by Rex Burns
“Put the squeeze on Mrs. Chiquichano.”
“Why? And how?”
“ ‘Why,’ because I figure she’s the lead to Matheney. Think about it, Dev. She provides the raw material, Matheney buys it. But he’s sitting on a cushion; he’s a respected surgeon, lives in a nice house, pays a lot of taxes, has important friends, and so on. He’s not going to spill a thing, not unless we’ve got a clear case against him. Chiquichano’s the weak link.”
“She might not know what Matheney wanted those people for. Hell, even we don’t know that for certain—we’re just guessing.”
“I’ll put money on our guesses, Dev. I want her to tell us she took money for those people—and who she took it from.”
“Right. What we do is go up and ask her, she says yes, then we start to squeeze. Come on, Bunch!”
“Maybe it’ll take a late-night chat. Just the three of us in a cozy, secluded spot.”
“You want to break her kneecaps, that it?”
“It might not hurt if she thinks that.”
I shook my head and drained my wineglass. “She’d laugh at us while we did it and sue us for assault afterward. No, if we want to threaten that woman, we’ve got to have some ammunition to do it with. And to make it worth her while to cooperate.”
A string of spaghetti snaked into Bunch’s pursed lips with a slight sizzle, and he nodded and mopped his plate with a wad of bread. “Yeah. She’s a tough old buzzard, that’s for sure.”
Later, after we’d changed into our ninja outfits of dark clothes and tennis shoes, Bunch eased the van across the jolt of railroad tracks and into a shadow cast by the corner of one of the warehouses that dotted the manufacturing district. Across a ribbon of black that was the bed of the South Platte River, South Denver’s lights formed a curtain of glare against the eastern sky. Only occasional street bulbs gleamed dully among the buildings surrounding Antibodies Research, and here and there the splash of security lights illuminated walls and doorways. We had driven slowly past the small building three or four times from different directions, and now we’d walk around the perimeter fencing before we attempted to get in.
Bunch, a carefully muffled tool kit in a belt pack around his waist, led the way through the shadows. I carried the small satchel and followed. We located the gates and, watching for the stray patrol car that might cruise the neighborhood, traced out the tall fence with its strands of gleaming razor wire spiraling along the top. Bunch looked for any electronic sensors that could make the fence hot, but Antibodies apparently believed in wire alone. A heavy brass padlock held the small gate shut, and Bunch worked the tumblers in the dark, feeling his way with the pick and spring. When it clicked open, we eased through and listened for the sound of night watchmen. Only the steady whisper of distant cars speeding along elevated 1-25 and, in the warm darkness, a motorcycle winding up through the gears a block or two away. Bunch led me to a corner of the building where the shadows were deepest, and I fished the grapple and line from the satchel. It took two tosses, both achingly loud despite the electric tape wrapped around the metal shafts, before the hooks caught firmly on the edge of the flat roof.
“You think they have a night guard?” I asked.
“Naw. Place this small, maybe part of a large security patrol—check the fences, rattle the doors, respond to alarms. That should be it.” He tugged hard on the line. “You ready?”
“Go ahead.”
I held the line taut while he walked up the side of the building, pulling himself hand over hand up the rope. His large shadow slid out of sight and I heard the tiny crackle of pea gravel against the sky. In a couple minutes, he was back to wave me up. I followed, feeling the ache of my shoulder start again under the strain of the climb. At the top, I paused a minute to work my shoulder around and ease the tightness; then I pulled the line up and coiled it ready at the roofs edge.
The top of the building was a small plateau in the dimness, broken here and there by vent pipes and, near the middle, by a block that should house the stairway. Two or three skylights lifted like small glass tents, and one of them glowed faintly.
“Somebody’s inside, Bunch.”
He tiptoed over to peer through the glass, pulling on his rubber gloves. Then he crept back. “It’s from the lobby. Maybe they do have a security team.”
“Goddamn it, Bunch—”
“Hey, maybe they don’t, too. Relax, it’s in man’s nature to take chances.”
“Man’s nature can be behind bars, too.”
“ ‘When a spider plunges from a fixed point to its consequences, it always sees before it an empty space where it can never set foot, no matter how it wriggles.’ “
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Kierkegaard, literary type. Kierkegaard in the middle of the night on an empty roof. And we’re about to take the leap of faith.”
“Christ, Bunch, just do it. Don’t try to think—just go ahead and do it.”
“That’s what Kierkegaard says.”
We walked as lightly as possible to the roof door. From there we could see the back of the building and the delivery and storage compound sheltered by its walls. Near the rear entry, pale in the gloom, a closed white van sat nosed against the landing.
“Bunch, what kind of vehicle did Nestor get into?”
He looked over the edge where I pointed. “Yeah. A white van. With Colorado plates and no windows. Just like that one.”
“I think we’ve detected something.”
“It’s about goddamn time.”
The roof door was locked. Using his penlight, Bunch traced along the crack of the door and spotted, at the top, the coppery glint of a contact that would register an alarm if the door opened. He threaded a piece of aluminum foil around it and completed the circuit by taping it to the door’s metal frame. Then gingerly he picked the lock and the door swung out stiffly, its hinges making a muted groan despite the penetrating oil I’d squirted into them. We left it open and groped down black stairs into the chemical-smelling breeze that lifted from the building’s interior.
We were after records, primarily, but we also wanted pictures of equipment that might support our suspicions and provide evidence for a warrant if needed. Exactly what we would do if it was needed, I wasn’t sure. But that was one of those bridges that could wait. Right now, we had several thousand square feet of unfamiliar building to search in the dark, and with a possible security guard lurking somewhere. Bunch, a gliding shadow of thicker darkness ahead, pressed open a fire door at the end of the stairs, and we were in a long hallway that stretched into gloom. Wordless, we turned toward the front of the building and the offices.
