THE DEATH GODS

Richard S. Prather

Creator of the

Shell Scott Mystery Series

Pendleton Artists

Books by Richard S. Prather

Case Of The Vanishing Beauty

Bodies In Bedlam

Everybody Had A Gun

Find This Woman

Pattern For Murder – republished The Scrambled Yeggs

Way Of A Wanton

Dagger Of Flesh

Darling, It's Death

Too Many Crooks

Always Leave 'Em Dying

Pattern For Panic

Strip For Murder

The Wailing Frail

Have Gat, Will Travel – Collection

Three's A Shroud – Collection

Slab Happy

Take A Murder, Darling

Over Her Dear Body

Double In Trouble (with Stephen Marlowe)

Dance With The Dead

Dig That Crazy Grave

Shell Scott's Seven Slaughters – Collection

Kill The Clown

Joker In The Deck

The Cockeyed Corpse

Dead Heat

The Trojan Hearse

Kill Him Twice

Dead Man's Walk

The Meandering Corpse

The Kubla Kahn Caper

Gat Heat

The Cheim Manuscript

The Shell Scott Sampler

Kill Me Tomorrow

Dead-Bang

The Sweet Ride

The Sure Thing

The Amber Effect

Shellshock

Hot Rock Rumble and The Double Take –Collections

Lie Down Killer (Non-Shell Scott Mystery)

Dragnet: Case No. 561 (Non-Shell Scott Mystery)

The Peddler (Non-Shell Scott Mystery)

The Death Gods

THE DEATH GODS © Copyright 2011 by Richard S. Prather; Published by arrangement with the Estate of Richard S. Prather, and Linda Pendleton. All Rights Reserved.

Editorial Credit, Linda Pendleton, Editor. Published by Linda Pendleton, Pendleton Artists at Smashwords.

Cover Design by Linda Pendleton and Judy Bullard.

Cover Copyright © Linda Pendleton, 2011.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

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Pendleton Artists

California

www.lindapendleton.com

In Memory

For Richard S. Prather (1921-2007), and dedicated to Richard’s first cousin, Mildred Comstock, and to her daughter, Patricia Willis. I’m sure all three are joyously dancing and partying together in heaven.

-Linda Pendleton

Editorial Note:

This book was Richard S. Prather’s last book. He asked me to take charge of the manuscript after his death and see if it was worthy of publication. I believe it will be considered his “masterpiece,” in the clever way he used his character, Shell Scott, to bring forth his own beliefs and deep passion about a subject he held dear to his heart for many, many years. He and his wife, Tina, might have been considered by some to be homeopathic and alternative medicine nuts, but if they were, they were well-educated and informed nuts about all avenues of alternative medicine and the risks of allopathic medicine. Richard devoted his life to research of alternative medicine, and the years he spent writing this novel were well-worth it, as it is not only entertaining, but informative, and may leave the reader pondering and questioning medical care, much to Richard’s delight.

I also thank my dear friend, the late Anne Boss for her hard work and dedication in typing the manuscript from Richard’s original thousand pages of manuscript—each handwritten page full of his notes and blue felt pen edits. Anne loved the story as much as I, and more than once I caught her crying over story events, especially when it came to the inhumane treatment of animals. Anne also came to understood how writers become very attached to their characters and how we go through “post-partum depression” when the story has ended.

This has been a joy to work with Richard’s final book and his classic Shell Scott character. I hope you enjoy the adventure.

-Linda Pendleton

“Even I—and I am not a doctor, and thus can’t know for sure about such things—understood that civilization must be face-to-face with its greatest peril ever, nothing less than the possible extinction of all life upon the planet except maybe cockroaches.”

-Sheldon “Shell” Scott, Private Investigator

“Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison.

The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.”

-Paracelsus (1493-1541)

Physician, Alchemist, Astrologer

CHAPTER ONE

“Good night, Shell,” she said.

That’s what she said. But it’s not what I heard, because she murmured those words in a hormone-heated burning-velvet voice that could make “NO!” sound like, “Yes, of course, darling.”

So naturally I said, still smiling hugely, “What? Good what?”

But by then she had turned into a door. Specifically, the just-closed door of room 626, Dane’s room, in the luxurious Halcyon Hotel, a new thousand-room hostel cloaked in lush and softly-illumined greenery, resplendent on the edge of Beverly Hills. Yes, the Beverly Hills of millionaires and billionaires, in Southern California, right next door to Hollywood—where I live in the Spartan Apartment Hotel on North Rossmore from whence I often occupy myself pursuing assorted evildoers: grifters and swindlers, killers and con-men, sophisticated crooks and slobbish hoodlums. Plus on occasion beauteous lasses—like the lovely who had just murmured invitingly in a voice hot enough to melt earwax, “Good night, Shell.”

That’s me, Sheldon “Shell” Scott, private eye, former optimist.

It was a really depressing moment, a lot like how the Prince must feel when he turns back into a frog. Because not only had there been that humongous kiss, or KISS—which I’ll get to in a minute—but this lady was transcendental, electric, almost glowing, bright and brainy enough to do cube roots in her pretty head, gorgeous as a South Pacific sunrise made entirely of naked angels, with the kind of eye-bruising body I might have invented myself if I’d had eons to get it just right.

We had been—and now, alas, I was—dawdling in the thickly-carpeted hallway outside the door of room 626, having apparently just come to the end of a splendid October evening. An evening notable for icy-cold Martinis in the hotel’s Sybaris Lounge, followed by butter-oozing crab legs for her and red-rare prime ribs of beef au plenty jus for me in the

Gourmet Room six floors below. Below Dane’s room, into which I had fondly imagined I might within seconds scoot with Dane Zanie, there to drink more Martinis, and eat the cute olives, and talk and laugh and—perhaps, perhaps—merrily explore a whole catalogue of sinful fantasies.

Sure. So this was a lesson for me, perhaps for everyone everywhere: Positive Thinking doesn’t work. Even so, for a moment I wondered positively what Dane would do if I kicked the goddamned door in. Wondered merely for a moment, of course. Dumb things like that actually happen only on those wonderful afternoon TV soaps like All My Frenzies. Not that I couldn’t have done it efficiently. My feet are—and the rest of me is—big enough: six-two, two hundred and six pounds, solid for the most part. And, oddly, Dane had seemed interested, warm and friendly, and with her boobs sticking way out. Maybe she’d taken her first really close look at my slightly irregular features, noting the twice-broken and once-realigned nose, the fine scar over my right eye, the bullet-clipped bit missing from the top of my left ear. Or perhaps what had turned her off was the inch-long white hair leaping straight up into the air like those playfully goosed teenagers in All My Frenzies. Maybe that springy hair combined with the equally white up-angling and down-bending brows over my gray eyes, all of that accented by the deep tan of my chops, had made her think I was older than my thirty years. Or in disguise. Or maybe she’d just had something better to do, like sleep. On the other hand while Dane hadn’t actually invited me inside, she had allowed me to kiss her good night. And how. Let me tell you:

Most first kisses are little more than the let’s-get-acquainted union of friendly lips, often more like people merely shaking mouths instead of hands. But this moments-ago-ended event had been a labial landmark in the history of inventive osculation, an acetylene-torch fusion and melting and imminent vaporizing of at least four lips and possibly several other vital organs. I got the impression Dane kissed with everything, and I’d liked it so much I could hardly wait for the next bunch. But it appeared I would have to; so I turned and walked along the hallway to the elevator, poked the button, stepped into the cage when it appeared, and rode it down.

I had parked my car, a year-old sky-blue Cadillac convertible, in the Halcyon’s lot about five this afternoon. A clock in the spacious lobby told me it was now a few minutes after nine p.m., and from the arched entrance to the Sybaris Lounge on my left came the curious sounds of “The Sonic Notes,” which, according to a six-foot-high photographic poster outside the Lounge, was a five-member group of so-called “creative instrumentalists.”

As I exited through the wide entrance doors I was thinking that Dane and I had spent a pleasant hour in the Sybaris Lounge earlier, before the entertainment started, and it had been more entertaining without the entertainment. I was also thinking that I really liked what I knew of Dane, but I didn’t know much. Certainly not enough.

Earlier today we had bumped into each other—literally—at a place called the Omega Medical Research Institute, where after a somewhat disjointed conversational beginning she had overcome what must have been severe misgivings and agreed to meet me later, here in the Sybaris at the Halcyon.

I walked past the pair of phone cubicles outside the lobby, and a considerably overweight uniformed parking attendant, looking remarkably like a winged creampuff in his glittery-pink coveralls, trotted up in front of me, holding out one pudgy hand. I shook my head, continued on toward the black-topped parking area, hearing the lad sniff behind me.

So let him sniff. When I’m alone, as when not escorting a famished lovely, I prefer to park the Cadillac myself. Due to the nature of my work, I often have to split in a hurry and therefore like to know exactly where my car is and how to reach it without any delay.

But I was, unfortunately, thinking less about that—the sometimes perilous nature of my work—than about the lady I’d just left, about Dane, about soft words spoken in a voice heated by a hot pink tongue and blistered by provocative lips, about magnificent full breasts partially revealed by the low-and-getting-lower neckline of a satiny green dress, about a lovely face made almost unreal by great eyes of emerald shadows.

And because I was, not for the first time, dwelling overmuch on the implied promise of future delights instead of what was happening right now, that preoccupation came very close to getting me killed.

I saw the two men, one on my right walking slowly between rows of parked cars and nearing the rear of my Cad which was parked facing me as I approached, the other leaning against the fender of a brown Mercedes-Benz sedan on my left, twenty feet from the front of my Cad. But their presence, even their movements, caused no ripple of alarm, no apprehension in me. Not at first. They were just two men—both big, burly, wearing dark suits—out here with me in the parking lot, but now moving simultaneously toward the left side of my car, where in a few more steps I would also be.

It was odd that they would be walking toward each other, and toward the spot where I would stand when I unlocked the driver’s-side door with the car keys already in my hand. The quickening movement registered; I was aware of it; but it was awareness without alarm. But suddenly that lack of concern was gone.

I saw the flash of light, metallic, glittering, a split-second of quicksilver brightness from something low at the first man’s right side, something held there, turning slightly in his hand.

I glanced at the other guy, behind me and to my left—but moving more quickly now—and I could clearly see the long-bladed knife in his hand, his left hand. Two men, two knives, an right-hander and a southpaw. As a licensed P.I., I almost invariably carry my Colt .38 Special in its clamshell holster at my left armpit, but it was in my hand now. I didn’t consciously reach for the gun, it was just suddenly there, solid in my right fist. I crouched low, knees bending, feeling the first great liquid leap of my heart, the quick papery dryness of my mouth, chilling of my skin in the warm October air.

The guy on my right was a yard closer than the other man and I shot him twice, saw him stagger as the hard flat blasts banged my ears. Then I was swinging my upper body left, pulling my left leg around in a short arc and hearing the shoe leather of my Cordovans scraping over the asphalt, flipping the .38 toward the other man now looming close and above me.

I was fast, but not fast enough. The man’s left hand was a swift blur sweeping up toward my chest. That long blade clicked with surprising loudness as it hit my gun, yanking the Colt from my grip, and immediately after that I felt, simultaneously, something like a solid blow against my upper arm—not a slash or cut but a punch like a swung fist—and the man’s heavy body slamming into me.

I managed to grab one of his wrists and hang on, but then went down hard—we both did. I’d been crouched low, and when the impact slammed me onto my back the man rushing at me flipped over my sprawled bulk like a runner hitting a two-foot-high fence. I heard his head hit with a solid thunk followed by the softer slap-thud of his feet flailing the asphalt.

I turned, got onto my knees, planted one foot under me and pushed, punching my gun toward him—or, rather, punching my empty fist. No gun. There was blood on the back of my hand, welling from a cut atop my index finger where the man’s knife had obviously sliced me. But the man himself appeared to be only half conscious, barely moving—so that dull thunking sound, like a cantaloupe falling onto the kitchen floor, had indeed been the guy’s head smacking the blacktop.

He was prone, stretched out facing toward me, one hand pushing against the blacktop feebly and without noticeable result. So he was no real threat to me at the moment. Still, I looked around, spotted my Colt .38 and picked it up, and seriously considered shooting the sonofabitch anyway. Instead, I stepped to a spot near the man’s head—feeling, finally, the pain of a knife cut under my left bicep and the warmth of blood beginning to flow—eyed the knife-wielder’s skull, which was raised a few inches above the blacktop, and kicked it with enthusiasm.

After that, the man lay still as death. I put a finger on the carotid artery in his throat. His heart was still pumping. The other guy, with two of my bullets in his chest, lay on his back a yard from my feet, head crammed against the left rear tire of my Cadillac and bent forward at a sharp angle. He was alive, moaning, making a wet bubbly sound.

Probably no more than half a minute had passed since I’d raised my gun and fired. But now I started to feel that strange weakness, a tremulous quivering deep in the gut. My skin was warmer, a thin film of perspiration on my face, on my arms, slightly greasy along my spine. And I thought: What the bloody hell? Who were these bastards, and why had they come at me silently out of the night, long knives at the ready?

Sure, I’d taken on a new client this morning, a new case. But it was a routine job—for an elderly and excitable but very pleasant and likable doctor, a somewhat unorthodox healer of the lame and blind—but these two bulky and now unmoving lobs sure as hell weren’t unorthodox surgeons hoping to harvest free transplantable organs for sale to patients who’d already ruined their own. No, I’d have given eight to five these losers were career thugs with records like crime encyclopedias.

Those thirty seconds—now about forty-five—had been sufficient time not only for me to get a little cut on my trigger finger and what felt like a much bigger slash under my arm, and prepare two thugs for the Emergency Room at Amiel-Fortis Hospital half a mile north, but also for several of the curious nearby, who undoubtedly had heard the exciting gunshots, to start running from near the Halcyon’s lobby toward the fun.

Or, toward me, toward the two guys limp on the ground. Those two weren’t going anywhere for a while; but I was. Not wanting to use my own phone I trotted toward the lobby and the outside phone cubicles there, and as the nearest juvenile fun-seekers got close I waved my revolver in a half circle before me and yelled. “Get the goddamn hell away from the scene, you idiots!” and the unmistakable authority in my voice impressed them enough that they almost instantly disappeared in several directions. Maybe the gun helped.

At the nearer pay phone, I dropped coins into their slot and started to call the Beverly Hills Police Department, then changed my mind.

I’m on good terms with a lot of cops in various divisions, but those I’m closest to, all the drinking buddies and longtime friends, work out of Central Division in downtown L.A. There weren’t any of my pals working Beverly Hills; and I knew from considerable experience that, when I explained why I’d had to shoot one citizen and kick another enthusiastically in the head, it would almost certainly be better if I explained to a friendly face instead of an unfamiliar ear.

So I simply punched in 911 and, without identifying myself, reported a shooting in the Halcyon Hotel’s parking lot, two men down, police and ambulance needed, then hung up and trotted back to my Cad.

And once again thought: What the bloody hell?

There was no big ape sprawled face down on the asphalt, no second big ape resting his head against the rear tire of my Cadillac. No guys, no knives, nothing. I even stepped to the back of my Cadillac and checked the license plate, in case I’d wound up next to somebody else’s year-old sky-blue convertible. But it was my Cad, where I’d left two totally-out-of-commission thugs only a couple of minutes ago.

The sound of a car’s engine rapidly accelerating nearby, then the screech of tires skidding on asphalt, hit my ears. I looked up and saw, racing away from me, a Mercedes black sedan, not the brown one still parked a few yards from my Cadillac. The black sedan’s taillights flared bright red as the driver braked and swung sharply right on the private road leading from the Halcyon’s entrance out to Birch Drive, then accelerated swiftly again.

I shoved a hand into my pants pocket for the Cad’s keys—and came up empty. Sure, they’d been in my hand, but when I grabbed for my Colt I had obviously dropped or thrown the keys. I was turning, looking around, taking a step when my shoe hit something on the asphalt, something that clicked and tinkled. I bent down, picked up my key ring, unlocked the Cad’s door, slid inside, jammed a key into the ignition. But I didn’t even turn on the engine, because I knew that black Mercedes was long gone by now.

I just sat there for a few seconds as I acknowledged my anger. There was no real evidence that the two burly mugs who’d jumped me had been in that Mercedes, but the driver had left here in one hell of a hurry. And it was a sure thing those two apes hadn’t left under their own power.

Well, the Mercedes had gotten away from me, at least temporarily, but its registration hadn’t. When the driver braked before turning right, I’d been close enough to get a flash of the license-plate numbers. I got out my notebook and jotted them down: CVY176, California plates.

It was a start. So I headed for home.

* * * * * *

Home is apartment 212 in the Spartan Hotel, on North Rossmore in Hollywood, only a couple of miles from Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, those fabled and glamorous movieland thoroughfares where congregate the shuffling freakos, the empty-eyed crack and coke and H and you-want-it-you-got-it dealers, stopping place for malnourished runaways, temporary open-air home for the homeless, the losing and the lost. The glamour isn’t as glamorous as it used to be; those Boulevards don’t even smell the same any more.

But apartment 212 smelled fine. I could pick from the air friendly aromas of burned toast, a little bourbon, a wisp of perfume that Lallah Palooza—yeah, that’s really her name, and maybe I’ll get around to Lallah later—had left behind a couple of nights ago.

Home is living room, bedroom, kitchenette and bath, yellow-gold carpet with a long cushiony shag nap in the living room, upon which carpet sort of scattered about are my big-enough-for-four chocolate-brown divan and low black-lacquered coffee table on which a few bourbon-and-water highballs and even a prettier drink or two have been spilled, all of this aslant before a fake fireplace. Plus my own personal leather chair, a couple of other chairs covered in some kind of nubby chocolate-brown cloth, and three low leather hassocks.

But not everything is chocolate-brown and leather and yellow-gold. On the wall above that gas-log fireplace is a lot of color, mostly flesh color, in a yard-square frame—of Amelia, a well-endowed nude lady facing away from the viewer but peeking back over one bare shoulder in unquestionably friendly fashion.

More splashes of brightness, always moving, are just inside the living room door. Against the wall there I keep my two tanks of tropical fishes, a ten-gallon tank filled with the kaleidoscopic color of fifteen or twenty frisky guppies, and a twenty-gallon aquarium stocked with red swordtails, black mollies, dangerous-looking little panchax chaperii, a couple of scavenging catfish and, at the moment, three vividly-glowing neon tetras partly hidden in the feathery green Myriophyllum and Cabomba.

I walked past the kitchenette and into the bathroom, pulling off my tie and shrugging out of my coat and shirt. There was quite a lot of blood, which had flowed from a three-inch-long cut on my upper arm. The coat and shirt were ruined, but the arm still seemed to be serviceable. It burned like fire when I flexed it, but everything worked. I cleaned the arm, smeared the cut with some calendula ointment and covered it with a makeshift bandage, then walked back into the living room, plopped on my couch and lifted the phone from a small table at the couch’s far end.

Before dialing, I thought back to that attack by the pair of dark-suited men, and decided I’d goofed. Not by failing to anticipate the attack—I still couldn’t think of a good reason for anybody to suddenly want me dead—but in failing to suspect that the men might not have been alone in the Halcyon’s parking lot. Obviously, they hadn’t been. I hadn’t seen the Mercedes driver at all, just the car. For that matter, I hadn’t gotten a really wonderful look at my attackers, since all that activity was crammed into very few seconds. But there were enough impressions remaining in memory—bushy brows and thick lips and an unusually prominent nose on the man I’d shot, thin face too narrow for the wide body and small eyes and a thick mustache on the guy I’d kicked on the conk—for me to know I’d never seen either of them before.

I sighed, dialed the LAPD Motor Vehicle Division. Working the phone there was Sergeant Robert Denn, whom I knew fairly well. So I told him who was calling and added, “Can you run the registration for me on a new black Mercedes, Bob? Number’s CVY176, I think it was an S600, looked like money.”

“Couple secs, Shell,” he said, and I knew he was poking letters and numbers into his computer.

While waiting for whatever info would appear on Sgt. Denn’s monitor, I wondered again if anything I’d done in the recent past might account for what had happened to me tonight. It seemed unlikely that any of my actions this day could have led to two men with glittery knives in the Halcyon’s parking lot... but something had sure stirred up the animals.

That thought—of stirring up the animals—struck me as curious. Because I had taken on a new client this morning, started a new case, and part of my job was to find an animal. A dog, in fact, a handsome three-year-old German Shepherd belonging to my client. This wasn’t exactly the kind of intriguing puzzlement to which I normally liked to devote time and energies; but there’d been nothing else of importance on the agenda at Sheldon Scott, Investigations, and—despite the fact that a possible murder attempt was allegedly involved—the job certainly hadn’t impressed me as dangerous.

I hadn’t found the dog yet. But I’d run into a few interesting characters, some lively and some ugly, perhaps even uglier than I’d thought at the time. And it occurred to me now that probably I should have taken more seriously, from the beginning, the Doc’s claim that somebody had already tried to kill him. Maybe he hadn’t been paranoid after all, despite the many other really crazy things he’d told me.

I cradled the phone against my shoulder, feeling sharp hot pain along the gash in my arm, and thought briefly about the simple, ordinary, unexciting way this job had started.

This day had begun like most other days, with me waking up, as usual, still asleep....

CHAPTER TWO

The second alarm went off with an unwelcome clangor, and I gradually, carefully, opened my eyes.

I let my lids slide down and up a couple of times, blinked them rapidly and pushed my tongue out, pulled it back in. Exercises over, I sat up, swung my feet down onto the bedroom’s black carpet, and sat there unmoving for a while.

I don’t know where it is I go when I’m sleeping, but it must be a great place because, at least for the first several minutes in the morning, I leave it very reluctantly. However, twenty minutes later, revived by a hot-and-cold shower and with a dollop of breakfast inside me, I was filled with enough ambition to at least leave the apartment.

About breakfast. Usually, it is what some people call gruel. It is, in fact, my own self-boiled oatmeal, artfully cooked so it always contains lots of lumps. I don’t like lumps. I don’t even like oatmeal much. But it’s better than almost everything else, including the burned toast that goes with it. Incidentally, I don’t deliberately burn the toast every a.m. It’s just that, like those lumps—never mind. But, somehow, the feel of sticky gruel on my palate, and the familiar smell of smoke in my nostrils, fills me with homey contentment. Besides which, breakfast is so lousy it makes the strong fresh-perked coffee taste almost like ambrosia.

So, with ambrosial coffee gurgling in my innards, and my outards clad in a real-blue silk-gabardine suit accompanied by white shirt and marvelous orange tie peppered with little green somethings like...well, like little green peppers, I was raring to go, and went.

* * * * * *

Sheldon Scott, Investigations, of which I am the sole proprietor and investigator, is on the second floor of the Hamilton Building on Broadway in downtown L.A. This Friday morning, the 24th day of October, I trotted up the stairs and stopped, as I usually do, leaning on the countertop beyond which was the computer, large white desk, switchboard, filing cabinets—and Hazel.

Hazel is the super-efficient young lady who handles incoming and outgoing calls for the Hamilton Building’s offices, updates and files our records, and keeps track of practically everything else, including me. She is also bright and bouncy and cute and curvy and quick-with-the-sharp mouth and never far from laughter.

“Miss,” I said, “has the captain of my yacht phoned in from the Caribbean yet?”

“No, Sir,” she replied dryly, not turning around, her fingers going rippety-pop over the keyboard, “but your canoe sank in Westlake Park. Again.” She went right on, while doing mysterious things with the keyboard, “Guess what, Shell. Yesterday I made a list of all the things you owe me.”

“Owe?”

“Things you’ve promised me, just in the last year.”

“Oh... them... Those.”

“Yes, lots and lots of thems and thoses.” Hazel spun around on her four-wheeled stool, facing me and looking up, smiling. “Pay up and I’ll quit this job, and go canoeing in the Caribbean. Observe,” she said, stretching out one arm and tapping a single key with a pink-tipped finger.

It always looks like magic to me. But the screen began filling with large letters, forming lines of things I “owed” Hazel, moving up the monitor’s face as more, and more, appeared below:

$11,000,000.

A used yacht.

Three imitation-mink coats.

Nine lobster dinners and buckets of rare champagnes.

Pounds of diamonds “sprinkled over your fair form like gobs of sparkling moondust.”

“Hey,” I said. “Quit that. Besides, I never said gobs.”

“Sure, you did. You say lots of dumb things, Shell.”

“Dumb? Dumb?”

“Gobs and buckets and pounds and barrels. Fair form, too.”

“Well, yeah, I remember that one. Yeah, well, look, you know I’m good for all that stuff. However, though gobs of checks must surely be in the mails, I happen to be between clients at the moment—”

“No, you’re not.”

It didn’t register immediately. I was thinking it was true that I had on occasion promised Hazel—in return for special services such as helping get me out of various pickles or jail, or phoning to wake me up when there was an impatient client in the office—numerous little bonuses or presents like bars of gold or tropical islands or dinner at the Halcyon, which is a fancy and traumatically expensive hotel at the edge of Beverly Hills.

But Hazel had been keeping track of my pleasantries.

“Hazel, dear,” I said, “this sounds a little like premeditated blackmail.”

“A lot like.”

“Okay. I’ll give you a blank check, signed by Blank himself... I’m not? Not what?”

Somehow she knew what I was talking about.

“Not between clients,” she said. “Not if you want to bestir yourself and call a Doctor.” She picked up a scribbled-on memo pad and glanced at it—“Henry Hernandez.”

She tore off the top page and handed it to me. On it in Hazel’s neat, rounded script was written, “Henry Hernandez, M.D. Phoned eight a.m. sharp, wishes to employ you immediately. Dr. Hernandez has lost his dog. I told him this sounded like a case Shell Scott could handle. Phone him at 555-9046.”

I looked sternly down at Hazel, who was patting her splendid knees and smiling at me. “Lost his dog?”

She laughed. “That’s what he said.” Then she sobered, or at least got as sober as bubbly Hazel could get. “There’s a good deal more on his mind than that, Shell. I’m sure of it. That’s all he told me, but I got the impression he was quite anxious.”

“Okay.” I folded the paper and stuck it into my shirt pocket. “Thanks, dear. For your help in making me eligible for the P.I. Dogcatcher of the Year Award. If I win it, I shall reward you with...with....”

She’d scooted quickly back to her computer and had already tapped a few keys. “Yes?”

“With a...a banana.”

Her shoulders slumped and she shook her head, but her fingers were rippety-popping the keys. This time the letters were enormous, filling the bottom half of the monitor:

AND ONE BAN-

ANA.

I searched my brains for a witty comment. But so much time passed that I decided to think up something later. So I sniffed and turned to go.

“Shell?”

“Yeah? What do you want, two bananas?”

“No. But I’ve been meaning to ask you.” She was gazing wide-eyed at my chest. “Is that a tie, and—is it alive?”

I glanced down at it, squinting slightly.

Hazel knows I like a bit of dashing color here and there in my apparel, and playfully ribs me from time to time about what she pretends is a short circuit in brain synapses activating my eyeballs. Well, the colors did seem to be dashing hither and thither when one looked directly at them, those little sort of glowing greenish bell-pepper somethings dancing in what appeared to be an orange’s electrified aura. Nonetheless, it pleased me.

“No Hazel,” I said stiffly. “Not any more. And I am shocked that you have so little respect for the recently deceased.” Then I turned and stalked down the hallway, ignoring Hazel’s queries as to whether it had died giving birth to those square pickles, and other dumb things.

Then I unlocked my office door, went inside, and said hello to the fish.

* * * * * *

The office of Dr. Henry Hernandez was, to be charitable, modest.

About the only times I’ve gone to see doctors have been occasions when I was shot, or hit unpleasantly upon the head, and thus have gone involuntarily and with little interest in my surroundings. Even so, I have become accustomed to offices and medical clinics in high-rent districts, many of them resembling small Taj Mahals or high-tech temples. But this, if I was not mistaken, appeared to be a house. A regular, ordinary, residential-area house.

That’s what it was. Except for a four-foot-wide patch of recently-turned earth parallel to the curb where I’d parked, in which brown soil several dozen little plants of some kind were struggling to grow—and the small wooden sign suspended from a post near the sidewalk, neatly painted with the name HENRY HERNANDEZ, M.D., and below that the words “Homeopathy and Preventive Holistic Medicine”—it was little different from the other residences set back behind green lawns on Mulberry Street.

Hernandez must not be a very successful medic, I thought, if he couldn’t afford an office separate from his home. But as I looked at the sign, and beyond it the freshly painted off-white house with neat green trim, something stirred in memory. Hernandez. I’d heard that name before, or had read about a “Dr. Hernandez,” several months ago, in connection with some kind of medical brouhaha or scandal.

And then I remembered having had a brief conversation with my friend, Paul Anson, over drinks in a Wilshire Boulevard saloon we both frequented, during which dialogue he had mentioned something about charges of “quackery” and “unauthorized medical treatments.” I didn’t recall the details now, but I was fairly sure Paul had been referring to a physician named Hernandez; and my fuzzy recollection was that Paul had been on his side, supportive of whatever it was the doc had been doing.

If so, that was a pretty good recommendation, because Paul is not only my very good friend, who lives just down the hall from me, but a physician himself. I seldom thought of him as Paul Anson, M.D., although the name was well known and respected among Beverly Hills hypochondriacs and Hollywood movie people worried about their post-adolescent acne or less-than-cosmic-orgasms—and among his medical confreres as well. I usually thought of him simply as my good buddy Paul, a long lanky full-of-life guy able to drink even me under the table and at least as enamored of the loveliness of lissome ladies as was I.

So, maybe I’d check with Paul tonight—if Dr. Hernandez became my client. That question wasn’t yet settled. After feeding the fish—more flashily colorful guppies in the ten-gallon tank at my office—I’d phoned Hernandez and learned he had more on his mind than a missing dog; Hazel had been right, as usual. The doctor believed somebody had already tried to kill him; but he hadn’t been able to convince the police, or anybody else, of that alleged fact. So what I was really here for was to determine if Hernandez was a sane and sensible guy with a problem, or merely another paranoid weirdo picking up Martian broadcasts through mercury-amalgam fillings in his molars.

I left my car at the curb, walked past the doctor’s wooden sign and up a cement walk to the front door. Two lines of black letters on a small brass plate above the bell said “Please enter,” and “Entrada, por favor,” so I entered.

A plump middle-aged lady, with black hair and a no longer young but very beautiful face, was seated behind a small desk on my right. She looked up as I approached.

“I’m Shell Scott,” I said. “Dr. Hernandez is expecting me.”

“Oh, yes!” she said enthusiastically, dazzling white teeth flashing as she smiled. “You go right in, Mr. Scott. Henry is not with a patient.”

I nodded, glancing toward a closed door on my left that she’d indicated. But before I could move toward it, the lady leaned forward and said, “Wait,” speaking softly.

I looked at her as she said, almost in a whisper, “Mr. Scott, you are a detective. I listened on the phone. Please help him. Please. He is very good man, very good doctor. He should not have to suffer all this.”

Suffer all this what? I wondered. But I said, “Well, if he wants me to do a job for him, and I decide....”

It was a little sticky. I could hardly tell this lovely plump lady that, before I joined his team, I wanted to be sure the Doc wasn’t a fruitcake. Once I agree to take on a case for any client, I feel morally obligated to give that client 100% no matter what comes down the pike, so I have to be careful that I don’t sign on with dingdongs.

She was looking up at me soberly, intently. “I am his wife,” she said, still almost whispering. “Eleanora Hernandez. He will not beg. Never. Not if death was the other...the altervativo? Ah—he is too proud. But I will beg. Please? He cannot do this, not alone. He needs a man young, strong, to help. A man with vigorous power, like you, Mr. Scott. Do assist him, I pray. Please?”

It was more than a little weird. The lady, Mrs. Hernandez, had suddenly moved me, in a strange way had gotten to me. It wasn’t because she’d called me young and strong and powerful—I already knew that—but because there was a kind of fierceness, almost desperation, in her whispering voice, a conviction and strength and need that I felt somewhere inside me, not just in my ears.

“Look,” I said, “I haven’t even met Dr. Hernandez yet, but I’ll do my best to help him, whatever it is he...you?...may want, honest, as long as I’m convinced he’s not a complete—”

I cut it off. What I’d started to say was “complete nut-case,” but I was afraid that wouldn’t go over with a real bang here. However, I couldn’t think of any other way to make my point completely clear, so I chuckled lightly, I hoped, and added, “—nutcase.”

Surprisingly, she laughed, pulling her head back and looking up at the ceiling, some extra flesh beneath her chin wiggling during the merriment. “Nutcase, it is like crazy, cuckoo, es un hombre muy loco?”

“Yeah. At least yeah for the crazy-cuckoo. I’m not sure– ”

“My husband the doctor, he is a nutcase, you bet, verdad! But he is a nutcrazy like Leonardo De Vinci, or Viktor Schauberger, or Hahnemann and Lakhovsky and Rife and Koch, like those. You will see.” She paused, peering closely at me, then smiled. “And you will help. You are the one!”

“I’m the one?”

“Si, yes. You are good man. Good like my husband doctor. That way good. You will help, it will be very well. I can tell this because I have some. I am a...” She stopped, frowning slightly, and with one index finger tapped the side of her head.

“Nutcase?” I said helpfully.

She laughed merrily again. “Psychic, a little bit,” she said. “That is how you say it, I think. Sometimes I have the clear seeing. All right, you go in now.”

I shrugged, and did as I was told, turning and taking a couple of steps toward the doctor’s office door. Maybe there were two people a little bit psychic here—not including me. Because at that moment the door opened and a tall, slim, gray-haired man looked out, nodded at me, smiling with large teeth as white as Mrs. Hernandez’, and saying: “Ah, bueno! Mr. Scott, true? Do come in, please! I am Hernandez.”

CHAPTER THREE

I nodded at the doctor and walked past him into his office, carpeted wall-to-wall in a kind of bronze-gold. It was a large airy room dominated by a massive oak desk directly in front of me. Behind the desk was a high-backed swivel chair, its padded leather the color of caramel candy, and facing the desk were two other big leather-covered chairs in the same caramel shade.

Against the dark-wood-paneled wall on my right, in the far corner, were three gray metal filing cabinets; and nearly all of the remaining wall space was filled with what appeared to be at least two dozen framed diplomas, licenses, plus hand-lettered rectangles of paper or parchment and several photographs, all but one of them black-and-white. The other wall, on my left as I faced the desk, was almost dizzying to look at, covered from one side to the other and from as high as I could have reached on down to the gold-carpeted floor with hundreds of newspaper clippings and what appeared to be articles from magazines, plus stapled-together pages of what looked like typed manuscripts, interspersed with newspaper and magazine and photographs, all of that encyclopedic whatever-it-was affixed to the paneling with large colored pins.

Hernandez closed the door behind me and then stepped briskly to his big desk, sat down behind it facing me. The obviously long-used and well-worn desk was cluttered with papers, a couple of fierce-looking clay figurines, and some framed photographs.

Dr. Hernandez was not only an unusually healthy-looking man but a very handsome old geezer. I’d noticed when walking past him into the office that he was about the same height as I, or a couple of inches over six feet, but he was a hell of a lot thinner, lean and erect.

I guessed he was in roughly the same age bracket as his wife, say late fifties or, in his case, probably edging over the sixty mark. The skin of his narrow face was smooth, unblemished—much like his wife’s—and as dark as my own, though the doctor’s tanned-leather look was undoubtedly due to his Hispanic heritage rather than the weekends-at-the-beach sunshine that had darkened my chops.

He was snappily dressed, wearing gray slacks and a bright blue jacket, creamy-beige loafers on his feet, a crisp white dress shirt and dark blue tie, tightly knotted. In addition to the gray hair—a lot of it, combed straight back—he had a wide but narrow gray mustache, neatly trimmed and sharply pointed at the ends. He had a long straight nose that must have been almost as thin as a knife when he was a young man, but now was nearly normal, though also definitely pointed at its end; it still looked sharp enough to slice cheese. Above the mustache and nose were dark brown eyes of remarkable brightness, almost the eyes of a fiery-blooded visionary—or maniac.

I seated myself in one of the caramel-colored leather chairs, and without further ado, Dr. Hernandez fixed those piercing eyes on me and said briskly, “I thank you for coming. I appreciate your velocity. It is encouraging to know you do not dawdle. Your time is valuable. Therefore, I shall now tell you everything of importance. Then you may inform me if you will care to...” It was the briefest of pauses. “...help me from the situation wherein I find myself.”

“Okay,” I said, but he was continuing briskly, or with considerable velocity.

“Nine days ago an attempt was made to kill me. Two men driving in a green van—the color is all I know, the make of it, and year, I have no conception—attempted to demolish me with their vehicle. It was deliberate, not an accidental confusion. They were accelerating, moving with much quickness and swerving toward me when I leaped with desperation backward onto the hood of my own vehicle. I am quite agile.”

I believed that last part. If he moved as rapidly as he spoke, it was surprising he hadn’t flown clear over his car. I said, “Okay, doctor, let’s say the attempt was deliberate, with malice aforethought. Why? Who would want to kill you?”

“This puzzles me desperately. Of this, I have no concrete idea. All I know is, they did it—those men in the green van vehicle—but why is a blankness. My hope is, you perhaps can determine this? Before they do it successfully?”

“Where did this hit...or, rather, miss-and-run occur?”

“There.” He pointed toward the street in front of his office, about where my car was now parked at the curb. “It was three p.m. of Wednesday, last week. I had been to see one of my patients, with one more yet to go, and upon returning from her house I parked in front here instead of in the driveway or garage. But I walked toward the driveway in order to go around my wife’s planting experiment. She had just planted the young little alstrameria, which the experts say will die horribly if planted in October, but she does not believe any experts—neither do I—so she is going to find out for herself, which is a sure cure for brainwashing. You perhaps saw the healthy little alstrameria when approaching?”

“Uh-huh. Didn’t know those green things were alstra... whatever, but I walked around the whole area.”

“Good. You are possessed of careful wisdom. Me, also. I knew if I stepped upon them, she would cut off my ears and nose and plant them also for composting, for of this she—Eleonora, my lifetime wife—informed me with earnestness. In loving jest, of course. Still, I did not step on them. It was when I first exited from my automobile and took two steps toward the driveway that the speeding vehicle’s acceleration noises revolved on my attention, and I looked—and then leaped. Quick backwards and flipping onto my own hood, head over feet.”

He stopped, gazing at me with the glowing eyes.

In just the last minute, Doctor Hernandez’ comments had caused at least half a dozen questions to pop up in my mind. However, the first thing I asked—or started to ask—concerned what was perhaps the least important of those questions. But I simply had to know.

“Doctor—”

“Hernandez,” he said. “Just Hernandez. Or Henry—even Hank if you like, since you will be—maybe?—energetically fixing everything? Your first name is...Shell? Like a sea shell, or gun shell, or—”

“Sheldon. But Shell’s okay.”

“I will call you Sheldon. And I am Hank, your new old-buddy, who happens to be a doctor instead of a shoe salesman. It is important what we call things, or don’t call. Language precedes thought. Sometimes. So, now we are friends?”

He had a habit of making statements that ended with question marks. And I was getting the impression that this guy either had several little cracks in his brains, or else he was way ahead of me.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Sure. Ah, what was I going to ask you?”

“I cannot help you there, Sheldon.”

“Ah, yeah, you mentioned that you’d been to see a patient and were returning from her house. Her house? You made a house call?”

“Oh, yes. Every day, at least once or twice, I go see the sick ones who think they are dying and cannot venture forth lest they keel over into oblivion. This one, Mrs. Poody, she is in truth nearly demolished, from the ravages of many drugs given her by other doctors, those who possess advanced degrees in stupid. Plus, there are other poisonous substances which Mrs. Poody’s bowels and blood are full of. But I am getting those out of her, and good unharmful substances into her, and soon she will be dancing and kicking with her heels.”

He nodded quickly. “As do many others. I fix hundreds like this, who think they are dying. Most, therefore, I never see again. But many send me letters of friendship, and cards like at Christmas.” He paused, smiling. “It is gratifying, more so than making a gazillion dollars, for which I would have to keep them sick, true?”

Every time Hernandez opened his mouth my ears filled up with more questions, some of which I knew would probably remain forever unanswered. Clearly, I would have to narrow the field, concentrate on finding out what really had happened nine days ago, and why.

I said, “Let me ask some questions. You say this car, van or whatever, almost ran you down nine days ago. Why wait until now to get in touch with me? Or another detective, or the police?”

“The police I informed immediately. They visited me, but could find no evidence in support of what I told them. Also, for one week after I was wary, careful of my whereabouts, without incident. But two nights ago, in the dark I turned into my driveway here, and in my headlights were illumined two men at the driveway’s end near the side of this house. I think one of them held a gun. I am not sure. But something in his hand reflected my headlights. I believe they—or at least one of them—were in the green van, the attempted assassinators of me.”

“Did the men approach you, or attempt to harm you, when you drove up the driveway?”

“I did not stupidly continue driving up the driveway. I reversed and backed with dangerous velocity in the opposite direction, even though the two men were fleeing away, having been brightly illumined. At a neighbor’s home I phoned police and reported the occurrence. The officer said a car would be dispatched, so I drove back here rapidly and looked in the house and all around, without result.”

“Also, without getting killed—assuming the two men weren’t local teenagers, and you’re not in the least paranoid, and light was indeed reflected from a gun instead of a cellular phone or bracelet or maybe nothing else in the real world.”

Hernandez didn’t take offense—which was one of the things I’d wanted to find out by asking the somewhat insolent question. Instead he tilted his head back and was silent a moment before he said, “I affirmed that I was not certain of the object’s identity. But I in truth believe it was a pistol. Certainly it was something from which the light beams flashed, something held in his hand.”

“Okay, so why then did you, soon after this, drive stupidly up the driveway—to borrow your own phrase—and dash about where perhaps one armed man, if not two of them, might have been lurking to conk-crush you or blow you away?”

“Conk-crush?”

“Hit you on the head, beat you up, or shoot you.”

“Inside the house was my beloved Eleonora, my forever wife. Had I attacked the men before the police call, I could have been demolished, assassinated, leaving no one—no police or anyone else—to aid Eleonora, or warn her, or do whatever remained possible. But when it was concluded that police in their car were dispatched to this destination, I rapidly came back, of course.”

I said, with somewhat less belligerence, “What makes you think one or both of the men might have been in that green van nine days ago? Surely you didn’t have time to catalogue their features if you were leaping head over feet through the air.”

He smiled, apparently amused, or pleased, by my question. And when he smiled widely, exposing those large sparkling white teeth, it was almost like a ray of sunshine dispelling gray shadows and brightening his entire face, and he looked at least ten years younger than when he was frowning and going on about the stupids.

“A glimpse of them—or one of them—I had, after I leaped, and focused my eyes upon their leaving vehicle. The individual on the side nearest me, the one not driving, stared from his open window back at me. He was with a large round face, completely bald on the head, but possessed of a large dark mustache with the ends drooping downward toward his chin. Like...”

“Like Fu Manchu?”

“Fu who?”

I got away from that one immediately, saying, “Large mustache with the ends drooping down, got it. Anything else?”

“Nothing else. That is all I saw. It was enough. One of the men in my driveway Wednesday night had such a mustache, and was possessed only of skin on his head. It is possible the other man was driver of the murderous vehicle.”

“Maybe probable,” I said half to myself. Which told me I was already thinking of this guy as my client, even if I hadn’t told him so yet. “You said you don’t have any idea who might want to kill you, that area is a...blankness. You mean you don’t have any enemies?”

“Enemies? Everywhere you look. Just about every allopathic physician is an enemy of me, they would like to put me in prisons—in again. That’s maybe half a million. How’s that for enemies?”

“Hank—”

“But only a few of them do the dirty workings, those high up in the AMA, the FDA, the ACS, NCI, CDC. But that is just how the medical business is, the medical monopoly of the allopathic bug killers. Can’t have a monopoly of something unless you monopolize it, true? Which means they are very vigorous in getting people like me, and those who practice healing similar to me, out of it.”

“Hank—”

“But not even those would kill me. Take away my medical license if they can do it, even making up false charges, yes; sue me with many lawyers, yes; deliver me into bankruptcy, yes. They have a long, very long, history of doing this to anyone who actually cures patients afflicted with profitable diseases owned by the monopoly, a history which can be examined by anyone willing to be curious. But not premeditated murder. No. None of these would kill, none would murder me.”

“If you’ve told me the whole truth, somebody tried to.”

“True. Is true.” He shrugged.

I let it ride. “Wednesday night, you saw those two men in your driveway. After that, did the cops come here?”

“Yes. Again, they could become acquainted with no evidence except what I myself described to them. It is perhaps unfortunate that the two officers were the same ones to whom I had spoken a week earlier of the green van aimed at me with murderousness. It became evident to me that they, though sympathetic in manner, believed me to be a fruit basket.”

“Fruitcake—strike that, do you remember the officers’ names?”

“Arthur Murphy and Wallace Devincent.”

I knew both officers, Art Murphy quite well. “I’ll check it out,” I said. “What more can you tell me about that van—or anything else that might give me a handle on why somebody might want you dead?”

He smiled that bright happy smile again. “This means you will help? I have employed you, Sheldon?”

I grinned back at him, as much in response to that almost childlike smile as the open and unconcealed pleasure in his voice. “Yeah, you have employed me. And, Hank, I hope nobody kills either of us.”

“No problem. You will protect us fiercely. Now, I feel very good. Thank you for assisting, Sheldon. I will tell you what little more I can think of.”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more he could give me. He did recall that the green van had only two windows, one on the driver’s and one on the passenger’s side, but behind them only metal, no windows in the back. Also, he was dimly aware that something had been printed in white or light-colored letters on the green metal of the van’s side. That was when he’d lamped the Fu Manchu guy, so it would have been the passenger side. But Hank now had no idea what those printed words might have been. More importantly, when the speeding van passed through the nearby intersection a car entering from the right had braked and skidded, and there had been “a collision sound.”

“Not a crashing,” Hernandez went on, “more like a click-clack. But that car of the assassins did somewhat strike the front of the other vehicle, glancing upon its front bumper or fender, but without serious consequences to either one.” He shrugged. “This other car vanished soon after. And nothing was remaining in the street as clues regarding the near mishap, which officers Murphy and Devincent told me with sympathy.”

“They didn’t appear to believe there was a near accident at the intersection, or even a click-clack?”

“No. They have become convinced all of it was a my imagination. It transpires that, following my first discussion with them on the preceding Wednesday, they looked for me in their computer, and knew already that I had been in their jails.”

“Jails? You’ve been arrested?”

“Si—yes, sure. Twice, both times resulting from malicious charges and lies concocted by my enemies, in hope of ruining me. But they, Murphy and Devincent, also knew of the other unpleasant incidents of notoriety, or some of them.”

“Others?” I was starting to become uneasy. “Incidents of notoriety? Some?”

“It is difficult to explain to a layman. Please, take no offense, many doctors consider this word—layman—a purposeful insult, a knockdown, description of a mere mortal, but with me it is a compliment, mainly. What for my purposes I must gradually acquaint you with are matters fully comprehensible only to other physicians who are not orthodox physicians, not allopathic doctors.”

Maybe because I was already a little uneasy, something in what he’d just said struck me. It was that, “What for my purposes I must gradually acquaint you with....” What purposes? And why “gradually”? But I already had plenty of other questions, so I merely commented, “I hate to get into this, I think. But you’ve said ‘allopathic’ several times now, and I’m not sure I know what it means. It sounds like some kind of disease.”

“It is. It is what everyone automatically thinks of when somebody says ‘doctor,’ or ‘physician,’ or ’medicine,’ or ‘M.D.,’ or ‘health care’ and so forth, because it—allopathy—is the only official medicine we have here in the United States, the so-called legitimate medicine. It is what nearly everyone believes is the only kind of real doctor there is, although there are many, many other kinds of doctors and healers—like me, for example. But they believe this because allopathy is ninety-nine percent of what we are allowed, what is ‘authorized and approved’ for medical treatment in these United States of ours, which also—most importantly—means this official authorized-and-approved stupidness becomes ninety-nine percent of what we hear or read or are told by talking dummies on television.”

Hank leaned forward, placing his clasped hands atop the desk, and fixed his bright almost-burning eyes on me. “Allopathy, or conventional medicine, is a therapeutic system based on the bassackward belief that expressions of so-called disease must be treated by different or unlike expressions—which, incidental but important, is the exact opposite of my homeopathy, which embraces the truism similia similibus curantur, or like cures like. Essentially, aside from the wonderful technical skills of trauma surgeons or surgery to repair or remove malfunctioning or injured body parts or tissues—not so wonderful if those body pieces are okay or repairable without irreversible operations, which most of the time they are—allopathy embraces the continuing use of unnatural chemical compounds alien to the body’s constitution, thousands of synthetic drugs and pills and shots and serums, to treat symptoms of bodily disease or disorder. In practice, it is the upside-down medical philosophy that disease must be attacked by its opposite expression, that disease symptoms must be fought, warred upon, suppressed at all costs.”

“So? What’s wrong with that?”

I had, apparently, not asked a wonderful question. He scowled hugely, pulling his lips sideways, and appearing to clamp his teeth tightly together. But then he smoothed his features, forcibly it seemed to me, and said slowly, much more slowly than before, as though to be sure I didn’t miss anything, “Perhaps you were not listening cleverly. I am explaining that allopathy is a crazy upside-down as I mentioned—bassackward system of medicine based on the unproven and unprovable assumption that diseases are foreign invaders”—his voice rose half an octave—“like killer bacteria and viruses and various evil malevolences from outer space, which must be attacked and destroyed with fire and sword and fierceness, with lightning bolts, lasers, poisons, giant hammers and maybe even H-bombs, whatever might kill the disease!”

Again, though somewhat tentatively this time, I said, “Uh, that’s wrong? There’s a better way?”

“Almost anything except suicide would be better. But there is an infinity of better, including everything else, everything not allopathic.” Hernandez nodded briskly, that sharp nose and the pointed ends of his gray mustache appearing to slice through the air. “But there is not time for me to inform you of all the gazillion better ways. Perhaps there never will be time.” He paused, gazing across the room for several seconds, then nodded briskly again and looked directly at me.

“There is not sufficient time, not now. So I will say only this.” Those dark glowing eyes of his seemed to become even brighter, as though some inner rheostat had turned up their power, and I remembered thinking, earlier, that his piercing gaze was almost that of a far-out visionary, or a madman.

“There is a wonderful, unmeasurable, almost unimaginable power within each of us, which is part of us. Of you, Sheldon, me, each, all. It is the power that formed, from the union of a tiny egg and a single microscopic spermatozoon, the incredible growing universe of being each has become—the universe, if you will, that is you, me, the patient in my outer office, the sick one. This power, which began each of the miracles of us with those two tiny cells and formed or helped to form the universe of us now does not, when this job is part done, disappear, vanish. It does not die. It is still there, alive and burning within us. And if we—or allopathic stupids—do not violently oppose it, it is ready to heal us of everything except death, and perhaps even of that also.”

He picked up a pen, twirled the cylinder in his fingers. “No doctor can cure these sick or suffering patient-universes. I cannot. But the true physician, who I say must cooperate with nature, with God, or with that force within instead of opposing it with his puny lightnings and thunders, can sometimes help the patient to cure himself. That is all we can do. But we should not do anything else.”

Hernandez paused, curled his lips as if to continue speaking, but then closed his mouth, nodding several times, slicing the air again vigorously with his nose, and at length said to me, “Those of us who believe this, or something of a friendly similarity, and thus practice unorthodox, unapproved, un-allopathic methods for hopefully restoring ease to the dis-eased are, by that ninety-nine percent of our medical colleagues, described or defamed as salesmen of snake oils, or fools misguided. Or, usually, as quacks.”

I blinked, took a deep breath, remembering again that conversation with Paul Anson. I was now sure my medical friend, Dr. Anson, had indeed spoken of a Henry Hernandez—and had also used the word “quack”.

“I see,” I said, not really seeing at all. But I continued, “If I’m not mistaken, a quack is either a maverick medical doctor who screws up almost beyond human comprehension, or, more often, somebody not a licensed M.D., who greedily profits from human misery by fleecing the sick and dying of their money and pretending to have miracle cures for everything.”

“Boy, are you mistaken, Sheldon. A quack—which is a word for horribleness spoken of others almost entirely by orthodox allopathic physicians—is a doctor who cures, a healer who heals, or could even be a layman who through herbs or natural medicines or magnetism or laying on of hands makes sick people well. One would think this healing a good thing, right? However, if anyone restores strength to the weak or life to the dying in ways disapproved by the monopoly, which in practice means anything that actually works, this is defined—by the monopolists themselves, of course—as dangerous quackery. Is it not fascinating, Sheldon? We have been led to believe that saving a man from death is dangerous to his health. So, a quack is me. I am almost the perfection of quackissimo.”

“You lost me, somewhere in the middle there.”

“Probably I lost you before then. It is difficult to make sense of any concept which is examined upside-down. First we must turn it right-side up in order to begin seeing what it is.” He inhaled deeply, let out a long sigh. “I would like to take time and explain fully, inform you well of this particular upside-downness, but soon I have a patient. I was able to see you easily at this time only because the Vungers, two of my dear patients, have not appeared at ten o’clock for their hour appointment. Again—twice now this has happened. It is strange.”

I said, “Well, I’ve got enough to start with, Doc—Hank. But before I leave, did you really lose a dog, or was that just—”

“Ai, Chihuahua, yes, my Rusty! You read the mind, this was the final thing of which I intended speaking to you, before the next patient. Rusty, this dog I love with all my heart and bones and everything. He is three years old, part of German Shepherd and part of maybe Saint Bernard, and part of just dogs I think. He is gone now nine days, and I am desolate.”

“Nine days? Isn’t that—”

“Yes. When I leaped back avoiding the green van, Rusty was coming forth from the back yard—we do not tie him, and with great enthusiasm he can jump over the fence—and racing to greet me by licking and jumping, you know. With quickness, he understood the wrongness of that green vehicle, and chased it down the street, barking as though to devour it. They went forward on Mulberry one block after this intersection here, then turned right on the street called Lemon. I was still watching, not yet fully comprehending everything. Rusty disappeared there also, a little more than one block away, still chasing, and he has not returned. I have not seen him since that moment.”

Hank paused, frowning, the usual brightness gone from his features. “Sheldon, we are now associated, you are helping. More than anything else, more even than those men of evil intentions, you will help me best if you can find Rusty. Or what has come about for him. I fear he is not alive or would have long ago returned.”

He looked so somber, his gaze fixed on but not seeing me, that I didn’t speak immediately. And before I responded, Hernandez blinked, shrugged, leaned toward an intercom box on his desk and pushed a lever down, then said something in rapid Spanish.

I caught a word or two—some time ago I’d spent a few months, part investigation and part vacation, in Mexico City—but all I could be sure of was the name Vunger, and telefono and casa or telephone and house. Equally rapid Spanish came back through the intercom speaker, and though I could tell it was Eleonora’s voice I couldn’t decipher much else, since both the doctor and his wife were speaking at approximately several thousand words a minute.

I did hear “Vungers” again, and something about salud or health and what sounded like “eye-fie,” followed by “mejor, mucho mejor” or “better, much better.”

Odd. That curious word had sounded a lot like the currently much-ballyhooed disease, IFAI, pronounced eye-fie, but I had probably screwed something up between Eleonora’s voice and my ears. Because, of the thousands of people who “caught” IFAI, nobody got better, they all died. The name now in common use made that clear enough: IFAI was an acronym for “Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness.” So, no two ways about it: catch IFAI and it followed with incontrovertible logic that, since IFAI was invariably fatal, invariably you were a goner.

Hernandez rattled off a few more comments in Spanish, then flipped up the intercom switch, leaned back in his chair and said, “Sheldon, I am concerned about so many things that I am becoming unstrung somewhat. These good people I spoke of to you, Mr. and Mrs. Vunger, my patients who failed to appear this morning, they also did not appear this past Monday, appointments for both times having been made. It is most unlike them not to phone for cancellation, or to explain. My wife has several times phoned their home, without success, but this morning she was able to speak with a neighbor, a Mrs. Brewster next door to them. The Vungers—he is Guenther, she Helga—are not at home, they have not been seen, newspapers have been left outside for several days, near the front door.”

He paused. “I am concerned, gravely, about Rusty. And I of course wish the two men, those bastardos, found and done something crucial with. But....”

He was taking a while to get there, but I knew where he was going. So I said, “Give me their address and I’ll do a quick check on the Vungers some time today. If they don’t live clear out in the boondocks.”

He smiled, face brightening, large teeth coming into view again. “It would be a service. Probably it is nothing of import, but—I will appreciate knowing something. They live not far. Thank you.”

“No problem. Hank, I assume you’ve told me all you can about that green van and the two bastardos.” He nodded quickly and I went on, “So, about Rusty, have you done some checking yourself, called the animal shelters, Humane Society, that sort of thing?”

“Oh, yes. Immediately when Rusty did not return, that very afternoon” He described actions he’d taken since then, and it seemed to me he’d covered most of the likely areas already. Hernandez finished by saying, “I have running advertisements in the newspapers’ lost-and-found sections, with a thousand-dollar reward offered. The police I also notified, but they were not greatly excited, being already familiar with my numerous psychoses.”

“Did you happen to check with any of the people around that next intersection? Along Lemon Street, where the van turned, with Rusty chasing them?”

His eyes widened. After a long silence he said, “Estupido! That is so obvious. Now. Estupido! I failed to even consider this obvious thing. I did all I could think of. But—”

“You did very well, Hank. I’ll rattle some doors over on Lemon Street as soon as I leave here. If there’s anything important to dig up, I’ll dig it.”

“Please do whatever else I have probably forgotten.” He slowly shook his head. “I am a good doctor, bad detective. But you are probably a lousy doctor, true?” He started to smile, then said abruptly, “Aha! I will give you a picture of Rusty. A photograph, from one month ago.”

He reached forward and grasped one of the framed photos I’d casually glanced at earlier, got up and stepped briskly around his desk, handing the four-by-five color photograph to me. “There is Rusty, my most wonderful loud-barking male dog person. Beautiful, yes?”

“Yes.”

Actually, beautiful wasn’t exactly the right word, but I liked the friendly-looking—even a little funny-looking—animal immediately. He was seated on a green lawn, front legs holding him erect, looking straight at the camera with his red tongue lolling from one side of his open mouth. Definitely the handsome appearance of a German Shepherd, but showing more reddishness than normal mixed with the near-black and creamy tan of his coat. The eyes were large and dark, and he seemed almost to be grinning at the picture-taker. Also, above those liquid brown eyes were bunches of strangely misplaced white hairs that....

I took a closer look. “Hey,” I said with some excitement, “Hank, take a gander at those eyebrows—that’s what they are, eyebrows. They’re white—white, like mine! How about that?”

Hernandez tilted the framed photo in my hand, gazed at it, gazed at me, and said, “How about that, yes. I knew, when I first saw you, Sheldon, that you reminded me of something.”

He spoke very seriously, soberly—but then he lost it, burst into a guffaw and laughed uproariously, having a perfectly splendid time. All by himself.

When the noise diminished enough so he could hear me, I said stiffly, “Okay, I quit.”

Well, he merely made more whooping-type noises than he’d been emitting before. It took a while, but when he was back behind the desk and in his chair again, wheezing only slightly, I said, “Anything else before I get going?”

“All of importance—all, at least, that is necessary now—has been said, I think. If you have further questions? I may have neglected some things, like the questioning of people on Lemon Street about Rusty.”

“Couple of items,” I said. “Probably not important, or even germane. But when you were speaking on the intercom to your wife, and mentioned the Vungers, I thought I heard a comment about IFAI. The disease, I mean. Or was that something in Spanish?”

Hank looked straight ahead, toward the wall behind me, then left and up toward the ceiling, lips pursed, pointed gray mustache slanting downward. After a few seconds of silence he responded, in his usual rapid-fire delivery, “All right, I will tell you, Sheldon. Normally, you understand, the patient’s affairs are not to be discussed freely, they are confidential as if spoken to a lawyer or priest. But the Vungers were so pleased with results from my treatment, they urged me to tell others of their good fortune, their success, saying I could take out large advertisements and use in them their names if I wished—which, of course, I would not do and would go to jail if I did. So, this is not the usual doctor-patient secret relationship, under the circumstances.”

He paused, narrow head tilted to one side, as if examining what he’d just said, then continued. “IFAI, yes, that is what you heard, Sheldon. Both Vungers had been diagnosed as afflicted by the disease, and indeed were very sick, looking like walking dead, almost gray people. That is why they came to me.”

“Well, hell,” I interrupted, “maybe that’s why nobody’s seen them for a while, maybe they’re already dead.”

Hank lifted his eyes, rolled them back and forth slightly, his expression something like that of a boy who’d slipped and forcibly straddled the bar on his bicycle, which is a very tortured expression. Then he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Both Mr. and Mrs. Vunger came to see me three months ago, having found no orthodox physician who offered them any hope for permanent improvement in their condition, or even possibility of survival. Each had been diagnosed as infected with the IFAI virus while at the Omega establishment where they worked until six months past. They were very ill, but both responded to treatment with such rapid improvement even I considered it remarkable.”

“That is why this circumstance is so strange,” he went on. “Guenther and Helga were both so very pleased, very overjoyed even, with much enthusiasm and eagerness for completing the last parts of my treatment—and, as mentioned, even urged me to tell others of their ‘miracle,’ which is how they called it. That is why their failure now to appear is worrisome.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re saying they’re better? Do you mean they didn’t really have IFAI when they came to see you?”

When Hank stopped wiggling his eyes at the ceiling some more, and grimacing extravagantly some more, he said in an odd tone, as though speaking to a large rock, “No, it is not what I mean. Each of the Vungers unquestionably had IFAI—I must use terms you understand, or will accept, at least for now. Stated more comprehensively, repeated scientific tests—very expensive scientific tests—confirmed the presence in their blood and tissues and some organs, including lung and liver and heart, of the virus which accompanies the symptoms of what is—today—named Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness. Or, in the words of the upside-down press, both of them had ‘caught IFAI.’ Five previously consulted physicians—five orthodox ignoramuses who call themselves physicians—had pronounced them terminal, kaput, dead ones, and had not failed to so inform the Vungers. It took Guenther and Helga many weeks to find me. But when I last examined them....”

He flipped the pages of a desk calendar. “Two days under two weeks, or twelve days ago, they were basically normal, healthy. They were for nine weeks past, negative to all standard tests for presence of the virus of so-called IFAI, and had become energetic, pink-cheeked, filled with forces of life once again. There remained only some residual damage in the lungs, and injuries being repaired in the heart, liver, spleen, other areas of little interest to you. But plenty to the Vungers. The prognosis was for complete recovery, one-hundred percent repair and rejuvenation of those organs and areas harmed by excess of retained toxins. I am very concerned by their non-appearance troubled by this—”

“Doctor, Hank, I must have missed something along the way to here. Everybody knows IFAI is incurable, not curable, it is invariably fatal. Hell, that’s what it’s called: Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness. But it sure seems to me you just said yes, they both had IFAI, and you cured them.”

“Of course,” he said mildly. “It is what I did. For them, and also for twenty-six...no, twenty-seven others. All of whom are, how you say, Happy Campers now. So?”

That tore it. My earlier questions, those nagging suspicions, came back and joined and multiplied. I felt suddenly lousy. I really did.

It was clear enough now. I had not only gotten myself involved with, and promised to help, a nut-cake and fruit-case and basket-kook but something even worse and more dangerous than all of those dingdongs put together:

A real quack.

CHAPTER FOUR

I sat in my chair before Hernandez’ desk, wondering how much I believed of what he’d just said. I already knew I liked this old geezer, and wanted to believe he was decent, honorable, truthful–not some kind of unprincipled medical con-man. Even this soon after meeting him, I knew I enjoyed his company, and actually got a kick out of his rapid-fire ravings. If that’s what they were.

But curing IFAI? Curing the incurable?

Until now, like practically everybody else in the country, I had simply accepted the fact that this new and virulent disease–which was said to have killed several thousand people already—was invariably fatal, and a potential victim’s only hope was not to “catch” it because once you had it you’d had it.

More accurately, that was what I, along with the rest of the country, had heard repeated with increasing frequency and intensity and finally near hysteria during the last three years, and I simply hadn’t questioned all of those experts, mainly because I hadn’t thought a whole lot about it. I’ve had so many large ugly hoodlums try to kill me that I’ve just never believed any dinky little bug could get me.

But now here was Hank, a medical doctor, casually saying he’d just cured a bunch of people struck down by the Invariably Fatal. Which, of course, was not possible. I was so involved in asking myself questions without getting sensible answers that I hardly noticed Hank speaking into the intercom, getting up, saying “Excuse me a little moment” as he walked past me. But then I heard the door close behind him, and I was alone in his office.

So, while waiting for him to return, I thought some more about doctors and quacks and diseases and the curable and incurable, and what I knew about the history of that curious word: IFAI.

Both the word and the disease seemed to have appeared suddenly out of nowhere, like a diabolical bogey-man leaping at us from the darkness. Until about four years ago, nobody had ever heard the curious and clumsy name. And even during that first year, reports of a previously unknown and virulent virus which appeared to cause an “invariably fatal illness,” were confined to medical journals read by physicians and a few science writers but ignored by the lay public. In July of the second year, the definitive–and now almost notorious–article about the new disease had appeared in the prestigious and widely-read JAMA, or Journal of the American Medical Association, which to many physicians was what the Pope is to Catholics. In that JAMA article the small but unquestionably already-ominous threat was defined, clarified, and emphasized, and the new disease was for the first time identified by the name and acronym which ever since had become synonymous with a slow-but-sure sickening of the victim, followed by precipitous decline and death: Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness: IFAI.

Merely the four-letter word now, four years after those first few cases became known, was enough to at least unsettle, if not panic, those who heard it spoken–and they heard it spoken over and over and over again on television, on radio, in solemn pronouncements from medical experts and political experts and research scientists working fruitlessly to find a vaccine to prevent it or a drug to cure it. Because to be told “You have IFAI” was to hear “You are dying, you are dead.”

The concerned family physician resting his hand on a hopeful patient’s shoulder and saying, “I’m sorry, but your blood test came back positive for IFAI antibodies” was a sentence of death no less chilling and final than the whisper of a hooded executioner’s axe.

For nobody was safe. There was no defense. Even I knew–everybody with eyes and ears knew–that the virus, which attacked its victims indiscriminately, lived and multiplied all around us in the very air we breathed. It wasn’t a phenomenon of criminal cells gone mad and devouring their host’s body if they were not quickly executed, as in the case of usually incurable cancer; or the result of sex or dirty-needle intravenous injection of drugs, as in the ugliness of incurable AIDS; or even the failure to promptly employ clean-needle intravenous injection of antibiotic drugs into the bloodstreams of victims of various life-threatening, or uncomfortable, infections. No, IFAI was airborne, all you had to do was breathe to get it.

It was not difficult to believe–and many experts were at last reluctantly beginning to assert–that, if the burgeoning epidemic was not stopped, in time every man and woman and child upon the earth might be at risk, indeed, said some. All were at risk now.

It was an ugly, even a terrifying thought, because all of us had seen, again and again, the pathetic photographs and films of dying victims: wasted men, women, and recently children, shriveled and shrunken and gaunt, many totally hairless as a result of one cosmetic side effect of the disease, bones pressing against the typically thin and shiny skin, and each of them with those enormous staring eyes that reminded us all of starving and hopeless prisoners once confined in concentration camps.

Almost as appalling as those photographs of people struck down by IFAI was the speed with which the horror had grown. In that first year, thirty-six individuals afflicted with a debilitating illness later diagnosed as IFAI were discovered, given the most advanced medical treatment available on earth, but died anyway. Not all at once, but the entire thirty-six were dead within a couple of years, despite continuing “aggressive” treatment by their doctors. By then, the epidemic was known to have begun.

Thirty-six cases the first year, then a jump to 399 in the second year, 4,401 in the third year, and this year–already, and it was only October–there were an estimated total of nearly 50,000 “carriers” of the IFAI virus in the United States alone, representing “what is now, clearly, a virulent epidemic out of control”–this in the words of the U.S. Surgeon General himself.

Some claimed that many cases of hepatitis, influenza, and even iatrogenic skin rashes were being temporarily misdiagnosed as IFAI, thus improperly inflating the statistics. But those tiny picky voices were drowned in thundering pronouncements, emanating from a dozen medical societies claiming to represent half a million physicians, which pronouncements were phrased in a dozen different ways but made essentially the same point: modern medicine was now so scientific, and employed for diagnosis and healing so many large multi-million-dollar scientific machineries, that misdiagnoses were almost as rare as purple daffodils or auks in zoos.

This gave rise to considerable merriment in some quarters, and even hyperbolic reports of earth movements in several cemeteries, but such irresponsible merriment died when the highest official of the authoritative Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia appeared in prime time on national television, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and the Disney Channel and solemnly revealed that:

“Our Chief Statistician at the CDC has discerned and mathematically proved that, from its deceptively simple beginning, the incidence of IFAI has multiplied each year by a factor of eleven; and at this rate–even should there be no catastrophic increase in the rate-of-spread of this invariably fatal infection then within a mere five more years from now there will be nearly eight billion human beings infected. Thus it is now unmistakably clear beyond any peradventure of doubts that the war against IFAI–the continuing twenty-four-hours-a-day race to find a vaccine to prevent IFAI or a drug to cure IFAI–is the most important war ever waged by the human race. As we all know, there are only approximately about six billion souls in existence upon this entire planet. So if it is projected that nearly eight billion people will at the present rate get this invariably fatal disease within five years, this obviously means....”

That had been the end of the high official’s statement. Apparently he’d wished his millions of viewers/listeners to draw their own conclusions. And draw them the nation did. Once it was realized that the very existence of all mankind depended upon doctors and other dedicated scientists finding a cure for their imminent kaputness, the American people responded generously, as they always had in time of grave crisis, and gave: Money. Lots and lots of money. So much money that nobody ever really counted it accurately, or discovered where it all went.

Suffice it to say that the volume of serious reportage expanded until nobody except the stone deaf or the already deceased had escaped having the horrors of IFAI boomed and banged and thundered at them and all around them and into them many thousands of times, so many thousands of times that even when unspoken the message continued to be whispered again and again upon their inner ear in the seductive and silken voice of Death.

Even I—and I am not a doctor, and thus can’t know for sure about such things—understood that civilization must be face-to-face with its greatest peril ever, nothing less than the possible extinction of all life upon the planet except maybe cockroaches.

But here was an old geezer, Henry Hernandez, M.D., pretending that he, all by himself, was capable of saving the world? No, not all by himself. I was supposed to help him.

That was the moment when Dr. Henry Hernandez came back inside, sat down behind his desk again and said, “My absence, please excuse, Sheldon. I must see my next patient in ten minutes. Before then, is there more you wish from me?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, slowly bringing my thoughts back from where they’d been. “While you were gone, I was thinking of what you said. About IFAI, I mean.”

I paused, looking at Henry Hernandez, M.D., that last word, the acronym for Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness seeming to reverberate faintly in the room. Thin shafts of filtered sunlight slanted through latticed draperies hanging over a window behind him, fell on his straight gray hair and made it look like combed steel threads, brightened one shoulder of that vivid blue jacket he was wearing. The dark blue tie, snugly knotted, was neat against the crisp white of his shirt. He sat quietly, waiting for me to continue, one arm bent at the elbow, finger stroking a pointed end of his gray mustache.

Hank was really quite a handsome old duck–unfortunately, “duck” automatically made me think of “quack”–sharp and brainy enough, perhaps considerably more than merely brainy. It had been pleasant sitting in his office, talking to the man, a nice sort of warm break in the day, as though simply his presence–or maybe what some of the spaced-out New Agers might have called his aura–filled the room and made it feel unusually comfortable, homey, almost healing. Probably, I thought, it was merely the subtly sensed impression of special caring and concern that penitents and patients feel, or imagine they feel, in the presence of the richly-robed and pale-cheeked priest, or the godlike physician, who is going to forgive all their sins. Or, maybe my oatmeal lumps were fermenting.

Finally I said bluntly, “I’ve decided either everybody else is crazy and you’re the remarkably sane exception, or you’re absolutely nuttier than a walnut farm. Until a few minutes ago I never heard anyone say IFAI could be cured. For three years now, everybody–including all the researchers and experts, the best doctors, government spokesmen and even the Surgeon General, committees of scientists, everybody–has said the disease is incurable, it’s always fatal, that’s all I’ve heard for the last three–”

“Heard? HEARD?”

Hank had almost lunged forward, leaning against his desk and with both hands pressed flat on its top, staring–no, glaring at me. “That is wonderful, magnifico!” he bellowed. “Now I know how to inform you of truth. If all you use is ears instead of brains, use your intelligent ears to hear this: There is no human disorder that is not curable! Hear it again, simply: NOTHING IS INCURABLE!”

If his voice had been a wind, it might have been Hurricane Zeus. It was loud, sure, but more, there was in it something that was almost a humming or vibration of trembling, like those infrasounds, inaudible, below the level of conscious awareness, that can annoy, then injure, and sometimes kill. It impressed me.

“Gotcha,” I said.

“No, you don’t gotcha,” Hank went on hummingly. “I had expected better of you, Sheldon–I still do expect better of you. Alas, like most others, you believe what you are told–told!–by the impostors of medicine, this great monopoly which bellows at you from every television and radio and also speaks in every media of print while saner voices are shut up so truth remains silenced. But must you believe the unbelievable because you hear it? Why have a brain at all if the only thing you use is ears?”

“Hank, maybe I should tell you that I’m not all sweetness and light, every minute of every day. Sometimes I actually get pissed–”

“Pissed? Pissed? What do I care even if you get diarrhea in my chair here? I am trying to replace garbage in your head with a glimmering of light you mentioned, with a modicum of sanity. If I cannot get out that garbage, you will remain unready to handle my purposes, remain without armor against them—you will be mentally a sheep among gangs of allopathic lions and tigers and hyenas who can eat you up easy.”

“I like to think I can take care of myself–”

“Take care physically I agree, even I expect with gorillas and freight trains. But mentally resisting, when ten-thousand unopposed voices say over and over the same lies, and dumbness, and stupid. Listen. You do not have to believe me. Or them, either. Take your pick–or, better, believe yourself. Listen again: Nothing is incurable! Any physician–or anybody else, who tells a patient he has a fatal disease, that he is terminal, that he is suffering from an incurable illness, should be taken to the center of town and horsewhipped within an inch of his life. Maybe a half-inch–”

“Yeah, well, even if there’s some truth in what–”

Presumably, he did not hear me. “Such a terrible statement,” he continued without pausing one-tenth of a second, “which is made by most orthodox physicians as casually as they would tell a patient he has a bunion, is thundering announcement not only of their own abysmal ignorance but also their lack of caring for fellow human beings. These imbeciles, whenever anybody else but them cures a sick one, claim it must be a delusion, or is because they treated the sick one first and he’s just now getting better nine years later, or they become clairvoyant and see that this apparent good result is only a ‘placebo effect’ as when people given sugar pills and told this will make them well often in truth get well. But what of their own poison-placebo effect? How many patients have these same orthodox physicians killed with their mouths, with their inexcusable pronouncings of doom and decay and death?”

Hank relaxed somewhat, or a least leaned back in his chair. But those burning eyes were still fixed on me as if purple rays were about to shoot out of them. I had to admit that, even though most of my questions and doubts remained, Hank had for a change made a point I could accept without reservation. Certainly I agreed that any physician who told a man he was inevitably going to die—of any disease or condition whatever—and killed hope by insisting nothing could be done to prevent the imminent croaking, should at least be forced to pay for the funeral.

But I didn’t mention that to Hank. Instead, I said, “Makes sense. If I ever get sick, what I want is a doctor who’ll tell me I’m immortal. Well, I’ll see what I can pick up about Rusty, and check the Vunger’s place later. As for those two heavies... anything more you can remember about them?”

He shook his head. “I recall no more than what I have said, Sheldon. And I saw only that one, he with the mustache hanging downward.”

“Yeah. Well, if...when those bums tried to waste you, it’s eight to five the idea wasn’t their own. Probably hired hands, doing their thing for somebody. If so, it’s that somebody who’s important, not them.”

“Exactly so. I had thought of it also, that those two were ruffians, hired hands as you say. But this somebody? It is blankness.”

“For now, anyway. I sure wish you could narrow down your list of enemies to something a little more manageable for me than half a million doctors.”

He smiled. “Again I must speak of medicine, because most who dislike what I and people like me stand for–notice I say dislike, not fill up with murderous frenzy–are in some way associated with medicine, pharmaceutical products, drugs and machineries.”

I could tell, he was getting revved up again, his voice slowly rising. “So it is true,” he went on, “most of these enemies are physicians, allopaths who fear even a Hernandez. But many enemies are not those, but others allied with them.

“Allied?”

“Allied, in league, in cohorts–or is it cahoots?–with the allopathic symptom-squashers. Foremost among those others would be the tunnel-visioned ones with cruel hearts and savage minds, those so-called scientific researchers who do unspeakable things to animals in order that new cosmetics or mouthwashes or deodorants–and most especially profitable new drugs and vaccines, and still more vaccines and drugs–may be developed. Developed, patented by the pharmaceutical Gargantuas, and sold for gazillions. Some of those have made sincere threats against me.”

“Animals? Animal research? Where did that come from? You hadn’t mentioned animals.”

“I cannot mention everything. The world is filled to flowing over with stupids–”

“Doctor–Hank, you’re not shortening the list of your enemies, soon it will equal the population. Haven’t you–we–got enough trouble with people without bringing in animals?”

“Okay, I am President of the California state chapter of Physicians Opposed to Cruel and Useless Experimentation on Animals, a now-national organization which, six years ago, I founded. In all of California there are only thirty-six of us, thirty-six true physicians willing to speak out against these crimes and risk being persecuted, ostracized, prosecuted, imprisoned, and maybe rolled in tars and feathers. But we have saved many animals. We have also ended, or maybe ruined, several so-called research projects. Naturally, those misnamed scientists and medical researchers who received multi-million-dollar grants for those ended or ruined animal-killing exercises now resent us colossally. Especially me.”

“What did you call this thing you founded?”

“This thing...It is Physicians Opposed to Cruel and Useless Experimentation on Animals. Or, for short, pee-oh-see-you-ee-ay.”

“For short? Pee-oh-see-you-ee-ay? I thought that’s what I heard. POCUEA, huh? Exactly what does this bunch do, you and the thirty-six others you mentioned.”

“Thirty-five others, thirty-six me included. We are all unalterably opposed to current medical experiments performed, usually in secret, upon animals. Opposed to them upon moral grounds, but also for good medical reasons, since nearly all results of such often-sadistic experimentation are of no value to people, produce no improvement of human health but instead more often produce harm, and are in a word USELESS.”

“Hank, if doctors and other scientists didn’t carry out some controlled research with animals, they’d have to experiment on people. Even you must admit–”

“They experiment on people anyway. All the time. How do you think they test their thousands of systemic poisons called drugs and vaccines? But at least people have a small choice, animals have none, they merely suffer and die.”

“Okay,” I said. “I think you’re pretty good at making mountains out of molehills, but you did mention that you and your group have ruined some multi-million-dollar research projects, right? Well, if I were a scientist, halfway through a very important, maybe years-long, experiment and you totally screwed it up, I might feel like killing you myself.”

“I see where you are going, Sheldon. But these people, most of them, are not that kind of killer. To run me over with a vehicle, shoot me, make a homicide of me, no. This is not the way it is done. My enemies, they plan for us–me, all those like me–a different kind of death. End me as a physician, turn me into an ex-M.D. on welfare, end my healing of their failures. This they would do with enthusiasm. As they did me before. Believe it, this has happened to many others, not once but hundreds of times, evidence of which is available to anyone who will open his eyes and mind and look for it. But these are not killers. At least, not with guns and bullets.”

I sighed, shook my head. “Hank, I told you I’d take your case and I will–I have. So I’ll do my damndest to find out what’s going on, who’s got it in for you. But to be completely honest, I’d feel better about this job if you didn’t exaggerate so damned much, didn’t make everything sound ten times worse than it really is....”

I stopped because Hank had leaned way forward, his head almost over the middle of his desk, and was staring at me with his dark eyes wide, burning. “Exaggerate?” he said in a loud voice. “Exaggerate? Where? I am careful to make things less worse than they are. I mean, I make the horribleness less horrible, so you will not puke in my clean office. Exaggerate? Where? When? Speak!”

“Don’t get so... Where? Well, oh, for example, those damned animals. There has got to be a lot of physicians and scientists doing good work with animals, to find things that will help the sick, improve life for the living–sure, maybe they test new drugs or vaccines on a few animals, but that’s in order to help–”

“Some wonderful help,” Hank interrupted me. “To torture and kill millions of animals to get FDA approval of some medication that is soon known to have terrible side effects, including deaths.”

Hank paused briefly, snorting dragon-fire through pinched nostrils. Paused very briefly. Then, “Sheldon, all pharmaceutical drugs are poisonous to the human system but were approved by the Food and Drug Administration, a federal bureaucracy apparently determined to eliminate health in the U.S.A. This approval means the pharmaceutical Gargantuas and their well-funded scientists first had to test them on animals, had to torture and cripple and blind and maim and kill millions of animals, to prove they could make people well. These FDA-approved toxins help the sick, these poisons improve life for the still-living? Do I have to say to you that animals have life, that they are among the living? Sheldon, in your ignorance you say I exaggerate.”

Then he sighed, got up and walked to one of the three gray filing cabinets against the wall to his left, opened the top drawer and took something out, held it in his right hand as he walked back and stopped before me. “I will tell you of only one experiment, this with chimpanzees. I have here some pictures, of one chimp only, but they are in a series.”

I interrupted him. “Hank, it isn’t that I’m not interested in this stuff, maybe even concerned, but what I need are specifics about people who might do you harm, the who and why. Specifics about people, not animals.”

“I have my reasons, Sheldon. I have my reasons.”

He spoke very softly, but I became even more aware of that kind of humming power in his voice, the unusual vibrancy I’d noted when I first came into this office. Still seated, I looked up at him and his eyes fixed on mine. This close to him, I was again struck by the almost-glowing luminousness of those dark eyes, but in his steady gaze was something else, I thought. Something—sorrow, fear–psychosis? How would I know?

“Here. You may keep this, Sheldon. But I would like for you to glance at it now.”

He handed me what looked like a paperback book, maybe 4” by 6” and a half-inch or so thick, with a color photograph of a handsome chimpanzee on the cover, its mouth open and lips pushed forward and curling as if the little ape was saying “Whoo!” At least, that’s the impression I got.

In black letters at the cover’s top, letters that appeared to have been typewritten rather than professionally printed, was “JOCK-JOCK,” and in similar letters at the bottom was the name, “Physicians Opposed to Cruel and Useless Experimentation on Animals.”

I opened the cover, looked at the first page. The “page” was actually a color photo printed on thin paper, showing an alert bright-eyed chimpanzee–apparently the same chimp as the one on the cover–seated in some kind of funny little chair. He was restrained by leather straps pressing tightly against his chest and stomach, and the long hairy arms were similarly bound to the arms of that little chair. A foot behind the chimp’s head was some kind of round metal thing about four inches in diameter and six inches long, like a piston removed from a car’s cylinder. Beneath the cylindrical thing, holding it up in the air, was a kind of Rube Goldberg collection of metal rods and bars.

I opened the book about a quarter of the way through, glanced at the photo there. It looked very similar to that first one. I didn’t understand what I was supposed to be seeing, or why Hank had wanted me to look at this.

“Are all these pix the same?” I asked him.

“No, each slightly different. The book is a series of sixty prints made from consecutive frames of an eight-millimeter movie film. This film, made at a medical-research facility for its record of an experimental procedure, was secretly removed from the facility by a lab worker friendly to POCUEA. And returned the next day. After we had made copies.”

“Sounds kind of–well, illegal to me.”

“Me, too. Probably a dozen of us broke two or three hundred laws. Interestingly, the experiment, the research, was not illegal, but we are.” He smiled and went on, “As I say, the pictures are all a little different. Look more closely, Sheldon.”

I did. And then I could see that, in this later photo, the chimpanzee’s head was tilted slightly more forward and down, the eyes were protruding slightly, and the lips instead of being in the “Whoo!” oval were spread to the sides, exposing the large teeth. Finally, I noticed that the metal cylinder was not a foot behind the chimp’s head but was against the back of its skull.

And suddenly, with a quick prickling coolness at the nape of my neck, I understood.

CHAPTER FIVE

I dug a finger into the pages of the book, opened it near the end. Here, the chimp’s head was far forward and twisted to one side; the eyes appeared to be bursting from the brown skull; the lips were pulled so wide it looked as if the stretched skin of the mouth might tear, as in photos I’d seen of astronauts straining against several G’s of acceleration. And there was blood....I closed the book, stared at Hank.

He told me, “As I said, a series of photographs, from movie film, each frame printed separately on paper, so the pages may be flipped, giving the illusion of movement, or reality.”

I nodded. “Sure. When I was a kid, I had a bunch of little books like this, smaller ones. Flip books we called them at school, but most were just cartoons, sex stuff, and if the teachers caught us guys–even a few giggling girls–with what they told us was mind-destroying pornography, we were sent home with sealed notes. Punishment for looking at dirty pictures. At least, they called them dirty.”

“Not as dirty as these, Sheldon. Flip them, look, learn.”

I held the book with thumb and finger of my left hand near its spine, riffled the pages with my other thumb, and for two or three seconds it was a real little movie, starring a chimp. And now I could see that the cylindrical thing was a kind of steel hammer, actuated and thrust forward by the Rube-Goldberg mechanism of shafts and rods and metal elbows and ball bearings, its power supplied by something outside the camera’s view; and that the hammer jumped forward and struck the brown skull, after which the chimp’s head snapped toward the camera and then jerked slightly back, pulled by the distended and twisted neck.

Hank was saying, “This was an experiment–very expensive, not only because the researchers were highly paid but because the chimpanzees cost a great deal, they are so rare now–to measure the effect on a living brain, a brain very similar to mine, or yours, of concussion produced by a given weight moving at measurable acceleration. As in automobile accidents, or falls from high places. The results were never put to any practical use, a report filled with useless numbers was written, that is all. It was just–scientific information and we, POCUEA, have a dozen others, all different, most worse than this. In this particular scientific experiment the three researchers—laughing and joking during its progress, by the way—repeated the crushing blow to the chimpanzee’s skull a total of ten times. What information of any possible value could the second blow reveal? Much less the fourth, the fifth. After the first impact the animal—these researchers themselves named him Jock-Jock—was unconscious. After the second or third he was unquestionably dead.” Hank was silent for a few seconds, then said simply, “Ten.”

I suppose several seconds passed before I became aware that I had crushed the book-sized series of photographs in my hand, crumpling the pages. The cover was torn.

Hank, without my being aware of his movement, had gone back behind the big desk, was seated in his leather chair again. Without a pause, he went on casually. “You should see my little movie flippers of cats in small cages being given electrical shocks, hundreds of shocks, to determine how long is required before the cats stop jumping and making pain noises, or convulsing, how long until they give up and stop attempting to escape from the box that cannot be escaped from. It is a portion of research by psychiatrists, those who testify as experts in court about our sanity.”

It was a very strange moment. With part of my attention I had been following Hank’s words, visualizing some of what he described, almost involuntarily pursuing his suggestion that I consider the mentalities of those people he spoke of; and at the same time, in my mind’s eye, I had glimpsed a flickering and almost cartoon like procession of men, and even women, who looked and walked and talked like all the other citizens of earth but who beneath the skin-deep surface of smile and speech and joke and grin were cold, cruel, calloused, like bloodless aliens in our midst, strangers more at home with pain than pleasure and with death than life.

But the rest of the strangeness of that moment was a recognition, in that other less busy part of my mind, a sudden certainty that nothing said to me this morning by Henry Hernandez, M.D., had been merely a pleasant old geezer’s ramblings or the casual poppings-off of an overly “exercised” new client. Some of that, maybe; but most of it and maybe all of it had been the product of a keen and calculating mind, a controlled and considered exercise deliberately designed to... To what?

The silence, in which neither of us spoke, lasted only a few seconds; but it was a long silence nonetheless. “Hank,” I said finally, “what is it you really want from me?”

He smiled slightly, pointed mustache lifting to form and almost straight gray line across his upper lip. “For now... keep me from getting run over, find Rusty, tell the Vungers to make new appointments, take two aspirins and call me in the morning.”

I smiled, the strangeness of that earlier moment slipping away, being replaced by common-sense normality. So I said, “Feel better already, Doctor,” and stood up.

Hank was also standing, looking at his watch. “Good timing,” he said. “My patient is in half a minute.”

I felt like asking him what this patient had been dying from when he brought him/her back from the grave; and I still had several unanswered questions concerning the Vungers, among a number of other curious things.

But I merely said, “I’m on my way, then. I don’t really know what to think about... Well, let’s just say for now that I guess I got some sort of medical education this morning–or brainwashing–along with the case. Hadn’t expected that, but I’ve done jobs for a circus snake-charmer and a belly dancer from Bombay, so I guess–”

“Wait,” he interrupted me, walking around his desk and stopping before me. He placed one hand lightly on my shoulder and, looking first at the wall, then the floor, and finally at my face, said, “I must be truthful with you, Sheldon. I must confess. This, the medical things, the brainwash, was most purposeful. It was not an accident that I went into areas that may seem not germane to the case you have taken. But I wished you to hear certain things, and I wished to observe closely your reactions to them.”

