Authors: Lawrence Sanders
I ignored him and bought Millie a souvenir from a vendor. A small stuffed pit dog. Its coat dyed with realistic bloodstains.
I have said that passion dooms profitable using, and it does. Millie and I were tuned to a tight, tinny pitch, but nothing we did that night opened the gates we wanted thrown free. I know it was so with me; I believe it was so with her. If that last fight had been a designed ballet, then I blamed art. For always offering the receding carrot. Beauty. Mystery. Ecstasy. I wanted only the now. The flat and tasteless now.
I was worse than her; I could not stop talking that night. To her sprawled, unhearing, somnolent corpus. All my problems. All my troubles. Stress pouring from me in a hemorrhage. That sweated bed became a confessional, and I meandered on about
Clostridium botulinum
and Grace Wingate and what I planned to do to Hyman R. Lewisohn. She did not hear me. But even if she had, she would not have understood. She was a poor, retarded clone with punched breasts and punished thighs, and what could she compute of the Department of Creative Science?
At some point in time, during that verbal diarrhea, I came around to Egon Schiele, whose art, I then realized, I had been sedulously avoiding for so long. There was something there, I said aloud, something there, something in his paintings and drawings frighteningly akin to what I had just seen: Janet and Eric seeking to chop each other to deadening pain.
It was all beyond me. I glimpsed rather than saw. Until I grew weary with disemboweling myself to a gently snoring Millie. I switched off the lamp. Listened awhile to the soft scuttling of mice displaced from the vacated porn shop below. And, finally, fell asleep.
Then back to Grosse Pointe the following morning. Curiously refurbished from the previous night’s folly. As if I had been flayed and then fitted with a smartly tailored suit of Juskin. Guaranteed blemish-free.
The house seemed crowded. My father had returned, bringing with him his production, marketing, and PR staffs. Ben Baker was the only object I knew. I was introduced to the others: names and faces of no significance to this account.
I sat in on the afternoon session, listening to the set speeches and the colloquy that followed. It soon became evident to me that the Die-Dee Doll was an intoxicating success. I learned that production shortfalls had limited love input during the Christmas selling season, but a new assembly plant had been brought onto line, and sales were overachieving in the postchris period.
“Ethnic markets are incredible,” the sales chief enthused.' “Much better than projected. Take Africa. We’re airlifting the DD-4, 5, and 6 models: light tan, dark brown, black. The DD-6 in tribal dress is moving exceptionally fast. We’re getting reports from our field ems that in some places, back in the bush, natives are worshiping the dolls!”
I gathered that, all over the world, little efs, and some little ems, were anxiously watching their Die-Dee Dolls, waiting for the rattle that presaged the end. In Scotland, Die-Dee Dolls in kilt and plaid. In Hong-Kong, in miniature cheongsam. In Japan, in kimono and obi. In California, in bikini (topless). In Greenland, in plastifurs. And so forth. All over the globe the final rattles sounded on the wind, and children rushed to inter the remains.
Then the meet was over; guests began departing by car and by copter. Finally, my father and I, alone, moved into the library. Giving Mrs. McPherson and Charles a chance to clean up the littered dining room.
“Nick-ol’-as!” my father shouted. Clapping me on the shoulder. “Good to see you, boy. You look peakish. Serving hard?”
“Very hard.” I nodded.
“Little medicine for the doctor,” he chuckled. Pouring us snifters of brandy. “I’m hearing and scanning a lot about you these days.”
I said nothing.
“How’s it coming?” he asked. “This Department of Creative Science? Think you’ll slip it by?”
“We’re hoping.”
“It sounds good to me,” he said stoutly. “I’ve spoken to a few objects about it. Heavy objects. They’re sympathetic. But they’d feel better if they knew who’ll be Director. I tell them you. Right?”
“Probably.”
“Counting on it?” he asked shrewdly.
“Sure. But no guarantee.”
“I wish you were in Washington. That’s where the action is.” “They’ve got me on the road, doing the PR. That’s important, too.”
“No doubt about it,” he assured me. “Very important. But Washington. . . . Paul Bumford’s handling things there?”
‘‘Yes. He’s running the temporary DCS office.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you know the obso stories about the traveling salesmen? How much cush they get away from home? But no one mentions how much the old lady gets at home, while hubby’s away. You follow?”
“Oh, sure.” I nodded. “I follow. But I trust Paul.”
