by James Dixon
At a back window, Jody watched her husband and Davis at the back fence. She could only imagine what they were talking about, things in all likelihood they did not want her to hear. She looked down. She saw her huge belly, resting against the sill of the window. Tenderly she rubbed it. “Oh, please. Please, God, no!” she murmured.
She looked up. Frank Davis was gone. Eugene was coming toward her, back across the yard. “Oh, no,” she whispered, “he can’t see me like this.” She had to do something to look busy. Crazily she thought, If I’m busy all this will go away. It will all become a bad dream.
Quickly she moved into the living room. The presents! She saw the presents, scattered all over the floor. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll get busy with the presents, she thought; then nothing will be wrong, everything will be as it was.
That was how Eugene found her, kneeling on their soft, thick carpet, picking up the gifts; all those lovely gifts she had received that day. Tiny sweaters for the baby; a little jumper suit to bring the baby home in from the hospital; fancy, intricate little bibs; one tiny, lovely little thing after another.
As she held those things in her hands, folding them carefully, she began to cry, burying her face in the soft material of the baby clothing.
Eugene went to her noiselessly across the soft carpet.
“Jody, Jody . . .”
He knelt beside her. He held her awkwardly, the packages between them.
“Honey, don’t,” he whispered.
“Did he tell you what it looked like?” she sobbed.
“No, honey, no.”
“Half an hour ago,” she said, “we were having a party. And now, all of a sudden, we’ve accepted the fact that our baby’s not going to be normal, that somebody’s going to try and kill it.”
“Honey,” Eugene protested, “I haven’t accepted anything.”
“Yes, you have,” she said. She looked at him with blazing clarity. “You know who this man is, what he has gone through. Why else would he be here?”
Eugene had no answer for her . . . none.
Jody continued. “Now we’re part of some conspiracy to save our own child. How can that be? In less time than it would take to eat lunch, how can we talk logically about something that isn’t possible?”
“It’s like an accident, honey,” said Eugene, “like any accident that happens to you. A car jumping the divider, a plane crashing into your house—sure, it happens fast. People are alive one minute, and the next they’re not. That’s how it is.”
“I feel exactly as I did when they called me up. Remember when Mom called me up when Dad died of the heart attack?” Jody asked.
Eugene nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“That’s how I feel. It takes forever to plan a life and only a second for everything to fall apart. Damn it,” she said. She took her beautiful artist’s hands, and rolling them into an unaccustomed fist, banged them over and over again into the floor. “Why us?” she cried. “Why us?”
And then it was night. Only a few lights were on in the upstairs level of the Scotts’ house. The station wagon was still there, across the street from the house; the man was still there, too, leaning against the side of the car, keeping his constant, unholy vigil.
Inside the house, in their bedroom, Jody was playing her violin, a piece by Mozart, trying to calm herself by doing what she did best. She stopped. She felt something. She reached down to touch her stomach. She called toward the bathroom:
“It’s kicking again, honey. It’s kicking hard.”
“I know,” said Eugene. His voice came from the partially opened bathroom door. “It’s always been an active baby.”
“Do you hear what I’m calling it?” Jody asked. “IT—not ‘he’ any more, or ‘she.’ ”
Eugene, still in the bathroom, answered her. “Come on, honey. Lots of people call their baby ‘it.’ ”
Jody gently put down her violin; she moved to their king-sized bed and let herself onto it carefully. Now, rolling herself almost into a ball, she called plaintively back toward the bathroom:
“Honey, what’s keeping you?”
“Be right there, Babes,” came Eugene’s answer.
In the bathroom, Eugene, at a small shuttered window, was looking out across the street. There he is, he thought, standing there as if he doesn’t give a good goddamn who sees him. Eugene knew one thing for sure. Nobody would stand out there like that, in a neighborhood like this, in Tucson, Arizona, at this time of night, if he didn’t have somebody on his side . . . The police at least.
“Honey?”
