The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(74)

He glanced around for the waiter. “You shouldn’t be here, you know. It’s not safe.”

“Oh, really. Why’s that?”

“After this drink, you should leave. I mean it, Hazel.”

There was an arrogance in the way he held up his hand for the waiter’s attention. She had gotten Alex all wrong, of course. She had mistaken him for one of her own kind, a geek, all rumpled clothes and bashful witticisms, a romantic at heart who was just waiting for the right person to come along. But now she saw him as a much odder creature: a disheveled playboy who could toy easily with women’s hearts because his true love was mathematics. Math may have betrayed him years ago, may have given up her secrets to another man, but he still pined for her, and no one would ever measure up.

“Another Campari and soda, please,” he told the passing waiter. “Make that two.”

“How international of you,” Hazel said. “You pick that up in Europe?”

He turned back to her. His gaze was intense. “From my mother, actually. She’s an alcoholic.”

Hazel sat down, locking her eyes on his. “I found your wig and mustache.”

“Oh, did I leave them somewhere?” He made a show of checking his pockets.

“I assume you also erased the photos on my phone. When did you manage that? When I was answering the door?”

Alex finished what was left in his glass. “All right, I give up. If I erased the photos, how are you here?”

She was furious with him, but she couldn’t help return some of his coolness. “I’m here for the party.”

He smiled. “Bride’s side or groom’s?”

Their drinks arrived before she could craft a response. “Do you think the ‘event’ will happen here?” she asked.

He adjusted himself on his chair. “I know as much about it as you do.”

That’s when she noticed a camera around his neck, a Leica, half hidden by his jacket.

“What’s that for?”

“Documentation.”

She glanced at the nearest Deco clock, which read 9:07. “Shouldn’t we be calling the police or something?”

“And what do you suggest we tell them? ‘You don’t understand, Officer, it’s mathematics!’?” Alex laughed into his drink.

“I’m sure we could come up with something smarter than that.”

He shook his head. “No police. We need the system to play out without interference.”

“So these people—they’re just a mathematical system to you? You just observe, snap your picture, and walk away?”

He leaned across the table. “Actually, you’re making my job as disinterested observer more difficult. See, in this system here”—he indicated the station with a wave of his hand—“you and I are the contamination.”

“But you just interacted with a waiter.”

“Hey, I can’t remove myself from the system entirely. Plus, this is one of the few ‘events,’ as you say, where one can get a drink.”

“You’ve witnessed others then.”

He nodded. “There were a couple of nasty ones on the east side two days ago. Gang related. I watched from a safe enough distance, with a long lens. I have yet to figure out if Isaac’s calculations are total in their omniscience, but I need to be sure that I am not, even as a witness, part of the system somehow. Then again, it’s likely someone dies no matter what we do. Even if we try to stop it, we can’t cheat the inevitable.”

“So the math somehow knows we’re here, has already figured that in?”

“Yes. It could be that the equation is, in fact, aware of itself.”

Hazel took this in. This idea that the equation knew—that the universe knew—what she would do before she did it made her head ache. It was as if someone had just told her that every second of her life had been monitored on surveillance tape. She forced herself to look at the clock again. Fifteen minutes now. She needed to get to the point. “So did you crack the password?”

“With some help.” He looked up at her quickly, realizing what he had just said.

Was Alex working for someone? Could Raspanti be right about this they? Operating on the assumption that you find out more when you appear to know the answer already, she asked, “Are you at least expensing the drinks to the people you work for?”

“The people I work for. Where’d you dig up that phrase?”

She quickly changed tacks. “Okay. Did you steal the equation for your own benefit? Because some Russian beat you to your precious proof? And now it’s your turn to take the credit you so deserve?”

Alex blanched. “You’ve been speaking to my mother.”

“She’s pretty chatty when you corner her.”

“God, does she love that story. The story of my epic failure.” He took a long drink and said, “I don’t steal other people’s mathematics.”

“What do you call breaking into Isaac’s hotel room? Or ransacking his office? On the day of the funeral, that was you in his study, wasn’t it?”

He smiled tightly. “His work doesn’t belong to you, Hazel. You wouldn’t have a clue what to do with it. Isn’t that why you let me in the room in the first place?”