“Uh-huh. But D. C. does strange things to young fellers. It’s like their first drunk. Their first lay. A taste of what it’s all about. I’ve been computing. . . . Suppose this: Suppose, unofficially, I organize a committee. ‘Businessmen for the DCS.' Something like that. Get some big names. Lean a little on the Washington crowd. Would that help?”
“One hell of a lot. Thank you, Father.”
“And while we’re leaning, we can pass a few nudges that our cooperation depends on your becoming Director. How does that jerk you?”
“I like it, I like it!” I said. As enthusiastically as I could. “I’d really appreciate that.”
“Good as done,” he said. Finishing his brandy in a gulp. “Well.. . . I’ve got a few little things to do.”
I must have looked amused.
“I don’t want to talk about this one, Nick,” he said.
“All right.”
“No jokes. Please.”
“All right,” I repeated patiently. “No jokes.”
“This one may be serious,” he said solemnly. “I’m really jerked.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Would you be sore, Nick? If—”
“If you married again? Of course not. It’s your life.”
“Well, I haven’t decided,” he said. “If I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
“If you do,” I said, “I think I better be the second to know.” “Nick-ol’-as!” he said fondly.
On to Buffalo. A speech there, and at Rochester. A private conversation with the Governor in Albany. A symposium at MIT and a colloquy at Harvard. Then back to Manhattan Landing while the others continued on to Washington.
“So nice.” Samantha Slater smiled. Slowly stroking my palm. “I’m looking forward to our next tour.”
“My pleasure,” I said.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Mine.”
During the twenty-six days I had been absent, I had kept in contact with Ellen Dawes in GPA-1 and Paul Bumford in Washington, D. C., via a Portaphone, a portable radiotelephone in an attache case. With a scrambler attachment. Paul had nothing urgent. The methodology of the programmed nutbreak of botulism in GPA-11 was still unsolved. HR-316 was coming up for amendment votes in the House Government Operations Committee. The DCS office in the EOB basement had been expanded. Art Roach had added two black zipsuits to his staff. And, oh, yes—there was a hand-addressed letter to me from Louise Rawlins Tucker. I asked Paul to open it and read it to me. Louise thanked me for the enjoyable lunch and invited me to a dinnerparty the second week in March, date and time to be confirmed later. I told Paul I’d take care of it when I returned.
“Louise Rawlins Tucker,” he said. “She’s Grace Wingate’s AA, isn’t she?”
“Social secretary,” I said.
Ellen Dawes’ news wasn’t as welcome. Nothing catastrophic had occurred in my absence, but the Satisfaction Rate continued to decline, and Lewisohn’s vital signals continued to deteriorate. And there was a courier-delivered letter from the Bureau of Public Security. It was marked “FIA”—For Immediate Action. That, in BPS nomenclature, was akin to California canners marking a jar “Gigantic olives.”
“Hold it for me,” I told Ellen. “If it was really hot, the courier would have waited for a reply. Miss me?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We’re running out of coffee.”
Dear, sweet Ellen. I needed her, occasionally, to snub me back to operative values.
I was glad to get back to GPA-1. To shower with a large cake of perfumed soap. To mix a big vodka-and-Smack with a slice of natural lime from three I had found in Florida. Generally to unwind. I pulled on a tattered, soft-as-silk zipsuit and old moccasins. I riffled through the personal mail that had accumulated in my absence. Bills, mostly. Some invitations to speak, write, submit to interviews, attend symposia. One of the latter, on megapopulation, was to be held in Reykjavik. Seemed an odd place for it. Why not Calcutta?
Later in the evening, about 2130,1 pulled on a hooded oilskin and dashed across the snowy compound to my office. My desk was piled high. I zipped through it swiftly.
Hospice No. 17 in Little Rock reported that a “volunteer,” who had been given a total transfusion of newly formulated synthetic blood, had lasted eighty-six hours. Possibly Angela Teresa Berri. But eighty-six hours wasn’t bad; they were getting there.
Phoebe Huntzinger had submitted a lengthy status update. Progress was continuing on Project Phoenix. Coherent conceptions were being drained from volunteers’ brains with increasing frequency and heightened sensitivity. Her use of the word ‘ ‘drained’ ’ excited a realization of how valuable the new technique might prove in interrogative procedures.
