Survival of the Fittest

by Jonathan Kellerman

  America.

  Democracy had begun in Greece but its real home was here. Birthplace of official compassion, too— no country had been as kind as America. Now Americans were paying for their compassion in drive-by shootings, the breakdown of rules and values, child-murderers let out on parole.

  Same thing back home. For all his country's image as a tough little fighter state, Daniel knew Israel as one big, soft heart populated by survivors and rooters for the underdog with a reluctance to punish.

  That's why victory doesn't sit well with us, he thought. Why we end up the first country in history to voluntarily give back land won in battle in exchange for an ill-defined peace with people who hate our guts.

  He'd watched, during the intifada, as the Palestinian Arabs made the most of Israeli democracy: staging rehearsed events masquerading as spontaneous shows of protest, exaggerating the very real brutality of the occupation with hyperbole, kids with rocks playing for the camera. The press, of course, gobbled it up like a rich dessert. Day after day of photo-op baton-to-skull and rubber-bullet hailstorm broadcast worldwide, while Assad executed tens of thousands of potential enemies in Syria and got maybe two lines of newsprint.

  Still, who ever said life was fair. He'd rather live in a free society . . . though sometimes . . .

  And now he was thinking of Elias Daoud again, resolutions tossed to the wind.

  The ginger-haired Christian Arab from Bethlehem had been his best homicide detective, playing a major role in the Butcher investigation, never letting the divided-loyalties thing get in the way though it hadn't been easy— no one but Daniel had trusted him.

  The closing of the Butcher file got everyone on the team promotions, but Daoud's had taken a bit more prodding of the pencil pushers.

  Daniel had been obdurate and finally Daoud ended up a mefakeah, Southern Division's first Arab inspector. The raise in pay for a guy with seven kids had made it more than just another ribbon.

  Daoud was kept on Daniel's squad and Daniel assigned him to the few nonpolitical homicide cases that came up: Old City gang stuff, the drug and watermelon rackets, nothing with any security overtones. For Daoud's protection as well as for the brass. Daniel didn't want him branded a collaborator.

  Then the intifada heated up. More rhetoric, more audacity, more violence— the wall of fear broken down, vermin scurrying through the rubble.

  Religious militancy found new life, too, and Christians in Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and everywhere else Christian, remembered Beirut and grew less vocal, many of them bribing their way across the border to Jordan and onward to families in Europe and the States.

  One morning, in the midst of a serious investigation into the Ramai gang's role in the hashish trade, with Daoud scheduled to give a progress report, everyone waiting in a restaurant on King George Street, the guy didn't show.

  Right away Daniel knew something was wrong. The man was a walking wristwatch.

  He dismissed the griping detectives, called Daoud's house, got a disconnected line.

  The usual twenty-minute drive to Bethlehem took him less than fifteen. Before he got to the city outskirts he saw the military jeeps and the police Ford Escorts, blue lights flashing, people milling around, the simmering feel of an impending riot.

  He showed his badge and made his way past grim faces to Daoud's house. Police tape had been wrapped around the little limestone cube and chickens circled the muddy ditch that passed for a yard. No more olive-wood crucifix in Daoud's window— when had that changed?

  It had been a long time since Daniel had been there. Now, he realized what a sorry place it was, objectively. Not much better than the hovel in Yemen where Daniel's father had been born. But the promotion had allowed Daoud to finish payments on it, the guy had been so proud.

  The uniform at the door warned him not to go in for his own sake, but he did anyway, thinking of Daoud, the young, fat wife Daoud loved madly and plied with chocolates, seven little kids . . .

  The kids gone, no one knew where. Months later, Daniel found out they'd somehow showed up with relatives in Amman, but that was as far as the information went.

  Daoud and the fat wife, still here.

  Slaughtered like sheep for the market.

  Sliced, trussed, dismembered, tongues severed. The wife a leaking bag of yellow adipose, eyes rolled back. Daoud castrated, his penis hacked off, the organ stuffed in his mouth.

  Hatchets, the medical examiner said. And long knives, probably six or seven attackers, a midnight blitz.

  Flies, so many flies.

  Arabic scrawl on the wall in blood:

  GOD IS GREAT! DEATH TO COLLABORATORS!

  He drove back to French Hill, kept his feelings to himself.

  Always, constantly, completely.

  Like the Dead Sea, flat and bitter, yielding nothing organic.

  Wanting to be dispassionate when he asked to run the investigation into the slaughter, so his superiors would consider it.

  Of course, they refused, saying it was an Arab issue, he could never get close enough, no one would talk to him.

  He kept asking, demanding, got the same answer, over and over. Refusing to give up, knowing he was being an idiot, he drove home each day with an inflamed belly and a raging headache, the strain of smiling at Laura and the kids just short of unbearable.

