Trifecta

by Pam Richter

  Ferd had said that she was to be a superior new off-shoot of mankind, but Eve did not think she was superior. She was just learning to behave in human fashion, and it was not easy. They had such strange rituals. Like that Tracy Rieber. He had given her his hat. Then he had taken the hat back. She had felt possessive of the hat and wanted it because it kept the sun out of her eyes and because it was bright red.

  Sabrina said he was 'coming on to her.' Did that mean that Tracy wanted to procreate? Or copulate? Or fuck? There were nuances in the meanings that Eve didn't understand. It was puzzling, and she knew Sabrina had been angry at Tracy.

  At that moment, Eve felt a tremendous jolt and her body was catapulted violently to the floor. She landed solidly on her hands and knees and leaped up to confront the person who knocked her down. She was consumed with blinding rage, having been pushed off balance while she had one leg high in the air, her space taken by another, a big clumsy man. She snarled at the man, baring her teeth. She wanted to kill.

  Fortunately the computer took over because she almost punched the clumsy lout.

  The man took her arm. She could tell he was scared that he had really hurt her. "Are you okay?" the big man was asking. Fortunately he mistook the bared teeth for pain, and had not heard her growl over the loud music.

  "Yes. You surprised me, bumping that hard," Eve managed to say. It had been bad luck that he had bumped into her when she was vulnerable, or he wouldn't have been able to knock her down with her heavy body mass. "Do not worry about my condition. I am fine. It's a good thing you are working out. Your body needs it."

  The man laughed. "You're right. Can you go on?"

  "I will continue to exercise." Eve started moving with the music again.

  The man watched her and began to move too, being very cautious to stay out of her way.

  There was another man watching Eve from the upstairs running oval. Malcolm Stoner made no pretense of exercising. From his vantage point he could see Eve doing aerobics and Sabrina in the jacuzzi. He had talked his way into the private gym on the pretext of trying the facilities out before deciding on a membership. He was glad he had won the coin toss again because he could see that the dark sister had muscles just like the redhead's.

  As Malcolm Stoner sat at the juice bar in the gym, watching the two women, Ivar Cousin was outside in the car observing the Japanese men still trying to get inside the private gym. Obviously not Japanese-Americans, they didn't possess the skill in English necessary to bluff their way in, as Malcolm had done. But Ivar had never thought they were Americans. He wondered if the Japanese government was also following the two women.

  Later that afternoon Ivar and Malcolm drove to downtown Los Angeles. Burgess Whitcomb wanted their report in person. They presented the pictures they had taken of Eve and Sabrina on the beach and in the restaurant.

  After they left, Burgess sat and wondered what the hell was going on. One interesting point in the recent investigation of Sabrina Miller was that she was an orphan. Background on the Miller woman had stated that her mother was unwed and had died in childbirth, leaving no living relatives. Now Sabrina had a woman staying with her that the Cousin-Stoner report stated could only be a sister or close relative because of the almost uncanny resemblance. The military investigator's eyebrows went down and his mouth became thin as a pencil line when he looked at a picture of both women together at a restaurant, taken that afternoon.

  Burgess frowned because he knew that the redhead was a blond. Or maybe the blond had changed to brunette. He opened a file drawer and checked for the picture that was first taken of the Miller woman when she went into the tanning salon. She did have blond hair in the first picture. But women often changed their hair color.

  The whole thing was rather intriguing. Whitcomb thought he would have the two women more closely scrutinized. The fact that at least one of them had changed their hair color indicated the possibility that one of them was wearing a wig and had undergone plastic surgery so the two could be passed off as sisters. He decided contact his agents immediately and tell them to break the covert surveillance. He wanted to know if one of the women was wearing a wig or had evidence of recent plastic surgery.

  Burgess wondered what the break-in at Dr. Steinbrenner's residence had to do with the case. Nothing seemed to be stolen, but you could never tell. On that night, when Dr. Steinbrenner had a heart attack and both of his sons had their legs broken, the man on surveillance at the tanning salon had had bouts of diarrhea and had not called in for backup.

