Authors: Hilary Norman
Valdez didn’t argue. “So you want me to tell Ash and his team to get some sleep?”
“Absolutely.”
“Don’t you want to ask Lally what she thinks about it?”
“No way,” Joe said, almost violently. “It’s two-fifteen, I hope to hell she’s asleep, and she may know about the documents, but she doesn’t know anything
about the detonation, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Okay.” Valdez held up his hands. “You’re the boss.”
When Al Hagen entered the stiflingly hot room on the second floor, Schwartz was sleeping restlessly, moaning a little, very softly. His forehead, illuminated by the night
light, was damp with perspiration, and there were two little oxygen tubes in his nostrils. His left arm, with its IV attached, lay still on top of the covers, while the fingers of his right hand
strayed across the sheet like a blind creature seeking some lost prey.
For several moments, Hagen stared down at the man in the bed, trying to reconcile what he now knew about him with what he had believed for the past decade. His misconceptions overwhelmed him.
For all the combined gifts and knowledge that Howard Leary and Olivia Ashcroft had brought to Hagen Pacing, it had, for a long time, been Fred Schwartz that Hagen had depended upon to keep things
running smoothly, reliably. Safely.
Hagen thought back to the hours and days after the first deaths in Boston and Chicago, to the shattered reaction this man had presented to them all. Schwartz had seemed more stunned than any of
them, more guilt-wracked, but even the guilt – more than anything, the guilt – had been a staggeringly fine acting performance.
“Man and metal,” Schwartz muttered.
Startled, Hagen scrutinized him. He was still asleep, and dreaming, his eyelids moving rapidly, his mouth contorting as if in pain.
“Fred,” Hagen said.
Schwartz went on sleeping.
“Fred,” he said again, a little louder.
“Man and metal.” Schwartz’s dreaming voice was slurred, like a drunk’s.
“Fred.”
Schwartz opened his eyes and stared up at Hagen.
“Hello, Fred.”
“You.” Schwartz’s pupils were dilated.
“That’s right,” Hagen said, warmly, gently. “I’ve come to see you, to talk to you. To ask you for your help.”
“Help.”
Hagen was uncertain if the word was mocking or wary. He moved in closer to the bed.
“Keep away,” Schwartz said.
It was fear, no doubt about it.
“Come on, Fred,” Hagen said, soothingly. “We all know the truth now, and I think I can maybe begin to understand why you did it, but it’s over now, and this is your
chance to put things right – ”
“Go away.” The pupils were so black now, so dilated with fear that they seemed almost to overwhelm the irises. “Get
away
from me.
“You have to think of all the good work, great work, you’ve done over the years,” Hagen persisted. “This isn’t what you want to be remembered for, Fred, for
pity’s sake.”
“My name is not Fred.”
Hagen stared at him. The man seemed almost terrified, and maybe he was in some kind of delirium, but in spite of the fear, in spite of the still slurred voice, Schwartz was looking right into
his face, and Hagen felt that the terror and hatred in that gaze was directed at him, was
for
him.
He kept his own tone gentle. “What do you mean, Fred?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
“You know who I am. I know who you are.”
Hagen felt his stomach turn over.
“Who am I, Fred?”
“You’re Hagen.” He pronounced the name oddly, differently, the German way. Hahgen.
“And you?” Hagen’s voice was very hushed. “Who are you?”
The pupils sharpened a little, the whole suffering, sagging face seemed to tauten, to grow prouder.
“I’m Siegfried,” Schwartz said. “And I know why you’re here.”
“Why am I here, Siegfried?”
“To kill me.” Schwartz seemed to summon all his strength. “But I’m going to fight you, Hagen, all the way.”
For another moment, confusion swamped Al Hagen. And then, abruptly, something clicked into place in his mind, and he realized without a doubt that Frederick Schwartz was beyond reason, that
whether or not he had been rational ten years ago when he had been hired to work at Hagen Pacing, he was now certifiably insane.
“He’s gone mad,” Hagen told Joe, in Morrissey’s office.
“What happened?” Joe asked.
“He was out of it when I went in, talking in his sleep. ‘Man and metal.’ He kept saying that – ‘Man and metal’. And then, when I woke him up, he took one look
at me and his eyes almost popped out of his head, and he started telling me to get away from him – he was terrified, I mean, really terrified.”
