Frameshift (23 page)

“Hello, Ms. Jacobs. I’m Tiffany Feng from Condor Health.”

“Won’t you come in?” said Molly.

“Thank you — my, what a charming place you have.”

“Thanks. Can I get you some coffee?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Well, then, please, have a seat.”

Tiffany sat down on the living-room couch and removed a few brochures from her attache case, then placed them on the pine coffee table, next to the blue-and-white transmitter for the baby monitor. Molly sat down next to her, putting Tiffany inside her zone. “Maybe you can tell me a bit about yourself, Ms. Jacobs,” said Tiffany.

“Please,” said Molly, “call me Karen.”

“Karen.”

“Well, I’m divorced. And I’m self-employed. I’ve got a preschooler.”

Molly gestured at the baby monitor. “But she’s with a neighbor right now.

Anyway, I got to thinking I should probably have some health insurance.”

“Well, you can’t go wrong with Condor,” said Tiffany. “Let me start by telling you about our Gold Plan. It’s our most comprehensive package…”

Molly listened intently to everything Tiffany said. All of Tiffany’s thoughts were benign: how much commission she’d get for landing the policy (Molly was surprised to learn that it was more than an entire year’s worth of premiums), the other appointments she had for the rest of the day, and so on.

When Tiffany’s spiel was over, Molly said, “Fine, I’ll take the Gold policy.”

“Oh, you won’t be sorry,” said Tiffany. “I just need you to fill out a form.” She took a legal-size sheet from her attache case and placed it on the table. She then opened her jacket, revealing an inside pocket with a row of pens clipped to it. She selected one and handed it to Molly. It was a retractable ballpoint. Molly pressed on the button with her thumb, the tip clicked out, and she began filling in the form.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a door opening upstairs.

Tiffany looked up, startled. “I thought we were alone.”

“Oh,” said Molly, “that’s just my husband.”

“Your husband — but I thought… Oh, my!”

Pierre was staggering down the stairs; for once, he didn’t mind the monster-movie sight he made as he did so. His left hand was holding on firmly to the banister, and in his right, which was swinging wildly, he held the receiver for the baby monitor. “Hello, Tiffany,” he said. Tiffany’s lipsticked mouth was open in shock. “Remember me?”

“You’re Pierre Trudeau!” said Tiffany, her eyes wide in recognition.

“Not quite,” said Pierre. “It’s Tardivel, actually.” He turned to his wife.

“Molly, I want to have a look at that pen.”

Tiffany tried to take the pen from Molly, but Molly jerked it away.

Pierre closed the distance, took the pen, sat down on an easy chair, unscrewed the barrel, and spilled the contents out on the coffee table.

There was a refill in there, with a spring wrapped around it. But the components of the button at the top of the pen were unusual. Pierre held the chrome-plated button up toward the window. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible spike projecting from its rounded top. He turned it toward his eye and squinted at it. It was hollow.

Pierre made an impressed face. “Nice piece of work,” he said, looking over at Tiffany. “When the customer presses down on the button with his thumb, a small core of skin cells is dug out. He wouldn’t feel a thing.”

Tiffany’s eyes were wide, and her voice was full of pleading. “Please, Mr. Tardivel, give me back the pen — I’m going to get in so much trouble!”

“I’ll say,” said Pierre grimly. “It’s against the law in this state to discriminate based on genetic tests — and I bet stealing cells from a body meets the legal definition of assault.”

“But we don’t discriminate!” said Tiffany. “The tissue samples are just for actuarial purposes.”

“What?” said Pierre, startled.

“Look — the new law, it’s crippling the insurance companies. We’re not allowed to get any genetic information from doctors unless it’s stripped of all other personal details about the individuals tested. How can we keep our actuarial tables current? We’ve got to have our own tissue database, do our own tests.”

“But you’re doing far more than that,” said Pierre. “You’re going after the policyholders—”

“What?” said Tiffany.

“The policyholders,” repeated Pierre. “If they’ve got bad genes, you—”

“We don’t keep any records relating the tissue samples to specific individuals. I told you, it’s just for actuarial studies — just for statistics.”

“But you—”

“No,” said Molly, still sitting next to Tiffany on the couch. “No, she really believes that.”

“It’s true,” said Tiffany emphatically.

“But then—” Pierre shut up.
Maudit
, she really didn’t know.

“Look,” said Tiffany, “please don’t say anything to anyone about that pen — it’ll cost me my job.”

“Do all the Condor salespeople use these pens?”

Tiffany shook her head. “No, no — only the top producers, like me. We get paid extra commissions for it, so—”

Pierre nodded grimly. “So no one ever leaves the company.” His voice was hard. “You want some advice? Quit your job. Quit today, right now, and start looking for work with another company — before everyone else from Condor is out there pounding the pavement with you.”