He paused. “I need someone...” It was clearly difficult for him to get the next part out for some reason, but he continued briskly, “...to help me. In more than just the hit-and-miss green van. And that someone–I now believe for certain it is you, Sheldon–cannot be one who will become dizzy, or resign, if I tell him the earth is really flat, or shock his intelligence with strange truth. I do not like asking another to help me do what I should do myself, but they are coming at me from so many directions, and now, at eighty-four, I have not the energy I once–”

“What? At what? How old are you?”

“Eighty-four. Oh, birthday is next month, so eighty-three and eleven-twelfths is more accurate.”

He kept on talking, but I wasn’t listening. I almost sat down in my chair again, involuntarily. I was astonished. This old geezer was an old geezer. Oddly, my next thought–that Henry Hernandez, M.D. was sure doing something right–inclined me toward belief, or at least some belief, in the other things he’d told me this morning. Of course, what if the old boy was lying? What if he was really just a fifty-year-old duck in terrible shape?

During my confusion, Eleanora’s voice announced over the intercom that the doctor’s next patient was waiting. So I waved a hand at Hank, who nodded briskly, and then I left. But in my Cad, before turning on the ignition, I looked past the painted wooden sign to the front door of Dr. Hernandez’ little house-and-office, wondering: What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Then I started the car, drove past the nearby intersection and on for another block, and took a right at Lemon Street–to start finding out.

* * * * * *

The guy’s name was Williston, and he was sweaty from mowing the handsome green lawn before his house half a block down Lemon Street. I’d stopped at both other houses before his on this side of the street, rung the bells and asked my questions: Nine days ago, green panel truck or van, two men in it, dog chasing them? No luck–until Williston.

He was about forty years old–or maybe a hundred; I was still confused about ages–leaning on the handle of his muscle-powered mower when I walked up to him. Half a minute before he’d been actually running back and forth, like the speeded-up film of a maniacal gardener. It was a bright Los Angeles morning, a little warm for October, and the man’s face and hairy arms was slick with sweat because he’d already clipped ninety percent of the grass and was beginning to look, I thought, dubious about clipping the rest of it.

“Morning,” I said.

“Hi.” He grinned cheerfully. “You wanna finish this goddamn lawn for me?”

I laughed, thinking that I had correctly interpreted the sweat, heaving chest, and his tongue hanging out. “Sure,” I said. “And you can paint my house. It’s only four stories–“

“Nah, I gotta do this for my health. Wife said she’d kill me if I didn’t. Last week of my vacation, and this I’m doing. Next year, the Caribbean. And let the lawn die.”

I nodded sympathetically, told him my name and that I was a P.I., showed him my wallet card, and found out he was Ed Williston–then asked my questions. This time there was a positive response.

“Yeah, week or so ago. Let’s see, ah, nine days, that’d be Wednesday? Uh-huh, I was out here looking at the goddamn lawn, thinking maybe I should buy a coupla sheep. Anyway, this green job came skidding around the corner there–” he pointed to the intersection of Lemon and Mulberry–“and ripped past here. And then, coming after them running like hell was this dog. German Shepherd you said?”

“Mostly. Three years old, black and tan, with these crazy white eyeb–”

“Must’ve been him, he was going like a bullet, beautiful, then the guy driving the van hit his brakes and came to a screech up there in front of Erickson’s.” He pointed again, in the opposite direction and across the street. “Doors in the back opened up and the dog jumped in. And off they went.”

“They took him? Drove off with him?”

“Yeah. You mean, like stole? Looked like he was after them, not the other way around, so I thought it was probably their dog. You know how if you leave ‘em and drive off and they get out, they’ll chase you for a hundred miles. Well, who was he, yours?”

I shook my head. “Belongs to a friend of mine. He hasn’t seen the dog since then.”

After another minute we’d agreed there must have been two men in the van, one driving and another who opened the rear doors–but he hadn’t seen either of them. Also, like Hank, he’d noticed some kind of lettering on the van’s side, but had no idea what it said. And he hadn’t seen the green van since that Wednesday, or any time before then for that matter.

So I thanked him, gave him one of my cards and said, “If you remember anything else, I’d appreciate your calling me.”

He nodded slowly, looking past me as if thinking of something else. “You know,” he said, “talking about your friend’s dog getting taken away like that, maybe stole, reminded me. Couple of the neighbors here lost pets in the last month or so.” He looked at me then. “You know, one pet missing, you figure it ran away, got lost, hit by a car, whatever. But that dog, after two others right here on this street.”

“Which neighbors lost their pets?”

“Tom Jefferson, next door to me here. And that Erickson looker.” He pointed up the street again. “Tom lost his Weimeraner, friendly four-year-old Weimeraner. And I think Erickson’s cat got lost.”

“This Erickson, you say she’s a looker? Do you mean she’s an old lady who peeks around the curtains, mumbling at the–”

That convulsed him. He whooped and chortled, whistled and waved his hands before him in an exaggerated figure eight, then cupped both hands before his chest and moved them up and down as if tossing a couple of basketballs into the air and catching them with some difficulty. Crude. Crude, but effective. Without saying a word, he had convinced me that Erickson was not an old lady who peeked around curtains.

“Ah,” I said, “that kind of looker. Well, I’ll have to check into this missing pet situation with her, I suppose. And, what was the guy’s name?”

“Tom. Thomas Jefferson. That’s a tough one to remember, all right.” Then he was whooping again. After a bit he said, “The other one’s Lucinda. Lucinda Erickson. Man, I’d mow her lawn any day. Or night. I’d cut it with fingernail scissors.”

I smiled. “Next year, the Caribbean,” I said, and walked next door to see if Thomas Jefferson was home.

He was at work, but his wife was there and answered my questions agreeably after I said her neighbor, Mr. Williston, had told me about their missing dog. The Weimeraner had been outside, around lunch time, and just hadn’t come home when they called him. That had been nearly a month ago; she knew the date, September eighteenth. They’d run advertisements, offered a reward, without any response. And that was all Mrs. Jefferson could tell me. She hadn’t seen any green vehicle, or running dog, recently.

So I left my card with her, went back to the Cad and drove it half a block and into the driveway next to the small house with “L. Erickson” on the mailbox out front. What I’d thought was another lawn here turned out to be attractively lumpy and bumpy Korean grass, very dark green, obviously well watered and with its edges neatly trimmed. Williston was out of luck; you can’t mow Korean grass, you just let it grow and maybe enjoy walking on it barefoot.

The house was painted a creamy beige with chocolate-brown trim, a chocolate-brown door, and on the beige paneling at the door’s right a chocolate-brown bell, which I poked. Nothing. Poked it again.

I heard a door slam at the rear of the house, thumping as of rapid footsteps, somebody trotting my way. Then the door was swung open wide and framed in it was the eye-torching blood-warming breath-taking shock of Lucinda.

At least, I guessed this was Lucinda. But, because I had been looking at the door and the trim and the bell, while at the same time thinking of walking barefoot on toe-friendly Korean grass, what I saw was an absolutely gorgeous gal with wild black hair and wilder black eyes and extravagant dimensions, a young black beauty of perhaps twenty-five tender years, with chocolate-brown skin the shade and smoothness of melted Hershey bars, who appeared to be barefoot all over.

At least, that’s what I thought for a remarkably stimulating second or two, but then I noted that though she was indeed barefooted and bare-legged and bare almost everywhere else, she was in fact wearing a brief two-piece swim suit, or play suit, or skin graft... Well, what it looked like, when my eyes finally found it–which wasn’t easy, because both little pieces of it were exactly the shade of melting Hershey bars–was the lower half of a brassiere above bikini briefs that had recently shrunk, these trifles either partially covering or abundantly uncovering a body that explained why Williston had found no words to describe it. But, then, Williston had struck me as more crude than eloquent, anyhow.

So I smiled eloquently and said, “Lu—?”

“Hi.”

“Lu–?”

“Are you selling something?”

“–cinda?”

“What?”

I sighed. “This isn’t working. Frankly, ma’am, or miss, or Ms., I had hoped to speak to you so eloquently that your ears would sing, that you would automatically say Yes! No matter what–”

“Yes? To what?”

“Ah, good question. Give me a minute–”

“Speak eloquently? My ears would sing? And what was that Loo–loo–sin–ahdah or whatever, isn’t that what you said?”

“How would I know? Why don’t you go put some pants on, and we’ll start over. Pretend I just got here.”

“You did just get here.”

“Will you quit it? Look, let’s really start over. It’s important, believe me. And you want some eloquence? Okay, hear this: I just got here. You just got here. I mean, I just pressed the belly-button, or rather the doorbelly, and you just opened the door wide and stood there like...like you’re standing there. Undismayed, I said smoothly: Hi there, ma’am. Or mmmm–I’m Shell Scott, a private investigator of some renown–strike that, uh, I have an office right here in Los Angeles. I have been employed to find a client’s dog. Well, more than that, a lot more, but the dog part is part of it. And, since that’s what I’m doing, I heard that you may also have lost a pet, a cat. That is, if you are indeed Lu–”

“Oh! My precious little purry kitty, Precious! You’ve found Precious?”

“Found what? No. I didn’t even know it was missing until...What did you call it?”

“You haven’t found Precious?”

“No. Good Lord, that is what you said.”

I scowled at her. Since she still appeared to be standing only a foot from me completely naked, I hadn’t lost interest entirely; but women who name their kittens–or birds, or baby iguanas–“Precious” can be dangerous to a man’s blood sugar. Thus that first fine careless rapture I’d felt upon glimpsing her apparently wearing only the doorway was being replaced by a sense of, ah, loss.

But that didn’t last long. It took only a few more seconds for me to realize she talked like an imbecile only when speaking of her kittycat, and the rest of the time she sounded normal, nice, and as intelligent as–well, as I am.

The way it went, she said, “Oh, I thought for a moment you’d found her and were bringing her back,” and I said, “No, sorry, I’m just checking the neighborhood here. But, first thing, are you really Lu–“ and she said, “I’m Lucinda Erickson,” and I said, “Thank goodness, I was really starting to wonder about that.”

And in another minute and a half she understood why I was here and what I was doing, and I knew that her cat had “just disappeared” a few weeks ago.

“Do you remember the exact date?” I asked her.

“About three weeks ago. Well, it was last month, and I wrote it down on the calendar. C’mon in, and I’ll check it.”

She opened the door even wider, stood for a moment in bright reflected sunlight, then turned and went back into the house.

After brief hesitation, not a whole lot, I followed her inside.

CHAPTER SIX

It was a small place, but neat and bright, with colorful paintings on the walls and pink and white pillows on a blue couch here in the living room.

Directly ahead of me were a couple of stools before a low counter, beyond which was the kitchen. Lucinda switched on a light in there and I could clearly see the refrigerator, an oven and microwave–and Lucinda. She was facing away from me, bending forward to peer at something low on the refrigerator door. I sighed.

“Eighteenth,” she said. “September eighteenth.”

“That’s very interesting.”

She came back into the living room, glanced at me and said, “You don’t have to stand there. Sit down, Mr. Scott.” Then she moved one of the pink pillows aside and sank onto the couch, crossing her long brown legs.

“Okay,” I said, looking around and spotting a pair of gracefully designed and attractive, but quite dinky, chairs. I stepped over to one of them and looked down at it, dubiously.

“Over here,” Lucinda said, patting the pink pillow next to her legs. “I paid a lot of money for those ridiculous things, and nobody as big as you is going to sit in them.”

“Okay,” I said again. “Good thinking.”

But I didn’t move immediately, wondering briefly if she expected me to sit on the pillow she was patting. However, I rejected that thought as highly unlikely, realizing my temporary hesitation was due only to the fact that the pillow was so close to those really bare legs, and bareness as provocative as what Lucinda was exhibiting in abundance had, on occasions in the past, made me appear to be a dummy, not because my mental processes stopped or even slowed down but, on the contrary, because they speeded up so fast that moving my feet had a very low priority.

I must have been thinking very speedily for quite a while, because Lucinda said, “Is there something fascinating about that dumb little chair that I never noticed before?” Then briskly–but pleasantly–“You can keep standing there and looking at it if you want to. Or come sit over here unless you’re afraid of me, Mr. Scott.”

“Fear is not my problem.” I moved the feet, sat down on the other side of the pink pillow she’d patted, and said, “Call me Shell, okay?”

“All right, Shell. Now, you said–”

“And you are... Mrs.? Miss? I know you’re not Mr. Erickson.”

She laughed easily. “You really are a detective, aren’t you? It’s Mrs. Erickson. Mr. Sco–Shell, when I told you the last time I saw Precious was September eighteenth, you said that was very interesting. Why?”

“Yeah, that. Well, you know Mr. Williston down the street, don’t you?”

“Yes. Just as one of the neighbors. We wave at each other. And sometimes he honks at me when he goes past my house.”

“When he goes past driving? Or walking?”

She laughed again, leaned over and slapped me on the knee, then straightened up, or at least straightened her spine.

“That’s pretty good,” she said.

“Truth is, when you opened the door, I was unprepared to see such a young, attractive... um—”

She was laughing merrily with unselfconscious abandon of people who like themselves, and others, enough that they’re not afraid of letting go a little, and it was so infectious that I joined her for a few seconds. When we calmed down I added, “Especially not in such a swell outfit.”

“Oh, this?” She took a deep breath, looking down at herself and brushing a hand over the wisp of Hershey-brown cloth only partially concealing those remarkable Hershey-brown breasts. “I forgot I had it on.”

Then she looked at me again and probably noticed my eyes widening, adding quickly, “I mean, I forgot I had it on. Usually I wear a one-piece swimsuit. When I heard the doorbell, I was about to jump into the Jacuzzi. Another two seconds and I’d have been soaking in it.”

“Good thing I rang when I did, I guess. Jacuzzi, huh?”

“I try to unwind in it at least once a day. With all the jets on, swooshing the warm water around, it relaxes me.”

“Well, I hate interrupting your routine, Mrs. Erickson. We could continue this, ah, friendly interrogation out there if you’d like, if you’d prefer. That is, if you’d enjoy that warm swooshing–”

“Do you mean you want to interrogate me in the Jacuzzi, Shell?”

“No, no, I don’t believe that’s what I...I thought maybe I’d just watch, and ask...You wouldn’t mind?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Well, maybe your husb–husb–” I always have difficulty with that word.

“Mr. Erickson and I are divorced.”

“Hoo.”

“We’re still friends. We just don’t live together any more. So you can either join me in the Jacuzzi, or sit outside and ask your questions. How long will it take?”

“How long will what take?” For a moment there I drew a total blank. Then I said, “Yeah, questions. Got it.”

“What was it about Mr. Williston?”

“Williston, sure. Well, he lost his pet, too, a young Weimeraner. Thing is, the dog disappeared on September eighteenth.”

Lucinda blinked, sober now. “Just like Precious. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

“Sure is. Something else. Nine days ago, Wednesday last week, a green van came up this street pretty fast, with a dog chasing it. Williston said the van braked to a stop about here, in front of your house. I was wondering if maybe you saw it.”

“Yes, I did. Just for a few seconds, though. I heard tires skidding on the street outside. I was in the kitchen, so I just walked over and opened the front door. The car or truck, van I guess, was stopped right out front. But it started up again in three or four seconds, and left.”

“Did you see the dog jump into the back of the van?”

“Dog? No, I didn’t see any dog.”

“Did you get a look at either of the men in the van?”

She shook her head, thick black hair shimmering. “Somebody was driving, of course. But I didn’t really see...”

“How about any writing on the side of the van?”

“There was. All I remember is there were white-on-green words. And there was something–something about death, I think.”

I blinked at her. “Death?”

“Yes, death or dying. It was some kind of phrase, or slogan, you know. But I can’t remember what it was now.”

“Good enough, that helps. Might help a lot.”

I looked at my watch. Getting close to eleven a.m. It had been an odd and already fairly full morning, but I knew there was much left to do this day. I also realized I had asked all my questions.

So, reluctantly, I said, “I’d better be on my way. Thanks very much for your time, and help.”

“Wish I could’ve remembered more. Do you really have to go, Shell?”

“Afraid so. Back to work, alas.”

She smiled. “No Jacuzzi today, then?”

I shook my head, got to my feet. “Not today. But I sure appreciate the offer–if that’s what it was.”

“That’s what it was.”

She walked with me to the door, opened it. I stepped outside, but just past the doorway turned, looked at Lucinda and said, “Thanks again for the info, especially about that ‘death’ van, Mrs. Erickson.” I scowled. “Do I have to call you–”

She interrupted me. “Mrs. Erickson is a little clumsy. You can call me...” She stopped, smiled at something in her thoughts, and said, “You can call me Lu– ” and laughed.

She’d noticed. But instead of scowling some more, I joined in her merry laughter. A little.

Then she said, “I couldn’t resist that, Shell. Call me Lucinda.” Her smile faded as she went on, “About Precious. I guess there’s not much chance I’ll see her again, is there? After all this time.”

“Not much, I’m afraid. But you never know, I might get lucky. I don’t suppose she looks much different from any other cat, or kitten.”

“She’s actually a year old, but she just looks like a regular–oh, there’s one thing. You mean, something different, so you’d know it was Precious if you happened to see her?”

“Yeah. In case I should spot her wandering around, or maybe even right outside in the bushes. In fact, on my way out I’ll check ‘em.”

“When she was about six months old, a dog chased her and caught her, almost bit her tail in two. The vet stitched her tail up and saved it, but it goes like this.” Lucinda drew a line in the air with her index finger, straight forward and then sharply left.

“Got it.” I mimicked her angular movement with my finger. “I’ll check those bushes–”

“And when she wiggles her tail, for some reason she wiggles her whole little tush. It’s the cutest thing.” I opened my mouth, then closed it, partly because Lucinda was continuing. “And if she likes you, at the same time she’ll meow, only it’s a really high, kind of scratchy sound, sort of maaah-maaah, or just maaaaaah!”

“No kidding.”

“I’m not explaining this very well, but it’s so unusual because she does it all at once, like...I’ll show you.”

Lucinda bent forward there in the doorway, and started rapidly wiggling her, well, tush, back and forth sideways, while making that odd noise, Maaaah! She was facing away from me during this exercise, or rather facing pretty much toward me with the exercise away from me, but it was nonetheless, all things considered, a truly memorable experience.

“You’ll have to imagine the crooked tail,” she said.

“I’d...rather not.”

Then Lucinda stopped vibrating and straightened up, lovely face slightly flushed. “Will that help?”

I took a deep breath, let it out saying, “I’m...not sure.”

She sighed. “Realistically, I suppose it isn’t likely I’ll ever see her again, and that’s so sad.”

“There’s always a chance. No question, I’ll recognize her if I get anywhere near her.”

“I hope so. I really do miss her. She’s such a sweet little kittycat. Nuzzles me with her head, reaches up and gives my cheek a soft tap-tap with her paw sometimes, and she loves to knead my tummy or breast with her tiny little claws–”

I sucked in my breath involuntarily, and it made a little squeaking sound in my throat. “Don’t say that,” I said. “I mean, don’t tell me Precious...” I stopped, hung up on that dumb name again.

“Don’t say she loves to knead my tummy?” Lucinda was smiling, with her lips and eyes.

I looked down at those dark brown almost-black eyes, looked for quite a while, then said, “Close enough. You’re warm. Well, I really do have to leave, Lucinda, but I hope you’ll keep that Jacuzzi warm for me.”

It seemed a long time before she answered, her eyes on mine, tongue moving slowly over those full lips. Then, “I’ll keep it...hot,” she said.

I turned, heard another little squeak, drifted over to my Cadillac. Got in. Backed out of the driveway. The front door was closed, as it had been when I first saw the little cream-colored house with chocolate-brown trim and rang the chocolate-brown bell. It looked different, though, a lot different, now that I knew what was inside.

And I was at least ten blocks away before I realized I’d forgotten to check those bushes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was on Eucalyptus, half a mile from Maple Street where the Vungers lived, when I parked, pulled out my pocket notebook and cell phone. On the remote chance that the Vungers were home and had simply stopped reading newspapers and answering their phone, before talking to them I wanted to learn what officers Murphy and Devincent could tell me about Henry Hernandez, M.D.

It took me about five minutes to run them down—taking a food break for coffee and hamburgers at Wendy’s—and another five minutes for the two of them, taking turns on the phone to fill me in. It wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping to hear about my new client.

Details and times of their meetings with Hernandez on the 18th and 25th of this month were exactly as Hank had given them to me. Unfortunately, however, both Ed Murphy—a big-boned and deep-voiced man of thirty-six, whom I liked a lot—and ten-years-younger, handsome intense Lou Devincent, a casual acquaintance of mine, thought Hernandez was full of it.

Murphy first: “You ask me, the old boy may think he’s being spied on by Martians. Lou and I never came up with any indication –besides what he told us himself and you know what that’s worth—anything happened at all. No physical evidence, for sure. We checked the street, talked to neighbors, got nothing. You know this character?”

“Yeah, just talked to him this morning.”

“Well, can you guess what he told us? He says, if the word of an honest citizen isn’t sufficient evidence itself, did there have to be fenders and bumpers and axles and pieces of bleeding torsos scattered—or strewn, yeah, strewn I think he said, or strewed—all over the intersection and piled up on his dead body before we might consider considering it evidence? Something like that.”

“Uh-huh. I think we’re talking about the same guy.”

“Hey, Shell, that’s not the whole scam about this one.” That was the higher, speedier voice of Devincent. “This old crock is a medical quack.”

I winced, but kept listening.

“Killed a bunch of patients, we hear, but got off somehow because he’s an M.D. None of the other docs understand how come he’s still licensed to practice. Neither do I, after what they told me. Or told us both—Murph didn’t buy it at first when I filled him in, thought I was pulling his leg again, like I do sometimes. But he checks and gets the same thing from the docs himself, which finally convinced him.”

“Who are these other docs you’re talking about?”

“Well, when we still thought maybe there was something to what this Hernandez said, we checked with the local medical society. State board, too. They all told us about his history of taking advantage of sick people, even incurables, giving them false hope with his quack treatments. And getting rich off them, of course.”

“He didn’t look all that rich to me, Lou. Doesn’t even seem to have an office, except in his house.”

“Maybe he’s not so rich now. The State Medical Board, and the FDA, they’ve been making it hot for him the last three, four years. Way the docs put it—didn’t actually say it, but I could get the drift—sometimes the only way to get these quacks out of business and stop ‘em ripping off people, is to keep bringing them into court for malpractice, or other legitimate charges, and let the law squeeze ‘em down. Sooner or later they’re history.”

“Uh-huh. You check with anyone besides the medical boards and FDA? Like any of his patients?”

“What for? The guy’s a doctor, so we checked with other doctors. They ought to know, right?”

“Did I hear you say Hernandez killed some people?”

“Yeah, a bunch I guess. They only sued him for some that died while he was treating them. But the way the docs explained it, there’s no way to tell how many of his patients kicked off later, maybe even years later, when nobody can connect it with whatever he did to ‘em. See?”

“Yeah. And they ought to know, right?”

The next voice was Murphy’s rumbling baritone. “Shell, you said you’ve talked to Hernandez. You didn’t let this sawbones sell you a bill of goods, did you?”

“I’m not sure yet, Murph. But I am working for him, as of today. Which is why I called you guys—”

“Shell, you gahdamn criminal, you make us sit here giving you all this info from top-secret police files for a gahdamn quack? Man, you’re gonna owe me a couple fingers of E. T. just for the gahdamn pain in my ass.”

I grinned. Murphy was a good guy, and a good cop, but he liked to talk like a rock-hard macho terror. I happened to know he picked up spiders in Kleenex and carried them out of his house. When he thought nobody was looking. Also, E. T. wasn’t a cute alien but Early Times bourbon.

“Okay, pal,” I said, “in your locker at Parker there’ll be a quart of E. T., and some cheap wine for Lou, next time I get down there. But consider this, Murph. I don’t know for sure—and neither do you— that Hernandez is a quack. None of us has spoken to his patients, friends, neighbors. Sounds like the only people you checked with were other doctors.”

“So? Man, if you can’t believe what doctors tell you, who can you believe?”

It was a pretty good question. In the last minute or so of conversation I got what Murphy and Devincent knew about the two fairly recent lawsuits against Hernandez, the charges, and as much as they could remember of dates and plaintiffs and such, plus the fact that Hernandez had not—not yet in Devincenzo’s words—been convicted of a solitary thing. And obviously Hank still had his medical license, and was still practicing.

So I said—again to Murphy—“Hell, don’t you find that significant? How come, if Hernandez is really such a medical disaster, he’s free as a bird?”

“What I find significant is, both times in court his mouthpiece was Webster J. Montrose.”

I hung up, thinking that last bit of info was, maybe, not only significant but disturbing. Montrose was one of the best and most expensive attorneys in Southern California. For three decades he had brilliantly won acquittals for nineteen of every twenty defendants he’d represented, most of them guilty as sin. And most of them were accused murderers, embezzlers, stock swindlers, and/or Mafiosi.

I’d finished making my notes and was putting the book back into my pocket when I saw the green van, rolling past me on Eucalyptus.

My pulse kicked up, then I reminded myself that what I’d spotted was merely a green van; could be hundreds like it around L.A. But I pulled into traffic, gunned the Cad’s engine. The van was more than a block ahead of me, in the left or speedier lane, but the driver didn’t seem to be in any hurry. So half a minute later I rolled alongside the van and eased my foot off the accelerator, close enough to read the white-painted letters on its right side: SOCAL PEST CONTROL; below that, in smaller block letters, was the interesting line, “We Kill ‘em Deader Than Dead!”

Interesting, because that was close enough to “death or dying,” the two words Lucinda had so recently mentioned—the “something” she’d seen painted on the side of a green van when it had stopped briefly in front of her home—but also because nothing else was painted there. People display names and slogans on their commercial vehicles for advertising purposes, promotion, to drum up business. But except for those two lines the side of the van was blank—no address, no phone number.

If this was the van I’d been hoping to find, which now seemed a pretty good bet, I’d lucked out and saved at least a day or two of hunting. Maybe today was my lucky day. At least, that was the cheering thought in my mind as I squinted a little longer at the van and, a bit late, became aware that a large unhappy-looking egg was glomming me from its passenger seat.

I couldn’t be certain of his size, but he looked large, with one muscular and hairy arm resting on the door, above it a wide beefy face. No Fu Manchu mustache, though. And he had what looked like a lot of red hair, certainly wasn’t bald. For a second or two he stared stolidly at my chops, unsmiling. Yeah, that was definitely an unhappy expression, he looked like a man passing a bunch of square gallstones.

I looked away, concentrated on the road ahead of me, eased off on the accelerator. But the van slowed also, dropped back a car length behind my Cad, then speeded up and passed me. The sour chap was gunning me again with unfriendly eyes when they sped on by. Odd. Guys working for a pesticide company shouldn’t mind if a traveler gawked at their vehicle, or even at them; that, presumably, was why SOCAL PEST CONTROL was painted on the van’s side: so people would look at it. Of course, if they’d recently tried to run over a pedestrian, like a doctor on Mulberry Street, they might well be edgy.

So I followed them for a mile, and when they took the next exit I turned there, too, and kept following them. But not for long. After about two blocks the green van pulled to the side of the street and stopped. I slowed, eased into the curb behind it.

As I turned off the ignition the heavy-faced redheaded man and another, shorter and stockier, got out of the van and stood on a dirt strip between the curb and the sidewalk, facing each other, not looking at me. And as I climbed out of my Cad I spotted something that intrigued me more than a little.

The shorter man, the driver, stood with his back to the van and right side toward me, facing the large egg; both his hands were stuck into his back pockets, but the sour-chopped guy’s arms were crossed over his thick chest. They were talking to each other, and I noticed that every time the man on my right, Sour Chops, spoke, his left hand went up and covered or moved over his mouth as if he was brushing an itch. Which told me this one was probably an ex-con who hadn’t been ex- very long.

Among the losers in stir, some learn to read lips so they can decipher what their friend—or enemy—is saying even when the words, or whispers, can’t be heard. As a result, many cons get into the habit, a sensible habit in the joint, of covering their mouths when they speak so nobody else can “see” what they’re saying.

I’d observed the habitual movement often before, and Sour Chops’ busy left hand was a classic giveaway. That understanding put me a little bit on edge. Just a little, no alarm bells, but there was the familiar tightening of muscles in my back, slightly heavier beat of blood, subtle sharpening of senses. Asking my questions of a supermarket clerk or garden-services salesman was one thing; asking the same questions of a hardcase con fresh from the slam might be something else entirely.

But I wasn’t looking for trouble. And it was eight to five, I thought, that they weren’t either.

How wrong can you get?

They were standing about ten feet away now, Sour still doing the bit with his left hand, the other guy nodding, saying something, nodding again. Neither of them had so much as glanced in my direction yet. So I walked over and stopped next to the two men, and let both of them simultaneously eye me with totally unconvincing surprise.

“Hi,” I said pleasantly.

Silence.

Well, if these citizens were hard-working sprayers of dangerous insects, they wouldn’t much care what I asked them. And if they did care, that would tell me part of what I wanted to know. So I said cheerfully, “Van just like this one almost creamed a friend of mine the other day. Mind if I check out your bumper and front fenders?”

They minded. They didn’t say so, but I could tell. I could also tell something else. This close to both men, it struck me as highly probable that the first one I’d seen, the guy eyeballing me from the passenger seat, looked sour because he was sour, maybe actually fermenting inside. The too-pale skin of his face was blotchy and pimpled, visible blackheads, almost big enough to thud if they fell out, dotting his nose. He did have a lot of red hair, and pinkish hair on his thick arms. He was about an inch taller than I, and would push the scales up to two-twenty or more.

The other man was shorter, maybe six feet, with the build and bulging muscles of a weight lifter, curly black hair, pale blue eyes, a straight Roman nose and full red lips. Women who like to hang out with hoods would probably consider him handsome or even “darling,” but to me that was a hard, cold, cruel face. The bigger guy was probably dangerous to mess with, but this one was worse; this one gave me the creeps.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, trying to relax the muscles of my neck and shoulders. Because a chance to check the van’s front end for possible damage might not come again so easily, or at all; so I meant to check it right now, simply by walking around these guys and taking a good look—if they let me do it. And if they didn’t want to let me, well, maybe they’d be helpful and cooperative. Maybe nothing unpleasant would happen. Maybe the moon is made of oatmeal.

I took a step to my right, began to walk past the big man, and immediately he started to make a move toward me. But only started. The curly-haired darling with pretty lips, acting without apparent haste, casually hooked one finger around the other man’s arm, tugged gently, and Sour stopped, sort of shivered a little, settled back on his heels.

“Look at anything you want to, pal,” Pretty-Lips said in a low, whispery voice. “You wanna waste your time, waste it.”

I nodded silently, uncomfortably aware of the man’s unblinking stare. Uncomfortably, because I didn’t like the look of those icy-blue glimmers at all. For a weird moment I could almost imagine tiny frozen worms in there, or little snakes uncoiling behind those pale blue eyes. Which was a thought crazy enough that I instantly pushed it out of my mind. Or tried to.

Then I walked around the two men. Neither of them stopped me. I squatted at the van’s front, looked it over. It hadn’t been in a body shop, or repainted. The bumper had been nicked several times, but not lately. Paint on both fenders was old, weathered, some of it slightly chipped. No question, this wasn’t a vehicle that had clipped another one recently.

I stood up, walked back near the two men.

“Thanks,” I said, looking at the pretty one. “Mind a couple questions?”

“Yeah.” That from Sour Chops.

“Depends on the questions,” said the other man. “You wanna try us out, try us out.” It sounded like a quiet threat.

“How many green vans are there like this one? On the road for SoCal Pest Control, I mean.”

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Pilgrim?” Sour Chops said.

That made me realize I might have to hit the sonofabitch. I didn’t want trouble with these guys, though; I really didn’t. I wanted to finish with them speedily, at least for now, and be on my way.

“Three,” the pretty mug said. “Three others. Why you wanna know?”

“I already told you. A van like this came too close to a friend of mine. So I’m interested in finding it.” The guy’s cold stare irritated me.

He was about to say something else but didn’t get it out because the large sour slob stepped closer to me, pressed his right hand flat against my chest, and said, “Didden you hear me, Pilgrim?”

His hand was still pressing against my chest. If he’d known anything about me, he wouldn’t have done that. Even if he was certain he could take me, or shoot me, or roll a cement mixer over me, he wouldn’t have done it. Because I have what might be characterized as an irrational antipathy toward that kind of belligerent familiarity, and do not feel it necessary to say “Please” or even “Watch out” to such people.

But I was still hoping to avoid rolling around on the sidewalk with these jokers—and, to be completely honest, I did not want to give that blue-eyed creep any chance to get behind me. So all I did was raise both hands up near my shoulders—still limp, not stretched open—and start to tell Sour that I had become terminally weary of his company.

He was saying something unintelligible to me, his wide mottled face pushed even closer toward mine, saliva shining on his lower lip. I couldn’t help suspecting that these two dandies didn’t add up to a pair.

I heard the last of it clearly enough. “... you like that, Pilgrim? So spill what the blank you was really follerin’ us for, you blankin’ blank, and don’ gimme no blank about fenders, Pilgrim, I mean spill what your real act is. Yeah?”

That was “Pilgrim” three times in less than a minute. This guy had seen every John Wayne movie twice, and maybe was even now watching a new one inside his head. So, briefly, I played along.

“Wa’al, podner,” I drawled—or tried to, but it didn’t really work for me, never does—“I was lookin’ for rustlers so me and the posse could hang ‘em all from an oak but I guess I’ll have to settle for shootin’ yah hand plumb off.”

“Hand? Huh?”

If I’d had any doubts about which of these two guys was top dog, they’d have been gone by now. Because the man with his hand flat—still—on my chest had by that act alone proved he was an amateur, didn’t have the faintest idea what he was doing or what could, and I guessed soon would, happen to him. The other man, though, the charmer with snakes in his eyes, midway through my response moved his right arm, moved it slowly and maybe without even thinking about it, the palm sliding over his stomach and toward his left armpit.

I wasn’t looking at him, but could see that movement from the edge of vision, see it stop and then the arm drop slowly back to his side.

I had been considering breaking Sour Chops’ collarbone on one side of his neck, maybe both sides, but instead moved my hands down and got his little finger in my left fist, the index finger in my right—he having left them there handy for me, and thus having asked for it—and yanked them apart and down toward his gut like a maniac making a wish on a pterodactyl’s wishbone, and the rest of it also happened very fast.

He said “Ack-hahgghah,” louder at the end, and went down onto his knees, then onto his broad butt, his legs bending with feet pointed outward and knees almost touching in the middle. I was helping him along, of course, and for a couple of seconds tried to pull his goddamned fingers off but didn’t quite break them, not yet, even though when his coat fell away from his chest I saw the holstered gun at his left armpit.

I stepped on his right knee, put my weight on it—keeping at least a fraction of my attention on the really hard lob six feet away, making sure that arm stayed at his side—and said to the big chap who was still making noises similar to the first one he’d suddenly made, only higher and softer now, “What was it you were telling me, friend? Any more advice? I probably won’t take it, but I’ll listen.”

He didn’t say anything more except squeaky things. So I broke his little finger and his index finger, snapped them quickly, then let him go and stepped back. I wasn’t looking at the man on the ground but at his companion six feet away.

He hadn’t moved. Rather, he hadn’t moved that right arm. But he seemed to have shrunk a little, as though down into himself, with his shoulders lifted slightly and his head thrust forward, almost like a turtle’s head coming out of its shell, or...a snake. And the queer thing, the odd and in a way actually scary thing, is that he was grinning.

He liked this. It was enjoyment, kicks, way to go. I knew without logic, or maybe with some kind of higher logic, just as certainly as I knew the sun was shining and it was close to noon in Los Angeles and I could smell the smog, that if I turned my back on this one for more than half a second I’d be dead. He’d kill me and grin, and keep on grinning.

So I kept my eyes on his, on those little nests of snakes I’d imagined thawing in there, and said quietly, “Maybe this Pilgrim here would appreciate it if you took him to a doctor. For some splints on his hand.”

“Good idea,” he said. I could hardly hear him. “Makes a lot of sense, pal. Hey, Kell, crawl over here. Don’t mess no more with this guy. He’s the toughest rascal I ever did see.”

All the time he grinned at me, never moving his eyes from mine. It actually gave me a shivery chill up my spine right then. There are people around who just bubble over with caring and compassion, at least so they claim, who insist there aren’t really any evil people, not really, and even the worst mugger or thief or rapist or mass murderer has so much good in him, and so many inviolable civil rights—whatever that means—plastered all over him that we should do everything humanly possible not to punish but to rehabilitate the sucker, assuming he’d ever actually been anything worth rehabilitating him back to.

So they say. And I think they probably mean it. Maybe it’s because those sweethearts don’t meet the same wonderful people that I do.

The wonderful person I’d just given a convincer, got up awkwardly off the ground, took one step toward me—I told you he was crazy—but his buddy said gently, “Stuff it,” and the man he’d earlier called Kell did—stopped, turned, walked toward the green van.

But even if he minded his buddy and took his good advice, Kell wasn’t going to leave without getting a last face-saving word in. Next to the van he turned, holding his right hand cupped in his left, blotchy face twisted.

“Gonna kill you,” he said. Like, “Have a nice day.” Just a simple, sincere, “Gonna kill you.”

SoCal Pest Control. Not much point looking it up. They wouldn’t be in the book.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“I’m The Grinner,” said the pretty-lipped man, still standing about six feet away from me. “Friends call me Grinny,” he went on conversationally. “You can call me The Grinner if you want to.”

“I’m not sure I want to call you at all.”

I wasn’t surprised at the hood moniker; the tag was a natural. Probably his friends had watched him pumping a few into a pal’s back, or throttling an old lady, noted his expression of enjoyment or orgasm or toothy rictus and welcomed him into the club by nicking his name. Men on the criminal turf, probably more than any other breed, refer to their associates not by given names but with invented appellations like The Joker or Garlic or Slippery Bob or the Waffler, monikers usually appropriate and often surprisingly colorful, part of a language that exists nowhere else.

So here was The Grinner. Pleasantly asking me, “What’s your handle, pal?”

I could have told him I was Elmer Hoopla from Red Dirt, Texas, and it would have delayed his making me for maybe three minutes. Both these apes now knew my Cadillac, its plates, and what I looked like, which was more than enough. So I said, “Shell Scott. I’m a PI. As I told you, I’m looking for a green van—but not that one.” I nodded toward the van with Kell now sitting inside it, but didn’t let my eyes leave his face.

“A pimp, huh?” Grinner said mildly. He wasn’t grinning, now that the fun was over, but his lips stretched in what might have been a corpse’s smile. “I’d guessed you was something like that. See you soon, pimp. Soon.” Then he turned abruptly, walked toward the front of the van, heading for the driver’s side.

Before it became shorthand for private investigator, “PI” had indeed meant “pimp” in places like, say, San Francisco. But that had been a long time ago, which Grinner knew as well as I did. One of the quirks about men like him and Kell, part of the sleazy world of warped values they live in, is that the surest way to get a lot of crap from them in the end is to let them get away with giving you just a little in the beginning.

So I took three fast steps forward, stopped a yard from where Kell was sitting inside the van, eyeballing me much as a starving vegetarian might examine 205 pounds of raw liver. Grinner was in the street, reaching for the door handle.

“Hold it,” I said to him. “I think you should hear this.”

He didn’t open the door, just raised his head slowly and looked at me over the van’s top.

“Hear it, and memorize it,” I said quietly. “Call me pimp one more time, Grinner and your pals will start calling you Gummer. Try it right now, if you feel like it.”

For all I knew, he might have laughed, or tried to shoot me, or popped off some more with his mouth. But he didn’t do anything like that. Just let his eyes rest briefly on my face, maybe shot a few more rays of freeze out of them, then casually opened the van’s door, got inside, and drove away.

I stood there for half a minute, shaking my head and looking bleakly at the landscape. I knew, just as when you see lightning you know you’ll hear thunder, I’d see those two lobs again. And that wasn’t a happy thought.

Then I got into the Cad and took off, heading for Maple Street and—maybe, though the possibility now seemed more and more unlikely—a helpful meeting with Guenther and Helga Vunger.

* * * * * *

It was a fairly large house, two stories, painted a pale green that had been faded by Southern California sunlight. I parked in a narrow driveway running along its left side and ending at the closed door of the Vunger’s garage. A few yards farther to my left was another house almost identical to this one, painted exactly the same shade of faded green. Lawns fronted both houses, bisected by cement walks leading from front doors to sidewalks along Maple Street.

As I got out of the Cad I noticed an elderly white-haired lady standing in the driveway next door, leaning forward slightly and supporting her weight, what there was of it, on two polished brown canes or walking sticks, one in each small hand.

I nodded to her. “Morning. Or, I guess it’s afternoon now.” A glance at my watch told me it had been afternoon for twenty minutes.

When I looked up again the lady was walking toward me. Or, rather, coming toward me in a kind of slow shuffle, moving the stick in her left hand forward ten or twelve inches, followed by her left leg, slippered foot sliding...then the right stick, right leg, slipper sliding.

With her eyes not on me but on the ground, where she was carefully planting the walking sticks, she said, in a quite strong and almost musical voice, “Good morning, young man. Are you looking for someone?”

“Yes, the Vungers. This is their place, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But they’re not—I don’t think they’re home.”

She was still about ten feet away from me. She’d been at least twelve or maybe even fourteen feet away when she started. Watching her, I began getting nervous. Or at least uncomfortable. She seemed bound and determined to get way over here where I was, which was okay with me, but it was taking her so damned long to get here. It was as if life was passing me by, while I waited for her to move left stick...right stick. I wanted to go over there and help her get here where I was but of course then I’d be there, and... I shook my head, pushed the weird thought away, waiting. She appeared so fragile.

“I haven’t seen either of them for more than a week now,” the fragile lady said, making one final maneuver and stopping two feet away, looking up at me. “And I’m worried about them.”

“Do you have any idea where they might have gone?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No idea. I saw Helga—that’s Mrs. Vunger—in her back yard on Wednesday after lunch, and didn’t see her at all Thursday. Or since then, either. Do you know Guenther and Helga well?”

“No, ma’am, only their names.”

“Oh, I’m Mrs. Brewster, ” she said brightly. “Ellen Brewster.”

“Hi, Mrs. Brewster. My name’s Scott, Shell Scott.” I paused, then went on, “I’m a private investigator, a detective, and I’m trying to locate the Vungers. I’d appreciate anything you can tell me that might help, anything at all.”

“Oh-h. I don’t actually know any more about where they went. Or why. Wish I did.”

“You say you saw Mrs. Vunger Wednesday. And they haven’t been around for more than a week. So it must have been Wednesday before last, right?”

“That’s right.”

This was Friday, October 28. Wednesday of last week had been the 19th. So there it was once more, nine days ago.

“She didn’t mention maybe leaving for a few days, on a vacation, or to see relatives?”

“No, we didn’t say anything to each other. We’re not real close, but if they’d been going on a trip I think she’d have said so. Besides....”

Mrs. Brewster hesitated, but only briefly. I had a hunch she welcomed the opportunity to talk with somebody, almost anybody, about practically anything. It was only a guess, but I was thinking of that agonizingly slow, and perhaps physically agonizing for her, trek over here to speak with me.

Anyhow, she went on, “I really don’t think they could afford a vacation. It’s been hard for them since they got laid off at Omega after they caught...” She stopped, then continued, “Well, they were both awfully sick, with that...”

She didn’t finish. Mrs. Brewster couldn’t be aware that I not only knew the Vungers had been suffering from IFAI, but also was working for the physician who—if he’d told me the truth-had restored them to vigorous health. Maybe she just didn’t want to say the ugly word. But she had said a couple of things that grabbed my attention, so I tried to keep her going.

“If you mean IFAI,” I said, “I know they had it, but I understand they’d been better lately. Practically normal again, so I hear. Would you say—?”

Mrs. Brewster interrupted, looking up at me from way down there. “Oh, they couldn’t have had IFAI, Mr. Scott. That’s what I thought for a while, they were so sick. In fact, that’s what Helga herself told me they had, when we were still talking. It was a terrifying thing—them living right next door, you know. It’s so catching—goes right through the air at you, but you know that, of course.”

“Sure.”

“I guess everybody does these days. But then, when I saw them both around outside, Helga in her little garden again, both of them driving around and all.”

“When was that? When they seemed to you to be healthier, or at least better than before?”

“Oh, a month or more back, I guess. During the last few weeks they were a lot more active, but—well, I had already talked to my doctor, to find out if there was a shot or something I could take if they had IFAI to protect myself from them, which there wasn’t, and when I told him my neighbors I’d been worried about seemed lots better, he said I wasn’t to worry any more, that they couldn’t have had IFAI because nobody gets better, they all die.”

“Yeah, I must have heard that myself a thousand times.”

“Probably just the flu bug, he said. Or a virus going around.”

“Uh-huh. I understand the Vungers were being treated by a local doctor—”

“Oh, I know about him.”

“—who was helping them, so, you know about him?”

“Helga mentioned it. That was two or three weeks ago, she called over the fence to me, said they didn’t have the IFAI any more and everything was all right. Isn’t that crazy? She even told me this Dr. Hernandez’ name—sounds like he’s a Mexican, doesn’t it?—and tried to get me to go see him.”

I smiled, but merely said, “I’ll bet you didn’t.”

“Of course not! I told you, I have my own wonderful doctor.”

“Yes, you did say doctor.” I smiled again. “I didn’t hear the wonderful.”

“Well, he is. Just the most wonderful man, he really cares. He’s trying to cure my arthuritis, and a little heart angina and funny beats I got lately. But it’s hard. There really isn’t any cure yet.”

“There isn’t any cure—but he’s trying to cure it?”

“He certainly is, he’s got me on three miracle drugs and two wonder ones. And I really think maybe I’m better. Except for this little angina and missed heartbeats once in a while. And the dizziness.”

“Yeah. What did the Vungers, or Helga, say about this Dr. Hernandez, Mrs. Brewster?”

“Well, they both thought he was God Himself—that’s the way those quack doctors get to you, you know. They said he’d cured their IFAI and some other diseases, and they were feeling so good—and I’ll bet they’re dead now. Maybe laying out in the streets somewhere, maybe even in their house!”

There were nine things I wanted to ask her, but I said, “Where did you hear Dr. Hernandez is a quack?” Probably I should have asked one of the other eight questions, because before Mrs. Brewster answered I knew what was coming. “I’ll bet I know who—“ I began.

“Naturally, when Helga told me that, getting rid of the IFAI and all, I mentioned it to my doctor and he really got upset. I thought he was going to throw a... Well, he said this Doctor Hernandez was one of the worst quacks in the country, getting rich pretending to cure IFAI and cancers and AIDS and arthuritis and everything, and he was terribly dangerous because he kept people from getting proper treatment.”

“That would be dangerous, all right. Incidentally, I think you suggested maybe the Vungers were dead? Maybe even in their house here? But if they just had the flu, like your d—”

“Well”... She sighed. “My doctor didn’t actually examine them, of course. He just said it sounded like a flu, or maybe some kind of spontaneous remisser... remisking....”

“Remission, yeah. There are some of them going around, too.”

“So if they really did have the IFAI and got one of those remisster things temporary, and then kept on going down, like they all do, they could have died by now, couldn’t they? They might even have died in their house. Last week maybe. Right next door! I can’t even sleep from thinking about it.”

Well, when it’s handed to you, you’d be a dummy to throw it away. So I said, “Mrs. Brewster, would you like for me to check inside their house...and make sure?”

She let out a big sigh, such a big sigh I’d have bet a sawbuck to a nickel that it was what she’d been working up to all this time. “Oh, would you?” she said. “It’s been such a constant worry on my mind.” After a pause, she added, “If they are in there, somebody will have to take them out. And fumigate, or...whatever.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll handle all that, Mrs. Brewster.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Scott.”

I felt a little guilty, but I believed I could handle that, too. “No problem,” I said. “Might be a good idea, though, if neither of us tells anybody else about this.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t” she said fervently.

Sure, I thought. Only her doctor. But I asked her, “Before I check inside, would you mind another question or two?”

“No, not at all.”

Now that she knew I was willing to haul out the decaying corpses and bug-bomb the premises, Mrs. Brewster was ready to answer a dozen questions. “You mentioned the Vungers getting laid off, and presumably working before then, at Omega. The only Omega I know of around here is the Omega Medical Research Institute, about ten miles north of Hollywood.”

“That’s the one. Guenther and Helga worked there for two years, until they caught—well, they said they caught the IFAI there, and then Dr. Wintersong fired them, and they couldn’t get other jobs right away. Partly because they got so sick.” She shifted her weight slightly, moved the walking sticks an inch or two. “I don’t know, really, what all they did at Omega. Except I think they do research work on viruses, and other deadly diseases, out there.”

“They sure do.”

Just as I’d heard a whole lot about IFAI and the dangers of an incurable epidemic wiping out the population, I’d also heard more than a little about Omega, its vital medical research, and the brilliant head of that research program, Dr. William Wintersong. These days, about every second or third time you heard “IFAI” you also heard “Wintersong,” because he was the nation’s, even the world’s, best hope for production of a vaccine to prevent IFAI and/or a wonder drug to cure it.

I vaguely recalled Dr. Hernandez saying something about “Omega” earlier today. At least, I thought he’d mentioned the place. Maybe it had been in connection with his comments about animals, because I knew there was a lot of animal experimentation carried on at the well-known—actually, world-famous—research facility. I’d always assumed it was necessary and often fruitful research, but the truth is I hadn’t really thought much about it until Hank started spouting his “the stupids” tirades.

Hank and his damned paranoid arguments, I thought. He hadn’t convinced me that everyone else except him was out of step in his parade or that all the “allopaths” or orthodox docs were conspiring against him; but he had done enough and said enough to get me at least confused.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to go inside, Mr. Scott.”

That was Mrs. Brewster. She’d misinterpreted my sour expression.

“Oh, it’s not that,” I said. “I mean, piece of cake. But, about the Vungers, did they say they contracted IFAI at Omega?”

“No, just that it was while they were both working there they caught it. She—it was Helga mentioned it to me, right at the beginning, before they got so sickly. Just said they were tested when they had jobs at Omega, like the law makes them do, and it was in them. You can catch it, you know, just breath-ing.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll give the place a quick toss, and let you know if I find anything.”

“Oh, yes, do let me know. Maybe I can sleep tonight.”

“Sure. Umm, we’ll let this breaking, uh, my looking around inside your neighbor’s house, be our little secret, okay?”

A private eye has a license authorizing him to make investigations, but he is still a private citizen; and private citizens are looked upon with considerable official disapproval if they engage in breaking-and-entering, or looking around uninvited in other people’s houses. But I felt I could trust Mrs. Brewster. Unless her doctor squealed on me.

“I wouldn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t mention it. Probably you can get in easier the back way. It’s just a screen door there, and a kind of little patio room back of the kitchen.”

“Thanks. Well, see you later.”

I started walking up the driveway toward the garage and rear of the house, and heard Mrs. Brewster saying behind me, “Oh, I hope, I hope, they’re not really dead in there.”

I noticed that I had stopped moving, so I quickly started up again. I wasn’t entirely sure what had made me stop moving. Certainly I hoped I wasn’t entirely sure. I want everyone to understand that, despite the best efforts of the entire medical profession for thousands of years I, personally, am not afraid of dinky little bugs. Perhaps because no hordes of them had ever attacked me with much success, and definitely hadn’t caused any parts of me to rot away yet. However, invisible little bugs crawling around aimlessly are one thing; but little bugs crawling around on a couple of dead people is sort of something else, especially if those people were dead because of those dinky little bugs.

This was silly. If I kept stopping like this, I’d never get to the back door. I hummed a little tune and started walking again, rapidly, to the rear of the house and the screen door there.

The door was secured only by a small metal latch inside, and it was the work of no more than a few seconds to unlock it. Then I opened the door, paused the briefest of moments, and went on in.

This was the “kind of little patio room,” as Mrs. Brewster had described it. I looked around, went on into the kitchen.

“Hello!” I called. “Anyone home? Hello!” Nobody answered.

The kitchen was bright, almost too bright, with alternating yellow and white plastic tiles on the floor, yellow cloth curtains on windows overlooking the backyard, yellow pots or sauce pans on a red-enamel electric range, next to which was a conventional oven. No microwave. Next to the wall on my left was a square table and two cushioned wooden chairs. The cushions were red, and a white cloth covered the table.

More brightness on the wall above the table was light reflected from three framed paintings that looked like original and very realistically painted oils. One was a bunch of carrots, the next several ears of corn, a couple of them shucked and looking good enough to eat raw, and the third—hung about an inch lower than the others, for no discernible reason—was two shiny red apples and a bright yellow banana.

There wasn’t any real food in sight, no remnants of a last meal or stack of dirty dishes. Next to the sink, in one of those dish racks made of heavy plastic-covered wire, were a couple of clean dinner plates, bowls, silverware.

Five minutes later I’d checked every room in the house, without finding anything suspicious or disturbing, certainly no people, alive or dead. In an upstairs bedroom, on a large wooden bureau, I found an old framed photograph of the Vungers, obviously taken at their wedding. She was short, plump, pretty; and he was about four inches taller, stocky, wearing a gray suit that looked a size too small for him. But both of them were showing lots of eyes and teeth in the kind of dazed smiles you sometimes see on lottery winners. The then-new Mr. and Mrs. Vunger struck me as a young and attractive couple filled with energy and hope, eyes fixed on a bright and beautiful future.

A recent photo—someone had written the date on its back along with “Our Twenty-Fifth Anniversary”—showed the same happy couple approaching middle age, dressed in party clothes, she in a simple pink dress and he in a brown suit that fit him this time, both smiling at the camera. The smiles weren’t quite the same, considerably less toothy, as though maybe they hadn’t yet won the lottery but knew there’d be another drawing next week.

They looked like nice people, not much different from millions of others in the U.S.A. Pleasant, simple, solid. I liked their looks. And I would be able to recognize the Vungers now, if I ever saw them.

After making sure the house was empty, I wound up downstairs in the kitchen, ready to leave. But those three bright paintings caught my eye again. It still bothered me that the one on the right was an inch or so lower than the other two. So I walked over by the table and looked at the apples and ripe banana. I hadn’t been close enough to notice it before, but in the wall about half an inch above the frame’s top edge was a small hole in the plaster. It was about where a little nail would have been if the painting had originally been hung level with the other two.

So I lifted the shiny apples and banana off the wall, revealing a considerably large hole that until then had been concealed by the bottom edge of the painting’s frame. Several other things might have caused it, but I’ve seen bullet holes in plaster and wood before, and to me that was a bullet hole.

I didn’t dig into the plaster to find out for sure if I was right, just replaced the painting as it had been before. I could be in enough trouble already, merely for entering the Vunger’s home without legal authority to do so. But I did mean to inform the police of what I’d found; I just wasn’t yet certain of the happiest way to inform them.

A yellow Princess phone sat atop a small desk against the wall opposite the breakfast table. Using my handkerchief, I picked up the phone and called my client’s number.

I recognized Eleonora’s soft voice as she said, “The office of Dr. Hernandez.”

“Hi, Mrs. Hernandez. This is Shell Scott. I was in earlier—s”

“Oh, Mr. Scott, yes. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For making my husband feel so jolly.”

“Jolly? Me? How?”

“He is filled with it, with jolly smiling and all. He said to me, you are...how did he say it? Just what the doctor ordered. That you measure up to what the others he spoke to said of you, even more so once he could talk with you in your person.”

“Well, I didn’t actually say a whole lot. Mostly I just listened to Hank going on and on about... Others? What others?”

“He did not say to you?”

“No, he did not say to me. You mean he checked me out, talked to friends of mine? To...enemies?”

“Both. Oh, his patient is just finished, coming out now. With my husband you wish to speak?”

“Yeah, I sure do.”

I could faintly hear her voice as she said something, probably to Hernandez, also another women’s voice, talk of an appointment. Then, apparently from the phone in Hank’s office, “Sheldon?”

“Yeah, Hank. I’m calling from the Vunger’s home.”

“Ah, and they are not at present resident in their residence, true?”

“Yeah, I think. There’s sure nobody home. And there are nine newspapers in front of the house—I’ll bring them inside before I leave. Plus, there’s a bullet hole in the kitchen wall. That’s where I am now, in their kitchen.”

“Bullet hole? Ai, caramba.”

“I haven’t checked for the slug, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. Somebody moved the painting an inch to cover the spot, which spot is the size of a thirty-eight bullet, I’d say.”

“Monstrous. Is there blood—?”

“No blood, no signs of struggle. Hank, any idea why someone might have fired a gun here in the kitchen?”

“No. Truly, no.”

“Okay. But I get the impression there’s more than a little you haven’t told me.”

“Correct. Absolutely. To tell you everything would require forever. But there are other circumstances of which you should be informed.”

“Let’s try this. A neighbor here mentioned that the Vungers worked for a couple of years at the Omega Medical Research Institute, apparently contracted IFAI there—and were let go by the well-known Dr. Wintersong. I know you didn’t mention Wintersong during our talk this morning, but I seem to recall something about Omega. Am I right?”

“Yes. I told you they became infected with the so-called IFAI virus there, which is true. Regarding Dr. Wintersong, he is one of the great animal destroyers of all times, a typical allopathic researcher who believes health is achieved by killing everything within a fifty-yard radius of anyone who sneezes, a monster of unbridled fanaticism all of which is aimed at the wrong target and therefore misses even if he hits it. Which is approximately what I told him in person, among other truths he was unable to recognize, two weeks ago at Omega.”

“You told him? Two weeks ago?”

“Yes. It was a great unpleasantness I had with the great Dr. Wintersong. I guess I had not mentioned that yet.”

“I guess.”

“Six of us visited the research center, as a delegation from POCUEA, to observe the animals. Sheldon, perhaps you would be free to come here again, to my office? I have not another patient until half past one o’clock. I should probably explain some of this.”

“You sure should,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

CHAPTER NINE

In my car, turning on the ignition, I took a last look at Mrs. Brewster. When I’d gathered up the newspapers in front and carried them around behind the house, Mrs. Brewster had been approaching her front door, sliding one stick and slippered foot forward and then the other. I’d walked up next to her, told her the Vungers were not inside their home so that whatever condition they were in they were in it far from Mrs. Brewster, watched her pleasant face light up with a smile and listened to her effusive thanks, then saw her face crinkle with pain as she turned, supporting much of her weight on those walking sticks once more.

She was a nice old lady with a pretty though puffy face, and I hoped, I really hoped, those three miracles and two wonders would make her well again.

Then I jammed the Cad into Drive and headed for Hank’s.

“No, no, and no,” said Dr. Henry Hernandez reasonably. “I am not blind to his virtues, since he does not possess any worth mentioning. And I am not prejudiced against him merely because he is a rabid killer of his animal superiors. No, I am also prejudiced against him because I have examined numerous hemorrhoids that displayed more charm than does the eminent Dr. Wintersong.”

“Well, okay,” I said. “I withdraw my accusations of possible bias, prejudice, paranoia, and imminent galloping psychosis, since it is obvious you’ve arrived at your conclusions logically by astral osmosis and without any emotional imbalances whatever.”

“Do you have to talk like that, Sheldon? You are supposed to be a detective, not a librarian.”

“Do I have to talk?” I let it go. It was a no-win situation. Another one.

I was again seated in the leather chair before the battered oak desk in Hank’s office. But he wasn’t at the desk, he was pacing the floor, hands clasped behind his back, pausing now to gaze down at me. He had just finished a five-minute explanation, interspersed with occasional brief tirades, about his and POCUEA’s visit two weeks ago, on October 10, to the Omega Medical Research Institute, headed and supervised by Dr. William Wintersong.

It had taken POCUEA a full year to get permission from Wintersong for a visit to the Institute, their phone calls and letters having been ignored until Hank enlisted the aid of the Congressman representing his district, whom he informed that animal experimentation being conducted at the Institute was not only unconscionable but also violated restrictions and guidelines of the National Institutes of Health. Whatever the documentation Hank provided to his Congressman, it resulted in permission for a half-dozen representatives of POCUEA to visit the Omega facility at a date and time designated by Dr. Wintersong.

Hank had described what he, and the five other members of his group, found in the two buildings in which the animals were caged, experimented upon—“senselessly tortured and brutalized” in his phrase, or rather one of his many phrases—and in most cases “sacrificed,” which is doctorese for killed when the experimenters had finished experimenting. POCUEA had not found evidence of any experiments in clear violation of “official restrictions and guidelines,” but it would have been surprising if they’d done so, since Dr. Wintersong “had weeks or months to conceal or bury his mistakes, which if Justice could see would have included self-immolation”—according to Hank.

In a momentary pause, I said, “You were going to fill me in on your altercation with Wintersong. What was that all about?”

“Ah, yes.” Hank turned away, marched behind his desk, sat erect in the swivel chair. “He did not meet us when our delegation arrived at Omega. Instead, he had designated two very large Sumo wrestlers, both wearing white jackets and expressions of aggressive imbecility, to accompany us during our visit. We proceeded through the two separate buildings where there are laboratories and where most of the several thousand animals are confined or caged. There are three buildings, two connected like a letter ‘H’, plus the central Administration Building where are most of the offices, including Wintersong’s two operating rooms, offices for other doctors and research scientists of various specialties—plus one special laboratory in which a few additional animals are kept, presumably for truly cosmic experiments aimed at improving the health of our entire solar system.”

“Hank, if you could sort of zero in on the basic facts, without a whole lot of wonderful embellishments—”

“I zero. Doctor Wintersong has his office in this central Administration Building, but when he emerged to see us, he emerged not from his office but from behind a door to the right of it, which door had upon it a red circle with a line through it and the words ‘Danger, Lethal Radiation’ and ‘Do Not Enter!’”

“He came out of a room where there was some kind of radiation?”

“No, this warning is a large baloney. It was from the ‘Do Not Enter’ door that Wintersong exited, and—which was a most unusual opportunity, for I was by chance in the right place at its right time—I was able to see past him, for one whole second maybe, before the door slammed shut with a great crashing like when a train starts up. And inside, on the left from me, I could see counters, equipment, wires and tubes—and a dog. Some kind of experiment.”

“Dog?”

“White and with black spots, a Dalmatian I think. I am not sure, I could not see all of him, a green cloth covered this dog’s body, but the handsome face and head were that of a Dalmatian. But the astonishment, the thing that most exercised me, is that to the top of this dog’s skull—or maybe into the brain itself, I could not see if the skull was all there or not—were wires and tubes, like when an animal is fed nutrients and a record is kept of heart beats, blood flow, brain waves and such functions, recorded on moving papers. You know?”

“Like when the doc does an EKG and those little wavy lines squiggle on—”

“Yes. It is possible Wintersong was doing some terrible experiment upon this dog. Something barbaric and most—”

“Dammit, there you go—if you just wouldn’t always jump to the most villainous conclusion, Hank. Plain common sense says that if you—anybody—could see inside that room when Wintersong strolled out of it, if there was any experiment at all it was probably innocuous. Otherwise he’d have made sure nobody could see whatever—whatever you think you saw.”

“He did not...stroll. I have concluded Wintersong was caught unaware. It was not exactly as though he let me see. It just happened in a fortunate accident when he came rushing through this doorway, all excited, that I chanced to observe inside those things I mentioned.”

“Hold it. Excited? He came rushing through the doorway? Hank, did you leave something out?”

“Eh...ah, mmm. Yes, something. Maybe I had better tell you the something.”

“No maybe about it.”

“In my coat lapel I had this small button or badge-like thing, which was of glass, a lens. In my pocket was the rubber bulb, which I squeezed when I wished—”

“Good God, you were taking pictures?”

“Yes. I had some good ones. Well, bad. Horrible. One of these large muscular globs accompanying our POCUEA group observed my squeezing, became very physical with me—lifting me up, rattling me somewhat. He found the bulb, the little camera....”

Hank paused again. “It is unfortunate. I had some photographs of the most gruesome ugli—”

“What happened then—where did Wintersong come in?”

“Well, there was considerable frenzy. I was being shaken, individuals were crying out things like ‘Bastard spies!’ and ‘Goddam miserable stinking mouse-lovers!’ and ‘Camera, he gotta camera!’ in that mode, very loud. Mostly I recall the loudness, which was probably sufficient to penetrate through the steel door marked with the Radiation-Danger warning I mentioned. But I suspect somebody phoned into that room where Wintersong was, for he came rushing out and rapidly up to me yelling ‘Camera! Where is the camera?’”

“Can’t say I blame him.”

“You would, if you knew him. However, I comprehend your point. Even Dr. Wintersong’s point. But I had made no promise not to photograph anything.”

“True. But neither had you promised not to blow up the entire establishment with tons of TNT, or bombard it with mortar fire, or dip Wintersong in hydrochloric acid—”

“You are a difficult man, Sheldon. I hate it when you are right. Of the pictures, I felt I should be the one to chance it, the doing was my responsibility—it was a calculated risk. Not sufficiently calculated, I now perceive.”

“What did Wintersong do, throw you out?”

“Yes, not bodily through the air, but with firm conviction. When he initially burst in upon us—and I perceived briefly the interior from which he had burst—he shouted for several moments into my face. I shouted back into his face. Naturally, neither of us could understand what the other was shouting, but when the steel door closed crashingly it became at that moment very quiet. Many people were standing around in this quiet.”

Hank paused briefly, then went on, “And Doctor Wintersong spoke, with words flying like flakes of blizzard, saying he had known it was a mistake to allow a bunch of quacks—that’s us, Physicians Opposed et cetera—to visit a scientific research facility, and obstruct true physicians and scientists in their vital work essential for the good of all mankind. He really does talk like that. The good of all mankind seems to be on his mind a lot. He also said he would not make the same mistake again—that I, and any others from POCUEA, and any other crazy animal freaks or medical quacks, would not under any circumstances ever again be permitted into Omega Research.”

I sighed. “I suppose you agreed with him sweetly, promised not to inconvenience him ever again, and quietly departed?”

“Oh, sure. Exactamente. Plus I kneeled down and licked his shoes, saying, “Whatever you wish, O Great One.”

“So you all left then?”

“A little...after then. Eventually. First I responded to Wintersong’s angry words in my face by informing him that he would succeed in preventing citizens from monitoring his monstrosities several years after hell froze solid enough for angels to ice-skate upon it.”

“You actually said ‘monitoring his monstrosities’?”

“Well, in that general area. I am making this up from memory. Additionally, I told him I would personally return, sounding I suppose something like General MacArthur contemplating the shores of Luzon, even if I had to blackmail the dictator of the FDA, even if I had to get orders from a court, even if I had to join the AMA, I would return and bug him.”

“You think that was wise, Hank?”

“No. Unwise. I, too, was angry. I had been shaken. Lifted up and rattled like somebody making cocktails.”

“You really threatened him with a court order?”

“Among other things. I seem to recall saying if my dreams came true I would supervise the strapping of him to a chair and the banging of his head with a piston-hammer, for the good of all mankind. Also the dripping of glue into his eyes, as they do to rabbits, to determine scientifically if lids stick when—”

“I think you can skip some of the incidental dumbness.”

“Dumbness is valid. I am not usually so unaware of myself, so uncontrolled in demeanor. But, Sheldon, it is not merely those things I have described, but that there is something ghastly in Wintersong, something chilling as snow winds, a repulsion from him that others feel. Certainly I felt it when near him—and he was like two inches apart from my face, spitting icicles—and this thing from him displaced my aura, or disturbed my energy body, caused me to itch all over. Well, what in truth happened, I blew my cool as some say. Should be blew my warm, I think. So I regret, not what I said to him but that it was said uncontrolled.”

“Yeah, and I think you mentioned a bunch of other people standing around? Paying close attention?”

“Yes. Fifteen, twenty. Lab workers, doctors, many others.”

“My point is, if Doctor Wintersong is anything like the character you’ve described, I’d guess he enjoyed your dressing him down—in front of his people, the workers he has authority over—about as much as gargling Drano.”

“Perhaps less than a Drano enema. He is a proud man, remote, authoritarian—you used the right word, his authority over them, he enjoys that, cherishes this power. Still, I regret this too-public injury to him. True, I regret it even though I despise him and the cruel and useless work he performs.” Hank paused. “But there is something about the man, something. I believe you would feel this something, Sheldon, if ever you should meet him.”

“Oh, I’ll meet him. Probably today, if he’ll see me.”

Hank’s gray brows arched over his dark eyes. “Oh? Well, fine. It is good idea. I had not expected you would wish to see him so soon.”

I squinted at him. So soon? I wondered what he’d meant by that. Hank had expected I might want to see Wintersong later? Or, maybe it meant nothing at all. Who could be sure about this guy?

I said, “Incidentally, I got the feeling, when you were describing Wintersong’s horrified reaction to your presence, that maybe he was upset about more than a hidden camera. You two ever tangle before?”

“Tangled, not exactly. We had met once before, but we spoke little. I already knew, of course, of his research work, his position of eminence among his peers, his close association and animal-shooting friendship with Belking, another mighty hunter and animal destroyer—of the giant pharmaceutical firm here in Los Angeles, Belking-Gray—and that as a child he enjoyed pulling the wings off of eagles. Certainly he also knew of me, the baseless lawsuits against me, and that I had founded POCUEA—which he, and many other physicians and scientists engaged in useless research consider a dangerous abomination deserving of medical purgatory, which is where we may wind up if they win. Nearly always, in the courts, they do win, but I hope to be an exception.”

“About that, Hank—the lawsuits and medical purgatory or wherever you’re supposed to wind up. I talked to officers Murphy and Devincent after I left here this morning.”

“Ah.” He smiled, nodding. “So, do you now wish to resign from my services, and find a client who is not a crazy murderer with his brains cracked?”

“Of course not. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes. I am gratified that you are, Sheldon. What, then, was said of me by the nice officers who think me a basket of fruit cakes?”

“Uh-uh. It works the other way. First, you tell me about getting sued, why and how it happened. Okay?”

“Okay. You are correct, I should first tell you and then we compare it with the officers’ mistakes.” He took a deep breath, blew it bubbling out past his lips. “Three years past, a little more, they—by now you know who I mean by they—framed a lawsuit against me, hoping to get rid of me finally and forever.”

“Hank, it’s a little difficult to frame a lawsuit. The plaintiff needs to produce evidence that a law was probably broken before he can get a defendant into court—”

“No, Sheldon. You may know laws, but you do not know organized medicine. It is easy for the medical monopoly to frame lawsuits and people, they do it all the time. They claim these actions are to protect the sick patients, so is it not strange they always frame those who are curing sick ones?”

He didn’t expect a response, and I wasn’t going to argue with him anyway. Hank always had an answer, whether it was the right one or not. So I just let him continue.

“Several patients previously diagnosed by orthodox oncologists as suffering from various cancers were then coming to me, since by word of mouth it was known many such had become again healty following treatment by me. Many, not all; most had already suffered the ravages of surgery, radiation, and poisonous chemotherapy, which are the only treatments approved by allopathic medicine or by wonderful coincidence, permitted by California State law—such are your laws, Sheldon. A couple of those ravaged people I could not help, they had been too much ruined by cutting and burning, too much poisoned with chemotherapeutic drugs which are themselves carcinogenic. Which is typical of allopathic imbecility, attacking cancer symptoms with chemicals that cause cancer, but I will not pursue this imbecility now.”

He paused for several seconds, then nodded briskly and said, “Sheldon, so that I may leave out most of the long details here, before you go I will give you clippings from newspapers concerning these trials and persecutions—that you can read in your leisure, if you get any. Is all right?”

“Okay. Just so it isn’t eight pounds—”

“Plus a few little writings of great interest, which may demolish some of your ignorance about upside-downnessess I mention occasionally. All right also?”

“Well...” I was entirely unsure what Hank might consider “little writings” of great interest.

“Thank you. I knew you would not be objectionable. Some of what I will now tell you does not ever get into newspapers, which explains why you can’t read it in them. What was done to me is the exact-same as has been done to hundreds of others. Usually it is handled through local and state medical societies, but always behind them is bigger fools, who have become expert at getting involvement of local police or deputies of the district attorney.”

“In the case of me personally, at five-fifteen p.m., just after closing of my offices—I then still owned my large clinic on Wilshire Boulevard—twelve men burst inside, crashing the door open. Five were from the California FDA office, one a representative of the ACS, American Cancer Society. The other six were law-enforcers, policemen or deputies from the DA. All these six had their guns waving and pointed frighteningly—”

“Hold it. Cops, or deputies, might pull their guns to stop a bank robber or armed felon, but they wouldn’t do anything like that in a doctor’s office. Not even if they were going to arrest you for some horrible crime and haul you off to the slammer—”

“They would. And they did. With brutal efficiency. First, having expected fewer people, upon seeing a dozen and many guns, I was quite startled, but raised my arms high over my head. People then shoved me against some cabinets, incidentally cracking two ribs of mine, and handcuffed me. And read me things: that I was under arrest for violation of numerous statutes including medical malpractice causing deaths, and produced a warrant allowing them to take all my patient records, plus herbal and homeopathic and other remedies—I had no allopathic drugs, do not use them—and destroy much of my equipment used for medical treatments. At least, allowed to or not by their paper warrant, that is what they did, with thoroughness.”

He paused, waiting for me to say something if I wanted to. I didn’t want to, not just yet. These were things I could check out with my own sources, in the LAPD and DA’s office, and until I found out how much exaggeration, or even falsehood, might be in Hank’s version of what happened I was going to ride along, and maybe let him hang himself.

He continued, “I had expected my own arrest eventually, knowing of the many alternative physicians and other unorthodox healers stopped the same way by agents of the medical monopoly, or almost-monopoly—arrested and even imprisoned, some like Ruth Drown and Wilhelm Reich dying suspiciously in those prisons. But I had not expected the arrest also of my nurse—the other clinic doctors and nurses were by then gone home—and of my Eleonora, my wife.”

He paused, eyes flashing, teeth pressed together momentarily. Then he said, “I do not like to carry anger inside me, or bitter resentment, for these things can cause almost as much cancer and ugly diseases as do allopathic drug poisons and needless surgeries and murderous vaccines. So I try not to cherish these angers. But some things I will not forgive. Arresting and imprisoning me, breaking of ribs, destroying irreplaceable records and equipment, two trials of me, much of this was expected. Not wished for, things hopefully to be avoided if possible, merely expected because so many others have suffered the same persecution. But the arrest, the manhandling, the putting into jail of my nurse and my Eleanora—especially my beloved Eleanora—this I will not forgive in ten thousand years.”

I said mildly, “Okay, the facts for me to check are: Twelve men forced their way into your offices, arrested and handcuffed Henry Hernandez, M.D., Mrs. Eleanora Hernandez, and one nurse who was present. All three were charged with crimes, arrested, and jailed. Records were seized, some equipment destroyed. All I need is the exact date of this raid, the address, and the nurse’s name. Plus names of the arresting officers and others involved if known to you.”

Unsmiling, while I made notes, he gave me the date, the clinic’s address, and name of his nurse then, Marilyn Green. “None of them with guns and warrant gave me names,” he added. “They should be listed in official records, I hope. Some, however, are known to Officers Murphy and Devincent from their checking up on me. And, Sheldon, please do check the facts as you expressed it. Please.”

There was a lot of emotion in his voice, as though he actually did want me to check everything he’d said. And, uncomfortably, I started to wonder....

“Having heard reliable rumors that some officers high in the Allopathic Medical Association intended to make me one of their examples,” Hank continued, “I had already, just in case those scoundrels did it, made arrangements with an attorney. This, I thought, would be for defending me in any trial, or maybe preventing trials from happening. Eleanora, charged for minor illegal actions—not with murder, like me—was released from jail in the morning, after booking and fingerprinting and debasement, and being all night in jail with criminals and drunks. Immediately she phoned this attorney, and in the afternoon I was before the Judge and let go, until my trial. Bond for Jack the Ripper might be one-hundred thousand dollars, maybe. For me it was a million. You need not accept this as fact, either, if you wish not to. Just check and see.”

“I will. Let’s get to the trial, and what you were charged with. And weren’t there two trials?”

“Another many years ago, fifteen or more years ago, but it was not well prepared and I was acquitted easily. My crime was that I, allegedly, claimed to have cured a dozen patients of leukemia by giving them massive infusions of sodium ascorbate—neutral pH vitamin C—intravenously, for periods of twenty-four hours or longer. My acquittal was, it is reasonable to say, a fluke or based on technicality. Which was that the intravenous infusions of one-hundred or two-hundred grams of injectable-grade vitamin C, even more sometimes, was done in a hospital setting. That was when I still had hospital privileges, which I didn’t after the trail—so the villains won that much. However, the more recent case of which we are speaking—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You just mentioned leukemia, and twice you said vitamin C plus something else.”

“Sodium ascorbate, neutral or buffered C. Ascorbic acid would, in your terms, burn the veins. It is too strong, too acid.”

“But...well, for crissakes, no wonder they sued the hell out of you. You can’t cure leukemia by giving people vitamin C, just a goddamn vitamin.”

“Who says so?”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

Hank smiled. “Sheldon, if you wished to do something simple and sensible, you would examine all the symptoms of leukemia. And if you compared this with the symptoms of scurvy, you would discover the two lists of symptoms are virtually identical. And scurvy is a severe, sometimes fatal, deficiency of what? Of vitamin C.” He shrugged. “I do not say now that these people suffered from leukemia; I did not say so then. It was orthodox oncologists, cancer specialists, who diagnosed them all as afflicted with—dying from—leukemia. I testified merely that they were obviously scorbutic and suffering from other nutritional deficiencies, primarily mineral imbalances. When those deficiencies and imbalances were corrected, their symptoms of dying were also corrected.”

“Are you actually telling me you cured all those people, of leukemia? With a goddamn vitamin?”

Hank scrunched up his face in a most unpleasant way. Squeezed his eyes tightly shut, then slowly opened them. “Eventually, Sheldon, you may understand. A little. And a little might be enough. But if I ever say I cured anybody of anything, much less any kind of incurable-by-orthodoxy cancerousness, the federal FDA will federally express me to dungeons for a thousand years. Curing people by ways that work is illegal, even if the law does not say so with such clarity. It is permitted to cure only by ways that don’t work. So I say—and said in the first trial—merely that after intravenous ascorbate infusions in hospital, plus some further in-office treatment by me to restore homeostasis, none of the four people had any longer whatever it was they had before. Okay?”

“Okay by me. I guess. So, except for whatever you did in your office to restore whatever it was, the only thing you did, at least the main thing, was just give them vitamin C?”

He nodded. “By intravenous infusion, slow drip for twenty-four hours or often more.”

“I don’t think I can believe that.”

“I don’t think you can believe it, either. So you will not believe this also: There are a thousand other helpful things that could be done and aren’t, but if hospitals would routinely give such IV vitamin C treatment to all their patients, at least half of them would get well and go home. This would be wonderful for patients but ruinous for hospitals, which would all go broke. So this is definitely one of the thousand things not done.”

“Look, forget your damned C, will you? These four patients, or people as you keep calling them... Don’t say it!”

I knew what he’d been about to say to me, I knew. That I was beginning to understand, at least I’d learned patients are not people! But I’d stopped him before he could even get his mouth open. “These four people-patients,” I went on smoothly, “all of whom were presumably about to croak, none of them died?”

“No, none. Well, maybe one later of something else, I do not know. I lost track of her, but the other three all still send me gladsome cards at Christmas. It is gratifying.”

“And that first trial fifteen years ago, you beat the rap—you weren’t convicted?”

“No. But the fluke is, I did all those intravenous infusions in the hospital where I still had such privilege then. Unless I was found innocent, the hospital would also have to be found guilty, which wasn’t supposed to happen. And, therefore, didn’t. The more recent trial of me was less flukey, but it is the second one they lost. The second of many, for certain. There will be a third, then a fourth—”

“Maybe not. Maybe—”

“No maybe. They do not stop. The same people, the same kinds of peoples—the same AMA/FDA criminals along with the usual unindicted and invisible co-conspirators—sued Hoxsey a hundred times.”

“Hoxsey. That was way back. Wasn’t he some kind of cancer...quack?”

“Some kind of, yes. Harry Hoxsey, using his herbal remedies, turned thousands of people with cancer into thousands of people without cancer. I hope you are beginning to suspect that might be why he was sued a hundred times.”

“Back to you, Hank. In your second trial, three years or so ago, were the charges the same as in your first trial?”

“Almost. I was charged—in layman’s language, for your understanding—with many crimes including illegally, and for personal profits to get rich, using methods not ‘authorized and approved’ for treating cancer, with the result that three cancer patients died who might have been helped through use of ‘authorized and approved’ orthodox treatments—or by cutting them up, burning them up, and embalming the corpses while they were still alive. That wasn’t part of the legal language. I just threw it in.”

“I’d guessed. Did three of your patients die, as they charged?”

“Yes, died. As charged, no.”

“Was this one before a judge, or jury?”

“Jury, thank God. With that particular judge, elected mostly by a doctor-PAC, jury was the only chance of winning. I will shorten how we won with the jury. Said briefly, fifty of my patients, who had before been diagnosed by allopaths as having cancers of various names, and who after me were free of any such diagnosable illnesses, came into court for testifying in my interest. Not one of them was allowed, none could give testimonies, for the pronounced reason it would unfairly prejudice the jury for me. But many doctors, allopathic physicians, spoke against me. Many cancer doctors, radiologist, chemotherapists—no healed patients. Do you follow this?”

“Yeah. So far.”

“The jury did not get to hear my patients speak, but they did hear the disallowing of their speaking for me. My attorney, very good attorney, made sure they thought twice about this—despite being threatened by the judge not to do it, you must know how that goes. I testified, and was cross-examined. But the criminals who charged me with crimes made two mistakes. First they charged, in their writings or complaints, that I had used not-allowed methods to treat cancers. Second, two of the three dead patients chosen by them as examples had, before coming to me, been treated by respected physicians with extensive surgery—which of course caused the cancers to metastasize, as they well knew it would—and then radiation supposed to kill those metastases. Plus, one of those two was disasterized with healing chemotherapy, which caused him to lose all his hair and fingernails and toenails and go from one-sixty pounds to ninety.”

“And the third one? No conventional treatment?”

“True.” Hank nodded slowly. “She was told by her longtime family doctor, allopathic doctor, her only hope was intensive radiation and chemotherapy, but she refused this. A second doctor, a famous oncologist or cancer specialist, said the same thing. Both promised her she would die if she did not undergo radiation and poisonous chemicals infused into her already-poisoned blood, one said in three months, the other genius, two months. She still refused, and was again and again told—with much anger and red-faced argument, she informed me later—that she would die, she must die, if she did not submit. Her own physician—the optimist—told her, ‘I give you three months.’”

Hank continued, “Imagine this, an ignorant doctor, a fool with M.D. after his name, giving people life, or death, or so many months out of his generosity! Well, I treated her for only seven months. I was unsuccessful. She died. In time I could maybe have cured her body, but her mind was already made up. She believed what those wonderful doctors told her, accepted and deeply embraced the death they both promised her.”

“The other two patients also did not respond,” he continued mildly. “With the approved orthodox treatment their immune defenses had been mostly wiped out, destroyed. There was almost nothing left to stimulate, to restore.”

“Well, you beat the rap. I’m starting to wonder how you managed it.”

“They had mistakenly charged me with wrongfully treating cancer. I testified I did not treat cancer, I treated people, patients. Maybe they had cancer symptoms, maybe they didn’t, it was no difference to me. I never once mentioned ‘cancer’ to any patient. My effort was to strengthen the person, the things in him or her that restore homeostasis or balance and produce health, as we have discussed a little.”

I nodded.

“In my testifying, I quoted other doctors—not me, many others—who demonstrated that one with cancer could pay fifty thousand or even two-hundred thousand dollars for orthodox treatment and die in two years, or take no treatment at all and die in about seven or eight years, these are averages.”

“Hank, if that were true, nobody would take any treatment at all from—“

“Of course they would. The proof is, they do. I testified, as my personal opinion, that despite morbidity and mortality figures showing cancer increasing and so-called ‘cancer deaths’ now six-hundred thousand a year, very few people died from cancer. I said most were killed by the treatments for cancer, which is why untreated people live so much longer than the killed ones—this was struck, or stricken, out of the record so nobody can read it. But I said it.”

“I’ll bet you did. But can you prove that? Or any of this stuff?”

“I can prove one goddamn hell more than just about the cancer killing, I can prove all of allopathic drug-medicine is bassackward and health ruinating. Which someday, if I can stay out of jails, I plan determinedly to do-which maybe explains why they are so excitedly frantic to lock me away somewhere. They go crazy fearing people may hear even a little of this, knowing even small truths can destroy large lies.”

Without waiting for any comment from me, he went on, “The other thing helpful was my testifying that my enemies chose these three named people as examples to get rid of me—three ones I did not treat for cancer, including two already treated by them with unscientific death-producing methods—only because of my many patients these three were the only dead ones they could find. Of all my patients then and in the previous year and a half no others had died. Only the two annihilated by them with cutting and radiation-burning and chemical poisoning, plus the untreated one promised death by them, had succumbed. At the same time, dozens sent home to die by my same accusers were, after treatment by me, again well, were healthy, and willing to so testify loudly—if not prevented by the law’s protection of real cancer quacks. For this saying I was admonished with force by the judge, he having ruled this truth unmentionable.”

Hank frowned slightly, gray brows lowering over the glowing eyes. “Happily it did not happen, but for un momentito I thought the judge was going to incarcerate me in a dungeon, at least overnight.”

“Or at least sentence your mouth to execution, right there in the courtroom. Perhaps understandably. You can, Hank, at times be a wee bit irritating—”

“Truth is irritating.”

“—but let that go. I noticed you mentioned your attorney favorably a couple of times, but not by name. I understand he’s the notorious Webster Montrose, sometimes called the Mob’s Mouthpiece. Is that right?”

“You bet. Most of the things he advised me to do, I did. Without such a one as this notorious Mr. Montrose, and his experienced wisdom concerning crooks and killers and many legalities, I would be in prison now. Serving my thousand years.”

That took some of the edge from my implied criticism. But I said anyway, “Don’t you feel people might think it strange that you hired, to defend you, an attorney who’s represented murderers and thieves, most of them undoubtedly guilty, and even successfully defended several members of organized crime, of what’s called the Mafia?”

“Strange? People? What should I care if people think I hired Stalin or Hitler or a Morris Fishbein to prevent me from vanishing into federal dungeons forever? He has defended Mafias? Good! My enemies, those who lie and persecute me and all like me are the goddamn medical Mafia, assessinos, they are professional assassins. I help people to heal themselves. They legally kill millions and stand atop their mountain of dead corpses yelling all together like one single idiot voice, they did everything orthodoxically possible, the slaughter was ‘authorized and approved,’ not even God could have done better, so it must have been the fault of those corpses. To fight such monsters, and keep them from squashing me before I have finished my work, I would hire the Devil and pay him with my blood.”

“Okay, okay. Maybe I was a little hasty in jumping—”

Hank interrupted me, his voice dropping from expressing outrage to an almost conversational tone again. “If I were them, Sheldon, I think I would have to squash me too. There is another reason, not mentioned yet, why Dr. Wintersong—and his allopathic peers, about whom I have been attempting to educate you—wish fervently to see me prevented from practicing my medical profession. And probably any other profession. This reason...”

I waited.

“... is that the filmstrip of Jock-Jock, which became the flipping-pages book you have seen, was made of an experiment performed—several times—at the Omega Medical Research Institute. It was not personally performed by, but was under the direction and close supervision of Doctor William Wintersong.”

“Interesting.”

“More than that. He does not know, at least I do not believe he knows, which of his employees surreptitiously removed and later returned the Omega-produced film of that brutality. But he does know—and, therefore, so do all his allopathic friends, like those frantic to squash me—that the film was delivered to Henry Hernandez, M.D., Doctor Quackissimo, who arranged that the flip-book be printed and given wide distribution. To a man like Wintersong, this is a more unforgivable act than the cutting off of his testicles. Assuming he has any.”

I thought about that, all of it, then I said, “Who did heist the Jock-Jock film from Omega? Is that something I should know?”

“Probably so. The two employees were Guenther and Helga.”

CHAPTER TEN

“The Vungers.” I nodded slowly. “Your recovering patients. The good people with a bullet hole in their kitchen wall.”

“The same. This is curious, no?”

“Is curious, yes. Did they deliver any other material to you besides the Jock-Jock tape?”

“Some. About other cruel experiments, crazy research. But no other films or tapes.”

“I understand Wintersong fired them several months ago. Could he have found out they were, well, working for the enemy?”

“I do not think so, Sheldon. I spoke much with the Vungers while they were beginning my treatment, and they do not believe their activities, for the enemy as you say, were suspected. Eventually, of course, Wintersong knew someone had revealed these things to us, but he did not then know it was the Vungers. No, they were discharged as soon as it was determined they were infected with the IFAI virus—or, more accurately, when it was determined antibodies of the virus were present in their blood, which is not the same thing. But that is the crazy test used.”

“Have I got this straight? They caught IFAI while working at Omega, so then Omega simply told them to get lost?”

“Precisely, except I wish you would not say they ‘caught’ anything. And except that the person who discharged them—Dr. Wintersong himself—did not tell them they had tested positive for the IFAI virus. This omission is unforgivable, I think.”

“If he didn’t tell them, maybe he didn’t know. Isn’t that possible?”

I slowed down a little before the end of my question, because Hank was giving me that look of his, sort of grimacing as though experiencing considerable pain, head tipped forward as he looked at me piercingly from under his eyebrows.

