Lock In (8 page)

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Dad’s trophy room is impressive, but then, that’s the point. Marcus Shane isn’t the kind of person to tell you he’s more important than you. He’s happy to let his hardware make the point for him.

The west side of the room details his early basketball career. This includes his junior high and high school jerseys, the four DCIAA trophies he won for Cardozo High, and the acceptance letter he received to Georgetown University, full scholarship. Then follows a ridiculous number of photos of him in action with the Hoyas, with whom he reached the Final Four three times, taking the championship in his junior year. The picture of him weeping as he cuts down the net is up there, with a piece of the actual net inside the same frame. It’s surrounded by the Wooden, Naismith, and Robinson awards, which he won the same year, and his championship ring on a pillow. The sting of crashing out of the NCAA Finals in the semi-final round in his senior year was ameliorated by winning an Olympic gold medal. Everyone agreed that the gold medals for his Olympiad were even uglier than usual. On the other hand, it was an Olympic gold medal, so everyone could just shut up.

On to the south side of the room, and we have Dad’s professional career, all of it with the Washington Wizards, into which he was drafted after a particularly abysmal sixteen-win season. A lot of people thought the team intentionally tanked their season to get a shot at Dad in the draft. Privately, Dad didn’t credit the coach or the GM with that much strategic planning. That coach was gone by the end of Dad’s first season, the GM by the second, and two years later, Dad drove the team into the playoffs. Two years after that, Washington won the first of three back-to-back-to-back championships.

This wall featured lots of photos of Dad suspended in air, his league and series MVP awards, some of the more iconic objects of his professional endorsement career, a display case with his four championship rings (the final one coming in his last year playing), topped off by the long thin trophy you get when you’re inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame, which he was, in his first year of eligibility.

The east side of the room begins with a magazine cover while Dad was still with the Wizards—not from
Sports Illustrated
but from a D.C. business magazine, which was the first to notice that America’s hottest rookie was not buying a stupidly large house and otherwise throwing his money around like an asshole, but was instead living in a modest Alexandria town house and investing in real estate in and around the District. By the time Dad retired from basketball, he was making more money from his real estate company than he was from playing and endorsements, and he officially became a billionaire the same year he was inducted into the Hall. This side of the room is filled with various business and real estate awards and citations. There are more of these than anything else. Businesspeople sure like to give out awards.

The north side of the room was related to Dad’s philanthropy work and specifically his work with Haden’s syndrome—a natural cause for him after his only child (me) was stricken with the disease in its first, terrible wave, along with millions of others, including Margaret Haden, the first lady of the United States. Despite the syndrome being named after the first lady, it was Dad and Mom (the former Jacqueline Oxford, scion of one of Virginia’s oldest political families) who became the public face of Haden’s awareness—along with me, of course.

And so this wall was filled with pictures of Dad testifying before Congress for the massive research and development required to deal with four and a half million U.S. citizens suddenly having their minds cut off from their bodies, being present when President Benjamin Haden signed the Haden Research Act into law, being on the board of the Haden Institute, and of Sebring-Warner Industries, which developed the first threeps, and being virtually present when the Agora, the virtual environment developed specifically for Hadens, was opened up for us to populate and to have a space of our own in the world.

Interspersed with these photos were pictures of us: me, Mom, and Dad, in various places, meeting world leaders, celebrities, and other Haden families. I was one of the first Haden children to own and use a threep, and my parents made a point of bringing me everywhere in my threep—not just so I could have a childhood filled with enviable personal experiences, although that was a nice side benefit. The point was to encourage the unaffected to see threeps as people, not freaky androids that had just popped up in their midst. Who better to do that than the child of one of the most celebrated men in the entire world?

So up until I turned eighteen, I was one of the most famous and photographed Hadens in the world. The photo of me handing a flower to the pope in St. Peter’s Basilica is regularly cited as one of the most famous photographs of the last half century—the image of a child-sized threep offering an Easter lily to the Bishop of Rome being an iconic juxtaposition of modern technology and traditional theology, one presenting a peace offering to the other, who is reaching out, smiling, to take it.