“Okay, Jody, be right there,” he answered.
Still in the bathroom, he moved to the medicine cabinet and took out some pills. Then he poured a couple into the palm of his hand. He drew a glass of water from the tap, and then, as an afterthought, opened the same box of pills and took two himself. Then he left the bathroom, shutting off the light.
In the bedroom, Jody, still rolled into a ball, watched her husband cross the room.
“Here, honey,” he said, “take these.”
Sitting on the bed, he handed her the pills and the glass of water.
Docilely she sat up and took the pills. Then she looked at him, asking him with her limpid green eyes, “Is he still there?”
Expecting it, Eugene was all set to lie. At least he could give her that, so maybe she could sleep . . . but he couldn’t. “Yes,” he said, “he is.”
“Oh, Gene,” she cried, “what can we do?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
And that same night, in downtown Tucson, on the shabby side of town, the “Vacancy” sign outside a small motel abruptly changed. The word “No” popped onto the old neon sign, and it now read, “No Vacancy.”
From a motel window in one of the rooms, Frank Davis watched a couple who had just registered make their drunken, laughing way across the courtyard, searching for their room.
The phone behind him rang.
Frank turned and moved toward the phone, passing a collection of seedy furniture that looked as if it had been picked up, a piece at a time, in a succession of second-hand stores.
“Hello,” he said.
“Your call to L.A. is ready,” a raspy, whiskey-soaked voice announced.
“Thank you,” said Frank.
A moment, and then another voice said, “Hello.”
“I’ve contacted them,” said Frank, not wasting any time. “I think they believe me. I’m going to need help down here right away, she’s very close . . . I’m at the Mirage Motor Inn, about a mile from the hospital.”
“I understand,” said the voice, and the phone clicked.
CHAPTER TWO
It was early the next day. The time, right after sunrise, when everything is beautiful and not too many people are up and about. The best time of day. The skies were a bright blue. The sun, as almost always in Tucson, was bright in the sky.
On the near-empty highway, a small, white Pinto Runabout moved well within the legal speed limit toward a large, sprawling building in the distance. A sign at the side of the road told the driver what the building was: HOSPITAL THIS EXIT.
The Pinto moved to the right, into the exit lane, and finally onto a smaller street, heading straight for that hospital.
Reaching the almost empty parking lot, the car wandered a bit, as if enjoying the luxury of choosing just about any parking spot it wanted. Finally it stopped, selecting a parking space right in the middle of things, as if choosing to remain as inconspicuous as possible.
The door on the driver’s side opened and Frank Davis got out. Quickly, he looked around him, as though he expected that someone might be following him. Then, satisfied everything was all right, he started for the hospital.
Reaching the front steps, he walked briskly through the front door that sprang open in response to his foot hitting the electronic pad.
Inside, a uniformed guard sat at a combination security check/reception desk, his head buried in the mor
ning paper. Hearing Frank’s brisk approach, he looked up. Frank nodded curtly, never slackening his step. As if this were his accustomed, every-morning path, he kept right on going. The guard nodded back, his head disappearing immediately back into the newspaper.
Farther down the hall Frank stopped at the bank of elevators.
“Going up,” a friendly voice called out. Quickly Frank marched into the massive hospital elevator.
“Floor, please,” the smiling attendant, a huge black man, said.
“Uh . . . four, please,” said Frank, making sure he didn’t pick too high a figure, since he didn’t know how many floors the hospital really had.
“Four it is,” answered the elevator man, slamming the steel doors shut.
The elevator took off with a jolt; Frank grabbed the rail for support. All of a sudden he felt weak, his stomach queasy. No wonder, he thought; he hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. Yesterday at the airport in L.A. Just after he got the call from the “organization” that told him they had received information that there was a good possibility another one of “those babies” was about to be born to a couple in Tucson. Would he like to go? Of course he would go.
“Four,” a voice intruded.
“Oh,” said Frank, “thank you.”