  What actually occurred that night was unknown, except that a man and woman had gone into the tanning salon and set off the alarm. Somehow the door knob had been totally broken off the door. It looked like it was torn off. The idiot on reconnaissance said he had cramps at just that moment. He had ducked into a restaurant to use the facilities. His picture of the man and woman who entered the tanning salon showed only their backs. The man was dark and the woman blond. The woman was a little taller than the man, but that was all they currently had. Of course, the dick with diarrhea was out of a job.

  Sabrina Miller and her friend Mark Ponti had the correct coloring and height to be the people who had entered the doctor's shop that night. They were the best suspects. But Burgess Whitcomb didn't think either of them had a computer implanted in their brain. Neither had taken time off of work recently.

  Now there was this mysterious new woman with Sabrina Miller. Burgess got on the phone. He told Malcolm Stoner and Ivar Cousin that they had to do some overtime work tonight.

  CHAPTER 13

  Eve decided she needed a tranquilizer. She had come close to killing the fat man at the gym. She had to consider her mind a dangerous place.

  Sabrina was in the bedroom napping, but Eve didn't want to lie down. The probability was, she would sleep, have an awful scary nightmare and wake up screaming or crying. She wanted to experience more of the world. The ocean that morning had been much more awesome and wonderful than she had thought possible.

  It was almost night time and something in her head was saying it wasn't safe to walk alone when it was dark. That was a Sabrina Thought. Eve knew no one could hurt her. A flash idea that her purse might be taken was really silly and unreasonable. No one could get her purse from her if she did not let them. Rape? Just try.

  Eve was disturbed with her own irrational rage reaction at the gym. She had almost walloped the fat guy. Anger had taken control of her mind and body so quickly it was quite peculiar. She imagined the response was some primitive protective device for humans, but that magnitude of rage at having been simply pushed down was not logical. She had momentarily lost domination over the body, which had wanted to kill. The computer was supposed to oversee such emotional responses, and it had, but it had been very close.

  As she got ready to leave, she thought back to when she had broken the legs of Ferd's sons. It had seemed the prudent thing to do and she hadn't felt any remorse. She did feel bad about the fat man, though, because he was pathetic. So overweight and out of shape. Certainly no match for her. She would never want to hurt someone for inadvertently knocking her down. Especially since she could have killed him in one lethal instant.

  Another thought was even more disturbing. She was getting strong emotions now, but in the future the emotions might be even more powerful, because surely the body did not have all the hormones in full force yet, did it? She didn't know. But if humans got strong emotions like this, she could not imagine how they could keep from killing each other off accidentally, until no one was left.

  When Eve left the apartment she took one of Sabrina's purses and put a ten dollar bill inside it from the sock drawer. She added a bottle of syrup in case of emergency. She was going to try the most common central nervous depressant, alcohol, to find a dosage which would control anger and keep her stable.

  Ivar and Malcolm were on surveillance again, their car parked across from Sabrina's apartment building.

  "The redhead is very thin," Malcolm said, frowning sligh
tly. "You could almost call her skinny except for the spectacular, gorgeous muscles. And I almost picked her, but then I saw the brunette in that exercise class, in the skimpy leotard and tights, and she was exactly the same. In build I mean. Now I don't know which I really prefer."

  Ivar smiled at his partner, Malcolm. He sounded perfectly serious and was frowning at the dilemma of picking one of the two beautiful women they were staking out. "What are you choosing for?" Ivar asked.

  "A permanent and erotic relationship," Malcolm said smiling dreamily.

  "I don't think you really have a choice," Ivar said, laughing gently. Malcolm always amused him greatly.

  "No?"

  "You have to pick the brunette. You saw the redhead's boyfriend."

  Malcolm waved his hand and shook his head in dismissal of the boyfriend.

  Ivar couldn't really blame Malcolm. Both American women were very beautiful. Having lost the coin tosses earlier in the day, Ivar had not seen the women up close. His view from the top of the bluff, above the production site for the toothpaste advertisement, had been through binoculars. At that distance, the images had jumped around through the eyepiece and he had only seen the women's faces in blurry and unsatisfactory focus.