But he said mildly, “You may assume it is possible, if you wish. However, because at Omega there is always much research work being done, with many presumably homicidal viruses and bacteria, the blood of each Omega employee must be tested every three months. Two days after their last blood samples were drawn the Vungers’ employment was ended, abruptly, by Dr. Wintersong. He told them in person their work was unsatisfactory, they would receive two weeks severance pay, and the severance was effective immediately. Nothing more. So it was only later, when Guenther and Helga became ill, tired and weak, that they began going from doctor to doctor. The first one ordered several tests, then informed them they were afflicted with IFAI, for which there was no cure. Which is the same inexcusable thing other doctors said to them. Until they came to me, of course. As I have recounted.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess it’s logical to assume—I mean, even I know Omega is probably number one in the war on...uh, the battle against...in medicine’s effort to find a cure for IFAI. Whatever that is.”

I wasn’t exactly pleased with the way Hank was smiling at me, or for that matter with the way he began responding to my comment.

“You are maybe beginning to think a little, Sheldon. I am encouraged: a little is better than nothing. But, yes, it is true that the Omega Medical Research Institute is the great allopathic hope for invention of a vaccine that can be injected into millions of people so they maybe won’t get IFAI but probably will get nineteen other disastrousness from the poisonous injection itself, and also for production and patenting of drugs to suppress the symptoms of IFAI in people who actually get it, even if as usually happens they get it from the vaccine intended to prevent it.”

“Hank—”

“And it is also true that Doctor William Wintersong is known as the foremost medical researcher into these life-and-death matters in the entire country. Not surprisingly, his medical gloriousness has been directed primarily toward the concoction of a ‘prevent-the-catching-of-IFAI’ vaccine, which can be squirted into everybody on earth so they won’t catch it, and only secondarily toward concoction of a drug for treating the comparatively few people who do catch it.”

“You just said ‘catch it’ yourself. Two or three times.”

“With me it is a joke, I know better. Do you follow my logicalness in saying it is better—much more hugely profitable—to produce a concoction which the Monopoly and its paid-for legislators can legally force upon everybody for the good of all mankind, instead of a drug to treat merely—”

“I’m afraid I do. I’m also afraid you’re either completely nuts, or the biggest negative thinker since Adam. I’m also beginning to think, even if you’re only three-fourths crazy, you still might be one of the most dangerous men on the planet.”

“No might-be about it, Sheldon. I am a most-dangerous man, all right, but only to the stupids and rabbit-blinders and pig-burners and bugshit makers. That is why they will keep trying to put me in jail—”

“Wait a minute. Did you say...? Well, I thought you said bug—”

“Shit, that is correct. But this is not my word. It is what the many eminent scientists who are now scientifically manufacturing the scientific vaccine, in accordance with the wondrous Doctor Wintersong’s breakthrough discoveries—”

“Vaccine? There isn’t any—”

“Actually, this nauseating term, bugshit, as a close-to-perfect description of the vaccine-glop I am here mentioning. The purulent slime is in part produced from the exudates or excretions from the virus suspected of producing in people the symptom complex unmusically named IFAI. These poisonous excretions—”

“IFAI? Where the hell are you going with this—?”

“—plus billions of the dead little bodies of the virus assuming it actually exists and has little bodies to be dead since viruses are already dead or they wouldn’t be viruses, is mixed together with a kind of...well, a kind of pus, heated and treated with corrosive chemicals to kill it, maybe, and formaldehyde to preserve it, maybe, whereupon it miraculously becomes a ‘life-saving vaccine’ to be injected into people for the prevention of IFAI, maybe. The geniuses who produce this awfullness do not, however, among themselves, call it a vaccine or a serum or a lifesaving anything, but simply bugshit. I am informed of this on good authority. It is their little scientific pleasantry, I suppose.”

I felt queasy.

Looking sharply at me, Hank said, “Sheldon, have I offended your ears by referring to this noxious substance as bugshit?”

“Well, it’s just that you make it tough—see, you stack all the cards in your favor. I’m no fan of today’s medical excesses, but I can’t go along with the kinds of things you claim happen. I just don’t believe doctors would do anything like—”

“Ha! Now you are being another puppet for medical ventriloquists. These godlike beings, our doctors, will do anything! There is nothing so horrible or life-destroying that it will fail to excite doctors; frenzy to attempt it. They will cut out your heart and throw it away, your kidneys, your lungs, your liver, your penis—no, not the penis. The women’s uterus, yes. Do you know that for many years the favorite unnecessary operation in the United States, the surgery performed more than any other, was the hysterectomy, a mutilation nearly always done by men doctors to women? This by doctors who have never cut off even one penis?” He smiled. “Does this not at least tickle your curiousness about their godness?”

I didn’t think he expected an answer. If he did, he was going to be disappointed.

“Sheldon, you must learn that in contrast to the way god-doctors speak among themselves on Olympus, for the peasants they create nice unintelligible words to describe their crimes, thus making them resemble virtuousness.”

“Okay, bugshit, whatever.” I told him. You were talking about Wintersong’s vaccine. Hell, I didn’t even know there was an IFAI vaccine.”

“There isn’t. There is only this concoction, concocted by very high-powered biochemists and bacteriologists and virologists and serologists and possibly proctologists, some of whom are working at the Omega Medical Research Institute under the supervision of Doctor Wintersong who invested it. The rest of whom are busily producing the concoction at Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Fortune-Five-Hundred drug colossus right here in Los Angeles. Which I mentioned earlier, speaking of Belking the lion and elephant shooter, who should himself be skinned alive.”

“They’re actually making it? An IFAI vaccine?” I knew something or other about Belking or Belking-Gray—something I didn’t like—and I might have remembered what it was, except that Hank was still zipping on.

“Well, they’re making, nitrogen-freezing, stockpiling, a lot of bugshit. But if you wish to call it a miracle vaccine to prevent people from catching an Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness, I won’t stop you.”

“I mean, everybody’s still saying... Well, I never heard of an IFAI vaccine before now. I thought maybe in a year or two—”

“It is natural you would hear nothing. All of this has been done in great secrecy, of course—in the profession we sometimes learn of these things, and I have certain people, doctors and others, who inform me of a little this, a little that. But you and other laymen would not hear anything—great secrecy is necessary so that no other drug company may learn important details of this new vaccine and steal it, and patent it, and make the hundred billion dollars or so which it might be worth.”

“The hundred billion? For bugshit?”

“Give or take a few billions. Even much more would be a small price for saving the human race, right? If it works, of course. Or, rather, if it comes close enough to be disguised as something that works some of the time, maybe, which is usually enough to satisfy the masses, elsewhere referred to as the human race and/or all mankind. But this cannot be known, nor can the Wintersong brand of bugshit truly become an FDA-approved life-saving vaccine—that’s a joke, Sheldon—until it is tried out on people.”

“Tried out. Yeah.” I was definitely a little queasy. And, my mind flipping back to other things Hank had said, I was experiencing, along with the queasiness, a noticeable nausea. I swallowed, finished, “But the way you talk, Hank, you make it sound like a, well, a crapshoot.”

“Right. Good for you, Sheldon, you have said it exactamente! It is truly a shooting of crap, but it is called scientific test, or clinical testing. These are terms our allopathic doctors and researchers use to impress upon public awareness the misperception that they are practicing life-saving science instead of a heads-we-win tails-you-lose crapshoot when they are experimenting upon people, and sometimes killing them. But how else can they find out if the new vaccine, or heart drug, kidney drug, or beta-blocker, antidepressant, cholesterol drug, or antibiotic bug-drug, actually squashes any symptoms? First it must be force-fed or injected into thousands of animals to find out how many of them it kills. This gives them a risk-benefit ratio to lie about in advertisements. After this it will be tried out on humans to find out how many of them it kills. If too many of these clinically-tested humans become dead, or merely comatose or impotent or blind or crippled, the dedicated researchers may assume the experiment was not a patentable success.”

I opened my mouth, but didn’t say anything. Hank wouldn’t listen, he would just keep barreling along. That’s what he did; he just kept barreling along.

“Then it’s back to the toilet for that one, and new clinical testings of the next one. The tragical comedy is that, as I have been explaining all day, none of these crapshoot-tested drugs and vaccines ever cure anyone who is sick, they cannot cure, for they merely attack or suppress symptoms of disease without removing the underlying imbalance or disorder that produced those symptoms. Thus instead of removing disorder they cause more disorder, disease, and death. Is this upside-down, or not?”

He stopped talking. But I didn’t say anything for quite a while, several seconds at least. Because I was trying to pick out segments of Hank’s various dialogues that had stuck in my brain for one reason or another, pull them from different places and line them up and—maybe make sense of it all, or part of the all. But he’d said so many strange things to me, some of them undoubtedly true but others probably hangovers from the religion on his asteroid, that all I actually got was: confused.

Hank noticed. “You look confused,” he said.

“Why would you think that?” I asked him belligerently. “How could I get confused? I have listened carefully to everything you’ve said in whatever foreign language it is you’re using and it is all now as clear as pitch darkness. I mean, everything I’ve heard has—”

“Heard, yes! Yes!”

“No. No, don’t—”

“That is the other part of it, Sheldon. I have explained how people and things that work to heal are gotten rid of. But that is only part, and you yourself have just put a spot of light on another part.”

“I did?”

“Yes. Because you—and everyone else—are supposed to become confused, it is a necessary part of the well-planned cleverness. This doctor dictatorship I have spoken of to you is a monopoly not only of medical practice, but also and even more so of mind. It is a conspiracy not only to yell out the fraudulent claims that don’t work but to shut up the true claims that do work. People cannot even know this good and true healing exists if it is never seen with their eyes or heard with their ears. This conspiracy to keep silent and invisible any who would use, or speak of, alternative therapies and cures is very successful. It has worked all your lifetime and much longer. It is working now.”

“Conspiracy? Come on. I haven’t heard a whole lot about any conspiracy.”

“Not supposed to. Conspirators always quote each other one after another saying there isn’t any conspiracy, only crazy people believe in conspiracies, so if you believe it this proves you are crazy and need mental adjustments in a qualified institution, which they just happen to have handy.”

He leaned forward, looked at me and said, “In this country, in medicine, for healing ourselves we have legitimately available only what doesn’t work because everything that does work is banished by the Mafia medical monopolizers into your pitch darkness. Partly this is so we can never compare the unavailable good that works with the available bad that doesn’t, because if we ever did we’d kill all the doctors.”

I was supposed to applaud, I guess. But instead I said, “Frankly, Hank, that sounds like a lot of crap to me. That is, if I know what you said. But if what I think you meant was actually true, why would millions of people keep on going to the same old doctors for the same old—”

I stopped, because Hank’s expression fascinated me. He had squeezed his teeth and lips together, and his eyes together, pulling the top of his skull down toward his chin, and kind of scrunching all his face into the middle of it. That, of course, wasn’t what he’d actually done, but it did look painful.

After a few seconds his features slowly smoothed, and he stretched them around as though to bring blood back into his chops, then got up from his chair. He pushed back the bottom of his blue jacket so he could jam both hands into his rear pants pockets, then walked around his desk and across the room, turned, strode back.

He stopped about three feet from where I sat, and said, “Sheldon, I have said things to you that you may consider shocking, maybe even crazy.”

He was looking down at me, obviously waiting for an answer, so I said, “Some, but I haven’t decided yet whether you’re a basket of fruit cakes or not. The jury’s still out.”

He bobbed his head in that brisk nod of his, sharp nose slicing the air. “I knew, before we began, you would hear many terrible things about me, some true, mostly lies. You have already heard a little, from the two police officers at least.”

“I suppose you mean there’ll be more.”

“Yes. The big guns—big mouths—have not fired themselves off yet. When they do, most minds are captured quickly and imprisoned in delusion. I have seen this many times. It is difficult to resist, even for one so strong of mind as you.”

I smiled. He wasn’t such a bad old duck, maybe.

“Attend this, then, Sheldon, with your ears and also with the magical universe between them: In this country, for healing ourselves, we are forbidden the ninety-nine percent that works and allowed only the one-percent that is useless.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Henry Hernandez, M.D., continued looking at me. Expectantly. Smiling and nodding his head.

Unfortunately, although my ears were working nicely, the magical universe between them apparently wasn’t. Because I was still waiting for Hank’s “key,” or some kind of dynamite revelation. Hell, I hadn’t even known he’d finished; but he had, and clearly was waiting for my profound, or enthusiastic, comment.

“How about that?” I said finally. “Umm... maybe I could squeeze onto the significance of what you just said if you led me up to it a little more, ah, gently?”

Hank didn’t get bugged. He merely said, “Gently, then. You agree there are many—many, many—ways of healing, curing, restoring wellness to the unwell?”

I nodded.

“One healing method seldom mentioned, homeopathy, is true healing science, total-person curing without harm. Another, Ayurveda, is magnificent very old wisdom, as is the ancient and good healing of Taoism. Another in the long list is allopathic medicine, which is what we’ve got, what everybody knows about, even if they call it something else. Allopathy is a fraction, one almost invisible piece of ways to go. Grasp that as beginning.” He waited until I nodded again. “Next, in the United States, in official medicine, we have an almost-total, powerful, criminal, multi-trillion-dollar monoploy: medical/pharmaceutical/governmental. What is a monopoly? Whether legal or illegal, it is when one is all, when the letter A becomes the entire alphabet and each of the other letters is eliminated one way or another, ignored, damned, crushed or destroyed. And in medical practice that has happened here for many decades, and is still happening now, this minute. With the result that bassackward-named healthcare is a medical alphabet with only one letter: A. Allopathy—this little one-percent of available methods for healing—is ninety-nine percent of what we are allowed. Indeed, much of the other ninety-nine percent that works, that heals without harm, is prohibited by law, made a crime, its curing of people an act of severely punishable feloniousness.”

He paused, then went on rapidly, “I will once again say it, and this time maybe you will cry out ‘Of course!’ Well, my words were that, for healing in this free country: We are denied the ninety-nine percent that works and allowed only the one percent that is useless. You see?”

After a while I nodded. “True. Except....”

“Except?” he interrupted. “Except? There are no excepts. It is true, absolutamente.” He continued quite calmly, much more softly than usual, not even looking at me as he said, “Sheldon, listen closely to me now. I wish you to grasp once and forever the difference between healing and what pretends to be healing, cure and what pretends to be cure. For you, for all of us, it is truly a matter of life and death. The symptoms are not the disease.”

He stopped. I was puzzled. I said, “That’s it?”

“That’s it. It is all you need. That’s it.”

“What is all I need? What’s this stupendous secret?”

“I will say it again: The symptoms are not the disease.” He paused, rapidly flicking his mustache with one finger.

There was about half a minute of silence then. And I began to realize that, while I sure couldn’t buy everything Hank had said, I’d bought quite a bunch without being aware I was doing it.

After a minute I said, “Well, I won’t say you’ve transformed me into a militant vegetarian, or that I’m going to start picketing drugstores, but maybe you’re only half-crazy.”

“Is good enough. I think maybe you are now ready for Wintersong.”

“Wintersong? Is that what you’ve been doing with me—to me? Turning me into some kind of holistic pseudo-doc so I can...can what?”

“This Wintersong is very smooth, very good, very convincing. I did not think he would, if you talk with him, eat you alive as he does most people. But if I had not informed you about much of this upside-downness and cruel ugliness in medicine, and his own doing of evil as with Jock-Jock, he might have bitten you severely. He is not only most convincing—he will not rave or shout, instead will quietly reveal great intelligence, brilliance. Maybe genius, but warped genius, icy cold, cold with evil.”

“There is another advantage over most others that you, Sheldon, have with one like Dr. Wintersong. Most people—even most doctors, including most allopathic doctors—are good people. Maybe they make mistakes and blunders, believe wrong things, but inside they are basically good. And, being good, it is hard for them to accept that others can be so different from themselves, that some others are evil, inside themselves truly evil. But you, Sheldon, because of the work you do, I would guess you can accept that there are such people.”

I nodded. “I sure can. It’s odd, but I was thinking pretty much the same thing earlier, just before noon when I met Kell and Grinner.” I paused. “One more thing, Hank, then I’ll call the evil Dr. Wintersong. Incidentally, when I do call him it might help if you’re handy, so is it okay if I use your phone?”

“Of course. What is this one more thing?”

“When I leave here, people will undoubtly be telling me slanderous things about Henry Hernandez and his medical practice, and I know you wouldn’t want a bunch of little doubts bugging me. So there’s one other thing we ought to discuss before I split.”

“Discuss.”

“Okay, until I came in here this morning—until I talked to you and maybe got a little bassackward brainwashing from you—I’d never heard anybody say IFAI was curable. Or AIDS, and a lot of other terminal diseases. But you claim to have reincarnated a whole bunch of these dead people, including the Vungers. What I need to know is: How come you can cure all these incurables when nobody else can? If you really did cure any of these people, how did you do it? Specifically the Vungers, if they’re really alive and well somewhere now, how did you cure their IFAI?”

“Oh, that, the protocol. The method. Well, first, Sheldon...” He paused, smiling oddly, and finished, “in truth, I did not cure anybody’s IFAI.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Here it comes, I thought—feeling a peculiar kind of disappointment. Because it seemed Hank was at last going to admit that, for some as yet unexplained reason, he had not before now been entirely truthful with me. That’s what I assumed. But I was wrong; and, oddly, that pleased me.

“You have misplaced your memory again for a little moment, Sheldon. Why should anyone try to cure a disease, which is merely a name doctors make up for a complex of symptoms that baffles them? No, what I did was guide the Vungers in allowing the power within them—I have spoken to you of this, the power or force or God or spirit which made them, and still repairs their cuts and bruises, and sighs upon their breath and beats with their hearts—to heal them. And it did.”

“How—?”

“As to the how, the protocol, you must comprehend, Sheldon, it will be somewhat different for each person because each person is different. As you understand, now, a true physician treats the person, not the same ‘disease-name’ the same way ten thousand times in a row. Anyone except allopath drug-pushers would consider this merely common sense. For example, because I am a homeopath, I gave each of the Vungers their indicated remedy, or remedies, including oxygenation, ones most closely matching the totality of their complaints. This, again, is the opposite of allopathy, which hammers all round pegs into square holes.”

“I see.” Maybe a part of me actually was beginning to see. After a moment I said, “No more of this for me. I’m splitting the hell out of here. Work to do. First, maybe you can help me get in to see Wintersong?”

Hank stood up, put both hands at the small of his back and stretched. “Would it be helpful if I phoned Wintersong for you? Probably he would hang up on me. Or maybe have a cerebral vascular incident—little stroke. Big would be better.”

“Let me try him myself first.”

He nodded.

“But first, just one other small thing, Hank. I gather you checked up on me, before hiring me for this job—whatever this job really is. Maybe talked to some of my chums, and even guys who’d like to kill me?”

“No maybe. You would be astonished with hearing what some disreputable persons told me.”

“Probably I wouldn’t. You really checked up on me, huh?”

“Very diligently, over many days. There is something wrong with this?”

“Well, no, I guess.”

“I hope this does not offend you, Sheldon. I believe you are beginning to understand I am in the fight of my life now, and after this there is much more I envisage, great and needed things to be done. About all of which, probably, I will tell you when the time for it is here. But right now I must survive this present peril, avoid assassination from the Medical Mafia and drivers of green vans also, plus who knows what besides? So, just the same as I asked many people and searched the best ways I could to discover the attorney most capable of confronting and defeating my enemies, so also I endeavored to find—as I suggested to you earlier—the most capable and competent investigator available for my various purposes. And I believe I have done that.”

“Well, that’s flattering. Who’d you ask about me?”

“Many people. Most names I cannot say to you, for some were criminal persons who agreed to talk with me only after affirming that, if I spilled my guts, they would spill my guts, word of that unfriendly nature.”

“Criminals—crooks...hoods? You mean you actually went out amongst...you were meeting and yacking with hoods?”

“Yes, in bars, clubs, on streets. Sometimes one crook led to another. A few were very helpful.”

“Hank, that’s nuts. Some of those guys out there would blow you away for nickels.”

“I told them I was a doctor. That scared hell out of them.” He laughed uproariously, clapping his hands before his face. “Should scare hell out of anybody, true?” And off he went again.

When he’d simmered down I said seriously, “Hank, no matter what you told them, you were a babe in the woods with those eggs. Taking chances like that was, well, damned unwise. If you ask me.”

“I suggest you are wrong again, Sheldon. Not unwise. Instead wise. How else could I find the truth?”

I looked at him, scowling, unable to come up with a good answer to that.

“And,” Hank continued, “I believe I found it. A man I had conversation with, the only one who agreed I could say his name, was called either Foreskins, as in sexual allusion, or the number four. I did not write it down, only heard this.”

“Fourskins,” I said, almost able to see him in the room’s corner, a couple of inches over five feet tall, skinny, hands in coat pockets, wearing his usual haunted expression. “He’s a cannon, a dip—pickpocket. Once he boosted he walked up to four guys standing around together at a bar, and lifted all their wallets, one after another, without rumbling anybody in the joint, including the four marks. That’s when he got the moniker. I’d guess Fourskins wouldn’t have much good to say about me.”

“He didn’t. Except indirectly. You put him into a hospital?”

“Well, he pulled a chiv, a knife on me. And I thought I should let him know I considered that an unkind thing to do.”

“He said you threw him across a room and down some stairs and broke one of his arms.”

“He broke it. Going down the stairs.”

Hank smiled. “He called you, I am quoting, a lousy muscle-bound slime-gob PI. But also, in response to my questioning, he said,” Hank squinted, remembering, “’Yeh, he’s a pig piece of crud he is, but yeh, he makes a deal wit you he won’t fink out of it.’ I interpreted that as high praise from such a citizen.”

I shrugged.

“I was able to interpret it thus, because from most of the others to whom I spoke the same thing came. I also interpreted that nearly all of these unsavory individuals dislike you with intensity.”

“Probably with good reason.”

“As one said, if a truck hit you, and you were lying bleeding in the street, he would shoot the ambulance. But, all in all, my sense was that they give you grudging respect. There were statements, made in various manners, indicating they consider you ‘straight,’ ‘right’ or honest with them, at least in ways they considered important. And that was important to me also.” Hank paused. “There was one other whose name I have permission to give, not a crook person but a friend of yours. And mine. A physician.”

“A doctor? And a friend of—you don’t mean Paul—?”

“Yes, Dr. Anson.”

“I’ll be damned. You know Paul?”

“For maybe twenty years now. Not so intimately as you, but well enough to respect his character—and opinion of his friend, though of course biased in your favoritism.”

“I’ll be damned.” I said again. “I was planning to ask Paul about you.”

Hank smiled. “Do so. I hope he speaks one-half as highly of me as he did of you.”

“Frankly,” I said grinning, “So do I.”

A minute later I was seated behind Hank’s desk, using his phone to call the number he’d given me.

A high-pitched, slightly grating lady’s voice answered, saying, “Omega Medical Research Institute, may I help you?”

I gave the lady my name, asked to speak with Dr. Wintersong, and was informed my name was not on her list of persons with whom the Director was scheduled to speak today.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and said to Hank, “I think I may have to get an appointment to make an appointment with this guy.”

“Sounds like him.” Hank held out one hand, raising his eyebrows. I gave him the phone and he said, “This is Doctor Henry Hernandez. Mr. Scott is a private investigator I have employed to assist me in certain endeavors. We would both appreciate it if Doctor Wintersong could see Mr. Scott for a few minutes today. Would you give him that message, please?”

There was a minute of silence. Hank looked at me, raising his brows again, then listened closely. “Hmm. Of course. I do understand his busy-ness, and the importance of his very valuable time. However...” He paused, chewing on his upper lip, then said briskly, “Please convey to the Director this message. Mr. Scott wishes to speak with Doctor Wintersong about two of his former employees, the Vungers. It will not require much of his time. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Vunger—Guenther and Helga. Thank you.”

Hank waited again, then smiled and handed me the phone.

By the time I got it to my ear a crisp, cold, controlled male voice was saying, “... meaning of this, Doctor Hernandez?”

“This isn’t the doctor,” I said pleasantly. “This is Shell Scott. I believe your receptionist mentioned my name?”

“Yesss...” The word ended in a whispery hiss. “You are an investigator, a private detective?”

“That’s right. And I would appreciate—”

“What is your interest in the Vungers?”

“I don’t think we can cover that on the phone. I’d need a little time, not much—”

“This afternoon. Two-thirty p.m. Precisely two-thirty. Ten minutes.” Click.

The click was Wintersong hanging up. Gently. But I stuck a finger in my left ear and wiggled it as I cradled the phone.

Hank, smiling, asked, “Did the good doctor destroy your eardrum when he hung up?”

“No, but I think I got frostbite on one lobe. That guy sounds two degrees warmer than Siberia.”

“I could not hear him, but I thought the busy Director might agree to see you.”

“He did.” I tried to mimic Wintersong’s voice, pretended I was chewing ice cubes, “This afternoon, two-thirty p.m.—precisely—ten minutes. Weird. Also weird that at first he wouldn’t talk to me, or even you, but one mention of the Vungers and I’ve got an appointment.”

“I, too, find this of interest. But not of great surprise. I have reason to believe Dr. Wintersong knows the Vungers have been under my professional care. Thus I also believe he will assume, correctly, that I have concluded they became infected with the IFAI virus while employed at his Omega Institute.” Hank nodded a couple of times, and continued, “Yes, he will hope to discover from you if his assumption is correct.”

“He’ll try to pump me instead of vice-versa?”

“Of course. Otherwise you would not have an appointment until a month and a half from now, if in this century.”

“How much can I tell him about your situation—and you? Nothing?”

“On the contrary, tell him anything, whatever you wish, Sheldon. If you speak freely, it may disarm him somewhat. So tell anything, except...” He frowned, nibbling his upper lip. “I would not ask you to deceive him with lies, but if it is no problem—as suggested earlier—fail to mention my use of hyper-oxygenation for cleansing the Vunger’s blood.”

“Oxygenation stuff? He wouldn’t know about that?”

“I’m sure he is aware of the protocol, and probably that it may be one element of my unorthodox practice. But Doctor Wintersong is one of my chief enemies, and it would be helpful not to put flames on the fire.”

“He won’t hear about it from me,” I said, nodding.

I stood up, glancing at my watch. It was almost one-thirty p.m. “Well, I’m off to visit Wintersong in his igloo,” I said.

As I turned and headed for the door, Hank’s intercom buzzed and he spoke speedily in Spanish. I was reaching for the doorknob when he said, “Sheldon, I meant to give you some papers, articles, things of great value for you to study assiduously, or at least read.”

I smiled over my shoulder, grasping the knob. “That’s okay,” I said. “I’d just as soon you didn’t go to a lot of trouble, or even any—”

“I have now a patient, but after you see Wintersong, could you stop back by here again? Does not matter when, I am here mostly day and night, except if I am making a house call.”

House call. That, I remembered, was the first thing that had itched at my ears, and surprised me about Dr. Henry Hernandez, in the beginning. The first of many itches.

Wondering if Dr. William Wintersong would have any itches or surprises for me, I waved a couple of fingers, said, “Okay, Hank,” and went on out.

* * * * * *

The Omega Medical Research Institute looked like three rectangles of bleached bone abandoned in the desert.

The one-lane asphalt road, which didn’t have a name, had risen slightly for a mile and a half after I’d turned off the freeway, so when I caught my first sight of Omega it was a mile distant and about a hundred yards below me.

The three white buildings did appear to form a large stretched-out letter “H”, just as Hank had described them. It looked odd, somehow. The central building faced the road on which I was approaching, the other two buildings adjoining it on my left and right. Not mentioned by Hank was a chain-link fence enclosing the entire complex, and a gatehouse in the fence’s middle, just left of the strip of asphalt which continued on to the central building, curving left there to end at a parking lot in which were approximately a hundred automobiles and a scattering of small trucks.

I slowed, came to a stop next to the gatehouse, which looked more like a guardhouse, I thought. Much more. Because inside the little house were two men wearing rumpled khaki uniforms complete with holstered guns at their hips, and one of the men was a stranger to me but the other was not. I only wished he was a stranger.

But, sad though it may be, not all our dreams come true. The other man was that sweetheart with snakes in his eyes.

Yeah. Grinner.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The other man, a leathery-faced six-footer, started to step from the gatehouse, but Grinner touched his shoulder and said loudly, “Lemme check this one, he’s a PI pal of mine.”

Then he sidled past the man and stepped up next to my Cad. I’d rolled the window down, and he bent forward to peer in at me and show me a lot of his teeth. “If it ain’t Shell Scott again,” he said almost pleasantly. “You’re a busy rascal.”

“Not as busy as you, Grinner. So, this great big place is SoCal Pest Control, huh? What do you make here, bug bombs for ostriches?”

“I’d love to jawbone with you, Scott, as a relief from all the excitement around here. But they said to shoot you right in if you come before two-thirty. Actually,” his grin stretched wider, “they didn’t say shoot.”

“Thought of it by yourself, did you? This ‘they’ would that be Wintersong?”

“Not the big chief hisself, Joanie at the front desk said it for him. You’re down for two-thirty with the doc. Almost that now.” He smiled at me with his pretty lips, not with his eyes. “Doc’s real funny. If you’re thirty seconds late, he won’t see you.”

“So open the gate and shoot me right in, Grinner.”

I was a little twitchy. The dash clock showed two-twenty-three p.m., and it wasn’t later than that only because I had exceeded the speed limit—ferociously, as Hank might have said—most of the way out here. And the gate, which would have to be swung inward before I could drive ahead, consisted primarily of half a dozen six-inch pipes welded to steel bars at their ends. If a man felt he had to get inside—or from inside get out—it would be easier to drive through the chain-link fence.

“Gotta check your ID,” Grinner said.

I handed him my Driver License, and wallet card issued by the Bureau of Investigative Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs certifying that I was a licensed private investigator, waited for him to examine them. And waited.

Finally, I said, “Grinner—” and he flipped the IDs back through the window. He didn’t hand them to me, just tossed them inside. One card landed in my lap, the other on the car seat. I picked them both up, starting to burn, put them back into my wallet as Grinner walked inside the gatehouse, reached up with one hand toward what I assumed was a switch for actuating the gate. And just stood there, unmoving, grinning at me.

It bugged me. I knew this was kid stuff, childish, game-playing, but it bugged the hell out of me anyway. I let him get away with it for maybe a minute, then opened the car door and started out fast. At which moment, of course, he actuated his switch and the heavy gate began slowly swinging inward.

I almost went on into the gatehouse anyway, but had sense enough not to. It was exactly four minutes until my exactly two-thirty appointment. So I put the Cad in gear, but said as I started rolling forward, “How’s the other joker who played games with me, Grinner?”

“I’ll tell Kell you asked about him,” Grinner said. Then he, and the gatehouse, slipped behind me.

Something about the bleached-white-bone appearance of those three buildings had struck me as odd when I’d first seen them from a mile away, but I hadn’t pinned down what it was. Now, as I got within fifty yards of the complex, I figured it out. All the walls were unblemished, smooth white blankness—no windows. It made the structures look even more like squared-off and polished slabs of bone. Maybe it was super-modern, super-efficient, and it was said a hundred million dollars had gone into constructing and equipping the Institute, but I didn’t like the look of the place. Didn’t like it at all.

There was no landscaping, no greenery to soften the bare whiteness, not a single shrub or tree to relieve the sharp angularity. Just a ten yard wide strip of pale-gray and dirty-white gravel fronting the complex, crunching under the Cad’s tires as I slowed and turned left.

Seven or eight cement steps rose toward double glass doors at the central building’s entrance above me on my right. Over the doors, shiny steel letters curving in an arch spelled out: O M E G A. I backed up, parking my car next to the windowless wall at the right of those cement steps instead of continuing on to the lot, then got out and trotted up to the glass doors.

Inside—sudden coolness, nostril-bite of anesthetics and unfamiliar chemicals plus human-sweat and animal-fear smells, or so I imagined—and straight ahead, cubicle resembling a nightclub checkroom, beyond its counter a fortyish henna-haired lady sitting, writing something in a ledger. She was still thirty or forty feet away, at the far side of a hallway extending left and right, apparently bisecting the building. It was very quiet, disturbingly so, as if everybody else in the place was dead, unaware that I was visiting their tomb.

As I zoomed to the counter and skidded to a stop the lady raised her head, looked at me disapprovingly. “Are you Mr. Scott?”

“Yes. That’s me, Shell—”

“You’re late, Mr. Scott.”

“Not yet, I’ve still got almost a minute and a half. Incidentally, I wish you wouldn’t say ‘late,’ not in this joint—”

“Sign-in. You must sign in.”

With one hand she’d twirled a clipboard holding a sheet of paper, twirled it around speedily as though urging me to hurry, hurry, stabbing a white-painted fingernail at a spot on the paper. It was lined, printed with numbers on the left, times of day, several names already written on the page. The lady—Joanie, I presumed, whose rather high scratchy voice I’d already heard on the phone—was tapping that white nail next to the numbers “2:30.”

Hurry, hurry. Tap-tap-tap. Yes, hurry, you bet. I yanked out my pen and jerked off its cap and hastily scribbled “Mr. Sheldon—” and stopped.

What the hell was I doing? So it was 2:29 and a tap...or a tick. So what? So if I was a wee bit late, and Dr. Wintersong had a fit or a pout, would the world end in a horrible crunch? I decided there was, already, something unusually disturbing about this place, a tilting of normality, like when you close your eyes after looking into a funhouse mirror, not really seeing that too-fat or too-thin wiggly body and longer but remembering the amusing, or maybe not quite-amusing, reflected distortion or who you are, or were.

I sighed, placed the point of my felt-tipped pen again on the paper, near the still-tapping whiteness of dictatorial nail, and wrote “Scott” in a firm, heavy hand. My name looked dumb. Yeah, that was a dumb signature, a looping, tilting, stretched-out “Mr. Sheldon” next to the more upright, neatly formed, bold “Scott.” It looked as if two people had signed it.

A heavy printed line a couple of inches above my name separated a.m. from p.m. There’d been only one signer in the morning, at 8:00 a.m., somebody called “Hobie” whose signature was even heavier and bolder than my “Scott,” and two visitors before me this afternoon. At 1:00 p.m., a signature less legible than my “Mr. Sheldon,” of which I could only be half-sure of the first two letters—“D” and “r” or “O” and “e” or “Q” and “c”—from which I deduced that the afternoon’s first visitor had been a Dr. practicing penmanship for prescriptions.

After him, or her, at 1:30 p.m., a guy named “Dane Smith,” then the chap in the funhouse mirror, me. Joanie, apparently a most unhappy lady, was looking past me at something above the double glass doors. I took a peek. The something was a large clock. A very large round clock, two feet in diameter, with a circle of black numbers plus an hour hand, a minute hand, and—you guessed it—a second hand. I had wasted so much time it was now two-twenty-nine and twenty-five seconds.

“You may go in,” Joanie said, tap-tap. “In through the door marked ‘Director.’ It will be on your right, twenty-two yards down the hall.” She was pointing to her right, my left.

“Twenty-two yards? Any inches?”

Nothing. She was not amused. I split speedily, zip down the hall to a solid-wood windowless door marked “Director” in gilt letters, the first door on my right. I reached for the doorknob, grabbed it. But I didn’t turn the knob and leap through into whatever.

Instead, I was looking behind me, at another door almost directly across the hallway. The hallway, polished plastic floor gleaming the same shiny way they do in hospitals, extended on for another thirty yards or so. Zipping to here I’d noticed a white-smocked young gal coming this way, but hadn’t taken time for leisurely appraisal. What held my attention now was that she was bending forward and preparing to poke an extended finger at something on the right side of that door. The bending-away-from-me vista was fetching, but more interesting was the thing she’d just poked for the first time.

It was one of those square “computerized” combination locks, set into the door where normally there would have been a knob and keyhole, looking somewhat like the face of a touch telephone but with only nine numbers, in three rows of three digits each. Even if I couldn’t see the numbers I could commit the combination to memory just by watching. So I did.

Upper left, lower right, upper right two times, milled of the bottom row twice, upper left once again, and the door clicked, moved an inch inward. Sometimes—not always but sometimes—in a building similarly equipped with poke-the-numbers locks, all of them share the same combination. Even if that wasn’t true at Omega, I knew I could at least get into that across-the-hallway room, if for any reason I wanted to, simply by poking the numerical sequence: 1-9-3-3-8-8-1.

I also knew I was late, many seconds late. Late for my “precisely” two-thirty p.m. appointment with Doctor William Wintersong. The eminent Doctor Wintersong. The frigid-voiced, ice-chomping, goddamned tyrant, William Wintersong, who was going to be ticked the hell off because it was two-thirty-one, maybe even later. But, so what? The hell with him. Yeah, I thought, to hell with you Dr. Wintersong!

Thus it came to pass that, scowling, with my teeth crunched together and lips pulled back and a little exhale wheezing out my nostrils, I twisted the knob, flung open the door, and sort of bounded determinedly into the room, hoping I wasn’t too late.

Correction. Bounded, yes, but not exactly into the room, more like part of the way into it, at which juncture I collided with something delicately scented and composed of yielding softnesses and bouncing-away smoothness, plus a sound that was approximately: Kkumph!

The umph! part was when she—yeah, definitely she—recoiling in a flurry of whipping dark hair and flailing arms and widening eyes and mixed expressions, landed kerumph several feet from me and, now, below me, on the shiny floor, landed there with her descent hopefully cushioned by a derriere that had to be at least wonderful because everything else I glimpsed in that kaleidoscopic instant was gorgeous—including the only-briefly-exposed expanse of curving white thigh revealed when the hem of her silvery-blue skirt flew up before being pulled down by a rosy-tipped and very speedy hand, and the now-pooching red lips that were extraordinarily sensual even when going “Ooohh” with provocatively-pooching ooohhness in the creamy-white skin of a shockingly beautiful face. There was a whole lot of other stuff, but insufficient time for an exhaustive inventory.

Because, after smoothing her skirt, the lovely, instead of leaping to her feet and socking me, leaned back on both elbows—which attitude instantly emphasized astonishingly abundant breastworks which, in case I hadn’t mentioned it, I had already noticed with approval and a sense of wonder—and, with what was almost a smile curving those incandescent red lips, said:

“How do you do?”

For a long beat, at least two or three seconds, I simply continued to stand there eyeballing her like a dummy, but then what she’d said, and the way she’d said it, hit a funny nerve somewhere in my head, and I laughed aloud.

But then I stepped forward, extended a hand toward her, saying, “Not too well. Please forgive me. May I help you up?”

“Yes, if you’ll do it very carefully.”

I smiled down at her, thinking that this was one unusual lady. She took my hand—warmness, softness, more than just flesh and blood and bone—and pulled, got gracefully to her feet.

“Thank you,” she said. “I think. Now, let me get out of your way, and you can go ahead and kill him.”

“Kill who...whom?”

“Whomever or whoever you dashed in here to assassinate. You did come here to kill someone...” She pulled her head back slightly, looked me up and down, returned those large luminous green eyes to my face, dark brows rising. “...didn’t you?”

“Of course not. I don’t go around... Why would you say that?”

“Well, the way you flew in here like a monster bird shot out of a cannon. And, of course, your strange expression, the way you looked.”

“Looked? Well, umm...” I fingered my chops, delicately. “Yeah, my nose was broken a couple of times, and this little part of my ear—” I fingered it absently—“got shot off, and... this and that. But I’ve never felt really ug—”

“No, I mean the way you had your teeth gnashing together and your lips moving all over, and that wild look of a mad beast in your eyes.”

“Mad beast? What happened to the bird? Never mind.” I stopped, started over. “Listen, it’s not that I was actually upset with anybody in here, not that I intended to demolish anyone or anything, certainly not such a gorgeous and forgiving person as you.”

I smiled. She just kept gazing at me curiously, waiting for my explanation. Which I didn’t have one of. So I continued stoutly: “What happened is, I was a little ticked off because I was late. That’s all there is to it.”

“Late?” she said, sort of blankly. “You did all this, and catapulted in here like that, because you were late?”

“Yeah. I guess that’s the best I can do. Doesn’t seem very convincing, even to me. See, I had an appointment for two-thirty, and it was already two-thirty-one, maybe even later, and...” I lifted my arms, let them plop down against my sides. “There is no simple explanation.”

“Well,” she said, with that almost-smile again curving her lips, “I like a man who’s on time, but...So that’s why you thundered in here like the Marines, flexing all those muscles?” She let her eyes flick over me again. “You really do have a lot of muscles to flex, don’t you?”

“I don’t think I know how to answer that, either,” I said. But then I gathered my scattered wits, and changed the subject adroitly. “Miss—or Ma’am, or Ms., or Mrs., Miss I hope—I have the solution to everything. I will explain the entire truth behind my precipitous entry, assuming I can remember what it was, and answer all your questions, and ask you a bunch, when—if—you’ll have dinner with me tonight. Yes? Don’t say no yet. I’ll take you to the most exciting restaurant in town, buy you the most exciting dinner the chef is capable of inventing, and...an exciting dessert? Yes?”

She smiled, but didn’t speak. No matter, there was some yes in that smile. Or, if not actually yes, it was at least noncommittal. “Make that two desserts,” I said. “And three lobsters. Throw in some crabs, oysters, steaks, roasts, goose liver, I care not. Plus—”

“That is exciting. Where are we going?”

“Beats the hell out of me, I was just working up to... Going? You mean you’ll go?”

She smiled, radiantly this time. “I might be making a mistake. But, yes, I’ll go to dinner with you—whoever you are.”

“Who—oh, I’m Shell Scott.” I started to ask her name, then remembered signing in at the desk, the page with an illegible signature and one other name above mine, and decided to impress her. “I’m a private detective. And I detect that you must be Dane Smith.”

“How did you know?” She smiled brilliantly. “You’ve read my books?”

“Books?”

“You haven’t read my books.”

“No. But...but I will. I’ll read them all. I’ll read them twice. I’ll bet they’re hot stuff—beautiful, very good, I mean. Do you write them, or read them, or publish them, or—”

“I write them, of course.”

“Of course. Whatever you say. Novels, romantic adventures where she meets the darkly mysterious stranger?” This, I detected, wasn’t going over real big.

“Not novels. Non-fiction books. Primarily in the medical field. My most recent one was Heart Attacks Don’t Have To Happen, subtitled But What To Do If They Do. It was number eight on the New York Times Best Seller List last year. I thought you might have read it, and remembered seeing my photograph on the dust jacket.”

“Sorry. Wish I had. Saw your name on the sign-in sheet at the little checkroom out front.”

“Checkroom?”

“Well, the... never mind. Number eight, huh? That’s stupendous, especially for a medical book.” I paused as a thought struck me. Belatedly. “Would you, by any chance, be here to see Dr. Wintersong?”

“Yes. Doctor William Wintersong here,”—she waved one hand out to her left side in a puzzling way—“and his fascinating work will be the most important chapter in my new book. It’s called IFAI—the Mystery and the Dilemma.”

“That’s hot. I can see it moving up the Best-Seller lists. Has it got a subtitle?”

“I just told you, ‘the Mystery and the Dilemma.’ The title will be ‘IFAI,’ only the one word, in big red letters.”

“Got it. In big red-that’s even hotter. I can really see it moving up—”

“But after talking to Dr. Wintersong here—“she moved her hand out to the left in that puzzling way again—“I may change the subtitle to ‘the Mystery and Possible Solution.’”

She went on, saying something about being vastly encouraged, but I comprehended it not. Because, after her second puzzling little hand movement, it occurred to me that she did it each time she mentioned Wintersong’s name and “here” both at once. So, since her left was my right, I cranked my head around to my right. Yep. There he was.

Had to be him. Standing not more than six feet away. How could I have missed him for all this time, if he’d been standing there eyeballing me all this time?

It was, however, true. Dr. William Wintersong stood there, arms folded over his chest, unmoving, his unmoving eyes fixed on me. And he gazed upon me, I swear this is true, exactly as that first long-lost Arctic explorer, dug out of an iceberg by his rescuers, gazed upon them, and their flying saucer, an instant after he thawed.

“Ah, be right with you, doctor,” I said.

Then I cranked my head around toward lovely Dane Smith—becoming peripherally aware at last that I was in a large white-walled room, and beyond the immobile doctor were long tables, lab equipment, cages against the walls, three other people out there, puttering, and farther left more tables, cages, curious equipment.

“Quick,” I said to Dane, almost whispering, “where may I pick you up? And how’s six p.m.?”

“I’m staying at the Halcyon Hotel. And six will be fine, Mr. Scott.”

“Shell. Halcyon? Boy, maybe I should write a book.”

I wasn’t thrilled by the look she gave me when I said that. But, no matter, she was gorgeous.

So I continued, “What a coincidence! That’s where we’re having dinner. Unless you’d prefer...?”

I heard this curious icy rumbling, like a frozen explorer running over a distant glacier, as Wintersong cleared his throat.

“That would be splendid, Shell. I’ve been looking forward to dining in the Gourmet Room for months, but I only arrived in Los Angeles this morning. So this will be a first for me. I’ll meet you in the Sybaris Lounge, all right? Till six, then.”

Whereupon she turned, approached Dr. Wintersong, and by extending her right hand actually got him to move. As they shook hands she said, “Thank you again, Doctor. You’ve been very helpful. Very.”

“It was my great pleasure, Ms. Smith. I repeat, I am most impressed with your knowledge of serology, bacteriology, and virology, and your rare understanding of the fact that science must gamble, take risks—that the true scientist’s reach must often exceed his grasp—to ensure that the needs of all mankind may best be served.”

“I expect to make that clear in my Doctor William Wintersong Chapter, Doctor Wintersong.”

Either she was still hanging onto his damned hand, or else he wouldn’t let go of hers. Worse, he was gazing upon Dane’s lovely face like a pornographic microscopist peeking at tiny naked people performing exercises from the Kama Sutra. Another thing wrong with him, he was the first guy I’d heard who could pronounce “Ms.” Without making it sound like an insect landing on a hot light bulb.

But perhaps I was being unfair. His voice was much lower and more mellifluous than I’d expected, and he wasn’t an ogre or gnome or cloddish Igor. Actually, he was a rather pleasant looking man, even “distinguished.” He was about five-ten or eleven and maybe forty pounds overweight, with the smooth plump face and expression of self-satisfied pseudo-benevolence apparently bestowed upon many physicians along with their medical degrees.

I knew he was forty-nine years old, surprisingly young for a man of his reported achievements in medicine and especially in medical research, recipient of numerous honors and much praise from his peers. I was almost ready to admit that I was being unjustly negative about the man when we hadn’t really met, hadn’t exchanged a single word here. But then Dane wrestled her hand free—or at least got it out of Wintersong’s—walked to the door, giving me a small wave as she undulated out. And, deliberately, Dr. William Wintersong shifted his gaze from her to me.

Well, unless you have seen a butterfly squeeze back into its cocoon, you would not believe how remarkably Wintersong’s appearance changed in that moment. He looked at me for a long second, gave me a quick one-inch nod, then turned and walked briskly toward what I assumed was his office.

There was no way, absolutely no way, for me to understand whether that inch of nod had been a reluctant invitation or peremptory dismissal. But I hadn’t come out here just to turn around and go without even saying hello. So I followed the receding and ample, indeed quite fleshy, figure of Dr. William Wintersong.

But with my usual bubbling optimism not noticeably bubbling.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I followed Wintersong, glancing around, getting my first good look at this room behind the “Director” door since I’d come so speedily into it.

On my right, three people wearing loose white neck-to-ankle coats worked at two long counters or workbenches extending toward the far wall. One appeared to be heating something in a glass retort shaped like a kitchen bowl but covered by a transparent lid with a spiraling tube rising six feet into the air, looping over what looked like one-inch plastic pipe extending from one wall to the other, then spiraling back down to drip thick amber fluid into an enclosed beaker. The other two people were washing something in stainless-steel sinks set into the workbenches. None of them were paying any attention to me now, though they’d probably noticed my entrance.

On my left a man and woman, both also wearing those loose white coats, placed food and drink into two of a dozen or more cages in a solid row against the wall there. I’d noticed similar cages lining the opposite wall as well as most of the wall which was the “Director” entrance. They were sturdy cages of clean and shiny steel, each with grillwork like a web of thick wires in its hinged door. Behind some of the grillwork I could see indistinct furry movement like the shifting of shadow.

Yeah, the cages—and animals, experimental animals. For a slightly sickening moment I wondered if this was the room in which Jock-Jock had been battered and bloodied, battered to death. But I quickly pushed that picture out of my mind, knowing it shouldn’t be in my thoughts when, or if, I spent my few scheduled minutes with Wintersong.

He’d gone into a room ten feet ahead of me, apparently his office, leaving the door partly open. Two similar solid-wood doors were visible on my left, perhaps other offices. But there were no offices on the right, just the gray-painted door—solid steel, Hank had told me—with, as reported, a slashed red circle painted over the gray and the words: DANGER—LETHAL RADIATION—DO NOT ENTER. Made me wonder if there could be a sputtering little nuclear reactor in there.

Then I was stepping past the partly-open door, which I noted had affixed to it large stainless-steel letters spelling “DIRECTOR” with below that in smaller but equally shiny letters the name, “William Wintersong, M.D.” It was a nice enough little office. Small but appearing comfortable, even bright. Thick dark-brown carpeting covering the floor, large abstract paintings on the walls, their garish swirling oils surprising after all the ark wood and stainless steel I’d become accustomed to here. In the wall to my right was what appeared to be a door except that it had no knob or lock or even one of those punch-code gadgets I’d noticed outside.

And there he sat, the Director, behind a black desk that was not merely uncluttered but completely bare except for two black plastic in-and-out baskets, a square of green stone or maybe even jade holding erect a gold pen-and-pencil set, and a modernistic-looking clock. To be honest, I’d liked Hank’s desk better, with its photos and clippings and papers and ogres.

A single angular uncomfortable-looking chair was before the black desk. Hoping we might still get off to a reasonably congenial start here, I seated myself in the angular chair—which was just as uncomfortable as it looked—and said pleasantly, “We haven’t exactly met, Dr. Wintersong, but I’m Shell Scott, and I appreciate your seeing me on such short notice. Also, sorry I was a bit late.”

Wintersong opened his mouth, and for a long second or two appeared to be wagging some kind of small internal battle with himself. Then he closed his mouth and bestowed upon me a thin smile. Any thinner and it would have involved only one lip.

But his voice was reasonably pleasant as he said, “Yes, unquestionably you were late, Mr. Scott, a fault I normally find inexcusable, not merely reprehensible. However, it was evident that you were not dawdling.”

I laughed, thinking maybe this guy wasn’t so rigidly unyielding as I’d supposed. But it was evident that Wintersong shared little—more accurately, none—of my amusement.

“You are the private investigator employed by Doctor Hernandez.” I nodded and started to say yes, but that hadn’t been a question. This egg clearly wasted no time on pleasantries.

Oddly, at that moment the clock on Wintersong’s desk caught my attention again. It was small, square-the only real curves I’d seen in this place had been on Dane Smith—with a black face and white numbers. What struck me as interesting was that the clock had been turned so that, while Wintersong would be unable to see its face, I or anybody else sitting here couldn’t miss it. Thus I was unable not to notice that the time was 2:36 p.m. And it had a sweeping second hand counting down the seconds. Which meant, almost surely, that I had only four minutes left, no more.

I said quickly, “Doctor Hernandez asked me to talk with the Vungers but I can’t locate them. They aren’t at their home—haven’t been for several days—and I really don’t know where else to look for them. Since they worked here for you, until they got canned, I thought you might be able to give me a lead. Names of associates, friends, people they worked with here, maybe relatives listed in your files. Former address, almost anything might help.”

“There is no such information available here, no names of friends or relatives, nothing that would be of assistance to you.”

“You’re kidding.”

He didn’t speak, but continued to gaze at me with eyes like glass. No, he wasn’t kidding; maybe lying, but not kidding. And that steady gaze of his gave me a slightly uncomfortable feeling. Usually I’m aware of eyes, their appearance, or “expression” if there is such a thing, in men and women, particularly women. Dane, for example. Those very large eyes of hers were soft, bright, the liquidly luminous green that mermaids must swim through at the bottom of emerald seas. I’d never known any man’s eyes to be more glowing and fiery than Hank’s, especially when he became exercised or was feverishly determined to make a point I could actually grasp and hang onto. And Grinner: the image of those tiny snakes coiling and squirming had risen in imagination automatically. But from William Wintersong, M.D., nothing.

I was looking straight into his slate-gray eyes, and it was as though there was nothing in them other than that visible grayness, nothing else, no fire or fury or even ice. It was a little crazy, of course, but I got the momentary impression of eyes behind which nothing at all, as if the man’s brain had been removed from his skull leaving only emptiness there, emptiness behind that slate-gray stillness of eyes like glass.

But then Wintersong raised a brow and said, “Immediately following your telephone call, I had the records of Mr. and Mrs. Vunger brought to me, in preparation for your two-thirty p.m. appointment.” He reached into the upper right drawer of his desk and took out a thick sheaf of papers, glanced over the first page and two or three others. “I have them here. And there is in them no information that would assist you in finding the Vungers.”

“May I look at those records, Doctor?”

He shook his head. “The information is confidential. Nearly everything done here is at least confidential, much of the research work classified, top secret. I assume you know we here at Omega do important, and necessarily secret, work for a number of government agencies, the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Defense, others.”

“I know Omega is supposed to be A-one in medical research, top of the totem pole.” I assumed he would like hearing that. I had to assume because I couldn’t tell by looking at him. “But if you do work under NIH and CDC and DOD contracts or grants, and it’s necessarily top secret, I guess I wouldn’t know anything about it, or even who decided the secrecy was necessary.”

Couldn’t get a wiggle out of him one way or another. He just sat, gazing, unmoving.

“So I can’t see the records,” I said. “Okay, if I ask you a question or two about what’s in them?”

“Certainly. If there is information I can reveal, I will.”

“No relatives listed? His or her parents or brothers or sisters, or second cousins?”

“Parents listed, but deceased. No brothers, sisters, children. Or second cousins.”

“References from previous employers?” One-inch shake of head. “Dates of birth, time and place of marriage, credit cards, social security numbers?”

“Social Security. I believe I can give you those.” He found them, read the numbers to me. I wrote them down. And that, despite several more questions, was all I could get from him about the Vungers. So I switched to a different subject of some interest to me.

“I got a little surprise when I arrived here, Doctor, to find there’s not only a heavy fence all around Omega, but a couple of guards at the entrance. Armed guards.”

“That should not surprise you, Mr. Scott. It is no secret that the organized anti-science fanatics and so-called animal-rights activists have increased their disruptive activities during the past year. Several laboratories have been physically invaded, actually broken into by these ignorant zealots who seem more concerned about the welfare of mice than of their fellow human beings. Surely you are not unaware of these events.”

“I’ve read several newspaper reports about them, and there have been some reports on TV newscasts.”

“Precisely. Even here at Omega, before we strengthened our security measures, we were picketed twice by these maniacs, demonstrating wildly before TV cameras they made certain would be present. But there have been no such incidents during this past year, and I am determined there will not be any. Our only problems have been internal, because of the subversive actions of disloyal employees.”

He didn’t name any such employees, and I didn’t press it. Instead I said, “What surprised me about the guards I mentioned even more than their guns, was that I met one of them earlier today. Calls himself Grinner. I’ve met his kind before in my business, and it’s eight to five he’s a hard-case hood.”

Wintersong didn’t even blink. But he said, “Hood? You mean a criminal.”

“You bet, a criminal.”

“That is most unlikely. But I, of course, have nothing to do with employing such people. That is the province of my Chief of Security, Mr. Baxter.”

He opened a desk drawer and started to put the sheaf of papers back into it, then paused and looked at me. “When you phoned, you said you wished to speak to me about the Vungers, Mr. Scott. Am I to understand they are not at their home?”

He glanced at the top sheet still in his hand. “On Maple Street?”

“That’s right. Apparently haven’t been seen there for about nine days now.”

He cleared his throat softly. “Normally I would not presume to suggest lines of investigation to an investigator. But I assume you have already consulted with the Vunger’s neighbors, followed your usual procedure.”

“Right. Neighbors don’t know anything, just that they haven’t seen the Vungers around lately.”

“None of them know if the Vungers might have left their home temporarily, possibly on a trip or vacation, and if so when they left, or where they were going?”

“They know from nothing.”

“Has anyone looked inside the house?”

For a moment I thought that was an odd question. But then I remembered—shades of Mrs. Brewster, I thought. But I simply said, “The house is empty.”

“In that case, if you have not already done so I suggest you check with area hospitals.”

“Well, I haven’t done that yet, but I suppose they could have had an accident. Except that the Vunger’s car is still in their garage.”

“I was not thinking of accident or injury, Mr. Scott. They may now be ill enough to require hospitalization, or even be dead and already in the morgue.” He paused. “You may not be aware of this, even though Mr. and Mrs. Vunger are known to have been patients of Dr. Hernandez for a time, and Dr. Hernandez has now employed you. But both of the Vungers are victims of IFAI.”

“Yeah, I know they are. Or were. Incidentally, it’s been suggested that they became infected with the virus here, since it’s common knowledge Omega has, for at least a couple of years, been working with the IFAI virus.” I kept my gaze on his pale-gray eyes as I finished, “I assume that’s true, particularly since I understand the Vungers were suddenly fired, without warning or advance notice, by you personally. Am I correct?”

“You are approximately correct about two of your three conclusions,” he said, adding icily, “which I assume approximates your average percentage of correct guesses.”

“Sometimes I—”

Wintersong just kept on going, “When one proceeds from a false or erroneous initial assumption, no matter how rigorously logical every succeeding accretion may appear to be, the resultant structure must inevitably collapse upon its insufficient or non-existent foundation. I am, of course, thinking of the insupportable pseudo-scientific accretions embraced by many unorthodox and unscientific physicians like your informant, Doctor Henry Hernandez.”

“Surprise, the mentioned suspicions were conveyed to me by one of the Vungers’ suspicious neighbors. Well, that would be a percentage of—”

“It is correct that here at Omega we are engaged in intensive study of the virus that causes IFAI, and one necessity of our research is that we possess pure cultures of that virulent disease organism, among many other deadly disease germs. But our safety measures are flawless, and not a single associate or employee of this facility has ever become infected by the IFAI microorganism or any other, and none ever will be. It is impossible.”

“Yeah, it’s impossible to walk on the moon, too, because you’ll sink into the green cheese—”

“It is true that Mr. and Mrs. Vunger tragically contracted the terminal disease during the time they were employed at Omega. But I assure you they became infected somewhere else, for they could not have contracted it here. Indeed, that is the reason I personally discharged them, when their routine blood tests revealed antibodies for the virus. The Vungers were placing all other employees here at great risk.”

“Well, first,” I said, “as of ten days or so ago, the Vungers were in the pink, not only alive but vigorously so. And second—”

“Mr. Scott, please.” He smiled. He really did, and it was a quite normal smile, making him appear, if not jolly, almost lukewarm. “I assure you, the Vungers had IFAI, which as you must know is incurable. I would estimate the probable time of the Vunger’s death to be approximately now. Certainly within the next month or two, at the most.”

“All I know is they were in good shape the last time Doctor Hernandez saw them.”

“Doctor Hernandez. Ah, yes, Doctor Hernandez. How long have you known him, Mr. Scott?”

“Well, actually, I just met him today. This morning, when he hired me—”

“Did you see the Vungers? Talk to them, observe them, determine for yourself that they were in the pink, as you so quaintly phrased it?”

“No, I haven’t actually seen or talked quaintly to them. But, as I said, apparently nobody’s seen them for several days now.”

“So may I assume your belief that they are well, even that they are alive, is based solely upon statements—unsupported statements—made to you by your new client, Dr. Hernandez?”

“You may assume that.”

Still smiling slightly, Wintersong continued, “Probably he told you it is true they had IFAI, but he cured them. What hundreds of thousands of other fine, caring physicians are unable to do, he alone swiftly accomplished in mysterious ways.”

“Well, not exactly.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer this guy. The hell of it was what he’d said was not only basically true but echoed questions I’d already asked myself. Moreover, he was convincing, pushing the right buttons, reminding me of earlier doubts. But then Wintersong, pressing on, pressed on a little too far. At least too far for me.

“Not exactly, eh?” he said, apparently with much subdued amusement. “I imagine he impressed upon you that he cured the Vungers of many things by somehow calling forth the magical Wizard within their metaphysical Oz, perhaps by sprinkling them with apricot kernels or powdered unicorn horn. Something like that?”

“No, doctor, I don’t believe he mentioned Oz even once. He did say...” I paused, remembering I’d agreed not to mention hyper-oxygenation therapy, the ozone infusions Hank had given the Vungers, then went on, “after eliminating the virus that causes—or rather, is associated with IFAI—“

“Causes, Mr. Scott. You were correct the first time. Unquestionably, causes.”

“After eliminating the virus associated with something or other called IFAI,” I went on doggedly, “and prescribing homeopathic remedies he felt were indicated, Dr. Hernandez’ efforts were aimed at strengthening the Vungers’ immune systems, organs and glands, generally building them up.”

“Building them up. I do not recall seeing this description in the scientific literature. Could you be more specific, Mr. Scott? Or is that the best you, and Dr. Hernandez, can do?”

I’ll confess, I wanted to spit in his eye. In fact, similar impulses had been nagging at me for some time now. Possibly Wintersong sensed an imminent attack of belligerent saliva. More likely, he detected external expression of my growing internal discontent.

At any rate, his own expression, which looked a bit too much like amused contempt to me, changed quickly and he said, “I’m quite serious, Mr. Scott. In all honesty, I believe Dr. Hernandez’ therapeutic methodologies to be hogwash. But I would appreciate your being more specific, if you can. I might even learn something not entirely without value myself.”

“Anything’s possible. But okay, I’ll give you a layman’s specifics. After which, maybe you’ll answer one or two specific questions of mine.”

“Fair enough. If I can.”

“Well, as far as the Vungers are concerned, and probably almost anyone else, I’d say Hank’s—Dr. Hernandez’—methods are whole-person or holistic, directed toward eliminating whatever the primary problem is instead of secondary symptoms the problem causes. That is, treating basic causes instead of effects—which requires somewhat different treatment for each patient because, as he keeps saying, everybody’s different. Essentially that means getting out of their bodies those things that shouldn’t be in them, like harmful metals or trace elements, pesticide and drug residues, various toxins. And the getting into them whatever’s most needed for the individual, maybe just improved nutrition, pure water and live foods instead of over-processed or irradiated food-corpses, maybe biological and glandular substances or extracts, vitamins and minerals almost always including extra vitamin C. Yeah, a lot of C, megadoses of ascorbate he calls it. And, well, that’s about it, that sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing, eh? Priceless! I must share this scientific breakthrough with the other physicians at my club. Dr. Hernandez puts into them vitamin C which prevents scurvy, but also causes kidney stones and is otherwise useless. And gets out of them disease-curing and life-saving drugs.” The doctor shook his head, apparently baffled by the enormity of Hernandez’ crimes against nature. “And he performs this legerdemain after eliminating the virus which causes IFAI, eh? Tell me, Mr. Scott, how does this medical Merlin of yours accomplish that miracle?”

No mistaking the tone of sarcasm this time. So I said slowly, as if trying to remember, “Well, it wasn’t unicorn horn, but... would you believe powered bull’s udder?”

And right then, for the first time, there was real antagonism between us. We hadn’t been buddies to begin with, but now there was sudden unmistakable anger pouring from Wintersong. It was almost palpable, like a thin warm fog rolling over me.

Wintersong leaned forward saying, his voice higher and less mellow than it normally was, “Let me tell you the truth about Dr. Henry Hernandez. Unlike many of my colleagues, I seldom use the word quack to describe those charlatans and frauds who only pretend to be physicians, who take advantage of sick and dying human beings solely for personal gain, for money. But I will, I must, use it now. That unconscionable Mexican quack may be able to fool his ignorant patients, and people like you, Mr. Scott—”

“What kind of people is that, doctor?”

“—but he cannot deceive his peers, legitimate physicians and trained scientists who recognize what he is. We know Hernandez to be a despicable fraud who preys like a vulture on diseased and terminal patients solely to satisfy his criminal greed, not caring whether those tortured human beings live or die. Oh, he is clever, even brilliant, I will give the devil his due. But that is what makes him so dangerous. He is persuasive, and to laymen often almost hypnotically convincing. Like many quacks.”

When he paused I didn’t comment on his remarks directly. Instead, I said, “Dr. Wintersong, I‘ve been told you’re trained as a neurosurgeon, a brilliant one by all accounts, and for several years specialized in brain and spinal surgery, difficult and delicate operations much admired by your peers.”

I had more to say, but already I was perplexed. I had assumed that no matter what Wintersong thought of private eyes, or Dr. Hernandez, he would appreciate hearing even me tell him how wonderful he was. But his expression, not one of unalloyed joy to begin with, became perhaps even more sour and forbidding.

I continued anyway, “Even that you originated a spinal operation immediately adopted by others as an elegant improvement on then-current procedures. Some kind of way to cut out vertebra or disk, or slice around some kind of whatsit—”

He winced. “The Wintersong Excision,” he said flatly. “It reduced the incidence of unavoidable paralysis slightly. Only slightly. But the technique itself pointed the way toward several superior procedures. At least, that possibility was evident. Still, the technique remains standard among neurosurgeons confronted with similar trauma of the spine. Standard, even today. I could...” He paused, moistened his lips. His right hand had been resting on the desk top, fingers curled underneath the palm, but I noticed it was now tightened into a fist, the skin tight and almost white over his knuckles. But he went on with his voice unchanged, “Someone should have improved upon the technique since then. It was a simple thing, a trifle. Merely an innovative way to...slice around a whatsit.”

I let it go. “That part of your career, I understand, occupied half a dozen years or so, until circumstances, and perhaps your own desires, led you into research. So you’ve been totally involved in medical research for fifteen or twenty years now. Right?”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “Sixteen years, next January. Is there some kind of point to this, Mr. Scott?”

“Just that I’m a bit puzzled. You’re Director of a world famous research facility here, engaged in work that’s light years from what Dr. Hernandez is doing. He’s just a general practitioner, I guess is the term. Kind of a family doctor, just poddling along. I’m puzzled that the prestigious Director of the renowned Omega Medical Research Institute would be so concerned about the poodling practice of a mere GP.”

“Poodling,” he said, as though mouthing a fungus. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn what you’re puzzled about, Mr. Scott.” Then he closed his eyes, slowly opened them. “But I will do my utmost to enlighten you. Perhaps even you are familiar with the well-known statement, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’”

I said pleasantly, “One of Edmund Burke’s better moments, wasn’t it? I’ll bet it was either him or Benvenuto ‘Moose-Nose’ Cellini, who was always saying well-known things to his fellow Mafiosi. Unless maybe it was Eddy ‘Cancer-Ass’ O’Tooke—”

He interrupted, “I can do without your smart mouth, Scott.”

I smiled. “Suits me. Thought I’d let you know I can do without yours, Wintersong.”

Either he blushed remarkably or entered the early stages of seizure. At least his face became marvelously red, and briefly appeared hot enough to radiate light invisible to the naked eye. But only for a few seconds. Then he inhaled deeply, let his breath out in an audible sigh, and won a little of my respect. Only a little, and not for long.

But at least Wintersong looked straight at me and said, “You were quite right to take umbrage. I invited your offensive response, Mr. Scott, and I should not have done so. I think it was because I become so disturbed whenever Dr. Hernandez is discussed. You ask why I care what he, an unimportant GP, does. I care because I have concern for his patients—his, or those of any other charlatan of similar ilk—human beings with a right to the best possible medical care who are prevented from receiving its proven benefits by conscienceless peddlers of snake-oil and useless, often harmful, nostrums. Dr. Hernandez is a menace, a danger to the health and even life of every unsuspecting patient who walks through his door. That is why all legitimate physicians—not only myself but all, those in general practice or board-certified specialists or even medical researchers—have a duty, a moral obligation, to prevent such men from continuing to injure their misguided victims.”

I thought I heard a very faint buzzing sound. It was very soft, but insistent. I couldn’t be sure, because Wintersong was still talking—and apparently he hadn’t heard it. Maybe it was some kind of engine or machinery miles distant, or even a little gnat hovering near my ear.

But, no, it wasn’t a far-away engine or nearby gnat. Because something very strange happened then.

Wintersong was continuing heatedly, “... not only injures but kills, yes kills. He is a murderer! He has already been tried for murder in a court of law, and we will accuse him again and again until justice—”

He stopped suddenly, eyes widening. And his reaction then was not merely surprising, it was alarming. His smooth pink face blanched, became white, literally turned from healthy pink to pasty whiteness between one second and the next. His eyes widened even more and his mouth sagged open.

I thought he might be having a stroke or some kind of coronary disaster because for three or four stretched-out taffy-like seconds he was unmoving, rigid, apparently not even breathing, with his features frozen into what at another time might have been an almost comical grimace.

And that soft buzzing continued insistently, very near. It was the only sound in the room.

The only sound, at least, until Wintersong let out his breath in a soft puff, yanked a ring of keys from his pocket, found one—it was red, I noticed, a red key—and stabbed with it at a lock in the upper-left drawer of his desk, stabbed again. Then he twisted the key, yanked the drawer open and thrust one hand inside it. The buzzing stopped.

He looked briefly at me, his eyes still wide and mouth open, as though staring through me, not seeing me at all. Then he moved that hand inside the drawer again, pulled it a few inches back toward him, and I heard a click. From the corner of my eye I saw slight movement of that part of the wall on my right which I’d thought, when I’d first come in here, looked like a door without a doorknob or lock. It moved only an inch, maybe half an inch—but away from me, inward toward that “Danger/Radiation” room next to Wintersong’s office.

He was already out of his chair, stepping swiftly toward what, obviously now, was a door without a knob that allowed entrance to the adjacent room—not another look at me, not a word—and then through and out of my sight, pushing the curious door shut behind him with another click, just like that first one. Also, like the somewhat louder click I’d heard when the white-coated lady had poked out a combination on the door across the hallway.

What the hell? I thought. Not for the first time today.

I stood up. First, I wanted to push against that knobless door and see if it moved inward, which I was almost certain would not happen. Then I meant to check that upper-left drawer of the doctor’s desk. But I didn’t even have time to move my feet.

Behind me a high hard voice said, “Where’s the Director? And who the hell are you?”

I turned. First, I saw the uniform. Neat, maybe even custom-tailored, smooth over wide shoulders, nipped in at narrow waist. The man was about five-eleven, solidly built, black haired, with a tanned face and large mustache completely covering his upper lip like a black cushion for his more than adequate nose.

“Dr. Wintersong is in there,” I said, pointing. “And I’m Shell Scott.”

No reaction. Most likely he already knew who I was, or at least knew who’d had a two-thirty appointment with the Director. I thought I could guess who he was, too, but I said anyway, “May I ask who’s asking?”

Thinking of that two-thirty appointment I glanced at the clock on Wintersong’s desk, surprised to note that it was now two-fifty-eight p.m.

The uniformed man said, “Baxter, Chief of Security. Were you leaving?”

I looked at him. “Guess so, Chief. I had a couple more questions, but Doctor Wintersong left all of a sudden, before I could ask them.”

The Security Chief struck me as unusually nervous, or twitchy. His eyes kept flicking around the room, landing on me and then shifting again. The fingers of his right hand brushed the bone grip of a holstered gun at his hip. He waved his other hand, motioning me toward the door he’d left open when he entered.

He was right behind me as I went out. I said, “Maybe you can help me with one of those unasked questions. Can you tell me the names of those two guards at the gatehouse?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Just wondering what to call Grinner besides Grinner.”

Walking alongside me through that big “lab” room where I’d bumped into Dane, the Chief stretched his lips, not exactly in a smile, but like a man silently saying “Yeah.” “Ah, you’re that Scott, are you?” he said, perhaps telling me more than he’d meant to. “You’re the private dick, right?”

“Yeah, right. So what do I call Grinner?”

“Officer Harris. Not that it’s any of your business, Scott.”

And that was the zenith of Chief Baxter’s helpfulness today. He escorted me out of the big room, up the polished hallway, out through the wide glass doors and all the way to my Cad. As I started the engine, I saw Baxter wave to somebody in the gatehouse, which didn’t make me feel really wonderful. But nothing unpleasant happened as I drove slowly through the already-open gate.

Except that, standing in the doorway of the guardhouse, Grinner gave me a sort of wave, composed of extended index finger and wiggling thumbtop, the way cute kids playing cops and robbers go “Bang-bang!” and shoot the bad guys dead.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I wheeled into the palm-lined driveway leading to the Halcyon Hotel’s entrance, found a spot in the parking lot, trotted over black asphalt and into the hotel’s spacious lobby. When I headed for the arched entrance of the Sybaris Lounge it was exactly one minute before six p.m.

Getting here in time had taken some doing. After the drive back into L.A. from Omega, I’d stopped briefly at Hank’s office. At least, I’d intended for the stop to be brief, but it was forty-five minutes before I got out of there.

I reported on my visit with Dr. Wintersong, including his precipitate exit, and told Hank of seeing at Omega the driver of a green van like the one that had almost run him down. He was interested, even excited, but had no better explanation for those events than I did. But, naturally, he had plenty to say about Wintersong, the guy I knew as Grinner, and approximately forty-seven other subjects of “piercing interest.”

When I was about to leave, Hank picked off his desk a manila folder at least two and a half inches thick, and pressed it upon me, saying, “These are a few copies I made especially for your fascination, for you to examine, enjoy.”

“Enjoy? Good God,” I said, “you don’t expect me to read all this stuff, do you?”

“No, no,” he replied smiling. “Merely look through the materials.” He brushed one half of that neatly-trimmed mustache, nodding slightly as he beamed at me. “But unless I am much mistaken about you, Sheldon, some of these things will fascinate you splendidly.”

“Yeah, sure, I’m getting giddy already.“

“Just go through the materials a little bit. That is all I ask. Consider it, if you wish, and essential part of this case, your investigating work for me. Actually, it will in time become evident, it is that.”

“OK, I’ll flip here and there. That much. But I may not do much more.”

“Is sufficient. You may surprise yourself and find some of these informations of huge excitement.”

“That would be a surprise, all right.”

“Trust me.” He smiled again. “We are not so different as you may think, Sheldon. You enjoy investigations, the finding of things hidden and previously unfound, seeing of things previously unseen. I believe that for you, as for me, discovering truth capable of upsetting mental apples-carts is always exciting, true?” He stabbed a finger at the thick folder under my arm. “This is people,” he said. “Everything, in the end, is people.”

I looked into his burning eyes for a moment longer, then shrugged, and with his “fascinating” folder clamped under my arm, got out of there.

* * * * * *

In my apartment at the Spartan, I sped into the bedroom, tossed Hank’s folder atop the bed, stripped in record time and hopped into the shower. I was lathering up like a maniac when I forced myself to slo-ow do-own. I was acting as if I were still stuck in that time warp I’d slipped into at Omega. So what if I was a few minutes late getting to the Sybaris Lounge? Dane would forgive me, wouldn’t she? That lovely, bright, busty lady couldn’t possibly be such a stickler for promptness as was that dingdong Doctor William Tardiness-is-Unforgivable Wintersong.

So I finished soaping with the alacrity of a sloth, rinsed leisurely, and for half a minute let steaming water stream into the short-cropped hair atop my head, hot enough perhaps to stimulate circulation in the brain, as when poet Shelley would lie down with his head cooking near the fireplace before tossing off a verse or two. Then I turned off the hot water and briefly whooped in the shocking cold.

And in the middle of a whoop I thought again of Wintersong. Wintersong, almost tyrannical about time, obsessed with a visitor’s promptness: half a minute late and “you’re outa luck, pal, the Doc won’t see you till next Tuesday.”

I’d been much more than a half-minute late. Supposed to be in his office at two-thirty, out at two-forty, chop-chop, you’re dismissed, hurry-hurry. But when Wintersong had split, without so much as a “Your ten minutes are up,” his clock with its speeding second hand had shown the time, I remembered, as two fifty-eight p.m.

And what, I wondered, did that mean? Maybe that I should steam my head more often? Maybe that Wintersong had needed those extra minutes to tell me something—or learn something from me? Maybe nothing?

I rubbed down with a rough, nubby towel, padded back into the bedroom and dressed in a custom-tailored dark suit, white dress shirt with an extra half-inch rise in the collar and silver-nugget links in the French cuffs, plus a white-silk tie with a neck-snug Windsor knot. Also, shoulder harness and Colt .38 in the clamshell holster. But not any noticeable bulge or ripple in the fine weave of the dark cloth.

Admiring myself in the full-length mirror, I thought: Pret-ty snappy. I looked like a large, tanned, somewhat beat-up private eye dressed for chow at the Halcyon Hotel. Or maybe a muscular mortician about to bury some billionaires. I realized that my momentary dubiousness was due to the fact that I am unused to so little color in my garb, so I found a red-silk handkerchief and stuffed it into the suit jacket’s breast pocket. It helped. Not enough. But I was through fiddling and ready to go. With twenty-eight minutes to get there.

Turning from the mirror, I saw Hank’s folder filled with fascinating excitements where I’d tossed it atop the bed, half of the papers spilling out onto the spread. I stuffed them back into the folder and put it on my bedside night table, noticing that the top item was a stapled slick-paper article entitled, “The Rife Microscope—Is It Back?” and just beneath it a photocopied page headed, “Koch and his Glyoxylide: The Failure of Success.”

I smiled, without joy. Microscopes, Glyoxylides, maybe even clippings about germs or photographs of colonic adhesions. I was going to have a grand time with this stuff. Hank Hernandez didn’t know me as well as he thought. Momentarily, I wondered if that might be true of other things Hank thought he knew.

But then I split—hurry-hurry again—with twenty-six minutes to Dane.

* * * * * *

Dane Smith smiled brilliantly, beautifully, like an angel on spring vacation lamping something much more interesting than a billionaire’s undertakes, as I slid into the black padded-leather booth opposite her.

She was radiant, skin glowing healthily pink—partly reflection from the rose-colored tablecloth, mostly just glow from inside her—wearing a strapless cocktail dress the cool dark green of new leaves in forest shadows. It made her eyes seem more sparkling, brighter, bigger, deeper and very wise. That chestnut-red hair like burning rust was piled on her head, arranged—or maybe a better word would be coiffed, or professionally styled—in swirls of softness burning bright.

More softness—white, rounded, warm—was the curving swell of her breasts, revealed only a little, but obviously a little of a lot, at the “scooped” neckline curving down and around and up like a wide letter U, beneath which that soft swelling continued...and continued.

I looked with unconcealed appreciation and pleasure at Dane’s white teeth, curving lips, eyes, hair—everything, even cheekbones, and earlobes from which dangled long pear shaped earrings of pendulous emeralds, or green glass, no matter.

“Keep smiling like that,” I said. “Don’t even stop when we eat.”

“Okay,” she said, keeping her lips curved stiffly and kind of sticking her upper teeth out, “but I may sprain my mouth on the entrée.”

“Both of us may. Dane, you look so gorgeous—at least you did until just now—that I’m at a loss for...for...”

“Words?”

“Ah, you went and spoiled it. That’s what I was going to say. Eventually. It was on the tip of my...”

And right then she moved the tip of her tongue slowly between those plump red lips, left to right, back again, pink softness caressing curving redness, leaving her lips shining and moist. Moist and warm. Warm and receptive. Or, so I thought. And I also thought: Wow!

“The tip of your what?” she asked me innocently.

“Never mind what,” I said. “But if you do that again, the waiter may have to make a citizen’s arrest right here at the table.”

Wouldn’t you know? At that instant, a tall tuxedo-clad waiter, so handsome he looked like a flirty girl, stopped next to our booth and said, “May I he-elp you-ou?”

I said, “Not a chance.”

And Dane said, not to the waiter but to me, “I got here only a minute or two before you picked me up, so I haven’t ordered a drink yet.”

“You’re hinting, right?”

“Stolichnaya Vodka on the rocks.”

“Sounds good to me, lady.” Then I said to the waiter, “Just bring the whole samovar,” and he was not amused.

I’m usually a bourbon-and-water man, but sometimes... So I had Stolichnaya also, then another and a second for Dane. Along with pleasant conversation, fun, a few laughs, and the almost sinful pleasure of watching Dane’s lips move when she spoke, or smiled, or said “No!” and, especially, when she said “Yes!” Then a bit of seriousness, discussion of her books, my work, even a bit about happiness and sometimes sadness of growing up—in small towns, both of us—and then off on a tangent to laughter again.

That’s the way it went during the drinks, and then a truly impressive dinner in the adjacent Gourmet Room. After the dessert, we were talking about her current book and she said of Wintersong that he was unquestionably brilliant and, she was sure, an outstanding research scientist, but there seemed to be “something a little odd” about him.

“Something a lot odd,” I said. “But that’s just my impression from one brief meeting with the man. You know more about him than I do, if he’s a complete chapter in your book.”

“I do know a great deal about him, but mainly from research, cramming in medical journals, interviews with other people working on IFAI—I’ve been researching this book over a year now.”

“Wow, if a case of mine lasts more than a week I get antsy. But a year? I guess you don’t just sit down at the computer and bang out a non-fiction best-seller on weekends.”

She smiled. “Don’t I wish! It’s a full-time job, most weekends included. I began my research a year ago—thirteen months now—but I haven’t even started the final draft yet. And today was the first time I’ve actually met Dr. Wintersong. He’s notorious for not giving interviews to writers, or reporters.” She smiled again. “Or detectives. Has he hired you? I mean, is he in some kind of trouble?”

“Not that I know of. Fact is, I asked to see Wintersong, not the other way around. I’m checking up on a couple of people who used to work for him, that’s all. Incidentally, now that you’ve met him, what’s your impression of Wintersong? If you don’t mind telling me.”

She shrugged. “Impression from intellectual analysis, or intuition?”

“Both. I’ll confess, my interest is more than casual, even though Wintersong isn’t personally under investigation by me. At least, not yet.”

“Not yet,” she repeated, cocking her head on one side. “That’s interesting. Besides my books, Shell, I also do occasional articles and personality profiles, usually about notable doctors and scientists because that’s my area of expertise. The short pieces pay the bills while I’m waiting for royalties on the books. So, if you ever do start investigating Dr. Wintersong—though I can’t imagine why that would happen—I’d love to know when. And why.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Even if I didn’t have a client requiring secrecy,” I said casually, “I couldn’t guarantee I’d tell you the why until I know what it might be myself. Right now there isn’t any why—or investigation. But...” I hesitated, then continued, “after a couple of things that have happened today, I’m not sure there won’t be. If I do start digging into this guy, I could fill you in on any parts that might interest you, so long as it doesn’t compromise anyone else. In return, you could probably fill in a lot of blanks for me right now.”

“Sort of share and share alike?”

“Sort of. At the moment you know a lot more about the doctor than I do, but that could change. Might not, but it could.”

“Fair enough.” Dane nodded slowly. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Anywhere. I’d just like to know more about the man than I do, get a better picture of him—and his background, where he’s coming from. I know Wintersong started out as a neurosurgeon, and switched to research after an injury to his hand, but I don’t even know what kind of injury, or accident. Look, you said he’s got an entire chapter in your book, so why not give me the meat of that chapter?”

“Like giving you an advance peek at the galleys? Well, why not? Most of what I know is public information, anyway. Not all, but most of it. So, I’ll share my secrets with you, Shell.”

I liked the sound of that. I even started to tell her so, but noticed she’d turned her head as a busboy removed our dessert plates. And he was soon followed by our gorgeous waiter, who asked if we would like anything else.

Dane looked at me. “Coffee?” she asked, raising a neat dark brow. “I’ve heard raves about it, Shell. I think they grow their own beans, or at least do something special with them.”

“Fine, special coffee, then—you sure it won’t keep you awake?” I smiled significantly.

But she said, with a fetching sigh, “Nothing would keep me awake tonight. I’m bushed, jet lag, I guess.”

Would you believe none of all that gave me even a tiny clue? Not the “nothing,” certainly not the “bushed,” and not even the “jet lag.” So, still smiling significantly, I instructed the waiter to bring two coffees and one check.

As the waiter floated away, Dane leaned back against the cushioned leather behind her and said, “Chapter Twenty-Six, ‘Dr. William Wintersong: Waging War Against Death.’”

I managed not to wince visibly.

Dane went on, “The meat for Mr. Scott. Ready?”

“Ready?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I’ll confess that at first I simply enjoyed looking at the occasional sweep of long lashes over Dane’s green eyes, and the movement of her lips as she spoke of Wintersong’s early years, earning his medical degree and doing his internship—making him sound like a genius destined for greatness almost from the crib—but then she mentioned that he had begun his active medical career as a resident at the Grantland Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois—and I brought my attention back from wherever it had been going.

Because “Grantland” and “Chicago” rang a little bell, twitched a nerve of memory, much as earlier today I’d thought the name Wintersong might somehow be connected with monkeys. I hadn’t quite pulled it together yet; but instead of asking Dane about it I just let her continue, and she answered the unasked question.

“Within four years,” she went on enthusiastically, “he was the unquestionable ‘rising star’ of the renowned surgical team at Grantland, under Chief of Surgery Duncan Sherwood—now remembered primarily as hero, or villain, of the controversial ‘monkey-head scandal’ that infuriated every animal-rights group in the country and moved Congress to legislate an amendment to the Animal Protection Act. Barely into his thirties, Dr. Wintersong was even then recognized as one of the most skilled young neurosurgeons in the world, having performed hundreds of now-classic brain operations and delicate spinal surgery, including elegant spinal-cord microsurgery previously thought impossible, and then originating the Wintersong cervical nerve-block operation which is now standard procedure.”

Dane paused. “Are you already familiar with any of this, Shell? I can skip some of the details, if you’re not interested in all the background or ‘color’ stuff I’ve collected.”

“No, I’m interested. Don’t skip. I’d heard about the famous Wintersong spinal whatyoucallit—which, by the way he and I discussed briefly today. I’ll fill you in on that later. I also remember some of the monkey thing, of course, like everybody else, but I’d forgotten the guy’s name, the doctor. Sherwood, was it? Duncan Sherwood?”

“Yes. Even before beginning my research for this book, I thought Dr. Sherwood’s suicide was tragic, a waste, and a considerable loss to medical science no matter what he’d done. But the important thing, as far as this particular chapter about IFAI is concerned, was the profound effect Sherwood’s death, particularly by his own hand, obviously had on Dr. Wintersong. The two of them were very close, you know.”

I shook my head. “Until you mentioned it, I wasn’t even aware they’d worked in the same hospital. And I’ve only vague memories of Sherwood’s part in that monkey thing, bits and pieces. It must have been sixteen or eighteen years ago when I was just a big kid starting high school and in those days I was more interested in rah-rah football, and finding someone with your approximate, ah, appearance to take to the prom.”

“Well, all of that seventeen years ago was when I was...” She turned her head to one side, fluttering her eyelashes. “... hardly more than a pubescent child.”

I figured she’d spent maybe a month and a half in puberty before leaping speedily on through sizzling adolescence, but I kept such musings to myself. And listened, as Dane refreshed my memory.

“I didn’t remember very much about it myself, Shell. But this last week I read all the material in my files, because I knew I’d be seeing Dr. Wintersong today. What Dr. Sherwood had done, you’ll recall, was keep a capuchin monkey’s severed head alive for sixteen days. After many failures, of course....”

Of course. As she spoke, it came back to me, the newspaper reports, magazine cover stories, praise and condemnation on the TV news. Gradually, details had emerged. Dr. Duncan Sherwood, after years of research and hundreds of failed experiments, had surgically severed a monkey’s head from its body and kept the head alive for sixteen days. Some applauded Sherwood’s “elegant” research. Among these who did not applaud, some booed and railed and condemned, calling Sherwood everything from a butcher to the bastard reincarnation of Adolf Hitler.

Dane continued. “Anyway, the Chief of Surgery at Grantland Memorial, Dr. Sherwood—he was in his fifties then—and his brilliant young surgical star, Wintersong, were very close, almost like father and son. So when Sherwood died, or rather when the father-figure ended his own life—one bullet, from a forty-five caliber gun into his right temple and on up through his brain—it was extremely traumatic for Dr. Wintersong. Especially since it was Wintersong, and an on-duty nurse with him, who together, found the body. And blood, brains, pieces of skull all over, on Sherwood’s desk, a wall, even part of the ceiling.” She grimaced. “According to copies of police reports and photos I have in my files.”

“Sounds more like my files,” I said. “So Wintersong himself found his friend’s body? And all the yuck?”

“Yes, him and a surgical nurse who was with him.”

“Do you remember her name?”

“I did earlier this week, when I re-read the...” Dane half closed her eyes, a faint frown line appearing between her brows. “Her name was...Fallon. Margaret Fallon. The two of them were together in a hospital corridor, not far from Dr. Sherwood’s office, and both of them actually heard the shot. Naturally they rushed to that office and found the body. Although he must have been terribly upset, Dr. Wintersong immediately sent nurse Fallon to find and inform the hospital administrator, while he phoned the police. He also had sufficient presence of mind to keep everyone else out of the office until the police arrived and sealed the room—other doctors and nurses had also heard the gunshot, of course, and several of them gathered in the hallway. If Dr. Wintersong hadn’t taken charge, so to speak, there might have been any number of people bursting in and disturbing the scene, I think was the phrase.”

I must have raised an eyebrow at that last comment because she added, “I’m trying to recall the details accurately for you, reconstructing this as best I can from my reading of the official reports and Dr. Wintersong’s statement to the police.”

“And doing a good job of it, Dane,” I said. “I’d forgotten most of the grisly details, at least the ones I was aware of in those days, until you jogged my memory. I didn’t even remember Wintersong was so closely associated with Sherwood, but that must have stuck somewhere in my head. Because I connected Wintersong somehow, without knowing why, with monkeys.”

I paused briefly, thinking. “But those weren’t his experimental animals, they were Sherwood’s. Was there anything fishy about his suicide? Anything in Sherwood’s office disturbed or missing? Did he leave a suicide note?”