“Please,” said Tiffany, “my secretary doesn’t even know who I was seeing this morning. Just don’t tell them you got the pen from me, I beg you.”

Pierre looked at her for a time. “All right — if you don’t let anyone know we’ve got the pen, I won’t reveal where we got it. Deal?”

“Thank you!” said Tiffany. “Thank you!”

Pierre nodded, and pointed with a shaking arm at the front door. “Now get the hell out of my house.”

Tiffany rose, grabbed her attache case, and scurried out the door. Pierre leaned back in the chair and looked at Molly. They were both silent for a very long time. Finally, Molly said, “So what do we do now?”

Pierre looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “Well, a conspiracy like this would have to be at the very highest level of the company, so we need to get in to see the president — what’s his name?”

Molly went and got the Condor annual report, and flipped pages in it until she found the officers’ listing. ‘“Craig D. Bullen, M.B.A. (Harvard), President and CEO.’”

“Okay, we get in to see this Craig Bullen, and—”

“How on earth do we do that?”

“They might not have cared about what I had to say about their coercing abortions, but they will damn sure pay attention to me as a geneticist.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll send him another letter on Human Genome Center stationery, telling him there’s been a breakthrough — something that will revolutionize actuarial science — and that I’m prepared to give him an advance look.

Hell, even salespeople like Tiffany know all about the HGP; you can bet the company’s president is following it closely and will jump at the chance to get ahead of his competitors.”

Molly nodded, impressed. “But even if he does agree to see you, what do we do next?”

Pierre smiled. “We put Wonder Woman to work.”

Molly and Pierre drove up to the Condor Health Insurance Building in Pierre’s Toyota. The building was located on a well-treed thirty-acre lot on the outskirts of San Francisco, not far from the ocean. The tower in the center of it all was a Bauhaus monolith of glass and steel, stretching forty stories above the landscape. It was surrounded by parking lots on all four sides. The whole property was contained by a high chain-link fence.

They pulled up to the gatehouse, told the guard they had an appointment with Craig Bullen, and waited while he confirmed that by telephone. The barricade, painted with black and yellow chevrons, swung up, and they drove in, parked, and made their way to the front door.

The spacious lobby was done in brass and red marble. Two giant American flags stood on poles in the atrium, which also contained a pond with goldfish the length of Pierre’s forearm swimming in it. Another guard was sitting behind a wide marble desk. Pierre and Molly presented themselves there and received date-stamped visitors’ badges.

“The executive offices are on the thirty-seventh floor,” said the guard, pointing to a bank of elevators. The sign above the faux-marble door-skins said 31st to 40th Floors Only.

They entered the cab, which had mirrored walls and pot lights in the ceiling, and headed up. The Muzak was an instrumental version of the old Supremes song “Reflections.”

When they got off the elevator, a sign directed them to the president’s office. Pierre placed both his hands in his hip pockets to help control their shaking. As they came to the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, Pierre’s eyes went wide. Bullen’s brunette receptionist was gorgeous —
Playboy
Playmate of the Year gorgeous. She smiled, her teeth Liquid Paper white.

“Hello,” said Pierre. “Drs. Tardivel and Bond, to see Mr. Bullen.”

She lifted a telephone handset to her ear. Pierre thought briefly that this must be part of Silicone Valley. Molly, picking up the word “silicone,” whapped him lightly on the upper arm.

Having gotten the okay, she rose and, hips swaying atop black stiletto heels, escorted Pierre and Molly to the inner sanctum, opening the heavy wooden door and gesturing them inside.

A goodly hunk of Condor Health Insurance’s profits had clearly been spent on Craig Bullen’s office. It was twenty feet wide and forty feet long, paneled in rich reddish wood — California redwood, Pierre imagined — with intricate carvings of hunting dogs and deer along the frieze. Eight oil paintings of landscapes hung in the room, all doubtless originals. Pierre was astounded to see that the one closest to him, depicting the Scottish moors, was by John Constable, and, like every good Canadian, he immediately recognized the distinctive stylized work of Emily Carr next to it. Her painting included one of her trademark Haida totem poles.

Bullen rose from behind his wide mahogany desk and strode down the length of the room. He was a broad-shouldered, athletic man of about forty, with the lined, dark face of someone who often spent time lying on southern beaches. He had a squarish head, brown eyes, and a hairline that had receded, leaving behind a graying dust bunny at the top of his forehead. His designer suit was dark blue, and he wore intriguing inch-wide cuff links made of gold-plated watch innards.

“Dr. Tardivel,” he said in a deep voice as he extended a large hand.

“How good of you to come.”

“Thank you,” said Pierre, quickly taking the proffered hand and shaking vigorously enough to hide his own palsied movements.

