‘I just don’t see the point of it,’ Mel said. ‘I’ll grant you these victims have all got something in common. That was my basic doubt about this business in the very beginning. But now we’ve got some idea of what the common denominator is – like, it’s mildness, and niceness, and political moderation – and it just doesn’t make any sense. Who kills people like that? And what for?’
‘John, you’ve hurt your foot,’ Vicki said.
For the first time, John took a look at his ankle, where Merton’s Buick had struck it at Travel Town. It was badly bruised and swollen, and the back of his shoe was split.
Vicki made him sit down, and examined his ankle carefully. John winced as she pressed in at the sides of it. She said, ‘It could be fractured, but I don’t think so. It’s more like you’ve sprained it, or the ligament’s torn.’
‘Why don’t I run you down to the doc?’ Mel suggested. ‘Vicki here can finish the casserole, and then when we come back we can try out some of my homemade chablis. I brought along a couple of gallons.’
‘What are you trying to do? Drink us into oblivion?’ John said.
‘It’s worth having your ankle checked,’ Vicki said. ‘You go along now, and I’ll have everything done by the time you get back.’
*
Doctor Pickaway’s house was a mile or two up the canyon towards Woodland Hills. The doctor palpated and probed John’s ankle and foot, and then said, ‘You’re fine. It’s nothing worse than a bad bruise. I’ll give you a spray to ease the swelling, but it shouldn’t worry you for longer than two or three days.’
Mel said, ‘Do I have to keep him in bed and feed him with beef tea?’
Doctor Pickaway smiled. ‘You should get him to run up and down the canyon a few times. He should do that anyway. Being fit is the best preventive medicine there is.’
‘I couldn’t bear to give up my cars,’ John said, swinging off the examining table and resting his foot tentatively on the floor. ‘Exercise is fine, but people don’t turn their heads when you go by in running shoes like they do when you go by in a ‘fifty-nine gas guzzler.’
Doctor Pickaway shrugged, a little prissily. ‘Well, Mr Cullen, I’ve always been a believer in people taking care of the human machine. Most of the ailments that I have to deal with here could have been avoided by people in good physical condition. People eat too much, drive too much, smoke too much, drink too much. Look at you, Mr Walters, you’re at least sixty pounds overweight, and that’s going to tell against you when you grow older.’
‘Oh, come on, doc,’ said Mel. ‘Different people have different physiques, different ways of life. Some fat people last for ever.’
‘That’s true, to a certain extent. But these days, you can tell which fat people are going to die at an early age, and which ones are going to survive. In fact, you can predict medical life expectancy within a three-year bracket.’
‘How do you do that?’ John asked.
Doctor Pickaway raised his eyebrows indulgently, castered chair and examined his bookcase with a slight frown. He pulled out a copy of a medical magazine, and then wheeled himself back to his desk.
‘This is Analytical Medicine. It only has a circulation of two or three thousand, but I like to keep in touch with some of the really advanced medical techniques.’
‘I’m a Rolling Stone man myself,’ said Mel, with a grin.
Doctor Prickaway raised his eyebrows indulgently. He leafed over the pages of the magazine, and said, ‘This issue came out about a year-and-a-half back, but there’s been correspondence about it in every issue since. Mind you, it only appears once every three months.’
‘We really have to go now, Doctor Pickaway. We have a meal waiting for us back home,’ John said.
‘This won’t take a moment,’ Doctor Pickaway said, ‘and it’s really very interesting. Here it is. “Demographic curves for the accurate prediction of human physiological and psychological development.’”
Mel looked across at John, and pulled a face.
‘What it means in simple terms is that computerised graphs can be prepared which can predict the probable life expectancy of any individual, according to his or her parentage, physical type, life-style, medical history, home environment, and about two hundred other factors. You can even tell which diseases are most likely to occur in any individual body, and when.’
‘So that means you can predict the week before you go on vacation that you’re going to come down with the grippe, which you knew anyway?’ Mel said.