Her brows pulled down slightly over the big green eyes, but all Dane said was, “No, there wasn’t a note. But the previous day’s edition of the Tribune was on his desk—the issue revealing that Dr. Sherwood had done those previously unknown, and successful, experiments on two other monkeys. If you remember.”

“Yeah, I do now. One of them survived for three weeks or so, and the other one put on life support at the same time—other head, at least—was still alive when Sherwood killed himself, right?”

“Almost right. The lab in Grantland Memorial where he’d done that...those experiments wasn’t checked until an hour or so after his body was taken to the morgue, and it was discovered then that the one remaining monkey was also dead, the life-support system turned off, or whatever Dr. Sherwood would have done to—to end it.”

“Probably just pull a plug. No electricity, no life, same as us people. Or light bulbs.”

Down came those brows again. After a second or two of what seemed like thick silence, Dane said, “Anyway, on his desk was that issue of the Tribune, with the front-page revelations about those two most-recent monkey-head experiments, and next to it another section, opened to the editorial page, where there was a box of very critical comments from the editor. It’s assumed that after reading the front-page story and those negative comments, maybe for the tenth time, Dr. Sherwood went to his lab and, well, pulled the plug on his final experiment, then returned to his office and did it. There was blood and stuff on those pages of the newspaper.”

Dane paused, then added, “But there wasn’t anything fishy about it, not as far as I know. And there wasn’t anything stolen, or missing....” She stopped. There was still a little crease between hew brows. “Except...”

“Except? You mean something was swiped?”

“No, I don’t mean that.” Dane leaned slightly forward, as though about to say something sharp to me, but apparently thought better of it. “It’s just that Dr. Sherwood was noted for his habit of keeping very detailed notes about everything he did in each of his experiments. He kept all of those notes—handwritten in small, but neat and very legible script, I’ve seen some of the pages—in individual leather-bound loose-leaf notebooks. He must have had nearly a hundred of them, one for each research project, all identical except for the title, or project name, he burned into the spine of each notebook, so they could be easily read when they were all lined up in a little bookcase he had.”

“Burned? You mean with one of those things like a little branding iron?”

“Yes. Probably something like those instruments people use to make designs in leather. The title were all short, only one word, or maybe two. A couple I remember were ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Rejuve’—probably short for ‘Rejuvenation,’ I’d guess. Some others were just names, like ‘Pepe’ or ‘Willie’ or ‘Tommy,’ and so on.”

“Pepe—or Willie or Tommy? That’s curious.”

“Why curious? They didn’t have to mean anything special except to Dr. Sherwood. Anyway, what I was getting to, his notes for what’s been called his last ‘monkey-head’ experiment—the one he pulled the plug on—weren’t complete. They ended abruptly six weeks before his death, which was unusual. There were about forty filled pages, then the notes just stopped.”

“This monkey notebook was loose-leaf, like all the others?”

“Yes, identical. Except, of course for the name, or word, ‘Jock’ on the spine, to identify it. My guess is that Dr. Sherwood was getting so depressed by some of the really nasty criticism that he just didn’t feel like writing down every—”

“Wait a minute. What the hell did you say?”

“I assume he was depressed, actually suffering from profound clinical depression, and simply didn’t feel like—”

“No, the subject word, the name burned into the notebook’s spine.”

“Jock? I told you the books all had different identifying words that didn’t have to mean anything except to Dr. Sherwood. Certainly I don’t know what they stood for.”

“I’m not sure I do, either. But...”

I stopped, a sudden rush of cold, almost like a tangible chill wind blowing over snow, prickling the back of my neck.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There was a brief moment when Dane, the booth, the softly lighted interior of the Gourmet Room melted away, even the sounds of conversation and laughter, clinking of silverware on white china, faded into stillness. And in that strange quietness I was seeing again, vividly, the appealing brown face of Jock-Jock, thick lips parted and curving into what looked like a smile. In an odd jerky fraction of a second before the Gourmet Room, Dane, all the rest came back from wherever they’d gone, I saw the brown head starting to snap forward, the lips spreading, and somewhere within my mind I actually heard the ugly sodden sound of that mechanized hammer striking the back of Jock-Jock’s skull.

“Are you all right? Shell? What’s the matter?”

I licked my lips, surprised that they were so suddenly dry. “Nothing. I just thought of something.” What I’d been reaching for didn’t make any sense at all, those remembered sights and imagined sounds couldn’t have any connection to something that had happened seventeen years ago. “Well, where were we?” I went on. “Yeah, I wanted to mention, when I was picturing those moments just before Sherwood shot himself, it lined up like—sound of gunshot, Wintersong and nurse Fallon are the first persons to reach the office, Wintersong sends the nurse for help and then keeps everybody else out until the cops take over, right?”

“That’s right. Is something bothering you?”

“Only that the police wouldn’t have arrived for at least five or ten minutes, maybe longer—assuming Wintersong called the law immediately. So for at least that long he was alone in Sherwood’s office. With the corpse, the notebooks, whatever was in there.”

“So? Would it have been better to let the entire staff rush in? He’s a doctor, you know, he understands what the police wish done in cases of unusual deaths. I thought Dr. Wintersong showed admirable decisiveness and good sense. Apparently you, uh, don’t agree?”

“I’m not quite sure, Dane. Maybe he just rubs me the wrong way. But I get the distinct impression you’ve got more than a little admiration for the good doctor.”

“I do admire him, Shell, or at least the work he’s doing. He’s not only been able to build a brilliant second life in medical research—after being forced to give up an outstanding career in neurosurgery, as you know—but there can’t be anything more important that finding a cure for IFAI, can there?”

“Well...”

I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question. But my response turned out to be unnecessary because I noticed Dane turning her head as our waiter approached the booth, coming back with our coffee. It looked like more than six-bucks-a-cup caffeine, however, because the guy was pushing before him a four-wheeled cart on which were a couple of silver bowls, a pair of tall but quite thin white cups, and two shiny pieces of mysterious machinery.

While we waited, and conversation lagged, our waiter brewed the brew alongside our booth, making such a production of it that I started thinking this stuff might be worth twelve bucks after all. He ground three or four varieties of little beans into a fine powder, using one piece of machinery, then dumped the result into a separate gleaming metallic contraption and poured steaming water in on top of it. The entire process consumed five or six minutes and produced two dinky cups of ominous-looking brown liquid. And my ominous-looking check.

But soon I had to admit that it—the coffee—was worth waiting for: smooth on the tongue, not bitter but almost as strong as just chewing the beans.

Dane sipped, closed her eyes and said, “Mmmmm.” Then, blinking at me, “That’s delicious. It actually tastes as good as coffee smells in the morning.”

“Well put. Great flavor, all right, but there’s sure a lot of it. I’ll bet this stuff would keep even Rip Van Winkle awake. All night. What do you bet?”

Apparently she didn’t want to bet anything yet, and merely repeated, “Mmmmm.” Then, “I could become addicted to this, Shell.”

“Probably ought to be available only on prescription, like other drugs. Hey, maybe for a big enough tip the waiter would inject it straight into our veins—and neither of us would fall asleep for a week—”

“Oh, that reminds me of an interesting thing I just read, Shell—your mentioning drugs made me think of it again. On the plane coming here this morning I was reading a book about a designer drug called... something or other, and how if affected various people. It’s supposed to open the heart chakra, the fourth one, make people more open, more friendly, more loving—”

“Sounds like a winner to me—”

“—more caring. This one woman said that, after taking the drug, she just sort of expanded out of her body and into—actually seemed to become—space and suns and stars, the universe, everything. And I was particularly struck by one thing she said: she suddenly understood that the entire universe, all of creation, is a continuous cosmic orgasm. I thought that was just beau—”

“No wonder I’m horny.”

“—tiful... You’re what? No wonder you’re what?”

Charming Dane was squinting at me uncharmingly, and finally I got it: we were having two different conversations. And I figured out something else: there is a time for horny and a time for not-horny, and for me this was a time for not.

So, to smooth over an unquestionably sticky moment, I said smoothly, “Forget it. Now, this drug addict, er, this woman, all by herself proved the Big Bang theory which, for years, literally thousands of scientists and astronomers... yes? No? Well, forget that, too. Ah, I was just wondering, Dane. Wondering—about Dr. Wintersong, I think it was. Yeah, him. Where did you leave off?”

Lovely, charming Dane squinted at me uncharmingly for another second or two, then relaxed and sighed. And, almost, started to smile, I thought. But probably I was wrong. Again.

“I believe I’d mentioned how important I feel Dr. Wintersong’s work on IFAI is.” After a long pause she continued, “That was just before the waiter arrived with his coffee beans... and hypodermic needle.”

And then she did smile. Beautifully. So, she was no longer mad at me, maybe. Not even miffed, maybe. At least, that is how I interpreted it, clinging to optimism. But I merely nodded, instead of risking opening my mouth again. And tried to nod with enthusiasm.

“Well...” Dane went on, getting that look of concentration once more, small frown wrinkle between her arched brows. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the incredible spread of IFAI is the most important, and frightening, public-health problem in the world today. After all, that’s what my whole book is about.”

I nodded, enthusiastically.

“And I do truly feel that Dr. Wintersong might be the one researcher most likely to find a cure. When I was talking to him today, I got the impression—only an impression, he didn’t actually say it—that he may be very close to perfecting a vaccine to prevent the terrible disease, may even have done it already. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Yeah. He didn’t come right out and say he’d cooked up a vaccine, right?”

“No, but if he has—or does in the future—and saves millions of lives, that would make him just about the most important physician, most important person, in the world today. Wouldn’t you agree, Shell?”

“Well, if he saved millions of lives, that would sure make him important. Probably also get him a whole bunch of awards, big federal grants—”

“He’d get the Nobel Prize. There wouldn’t be any question about it, the Nobel for Medicine couldn’t possibly go to anyone else. I’m quite familiar with the achievements of past winners—my first book was on the Nobel, you know.”

“Oh? Sorry, I didn’t know. I haven’t been exactly up to my neck in medical investigations... Until just lately, maybe.”

“Well, it was my first published title, and it didn’t get on any of the best-seller lists. But The Nobel had a decent sale, and was very well received in the scientific community. Dr. Wintersong told me he loved the book.”

“Then he’d read it?”

“Read it twice, he told me—music to an author’s ears. Once when it was first published, and again after I wrote him asking for an interview. In fact, he said it was my unusual understanding of the many difficulties confronted and overcome by former winners on their way to the Prize that convinced him he should grant me the interview.”

She paused. “His exact words were that it was my remarkably objective and sympathetic—for a lay person—recounting of their ‘long and lonely but loving labors’ that most impressed him. I wrote it down, maybe I can use the quote somewhere.”

“Assuming he didn’t swipe it from Swinburne. Objective and sympathetic... reminds me of his eliminating the unavoidable. I’m starting to wonder if there’s something really wacky in this guy’s thought processes, some zigs where zags ought—”

“Eliminating... what?” she eyed me blankly. “Wacky?”

“Not important—I was just recalling some of the doc’s dialogue with me. I gather he brought up the Nobel Prize, at least your book about it, right?”

“Yes, and while we were discussing some of the great Eureka moments of the past in science and medicine—like the double-helix breakthrough when Crick and Watson and Wilkins solved the DNA code—I told Dr. Wintersong that if he did discover a drug to cure IFAI or even a vaccine to prevent it, I knew he’d be the next Nobel Laureate in Medicine.”

“And I’ll bet he didn’t stalk out of the room in a fit of anger.”

She gave me a rather sharp look. “We all like appreciation or praise, particularly if we deserve it, don’t we? And my comment was honest opinion, not flattery.”

“I know that, Dane. I was just interested in Wintersong’s reaction. What did he say about his Nobel Laureate possibilities?”

“Just that it would be the greatest possible honor, and one which he wouldn’t deserve. But then he chuckled, even laughed a little—he can be quite charming, you know.”

“I guess it’s possible. Also it’s possible I wasn’t exposed to any of it because I kept him waiting for at least two minutes while I was knocking you down.”

She smiled again. “Our meeting was a memorable introduction, wasn’t it?”

“Nicest shock I can remember.”

“Well, next time try to be a little less reckless, and more gentle with me, Shell.”

I smiled, opened my smiling mouth, and said—nothing. Didn’t have time. Whenever Dane gave me an opening she instantly closed it, and this was a little bit worrisome. Also at that moment a fragment of worrisome memory flickered—something to do with jets and bushes and legs—but Dane was speeding on.

“As I was saying about Dr. Wintersong, he laughed and commented that, should such an unlikely combination of fortuitous events culminate in his being awarded the most coveted and prestigious prize in medicine, the Nobel, he feared he might find himself unable to refuse so great and rare and humbling an honor.”

“You’re quoting him, aren’t you? I hope.”

“Word-for-word, most likely. I’ve an almost freakishly retentive memory of things I hear or read, if they might fit into one of my books.”

“Good. Good for you, I mean. But this guy Wintersong, yeah, there’s got to be something wacky about this guy.“

“You don’t like him at all, do you?”

“I guess not. And I’ll bet a buck to a bean that he’s spent more than a little time thinking covetously about the much-coveted Nobel and his chances of actually nabbing the Prize—despite those faint protestations of unworthiness while chuckling charmingly.”

“What would make you think that?”

“Only about nine things you’ve told me he did or said. Yeah, the more I think—”

“But why don’t you like Dr. Wintersong, Shell?”

“I’m not really sure. He just—he bugs me.”

“Well, I can’t understand why you’d feel that way, Shell. I really can’t. He is—or was—a wonderful neurosurgeon, and is a truly brilliant scientist and researcher now, recognized as such by everybody in medicine. Don’t forget, it was Dr. Wintersong who discovered and cultured the IFAI virus when all attempts by others to isolate the organism had completely failed—”

“Couldn’t find it, could they? Think about that. What if they were all looking for a needle in a haystack with no needles until Nobel-coveting Winter—”

“—and, Shell, even you would have to admit, wouldn’t you, that he’s a great researcher, a great man, if he actually perfects a vaccine for prevention of this terrible, terrible plague that’s killed so many innocent victims, a vaccine to immunize everybody against IFAI?” She sighed, almost reverently I thought. “If, God willing, he actually succeeds.”

“Hell, he already has...” I stopped then added quickly, “I mean, maybe he’s already done it. Could’ve already grown quintrillions of the little devils and killed them in cold blood and cooked them in acid and zapped them with cobalt and sprinkled their wee corpses with formaldehyde... and whatever else they... No?”

As Dane began squinting at me again, I realized there were two separate trains of thought in my mind, headed for collision. One was triggered by clear and almost audible recall of several statements made to me by Henry Hernandez, M.D., possibly baseless or even crazy statements that were nonetheless still itching inside my head. The other was that Dane seemed almost to bristle when I waxed less than lyrical about Dr. William Wintersong, and I knew I was probably about to make her bristle some more.

I sighed and said, “Maybe Dr. Wintersong will turn out to be America’s Hero, or maybe something else entirely. Didn’t you just suggest how wonderful it would be if he came up with a vaccine to immunize everybody against IFAI?”

“Of course I did.”

“Dane, it’s the ‘everybody’ that bothers me. What if Wintersong’s patented shots-for-everybody turned out to be not so wonderful, actually harmful or maybe even lethal for some people—after all mankind had been stuck with it?”

Yeah, she was squinting at me again. But I blundered on, “There are some people, Dane, not all of them dummies, who say all vaccinations are harmful, that so-called immunizations don’t really immunize. And that most of the kids who get measles, say, or whooping cough, are the ones repeatedly vaccinated to prevent measles... or the whoop...”

“What utter rot!” she said heatedly.

I was in trouble. Dane was shaking her head, the Gourmet Room’s subdued lighting brushing spots of shimmering amber into her rust-red hair, and it would have been an absolutely gorgeous sight if she hadn’t been simultaneously bristling and squinting.

“I simply don’t understand you, Shell,” she continued rapidly. “Why wouldn’t it be wonderful if Dr. Wintersong, or any other scientist, perfected a vaccine to prevent an invariably fatal illness, or perfected a drug to cure it? When we talk about IFAI we’re not speaking of statistics but people—men and women and children—who are dying. I can’t think of anything more important—at least as far as public health is concerned—than ending this terrible epidemic, preventing the deadly disease from spreading. You can’t possibly disagree with that, can you?”

It was funny—funny peculiar, not amusing—but Dane’s words fell seriously atilt upon my ears. Most of those words and phrases sounded twisted, warped—sounded actually dumb. And I realized suddenly that everything she’d said would have made pretty good sense to me—yesterday. But not today.

Before talking to, or being enthusiastically brainwashed by, Hank Hernandez, while I’d not been a devout disciple of modern medicine I had assumed it was at least a better way-to-go than almost anything else available, and at best a dedicated army of healers possessed of scientific truth and stethoscopes and scalpels and tons of bug-poisoning chemicals, fighting the good fight to annihilate advancing forces of a hundred, maybe even a thousand, diseases. Diseases so virulent and deadly that if specially anointed human beings did not attack and destroy them, those murderous microbes would attack and destroy us. Somehow. It was never absolutely clear exactly how... just somehow, or other.

Entirely aside from Hank, however, during more than one previous job I’d become acquainted with “holistic” physicians, or orthodox M.D.s who’d strayed from—and in at least one case become militantly opposed to—the rigidly-enforced dogmas of orthodoxy. Moreover, my doctor friend Paul had laid upon me a few tales of monstrous medical error or malpractice never aired outside the medical fraternity itself and thus unknown or too often unsuspected by the public at large. Even so, until now I’d been inclined to say to myself, “So who’s perfect?” and ignore most of the nagging pressure of insistent doubt. For to doubt was to question science, universal law, revealed truth, even to suggest that our medical gods might be not only fallible but actually dangerous to our health.

Now, though, something had changed. Changed in me. Maybe Hank’s tirades hadn’t convinced me everything he’d said was true, or that any of it was sacrosanct, part of a new medical gospel also not to be questioned. But he’d for sure shaken my thinking, forced me to look with a less innocent and trusting eye upon such normally accepted blessings of the medical priesthoods as “immunization” and “chemicals/drugs to cure” and “terminal” illnesses. Because now, whether I liked it or not, I couldn’t hear even someone as intelligent and well-informed—and well-formed—as Dane mentioning such usually unquestioned articles of the orthodox faith without simultaneously hearing Hank’s heretical condemnation of them all: “Bugshit”... “symptom-squashing”...synthetic drugs that never cure but often “cripple or kill”... and “Nothing is incurable, nothing!”

But I didn’t lay any of that on Dane, merely said, “I can’t, and don’t, deny the virtue of keeping men and women and children alive—and healthy—as long as possible. I’m just not sure making them sick is the way to do it.”

“Making them sick? Shell, you must not understand the scientific basis for immunization at all—”

“Who does?” I interrupted, smiling, convinced it was time to change the subject. “Incidentally, a couple of minutes ago you mentioned seeing police reports, official photos and such, from the investigation of Dr. Sherwood’s suicide. Including a statement from Wintersong, right?”

After a brief pause she said, “Yes, I’ve copies of most of that material.”

“I suppose the police also took a statement from the nurse. Name...Margaret Fallon?”

“Yes, It was basically the same as Dr. Wintersong’s statement, of course. Except that when he entered Sherwood’s office she left to inform the hospital Director.”

“Didn’t she go into the office herself? I mean, did Wintersong tell her the guy was dead, go find the chief, or did she actually see the body?”

Dane looked blank for a moment. “I don’t really know, Shell. But judging by the photos I have, she surely would have seen the splattered material on the wall and desk, even if she never went inside the door. What difference does it make?”

“Probably none. Just poking around, force of habit. This Fallon, do you know where she is now, or if she’s still at Grantland Memorial?”

“Well, that was a long time ago, I don’t even know if she’s still in nursing. Almost immediately after the suicide and all that scandal, she left Grantland and went somewhere else. Florida, I think. Probably to another hospital, but I wasn’t, and I’m not, the least bit interested in doing research on Margaret Fallon.” She smiled. “My book is called IFAI, you know.”

“Right. And IFAI and Wintersong are almost synonymous these days, so maybe you can fill in another blank about the doctor for me. I know he made the big career change from surgery to medical research—starting out pretty high up in the business, as head of Omega—only a year or two after his friend’s suicide. Not because of that tragedy and all the media hullabaloo, but apparently because of some kind of injury to his right hand, which you mentioned earlier. Do you know what kind of injury or accident it was?”

“A gunshot, a bullet from a hunting rifle. It went through the side of his palm below his little finger. For most people, it wouldn’t have been a very serious wound. There was some nerve damage, but Dr. Wintersong has almost full use of that hand and it looks normal. Just not normal enough for a neurosurgeon.”

“A hunting rifle? Did it happen there, in Chicago?”

“No, in Africa.”

“Africa? What the hell was Wintersong doing in Africa? For that matter, what was he doing with a rifle...or did somebody else shoot him?”

“Nobody shot him, Shell. Not on purpose, at least. It was an accident. He’d been invited by Mr. Belking—Hobart Belking, of the pharmaceutical company here in Los Angeles—to be Mr. Belking’s guest on his annual hunting expedition, or wild-game safari. It was in Zimbabwe that year, and Mr. Belking’s gun went off, or he dropped it—I don’t know exactly what happened, just that the bullet injured Dr. Wintersong’s hand.”

“Belking. Yeah, Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals... Hold it a second, Dane.”

I was beginning to pin the guy down, finally. I remembered that Hank had mentioned his name this morning, along with something like “lion-and-elephant killer,” but it had made only a glancing impression then because Hank zipped and zoomed in so many conversational directions that dialogue with him was sometimes like a verbal kaleidoscope.

But now I recalled hearing of, reading of, Hobart Belking and his giant drug business, his enormous wealth, his philanthropies. And, yes, his “safaris” or big-game treks into the wilds and woolies, banging away with everything but bazookas at any non-human life form that moved. Something else, too, recently, that had interested me, something newsworthy.

“Got it,” I said. The museum. Belking’s damned animal museum. Within the last few days I’d read a half-page story in the L.A. Times about the imminent opening of “Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum,” accompanied by a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Belking. The photo was of a short, squat, wide, very solid-looking guy who appeared to weigh a ton and a half, smiling with teeth like sawed-off tusks, standing next to Mrs. Belking, who was two or three inches taller than hubby and nearly a ton and a half lighter. That is, she appeared to be not quite six feet tall, not quite a hundred pounds, and not quite anything else wonderfully appetizing. The sober, even sour, expression on her long thin unsmiling face contrasted sharply with the tusklike grin stretching her husband’s square, beefy chops. Neither of them looked like a lot of fun.

The story had appeared in what was sometimes called the Society section, captioned as “Happenings!” and written by a reporter whose byline was “Tuti,” who declared that Mr. and Mrs. Belking had been interviewed “by Tuti, personally” upon their return from Europe in time for “the much, much anticipated opening, on Monday, October 27, of ‘Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum.’” It was also revealed that the long, angular creature wearing the expression of one watching the Black Plague approaching and a skirt that exposed her knee-knobs was “Mr. Hobart Belking’s much younger and so charming wife, Sybil.”

In truth, I didn’t read every word of Tuti’s story. No matter, I had already become acquainted with the most important facts, to me, about Hobart, and those details were coming back into memory now. He was unquestionably one of the most avid and “successful” hunters in the country, probably in the world, since he had made almost a separate career of killing animals for kicks, or for sport—which presumably is why he and his brothers-in-arms called themselves “sportsmen,” an appellation which, if accurate, means a matador is a veterinarian—and had blown away at least two or three thousand individual samples of life’s various expressions during his many safaris and expeditions and plinkings and treks.

Yes, I’d tagged him now, owner of revolvers, semi-automatic pistols, rifles and shotguns, derringers and possibly Uzis. With one or more of those weapons, though presumably not all, he repeatedly went big-game hunting, little-game hunting, and anywhere-in-between-game hunting. He had also sportily ended the gentle lives of nearly every breed of bird that ever flew in sunny skies—duck and goose and quail, pheasant and dove, anything bright and feathery that stretched its soaring wings in airy blueness.

I figured if nothing else was available Belking would shoot canaries in cages. Certainly he would if they were blue-ribbon prize canaries, and unquestionably should one of them happen to be the finest, grandest, most-special yellow bird that ever lived.

Why not? He had already “taken” or “captured” or “harvested” the biggest Kodiak bear, the strongest Alaskan elk, the most magnificently-antlered Wyoming deer, whatever was the best and finest and most beautiful of its kind, and insisted he was “thinning” the herd in order to prevent later starvation among its unsavaged remainder.

When you looked at it like the—upside-down—you had to admit that Hobart Belking was one of the most caring and compassionate friends that corpses could possibly have. Some of those corpses, expertly preserved, would be on display at his much-ballyhooed Museum; but for most of his trophies, or prizes, he kept only the heads and threw the rest of the former animals away.

“Hobart Belking,” I said to Dane. “Yeah, I’ve heard of him. A sweetheart. You say he and Wintersong are buddies? Go on safaris in Africa, have fun shooting things together?”

“Well, they’re friends—very good friends now. Besides being business associates as well.”

“Lots of businesses, or just Omega?”

“Mainly the Omega Medical Research Institute, but all by itself that’s big business. And in time it could become mega-business, very big.”

“Especially if they manage to develop and patent an IFAI vaccine, right?”

“Of course. But the patent wouldn’t be Omega’s. They do the R&D—experimental procedures, culturing viruses and pathogenic bacteria, testing drugs on animals and so forth—but the patents for any vaccines or new drugs would be owned by Belking-Gray.”

Dane told me it had been about ten years since Belking had formed a corporation to build the Omega Medical Research Institute, and he still owned most of the stock. Omega was a privately-held corporation, unlike the pharmaceutical company which was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. She also said it was Belking himself who had offered Wintersong his position as President and CEO of Omega. The two men had been only acquaintances then, but were close friends now.

And then it was time to go. I had already paid the check, so we slid from our booth and walked out of the Gourmet Room, through the Sybaris Lounge where I’d met Dane two hours earlier—where now, four scraggly adolescents were either beginning to play a bit of music or tuning their instruments—and into the Halcyon’s lobby, then up the elevator.

Up to the sixth floor, and together down the hall to Dane’s room. She didn’t object to my arm around her waist, and I didn’t object an iota to the soft sensuality of her rounded hip moving, touching, almost—or so it seemed to me, in the fevers that sometimes rise in fervid imagination—promising even more intimate pressures and caresses, soon, soon, almost now....

At her door, she unlocked it and turned, lifting her face to look up at me, those great green eyes filled with slumbrous darkness, with magic, with—or so it seemed to me—even more sensual promise than her provocative hip.

I knew, or at least confidently assumed, that Dane would invite me inside. Perhaps with a gay little laugh, or a “Just for a minute or two, maybe for a drink or two?” Possibly even a couple of Martinis! I feverishly imagined. Ah, this was the perfect ending to a marvelous evening. I was sure glad now that I’d restrained myself and hadn’t turned her off with more talk about bugs and vaccines and slimy glop.

I could tell Dane expected me to kiss her. I, too, expected it. For openers. Wow, I thought exuberantly, kisses and Martinis and hot green eyes and sizzling hips or, at least so far, hip... what a way to go! Kisses in the hallway, kisses in the room, kisses outside and inside and wherever she wanted some, including between Martinis.

Her eyes, heavy-lidded, were on mine, growing larger, nearer and larger... and then her parted lips—

Words failed me. Nothing else did, but words and even whole sentences would have been utterly inadequate to describe merely the initial pucker. To report on the entire osculation would have required roman candles and flaming Ferris wheels and a couple of spinning constellations merely to commence a beginning.

When it was over, temporarily, she squeezed my hands in her hands and moved all four hands outward. Something new? What was she up to? I wondered. As I wondered, she stepped back slightly.

After a few more moments, just enough to get my bearings, I smiled joyously at Dane Smith, and opened my mouth to say—nothing. Again. Again, she beat me to it.

With her eyes filled with obvious glints and gleams of lust, with her hot lips moistly parted in wild promise, Dane said passionately, “Good night, Shell,” and then—probably you won’t believe this; probably I won’t, either—apparently turned into a door....

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In my living room at the Spartan Apartment Hotel, relaxed on my divan, heavy Cordovans propped atop the scarred coffee table and phone still pressed against my left ear, I wondered about Dane Smith.

Why, after bestowing upon me a much-more-than-merely-friendly kiss, one of such indescribable voluptuousness that parts of it were undoubtedly still volupting in astral dimensions normally unreachable by human lips, had she vanished? A kiss like that had to mean something. But what? Certainly something besides “Good night.” It had to mean something else.

Puzzles, puzzles....

Another puzzle was the presence of those two burly apes I’d met—or who’d met me—in the parking lot when I tottered down there after leaving Dane’s door thinking: “Good night? What do you mean good night?”

Well, I just had to face it: she’d made a mistake.

And, no question about it, so had those two lobs in the parking lot. The ones I’d left on the asphalt and expected to interrogate severely upon my return. I felt the raw soreness underneath my left bicep, remembering I’d returned to find only asphalt—and a new Mercedes Benz sedan speeding away.

That wasn’t proof my knife-wielding attackers had been in the Mercedes. But where else? They sure as hell hadn’t left under their own power. I was waiting with considerable curiosity to learn what Sgt. Bob Denn and his LAPD computer would come up with.

Soon he was saying, “Got it, Shell. You know how to pick ‘em, don’t you?”

“What’s the registration?”

“Big shot this time. Hobart Belking.”

He went on to give me other info including the Belking’s home address, and I said, “Much thanks, Bob,” and hung up.

Hobart Belking. Why wasn’t I surprised? Hobart—very likely the “Hobie” written in a bold heavy hand at the top of that “Visitors” sheet I’d signed at Omega earlier today. Drug company multi-millionaire, maybe half-billionaire. Wintersong’s buddy. Mighty hunter. But protector of hoods and heavies? Stalker of game in the L.A. jungle? I guessed I would have to ask Hobie himself about that.

Tomorrow.

I stripped, showered off the L.A. smog and some more of my dried blood, put on a robe then padded into the bedroom. It was still early, not yet nine p.m., and I figured I’d see what was on the tube, catch the local news, and get a full night’s sleep for a change.

But when I turned on the bedside lamp, light splashed on that thick folder I’d placed on the night table earlier, before driving to the Halcyon Hotel and Dane. Yeah, the file of “excitements” that Hank Hernandez had given me—or, practically forced upon me. I sighed.

Well, I had told Hank I’d look at the stuff. Man’s gotta do what he says he’s gonna do. So I plopped the file on my bed, plopped myself next to it, and looked. And looked. I missed the TV news; didn’t even turn the set on.

If Hank had told me I might read even one of his articles or clipped-together “files” all the way through, his misplaced optimism would have amused me. No way anyone could have made me believe, in advance of the fact, that—except for a half-hour break between ten and eleven p.m.—I would read his strange, fascinating, and sometimes appalling collection for six solid hours and sack out weary-eyed long after three o’clock in the morning.

But that’s what I did.

I had never read anything like this collection of queer stuff before. It included newspaper clippings, pages from medical journals, photocopied articles from magazines with strange-sounding names, and numerous others.

There were also a lot of individual packets of stapled-together pages—some thin, only three or four pages, others containing twenty pages or more—photocopied from various books, with the top page of each a copy of the cover or title page of the publication it had been copied from. Just reading the titles was not only a shock but a peculiarly eye-opening education. I didn’t read them all. But I read enough. And before I finished I was wondering if Hank might not be the sanest man I’d met in my life—but that was at three in the morning.

At nine p.m.—probably what got me started, the initial hook that pulled me into the rest of it—I merely opened the folder and flipped through its contents, wondering if there might be a little package on Wintersong, or even Belking, info that could save me time and trouble, let me do legwork the easy way. There was. In fact, there was a thick package on each of them. I read them both.

There weren’t any astonishing revelations, but when I’d finished I knew a good deal more about both men and their relationship, which was very close both professionally and socially. Part of the material consisted of clippings from newspapers and magazines, but half a dozen pages were typed, with no indication of who’d prepared them. Maybe Henry Hernandez? Hank had said he’d made this file of copies for me, so I found a red pen and marked a few paragraphs, underlined parts that most interested me.

Corroborating what Dane had said, I read that William Wintersong, M.D. had been offered the position of Director of Research at Omega by Hobart Belking, who in later printed interviews congratulated himself upon his “brilliant choice.” It would have been difficult to argue with Belking about that. For, working with the aid of a three-year twenty-million-dollar grant from Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals, before Wintersong’s first year as Director ended a steady stream of new prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications had begun flowing from Omega to Belking-Gray, and thence into hospitals, doctors’ offices, and drugstores. And, of course, into people.

Now, sixteen years after becoming head of Omega, Wintersong was not only recognized in financial circles as the “Wizard” who had overseen development of products that helped Belking-Gray move from number 381 on the list of Fortune-500 Companies to number 65—with a consequent mouth-watering rise in the company’s stock price—but was also respected and honored in the medical world as one of the country’s foremost medical researchers.

Indeed, among honors of which I’d been previously unaware—Dane hadn’t mentioned it to me this evening—Wintersong had last year received the super-prestigious Anderson J. Martin Award for his direction of and personal contributions to the Omega effort culminating in identification and isolation of the virus which, most orthodox medical experts agree, caused IFAI. This was, of course, not a cure for the invariably fatal disease, but it was unquestionably the essential first step toward “finding and patenting” a cure, or at least a treatment.

It was also the breakthrough that enabled public health services and individual physicians to test people for the presence in their blood of antibodies to the IFAI virus. I learned, for the first time, that the deadly microorganism—which I’d never before heard called anything but “the IFAI virus”—had been officially designated by the CDC as IFAI III, or Invariably Fatal Immunodeficiency Virus #3; and that it was #3 because the #1 (I) and #2 (II) viruses isolated by Wintersong and his expert team of virologists, serologists, bacteriologists, chemists, and microbiologists, later turned out to be not IFAI III, which or course hadn’t been invented yet, but “foreign retroviral” contamination of the culture by some still-unidentified substance in the nutrient medium necessary for successful culture, or growth, of the elusive virus.

The ingredients finally selected by Dr. Wintersong for that medium, after numerous other combinations of nutrients had been tried without success—or the laboratory cell culture “recipe” that finally worked—were listed, and I read them with strange sensations, many of them in the area of my abdomen and duodenum. Along with items completely unintelligible to me, because they were apparently written in the Latin spoken by illiterates on the streets of ancient Rome, were a few I could comprehend: ground-up African Green-Monkey kidneys, pig plasma prepared from blood syringed or sucked out of the live pig hearts, yolks of fertile turkey eggs, extract of macerated unborn (aborted) human embryos, beef broth from bouillon cubes, and liquefied mouse livers.

How, I wondered, did they happen to think of bouillon cubes?

But probably the most interesting thing I learned during the half hour spent reading the Wintersong and Belking packages was that Hobart Belking was an ex-con. Well, sort of.

He’d grown up in the south, only son of wealthy and politically-connected Furman Belking, owner of a chain of “Furman’s” drug stores. Hobart was now fifty-one years old, but when he was a callow youth of nineteen he had been—allegedly—the leader of a teenage gang that stole approximately two hundred expensive automobiles, stripped them, and sold the parts to real criminals.

Belking and most members of this crew were tried, convicted and jugged. But after sixteen months of detention in a youth facility—or one day after his twenty-first birthday—the Governor of the Southern state granted him a full pardon, citing “new evidence” and “technical errors” and a “miscarriage of justice,” and Hobie was then and thereafter free as a bird.

All of that was part of the typed information, and there wasn’t any documentation other than dates and place of arrest and trial, plus the name of the juvenile-detention facility. Still, those dates and names could be checked, so there was a starting point; if, of course, there should be any reason for starting.

However, Hobie’s juvenile crime spree had occurred a long time ago, thirty-two years ago. And in today’s climate a lot of otherwise functional citizens, some in the name of “Christian charity” and some merely out of sincere suicidal imbecility, think criminals should be automatically forgiven for anything they did the day before yesterday.

It is perhaps unnecessary to say that I am not one of those citizens. I figure it’s a splendid thing to say “Bless you, my son” to the slob—and even mean it—but then slam that steel door behind him. It’s splendid to tell him, “Go, and sin no more,” but wiser to make sure he can’t go. Often those guys just don’t pay attention to what you merely tell them.

But I was thinking about Belking specifically, and none of that really applied to Hobie, not yet. I didn’t have anything actionable against him, nothing solid. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. But for now I was gratified to know about the crime, or alleged crime, of his innocent youth. Maybe it hadn’t been his alleged last.

What most sharply caught my eye and most disturbed me about Belking-Gray was this: Even after it became undeniably evident that thousands of people had become injured and hundreds had become dead following repeated ingestion of two of the company’s drugs, and the FDA withdrew its approval of the two drugs, the giant pharmaceutical firm did not immediately cease distribution and sale of the drugs.

Instead Belking-Gray filed a lawsuit to prevent the FDA’s prohibition from taking effect. All the power and pull and money of Belking-Gray, and personnel including vice-presidents, comptrollers, scientists, researchers—yes, including Omega Director William Wintersong, and Hobart Belking himself—were utilized in the fight to prevent the public from being deprived of these two drugs.

Only a few lines, apparently from the record of those legal proceedings, were included in the Hernandez file. Such as some of the company’s arguments, to the effect that “when properly prescribed” the drugs’ side effects were minimal. And that “difficulties” had been encountered in only a tiny fraction of patients while thousands had benefited, many benefiting so much that some might even be “on their way” to complete cure, or at least control, of their incurable diseases. And, in view of all this, “... we, as a responsible pharmaceutical corporation, cannot in good conscience withhold the proven benefits of these drugs from those who need them.”

They lost in court. At least, they lost in the USA. So Belking-Gray then promptly withdrew both drugs from circulation in the United States, having postponed that action for nearly two years—and just as promptly shipped tons of the drugs overseas, most of it to what are often called the Third World countries, for distribution and sale to the people there who might need the drugs benefits to make them well.

I put down the pages, got up, walked into my kitchenette. I wasn’t finished with Hank’s file, but I’d finished the parts about Belking and Wintersong, and I just wanted to get away from the rest of it for a minute or two. I got out the bottle of Jim Beam, poured a hefty jigger into a glass and splashed Perrier on top of the bourbon, then tossed in another half-jigger of Jim. I swallowed a fourth of the drink, glanced at my watch.

It was peculiar, quite weird, as if I’d become3 temporarily telepathic, but when I noted the time was 10:33 and decided to give next-door neighbor Paul a ring and invite him over for talk plus a dollop of his favorite horribly expensive brandy, at the very moment there was a knock on my own door. It was the familiar clunk-clunk and a pause, then another clunk—Paul’s knock, to inform me it was him, not a hoodlum there with a cocked heater.

When I opened the door Paul strolled inside smiling, unfolded his lanky frame and eased it down onto the divan. Paul Anson, M.D., looked like a Hollywood producer’s idea of a movie doctor specializing in treating Beverly Hills women for ennui and annoyance—which was, in fact, a large part of what Paul actually did. He was inconsiderately tall, an inch or so over my own six-two, obnoxiously good-looking, lean and rangy, in appearance not unlike a John Wayne clone in his mid thirties.

I found the Remy Martin Armagnac and a large bell-bottom glass for him, squatted on a hassock while we jawed and drank for a few minutes. He was enthusiastically telling me about a new patient, a budding twenty-three year old actress named Veloris, who had consulted him about a ringing in her ears.

“Well, my friend,” he said seriously, “now I have ringings in my ears, audible above the boiling of my blood. At the moment, Veloris is merely a promising extra, but I see great things ahead for her. I’d say she’s thirty-eight, or maybe thirty-nine, twenty-four, thirty—”

“Yeah, sure,” I interrupted. Why should I care? You’ll never let me meet her. But let’s get serious—4785”

“You think I’m not? Believe me, Shell, if Veloris ever gets her meaty parts into a meaty part she’ll be a star—“

“Forget Veloris for a minute.”

“Forget Veloris? Shell, is this you? No, this cannot be the Shell Scott I used to know... ah.” He paused. “Have you injured some of your more important glands?” Paul smiled benignly. “You can tell me. I’m a doctor.”

“That’s what I want to ask you about—another doctor. One I’m doing a job for, in fact.”

“Ah,” he said again, but this time as though with recognition. “I got the definite impression Henry would call you. You’ve already met him, have you?”

“Yes, you mean Dr. Hernandez, the human whirlwind. But I must know him better than you do. I call him Hank.”

Paul grinned. “That’s one of the great things about Henry, never insists ailing patients call him Doctor, or kiss his ring. Quite the contrary.”

“Yeah, it’s refreshing. You’re hired, then? Actually working for him now?”

“Yeah, since this morning.”

“What does he want you to do?”

I didn’t know why Paul would be interested in that, but I told him: try to run down the guy’s who’d tried to run Hank down; look for and hopefully locate his patients, the Vungers; and, of course, if I got lucky, bring back his dog, Rusty.

“Plus,” I continued, “he keeps reaming out my ears with half an encyclopedia about official medicine—or allopathy, which he isn’t too fond of—and doctor-type stuff I’m not too fond of.”

I paused, noting Paul was smiling, nodding, and for some reason looking quite pleased.

“You’d think he wanted me to take out somebody’s gall bladder,” I went on. “He hired me as an investigator, so how come all this medical history and hyperbole...” I stopped. “Are you sitting on some feathers?”

Paul was chuckling audibly, wagging his head. “That’s Henry, all right. He must like you, Shell, or he wouldn’t be trying to-to un-brainwash you, he might say. Which is probably significant.” Then, more soberly but still smiling, “A few days ago Henry called and asked me about you, wanted to know if you’re as good, and unorthodox, an investigator as he’d heard from a couple of other people. I told him you were unorthodox enough that he probably wouldn’t be disappointed, but I had to say that so I could keep drinking your Armagnac. So I knew he needed a PI for something, but he didn’t tell me for what. I suspect...”

Paul stopped speaking for a few seconds, looking past me with half-closed eyes. “If he’s really trying to educate you—educate you about real medical practice and politics—I suspect it’s because he’s got considerably more in mind for you than he may have said so far.” Paul paused again, then added slowly, “If you want my advice, pal, pay attention to whatever Henry tells you, even if it doesn’t strike you as immediately germane. He’s got a good reason, or he wouldn’t bother.”

“Pay attention? You mean it’s possible not to? Paul, do you know what this guy does to people? When he desires a little, say a hundred percent, of their attention? Like shooting little lasers out of his eyes, and doing something with his voice so it hums inside your ears....”

I guess that’s one of the things I like about Paul: he laughs a lot. But eventually he said, “You don’t need to describe it, Shell, it can’t be described. But I know well what you mean.” Then, more seriously, “I’ll be glad to tell you what I think of Henry. Actually, I’ve been wanting to do that ever since he told me he needed a detective, and asked about you. Okay, Henry Hernandez, M.D., homeopath, student of the Tao and Ayurveda, and you name it, mystic, gentle genius, magician. Among other things. The bottom line is, he’s not only the finest physician I’ve ever met but one of the finest men. And, bar none, the most brilliant human being I’ve had the pleasure of learning from.”

It was strange, to hear Paul—whose opinion I respected—speak so highly of Hank and it seemed to loosen something that had been wound up in me. I felt a sense of relief. I already knew I liked Hank Hernandez, enjoyed him and even his wackier outbursts; and by now I’d come ninety percent of the way toward accepting the man as genuine, honest, probably even right most of the time. But there’d always been a kind of unease, a wondering. What if it turned out he was actually a brilliant nut, some kind of convincing crackpot or con-man? And that was highly unlikely if Paul Anson could speak of him with such complete approval.

We yacked a few minutes more and I filled Paul in on some events of my day. At mention of the parking-lot altercation he offered to dress my wound professionally so I wouldn’t get lockjaw during the conversation, but I told him I’d doused the cut with diluted calendula extract and he nodded approvingly. When I told him of tracing the Mercedes sedan to Hobart Belking, he raised his eyebrows and said he knew a lot about Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals but little about Belking himself—except that he was reputed to be tougher than gristle, both in his business and personal life.

I mentioned the pile of info given me by Hank, that I’d just started reading, and Paul said he’d like to see that material himself. So I got the thick folder from my bedroom and handed it to Paul. He rested it on his knees, started thumbing through the pages. A couple of times he said, “Hmmm,” or “Well, well,” and finally looked at me again.

“Very interesting,” he said. “This is remarkable stuff. You haven’t read much of it yet?”

“Only the parts about Wintersong and Belking, flipped through the rest—I’ve never heard of most of those investigators and their therapies, or machines, instruments, whatever they are.”

“Most people haven’t, Shell, even doctors—especially mainstream doctors. Henry’s got a ton of this stuff in his personal library, but it looks as if he selected the cream of the crop and laid a few pounds of it on you.” Paul swirled the brandy in his glass, took a leisurely swallow, then continued. “Undoubtedly some of this is connected with what you’re doing for him, but most of it...” He swirled the brandy again, looking intently at me. “The rest of it, well, if this material was widely known, familiar to everyone in the country—all these exceptional people, and therapies, cures for everything, cures that have been deliberately hidden, forbidden, suppressed by the medical-pharmaceutical conspiracy supported by an army of federal bureaucrats like those in the FDA—it would mean the end of medical practice as we know it in the U.S.A. The absolute end of orthodoxy. Which, one might reasonably expect, is why so few people have heard of these remarkable people and therapies and cures.”

I blinked at him. “You’re kidding.”

“Not this time, pal.”

“But, the end of orthodoxy, of allopathic medicine, kaput, you really mean end?”

He nodded. “Down the tubes. Vanished, like surgery without anesthesia, like phlogiston, the Sponteparists, leeches and bleeding, like—well, everything that didn’t work.”

“You sound a hell of a lot like Hank.” I stopped. After a while I continued slowly, “Paul, how come you know so much about the crazy stuff in there—” I poked a finger at the thick folder still on his knees— “and, for that matter, about Hank?”

He started to answer me in his usual half-nonsensical way, saying, “Why, because I have not one but two giant brains, one of which I keep in the refrigerator...” But then he stopped, gazed at me for long seconds, and said, “Mainly because it never came up before, Shell. But I’ll tell you this now: Your Hank—my Henry—is the reason I became a doctor. And the main reason I’m a good one.”

I blinked at him again, surprised; no, more like astonished. “I’ll be damned,” I said. “I’ve never heard you even mention Hernandez before.”

“I’ve never mentioned Dr. Ed Latterbee, either, but we play golf together every other Thursday. I interned at the Foster-Wilson Hospital years ago with Dr. Barry Midland, but there was never any reason to mention Barry until you phoned from Arizona and asked me to recommend a medical wizard there—for that brain-shocked client of yours, remember?”

I did. The client was named Romanelle, and he’d been virtually comatose following severe electrical shock, little more than a vegetable. But in less than an hour Dr. Midland had turned that vegetable back into Romanelle by giving him an intravenous infusion of vitamin C and a bunch of colloidal minerals, plus an injection of pentothal and anectine, and later some under-the-tongue drops of homeopathic acetylcholine.

“I sure remember that wizardry,” I said. “Doc Midland also took care of me for a couple of weeks, you know, after I got crushed in an avalanche, or whatever it was that happened to me. It’s mainly because of Barry Midland—hey, he’s another one who didn’t mind if he wasn’t called Doctor Doctor, he told me I could call him Doc.”

Paul nodded. “If it makes you feel superior to your betters, you may call me Doc. And I will address you as Private Invest.”

“No, thanks, Doctor. Anyway, it’s mainly because of Midland that I was able to accept some of the quackish—apparently quackish—stuff Hank threw at me. But Midland was also very unorthodox.

I stopped, squinting at Paul. We’d never talked much about his profession, at least not the day-to-day details of his practice. I knew he prescribed a lot of what he’d referred to himself as “horribly expensive placebos for Hollywood hypochondriacs,” and that among his patients were many very powerful, and very rich, citizens of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Bel Air. But he’d never discussed specifics of his work, his treatments or medical philosophy. Maybe because I’d never asked, since to me Paul was just a great guy, jovial drinking companion, a good friend I enjoyed and had a lot of laughs with.

So I said, “Hank is so far out, but you’re a regular physician, aren’t you? I mean—you’re an allopath, right?”

“Sure, it’s basically the only kind of training available in medical schools now, at least since the AMA squeezed out the homeopaths at the turn of the century. But, since getting my license, I haven’t really practiced allopathic medicine—don’t prescribe drugs, for example except in extraordinary circumstances. But neither do I broadcast that fact, or call attention to it. So I’m in pretty good standing with my peers.”

“You mentioned Hank, and your becoming a doctor—because of him?”

“It’s true.” Paul smiled. “When I was still in High School, we moved from Glendale into the city, rented a house on Mulberry Street. Our next-door neighbors were Henry and Eleanora Hernandez—living then in the same house that’s his office now.”

“Paul, you’ve flabbergasted me again. You mean, when I was talking to Hank in his office this morning, I was next door to where you used to live?”

“Right. I was sixteen then, and by the time I graduated from high school I must have spent hundreds of hours talking with Henry. Or vice-versa. He always had a few minutes for me, often more, and usually told me some little thing that didn’t make sense. Didn’t seem to, anyway. Not at first. But little by little....”

Paul paused and then, apparently out of left field, asked me, “Are you familiar with Sturgeon’s Law, Shell?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Who, or what, is a Sturgeon?”

“As everyone except you illiterates knows, Theodore Sturgeon is a famous science-fiction writer, damned good one. Also a philosopher at least the equal of Murphy, for here in six memorable words is Sturgeon’s Law slightly sanitized: ‘Ninety percent of everything is crud.’ Obviously, if—”

I laughed, interrupting him.

“Don’t laugh!” he said, frowning exaggeratedly. “your knee-jerk reaction to the disturbing truth of Sturgeon’s Law is exactly like my youthful reaction to those crazy things Henry used to say to me. I thought they were crud at the time, but I finally understood he was gently introducing me to some of the ten percent that isn’t.”

Paul lifted his snifter, drained the brandy. “No question, Henry’s ten percent was tough for a teenager to handle. It wasn’t what my teachers—or even my parents—had been telling me, and it sure as hell wasn’t what the medical profession was telling everybody. And that was the hardest part for me to handle, because by then, certainly by the time I was ready to enter college, I knew I was going into pre-med, that I wanted to be a doctor. Which is what eventually happened, of course, but I would have become a completely different kind of doctor if Henry hadn’t told me so many things that didn’t make any sense at all. Not at first.”

“Things like what?”

“The crazy stuff? I remember hundreds of things. Maybe a thousand?”

“Sure. After today I may even recognize it, that’s why I asked.”

“It’ll cost you, oh, about five bucks worth of Armagnax.”

I told Paul that unless both his arms were broken he might consider pouring the dollop himself, which he was already doing anyway. After a series of small sips, eyes closed, he looked at me and said, “This particular craziness I remember well, because it was the very first time I’d heard anyone—anyone at all, anywhere—suggest that bacteria or viruses might not be the cause of infections or diseases but a result, like parasites or scavenger bugs that feast on already-sick plants in the garden and leave healthy stuff alone. I really thought that was dumb, then-gnarbly was the hot word in school that year, I thought it was really gnarbly.”

“Wait a sec, Paul. You thought it was dumb then? Meaning you don’t think so now?”

“Right. There was a big drive on then to get all the kids immunized against the flu epidemic that was supposed to start that year. Don’t remember what it was called, some virulent miasma floating in from Australia or New Zealand—or maybe Africa, wherever. In those days I never wondered how the experts figured out exactly where those little bugs would be coming from—I knew the bugs were so little they were invisible, nobody could see them, and I guess I assumed the experts just somehow knew where to go and capture them—or how those bug scientists tracked them through the atmosphere from there to here. Anyhow, I told Henry I’d be getting my flu shot the next day. And he asked me if I was sure that was a good idea, which I hadn’t really thought much about. I just knew everybody did it, so it must be a good idea. If it wasn’t, why would everybody do it? Well, I told Henry I guessed so, because the new influenza virus was coming and I didn’t want to catch it and come down with the flu.”

“Okay.”

“So, Henry asked me, ‘So, Paul, you really believe little influenza bugs from New Zealand smell us in California, and come here to bite us and infect us with the disease of flu?’ Before I could answer he said, ‘Ha! Chihuahua, caramba! Everybody knows—what? Nothing, that’s what. Everybody know the great Louis Pasteur proved germs cause diseases, a different germ for every disease—a different mosquito to stagnate every puddle—true? Plus also, everybody knows great Edward Jenner transferred pus and pox and putrid abominations from cow bellies and swine sores into people and saved those people from sickness—by nauseating to death all germs that cause diseases and all mosquitoes that stagnate sick puddles, comprende? Therefore everybody also knows that these great ones, this Louis and that Edward, together made everybody healthy as angels by immunizing them against every deadly germ and thus eliminating all infectious diseases from the earth. What everybody does not know is the TRUTH,’ he bellowed. ‘The truth that Pasteur proved nothing except he was a plagiarist and thief, a fraud whose scientific imbecility corrupted even the brilliant ideas he stole from Pierre Antoine Bechamp and others, transforming their genius into nonsense, gold into brass, virtue into vice. The truth that Jenner before him was the same kind of ignorant and arrogant politician as Pasteur, a do-gooder assassin who polluted the blood of his own eighteen-month-old child with poisonous swine-pox vaccine that killed him, thus making his only infant son one of the first in Jenner’s graveyard of immunized corpses. And these charlatans, impostors, apostles of pustulent error—these are the gods of death our allopaths worship: Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur, sainted authors of the sickness of vaccination and superstition of immunization, holy fathers of more than a century of man-made disease and decay and death, their heirs the murderers of millions of innocents.’ Henry went on and on, and by the time he finished, I saw things in a different light.”

“Seems Hank has a way of doing that.”

There wasn’t any conversation for at least a minute, and when I glanced at Paul again he was watching me, smiling slightly.

“May I have some more of my seventy-five-year-old cognac? Please?”

“No.”

He poured himself a small splash, maybe half a jigger or about five bucks’ worth. “You’ve got to stop being so negative, Shell. It’s just No, No, No all the time.” He polished off the cognac, held it in his mouth while slowly shaking his head back and forth, then swallowed and said, “Ahh-hh. Well, gotta go. But first....”

He thumbed through the pile of papers next to him on the divan, pulled out three or four of them, then closed the manila cover placing his selections on top. “If I know you, which I do, you won’t read all of this stuff in the next fourteen months. So I have chosen for you a sampler of Henry’s most subversive dynamite with which you may quickly improve your mind, or blow it entirely apart. I’m off.” He rose to his feet, stretching.

I leaned forward and picked Paul’s sampler off the stack, but didn’t check it immediately to see what those selections were.

“Good night, Paul.”

“Good night, Shell old Scott.”

I got up and walked to the doorway as Paul strode toward his adjacent apartment, then stopped, turned and smiled.

I smiled, too.

Paul put a key into his lock, went on inside.

But I stood there, smiling, for a minute longer before going back into my own apartment, wondering.

What, I was wondering, am I smiling about?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Back in my living room, I just puttered around for a minute or two. There were a lot of strange ideas in my head, and I wasn’t sure I liked all of them.

So I did what I often do when I don’t feel like thinking about anything puzzling, just want to relax: I fed the fish, in their two top-lighted aquariums against the front living room wall, and watched what’s got to be swirling beauty in anyone’s book: bright-orange swordtails, velvety black molliensias, a pair of perky little gold-and-cream raspboraheteromorpha, three dainty and yet deadly looking gray-and-black panchax chaperii swimming like sharks, and—“segregated” at one end of my twenty-gallon tank—the purple-bluish ripple of my lone betta splendens’ fanlike dorsal and anal and caudal fins, hues ever changing, flowing from purple to violet to a reddish-blue that sometimes melded into almost-ultra-violet vibrations of unnamable spectrums.

Plus, of course, a separate ten-gallon tank filled with the kaleidoscopically-darting and gonopodium-flexing exhibitionism of my dozen or so always busy guppies. Technically, lebistes reticulatus, a horrible scientific cognomen; “guppies” is a much better name, I think, for a collection of hyperactive little life forms that look like exploding rainbows.

I fed them a few pinches of salmon meal, which my pets attacked with enthusiasm, little live fishes eating bits of dead fishes, and watched them all dart, bend, twist and glitter. And felt myself unwind, relaxing. It always happens, when I watch the fish. Maybe I should have a dog or two. Nothing wrong with cats, except they might eat my fishes.

I picked up the stack of Hank’s papers with Paul’s few selections on top, carried them into the bedroom and plopped them on the bed, hung up the gaudy Chinese robe, stretched, yawned, scratched the hair on my chest.

Then I looked down at the thick pile of material on my bed. Earlier I had guessed that, in addition to a handful of pamphlets and brochures, as many as two hundred printed and typed pages might be lurking in there. I sighed. Paul had undoubtedly been right, no way I’d read all this stuff in the foreseeable future even if each paper had a splendid centerfold in it. But Paul’s sampler of Hank’s “excitements” was much less formidable, probably only an hour of pre-sleep reading, maybe only half that if I skipped a little.

So I climbed into the sack, fluffed three pillows behind me, adjusted my bedside reading lamp, picked up the less-forbidding small stack of the stuff. It wouldn’t be true to say I was giddy with enthusiasm, but I was unquestionably curious to find out what Paul’s hot-dog and hot-damn selections had been from what he’d referred to as “a remarkable collection.” He’d also said, apparently in all seriousness, that if everybody in the country knew what was in that collection it would mean the end of orthodo—or the end of Hank’s “ninety-nine percent that’s useless,” no less.

I started skimming through Paul’s small package quickly, but then slowed down, reading with a growing sense of surprise, and occasional shock. It took me only forty-five minutes—the first time—to read it all; but it was nearly two hours before I finished because, after that first go-through, I went back to the beginning again and with a red pen marked names, lines, paragraphs, emphasizing and underlining, putting together in my head a piece from here and a bit from there. Finally I thumbed through those pages once more, reviewing the parts I’d marked, and wondering what the hell.

* * * * * *

It was four a.m. when I turned out the light, and in probably no more than a minute I was asleep. At least I was zonked out in bed, and possibly snoring, sleeping the sleep of the pooped and brain-fagged and eye-weary. But then I got up, still wearing my fatigues, put on my boots and walked out onto the veld where I saw Bill Wintersong and Hobie Belking sitting on opposite sides of a glowing campfire. Yeah, the day was done, the great African sun, like a brain-fagged bloodshot eye, resting on the horizon and sinking toward night.

Wintersong was congratulating Belking, and Belking was congratulating Wintersong, on the harvest. The wonderful, record harvest. No question, it was a record, nobody else would ever touch it, they were the champeen harvesters of all time. I could see lumps on the veld, thousands of shadows from thousands of lumps. The lumps were animals. The corpses of animals. Animals dead, still bleeding, oozing warm, dead hippos and lions and rhinos and tigers and cheetahs and leopards and monkeys and elephants and bears and rams and puppies and everything else. Thousands, thousands, millions of them.

Then I couldn’t see the lumps any longer, so I turned, walked toward a mountain, I think it was Kilimanjaro, but whatever it was I knew the Spartan Apartment Hotel was over there somewhere. Ah, there it was, apartment 212. At the door, I turned, turned for a last look.

And in the distance was William Wintersong, M.D. and Hobart Belking of Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Two tiny figures, nodding little heads and moving little arms, chuckling, drinking, chortling and joking, laughing with the blood of animals on their hands.

The alarm was a series of gunshots ending in a bell-like sound, a kind of bang-bang-bing. I didn’t open my eyes. Though a sense of disorientation persisted briefly, I knew I was awakening, knew where I was, on the veld in my bedroom at the Kilimanjaro...no. In my bedroom, after dreaming of the dry earth, the bloody earth, and of Bill and Hobie.

Yeah, Hobie, Hobart. In the last still-stretched-out-of-shape moment before opening my eyes and glimming another day, I remembered I would be meeting Hobart Belking this morning, would see him for the first time in the flesh.

And I knew, somehow, that no matter how nice the man might turn out to be, I wasn’t going to like Hobart Belking at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I woke up feeling as if I’d had a solid three minutes of sleep, showered and shaved, then zombied into the kitchen where I cooked some mush and ate two lumps, burned the toast and threw it away. Maybe I wasn’t super-dynamic this a.m., but I was efficient.

Over black coffee I thought about what I’d read, and pondered—and possibly carried into fragments of dimly-remembered dreams—last night and in the early hours of this morning. Then I got my morning L.A. Times from outside the apartment door. The lead story, top-right on the front page, finished waking me up. Its bold black heading leaped at me: NEW HOPE IN WAR AGAINST IFAI. And below that, only slightly less bold: FDA Approves Clinical Testing of Miracle Vaccine to Prevent Spread of Deadly Disease.

“I’ll be damned,” I mumbled. For a moment I stood there, squinting down the empty hallway, thinking: IFAI? Clinical trials? What happened to the usual years of delay before the FDA approved anything?

Back in my living room, sprawled on the couch and with fresh coffee handy, I got my answer or at least part of it by quickly reading that lead story, plus a filled-with-hope-and-praise Editorial, and two supporting articles by the Times’ “team of medical experts,” namely a Myron Slotnick and a Dr. Manfred Boofremmel, who for authoritative in-depth enlightenment with you-know-who, don’t you?

What happened was the men of my dreams—how about that? I had practically predicted this excitement while unconscious—or Dr. William Wintersong and Hobart Belking, or in a larger sense the Omega Research Institute supported by Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals, Inc., had perfected a vaccine already, scientifically proven to be effective against the deadly virus known to cause IFAI.

Working with great secrecy—to avoid raising false hope among victims of this deadly disease—scores of experts at Omega had months ago succeeded in perfecting the vaccine which had since then been successfully mass-marketed in ready-to-inject sterile glass, and nitrogen-frozen ampules, by scores of other experts toiling at Belking-Gray. Even after reading the explanation by the Times medical expert, I don’t have the faintest idea how all those other experts had done what they did, but probably nobody else did, either.

Well, almost nobody. Those Omega scientists, who almost certainly knew what they’d done, included virologists, bacteriologists, biologists, serologists, vampires, and an impressive array of other ologists and icians, many of which I couldn’t even pronounce, much less spell without looking them up. All of whom, it was several times noted, were under the brilliant supervision of the “eminent” Dr. Wintersong. Who, in other paragraphs was described as “scientific genius,” former outstandingly successful neurosurgeon turned top ranking researcher, award winner, and assuming the Wintersong-IFAI vaccine fulfilled what was referred to as its almost-certain promise, an “odds on favorite for the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year.”

Indeed, Wintersong was mentioned at least nineteen times, and Belking or Belking-Gray only about half as often. But there was a separate story, an illustrated lead article in the newspaper’s second section, about the pharmaceutical tycoon and the imminent day-after-tomorrow grand free-to-everybody-and-with-toys-for-the-children opening Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum. Wherein, come Monday morning, animal lovers could view more than two hundred objects of their affection--mounted, stuffed, but mostly freeze-dried “in amazingly lifelike poses”—in mountain, desert, and jungle settings that were “faithful replicas of their natural environments.”

I got a little shiver when I read that, an involuntary goosebumpy rippling among my lumbar and cervical vertebrae, or whatever those wiggly bones are: and, remembering folks in black suits standing around the casket, whispering, “Doesn’t Henry look natural?” decided to read more about Belking’s amazingly-lifelike exhibits later. There were other creatures of more interest and importance anyhow. Lots of them.

Because it was revealed that “thousands” of animal experiments—the FDA mandated test to ensure safety and efficacy of any vaccine or drug or other poison prior to its licensure and injection into or ingestion by real living beings—had already been concluded. Concluded successfully, and properly reported to the Food and Drug Administration. Which after careful, but speedy, study had taken the bold but necessary step of approving “final clinical trials” of the vaccine without the usual lengthy delay, a delay during which “uncountable additional victims of IFAI might otherwise die unnecessarily” due to unavailability of the Wintersong vaccine. So, to prevent those uncountable demises, the FDA had cut the usual time for approval down, from eight or ten years to a couple of months.

I didn’t really understand what was going on. I’d read other news bits concerning FDA approvals in the past, but there seemed to be something askew, or at least different, about this one. Of course, IFAI itself was different, or so everybody said. Maybe I’d ask Hank what he thought of this, to him an undoubtedly revolting development.

Yeah, Hank. Sure enough, he’d told me the “IFAI vaccine” was already prepared, ready and waiting—for this, for what had just happened. Then, I’d thought maybe he was nuts. Needless to say, I no longer thought so.

I got dressed in a fresh-from-the-cleaners beige gabardine suit, complete with white shirt and tan tie with small brown Comedy-and-Tragedy masks scattered upon it. Plus fully-loaded Colt .38 Special in its clamshell holster. Then, back in the living room, I grabbed the phone from its stand next to the couch, ready and even eager to get going on the work of this day. Before punching in a number, I ran through a mental list of the things I needed to check, or do, people I intended to see, calls I wanted to make.

It was funny. Peculiar. A little creepy. For no reason at all, except possibly the fact that I was imagining some of the good things, and maybe bad things that might lie ahead of me, those ice worms started slurking around on my back again. Bigger ones this time. Fat, slimy creepers, going at my spine like insect chiropractors. Fortunately, only for a second or two. Long enough.

Then I made my first call of this Saturday morning. After that, things just kept picking up, moving faster, getting better some of the time and worse most of the time, but all of it like a boulder bouncing down the mountainside, no way to stop it, even if you wanted to, without getting squashed into grease spots.

Probably it’s a good thing we never know for sure, in advance, which of our days will be the ones we won’t ever forget, won’t forget because we can’t. Probably it’s a good thing we don’t know; but it would sure help a bunch if we did.

I started dialing the Hamilton Building’s number, planning to let Hazel know I might not make it to the office until late afternoon, if at all—then remembered this was Saturday and Hazel wouldn’t be at the switchboard. So, since there’d been no messages recorded on my answering-machine tape except the one I’d already played back, last night, I made follow-up calls to several of the same informants I’d phoned yesterday.

The only info developed worth noting was a mildly interesting bit from my TV-producer friend. During the last couple of years he’d gotten actively involved with a Hollywood based animal-rights organization, a fast-growing group called “OneLife,” with the result that he had become quite familiar with who, and what, Hobart Belking was. He told me that Belking was so close to, and friendly with, Caesar Velli, born Caesar Vellitano and now vice-president/general manager of Pegasus Records, that the two men had been on several hunting trips together, bagging elk and deer in Idaho, and, under special permit, a pair of Dali rams in Alaska, one of the magnificent massive-horned beasts for each of them. My friend also said that he thought Velli was one of the biggest crooks in the record business.

So, for that matter, did I. I’d never had anything to do with Velli himself, but several months ago I’d had as a client a popular lady singer who believed she’d been screwed out of royalties on several of her recordings released by Pegasus. As a result, I knew the LAPD Intelligence Division had a thick file on Velli. He’d never been arrested, or even indicted on criminal charges, but there was no doubt the man was connected, a long time associate of several well-known members of organized crime, some of whom had been indicted, convicted and temporarily judged.

It wasn’t much, either a tenuous connection or none at all. But it interested me enough to play that lone phone-tape message again: “Grinners a dude name of Francis Harris. Just don’t never call him Francis. Used to do heavy work for Caesar Velli, the record guy. But that was a year or so back, and I ain’t heard nothin’ about the dude since.”

That was all. But, again, the name was Velli. And to Billy Whack, “heavy work” was anything from muscle to murder; it did not refer to lifting large packages.

I was about to make another call, reaching for the phone when it rang. I grabbed it, said, “Hello,” and listened with instant pleasure to “Shell, is that you?” in the soft rustling voice that was an aphrodisiac for earlobes. “Yeah, hi,” I said enthusiastically. “It’s Dane, isn’t it? I hope.”

“Yes, this is Dane.”

“Wonderful.”

“I called to ask a favor, Shell.”

“You’ve got it, I’ll do it.”

“Last night, you offered to drive me to Omega today, remember?”

“Sure do. To see Dr. Wintersong.”

“Yes, as I told you, he agreed to let me have another hour of his time to finish my interview with him and I was supposed to be there at eleven this morning.”

“Uh-huh. But now he’s too busy, right? Or he’s flown off to Stockholm to practice accepting the Nobel with one hand while patting himself on the back with—”

“No, of course not—Shell, you’re so cynical, and so... it’s just that he can’t see me until half past twelve. I wanted to let you know my appointment’s an hour later than I told you. So I’ll meet you in the lobby here at eleven-fifteen instead of ten-fifteen. If that’s all right?”

“You bet.”

“Good. I was afraid I might miss you. I only found out about the time change myself a few minutes ago.”

“Incidentally, how did you find out?”

“Dr. Wintersong phoned me himself, from Omega. He’d been absolutely deluged with calls for the past hour, he said. Which under the circumstances, I’m lucky he can see me at all today.” She paused. “I assume you’ve heard the wonderful...” She paused again, then went on, “...at least the exciting news about his IFAI vaccine?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Read it in the morning Times. And it is pretty...exciting.” I remembered my error in starting to phone Hazel earlier, and said, “Do Wintersong and his people work at Omega on Saturdays? Weekends?”

“Only until noon today, I think. But I suppose some employees have to be there all the time. I don’t really know.”

“Must be somebody there to feed the animals. Plus security animals to shoot stray people, if necessary. It’s probably not important.”

“Well, I’m glad I caught you, Shell. See you at eleven-fifteen.”

“On the dot,” I said, and she said “Bye” as we hung up.

* * * * * *

Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum was on Macadamia Street, which extended from high-powered and high-priced Wilshire Boulevard for a mile and a half to its end at Almond. This had once been a residential area for money, or at least people who possessed an unusual abundance of it; and there were still toward the southern or quiet end of Macadamia Street a dozen or so of these large and grand old homes that look like yesterday. But, moving toward them from bustling Wilshire, were a smattering of commercial buildings and business offices, hard-edged and modern, brash and belligerent newcomers that weren’t going to be denied their rezoned space. In a few more years, all of those ancient two-story thirty-and forty-room wooden homes would be gone, crowded into the past by cement and stone and glass and reinforced steel of an insistent now and impatient tomorrow.

Part of that tomorrow appeared already to have arrived on Macadamia Street. The “dead animal mausoleum” as it was sometimes referred to by militant vegetarians—which almost certainly pained Hobart Belking severely, since he had from the beginning insisted it be called “Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum, dammit,” possibly so it wouldn’t be confused with somebody else’s Wild Animal Museum—was centered in a full city block of only a quarter-mile from Wilshire real estate. A year or two ago, that bit of land had been occupied by four of those outmoded turn-of-the-century houses, each accompanied by ample space for lawns and gardens, trees, flowers and shrubs. All of which had been bulldozed in a jiffy, immediately after Belking purchased the site and got cracking, taking his typical no-nonsense do-it-now hang-the-expense attitude toward getting the job done.

Well, he’d done one hell of a job at that, a fine and impressive job, even I had to admit. If, of course, what you wanted was an impressive soaring, gleaming, beautiful glass-steel-and-stone Wild Animal Museum.

It had been reported that Belking spent nearly fifty million dollars to complete his project. Of course, that included initial payment for the site, cost of bulldozers, and hauling the previous landscape away even before construction commenced. Still, it looked as if he’d got his money’s worth. And, almost with dismay, I had to confess I really liked the looks of the damned building.

I was in my Cadillac, engine idling, momentarily parked and looking across Macadamia Street at the Museum. It was centered on the lavishly-landscaped site, with a wide cement walk leading from Macadamia to a series of curving steps rising to twenty-foot-high entrance doors. The doors were light-colored wood, intricately carved, though I couldn’t distinguish much of their design from here.

One of several things I liked about the sprawling sand-colored building’s appearance was that it didn’t look boxlike or angular. The outer walls on the left and right rose and then actually curved inward before rising again and then curving inward again, and again. There was a lot of glass, and atop the oddly graceful building was visible a sign, not excessively bold, which identified the place as HOBART BELKING’S WILD ANIMAL MUSEUM.

Not bad, I thought. Not too shabby. Not, at least, on the outside. I put the Cad into gear, moved ahead and then left into a driveway running alongside the building and leading to what a small sign at the entrance promised was a parking lot. Another sign said, “Do Not Enter!” And one a foot below it said, “No Admittance. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.”

The first sign, at least, was accurate. Behind the museum was, sure enough, a parking lot and it looked large enough to handle several hundred cars. At the moment, however, only two automobiles and one covered truck the size of a moving van were here ahead of me. One of the autos was a new silver-gray Lincoln Continental, the other a black Mercedes Benz, four door sedan.

I parked next to the Mercedes, checked its rear plate: CVY176. That pleased me. Pleased me because before leaving my apartment I had made nine phone calls trying to get a phone number for Hobart Belking, or at least a hint as to where I might find the man. Results, nine blanks. So I’d simply headed for the Museum, assuming—since its grand opening was less than forty-eight hours away—there was a pretty good chance I’d find my man there.

Ahead of me were half a dozen cement steps leading up to a large double doors, closed now. The steps weren’t as wide, or gracefully curving, as those out front, but the doors appeared to be just as intricately carved. After climbing the steps, I could see that those carvings were of jungle foliage and palm trees and bushy plants, among which within the bas-relief of the carvings on the door were parts of numerous animals: the eyes of a great cat, the trunk and fanlike ear of an elephant, horn of rhino, mane of lion, forelegs and claws of...something, leaping and reaching, skin and flesh retracted from claws like curved knives.

Odd, I thought. Carvings, not of animals, but parts of animals.

I shrugged. Sign on the left-hand door, red letters on smooth white paint: “NO ADMITTANCE!” “DO NOT ENTER!”

I was prepared to bang on the door, or even kick the hell out of it, but when I pulled on the large curving brass, or maybe gold-plated handle the door began moving noiselessly open.

I eyeballed the signs again, “NO ADMITTANCE!” and “DO NOT ENTER!” and pulled the door open, and entered.

Entered brightness; all of the interior lights—overhead, concealed lights, even a profusion of spotlights were on—perhaps as a final check before Monday’s opening. So I entered that brightness and walked, roamed, without interruption for a minute or more.

But I also entered a hush, and strangeness.

Entered a freeze-frame world of immobile animals, frozen in unending moments, beautiful and once-vital beings caught and held in thin slices of time—snarling black bear, whooping hyena, coughing lion, zebra, gazelle, sprinting cheetah, and dozens of others, scores of others. Each stuffed or freeze-dried or otherwise-preserved animal was posed in a disturbingly believable but still strangely unreal mini-landscape—artfully crafted segment of desert, rock-pocked mountainside, green oasis, jungle clearing—that faithfully reproduced the original habitat where it lived, when it had lived.

Some of those displays were in separate rooms along the rear of the museum, where I’d entered. Each room was three-walled, with its front—where a fourth wall would normally have been—entirely open, so that anyone walking before that series of rooms would have an unobstructed view at the exhibits inside.

The animals looked out of those rooms toward me, toward Macadamia Street, outside, or past me to the great central space of the museum, the piece de resistance. Because the three walled rooms at the rear and sides of the building, perhaps a dozen in all, were obviously “extras,” subsidiary to the stunningly impressive displays occupying the enormous open center of the Museum and filling at least three-fourths of the building’s available space.

Most of that space was filled with exhibits much like those I’d glanced at in the separate rooms, but these were bigger, brighter, more colorful and seemed—briefly, only briefly—more vibrant and alive.

Even from where I stood—and, having entered from the back of the Museum, I was obviously not getting my initial look at Belking’s handiwork as it was designed to be seen for the first time—the sight was stunning.

At least twenty separate exhibits filled that central space, including among them what I guessed were a hundred or more animals, each not only appropriately posed but in its appropriate setting. Most of them, however, were facing away from, or at right angles to me. So I walked to the approximate center of the room, skirting a couple of exhibits to get there, and then turned with my back toward Macadamia Street. It was very quiet, and an odd musty smell filled my nostrils.

On my left, half a dozen small Rhesus monkeys perched or clung in real-looking trees; on the ground below, a ten-foot-long snake slithered over grass and leaves. Beyond that exhibit was another one entirely, even shockingly, different: a sinewy almost-white snow leopard, one front leg extended, appearing to glide over powdery white plastic that glistened like ice.

Near on my right was a great lion with an almost black mane, neck arched and head raised with jaws stretched wide and white fangs reflecting the room’s light, as it roared silently in the Museum, as it must once have roared awesomely on African plains. It appeared—briefly—to be bursting with health and almost uncontrolled energy; and it was wonderfully beautiful, massive, twice the size of any lion I’d ever seen in a zoo.

That thought blended with another, a growing sense that all this “life” captured in a paralysis of movement was like a zoo of death, not much different from “Henry” in his casket being put on display. Or a whole collection of Henrys and Marthas and Janes and Bills, plus dead little Billies and Jane-Janes and Dickies and Juniors.

I looked at the magnificent black-maned lion again and noticed to his right, nearer me but half concealed by leaves and trailing ropelike vines, one of the females of his pride, prone, head slanting forward and resting on large front paws, eyes turned slightly toward me and glistening like polished gems.

Perhaps the most impressive—or depressing, depending on your point of view—feature of that great room was an astonishing collection of mounted animal heads hanging like three-dimensional artwork high upon the walls. I was standing at the middle of the main room, with the entrance doors behind me, and I could see at least thirty animal heads form an irregular line across the room’s rear wall. That line extended toward the front of the Museum continuing on both left and right walls; but for seconds my attention was almost hypnotically held by the bizarre sight of what briefly and weirdly resembled a giant necklace of severed animal heads stretching from left to right before me.

Each head was centered at a spot about twelve feet above the floor, but the line was irregular because there were small heads, medium-sized heads, and large heads. The largest of all, the one in the middle of all the others, absolutely riveting and impossible to miss or ignore, was the looming gray-black head of an elephant, trunk raised above thick white tusks curving outward and upward to narrower points like bulky scimitars fashioned of polished bone.

Far left, at the junction of the rear and left walls, the head of a rhinoceros; at the opposite end, against the right wall, what remained of a hippopotamus; and in between, two dozen or more others, smaller, some familiar like antelope, wart hog, zebra, Oryx and ram, others unknown to me. Each of a different species and each posed in a slightly different way, but all of them staring at unseen horizons through immobile eyes of glass.

Gradually the unsettling conviction grew in me that I might be looking at one of the most ugly expressions of virulent pathology that I had ever seen in my life. Even though some of the heads, some of the full-size animals and entire exhibits, were unquestionably remarkable, even beautiful—if beauty is merely form and color and mass and line. But beauty is more than that, has to be more, or life itself is a fraud on the living. I turned, letting my gaze follow that uneven line of heads and more heads on the left wall, wondering if there were even more of them on the fourth or front wall of the museum as well—wondering as sourness began to gather in my stomach, and wisps from last night’s dream crawled through my mind like the worms that eat through corpses, what I would see there, and if seeing it would pour more sourness into the already churning uneasiness in my stomach—and stared, eyes suddenly widening, at the enormous animal-like head of Hobart Belking, not more than three feet away.

For a crazy moment, a truly startling and almost frightening moment, I imagined—a trick of perspective, born of mentally gazing toward the distant wall and then having almost my entire field of vision overwhelmed by a face only a yard or less away, a beefy, jut-jawed, unsmiling face, which was doing a lot of unsmiling at me—that stuck to, and jutting from the wall ahead of me, above the closed entrance-and-exit doors, was the gargantuan severed head of a gigantic Hobart Belking, approximately the last thing to be seen by visitors leaving Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum.

Actually, I didn’t sort it out all that clearly in my head during the first instant when with considerable dismay, I ogled it, or ogled him. That was a few moments later. The very first instant, I cried out, “Baah!” Apparently having started to say... hell, I don’t have any idea what I’d started to say.

But then I pulled myself together, got my bearings—or at least realized that normal-sized, even three or four inches shorter than I, Hobart Belking was standing only three feet, maybe two and a half feet from me with his head on—and said, “Holy jumping Jehosaphet—man, I thought you were going to swallow me or bite off my... Ah, how do you do, Mr. Belking?”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing screwing around in here?”

“Didn’t you see the goddamn signs, Jack?”

It was a strange thing, one more strange thing, but at the moment when I’d realized those out-of-focus chops before me, were not giant-sized but merely little normal ones distorted by unexpected closeness, I had also seen the expression on those chops instantly change. It was just a quick flickering of something—recognition, I felt pretty sure—visible only momentarily before being replaced by glower. But the wide-shouldered wide-hipped man near me was Belking for sure; and it was better than eight to five that he’d recognized me when I, at that moment, turned.

Perhaps not until then. He’d approached, very silently, from behind my back. He didn’t have a club in his hands, or a gun or knife. Nothing. But those were big, hard-knuckled, beefy-looking hands; maybe this guy didn’t think he needed a club.

I said, “Sorry, you startled me. My name’s Shell Scott. I’m a private detective.”

He stared for a moment without speaking. Belking looked bigger than he had in photos, more bulky, more solid, and I guessed most of the solid stuff was either bone or muscle. He had to be close to twenty years older than I, no kid by a long shot, but he impressed me as a man in better shape than most kids in their teens.

I figured he was about five-ten, four inches shorter than I am, but he probably weighed thirty or forty pounds more than my two-hundred and five. He was wearing khaki trousers and a sweat-stained T-shirt that revealed the barrel chest and impressive width of meaty shoulders.

When he spoke, Belking pulled his lips apart to show those big, square, tusklike teeth, prominent incisors a bit longer than the other tusks, giving him the look of a man about to eat a steak raw, while it was still being used by the animal.

What he said was, “I don’t give a damn if you’re the king of all Siberia, Jack. Get your ass out of here or I’ll throw it out in two pieces.”

“No kidding?” I said, grinding my teeth. “Two pieces?”

And then I deliberately paused, reminding myself that this situation demanded logic and coolness, not homicidal mania or the grinding of teeth.

So I continued quietly, with only a slight sharpness in my voice, “Well, let’s put aside the interesting question of whether it would be possible for you, assisted by three or four other apes, to do what you—I hope in jest—suggested. Let’s put it aside at least until I ask you how many hoods you hauled away from the Halcyon Hotel’s parking lot last night in that black Mercedes of yours. The S600 four-door sedan, registration CVY176. Also, of course, I’d like their names, addresses, and next of kin.”

No flicker of expression, not even a raised eyebrow. Which told me what I’d wanted to know. Part of anyhow. His eyes, I noticed, were green, a kind of dark green. Not the luminous emerald of Dane’s eyes, but more the shade of a dyspeptic’s digestive juices, or even, to borrow from his own flavorful dialogue, a squashed frog’s poop. His thick lips were very red, as though recently blistered.

There was something about this guy that made me want to hit him. I mean, even if I’d known he was Abraham Lincoln I would have wanted to hit him. And that’s bad; it interferes with logical coolness, and can lead to unpremeditated stupidity.

I merely nodded, sort of smiling thinly, as Belking said, “So that’s it? Well, let me tell you what I guess you want to know, then you can buzz out of here, Jack.” He grinned, muscle bunching at both sides of his mouth like fleshy parenthesis around his bony teeth. “In one piece.”

That was three times this belligerent beefcake had called me “Jack.” But I merely said sweetly, “That would be nice.”

“I thought it was punk kids at first. Maybe it wasn’t.”

“Thought what?”

“Must’ve been kids heisted my car. Punk kids, doped up or drunk, we’ve got them even in my neighborhood.”

I nodded, knowing what had to be coming next. “Uh-huh,” I said. “I’ll bet those kids stole your Mercedes before eight p.m. last night, and you had no idea where it was until they brought it back an hour ago, after filling up the gas tank.”

Belking measured me with his frog-green eyes, flicked them down and up and left them resting on my face, in them the same cold look that must have been in those eyes every time he shot a rhinoceros. But his voice was completely controlled. Soft and almost pleasant when he spoke.

“That’s about right,” he said. “Close enough. I didn’t know the Mercedes was gone until ten o’clock last night, which is when I phoned the Beverly Hills police and reported it missing.” He shrugged, the heavy shoulders. “Ticked me off a little, but it’s not like I had to walk to the Circle K. I’ve got a dozen other cars at the estate.”

I wondered if the casual billionaire language was meant as a veiled threat; but waited silently as Belking finished.

“About five or six this morning, the car was found in Glendale, abandoned, but fortunately undamaged. Two officers returned it to me at eight this morning. They kept the carpeting from the floor behind the front seats because there was a considerable amount of blood.”

“Not surprising,” I said as he stopped speaking. Well, Okay, the story would be easy to check, and undoubtedly it was the only one I’d get from Belking. Maybe it was even the truth. True or not, it was highly unlikely I’d get any more from this guy except whatever he wanted me to hear. So I said, “Okay, Mr. Belking. Thanks for your time.”

“That’s it?” He seemed surprised.

It wasn’t, but I merely said, “I suppose I should apologize for walking in past the ‘Don’t’ signs. Sorry about that. But I had a good reason for tracking down your Mercedes—and not ringing the front doorbell or yelling ‘Yoo-hoo.’”

“Why not?”

“I’ve known guys to run out the back door and be a block and a half away before I finished knocking the front door down.”

“Jack, I’ve been charged by cats, boar, hippo, rhino, even a half-drunk bull elephant—” he slashed a thick index finger through the air toward the massive head I knew was behind me, the centerpiece with upraised trunk and ivory-scimitar tusks—“that bull. I never backed off from any of them. Why would I run from you?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t. But you might hide.”

“Not a chance.” He frowned, gaze slanting down and right, apparently thinking of something. In a moment he looked at my face again and said, “What’s your big interest in my car? All I know is, somebody heisted the Mercedes and before I got it back somebody’d bled on the carpet. Lamb’s wool. Bled all over the goddamn lamb’s wool carpet.” He paused. “I really don’t give a goddamn if you believe that or not, but it’s the truth. And if it’s not a secret, I’m curious to know what did happen. What came down?”

He sounded sincere. He looked sincere. But the feeling I got was of Hobart Belking looking sincerely at me over the ring-a-ding barrel of his four-fifty-eight Winchester Magnum putsy putsy Boom-Boomer. I smiled slightly.

Belking didn’t miss that. “It’s a funny question?”

“No.”

He waited, either sincerely interested in learning what mysterious-to-him events had occurred last night, or doing a good job of conveying that impression to me. Except, of course, for that rhino-killing fire in the ice of his eyes. But, what the hell, I told him of leaving the Halcyon, two men silently approaching, parking-lot lights glancing from long thin knives at the ready.

I finished it, “So I shot one of the bastards, dumped the other guy, then called the LAPD complaint board and went back to collect my trophies. They were gone. By a curious coincidence, not quite gone but going in a significant hurry, was a Mercedes sedan registered to Hobart Belking. In or on the back seat of which, I have not the least doubt, were the two discouraged citizens I’d left on the asphalt. One of whom leaked some of his blood, hopefully all he had left, onto your lamb’s wool carpet.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” Belking said slowly. “So that’s it. Yeah, sure explains why you wanted to talk to me.”

He paused, and his next comment fell oddly on my ears, like part of a different conversation entirely. “You look like a tough baby,” he said. “But looks don’t mean shit in the real world. On the edge, that’s where a man proves it. So maybe you really can handle yourself, maybe you’re as tough as you look, right, Jack?”

“Probably not,” I said. “But who knows? We’ll both find out if you keep calling me Jack, Mr. Belking.”

I think he started to pop off, crack wise, maybe even say, “Okay, Jack,” but didn’t let those words get past his tusks. After several seconds of silence, he looked at me nodding the big square head. “Fair enough. Bad habit of mine, Mr. Scott. That’s all it is, just a dumb goddamn habit. Like the way kids these days say ‘Y’know?’ nineteen times in every sentence. When they manage to finish a sentence.” He grinned. “Y’know?”

His grin this time wasn’t the usual wide muscle-bunching meat-ripping display of obtrusive incisors and bicuspids and fangs, but more a half smile, and he looked almost pleasant. Still an eight-ton of beef and muscle, possible malice and probable danger to anything living within a country mile, but almost pleasant. For a moment, and really for the first time, I wondered if I might be wrong about Belking. Maybe I’d automatically, and unfairly, tagged him villain when he was really just your regular old garden variety billionaire yearning to improve himself and do good.

At the moment he was sweeping one beefy arm in a short arc, saying, “What do you think, Mr. Scott?”

“About what?”

“This joint of mine. Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum.” He hesitated, then went on, “Monday morning the first of thousands, maybe millions, of people will start coming through here. But I guess you’re my first customer. You sure as hell weren’t invited, and you busted in here like a stray moose, but you’re here, you’re the goddamn first. So, how does it all strike you?”

I was wondering what I could say that would be true but wouldn’t make Belking homicidal, when he added, “Doesn’t matter to me if you love it or hate it—just so you’re not one of those gaddamn wimp animal freaks with subzero IQ’s who swallow oysters alive and wear cowskins and beat their kids and picket scientific research labs, who can’t wait to get in here and start meowing, ‘Ooh, bad man shooted and killed all those pwetty animals to death.’”

He’d gone on long enough for me to get my thoughts in order, but hearing that strange unmusical squeaking coming out of Hobart Belking—he’d raised his voice at least an octave, maybe several. I mean, it was grotesque. Here was this big muscular two hundred and fifty pound bulging monstrosity with his face all scrunched and his mouth puckered into what looked like a giant rose made out of raw meat, or maybe a mashed red octopus, going “Ooh, pwetty animals.”

I may have seen sights more horrible in my time, but if so they have fled from memory. Contemplating that, I merely said, “Well, uh...” Then, knowing Belking expected an answer, I looked all around, nodding sagely, and added, “I guess you could say I’m impressed. It’s a remarkable exhibition of...uh....”