Bullen’s grip was firm, perhaps overly so — an aggressive, macho display.

He turned to Molly, his eyebrows moving up for a conference with his dust bunny. “And this is?”

“My wife, Dr. Molly Bond,” said Pierre, returning his hands to his pockets. He stepped on his left foot with his right, trying to keep it from moving.

Bullen shook her hand as well. “You’re very beautiful,” he said, smiling right at her. “I hadn’t realized Dr. Tardivel was bringing anyone with him, but now that I see you, I’m delighted that he did.”

Molly blushed slightly. “Thank you.”

Bullen started walking. “Please, please, come in.”

A long conference table of polished wood filled part of the room; it had seating for fourteen. Bullen walked along its length to a giant antique Earth globe and tilted off the Northern Hemisphere, revealing a stock of liquor bottles within.

“Won’t you have a drink?” he said.

Pierre shook his head.

“No, thank you,” said Molly.

“Coffee? A soft drink, perhaps? Rosalee will be glad to get you anything you’d like.”

Pierre thought for half a second about asking for something, just to get another look at the spectacular secretary. He smiled ruefully to himself.

You can’t escape your genes. “No, thank you.”

“Very well,” said Bullen. He closed up the Earth and took a seat at the conference table. “Now, Dr. Tardivel, I understand you’ve had a breakthrough over at your lab.”

Pierre nodded and gestured for Molly to sit down. She took the padded leather seat next to Bullen, then moved the chair slightly, bringing him into her zone; her right knee was now practically touching his. Pierre walked around to the other side of the long table, using the backs of the chairs as supports. He removed his sports jacket — he was wearing a pale blue short-sleeved shirt beneath — and sat opposite both of them. “I think it’s safe to say,” said Pierre, “that what we’ve discovered will shock the entire insurance industry.”

Bullen nodded, fascinated. “Do go on, sir. I’m all ears.” A writing pad bound in calf leather was sitting on the table. Bullen drew it to him, opened it up, and took a gold-and-black fountain pen from his jacket pocket.

“What we’ve discovered,” said Pierre, “is, well, shall we say in the nature of a statistical anomaly.” He paused, looking significantly at Bullen.

The man nodded. “Statistics are the lifeblood of insurance, Dr. Tardivel.”

“Well said,” remarked Pierre, “for blood figures very heavily in all of this.” He looked over at Molly and raised his eyebrows a tiny amount, conveying the question of whether she was succeeding at reading Bullen’s mind. She nodded slightly. Pierre went on. “What we’ve discovered, Mr. Bullen, is that your company has a very low rate of major claims payments.”

A few vertical creases joined the horizontal ones on Bullen’s bronzed forehead as he drew his brows together. “We’ve been very lucky of late.”

“Isn’t it more than just luck, Mr. Bullen?”

Bullen was becoming visibly annoyed. “We strive for good management.

I don’t suppose you’ve read Milton Friedman, but—”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” said Pierre. He was pleased to see Bullen’s eyebrows go up — but Friedman had won the 1976 Nobel Prize in economics. “I know he asked the question, ‘Do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible?’”

Bullen nodded. “And Friedman’s answer was, No, they do not.”

“But staying within the law is the key point, no? And that’s very hard to do.”

“I thought you had something to tell me about the Human Genome Project,” said Bullen, his face reddening. He placed the cap back on his pen.

Pierre’s heart was pounding so loudly he suspected Bullen and Molly could both hear it. He was suddenly confused. It had been happening more and more lately, but he’d been denying it to himself. That Huntington’s had already robbed him of much of his physical prowess he could accept, but that it also was bound to affect his mind was something he’d been refusing to deal with. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to remember what he was supposed to say next. “Mr. Bullen, I believe your company is illegally taking genetic samples from its policy applicants.”

Molly’s eyes went wide. As soon as the words were out, Pierre realized he’d said the precise thing they’d decided he would not say. All he’d intended to do was steer the conversation lightly around the issue, letting Molly listen to his thoughts. But now…

Bullen looked first at Pierre, then at Molly sitting next to him, then back at Pierre. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said slowly.

What to do? Try to backtrack? But the accusation was out, and Bullen was clearly on guard now. “I’ve seen the pens,” said Pierre.

Bullen shrugged. “There’s nothing illegal about them.”

To press on? Surely that was the only thing to do. “You’re collecting tissue samples without permission.”