Frank walked out of the elevator. He started off busily down the hall, as if he knew exactly where he was going.
Hearing the elevator doors close, he stopped. Now he began to look around, getting his bearings, making sure no one was watching. He saw a sign reading “EXIT” and started off in that direction.
At the end of the hall he tried the exit door. It was open. Through that, he was now in the rarely used stairwell that led to every floor of the hospital and served primarily, he supposed, as a fire exit.
Then, taking his time, he went from floor to floor, trying door after door, finding out what door led where, getting the feel of the hospital. He was finding out just where everything was in case, for whatever reason, he would need to know later on.
Later that morning, in an ultramodern office building in downtown Tucson housing the chic offices of the bright new law firm in town, Foster and Scott, the partners, Al Foster and Eugene Scott, and two of their associates were having their usual midmorning staff meeting.
Eugene, seated in the middle of the fast-paced lawyers’ talk, seemed far away, lost in his own thoughts.
“Gene?” said his partner, Al Foster. “Gene.”
Eugene snapped out of it. He looked at his partner as if he had just discovered him sitting there. “I’m sorry,” he said with a smile. “I was off in left field somewhere.”
Foster returned his smile. “Then you’ll talk to Clark?” he said.
“Clark?” said Eugene, trying to place who the hell he was.
Foster was annoyed. “In the city attorney’s office, about the Goldfarb continuance.”
“Oh, Clark. Oh, sure, I’ll have that all taken care of. No problem,” said Eugene, finally recalling who Clark was.
A secretary entered. She was young and much too good-looking to be entirely functional.
“Excuse me,” she said, batting her store-bought eyelashes at anyone who might have been interested. “There’s a Mr. Davis on the phone for Mr. Scott.”
“Thank you, Connie,” said Al Foster. Annoyed, he pushed the phone at his elbow over toward Eugene.
Eugene jumped up. “I’ll take it in my office,” he said, moving quickly past the young secretary and out the door.
A few steps along the hallway brought him to his private office. He closed the door behind him and rushed to the phone. “Yes,” he said, not wailing to sit down.
“Can you meet me this afternoon about four o’clock?” Frank Davis asked.
“Four o’clock,” said Eugene. “What for?”
“Please, Mr. Scott,” said Frank, “just meet me. Have you told anybody about our conversation last night?”
“No,” said Eugene. “Nobody.”
“All right,” said Frank, “there’s a cafeteria on Main, just off Maple, I think it is.”
“I know where it is.”
“I’ll meet you there,” said Frank, “at four o’clock.”
The phone went dead. Eugene sat staring at it. “What am I doing,” he murmured, “talking to this maniac, trusting him? I must be out of my goddamn mind.”
The cafeteria was deserted at that early hour. A few older people were there, taking advantage of the advertised “Early Bird Senior Citizens’ Special.” Frank was there waiting for Eugene as he entered the front door.
Smiling, he led Eugene over to where one picked up the trays and silverware. “I figured you hadn’t eaten,” he said, handing him a tray. “Your wife? How’s she holding up?”
“All right,” said Eugene, trying to get a good look at Davis as he adjusted his eyes to the dim light of the cafeteria. “She wanted to call her mother.”
“Did she?” asked Davis, suddenly alarmed.
“No, I talked her out of it,” said Eugene.
“Good,” said Frank.
They started along the line. Eugene, although he didn’t have much of an appetite, began arbitrarily putting things on his tray.
At the cashier’s stand, Frank reached for his money.
“Here, let me get it,” said Eugene.
“Next time,” said Frank, smiling, already handing the clerk a bill.
After Frank had paid for Eugene’s food—Jello, a side dish of spaghetti, and coffee—they started back toward the dining area. Eugene was about to sit at the first available table.
“Not here,” said Frank softly. He moved deeper into the cafeteria, Eugene following. “I have some people I want you to meet.”