Doctor Pickaway gave a small, dry snort which they guessed was a kind of laugh. He said, ‘It’s potentially much more sophisticated than that. You can tell when you’re five years old if you’re going to die of cancer when you’re seventy-two, give or take eighteen months in either direction.’
‘That’s incredible,’ John said, now interested.
‘It is incredible, but all the research has been done, and tested over a period of thirty years, and so far the accuracy has been eighty-six percent, which is quite remarkable. One of the doctors on the project predicted in 1954 that he himself would die from bone cancer in 1967, and he did. A woman subject was told that she would live until she was eighty, in spite of the fact that her parents had died young, and she expected to die young herself. She survived until she was eighty-two.’
‘You mentioned psychological as well as physiological. How does that work?’ John asked.
‘Much the same way,’ said Doctor Pickaway. ‘You can draw up a demographic curve which predicts how people are likely to think in future years. It could be pretty useful for commercial companies, I should imagine. They could tell in advance how people are going to react to a new kind of cereal, or a new model of automobile, and they could adjust their designs and their sales promotions accordingly.’
‘Isn’t that kind of pie-in-the-sky?’ Mel asked. ‘I mean, any computer programme needs information, and who’s going to be able to find out that much information about any particular person?’
Doctor Pickaway peered at the article in the magazine. ‘It says here – and I’m only quoting, mind you – that if you know someone’s age, racial origins, occupation, education, and most of the particulars on their credit rating assessments, then you have almost enough information to be able to predict what washing powder they’re most likely to buy in five years’ time, and even how they’re going to vote.’
‘Vote?’ John repeated.
Doctor Pickaway nodded. ‘That’s right. It says here specifically: ‘A demographic curve could be prepared for those members of our society who are politically influential, and the pattern of this curve would show quite expressly how the nation is likely to vote in forthcoming years, provided there are no political scandals of Watergate proportions.’ Then there’s a footnote which reads: “politically influential does not necessarily mean politically active. It means those people whose personality is sympathetic enough to influence the thinking of their immediate neighbours and friends.”’
John felt as if he had woken up in the night to find himself covered by a wet, ice-cold sheet. ‘Who wrote that article, doctor?’ John asked quietly.
‘It’s written by Professor Arlnikov, from Berkeley, but most of the work on the curve was done by Professor Aaron Sweetman, from San Diego. A dear old boy. I met him once at a medical convention in Atlanta. Quite charming, and brilliant, too. That’s why all this correspondence here refers to the Sweetman Curve.’
*
They could tell something was wrong as they came around the bend in Topanga Canyon just above the firehouse. There were people running, and there was a dim, unhealthy glow above the treetops. Mel said, ‘Christ, that’s a brush-fire. Right by the hollow, too, by the look of it.’
He put his foot down, and the orange Beetle rattled and coughed as it speeded up. They took the next curve with the worn-out tyres howling, and John holding on to the handle to keep his balance. Through the trees, they could already see the sparkling of burning bushes, and the thick
smell of smoke was already tainting the wind.
‘Oh, God,’ said John, as they arrived at their driveway. ‘It’s the whole damned hollow.’
There were two firetrucks already parked halfway up their drive, and firemen were beating at the scrub and sending four or five tall arches of spray into the bushes. John scrambled out of the Beetle and ran up the slope with Mel close behind him.
A fireman blocked his way. ‘You can’t come up here, sir. We want to contain this thing and we don’t want anyone hurt.’
‘What do you think I am, a sightseer?’ snapped John. ‘That’s my house up there!’
‘I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go up there. I’ll have a word with the fire chief.’
‘Will you get out of my way?’ John yelled. ‘That’s my house and my girlfriend’s in there!’
‘Well, sir, I’m—’
Mel pushed his way forward and grabbed the collar of the fireman’s jacket. He said, ‘I’m not normally a violent man, officer, but we have to get up there, by force if necessary.’