  "I would take the brunette," Malcolm said nodding. He stretched and yawned hugely, settling in for a long wait.

  As Ivar mulled through strategies to get closer to the women, he suspected that the boyfriend might really be the focus of the investigation. He had seen the agent who was covering Mark Ponti.

  As Malcolm started a monologue of intricate schemes to bed one of the two women, Ivar was suddenly galvanized by the sight of the dark-haired one leaving the condominium alone.

  Ivar was not going to put up with another coin toss that he might lose. He sprang up and told Malcolm to stay put; he would follow the woman. He did it so fast that he was out of the car before Malcolm could protest.

  Ivar kept in mind that besides the instructions from the Russian agent about this investigation, he and Malcolm had been directed by their American boss, Burgess Whitcomb, more commonly known as Old Hood Eyes, to find out whether one of the women was using a wig or had undergone recent plastic surgery. Whitcomb said that if it was necessary to break cover in order to do so, to go ahead. They would be replaced by other agents.

  Ivar knew that he could not be replaced, so he would do as instructed, but he would not tell Hood Eyes if he made contact. His American boss was forbidding, but nothing like what the consequences would be if he failed the highly placed KGB agent. Ivar didn't fear the Americans, but if he was replaced on this case, the Russian agent would be very unhappy. There might be severe reprisals.

  As Ivar followed the young woman, he wondered if it would be as simple to detect a wig on a woman as it was a toupee on a man. From here, the woman's hair looked real and whirled in the light breeze. Ivar had very good vision, better than twenty/twenty, but he couldn't see any scars on the side of the woman's face. At least not at this distance.

  * * * * *

  Eve was walking uphill toward Sunset Boulevard. The twilight weather was cool and balmy, a small breeze making the walk pleasant. As Eve strolled along she looked into department stores windows and thought that the clothes displayed in the windows were not nearly as nice as those Sabrina made. The plastic models were all spectacularly thin. Eve wondered why. At the gym there had been lots of women in the locker room and most of them were not so thin as she and Sabrina and the models displayed in the windows. It had been a revelation that women came in such diverse sizes and shapes. On television they did not show naked bodies or many different sizes of female anatomy.

  On Sunset Boulevard a sign proclaimed she was in the Sunset Plaza area. There were myriad luxury shops catering to unlimited tastes. Eve looked into each one. There were shops with revealing lingerie in the windows; one for wedding gowns; a shop just for children's clothing and one with leather apparel. One store rented and sold tuxedos, one proclaimed that it could teach karate up to the black belt level. There were advertisements in the windows for tattoos and for designer Paris jeans.

  Some items were so beautiful it made her eyes happy. Eve looked up at huge billboards advertising rock stars, cigarettes, liquor and movies. Along Sunset Boulevard came a most diverse stream of cars, from stretch limousines, to beat up old clunkers with lowered fenders, packed with teens cruising slowly. She passed several large hotels. In the hills above the Sunset strip were huge houses with diverse and ostentatious architecture.

  As Eve walked along she noticed that she was the only lone woman on Sunset Boulevard. There were a few couples she passed and a few stray men. The men all seemed to appraise her in an odd way. Most were badly dressed, visibly unclean, and Eve could smell them. She guessed that they fit in the category of Bum. A few stopped and looked at her. Eve heard an inner voice telling her to keep walking quickly.

  Eve saw a restaurant with tables on an outside patio. The restaurant's occupants all seemed to be having a grand time eating and drinking, so Eve decided to go inside and try a soothing alcohol dosage there. She walked up a cobbled path between the outside tables into the restaurant.

  A woman with lacquered hair, impeccable grooming and a very thick French accent told Eve where the bar was. The woman did not smile. Eve wondered if she was wearing something wrong. She had on designer jeans, a silk blouse and a leather jacket. Maybe she had acted improperly when she had asked the woman where the bar was located. The woman was looking at her very disapprovingly. She could almost feel the eyes riveted on her back as she walked through the tables to the back of the restaurant.

