Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

folder. He takes out an airplane ticket and a brochure with a cover showing an impressive building at the edge of a lake. “My mother told me about this place. It’s in Maine. Sebago Hospital.”

“What was your mother doing there?”

“She has Parkinson’s, as you know. Two years ago, she was trembling so much that her life was a nightmare. One day, her doctor suggested a new form of treatment—they put two thin electrodes in her brain connected to a little electric box implanted under her collarbone. Kind of like a pacemaker.”

“You told me this already, Seymour, and you yourself admitted that the electrical pulses didn’t stop the disease from progressing.”

“Maybe not, but they got rid of the worst symptoms, and she feels much better now.”

“Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are not the same thing at all.”

“I know,” he says, handing me the brochure, “but look at this place. They use deep-brain stimulation to fight the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Initial results are encouraging. It wasn’t easy, but I got you a place in their study. I’ve paid for it all, but you have to leave tomorrow. I booked you a plane ticket to Boston.”

I shake my head. “Keep your money, Seymour. It doesn’t make any difference. I’m going to die, period.”

“Sleep on it,” he insists. “But first, let me take you home. You’re in no state to drive.”

Too weary to argue with him, I slide over into the passenger seat and let him drive.

It is 12:17 a.m. when the security camera in the parking garage films us on our way out.

24

Chapter Zero

Tribeca

4:50 a.m.

Three hours before Alice first meets Gabriel

THE TELEPHONE RANG six times in room 308 of the Greenwich Hotel before it was finally picked up.

“Hello,” said a thick voice, emerging from deep sleep.

“This is reception, Mr. Keyne. I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, but I have a call for you. A Mr. Thomas Krieg is asking to speak with you.”

“In the middle of the night? What the hell time is it, anyway?”

“Nearly five o’clock, sir. He told me it was very urgent.”

“Okay, put him through.”

Gabriel pushed himself up on the pillow, then sat on the edge of the bed. The room was in darkness, but the light from the radio alarm clock gave a vague impression of the chaos within it. The carpet was strewn with clothes and small, empty bottles. The woman sleeping next to him had not woken up. It took him a few seconds to remember her name: Elena Sabatini, from Florida, whom he had met the previous evening in the hotel lounge. After a few martinis, he had persuaded her to go up to his room and they had gotten to know each other much better while raiding the minibar.

Gabriel rubbed his eyes and sighed. He hated what he had become since his wife left him—a lost soul drifting in a downward spiral, a ghost. There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth. Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote came to mind immediately. It fit him like a glove.

“Gabriel? Hey, are you there?” yelled the voice at the other end of the line.

Receiver pressed to his ear, Keyne got off his bed and closed the sliding door that separated the bedroom from the little living room next to it. “Hello, Thomas.”

“I tried calling you on your landline in Astoria, then on your cell phone, but you weren’t answering.”

“The battery must be dead. How did you find me?”

“I remembered it was the week of the American Psychiatric Association’s annual conference. I called their main office and they told me they’d booked you a room at the Greenwich.”

“What do you want?”

“I heard you got a great response yesterday for your speech on the psychiatric aspects of Alzheimer’s.”

“Spare me the flattery, would you?”

“You’re right; I’ll get straight to the point. I want your opinion on a patient.”

“At five in the morning? Thomas, can I remind you that we’re no longer partners?”

“Yeah, and that’s too bad. We made a good team, the two of us. We complement each other perfectly, the psychiatrist and the neurologist.”

“Yeah, yeah, but it’s over. I sold you my share in the practice, remember?”

“The biggest mistake of your life.”

Gabriel lost his temper. “We’re not going to have this discussion again! You know perfectly well why I did it!”

“Yes—moving to London so you could get joint custody of your son. And what did you get out of it? A restraining order that forced you to come back to the States.”

Gabriel felt his eyes tearing up. He rubbed his temples while his friend kept talking.

“Could you take a look at my case file? Please. It’s an early-onset Alzheimer’s. I think you’ll find it fascinating. I’ll e-mail it to you now and call you back in twenty minutes.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding! I’m going back to bed. And please don’t call me again,” he said firmly before hanging up.

The window reflected the image of a tired, unshaven, and depressed-looking man. He found his cell phone—battery dead—on the carpet next to the couch. He plugged it in, walked to the bathroom, and spent ten minutes in the shower to wake himself from his lethargy. Wearing a bathrobe, he went back to the living room. Using the pod machine on top of a chest of drawers, he made himself a double espresso and drank it while watching the Hudson shine in the first glimmers of daylight. After that, he made himself another coffee and turned on his laptop. As promised, Thomas’s e-mail was waiting in his in-box.

Christ, that guy never gives up!

The neurologist had sent him his patient’s case file. Krieg knew that Gabriel would not be able to resist taking a look at it.

Gabriel opened the PDF and skimmed through the first few pages. The patient’s unusual profile caught his attention: Alice Schafer, thirty-eight, a pretty Frenchwoman with regular features and an open face framed by blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He lingered for a few seconds