It was the best I could do. That much was true, but if I had uttered even one more syllable it would have had to be part of the first lie or else the real and brutal truth. Because all of the frozen-in-movement figures around me had become, and increasingly so the longer I was among them, reminiscent of imitation men and women poised like upright corpses in a Wax Museum, eternally rigid in mimicry not of life but of death. And by now the sight of so many freeze-dried animals, or former animals, was as grotesque as Belking’s “Ooh,” and considerably more depressing.

But the man responsible for this disaster was pleased; no, more than merely pleased. He looked ecstatic, gazing past me and around the room at his collection of heads and bodies, and Belking’s pride in his Museum, in the mortal remains of the immortal beings he and others had blown into temporal oblivion, glowed from him like sunburn.

His eyes were almost glassy when he pulled them from his prizes, from oryx and zebra, tiger and gazelle, elephant and hippo, the whole animal farm of freeze-dry taxidermy, and aimed them again at my face. “Goddamn right,” he growled. “You’re goddamn right. They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Goddamn beautiful?”

Maybe it was a question, but I didn’t answer him. He probably wouldn’t have heard me anyway, because he was going on, his voice soft, “I remember every one of mine, every goddamn one. Location, time of day, how the sun and air felt when I took each single prize. Fourteen of my own exhibits here are record kills, did you know that? World records. No man alive has more record trophies than I do. Let me show you around, Scott. Guided tour.” He continued almost non-stop for maybe five minutes, his voice sounding almost slippery, but never rising, as he led me to one exhibit or display after another—a group of antelopes, a white polar bear near the entrance doors, those replicas of thatch-roofed native huts with gas-fed cook-fires flickering near them and a dead antelope lying close to the flames before one of the huts, even beneath some of those mounted heads on the walls—telling me where he’d “taken” this one or almost got “run down and stomped” by that one.

I hadn’t said much more than “Hmm” or “How about that?” during Belking’s mighty hunter monologue of trips and treks and self-praise, during which he’d pointed out at least ten or a dozen of the “specimens” on display and described how and where he’d taken each of them. But his reliving of all those kills had pumped him up, gotten him into what had to be his best mood of the day. So I figured it was time for me to ask my last few questions, when there was at least a small chance I’d get answers.

We’d stopped between an exhibit of blunt-faced prickly haired javelina and a magnificent pair of white Dali rams. Belking was pointing to the row of animal heads I’d examined earlier on the Museum’s rear wall, and saying, “That big oryx there, fourth from the left.”

It was a big one, strikingly beautiful even mounted on a block of polished mahogany, with a black splotch on the creamy-white face, pair of surprisingly long narrow horns rising almost straight up from the head, curving back slightly toward the wall.

“I took that sucker from three hundred yards,” Belking continued, “standing, with a sling. I was carrying my .380 Winchester that day, loaded with, and fitted with a Maxwell eight-power scope. One shot. Drilled him dead in the heart from three hundred yards. We paced it off.”

He’d said “we,” and I knew Belking never hunted alone, and that he’d been on trips and expeditions not only with Wintersong and Velli but Congressmen and Senators, CEOs of other Fortune Five-Hundred companies, a former head of the FDA and at least one Supreme Court Judge.

“How about Velli?” I asked blandly. “He take any of these exhibits?”

“Ceese got one of those Dalis there.” He pointed to the pair of rams on our left. “Lucky bastard killed the bigger one....” He let the words trail off, looking directly at me for the first time in quite a while. “Why the hell would you be asking me about Velli?”

“Just curious. I guess everybody knows you’ve hunted with a lot of other sportsmen, other people. How about Dr. Wintersong? He have any luck?”

“It’s none of your goddamn business who I hunt with. Or what kills anybody makes.”

“Hell, Mr. Belking, you’ve just been telling me about shooting every conceivable animal, vegetable, and mineral on half a dozen continents. I was keeping the conversation rolling.”

“Sure you were. Yeah, I’ve gone on hunting trips with one hell of a lot of people. Including my friend, Caesar Velli. But I’ll bet there aren’t a dozen people who know Velli’s hunted with me. So how did you know?”

“Picked it up somewhere. A private investigator hears all kinds of rumbles.”

He nodded slightly several times, looking past my left shoulder at something, or nothing, as if his thoughts were temporarily elsewhere. Then his eyes narrowed, his lips thinned a little, and he turned to face me squarely, head inclined forward a bit as he looked up at me under the tangled reddish brows. “All right,” he said, resting both his hands on his hips. “What else has the hotshot PI got lined up to ask me? You’ve got a minute.”

“Nothing else,” I said. “Nothing that can’t wait. Mainly, as you know, I wanted to ask if you were driving your Mercedes last night.”

I glanced at those beefy hands resting on his hips, the hairy darkly-tanned arms. Belking’s forearms were almost gross, half again as thick as my own, more like Popeye’s after two cans of spinach. Maybe I didn’t have proof Belking had been in his car at the Halcyon’s lot last night, but I’d have given long odds he either had been or knew who was. Who, and why. If it had been Belking, he could probably have picked up both of my bully assailants, one in each meathook and tossed them into his sedan without grunting.

“... or if you loaned it to some Mafiosi,” I continued pleasantly. “Or, of course, ask if maybe some youthful funlovers took it for an unauthorized spin, y’know?”

Those dark green eyes actually seemed to get darker. Maybe it was just that the lids lowered a bit, as though in synch with the corners of his mouth pulling down. He shifted his weight slightly, and for a moment I wondered—more in amazement than alarm—if this blister was actually about to take a swing at me. Surely, he wouldn’t make such a grievous mistake, I told myself. True, he had thirty, forty pounds or so, on me; and arms like Popeye’s; but Belking was an old cat, probably fifty or more.

For the briefest moment, a peculiarly disturbing moment, I remembered how surprised I had been upon learning that spry and vigorous Henry Hernandez was in fact an unbelievable eighty-three, but then the thought sort of wisped away into the ether and I couldn’t even recall why it had disturbed me.

Nothing happened. Except that Belking inhaled, let his breath out in a long sigh, and said, “You through?”

“Yeah, other than saying congratulations to Belking-Gray before I go. And to you, of course.”

“I wondered when you’d get around to that. Congratulations on preliminary approval for our IFAI vaccine, right?”

“Right, Dr. Wintersong’s vaccine—or, I guess technically, Belking-Gray’s vaccine, if you’ve got the patent on it.”

“We do. Fortunately.”

“Preliminary approval? My impression from the newspaper story was everybody might be getting shots of it by day after tomorrow.”

He smiled without parting his lips. “Approval for clinical trials. Animal testing was recently concluded—with very impressive results; the vaccine is almost as safe as distilled water—but mass immunizations can’t begin until after those trials have produced corroborative evidence of the vaccine’s efficacy and safety in humans.”

That last sentence came out canned, like something he might have been reading from a teleprompter. “When might that be?” I asked. “I mean, how long does it take, a year? A day and a half?”

I thought at first he wasn’t going to answer. Then he did that inhale-and-sigh bit again and said, “This is an unusual situation, because of the unusual and extreme danger to the entire population of the country—indeed, the earth, the entire population of the planet itself—due to the out-of-control IFAI epidemic. Even you must know that, until now, there has been neither prevention nor hope of cure for the increasing number of victims infected with the deadly virus.”

“Even I? Where you going with this?”

“I had not concluded my response. In the light of these highly unusual and potentially catastrophic circumstances, the clinical vaccine trials were in fact commenced some time ago. After completion of all animal tests required and with full knowledge and approval of the federal Food and Drug Administration, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Therefore, mass immunizations could commence in a few weeks. Two or three, probably less. The sooner the better, naturally, to protect those thousands, perhaps millions, who might otherwise become infected with the IFAI virus.”

“Ah...”

He squinted. “What does that mean?”

“Ah? Nothing special. Just, ah...mass immunizations, that’s when everyone has to get the shots, right?”

“Wrong. Everyone who desires to avail himself, or herself, of the protection guaranteed by the vaccine may get the shots from public health services or any qualified physician. Assuming, of course, that the Food and Drug Administration does in fact approve the vaccine.”

“Is there any doubt the FDA will? I mean, has the FDA ever failed to approve a vaccine, even when there wasn’t a disease for it to prevent?”

“That’s a goddamn ridiculous statement.”

“How about the Swine Flu vaccine? Didn’t the FDA and every medical genius in the country approve that dandy when there wasn’t a single case of Swine Flu anywhere on the planet then, or since? Wasn’t a lot of big bucks spent with insistance that everybody in the country should be vaccinated—to prevent an epidemic of a disease that didn’t exist? And didn’t Belking-Gray get a good chunk of those bucks?”

Belking’s eyes narrowed even more and his face flushed, got distinctly redder than normal. A vein over his left temple became suddenly prominent. He looked like a man about to have an attack. Or, maybe, about to attack me.

But I went on, so aware of his irritation coming at me, and mentally stretched by the almost suffocating nearness of those hundreds of stuffed animal corpses, that it actually seemed a good idea at the time.

“Hypothetical question: What if IFAI is no more a true virus-caused disease than Swine Flu was, or AIDS, or any of the other now-nonexistent diseases everybody alive is supposed to be immunized against? And suppose, down the road, public opinion forces the FDA to rescind its approval for your Wintersong vaccine—maybe after it kills a few thousand people, sickens a few million more—what then? Do you, and Belking-Gray, ship tons of Wintersong’s unsold bugshit to Africa, Brazil, Afghanistan, and a bunch of third world countries, and peddle it there?”

Two curious things happened at the same moment then, or at least I became aware of two curious things. First, the corners of Belking’s mouth pulled down, and he shifted his weight slightly—just as he had a few minutes before—but this time he pulled both hands away from his hips, raising the left one, dropping his right three or four inches; and I knew he was actually about to throw a punch. At me.

But at the same time I became aware of a strange whining sound—a kind of gritty “ooobiebobiebunnynngggg” played on a musical buzz saw—and I wondered if I could possibly have developed a disabling form of instant tinnitus in both ears, simultaneously. But if that screechy chalk-on-a-blackboard sound was inside my ears, it was so loud that Belking heard it, too. And it was of such arresting dissonance that he forgot to hit me. Or decided not to.

There it was again.

“What in God’s name was that?” I asked, asking nobody in particular.

“Sybil,” Belking said. Not to me, but as though to that same nobody in particular.

Then, dimly recalling that “Sybil” was the name of Belking’s wife, and hearing the clack of heels on the floor somewhere behind me, I was able to decipher the next whiningness as, “Hobie, Hobie, hon, are you ready to—oh, there you are.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Yeah, Sybil Belking, skirting the Dali ram exhibit and walking toward us, still going on about what time it was, and they’d be late for lunch with the Mayor, and if she didn’t keep track of their appointments and remind him of them he’d spend all his time with the dumb animals, and more, which I missed.

Missed, because, when she stopped a yard from us, peering intently into her husband’s face while ignoring me entirely, I automatically glanced briefly at Hobart Belking just as he glanced briefly at me. Our glances met for only a second or two as I said “Sybil?” sourly, and he said sourly “Sybil.”

I think it was our one moment of genuine man-to-man rapport; one, and only.

To say that Sybil Belking’s voice was high, thin, brassy, and disturbingly unmelodious, and that it was probably causing bats to stir restlessly in distant caves, would have been several understatements. And it is probably unkind to say that the voice flattered the body from which it issued; but I’ll say it anyhow. Somebody once remarked that a woman “can’t be too rich or too thin,” but all by herself Mrs. Belking proved that wit at least half wrong. She was so thin—well, if you sliced a normal woman from head to toe twice, and thus lopped her into three skinny pieces, Mrs. Sybil Belking would be the one in the middle.

On that narrow angular body was draped a pinkish-colored dress, unadorned except for a sort of polka-dotted creamy-white belt that looked like, and probably was, leopard skin, which matched the creamy-white fur dotted with dark circles dangling loosely from the crook of one arm. On her feet were shoes that looked like lizards.

Her thin-lipped mouth was still moving, and I heard her telling Belking that she’d taken “oh, a dozen, at least a dozen” phone calls for him, naming one Governor, one Senator, several reporters and scientists. All of that was like the faint whining of a distant air-raid siren, but then I clearly heard a phrase that grabbed my attention. Grabbed it suddenly, and held it.

“... and there’s a writer named Dane Smith, who’d like to interview you. About the vaccine, of course. Dr. Billy said she’s friendly, could be helpful, and you might consider it. Well, if we aren’t going to be late for the luncheon, we should leave now. All rightie, hon?”

Hon’s face was impassive, or maybe bleak. I waved a couple of fingers at it, and at the profile of Mrs. Belking, who apparently considered me not really there, or invisible, or another of the dumb animals, and walked toward the Museum’s doors.

Not the rear doors. Instead, I went to a spot just inside the entrance and turned, to get a look at Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum from there, as it was designed to be seen by first visitors.

The lights were still on, the two campfires flickering. Far to my left an exhibit of elk included a small but realistic looking waterfall sparkling in the light. Just inside the entrance doors, near on my left, was a brown-black Kodiak bear on all fours, thick neck arched, head raised and glassy eyes gazing at me. On my right was the enormous polar bear Belking had already pointed out to me—another “clean kill, dead in the heart”—rearing high into the air above my head, lips pulled back from fearsome fangs, both thick arms raised with knifelike claws extending from the massive paws, glass eyes glittering.

Ten yards ahead of me, Mr. and Mrs. Belking were turning, stepping toward the Museum’s rear, preparing to leave. Around them and on the walls above them, were the two hundred and fifty-six “prizes,” the Wild Animals of Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum, or what was left of them. Entire freeze-dried bodies, or mounted heads and necks, antlers and horns and tusks, skin and hide and fur and feathers, each attached severed head blinded by eyes of glittering glass.

It was unquestionably a bright and, in some ways, a beautiful scene. The animals were beautiful indeed, their fur and form and posture, the illusion of graceful or powerful movement, pleasing to the eye. So were the fowl, for in the imitation trees and even on the ersatz earth were dozens of birds, perched on limbs or preparing for flight, vivid plumage cheerful and bright. But there was no movement, none at all, those gaping mouths never closed, the turning heads never turned, nothing breathed, no blazingly-bright-feathered bird soared in splendor.

Beautiful, artful, impressive—but cold, still, sterile. And, at last, ugly. It all looked to me, now, like a graveyard filled with hundreds of brightly-painted corpses imprisoned outside their caskets. And showing off his prizes to me and saying, I remembered Hobart Belking, his voice hushed and suffused with the emotion of a penitent in prayer, “A lot of my life is here, in the Museum, a lot of my goddamned life. Hell, most of it is.”

And that was sad, depressing, dismaying, and even frightening. It had to be at least a little frightening to know that Hobart Belking, founder and builder of Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals, Inc., billionaire businessman, respected sportsman and harvester of beauty in its prime, could confess without shame that most of his life was death.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I walked to the double entrance doors and outside into sunlight. Into bright sunlight, welcome warmth and blaze and burn of life. I took a deep breath, sucked in sunshine, stretched my arms and legs, and wiggled a little just for the fun of it. I’d been temporarily embalmed and the stuff had stopped working, or I’d been slightly frozen but now was thawing.

I trotted briskly down the steps, turned at the Museum wall paralleling the driveway, heading for my Cad in the rear. When I was only halfway to the lot, Belking’s black Mercedes-Benz rolled on by, Hobart looking straight ahead, ignoring me. Right behind the Mercedes came a copper-colored Jaguar X56 sedan. Mrs. Belking ignored me, too, but I figured that was because she couldn’t see me. For a moment I was tempted to yell, “HEY, BABE!” at Sybil and scare her pants off, but the temptation lasted only a moment, because she was clearly a babe who should keep her pants on.

Yes, life was coming back, the blood was warming. So naturally I thought of Dane. In my Cadillac, rolling down the driveway and into Macadamia Street, I thought of Dane and Mrs. Belking’s comment about her, plus a couple of other comments that had been made during the last half hour.

It was of considerable interest to me that, when I casually offered “congratulations” to Belking and his pharmaceutical company, he had not only known I must be referring to Wintersong’s IFAI vaccine, which was natural enough since news of the FDA’s blessing was being hyped by all media, but also had responded with what struck me as an unnatural comment: “I wondered when you’d get around to that.” I wondered why Hobart Belking would have expected me to “get around” to discussing the vaccine with him at all.

But there had been another comment, at least a thoughtless comment that might or might not mean trouble—not for me, but for Hank—and I’d made it. That had also been during discussion of the vaccine, when I later referred to it as “bugshit.” That was Hank’s word for the Belking-Gray brew already being injected experimentally into bloodstreams to prevent deadly IFAI animalcules from swimming around among endangered corpuscles. At least, it was from Hank that I’d first heard the pejorative term, and it worried me that Belking might guess that’s where I’d got it. Might guess, certainly, if he knew I was working for Dr. Henry Hernandez. Which he probably did.

Still, Hank also had said bugshit was the word used by Belking-Gray researchers themselves, when referring to the vaccine they’d personally concocted. So I was probably making a mountain of an unimportant molehill. Probably. But that faint thread of worry kept wiggling in my brain, like a wee bug crawling among the convolutions.

So I gave Dr. Hernandez a call. I’d been wanting to check with him anyway, to fill him in on what I’d been up to and find out what kind of severely unbearable conniption this morning’s IFAI-vaccine news had produced in him.

Mrs. Hernandez answered, that low lilting voice saying softly, “Dr. Hernandez’ office, may I be of assistance?”

Her soft voice caressing my ear with liquidly-accented English—“may I be of ahzzeezztahnss?” was nice enough to repair most of the damage Sybil had done to it.

“Eleanora,” I said, “Hi, this is Shell Scott, the guy your hus—”

“Ah, Mr. Sheldon, my husband’s friend I like so much!”

“Oh? Ah. Well, that’s...that’s nice.”

“Yes, Mr. Sheldon, who will keep my Henry from being run over and destroyed, or ruined by the doctor monsters, or turned into a farmer of potatoes—”

“Well, I’m not sure. I’ll do what I can of course, but I’ve really just start—”

“I told you before, when yesterday we met, I knew you would be the good man for my husband. You remember, I mentioned I have a little of the seeing, the other sight.”

“Yeah, and I wish I had some. Eleanora, is Hank available for a consultation with me?”

“Oh, yes. He has not patients every half hour as before, some have stopped coming—they have been working on those.”

“They—on those? You mean somebody’s working on... who? Hank?”

“No, no, on his patients, making some believe they are stupid foolish to consult with such a quack. They have been very busy.”

“Who’s this they?”

“The same as always, the doctor businessmen those my husband calls members of the union for upside-down doctors of bassackward medicine.”

“Come on, you don’t mean doctors—regular physicians, other M.D.s—are looking up Hank’s patients and leaning on them, do you? That sounds crazy?”

“Si, sounds like, as you say, paranoia? Little funny men following? But is true, is not a new thing. It has happened often before, with others. Henry can tell you. They do not ever threaten them, or do obvious menacing of those patients. Just helpfully convince those that they are putting themselves in foolish risk of illness, even of death maybe, from trusting in greedy unorthodox quacks instead of wonderful qualified physicians like them.”

“You’re not kidding?”

“Not kidding, why would I? It is even sometimes the doctors themselves who do this, but not usually in person. Most often they send around others, like social welfare or the health department people, sometimes even men with badges from the District Attorney, asking questions for supposed investigations of malpractice of crooked doctors. Like—usually it can just happen to be mentioned, somehow you know anything about this crook quack? There are many ways.”

“Maybe. And maybe I’ve still got a lot to learn.”

She laughed, for some reason. “Henry said to me he thinks you learn better than most who drive him crazy, because you are no dummy. My husband, Henry is excited with hopefulness that you will soon be filled with knowing and determination for doing, and accomplishing his great purposes with much success. I will buzz him for you, he will be glad.”

“Wait.”

Nothing.

“Listen, Eleanora,” I said severely, “you just threw those purposes at me again, ‘accomplishing his purposes’ you said. Could you perhaps be a little more specific about what the hell that purposes means? Sometimes I get a hunch I’m playing in a different game here, like I missed something along the way... hello? Eleanora?”

Still nothing. I was a little frustrated, but in a moment became aware that I was smiling. Just a bit. I liked Eleanora. She was a nice old gal. Really nice. Yeah, I liked her a lot. I guess it’s hard not to like people when they really like you.

Still, every once in a while I got this eerie sense that Hank wasn’t telling me nearly everything, and was leading me to the edge of a cliff but making sure I didn’t look over the edge, look from the precarious precipice down into a great, black, yawning pit with no bottom, just down and down and down.

And, moreover, a spooky sense that even Eleanora might be doing the same subversive thing to me somehow. How about that? Each of the conspirators working on me, nudging me, poking at me, each of them conspiring at me in his own way. Or her own. Or their own. Well, each doing a different thing but with the same end in mind. Maybe my end. Or, could be I was getting really paranoid, and soon there’d be little funny men following me. On the other hand—

I never got wherever I was going. Because the familiar rippety-pop voice was exploding staccato phrases in my left ear:

“Sheldon, my friend! Good, it is good you phoned. Come over, we will talk. The news is sickening, verdad? I am filled with eagerness to hear from you. Can you do it, Sheldon?”

I glanced at my watch. Not even ten a.m. yet. I wouldn’t pick up Dane until eleven-forty-five. I had a few questions to ask Hank, and he probably had some for me. There was time enough.

“I have no patient for over an hour,” Hank said. “Either everybody is healthy, or quackery is slowing down these days.”

“Okay, Hank. Give me twenty minutes.”

“Is good. But I cannot wait to ask, did you read some of the medical papers, those excitements, which I gave you? Any?”

“Read ‘em all, Hank.”

“Ahh...” It was a pleased sound, and I could almost see Hank’s quick smile, sharp ends of that neat gray mustache rising. “Mucho bueno,” he continued. “Come speedily. It will be good to speak with you again, my friend.”

I hung up. And realized I was smiling, just a bit, as I had after talking with Eleanora. Maybe something was wrong with me.

* * * * * *

When I walked through the door of the office, Eleanora smiled brilliantly and said, “Hola!”

“Hula yourself,” I said, grinning. “Is the doctor in? I have this little pain in my brain.”

“He will fix.”

She leaned toward the intercom box on her desk, but before she could buzz Hank, his office door flew open and he bounced into the outer room, grabbed my hand and pumped it.

“Good, speedily you did come,” he said. “What things have you been doing, Sheldon? I am eager for you to tell me everything happening. Come.” Then, zip, he was back in his office, waiting for me near the open door.

I went inside and to the same chair I’d used yesterday, as Hank closed the door and walked over to sit down behind his desk. He was handsomely eye-catching this morning, almost dazzling in red slacks, a pink sport shirt open at the throat with its wide collar worn outside the collar of a nicely cut white jacket. Part of a silky red handkerchief projected from the jacket’s breast pocket and soft-looking white loafers were on his feet. Henry Hernandez, M.D., projected the air of a man who’d just had a shave and massage after a jog on the beach, and to me still didn’t appear to be a day over sixty.

“You sure don’t look like a doctor, doctor,” I said. “You look like you just got off one of your yachts.”

He smiled, then said, “Well, Sheldon, what have you been doing, is there anything new for reporting to me?”

I filled Hank in on what had happened since I’d last seen him yesterday afternoon. He was concerned, and looked angry, as I told him of the action in the Halcyon’s parking lot following my dinner with Dane Smith, surprised when I mentioned identifying the Mercedes-Benz as belonging to Hobart Belking.

At one point he did say, soberly, “You could have been killed. It was clearly the intention of those two men, verdad?”

“Yeah, you bet. The hell of it is, I don’t have any idea who they were. But I got a pretty good look at them. Probably good enough to pick their chops out of the police mug books. If they’re in them. Which I’ll most likely check at Parker Center this afternoon.”

For the next few minutes we just sort of chatted. I told him about visiting the Wild Animal Museum and meeting Belking there, and Hank asked my impression of the “dead animals” and seemed pleased by my lack of enthusiasm. He knew that Dr. Paul Anson was my next-door neighbor at the Spartan Apartment Hotel, and I found myself telling him about my three rooms and bath, the two tanks of tropical fish, even the painting of Amelia and her fetching fanny—at which point, for some reason, he seemed briefly to go off into a different space somewhere, gazing intently past me toward the wall, and smiling.

What’d I say? I wondered. Amelia? Fanny? Something else profoundly fascinating?

But Hank’s whatever-it-was lasted only three or four seconds, then he said more soberly, “I would speak to you of the IFAI vaccine, this ominous concoction of Wintersong and Belking-Gray. Speak very seriously. But to do so, to fill your understanding with how dangerous it can be, I must say some things you would not have believed yesterday, maybe not today either. But I think you may now be ready for most of this, Sheldon. We will see. On the phone, you mentioned reading all those articles and medical papers I gave you concerning some of the craziness and unbelieveableness of modern medical thinking and practice. Is true, all?”

“Yeah, Hank. Every word, some of it a couple times.”

He nodded slowly, looking pleased. “That is good, Sheldon. Very good. It was a considerable quantity.”

I’d mentioned that I was later going to pick up Dane and drive the lady to Omega for her interview. Hank had scowled fiercely then, which I assumed was his normal scowling at the mention of Dr. Wintersong, but hadn’t asked at what time that would be. Until this moment.

I checked my watch. “I’m meeting Dane just before noon at her hotel, the Halcyon. A little over an hour from now.”

“Bueno. That is enough.”

I could feel my eyebrows squeezing together a little. “Enough for what?”

But he didn’t answer. Instead, burning those piercing eyes into me, he asked another question. “Of your reading, in all that considerable quantity, what to you seemed of most special importance?”

“Just about everything, if you want the truth, Hank. Maybe because it was all new stuff to me. But I guess what really knocked my socks off was the Royal Rife info, plus the history of Dr. Koch and his Glyoxylide. In both cases it was like reading about magic.”

“Yes. But that is because we have strayed—no, been led—so far away from the magic within us, within every miraculous cell inside us. Led to believe we and all the miracles of us are helpless, and only drugstore pills and potions have magic. Doctor magic.”

He sighed. “Muy triste, very sad. Rife and Koch, both the same history. Both of those good men, and a hundred other good men, destroyed by the same agents of medical monopoly—mainly AMA, but supported by FDA and all the other alphabet of orthodoxy I have mentioned to you.”

“Yeah, I’ve almost got them memorized. NIH, ACS, NCI, and...ah, I’m working on it.”

“It is more complicated than a ton of vegetable soup, Sheldon, so you cannot digest the whole thing in one meal. But before we finish, maybe you will be one of those able to remember that what happens to a Rife or a Koch, and so many others, is always the same happening, the same ugliness over and over. I could name them all day and until tomorrow. Each time it is the same story, over and over, again and again. It is a great crime. A crime so monstrous the imagination cannot wrap around it—but nobody pays. At least the guilty do not pay, only the innocent.”

“I see plenty of that in my own business.”

“Yes, it is not only in medicine that the guilty go free. But where else except in medicine are the victims unaware they are victims? Where else are the assassins saluted, made rich, blessed as saviors, rewarded and honored for their crimes?”

“That’s pretty strong stuff, Hank.”

“Not strong enough. Perhaps one day soon.” He looked past me, unmoving, his voice becoming gentler. “You yourself, Sheldon, will be able to see in your mind unending mountains of corpses, smell the stench of rotting dead, maybe weep for children whose futures have been stolen.”

He blinked, his eyes focused on my face again. “So, then, my little library I gave you made you impressed with Rife and Koch, and what happened to them. That is good, good for you to know. Was there anything else of special importance to you?”

“Yeah...” I sort of mentally skipped back through that thick file again, remembering things that had surprised me, or shocked the hell out of me, points I’d noted and underlined. “The other big thing would have to be the really incredible—to me—number of negative articles, quotes, statistics, and damned convincing reports about immunizations, vaccinations, their dangers and side effects. Some of it almost made your crazy claims sound conservative.”

Hank smiled. “I am conservative, you just don’t know it yet. So, then, you found the arguments against immunization convincing? Intelligent even?”

“Made more sense to me than what I’ve heard from the other side—the little there’s been. I mean, all my life I’ve heard get your shots, get protected, but not much about why. Just do it, never much in the way of logical explanation.”

“That is because there is no logical explanation.”

“Well, it’s still kind of surprising. Maybe shocking. But, for one thing, entirely aside from all your brainwashing yesterday—”

“Un-brainwash. Vice-versa.”

“—I saw a side of my buddy, Paul, last night that I didn’t know anything about. I mean, I talked to Paul, Dr. Anson—”

“I know.”

“You know? How come you know about that?”

I didn’t really expect an answer. Didn’t get any. “What the hell is Paul doing?” I asked, somewhat severely. “Is he reporting to you about my progress in school? Or what?”

Same response. Except this time Hank smiled, rubbing one sharp end of his gray mustache in what struck me as a sinister way.

Finally I said, “Okay, pull the dumb Sphinx bit on me. But tell me this, maybe I don’t know a whole lot about Pasteur, but I always got the impression he was some kind of medical god, brilliant scientist and researcher—until Paul started dumping on him last night. And now you. I remember way back, in school... well, didn’t Pasteur save the French silkworm industry? By finding out what bugs were eating them up or something? And didn’t he discover how to inoculate cows or pigs or something with the vaccine he invented, and saved the whole goddamn cattle industry? Or something?”

“Something, yes. But not what you think, not what you have been allowed to hear. Good for Paul. Good for me. I will dump on Louis Pasteur every chance that comes to me, he needs plenty of dumping. As does the other criminal, Jenner. In your area of expertise, Sheldon, they were, respectively, our Jack the Ripper and Al Capone of medical superstition.”

“That’s too damned much, Hank. Maybe these guys didn’t have all the answers—back then—but they must have contributed something to science, and medicine.”

“They contributed horror, tragic error. Disease and death. Uncountable, unimaginable, unnecessary death then, in their day, and also now, in ours.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Hank stopped speaking, and for awhile I didn’t say anything either. I then looked across the desk at Hank and said, “Don’t misunderstand me, my friend. Since talking to you yesterday, and all that reading last night, I’m pretty much on your side. Pretty much. I mean I don’t doubt the facts you’ve laid on me, maybe not even your conclusions. But it’s so damned one-sided, and extreme.”

I stopped, started over. “Put it this way, Hank. If everything you’ve said is true, the absolute gospel, how come I never heard any of it before? Not any of it. The same thing occurred to me last night when I was reading. How come I never heard any of those arguments before, but only the other side? Like what a blessing immunizations are, how important it is for everybody to get their protective shots. Why was all of that new to me, and if it’s so bloody important, as important as you say it is, how come everybody doesn’t know about it already?”

Hank didn’t answer my question directly, at least not right away. Or maybe he did, but I didn’t exactly know he was doing it until he’d done it.

“We switch,” he said. “I think it is not good to give you too many facts, true stories, statistics. I think if I explain for you by interesting analogy, it is better.”

“Better for what?”

“Like making up a story that is basically true but doesn’t seem like it. I think this will bore into your head deeper, and stay there longer.” Hank paused only momentarily. “I admit my one-sidedness absolutely. This is because all your life you trust almost everyone else, have heard only the other side. There are reasons for this. But we will explain it more like playing a game, with more fun. So Sheldon, let us begin. Invent a religion for me. Just quick, any kind.”

“Invent? Did you just fall over the edge?”

“Not yet. Sheldon, I have already informed you—yesterday morning—that orthodox medicine is a monopoly, an allopathic monopoly, the one percent that is allowed. And this is true not only of medical practice but reporting about medicine. So that whenever a medical expert is consulted for truth to put or take out of a newspaper story or magazine article or book, it is always an allopathic expert, of the one percent who is consulted, every physician who writes a daily newspaper column about health, or appears on the TV news health segments or in movies, or speaks for our government agencies, all over and everywhere—is without exception an allopathic physician, an orthodox pill-prescribing drug-pushing vaccine-squirting kill-the-disease doctor. I have told you this already.”

“Yeah.”

He went right on. “So that part is all done. But you still need to grasp more firmly, not only that this controlling one percent is much like a powerful priesthood with absolute authority to exercise demons and punish heretics and forgive sinners, but that these priests of medicine control the writing of all the law and commandments and rules for what may be done and said, plus penalties—like stoning with boulders or burning at the stake—for breaking them.”

Hank paused, brushing half of his mustache with an index finger, looking at me. “Sheldon, let us together make up this religion of ours.” He spoke softly, and very slowly for a change. “We will say it is some place in the infinite universe, maybe this tiny earth, maybe a place like this, whatever we wish. There the priests have proclaimed a holy commandment that from sunset to sunrise it is forbidden for anyone to look upward, at the home of gods radiant in splendor, lest the people parish, and, therefore, a further commandment that all people must at sundown enter their houses and come out again only after sunrise. The priests said this is for the people’s good, for their protection. So, naturally, the people thank the priests and give them their fatted brains, and some calves. But one night a man, brave or bored or curious or even crazy, goes outside his House, thus breaking the second commandment...he looks up without being blinded, thus breaking the holy first commandment... and sees stars.”

Hank looked sharply at me again. “What happens to him?”

I’d been about half hypnotized by Hank’s unusually soft and slow delivery, but I had also been visualizing with unusual clarity the pictures suggested by his words. I had imagined a gray-green land, the shuffling people, richly-robed and stern-visaged priests. And then for a few seconds I was that lone and lonely man, stepping outside into night, looking up, filled with fear and trembling—and then with wonder.

So I had to come back a long way. “What happens to him?”

“Yes. Finish my story. Make me believe it is true.” He was smiling, arm bent, with elbow resting on his desk top.

“Okay,” I said, a bit hesitantly. “Well, this guy has all by himself discovered there’s a whole something-else out there, he’s like Marco Polo landing in Cathay, or Christopher Columbus discovering Amer... whatever it was he sailed to, the Gray Azores or....”

I paused, thinking. “Yeah.” I was getting with it now. “Okay, he’s got this incredible revelation, this marvelous new knowledge, so he tells the people—hey, what he does, he gets a whole gang of them together, like in a Coliseum, and he makes this great mind-blowing speech telling them to hell with priests and commandments, they’ve all got to go outside tonight and look up and they’ll see a glory! He’s named it stars! They flip out, go crazy, elect him President and give him a hundred concubines and a lifetime pension of a million dollars a year. Or whatever they use there, maybe they give him a gazillion something or others. And he rules with a strong wise hand, and he and the people live happily ever....”

Hank’s mouth was pulled down, ends of that mustache like little gray daggers, and he appeared to be growling hugely. It was unquestionably a sour look. But he didn’t say anything. Just kept on looking as if his entire face was fermenting.

I began getting uncomfortable. “Look, that’s how it happened, okay? You see, Hank, all our boy has to do is talk to the people, and tell them the good news about what’s what, and that for all these years the priests have been bullshitting.”

I stopped. He’d done it to me, just let me stumble along until I arrived at his conclusion.

It ticked me off a little, but I ground my teeth together and said through them, “Got it. They cooked him in a pot, didn’t they?”

“Worse. They named him anathema, accused him of blasphemy, found him guilty of heresy, after which they tried him, and tied his limbs to four posts and shot them off in opposite directions. Then they cooked his pieces in a pot.”

“Of course,” I said.

“And his pieces were Royal Rife, William Koch, Wilhelm Reich, and a thousand more. And maybe, if we’re not very careful, Henry Hernandez and even Sheldon Scott.”

I felt a little tightness between my shoulder blades, but I said, “Don’t include me, Hank. I’m a layman, remember?”

“You think they don’t cook pieces of laymen in pots? Happens all the time, Sheldon.”

But then he stood up, stretched, arching his back, stepped out from behind his desk and stopped near where I sat in my chair.

Looking down at me said, with considerable animation again, “In answering your questioning why only the dumb one percent is known to anybody, the other part is showing you how truth is buried with ‘LIES’ carved on its headstone.”

“Hank, I’ve got to split pretty quick, twenty minutes. I have to pick up Dane.” I smiled, thinking thoughts unmedical. Also, unreportable. And maybe unlikely.

“Plenty of time,” Hank said. “I think I can inform you some more about the curious allopathic mentality. I think we can do it with flyspecks.”

“Flyspecks, huh?”

“We will consider the so-called scientific research of the allopathic fraternity, the orthodox physicians of authorized futility. There are some of them researching now.”

Hank turned, hands clasped behind his back. For a few seconds he gazed down at the floor, silently, then raised his head to look directly at me, eyes burning, and began speaking rapidly, like a professor beginning an address to his students a minute before the bell.

“Allopaths!” he barked. “Allopaths see a swarm of little flies on a big pile of manure and ask themselves, ‘How did they do that?’ After deep thought and considerable time, they publish scientific analysis in medical journals probing that, though nobody has ever actually seen it happen, it is obvious flies must have eleven thousand little bowel movements a day, which add up. Then the unorthodox Kochs or Rifes or Reichs, or even Hernandezes, people who comprehend the existence and nature of those little round specks flies leave behind, they send papers to those same medical journals saying, ‘Flies don’t do manure piles, they do flyspecks—but none of those papers is ever published, none, zilch—the authors’ reports are anecdotal, there have been no double-blind tests. So all these papers telling the truth are denied publication. This truth is rejected as quackery flying in the face of science. I said ‘flying’ there on purpose.”

“I wish you hadn’t.”

He smiled. “They must be quackery, because science is what is published in reputable medical journals. This easily, Sheldon, is truth crucified and error made king by acclamation. Because of this, in time a brand-new young doctor sees some flies on a big huge pile of manure and being just out of allopath school where everybody is crazy, naturally he says, ’How did they do that?’”

“Yeah, yeah, I think I already heard this one.”

“No, this is a different one. Patience. You are learning things, even if you don’t know it. Later, when you think of orthodox research—like Jenner’s, Pasteur’s, Wintersong’s—you will automatically be reminded of manure piles. Our young new allopath is, we will charitably assume, a sincere and honest fellow not yet totally corrupted, and thus still eager to learn the truth. So, remembering what Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, ‘You can observe a lot just by looking,’ he observes the pile in order to look at it.”

“Did Yogi really say that?”

“Probably not. Our fellow considers the size of the mass, estimates its weight, counts the flies. Finally he says, ‘Caramba, this is too much for me,’ and begins seeking the truth. How does he do this, Sheldon?”

“How? You’re asking me how?”

“Never mind. I already know the answer. The answer is: He consults the scientific literature. He looks into the Index Medicus, into all the places where published scientific papers are listed explaining the truth about everything. Our fellow has a dim memory, from before medical school, of something or other about flyspecks. So he looks it up. It isn’t there. Nothing has ever been published about flyspecks, or any excremental deposits even remotely resembling them. Therefore, they don’t exist. So he looks up ‘manure’ and there finds the answer. He finds eleven small-print pages of answers. He finds. ‘Manure, Uncommon Production of by Common Housefly,’ and ‘Manure, Muscidae and Their...’ he finds, ‘manure, ordure of Musca Domestica of the family Muscidae: How They Do That.’”

“Hum,” I said. “You sure cover a lot of territory just to get back where—”

“The end result...well, in the end, our young doctor fellow is satisfied, convinced he now possesses the truth because he has found it printed in reputable medical journals and cited in the Index Medicus, et cetera, just like all the other doctors who did the same thing, and still do. Our hero is well on his way to becoming a true allopath, welcomed into the miasmas of orthodoxy with all the other misasmers. And forever after, if he sees or hears a Rife or Koch, Reich or Hoxey, or even a Hernandez, running around quacking ‘Flies don’t do big manure piles, they only do little bitty flyspecks, they really do do,’ and that is what he believes truth is.”

“I see.”

“Do you? The truth before their eyes has become invisible, as invisible to them as were Magellan’s ships to the Fuegans.”

Hank marched to his desk, sat down, leaned forward. He beamed at me, waiting expectantly.

After apparently waiting long enough, he said, “Sheldon, does this help you understand better how unreal is much of authorized medical reality? And why in the absence of medical freedom, it must be so?”

“Well, maybe if I reach a little. I think I followed most of that, until Magellan? And some ships.”

“Fuegans. This wonderfully illuminating report drawn from the log books of Fernando Magellan, the Portuguese navigator and ship captain whose ships sailed into Tierra del Fuego, or the group of islands below the tip of South America and south of what is now called the Straits of Magellan, the native Fuegans were unable to see them. They were unable to see the ships. The people who lived there had, for centuries, seen nothing on the sea larger than their own canoes. A great ship, thousands of times larger than a canoe, was beyond not only their experience but their imaginations. So they could not see Magellan’s ships, and did not.”

“How do you know they couldn’t see the ships? I don’t imagine they went around saying, ‘Hey, lookit that thing, I can’t see it, can you either?’”

Hank smiled. “Good question, Sheldon. I’m glad you asked. Seamen of other later expeditions who went ashore and communicated with those people, were informed by the Fuegans that they had indeed been unable to see the ships. But, also, their shaman told them the visiting seamen had been transported in some kind of great and strange vessel, and I would guess he must have described it at as something like an unbelievably monstrous canoe. Moreover, and this is why I am pleased you asked the question, he told them also that this great thing could actually be seen if one looked carefully.”

Those ships, and the “blind” Fuegans, really did fascinate me, and I briefly let the thoughts sparked by that story sort of roll around in my head for a moment. “So is this the Megallen ship thing—they don’t see it, don’t want to?”

“Partly, but mainly because they almost always see dead bugs. Dead bugs don’t change to something else, they just stay dead.”

“I remember...the Rife Microscope, that didn’t kill the bugs, right?”

“That is correct and that is of supreme importance, Sheldon. The allopathic microbiologists, virologists, bacteriologists, when they stain specimens, that stain itself kills the specimens. When they put them into an electron microscope, the electron beam kills them. So they see only dead ones. Start with some cocci, round bugs, call the Bug A. They change to another form, B, then to C and D and E and finally the rod–shaped bacilli, F. So when they look at them dead, they think each one is a different bug. But A-B-C-D-E-F isn’t six different bugs, but one bug changing form. Do you see what this, all of this I have said, means?”

“Well, I’m sort of getting the idea.”

Hank placed both hands on the top of his desk, leaned toward me, and his voice again began to take on that almost metallic humming or vibration I’d mentioned to Paul.

“It means every prevent-the-bug vaccine ever cooked up by Jenner or Pasteur or Wintersong and every imbecile in between them is a worse-than-useless putrescence of pleomorphic mutating bugshits that cause epidemics of sickness and death instead of preventing them.” He took a deep breath and continued, “It also, almost incidentally, means every poisonous kill-the-bug drug either does nothing good, or else kills only some symptoms of disease and leaves the true disorder the same as before, or usually worse. They cannot allow the people to even begin believing this truth is true. They must keep truth upside down.”

Hank paused, took a deep breath. “You must now see why this must be so, do you not, Sheldon?”

“Sure.” I nodded slowly. “If I buy your version—and I think I do now—if people realized what’s been dumped on them, and what they’re literally being stuck with, I guess they’d put the dumpers pretty much out of business.”

“Out of business is the number one thing, the big money thing. Multi-billion dollar thing. Public awareness and understanding of what we “quacks” have been saying would mean, first, that the public would get one-thousand percent healthier, but companies, and chemical companies, and hospital companies, and allopathic prescription writing—plus all the insanity of mass vaccinations and mandatory immunization programs to protect the public from specific diseases caused by specific unchanging bugs—would be down the toilet, where it belongs.”

“Where, as I imagine you’d say, most of it came from in the first place.”

“That is good, very good. Have I told you that modern medicine is upside-down and bassackward?”

I laughed. “You sure have.” I stood up, stretched my arms and checked my watch.

“You are going?” Hank said.

“Yep, on my way. But don’t think it hasn’t been fun.”

“Beside hilarious fun,” Hank said, not quite concealing his smile, “you have learned something about bugs.”

“More than I ever hoped and dreamed, believe it or not.” I walked to the door, put my hand on the knob.

Hank, still seated behind his desk, said cheerfully, “Well, for sure, now you know where deadly epidemics come from, plus how they are prevented and the people saved from terrible disasters. You will be glad of this next time it happens.”

“I do? I will?”

“Of course. Maybe you fail to realize it fully, but you are now well-protected by a little knowledge—doesn’t take much—against the fear-shouting of our protectors. When again they start yelling all-together how they must protect everybody from the next epidemic everybody didn’t know they needed protecting from, you will recognize the symptoms of this immunizing-everybody disease.”

“I will, huh?” I hadn’t made it out yet, but I turned the knob and pulled the door halfway open.

“You bet. It’s like finding hidden words in puzzles or riding a bicycle.” Hank walked to his desk, sat down behind it looking satisfied.

I turned to leave but then turned back momentarily and said, “Hey, IFAI, that reminds me. When we spoke on the phone you said you wanted to talk to me about that—about Wintersong’s practically-approved IFAI vaccine. I’m afraid it will have to wait.”

“Wait?” He asked softly, smiling benignly. “Sheldon, what do you think we’ve been doing?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dane laughed and said, “Turned into a door? That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I scowled through the Cad’s windshield at the narrow black-asphalt road ahead and decided to change the subject. The present subject wasn’t working.

I had hoped that by casually mentioning our goodnight kiss of the previous p.m. Dane would confess she’d made a foolish mistake in vanishing so abruptly. Or that we’d have to try it again and perfect it, perfect whatever it was we’d been doing, or that she’d suddenly gotten a terrible cramp in her lips. Practically anything. But dumb?

We were only about two miles from the top of the rise ahead, from which point we would be able to look down at those windowless bleached-bone buildings of the Omega Medical Research Center. It was twelve-ten p.m. so there were twenty minutes left before Dane’s appointment with William Wintersong, M.D., plenty of time.

I hadn’t been late arriving at the Halcyon, but I wasn’t even ten seconds early, either, because when I’d pulled to a stop before the lavishly-landscaped hotel, Dane was just coming out through the lobby doors.

She had looked—and still did—as fresh and pretty as wildflowers, wearing a silky-smooth white dress splashed with shimmering bright colors, like pieces of aurora borealis floating in milk, and around her neck was a scarf the shade of melting emeralds, the color of her eyes. And, until just now, it had been a most enjoyable trip.

In the beginning, after Hello and You Look Great, and I Like A Man Who’s On Time, we yacked easily for a while on our way out of the city. Yacked about Los Angeles, her New York apartment from which she could see approximately a millionth of an acre of Central Park, odds and ends. Dane mentioned her writing, time-consuming but fascinating research of Dr. Wintersong. And, because I was still full of stuff Henry Hernandez had so recently been pounding into me, I mentioned a couple of the ideas I’d gotten from him.

When she spoke of Dr. Wintersong’s generosity in allowing her to interview him again today, only hours after the “wonderful news” about his IFAI vaccine had been released, she glanced over at me, smiling slightly, and said, “But maybe you don’t think it’s all that wonderful, Shell. At least you didn’t seem to last night.”

“Still don’t. Apparently, according to what I got from this morning’s story in the Times, all that’s left before final approval of Wintersong’s bugsh—his vaccine, or the FDA go-ahead for nationwide distribution and maybe mass immunization, is testing it on a few more people.”

“Not exactly a few, six thousand subjects from all the most vulnerable population groups—for the usual clinical testing in selected hospitals, some doctors’ offices, clinics. That’s a statistically-significant sample, and the protocol seems very sensible to me.”

“Well, look, I’ve been mentally kidnapped by a mad scientist—actually, a superior kind of physician, I think—and he’s been throwing some provocative stuff at me. Let me toss a couple of his curves at you and see what you think, okay?”

“Splendid. Toss.”

I did the best I could to sum up from what I’d read, or heard from Hank, the double-barreled criticism of medicine’s so-called germ theory of disease that had most impressed me, had in fact convinced me. Many of Hank’s comments had been thrown at me so recently, some of them almost riveted into my brain by that brnnggnng muted-buzz-saw voice he employed occasionally, that most of it just fell into place without much effort on my part.

First barrel: The simple and natural-sounding concept that various disorders and imbalances, or “diseases,” and “disease germs,” arise from within each of us individually, when our internal environment fosters their growth, but not when it doesn’t. This in accordance with the same natural laws that shape our own birth and miraculous growth thereafter into whatever we become—which basically made “I” or each individual, responsible for what happened, good or bad...as opposed to the authorized-and-approved dogma that hundreds of different invasive diseases, each with its own army of virulent germs carrying pieces of the disease around, indiscriminately attack everybody in their way—which meant the individual was essentially helpless and “they” were in control of his life and health. Or rather, “they” would be in control if it weren’t for that other army, of highly-trained licensed medical doctors and health department healers, who, thank God, knew how to kill invisible dinosaurs.

And, second barrel: The many-times reported phenomena of pleomorphism, or the often-observed fact that microorganisms including “disease germs” routinely change form, mutate, become something other than what they were hours or even minutes before, altering not only size and form but function depending upon the nature of the medium in which they found themselves. Or, what they were depended upon where they were. Which meant that “deadly disease germs” could become harmless bugs or vice versa, depending upon changes in their environment: Us.

It all took me about a non-stop minute and a half, after which Dane was completely silent for another half-minute or so. Then she said—somewhat to my surprise—“That’s interesting. And you really contrasted the two theories brilliantly, Shell.”

“I did?” Well, umm, mostly I was quoting a guy named Hernandez.”

“Some of your concepts, or comparisons, were quite new to me, even though... Well, in my research, I’ve several times come across the idea that cells and cellular organisms might be formed from sub-cell life-bits or particles, mostly in the controversial work of Wilhelm Reich—and of course I’m familiar with the theory of pleomorphism, as opposed to currently accepted monomorphism. But everyone said... I mean, all the experts I consulted assured me that in relationship to infectious diseases, the pleomorphic theory was completely baseless, fraudulent research, preposterous. And they’re the foremost authorities in the world, the very best.”

I didn’t respond to that, but after half a minute or so, Dane went on, as though she’d been continuing the conversation inside her pretty head. “You know, Shell, it’s funny—I mean, funny I never thought of it this way before—but we’re pheomorphic.”

“How’s that again?”

“We’re all pleomorphic, you, me, everybody. Even those experts who told me pleomorphism is unscientific quackery. Right after conception, each of us is just a pinpoint of identical cells. Identical, one no different from the rest, each with identical DNA and form and function, each the same. But long before birth, billions of those cells have changed, differentiated, become fetal heart cells, or brain or bone or blood cells. They’ve changed their size and form and function. And that is pleomorphism, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.” I thought about it. “Hell, of course it is, must be.” Maybe I can throw that at Hank and impress him.

Once again, briefly, I wondered why I should feel a need to impress Hank about anything, but Dane was going on. She was going on with something completely unintelligible about “metaphasia... differentiation and dedifferentiation and redifferentiation,” and “oncologists, too, have to consider the pleomorphism of normal cells becoming cancer cells, even if they don’t call it that....”

I said, “It’s a good thing I like brainy girls. When they’re gorgeous. Thank goodness—”

“Shell, I am not a girl. I am a woman.”

“Yeah, boy—” I stopped. Uh-oh, I thought. Dane had sounded a mite severe there. It’s probably the influence of all these gals—uh-oh—women riding around on motorcycles, picking their teeth with Bowie knives. Why is it a woman can say, “Jimmy went out bowling with the boys,” but a guy can’t say, “Jenny’s out riding her Yamaha 23XY60 with the other girls?” Yeah, that’s a tough one.

Well, at least I’d learned something else. I’d learned never to do that again. But I hadn’t proved it to Dane yet. So I said, “Yes, woman. Sorry about that. What I meant was, you are, fortunately, a lovely, intelligent, female person who is kind, generous, forgiving...”

We rolled along in silence after that, until I turned off the freeway, heading east on the long straight road that ended at Omega. It was a few minutes after noon then, and I soon noticed an increasing number of cars coming out our way. Most of Omega’s employees worked only half a day on Saturday, and the first of them would now be heading home. The thought, for no identifiable reason at first, caused a small cool spot of uneasiness to start wandering around near the back of my neck.

And right then Dane spoke again, clenching a small fist and nodding vigorously. “Shell, I’m glad you told me, well, what you called your little bug speech. I’ve been thinking about some things you said that bothered me. A few of those ideas, medical contradictions, were suggested to you by that doctor you mentioned, weren’t they?”

“All of them, really. And he ‘suggests’ about the way a hammer...uh, a hammer suggests to a nail that it go a bit deeper.”

I sort of stopped and stuttered in the middle of that sentence, because, when I said ‘hammer’ the picture of Jock-Jock confined in his chair, heavy mallet smacking the back of his skull, was suddenly and shockingly vivid before my eyes. It was almost real and came out of nowhere, without warning, was just suddenly there. I hadn’t thought of the little chimp, or that depressing flip-book Hank had given me—still in the Cad’s glove compartment, I realized—for a lot of hours. And I almost wished I wouldn’t ever again remember humorously handsome Jock-Jock. Almost.

Dane was saying, “What was his name?”

“The Doc? Hernandez. Henry Hernandez, he’s an M.D., but definitely not part of the establishment. Actually, he’s a homeopathic physician, into prevention, nutrition, natural stuff.”

“He sounds like an interesting man.”

“He’s that, for sure. I don’t even think he’s crazy. Not entirely.”

“Anyway, I’ve just decided I’m going to see if Dr. Wintersong has any good answers to those things that bothered me. Make it part of my interview.”

“I doubt that’ll put him into a joyous mood. Especially if you mention Hern—”

“It doesn’t matter. I decided this morning—maybe because we were discussing it last night—that I’m going to ask William, uh, Dr. Wintersong about Dr. Sherwood’s suicide, when both of them were working so closely together at Grantland Memorial. There are some questions that haven’t really been answered, and if I’m the hotshot researcher I think I am, maybe I can dig out answers—”

“Dane,” I interrupted, “what you talk to the guy about is your business, but I wish you wouldn’t get into the Sherwood thing. Or, for that matter, even mention the name Hernandez. Wintersong might start foaming at the mouth.”

“Shell, the Wintersong story is the longest, most meatiest, most important chapter in my book. And the suicide of his mentor, Dr. Sherwood was a pivotal turning point in Dr. Wintersong’s life. After that he didn’t perform surgery, or even practice medicine, for nearly a year. And it was during that year he met Hobart Belking, got the initial funding for Omega, and was on his way in research—to the next Nobel, I predict. No, Shell, my book wouldn’t be complete, wouldn’t be a thorough, honest job, if I left anything significant out.”

A stream of cars was going past us by then, heading toward L.A. or other nearby cities, moving in the opposite direction and so close there was a repeated whiff, whiff sound as they sped by my Cad on the narrow road.

Watching them flash along the edge of sight, I realized Omega would very soon be empty, or nearly so. And that might have been the thing bothering me, giving rise to the nebulous unease resting, light and clammy, at the back of my neck. Or, one of the things. Something else was eating at me, but I couldn’t pin it down.

I mentioned to Dane that everybody was fleeing Omega so speedily you’d think all the bugs had gotten loose and were chasing them, then added, “I hope you’re not alone in that joint with just Wintersong and a few guards. There’s something I don’t like—”

“Oh, Shell, you goose. You don’t think William’s going to chase me around a desk with his tongue hanging out, do you?”

“No, not with his tongue hanging—strike that. How about, ‘Wa’al, ma’am, he will if he’s half the man I think he ain’t... Strike that, too. It’s just that I’m uneasy about something, Dane. Part of it’s the damned lab itself. Caged animals, slimy cultures, people gliding around in white smocks with blood on them...Wintersong, mainly, I suppose.” I shook my head. “I’ve been dealing with people, usually people on the scummy side, for quite a while now, and there are times when you can tell...I’m not sure what it is about Wintersong, but there’s something wrong with the guy, something really wrong.”

“Don’t be silly. I know you don’t like him much, Shell, but William’s really a nice man. Certainly he’s been extremely nice, and proper—and really quite charming—with me.”

“William is nice, huh? Charming? Nice, huh? Huh!”

“Why, you almost sound jealous. And that’s silly.”

“Me? Jealous? Of a doctor?” Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. Or maybe I should have. Doesn’t matter; I did it. “Dane, open the glove compartment, and take out the little book you’ll find there, will you?”

She did. I told her how to hold it, how to flip it, and she did that, too.

I didn’t have to say anything more. She looked at me, shock growing visibly on her face. “Oh, my God,” she said. Then, more softly, “My... God. What—what is it?”

“One of Dr. Wintersong’s nice animal-testing exercises,” I said. “At least, Wintersong supervised it. Looks like more of what Hank calls the worse-than-useless—but he’s a professional negative thinker. No, those scientists were either trying to perfect a vaccine to prevent hammers, or else that was one more noble effort to help people become healthier, better human beings.”

“How could something as terrible as that help anybody?”

I smiled at her, then turned my eyes back to the road; about three miles more and we’d be able to see Omega.

“I do not know the answer to that question, Dane, dear. But I do not need to know. Nor does anyone else. Because all medical experiments are to help people, help them become healthier and wiser—what other reason could there be? And isn’t that what the experimenters themselves tell us? Would they lie? No, never in a billion years. So, we the people should try to understand how terribly important it is that they get to help us, even if they have to kill every animal on earth before they get to us. Clearly, then, thinking persons must agree that all medical experiments are good including those millions of humanitarian protocols in which animals are bludgeoned, boiled, blinded, burned alive, radiated, skinned, sliced open, electrocuted, have their skulls sawed open or their testicles crushed or—”

“Stop it! Just stop it.” She paused. Then, “May I keep this?” She was holding the little flip-book up in one hand.

“No, you may not,” I said. “Absolutely not. Put it back in the glove compartment. I mean it—okay. Now, leave it there. And don’t even think about showing it to Wintersong, or mentioning it for that matter. Hell, he probably likes zonking animals—”

“Let’s change the subject, Shell. Permanently.”

“Okay by me.” Hey, I’ve got a hot, or at least different, subject to explore. Ah, about last night, Dane, dear.”

And that’s when I’d done it. Mentioned her sudden disappearance, and my impression that she’d turned into a door, a closed door. Followed by Dane’s somewhat ungenerous comment that it was “about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Which didn’t exactly put a smile on my lips or give my tongue wings. So we rolled along that narrow two-lane road for another mile or two, but now in sticky silence.

* * * * * * *

Then, suddenly the Omega Medical Research Center was spread out below us. We’d reached the crest of that rise, were starting down the slight incline.

Something about the sight of those low, windowless, white buildings seemed to sober and subdue both of us even more. Neither Dane nor I spoke until we were a hundred yards or so from the gatehouse, close enough that I could see individual wires in the chain-link fence, those darker strands of barbed wire atop it.

Seeing that gatehouse, next to it the heavy gate swung closed to bar entry, reminded me of a question I probably should already have asked Dane, but one that hadn’t even occurred to me until now.

I slowed the Cad to under twenty miles an hour. “Dane, does Wintersong—does anybody—know I’m with you, that I was going to drive you here?”

“No, I don’t think so. At least, I didn’t mention it to anybody except you. Does it matter?”

“It might. You say Wintersong phoned you early this morning, changed your interview time to half an hour after noon?”

She nodded. “You didn’t mention your car trouble, delay, anything about getting another ride?”

“No, I didn’t. I’m sure of that. I didn’t even know my little Taurus was bollixed until after I spoke to William, so I couldn’t have told him about it.”

Her expression indicated sudden worry, or at least concern. Maybe she was picking up some of that prickly anxiety I’d begun feeling.

“Shell, why are you asking me that?”

“Some quick advice, Dane,” I said, “which I hope you’ll take. Don’t get mouthy with Wintersong, just do your interview stuff and say Thanks-Goodbye, don’t mention Duncan Sherwood, or Dr. Hernandez, or even me if you don’t have to.”

“What in the world—?”

“There isn’t time to lay out the coincidences and funny patterns bugging me. But some disturbing, unlikely things have been going on around here—somehow connected with this joint, with Omega, or, with Wintersong, or...hell, I don’t know.”

“Wonderful, wonderful. Damn you, Shell, are you trying to frighten me? What is it?”

“Maybe it isn’t anything. Really, maybe there’s no reason for me to be itchy, but....”

We were barely rolling, now only about twenty yards from the closed gate. As I was speaking, a man stepped from the gatehouse and stood on the asphalt next to it, hands on his hips, looking toward the Cad. Even before seeing his face, I’d tagged him, recognized the swaggering, almost arrogant, way he moved. Francis Harris, Grinner. Again.

What the hell does this guy do, I wondered, live here? Could be, of course, that only for the last day or two, had he been guarding gates all the time instead of breaking and entering, mugging citizens. Or maybe the horrible truth was that Grinner was my fate, karma, nemesis, doom—or maybe life was getting even with me for shooting so many guys just like him.

“I mentioned some disturbing things,” I said to Dane. “There’s one of them.”

I’d stopped the Cad and turned off the ignition, front bumper about a foot from Grinner’s legs. He hadn’t moved, stood there, hands on hips still, smile stretching his face. Or, rather, grin stretching it. For he, clearly, had recognized me also. Because he raised his right fist from his hip, extended the index finger pointing it straight through the windshield at me while wiggling his thumb, down and up again, down and up again. Twice. Bang-bang. In that cute way he had, as when yesterday I’d driven from this same spot, but going in the other direction.

“He...he’s scary,” Dane said, almost in a whisper.

While Grinner was still at the Cad’s front end, I looked at Dane and said rapidly, “I’ve already danced with that guy and a pal of his. They’re hoods, both of them, heavy-time losers. Why would hoods be working at a medical research center? Why this one? Plus, those losers maybe, just maybe, took a whack at running over my client with a two-ton van.”

Grinner was walking toward my side, the driver’s side, of the Cadillac now. So I finished, “just don’t make any waves until I figure out what the hell’s happening, okay?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, of course. Shell, you... Oh, dear, I didn’t even think to ask before. You are going to wait here for me, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.”

Grinner rapped on my window. I pressed the little lever, started rolling the window down, saying to Dane, “In fact, I’ll wait for you inside, if....”

That was all there was time for. But, also, the instant I told Dane I might “wait inside,” I knew I wasn’t going to. It wasn’t a logical deduction, even though it made sense that nobody would want me roaming around Omega’s hallways, labs and rooms, when nearly everybody else was gone. No, it was simply a kind of resigned acceptance, not logic but knowing, without having any idea how I knew. And I wasn’t sure I liked the feeling. Grinner bent down, looked through the open window at me, saying, “I swear, you’re even stupider than the other private pimps, Scott. Thought you had enough sense not to come back here after—”

I slapped my hand onto the door handle preparing—momentarily—to slam the door into Grinner, join him on the blacktopped road, and wash out his mouth with some rocks, or knuckles, or all of the above. Momentarily, because half a second after the burn started I knew that idea was—a lousy one with Dane on the seat, beside me. A lousy idea, maybe, even if she hadn’t been here. A second uniformed guard was in the small gatehouse, his back to me, long black hair hiding his neck, nothing hiding the heavy gun holstered at his left hip. I knew there would be at least two, maybe more than two, on the Omega grounds or inside the buildings.

My quickly arrested movement wasn’t what had stopped Grinner in mid-sentence. He’d bent down a little more, to get a look at Dane, and now he was saying, not to her but to me, “That’s why you’re back here, huh? She’s the writer broad, right?” When I didn’t respond, he said more loudly, “Well, is she the broad on Wintersong’s list or what?”

I just shook my head. Pimp for me, broad for my “girl.” Grinner wasn’t a big hit so far. Finally he stared past me at Dane, unaware that the combination of narrow, slitted eyes showing hardly any green, plus a compression of expression that made her mouth appear lipless, was not quite how the lady usually looked.

Thus, unaware, he blundered on, “Well, you this Dane Smith that’s expected, or ain’t you?”

She relaxed her mouth, letting both lips come back out, and said sweetly, “Of course I’m this Dane. And I’ll bet they call you Mr. Wonderful, don’t they?”

It was weak, and though I knew that given a little more warning she could probably have ripped him wide open, even more sweetly, I was gladdened by the weakness. For, because of it, Grinner didn’t really know if he’d been dumped on or flirted with, and it was strange to see the way his tentative smile frowned.

Not yet sure Grinner looked at me again, foolish enough to think I might help him. “Yeah, bo,” I said, “you got it. This bimbo there is the writer broad, all right. So let us in, whyn’t you?”

He gave me a slow, cold look, and for the first time today I was reminded of little icy snakes coiling somewhere behind venomous eyes. “Her in,” he said.

Then he turned and walked away but not to the gatehouse. Instead, he stepped up next to the closed gate in front of my Cad, raised both arms above his head and waved vigorously. In a moment, a jeep parked near the entrance steps before the large central building pulled away from the steps, swung left and sped toward us over the black-asphalt road.

Grinner moved to the far side of my Cad, opened the door. “C’mon,” he said to Dane.

She looked at me, a little worry frown wrinkling the bridge of her nose.

“I’ll drive the lady in, Grinner,” I said. “You don’t need—”

“No, you won’t, Scott. Believe me.”

“Look, I’ll come right back out if you want. It’s pretty ridiculous to—”

He interrupted again, voice somewhat sharper this time. “No, you won’t. You don’t do crap except sit here, you comprehend? I got my own orders, and you don’t go an inch past the gate, pal.”

He probably did have his orders. But I didn’t like this song and dance. Although, logically, since I knew I would hardly be allowed inside to roam around, it shouldn’t make any difference whether I took Dane to the door, or the guys in the jeep did. Guys—two of them. Nobody I knew.

Dane slid out of the car, looked back in at me and said, “See you in a little while, Shell.” Her voice wasn’t as crisp and sharp as when she’d suggested Grinner must be ‘Mr. Wonderful.’

“How long a wait?” I asked her. “So I don’t get impatient. Half an hour?” I asked.

“I wish....” she didn’t finish it.

In a few seconds Dane was in the jeep’s rear seat; the driver spun in a circle and headed toward Omega. I glanced toward the gatehouse. The other man, now standing in the doorway, turned away suddenly. I got only a glimpse of his face, a brief one while he was turning quickly, but it triggered an edge of memory, nebulous, unidentifiable at first. He was wide-shouldered, wide-bodied, with long greasy-looking hair, and I tagged him: One of the two men I’d met in the Halcyon’s lot last night, not the one I’d shot, the mugg I’d kicked in the head. It wasn’t a sure thing; I could have been wrong, but from here on I was going to pretend it was a sure thing.

I brushed my right hand up over my shirt, touched the Colt Special’s grip beneath my coat. Sometimes I leave an empty chamber under the revolver’s hammer, for safety. Last night, after the parking-lot altercation, I’d filled that empty chamber with a sixth 258-grain pill. For safety.

A hundred yards away, the jeep stopped before those wide cement steps; in a moment I saw Dane walking up them.

At the double entrance doors, she turned briefly. I couldn’t tell if she was looking back toward the gate, toward me. But I had a hunch she was. Then Dane went through the doors and out of my sight.

Grinner walked to a spot near my open window. I thought he was going to say something to me—partly because of the sneer that began twisting his lips, but he twirled suddenly and hurried into the gatehouse. There he pulled a phone from the wall and dialed, standing facing me behind a heavy-looking window. I guessed he’d forgotten, or maybe too long delayed, his report to Wintersong that the writer broad was on time. All I knew for sure was that he was speaking briefly to someone, listening, speaking briefly again, then listening for several long seconds; and that he then nodded vigorously, said another word or two, and hung up. And when he hung up, he looked happy.

Which did not make me feel good all over.

If you knew a guy who enjoyed picnicking in cemeteries, and called Frankenstein’s monster “Frankie, Old buddy,” and hummed hard-rock music with lyrics about fun decapitations, and you chanced to see him smiling, joyous, suddenly happy, would you suddenly feel good all over?

After hanging up the phone, Grinner turned away from me and apparently was speaking to the other guard. After a few seconds the bulky man with long black hair turned and took a step toward the far side of the gatehouse as Grinner moved into the doorway and stood there briefly, looking at me.

His body blocked my view of the other guard, but when the man turned I’d seen again the heavy gun holstered at his hip—and, this time, realized it was on his left hip. A leftie. Like the bulky bastard last night, swinging one arm, glitter of light on the moving blade in his hand—his left hand.

And that did it. Maybe a little late, but I’d tagged him now for sure. He was the mugg I’d kicked in the head at Halcyon’s lot. I’d glimpsed only the right side of his face, but I would have given long odds that on his left profile, at the hairline, there would still be a large lump and probably a sizeable scab.

I felt the sudden extra surge of my heart, almost as if it was thumping in the pit of my stomach. And at that moment, after staring at me for a long ten seconds, Grinner stepped from the gatehouse doorway and moved briskly toward my Cad.

He was grinning, naturally, like a starving wolf about to eat Bugs Bunny, and the fingertips of his right hand brushed the butt of his holstered Colt .45 automatic—the same kind of pistol the other guard was carrying. Looking past Grinner, I couldn’t see that long-haired creep inside the gatehouse. Probably there was another door in the far wall, but why would the guy go outside over there? Hell, maybe he was just taking a leak. Maybe I was getting paranoid. No, the knives last night, the still-sore cut underneath my left arm, that wasn’t paranoia. Even so, I was still hesitant, unsure, uptight, nerves stretching. But then I noticed two things that made up my mind, two not-quite-right little things.

One more step and Grinner would be alongside my Cad. The fingers of his right hand, which had been touching the gun’s butt, were firmly around its grip now. And the thing that really set off alarm bells for me, the small leather strap meant to hold the pistol safely in its holster was unsnapped, wiggling in the air.

I leaned back a little, keeping my face turned toward Grinner but slanting my eyes right and up to the rearview mirror. Reflected in the mirror, something moved, barely visible above the Cad’s rear, something brownish-beige, almost the color of the dried earth. For half a second it didn’t mean anything, failed to register. But then it made sense: the khaki-uniformed guard, that other sonofabitch, was bent over—not quite over enough—moving toward the other side of my Cad, the side opposite Grinner.

So that settled it.

Earlier, I’d considered slamming the Cad’s door open into Grinner, but that hadn’t been the right time for it. Now was the right time. I hit the handle, cracking the door, but didn’t shove with my hand. Instead, I threw myself backward onto the car’s seat, at the same moment slamming my left foot against the door and yanking my Colt from its holster. I heard solid thump and metallic clank—Grinner must already have had a gun in his hand—but I wasn’t even looking in his direction because by then I was on my back, Colt pointed at the closed right-hand window. Beyond which was nothing but blue sky. For a fraction of a second. One moment I was looking at a patch of empty sky and the next moment he was there.

Or part of him was there—all of it, from where I lay, grotesquely upside-down and fragmented like pieces of a lifesize jigsaw puzzle—both his extended hands gripping the Colt .45, beyond and above that a part of his neck and the beefy face, compressed lips, greasy black hair, squinted eyes fixed on the swinging door and my extended left leg.

It all happened jerkily, in separate isolated segments of a second or two or a few thin slices of forever, jumbled together like kaleidoscope pieces tumbling, but the man must have jumped up alongside the Cad’s window just as I slammed my foot against the door, swinging his cocked Colt automatic toward the spot where I should have been. Should have been, but wasn’t.

He had time for a flicker of surprise, but that was all he had time for. I shot him, or at least shot at him, twice. On my back, right arm only partly extended and the gun’s barrel almost touching the window glass, eyes rolled up toward the top of my head, when I saw him I didn’t really aim but just pointed and pulled, pulled again as the deeper crack of his own .45 banged my ears.

I saw two holes appear in the Cad’s window, one an inch or more above the other, a thousand fine lines like white cobwebs radiating out from them; I saw a red rash appear on the man’s face as bits of flying window hit it like tiny glass bullets, saw him stagger slightly just before a gob of flesh flew away from his neck; and when his gun fired and the sound hammered my ears I saw the recoil lift his hand six inches—but by then I was rolling onto my side, straining to sit up. His gun blasted again onto my side, ripped through metal of the Cad’s roof, and his hand sort of floated higher again, gun pointing at a forty-five degree angle toward the empty blue sky.

I got the seat beneath me, straightened my back. Everything was right-side up again. I could see a small spot of red high on the man’s chest, stain only beginning to spread in the uniform’s khaki cloth. But more blood was pouring down the side of the man’s neck, a lot more.

Not enough. I shot him in the face.

The slug bored into his skull at the edge of his nose, slightly below one eye. His head jerked back and the index finger of his left hand, for the last time, convulsively squeezed the automatic’s trigger. I didn’t watch him fall; I knew he was dead. But Grinner wasn’t. Not yet, he wasn’t.

I slid over the seat, under the steering wheel. The Cad’s door was open, and I saw Grinner almost at the gatehouse, bent forward, hand just closing around his own .45 automatic—grabbling it from where it must have landed after the Cad’s door banged into him.

There was a weird fullness in my head, and for a moment I couldn’t understand how Grinner could just now be picking up his gun, just now be starting to jump into the gatehouse. Part of me knew only seconds had passed, but another part of me couldn’t believe it, knew it must have been a much longer time, the part of me that had come close to death and shot another man in the face and been delighted to do it.

Grinner didn’t grab his gun, whirl around and blaze away at me. He snatched his Colt .45 off the asphalt, yes; but then he leaped toward the gatehouse door moving so speedily he was almost through it and out of sight before I could aim and fire.

I poked my right fist through the Cad’s open window, pointed my .38 at the middle of Grinner’s back, squeezed off one shot. And missed. Movement wiggled in the corner of my eye and I glanced right. The jeep that had taken Dane to Omega’s cement steps was moving this way fast. The jeep—and the two men in it. They were already halfway to the gatehouse and I could hear the jeep’s engine whining fifty yards away—only fifty yards to go.

I flicked my eyes right, then back immediately toward the gatehouse, and it was a good thing I didn’t let my eyes dawdle. I could see Grinner now, standing just inside the open doorway and visible through that window on my right—which told me the glass had to be tempered, reinforced—with his right arm sticking out through the doorway, gun in his fist aimed in my general direction.

General direction, because Grinner wasn’t sighting over the Colt’s barrel but looking at me from behind the window’s bulletproof glass, while awkwardly trying to align his gun way over there in the doorway, with my unprotected head way over here in the Cad. I barely had time to be relieved that this was a really dumb way to try and shoot a guy when BLAM. Then closely followed by BLAMBLAM.

The dumbbell must not have aimed at all, just waved his heat at me and let three fly. They all flew several feet, thunked somewhere into the Cad’s rear end with the sound of avalanching boulders landing back there and ruining some more of my shiny powder-blue Cadillac.

Then BLAM, considerably closer—and, this time in front of me. The slug flew past my head, snapping the air like a whip, and bore another hole in the already punctured right window. I heard shards of glass landing, almost metallically, upon the asphalt.

I had not, myself, been entirely idle during all this. Grinner’s exposed arm was an inviting stationary target, and I aimed at it, taking time to thumb back the Colt Special’s hammer to ensure maximum accuracy, and squeezed. It was almost a textbook example of firing carefully for effect. Almost. Only one thing went wrong. While aiming at Grinner’s arm, just as I was carefully squeezing that last horrible BLAM and its horrible slug whipping by about an inch to the right of my head turned my squeeze into spasmodic digital convulsion or grab. It also, incidentally but importantly, convinced me that Grinner didn’t really have to aim a whole lot. In fact, he didn’t have to aim at all. He could just blaze away and watch where his slugs landed—the way Army guys do when shooting mortars at the enemy—and make adjustments thisaway and thataway until one landed on target.

The result was that I didn’t break Grinner’s arm but merely nipped it. I saw the khaki short-sleeve jump, and immediately after that Grinner pulled his arm back inside and stood there protected by his window, simultaneously glaring through it at me and grimacing hugely.

For a very brief moment I wondered if that glass was really bulletproof. Not even Grinner would be dumb enough to just stand there all exposed, if it wasn’t, would he? Well, would he? Maybe it would be worth chancing one shot straight at him, there behind the window. If it was plain old glass, I could drill him dead center, and end this wondering. And end Grinner, of course.

But I must not have done much damage to Grinner’s arm, because there it was again, ending in his hand and Colt .45, and BLAM. But, by the time he fired that time, I had thrown myself backward onto the car seat again. And, lying there, I started thinking fast, mainly about bullets.

I’d used three on the guy now lying empty on the asphalt and I’d fired one at Grinner when he jumped into the gatehouse, another when I’d nipped his arm or sleeve. Which added up to five. And five from six left—not nearly enough.

Which also meant: no more fast thinking required, time for some fast going. Assuming, of course, that going was still possible. The car keys dangled from the ignition, where I’d left them, so without raising my head I twisted the key, heard the Cad’s engine start. It purred, idling smoothly, but then that sound was overpowered by the shriek of tires skidding on asphalt and, mixed with that scream of sliding rubber, the ear-banging crack of two shots from Grinner’s gun. I not only heard both slugs smashing into the Cad’s body but felt the car rock slightly from their impact.

I hadn’t been counting, but my distinct impression was that I’d been shot at approximately a hundred times, which surely must have emptied the Colt .45’s magazine. So I raised my head, ready to hide it in a hurry but Grinner was clearly visible behind his window, ejecting the clip from his gun’s butt, preparing to reload.

Erect behind the steering wheel, I slapped the gearshift into reverse, using my right hand but keeping a firm grip on the Colt Special, then—pushing my left foot hard on the brake pedal and right foot down on the accelerator—aimed that Colt out the Cad’s window at Grinner’s forehead.

He was shoving a fresh magazine up into the gun’s grip, and busy reloading, hadn’t taken time to open the gate. Beyond it, the two men in the jeep—I could see them both clearly—were starting to honk their tinny horn impatiently. Right hand and gun resting on my left fist, fist steadied atop the outside mirror, I let out half of my breath and slowly tightened my index finger against the trigger, squeezed, looking at Grinner’s head.

He’d pulled back the reloaded automatic’s slide and let it snap forward, cocking the piece. And at that moment—the exact moment when the Colt’s hammer fell and sent my last slug spinning toward his brain—Grinner turned his head and looked at me, directly at me. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed to me he froze in that moment, immobile except for his widening eyes. Then, I couldn’t see him.

It wasn’t that I’d blown some brains out the back of his head, which had been my intention. No, it was just that I couldn’t see the bastard behind the damned glass, which was still there even if he didn’t appear to be. Still there, but looking frosted, filled with silvery lines and crinkles and whiteness radiating from the white-as-snow pitted indentation exactly in line with his forehead.

But, if nothing else, Grinner would probably have to change his shorts, assuming he wore any, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t forget this moment, a moment when death slivered tempered glass inches from his eyes.

By then, I’d pulled up my left foot, freeing the brakes, and jammed my right foot down harder on the gas pedal. I let the Cad speed backwards for twenty or thirty yards before spinning the steering wheel, skidding, straightening out and slapping the shift into drive, going away from there, away from Omega.

When I’d skidded and turned, the heavy gate back there was still closed. No way anybody would catch up with me now. Maybe nobody would even try, considering how far I was from them and how fast I was going. And maybe—it was just a fond hope, perhaps not likely but certainly worth hoping—Grinner was still just standing there, still staring aghast, peeing on himself, and wishing, just as sincerely as I wished I’d never heard of Grinner, that he’d never heard of Shell Scott.

But the big thing in my mind as I rolled along, nearing the freeway, was: me and my big mouth. Me, saying to lovely, more than a little frightened, Dane Smith:

“Of course I’ll wait....”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The problem was: How could I return to Omega—and get inside—without simultaneously getting killed?

No question, I was determined to go back there, one way or another and as soon as possible. And for a lot of reasons—but the main reason was my increasing worry about Dane. I kept telling myself that, even after what had just happened to me, there was no logical reason to believe she was in any real danger. But I couldn’t quite make myself believe it. Maybe because there was still too much I didn’t know—including why those two apes had just tried to waste me.

It seemed clear that returning to Omega alone was equivalent to committing suicide, so the best way for me to go back would be in the company of a whole lot of heavily armed lawmen. Unfortunately, I know that wasn’t going to happen—because I was standing alongside my Cad, at the curb near a gas station just off the freeway, finishing a five-minute conversation with a desk sergeant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, to which has jurisdiction over criminous events out there in the toolies, within the county but beyond L.A.’s city limits. And the Sergeant, Wally Lerner was dubious. Dubious not only about the criminous events I had been reporting to him, but about me personally.

It wasn’t that he’d never heard of me; he had. Or that he disliked me intensely; he only disliked me a little. But, mainly, he did not consider my suggestion that a dozen deputies instantly invade Omega as authoritative as a similar suggestion from, say, the Sheriff of Los Angeles County, or even the girl who served him hamburgers at McDonald’s.

It also became evident—which shouldn’t have surprised me—that, since the Omega Medical Research Center paid a very large yearly sum to the county in taxes, it wouldn’t be considered neighborly to “harass” employees of Omega, and particularly not the world-famous and certifiably wonderful Wintersong, M.D., who, according to no less an authority than the morning papers, was going to save the world.

That isn’t precisely what Sergeant Lerner said, but only how I interpreted his officialese. What he actually did say, near the conversation’s end, was:

“All right, Scott, we’ll send a car and check it out. You claim there’ll be a dead guy laying near the entrance?”

“Yeah. He’s dead, all right. And he was there...” I got another little twinge of worry then, realizing how unlikely it was that Grinner, or anybody else at Omega, would leave the stiff stiffening on their roadway. But I finished, “He was there when I left. Probably isn’t now.”

“You don’t know who he was?”

“No, but the other guard is named Francis Harris, AKA Grinner. He’s a bad one. You’ve probably got paper on him.”

“And you want us to check on this lady, Dane Smith. She’s got some kind of problem out there?”

“Well, not that I know of, not for certain. But—”

“And you also want us to look around for shell casings ejected from two Colt automatics, and note damage to what you claim is a bulletproof window in the gatehouse, is that right?”

“Yeah. Perfect.” I didn’t like the way he was asking the questions.

“And, finally,” he said, with what struck me as entirely gratuitous sarcasm, “this is all at the Omega Medical Research Center? Which is operated by Dr. William Wintersong, of whom we have been reading today?”

I didn’t answer, just shook my head, scowling. I’d already told him twice where it happened.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. Thanks a lot.”

“I’ll tell you this, Scott. We’ll check it. But if you haven’t given this to me straight, and I mean a hundred and ten percent, I’d recommend you take a long vacation someplace. Someplace like China.”

I snapped shut my phone, looked at my car again. Again, it was a depressing sight. I’d told Sergeant Lerner I would be glad to show him the half-dozen bullet holes in my Cadillac, as evidence. Whereupon, in his sweetly reasonable way, he had said, “Evidence of what?” and asked if the shooters had autographed their holes for me.

At which point I’d gotten an inkling that my problem wasn’t going to be top-priority on the sheriff’s agenda. I would still show Lerner those bullet holes, when I went in to sign the formal complaint, but that would have to wait. He would no doubt dispatch a car and a couple of deputies to Omega, but I didn’t have much hope that would help me in my situation. In fact, I didn’t have any hope.

So I looked glumly at the round holes and jagged holes in the Cad’s trunk, left-rear fender, hood, and both doors, thankful only that no slugs had ruined the engine, gas tank, or tires. Or me.

I was still determined that I would go back to Omega—without getting killed. And that I would get inside the damned place—without getting killed. So I had everything figured out, except for the single question: How?

I opened the Cad’s trunk, which squeaked a little, but worked. In the trunk was a box of .38-caliber cartridges, and I reloaded my Colt Special, put the box and remaining cartridges on the Cad’s front seat next to me, and sat behind the wheel, thinking. Not long.

Then I started the engine and pulled away from the curb, back onto the Freeway, not certain where I was going but rolling toward Hollywood, thinking. Without result. Thinking. Without result. But I guess persistence pays, because finally a curious memory floated up from somewhere in all that thinking-without-results and I almost let out a whoop of horrified pleasure.

Pleasure because now I knew I was going back to Omega, and I was going to get inside the damned place, and I even knew how I was going to do it...but horrified because the unanswered question was still: How can I do that without getting killed.

A year or so back I’d read a newspaper story about a burglar who’d just been sentenced, and judged. At the time, I’d felt it was unfortunate that such a creative cat had wound up using his energies, and ideas, on the wrong side of the law. What I’d thought creative was his method of breaking and entering—which might never have come to light if he hadn’t been caught. But caught he’d been, with the result that he was now doing a bit of heavy time at San Quentin. However, that didn’t have to mean I would get caught. And the more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself the thing might actually work. But I couldn’t pull off this kind of caper alone. I would need help, quite a lot of help, and all of it in a hurry.

The only man I knew who would be willing to help me commit such a heinous act as desecrating a medical temple was—who else?—Henry Hernandez, M.D. Hank, I knew, would not only help me, if he could, but would become my co-conspirator with lots of “hallelujahs!” But, could even he get me what I needed?

I checked my watch. I could be on Mulberry Street and at his office in ten. So, I just kept rolling along.

* * * * * *

Hank looked intently at me, eyes almost glowing, brushing the right half of his sharp mustache with the tip of his index finger. “I fix,” he said.

“You’re serious? You actually know somebody who can help me do this? I mean now, not tomorrow. That’s the main thing that worried me, that there isn’t a lot of time—”

“I know nine thousand people who would help you—help us—if they could. But, here in Los Angeles, almost thirteen hundred. Among them...yes, I know from memory two who will have everything required. And they will know others who can do what else is needed, the spray-painting with stencils, bringing the truck.”

He was pulling his phone toward him over the desktop, already dialing.

I said, “Nine thousand? What’s this nine thousand people? And the three hundred here—?”

Hank waved a hand, not looking at me but saying, “Later. Later, I will explain this, and much else. But now—”

He broke it off, then said into the phone’s mouthpiece, “Geraldo? Si, it is Henry Hernandez here. I need your assistance. We are going after Omega again, but this is the best yet, a man will go inside this afternoon when most others have left the buildings.”

He listened briefly, then continued, “It is a friend of ours, a new friend but a most competent individual. Yes, he may be killed. But he knows that. They have tried already to kill him. Yes, twice already. Bueno, Geraldo, this is what we require—and swiftly, with much speed, comprende?”

After that, Hank quickly explained precisely what was needed, and didn’t leave anything out, covered it all. I just sat there, shaking my head.

“They,” Hank was saying, “Good question. I have a good answer, I think. Momentito.”

He opened a desk drawer, pulled out a manila folder and opened it, thumbed through papers, found the one he wanted. “Omega is expecting shipment of 2 Nuclear Resonance Analyzers.” He spelled it slowly, then: “It was shipped. Let’s see here, should arrive Monday. Bueno. Today, Saturday, will not be surprising. It is mmm...from United MediTech in Albany, New York.” He spelled that name, too, then, listened, smiling. “Good, good. Mil gracias.” Then, “De nada, Geraldo,” and hung up.

“All fixed,” he said, beaming happily.

I just looked at him.

He continued to beam, happily, waiting.

Finally I mentally shoved my eighteen or nineteen questions over into one corner, and simply said, “Will I be on my merry way sometime today?”

“Maybe an hour, Sheldon. Could be less. Geraldo is only five minutes from here, but he must get the truck driven to his business office, plus arrange the other things. But he is one most creative dynamo, and I would guess it will be not more than one hour from now.”

He leaned forward, arms folded on the desktop. “Your idea of how to accomplish this exciting invasion of the Omega death factory is also most creative, Sheldon. Yes, brilliant, excellent. I am impressed.”

“You’ve got it backwards. I’m impressed. Besides, shipping me into Omega disguised as a Nuclear Whosit wasn’t really my idea. I got it from that crook I mentioned.”

“I know. But the creativeness was applying that criminal’s method, which failed, to a situation with different parameters and more laudable motive—which, therefore will succeed, and produce marvelous benefits for you, me, POCUEA, the others—for everybody. Perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” I echoed him, adding a couple more questions to my pile in the corner of my head.

After filling Hank in on the recent events at Omega, I had told him what I recalled about the burglar, now counting his days in ‘Quentin.

The pertinent point was that he had arranged to have himself shipped as freight, inside a large packing crate, into a Sears store in Glendale, which establishment he was hot to burgle. Then when everybody else left around five p.m. on Saturday, he let himself out of his box and commenced burglarizing the premises. Burglarizing leisurely, even enjoying part of a sandwich and some hot coffee he’d brought along, assuming—with sadly misplaced optimism, considering that before consummating his first burgle he’d triggered at least two, maybe three concealed alarms—he had before him not less than thirty-eight uninterrupted hours in which to gather up the goodies. He was off by a tick or two more than thirty-seven and a half hours, since a bunch of cops nailed him before he’d finished his baloney-and-cheese on rye.

“You know,” I said, sort of musing, “maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to get too optimistic about this crazy idea, which sounds crazier and crazier the more—”

“Nonsense, Sheldon, I have great faith in you. Now. At first, I was encouraged, but not certain. Now I am certain. Have they not tried twice already to kill you—to their dismay? Yes, I am heartened. If this thing is possible, you will do it.”

That was a crock, of course, but I liked hearing this old Svengali say it anyhow. Which he undoubtedly knew. Maybe he also knew how to turn lead into gold, double eagles, or shinny up the Philosopher’s stone, who knows? He usually had me interested, confused, and more than a little off balance. A condition which wasn’t, it appeared, going to change very soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Hank and I stood in his outer office, and Eleanora sat behind her desk. All of us chatting. Then the phone rang.

Eleanora answered it, listened, and said to Hank, “It is the Captain, for you. From the Sheriff’s department.”

“Muy bien,”

“Come, Sheldon. Maybe we find out what is happening at Omega.” He hustled back into his office, behind his desk and picked up the phone. For half a minute he listened, making only brief comments, then hung up.

“I did not tell Captain Winston you were here,” Hank said to me. “He is a friend, but some of the deputies are unhappy with you. Especially, I think, a Sergeant Wallace Lerner?” It was a question.

I nodded. “Yeah, especially. Let me guess. They didn’t find a body stiffening in a pool of his blood near the gatehouse.”