Toward the back of the cafeteria, in the dimmest corner, sat two men. Eugene could just about make them out. One was large and muscular, the other smallish, with a beard. The small one was smoking an odd-looking pipe.
At the table Davis said simply, pointing to the small, bearded man, “Dr. Westley,” and then, to the large man, “Dr. Forrest. They flew in from Los Angeles this morning.”
Without getting up or shaking hands, Dr. Westley began. “I’ll be as brief as possible. We’re setting up facilities to deliver the baby outside the hospital.”
Eugene looked at them. He could not believe their gall. These two rumpled-looking men, perfect strangers, were telling him what they were about to do with his wife and his baby.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” stormed Eugene. “Listen, I’m not all that sure this isn’t just some colossal joke. What makes you so sure you know what you’re talking about, anyway?”
Dr. Forrest, taking a different tack from that of the ruthlessly cold Dr. Westley, tried putting a calming hand on Eugene’s arm. “Mr. Scott,” he said, “we’ve seen stolen copies of the serologists’ reports on your wife’s blood. There can be no doubt—”
“What the hell’s a serologist?” Eugene interrupted.
“A serologist,” said Dr. Westley, as if reading from a textbook, “is a man who deals with the properties or the uses of serums.”
“That makes it as clear as mud,” said Eugene coldly.
“Mr. Scott, without getting into a whole technical explanation, which we don’t have time for,” said Dr. Westley, “and which, quite frankly, you as a layman would have great difficulty understanding, the serum, or the animal fluid within your baby’s blood, has exactly the same properties as the serum found in the blood of”—pointing to Frank Davis—“the Davis baby, the baby born in Seattle, and the other baby that was destroyed in Evanston, Illinois. All four had the same properties. All these babies were destroyed. Now we are attempting to save your baby. However, without your full cooperation and that of your wife, we won’t have a chance in the world of doing it. That’s it, it’s just that clear. The rest is up to you.”
Westley was finished. Everyone was quiet. They sat waiting, watching Eugene.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Eugene in a weary vo
ice.
Westley smiled, a controlled smile. He had won. “A mobile unit is being brought in from Los Angeles. It’s on the road now.”
“A mobile unit!” Eugene exclaimed. “Why a mobile unit?”
“We can’t wait for her to go into labor,” answered Dr. Forrest reassuringly. “We have to remove her from your home within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Why, for God’s sake?” shouted Eugene, forgetting for the moment where they were.
The four men looked around conspiratorially to see if anyone was watching them.
Nobody was. The few people in the cafeteria were all absorbed in shoveling their food into their lowered faces.
“Because,” said Dr. Westley in a low voice, “if we do it any other way, the authorities, as I have already explained to you, will get hold of your baby and kill it. Isn’t that right, Davis?”
“Yes,” said Davis, “that’s right.”
They paused; no one spoke, waiting for Eugene. Finally he asked, “Will it be safe? I mean for Jody, in some kind of mobile setup?”
“There’ll be no problem,” said Dr. Forrest, a good man, caught up, he believed, in a valid cause. “My plan is to take the child early, by Caesarean.”
“The prime danger, the only danger, will be the infant itself. We’ll have to tranquilize it before delivery,” said Dr. Westley.
Just then a young man, a teen-ager really, sauntered by the table with a group of friends, all of them horsing around and laughing at some joke the leader was telling. Suddenly one of them grabbed for this boy’s tray. The boy instinctively swung his tray away, splashing a glass of soda onto Dr. Westley.
“Hey, excuse me, man. No shit, I’m sorry, man,” said the boy.
As a further indignity to Dr. Westley, the young man, trying to be helpful, took a napkin from his tray and began wiping off the furious Dr. Westley’s jacket, which threw his friends into squeals of laughter. “Really, man, I’m sorry,” continued the boy, now having a good time himself, especially after he saw the effect this was having on his friends.
“That’s all right,” said the flustered Dr. Westley, trying to get the boy to stop wiping him. “I’ll take care of it myself.”