The Bad Place

Page 19

He said nothing.
She said, “It’s erotic, the sun. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. You lay out in the sun enough, on a nice beach, and all your inhibitions sort of melt away.”
He just stared at her.
After she finished filling out the analysis orders, gave him copies, and attached each order to the correct sample, Lisa said, “Listen, Clint, we’re living in a modem world, right?”
He didn’t know what she meant.
She said, “We’re all liberated these days, am I right? So if a girl finds a guy attractive, she doesn’t have to wait for him to make the move.”
Oh, Clint thought.
Leaning back on her stool, maybe to let him see how her full br**sts filled out her white uniform blouse, she smiled and said, “Would you be interested in a dinner, movie?”
“No.”
Her smile froze.
“Sorry,” he said.
He folded the copies of the work orders and put them in the same jacket pocket from which earlier he had withdrawn a business card.
She was glaring at him, and he realized he’d hurt her feelings.
Searching for something to say, all he could come up with was, “I’m gay.”
She blinked and shook her head as if recovering from a stunning blow. Like sun piercing clouds, her smile broke through the gloom on her face. “Had to be to resist this package, I guess.”
“Sorry.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault. We are what we are, huh?”
He went into the rain again. It was getting colder. The sky looked like the ruins of a burned-out building to which the fire department had arrived too late: wet ashes, dripping cinders.
30
As NIGHT fell on that rainy Monday, Bobby Dakota stood at the hospital window and said, “Not much of a view, Frank. Unless you’re keen on parking lots.” He turned and surveyed the small, white room. Hospitals always gave him the creeps, but he did not express his true feelings to Frank. “The decor sure won’t be featured in Architectural Digest anytime soon, but it’s comfy enough. You’ve got TV, magazines, and three meals a day in bed. I noticed some of the nurses are real lookers, too, but please try to keep your hands off the nuns, okay?”
Frank was paler than ever. The dark circles around his eyes had grown like spreading inkblots. He not only looked as if he belonged in a hospital but as if he had been there for weeks already. He used the power controls to tilt the bed up. “Are these tests really necessary?”
“Your amnesia might have a physical cause,” Julie said. “You heard Dr. Freeborn. They’ll look for cerebral abscesses, neoplasms, cysts, clots, all kinds of things.”
“I’m not sure about this Freeborn,” Frank said worriedly.
Sanford Freeborn was Bobby and Julie’s friend, as well as their physician. A few years ago they had helped him get his brother out of deep trouble.
“Why? What’s wrong with Sandy?”
Frank said, “I don’t know him.”
“You don’t know anybody,” Bobby said. “That’s your problem. Remember? You’re an amnesiac.”
After accepting Frank as a client, they had taken him directly to Sandy Freeborn’s office for a preliminary examination. All Sandy knew was that Frank could remember nothing but his name. They had not told him about the bags of money, the blood, black sand, red gems, weird insect, or any of the rest of it. Sandy didn’t ask why Frank had come to them instead of the police or why they had accepted a case so far outside their usual purview; one of the things that made him a good friend was his reliable discretion.
Nervously adjusting the sheets, Frank said, “You think a private room is really necessary?”
Julie nodded. “You also want us to find out what you do at night, where you go, which means monitoring you, tight security.”
“A private room’s expensive,” Frank said.
“You can afford the finest care,” Bobby said.
“The money in those bags might not be mine.”
Bobby shrugged. “Then you’ll have to work off your hospital bill—change a few hundred beds, empty a few thousand bed-pans, perform some brain surgery free of charge. You might be a brain surgeon. Who knows? With amnesia, it’s just as likely you’ve forgotten that you’re a surgeon as that you’re a used-car salesman. Worth a try. Get a bone saw, cut off the top of some guy’s head, have a peek in there, see if anything looks familiar.”
Leaning against the bed rail, Julie said, “When you’re not in radiology or some other department, undergoing tests, we’ll have a man with you, watching over you. Tonight it’s Hal.”