When I was in college I had a professor tell me that single image did more to advance the acceptance of Hadens as people, not victims, than a thousand congressional testimonials or scientific discoveries could have. I told him what I remembered about the pope was that he had wicked bad breath. I went to Georgetown. My professor was a priest. I don’t think he was very happy with me.

My dad had taken the photo. It was dead center north wall. On the left side of it is his certificate for being a Pulitzer finalist for the Feature Photography category, which even he, to his credit, admits is kind of ridiculous. On the right side is his Presidential Medal of Freedom, given to him a couple of years back for his work with Haden’s. Underneath that is the picture of him having the medal placed around his neck by President Gilchrist, and bending down, laughing, so the famously short Gilchrist could manage it.

Three months later Willard Hill was elected president. President Hill signed Abrams-Kettering into law. President Hill was not thought well of in the Shane household.

I’ve lived with the trophy room all my life so I never thought there was anything particularly special about it. It was just another room in the house and a boring one at that, since I wasn’t allowed to play in it. And I know Dad is pretty blasé about awards at this point. Short of a Nobel Peace Prize, he’s pretty much run the table. Outside of humoring visitors or hosting events, I’ve never seen him step foot into the trophy room. He doesn’t even put things in there—he leaves that to Mom.

But then, the trophy room isn’t for us. It’s for everyone else. My father deals with millionaires and billionaires on a daily basis, the sort of people who have egos just this side (and sometimes way over the edge) of sociopathy. The sort of person who thinks he’s the apex predator wading through a universe of sheep. Dad takes them into the trophy room and their eyes get to the size of dinner plates and they realize that whatever shit they’ve got going on is tiddlywinks compared to Dad. There are maybe three people in the world more interesting than Marcus Shane. They’re not one of them.

Which is why Mom, when she’s being indiscreet, refers to the trophy room as the “vet’s office.” Because that’s where Dad brings people to take their balls.

Into the vet’s office I walked, newly numb in the jaw, to see who tonight’s set of financial and testicular donors were. I saw Dad instantly, of course. He’s six foot eight. He’s hard to miss.

I was not prepared for the other person I saw, standing with Dad, looking up at him, smiling, drink in hand.

It was Nicholas Bell.

Chapter Seven

“C
HRIS!” DAD SAID,
and then suddenly he was looming over me, as he does, to grab me in a hug. “How you doing, kiddo.”

“Being crushed by you, Dad,” I said, and he laughed. This was a standard call-and-response for us.

“Thanks for coming in to meet people,” he said.

“We have to have a talk about that,” I said. “Sometime really soon.”

“I know, I know,” he said, but then waved Bell over anyway. Bell walked over, drink in hand, still smiling. “This is Lucas Hubbard, CEO and chairman of Accelerant Investments.”

“Hello, Chris,” Hubbard/Bell said, extending his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

I shook it. “And you,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m having a bit of déjà vu at the moment.”

Hubbard/Bell smiled. “I get that a lot,” he said. He sipped from the glass: scotch on the rocks.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just surprised.”

“So you know who Lucas is,” Dad said, watching our somewhat cryptic exchange.

“No, it’s not that,” I said. “I mean, yes. I know who Lucas Hubbard is, of course. But I also know…” I trailed off. It was considered rude to acknowledge that an integrated Haden was using someone else’s body.

“You know the Integrator I’m using,” Hubbard said, sparing me the faux pas.

“Yes, that’s it,” I said. “We’ve met before.”

“Socially?” Hubbard said.

“Professionally,” I said. “Briefly.”

“Interesting,” Hubbard said. A rather good-looking woman walked up and stood next to him. He motioned to her. “And this is Accelerant Investments’ general counsel, Samuel Schwartz.”

“We’ve met,” Schwartz said, looking directly at me.

“Have you, now,” Hubbard said.

“Also professionally,” I said. “Also briefly.”

“Indeed,” Schwartz said, and smiled. “I didn’t make the connection as to who you were at first when we met, Agent Shane. I had to look you up halfway through the conversation. I do apologize.”

