The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (16 page)

“
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?”