Hal Yamataka had already taken his station in an uncomfortable-looking, upholstered chair provided for visitors. He was to one side of the bed, between Frank and the door, in a position to watch both his charge and, if Frank was in the mood, the wall-mounted television. Hal resembled a Japanese version of Clint Karaghiosis: about five foot seven or eight, broad in the shoulders and chest, as solid-looking as if he had been built by a mason who knew how to fit stones tight together and hide the mortar. In case nothing worth watching was on television and his charge proved to be a lousy conversationalist, he had brought a John D. MacDonald novel.
Looking at the rain-washed window, Frank said, “I guess I’m just ... scared.”
“No need to be scared,” Bobby said. “Hal’s not as dangerous as he looks. He’s never killed anyone he liked.”
“Only once,” Hal said.
Bobby said, “You once killed someone you liked? Over what?”
“He asked to borrow my comb.”
“There you go, Frank,” Bobby said. “Just don’t ask to borrow his comb, and you’re safe.”
Frank was in no mood to be kidded. “I can’t stop thinking about waking up with blood on my hands. I’m afraid maybe I’ve already hurt someone. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
“Oh, you can’t hurt Hal,” Bobby said. “He’s an impenetrable oriental.”
“Inscrutable,” Hal said. “I’m an inscrutable oriental.”
“I don’t want to hear about your sex problems, Hal. Anyway, if you didn’t eat so much sushi and didn’t have raw-fish breath, you’d get scruted as often as anyone.”
Reaching over the bed railing, Julie took one of Frank’s hands.
He smiled weakly. “Your husband always like this, Mrs. Dakota?”
“Call me Julie. Do you mean, does he always act like a wiseass or a child? Not always, but most of the time, I’m afraid.”
“You hear that, Hal?” Bobby said. “Women and amnesiacs —they have no sense of humor.”
To Frank, Julie said, “My husband believes everything in life should be fun, even car accidents, even funerals—”
“Even dental hygiene,” Bobby said.
“—and he’d probably be making jokes about fallout in the middle of a nuclear war. That’s just the way he is. He can’t be cured—”
“She’s tried,” Bobby said. “She sent me to a happiness detox center. They promised to knock some gloom into me. Couldn’t.”
“You’ll be safe here,” Julie said, squeezing Frank’s hand before letting go of it. “Hal will look after you.”
31
THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S house was in the Turtle Rock development in Irvine, within easy driving distance of the university. Low, black, mushroom-shaped Malibu lamps threw circles of light on the rain-puddled walkway that led to the softly gleaming oak doors.
Carrying one of Frank Pollard’s leather flight bags, Clint stepped onto the small covered porch and rang the bell.
A man spoke to him through an intercom set just below the bell push. “Who is it, please?”
“Dr. Dyson Manfred? I’m Clint Karaghiosis. From Dakota and Dakota.”
Half a minute later, Manfred opened the door. He was at least ten inches taller than Clint, six feet five or six, and thin. He was wearing black slacks, a white shirt, and a green necktie; the top button of the shirt was undone, and the tie hung loose.
“Good God, man, you’re soaked.”
“Just damp.”
Manfred moved back, opening the door wide, and Clint stepped into the tile-floored foyer.
As he closed the door, Manfred said, “Ought to have a raincoat or umbrella on a night like this.”
“It’s invigorating.”
“What is?”
“Bad weather,” Clint said.
Manfred looked at him as if he was strange, but in Clint’s view it was Manfred himself who was strange. The guy was too thin, all bones. He could not fill his clothes; his trousers hung shapelessly on his knobby hips, and his shoulders poked at the fabric of his shirt as if only bare, sharp bones lay under there. Angular and graceless, he looked as if he had been assembled from a pile of dry sticks by an apprentice god. His face was long and narrow, with a high brow and a lantern jaw, and his well-tanned, leathery skin seemed to be stretched so tight over his cheekbones that it might split. He had peculiar amber eyes that regarded Clint with an expression of cool curiosity no doubt familiar to the thousands of bugs he had pinned to specimen boards.
Manfred’s gaze traveled down Clint to the floor, where water was puddling around his running shoes.
“Sorry,” Clint said.
“It’ll dry. I was in my study. Come along.”
