Zero to sixty in less than four seconds. Around two hundred miles an hour.”

“No way!”

“You ever driven one of these things?” Lucy says to the older boy.

“I’ve never seen one in person.”

“What about you?” Lucy asks his redheaded brother, who is maybe eight or nine.

“No, ma’am.” Shyly.

Lucy opens the driver’s door and the two redheads crane to get a peek and suck in their breath at the same time.

“What’s your name?” she asks the older boy.

“Fred.”

“Sit in the driver’s seat, Fred, and I’m going to show you how to start this thing.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Mom says to her, and she looks as if she’s about to cry. “Honey, don’t you hurt anything.”

“I’m Johnny,” the other boy says.

“You’re next,” Lucy says. “Get over here next to me and pay attention.”

Lucy turns on the battery, makes sure the Ferrari’s in neutral. She takes Fred’s finger and places it on the steering wheel’s red start button. She lets go of his hand. “Hold it in for a few seconds and fire her up.” The Ferrari roars awake.

Lucy gives each boy a ride around the parking lot while their mother stands all alone in the middle of it and smiles and waves and wipes her eyes.

Benton records Gladys Self from his office phone inside McLean’s Neuroimaging Lab. As is true of her famous daughter, the name Self suits her.

“If you’re wondering why that rich daughter of mine doesn’t put me in some nice mansion in Boca,” Mrs. Self says, “well, sir, I don’t want to be in Boca or Palm Beach or anywhere but right here in Hollywood, Florida. In my run-down little oceanfront apartment on the boardwalk.”

“Why might that be?”

“To pay her back. Think how that will look when they find me dead in a dump like this someday. Let’s see what that does to her popularity.” She chortles.

“Sounds like you might have a hard time saying anything nice about her,” Benton says. “And I do need several minutes of your praising her, Mrs. Self. Just as I’m going to need a few minutes of your being neutral and then critical.”

“Why’s she doing this, anyway?”

“I explained it at the beginning of our conversation. She volunteered for a scientific research project I’m conducting.”