“They found nothing. Two deputies drove to Omega, but found no body, no blood even.”

“Look, I hit that window in the gatehouse with one slug. The bullet didn’t penetrate, but it sure as hell made an obvious—”

“There was no window, just air, an open space. Also, the deputies found no cartridge cases, which I understand you assured Sergeant Lerner would be evident in abundance. This Sergeant wishes to see you soon, even instantly. To ask you, among other things, why you made a false report—”

“It wasn’t a false—” I cut it off. Didn’t have to convince Hank, and probably couldn’t convince Lerner. Besides, there was something else more important.

“What about Dane Smith” I asked. “Did they talk to her?”

Hank shook his head. “She had already returned to her hotel, with an employee who was driving to Los Angeles.”

“Who says so?”

“Dr. Wintersong. Also Mr. Hobart Belking. Both were interviewed by the deputies, and both said the same things.”

“They would. Belking was out there?” Hank nodded, and I asked, “Who’s the employee Dane is supposed to have left with?”

“That was not mentioned by Captain Winston. He said only that the deputies were informed Miss Smith was driven to Omega by you, and expected to return with you. But, when her interview with Dr. Wintersong was concluded, you had left, or disappeared, at least were no longer there.”

“Great.” I called the Halcyon Hotel, asked for Dane’s room, let the phone ring ten times. Then I spoke to the desk clerk, and was informed Miss Smith had not returned. Her key was still in its slot at the desk, where the same clerk had put it when she left shortly before noon.

I ended the call, hung up, started pacing the floor, feeling jangly, nerves stretched. “She isn’t there,” I said. “So there’s no point in my checking the hotel personally. The best thing left is for me to get back to Omega as soon as I can.”

Hank glanced at his wristwatch. “Since I called Geraldo, it has been twenty, thirty minutes. It should not be much longer, Sheldon.”

I paced some more, thinking, then sat down again. “Well, we know one thing we didn’t know before—didn’t know for sure, anyhow. I would expect Grinner to lie—no way he’d admit he and his friend cooperated in trying to blow my head off. But, with the deputies’ testimony, now we know Wintersong and Belking are also lying.”

“So, they are both liars. This surprises you?”

“Well, no, I don’t know. I don’t like Wintersong—or Belking, for that matter. But one’s a Laser Award Winner, maybe future Nobel Laureate, almost as big a saint as Dr. Salk, if you believe the newspapers.”

“This is your saint?”

I didn’t rise to the great expected bait this time. “I’m just saying one of these guys is an honored physician, considered practically a saint, and the other’s a respected billionaire, philanthropist, friend of Congressmen and Senators.”

“Belking has even had dinner with our President at the White House. And both of them, together with all our federal health agencies, are preparing to wipe the scourge of IFAI from the face of the earth, because they are so deeply concerned about sick people. This certifies that both of them must be honest men?”

I shook my head, not answering. Hank’s mention of IFAI reminded me of the recently speeded-up approval for Wintersong’s vaccine, the growing chorus of urgent calls for mass immunizations. And I couldn’t help but shiver at the thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

At that moment, there was the quick beep-beep of a vehicle’s horn, sound of tires in the adjacent driveway, squeaking of brakes.

Hank jumped up, sped to the open window in the wall behind his desk, unhooked and pushed on the screen, stuck his head outside. Then he turned back to me, smiling widely.

“Geraldo!” he cried. Then he looked at his watch, adding “Less than an hour, as predicted. Verdad?”

He was right. But that was still two hours since I’d split from Omega. From Grinner, and his hot Colt .45. Also, apparently, from Belking and Dr. Wintersong. Unquestionably, from Dane Smith. Two hours too many.

I started getting out from my chair, but Hank was already speeding past me, opening his office door again.

“Come,” he called over his shoulder—a smile on his face, eyes bright, looking excited, as if he was about to charge into battle somewhere, or was preparing to break into the Omega Medical Research Center himself.

“Come quickly, Sheldon, ah! We are on our way now, are we not?”

Then, zip, he was out the front door, turning right, trotting toward the driveway.

I had watched him for a moment, simply stood there briefly, unmoving. Partly that was because he’d zipped out of here so fast. But mainly it was because when he sped past me and to the door, I had experienced a strange and almost overpowering feeling, more like sudden knowing, that from this moment on everything was going to zip and dash and speed along like Henry Hernandez racing for his driveway...that time for careful choices or reflection was past...and that events now being set in motion would, once started, accelerate inevitably to their own already-fixed but still unknowable conclusion, with me just hanging on, going along for the ride.

With that weird conviction of certainty also came a hair-prickling sensation of alarm. It just came out of the blue, without any discernible reason for it, but strong, compelling disturbing. I didn’t like the sense of something already out of control—a pale, watered-down version of what a man might feel upon changing his mind after jumping from a downtown building’s fortieth floor.

So I simply stood there briefly, rooted like an oak, mentally counting those floors as I plummeted past them; thirty-nine, thirty-eight....

Forget it. Must’ve been something I ate.

Then I sucked in some air, whooshed it out, and set myself in motion.

* * * * * *

Hank was standing next to a flatbed truck parked in the driveway, cab’s bumpers almost touching his garage door. “Bueno,” he was saying, looking at a large—at least five feet on each side—white-pine crate resting on the truck’s bed. Or, rather resting upon a wooden palette that raised it about four inches above the truck’s bed.

Hank was spewing rapid Spanish at a man squatted next to the box, his back to us. The man was doing something to the side of the crate, left hand pressed against it and right hand holding a queer-looking gizmo—a small spray gun. It sent a fine spray of black paint through a bulky-looking stencil, lettering a message on the porous white pine.

The final letters, apparently, because he put down the spray gun and, with both hands, removed the stencil—as Hank, leaning forward, said softly, “Bueno, bueno, pero,” adding more rapid Spanish ending with “pocito mas por favor.”

The man nodded, patted and rubbed the letters with a soiled cloth, then banged it a few times with a claw hammer, looked at Hank. “Esta bien?”

“Perfectamente!”

The guy slid from the truck bed to the driveway and stood facing us. I had time to note that he was about five and a half feet tall, over two hundred pounds, swarthy, with a large black mustache, and looked not unlike Pancho Villa overdosed on steroids, when Hank said, “Sheldon, this is Geraldo, our good friend. Good—and very speedy. Geraldo, Sheldon Scott, he who will do what we spoke of en telefono.”

We told each other Hi-Hello, and shook hands. Geraldo looked at me from very dark brown eyes and said, “Vaya con... God go with you.”

I grinned. “Thanks, I’ll take all the help I can get.” Then I looked at the crate, at Geraldo’s handiwork, and said, “You are speedy. Must’ve finished that stenciling on the way here, right?”

“Si. Robert was careful to miss potholes.”

Robert turned out to be a young red-haired guy who waved through the cab’s rear window but stayed behind the wheel. Looking at the crate, I said to Geraldo, “Beautiful job,” and meant it.

In neat, slightly fuzzy black letters was printed: OMEGA MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER and an address in two lines below that. Top left, in smaller print, was the shipper’s name: United MediTech. On both the left and right sides of the panel were black arrows pointing up.

Geraldo leaned over the trailer’s side, reached for the crate’s top panel resting flat on the truck bed and muscled it onto one edge so I could read words there: Nuclear Resonance Analyzer. I remembered Hank saying on the phone that Omega was expecting shipment of something that had sounded like what I was reading. Also boldly printed—I was pleased to see—was: THIS SIDE UP.

I turned toward Hank. “Looks good to me. Should work, I think. Hope. Guess.”

“Will work, Sheldon. You will make it work, verdad?”

“Yeah, sure.”

About a minute later I said, “Well, I guess that’s it, friends. Time to get back to Omega, back to...” But I was thinking of that doomed guy I’d made up, leaping like a goose honking away from that skyscraper, flapping his arms in the air and strenuously desiring, an instant too late, to go back up, but instead inevitably going: ...thirty-seven...thirty-six....

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

While Geraldo added some final touches to the crate, Hank stood with me on the lawn before his office and spoke earnestly for a couple of minutes, describing the interior of all three Omega buildings in so much detail that he might have been the architect.

More than three hundred people were employed at Omega, he said; but on weekends there were normally only four employees inside the three buildings—and the same number of guards outside—the employees primarily supplying water and food to the experimental animals, and disposing of any that died. Which meant, I thought, that if I got inside today there’d be only four people to look out for; plus, perhaps, Dr. Wintersong and Hobart Belking.

Hank told me where laboratories were, experiments believed to be in progress, the location of certain animal pens and cages. He spoke rapidly, eyes half closed and appearing unfocused, aimed not at my face but somewhere around my shoulder, almost as if he were looking inward at mental images of plans or blueprints. He seemed to know as much about the layout of those three buildings and their numerous rooms as would someone who’d worked in the place for years. But he didn’t explain how he’d come into possession of so much intimate detail about the research facility, and I didn’t ask.

Finally he said, “All of the buildings face south, as you know, toward Los Angeles. The central building, the one you have been inside, is bisected by a corridor extending from north to south and ending at double doors adjacent to loading facilities in the rear. Do you see this?”

I closed my eyes. Hank was precise when he wanted to be, so “bisected” meant in the middle of the building. I remembered walking away from the reception desk, at the main building’s east end, starting down the long polished hallway that had stretched ahead of me. But I hadn’t walked very far, just to the “second door on your right.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t get down there, but it would be beyond that big room where Wintersong has his own office, right?”

“Correct. If you had continued on, and turned right at the next corridor, halfway down it you would have seen a large metal bin, about ten feet long and four feet wide, four or five feet high, similar to the large garbage or trash bins placed sometimes in alleys, but smaller. Next to it, in the wall, is a sliding metal door, beyond which is the chute.”

“Chute?”

“Metal chute, or slide, leading down into the incinerator below ground level for cremation. But I am not concerned with this incinerator, does not function efficiently. I wish you to look into the metal bin. It is usually closed by a heavy lid, but one man can lift it. Just lift the lid, and look.”

I felt a slight oiliness in my throat. “Animals?”

“Dead animals. The things of experiments. It will not be pleasant.”

I swallowed. The taste was vaguely like olive oil and garlic, and something else. Hank handed me a small expensive looking mini-camera. Just handed it to me, without further comment.

The camera was only about three inches long and an inch square. As I stuck it into the breast pocket of my jacket, I heard the heavy chunk of the truck’s door slamming. Geraldo had finished his work, adding a line of letters to the crate, and gotten into the cab’s right seat next to Robert, who was already behind the wheel.

Hank continued intensely, his eyes focused now on my face. “There, and in rooms, in cages, you may see things that, ordinarily, you might consider evidence of crimes. Things you might call the police or sheriff to report. I ask you, should this impress you as desirable, that you instead call me, Sheldon, and I will phone the sheriff, or appropriate authorities, if in my judgment this is necessary. You have no objection?”

I shook my head slowly. “Suits me. I’d just as soon not jaw with Sergeant Lerner again, anyway. But, hell, Hank, you’ve already educated me pretty well about what’s done to animals in labs these days, including what was done to Jock-Jock. So you need not assume I’ll yell for fuzz if I merely see a bunch of dead mice and guinea pigs in that bin.”

“My real concern is not the burn-bin—this is what they themselves call it, those who slide animal corpses down the chute. It is the other rooms, the other cages, and things in them. More important, Sheldon, you...”

He paused. At first I thought it was because Robert had started the truck’s engine, was backing slowly toward Elm Street. But Hank had hesitated for another reason.

“Excuse blunt truth, por favor. I commenced to say, you are not competent to judge medical crimes, Sheldon. Virtually no laymen are thus competent, because they are unfamiliar with proper definitions.”

“Definitions again?”

“Always. Is important. Most things done in allopathic medicine are, in truth, criminal, often murderous—but they are not defined as criminal acts. They are defined as ‘authorized and approved,’ ‘finest health care in the world,’ et cetera. Similarly, in research laboratories, there are almost no prohibitions against killing animals, electrocuting, drowning, squashing, cooking alive in ovens—”

“Hank, even I know there’s an Animal Protection Act to prevent the worst—”

His eyes were bright, brows raised above them. “The passage of this ‘wonderful’ act, does little.”

During the last of this, I’d walked toward my Cad, Hank alongside me. The truck was in the middle of Mulberry Street now, slowly pulling forward and straightening out. I got into the Cad, settled behind the steering wheel and started the engine. Hank was standing next to the car, in the street on my left.

As I slipped the stick into gear, he said, “Vaya con Dios, me amigo.” Then, “Sheldon, I must comment. This dangerous thing you are doing—”

I grinned. “You mean cracked, don’t you? Hell, you’re a doctor, you’re supposed to recognize symptoms of—”

“Por favor! Listen, please. I wish to say serious words... Oh well, this indubitably psychotic enterprise upon which you are semi-or un-wittingly embarking—”

“Okay, courageous.”

“—is a previously unplanned event of great fortuitousness, which may produce results of greater value than can be measured. You are aware it is at this moment important, Sheldon, but it may be of considerable more importance than you have sensed. You also recognize well that there is danger, but, again, this thing is more dangerous than you suspect. Indeed, were it not that the possible benefits are so great, I would not let you do this, for if you should fail I could not in this lifetime—”

“Fail? Fail? Is this Henry Hernandez going downhill? Let me give you some help, Doc. In the morning and at night, say over and over again, ‘Every day in every way I’m getting bet—”

“Go! Go!” His expression was severe, even grave. But as I took my foot off the brake, pressed it gently against the gas pedal, he added “...con Dios. And try not to get killed unnecessarily. Por favor?”

As I drove away I caught a glimpse of Hank in the rearview mirror. He was standing almost in the middle of Mulberry Street, reflection dwindling, getting smaller and smaller, but looking very tall.

* * * * * *

Sitting down, uncomfortably cramped in one corner of the big crate, I looked up at the heads of Geraldo and Robert, gazing expressionlessly down upon me, and at clear blue sky and sunlight-faded quarter-moon visible beyond their disembodied heads. Then, smiling a dashing-astronaut smile, I said bravely, “Don’t forget, lads, when I’m going lickety-split around the far side of the moon, our walkie-talkies won’t work.”

Why did I say that? Don’t ask me why I said that. Robert didn’t respond in any way whatever, and all that came out of Geraldo was, “Mande?” Which I guessed was Mexican for “Huh?” I also guessed that most people must say dumb things when they’re nervous. At least, I knew—now—that I must. Yeah, right, I was nervous, beginning to fill up with a vast sense of unease.

Only minutes before, after following the truck, driven by red-haired Robert at what must have been ninety-nine miles an hour to within two miles of our destination, they had stopped as per plan at the side of the narrow road. I’d then driven a bumpy hundred yards cross-country and left my shot-up Cadillac parked in a clump of trees, removed a few items from its trunk, walked back to the flatbed truck, climbed into my crate, and become a “Nuclear Resonance Analyzer,” ready for delivery.

But now the action had stopped, at least temporarily, and I had time to brood. While Geraldo and Robert put the five-foot by five-foot wooden top of the crate in place, I told myself I was a healthy fellow without the least bit of claustrophobic weakness in my makeup; but I wasn’t listening. Because it suddenly got very close and spookily cramped inside the box, especially when the sun—or at least sunlight—went out, blocked by those closely-fitted pine boards.

In another minute, Geraldo and Robert were finished and I was completing my part of the job, with some difficulty. Their part was simply to insert long bolts into holes at each of the four corners up there, poking them on down through matching holes drilled in a pair of five-foot-long metal braces, which were already rigidly in place on opposite sides of the crate, and three inches below its top. Since bolts were three and a half inches long, and the braces were a quarter of an inch thick, each bolt—if nobody had goofed—would extend through the brace with its threaded end protruding a quarter of an inch and ready to receive a nut. I was in charge of the nuts.

My job was merely to twist one of them onto each bolt and tighten all four gently with a socket wrench. The crate’s top would then be attached firmly enough to pass inspection, even fairly careful inspection, but could be easily removed when I wanted out. Simple, and effective; however, it was pretty dark in here.

I checked, by feel, for the several items I’d brought along with me: Colt Special in holster, cell phone, and camera from Hank, I’d been given a nut-size socket wrench by Geraldo, and had myself brought along from the Cad’s trunk a three-inch-wide roll of surgical tape, my favorite set of lock-picks, and a pencil flashlight, which was the item I needed now. I didn’t expect the cell phone to be of use within the walls of Omega, but I had it just in case. Even with illumination of the flashlight, it took me two minutes to get all four bolts firmly affixed. Also, I skinned several knuckles. It would have been nice if there’d been some kind of simple lever to instantly release the crate’s top, but I had to admit that Geraldo had done a remarkably good job, considering the limited amount of time he’d had available.

He had even, at the last moment, quickly spray-painted “Box 1 of 2 in shipment” on the crate’s side. This, after Hank mentioned that the several components of a real Analyzer, such as the one Omega was expecting, weighed four hundred and eighty pounds, and that “Sheldon, though large” would total considerably less. Hank then asked me what I weighed, and when I told him two-hundred and five pounds he said, significantly, to Geraldo, “You see? Sheldon is two-hundred and seventy-five pounds short!”

That had puzzled me, briefly. Hank’s point, however, was well taken, and his concern a sensible one. Even very dim bulbs, with IQs barely adequate for lifting, might—if aware they were supposed to be muscling nearly five hundred pounds—pick me up, stare off into space for a minute or two, and then say suspiciously, “Dere, is something perplexible about dis here box, boss.” So I was grateful to Hank for that idea, and also for shooting down one of my own.

I hadn’t realized how dark it would be in my package once its top was on, but it had occurred to me that I would then be in a five-by-five cubicle, containing not very many cubicle feet of air, which is only partly oxygen; which is necessary for breathing; and; though I might not become asphyxiated, I might wind up unpleasantly full of carbon dioxide if I was in this box very long. So, trying to think ahead—not quite far enough—I’d suggested boring a few holes in the top and sides of my crate, in order that I might continue comfortably inhaling and exhaling.

“Inhaling and expiring,” Hank said.

I wasn’t instantly certain what he meant. But then—without, I’d like to think, gratuitous sarcasm—he suggested boring two or three hundred holes, to be certain the ruffians would not fail to peer through at least one of them at their “Analyzer,” and immediately thereafter add more holes of their own, by propelling large bullets “with terminal velocity” into it.

He was kind enough to say into “it,” though we all knew who he meant. But I also knew he must have my well-being at heart, and thus was thinking only of preventing my terminal perforation, so all that gratuitous sarcasm didn’t tick me off. Much.

I lifted my arms, pushed both hands against the crate’s top. It was firmly in place, very solid. So I knocked twice on the wood, informing Geraldo that I’d finished. He rapped twice quickly in reply, and in a few more seconds the truck moved forward. From here, there remained only a mile of gently-rising road, then another mile downhill to the gatehouse. When the truck swerved—Robert missing a pothole, I presumed—it was difficult to keep my balance, because there was no warning, no visible point of reference, as I just sort of floated along in almost-black darkness.

Then I felt a slight lessening of my weight as we reached the end of that long upslanting grade and started down the other side. So I knew we were on the last downhill mile of narrow road, ending at those bleached-bone buildings of the Omega Medical Research Center.

The last mile. I didn’t like the sound of it. I didn’t like “downhill” much, either.

We came to a stop, and I heard somebody with a gruff scratchy voice saying, “Whatcha got dere?” We’d reached the gatehouse. But that voice hadn’t come out of Grinner, or Kell, or anybody else I knew. Or anybody I wanted to know.

The truck door slammed, several seconds passed. The scratchy voiced man was saying, “Yeah, nookoolar analyzer, I heard somethin’ about it. Okay.” Apparently he was looking at papers Geraldo had prepared and then he said again, “Okay. Take it—you ever been here before, Jose?”

I winced, closing my eyes in the darkness. I didn’t care how big or tough this gate-guard was, he had to be speaking to Geraldo, whose barrel chest and muscled arms had impressed me as awesome. Which gave me a hint that this egg was either unusually reckless, or blind.

But then I heard Geraldo, whose English was plain old everyday English with only a slight Latin flavoring, say, “No, seynyooore, these ees forst time, seynyooore. Please?”

I grinned, relieved, and opened my eyes, everything looked the same as when they’d been closed.

Scratchy voice: “Run it around back, you’ll see a loadin’ ramp back there, coupla big double doors. Think you can handle it, Jose?”

I closed my eyes again, grimaced, waited.

But Geraldo replied smoothly, “I believe so, sir. I don’t expect to encounter insurmountable difficulties in my search for the building’s rear, and once that’s accomplished I’m confident I’ll be able to locate the ramp, which should make finding those double doors a piece of cake.”

I did not stop grimacing, or anticipating disaster, until I heard the truck’s door slam again, and we began moving forward. In what seemed like no time at all, the truck stopped, and this time Robert turned off the engine. Soon I heard more voices, but couldn’t make out what was being said. Half a minute of silence, broken by the sound of another engine outside, crunching as if tires were moving over gravel, then a different crunch, and clunk and I was airborne.

I was being lifted, apparently by a fork lift, the crate wobbling slightly, its boards squeaking, like an old ship in gentle seas. In darkness, the sensation of movement was weird, a slow almost dizzying swirling, most of it in my stomach.

Geraldo’s voice: “Easy, easy there, that’s delicate equipment, man.”

“Who’s doin’ this? Shut up.” Something not unfamiliar about that voice.

Geraldo: “Pretend it’s glass, huh?”

“Didn’t you hear me? Shut up!”

Clunk, creak, wobble, and thud. I was delivered. Half a minute went by. The flatbed truck’s engine started; its sound moved away, becoming fainter. Then there was no sound at all, not even the rustle of movement near me.

I started worrying. Or, rather, continued to do so. The whole reason for this deliver-the-crate caper, was to get me inside Omega. Even the Trojan Horse was just a large, funny-looking wooden horsy, of no utility until it was pulled inside the walls of Troy. A silent minute dragged by.

But then I heard a voice. Sharp, angry, loud—and familiar. “What the crap you goddamn hemorrhoids think you’re doing? Get off your asses and put that shipment inside.”

“Yes, Sir!”

“Yes, Sir, right away.”

The men sounded like two privates speaking to the commanding general. But it wasn’t a general, not exactly. That had, unquestionably, been Hobart Belking. So Belking was still here. If Belking, maybe Wintersong? And...Dane?

Moreover, I’d made that first guy, too. From “Who’s doin’ this, shut up,” minutes ago to “Yes, Sir, right away” just now, the voice had moved from not entirely unfamiliar: to Grinner. So perhaps—I couldn’t tell merely from the “Yes, Sir”—the other hemorrhoid was Kell.

I can’t say the conclusion made me feel glad all over. I wondered, if the two men were indeed Kell and Grinner, how come they seemed almost eager, perhaps even accustomed, to obeying orders from Hobart Belking.

I also wondered what would happen if, for any reason, I needed to get out of this bolted-together box of mine in a hurry.

And right then, maybe at the worst possible time for it considering the unanswered question in my mind, there was a bunch of dialogue, part of it in yet another familiar voice and at the same moment I felt a jarring thud followed by jerky movement.

The man speaking was William Wintersong, and—just as my crate was suddenly lifted a foot or so by one of the men operating some kind of machinery the doctor said heartily, “Good, good, the Analyzer. Splendid! Run it into the storeroom for now. And be careful with it, very careful.”

Right after that, the hard flat voice of Belking again. “Harris, I’m sure you know you’ve been on borrowed time ever since that screw-up with Hernandez, but letting Scott get away from here today was perhaps fatally inexcusable. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Sir. No—well, I swear...”

Grinner stopped speaking, but when Belking remained silent Grinner went on, in little spurts of words separated by brief pauses, “I swear I hit him...twice, put two pills right through him just like he was a ghost...I swear, I—”

”Knock off the crap. At least, it isn’t likely that big white-haired jerk will come back here again. Not likely—but if he should happen to show up here, day or night, no matter when, you’re dead if you screw it up twice. Is that abundantly clear to you, Harris?”

I didn’t know if Grinner had an answer to that or not, because before he responded I heard the warm, mellifluous voice of Doctor Wintersong, saying gently, “That Mr. Scott would actually attempt to return now is an extremely remote possibility, to be sure. However, should he, perchance, do so, and should you finally succeed in killing the bastard, you would be wise to leave no evidence that he was ever here, Harris. By that, I mean you would be sensible enough to slide him down the chute, would you not?”

“Sensible...ah, yeah, sure. Blast him and burn him, right? You got it, Doc. Be my pleasure.” A brief pause, then, “What’s with the broad, Doc? Can’t she walk?”

“Oh, she’ll be all right. It became necessary for me to sedate her, but I believe—”

Then the hard voice of Belking again, interrupting angrily “Harris, you mouthy sonofabitch, I’ve told you for the last time. Bag your goddamn head about what’s none of your business. Are you going to control that yap, or—”

“Yes, sir. Sorry. Won’t happen again, sorry.”

All that dialogue gave me almost too much to think about. But most important had been: “What’s with the broad?” That had to be a reference to Dane.

My skin felt flushed, and my heart had given a jump, started pounding harder. Dane Smith, sedated. And still right here—but probably not for long. I stuck a hand into my coat pocket, gripped the little socket wrench, then decided no way. Slow; noisy; and suicidal. Maybe I could kick out a couple of boards in the crate’s side, with some luck be out in, well, a few seconds. Probably quick enough, given a little element of surprise, but depending on how solidly those boards were. I was afraid if I analyzed the possibilities carefully, I just wouldn’t do it. And I had to give it a try. I bent my knees, preparing to lie flat on my back, lift up both legs and slam them—

Before I could kick it the crate gave one hell of a lurch, upward and sideways, then jerkily down—which also described my own movement, or part of it. Already disoriented, in blackness, and totally unbalanced by that quick jerky movement, I went from a squat into a twisting flow, landing on my left hip and elbow, and clunking my head solidly against the crate’s wall on my way down. It was not a silent clunk. When my head cracked against the wood, it made a surprisingly loud and painful sound. The important thing was, I felt sure that a stupendously expensive Nuclear Resonance Analyzer wasn’t supposed to do that.

“What the crud?” somebody said. Kell, I think it was. No matter, somebody, continuing, “You hear that?” A moment later, “Well, screw em, screw ‘em all.”

Which, if my head was still working okay after that booming clunk, meant Wintersong and Belking must already be out of earshot. Apparently, I was right about that, because I heard the whoom-whoom of a car’s engine starting—another immediately after that, then the crunching of tires rolling over gravel.

I reached under my coat, gripped the checked butt of my Colt Special. I’m not quite sure why, because I wasn’t going to shoot anybody, wasn’t going anywhere. No point now in trying to crash out of this wooden jail. Which was still moving, bouncing a little. In a few more seconds there was a clunk and a thud as Grinner, with whatever equipment he was using, lowered me not very expertly to the floor.

Then, “Georgie! Hey, c’mere and gimme a hand. I can’t get this thing through the goddamn door here.”

Kell, answering, “Hell, Francis, I can’t lift nothin’ with this busted finger. Whyn’t you just leave it—”

“Goddammit, I’ll bust—”

“Okay, okay. Don’t wet your pants, Francis.”

That removed any doubt I might have had about who the two lobs were. But, also, Kell had called Grinner “Francis.” They must be really good friends, I thought. Georgie and Francis, how nice.

Then more bumping, grunting, sliding movement as they muscled the crate a few feet—somewhere. Finally a half-dozen swear words, and “Shee-it, that’s good enough. Whuddabout a beer, Francis. Hey?”

“Suits me. Didn’t think them jerkoffs was ever gonna leave, but we can still flop in the trailer and watch the fight.”

“Yeah. Ten bucks Mercury knocks Bunion’s conk off.”

“I love takin’ your money, Georgie. Bunion’ll kill that loser in the first round.”

They were jawing about the upcoming Saturday night fights, shown locally on Channel Five. A couple of heavyweight contenders were meeting, the winner earning a chance to get pulverized by the champ. “Mercury” was a white kid named Delbert Jones, alleged to be quicker and more slippery than quicksilver. The other man, a black old-timer of twenty-eight years, had been described by a local sportswriter, who wrote well but couldn’t spell worth a damn, as, “Stronger than Paul Bunion’s ox,” and the Bunion had stuck.

There were a few more comments, getting fainter as Grinner and Kell walked out—out of wherever we were. I heard the sound of a door being pulled shut.

Then...nothing.

Inside my crate, the blackness was total, absolute, as though light had never existed here; but the silence wasn’t complete. There was very faint, very soft sound somewhere, coming from somewhere, almost like the rustling of far-away surf, or even the rush of traffic on a distant freeway.

It was a strange sensation sitting there, momentarily unmoving, in the almost-silent blackness, and my emotions were mixed. I had wanted very much to get inside the Omega Medical Research Center, among its ten thousand experimental animals, its unknown number of virulent bacterial and viral cultures, its serums and vaccines—or bugshits and GOKs—and laboratories, offices, cages....

But my primary reason—almost only urgent reason in the beginning—was because Dane Smith had been here. And Dane was here no longer. She was either with Wintersong or with Belking—I’d heard two cars driven away—being taken somewhere. No telling where. Or why.

Curiously, that brief thought of Doctor Wintersong was accompanied by an echo of his musical voice, saying, “...slide him down the chute...” and Grinner’s reply, “...blast him and burn him, my pleasure...” Curiously, because at the time Wintersong’s words had registered but their full meaning had not. I had been occupied with other thoughts immediately afterward, of Dane, then of bullets splintering wood “with terminal velocity,” jagged odds and bloody ends.

Now, though, the good doctor’s meaning became suddenly if belatedly, clear. Wintersong had been referring gently to my cremation, to Grinner’s sliding my corpse down a slanted and slick steel chute into Omega’s incinerator.

That picture—briefly but vividly visible against blackness before my eyes—shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did. Logically, if Grinner slid my corpse lickety-split into the incinerator, I wouldn’t feel anything at all, because I’d be dead. Corpses are, by definition, and my own personal experience of them, kaput. No problem, not to worry.

So, no, it shouldn’t have bothered me; but, yes, it did bother me. Plenty. Maybe because, in that picture I’d perversely invented, the corpse was yelling, kicking, and twitching, scratching bloody nails on steel, shouting as hungry eighteen hundred degree incandescent flames started eating feet, legs, thighs...shouting and finally screaming..

Well, I thought, I’ve done it. I wanted to get in here, and by God I am in here. I have done the impossible, I am, unnoticed, unsuspected, undetected, actually inside the impregnable Omega Medical Research Center. Almost flippantly, remembering fragments of a dumb poem I’d read somewhere, I thought: They showed me the thing that couldn’t be done—and I did it! I have succeeded! So, I should have been feeling wonderful, right? So, why didn’t I?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I propped my pencil flashlight in a corner of the crate, took the socket wrench from my pocket and began unscrewing the four nuts.

When the last one came free, I put it on the boards near my feet, then slid the crate’s top sideways, gripped its exposed edge and lowered the thing slowly to the floor. One of the long bolts fell out and wobbled toward the wall. In a few more moments I was outside the crate and in some kind of storeroom. There was a sharp almost vinegary scent in the air. Enough light spilled under a nearby door, so that I could see shelves along three walls, filled with small items of unfamiliar equipment and stacks of cloth items, some green and some white—maybe robes the workers wore, or towels; I didn’t check. Instead, I stepped to the door, turned the knob and pulled. Nothing; the door opened outward. I took a deep breath, and stuck my neck past it, looked left, right, and let my breath bubble out in a long sigh.

I knew immediately where I was. It was apparent I was in the “bisecting” corridor Hank had described—which I might have anticipated, since Hank had said it ended at two large double doors in the building’s rear, next to the loading dock. The dock where I’d just been.

When I looked right, I could see those large doors, closed to my left, highly polished ivory and white linoleum stretched away from me until it met the east-west hallway I’d been in earlier today. Halfway up this hallway, on my left was the large metal bin Hank had made a point of mentioning to me. The burn-bin. From this angle, I could barely see the metallic gleam of what appeared to be a metal plate in the wall at this side of the bin but about level with its top. Probably an opening to the slide, extending down into the incinerator which Dr. Wintersong had made a point of mentioning to Grinner.

I stepped out of the storeroom, turned left and walked up the hallway over the polished linoleum, heels squeaking slightly on its waxy stickiness. That sour vinegary smell got stronger, was almost overpowering when I reached the bin.

Now that I was out of the confining crate, and the storeroom, the faint sounds I’d heard when in there, like distant surf, were a little louder and, finally, in part identifiable. I could hear the yap-yapping and barking of what sounded like half a dozen dogs, another dog howling somewhere like a wolf baying at the moon. And there was the higher, shriller, more nerve-shredding cry of a cat—sounded like a big cat, in pain.

Hank had told me that most—but not all—experimental animals subjected to experimentally-necessary torture or trauma made no sounds, did not bark or wail or scream, due to the fact that their vocal cords had been cut. I could certainly understand why scientists and research physicians would perform such simple surgical operations before experimentation commenced, because thousands of animals making all kinds of horrible noises would unquestionably be disturbing to the researchers involved, even possibly—more likely, probably—so distracting as to invalidate some of their experimental results. Certainly the few animal sounds I could hear, far off or behind walls somewhere, but persistent, unending, fell upon my ears with extraordinary effect, much like the effect that might be produced by several chalks squeaking on living blackboards, or an audible version of what you feel when you accidentally bend a long fingernail backwards into the tender quick...a sort of shivering discomfort beginning in ears and seeping into miles of thin, twitchy nerves. I didn’t like it at all.

I put thoughts of what might be happening to Dane out of my mind, or tried to, and walked in front of the large bin. No question, that’s where the stink was coming from. Part of it, but only part, was undoubtedly some kind of bactericide or antiseptic. The down-slanting metal lid or cover, its lower edge almost touching my midsection, was closed—more than closed, the damned thing was locked, a padlock’s shiny steel U looped though holes in the metal flanges welded to both the cover and top-front of the bin.

Everything else I’d brought with me was in my pockets, but I had been holding the two-foot-long crowbar, carried along for a different purpose, in my left hand. I shifted it to my right hand, inserted one end through the U and started prying. Without any success—probably because I was trying to avoid making any noise, which was clearly going to be impossible. Finally I rammed the crowbar’s narrow end between the two flanges, already weakened by those holes drilled through them, and after a minute of prying broke the top one cleanly near the weld. Cleanly, but noisily.

I checked the empty corridor then half-ran to its end, where it joined the intersecting hallway. No sign of life, animal or human, and the only sound was the muffled yap-bark-howl of animal protest constantly twisting in my ears.

I waited a full minute to be sure no one was hustling this way, then trotted back to the now-unlocked burn-bin. That thick sour smell seemed even stronger now, maybe because my heart was pounding slightly and I was breathing more deeply.

Whatever the reason, the putrid stench was clogging my nostrils and itching like acid at the back of my throat. Almost gagging, with an unusual quivering tightness between my shoulder blades, I gripped the bin’s metal cover and lifted, raised it and shoved, pushing its top edge over against the wall.

Then I looked down into the bin—and turned away.

After a few deep breaths, sucking in stink but also more oxygen, I turned around and looked again. Made myself look carefully as impassively as I could. Nearly filled with the bodies of animals. Bodies. And parts of bodies. Visible, concealing whatever was beneath them, were corpses and pieces of corpses—of mice, probably several hundred mice, plus some rats, and guinea pigs, two bantam chickens and a brightly-plumaged bird, frogs, rabbits, cats, dogs, three small monkeys.

Near the bins right side, atop the heap and stiff with rigor mortis, was the body of a mature Irish setter, red coat still shiny, healthy-looking. Closer to me, almost directly below my eyes, were two Siamese cats, with the breed’s distinctive beige-and-chocolate-brown markings, with open and glazed eyes, staring blue eyes. I could see the tops of both cats heads—or, rather, the upper curves and convolutions of their exposed brains. An oval portion of each skull had been removed, for what purpose I could only guess, because there was no longer evidence of whatever had been done to the cats before they died.

Hank’s little camera was still in the breast pocket of my jacket. I took the camera out, concentrated on making sure it was correctly focused and on snapping the first shot from where I stood. Then I hoisted myself onto the bin’s side, stood for a few wobbly seconds up there on a right-angled corner and took two more shots. Then I hopped down at the bin’s left end, steadying myself by pressing one hand against the wall. Or, rather, intending to steady myself—but my hand pressed not wall but that metal panel I’d glimpsed a few minutes ago, when looking up here from the storeroom. It slid sideways and I stumbled, almost fell. The shiny metal panel was about three feet square, and I remembered Hank describing a “sliding metal door” at the top of the chute.

The door had moved from my right to left about a foot; I pushed it open all the way, revealing something that looked like a yard-square galvanized-metal air-conditioning duct, slanting down. I could see into the opening for only a few feet because a baffle of some kind, made of a black material that looked like rubbery plastic, hung from the chute’s top and concealed everything beyond it. There wasn’t any unusual heat perceptible here, which figured.

The incinerator would be well beneath this floor, and undoubtedly the chute was equipped with many additional screens or baffles like the one I could see.

For a few curiously depressing seconds, I looked into that yard-square opening, and mentally all the way down to the flames, imagining everything I’d just seen in the burn-bin in a kind of slow motion sliding, spinning down the slick metal chute into fire, becoming a small pile of powdery ash. And I wondered how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of dead animals, how many tons of stiffening corpses, had already been turned into fluffy gray ashes and bits of white bone.

I could only guess. But I knew Omega was just one medical-research facility of thousands, many of them smaller and some much larger than Omega, not all with jim-dandy crematoria of course, but all determinedly, scientifically, and above all efficiently, turning the brothers and sisters of Fido and Coco and Squeakie into easily disposable homogenized miscellany in order to save mankind from sickness.

Scowling, I slid the metal door shut, lowered the heavy cover down onto the stinking bin, and got the hell away from there.

The sick, sour smell was still present, heavy in the air, but for some reason it didn’t bother me much any longer. Oddly, or perhaps not oddly, the multiple whimpering-yapping-barking-whatever, still constant, did. In fact, it bothered me even more now, irritated me, plucked at my ears and nerves and brain. Worse, unless I’m pounded severely on the head, I never get a headache, but I was getting a headache.

I walked away from the bin and the smell, turned left, then paused, stood unmoving for a few seconds. The last time I had approached this same front hallway I stopped just short of it, peered around the wall’s edge, carefully made sure no other person was here with me. This time, I simply walked straight out into exposed openness, turned left, headed for the door that said “Director”—the same door I’d burst through yesterday moments before colliding with Dane.

Only after I’d done it did I realize I had simply blundered out here without any of the normal care and caution that keeps guys like me alive. Slow down, I told myself; don’t get jerky and blow the whole bit.

I had to slow down briefly, whether I wanted to or not, at the door marked “Director,” because it was locked; the knob didn’t turn at all. Set into the doorframe was one of those combination locks with three rows of three numbered push buttons. I remembered watching the white-smocked gal yesterday afternoon, bending forward and poking at a similar lock across the hall.

Fortunately, I had written the sequence down, because I couldn’t remember any of it now. I got out my notebook, poked 1-9-3-3-8-8-1, heard a metallic click, and the knob turned. I eased the door open, slipped through and closed the door behind me, Colt Special ready in my right hand.

No problem; the big room was empty, at least empty of people. There was shadowy movement within the thirty or forty animal cages lining three walls, but nobody stood at the two long workbenches where yesterday I’d seen men washing equipment in stainless-steel sinks. In the far wall ahead of me were the three solid-wood office doors, closed, and to the right of that third door—on which I recalled was the large gray-painted door with the bright-red warning: DANGER – LETHAL RADIATION – DO NOT ENTER.

I went straight to Wintersong’s office and was not in the least surprised to find it locked. There was, however, no nine-number panel here like the one I’d pushed to get inside; so I took out my set of lock-picks, and got to work.

It took me three minutes, and I was sweating before finally getting the door open. Sweating, primarily, not because of the minimal effort involved but because I kept thinking somebody was behind me, eyes fixed on the back of my head, silently approaching as I worked on the lock. That nervousness, or subdued fear, was baseless, because nothing moved in the big room except those caged animals, but I couldn’t shake it entirely. Partly, I suppose, because the room was so quiet; I could hear the soft sound of movement, occasional clink of chain or brief rattle of metal door, but not any barking or chittering or howling, no sound of animal voices.

So when the tumblers moved and the lock was open I pushed the door inward and stepped into Wintersong’s office, closing the door again quickly and leaning back against it—in darkness. I found a light switch, flipped it and bright overhead light bathed the room. This, I remembered well. Dark-brown carpet, black desk with large padded-leather chair behind it and small angular chair in front, nearer me. Also the large shockingly bright abstract painting on the wall to my right, the painting which I now knew was exactly the same size as some kind of door concealed behind it.

The black desk was just as neat and uncluttered as when I’d first seen it. Two precisely aligned black-plastic baskets, gold pen and pencil set, small square clock with its black face and white numbers—and speedy white second hand racing around the dial. Plus what I was after: a telephone.

I had assumed that if there was anywhere in this joint a phone with its own direct line outside Omega, it would be the Director’s. That assumption was correct. Seated in Wintersong’s swivel chair, I picked up the phone and heard a welcome dial tone; pressed in Hank’s number and got Eleanora, and five seconds later, Hank.

I had also assumed correctly that Hank would have several dozen questions. He would probably have asked them all, one after another without pausing for breath, if I hadn’t cut him off.

“Hold it,” I said. “I don’t have much to tell you—yet. And that’s not why I called. I need your help.”

He didn’t interrupt while I told him that I’d made it inside Omega without difficulty, was in fact using a phone in the Director’s office, and then explained my concern about Dane Smith, repeated what I’d overheard Wintersong saying.

“Sedated?” Hank said. “That is not good.”

“It’s lousy. Right after that, both Wintersong and Belking drove away, so I don’t know which one she was with. Now...” I dug out my notebook, flipped some pages. “This morning, when Belking drove away from his Museum after our talk, he was in a new Mercedes Benz sedan, license plate number CVY176. His wife was right behind him in a Jaguar Sedan, license number PHS988. Unfortunately, I don’t know what Wintersong would have been driving.”

“That can be discovered without difficulty, I will take care of it.”

He went on to say he would contact many of his friends, and there would be observation made of Wintersong’s home, and Belking’s, for me not to be concerned but to concentrate on seeing and photographing whatever I felt might be of value or significance, and then getting back out of Omega safely. “Incidentally,” he finished, “how will you do that?”

While he spoke, I had been remembering the last time I’d been in this office, and how abruptly that interview had ended. I could almost hear again that faint insistent buzzing, see Wintersong’s sudden shock and pallor before becoming agitated. He had opened one of the drawers in his desk—the upper-left drawer, so close to me now I could touch it.

The keyhole of the lock, in that upper left drawer, into which Wintersong had finally managed to insert his red key, looked ordinary, standard. No matter how much doctors may know about tibias and fibulas, sulfas and ‘cillins, from a private eye’s point of view they’re laymen. And many of them think if a front door, or briefcase, or desk drawer, is locked, it’s really locked. Which, of course, it isn’t.

I got out my lock-picks again, selected one and wiggled it gently into the narrow keyhole.

Hank was saying, again, “How will you get out of Omega, Sheldon? You did not tell me before. You have another marvelous plan for accomplishing this, yes?”

Actually, the answer was: No.

I scowled, clenched my teeth together, wiggled my lock-pick, snorted through my nose. Well, dammit, I told myself, a man can’t think of everything.

“Sheldon? How—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you. Look, don’t worry about it. I promise you, Hank, I’ll uh, worry plenty for both of us.” That was true. I’d already started.

Then, suddenly, the upper-left drawer was sliding open. I pulled it out a little more, freed the lock-pick, reached inside the drawer. Wintersong, ashen, had fumbled in here, about halfway back on the left, was my guess. Yeah, there was something, felt like an inch-long protuberance, shaped like a tiny bowling pin.

I pushed it forward. Nothing happened.

Hank was saying, “So if there is anything of significance you have seen, or can tell me—”

I interrupted, “Not yet, Hank. I really just got started. But...”

This time, I pulled on the little protuberance, it moved a quarter of an inch, and—click. It was a solid sharp sound, the same thing I’d heard yesterday. And from the corner of my eye, even before turning my head to look, I saw that big bright swirl of oils on the wall move.

I jerked my head around. The right side of the painting had again, same today as yesterday, swung slightly away from me, toward the interior of the adjoining room. With an inch of space all along the painting’s right edge, it looked now very much like a door standing ajar. Which, of course, is what it was.

I said to Hank, “... maybe I will have, soon. Call you back later.”

“Bueno.”

I hung up, got to my feet and moved to the painting, put one hand against it. For a moment I thought of that red-lettered warning, on the wall outside this room next to Wintersong’s office, DANGER – LETHAL RADIATION. When Wintersong had hurried through this same door yesterday, he’d seemed unusually concerned, yes. But concerned about radiation? I didn’t think so.

I pushed the door open. The room beyond it was dark, illuminated only by overhead light spilling from behind me in the office. I stepped through the doorway. Directly ahead of me was something like a large bookcase with shelving and bins holding coils of tubing, wires, glass bowls and bottles, odds and ends of equipment that I merely glanced at. The wooden structure apparently designed to provide storage space, also blocked my view of the room’s interior because it was about six feet high and extended all the way to the wall on my left, and about halfway to the other, or front, wall on my right.

I looked for a light switch, spotted one on the wall a foot from the open door and flipped it on. Harsh light blazed from four fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling. I squinted briefly, then walked past the end of those wooden bins, turned sharply and was looking into a large cluttered room.

For a few seconds, I didn’t have any idea what I was looking at. There were several long tables, some covered with retorts and Petri dishes and strange collections of coils and tubes and wires, things I’d never seen before. A few feet away on my right were several dark green upright cylinders like those that contain oxygen and other liquefied gasses. On their left was what looked like a barrel about half the size of a fifty-five-gallon oil drum, but made of seamless and smoothly polished stainless steel. A pair of thin transparent tubes entered the bottom of the barrel, and a similar pair entered—or exited—at the top. I didn’t know what the thing did, but it was doing something, making a constant low humming sound.

Nearer, on my right, was a large and bulky piece of equipment almost the size of a piano but with its upper face covered by dials; a protruding shelf below the array of dials, was fitted with perhaps a dozen upright pens, most of them wiggling, with their points leaving wavering lines on white paper tape moving beneath them. The wide strip of paper tape folded slowly into a large cardboard box resting on the floor.

From the back side of that bulky piece of equipment, a shelf of wires rose, very fine insulated wires running over pipes and through loops. Most of them extended toward something at the far end of the room from me, but a dozen or so swept just over my head and continued on to my left, and down.

At that moment, I saw...something. At first I thought it was slow movement, glimpsed from the corner of my eye. But it wasn’t anything moving. I pulled my head left, looked, stared at the thing. At first I thought it was a dog.

It was on a solid, square metal table about ten feet away. I stepped toward it, suddenly filled with a strange tremulous apprehension, as though my nerves were also thin wires, stretched too tight. There was a musty, almost oily, smell in the room, different from the sharper stink I’d noticed outside in the hallway. Clearly, this was what those fine wires led to, and where those four fine transparent tubes led also, carrying fluids from or to that humming barrel-like machine. Apparently the piano-sized instrument with those dials and wiggling pens was recording electrical impulses from this plastic-tube-fed source.

The source was a dog’s head.

The top of the dog’s skull had been surgically removed, a six-inch-long oval neatly excised—as in the smaller skulls of those two Siamese cats dead in the burn-bin—and the ends of those ten or twelve fine wires were buried in the living brain. Living, because both eyes in the dog’s head were functioning, moving, following me as I approached and stopped a foot before it.

The dog’s head. Head only. It wasn’t a dog. It was the severed and nutrient-fed and electronically monitored—but alive—head of a dog. It was a shocking, stunning thing to see, that head without a body, grisly obscene. Near this end of the metal table was a small white plastic-covered box, its tip about five feet above the laboratory floor. And atop the box rested the dog’s head. Nothing else remained of him, no body, no legs or paws, no wagging tail. Just the head and part of the neck wound with thick white gauze at its base; below the truncated neck and surgical gauze only the white box, much too small for a dog’s body but large enough for the four transparent tubes that stretched, like multiple umbilical cords out of its sides, through holes in the plastic up to wall-to-wall piping above me, then on to that humming barrel. The head was held immobile by curving metal pincers, blunt ends pressed against each side of the skull.

The head was immobile, but its eyes were not. That was the worst thing of all; seeing those living, intelligent eyes, the only things that moved, except for pulsing synapses in the brain, their amplitude and frequency being traced by wavy lines on moving paper tape.

And then I saw the tuft-like patches of whitish hairs, above those moving eyes...distinctive chalky areas which had, in the beginning reminded me of my own goofy eyebrows. I’d found Hank’s dog, Rusty.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Sadness was like a weight pressing down on me, and the tightness in my stomach was almost pain. But there wasn’t any doubt, none at all. I had indeed found Rusty, or what was left of him.

This was, had been, Hank’s dog, his part-mongrel German Shepherd, his “much-loved human-animal.” It was the same handsome face I’d seen in the photo Hank had given me, back in the beginning, a long time ago; I didn’t even have to check it again. The same beige-brown shades, same long smooth muzzle, same unmistakable whitish goofiness above the dark brown eyes. Eyes that—horribly—continued to move.

I stepped to my right, raised a hand. Those eyes moved, left, followed me, and glittered—at least in the increasing craziness of my imagination—like eyes of glass, like one of Hobart Belking’s freeze-dried heads watching me with intelligence, with awareness, perhaps even with fear.

Maybe the head was “alive,” but Rusty wasn’t. He’d been dead for a long time, probably since soon after Hank last saw him running down Mulberry Street and around the corner at Elm, sprinting after a dark green van.

I felt an unaccustomed weakness, a strangeness in my legs, something almost like dizziness. Something that was dizziness swirling in my head while an inner trembling filled all my body.

Then I killed Rusty.

Killed whatever it was.

It took a long time to die; at least, it seemed a very, very long time. But finally there was a moment when the movement, the light, the life left Rusty’s eyes.

And that was too much for me. Whatever it was that had started to hit me earlier finished the job. Everything around me was spinning; anger burned in my stomach, rose into my throat.

I spun around and headed—maybe for the door where I’d entered, maybe. I don’t know. I just know, wherever it was, I didn’t get there, didn’t get out of the room. I bumped into a table, heard shattering of glass, then banged into a wall and bent over, retching, getting rid of almost everything inside me except the sickness I wanted to be free of, but knew I would never be free of.

No way. Not now. Because... when I started to straighten up, rubbing one hand over smelly thickness smearing my lips and chin, I was looking back toward an area of the big laboratory ten or fifteen feet beyond where I’d just been, and my gaze fell on other tables, plastic white boxes, two more of those bright steel barrels, fine wires and thin plastic tubing, and a couple of other things.

And, instantly I understood what had happened to Guenther and Helga, knew where they’d been and much of the why. Knew with my mind almost frozen, numbed, unable to fully respond that I had finally found the Vungers.

Or, again...what was left of them.

Both human heads were displayed as Rusty’s had been, atop shiny white boxes placed on heavy tables, thin plastic tubing entering from beneath and fine wires descending from directly above the exposed brains. Both heads had been shaved and were obscenely hairless. Guenther was nearer me, about fifteen feet away, Helga seven or eight feet behind him. There was something strange and disturbing about the expression on Guenther’s face—I couldn’t help thinking of the thing as Guenther, but it wasn’t a real....

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling a kind of clammy darkness spreading in my own brain, not quite able to believe I was looking at the severed heads of Guenther and Helga Vunger, at a kind of living death one might expect to see in hell but not on the gentle earth...looking at people, or at least the faces and features of people, I had immediately recognized. The Vunger’s and I hadn’t met, but in shadowy grayness behind my closed lids I could see them both as clearly as if we’d sat and chatted yesterday. I had seen only their pictures, those two framed photographs upstairs in their home, but I recalled them now with unnatural vividness. In their wedding picture, she’d been a plump and pretty lady, he a stocky man wearing a gray suit too tight for his body. That led me to wonder where his body was, and if it was ashes and bits of bone now.

I remembered thinking that the Vungers, like many newlyweds, had seemed to be gazing dazedly toward a bright and promising future, smiling hugely. Twenty years later—wedding anniversary not long ago—those smiles had become less toothy, but both Mr. and Mrs. had still been smiling. And I remembered thinking they looked like very nice people.

I opened my eyes. I was still disturbed by that strangely unreal expression of Guenther’s face, and for a moment I thought it was because his eyes seemed to be entirely, shiningly white, like the plastic below his severed neck, or pieces of peeled hard-boiled egg. But then I took two steps toward him—toward it, I still kept thinking of it as Guenther—and understood.

My second step brought me to within three or four feet of Guenther’s head, and only then did his eyes move. They had been turned far to the left, as far as they could be turned; he swung them swiftly right rolled them up to fix them on my face staring intently, wildly, for long seconds—frightening seconds, I have to admit—then pulled them left, far left, again. His right eye seemed almost to be looking at the bridge of his nose, left eye straining toward...something...on his left.

Then I got it, then I understood.

Guenther’s gaze was on the glass face of a cabinet, the glass almost mirrorlike, reflecting an area of the room behind Guenther. And in that reflected area atop a white-plastic box on another large square table, unreal, toy-like, resembling the waxy plastic face and shiny skull of a department-store mannequin, was the head of Guenther’s wife.

He stretched and strained his eyes to see the glass, and in the glass the sliced-off disembodied head, of Mrs. Vunger. Of Helga. How many times had he said her name in the twenty years and more they’d lived together? Was he saying it, thinking it now? Remembering the wildness of his eyes fixed on my face, seeing them now rolled far left to stare at glass and the reflected face, I could understand why he, why it, by now must surely be mad. I stepped around Guenther, tried the door of that cabinet. It wasn’t locked, and I opened the door part way so Guenther wouldn’t be able to see a reflection of what I was doing. Then I walked on back and checked the head of Helga Vunger.

She was, unquestionably, dead. Her head had even been “unplugged,” to state the fact crudely. The dozen fine wires had been pulled from the brain and dangled in the air a few inches above it, folded up and held together with a common wire-and-paper strip like the “ties” housewives use to close plastic sacks in their kitchens.

For a moment I looked at that face, now not alive and not even dead but more like something that could never have been alive or pretty or warm, a caricature fashioned from doughy putty, with no synapses or electromagnetic surges here to make pens wiggle wavy lines, no flow of electricity, no singing of life—nothing being reported from this experiment now.

Nothing reported since yesterday, I guessed. Nothing since the moment, or not long after the moment, when my dialogue with Dr. William Wintersong—right next door, in the good doctor’s office—had so abruptly ended, when he’d heard the same faint buzzing I’d heard, and began instantly to come unglued. That must have been when Mrs. Vunger died, or started dying... because obviously Wintersong hadn’t been able to “save” her.

Right then another thought struck me, really struck me. I wondered if Guenther, too, had heard at that same time the same insistent buzzing...and, stretching his eyes far left, understood what it meant, understood as he watched what remained of his Helga, die. And I wondered if Guenther had realized then that he must be looking at a reflection of himself, of what he also had become, or more truly what Dr. Wintersong had made of him. If he had, I couldn’t conceive of any realization more shattering, more unbelievably horrible.

Well, I sure couldn’t ask him; no way. There was still life, or something approximating life, within that grisly head, still perception undoubtedly accompanied by thought. I knew it could see, probably could hear, but certainly couldn’t speak without lungs or breath. No way to communicate with what little was left of Guenther, even though the key to all of Guenther was undoubtedly inside that open skull. No way unless, maybe, by some kind of eye-code, blinking and winking and rolling—then, unbidden and out of the blue, for a curious and almost crazy moment, I imagined myself as Guenther—or Helga—or Rusty—coming slowly up out of drugged nothingness, fuzzy with dregs of anesthesia, awakening after the monstrous thing had been done.

How would I know what had happened? Would I know? How could I...a head, something without a body but with hearing and sight, with thought and perception and emotion...know what had been done to me? I would be unable to see my chest, arms, legs, and of course couldn’t feel them, but would probably assume they were there.

I shook my head hard, practically rattled it, slapped my chest, felt my arms and legs and pinched my cheek and nose and parts of my neck. I had been pretty far out for a long moment there, and it was good to be back. I had a funny feeling that, somewhere in those near-addled thoughts had been one that was important, very important, but couldn’t pin it down. Besides, it felt so good to be able to thump my chest and arms and legs that I said to hell with that noise, there’s work to be done. And got busy doing it.

I snapped nine shots with Hank’s little camera, three each of Helga, Guenther, and Rusty, but taking the three of Guenther started one more shiver rippling up my spine. His eyes were moving wildly, silently, with an erratic jerkiness that was unnerving.

Finally I closed that cabinet door I had opened minutes before. Guenther’s eyes snapped left again, far left, and stayed there.

I walked away from him, past Rusty, around those shelves and back into Wintersong’s office. There was no knob or handle on the concealed door, so I closed it by pulling on the painting’s frame. Then I sat again behind the Director’s desk, and grabbed the phone.

I got Hank, but hesitated about telling him what I’d found. I didn’t know where to start. Hank, however, started going a mile a minute, explaining that he already had twenty or thirty people looking for Wintersong’s and Belking’s automobiles, watching their homes, that he had personally phoned the Halcyon Hotel and learned Dane Smith had not returned to her room.

Finally I interrupted, and just said it bluntly. “I’ve found Rusty, Hank. He’s dead.”

Silence for ten or fifteen seconds, maybe longer. Then “In my bones, I knew before you said it. Sheldon, was he tortured?”

Telling Hank what Wintersong had done to Rusty—including my own part, at the very end—was not one of the easiest things I’ve ever had to do. But I got it said.

Then I told him about the Vungers.

There were several more silent seconds, during which I couldn’t even hear Hank breathing: I guessed he’d squeezed a hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. Then he said rapidly, sounding almost as cantankerous as normal, but with perhaps a little more anger than usual in the brnngngg vitality of his voice, “So, now it is murder that cannot be disguised as health care even by the symptom-squashers, who usually have a wonderful bassackward name for their less obvious mistakes. Goddamn, now no one can get away with calling it “authorized and approved” treatment to cut off peoples’ heads....

He paused, swearing softly in Spanish for a while; I didn’t understand any of it, but I would have sworn it was swearing. “My dog, Rusty,” he said, “and my patients, Helga and Guenther. For Wintersong, the only thing more satisfying would be my head stuck on a stick in his laboratory. To that self-satisfied self-serving gusano it is an unforgivable disaster that I helped the Vungers cure themselves—of his own special proprietary disease, IFAI, which like everything else is incurable—without any drugs, or cutting them up and replacing parts of them, without even his miserable vaccine. And cheap, for nickels and dimes instead of an outrageous hundred-thousand bucks per capita...make that decapita. He and Belking, too, goes without saying it, hate me furiously and fear me and every doctor like me who cures any by-their-definition incurable peoples. Plus, they both know that I, my friends and I, intend determinedly to destroy them, they have spies—”

“Hank. Spies? Listen. I’ve really got to split—”

“We have had two traitors, pill doctors who told the sonofbitches about our plans, our timetable, whatever they learned traitorously—”

“Hank—later. Goodbye.”

“Not yet. Forgive me. Sheldon, I will not forgive the bastardos, not for Guenther and Helga, not for Rusty. Oh, shit. Not for Rusty...”

After a long pause, Hank went on, “Take a photograph of him, Sheldon. Of my fine dog-friend, that was. Not for me, but for evidence—”

“I already have, Hank. And of the Vungers—which means the law has to be told about them right away, told about this whole operation. I can call the LAPD from here myself, even if the Sheriff does have jurisdiction—”

“No, Sheldon. No. Let me inform the proper official persons, please—I have already spoken for you to one of your LAPD friends, about Miss Dane Smith, and the possibility she departed from Omega with Dr. Wintersong or Mr. Belking. But of this new monstrousness, it is of excruciating importance how, and to whom, the informing is consummated. You have more important things to do, one of which is to stay alive—and bring me your photographs and eye-witnessing testimony. Beside...” He stopped briefly, continued, “To nearly everyone in the United States, even the world, Dr. Wintersong and Hobart Belking are men possessed of great virtue, men of exceeding ability and honor. Few, in the absence of overwhelming proof, will believe they are duplicitous monsters. Most importantly if through even small error, word of our intentions should reach these honored monsters, the evidence you have found would swiftly disappear. It would then be your word against theirs.”

“My word—plus some photographs of severed heads.”

“If, fortunately they—and you—did not also disappear into the Bermuda Triangle. Wintersong and Belking would say you faked the pictures, doctored them. And Hobart Belking could spend a billion dollars, if necessary, to prove it. He has spent much already to pervert justice, so this would be nothing new. You understand?”

“Well, yeah...enough, anyhow. But, Hank, if you’re going to inform the law, I would hate to think you mean sometime tomorrow—”

“No, no, this afternoon, soon, with only small delay, for accomplishment of certain vital things. Trust me.”

“I suppose I’ll have to.”

“I must confess, Sheldon, I hoped you would not have to force yourself to place trust in me.”

Hank, didn’t sound hurt, or offended, or angry, but there was a certain, “something” in his tone, rather like that of a high school teacher greeting a favorite student arriving in class, very late, without any pants on.

I said, “Can I force myself a little?”

“Hokay.” It sounded as if he were smiling. Then he went on, quite seriously, “It is essential that the evidence you have found remain available—to be seen by official people so it cannot later be denied. But you must not stay there. You must expeditiously bring your photographs, anything you can bring of value, here to me.”

“You’ll be in your office if...whenever I get there?”

“Yes. This office is, as you might express it, a command center, and central place for communications from many others, such as those looking for the Mercedes and Jaguar automobiles. So come speedily, but ah...well, when you depart from Omega, it would be considerate if you left a door unlocked, or open. Even two doors.”

I thought about that. But only a little; it didn’t require a lot of thinking. “Hank, if you’ve got some fruitcake idea about coming out here—”

“Do not concern yourself with fruitcakes. This is our most important opportunity in several years, and the time could not be more propitious—”

“Hank, dammit, if you’re thinking of coming out here, the damned guards will blow you away!”

“They cannot blow away a hundred tourists from Iowa, unless they are equipped with machine guns and bazookas, nor is it likely they would annihilate a mere mob of fifty or so citizens, peacefully assembled at Omega to protest organized cruelty to animals and bugs, particularly should such citizens be carrying crudely-lettered signs and placards saying ‘DOWN WITH SCIENTISTS WHO’—”

“Are you off your nut? You must...hey. Citizens, placards—you didn’t just now think of this, did you?”

“No, months ago, years. Now is always too late—but you do not wish to hear this.”

“Yeah. I mean, no. I don’t think I do.”

“Come speedily, Sheldon. I will have much to tell you—some important things I have withheld, but will withhold no longer.”

I started to ask him about those “things,” but he was asking me, “Have you been elsewhere in Omega?”

“Not yet, just this main building. After checking that burn-bin, I came straight here to Wintersong’s office.”

“Is good enough. There is much more you might see were there leisure, which there is not. But you have already seen more than plenty, more even than I hoped, which pleases me. You have done well, Sheldon. But the essential action is getting yourself out of Omega safely. You did not finish telling me before—you have a plan for this?”

“I don’t, well, I don’t.” I scowled. “Look, just leave all that to me, okay? I’m going to hang up, give this joint a quick tour—get more photos and split out of here, hopefully employing a clever stratagem or two, which, if I do, I’ll tell you about, and if...Adios! I go!”

“Con Dios.”

We hung up.

I sat in the Director’s chair a little longer, thinking.

Until I’d mentioned it to Hank, I hadn’t really planned to “quick tour” the Omega facility, but that struck me as well worth doing—particularly right now, when I was already inside and the guys with guns were outside. Who could ask for anything more?

Since seeing Rusty, and the other ugliness in the lab next door, I hadn’t been thinking of much else, just fully occupied with each moment. But it was now time to start planning ahead, devising stratagems, and...like that.

The thought of Wintersong’s lab next door reminded me of Hank’s suggestion to leave a door or two unlocked. It also reminded me that very few people, and no outsiders except me, could know about Wintersong’s secret switch that opened the door concealed right here behind its rainbow-colored painting. If I was going to leave any door unlocked, that had to be number-one.

So I pulled out the desk’s top-left drawer, poked my left hand inside, and found the little bowling pin...and that was all.

I didn’t hear him come inside. Bending toward the drawer, I didn’t even see him, not at first. But I knew from the tone of his voice, from the three little words he yelled, that he had a gun in his hand, that it was pointed at me, and that he was damned close to squeezing the trigger. All that, without the least doubt about any of it, merely from: “FREEZE, you bastard!”

CHAPTER THIRTY

I froze. The man’s voice was usually lower and more whispery, sometimes sibilant, but even when he was yelling in apparent surprise or even shock I knew that voice was Grinner’s.

Without moving my head, I slanted my eyes right to get a look at him. As I also looked at Grinner’s hard face with nothing pretty in it now, at both his muscular arms extended toward me with his left hand cupping the right holding a fat-bodies Colt .45 pointed at my teeth—I could still see those wild eyes in Guenther’s head, rolling, sliding and jerking and almost spinning. Spinning faster and faster.

Grinner said, “How the hell did you get in here?”

Clearly, for a fraction of a second, he really wanted to know. But, even more clearly, he wasn’t going to wait for an answer, because right after that he continued, almost whispering, “Never mind, Scott. Good—”

I knew he was already saying “Goodbye,” maybe already before squeezing the Colt’s trigger to blow me away, and even though my holstered .38 was only two feet from my right hand I also knew there wasn’t a chance I could reach it in time. So, not even thinking about it, without consciously planning to distract Grinner or startle him or shoot him, without planning a damned thing, I curled my trigger finger—not on my right hand, on the left, squeezing that finger against the bowling-pin lever it was already touching, and the suddenly-opening door made an ear-smashing click-BLAM sound like a .45 caliber pistol going off—which is precisely what it was.

My eyes were on Grinner’s gun, but I could see the face behind it, and I saw his eyes jerk toward the painting-covered door, or at least toward the click as that door jumped ajar, and the muzzle of his fat .45 followed his eyes. Not much, not far: Just far enough.

The heavy slug hissed past my ear almost close enough to burn part of it off, but it missed the teeth he’d been aiming at, missed my head. And that gave me time to yank out my own gun, and fire, before Grinner recovered enough to fire at me again. I shot at him three times and hit him twice. That first .38 Special slug smacked into the wall behind him and at least a yard to his left, but the next two went into him.

Sometimes men, hit two or three times, even more, with .38 caliber bullets are able to stay on their feet long enough to empty their own gun at you, or walk around the block, drive to the pool hall. Not Grinner. I didn’t know what I’d hit inside him, but it must have been something fairly significant. He went straight down, landed hard, and fell against the wall behind him with his head smacking it and bouncing forward like a rubber ball, then slowly moving back to touch the wall again, and stay there.

He was wearing brown pants and a white T-shirt with blood on it. The blood was just beginning to spill high on his chest near the left collar-bone, and low in his stomach, below the navel, oozing over the belt of his brown trousers. Three shots, wall, chest and guts. Not very good shooting. Correction: damned good shooting. It got the job done.

There was, already, quite a lot of blood. But the Colt .45, was still in Grinner’s hand. The pistol although pointing at the floor and not toward me, was still loosely held. Besides which, when I moved around the desk and stepped close to him, he looked at me and I’d swear tiny snakes were still unthawing behind those cold blue eyes.

I took the last step swinging my right leg forward, and the heavy Cordovan shoe on my foot crunched against Grinner’s right hand, sending the gun flying. And, I think, breaking one or two of Grinner’s fingers. He didn’t appear to notice. So I grabbed him around the neck, pulled him six inches toward me, then slammed his head back against the wall.

No? I should be nice? I should be gentle with this degenerate creep who’d just tried to blow my teeth out, and me out with them? The truth is, I felt like slamming his conk some more, until it broke.

But I didn’t. I wanted some words from Grinner.

“Francis,” I said, but he got in ahead of me.

Looking at me quite calmly, his expression bland, Grinner said matter-of-factly, “You sonofabitch, you killed me.”

“Well, you’re not dead yet, Francis. But—”

“Don’t call me...”

“—you will be if you don’t start puking. Because I intend to squash one of your kidneys for openers, and reach down your goddamn throat to get at it.”

“... Francis.”

“What? Oh, yeah. Okay, Grinner, okay? Mr. Grinner if it’ll help.” I was still holding onto his neck, but lightly, so I shook it a little. “Get started, pal.”

“Where?”

It was a pretty good question. I had to give him that. There were a lot of things I wanted to know about, and Grinner had probably been involved in at least half of them. He was doing pretty well for a guy bleeding so much.

“Henry Hernandez, M.D.,” I said. “That Friday and your attempted hit-run—I caught up with you and Kell in that van yesterday, so I figure the two of you were in it when you tried to wipe out Hernandez. But I want to hear it from you, Grinner.”

“Yeah, Kell. You broke both his goddamn fingers, you’re really a mean sonabitch. Broke his goddamn—”

“You’re getting me fried, man. Open your mouth.”

“Open...? What the hell for?”

“So I can get in there.”

He actually grinned. I mean, not the way he did when he was shooting people, but as though truly amused in a painful way. But he didn’t say anything.

So I did. “You may not fully realize it, Grinner, but you’re running out of time. Which means, so am I. And I’m impatient. I am, in fact, getting damned impatient—”

“It was us, sure. Me and him. But in a different van. There’s three vans altogether. When we tried to waste him...tried—I still don’t believe I missed him. This old coot—he’s like a thousand years old, y’understand—and he lamps us and goes—zonk. Like a bleeping circus acrobat, does a half-gainer backwards, totally flips around like a chiropractor throwed him away, and is eyeballing Kell as we speeds off, Kell being astonished considerable—”

“Keep it short, Grinner.”

I was a little puzzled. Remembering Hank’s description of the “Fu Manchu” mustache he’d seen on one man in the van, I’d thought it possible neither of those two men had been Kell or Grinner. I was not, of course, going to mention any such doubts to Grinner.

I said, “You and Kell, huh? I thought one of the guys owned some long droopy lip whiskers—”

“Them was Kell’s. He glued them hairs on to disguise himself, case anyone glommed us running over anybody. He’s practically an idiot, y’know. Wouldn’t want you to think it was my idea, which it wasn’t. Like I said, Kell’s an idiot.”

“You’re wasting time, Grinner. I guess the sad thing is, you don’t even know it—”

“You think I don’t, huh?” He gave me an odd, almost sleepy-eyed look. “Why you think I’m puking all over myself? It’s to frustrate your bowels, Scott. Because I know you won’t be able to do nothin’ to me about any of it, which I hope gets you constipated as a rock.”

I got a queer feeling he might be doing better than I was. But I said, “Be that as it may. What about—”

He wasn’t listening. He kept on going, his voice softer, “If Jake and Eddy’d finished you like...supposed to, I wouldn’t be here now. You wouldn’t be here, so I wouldn’t neither. Man, if my hopes come true you won’t crap for a year.”

“Jake and Eddy?”

Grinner wasn’t answering questions. He was just saying those things that, for whatever reason, he felt like telling me, or talking about, at the moment. And there weren’t going to be many more moments; he was wandering.

Switching time and place again, he said, “Missed the old coot, then his damn dog came after us barking like a herd of apes in Africa. So we let him jump in...”

Grinner stopped. While speaking, his cold blue eyes had been fixed on my face; but suddenly, without any movement or change of expression, he wasn’t looking at me any longer. He was looking at something a lot farther from him than I was. After two or three seconds, his eyes got very wide. Only a minute ago, he’d as much as told me he knew he was dying. But I’ve seen it before: there’s knowing, and knowing. And the difference was, right now, Grinner knew.

But he was still sitting up, moving a little. I’d squatted before him, but wasn’t squeezing his neck any longer. He glanced down at the blood on his chest. Nearly the entire front of his once-white T-shirt was red now.

He lifted his head. “Doc Wimp was pissed we missed the coot, really pissed. But when we tell him who this extra dog we picked up on our sweep is, who the mutt belongs to, we had to back up so old Wimp wouldn’t kiss us. Got unpissed quick, and so happy—goddamn quack’s dog he says, good-good he says about nine times, beautiful work after all, he says—Kell and me, we think he’s about to cream his pants. Really happy...”

I said, gently, “I guess you mean Wintersong.”

“Wintersong. Doctor Wimp.” He closed his eyes, opened them slowly. “Jake and Eddy now, they...”

There were other things, and people I would much rather have heard about, but I wasn’t going to push. I’d take anything more I could get from Grinner. If there was going to be more.

But I said, “Jake and Eddy, they the two knife artists who tried for me?”

“Of course. Didn’t I tell you? Thought I did. They was supposed to kill you. Really too bad they didn’t—”

“Kill me, why? And whose idea was it to waste me? Almost had to be Wintersong, right?”

“Him? Doc Wimp? He sicced us onto Hernandez, like I said...didn’t I? But we don’t take orders from him—or anybody unless the boss okays it...which that time he did. No, the guy sent them slicers to carve you up like a turkey was Belk—”

Just like that, he was gone. From living and talking, all the way to dead, in no time at all.

I stood up, rubbed a small painful cramp out of my left calf. It felt wonderful!

* * * * * *

I did the rest of it concentrating on fast, not careful. I simply walked through rooms, laboratories, past rows of identical metal cages, Colt .38 in my right hand. I didn’t check all areas in the three Omega buildings, but I saw enough to last me for a lifetime and I took all the pictures I needed. Fortunately, I met one of the four weekend workers Hank had said should be here, and he wasn’t any trouble. He was a kid, barely twenty, and I got the impression nobody had ever pointed a gun at him before.

He told me today was “his turn” and the three other guys were sacked out, either resting or industriously snoozing on the job, in what he called the Rhesus room. This turned out to be a room, in one of the two other buildings, where a bunch of monkeys were kept under observation “to see how long they lived” after receiving injections of an experimental anti-cancer drug. I had the kid tell me exactly where it was—so I wouldn’t go there.

I left him reasonably comfortable, hand and feet and mouth incapacitated by strips from my roll of surgical tape, and went on my way. I spent only twenty minutes looking around, without meeting anyone else, and without any trouble.

The next time my attention was so completely captured that a kindergarten kid could have bopped me on the head was when I found Precious.

Yeah, no kidding. I found her.

But not, thank God, like Rusty. And there was no doubt, once I saw her, that it was Precious: white paw, scarred ear, and especially the unmistakable crooked tail that went “like this...and there” as warm and lovely, brown-eyed, brown-everythinged Lucinda had told me yesterday morning.

Yesterday? No, last month, surely...last week? Whenever, on a crisp cool morning a long time ago.

I went back in the central building preparing to get out of this joint, or at least try to. Turning from the main hallway into the one where I’d left my Trojan crate, I recalled the room—only a few yards from me now—where I’d seen the shapely lass bending forward, poking a combination.

I had wondered then what was in there, but assumed it was probably something innocuous, like a rest room. For some reason, maybe because it was directly opposite the “Director” door, I walked over to it, poked 1-9-33-88-1, pushed the door open and stepped inside.

It wasn’t a rest room. Looked more like a kennel, or whatever they call them for cats. A wire screen, wall to wall and from floor to ceiling separated the narrow space where I was from the rest of the small room. Beyond that screen, lying on the linoleum floor or slinking around, were at least fifteen or twenty cats. Not many specimens, either. These looked healthy, well-groomed and well-fed. Moreover, if these were pound cats or strays, they included at least one glossy brown Burmese, a pair of Siamese, and what looked to my unpracticed eyes like a long-haired Persian, and a Manx. I saw a couple of water bowls, some litter boxes, plastic containers filled with dry food.

Most gratifying to me after where I had just been. Apparently none of these animals had been operated on, or drugged, or brain-wired, or microwaved, or, I thought, remembering one of Hank’s outbursts, cooked in ovens until crispy.

But why they were here, and what they might be here for, were not my chief concerns at the moment. I’d seen enough and turned to leave reaching for the inside doorknob. But looped over the knob, dangling from it, were a handful of pet collars, each about the size of a cat’s neck.

I pulled them off the knob, looked them over. There were four of them. Not quite a handful; maybe a heartfull. Because two were prettily jeweled, or at least displayed gem-like bits of colorful glass; one was plain worn leather; and the last was a half-inch wide strip of velvety black cloth with a row of rhinestones along its middle, feminine as a fan-dancer’s garter.

Attached by figure-eight hooks to each collar was a metal license tag, one of them with no identification except a phone number. But the other three carried engraved names: Tzu-Tzu, Dynamite and Delilah.

I dropped all four collars into my coat pocket, reached for the doorknob and something behind me went “Maa.”

That was odd. I knew I’d never heard anything quite like that squeaky “Maa” before, so why did it remind me of something?

I turned the doorknob and again heard, “Maa, Maa!”

You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. Either that bed-spring needs grease, or a lamb is going...wait a minute....

“Maa!”

I turned around, took a step forward and squatted before the wire screen, and looked at the lovely, lovely little cat about a foot away now, with white paw, partly-gone ear, crooked tail.

And I said, “Hi, there. I thought Lucinda was cutesy-pooh to stick such a goofy name on you. But I was wrong, kid. You really are Precious.”

Precious wiggled as she said, “Maaaaaaa!” And I understood completely. Didn’t blame her, either.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I walked toward the big double doors at the hallway’s end, carrying a closed cardboard box in which, apparently content, was Precious—along with my now-excess baggage of camera, lock-picks, flashlight, and four cat collars. The roll of surgical tape was still bulky in my coat pocket, since with a little more luck I hoped to be using it again, and soon.

The double doors weren’t locked. I pushed one of them partly open. Nothing was in sight back here except a twenty-foot-long trailer, painted white with green trim, white-and-green trailer thirty yards away on my right, and a beat-up brown Jeep parked in front of it. The Jeep had a trailer-hook affixed to its rear bumper, obviously mate to the heavy metal coupling built onto the trailer’s front, but the hook and coupling were a few feet apart, not joined.

Before leaving Grinner on the floor of Wintersong’s office I’d emptied his pockets. Nothing had been of interest to me except a key ring with four keys on it, one of them stamped with the Jeep name and logo. I knew Grinner and Kell must have some kind of vehicle available, and remembered the Jeep racing toward me and the gatehouse earlier today. So I’d put everything else back into the corpse’s pockets, but kept the key-ring.

It was almost a sure thing that key fit the beat-up brown Jeep’s ignition. And the trailer had to be the one Grinner mentioned to Kell when suggesting they flop there. If Kell was in there now, I assumed he’d be alone, because the two remaining guards were probably out front in the gatehouse. Probably; no guarantees.

I stepped out onto the loading dock, eased down to the graveled earth four feet below—careful not to bang my cardboard-box carrier—and walked in the open, but swiftly, those long thirty yards. When I stopped next to one side of the trailer, a few feet from an open door, I could hear audio from a television set inside. The Mercury-Bunion fight wasn’t on yet; a commercial was, a gal confessing in a steamy whisper, three times in a row, “When I’ve got sinus stuffiness, I take—” I wasn’t sure, but I feared she had said NAZELKLEEN all three times. Then a twangy-voiced male announcer began describing action in a light-heavy bout on the undercard.

The Jeep was about six feet from me. I moved over to it, sat my box, and cat, down on the passenger seat, then got out Grinner’s key-ring and tried the Jeep key in the ignition. It fit. I took a big breath, let it out slowly.

One of the light-heavies was pounding the other guy all around the ring, and the twangy-voiced announcer was getting excited. This had to be as good a time as any. With my fully-loaded Colt Special in my right hand I moved to the trailer’s open door, up two steps, and inside.

It was a cluttered crudely-furnished room. Ahead on my left, beyond an unpainted wooden counter upon which sat a brown phone, was an electric range with a coffee pot on one of the burners. In the corner beyond the range was a white refrigerator. There was a lumpy couch with a folded-up card table resting at one of its ends, four large wooden chairs—and the television set.

In one of the chairs, on my right and about three feet from the glowing TV tube, slouched Kell. He was alone, can of beer in his meaty left hand. He heard me step inside, but obviously thought I was Grinner returning from his tour of the buildings.

Without looking my way he said, “About time you got back, Francis. What the hell you get hung on?”

“Me,” I said.

He jerked his big head around starting to spring up from his chair, saw my Colt pointed at his nose and thought better of it. The expression on his pale, blotchy face wasn’t so much alarm or fear as disbelief.

“You?” he said. “You? Where the hell did you come from?” Without waiting for an answer, he went right on, “Where’s Francis? Hey, where’s Francis?”

“He’s dead, Kell. Which is what you’ll—”

“Aw, not Francis! Not Francis!”

He got out of the chair, all six-foot-three and two-twenty or so pounds of him, and all the way up this time.

“Don’t try it,” I said.

That big sour face still looked as if it was fermenting, but anger, or whatever emotions were bubbling up in him, made his pimpled skin flush almost healthily pink. He was wearing jeans and a dark blue sleeveless sweat shirt, and I could see muscles in his arm bulge, wiry red hairs wiggling, as he squeezed the beer can in his left hand. The can crumpled, and beer spilled onto the floor near his feet.

He was holding his hand slightly before him, about waist high, and I could see his entire hand—thumb, plus all four extended fingers, probably including splints for at least the two I’d snapped—was covered by a professional-looking bandage.

“Francis,” he said softly. “He was the only friend I got.”

“So now you don’t have any,” I said, and then—as he took a step toward me—thumbed back the Colt’s hammer. “You want to join him, I’ll oblige you, Kell.”

He almost took the second step. It was close. He stared at my face for long seconds, then dropped his eyes slowly to that bandaged right hand. And when I said, “Sit down,” he sat.

After that, the rest was easy.

I told Kell what I wanted him to do. He argued, but his heart wasn’t in it, and two minutes later he was sitting in his chair facing the wooden counter upon which was the beige, not brown, very dirty phone. When I tossed Kell my roll of surgical tape he opened his mouth and said “You—” and let it go.

While I watched, to make sure he did it right, he wrapped the wide tape around both his ankles several times. He had a little difficulty, working primarily with his left hand, but when he’d finished that part I was satisfied.

He looked at me again and said, “You goddamn...” But then finished his task, extending the tape around both legs of the chair he sat in, grumbling and swearing, but doing a reasonably competent job. I had him peel off enough of the tape so he could toss—not hand—the bulk of it to me, then stepped behind his chair.

I pulled his arms behind him and taped them first to each other and then to the chair’s back. When I finished, the big roll of surgical tape was only half the size I’d started out with; but I figured, since I’d earlier used some on the kid inside, there was probably enough left for my purposes. Also, with Kell immobilized, I felt sufficiently comfortable to ask him a few questions before pulling the telephone over near his sour chops.

He was quite cooperative, especially after I wondered aloud whether or not to bandage off his hand and try for five little piggies. He started talking at the end of round seven, and was all finished before the middle of round eight—the TV was still on, and the announcer’s voice was a half-noticed series of twangs in the background.

When Kell ran dry—which didn’t take long because he knew little more than Grinner had already spilled—I lifted the phone from its cradle. Kell had told me the phone was working, and I’d listened for the dial tone once, but I checked it again before poking the gatehouse number he’d given me.

Then I held the phone in my left hand, near his ear and mouth, and held the Colt Special in my right hand, pointed at one of his eyes.

He did splendidly. I’ve long had a hunch that most hoods are frustrated actors, and Kell did nothing to change my mind. I could hear “Yeah?” from the earpiece, and then Kell started right in. “Fred? You and Horse get the hell down here quick, both of yez, it’s a goddamn catasterphism—”

Squawking come from the earpiece, and Kell rushed on excitedly, as though overcome by an excess of catasterphizes, “Hell, yes, it’s me, Georgie, inna trailer, you get here in a hurry—you and Horse both, both of you. The sunbitch shot Grin—”

I’d been waiting for something like that, and I shoved the Colt’s muzzle at Kell’s eye. Well, not exactly at, but more kind of onto, or into, it, banging the orb rather severely.

Kell let out a great “OLP!” then went on, “...ah, it’s Francis. Francis, you hear me? Who some call, Grinner by mistake—Francis is shot, he’s bleeding all over here, and me. Yeah, yeah that sunbitch Shell Scott killed—shot him, and Francis is bleedin’ his life’s blood...Will you shut up?”

After a moment, “Yeah, Scott, the P.I., he snuck in and I think the sunbitch is still prowlin’—”

I hung up the phone. There was a last strip of tape in my left hand, one about a yard long, and I grabbed the free end in my right hand and started to press the sticky gag over Kell’s mouth.

But he said, “Wait a minute. You must be the dumbest sunbitch in California.”

“Oh?” I smiled thinly. “You’re sitting there like an Egyptian mummy, and I’m dumb?”

“I mean, you don’t really think Fred and Horse is gonna fly in here and let you get the drop on ‘em, and wind ‘em both up like me, do you?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Man, you must be the dumbest—”

Unfortunately, whatever else he might have wished to say, I was unable to hear clearly through the tape over his mouth. I wound the rest of it around his head, then looked straight into his eyes, the good one and the red one that was watering, profusely.

“Count on it, Kell,” I said, wearing a self-satisfied man-in-control smile. “Exactly like you. No problem. Piece of cake.”

In truth, I was laying it on him a little. A lot. I did not feel nearly as confident as I tried to sound. Not nearly. But I should let Kell know that?

I could hear a car—another Jeep, probably—coming rapidly nearer, engine whining. At the same time, from the television set, “...a beautiful right hand, absolutely beautiful. Krynzik is down...”

I walked toward the open door, stood against the wall as far from the door as I could get. The Jeep was close, engine-sound dropping, then I heard the noise of tires skidding, gravel flying.

“... the count is three...four...he’s not going to get up, not even moving, Krynzik is destroyed!”

Car door slamming, running feet crunching on gravel—sounded like another man close behind the first one. I wasn’t sure, but I hoped it was both men, running.

It was.

The first guard jumped through the door without even looking around, just spotted Kell lying on his side, taped to his chair, and ran to him saying, “Whuh?”

The second guy came in more slowly, and more carefully—looking first right—away from me—then left, squarely at me. Me and my Colt. I jerked my head left, wiggled the gun’s muzzle slightly. The man didn’t argue, moved over to stand near the first guard, who was just turning around.

In the now-familiar twang, “... ten, that’s it. Krynzik still hasn’t moved. It was a left jab set him up, followed by that beautiful right hand...A doctor’s coming into the ring...”

Both uniformed guards had guns. Not in their hands. In holsters. So, no problem there.

Piece of cake.

* * * * * *

Hank got up, then sat down again behind the desk.

There was, for the first time in my brief memory of him, evidence of strain, maybe even weariness, on his long narrow face. Since I’d come into the office, five minutes ago, he’d seemed more subdued, less volatile, actually more inclined to listen than orate, lecture, or volubly explode. At least, so far.

On my way into town I’d called Hank, but he’d said there was nothing to report yet, at least nothing of special importance to me, and urged me to come quickly. He’d seemed most anxious about the pictures I’d taken inside Omega, and when I told him the camera was undamaged and in my cat box—which may have puzzled him—he had asked me to bring the camera “most expeditiously.” Then, as I was hanging up, I’d heard him saying, “What box?”

When I’d reached the office, just before six p.m., Hank was waiting for me, in the company of a middle-aged woman I’d never seen before. Hank took the camera, still loaded with its gold-mine, said, “Bueno!” and handed it to the woman. She trotted outside, climbed onto a big Harley-Davidson motorcycle, kicked it into a roar and zoomed away.

In Hank’s office, while he sat behind his desk, I brought him up to date hitting the high points. In all of it, I managed not to mention Rusty by name, and Hank didn’t ask about him. Actually, he interrupted me only once, while I was reporting some of the things Kell had told me.

“Those two ruffians had been stealing pets for three months? This was his admission to you?”

“Right. He and Grinner, the guy I shot, drove around and grabbed two or three, maybe half a dozen a day, dropped them off at Omega for Wintersong.”

“Why pets? They are able to get many animals from pounds.”

“According to Kell, Wintersong didn’t want pound animals. Claimed they were often diseased, malnourished, too run down for his purposes. But pets were likely to be well fed, lovingly cared for, in prime condition. Dogs and cats, that’s all he wanted.”

Hank nodded silent, stayed silent while I went through the rest of it. When I finished he then said, “Very good, Sheldon. You have achieved results exceeding my greatest expectations—as I expected.”

“Well, that’s...As you—?”

“As promised, I notified the proper authorities, plus maybe some improper ones, of what you discovered—part of what you discovered, specifically the Vungers—immediately after your phone call to me on your way here. As I mentioned to you, it was essential that certain actions be initiated—such as dispatching a number of concerned citizens to Omega—prior to such notification. Also, Sheldon, I did not desire that uniformed enforces of law and order be galvanized into action so prematurely, that they might find you, or your corpse, illegally within the research facility.”

“Thanks. But if I was a corpse, wouldn’t I be relatively disinterested in—?”

“I know you are concerned about your friend, Dane Smith. And the whereabouts of Dr. Wintersong and Mr. Belking. We all are. There are now nearly two dozen of our people looking and searching for them, in appropriate areas, so far without result. But I am confident—”

His phone rang. He grabbed it quickly, listened, said something in rapid Spanish, hung up.

“Anything about Dane? I asked.

He shook his head. “From one of our people who just went to Omega. One of those who have already left.”

“Left?”

“Ten men and two women who successfully vanished in one of the trucks, along with considerable valuable evidence, before the deputies—and police officers, I did not know L.A. police would be there also—put in their appearance. All the others are still at Omega, being arrested.”

“In this particular, and perhaps unusual circumstance, how do you define ‘evidence’? And how many citizens did you send out there? I passed one truck going in as I was driving the hell away from Omega, but—”

“One was close to arriving even as you were leaving.”

