by Greg Dinallo
“Look, Lilah,” Schaefer said sharply, sensing a clinical reply had the best chance of neutralizing her. “You left me a very businesslike message, and I was very pleased by it. The emotional detachment and strength in your voice indicated you’d made some progress; but what I’m hearing now suggests otherwise. If you can’t keep this on a professional plane, I’m afraid we’ll have to forget it.”
“Of course I can,” Lilah said, forcing a laugh. She pulled the towel around her torso, disappointed in herself, disappointed that after being detached and strong, she’d blown it the first chance she got.
“Good,” he said, glad she couldn’t see the relief in his eyes. “You mentioned the prison study is a go . . .”
“Uh-huh. We’re due up there at ten on Monday.”
Schaefer’s brows arched with concern. “You’re right, we’d better make sure we’re on the same page.”
A half hour later they were in a booth at Mario’s, a pasta palace on the comer of Broxton that had treated the neighborhood to the heady odor of garlic for more than twenty-five years. The waiters were so surly and the decor so offensive that the food had to be cheap and good, which was why the place was always packed.
“Monday . . .” Schaefer mused, twirling a forkful of angel hair with one hand and accessing an organizer with the other. It had a calendar, phone directory, memo pad, calculator, fax modem, and interface for exchanging data with computers. “My weekend’s jammed. We’re taking the kids to Sea World. No time to prepare. Maybe if you—”
“Don’t back out of this, Paul,” Lilah interrupted, assuming the worst, her soft blue eyes pleading from beneath perfectly arched brows. “Don’t do this to me.”
“Let me finish,” Schaefer intoned reassuringly. “I was going to say, if you go up there alone on Monday and knock off all the blood specimens, it’d buy me until the next session to get up to speed.”
Lilah vehemently shook her bead no, sending her damp ponytail snapping from side to side. “Bad idea. We have to do each prisoner from beginning to end, and we have to do them together.”
Schaefer’s fork paused in mid-twirl. “Why? I just told you I’m up to my ass.”
“Let me finish, okay? These guys,” Lilah resumed, lowering her voice, “these fucking rapists and child abusers, they signed up for this study but they don’t have a clue what’s coming next, right?”
Schaefer dabbed at his mustache with a napkin, then nodded impatiently. “I’m fully able to empathize.”
Lilah smiled good-naturedly. “The point is, each one of these—these degenerates who’s taken a child’s innocence or a woman’s dignity, maybe their sanity, is going to be a little anxious when he enters a room and finds a woman there. A woman who’s going to take something from him.”
Schaefer frowned and cocked his head skeptically.
Lilah pressed on, undaunted. “A woman who orders him to roll up his sleeve, ties a tourniquet around his arm, and stabs him with a needle.”
“Jeezus,” Schaefer exclaimed, taken aback. “You make drawing blood sound like an act of violence.”
Lilah nodded mischievously. “Hey, who knows what buttons it might push?”
“I’d like to know what’s pushing yours.”
“My genes,” she replied with a laugh. “Come on, this thing’s been controversial from the get-go anyway.”
“I don’t know. It’s an extremely risky concept.”
“You make that sound like a negative,” Lilah joked, her eyes glowing with enthusiasm. “I didn’t get where I am by playing it safe. Neither did you.”
Schaefer studied her for a moment, captured by the infectious spirit and willingness to take risks that had first attracted him to her, then broke into a wry smile. “You know, Lilah, as mad scientists go—”
“I’m the maddest. I know. Come on, what do you say?”
“Well,” Schaefer mused, warming to the idea, “it could provoke some intriguing behavioral dynamics.” Lilah was beaming in triumph when he glanced at his watch and began to slide from the booth. “I have to make a call.”
“Use my cellular.”
“Thanks. Need to make a pit stop too.”
He’s calling his wife, Lilah thought as Schaefer moved off. She was toying with a piece of grilled shrimp when snippets of conversation about “tissue sections” and “mast cells” drew her attention to a group of medical students who had entered the restaurant. The cavelike darkness and thickets of plastic vegetation allowed her only fleeting glimpses at first, but as the students made their way to a table, the glow from a cluster of illuminated grapes raked their faces, confirming that the lean, curly-haired guy hitting on his twenty-something classmate with the pouty lips and perky breasts was exactly who Lilah thought it was.