  A case number was assigned to the Daoud murders but no one seemed to be actually investigating.

  He lost interest in his gang cases; the Ramais could sell dope for another few months, big deal. And if they shot each other, no great loss.

  He wrote memo after memo, received no answer.

  Finally, in Laufer's office, after yet another dismissal, he exploded at the commander.

  Is this what it's come to? He was an Arab so it's not worth the time and effort? Different values for different lives? What are we, Nazi Germany?

  Laufer had looked him up and down, chain-smoking, sleepy eyes full of contempt, but he hadn't said a word. Daniel's solving the Butcher had gotten him kicked up from deputy commander. Who knew what other value the Yemenite might have for him?

  After that, a few suspects were hauled in for questioning, but it led nowhere, the file was never closed, never would be.

  Daniel thought from time to time of the savages who'd done it. Dispatched from Syria or Lebanon? Or locals, still living in Bethlehem, passing that house, now demolished, and really believing they'd shown God to be great?

  And what of the seven kids? Who was raising them? What had they been told?

  That the Jews had done it?

  Daddy and Mommy, martyrs to Palestine?

  The Arabs loved martyrs. After the intifada ended, there'd been a martyr shortage, young guys with scraped feet or the flu claiming they'd gotten hurt fighting the Zionists.

  The virtue of suffering.

  We, their Jewish cousins, aren't much different, are we? he thought. Though we're a little more subtle about it.

  Democracy . . .

  And now these American killings.

  Three homicides of children in three separate police districts— Delaware had a point about that. Spread out over a vast, shapeless thing that calls itself a city.

  Retarded kids, how could you get any crueler?

  Gene said they called them something else nowadays . . . developmentally challenged.

  “Nowadays, everyone's challenged, Danny Boy. Short people are vertically challenged, drunks are sobriety-challenged, criminal scumbags are socially challenged.”

  “Socially challenged sounds more like someone shy, Gene.”

  “That's the point, my friend. It's not supposed to make sense. A con game, like that book, 1984. Change the names to confuse the good guys.”

  Socially challenged.

  So what does that make me on this case? And Sturgis and Delaware.

  Solution-challenged?

  No, just stuck.

  32

  Seven-thirty a.m. I was at the doors to the Biomed library when they opened, barely aw
ake, showered but unshaven, still tasting gulped coffee.

  I worked for two hours, finding only one reference to the group called Meta. But it was enough.

  Wire-service piece, three years old, carried locally by the Daily News.

  GENIUS GROUP EDITORIAL

  CAUSES CONTROVERSY

  NEW YORK— Opinions supporting selective breeding to improve genetic stock as well as mercy killing of the retarded, published by an organization of self-described geniuses, have raised controversy among members of social-advocacy organizations and put the group under an unaccustomed spotlight.

  Meta, a little-known Manhattan-based club founded ten years ago to provide information about creativity and giftedness, now finds itself accused of fascism.

  The article under fire was written by Meta director and attorney Farley Sanger in The Pathfinder, the group's quarterly newsletter. In it, Sanger calls for a “new utopia” based upon “objectively measured intellectual ability” and questions the value of providing special education and other services, including medical care, to the developmentally disabled, whom he labels meat without mentation.

  Sanger also suggests that those lacking the ability to reason and care for themselves are not fully human and, thus, do not merit constitutional protection under the law. “An effective social-policy analogue,” he argues, would be “animal-protection statutes. Just as sterilization and euthanasia are widely held to be humane policies for cats and dogs, so should they be considered for those “quasi-human' organisms whose genetic makeup causes them to fall well short of the intellectual goalpost.”

  The article, published several months ago without fanfare until it was brought to the attention of the press, has generated a predictably hostile reaction from advocates for the mentally retarded.

  “This is fascism, pure and simple,” said Barry Hannigan, chairman of the Child Welfare Society. “Ugly stuff reminiscent of Nazi Germany.”

  Margaret Esposito, director of the Special Children Foundation, an advocacy group for the retarded, said, “We've worked so hard to erase the stigma associated with developmental delay only to see something like this come along. I can only hope we're talking about a fringe group and that reasonable people will see it for what it is.”

  Similar sentiments were echoed by clergy, social scientists, and jurists.

  “Reprehensible,” said Monsignor William Binchy of the Manhattan archdiocese. “The Church believes only God should play God.”

  The editor responsible for publishing the article in The Pathfinder, Wall Street securities analyst Helga Cranepool, was unfazed by these comments. Admitting that Sanger's essay contained “some push-the-envelope phraseology and adventurous notions,” Cranepool defended them on free-speech grounds and “the right of our members to be exposed to a wide spectrum of opinions. Two characteristics of very bright people are a willingness to take reasonable risks and an unquenchable curiosity. We're not for everyone, nor do we claim to be. We'll continue to do everything in our power to stimulate and challenge ourselves through an unfettered exchange of ideas.”