Glancing into the living room, to his right, Clint noted fleurde-lis wallpaper, a thick Chinese rug, too many overstuffed chairs and sofas, antique English furniture, wine-red velour drapes, and tables cluttered with bibelots that glimmered in the lamplight. It was a very Victorian room, not in harmony with the California lines and layout of the house itself.
He followed the entomologist past the living room, along a short hall to the study. Manfred had a singular, stilting gait. Tall and sticklike as he was, with shoulders hunched and head thrust forward slightly, he seemed as unevolved and prehistoric as a praying mantis.
Clint had expected a university professor’s study to be crammed full of books, but only forty or fifty volumes were shelved in one case to the left of the desk. There were cabinets with wide, shallow drawers that probably were filled with creepy-crawlies, and on the walls were insects in specimen boxes, framed under glass.
When he saw Clint staring at one collection in particular, Manfred said, “Cockroaches. Beautiful creatures.”
Clint did not reply.
“The simplicity of their design and function, I mean. Few would find them beautiful in appearance, of course.”
Clint couldn’t shake the feeling that the bugs were really alive.
Manfred said, “What do you think of that big fellow in the comer of the collection?”
“He’s big, sir.”
“Madagascar hissing roach. The scientific name’s Gromphadorrhina portentosa. That one’s over eight and a half centimeters long, about three and a half inches. Absolutely beautiful, isn’t he?”
Clint said nothing.
Settling into the chair behind his desk, Manfred somehow folded his long bony arms and legs into that compact space, the way a large spider could scrunch itself into a tiny ball.
Clint did not sit down. Having put in a long day, he was eager to go home.
Manfred said, “I received a call from the university chancellor. He asked me to cooperate with your Mr. Dakota in any way I could.”
UCI—the University of California at Irvine—had long been striving to become one of the country’s premier universities. The current chancellor and the one before him had sought to attain that status by offering enormous salaries and generous fringe benefits to world-class professors and researchers at other institutions. Before committing substantial resources in the form of a well-upholstered job offer, however, the university hired Dakota & Dakota to conduct a background investigation on the prospective faculty member. Even a brilliant physicist or biologist could have too great a thirst for whiskey, a nose for cocaine, or an unfortunate attraction to underage girls. UCI wanted to buy brainpower, respectability, and academic glory, not scandal; Dakota & Dakota served them well.
Manfred propped his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers, which were so long that they looked as if they must have at least one extra knuckle each. “What’s the problem?” he asked.
Clint opened the leather flight bag and removed the quart-size, wide-mouth mason jar. He put it on the entomologist’s desk.
The bug in the jar was at least twice as big as the Madagascar hissing roach on the wall.
For a moment Dr. Dyson Manfred seemed to have been quick-frozen. He didn’t move a finger; his eyes didn’t blink. He stared intently at the creature in the jar. At last he said, “What is this—a hoax?”
“It’s real.”
Manfred leaned forward, hunching over the desk and lowering his head until his nose almost touched the thick glass behind which the insect crouched. “Alive?”
“Dead.”
“Where did you find this—not here in southern California?”
“Yes.”
“Impossible.”
“What is it?” Clint asked.
Manfred looked up at him, scowling. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And if I haven’t seen anything like it, neither has anyone else. It’s of the phylum Arthropoda, I’m sure, which includes such things as spiders and scorpions, but whether it can be classed an insect, I can’t say, not until I’ve examined it. If it is an insect, it’s of a new species. Where, exactly, did you find it, and why on earth would it be of interest to private detectives?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t tell you anything about the case. I have to protect the client’s privacy.”
Manfred carefully turned the jar around in his hands, studying the resident from every side. “Just incredible. I must have it.” He looked up, and his amber eyes were no longer cool and appraising, but gleaming with excitement. “I must have this specimen.”
“Well, I intended to leave it with you for examination,” Clint said. “But as to whether you can have permanent possession—”
“Yes. Permanent.”
“That’s up to my boss and the client. Meanwhile we want to know what it is, where it comes from, everything you can tell us about it.”
With exaggerated care, as if handling the finest crystal instead of ordinary glass, Manfred put the jar on the blotter. “I’ll make a complete photographic and videotape record of the specimen from every angle and in extreme close-up. Then it’ll be necessary to dissect it, though that’ll be done with utmost care, I assure you.”