  The lounge was dark and plush, with red velvet bar stools and a long dark mahogany bar. The bottles behind the bar were lit from behind and shone like jewels. Eve could almost believe she was one of the heroines she had seen in movies going into bars, where someone was always playing a piano and everyone was friendly. Here, the bar did not have a piano and there was only one man sitting alone at the other end of the bar.

  Sabrina sat on a stool. She twirled the seat in a circle several times, as she enjoyed the motion. The bartender was wiping glasses, just like in the movies. He came over and asked Eve, What's your poison? She didn't know what he meant so she asked for something sweet. She knew that Sabrina would have requested wine, but she had tried wine. It tasted like old spit. The bartender recited, in a very bored way, a list of sweet after-dinner drinks. Eve chose Creme de Menthe and soda, thinking that she didn't know how the computer would react to alcohol. It might be better if she had it diluted. She took small sips of the drink and liked the taste. It had a peculiar warm feeling when it went down her throat.

  Eve could see the man at the end of the bar smoking. She wished she knew how. People always drank and smoked together in bars, and she watched the man intently, noting how he inhaled the smoke and then blew it out. Some of the smoke came out of his nostrils. The man saw her watching him smoke and smiled at her. Eve smiled back to be polite. She was not going to make any mistakes. She didn't want to give Sabrina a bad reputation.

  The smoking man was about forty years old and had had a very bad day. He was commiserating about it over his sixth bourbon. Suddenly, he thought it might be his lucky night, because obviously the lady's smile was an invitation. He took his drink over to where Eve was sitting and sat down. He asked if he could sit there, after the fact. Eve said he could sit there. She thought it strange that with all the room in the bar the man would want to sit so close. He was actually brushing her with his elbow and part of his arm. Eve thought that it must be a custom that people sat close together in bars. She would have to get used to it.

  Then Eve had a Sabrina Thought. She suddenly knew that this stranger was sitting altogether too close. He was leaning on his elbow and looking straight into her face. Eve moved to the edge of her stool and removed her arm from the proximity of his. The man moved even closer. Eve knew that along with her excellent hearing and sight, she had a fine olfactory ability. The man's breath smel
led strong in an obnoxious way, like the drink he was consuming in large gulps. He breathed smoke right into her face. It hurt her eyes and made her want to cough. Eve leaned away from the man. He was asking her what she did for a living. All of the words went together and were not distinct.

  Eve tried to keep her distance and answered that she designed women's clothing. The man said he thought she was an actress or something. He went on and on about how beautiful she was.

  Eve was feeling uncomfortable and decided that the experiment of tranquilizing herself was over. She wanted to get out of the bar and away from the evil smelling man. Eve gulped her drink so she could hurry and leave. She almost choked and started coughing. The man patted her back and laughed. Eve did not find it at all funny.

  Ivar Cousin had been standing in the back of the bar and saw the drunk leering at Eve. This was the perfect opportunity for him to make contact. He quietly walked over to the bar and sat on the other side of Eve, ordering a coke from the bartender.

  Ivar heard the drunk suggesting that he and Eve go someplace quiet, and Eve said No, rather loudly. The bartender, who should have been handling the situation for her, thought she was a hooker and was ignoring the whole scene. Ivar didn't think she was a prostitute, but wondered why she didn't brush the man off. She must be very naive to be so obviously uncomfortable and do nothing about it.

  Ivar tapped Eve on the shoulder to get her attention and she shook his hand off irritably. Ivar could see why. The drunk had placed his hand on her knee and was massaging it.

  Eve finished the drink in a gulp, feeling her eyes fill with tears. She put the ten dollars she had brought on the bar. She wanted to wave the bill in the air to get the bartender's attention. It was altogether too much, this sitting close in bars. First there was one man with his hand rudely moving up her leg, and now another one on the other side of her touching her shoulder. Even though Eve could not feel pain, or hot and cold, she could feel pressure. She did not like being, she thought for the right word and then had it, pawed.