Leo Bernstein’s report consisted of three words: “No significant progress.” But I knew Leo; nothing was significant to him except the solution. I was certain he was achieving.
I finally came to the For Immediate Action message from the Bureau of Public Security. It was obviously a form letter, composed and produced by computer, with the signature of R. Sam Bigelow printed in water-soluble ink that smudged if you rubbed it. The real thing.
The letter stated that BPS was conducting a “routine inventory” on samples of the restricted toxic substance 416HBL-CW3. In 1988, a number of samples of this substance had been delivered to various research facilities, one of which was the Department of Research & Development, SATSEC, DOB. Records indicate, shipment of and signed receipt for 5 cc of the aforementioned substance. I was to inform BPS if the 5 cc were still in possession of DivRad. If not, I was to explain when and for what purpose any or all of it had been used. Reply requested instanter.
The letter angered me. I was not angry with R. Sam Bigelow; he was just performing his service, trying to trace all known quantities of the aerobic
Clostridium botulinum
in glycerol. I was angry with myself. After the analysis in K Lab, when I had looked up 416HBL-CW3 in our restricted drug code book, I had scanned the large green star after the definition. But the proper synaptic closure had not been made. I had not interpreted that green Star. It signified that a restricted drug so marked was in our pharmacology library.
Then I recalled my few moments of talk with Paul Bumford in the basement of the EOB, when I had told him that 416HBL-CW3 was the causative agent in the botulism outbreak in GPA-11.1 remembered that brief conversation had disturbed me. Was it because that, subconsciously, my mental lapse was nagging? That I knew I had missed something, but could not dredge it to the surface? I had had to postpone my annual hippocampal irrigation. Perhaps that had been a mistake if my memory was beginning to stammer.
No matter. All I had to do now was to verify that existence of 5 cc of 416HBL-CW3 in our pharmacology library and so inform R. Sam Bigelow. I could not recall anyone in DivRad ever requesting and using any of the damned stuff. We had no need to paint cigars or spray our neighbors’ tomatoes.
Once again, oilskin clad, I dashed across the compound. Because of the snow, the automatic car-trains were not running. I slotted my BIN card, was further identified by voiceprint check, and was allowed entrance into B Lab. Down in the third sublevel I followed a maze of underground tunnels to the drug storage area. The empty white corridors went on and on. When, good little mouse that I was, I arrived at my goal, I would receive a food pellet.
There was a night staff in the outer office of the pharmacology library: two objects playing three-dimensional chess, one kibitzing. They looked up when I came in and started to rise. I waved them down.
“I can find it,” I said. “Go on with your game.”
They settled back.
“Still snowing out, Director?” the kibitzer asked.
“Still.” I nodded. “You may be here for days. Nothing to eat but aphrodisiacs.”
They grinned at me and went back to their game. I went to the file computer, switched it on, punched the readout button, and typed 416HBL-CW3 on the keyboard. Almost immediately the screen showed: RESTRICTED SECTIONXXXROOM GXXXBIN 3XXXSTACK 4XXXPOSITION RXXX END IT.
I wiped the screen, turned off the machine, went through an inner door to the storage area. The restricted section was at the end of another long, deserted corridor. Shining plastiasb tiles underfoot, white walls and ceiling, fluorescent lighting. Subway to nowhere.
The glass doors to the restricted section were locked. As they should have been. I pushed the buzzer. Nothing happened. No one came. I knew what the problem was. Vinnie Altman, the obso night guard of the restricted drug library. And to problem was petroport. But he was inoffensive, serving out his final years to retirement. It was easy to overlook his mild alcoholism and taste in scanning matter.
I leaned on the buzzer again. Finally I saw him. Blinking, shambling toward the door. Carrying a magazine. He peered at me through the glass. Then his whiskey face creased deeper. He turned off the alarm, opened the two locks, slid the door aside.
“Hey there, doc,” he said. “Long time no see.”
I didn’t mind when
he
called me doc. I stepped inside. He closed the door. The locks and alarm connected again automatically. I took the picture magazine from his hand. Danish porn for export. It was called
Gash.
So it was. All of it.
“All I can do is look,” he said.
“Look but don’t lick,” I said. “The ink may give you a bellyache.”
“That ain’t where my ache is,” he said. “Please sign the register, doc.”
I signed the register, a big ledger, with date, time of entrance,' name. While Vinnie Altman leaned over my shoulder. Watching. He exuded petroport fumes.