“No apology needed,” I said. “I was out of context. Speaking of which, you are looking a bit different from when I last saw you, Mr. Schwartz. It’s an unexpected look.”

Schwartz glanced down at his body. “I suppose it is,” he said. “I know some Hadens who enjoy cross-gender integration, but I’m not usually one of them. But my usual Integrator was unavailable this evening and I was a last-minute addition to this party. So I had to work with who was available.”

“You could have done worse,” I assured him. He smiled again.

“I don’t know how I feel about you knowing these two better than I do,” Dad said, charmingly, smoothly.

“I find it a little surprising myself,” I said.

“As do I,” Hubbard said. “It doesn’t seem possible that your father and I haven’t crossed paths before, all things considered. But then, aside from our various offices, Accelerant Investments doesn’t do much in the field of real estate.”

“Why is that, Lucas?” Dad asked.

“As a Haden, I’m less engaged with the physical world, I suppose,” Hubbard said. “It’s just not front of mind for me.” He motioned at Dad with his scotch. “I don’t think you mind me not competing in your field.”

“No,” Dad said. “Although I don’t mind competition.”

“That’s because you’re very good at beating the competition,” Hubbard said.

Dad laughed. “I suppose that’s true,” he said.

“Of course it is,” Hubbard said, and then looked at me, smiling. “It’s something the two of us have in common.”

*   *   *

As we sat down at the table for dinner I called Vann, using my inside voice so no one at the table would know my attention was elsewhere.

Vann picked up. “I’m busy,” she said. I could barely hear her over the background noise.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m in a bar, having a drink and trying to get laid,” she said. “Which means I’m busy.”

“I know that Lucas Hubbard uses Nicholas Bell as an Integrator.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Hubbard is sitting across from me at the dinner table right now, using Bell.”

“Well, shit,” Vann said. “That was easy.”

“What should I do?”

“You’re off the clock, Shane,” Vann said. “Do what you like.”

“I thought you might be a little more excited,” I said.

“When you see me tomorrow, on the job, I will be excited,” Vann promised. “Right now, I’m otherwise occupied.”

“Got it,” I said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“So am I,” Vann said. “But since you did I’ll tell you I’ve made progress on our corpse. The DNA came back.”

“Who is he?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“I thought you said you made progress,” I said.

“I did. The DNA analysis didn’t come up with anything but it determined that he’s probably of Navajo ancestry. Which might explain why we can’t find him in the database. If he’s Navajo and he lived on a reservation, then all his records would be on the reservation’s databases. They’re not automatically tied into the U.S. databases because the Navajo Nation is autonomous. And strangely distrustful of the United States government!” Vann fairly cackled that last line.

“How often does that happen?” I asked. “Even if you live on a reservation, if you ever leave it, you probably do something that gets you into our databases.”

“Maybe this guy never left,” Vann said. “Until he left.”

“Do we have a request in to them?” I asked. “The Navajo Nation, I mean.”

“Our forensics team does, yeah,” Vann said. “DNA, fingerprints, and facial scan. The Navajo will get to it when they get to it. They don’t always put a priority on our needs.”

Up at the head of the table, Dad started clanging on his wineglass, and then stood up.

“Have to go,” I said. “My dad is about to make a speech.”

“Good,” Vann said. “I was about to hang up on you anyway.” And then she did.

*   *   *

Dad’s speech was his standard-issue “at home with donors who everyone is pretending are friends” speech, which is to say that it was light, familiar, casually intimate, yet at the same time it touched on themes important to the nation and to his not-quite-formally-announced senatorial campaign. It went over like it usually does, which is to say very well, because Dad is Dad and he’s been doing the public relations thing since he was in high school. If you can’t be charmed by Marcus Shane, you’re probably a sociopath of some sort.

But at the end of the speech there was a switch up from the text. Dad mentioned “the challenges and opportunities that Abrams-Kettering offers each of us,” which I thought was a little out of context, since only Hubbard and Schwartz and I had Haden’s. So I cheated and did a quick facial scan of the other people at the table. Five of them were CEOs and/or chairmen of companies that catered to the Haden market one way or another, with all the businesses headquartered here in Virginia.