Bullen leaned back in his chair and spread his arms. “Dr. Tardivel, that chair you’re sitting in is upholstered in leather, and today is a nice, hot summer’s day, even with the air-conditioning. Your forearm is probably sticking to the chair’s arm, no? When you lift up your arm, your skin will peel away from it, and you’ll leave many hundreds of skin cells behind on the chair. I could freely collect those. If you used my bathroom” — he gestured at an unmarked door set into the redwood paneling — “and left a bowel movement in the toilet bowl, there would be thousands upon thousands of sloughed-off epithelial cells from your intestines coating the feces, and I could collect those, too. If you shed a hair with attached follicle, or spit out some mouth wash in my sink, or blew your nose, or did any of hundreds of other things, I could collect samples of your DNA without you knowing it. My lawyers tell me there’s absolutely nothing illegal about picking up material people are dropping all the time anyway.”

“But you’re not just collecting cells,” said Pierre. “You’re using the information to determine which policyholders are likely to submit expensive claims.”

Bullen raised his hand, palms out. “Only in general terms, so we can plan responsibly. It lets my statisticians forecast the dollar value in claims payouts we’ll likely have to make to existing policyholders in the future — and that is to the policyholders’ benefit, actually. We were totally unprepared for all the claims related to AIDS, for instance; there was a while there in the late eighties when we thought we might have to file Chapter Eleven.”

“Chapter Eleven?”

“Bankruptcy, Dr. Tardivel. It doesn’t do a person much good to have a policy with a bankrupt insurer. This way, we’re able to responsibly plan for the claims we’ll have to pay.”

“I don’t think it’s that at all, Mr. Bullen. I think you’re doing it to
avoid
having to pay claims. I think you’re doing it to identify in advance and eliminate policyholders who will make substantial claims in the future.”

Molly shook her head slightly. Pierre knew he was going too far. Damn it, why couldn’t he think straight?

Bullen tipped his head to one side. “What?”

Pierre looked over at Molly, then back at Bullen. He took a deep breath, but it was too late now to stop. “Your company is killing people, isn’t it, Mr. Bullen? You arrange the murder of anyone you discover might make a big claim against you.”

“Dr. Tardivel — if you
are
a doctor — I think you should leave.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” said Pierre, wanting to resolve it once and for all.

“You killed Joan Dawson. You killed Bryan Proctor. You killed Peter Mansbridge. You killed Cathy Jurima. And you tried to have me killed, too — and probably would have tried again, except that that would have aroused too much suspicion.”

Bullen was on his feet now. “Rosalee!” he shouted. “
Rosalee!
”

The heavy door opened a bit, and the stunning brunette poked her head in. “Sir?”

“Call security! These people are crazy.” Bullen was moving quickly back toward his desk. “Get out, you two! Get out of here.” Rosalee was already on the phone. Bullen opened the top left drawer of his desk and pulled out a small revolver. “Get out!”

Pierre lifted his rump onto the table, slid across its wide, polished surface, got off on the other side, and quickly interposed himself between Molly and Bullen’s line of fire. “We’re leaving,” said Pierre. “We’re leaving.

Put that away.”

Rosalee reappeared. Her collagen-injected lips opened wide when she saw Bullen’s gun. “S-s-security is on its way,” she stammered.

Soon four burly guards in gray uniforms appeared. Two of them had large revolvers drawn.

“Eject these two from the premises,” snapped Bullen.

“Come along,” said one of the guards, gesturing with his gun.

Pierre started walking. Molly soon followed. The guards took them immediately to the elevator lobby. One of the cars was locked off on-service; they were hustled into that one. A guard turned a key in the control panel, and the elevator dropped rapidly down the thirty-seven stories to the ground, Pierre’s ears popping as it did so.

“Outside,” said the same guard who had spoken before.

Pierre and Molly hightailed it into the parking lot, two guards following them. They got into the Toyota, Molly driving, and sped out of the lot.

Pierre was shaking from head to toe, his chorea aggravated by the adrenaline coursing through his system.

“What happened in there?” said Molly.

“I — I got confused.”

“You said far more than you were supposed to.”

Pierre closed his eyes. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. It’s — damn, I hate this fucking disease.”

The road curved to the left. The tires squealed slightly as the car followed the bend.

“What about Bullen?” said Pierre at last.

Molly shook her head. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘Nothing’?”

“Bullen just kept thinking things like, ‘My God — he’s a lunatic,’ and ‘He’s out of his mind,’ and…”

“Yes?”

“And ‘Look at the way he’s shaking — he must be drunk.’”

“But nothing about the murders?”

She turned down another road. “Nothing.”

“No guilt? No sense of shock that he’d been caught?”

“No. Nothing like that. I tell you, Pierre, he honestly didn’t have a clue as to what you were talking about.”

“But I was so sure. All the evidence…”

They came to a traffic signal. Molly stopped the car. “Evidence that you’ve seen,” she said softly. She looked at him briefly, then dropped her eyes.

“No,” said Pierre sharply. “Dammit, no. What happened in there was a fluke. This isn’t a hallucination. I haven’t lost my mind.”