“It’s probably the heat and his condition taking their toll,” Morrissey said.
“No,” Hagen disagreed. “Oh, I’m not saying they haven’t tipped the balance, but I’m telling you it was me he was scared of.” He shook his grey head.
“And believe it or not, I think this all has something to do with opera.”
“Opera?” Morrissey queried.
“Go on.” Joe’s tone was sharp.
Morrissey was sitting behind his desk, while Joe paced. Hagen sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs, facing the doctor.
“Are either of you familiar with the works of Richard Wagner?”
“To a degree,” Morrissey answered.
“Lieutenant?”
Joe recalled Cynthia Alesso, Hagen’s assistant, telling him and Lipman on their first morning at Hagen Pacing that her boss was crazy about Wagner. He went on pacing. “Just go ahead,
please.”
Hagen shook his head. “I don’t know if this is relevant, or any help to you, but for the first time ever, Schwartz used the German pronunciation of my name – Hahgen instead of
Hagen.” He paused. “And when I kept calling him Fred, he said – and he was way out of it, as I told you – but he said that that wasn’t his name, that his name was
Siegfried.”
“Siegfried the dragon slayer,” Morrissey said.
“Exactly.”
Joe stopped pacing. “Could one of you explain that to me?”
“Richard Wagner wrote a fifteen-hour operatic cycle,” Hagen told him, “that was divided up into four separate operas, and the whole thing was called
The Ring of the
Nibelung
. It’s wonderful stuff, pretty heavy in its way – too long for many people – and it’s loaded with symbolism and mythology.”
“The great hero’s name,” Morrissey took it up, “is Siegfried, and he’s sometimes known as the dragon slayer because he kills the dragon guarding the Nibelung
gold.”
“And in
Götterdämmerung
– ‘Twilight of the Gods’,” Hagen went on, “which is the final opera in the cycle, a character with my name kills
Siegfried the hero.”
“Though what all that has to do with Schwartz and what he’s done,” Morrissey said, “beats the hell out of me.”
Joe thought about the bizarre paintings and drawings and tapestries on the walls in apartment 1510 – the samplers signed with an elaborate
‘E’
, his mother’s
signature. “It could have a lot to do with Schwartz,” he said slowly. “He has an obsession with dragons.”
“Really?” Hagen looked confused.
“You said he was talking about man and metal?” Joe asked.
“That was what he kept muttering in his sleep. Does it mean anything to you, Lieutenant?”
“It certainly means something to him.” Briefly, Joe shut his eyes, trying to recall the words on one of the samplers. “Something to do with one of the ways dragons are born
– some really off-the-wall myth about mixing metal with flesh and blood and coming up with monsters.”
“Do you know,” Morrissey asked Hagen, “if Schwartz is an opera fan?”
“He’s a Wagner fan, like you, sir,” Joe answered, looking at Hagen. “His place is jammed with discs and tapes – and he had a CD of
Twilight of the Gods
. I
thought, for a while, that Schwartz might be trying to emulate your lifestyle, that it was a sign of admiration, a kind of hero-worship.”
They all fell silent for a long moment.
“So what are we saying here?” Hagen asked, slowly. “We already know Schwartz blamed his mother’s pacemaker for failing to save her life.” He paused. “I bought
the company in the mid-seventies, years after her death, of course, but if Schwartz was already fixated by the Siegfried and Hagen myth, I suppose pinning the blame on a company called Hagen Pacing
was just a hop and a skip away.” He shook his head. “But that only adds to his motivation, doesn’t it? I don’t see it helping to get anything more out of him.”
“I do,” Joe said.
“How?” Hagen asked.
Joe didn’t respond, just met Morrissey’s glance.
Hagen got the message. “You want me to go.”
“If you don’t mind,” Joe said. “I want to thank you for your help.”
“I’ve done nothing.”
“You’ve done more than you know,” Joe said.
When the door closed behind Hagen, Morrissey looked at Joe.
“What are you planning now, Lieutenant?”
“Where’s Mr Ferguson?”
“Somewhere in the building. Why?”
A new hit of adrenaline had sharpened Joe’s flagging system again. “Schwartz is right on the brink, isn’t he? He’s mixing up his myths, blurring the edges of fantasy and
reality – we have to use that, ethical or not. Without Schwartz’s confession, those documents are useless. If I can’t find a way to break him, he’ll go free, and all those
other patients out there will be no better off than when we started.”