“Yeah. But there were only maybe twenty or thirty of them, some holding signs. I managed to read part of one—I was going pretty fast—that said ‘End Cruel and Useless’ something or other. Reminded me of Hank Hernandez, for some reason.”

“Yes. They were some of us.”

“Us. Hank, I think I just had some kind of psychic vision, of me behind bars, in a worse-than-useless dungeon, and you—”

“Oh, yes. I expect we will all be arrested. You, me, ninety or more at Omega, plus—”

“You expect? Expect? Do you also expect we should just sit here, waiting like dummies for the Army, Navy, Air Force and—”

“We must wait here. This is headquarters. And I do not expect...believe any indictments will be issued until tomorrow—no, until the next day, Monday.”

“Hank, I think we’re in trouble.”

“You, as you yourself might say, Sheldon, do not know the one-half of it.”

“If I don’t know the half of it, maybe you’d better give me the other half. At least. And now.”

“Yes, it is time. Besides, you are as ready as I can ever get you, plus you have seen Omega.” He sighed. “And there is nothing more for us to do except wait. Wait for the unfolding of what has been set in motion, for calls, visitors, reports, whatever is to occur.”

“Like the Army and Navy and—”

“Plus NASA, and most dangerous of all, the deadly FDA. And also AMA. I will fully inform you now, Sheldon. But first....”

“Ah, I get it. You’ll tell me all, but first, and then second, and then—”

“No, no. It is only that I am possessed by curiousness, and wish to dissolve it, them, before I commence the informing of you with thoroughness.”

“Okay. Get to it.”

“First did you truly, and without difficulty—as you said, no problem—overpower all three of those ruffians, leaving them bound and gagged, helpless—”

“Taped and gagged, Hank. Well, yeah, it wasn’t really any...well, at the end it was no problem.” I paused. “Look, all I left out was the non-essential stuff. Like, well, I got the first guy to tape his own ankles, same as with Kell, but when I started to tape that first guy’s hands, the other creep hit me with something.”

“Something? This other, he was not bound and gagged?”

“You can only do one of these things at a time, Hank. No, he was not. Anyway, maybe he hit me with a table. Or it might have been the TV set, although I did keep hearing twanging after that. What happened, I had to kick the bastard, then get up and knee him in the groin, and break his collar bone, and hit him two or three times, and then I taped him to a chair, finished doing the first guy and flopped them and their chairs over sideways on the floor so they couldn’t even hop...”

“What is this catabox?”

“Cat box. Don’t you understand plain Ingles? Actually, it was just a cardboard box, but it had a cat in it—hell, still does. Precious is out in my Cad, in the catabox.”

“Precious?”

Of course, I had to tell him the whole thing then. Hank was hugely excited by my report of the four cat collars, and insisted I get them—and also bring in the cat. “Give him to Eleanora for now, she will feed him if he’s hungry.”

“She. You ever hear of a boy cat named Precious?”

“I have not heard of a girl cat named Precious.”

Well, he had me there. I got my cardboard box from the Cad, and surrendered the four collars to Hank. He immediately returned to his office and began making phone calls, while I handed Precious to Eleanora, who smiled and scrunched up her face and made female noises. A little of that goes a long way with me, so I went back into the office, and sat in my chair again.

Hank hung up the phone, nodding slightly and saying, “Bueno, mucho bueno.” Then, looking soberly at me, he said, “Now, the third of my curiousnesses. And last. Tell me all, all about Rusty.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“Hank,” I said, “I’ve already told you most—”

“Everything. The little parts in the middle, all.”

“Well, O.K. I was even thinking when you get back the enlargements of those snapshots I took, there’ll be a couple I took of Rusty’s...of Rusty. I was thinking, maybe if I removed those two before you—”

“No, Sheldon.” He spoke quietly, but firmly. “We do not diminish ugliness by looking away, pretending it is not there. We only allow it to grow, breeding more of itself in darkness. I will see your photographs of Rusty, and I wish to hear all. It is necessary.”

So I told him. All of it. When I finished he was silent for a while, unmoving except for a finger flicking one side of his gray mustache. Then he nodded once briskly and said, “Thank you, Sheldon. I wish to assure you, in ending Rusty’s torture, you did only what I would have wished you to do. What I, too, would have done. And do not burden yourself, ever, by thinking you took his life. His life was taken by Wintersong. I will no longer use the honorable title, Doctor, with his name.”

I didn’t say anything, but I appreciated Hank’s comment, and the simple fact that he’d made it, in an attempt to make me feel better.

None of what Hank was undoubtedly feeling showed on the surface, however. After a few seconds, he leaned forward, placing both arms on the desktop, clasped his hands together, and gazed intently at me. “I begin” he said, “Or, rather, I finish. Finish what I began with you yesterday morning. All I told you then and since, plus all you have read in the big folder I gave you is true. But it is only a small part of the truth, like the first few letters of an alphabet.” He paused, but added, “Call them new letters replacing those in what is now an alphabet of death—as you will soon see, if you have not done so already. I will, if there is time, inform you of much more, but first I will tell you the full truth about POCUEH and our determined plans, for you are entitled to this now.”

“POCUEA?”

“POCUEH.” He spelled it, then waited, raising an eyebrow.

I mentally went back, fumbled around. “Yeah, Physicians Opposed to...Cruel and Useless...ah, Experiments on...H? H? What happened to Animals? H...Humans? Humans?”

“Hermosissimo! Beautiful, Sheldon! Verdad, Humans is the H—you, me, us and everybody. But in this larger POCUEH group, all nine thousand of us, the P stands for People instead of Physicians. Only we have not publicized this—yet. This will be one small part of the attack.”

“Attack? Sounds like a war.”

“It is war. It is also or will be when we succeed, Medical Armageddon. We, POCUEH, and several organizations allied with us, with publicity and lawsuits and truth intend to destroy the monopoly of allopathic medicine utterly, convict the FDA and AMA of criminal conspiracy with the pharmaceutical poisoners, expose life-destroying machinations of NIH and CDC and ACS and WHO—“

“Por favor, doc,” I said. “That’s DOC. I may have missed some of the letters, but I think I got the message. It sounded as if you people—”

“Us people, or we—you are included. Unless, which would sadden me, you desire to be excluded out. In which case I can tell you no more.”

“No, I desire to be included in. Left in whatever—dammit, it sounds as if you—we—actually think somebody can go up against the whole shebang of organized medicine, stick it to the bug billionaires, have even half a chance of changing the way people are treated by—”

“Whole chance. No half measures.” Hank’s eyes, I would have sworn, were getting brighter, almost luminous, and some of that “different” vibration had grrnggd into his voice. “This is serious business—literally, life or death business—and many of us are willing to die if necessary, but we are not willing to lose. We will not lose, we must and will succeed. In the end, we will prevent the forcible immunization of newborn infants and vulnerable children, and any others who do not choose to be vaccinated against every new disease invented by imbeciles; we are determined to ensure the availability of alternative non-allopathic non-drug modalities; and we will end finally and absolutely the murderous forced medication of drinking water by the viciously dishonest propagandists of fluoridation.

Hank slid his chair back, stood up behind his desk and stretched, shoving his arms up straight and then out and down. Then Hank arched an eyebrow, glanced at me. “You understand I have available many sources. Anyway, it will begin Monday, you will observe. The plan is to speed up final approval of Wintersong’s IFAI vaccine, and—because of the urgency, the danger, there will be much talk like this on the news programs—urge Congress to pass laws ensuring that everybody must be protected.”

Hank looked at his watch, frowned, lifted his phone off its hook and dialed. Listened. “Mande? Si, si, pero digame pronto cuando...Esta bien.” Hung up.

Looking at me he shook his head, lips pursed. Then he said, “Nothing for you or me. Jaime, to whom I spoke now, has enlisted nearly two dozen more of us, for watching and looking, plus one or two other things. So, we wait.”

He stood up, stepped from behind his desk and began pacing slowly. After a few seconds, he stopped about six feet from me and said, “Sheldon, I will inform you of this quickly. It is good for you to know, but time may be long or short so I will compress.”

Then, standing straight, arms crossed, he commenced speaking so rapidly it was like hearing him rattle Spanish on the phone to Eleanora—except that I understood every word. Not only heard each word clearly but absorbed them all easily, soaked them up, beginning to understand even better than before.

Hank stood quite still, looking past me at something. Or maybe at nothing. “And, Sheldon, the same people, the kind of people, certainly the ones who have done the same thing before, many times before, are preparing now to do it again. And it will be the same circus it has always been, first a terrible new disease endangering everybody and then the same thousand voices calling for mass immunizations—mandatory mass immunizations, three words you will be hearing in the days ahead, over and over again, in connection with saving us all from IFAI.”

Hank looked up at the ceiling, clapping one hand to his forehead and crying, “Ai, what is the matter with us that we let them continue to deceive us, to again and again profit from poisoning our bodies and corrupting our minds? Ai! Es impossible!” Then, looking down at me, “You, Sheldon, you must at least begin to understand fully that there are doctors, health professionals, officials in government agencies, who will lie, who will cripple and kill others—even millions of others—for personal gain. You must understand there is evil. Yes, truly there is evil. Evil to which we blind ourselves, evil we deny at our peril. Most men and women are good, basically good people, and they therefore assume others must be as good as they themselves are. When they are wrong, such people are vulnerable, easily led, easily deceived—easily killed, if need be. Even you, who know human depravity better than most, make excuses for monsters, saying maybe those who invented this epidemic were merely mistaken, they maybe believed the lies they said. This disappoints me.” He was scowling.

I said, “Probably disappoints me, too.”

“Evil.”

I believed him. But my mind, really, was elsewhere. In front of my eyes was Dane’s lovely face, melting green eyes, wondrously warm smile. and I remembered Dane telling me last night about her friend, the woman who under—or maybe even over—the influence of some kind of drug had said, with a kind of holy awe, that the entire living universe was “a continuing cosmic orgasm.” And the hell of it was, I had already been thinking of Dane Smith, so that ruined me. Because I could not only see but simultaneously feel every glowing and glorious part of Dane’s eyes and lips and breasts and thighs, and also the rush of her blood and the pulse of her heart, and then her lips, were like acetylene torches vulcanizing my mov—”

The phone rang.

I jumped, involuntarily. Even Hank jumped.

We both knew.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Hank listened, said softly, “Bueno, mil gracias,” and hung up the phone.

Looking at me, he said, “None of our people have yet seen Wintersong, or your lady, Miss Smith. But Hobart Belking was observed within the minute, on Wilshire Boulevard. He is driving what I am told is his wife’s Jaguar.”

I nodded. “Going which direction on Wilshire?”

“East.” Hank knew what I was getting at, and added, “He was then half a mile from and approaching Macadamia Street. As you have comprehended, he is almost surely proceeding to his Dead Animal Mausoleum.”

I got to my feet. “I’ll take care of it.”

Hank pulled at his lower lip. “I can phone now, for assistance. Amateur assistance, but help for you if you wish—”

“No,” I said. “I don’t wish.”

And I left.

* * * * * *

It was different at night, driving up Macadamia Street with my lights out, turning into the driveway alongside Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum. This time there was no sunlight—no lighting at all—illuminating the modernistic building’s exterior. It was just a darker shadow against the moonless night sky, the sign at its top not even visible now. But there were lights on inside, and as I rolled slowly along the driveway toward parking spaces in the rear, I saw a darkened window at the building’s far left become bright.

It all looked different, but also, I felt different. I was tight, muscles pulling at the back and sides of my neck and squeezing my gut. Part of the unease was worry about Dane, even wondering about Wintersong, and some of it, the natural build-up of tension during that last hour with Hank. But part of it had to be knowing I would be confronting Hobart Belking again within another minute or two, and this time there would be not even a pretense of politeness. Not, at least, on my part.

Driving here, I’d decided it would be helpful if I could get into the Museum unobserved. Helpful but not essential, since I assumed there was no way Belking could know I’d been in that packing crate delivered to Omega earlier today. Which also meant he couldn’t be aware of my real reason for being here. So even if all the doors were locked and I had to bang on them to get next to Belking, it should then be simple enough to point my Colt Special at his chops and take him away. I couldn’t think of any reason why that wasn’t true, but I had a kind of irrational, almost ominous, feeling it might not be that easy.

For one thing, Hobart Belking had impressed me as a beefball who might not cooperate a whole lot even with a gun muzzle screwed into his ear. But also I kept wondering if I had overlooked something, forgotten something I’d be much better off remembering.

Halfway down the driveway, I stopped my Cad, cut the engine. I’d been heading for the parking lot behind the building, intending to go inside again through those back doors, or at least raise a racket there if they were locked. But, on impulse, or maybe moved by those nebulous worries, I decided not to repeat what I’d done before. So I got out of the Cad and walked to the curving steps facing Macadamia Street, up them to those twenty-foot-high wooden doors, gripped one of the large curved-metal handles and pulled.

The door was unlocked, moved easily. That should have pleased me; somehow, it didn’t. I rolled my head left, right, trying to loosen that tightness in my neck, then pulled the door open wide enough for me to step through.

Inside, as the door closed behind me with a barely audible shush, the sight that hit my eyes was—for the second time today—stunning, almost a shock. Warm light flooded the cavernous room, and arrayed before me was that almost dizzying abundance of ersatz life I’d first seen this morning, scores of freeze-dried and stuffed animals artfully posed and positioned in strangely disturbing three-dimensional stillness. Among the real-looking trees, shrubs, sand dunes, native huts, were tiger, leopard, hippo and rhino, antelope and Oryx, monkeys on branches and bright birds in the trees.

I saw again, almost with pleasurable recognition, the awesome black-maned lion, silently roaring; graceful snow leopard poised in mid-movement on white-plastic ice; beautiful pair of white Dali rams; and in uneven rows on three of the walls those mounted heads, of hippopotamus, wart hog, Oryx, great white-tusked elephant, zebra, javelina, more, and more, and more.

But nothing moved. At least, not anything living. On my left, the natural-looking waterfall I’d noticed this morning tumbled over dark rock into a pool where a wild dog drank; and at both my left and right, flames from the fake cook-fires before thatched huts flickered and waved. No sign of Belking. I knew he was here, here somewhere. Knew not because he must have turned on all the lights in the place, lighted the fires and started the waterfall; it had nothing to do with common sense or logic. I could feel him.

At least, I thought I could feel the sonofabitch, and the skin-prickling sensation was so strong I actually looked around, left and right and even behind. It didn’t help a whole lot that, rearing above me too close on my right was the enormous white polar bear Belking had taken “clean in the heart,” its massive arms, with long curving claws unsheathed, upraised and white-fanged mouth open so wide there appeared to be room enough inside it for my head plus a couple of antelopes. On my left, also too close, was the dark brown Kodiak bear on all fours, head raised and glass eyes glittering.

I walked forward a few steps, paused, then yelled, “Belking! Hey, anybody who’s here not stuffed? Belking?”

Nothing. I moved forward again, and:

“Scott? That you?”

The words—shouted, but unmistakable in Belking’s deep, rasping voice—came from somewhere near the Museum’s rear wall ahead of me. I could see, ahead and to my left, the several three-walled rooms in which groupings of more immobile but lifelike animals: zebra, gazelle, roaring lion, black bear snarling, silently whooping hyena with neck arched and head stretched back. But nothing else, no movement.

Then, suddenly, there he was on my right, well over toward the far side of the big room, stepping briskly toward me. Briskly, for a guy built like the rear end of a rhinoceros.

“I wondered when the hell you’d get here,” he said. “Cops finally located you, huh?”

I’d actually started lifting my right hand, reaching for the Colt Special under my coat. “Cops? Located—for what?”

Belking was about halfway to where I stood. His shoe heels still clicking dully on the composition floor. I was still puzzled by the way he’d seemed to pop out of nowhere. Apparently he’d stepped around the six-foot-high pecky-cypress panel that had temporarily blocked my view of the central-room’s displays when I let myself inside this morning. I was a little puzzled, too, about what he’d been doing in that area. Couldn’t recall anything back there except the open-fronted displays. And, of course...

It started nibbling at me, but without quite enough time to bite. Because Belking, now only a few feet away was saying, “Didn’t those bastards tell you?” He waved something in his left hand; looked like a small piece of paper. “Take a look at this Scott.”

And, therefore, much like those French losers who adjusted their own necks for the guillotines blade I looked. Yes, it was a little piece of paper. With any luck, it was toilet paper. But this wasn’t to be my luckiest moment of the week, day, or even moment, nor my most brilliant, either. In fairness to Belking, he’d done a pretty good job on me, carried it off with not unconvincing diversion. But the real dumbness was my confidence that I could have little to fear from a fifty-year-old cat, particularly one who had in his hands nothing more lethal than a bit of toilet paper. And so it goes.

Four things happened then, simultaneously, or at least like lightning. I realized Belking must have been lurking behind the pecky-cypress panel so he could stand by the door there which had, not quite, bitten me; and I realized he must have been standing by the door so that, when I stealthed in through it, he could clobber or kill me with the club, or hammer, or axe, or whatever he had chosen to use for that purpose; and I realized he had not trotted out here to greet me, still holding said chosen instrument, because upon observing it, I would have figured everything out like lightning and shot him; and finally I realized Hobart Belking had not paused a few feet away but had kept on moving speedily and managed to hit me with a tree trunk, or small locomotive, or wrecking ball, on the exterior, and perhaps also interior of my guts. And I was on my butt, on the floor, sliding backwards...which I guess was the fifth thing, I realized. Anyway, five, six, whatever, they all happened like lightning, which electrocuted me in the stomach.

I had no air in me. None. And it was the kind of rare situation when you are so empty of air that there’s no air to suck with. So I couldn’t fill up my nostrils, much less my lungs, which probably is why I felt numb all over. Even my eyes were numb, but I could still see clearly through them, and I could clearly see this horribly squashed creature, about two feet high and several yards across, stepping toward me through a million silvery bubbles twirling in the smoke, and then leaning over.

I guess I moved automatically, from habit or muscle memory, flopping onto my back while raising my legs so I could kick the big creature in its head, if it had one—and as I cocked my feet and the deformed grock moved quickly away, suddenly there was air in me. I couldn’t recall breathing, so I wasn’t sure where the air came from, but I wasn’t about to ask any indelicate questions. It was enough that I could breathe, then scramble to my feet as the smoke vanished and silvery bubbles popped, and I was standing, stomach feeling like a huge raw bruise, and facing Hobart Belking.

He still looked squashed. Even more than the man normally did, because he was in a slight crouch, knees bent, arms raised and hamlike fists held before him like the posture of a professional fighter—and stepping toward me. But I’d had time to take a couple of deep breaths, sucking in air, and this time I wasn’t looking at a little piece of paper in his hand.

So when Belking feinted, jabbing his beefy left arm and clenched fist toward my face then pivoting as he drove that right toward my gut again. I bent aside, felt his wrist and arm bounce harmlessly, then tried to bury my left fist in his exposed side. I felt his ribs bend inward, heard a muffled pop, raised my right arm high, hand open and thumb stretched back, slammed it down toward Belking’s neck like a flesh-and-bone cleaver. If the thick edge of my palm had landed where I was aiming, just beneath his right ear, the blow might have killed him, certainly the fight would have been over. But the blow didn’t land—this guy was something else. I know I either broke one of his ribs or tore it loose, but Belking didn’t even grunt. He spun around, swinging his extended right arm like a club that hammered me in the armpit and knocked me sideways at least a yard.

The force of that swinging forearm with the weight of his spinning body behind it nearly lifted me off my feet, and when I turned back toward him he slammed into my chest, head banging the side of my jaw as he wrapped both arms around mine, pinning them to my sides. We flew backwards together, landed heavily, rolled, and I heard something break, a snapping sound, felt sudden inexplicable heat as if blood was boiling in my face, and sucked acridness into my nostrils, sucked in a smell like cloth or hair or flesh burning. Then there was flickering redness in front of my eyes, flames wavering. We’d rolled into that cook-fire burning before the hut nearest the Museum’s entrance, scattering fake logs and something metallic that clanged and rolled.

But Belking had wound up beneath me this time, on his back, and a thick tongue of gas-fed flame was flowing over the side of his forehead and into his hair. Finally he made a noise, letting out a high harsh sound that was more scream than yell, and rolled away from me rubbing both hands over his hair and face. I got to my feet, reached him in two long steps and hit him with a hard, jarring right hand that split skin over his cheekbone and knocked him down, down to stay. Except he went down and bounced up, just bounced up like a goddamn dancer, didn’t even pause an instant down there.

Something weird was going on here; he wasn’t supposed to do that. I had felt the shock of that last solid blow in my fist and wrist and arm and shoulder, and I had said to myself with some satisfaction: that takes care of the bastard, he’s down to stay!

So how come in an instant he’s dancing about fresh as a daisy? Maybe he’d already knocked me out, and I was dreaming. Belking was, sure enough, all bounced up and, while I was still telling myself, “He’s down to stay!” he slapped at my face with his open left hand, slapping almost like a woman, and then—

My distinct impression was that his fist went in my stomach, passed through my last meal, and exited somewhere near my spine. Again, I went down on my back, but this time when he stepped closer I rolled, hooked one heel behind his ankle and kicked his kneecap hard with my other foot. He went down heavily. Yeah. For an instant.

Then Belking was on top of me, gouging at my eyes, clubbing the side of my face until I managed to hug those burly arms to his side, hanging tightly on as we rolled, him on top of me and then me on top of him, still rolling bumpily—and crashing through a hut’s flimsy wall in a blur of smoke and flickering flame and splitting bamboo and palm fronds and noisily cracking plywood, out through the other wall, each of us trying really hard to kill the other or at least to stay alive. It went on for a while. I don’t know how long. And I’m not sure of everything that happened; much of it’s fuzzy. But there was one moment of extraordinarily sharp clarity at the end. I was down again, on the floor, rolling through pain away from the lower legs and feet of Belking, who was somehow or other standing, not merely standing but sort of dancing about unless I was having delusions. Everything was wrapped in warm, acrid, smoky fuzziness until that moment.

But then—I don’t remember how I got there, but I recall rolling and seeing blurrily the striking mane of that magnificent lion I’d seen and admired, and as I rolled, eyes swinging, it seemed almost that he was moving, leaping, ten feet from me. And then my motion stopped and my eyes fell and focused on the face of the female, one of his pride that I’d noticed near him almost hidden in grass, head thrust forward and resting on her paws.

But the strangeness was that when I saw that handsome face and big beige head I didn’t see a lioness, a sleek cat with glass eyes glittering, dead eyes unseeing on my face. No, what I saw a foot from my own eyes was Rusty.

Rusty’s face, with those whitish, goofy brows.

Rusty’s severed head with wires and tubes in its brain.

Rusty, dying.

Rusty, dead.

And before I got up off the floor I felt Belking’s shoe bite into my side as he kicked me, but it didn’t matter. On my feet, I set myself and watched almost idly as Belking moved toward me. Noticed his bloody mouth, flap of ripped skin over one eye, split and swollen redness at his cheekbone. When he waved that almost-girlish left hand at my face again I ignored it, measured the bastard and swung with all the power I had left, right arm unwinding from bunched biceps and tight shoulder muscles while my right leg straightened, driving me, and arm, and fist, forward. When that fist met Belking’s mouth and nose he was moving toward me, but only briefly toward me, then his head snapped back on his thick neck and a splash of blood sprayed through the air.

And after that, the fight was essentially over. True, I hit him a couple more times, but I had to lean down toward him to do it. The first time was when, after several seconds, he got up onto his knees. But Belking wasn’t looking at me. He stared past me, shock on his battered face, eyes wide and filled with something like horror.

“My God,” he said softly. “Oh...my God.”

Near us there was a great roaring and crackling, and a terrible velvety sound like humming winds. I could feel the heat. Probably I’d felt it before, but only then did I become fully aware of it. Belking and I had moved around a lot while pounding on each other, but we’d wound up near that black-maned-lion exhibit only a few feet from where we’d started, where the battle had begun with me sliding backwards on my butt.

Behind me were those big double doors at the Museum’s entrance, and Belking was on his knees before me, staring to my left and away from me. He was looking toward the nearer of those two thatched huts, the one where we’d rolled into the cook-fire; but the hut was no longer there. A blackened framework of posts and two-by-fours remained, still burning, but all the roof, and walls of palm leaves and fronds, had vanished in fire and smoke.

The other hut next to the first was still burning fiercely, sparks flying upward and spinning lazily toward the rear of the room, and as I looked the whole thing collapsed, even the inner framework holding it together falling with a sound like a giant sigh. As it collapsed, burning bits of leaves and wood arced outward and up, and a sudden wave of greater heat made me turn my face briefly away.

Something flamed redly at the back of the room, but my view of whatever burned there was blocked by an exhibit of two fearsome-looking gorillas half hidden among greenness of leaves and vines. I could see the dance of reddish light flickering over the long left-to-right wall where, a dozen feet above the floor, the severed heads of scores of animals were mounted and arrayed in an uneven row.

Belking was making a noise. Not words. Something more like, “Aahhh-ahh,” then he started trying to get up, pressing one foot against the floor.

“Don’t try it, Belking,” I said. “I’ll just have to belt you again.”

I don’t think he heard me. “It’s burning, it’s on fire, it’s all burning,” he moaned. “Help me, you’ve got to help me.”

“No, I don’t. Belking—”

He pushed with his one planted foot, got the other one beneath him and began wobbling upward. So I belted him.

He landed on his chest and face, rolled over, sat up. “Aaah-ahh...”

I squatted near him as he licked his bloody lips, spat out a clot of blood, then said in an unnaturally high voice, “You’ve got to help me. My God...It’s all going. My God, my God, help me put out the fire.”

“First, where’s Dane Smith? And Dr. Wintersong? Maybe then we’ll do something about the fire.”

I had to repeat it, after rapping his forehead with my knuckles to get his attention. Even then, he hesitated. But after looking around, left, right, eyes staring, he answered my questions. Plus a few others.

I got to my feet. It really was time to get the hell out of here—half the big room was on fire now, there was even flame snaking through those interlaced branches on the ceiling. Turning my head I saw that handsome pair of prize Dali rams Belking had pointed out to me, saying he’d “taken” one and Caesar Velli had blown away the other. A burning limb, or vine, something, had fallen over them, rested against their sleek whiteness, and they were burning as I watched, melting, turning black.

Beyond them the hindquarters of a grazing zebra was smoldering and smoking, only a small half circle of flame moving on one hip, near its tail. Up on the rear wall, far to the right, two mounted heads were burning as was the wood around them. Oddly, the only other burning head was far from those two, almost in the middle of the row. But that one was really blazing, nearly consumed, already unrecognizable.

I remembered it had been immediately right of the prize exhibit on the wall, that great head of an African elephant with curving tusks like thick white scimitars.

Belking groaned, moaned, grunted, and stood up.

Well, almost up.

When he’d made it about halfway, maybe a little more, I leaned over a bit and creamed him. He went flat, face down, but moved his arms, pressed both hands against the floor. This guy was unreal. But he wasn’t trying to stand up again, just getting room to move his head around so he could look at me, or at least toward me. His puffy lips moved and sounds came out. I couldn’t understand them.

But he kept trying, so I knelt down, put my face close to his, heard “Please...” Belking’s hands moved slightly, scratching at the floor, and his mouth continued to move. I looked at his battered face, broken nose, puffed eyes, red mouth moving and heard the rest of the impossible thing he was asking of me.

Heard him, but did not sympathize.

Because what he said was, “Save the animals.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I walked the last hundred yards, moving silently over sand.

This was no time to spook anybody with flashing headlights or the sound of an approaching car, so I’d left my Cad parked off the road, walked down gently-slanting earth to the beach and turned left toward the big two-story house.

It was the right house, the only one within a mile of here. “Here” was a private, isolated stretch of ocean-front property north of Malibu, and I was one of the few people who knew the isolated residence was owned by billionaire Hobart Belking. Maybe you had to know how to ask him.

The owner of the house was not, of course, in the house. He was bundled up, trussed and taped, in the trunk of my Cadillac. You’re asking: Why in the trunk of your Cadillac?

Right? Well, if you want the truth, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with him once I had him. You can’t just turn a mad billionaire loose; he might hire a police force, or an Air Force, or Nicaragua, and tell them: Kill! That’s the way it is with some billionaires, they never know when they’re licked. Even when you’ve just beaten the hell out of them. Especially when you’ve just beaten the hell out of them. So maybe one answer to your question is: Why not?

But if you want some more truth, the whole situation was beginning to worry me. Just a little bit. Not a whole lot—well, yeah, maybe a whole lot. For one thing, by the time I had slammed the trunk’s lid over Belking—who by then was commencing to wriggle menacingly and making muffled angry noises—I could hear sirens. Many sirens, which appeared to be converging upon the trunk of my Cadillac from all directions. That, of course, was because Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum was on fire. But so many sirens?

The joint had sure been burning, all right. You didn’t have to be inside it to know that. You could tell from the outside that there were holes in the roof, with flames shooting up out of them. Fortunately, I hadn’t done it. Not all by myself. But I wouldn’t have put it past Hobart Belking, owner of Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Ashes, to lie and say I did. I really wished I could figure out what to do with him.

But that would work itself out, just turn it over to the old subconscious. Yeah.

I took a deep breath of salt-fresh air, and walked swiftly along the tide marks, surf booming on my right. There was no moon, but I could see the faint gray-whiteness of breakers tumbling, hear the hiss as the sea’s edge fanned over wet sand near my feet. When I stopped before the two-story house I could see its lower floor was dark; but light warmed one squareness of window above: Top floor left, farthest room back. I went inside.

That part was easy enough. The front door was locked and no windows were open. But I still had in my pockets the stuff I’d carried into and out of the Omega Medical Research Foundation. So my lock-pick kit made opening the door a thirty-second job.

The thought of Omega reminded me: When Belking was at last answering my questions, he explained how he knew I’d been involved in, if not entirely responsible for, the disastrous upheaval and commotion at Omega including the catastrophic—especially for Dr. Wintersong—exposure of what was going on there. Explained with some reluctance, but in enough detail that I could figure out the parts left unsaid. The young kid who’d seen me inside Omega, whom I’d left tied up in a storeroom there was found by police who’d searched all three buildings after finding and photographing the heads of Guenther and Helga Vunger and Rusty.

The kid was allowed a phone call, which he made to the attorney he had been advised to contact about any matters concerning Omega and his job there, that might require legal action or representation. Advised by the boss, William Wintersong, M.D., who had been so instructed by the real Boss, Hobart Belking, S.O.B. The kid didn’t know about the gruesome things in that lab next to Wintersong’s office; but he knew some animal-rights activists were milling about, and a lot of cops were also there, and he did not fail to mention the large white-haired ape, with up-angling and down-bending white brows et cetera, who had tied him up and left him to die in a storeroom. Nobody assumed the white-haired ape was a guy named Elmer Thudd, who had broken into Omega to burgle some stethoscopes. By then, of course, Grinner’s “murdered” corpse had been found, plus trussed-up George Kell and the two guards he’d called Fred and Horse; and stated conservatively, events simply proceeded inevitably from there, toward hell-to-pay.

Anyhow, after instructing Wintersong to take Dane Smith with him to the beach house, where—unless Belking had lied to me about that—both were at this very moment, and visiting Omega, and being respectfully interrogated by the law downtown at Parker Center, Belking had gone to his Museum. Partly because that was his baby, his prize, his dream; partly because he suspected I might visit him there, and devoutly hoped I would.

So when I turned off Macadamia into his driveway, Belking had seen me coming, and immediately—assuming I would park again in the lot behind his Museum—moved from the front to the rear doors to greet me. Greet me, incidentally, with a three-foot length of heavy stainless-steel pipe which he had kept handy for that very purpose. The only thing he missed, fortunately for me, was my parking halfway up the drive and walking to the still-unlocked front doors, and entering through them. Which was understandable, considering his eagerness to knock my block off; but also because he couldn’t have known I would do that, since I hadn’t known it myself until I did it.

So now he was in an uncomfortable position a hundred yards from here, and I was in an uncomfortable position here. When I closed the front door of the beach house behind me, I heard music. Somebody singing...a man, the voice full, rich, powerful. It was classical stuff, opera—and suddenly I recognized the artist and the song.

Let it be clear, I’m not a classical musical buff. Normally I wouldn’t know Beethoven’s Fifth from Mozart’s Quart. But a friend of mine was fruit for both old 78 rpms and early LPs, including RCA Victor’s dubbing of orchestral music to recording classics, his favorite torture being Enrico Caruso. Originally made in the first couple decades of the twentieth century, my friend’s favorite torture being the voice, in some foreign language of Enrico Caruso. That’s what I was hearing, an ancient—and somewhat scratchy, wavering, but honest-to-God original re-dubbed recording of Caruso singing Pagliacci. It was somewhere around the beginning, where he goes “Tutti Frutti”—whatever—I never figured it out, and that told me Belking hadn’t lied; Wintersong was here.

I found the stairs, went up them quickly and almost silently, saw light slipping beneath a door up ahead. When I tried the knob, it turned; the door moved inward a quarter of an inch. For some reason my heart was pounding more than when I’d been preparing to meet Belking. I could feel the solid thud in my chest, rubbery pulsing in my temples. I took a deep breath, held it, let the air out slowly, then pushed the door open and went in.

I didn’t see Dane right away. My eyes fell on Wintersong—Wintersong’s back. He was seated before a large wooden desk on my right, looking at some papers illuminated by a small green-shaded lamp on the desktop. Next to the papers was a stack of mail with a knifelike letter opener atop the stack, but nothing else that looked like a weapon, certainly no handgun. Beyond the desk, at the intersection of the walls, sat a large TV set, silent, screen dark and dull and staring emptily like the eye of a blinded Cyclops. Above it on the wall opposite me, a large clock with, yes, a long second hand sweeping, sweeping. Wintersong didn’t move, didn’t wiggle; obviously hadn’t heard me come inside—which was understandable.

Caruso with considerable lung power, was finishing the part that goes Tutti Frutti, or however it goes, and Wintersong might not have heard anything else if I’d slammed the door behind me. I took one long gliding step forward, looking around—and saw Dane. She was in an overstuffed chair to my left, hands behind her back, head rolled to one side. But I could see the slow rise and fall of those abundant breasts beneath the now not-quite-white blouse, so she was alive, breathing. Maybe drugged or unconscious, but...no, not all that unconscious.

Because as I watched she cracked one eye, her left one, aiming it toward Wintersong. Good girl, probably she’d been playing possum, or opossum, whatever the hell those things are. The next thing was odd. She blinked that left eye, then opened the right one, and rolled them both around at me. Then she snapped her head around and opened her mouth wide. Very wide.

I started to say, “Shhh!” but it was too late.

Enrico had just got to that tremendous Riiiiiddiiii Pahlyaaaa, but I missed it. Wintersong also missed it. Everybody missed it. Because the sound she made was noisier than two hard-rock bands playing at each other inside a steel tunnel, and of all dumb things for her to yell it had to be SHEEEEELLLLL—

Loud? Caruso had no lungs at all. He was whispering. But you could hear him when Dane stopped. Because that’s what she did, she yelled it and then stopped and then yelled it again, over and over, talk about a dumb—

SHEEEEELLL—

Iiiiiiiiiii

SHEEEELLLLL—

Pahllyaaaahh—

SHEEELLLL

aaaahh—SHEEELLL—chi—SHEEELLL—

“Shut the hell up,” I said. “Both of you.”

Then there was silence. Except for Pahllyaaah—and Wintersong crying out, “Good God Almighty, it’s—”

“Yeah, Shell,” I finished it for him. “How did you know? Well, Wintersong, I guess you also know what I’m going to do to you.”

I was only a couple of feet from him by then, and he was scrambling up from the desk, shooting up out of his chair, turning to face me. But not in a belligerent way. No, not in any offensive way at all.

He stood there, facing me, his pasty face even paler than usual, almost white as a clown’s. On his chops was a flickering montage of many expressions, none of them joyous.

It wasn’t much of a fight. Nothing like that stupendous bruising and hammering and battering with Belking, which had absolutely ruined the man’s face. I, of course, was beautiful. I hadn’t yet looked at my own face in a mirror, but I’d felt it. And just feeling it made me feel bad. It also made me feel pretty pissed off. And I had already been pissed off with Dr. William Wintersong.

So I did not feel the least bit guilty that Dr. Wimp was not flailing away at me, or trying to hit me, or offering any resistance whatever. I just went ahead and did it anyhow, with a considerable amount of satisfaction, actually.

As already mentioned it wasn’t much of a fight. Just one punch. But it was a dandy. As I got set, planted my feet, cocked my right fist, Wintersong still didn’t take a swing, didn’t even raise his hands.

He just eyeballed me like a matador being gored from behind by the bull and said, “No! No! No!”

“Yes,” I said.

* * * * * *

As I turned away from Wintersong, now silent and crumpled on top of the desk, Dane cried—what else?—“Shell!”

“Will you quit that?” I said. I’m starting to get bugged by the sound of my own name. Also, Enrico was still going on and on about something pretty miserable. “Will you shut that damned thing off?”

She was silent for a few seconds, probably thinking how thrilled she was that I’d rescued her, that she was free, saved from no telling what, blinking the big green eyes slowly and breathing deeply, those big plump breasts rising and falling, straining hotly against the white blouse—yeah, I always notice things like that, it’s one of my idiosyncrasies—and then, with one last plump breath, said, “How?”

“What?”

“Turn it off how? Can’t you see I’m tied up?”

Her wrists were not manacled behind her, or wired, or anything like that, just tied with several loops of quarter inch rope. But the knot wasn’t a granny knot, it was a complicated... no, impossible—

“Haven’t you got a knife?”

“Dane, what do you think I am, a Boy Scout? If you’ll just give me a minute.” Earlier I’d noticed a keen-edged letter opener on the desk, walked over there and got it. Had to move Wintersong closer to the wall, but found the knifelike opener, and it was sharp enough. A minute later Dane’s hands were free and she stood before me, smiling and rubbing her wrists.

“Oh, that feels good,” she said. “Shell, I was so shocked to see you! I didn’t really know whether you were dead or not, I mean not for sure—”

“What?”

“—but they hadn’t killed me yet, so I guessed you must still be alive. Or had been alive—”

“Wait-wait. What do you mean had been alive, hadn’t killed you yet? What kind of talk—”

“What happened to you?” Dane interrupted, her eyes suddenly very wide. She was staring, as though revolted, at my face, my once resplendent garb, at my face again. “Did someone beat you up?”

“Beat me up? Beat me up? Why do you ask?”

“Well, you’re all beat-up—and lumpy, and bloody, and your clothes are all practically torn off, and you’ve got a big bump on your forehead, and you look awful. I’m surprised I recognized you, you look so awful.”

“Exactly what the coroner said to me during the autopsy. Isn’t that a coincidence?”

“Well, you don’t have to get maad.”

“Who’s maad?” I smiled stiffly, which I discovered hurt like hell.

“Oh, your poor lips...” Dane said, more softly, reaching up to press cool fingers against my mouth.

“Enough about me,” I said, feeling my poor lips moving against Dane’s erotic fingers. “But, speaking of lips, well, what I mean is, this reunion isn’t going exactly the way I dreamed or, oh, anticipated it.”

“Reunion? That’s a strange—”

“I thought maybe when I found you—rescued you? Would you buy resc...? Well, that you might jump up and fling your arms around me, and give me a big—assuming, of course, you weren’t dead, or being raped, or anything—kiss.”

“Kiss?” She looked nonplussed, which also I had not anticipated.

“Yeah, kiss, a kiss.”

“Who would think of kissing at a time like this?”

“Who? Me, that’s who.”

“You mean you want me to kiss you? Now?”

“No. A week from Wednesday.”

“But won’t it hurt?” Her face seemed—softer. And the full lids drooped lower, half hiding her green eyes.

For a brief moment I misunderstood the question, until Dane brushed those cool fingers over my lips again. “Probably a little,” I said, “isn’t that great? But—ah, yeah. I mean, no. Don’t worry about it. What’s a little agony? I can handle it.”

She lifted her face and closed her eyes, smiling that same knowing smile women were smiling before Adam reached puberty, and I wondered yet again: What does it mean? I’ll tell you the truth, it beats the hell out of me. I don’t know what it means: no man alive knows. I think it’s something they all teach each other, maybe using witchcraft, when no guys are around. And I felt it was important to understand this joyously infuriating smilingness, it was a vital thing for a man to know...but then almost instantly—yeah, almost instantly again, same damn thing, just like always—there descended upon me the mystical truth WHO CARES? As her full yielding body pressed against mine, and I inhaled through my broken nose the delicate scents of softness and loveliness and hard-as-nails sweetness, and her lips, ah.

This was the only time Dane had kissed me, or vise versa, since that first, and last, memorable Osculation outside her room in the Halcyon Hotel, and ever since then I had been wondering if she could do it twice. She could. She did. Easy. Indeed, Dane Smith could somehow cram more kissing into a quarter of a minute than most gals can manage in an hour and a half.

There she was, a couple of yards away, still emitting bolts of radioactivity. But at least she hadn’t disappeared entirely this time. “Wow!” I started to say, for lack of anything more significant at the moment, but I never got it out because Dane said, “Are you in pain, Shell?”

“Well, yeah, sort of. But...you wouldn’t know anything about it.”

I had, in fact, suspected that my lips, having been hit forcibly by Belking, and kicked slightly by him, and apparently having fallen into a washing machine filled with piranhas might cause me a little pain. I was wrong. Caused me a lot of pain. In fact, it hurt like hell, it damn near killed me. It was, of course, worth it, but now even my knees hurt.

“Shouldn’t we get out of here, Shell?”

“Changing the subject, hey? Well, yeah, that’s a good idea.” I squinted, scowled, thinking.

“Does it hurt that much?”

“Yeah—no—this is something else. I was kind of wondering, what should I do with Wintersong? Can’t just leave him there, on the desk. Can’t call the cops, not exactly, not quite yet. And I don’t think there’s room for two in my trunk.”

“Two? Trunk?”

“Never mind. I’ll explain later. If I can.”

The stereo, wherever it was, had turned itself off, apparently having done all the damage it could. Thus it was so quiet I could hear Wintersong’s breath, sighing out of his mouth, pressed against the desktop. I walked over there and looked down at him for a moment, feeling the return of that unsettling uneasiness I’d begun experiencing after dumping Belking into the trunk of my Cad.

At the moment, I had my hands on the two major players in this murder/conspiracy/IFAI/et cetera can of worms; I’d met each in fair battle and taken each prisoner; and I knew both Wintersong and Belking deserved whatever painful punishment they might get.

So, why did I have a hunch, why did I strongly suspect, that if I simply delivered all of us to the law it might turn out to be not they—the billionaire businessman-philanthropist friend of Congressmen and Judges and Heads of State, and the prestigious Lasker-Award-Winning Nobel-Prize candidate who was also a doctor—at risk of suffering well-deserved justice, but a private investigator named Scott who could be facing life plus a thousand years in the slammer?

I raised one of Wintersong’s eyelids and let the lid drop slowly close, knowing he was still thoroughly unconscious, completely out of it. But there was no way to be sure how long that condition would last, so I had to make a decision pretty quick. The same annoying little problem I’d mentioned to Dane was still nagging me: What the hell was I going to do with this guy? Not to mention the hugely disgruntled Hobart Belking?

The shape I was in, just carrying Wintersong a hundred yards to my car might do me in. So I turned around and said to Dane, “My Cad’s parked up the road. I’m going to drive it down here. Which means you’ll be alone for a minute or two.” I pulled the Colt Special from its holster and extended it butt-first toward her. “I’m sure you won’t need this, but if anything moves, shoot it.”

“Shoot...it?” Dane took the Colt from me with a distinct absence of enthusiasm and held it dangling from her fingertips, muzzle pointing toward the floor.

“It won’t work like that,” I said. When I got the gun’s butt out of her fingers and into her palm, I pointed. “That’s the trigger. Just pull it and a bullet will go boom out the other end.”

She was holding the gun at arm’s length, peering slant-eyed at it as if the thing was a dead mouse which had just wiggled. So I said, “That’s the ticket,” and split.

I was back in two minutes. A minute and a half to reach the Cad, start it, and drive back; then half a minute to open the trunk and dig out a paper-wrapped gauze pad and what little was left of the roll of tape I’d first used at Omega and last used on Belking.

During that entire half-minute, Hobart Belking yelled at me and cursed me ferociously. Well, that’s what I assumed. The sounds were muffled and made unintelligible by another of those gauze pads taped over his mouth, but they sure sounded like unintelligible yellings and cursings.

I started getting feelings of considerable unease again—then slammed the trunk’s lid and trotted back into the house and upstairs, Wintersong was immobile on the desk where I’d left him, and Dane was still standing where she’d been before. But the gun was on the floor at her feet.

I looked at the gun, then at Dane, and smiled painfully.

“Swell,” I said.

“It made me feel bad,” she said belligerently. “Creepy. Awful! I think guns are—”

“Don’t tell me about it. I said swell, didn’t I?”

I picked up the Colt and stuffed it into its holster, then stepped to the desk and picked up Wintersong, which was a lot tougher. I grunted, feeling the burn under my left arm, something like a malevolent sprain in my spine, and about forty or fifty pains, aches, and curious agonies everywhere else.

“Be right back,” I grunted, standing there, wondering why nothing was going.

But pretty soon I got a leg to move, then the other, and kept them moving till I reached the Cadillac. I’d left the passenger-side door open and, like a man shot-putting a boulder, managed to heave Wintersong’s limpness through it and onto the back seat cushions. After slamming the door, I began the long trek back to the house, up the stairs, into the room where Dane was. Going down those stairs carrying Wintersong had been miserable, but even climbing up them was discouraging, and when I got all the way back into that upstairs room I was still puffing and huffing and my legs felt like taffy.

I nodded at Dane, going past her to flop into the chair where she’d been seated when I bounded in to rescue her. Any Brownie points I might have gotten for that were already turning blue, apparently, because when I coughed and wheezed a little she asked, “Shell, are you all right? You look horrible.”

“Of course I’m all right. Fantastic. Super-duper.”

“But you’re so out of breath.”

When I could, I said sweetly, “Dane, dear, would you please not ask any more dumb questions for a minute?”

I was wondering how I could get so ticked off at this beauty when instants ago I had been kissing her and thinking only positive thoughts, if any. Probably has something to do with sex, I thought. I hoped.

“Well, ” I said finally, “while I rest...ah, while I relax here for a minute, and plan my next move, let me ask a question or two. Right after I socked Wintersong, you said something about not knowing if I was dead or had been dead, and that you hadn’t been killed yet. What was that about? Also, how come you’re still ali—still here? I mean, how come they grabbed you in the first place? If you know.”

“Well, I do and I don’t. Know, I mean. It’s all very strange. When you drove me to Omega, and those men made me go in with them in their jeep, they wouldn’t let you come along, remember?” I nodded, and she continued, “That bothered me, and I was already upset, nervous. When I went inside alone, nobody else was around and everything seemed spooky.” She smiled slightly. “I suppose that sounds ridiculous?”

“Not a bit. Even when the gangs all there that joint is spooky.”

“Well, I began feeling almost scared. So when I walked through that big room with those work stations and animal cages to Dr. Wintersong’s office, I started to just go on in. Normally, I wouldn’t have dreamed of walking in there without knocking, but...”

She let it trail off, and I said, “You barged in on him unannounced? He’s probably dissected people for less than that.”

“No, I didn’t—didn’t really go in. I turned the knob and started to, but then I realized what I was doing and stopped. The door was only cracked about an inch, and I just stood there for a moment and that’s when I heard Dr. Wintersong say ‘Kill him.’”

“Heard what? He—” I stopped, thinking back, beginning to understand. “Go on.”

“He was speaking to somebody on the telephone—I didn’t know that then, I thought it was maybe to somebody else in his office. I heard him say, ‘Kill him. If you’re sure it’s him.’ Then after a few seconds he said, ‘So do it now, then get in here.’ That’s when I heard Dr. Wintersong hang up his phone. Well, I was really scared, and I closed the door, I didn’t want him to know I might have heard.”

I winced. “Closed it with a big bang, yes?”

“No. It’s not as if I panicked, I closed it very, very slowly, no noise at all. But I still had my hand on the knob when Dr. Wintersong yanked the door open and stood there looking at me.”

“Beautiful. Smiling sweetly, no doubt.”

“Actually, he was smiling. But not with his eyes.”

“He never smiles with his eyes. Well, give me the rest of it.”

“Dr. Wintersong took my arm and pulled me into his office—not violently, just firmly. And he was quite pleasant, very calm, all the time. He said he knew I’d overheard him speaking on the phone, and wanted me to understand he’d merely been approving the necessary sacrifice of an injured experimental animal, which was a routine procedure at Omega. He’d been talking to his chief veterinarian about the unfortunate, but humanely necessary, destruction of a suffering pig.”

“Pig?”

“That’s what he said. Actually, he was very convincing, Shell, and it did seem to make sense, the way he was explaining it all very logically to me. But then, while he was still explaining, we heard the gunshots.”

“Ah...” I nodded, remembering six shots fired from my Colt, one from the other guard’s gun; and before I got out of range, Grinner had emptied his automatic at me. “A lot of gunshots, right?”

“It sounded like a war. Even there in Wintersong’s office—it wasn’t very loud, but there was no mistaking what it was, and that it was happening near the gatehouse, where I’d just left you. And, well, I guess I got a little hysterical.”

I smiled. “Thought they’d done me in, hey? Well, not to worry—”

“I knew right away Dr. Wintersong had been lying, and it wasn’t a suffering pig they were destroying, they were destroying you, shooting you, and you were dead, dead, they’d murdered you, right that minute were murdering you—”

“Dane, you don’t have to say it over and over—”

“And if they were murdering you and I knew all about it, they’d have to murder me, too, wouldn’t they?”

“Ah, pretty good thinking.”

“What finally happened, I was yelling, accusing Dr. Wintersong of being a murderer, having you killed and all, saying I knew you were dead, you were murdered—”

“Dane, would you mind—?”

“—and he gave me a shot, an injection. He kept saying I was mistaken, confused, he’d been talking about animals, it would all be explained, things like that. And I remember his exact words just before he stuck that needle into my arm, ‘This is merely a mild sedative to calm you down, my dear girl.’ Girl, he called me, my dear g—”

“Dane, can you control your female dismay until you’ve shared the rest of it?” I paused. “Incidentally, it’s clear Wintersong wasn’t as calm and controlled as he seemed, because he could have told you he’d been phoning somebody in Cleveland. Of course, once he mentioned Omega, he was stuck with it. But something else puzzles me. If Wintersong thought his boys had just finished blowing me away—and you’d actually heard him telling them to do it—why would he give you merely a sedative then? I mean, he had to know you’d just become a stupendously big danger to him, much more of a danger than you realized, so why didn’t he squirt you with cyanide or something that would kill... Now you’ve got me doing it.”

I started over, after thinking back to those violent seconds out there at the gatehouse, remembering how long—and noisy—those seconds had seemed to me.

“No, Wintersong couldn’t have known, at least not for sure, that I’d been taken care of. Because it wouldn’t have sounded like a war if one of those guys had started it by hitting me in the head. And you both heard at least a dozen shots fired.” I looked at Dane. “After that, Wintersong gave you an injection—in the arm?”

“Yes.”

“Where in the arm?”

Dane gave me an odd look, but then turned slightly, showing me a definite needle mark in the skin inside her left arm below the bicep, below the shoulder. It was very small but unmistakable, and now surrounded by the faint discoloration of a bruise.

I said, “Did it knock you out?”

“No, it just made me—numb. Dopey, like a zombie. Dr. Wintersong even left me alone in his office for a while, and I just sat there, didn’t want to move. After that, and I’ve no idea how long after, I realized Mr. Belking was there, too. I don’t know why, or...it’s all pretty fuzzy.”

“Uh-huh. I’d give large odds Wintersong phoned Belking to tell him there was trouble.” I thought about it. “To tell him there was a lot of trouble, because by then Wintersong would have known not only that Grinner missed me and the other guard was dead, but that I’d gotten away—more than enough reason for Belking to hustle out there. Did he say anything, talk to you?”

“Mr. Belking? No, no, then, not until...well, they took me outside, sometime. All I know is it was still daylight.”

“Yeah, it was when they both drove off, but I’m not sure which one of them you were with.”

“I was in the car with Dr. Wintersong. But they both—” She stopped, looking at me in surprise. “How could you know that?”

I didn’t try to tell Dane the whole thing, just gave her enough so she understood I’d been briefly aware she was being taken from Omega by Belking and Wintersong, but had been prevented by peculiar circumstances from reaching the men and their bodyguards and tearing them all limb from limb, which was why none of them were limbless. She appeared to chew on this as if it was something yummy, but I continued speedily, “You said Belking didn’t talk to you then. Does that mean he did later?”

“Yes. Before we reached the Freeway, he stopped at the side of the road, and we parked behind him. He spoke to Dr. Wintersong outside the car for a minute. I couldn’t hear them, but Mr. Belking shook his head a couple of times, then they both came back and talked to me.”

“Were you able to carry on a conversation, understand what they were saying?”

“Oh, yes. I was still very relaxed, sort of spaced out, but I could function. And I remember what they kept telling me, but at the time it just didn’t seem important. I’m still not sure—”

“Kept telling you?”

“Yes, basically the same thing, first from Mr. Belking, then Dr. Wintersong, then Mr. Belking again, as if they wanted to be certain I understood. Mainly it was that the sounds I’d heard, those shots—when I became so upset had nothing to do with you, you’d already left by then. So, you certainly weren’t dead, and they not only could but would prove that to me as soon as possible—but until they had proved it they couldn’t let me go. There was important scientific work being completed, agreements being negotiated involving hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions, and at such a critical time they couldn’t risk my making unfounded accusations against them simply because I didn’t know the truth. Also, that could get me into a great deal of trouble, and they didn’t want that to happen.”

“Sounds as if they were kidnapping you for your own good.”

“They really were quite nice about it, friendly, almost apologetic.”

“Yeah, they would be.”

“Anyway, then Mr. Belking drove away very fast, and Dr. Wintersong brought me here.”

I got up, said to Dane, “Makes a curious kind of sense. At least part of what they told you was true—the rest of what they said was probably backward.”

“What do you mean backwards?”

The word, so often used by Hank, reminded me of him and I said to Dane, “Just listen to the conversation, and it will become clear.”

“What conversation?”

By the time she asked the question I’d stepped to the desk and picked up the phone there. Punching Hank’s number I said, “This one.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Instead of my getting Eleanora, as usual Hank answered the phone himself.

I said, “Shell here, Hank,” and he broke into a small flood of Spanish, then switched to a rapid, “You are all right, Sheldon? I feared—”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Except...” I paused, searching for the just-right words.

While I was pausing, Hank made it clear he knew—everybody knew—about the fire at Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum, and he’d feared I might have “perished” in the “stupendous conflagration.”

I said, “How did you know it was stupendous?”

“It was on the news, radio, television, on all the stations. Even there were bulletins. Including you in them, Sheldon Scott—”

“Why me? They don’t know—umm don’t think I started the damned fire, do they?”

“Sheldon, caramba-chihua—did you? Did you set it all ablaze and afire—”

“No, not exactly. I was there when it happened, yes, but, look, Belking and I were fighting and rolling around, and we broke a natural gas line, which—it was an accident. I didn’t do it on purpose, Hank. But what’s this about me on tele—?”

“And what of Hobart Belking, Sheldon? On the news was much conjecturings but nothing of certainty. It was conjectured that he also may have perished in this stupendous conflagration—”

“Don’t worry about that, Hank. I’ve got him in my trunk. He—”

“You’ve got him what?”

“I knocked him out. Tied him up. He’s in the trunk of my Cadillac.”

“What? He is—you did what?—he is where?”

“Hank, you needn’t get so... Look, I couldn’t just leave him in his damned museum to burn up, could I? So we’re still in the beach house where I found Dane Smith, which is another count against these guys. Wintersong was hiding out here in the house owned by Belking, where they were—at least Wintersong was—holding Dane against her will.”

Silence.

“They told Dane,” I went on doggedly, “they couldn’t let her go until they’d proved to her satisfaction that I was alive. But, as you’ve probably guessed already, the truth has got to be just the opposite. Or, bassackwards, right? They know I drove her to Omega, thus I’m the only guy who could give first-hand testimony that she was in fact there—”

“What, Sheldon, have you done with Wintersong?”

“Just a sec, Hank, let me finish, okay? I told Dane to listen to this, too. See, the real, or backwards, truth has to be: because I’m the only guy alive who could—and, if still alive, would—prove Dane was at Omega when those two apes tried to waste me, Belking and Wintersong couldn’t afford to kill her until they’d made sure I really was dead. See? First kill me and then her, not vice versa, which means they sure as hell weren’t hoping to prove I was alive, but just the—well backwards, okay? As you probably guessed already, right, Hank? Hello? Comprende, senor?”

“Comprendo. You have killed Wintersong, verdad? You have massacred him—”

“Hank, that’s—he’s perfectly all right, Hank. Well, maybe not perfectly. That is, I tapped him one, and he’s been unconscious for a while. But he’s also tied up—or, taped—and in my car. So everything’s under control, okay?”

Softly he said, “Madre de Dios!”

Actually, those were pretty much my sentiments, too. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. I didn’t even like thinking about it.

Then Hank said, “What are your plans to do with them?”

“Plans?”

“Them being Hobart Belking, who—maybe I didn’t mention this—is Chairman of the U.S. President’s cure-IFAI Committee, and President of the American Pharmaceutical Council, and has been asked by a few Senators and a lot of druggists to run for President himself of the U.S.A., and has insisted the police arrest you without mercy. Plus, also W. Wintersong, M.D., who maybe I didn’t tell you—”

“Don’t tell me.”

“That is who them is. And now that you have—caramba, have both of them—what are your plans to do with them?”

“Yeah, that. I mean, them. You have to understand, Hank, I’ve been very busy. Very busy. One plan might be to...” I stopped, realizing I had not yet formulated any plans. Well, I guess I could drown them, the way they do cats in laboratories. Maybe I could call it a scientific exp—”

“Sheldon, I think you had better come to my office before you drown anybody. I cannot myself leave, since this is the command post, and so many things are happening, you would not easily believe it. And it is essential that you cogitate what to do about these catastrophes. So come here rapidamente, quickly! If it is possible for you to do so without being apprehended by police or crazy citizens.”

Something about that last comment fell oddly on my eardrums, but I said, “Good thinking, Hank. I was planning to do that. First, I’ve got to know what’s this about mention of me on television? And Belking said I should be arrested? Said when—and why, for that matter? It’s Belking and Wintersong who should be. What do you mean, crazy citizens?”

“I will explain. I will try to. It is apparent you have not seen the TV or listened to any radio, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Where you are now, this beach house, is there a television?”

“Yeah, I’ll get Dane to turn the TV on.”

I caught her eye, pointed to the big console and she nodded, moved quickly to it. Watching her, I noticed the hands of the wall clock above the set pointing at four minutes to midnight. As sound came on the screen flickered, I heard Hank inhale a deep breath and let it out in a soft whoosh. Then he started telling me what I’d been missing.

Some of Hank’s info came from reporters he knew, more from several of his people who’d phoned him, but it became clear that much of it had issued from the tusk-toothed mouth of Hobart Belking during a taped for TV interview earlier today at Omega, a few hours before I’d found the man at his Museum. It also became clear, after about a minute of Hank’s rapid-fire summation of events that I might somehow be in more trouble than either Belking or Wintersong.

Yes, more even than Dr. Wintersong. He was, of course wanted by the police. Sheriff’s deputies, Homicide investigators from the LAPD, and numerous other citizens who desired to ask him a bunch of pointed questions at the very least, satisfy their fervid curiosity about the three heads—one dog, two human—in that private laboratory adjacent to his office. Those heads had been found, photographed, and two had already been identified as having once been parts of a Mr. Guenther and Mrs. Helga Vunger. Nobody had yet identified Rusty.

So there was a local and an APB out on Wintersong. But there was also a warrant with my name on it, which didn’t astonish me; however, because by now I knew Hank and his sometimes peculiar manner of expression quite well, I got the distinctly unnerving impression that I was—for some reason he hadn’t yet mentioned—even deeper in the soup than I’d suspected. But I didn’t interrupt him, not at first.

Hank deduced, because of my having told him where Dane and I were now, that after leaving Omega with Dane earlier today Belking and Wintersong had split up—probably about the time I was climbing out of my wooden crate—with Wintersong heading for Malibu while Belking proceeded to Belking Pharmaceuticals corporate offices on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. It was a reasonable deduction, since Belking had been in his suite atop the twenty-two story building, when a telephoned message apprised him that something like all hell had broken loose at the Omega Medical Research Center. The call, probably from Kell or the lad I’d left resting uncomfortably in a storeroom, suggested unmistakably that it was either Shell Scott, or someone looking exactly like him, who had broken all the hell loose.

So unhappily for Belking, it was back to Omega again, his third trip this Saturday. There, presumably after being made even less joyous by the sight and sound of half a hundred sign-carrying pickets yelling things like “Stop Disemboweling Fido!” Belking had engaged in dialogue—apparently more like monologue—with a small crowd of Sheriff’s deputies, police officers, and reporters. I gathered there were a lot of reporters, some accompanied by camera crews.

Belking had forcibly made a great number of accusations and charges, none of them successfully contradicted at the time, and called for the arrest, prosecution, and implied sacrifice of several people, the most important of whom, to me, was me.

Apparently referring to notes he’d made, Hank rattled off some of those charges.

I was appalled by the number of crimes I had committed: felonious entry into the Omega Medical Research Center; violent assault upon young Timothy Wilson, a trusted employee working his way through medical school and supporting his invalid grandmother; various injuries including mayhem committed upon three guards, namely Mr. Gordon Kell, Mr. Edward F. Woffle, and Mr. Billy Horstling; heinous destruction and ruination of innumerable vital scientific breakthroughs and permanently traumatized experimental animals; conspiracy to facilitate the illegal entry into a medical research facility of vandals, hooligans, and vegetarians; and the unconscionable murder of a highly valued Omega executive, the Vice President of Security, Mr. Francis Harris.

Who? Francis Harris? Grinner?

Yes, I was appalled. But Hank was perhaps even more dismayed. For Belking had not failed to repeatedly name the “notorious medical quack” Henry Hernandez, asserting that the inexcusable anti-science picketing—and Shell-Scott-assisted break-in and vandalism of Omega facilities—was obviously the work of POCUEH, which organization of mouse-lovers was the creation of none other than the aforementioned notorious medical quack, Henry Hernandez. To be certain reporters and officers got the criminal organization’s name right, Belking even spelled POCUEH, including the H.

Almost as an afterthought, Hobart Belking had admitted knowing about the unusual condition of Mr. and Mrs. Vunger’s heads.

When Hank dropped that bit of intelligence on me, I almost dropped the phone. “He what?” I interrupted? “No!”

“Yes! But that brain-constipated animal-shooter is far beyond belief. According to him, Wintersong may have done Guenther and Helga a kindness. Sheldon, he made them—their heads—sound like volunteers.”

“No!”

“Yes! Well, almost. You must see it on TV, but I will give you a capsule of it. According to Belking, Guenther and Helga become infected with IFAI while employed at Omega by their good friend, Dr. Wintersong. While on sick leave—”

“Sick leave? Their good friend? The guy who lopped off their—”

“Sheldon, you need not expostulate with me about the lies of liars. I have been trying to educate you—”

“Got it. I’ll try not to expostulate, if that’s what I was doing.”

“Unfortunately, while dying, the Vungers succumbed to the blandishments of a notorious charlatan—we know who he is—who dosed them with—useless quack remedies, at great expense, thus preventing them from seeking life-saving orthodox treatment, for their incurable disease. Finally, at death’s door, they appealed for help to their dear friend, Dr. Wintersong, the world’s expert on IFAI. He told them there was no hope, their infected and ravaged bodies were dead already, only their brains still lived, like there were minutes to go and then pfft, finished.”

“Hank, he didn’t say that, you’re making this up—”

“I am only making it interesting. Believe me, Sheldon, I do no violence to truth, merely salt-and-pepper it a little. As Belking related this fantasy, the wonderful Doctor Wintersong convinced the Vungers they might, only might—in medicine there are no for-sure promises—live days longer, or weeks, maybe even forever if they were lucky, without their dying bodies making them sick.”

I opened my mouth, closed it.

“Besides which, this was their chance to make a contribution, play an important part in the advance of medical science, bring joy to human beings, make other people well—the same bullshit doctors tell dumbbells when they want to try out experimental drugs on them and find out whether it kills more mice or people. So Guenther and Helga signed the papers, agreeing Wintersong could perform craniectomies on them.”

“I don’t damn believe it. Not if cranie-whatever means lopping their noodles off.”

“It does. Especially in this case. But I don’t believe it, either. Sheldon, I am telling you the lies Belking lied on TV, comprende? And very cleverly lied, knowing it is widely understood people, especially sick people—and who isn’t—will sign anything a licensed physician or used-car salesman tells them to. After all, any release Guenther and Helga might have signed would only be the same kind of release all hospital patients sign before operations, agreeing with the doctor that the doctor may do whatever in his wisdom the doctor decides is necessary or amusing. So Belking said to the many reporters yes, he had in his possession those signed papers, making everything hunky-dory.”

“In his possession? That’s not possi—”

“Caramba, I said he said he had them, not that he had them. He was not waving them about, holding up wiggly signatures before the TV cameras. If necessary, he promised they would be made available. Which, no doubt, they will be, as soon as they’re finished.”

I was shaking my head. “Hank, that’s monstrous. Belking may be the most convincing liar in the country, but that’s so goddamned ridiculous. Surely people won’t believe that crap.”

“People already believe mostly crap, Sheldon. And as I have told you lies believed become truth, after which those who speak truth, become liars. Those things, about my friends the Vungers, are bad lies. But there is something else I must tell you that is even worse.”

“Come on. What could be worse?”

That distinctly unnerving impression I mentioned earlier had not withered away. On the contrary, it was blooming. I said cautiously, “Like what? And worse for whom?”

“Ah, you. For you, Sheldon, worse. And it is of this I have been cogitating how best to inform you. It is essential you be most alertly aware of your increasing peril, concocted by Hobart Belking with vile cleverness.”

“Increasing peril?” “Wasn’t there enough to begin—”

“Mainly because of this new peril, more so than your other enumerated crimes and misdemeanors, everybody has been searching for you all this evening some searching in veritable frenzies. Everybody—”

“Hank, there’s that ‘everybody’ again. You mean lots of cops, right? Which doesn’t exactly surprise the hell—”

“Cops, yes. Also deputies, federal police persons, maybe even National Guards. And, of course, every physician in California, each pediatrician, podiatrist, oncologist, all the gynecologists and immunologists and virologists, plus especially every official or employee of federal and state and local health departments including M.D.s and Ph.D.s and statisticians—”

“You’re going to drive me nuts, Hernandez. What do you mean, health departments? Why would all those goddamn doctors be looking for me in frenzies—including... I’ll swear you said gynecologists, gynecologists? What are you doing, pulling my—wait!”

I stopped suddenly, getting a ghastly much worse than merely an unnerving impression a definitely scary-all-over feeling. Because, though I did not understand exactly where Hank was going, I had in that instant gotten a kind of subconscious inkling and even a single inkle was enough. I couldn’t grab it; but the slippery thought brushed my mind like a feather of ice.

“You see, Sheldon, during your invasion of Omega you blundered recklessly into Dr. Wintersong’s own sanctum of virological va-va-voom where, following a full year of painstaking genius, the doctor has at last succeeded in isolating, purifying, putrefying, and propagating a super-virulent mutation of the IFAI virus—”

“No, don’t say it, I won’t believe—”

“—from which he hoped to develop a newer and even better IFAI vaccine for a newer and better world. Unfortunately, blundering Sheldon Scott—that’s you—blun—”

“The hell it is—”

“—dered into and broke to smahereens the sealed pyrex glass flask containing that super-virulent super-savage super-deadly new IFAI virus, thus not only destroying the entire Wintersong experiment but simultaneously, and inevitably, becoming infected by it himself. What this means—”

“God in Heaven,” I murmured, instantly becoming nauseous.

“—is that he—you—Sheldon, are simply swarming with billions of multiplying an even more invariably-fatal superviruses that cause Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness, and are therefore super infectious, a threat to the lives and vacations of every man, woman, and child in the city of Los Angeles.”

“Why not the goddamn State of California?”

“Verdad, is true—a deadly danger to the entire United States of America!”

“Tomorrow, the World.”

“Do you comprehend, then, what this means?”

“Sure,” I said, glumly. “Means I’m an epidemic.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“If you are lucky,” Hank said, “maybe you will only be quarantined.”

“Yeah, in the morgue, right? And what makes you think I’ll be lucky?”

“Sheldon, this is a most serious matter!”

“Did I say anything different? Hank, you know this Belking baloney about my smashing some kind of bug soup is baloney, don’t you?”

“Of course. Is worse than baloney, is the usual epidemiological bullshit, which would still be pure bullshit even if you had blundered into his cultured bugshit and scattered it all the way to Bakersfield. But consider how clever Belking is, Sheldon. By putting into everybody’s ears a horrifying warning that they may catch their deaths from some little bugs you maybe stepped on, he has shifted their petrified attention from their heads to your feet, from him and Wintersong and murder and medical madness, to a pathological fear of The Walking Death, Sheldon Scott.”

“Yeah,” I said glumly—I seemed to be getting glummer and glummer. But not, I thought, without reason. “Well, I continued, you do have a sickening way with words, Hank. I’ve been called some pret-ty miserable things before, but never anything so profoundly depressing as The Walk—”

“So I suggest you come with alacrity, Sheldon, come here. It would be better I could go to where you are, but I cannot, I must stay, some associates have come to my office, there have been many calls, because of the situation. But we must talk, consider everything, you and I. We will think of something, maybe. Maybe not. Caramba! So, come with alacrity but also care—great care—you and ah, all you people. Caramba!”

“Yeah. I believe those are pretty much my sentiments. Consider though, just for the joy of it, it’s probably a good thing I’ve got those two bozos under precarious control, instead of their wandering around talking to reporters and Congressmen and psychiatrists, judges...and ah...”

“We are both going to jails for thousands of years.”

“Buck up, old man, that’s not like you. But you’re probably right.” I paused, a feeling in my stomach as if I’d eaten a used meal. “But you’ll think of something, Hank. I have lots of confidence in you. Lots. Yeah, you’ll think of something stupendous. Won’t you?”

“If I don’t, you had better do it.” He sighed. “At least, Sheldon, you will now understand why it is best, if you get here—”

“When. When I get—”

“—that you park backwards in my driveway, not out in the street where, obtrusively visible, would be your automobile containing a USA President and famous Nobel-Prize-winning—”

“Got it. I probably should park in Pasadena. I may even smear the license plate with my luminous blood.”

“Bueno. Do not let them—anyone—catch you. They probably would not wish to get close but they might kill you from a safe distance.”

“Swell. That’s just swell,” I said. “Man, you really know how to cheer a guy—hey?” He’d hung up.

I hung up, too, scowling, grinding my teeth together, thinking dark and ugly thoughts.

A woman standing in the middle of the room said, “Are you hurting again, Shell? In pain?”

“Huh. Forgot you were here, Dane. Pain?”

“Forgot? You forgot?”

“Don’t push it. It was only for a minute, anyway. A second or two. See, I’ve got a few little things on my mind. Why the hell would you ask if I’m in pain, anyway?”

“Well, you look—horrible.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. I think I better explain—”

I stopped because on the television screen, and instantly recognizable, was a long-shot of the Omega Medical Research Center, guardhouse and chain-link fence, heavy gate—wide open—and the low white windowless building beyond. The only difference from the last time I’d seen it was that, beyond the fence, in the open area before the central building, a lot of little people were scurrying around like bugs. I could even make out tiny signs the bug people were carrying.

I turned up the sound, stepped back. Dane watched, and listened with me, which meant there’d be fewer things I would have to explain later. We began absorbing the various disasters at about a minute after twelve, and it was twelve-oh-nine before the Midnight News’ “Top Story of the Day” ended.

So, subtracting sixty seconds for a commercial—in which a middle-aged cowboy actor wearing a white hospital jacket equipped with stethoscope assured one and all that this here box of IntestiBliss pills, because it was highly recommended by eight out of ten doctors, was two and a half times better for Stubborn Constipation. The news team devoted seven full minutes to their top story. In the first three minutes, they covered Omega, Wintersong, Belking, severed heads, IFAI and Super-IFAI, the need for animal research to save human lives, and the FDA’s approval of an IFAI vaccine to save human lives—plus Henry Hernandez, who was “once again facing charges of medical malpractice,” and Shell Scott, local private investigator, who was facing charges of practically everything that had so far been invented. And that was before Hobart Belking’s beefy face appeared on screen, its mouth open and moving malevolently, and there was no denying once he got around to Shell Scott he made him sound like a criminal psychopath even I would love to hate.

Some people, honest people, can’t lie worth a damn. Unconsciously, they give the game away every time. Even if it’s just a little one, they’ll wiggle their ears, or say “Er, ah,” or start biting pieces of skin off their lips. Losers, tragically unequipped to make it in real life. But not Belking. He must have been born lying, because the bastard laid it on with polish and savoir-faire, with almost hypnotic conviction, and the enthusiasm that comes only after long practice.

In response to a question, about the one dog and two murdered-human heads, Hobart frankly revealed that he already knew of the “incredible” situation, but had learned of it only this very day, during an early-morning meeting with Dr. William Wintersong at Omega. Naturally he was shocked, even horrified, at first. But only at first. Because when Dr. Wintersong told him the truth—including the uniquely disturbing circumstances compelling him to do what he’d done—Belking understood Dr. Wintersong’s dilemma, and reluctantly approved the courageous decision he had made. Not only approved, but admired Dr. Wintersong for his courage in acting decisively, indeed even humanely and compassionately, in the highest and best traditions of medical science.

The man was confident, self assured, so convincing that when he spoke of the Vunger’s “signing a release required by law,” it sounded as natural as organic carrots, a most sensible thing to do, and not even one of the assembled reporters said anything like, “Come on, pal, you’ve got to be full of IntestiBliss.” Of course, Hobart Belking spoke with the natural authority of a billion dollars or so. Would a billionaire lie? Would he cancel a million bucks worth of advertising?

Nobody had yet asked him how long—and why—Dr. Wintersong had been experimenting with keeping heads without bodies alive. I’d begun thinking the question wasn’t going to be brought up, which would be unfortunate, because Belking would surely have a difficult time coming up with an acceptable answer to that one. I was wrong.

The bastard was not only ready, but probably eager. Because he paused, looked directly at a young bearded news anchor seen nightly on Channel Four, whereupon the young anchor popped that question as though on cue—with the added “tough” query about whether Mr. Belking himself had known of these “inhuman” experiments.

Yes, he had known, approved, and provided substantial funding for Dr. Wintersong’s experiments. Animal experiments, of course, only with animals, who apparently didn’t mind. But then Belking almost won my reluctant admiration, at least for his warped intelligence and diabolical slyness. Only this morning, as stated, did he learn after the fact of the human heads Dr. Wintersong had kept alive for eleven days. A long, pregnant pause, and then—Alive! Think of it! Eleven days—eleven months—eleven years! The possibilities were immense, thrilling, fantastic, and of thunderous importance to all humanity. Dare we dream, like William Wintersong, M.D., of Immortality? Dare we dream? If so, with courage, with federal funding, it would surely some day soon be possible to preserve the intelligence, the knowledge, the wisdom—yes, the life—of an Einstein, a Joan of Arc, a Martin Luther King...even a crucified Jesus saved from the cross!

Well, hell, I thought, that tore it. How could scientists or feminists or conservatives or liberals or minorities, or especially good Christians, knock that? I would have sworn nobody could make medical murder sound like a virtuous moral necessity, but Belking had not only done it but tagged most bases in the ballpark while doing it. After that how could anybody except pro-death fanatics and health nuts knock it? How could the scientists and politicians, whose support was necessary for continued “immortality” research object to living eleven more years after they died?

Perhaps even more dismaying, there had to be thousands of stuporously-sick people out there—assured by medical pessimists that their various organic malfunctions were all terminal—who would unhesitantly choose scientifically tested-and-approved “craniectomies” today over the inevitability of doctor-guaranteed death tomorrow.

Why not? For decades surgeons had been cutting out and replacing imperfect but perfectly-repairable hearts and throwing the originals away. Hearts—and lungs, livers, pancreases, kidneys, whatever was available for sale in there. Of course, for sale; you wouldn’t expect to give them away, would you? So why not surgically excise the entire body, harvest its giblets and various goodies, then throw the unmarketable stuff into the garbage. Maybe Belking and Wintersong weren’t crazy after all; maybe this was merely a health-care idea whose time had come.

I didn’t have much time to wonder about all that, because right then at the very end—significantly, the last words Belking’s listeners would hear from him—he launched into a minute-long crescendo of serious horse manure about me, about that despicable and dangerous—now even more dangerous—arch-criminal, Shell Scott.

Belking could have gotten an actor, an upside-down Oscar for hyperbolic hamminess somber, sorrowful, his voice lower, slower, funerial. It almost made me itch from the inside out, because he made me sound, even to me like the Bubonic Plaque coming down with pneumonia.

Which meant, sure as skunks stink, by the time Belking finished there were lots of brilliant citizens out there in TV land who knew a thin gooey miasma must be oozing from Shell Scott and slurping on out past the farthest stars, digesting everything in its path, and suspected that, what ever it was they’d caught it already.

The most dismaying thing was: nobody laughed.

Visible in the television picture, near and around Belking were twenty or thirty other people, reporters and police and deputies plus a handful of POCUEH terrorists not yet arrested. But not one of all those people laughed, and a few of the hardboiled and cynical reporters actually looked alarmed.

No question: I was in deep trouble.

Well, Hank had told me people would believe anything about “disease” except the truth: that they themselves were its creator, but this was a painful way for me to become convinced he never exaggerated, not really.

At twelve-oh-nine a.m., bleak beginning of Sunday morning, the male and female co-anchors began taking turns reporting another story, something about Congressional plans to provide free burials for everybody who died prematurely of old age. So I turned to Dane and said, “Let’s go. I’ll explain—”

That was odd. She had stepped back, shrinking away, and staring at me wide-eyed, both arms crossed tightly over her boobs. What the hell? I thought—but only for a fraction of a second. Because it was, instantly, clear that this was a diluted expression of what might henceforth be expected from citizens confronted suddenly by The Slobbering Death: me.

“No—wait—it’s not true,” I said.

“Not...true?”

“Attagirl, good thinking. Don’t—don’t panic.”

Well, it took me half a minute, maybe longer, to win Dane’s confidence again. To, at least, keep her from screaming and jumping out the window. By the time I explained that I’d been forewarned about what Belking was going to say, informed by Hank’s unheard-by-her comments on the phone, while Hobart’s hammy but effective histronics must have caught Dane with her normally keen and even gorgeous intelligence off guard, she had not only stopped shrinking away but was no longer squashing her boobs, which I took as a good omen.

Thus encouraged, I said, “Bottom line, there isn’t any Super-IFAI culture, or if there is I didn’t become acquainted with it. And I certainly didn’t step on it, or get infected by IFAI—or anything else. Hell, I haven’t even had a cold for a year and a half.”

She smiled a small smile and I added, “Belking just made it all up. The whole thing—about the super-horrible bugs, at least. See?”

She nodded, at first very slowly, then briskly. “Yes, I can understand why he might.” Dane paused, sighed, and continued, “But the other—you told me you got inside Omega, when Dr. Wintersong and Mr. Belking were taking me away, but did you—did you kill that man? The one the police found dead there?”

“Grinner? You bet. But only after he tossed a shot at me. Cops will find a slug from his gun in the back wall, where it wound up after not quite dismantling my head.”

She sighed again, more deeply and naturally than before, and appeared really to relax for the first time since the newscast had ended. “Then all that about your ruining Dr. Wintersong’s culture, becoming infected... Mr. Belking, well, he just lied?”

“Like Baron Munchhaussen on his best day.”

“He certainly was convincing. He almost convinced me, Shell—almost. Just for a minute.”

“Sure. Maybe that’s because most people will believe horseflies cause Charley horses if a licensed medical expert says so. Happens all the time. Like, according to Hank anyhow, every year’s brand-new flu bug... I stopped. I swear, Hank has really done a job on me—”

“About him, Shell, Doctor Hernandez. On the phone, didn’t you say something about meeting him?”

“Yeah, and soon. So we might as well get started.”

“But how, if everybody’s looking for you, police and—?”

“Trust me. Let’s go.”

And, this time, we went. Not far. Up to my Cadillac, which is—was—a shiny Robin’s-egg-blue convertible, a familiar sight to about six thousand cops, several hundred other citizens in L.A., and half the population of Hollywood. Which description applied before it became even more easily identifiable because of its eye-catching collection of bullet holes.

Wintersong’s black Cadillac sedan was parked in the garage of Belking’s beach-front home. Fortunately my own garage-door opener actuated the door and it slid up, rumbling softly, folded out of sight. Not so fortunately, I would have to transfer Dr. W., and his friend Hobie, from my Cad to his.

I sighed, found the sedan’s keys in Wintersong’s coat pocket, backed his Cad next to mine. Five minutes later the job was done, but the gut-straining exercise did not further endear me to either of them. The doctor wasn’t much trouble; but Hobart Belking, even bound and gagged and beat-up all over, was a lot like one of the wild animals he loved to blow away. He’d had a few hours with nothing to do except stew, and I had a hunch he’d spent most of those hours thinking of just that: his magnificent prizes, those beautiful smooth-muscled animals he’d searched for and found; joy of the hunt and sick sweetness of the kill, bright quickening of life in him each time one of them died, and his pride in displaying their well-preserved corpses. All that—and what they were now, ashes and soot and fire-blackened eyes.

Whatever the reason, if vicious grunts could kill I would have been long kaput. As I’d heaved him out of my Cad’s trunk and dumped him into Wintersong’s, Belking was gutterally grunting, twisting, straining, raging to kill something again.

And I wondered what this beef-shouldered tusk-toothed at-least-temporarily-psychotic nut would do if I—or somebody else—ever let him get loose.

Behind the wheel, key in ignition, with lovely Dane sitting quietly beside me—very quiet, very still—I thought for a moment about that. Belking alone was more than merely a formidable enemy. Largely because he wasn’t Belking “alone.” With his billion or so bucks, position and prestige, hundreds of powerful political and corporate—and judicial—associates and friends, he was more like an enemy crowd, the General in charge of an army of generals, or chief cook of the cannibals boiling people in pots.

It was depressing, therefore, to realize that even ignoring Belking, William M. Wintersong, M.D. was enemy enough. Perhaps not personally very threatening, it could not be denied he was an admired and prestigious representative of, and prominent spokesman for, the most dangerous and deadly organization of sacrosanct citizens on earth, DOCTORS.

But I’d gotten myself into a position from which there was now no possibility of retreat. So, since there was no other direction available except sideways, from this moment forward my path would be—forward!

Forward to... Well, I didn’t have that part figured out yet. But I turned on the ignition, stepped on the gas, and moved—forward.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Hank peeled his lips back, jamming his teeth together as though trying to eat them. For an old geezer who could look quite handsome when in his normally pleasant mood, these occasional metamorphoses were disturbing.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said.

“Los bastardos!” he went on, ignoring me. “Now we have them—you have them, trussed and bundled in your vehicle—but they have us! What can we do with them? What? What?”

“I’ve been asking myself those same three questions, Hank—”

“At any moment, I expect hordes of policemen, deputies, FDA Gestapos, CDC investigators, and the Surgeon General in full Halloween uniform bursting upon us. I expected it already, before now even. Should they do this and into custody take us, and from out of the automobile extract them, can you guess what will happen?”

“Yeah. Sure. I imagine—”

“No, you can imagine nothing horrible enough. They will give both Belking and Wintersong Nobel Prizes and free tickets to Disneyland while executing us instantly in my driveway.”

“Hank, it’s always darkest just before...?”

“Before Midnight, no matter what they say. Ai!” Hank flipped both hands into the air, turned, began pacing again.

I looked at Dane. She still wore an expression indicating a kind of bewilderment mixed with burgeoning apprehension. It was an expression that had been burgeoning for some time now.

We’d arrived at Hank’s combined home and office on Mulberry Street twenty minutes ago, and he’d greeted us with his normal volubility and enthusiasm. When he’d squinted with concern at my face, which was apparently still somewhat lumpy, and commented that I looked “seriously distorted,” I told him it was merely a temporary residue from my disagreement with Hobart Belking and he should see the other guy, then introduced him to Dane Smith.

It was of course, their first meeting, and Hank gazed upon her as a miser might contemplate his millions, saying, “Hermosissima! You are ravishing, Miss Smith. It is a great pleasure for my heart to meet one so most-beautiful.”

Then he bent forward and kissed her hand like one of those thin-mustached European fruitcakes, and I could tell she liked him already.

After moving to Hank’s inner office, we’d spent five minutes filling each other in with bits of info and fact not previously covered, then another five minutes discussing pros and cons of our immediate circumstances. Our immediate circumstances didn’t look too hot.

That’s when Hank had begun pacing. Pacing, and trailing streams of words behind him. Words, phrases, whole sentences and even paragraphs about allopathic myopia, about non-existent diseases that were terminal only when treated with orthodox futility and fatality, and also how great was the opportunity almost-now to cure the madness of medicine and restore virtue to the long-deceived people—those millions of senselessly sick, cruelly crippled, needlessly dying, the millions already bereaved and surviving in sorrow their beloved dead—by awakening them all from their medicated sleep and beginning the ending of their bassackward faith in gods of death and priests of perversion... but also how perilously endangered already-now, not tomorrow but today, tonight, now, was that great and splendid hope, how precariously balanced it was, how fragile this opportunity which might not come again.

It was Henry Hernandez, M.D., at his best and worst and somewhere-in-between emitting intelligent unintelligibilities at ricochet angles, and a lot of it went right by me, because I was by now used to this sort of verbal passion, Dane, however, was not. Just as Belking’s televised words about me—when she hadn’t been forewarned, or prepared for them—caused her considerable consternation, so did her unfamiliarity with Hank’s eruptions.

As Hank paced near her and started to turn, Dane said “Dr. Hernan—Hank.” It had become Hank and Dane about a half-minute after they met. “You’re getting me all confused. Talking about gods and priests and last-chance and...well, forgive me, it sounds crazy.”

“Is crazy.” He stopped, standing about two feet from Dane, eyes fixed on her face. “Not me, them. Their system of healing that cripples, their curing that kills. Most crazy, millions of people disasterized by this medical decay and corruption, still believe it is health care.”

“Hank, that’s—”

“I agreed already, crazy. I will explain.”

Hank stopped, was silent for several seconds, apparently deliberating, hesitating. Then, looking fiercely into Dane’s eyes as though trying to see the back of her head, he said slowly. “Yes, I will trust you. A woman of such radiant loveliness outside, if I cannot trust her inside then the word trust is useless, should be rubbed out from dictionaries.”

He turned took three or four paces away, came back and faced Dane again. “I will explain as best I can quickly, some of what I have said already to Sheldon. But I do not have two days with you. And you are involved with us now, you should understand what is at stake is not us, not a few little people, is much greater, is all of us, is all.”

He paused, breathing slowly and deeply. Then, eyes burning into Dane’s, he placed one hand on each of her shoulders, spoke rapidly and without pause for at least two minutes, spoke with such rising and at last brrnnnggging intensity that it transfixed even my attention—and I’d heard most of it before. Dane stood unmoving, her eyes steady on his, lips parted, entranced as though hypnotized.

Into those two minutes Hank somehow compressed hours of argument he’d hurled at me, jumping from one point to the next and thundering on to another like a man driving spikes with a verbal sledge hammer, but he also added for Dane a few things I’d never heard before. Not from him, not from anyone else.

I heard him say or shout again: “The symptoms are not the disease... Nothing is incurable... allopathic insanity mandated by law makes truth a crime. Plus, new to me: Callous killing of millions for profit... murder for power and perhaps pleasure... drugging with fluoride and killing with chemotherapy.”

Then more quietly, Hank spoke of dozens of separate lawsuits already in preparation, many ready for filing. Each was aimed at a different point—weakness, dangerous delusion, legally-protected coercion—in the body of what Hank called the “allopathic monopoly that rules us the same way it attacks diseases: not through persuasion and truthful argument but by deception and terrible force.” In more than half of the lawsuits, plaintiffs were either POCUEH itself or members of that organization; the rest were a variety of groups and individuals supporting animal rights, patient rights, human rights.

At the end, Hank slowly dropped his hands from Dane’s shoulders and said, “If we succeed, if we win, we will win for all of America, medical freedom, not an imposition of more coercion for our own alleged good, but the removal of such coercion—for the first time since this land-of-free USA was born, true medical freedom, the right of each citizen to choose whatever health care he wishes and can pay for, and his equal right to reject any so-called medical protection or treatment chosen for him by others even if falsely called free medicare. Then the people may survive and grow strong, at least it will be possible, there will be hope. But if we are prevented, or lose this chance to win all, I fear there will not again be an opportunity like this. If we lose I fear there will not be hope any more. It will be already too late.”

Dane looked a little dazed. She blinked, moistened her lips, then said the first words she’d spoken for quite a while—the first words anyone except Hank had spoken for a while. “It...it can’t be that bad, Hank, can it?”

“Can be. Is. Is worse all the time, unless stopped will become much worse, tragically so, with unimaginable death. Already is planned mandatory-for-all immunization with poisonous miasmas....”

Hank let the words trail off, then walked behind his desk, leaned forward toward us with both hands flat on the desktop. He looked at Dane, then me, back to Dane again.