Thankful for the garish divider that concealed her, Lilah sighed and stared at the shrimp impaled on her fork. Nothing could fill the hollowness now. Nothing could satisfy the gut-wrenching emptiness that rocked her. Not even Mario’s legendary gamberetti a l’aglio. She knew it was childish, knew Kauffman was a meaningless roll in the sack. Even he was mature enough to know all she was doing was getting her rocks off. She was a grown woman who’d survived more than her share of busted relationships. Why did it always hurt so much? she wondered. Why did she always feel so vulnerable and anxious? Why this overwhelming sense of impending doom that always came over her when she felt rejected, or found herself manless?
She was still lost in her thoughts when Schaefer emerged from the restaurant’s dingy recesses. “I’ve got piles of work to do before Monday,” she said, anxious to leave before Kauffman spotted them. “And I’m dying for a cigarette. Cover the check, and we’ll settle up later. Okay?”
Lilah left the restaurant, digging the pack of Virginia Slims from her briefcase. She lit up as she walked, and charged down Weyburn oblivious to the glow of wildfires streaking skyward behind the mountains. The winds were still blistering hot, and the streets were jammed with students seeking refuge in the movie houses and eateries. After several blocks she flicked the half-smoked cigarette into the gutter and took an air-conditioned shortcut through Bullock’s. Like most Southern California department stores, the longtime Westwood landmark—which had recently been bought by, and renamed, Macy’s—remained open till nine P.M.
Its 1950s fieldstone facade spanned the entire block on two levels, with entrances from Weyburn on the lower, where Lilah entered, and Le Conte on the upper—devoted to women’s clothing, accessories, fragrances, and the like—where Lilah exited opposite the Stein Eye Institute. The latter, one of UCLA’s many prestigious medical facilities, had been founded by Dr. Jules Stein who—personifying the Hollywood adage that everyone in L.A. has two businesses, their own and the movies—had also founded MCA/Universal Studios.
Lilah crossed the street, taking another shortcut between a brick wall and a towering stand of pines to where a section of fence had been removed, providing mid-block access to the campus. The respite from the heat was momentary, and she was drenched with perspiration by the time she arrived at Mac-Med.
“Been shopping again, Dr. Graham?” the security guard said cheerily, drawing her attention to the Macy’s shopping bag clutched in her fist.
Lilah stared at it for a long moment, having no recollection whatsoever of making a purchase, then forced a confused smile and entered the elevator. The instant the door closed, she reached into the bag and removed something wrapped in tissue paper, something that appeared to be shiny and red. She was about to tear off the tissue when the elevator stopped and the door opened to reveal Serena striding down the corridor toward her. Lilah quickly shoved whatever it was back into the shopping bag and hurried from the elevator.
“Lilah . . .” Serena called out cheerily in her mild accent; then, never missing an opportunity to needle her boss, she added, “I can’t remember the last time I ran into you here at this hour.”
“Sounds like the onset of Alzheimer’s to me,” Lilah teased without breaking stride.
/> “Really? I distinctly recall leaving a consent form on your desk—a blank one,” Serena said pointedly. “Ruben said you’d take care of it straightaway.”
“Straightaway,” Lilah echoed, too distracted by the mysterious purchase to talk shop.
“I flagged it in the computer in case you . . .” Serena let it trail off and shrugged resignedly as Lilah turned the corner, heading toward her office.
Lilah went straight to her desk, without noticing the package with the bold angry printing that Cardenas had put on the table beneath the bookshelves. She set the shopping bag down and removed the contents. Wrapped in the tissue she found a silk, fire-engine-red teddy. It had a peekaboo bodice, fluttery side slits, and a $350 price tag that made her gasp. She pinched the thin straps between thumb and forefinger and held the slinky garment out in front of her as if she’d never seen it before, let alone purchased it.