“I ask you again,” Morrissey said, “what are you planning?”
“I’m planning,” Joe said, “to try and scare him half to death.” He read the disapproval on the physician’s face. “Schwartz isn’t going to talk any
other way, we all know that.” He went on slowly, still working it out. “What we can’t be sure of – short of crawling inside that fucked-up mind of his – is if,
ultimately, Schwartz is going to be more terrified of dying, or of this crazy man-and-metal thing.”
“You want Kaminsky to try again?”
Joe shook his head. “Kaminsky alone won’t change Schwartz’s mind, but I do have an idea that might tip the balance. It’s more than a little bizarre, and it’ll take
some time to set up, but it might just work.”
“Maybe I’d be better off not hearing this,” Morrissey said.
“Do you want to pull the plug?” Joe asked.
“How can I pull the plug on a plan I know nothing about?”
“Let’s not kid ourselves.” Joe owed it to Morrissey to be realistic. “If things go wrong, who’s going to believe you knew nothing? We’ve already involved
members of your staff – there are witnesses. It could mean major trouble for you and the clinic.”
“I’m well aware of that, Lieutenant.” Morrissey smiled wryly. “I’ve already done more than enough to get myself into all kinds of trouble. But I’m not a young
man – I’ll be retiring soon enough, anyway. And I owe Marie a great debt.” He paused. “But I am still a doctor, and when all is said and done, no matter what Schwartz is
guilty of, he’s still a patient in my clinic. I can’t become personally involved in any form of mistreatment.”
“You won’t be.”
“Do you give me your word he won’t be harmed?”
“I do.”
Morrissey nodded. “Then as I said, I can’t pull the plug on something I know nothing about.”
Joe checked his watch. Ten past three in the morning, and the whole investigation was still as big a mess as it had been. There was just this one remaining chance, this one more insane shot at
trying to break Schwartz, and if he failed, Joe knew that he’d have no more reason not to give Ash the go-ahead to take Lally into surgery.
Less than five hours remained until the commander’s deadline expired, and his career went down in flames. Right now, that was the least of his worries.
At four-fifteen a.m., Frederick Schwartz was dreaming again, wild, dark nightmares in which his mother was punishing him, burning his skin with her cigarette, in which a great
scaly dragon bore down on him, its breath so hot that he felt stifled, suffocated, in which he screamed and wept and no one came to save him. In which Hagen stood, silent and shadowy, in the
background, his sword drawn and all hope gone.
For several moments, Sean Ferguson watched the man who had killed his wife, and suddenly, for the very first time in all his years, adult and childhood, he experienced the urge to end another
human being’s life. He wanted to pick up one of those pillows and place it over this madman’s face, to push and push until the laboured breathing stopped and the insane, poisonous, evil
blood ceased flowing through his veins –
And then Schwartz gave a wheezing, choking breath, and his right hand clutched spasmodically at the damp sheet covering him, and the brief, murderous impulse left Ferguson. Killing him now would
help no one. Duval’s way was better.
Ferguson-Kaminsky took a deep breath of stifling air, and bent over the bed. “Mr Schwartz, wake up.”
Schwartz moaned.
“Come on, Mr Schwartz, you’re okay.”
Schwartz woke with a jolt, sweat streaming off him, eyes dark with terror.
“You’re okay now,” Ferguson-Kaminsky said. “It was just a dream.”
“Where is he?”
Schwartz’s voice was a hiss.
“Where is who?”
“Where’s Hagen? I saw him – he was here.”
“Mr Hagen was here earlier, but he’s gone home.” Ferguson-Kaminsky’s bedside manner was so gentle and calming he marvelled at it himself. “But I’ve come to
talk to you again about letting us treat your condition.”
Schwartz shook his head weakly from side to side.
“Where’s Hagen?” he asked again.
“I told you, sir, he left.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Ferguson-Kaminsky sat on a chair beside the bed. “Listen to me, please, Mr Schwartz, because I have something important to tell you.”
The wild eyes narrowed. “You want to put metal into me.”
“I want to put a pacemaker into you, yes.” The doctor paused. “You remember I told you about the other patient bitten by the Gila monster? Do you remember I told you that he
was very sick, that it was too late for him?”
“I remember. I remember all your lies.”