The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (20 page)

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.