  Author Sanger, reached at his Midtown law office, refused to comment beyond saying, “The writing speaks for itself.” Both he and Cranepool declined to offer the names of other Meta members, with Cranepool describing the group as “small and selective. We don't seek publicity.”

  The chairman of the Manhattan chapter of the better-known high-IQ group Mensa, Laurence Lanin, described Meta as “one of our wackier imitators. There are lots of them, but they rarely endure.” He estimated Meta membership at no more than a few dozen.

  As with Mensa, sources say admittance to the group is based upon scores on a self-designed IQ test. Mensa membership is based upon an upper 2 percent score and Meta is believed to be more selective. When asked if Mensa members shared Sanger's views, Lanin said, “I can only speak for myself but I find them repellent.”

  I photocopied the article and searched local phone books for Meta listings. None. Big surprise.

  How did they recruit members?

  Mensa imitator . . . the better-known group was listed. West L.A. number, no address.

  A recording listed the time and address for the next meeting and said messages could be left after the beep.

  I said, “My name is Al and I'm an East Coast transplant looking for info on Meta. Are they out here?” and left my number.

  Next, I reached Milo at his desk.

  “Just the one article?” he said.

  “That's it.”

  “So maybe that was Ponsico's club, too. Maybe Sharavi can find something on his computers.”

  “You're going to call him?”

  “He called me. Seven A.M., gotta give him points for industriousness. He said he'd been working all night with the foreign police and Israeli contacts— zippo. I think he was telling the truth, I know that pissed-off tone of voice. Now that we have a name, maybe he can pull something up. I'll arrange a meet at his place this afternoon but first I've got a lunch appointment with Malcolm Ponsico's first girlfriend. Sally the scientist, more than eager to talk about Zena the clerk. She's working out in Sherman Oaks now, near the burn center, and I'm supposed to meet her at an Italian place on Ventura and Woodman. In the mood for pasta?”

  “The stuff I've been reading lately has killed my appetite,” I said. “But the company sounds fine.”

  33

  Sally Branch speared a piece of mussel from a nest of linguini and stared at it clinically.

  She was thirty-one but had a teenager's eager, nasal voice— Valley Girl inflections overlaid on long, articulate phrases— thick, wavy chestnut hair, a broad, plain, freckled face, brown eyes, and a knockout figure enhanced by a black knit dress. A white lab coat was draped over her chair.

  She said, “Malcolm was never a very communicative person but he got worse after he met her.”

  “How long before his death did you have contact with him?” said Milo.

  “A few days before, we had lunch in the PlasmoDerm cafeteria.” She colored. “I saw him and sat down. He seemed preoccupied but not depressed.”

  “Preoccupied by what?”

  “His work, I assume.”

  “He was having work problems?”

  She smiled. “No, on the contrary. He was brilliant. But every day something new comes up— specific experiments.”

  Milo smiled, too. “You'd have to be a scientist to understand?”

  “Well, I don't know about that.”

  She ate the mussel.

  I said, “So he never actually talked about something bothering him.”

  “No, but I could tell.”

  “The breakup,” said Milo. “Was it friendly?”

  She swallowed and forced another smile. “Is it ever really friendly? He stopped calling, I wanted to know why, he wouldn't say, then I saw him with her. But I got over it— I guess I kept thinking Malcolm would come to his senses. Listen, I know I sound like just another jealous woman but you need to understand that suicide would have been a totally illogical choice for Malcolm. His life was going great, he never lost interest in his work. And he liked himself. Malcolm was someone who truly liked himself.”

  “Good self-esteem?” said Milo.

  “Nothing obnoxious but he was brilliant and knew it. He used to make wisecracks about winning the Nobel prize but I knew it wasn't a total joke.”

  “What was he researching?” I said.

  “Cell permeability— moving ions and chemical compounds of increasing complexity through cell walls without causing structural damage. It was still at a theoretical level— mouse cells. But the practical potential was enormous.”

  “Getting drugs into cells without damage,” I said.

  “Exactly. Drugs are basically cellular-repair agents. Malcolm was studying drugs that enhance tissue growth in burn patients. He described it as playing with toy trains on a cellular level.”

  “Cellular repair— like patching up defective chromosomes?”

  “Yes! I sug
gested that to Malcolm but he said he'd stick to medications. That it was possible inborn defects shouldn't be tinkered with.”

  “Why's that?”

  She looked at her plate. “Malcolm was a bit . . . stodgy. A determinist— he believed some things should be left alone.”

  “Healing burns was okay but genetic problems shouldn't be fixed.”

  “Something like that— I don't want to make him sound unsympathetic. He wasn't. He was kind. But extremely brilliant people are sometimes like that.”