“I have been arguing to you that every belief and almost every practice of official medicine today is worse than useless—is harmful. If this is true—and it is true—how much harm can people suffer without losing joy in life, if not life itself? Look with me at a single piece of this worseness, because it is so important now, this minute: IFAI. All who listen only with ears to the many voices of official medicine, including those of great police powers in our own U.S. Government, will become hopelessly convinced this Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness, this brand new one is the most terrible threat to life now attacking the earth—but only because so many self-appointed experts, plus radios and televisions and newspapers say all-together the same thing. It is not something horrible that is, only something said, but said over and over and over again until it is like, Don’t-think-of-purple-elephants until you can’t think of anything but purple elephants.”

Hank hissed a bunch of air through his nose. “These same ear-thinkers will become convinced also their peril is increasingly desperate because it had been said eight million times the illness is fatal and there is not yet any cure—by which the medicine business does not really mean cure, but only, patentable drugs and drugs and more drugs, and poisonous vaccines, to be sold for billions of profits. Which should make transparent to you both how it will work out, how it always works out. Si?”

He gazed briefly at Dane, then me, as though expecting some kind of brilliant A-ha! He didn’t get any. So Hank sped on, “When all is lost almost, when hope is gone almost, or when everybody is terrified enough, there will be announced a ray of exciting hope in the hopelessness and ninety-nine times out of ninety-nine, the hope will be something patented by a drug company.”

“Outside—” Hank inclined his head toward the driveway, not moving his hands from the desk— “are Belking and Wintersong, two people of greatest importance in this danger from IFAI, its prevention, its cure. Wintersong has discovered a vaccine, will oversee testing, perfecting, lend to it his great prestige. Belking will manufacture—has manufactured tons of the Wintersong vaccine, will promote it and sell it and become enriched from it. Soon there will be other new drugs—”

“Hank, wait, has manufactured tons? Tons?” That was Dane, again. “The FDA hasn’t even given final approval for the vaccine yet. Only Phase Two clinical testing on human, not approval for mass immunization. And tons would mean...”

“Tons, yes. Nitrogen-frozen, all ready. Enough for everybody. You, me, Sheldon, and a quarter-billion customers besides us, just in the U.S.A. Do not repeat this, please, could get two people I love dearly in much trouble, meaning dead. There was recently a secret meeting—”

Hank stopped, and smiled. Then he relaxed, sat down in his padded swivel chair, and said less seriously than before, “Sounds so melodramatic, verdad? Like spy movies, Hitchcock plots. Well, sometimes life is melodramatic—and death, too, melodrama with unhappy ending. The secret meeting I mentioned was in Lausanne, Switzerland. During three days there, plans were made for acceleration of the IFAI machine from epidemic to pandemic, more cases diagnosed under new definitions, danger increasing like crazy, this together with much promotion of the IFAI vaccine—new releases, TV reports about how safe the vaccine is, like mother’s milk used to be, eighty-nine point nine percent protection, so on, so on. This to be followed by lobbying Congress, and other criminals in Washington, D.C., for passage of a law—already written by the lawyers—requiring universal immunization against IFAI, on mandatory vaccination of everybody, to protect everybody.”

With only a momenarty pause, Hank continued, “Even when I condemn stupid upside-downness of allopathic medicine, I am not condemning all allopathy, all upside-down doctors. Most are good men, good people, lousy doctors—because they all try to squash symptoms with poisonous drugs and pills, that’s what allopathy is; hit-it-till-it’s-dead. Their problem, and ours, is that they have been taught lies and believed them.

Hank stopped, frowned, then said slowly and deliberately, “It is easy to prevent an epidemic that does not exist. But if you are crippled or killed by a doctor’s sincere stupid treatment of your symptoms, does it matter to you that he is not evil but merely deluded? Does it make any difference to your injured or dying loved one, friend, child? Please, do not be yourself stupid or hear what I have not said. I have not said all in today’s medicine are evil, are liars, are some kind of monsters. I have said most are good people, maybe misguided people but possessed of virtue, intending healing while doing unintended harm, I have said most are. Most, not all.”

“Because some, a few, understand the truth as well as I, or you or anyone else, they know very well what they are doing—and, monstrously, continue doing it even knowing what they know. Those are the few who move the rest, who speak for all, who profit most from the drugs and pills and mass immunizations for disease-names they have invented. Over and over it is the same people—many times familiar names if you look for them—speaking new versions of old lies and announcing again and again new epidemics to replace used-up ones. If you watch, and remember, you will also recognize the same old Heaven-and-Hell scare-you-to-death alarms and warnings, and panic-button pushing in a hand-set for the Swine Flu or AIDS or IFAI bugshit along with just-patented approved poisons guaranteed to cure the so-called incurable disease. Those who orchestrate this, who plan and promote and profit most are not ignorant or deluded, they are evil. And it is those few who must be faced, who must be confronted and confounded, or all is lost.”

Hank stopped, this expression grave.

I was shocked. I hadn’t heard him sound so down and pessimistic before, and until now he’d never spoken of all being “lost.”

But his sour expression, and apparent depression, was momentary. After a few seconds he stood up again, stuck both hands in his back pockets of his trousers, and said briskly, “We have two of the worst outside, wrapped up by Sheldon like cocoons. Two of those who know well what they are doing, two of the worst. But they will never admit they know, will not confess their part in this monstrous deception. Even if they did, to us, they would later deny—successfully, for we are already discredited while they are gods of medicine and money—”

“Hank, deception?” That was Dane again. “And monstrous? I don’t think you meant what happened to the Vungers.”

“I didn’t.”

“And after what you just said, I’m not sure I believe any of it, but I certainly don’t believe you if you’re suggesting attempts to control the IFAI epidemic are some kind of deception. Because there’s no question it’s a terrible disease, a plague, people are dying—”

“Dane, my dear, people are dying all the time. And they die of whatever doctors put on death certificates, yes? People die of chemotherapy or massive uncontrollable infection after chemotherapy and their death certificates all say some kind of cancer. Old men and women in nursing homes die of over-drugging with psychotropic and sedatives and their death certificates report failure of heart, lungs, kidney, whatever—at death everything fails. So name any one of those failures and it’s true. Babies die within days of hypodermic injections to protect them against seven deadly dangers and their death certificates say ‘SIDS,’ or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is acceptable medical tautology like dead due to dying. You say no?”

Hank paused, waiting for whatever comment Dane might wish to make. She didn’t make any, remained silent, and I thought she looked a little frightened. Whether it was because of Hank himself, or what he’d been saying, I didn’t know; but her expression was almost one of alarm.

Hank continued, “Add up all those diagnoses, misdiagnoses, guesses, and deceptions from all those death certificates and they turn into statistics. Medical statistics of morbidity, mortality, disease-name incidence also epidemics. In USA we have more different epidemics than anybody, we are lousy with them: epidemics of heart disease, other cardiovascular diseases, cancer diseases, practically everything is diseases. Consider the Swine Flu epidemic. We know now—there wasn’t any, not a single case, it didn’t happen, didn’t exist, it and the Swine Flu virus were made up by those ‘few,’ the death gods, I have mentioned. Since there was not anything resembling a Swine Flu virus anywhere in all of existence it was difficult to make a vaccine from it. But by sheer persistence they managed to do it anyhow. Then they shot barrels of whatever it was into millions of humans to protect them from it. Gave them millions or billions of the people’s money. Or consider the AIDS epidemic. Which, alas, is also neither a disease nor infection—”

“Stop it!” That wasn’t me this time; it was Dane. She continued somewhat heatedly, “That’s a terrible thing to imply when thousands of people are dying...” She let the words trail off, apparently recalling what Hank had said to her the last time she’d mentioned deaths attributed to IFAI.

Then, even more heatedly, almost angrily, she went on, “The entire scientific world can’t be wrong! What if you’re wrong? What if the IFAI epidemic is getting worse, and Dr. Wintersong really has developed a vaccine to prevent it? If you had your way, you’d make people afraid of being immunized, you’d allow them to refuse...” Dane stopped again, shaking her head, and finally said simply, “Damn you!”

“I know,” Hank said gently. “Is difficult. We are so used to letting experts do to us what they think should be done it has become almost habit to agree even when experts are lunatics. That is most dangerous in medicine, where truth can improve and prolong our lives, but lies—even simple error if inflicted upon all—can hasten all our deaths. You say maybe they are right, I am wrong. If so, so what? How many thousands, or millions, can my error sicken or kill? My error does nothing to people, it leaves them alone. But if I am right? What might results be of their error? And what if it is not error but deliberate design, part of a monstrous purpose kept secret from its victims?”

Hank stepped from behind his desk, began pacing slowly again, both hands still in his hip pockets. “Concerning Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness, this deadly IFAI, you also say the entire scientific world can’t be wrong. Of course it can be. Usually is. But where do you get this ‘entire’ anyway? How about Dr. Hernandez, me? I am part of the scientific world. So are several hundred physicians in POCUEH plus many biologists and virologists and engineers and housewives and husbands. Plus thousands more in USA and around the world. But their voices are like mine—only those I speak to within earshot, in person, like you and Sheldon, know I believe most IFAI promoters are dangerous ignoramuses or worse. Such unacceptable hearsay remains private, is not published, is not written in newspapers or verified on TV.”

Hank flashed a quick smile at me, then turned and began pacing again, saying, “I have unusual sources of information—some of it secret, or supposed to be many thousands in POCUEH, plus people in dozens of other organizations working with us, even a few in CDC, NIH, FDA, and elsewhere. So I can tell you about results from the first test of Wintersong’s IFAI vaccine. Of one thousand mice, in ten weeks, four hundred died. So they started over by cremating the four-hundred dead mice along with all records about them, saying the test was with only the remaining six-hundred mice.”

I heard Dane suck in her breath. Then she said, “That’s not possible. Hank, that’s deliberate fraud, outright deception. Scientists wouldn’t do that.”

Hank stopped pacing near us, smiled at Dane. “Among those six hundred mice, many developed malignant tumors, others staggering gait, a few developed a peculiar semi-paralysis with tremors, just lay in their cages and wiggled, trembled, jerked.”

Dane pulled her head to one side, eyes squeezed shut, but she didn’t say anything.

“So that experiment was entirely abandoned,” Hank went on pleasantly. “Meaning it never happened. Wintersong perfected his vaccine some more, maybe diluted it with Coca Cola made with fluoridated water, nobody has informed me of this so I am guessing. The next experiment was five hundred guinea pigs injected with reduced doses of the bugshit—the vaccine. Only two percent died completely. I have heard the most recent animal tests, which were fully reported to the Food and Drug Administration, achieved a zero percent mortality, complete protection against IFAI, and minimal side effects.”

Dane still looked as if she’d swallowed something sour. So I said, “How much of that was exaggeration, Hank? Or pure invention?”

“Only the Coca Cola.”

“But haven’t there been human tests since then, trying the vaccine out on people?”

“Of course, is the only way to make some kind of record for FDA to approve. Even devout vivisectionists know what happens to mice and guinea pigs and elephants is a little different from what happens with people. So three thousand people got to volunteer for experimental protection against IFAI. No fatalities. I think six died from profound immune-system depression resulting in antibiotic-resistant pneumonia. But those deaths were not attributable to the vaccine, since all six people obviously died of pneumonia, which was acceptable.”

Hank took a deep breath, looked from me to Dane and said intensely, “I do not exaggerate, we are truly in peril. Because when medical opinions become laws enforced by the State, any bassackward ‘authorized-and-approved’ whim can become law of the land and then rational argument is ended—illegal, forbidden!”

After thirty seconds I was really getting twitchy. Five seconds more and I said, “Well, ah...”

Hank said soberly, “I do not know how to stop the forces of our own government, of medicine, mega-business, and secret unnamed assassins from achieving their determination to immunize and drug everybody to death. I can not be sure now what will happen to our hundred lawsuits. I do not know how to prevent our imminent arrest, torture, and execution. It is almost incidental, but I do not even know what to do with—” he waved a hand toward his driveway.

Yeah, his driveway where sat Dr. Wintersong’s black Cadillac. In which Cadillac was Wintersong, plotting; and Belking, grunting and wiggling murderously. Assuming they hadn’t suffocated.

We all sat in lengthening silence. It stretched, thickened. And my mind was blank. At first. But then pictures began moving unbidden behind my eyes, slowly swirling among fragments of thought.

I recalled the first time I’d seen Hank...the flip book of Jock-Jock with his head snapping forward, lips spreading, the pale brown eyes and velvety skin of Lucinda, and the sound of precious Precious squeaking “Maaa!” I remembered beautiful Rusty, dying, dead, his brown eyes glazing into orbs of glass, and ugliness of the Vunger’s severed heads, Helga’s still, empty eyes, Guenther’s wild eyes rolling, Grinner’s body jerking as my bullets hit him, thick redness spilling from his mouth, flames licking at palm leaves and turning freeze-dried animals into ashes reaching for rows of mounted heads bolted against the walls.

My mind stopped, froze briefly, then moved again. One thought, one picture, stayed with me, melted, changed, and I felt a slow surge of warmth rise up in me and flush my face. I didn’t remember getting to my feet, but I was out of my chair, standing, then stepping to the edge of Hank’s desk.

I leaned forward, resting my hands on the desktop, and said rapidly, “Maybe there’s a way. What do you think of this?”

And for a full minute I laid it on him, starting with the picture that had melted in my mind and then building it up, getting excited as my own words began to help me visualize the scene more clearly, watching it work.

When I finished, Hank frowned, thinking, looking fierce.

Behind me, Dane said almost shrilly, “Shell, you can’t, you can’t do that!”

I glanced at her, smiling slightly. “Sure I can.”

“But that’s... too awful, too cruel—he might die!”

“Yeah,” I said, “I suppose he might. With any luck.”

Then Hank began nodding briskly, knifelike nose slicing the air. “It is possible, I think. At least, since I am a doctor, the medical parts can be consummated perhaps...probably. The rest, that will be up to you mostly.”

“Will be? Does that mean you think it could work.”

“Si. At least, is possible. If successful, most of our problems might be solved, partly, maybe, mostly.”

“Then you’ll give it a shot?”

Hank stopped frowning fiercely. His face smoothed, the bright blue eyes became brighter, almost glowing. At last, he smiled.

“Si!”

And I said, grinning, “Bueno!”

The game was afoot.

Some of it excited me, some worried me, and some of it plain scared the hell out of me.

But I knew how we were really going to do it. God help us.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

It had taken us six hours, but everything looked so good I was beginning to think we might actually pull it off.

I was inside the Omega Medical Research Center again, more specifically, inside the private laboratory next to Dr. Wintersong’s office, where this afternoon—no, yesterday afternoon now—I’d found the severed heads of Rusty, Guenther, Helga: two living, one dead. And I wasn’t alone, all five of us were here. With me were Henry Hernandez, M.D., and Dane Smith; and here with the three of us were Dr. William Wintersong and Hobart “Hobie” Belking. At least, their heads were here.

Unquestionably, we had been breaking all kinds of laws, probably including some we’d never heard of. But I, at least, had been doing it joyously and without the least reserve or regret. Hank, too, I’m pretty sure, had taken some pleasure in performing his complicated tasks. It was difficult to be certain about Dane. Since we’d arrived at Omega she’d said little, for the most part just silently, smiling, or frowning, often appearing to be doing both at the same time.

We’d arrived here shortly before dawn. Dawn, on Sunday morning. Soon lots of people would be going to church; we might be going to services in the slam. There had been no guards in evidence here this early a.m., but I’d had to ignore a plastic DO NOT CROSS banner at the entrance gate and break a police seal on the front door of Omega’s main building to get us all inside. For which crime alone, I feared the penalty could be humongous; but, under the circumstances that was the least of my humongous concerns.

Now, inside the small cluttered laboratory, brightly illumined by overhead fluorescent lamps, I looked around, one more time. Wintersong and Belking were still unconscious, but the drug that had put them under should be wearing off in a few minutes more, according to Hank. He’d sedated each of them a couple of hours ago, before we’d chopped off their heads.

Actually, we hadn’t really cut their lousy heads off. It only looked that way. But it sure as hell did look that way. We’d even shaved Wintersong’s scalp slick as a whistle. Hank insisted on that, saying when the doc came to, if he saw his reflection in a mirror—which he would; we’d made sure of that—he’d know something was amiss if his scalp wasn’t slick as a whistle. Or words to that effect. So everything was done except for the “finishing touches” which Hank would be taking care of any minute now. He’d been standing near Wintersong, checking him with a stethoscope, listening to his breathing, doing doctor-type things.

There hadn’t been any words exchanged among the three of us for a while.

Dane said in a small voice, “I am beginning to have serious misgivings.”

“No kidding?” I said, smiling stiffly. “That’s odd.”

She smiled back at me, frowning, brows knitted over the luminous green eyes; her folded arms clutching a compact camcorder against her breasts. Since both Hank and I were expected to be occupied with other things, that had become Dane’s job, to videotape the sights and sounds of the next hour or minute, or whatever it turned out to be when it happened, if anything significant did happen.

But her initial enthusiasm, apparently, had diminished somewhat during recent hours. She went from “Marvelous! Incredible!” and “What a fantastic final chapter for my book,” to “serious misgivings.”

That was the problem: all those misgivings. After Dane’s last comment, she’d fallen silent, hugging her camcorder, gazing fixedly at the chops of William Wintersong, M.D.

I took another gaze at the chops myself, thinking: Man, that head sure does look dead. I stood only a couple of feet from where it rested, exactly where Rusty’s head had been yesterday, and it truly did look like the McCoy, the real thing, a severed human head—alive, fed by tubes and monitored by thin electrical wires rising from the shaved skull. Those wires ran over beams above, and then down to the banks of gauges and dials, wide paper tape unrolling silently over there. The two lengths of plastic tubing ended at the squat barrel-shaped pump meant to recirculate nutrient solution to and from the brain, the pump making its whispery chshh-chshh sound.

Getting Wintersong muscled into place, sitting erect so his head would be at the level where we wanted it, had been our most difficult and time-consuming job, but both Hank and I were pleased with the result. I thought it was an almost-beautiful work of gruesome art. The doctor’s limp, bare form—he was naked as a new nudist—was seated on a heavy box and held erect by crude-looking but effective straps secured to the four-sided wooden frame around him. A few of those straps were heavy Velcro, the rest twisted strips from sheets supplied by Mrs. Hernandez.

The decapitated heads of Guenther, Helga, and Rusty were long gone, but all the experimental equipment remained behind. So we knew each of those heads had been positioned on a yard-square piece of polished inch-thick mahogany, directly above a six-inch hole in the board’s center, the hole allowing insertion of wires, tubes, probes from below. Unfortunately, Wintersong’s head wouldn’t go through a six-inch hole, and still had his body attached to it. So, in order to preserve, perhaps even improve, the illusion, we’d sawed one of the boards in two down the middle and, once Wintersong was strapped into place, put it together again around his neck.

It was a tight fit, but looked grand. Especially since around the doctor’s throat was a quarter-inch strip of elastic Velcro that could be tightened or loosened easily—not yet very tight because we didn’t want Wintersong to stop breathing entirely. We intended that he breathe with considerable difficulty, yes; and with discomfort noticeable where, presumably, his neck had been sliced like a delicatessen salami; but also that he continue to do some breathing.

From where I stood, Wintersong’s plastic-covered bare feet could be seen touching the floor below that five-sided, bottomless, framework enclosing his body. His hips and both legs were enclosed in whole bag “splints,” plastic bags filled with body-temperature water under pressure. Much of that plus such incongruities as taut twisted-sheet ropes extending from Wintersong to a desk on one side and a heavy air compressor on the other, would have been visible from just about any place in the laboratory except where Wintersong himself was. Which impressed me as good enough. More than good enough. Up there where Wintersong, or his head, rested slightly below my eye level, everything looked perfect.

Dr. Wintersong, upon seeing himself—what there was of him—reflected in a nearby mirror we’d thoughtfully provided, was also supposed instantly to believe those gadgets descended on down into his brain. Into his very own brain. Which, experimentally speaking had to be far, far different from someone else’s brain. But would he believe? Sure. Sure, I told myself a second time, otherwise why the hell go to all this trouble? With any luck he’d buy the whole package. Sure.

Earlier I’d asked Hank about one of my pesky misgivings, namely, “What if the doc gets cramps in his toes, or is seized by an uncontrollable impulse to scratch —”

“Not to worry, Sheldon.”

“That’s easy for you to say, doctor. Hell, that’s what doctors always say, right? I mean, do you think Wintersong will really believe he’s a head alone?”

“Your question is, will Wintersong, upon becoming indelibly impressed by his perplexed reflection before him, wonder frantically, ‘Is that all there is?’ or will he suspect devious trickery? Will he truly believe himself still whole or departed?”

“Close enough. Speaking loosely. However, I think you’re getting a little giddy, right?”

“Yes, plus enormous anxiety. I am worried about me, you, Dane, ten thousand others, all of POCUEH, our hundred lawsuits, a quarter-billion U.S. people who are about to become saved from IFAI now, and IFAI-squared later, if he himself to believe it. On the other hand—he may not. So the answer to your question is: Si, es possible, pero possiblamente no. Or quien sabe?”

“That’s about what I figured.”

“We must do those things I have mentioned, to you already, doing, as you say, the convincers. As, discussion of allowing more compressed oxygen mixture—substitute for his missing lungs—to activate his voice box. Unless he accepts he can speak, and believes it technically feasible, we are not, you and I, going to hear much from him that is interesting, informative, or life-saving. And you must remember to ask me about Maillander. Wintersong knows that name well, so it will be perhaps the most important convincer.”

Hank had discussed that bit with me earlier. Dr. Charles Maillander, now seventy years old, could probably without exaggeration have been called a neurosurgeon’s neurosurgeon. Twice Nobel nominee, but never Laureate, he was the widely admired practitioner-instructor pioneer in brain microsurgery who had most impressed our own Dr. Wintersong in medical school. Maillander had at one time been briefly interested in research into the possibility of cranial transplants—some years before the now notorious “Monkey Head” brouhaha in the media—of which Maillander then approved without reservations. He had even worked for a few months with Dr. Duncan Sherwood, primarily helping him develop nutrient solutions that might succeed in keeping those monkeys’ heads alive for more than minutes. None did; all died. But that’s progress.

Years ago, a hugely prestigious medical journal had published an approving article about Maillander’s brain-feeding experiments, and their “great promise.” The author: William Wintersong, M.D. So, no question, he would recognize the name.

Hank had the stethoscope in his ears again, black-plastic mouth pressed against Wintersong’s bare back. Nodding abruptly, he said, “Now, I think. Yes.”

“Now what?”

“Now we make the head unaware it is attached to a body.”

His black medical bag was open on a small table next to him. Hank reached inside it, brought out a large hypodermic syringe and a paper-wrapped needle. After stripping off the paper, he affixed the needle onto the syringe’s end and reached into his bag again. When he brought out a small rubber-topped vial containing an ounce or two of clear liquid.

“This is Xylocaine,” he said, sucking fluid from the vial into the syringe’s barrel. “In my bag are twenty-five gauge spinal needles, and we will do two nerve blocks at the cervical level—that is, we’ll give him two injections. His head will not know there is a body anywhere near it.”

I sighed. “You know, Hank this might work.”

“It had better. Now that we have committed all of...this.” Hank tightened the Velcro strap around Wintersong’s neck stepped back. He shrugged his shoulders, expression bleak.

I looked around again. Part of “this” was what appeared to be the head of billionaire Belking, about where Guenther’s severed skull had once rested with those straining, rolling eyes I so well remembered. But we’d done a simple job on Hobart, merely knocking him out with a drug from Hank’s bag and fitting one of those yard-square mahogany boards with a hole in it around his neck, leaving his wrists and ankles taped. No need for needles or whatever “blocks” Hank had mentioned. He had no speaking part, or any part at all, really—except to be seen by Wintersong, hopefully as one more “convincer,” if any more was needed by then.

When Wintersong opened his eyes, the first thing he would see was his reflection in the mirror we’d placed three feet in front of him, that and maybe Hank and me examining his head with interest. But if he rolled his eyes left, somewhat as Guenther had done yesterday, he would be able to observe, reflected in the heavy glass of a carefully-placed cabinet, what looked remarkably like the severed head of Hobart Belking, kaput, Hank had given Belking a larger shot than Wintersong’s, to be sure he’d just sort of lie there as a prop.

Hank snapped his black bag shut, everything put away, and said, “That is all we can do, Sheldon. Now there is nothing except to wait.”

So that’s what we did.

* * * * * *

I thought I saw the flicker of an eyelid.

And for a moment I felt a twinge of doubt about what we might have done to William Wintersong, M.D., because God only knew what the effect might be upon him if he really believed. But then I remembered all the rest, and there were no more twinges.

I just watched the eye that, I thought, might have flickered, thinking: When Wintersong’s head, such as it was, became clear enough, with reason ascendant; when he could clearly see what was before him, and near him; when he could hear, even speak; and when—if it indeed happened—he became fully aware of the unspeakable and criminally-insane thing this sonofabitch Shell Scott and that anti-science quack Henry Hernandez had done to him—then, well, it would be interesting to watch.

That eyelid flickered again, then both of them, twitched. Wintersong blinked. Blinked again—and those eyes stayed open. Open, getting wider and wider.

We waited.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

When those eyes opened, stayed open, I was on Wintersong’s right, only two or three feet from him, Hank on his left. The eyes rested on my chest, crawled up to my face, slid over to Hank. Wintersong’s features twisted in sudden alarm, something close to panic. Probably he’d tried to move his arms or legs, and been unable to, unable even to detect their presence. His mouth opened, eyes flipping right and left, erratically, and then stopped. Stopped, fixed straight ahead, midway between Hank and me, frozen on the mirror before him. He stared at the reflection of himself, of his hairless head, uncomprehending—at first uncomprehending.

Long seconds passed. I could hear breath sighing from his open mouth, slowly out and then in, again, and again, faster and faster, until at last he sucked his breath in with a sharp squeaking sound and held it. He held the breath in, mouth wide open, eyes enormous-then Wintersong screamed.

I mean, he screamed like a terrified woman, like a banshee, like a factory whistle—but there wasn’t anything funny about it, nothing amusing; it was a horrible, ear-shredding, terrible sound.

Wintersong screamed and kept on screaming. I don’t know how long that lasted. Too long. But, finally, he stopped, staring silently lips moving slowly, a smear of saliva shining on his chin.

Hank stepped closer to Wintersong’s head. He bent forward, peering at the staring eyes, and said quietly, “Good morning, Wintersong. It is Sunday morning. We have a few questions for you.”

Nothing. The eyes kept staring, slack lips moving rhythmically. Hank turned his head, looked at me. After a few seconds he scowled, pressing his teeth together, as though trying to convey some kind of message to me. A message, apparently of turbulent discontent.

Yeah, I remembered. Finally I remembered. I had been so fascinated by Wintersong’s reactions I’d forgotten Hank and I were supposed to engage in bits of dialogue to nail down the con. But those reactions themselves made me think little if any nailing-down would be needed.

Even so, I said, “Is something wrong, Hank? Didn’t Maillander say the doc would be able to talk okay?”

“Verdad.” Hank relieved, stopped scowling at me. “Dr. Maillander guaranteed he could speak.”

It appeared that Wintersong did not realize he had just used his voice in those horrendous screams. But was he even listening to Hank?

Apparently he was. Both eyes moved left, and up slightly, to Hank’s face.

After a pause, Hank said to him, “You can speak if you wish. I am sure of it. But perhaps a little more pressure, a little more of compressed-air mixture from the tank. Sheldon?”

I moved to my left, pretended to be fooling with an imaginary valve on an imaginary tank. Hank said sharply, “Enough! Take care, Sheldon. As I informed you, is merely substitute for missing lungs, I do not wish you to blow his brains out!”

I winced, for just a moment. Then said, “This about right?”

“Bueno. Is good. Perfectamente.”

Then Hank looked at Wintersong again. “Speak, speak. Is possible. Dr. Maillander could not wait around, but he guaranteed to me you would be able to converse with only small difficulty, once fully conscious. We have questions you must answer for us. And I do not know how much time you...how much time we have.”

I winced again; couldn’t help it. But I guess doctors have to be cruel sometimes. For the patient’s good.

The patient slid his eyes from Hank’s face, back to the mirror, staring glassily. Almost a minute went by. Wintersong studied himself in the mirror, his features rigid, unmoving. Then at last, he opened his mouth and I heard: “Hhhaayy.”

Close enough; soon I realized Wintersong was merely saying “I.” But he was saying it like a man—no, like the head of a man—not certain it would be possible to do it. And that, as much as anything else, even more than the screams, convinced me he’d bought our con. The game, truly, was afoot.

“Hhhaayy ahmm...Daahhctorr...Winter song.”

“Yes. Wintersong,” Hank said briskly. “It will become easier, more natural, soon. The entrance and exit of air mixture-artificial inhalation-exhalation is controlled by computer to mimic your natural...trust me. My first question for you is—”

“I amm... I am Dahctorr, doctor, doctor... I am doctor...doctor Winter...song. I am doctor Wintersong, I—Oh...my...God! My God, my God, my God, my God...”

It took a while, two or three minutes, but finally Hank pinched Wintersong’s tear-wet cheek, got his attention, put his face six inches from Wintersong’s and said, “Let us not waste more valuable time. My first question for you is this: The FDA has just given accelerated approval for Phase Two—human—tests of your IFAI vaccine, because animal experiments were reported to them as successful. In truth, has your vaccine produced any immunity to anything? In anything? Be advised, I know of those falsified results in your first OM-IF—Omega-IFAI—experiment, the not counting of dead ones. Not counting, also, the dying mice. And, of a surety, you understand it would be useless for you to further dissemble now, now is too late. You do understand that, do you not?”

It took about half a minute. Then, “Yes.”

“I repeat, has your IFAI vaccine produced even partial immunity to the virus in any experimental animals?”

“No.”

After that, the rest was easy. Well, sort of.

If pulling a man’s guts out tying granny knots in them, and then putting them in backwards is easy, then the rest of it was easy. I like to think, when it’s necessary, I can be as tough and mean as the next guy. Because sometimes, if you’re too gentle, considerate, kind—not quite mean enough—you can blow it, get yourself killed, or even get other people killed, which is almost as bad. In which case kindness becomes brutality. Which, it did not appear, was going to be a problem for Hank Hernandez.

He said intensely, “I have read all your papers, Wintersong. And all others concerning IFAI by virologists, molecular biologists, immunologists. I have seen your celebrated microphotographs of the IFAI virus. Nobody else has taken such photographs, because nobody else has seen it. How does it happen that only one man has ‘isolated’ the deadly IFAI virus? If it exists, and can be isolated, should not dozens of our brilliant virologists be able to produce pure cultures of it?”

“It exists, of course...of course it exists. The techniques for isolation, for producing the initial culture, are extremely complex, delicate, difficult... laymen cannot possibly understand the scientific protocol—”

“I am a doctor, you idiota! I am not laymen who pucker and kiss science asses, I am a physician, a surgeon—remember? If your IFAI bug exists, show it to me, give me some.”

“That is ridiculous...ridiculous. I isolated, yes, I alone isolated, the virus. I took microphotographs of it—”

“I told you, Wintersong, I have seen your photographs. Not only reproductions in journals, but the originals, glossy enlargements. Your virus looks like—what, The Crab Nebula maybe on a foggy night? Or electron-cooked chewing gum. Spit? Did you take pictures of some spit? What is it, Wintersong?”

Wintersong’s eyes were sort of jerking, moving rapidly left and right, pausing, then moving again, as if there was a tremor in muscles controlling them. He was blinking his eyes rapidly. “I don’t know what it is. Nobody does, really. But it probably is the IFAI virus—”

“Not if there is no IFAI virus.”

“That’s ridiculous. Ridiculous. There is one. Billions of them. I took microphotos of some. But it keeps...changing. That is, they keep changing.”

“Ah! Of course, changing, altering form, as do all viruses and bacteria, as I have dozens of times seen, as many others have seen, photographed, written—it is normal pleomorphism, thus you yourself must have observed—”

“No. Ridiculous. There is no such thing as pleomorphism. That’s quackery, existing only in the...minds of quacks.”

“If the IFAI virus continually changed form, how could you make a vaccine from it? From which form did you make it?”

“I—that’s not...it was difficult.”

“It was impossible! Verdad? Not even the great Dr. Wintersong could do the impossible.”

“No, I did it. I have perfected the vaccine to prevent IFAI—the deadly epidemic, IFAI—I...it perhaps, perhaps needs more testing, more... It is a great, great achievement, worthy of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. I will probably receive the No—”

“Bullshit!” Hank stuck his face about three inches from Wintersong’s head, roaring, “I know in Omega you call the vaccine bugshit, but it is really bullshit, verdad? It is a hoax, a fraud, allopathic bassackward dumbness—bullshit! Admit it!”

“No, it is the safe, perfect Wintersong vaccine, I will deserve the Nobel—”

“Sheldon!”

I jumped. I knew Hank could get loud, but that was loud.

“Yessir,” I said. “What? What?”

“Stop the air mixture, turn it off. Pull out the wires from this—this—head. Pull out the tubes, turn if off—”

“No—no—no-no-no-no...”

That was the head, of course.

Hank again, face about three inches, maybe two inches, from Wintersong’s bugging eyes. Almost snarling. “Say what is the IFAI vaccine, the truth.”

“I...don’t know. Not exactly. But it won’t hurt anybody.”

“Caramba! It won’t prevent IFAI, either, verdad, bastardo?”

“No...well, if people believe it will, it will probably prevent many cases. There is the well known placebo effect, which can cure many people, millions.”

Hank had straightened up, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, clenching his teeth. “Ai,” he cried. “Your IFAI vaccine will kill people. Cripple them. Like the Swine Flu vaccine, like smallpox vaccine in Africa. Like all your goddamn worse-than-useless vaccines. It will kill, cripple, diminish destroy—”

“No, it is safe. Only more animal tests.”

“Bastardo! Idiota! I am out of patience with you, totalmente! You persist in lying, lying, from years of habit, yes.”

Hank stuck his face inches from Wintersong’s again, and his voice took on that humming vibrato or quivering ululation I’d heard many times before but never been able to really describe. It couldn’t be described accurately anyway; it had to be felt, zonking eardrums and plucking dendrites, or synapses, whatever, those nerve things are.

“I am glad Maillander and I cut your goddamn head off. Next I will cut your nose off—”

“No.”

“Then your ears, whatever is left, I am going to whittle you away—”

“No—”

“Yes. One more lie, one more of anything less than the whole truth, and...Look at you!”

Hank stepped aside, his body no longer concealing the mirror. Pointing to it, but staring fiercely at Wintersong, he went on, “Look at yourself, what is left. You are a pigmy, maybe eight inches high, a nothing! Now you see yourself, for the first time, as you really are. Observe: William Wintersong, M.D. this nothing!”

Wintersong observed. Minutes earlier, when he’d seen his reflected image for the first time, he had screamed horrendously, an ugly blood-chilling sound. But, then, there had been sudden shock, rising horror, undoubtedly uncomprehending disbelief. Now he was fully alert, he’d been speaking at least temporarily distracted from his condition. Now, he again observed, gazed upon himself, looked long upon William Wintersong, M.D., and began to die.

Certainly that was the impression I got. Because it was as the livingness, or force, a silent humming of invisible energies within him—what Hank had once spoken of to me as the power within that formed each of us from sperm and ovum, made of us women and men, still animals all, blood and bone and heart and brain—diminished in him, faded, began leaking out of Wintersong.

It worried me. But not Hank. Or, if it did, his worry wasn’t evident, and it sure didn’t temper his attitude, an attitude almost of savagery. He just waited, watching hawk-like, as Wintersong seemed to shrink, to become somehow less, diminished, dwindling; then, when he was ready, Hank bored on in.

“Wintersong, listen closely, with your life listen to me. I say the epidemic of your Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness is the disease not of civilization but of allopathic civilization—your pharmaceutical poisons, your immune-suppressing drugs and vampiric vaccines, your mistakes in attacking myriad symptoms, preventing rational treatment of any causes of those disorders on this earth and its people...that, and the pollution of land and sea and sky by multiplied and mingled wastes and toxins, each year a hundred thousand tons of airborne death unpunished, and food crops grown with chemicals made not by God but greedy men, weakened crops grown in pesticide-poisoned earth, in the interest not of human value but of more dollars for the bastardos who turn food into waste before it is eaten. It is these things, and more unending, that derange nature, poison earth, weaken immune defenses, sicken bodies, and produce departures from wholeness that assbackward allopaths call Latin-name diseases...and there is no IFAI virus involved in this at all. Or—Wintersong—will you say I am wrong?” Hank spat out those last words like an oath, and waited, glaring.

“...No.”

Hank sighed. “But you did produce a vaccine.”

“I had to. Hobie insisted.”

“Hobart Belking, of Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals, insisted you produce a vaccine—even if it was impossible? Even if there does not exist an IFAI virus from which to make a vaccine?”

“Yes.”

“Why? The obvious answer, I of course know. But the whole truth, Wintersong. While there is time for you...and for us. The truth.”

“Money. Incredible amounts of money. Even I was astonished. Hobie explained for me the many avenues, many ways.”

A curious thing was happening. Since looking long at himself, at his head with tubes and wires descending to his naked scalp, Wintersong had not only appeared to shrink somehow, to become less alive, but he was now responding, speaking much like an automaton. His voice was virtually without inflection, mechanical, almost unreal. His expression, too, was much less animated, less mobile.

Now the flat voice issued from his moving mouth in a face like a waxen mask. Neither in voice or features was there any evidence of emotion at all, as if Wintersong no longer cared what might be heard from him by others, or thought of him by others.

If so, that probably meant he would speak to us truly—at least, speak the truth as he knew it, whatever it was he really believed.

Wintersong was continuing, in those dull, almost unwavering tones, “Hobie assumed there would be passage of legislation for mass immunization requiring everyone to be immunized. He expected it within a month or two after my IFAI vaccine received final approval. Which we knew it would, soon. Figures were more than six billion dollars into the general economy—through the medical community—of which two billion would accrue to Belking-Gray Pharmaceuticals. Or to Hobie, practically speaking. Two billion gross, but it’s nearly all net profit, the vaccine costs only pennies. The assumption was a wholesale price of eight dollars per c.c. of Belking-Gray/Wintersong vaccine, with pediatricians, hospitals, general practioners charging approximately twenty-five dollars for each injection of the antigen. Much would depend upon amount approved for protection of the citizenry by the government programs, Medicare-Medicaid, but Hobie expected the federal position would be a reasonable one.”

I got a small shiver somewhere between my ears. Not because of the corruption testified to by Wintersong’s words, delivered in that flat and unmusical monotone, but at his mention of government programs—whether “the public” desired it or not, unquestionably each citizen of the citizenry might not only get it but be required to pay for the dubious privilege.

I dimly recalled a Hernandez tirade about multi-billion-dollar payments for approved medical treatments and only for such “accepted-and-approved” treatments, thus ensuring payment of tax dollars only for “the one-percent that doesn’t work” but inevitably nothing for the other ninety-nine percent. This resulting in further enrichment, and entrenchment, of “the goddamn bassackward allopathic monopoly.”

Wintersong had stopped speaking of dollars and protection and profit, right after another comment about Hobart Belking’s assumed “scenario.” He had been silent for several seconds, long seconds, his eyes straining far to his left and just as his mouth began opening while his eyes grew very wide I realized what it was Wintersong was peering at, straining to see.

Belking. I’d actually forgotten about Hobart Belking for the last few minutes. Hank and I had carefully placed the big cabinet well to Wintersong’s left, Belking’s “severed” head clearly reflected in the middle of its heavy glass-face, should Wintersong look that way. He just hadn’t tried to look that far left—until now.

His eyes were about as wide as they could get, and at last from his open mouth came “Hobie? HOBIE?”

It took a while to get his attention again. He was going on about “Hobie!” and “Him, too?” and “You killed him, he’s dead, dead!”

And about then I had an idea. Didn’t know if it was a good idea, just an idea, but it seemed suddenly clear to me that the doctor’s greatest financial and moral support had for many years come from billionaire Belking, a man with enough influence to protect Wintersong from almost anything coming down the pike. Without that powerful friend, without that protection, Wintersong would really be in the soup.

So as Hank started saying, “No, no, he’s all—”

I interrupted “Woops! Yes, all caught up, washed up, kaput—too bad, Wintersong.” Hank seemed puzzled for a moment by my rapidly wiggling eyebrows, then smiled.

I went on, “You should be glad we tried the experiment on him first, Wintersong. That could be you back there. Fortunately, Hank and Maillander learned from the Belking mess what not to do. I hope you realize how lucky you are, doctor.”

Judging by what I guessed was Wintersong’s expression, he didn’t feel all that lucky. And, again, he was unresponsive to questions for a while. Hank said, “You would be wise to cooperate. Mr. Belking—your Hobie—cannot help you now. Only I, and Mr. Scott, can help you now. Do not worry about anything else, doctor. Your concern should be, must be, immediate answers to our questions. Like, who was responsible for the attempt to kill me? Who, and why?”

Wintersong’s voice now seemed even thinner, more frail, with less life in it. “I explained the situation, the urgent necessity for your death, to Hobie. He understood and took appropriate action immediately, by ordering it done, and told them to make your death appear accidental. I remember it was their decision that the means would be vehicular homicide.”

Hank slanted his eyes toward me, chopping his teeth together a couple of times. “That the means would be vehicular homicided—why? Because I got a glimpse into your laboratory at Omega?”

“That, of course. But more than that, much more. Many things. Many.”

He paused, and Hank prompted him, “Specifically?”

“Guenther and Helga contracted IFAI at Omega. Our tests proved it, as much as such tests can... Whatever it was, they were unquestionably very ill, dying. But then they went to Hernandez.”

Wintersong spoke steadily, automatically, gazing straight ahead into the mirror, not looking either at Hank or me, just letting it roll out.

“And he cured them, eliminated the virus, strengthened their immune systems. At least he would claim that, take credit for it, say it was his treatment. When we did the tests on Guenther and Helga again—before employing in the experiment—they were... there was nothing wrong with them. They were healthy.”

Another of those long, odd pauses. “No virus, not even antibodies to the virus. No immune suppression. Excellent parameters. It was probably spontaneous remission, one of those things...or the result of previous orthodox treatment, delayed, delayed reaction. But it was certain Hernandez would claim he cured them, saved them from a disease that everybody has been told is incurable... invariable fatal...certain death. And...and if the people learned a greedy quack cured two terminal victims of IFAI, cured people infected with the deadly virus, then there would be no need, no need for my vaccine, the Belking-Gray/Wintersong vaccine, it would mean the end of my work for the good of all mankind. And the Nobel....”

Wintersong stopped for almost a minute this time. But Hank didn’t say anything, just waited. So did I—though I had a couple of questions I was eager to ask this guy myself, before he decided to shut up, or just pooped out entirely.

Then, “When I reported this, and the many other dangers to Hobie, he became furious. Raging. And angry with me, abusive. I had been concerned, worried, about Hernandez’s threat to return to Omega with a court order. Legal permission to—to monitor our humane treatment of animals used in medical experiments to help cure people—and to examine the premises, all our buildings...which could have included my office, the private laboratory where my animals...Guenther and Helga...the heads...were already. And the experiments were succeeding, brilliant experiments, filled with promise for mankind, for the sick and dying, brain-damaged. Hobie was furious. I remember he said, ‘we should have killed the old sonofabitch when he bugged your ass.’ He was right, of course, he was always right.”

Hank sighed, looked at me raising an eyebrow, glancing at Wintersong’s again silent head and then back to me. It was, I concluded, a plain enough invitation for me to chime in if I felt like it, and I felt like it. Hank turned his back on Wintersong.

I stepped in front of Wintersong, blocking his view of the mirror. I said, “Dr. Wintersong, my turn. Two men tried to kill me, using knives, on a Friday night a while back in the Halcyon Hotel’s parking lot. There’s plenty of reason now for you, or Belking, to want me dead, I understand that. But why then? I hadn’t done anything, wasn’t a threat to anybody then.”

“You were. Of course you were. You had already been told everything the quack Hernandez knew, you were already working for him. You knew we were stealing dogs, cats, pets, healthy animals for our laboratory work—”

“I didn’t know it then, not till Sunday when I found the collars, and–”

“You spoke to Grinner and Kell about their stealing of animals, made pointed remarks, rustling you called it, that’s what they told me. You knew. Yes, you knew. Besides, you phoned the police about the bullet, the hole in Guenther and Helga’s kitchen wall.”

“Rustling? Yeah, I guess when you’re guilty as hell it doesn’t take much to ring your bell. Obviously, they jumped at what was to them the logical implication.”

Wintersong wasn’t listening. “And you visited me at Omega,” he continued in that gritty monotone. “You were there with me when Helga terminated, and I rushed in. I didn’t stop to think, knew I had to get in there, to see. But you knew of the entrance from my office, the door.”

There were half a dozen more questions, but only four answers, because twice Wintersong either ignored the question or truly didn’t hear it.

However, those four questions covered everything I needed to know, and apparently all Hank was after, too. Wintersong had once more stopped speaking. And apparently wasn’t going to start again, unless I started him. I looked at Hank, raised both eyebrows inquiring.

No words were spoken, but we understood each other pretty well by now, and I was satisfied Hank agreed we’d gotten enough. Later, we could have at Wintersong again, if need be; he’d said far too much to successfully deny any of it now.

So I sighed, bent forward a little, and said quietly, “Dr. Wintersong, I’ve something important to tell you.”

He remained silent, eyes still fixed on the mirror, blinking slowly.

“Dr. Hernandez and I played a trick on you,” I said. “Kind of a dirty trick, but justifiable under the circumstances, as even you might agree. Especially you. But I’ll confess, doc, we didn’t really have Maillander cut your head off. It didn’t happen. You’re okay.”

Nothing.

I tried again. “This is just a—a con-game, doctor. We wanted you to spill, needed to convince you your situation was serious, the jig is up. So we simply made it look as if somebody had done a craniectomy on you—Hank, Doc Hernandez, can explain the medical part.”

Wintersong’s dark, empty eyes had moved beyond me and again to the mirror and stayed there. I said, with some asperity, “Didn’t you the hell hear me, doctor? I said we didn’t—didn’t—cut your damned head off.”

Finally the eyes moved, rolled a little right and then up to my face. And there was a look in those death-dark eyes that sent a chill into my heart, stopped my breath for a strangely sad moment.

“Yes, you did,” he said.

CHAPTER FORTY

Wintersong’s dry lips moved, twitched, as his eyes dropped from my features, found the mirror again, focusing softly but intently there, almost like a man’s gaze resting upon a lover’s dead face.

“I did it myself. So, I know you did it to me. I know.”

I looked at Hank, back at Wintersong’s head.

“Really, doc. You’re okay. We can undo you—let you loose—pretty quick, but you’re actually in good shape. Going to the slam forever, of course. But you’re not decapitated, nobody even operated on you—”

“Why are you lying to me?”

“Lying? Man, you don’t know good news when you hear—”

“I know you did it. I know. I have no arms, no legs, no body.” Pause. “Where is my body?”

“Hell, you’ve got it on,” I said. “I mean, you’re wearing it—it’s where it always was, dammit.”

“You used the animal crematory, I suppose. That’s what I did, so you needn’t try to fool me, make me feel—feel—feel alive. I know how it’s done. I did it myself, you know, I did it myself.”

It wasn’t exactly a display of emotion, but the voice was getting higher, more ragged, his face and even part of the shiny bare scalp flushing with the effort he was putting into forcing out those words.

I said to Hank, “He’s not going to conk out on us, is he? Choke or anything?”

Hank didn’t speak, merely shook his head, gaze on Wintersong, his face a frown.

Wintersong was continuing mechanically. “It became easier as I went along. The surgery was intricate, but not much more difficult than a heart-lung transplant, certainly less delicate than microsurgery on the spine. Or brain. It was keeping them alive that eluded me again and again... formulating a nutrient solution of proper viscosity, pH, with the essential proteins, minerals, electrolytes... I improved on the solution I took, stole, stole from Duncan’s papers that day he killed himself, kept changing it, until finally it worked.”

“Look, Dr. Wintersong.” He didn’t pay any attention to me, kept on going. But I tried. “You’re really okay, you’re all right, you’re fine and dandy.”

“So I know better than anyone it can be done, and how you did it...to me. I did it with thirty cats and fourteen dogs and seven people. Seven humans. Five before Guenther and Helga, but the best experiment before them lasted only three days. But it was working so well, so well, with those last two.”

Pause, half a minute maybe. “Two humans. Some people, laymen, fools, might not understand the necessity for seven humans, but in order to save millions. Billions of dollars—people, billions of people. All mankind. Yes, of course, I did it of course for the god—the good of all mankind. For all humans, living lives of quiet despara... And the Nobel—for them, for mankind, and me, me...me....”

“Sure,” I said.

Wintersong, without prompting or questions, continued talking for a few minutes more. But he spoke erratically, with longer and longer pauses, and with less—well, less intelligence. He began pronouncing words strangely, mixing up syllables, finally saying things like “the god of all man goodkin....” Something quite terrible, was happening among the neurons and dendrites and stuttering synapses in his “severed” brain. Probably I should have felt alarm, keen concern for Dr. William Wintersong, compassion, or pity at least. Probably.

Hank clapped his hands lightly together. “We have concluded. I believe it is done.”

I looked around, almost surprised to see Dane, and then surprised that I was surprised. How could I have forgotten, even momentarily, about gorgeous Dane Smith? She’d just stepped down from a heavy wooden box on which she’d been standing while, yeah, while recording all of this with the camcorder now clutched in both hands against her breasts. Her very bazzoomy and crushable breasts.

I turned, stepped toward her, saying, “Slipped my mind you were getting this on tape, would you believe it? How—”

“My God,” she said, close to me now, looking up at my face. “This is hot, so hot, I had no idea we’d get such sensational material.”

“Well, I told you, if we could get Wintersong to spill, there was an abundance for spilling—”

“I guess I didn’t really believe that,” she said.

Dane’s lovely face was visibly flushed, the vibrant pinkish glow making her velvety green eyes even brighter than they usually were, more luminous. “I’ll have to rip out my Wintersong chapter, that’s all, put this in instead and end the book with it. My God, it’s just got to be number one, maybe all year. And PAG won’t be able to ignore me this year—”

“Pag?”

“Professional Authors Guild, the PAG, every year they—”

“Dane, please please, Dane, don’t even mention any Nobels or Pulitzers or all mankind.”

“If I can manage to get this tape shown even once... the networks won’t touch it, that’s pretty sure—but with my contacts at CNN and PMM maybe they’ll...”

She was looking raptly up at my face, smiling ravishingly at my... No, wasn’t my face, more like my left temple—or maybe ear—or, no, she was gazing ravishingly and raptly at something about an inch left of, and somewhere beyond, my left ear. I began feeling a little bit uneasy. Couldn’t figure out exactly why, just knew I was starting to experience something kind of uneasy.

“It is mine, isn’t it?” Dane said. “This tape? You said if I helped, if I used the camcorder, made the record for you I could handle distribution, television, you—and Doctor...and Hank, too. He said the same thing.”

“Yeah. Well, I suppose. It’s really up to Hank, I guess.” I looked at him.

“She’s entirely right about the networks,” he said briskly. “They won’t touch anything like this. First, they would have to get an opinion from their medical experts. All allopaths, of course, illegal for anyone else to be an expert. Which means CBS, NBC, and ABC would each get the same firm, carefully considered, forget it, are you out of your gourds?”

“Hank—”

“So if Dane can arrange for this—this drama to be shown even once on national television, even if only on cable, she can then do with it whatever she desires, with my blessing. That is, with the copy we’ll make for her. If that’s all right with you, Sheldon?”

“Me? Why me?”

“Well, you’re in it, aren’t you? Quite prominently, I would say.”

“Yeah, I guess... Well, huh, it’s okay by me.” I ran some fingers through my hair, smoothed my unsmoothable eyebrows, and smiled gently. “Do you think I—we, I mean—might really be on national telev—”

“Numerous other copies we must make from the original will, I expect, be viewed primarily during meetings of PUCUEH, and other life-affirming organizations allied with us. Assuming, of course, the FDA does not seize all copies, define them as detrimental to the nation’s health, and destroy them. Also assuming we are still at large after it—and we—are viewed by the police.”

“Ah...police. Yes. I knew there was something—”

“We must phone them immediately, and surrender.”

“Surrender?”

“Of course. Were you planning to escape from the planet?”

That didn’t deserve an answer. Besides, Hank continued, without waiting, “Even an hour ago, Sheldon, I feared you and I—Dane, too—might soon be arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to forever. But now, I do not fear this so much. I believe we have won a great victory. Not the war, no, but this battle, yes. If so, we may expect to proceed onward vigorously and win more battles, more and more of the many that lie before us.”

“I hope you’re right, Hank.”

“Who doesn’t? So, Sheldon, make haste now and inform officialdom, call the po—”

He stopped, head cocked on one side, listening.

I heard it, too. Faintly. Sirens. A lot of sirens.

Hank scowled, then sighed. “Perhaps,” he said gently, “that will not be necessary.”

He was right again. Only there was no “perhaps” about it.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The sounds of sirens nearing the Omega Research Center was faint, but getting louder.

Hank glanced around the cluttered laboratory. “I think,” he said briskly, “we would make a better first impression if we took Wintersong and Belking out of their boxes.”

I agreed instantly. It would not be helpful for those visitors to assume we’d trussed up our prisoners and were fiendishly occupied in beating them with whips, clubs, or tickling their feet; we were in enough trouble already.

We had time, but just barely. When the first two armed came inside the lab, followed—after a curious but soon-understood delay—by uniformed police and plainclothes officers, three newspaper reporters, one TV anchor, and two politicians, Belking and Wintersong were seated on the floor against a wall, erect but slumping and leaning against each other.

Belking was totally out of it, still unconscious; but Wintersong’s eyes were open, staring. During the next hour, which is how long it was before all of us left Omega together and headed downtown in separate cars, like a parade, Wintersong didn’t speak once, didn’t say a single word. At the time, I missed the significance of that fact, my attention occupied by the many other things going on, some of which were exceedingly peculiar.

The first being when the nearer, and shorter, of the two uniformed deputies spotted us, fixed his eyes, and gun, on me and yelled, “Hold it right there, Mister!” exactly like a prime-time TV actor in a detective soap. Well, no; not exactly. Because something very odd was going on here.

He was staring at me almost as bug-eyed as Wintersong, and his voice cracked on that last word so it came out “Mis-terer!” Moreover, instead of thundering toward me he was backing away. Backing away? So for that matter, was the taller deputy, who’d thundered in right behind the first guy. They’d come through the door in the wall of Wintersong’s adjacent office, and around the end of that six-foot-high honeycombed wall like gangbusters; but now they were acting as if I was armed with two AK-47s and a bazooka. I didn’t get it. Not right away.

Hank, fortunately, did. He raised one hand, palm out toward them, and said loudly, presumably using language he thought, not necessarily correctly, they would find familiar and friendly, “Not to worry. No sweating. There is no problem, I am a doctor.”

That got the attention of the first deputy’s eyes. His gun stayed aimed approximately at my midsection, but he glanced at Hank, who was continuing, “Yes, I am a medical doctor. And I have examined this man, indeed I have psychically if not physically tested not only his blood, but his urine, hair clippings, tongue scrapings, and the pupils of his eyes, to determine if there is any hyperplopia of his meniscatosis or protruberance of any randomized dipthongs, and there is none. Not a trace. This man is not contagious, he is not even infected! Praise Aesaulepius!”

Then I got it. I kept forgetting I was supposed to have crunched a vial of super-IFAI bugs and become the Shelldonic Plague preparing to sweep the earth, or at least Southern California; and obviously these lawmen had been afraid of catching the plague, me. Which, I thought sympathetically, must have given them serious pause: How could they catch me, if they were afraid of catching me?

But now, I could see both men visibly relax. The short deputy asked, “Isn’t he Shell Scott, the P.I. IFAI guy I—?”

“Please, please,” Hank interrupted smoothly. “I assure you, Sir,” followed by considerable more gibberish, ending “I realize you laymen do not even begin to understand all these technical medical terms, but let it suffice to say my professional opinion is, even Mr. Scott’s colonic escherii coli are benevolent and he therefore suffers from no infections, diseases, or even micro-bacteria...whatever Quod erat demonstrandum.”

“Wow, hey, that’s a relief,” the deputy said, looking confused, but pleased.

“Hank,” I said nearly in a whisper, “you really ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

He turned his head to look at me, beaming hugely, white teeth flashing. “You would of course prefer to be shot, or sprayed with something dubious, verdad?”

I didn’t have an answer for the old goat, so I didn’t answer him.

Following a whispered conversation between both deputies, the taller one left, returning in about a minute with a third uniformed deputy and two men in business suits, one of whom I recognized as an LAPD police undercover officer working out of the Central Homicide Division. There were more to come, but it took almost ten minutes before the whole gang was here.

By then, I understood the tip to the law about us had come from a 911 call made by the male half of a young “engaged” couple who’d been parking in the nearby toolies, discussing what kind of cake to have at their wedding, and had seen us drive up to the Omega entrance and “break in.” This hadn’t interested them a whole lot; just enough that they glimpsed me carrying the two “corpses” inside, so all of these crimes were duly reported—later, having by then decided angel’s food cake would be nice.

Anyway, about fifteen minutes after that “Hold it right there, Mis-terer,” the small laboratory was crowded with more than a dozen guests, including the mentioned reporters and politicians. One of the politicos was the Congressman from Belking’s district, known to be a close friend of Hobart’s; the other was the junior Senator from California, Edward Manners, a man I thought well of, judging by his actions and pronouncements so far.

They were accompanied by the L.A. County Sheriff himself, and those three were not only last to arrive, but the last who were going to. Apparently the other lawmen, once inside Omega, had headed in pairs for different areas, not being sure where the criminals might be found.

Well, they’d found us. We hadn’t even been handcuffed yet, but the Sheriff, a burly heavy-shouldered man with a thick mustache and kind-looking eyes, stepped toward us—and right then a voice cracked, “Your attention, please!”

It was Hank, of course, and he just kept on going. Yes, kept on going rippety-pop and made one of his ringading speeches, wouldn’t you know? He spoke rapid-fire for three or four minutes, and fell silent when he was through, silent because he’d finished, not because anybody stopped him. Nobody did.

Whether any of those here believed everything he said or not, I couldn’t tell; but they all listened. For maybe the first minute there was a little movement, and eyes shifting—usually toward me, with dark suspicion as though I might be about to lay a deadly sneeze upon them—but after that all eyes were upon Henry Hernandez, M.D., along with every iota of everyone’s attention. There really was something Rasputin-like about this guy when he got going, and he got going pretty good.

Indeed, it was Hank Hernandez at his most arresting and hypnotic, his most dramatic and outrageous—and, I fervently hoped, most convincing. For he summed up events of the last few hours concisely, and most effectively than I could have in a week, and his only sins, if any, were of selective omission. Midway in what was becoming a familiar-to-me crackling-electrically humming-brrnnngging harangue, he flatly accused William M. Wintersong, M.D. and all his kind, of crimes so monstrous as to be almost beyond evil, and included Hobart Belking—still unconscious, but with the beginning of involuntary movements and perceptible facial tics—as not only accomplice but author of most of them.

On one level, the rapid-fire speech was a factual recital; on another, all those facts were intertwined with Hank’s philosophy of health and wholeness, his belief in the necessity of not fighting but encouraging the life force, élan vital, inner virtue, divine wisdom in everyman that it might restore harmony and wholeness—versus the Belking-Wintersong-allopathic conviction that “sickness” must be violently attacked, by licensed medical doctors.

Hank, at the end of those few minutes, it was at least unmistakably clear that the difference between Henry Hernandez and Belking-Wintersong was the difference between those who believe man a universe of wonder, a spirit-mind-body creation almost if not in truth godlike, a triune being complete, whole, indivisible, one—and those who look upon man as a collection of isolated individual flesh-and-bone pieces, a mechanical gathering-together of liver, heart, skin, brain, bowels...a perception leading inevitably to the separate, and separated, parts of Guenther and Helga Vunger, and Rusty.

After mention of those names Hank ripped on with his voice like a musical buzzsaw and finished “...as some of you saw them here in this very room yesterday, saw them I pray with shuddering shame, Guenther and Helga, my beloved friends, cured of their flesh-and-bone bodies, requiring only life-saving transplants to make them well again.”

For at least ten seconds after Hank’s last words there was silence. Then the silence was broken by a shockingly noisome “ppppp...” which, it immediately became evident, was not any kind of opinion, or criticism, but air bubbling past Hobart Belking’s lax lips. He was coming around, and quickly, Belking opened his eyes, blinked them rapidly, ran his tongue out and back in, then grunted gutturally. No words yet; but that was definitely discontented grunting. And in about another minute, when he’d come to most of the way and lost at least some of the grogginess, Belking made a kind of a speech himself.

It was as if he’d never been unconscious at all, and was merely launching into a tirade he’d been planning for some time. At least, he accused the notorious quack and the homicidal maniac of practically everything except putting cayenne pepper on his monogrammed toilet paper. His major charge was that Hernandez and Scott were dangerous fanatics who in their mania along with other nuts like them—threatened important medical experiments that could lead to improved health and increased life spans for everyone everywhere, lifesaving research whose finest moments were within medicine’s grasp right now if not destroyed or delayed by the inexcusable actions of quacks like Hernandez and criminals like Scott.

By then Belking was on his feet, waving his thick arms, but that’s where he ran down. Perhaps because he was wondering at last how he’d got here, and where all these people had come from. But undoubtedly in part because he was receiving dubious looks from several of those here assembled, since, having entirely missed Hank’s just-concluded harangue, Belking couldn’t know his mention of medicine’s “finest moments” was not the most felicitous phrase he might have chosen under the circumstances.

That also ended the most educational and least strenuous portion of our just-beginning day with the law. Events moved speedily thereafter. In the half hour or so before everyone left Omega, Hank, Dane, and I were interrogated separately in Wintersong’s office, then handcuffed and held temporarily under guard in the large room outside that office; and it seemed to me everything was coming full circle, because that was the large lab-room where I’d first seen Dane, and all those captive experimental animals in cages lining the walls; where, in fact, I’d first seen, William M. Wintersong, M.D.

The police had, of course, seized the Camcorder and the videotape it contained. We had explained to the Sheriff and one of his deputies what was on the tape, stressing its uniqueness and importance—and I managed to tell the same thing to the Lieutenant I was acquainted with from Central Homicide. I saw California’s junior Senator, Ed Manners, speaking briefly with Hank, but they weren’t close enough for me to hear what was said. What I could hear was Dane, a couple of feet away on my right, worrying aloud at me.

She was worried about that videotape, about whether she would ever get it back, or at least a copy of it back, so she could take it to television people she knew in Hollywood and New York, so she could review it to make sure the climactic chapters of her book were word-for-word authentic.

I interrupted her verbal expressions of almost panicky concern, saying, “Dane, dear, relax a little. Save your strength for when we go to dinner tonight, or tomorrow—whenever we get sprung. Hank will see to it or I will, that you get the tape sooner or later. Just as we promised, okay?”

“But I need it now, Shell. I’ve got to tear the whole book apart, that must be obvious, and I was so busy shooting it all I can’t...well, I can’t remember everything that was said, and that happened—”

“Look, if you’ve got to worry about something, assume we’re all about to be thrown into dungeons, and whipped with barbed wires. And get our nails pulled out with pliers—not you, of course. You know I won’t let them harm a pore of your pretty—”

“I do? You won’t?”

It was not said tremulously, accompanied by a faint blush. No, there was something in the way Dane spoke, as though shaking ice cubes with her epiglottis, that reminded me I was standing there with my arms stretched behind me, wrists encircled by handcuffs, not exactly in control of the situation. Not, at least, at this particular instant. Plus, her glance traveled from my face down my arms, and sort of through my hip to the manacles. Maybe this wasn’t my day.

On the other hand, observing Dane’s glance, I also observed that it issued from those great luminous green eyes, eyes that looked like hot emeralds melting, eyes only inches from those stupendously provocative lips that...well, right at the instant, they were kind of pressed together into a thin red line, which was not what I’d been fondly remembering, or thinking about, or planning to—

“Hey,” I said, inspired, “I already mentioned dinner, but didn’t hear you yell Wow or anything, so let’s try it again. If they finish beating us with those barbed whips early enough today, let’s go out to dinner tonight at that same place where we had such a fantastic time until—”

“Oh, my God, Shell, how can you talk about something like that at a time like this? I’ve—”

“Something like what?”

“—got a million important things to do, the whole Wintersong chapter to tear up and fix—it’ll probably be most of the book now—”

“Dane,” I interrupted her, rather severely, “it isn’t even nine o’clock in the goddamned morning yet, but it sounds like you’re already saying ‘Goodnight, Shell,’ and if you want the goddamned truth, lady—”

I don’t think she heard me. Certainly, she hadn’t stopped, going, “and a thousand phone calls to make.”

“Does this mean No?” I said, to no avail.

So I stopped listening, even though Dane was still gazing at my face—no, like once before, or twice, or whatever, she was gazing past my head at something out there yonder, gazing at yonder from starey eyes, sort of greenish, like pools of split-pea soup.

“Sheldon, do not, por favor, be so glum, for we have not lost, we have won. Though it may require a modicum of time before....”

That was Hank, only about a yard from me, gazing intently at my face now. Those wise dark eyes narrowed slightly, flicked from me to Dane and back to my face, then he continued after only a brief pause, “...that which is now certain becomes obvious to all. But you and I, we may not have much time together. For the moment.”

I sighed. “Eight to five, Hank, an hour after the local law absorbs that videotape, we’ll be on our way.”

“Probablamente. There are other considerations, but I believe you are right. However, soon, they will take us in different directions, you your way and me mine, and it is possible we will not speak again until—until we speak again. So remember all the significant things you have learned, Sheldon, my friend.”

“You can bet I’ll remember some, Hank. As for all, I dunno, there’ve been one hell of a lot—”

“You will remember, for you are of a tenacious mind, believe me, for I know.”

Dane had moved a step or two away, was looking at something across the room, or maybe at more yonder. Hank went on, brightly and briskly, either empathetically tuned in and trying to brighten my moment, or giving me a last flippant lesson, at least for this day.

“Ai, caramba and Chihuahua and all those excitements,” he said, grinning widely, those super-sharp points of his gray mustache appearing to slice tiny swathes though the air. “Do not worry about remembering any of these things, just write them down casually in your head as fruits from me of my long and actively-seeking life.” He paused only for a moment. “But do remember the wonderful men, and their methods we have come to know somewhat together, any one of which might end most illness and misery in this land, even in this troubled world. Think, Sheldon, if only one of these could prove so helpful to many, so preserving of life, think of the world we would enjoy if all were allowed, cherished in honesty, available to the sick and the dying. Ai, that they have been so long denied and even now are still denied, to us and our brothers and sisters, is enough to trouble even Almighty God, and make the angels weep....”

“Let’s go, Hernandez. You too, Scott.”

That was a deputy, one hand touching Hank’s arm, turning him around. Another deputy stood next to me, Dane was already halfway across the room with somebody.

After that, it all became a kind of blurred montage, traveling in official cars, arriving at the Sheriff’s Department, lots of questions, the same questions over and over again. After an hour or two, I knew the “Wintersong” videotape had been played for the Sheriff and half a dozen other officers, then run over and over again for others throughout the morning and on into the afternoon. I knew, too, there was increasing interest, even unusual excitement, about what had been seen, what everyone in the department now wanted to see.

They let me go, with the usual warnings and admonitions, at 3:45 p.m. that Sunday afternoon. I didn’t know, and couldn’t then find out, if Hank and Dane had been released or were still being questioned. But, on my way out I saw near the booking desk, two attorneys from POCUEH, and PETA.

I called the LAPD, found out from an officer where they’d arranged for the care of Lucinda’s cat, Precious. An officer had deposited her with a veterinarian. I drove there, picked up Precious in a wooden cat box and headed for home.

When I got back to the Spartan Apartment Hotel, it was dusk, the air soft, cooler now than it had been throughout the day. It had been a long, long day, finally ended. I carried my cat box, and what felt like twenty extra pounds of me, up the stairs to 212. I let myself inside, put the cat box atop my bed and stripped, then spent at least fifteen minutes in the shower, under the steaming spray, unwinding and washing off a lot of things, maybe including the invisible auras of Wintersong and Belking. Then I rubbed down with a nubby towel, and flopped on the bed.

Eyes closed, I watched flickering images float, some dancing in a kind of shadowy space before me. My first meeting with Henry Hernandez, M.D., and his nice warm wife Eleanora, Jock-Jock, about-to-be-shattered, head jerking, blood starting to spill over his lips, Rusty’s head, his beautiful brown eyes glazing, Rusty dead. Guenther and Helga. So much, so much. I pushed the images away.

After awhile I might have drifted lazily into sleep, almost did, but suddenly there was a small but stupendously piercing sound in my ear, a horrible sound very much like the maaaa! of terminal tinnitus.

Yeah, slipped my mind there. Just happened, where my head, and left ear, were lying, was about an inch and a half from where I’d placed the wooden cat carrier. Shaking a little, with the twanging inner vibration that sometimes temporarily ruins you when you’re yanked awake from almost-sleep, I peeled my eyes open. Rolled them left. And said, not too sweetly.

“Hello, you noisy damned cat. I suppose you think I should take you home to Lucinda, right?”

The cat, or kitten, didn’t respond—just blinked at me, and then rubbed a paw over her face—but I responded. The moment I said, aloud, “Lucinda,” the sound turned into light waves and for an incandescent moment, I could see that lovely lady demonstrating for me how it was that Precious wiggled her little tush when she maaa’d.

I sat up, swung my feet to the floor.

“Lucinda!” I said.

“Maaa!

“Right,” I said, “good thinking,” got my book and looked up the number, sat down on the bed again, grabbed the phone. I shook my head, took a couple of deep breaths and then, wide awake, punched in the numbers.

No mistaking that voice. Soft, smooth, liquid, hot. “Hello?” She crammed about a paragraph into the word.

“Beautiful,” I said, “Hi Lucinda. It’s me.”

After a pause, “Who’s you?”

“Well...well, I am a tall, strong, ruggedly handsome, wise, rich, immortal detective.”

“Huh. I know lots of those. Which one are you?”

That stumped me for a few seconds. “Well...which would you like?”

“The one looks like a truck ran all over him.”

“Knew it was me all along, didn’t you? Okay, let’s get down to business. If I gave you something you’d very much like to have, you’d probably insist on being oh, fair, wouldn’t you?”

“What’s this wonderful thing you s’pose I’d like very much?”

“In a minute. First, if I generously gave you this something you’d like very much what would you give me? Out of...fairness?”

“I’ll give you a sock in the eye.”

“Lucinda, it isn’t supposed to go like this.”

“How’s it s’posed to go? Shell—I mean, Mr. Who—why don’t you quit this horsing around—?”

“Hell, we haven’t even started horsing—”

“—and tell me whatever you called up to tell me. Or ask, whatever. Take a chance. You like to live dangerously, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, I guess, but we haven’t even started that, eith—”

“I’m gonna hang up.”

“Hold it—somewhere around here, I’ve got a cat that knows you. Kitten.”

“Cat...kit...PRECIOUS?”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and wiggled a finger in my ear. Lucinda was still shrieking loud with something that sounded like PRECIOUSPRESIOUS.

After a while I said, “Please don’t yell any more. Yes, Precious, the one that goes maaa. Hold it—don’t say it. In other words, I knew if I just said, ‘Hi, this is Shell, and I’ve rescued your dumb cat,’ well, you’d say something like ‘Shell, you’re wonderful, just wonderful’—but it wouldn’t mean anything. So, I...hello?”

After a while I said, “Well, say something.”

“You told me to shut up. You forget already?”

“I didn’t, either.”

“You forgot already. What are you doing with Precious?”

“Well, I just fed her to the dog. How does that grab you?”

Silence. Then a funny sound. Laughter?

After a few shorts and a little whoop or two, Lucinda said almost gaily, “Oh, you men, you’re all so dumb.”

“Dumb? Dumb?”

“And you don’t have to explain, about not mentioning Precious and all that. I understand.”

“How the hell could you understand, you’re a woman.”

“Now you’re talking. Shell, let’s start over.”

“Start what over?”

“Pretend you’ve just called me up. I think Precious is dead, eaten by dogs. But you don’t mention it. You just say, in your boyish way, ‘Hi!’”

“That’s ridiculous. You can’t be serious.”

“I am serious. Do it.”

“No. I’d feel dumb—silly. Just silly.”

“Do it.”

Finally I sighed, and said, feeling of course like an absolute idiot, “Hi, Lucinda, this is dumb old Shell—”

“Oh, Shell. Heavens above, it’s Shellshellshell! Oh, I’m covered with goosebumps.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Didn’t mean to, just slipped out. You got me so bugged—”

“Shell...” The voice was softer, more velvety; a whispery sound triggering memories of certain knee-weakening moments after we’d met. “...I really am covered with goosebumps.”

“Yeah, sure. Well, go see a doctor.”

“I really am. You wouldn’t believe where I’ve got goosebumps, hon.”

Hon? Yeah, there was something about that honeyed voice, all right. Hon, huh? After a bit I said:

“Mmm...maybe I would.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Spring was showing off again, filling the world with wonder. Eyes were brighter, hearts lighter, hormones hornier, people moved more briskly through the clotted streets and, once in a while, smiled at strangers.

That early-Sunday-morning siren-announced invasion of Omega by the law, subsequent arrests of Hank and Dane and me, swift removal in ambulance of Wintersong and Belking, followed by our interrogation and provisional release in the late afternoon was six months in the past. It was the end of April now. For a week the days had been unseasonably warm but comfortably so, cooled by sweet, spring breezes, and once in a while it seemed to me the world was wrapped in glory. But only once in a while. Because that “wrapping” wasn’t glory, it was the thousand mingled shades of smog’s pollution-brown and petroleum-gray mixed with the unappetizing hues of impacted colons.

I could almost believe what more and more ordinary citizens were saying these days: that earth was dying. At least, I wasn’t inclined to disbelieve them, especially not this morning. I’d been having curious, disjointed dreams which, unfortunately, I remembered on awakening. And last night one of the most disturbing of them had returned for a second time, which was twice too often, and it was still darkening the edges of my thoughts like an old bruise.

In the dream, it seemed I was just “somewhere” watching—in some kind of “space” that was, apparently, space—for I could see the beautiful tiny round ball of earth floating in velvet blueness, moving closer, becoming larger, until I was viewing rich brown soil and abundant greenery, sparkling jade-and-emerald seas, silvery lakes and streams. But then I realized earth’s skin, its billion-year crust, was everywhere ravished grossly marked by pustulent scabs and sores like bubbling sarcomas, not fixed in place but moving, growing.

Slowly, so slowly it was difficult to know it was happening, I became aware of bright crystal air dimming, earth darkening, serpentine rivers moving more and more sluggishly while the seas they fed thickened, and I knew earth’s bloodstream was choking and slowing and saw Alph, the sacred river, black and still as a frozen vein, and other things I blocked even from memory within a dream.

Earth’s antlike parasites—two-armed, two-legged, erect, hyperactive—swarmed upon the skin of their host: some raced along curving lines that ended at their beginnings while others marched in ragged waves like billions of cells metastasizing; some clumped in amorphous groups producing toxins and garbage and wastes which they disposed of in the planet’s blood; and some, a few, a special army of specially-privileged soldier-priest parasites—by their own inviolable definition wiser than others, wiser than earth—deliberately and mechanically pumped endless streams of rainbow-colored poisons deep into the billions of bodies of their peers and simultaneously, into the single great and holy body of their host.

I watched them idly, watched streams and rivers stilled, and gray seas fermenting; watched centuries of living forests felled and toppling like splinters then on fire, flaming, the breath of earth burning; watched waves of greenery caressing earth’s crust turning brown, then ashen-black, shriveling. My final view was of the tiny ball at last embraced by death, covered with disintegrating corpses, itself alive but dying, still spinning wondrously, and beautiful still....

That had been at four o’clock this morning. At least, that was when I’d awakened, shivering. And I had a hunch my whole day was ruined. It didn’t help that, after coffee and three bites of my lumpy-mush breakfast, I read the morning newspaper and watched ten minutes of news on This Is Your World which, even on good days, was pretty depressing.

I’d gotten into the habit, during the last month or so of checking the obits for Hank’s name—I’ll get to that in a minute—but, once again, there was no Hernandez, Henry, M.D. And, once again, I sighed involuntarily, with gentle but sweet relief.

IFAI was continuing to spread, incidence increasing and mortality rising, according to all the experts. Hank and I had hoped, even expected, that the admissions we’d gotten from Dr. Wintersong—and especially the revelations from his “head” on our homemade half-hour videotape—might be enough to completely derail the speedily rolling IFAI juggernaut, if only temporarily. But we hadn’t even slowed it down much. . The FDA had given final approval for Phase III testing of the IFAI vaccine, or widespread experimentation on willing victims—only it was not the Wintersong vaccine.

It was the Starr-Danweather vaccine—perfected by two physicians/medical researchers and their infectious disease team at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York. The Starr-Danweather monkey-kidney soup was apparently identical in composition, safety, and effectiveness with the discarded Wintersong vaccine, since the FDA had merely substituted the one for the other and kept rolling along.

The problem with the Wintersong vaccine was—Wintersong. He could no longer supervise preparation and testing of his lifesaving invention, since he could no longer supervise anything. Since the end of last October, he’d been in the Hobart M. Belking Hospital in Beverly Hills, in Intensive Care. Belking seemed to have a piece of nearly everything connected with death.

Wintersong never moved any part of his body except his eyes, and mouth, and lips when he spoke—though, as time went on, he spoke less and less. I understand he hadn’t said anything at all for a month now.

William M. Wintersong didn’t believe anything was left of him except his head, and nobody, not even the finest specialists, could convince him otherwise. He simply knew he didn’t possess a body any more. Hank and I had convinced him—even more authoritatively than those fine doctors who promise almost cheerfully to give you three more months—that he was a disembodied head, no more, and he had believed it to be true. Believed it then, believed it still.

The prestigious patient was hooked up to several machines, which weren’t in use all the time, but only when he started to conk out again. Mainly, he kept getting weaker because he wouldn’t eat much, just enough to supply his head with nutrients. Which was only a bite or two—of dietitian-selected hospital junkfood, at that—once or twice a day. So he was being fed most of the time intravenously, other machines shocking his heart or cleansing his blood or doing high-tech lifesaving things whenever necessary. Probably he would soon be hooked up all the time, so the doctors could keep it alive for a hundred years, if they wanted to.

I went to the Hobart B. Hospital once and looked in on Wintersong. Briefly. We didn’t talk. I remember thinking that, considering how absolutely ruined the old boy looked, pretty quick doctors would be able to dig people up from graveyards and, if they were reasonably well preserved, keep them alive in the Intensive Care Morgue, and on Medicare indefinitely. Yeah, William M. Wintersong, M.D., former high-priest of the cure-IFAI scam, was a ghastly sight, ugly, repulsive. He didn’t do much of anything while I was there, except, occasionally, drool on his chin.

You might wonder: Did I, considering everything, experience nagging guilt about my part in producing whatever it was William M. Wintersong had become? Did I feel a twinge or two of sorrow, of sympathy, feel at least a little regret?

No. Not considering everything.

Nor did I feel sorry for Hobart Belking, since there was no need to. Nothing whatever had happened to that sonofabitch, or if anything had I didn’t know about it. I did know he’d been detained by the Sheriff—as were Hank and Dane and I—but by the time we were released in the afternoon, Belking had been gone since mid-morning.

As far as I could determine—and I had more sources of info than most—Belking hadn’t been charged even with a misdemeanor, and was under no restrictions whatsoever. His claim, of course, was to the effect that he had been savagely beaten when he wasn’t looking by murderous madman Shell Scott, then forcibly abducted by that crazy arsonist and his co-conspirator, Henry Hernandez, the notorious quack, and even—horror of horrors—brutally injected, without his permission and contrary to his desire, with what he called “an unknown drug,” which was absolutely a gross violation of his constitutional rights and human dignity, and so on, and on. Do tell.

I, however, was under a few restrictions, not limited to the necessity for me appearing in court, to answer Belking’s charges, in a couple more months. I was prohibited from leaving Los Angeles County without prior approval of the court; I was forbidden to carry a concealed weapon, which left me feeling somewhat like a fly among swatters; and my private investigators’ license, issued by the State of California, had been at least temporarily suspended by the Board.

I tried to think of the enforced hiatus as my spring vacation. At least, it was spring—the always right-on-time vernal equinox that man, through oversight, had not yet improved upon—and a lovely spring it was. Warming of earth, life bursting into bloom everywhere you looked, lavish greenery and rainbow-colored flowers all over. All over outside the city, that is; no flowers, no grass or greenery, in the city.

Still, if I hadn’t been so bugged by the possibility I might get shot without being able to shoot back, and the other restrictions laid upon me, I might have thought it the most glorious spring of all my thirty years.

I really wanted to talk with Henry Hernandez, but I couldn’t because I didn’t know where Hank was, or even if that remarkable and abrasive friend of mine was still alive. I had a gut-chilling hunch he was not...that he was dead.

I’d not had a single word from him, or from anyone else about him, since that last Sunday morning in October. He’d simply vanished.

For a few days, I made Henry Hernandez a priority “case,” suspended P.I. license or not, played detective and played it full-time. Result: nothing. I found no one who knew what had happened to him or his wife, or where he might be. Not even his close associates and longtime friends at POCUEH—or, if any of them did know more than they told, they just weren’t telling. For a while that thought was a comfort; but only for a while.

POCUEH itself was thriving, even more active than it normally was—as were a lot of other health-freedom and patients-rights groups and advocates. Groups like the National Health Federation, Cancer Control Society, National Association of Cancer Victors and Friends, PETA, etc. etc....Citizens for Medical Choice, Dissatisfied Parents Together, and, many others. Much of that activity was, at least in part, due to the reception given to, and subsequent anger, shock, and consternation arising from, widespread viewing of our homemade videotape of Dr. Wintersong’s bald head, answering first Hank’s questions, and then my own. But for two long months was seen only by police and a lot of lawyers, having been held in police custody as “evidence”—even though the crimes had not yet been clearly defined, nor even who’d done what to whom and how, and where’s that at in the Penal Code, Lieutenant?

It required legal action, and various people pulling invisible strings, but a court order permitted POCEUH’s lawyers—acting for the missing Henry Hernandez plus me and Dane Smith—to make one copy of the videotape in order properly to prepare our defenses.

That one tape somehow became two, then at least a hundred and maybe even thousands, shown over and over again during meetings of the mentioned animal-and-people rights groups plus, undoubtedly a passel of unmentioned ones.

Moreover, on February 13, or a few hours before Valentine’s Day, the entire shocking and possibly even gruesome forty minutes was shown once, only once, on public television—never even once on the networks, as somebody had accurately predicted. But, because it was seen nationwide, and uncut, interspersed only with warnings that “what you are about to see might traumatize the children,” that one time was sufficient. It did traumatize some children, plus a considerable number of adults as well. And many of those adults were at last moved, in some cases, positively inspired to get off their duffs and take a variety of actions, none of which variety gladdened the heart of members of the AMA, the FDA or their kissing cousins.

Perhaps not surprisingly, among those who’d viewed the 40-minute videotape—which within weeks began to seem like half of everybody—one of the biggest hullabaloos arose from Dr. Wintersong’s admission that his, and Belking-Gray’s, super-duper IFAI vaccine was useless except as a money-maker; that scientifically, the glop was less/virtuous than snake oil. Citizens howled and made nasty accusations; they’d never even thought of before; the medical fraternity shouted back that the respected and prestigious physician so obviously and obscenely tricked and tortured had been forced to lie; and, besides his lies had been misinterpreted, taken out of context, obtained by deceit and duress and criminal coercion and if presented in court were not allowable as testimony anyway, since they would unfairly prejudice any jury against the defendant.

But, whether such heresay was allowable or not, many citizens nonetheless saw, heard, and—to the horror of many Doctors, Lawyers, and Merchant Chiefs—made up their own minds. It was as though the shock of viewing the “Dr. Wintersong” videotape—the ugliness of that talking head, the ugliness of what it, Wintersong, M.D. said—initiated an at-first-gentle turbulence that continued to grow and spread until it became a kind of last-straw catalyst bringing into the open, a host of long-buried fears, doubts, and never-before-asked—or-answered—questions. Not only activists groups but individual citizens began committing the cardinal sin of questioning authority and doubting dogma, and demanding proof, of unproven claims, and even, (perhaps indicating the end of the world might be near) arguing with their doctors.

Unquestionably, there was ferment, and the fermentation was spreading. All of which pleased me hugely—and I knew Hank would have loved every minute of it. Indeed, sometimes I felt Hank must be alive, vigorous and well, out there somewhere, advising and guiding certain people, arranging protests and press releases—and things like those high-powered attorneys from POCUEH—while keeping out of sight merely to avoid arrest, or injury, or murder, remaining silent for good and sufficient reasons of his own.

Sometimes I felt that; not most of the time. And, I thought, if he was in fact alive, surely he would at least phone, give me a ring, say Hi and let me know. But there’d been no call, no ring, no Hi, and it had been six months now. Maybe I’d missed something back then, heard one thing when another was said. I remembered well the last time I’d seen Hank and even the last odd word, “weep,” he’d said to me just before they took him away.

Now, relaxed in my Hollywood apartment, on my chocolate-brown divan, glancing occasionally at Amelia’s fair fanny but thinking about Hank and Eleanora. And that last Sunday morning in October.

Had the “Death Gods” won the battle? I think not. Not completely.

* * * * * *

And, much later, it seemed to me a chunk of my life, like a chapter in a book, was, most curiously, ending exactly as it had begun. Well, not exactly. The words were the same, but their meaning, their weight, their juiciness—and the story they told—and who told it, were not the same at all.

Bassackward, Hank might have said. Just as he’d said you have to look behind the words, behind the definitions, to know what the thing really is, because truth never changes, but definitions of it do. Something like that. He’d said so many unusual things to me, and I couldn’t remember them all now.

Maybe I could ask him some day. Maybe, up ahead somewhere, my phone would ring in the middle of the night and I’d hear that familiar voice—strong, young, certainly not sick, more like a welcome voice bubbling with enthusiasm—“Sheldon...?”

I hoped so. I really did hope so.

But those thoughts were becoming fuzzy. I was almost asleep. Then really asleep. But just before then, or maybe just after, I felt Lucinda stir lazily next to me, and heard again, as I have often heard before, those same soft, warm, liquid words of ending, or beginning...

“Good night, Shell.”

-THE END-

About Richard S. Prather

Richard Scott Prather was born in Santa Ana, California on September 9, 1921. He served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. Richard married Tina Hager in 1945. He then worked as a civilian chief clerk of surplus property at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California, until leaving that career to become a full time writer in 1949. Tina, his wife of 58 years, passed away in April of 2004, and he passed away on February 14, 2007.

Richard Prather’s long and successful writing career began in 1950 with the publication of his first Shell Scott mystery novel, The Case of the Vanishing Beauty, published by Fawcett’s Gold Medal Paperback Originals. His successful and best-selling Shell Scott series of thirty-six novels, plus four short story collections, published between 1950 and 1987, have sold over 40 million copies in the United States and have enjoyed foreign language publication, selling millions more world-wide, and are considered classics. His last Shell Scott mystery, Shell Shock, was published in hardcover in 1987. The manuscript for The Death Gods was completed a few years before his death.

In addition to the Shell Scott mysteries, Richard penned three mystery novels under pseudonyms: David Knight and Douglas Ring. He also wrote the first novel based on the television show, Dragnet, titled Dragnet: Case 561. The book, Double in Trouble, written with Stephen Marlowe, combined the Shell Scott character and Marlowe’s character, Chester Drum. Richard’s novel, The Peddler, originally published as by Douglas Ring, was later published under his own name by Gold Medal. Then in 2006, The Peddler was reissued by Hard Case Crime.

Richard received the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986, and was twice on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America. He was Editor of The Comfortable Coffin, the 13th Mystery Writers of America Anthology. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines, The Shell Scott Mystery Magazine, and several anthologies.

His biography has appeared in many reference works including Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, Editor John M. Reilly, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1980; 2002 edition of Marquis Who’s Who in America. Richard S. Prather Manuscript Collection, University of Wyoming, Laramie.

About Linda Pendleton

Linda Pendleton writes fiction and nonfiction books, comics, and screenplays, including several written with her late husband, Don Pendleton, creator of The Executioner, Mack Bolan Series. She is author of the Catherine Winter, Private Investigator Series, the historical novel, Corn Silk Days, Iowa, 1862; The Dawning; and Roulette: The Search for the Sunrise Killer, written with Don Pendleton. Don and Linda are known for their popular nonfiction books, To Dance With Angels, and Whispers From the Soul. Linda wrote A Walk Through Grief: Crossing the Bridge Between Worlds, following the death of her husband. She is a member of the Authors Guild, Sisters in Crime, and EPIC Authors. Several of her books have won awards.

Linda Pendleton did an exclusive in-depth interview with Prather and published the Exclusive Interview with Richard S. Prather, Author of the Shell Scott Mystery Series, two months before his death. The intimate look at Prather’s writing career and life turned out to be his last interview. Within the unique interview, he shares his long writing career, his personal life, his philosophy, and gives useful information on writing for aspiring authors.

* * *

Richard S. Prather Smashwords Author Page

Linda Pendleton Smashwords Author Page

Don Pendleton Smashwords Author Page

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO