “Yes, sir”. She refused to utilize the inverse under any circumstances.

  Dillon kept a small fleet of unassuming vehicles in the building's underground garage, and it was always the Commander's choice which one would be selected. She preferred electric or fuel cell vehicles whenever possible, and Dillon enjoyed the quiet smooth ride to the airport, where the Commander left the car with a valet and proceeded to lead her boss to his personal aircraft, which she flew with the same calm confidence and skill. The flight across the country to the borough of Brooklyn was accomplished in as little time as possible. Dillon, as was his habit, kept himself occupied by studying diverse unsuspected connections between the most remotely flung data points. That particular day he realized that the distance navigated by harbor seals between mating seasons was equal in proportion to the blossoming cycle of three-year-old cherry trees divided by the size of the cache maintained by temporary eRAT system files when sorted by date. He never knew when that sort of insight might come in handy.

  Commander Rush kept her eyes on the skies while she piloted the small craft and arranged for transport on the ground upon arrival. Their destination would be well within range of a virus-battery powered car, but she couldn't be certain of the mileage her boss might accrue during this assignment, so she opted for a hybrid with a diesel modification. She had a mind for such specifics, but refrained from voicing any curiosity about the details of his missions. She only required to know the minimum needed. Too much information could only interfere with the smooth operation of her will. Her philosophy was the opposite of Dillon's, for whom there could never be TMI. The Commander's brain stored mainly dates and times, locations and durations so that her boss didn't have to if he didn't want to. 1218 Pewanee Avenue meant nothing to him, but Bethany Rush had already plotted the route and visualized the drive long before landing the plane and picking up the car. Although she hadn't been summoned until ten in the morning, she had taken him across the nation and right to the door of the beeping house by four seventeen in the afternoon.

  She also served as his personal security squad, and so she left him in the vehicle while she verified the identity of the inhabitant and thoroughly checked out the habitation. In the meantime, Dillon selected an appropriate hat for the occasion. He had brought several, each one with a potentially critical role to play. It was important to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Dillon's appearance had become quite well-known and he was easily and often spotted in public unless he was wearing the proper hat. He was in prime sports-fancountry now, where people identified way too strongly with teams both local and remote. Any kind of professional logo would draw scrutiny, yet at the same time anything other than a baseball-style cap would also bring unwelcome attention. He chose a light gray, worn and frayed cap with the insignia of a plumbing company half rubbed off the front. This would provide him with enough of a manliness quotient to ward off potential homophobes, yet not nearly enough to evoke a second glance from any self-respecting New York City female.

  He emerged from the vehicle on cue from the Commander, and found his hat selection irrelevant for the moment, as there was no one else on the street at that moment. He was able to walk to the door completely unnoticed by anyone but Mr. Harley White, the owner of the house and hearer of the beeping. Mr. White was in his fifties, with more gray in his short wiry hair than his amount of years would suggest. He had a definite paunch of which Dillon couldn't help but disapprove, though he felt uncomfortably like his own grandmother at such moments. It was as if he were looking at the man through her eyes. The man was smiling but formally, not with any genuine emotion behind it.

  “Please come in, sir,” he said, glancing at the Commander to make sure she noticed how he'd followed her explicit instructions not to mention Dillon's name out loud. Dillon entered the small, brick house and immediately began taking mental notes of its contents. He observed the good condition of the wallpaper, the neat linear arrangement of brass-framed photographs hung along the hallway, the solid appearance of the floorboards, the cleanliness and order of each room as he inspected every one.

  “Your house is well-maintained,” he informed Mr. White, who nodded with pleasure.

  “I do everything myself,” he beamed.

  “Excellent woodwork,” Dillon said, running a finger along the edge of the fine dining room table. “I would think that you also hand-crafted this.”

  �
��Yes, sir, I did,” Mr. White said. “How did you know?”

  “You are present in all the details,” Dillon told him. “Besides, I see that you were once an accomplished semi-pro ball player.”

  “Not good enough,” Mr. White replied, confused as to how that even connected to the subject of carpentry.

  “Good enough to turn your own bats,” Dillon remarked, gesturing at a photograph above the kitchen stove.

  “Those were the days,” Mr. White said.

  “Where can we stay?” Dillon asked. “I'd like to be as close as possible to the source, which I believe to be in the main hallway if I'm not completely mistaken.”

  “Yes, sir, it's been right by the door to the TV room, pretty much right over here,” Mr. White pointed at a spot in the molding.

  “Then I'll stay in the TV room,” Dillon said, and gestured at the Commander, who immediately undertook another inspection to determine the bedding requirements. In moments she was on the phone ordering special equipment, ignoring Mr. White's comments that the sofabed already in there could fold out nicely and was actually quite comfortable.

  “Thank you, Mr. White,” Dillon added. “Is there somewhere else you can go?”

  “Go?”

  “Yes, I'd like to have the place to myself if that's all right with you. I'd prefer no distractions, no external variables.”

  “Um, okay, I guess so,” Mr. White paused to consider. “I can stay with my sister, I suppose.”

  “We don't need to know where you are,” the Commander informed him. “Just go, now if you please.”

  Dillon remained standing in the hallway while Mr. White packed up a valise and left as quickly as he could. Shortly thereafter a panel truck arrived with a feather down queen size bed which the workers installed in the TV room, hauling away the sofabed and the lazy boy chair which was also in the way. Commander Rush supervised these events while Dillon made tea in the kitchen and held a brief conversation with his tablet.

  “Now, then,” he said to his assistant, after the moving was done, “where would you like to sleep?”

  “Shall I take the bedroom upstairs?”

  “Whatever you like. We'll be free until late. You can go out if you like.”

  “Yes, sir. I'll stay here with you. Perhaps there is something good on TV?”

  “That would be new,” he remarked. “But no, let's watch something bad.”

  They ordered takeout Chinese and chose a crummy old Western followed by a horrifying American vocal talent show. After that, a bit of the ever-alarming local news broadcast, and then finally it was time for bed.

  “Let's get this show on the road,” Dillon muttered, as he settled into the soft cozy mattress for what he hoped would be an interesting night.

  He had barely snuggled beneath the vintage Amish quilt when the phone rang.

  “I'm in New York,” he answered bluntly.

  “Ooh,” Karen Clyde cooed on the other end, “does that mean the dry spell is over?”

  “I don't know yet,” he replied. “It could be nothing. What does the number twenty-two mean to you?”

  “Um, let me think,”she said, and then after a pause added, “it's how old I was when I married my first husband.”

  “Anything else come to mind?”

  “It's a kind of gun, isn't it? As in 'I blasted him with my 22'?”

  “That's more the caliber bullet, I think,” Dillon said, “and anyway, you can't really 'blast' anything with a 22.”

  “Oh,” she sighed, “Well, I suppose there must be some kind of decent Bible verse with that number, isn't there? A Bible