Stunned and shaken, she stuffed the teddy back into the shopping bag, then dropped into her chair, steadying her hands long enough to light a cigarette. Her lips were pursed to blow out the match when her eyes became drawn to the flame, and she began rocking back and forth like a hyperactive child unable to sit still in class; then she began swiveling left and right until it seemed as if the chair was spinning one way and the room the other—spinning faster and faster in opposite directions until everything began to blur in horizontal streaks that ended with a head-long rush into the all too familiar explosions of colored light, leaving her dazed and disoriented.
The next thing Lilah knew, the cellular was in her hand—she’d evidently already made some calls: among them, one to her service and one to the answering machine in her condo, because there was a short list of messages jotted on a pad—and now it dawned on her that she must have also just autodialed her parents’ number because she could hear her mother’s voice saying, “Hello? Hello, is anyone there?”
“Oh—oh yeah . . . hi. Mom, it’s me,” Lilah said, blinking at the ftuorescents as she came out of it. “Is Daddy there?”
“Of course. Hold on a sec.”
“No, no don’t bother him, it’s okay.”
“I don’t understand, Lilah. You asked for your father but you don’t want to talk to him?”
“I just wanted to know if he was there.”
“Where else would he be?”
“How would I know?” Lilah replied weakly, feeling confused. “Listen, I have to go,” she said, suddenly struck by an overwhelming desire to get out of there. “Yeah, I’m still at the office . . . No, no don’t worry, I won’t.”
She hung up and was taking a moment to pull herself together when she thought she smelled something vaguely familiar, something she couldn’t place. She dismissed her concern with a glance to the ashtray, and was crossing to the door when she smelled the acrid, fuel-like odor again. She began sniffing the air, finally zeroing in on the package. She had no idea what it contained, no idea that the fire bomb had just been activated, that the lightbulb filament had ignited the book of matches, that the fuel-sprinkled excelsior was already aflame inside. She was reaching for the carton to open it when the phone on her desk rang, startling her. She froze momentarily, then scooped the receiver from the cradle. “Genetics—Or. Graham.”
“Hey, what do you like on your pizza, Doc?”
“Kauffman?” she wondered, displeased by the elation she heard in her voice.
“Your own personal pizza man, who else?” he replied with a cocky chortle. “I can handle anything but pineapple.”
Yeah, and med students with pouty lips and perky boobs, she thought, tempted to reveal she’d been at Mario’s and tease him that he was calling her because he’d struck out. “You’re something else, you know?”
“Hey, all the professors I sleep with say that.”
Lilah laughed in spite of herself, and glanced over her shoulder at the carton. “Yeah,” she said, deciding not to play hard to get, “but this one means it.”
“Agggh,” the kid groaned, pretending that he was crushed. “I knew it. I’m nothing more than a sex object.”
“A sex object who got into med school. Not bad for a guy with three strikes against him.”
“Three?”
“You’re white, you’re male, and you’re Jewish.”
“How do you know I’m Jewish?”
“I had the misfortune to acquire intimate knowledge of your shortcomings, remember?” They were both laughing when Lilah suddenly screamed, then screamed again, startled by a deafening pop and blinding flash that erupted behind her when the combustion inside the box had amassed enough pressure to blow it apart at the seams. The Ziploc bag had already melted, exposing the incendiary mixture to the oxygen-rich air that rushed into the carton. Lilah whirled just as it ignited in a fireball. The intense heat vaporized the corrugated board like flash paper. Sheets of flame raced up the wall to the ceiling. Waves of fiery sludge rolled across the table and onto the floor like molten lava.
“Kauffman! Kauffmannnn!” Lilah screamed, her voice trailing off in a terrified wail.
“Lilah? Doc? Doc Graham?” Kauffman. shouted into the phone. “Doc, what’s going on? You okay?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The wail of sirens and throaty bark of Klaxons echoed off Westwood’s glass-walled towers as a caravan of fire trucks thundered down Wilshire Boulevard.