John said, ‘Come on,’ and they pushed their way past the fireman and up the driveway, jumping over a tangle of hoses, almost ankle-deep in black, sooty water. The noise of the fire was enormous. A huge, ravenous roaring like endless rolls of thunder, almost drowning the yells of the firemen and the crackling, electric voices that came over their walkie-talkies.
‘Get those bushes down there!’ shouted one of the firemen. ‘I want a break there, and I want it fast! If the wind gets up, this is going to be a wiener party!’
‘Get those beaters over here!’ came another hoarse voice. ‘Get those goddamned beaters over here!’
Another firetruck came howling and warbling up the canyon, and as he ran through the heat and the smoke and the foul-smelling water, John heard the firemen calling for a helicopter water-drop.
‘If we can contain the worst of it in the hollow, we’re okay!’ shouted the fire chief. ‘Now, move your ass!’
John and Mel reached the crest of the driveway. To John’s cold horror, his own house, his own old-fashioned wooden house, was fiercely ablaze. The downstairs windows had already broken, and curtains of flame were flapping from them wildly. The verandah rails were charred and burning, and most of them had already collapsed. There was a hot, funnelling sound as the flames ate away at the wooden weather-boards, and cedar-fragrant sparks were whirled up into the smoky sky.
Three firemen were plying water on the roof, but the house was burning so intensely that there was nothing they could do but damp down the sparks, so that the fire didn’t spread out of the hollow.
John sprinted up to them and yelled, ‘Where’s the girl? There was a girl in there!’
One of the firemen glanced at him. ‘We didn’t have a chance, mister. This place was already going like a torch by the time we got here. We haven’t been able to get near it.’
‘But Vicki’s in there!’ he screamed. His face was already scorched red by the heat of the fire. ‘She’s in there! You have to get her out!’
Mel’s strong hands held his arm. He said, ‘John, there’s no way. It’s too late.’
John twisted himself free. ‘Mel, she’s in there! Maybe she’s trapped!’
The fireman said, ‘I’m sorry, mister, but nobody could live through that. If your girl was in there, I’m sorry, but that’s it.’
‘We managed to move your car,’ put in another fireman. ‘The big old white Lincoln? That’s down at the pull-off now.’
John stared at his crackling, blazing house. He felt such a sense of dread and grief that he couldn’t speak or think or move. The whole house was wobbling like something out of a nightmare, as the heat distorted the air, and sparks whipped upward with hectic and unnatural speed. It was so hot now that he had to pant for breath.
With a wrenching, lurching noise, part of the roof collapsed, and fiery rafters fell through the house into The downstairs rooms. Then the staircase went, a ladder of flames, and part of the brick chimney dropped into the living room with a heavy crash.
Mel put his arm around John’s shoulder, and held him tight. There were tears in his own eyes, behind the dancing orange flames that were reflected in his glasses, and he couldn’t speak any words of comfort that would have meant anything.
The fire chief came up, a hard-faced blue-eyed man in a black helmet. ‘I hear this is your house, friend,’ he said.
John lowered his head. He closed his eyes for a moment, and behind his eyelids, in the darkness of his mind, he prayed that he wasn’t here at all, that none of this was true, and that he’d open his eyes again and find he was standing next to Vicki at the stove, and asking her what was for dinner. Mel said to the fire chief, ‘Yes, sir, it’s his house. It was his girlfriend in there.’ The fire chief looked at the house for a while, and then up at the smoke-dark sky, and the way the sparks were flying.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘If there was any chance at all of getting into the house, we would have taken it.’
‘Do you know how the fire started?’ Mel asked.
The fire chief shook his head. ‘Could have been anything. We’ve had all this dry weather lately, and a heatwave. Cigarette butt, maybe.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Mel, and there was a catch in his voice he couldn’t hide.
The fire chief said, ‘You’d better get out of here now. We’ve had a forecast the wind’s going to turn, and if it does, we’re going to have a bad one. Do you have someplace to stay for the night?’