Moments earlier, Mac-Med’s detection system had automatically set off internal fire alarms, broadcast an evacuation announcement over the intercom, and transmitted a signal to the tire station on Veteran Avenue a quarter mile away. Within thirty seconds every piece of equipment in its arsenal was rolling.
Kauffman had dashed from the restaurant and was sprinting north on Westwood Boulevard toward UCLA’s main gate when the fire trucks rumbled past him. From there it was a straight two-block run to Mac-Med. The chunky six-story building, wrapped in bands of harsh red brick and waffle-iron window grids, sat atop a forbidding concrete bunker. A sweeping staircase cut into one side led to an entrance plaza above. The entire area was being cordoned off with barricades by campus security when Kauffman arrived.
Emergency flashers swept through the darkness. Radios hissed and crackled with the detached voices of dispatchers. Firemen in their clunky boots, protective coats, and helmets ran in every direction. Some were connecting pumpers to hydrants and pulling hoses into the lobby; others were extending an aerial ladder and its platform-mounted water cannon to a window in Lilah’s office that had shattered from the heat. Flames shot from the opening and licked at the facade, which was blackening from billowing smoke.
The chaotic scene confirmed Kauffman’s fears that Lilah was in extreme danger. Drenched with sweat, gasping for breath, he fought through the crowd of onlookers, eluded a security guard, and vaulted the barricade. The guard pursued him to a group of firefighters who were reviewing blueprints that were spread across the hood of a campus security cruiser.
Captain Singer was in charge. A soft-spoken man with decisive eyes, he was noting the location of biohazard and radioactive symbols when Kauffman arrived. He held off the guard long enough for the kid to tell his story; then he assembled a rescue team and led the way into the building in search of Lilah. They trudged up four flights with their equipment and clumsy air tanks, then down a hazy corridor into the genetics lab. Thick smoke and torrential rains from the sprinkler system cut visibility to almost zero.
“Dr. Graham!” Singer called out. “Hello? Dr. Graham! Doc! Doc, you in here?”
There was no reply; no sound other than the rush of water and sharp crackle of fire. The sprinklers had contained it but hadn’t come close to extinguishing the inferno that was still raging in Lilah’s office. Several walls had already crumbled, and rhythmic waves of blue-orange flames were washing over the debris, threatening to engulf the entire lab.
The firefighters moved between the workstations, knocking down flames and flare-ups as they searched for Lilah. Several made their way to the administrative area and found her at a wall
of file cabinets. She was soaked to the skin and choking on the heavy smoke despite the scarf tied over her nose and mouth; and in defiance of the screaming alarm, raging flames, and intense heat, she was frantically trying to save the precious OX-A data from being destroyed. Lilah had already filled her briefcase with boxes of computer diskettes, and was now slipping packets of autorads into the Macy’s shopping bag.
“Dr. Graham!” Singer shouted, grasping her shoulders. “Tune to get out of here!”
“This data hasn’t been archived!” she replied as she pulled free and whirled to the files. “And we’ve got all these subzero reefers. The temperature’s critical—years of work—I mean, if the emergency power hasn’t kicked in—”
Singer and several of his men picked her up and carried her from the lab along with the briefcase and shopping bag. Between protests and gasps for breath, Lilah told the captain about the box that had exploded and burst into flame.
Kauffman was beside himself with anxiety by the time the firemen escorted Lilah from the building and turned her over to paramedics. Relieved that she was safe, he decided discretion was the better part of valor this time and kept his distance. She was being treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation when Captain Singer poked his head inside the van. “Thought you’d want to know the fire’s been knocked down, and the emergency power is on.”
“Thanks. Can I go back up there now?”
“Not till it cools down. Besides, we’re still checking for radioactivity.” He noticed a vehicle rumble to a stop on the far side of the paramedic van and hurried toward it.
A short time later Lilah was sitting in the open door of the van with a cigarette—despite a paramedic’s advice that she lay off for a few days—when a shaggy, broad-shouldered man came toward her. An attaché case hung from his fist. His face was strained and smudged with soot. Massive rings of perspiration radiated from his armpits, darkening his shirt.
“Dr. Graham?”