‘Sure,’ nodded Mel. ‘We can check into a hotel.’
‘Okay,’ said the fire chief. ‘Leave your number with the fire department when you’ve settled in, and we’ll call you if there’s any news.’
‘Thanks,’ said Mel. Then he squeezed John’s arm, and said, ‘Come on, John. There’s no reason to wait around here. Let’s go.’
John stared with smoke-watering eyes at the ruins of his house, black and smouldering like the ashes of a ritual cremation. He couldn’t believe that Vicki was lying in those ruins, burned and dead, but he knew that she was nowhere else, that no matter what he did now, or where he went, he would never see her again, or touch her again, or talk to her again.
He waited for almost a minute, with tears streaking the smuts on his cheeks, and then he said: ‘Okay, Mel. Let’s go.’
Twenty-Six
That night, the sirens warbled and screamed until dawn, as Topanga Canyon was ravaged by one of the worst fires in years. A hot wind fanned the flames, and the glow from the burning trees and brush could be seen for miles. On his way back to his room in Venice, driving his primrose-yellow Pinto, T.F. was passed by three firetrucks from Anaheim, their lights flashing and their hooters blaring.
He parked on San Juan Avenue, locked his car, and went upstairs to his room. He propped his long canvas rifle-case up against the wardrobe, and threw on to the bed four sex magazines that he’d bought that morning in Hollywood. He switched on his television, without any sound, and sat down to take off his shoes.
The telephone rang. He let it ring for a little while, and then he picked it up.
‘Who is it?’ he demanded.
‘T.F.? It’s me, Ken.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘We had some trouble with that Cullen guy today, lie was round at Mrs Perlman’s this morning, snooping and asking questions.’
‘So?’
‘So I checked back with you-know-who, and you-know-who said waste him straight away.’
‘And?’
‘Well, we were going to take him out to the park and get rid of him, but we had a foul-up on the way. He made a run for it, and we had a smash-up in the car. Merton’s dead. Burned in the wreck.’
T.F. took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit it carefully. Then he testily blew smoke, and said, ‘Who is this guy? Shazam or something? He’s unarmed, and on his own, and he smashes your car and kills Merton?’
‘T.F., it was an accident. A freak accident.’
T.F.
put his feet up on the bed. ‘Did the cops ask you what happened?’
‘Sure, but I said it was just a traffic smash-up. They’re not making a case out of it.’
‘That’s one relief. So what’s happening now?’
‘We fixed Cullen tonight like we originally planned. I went up there at five and torched the house. That’s what all this big fire is about. I torched it so damned well the whole canyon’s burning.’
‘That’s good. I like it. A guy I knew in Seattle always used to say that if you wanted to knock someone off and hide the evidence, then the best thing to do was knock five people off.’
‘Anyway,’ said Ken, ‘the three of them must’ve gotten roasted. Cullen, the girl, and the fat guy. All on one broiler.’
‘Pity about the girl,’ T.F. remarked absently. ‘She had just the kind of figure I go for.’
Ken said, ‘I got your baby into the house okay. She’s hidden under the floor in my dressing room.’
‘Fine, ‘said T.F. ‘I miss her.’
‘Do you want me to call you again before Saturday?’
‘Not unless it’s urgent. I’ll see you then, okay?’
‘Okay, T.F. Go easy.’
‘Go easy yourself, Ken.’
T.F. set down the telephone, took another drag at his cigarette, and then went over to the bed and inspected his sex magazines. One of them was called Wet Party, and was full of colour pictures of girls in black stockings and garter-belts peeing all over themselves. Another one was titled Canine Lovers. He looked through them with a strangely dispassionate expression, smoking as he did so. He paused for a while at a photograph of a pretty brunette with her mouth wide open and her eyes closed, drinking from two busty black-stockinged girl friends; and then he closed the magazines altogether and put them away in the bottom of his wardrobe.
The Sweetman Curve Page 19