Cautiously we opened doors along the way, our tiny lights playing quickly over their interiors. Storage rooms held a glitter of chromed medical equipment, tanks of oxygen and nitrogen, a series of cooling units, all portable and one as large as a walk- in freezer but ornamented with an impressive array of monitoring gauges. One large room housed a collection of wire cages and the musty smell of animal. The scurry of tiny feet and an occasional squeak punctuated the darkness.
“Lab rats, Dev. They’re running some kind of experiments.” Bunch’s light slid along the identification tags on the cages and gleamed back at us from a hundred blinking sparks. I eased open the drawer of a filing cabinet and studied the headings of the dividers. Most of the index was made up of dates and chemical formulas, and a glance at the contents showed careful recordings of variations in weight, food and water intake, temperatures and behaviors, and finally the chemical analysis of the rats’ organs and fluids. It made little sense to me, but it was clear the experiments were long-running and extensive. The camera’s flash winked and set the animals scurrying nervously, and we closed the door behind us.
Next was a well-appointed operating room that rivaled the one in Warner Memorial. Windowless, it had an efficient arrangement of tables, lights, life-support equipment, and monitors. The space was cramped but suitable, and a rack of surgical go
wns, masks, and bootees hung ready in a small adjoining room with a scrub basin and covered racks of sterilizing equipment and instruments. I took half a dozen photographs, the flash blinding us for a few seconds, and we waited until the red blossoms of reflected glare faded from our eyes before moving again.
Bunch, poking around beyond a concrete-block partition, hissed for me to join him. Tucked away and glowing pale blue through a line of ventilation ports, the gas pilot light of a large and well-insulated incinerator hissed comfortably. The black jets, visible in the glow, were large and numerous and focused to create extremely high temperatures.
“Here’s where they get rid of dead lab rats and other bits of flesh,” said Bunch.
Ceramic containers of various sizes were stored in antiseptic cabinets along one wall. “I think these are for powdering bones, Bunch.” Another sterilized glass rack held portable perfusion units at the ready. I photographed the setup.
“It’s a factory, Dev. A goddamn ‘harvesting’ factory.”
I nodded and finished up that roll of film and reloaded. Antibodies had improved on the Nazis’ technology as well as their economy of production.
Back in the hallway, we followed its turn left and were partway down the short leg when Bunch’s large hand pressed hard against my shoulder to halt me.
“Guard.”
I heard the creak of crepe soles on the waxed floor and an instant later a jingle of keys. A circle of light swung up the wall and down again, and Bunch and I slipped through an open doorway as the light swung up once more. It angled around the corner of the hallway, its reflection catching the leather and brass of a quasi-military uniform and the features of a face, whistling softly between its teeth, turning toward us. I closed the door softly and we froze, waiting as the shoes squeaked down the hallway. The vague tune floated above them. A couple minutes later, the sounds came back, punctuated by the jingling keys as the guard completed his round and headed back to the television set. Opening the door a crack, I watched the bobbing glow of the flashlight fade and finally wink out.
“Well, we know there’s at least one guard,” whispered Bunch.
I grunted yes and turned the light to survey this room. One wall was filled with computer equipment and another with a library of disks and three screens for reading and printing.
“Jesus, Dev—look at all this crap. It looks like they’ve got their own mainframe.”
It sure wasn’t your basic home computer, and the cost of the equipment probably rivaled that of the entire building. Quickly I photographed this room, too, careful to get shots of the filing system for disks, and we slipped back into the hallway.
The offices were around another corner and next to the main entry. We could hear the mechanical noises of the television from somewhere near the tiny lobby. The offices consisted of two rooms, the outer one for the severe secretary whose nameplate on a small desk caught the light: Phyllis Whortley. A large table held most of the work space as well as a telefax machine, filing cabinets, and another computer terminal. The inner office was filled with expensive modern furniture—a desk almost as large as Phyllis’s worktable, a swivel chair almost as large as the desk, and a visitor’s chair whose leather upholstery made up for its diminished size. Another computer terminal, a calendar, a telephone with memory buttons, and a matching pen set rested on the desktop. I photographed the telephone index.
“Look up there, Dev.”
Bunch’s light rose up the wall to show a pair of golden eyes glaring down at us. Behind the eyes, spreading like a dark cloud, a set of wide antlers loomed. On another wall glinted the ivory teeth of a snarling, hairy lion’s head. Other, smaller trophies decorated different walls.
“Looks like he’s transplanting heads, too,” said Bunch. He went to the door and stood guard while I rifled through the filing cabinets and drawers, delayed briefly by a locked cabinet.
“Anything?”
“No. Invoices. Bills for supplies. Telephone records.” I took pictures of those sheets with their columns of numbers and times and costs, then eyed the computer’s black screen.
“Bunch—you check the computer files. See if the records are there.”
He did, and I took his place near the door and listened to the friendly beep and rattle of the keyboard as Bunch turned the machine on and played through the menu and coded file names. We had to halt once, tense in the blackness as the computer motor wound down to a dying wheeze and the guard took another tour down the hall. The same flashlight beam swung carelessly in the dark; the same half-whistled tune echoed from the walls. Then Bunch clicked the machine on again, its beep greeting us loudly.
After a while, he whispered, “Dev—look here.”
The pale orange letters read DONOR C-3 (IBRAHIM HASSAN RH NULL), followed by a list of dates and coded references and figures.
“Look at the dates, Bunch.”
The file had been opened on the seventeenth of last month. On the nineteenth occurred P & D with a notation ROSENBERG. On the twenty-second, a large figure with many zeros.
“That’s Nestor,” whispered Bunch. “It’s got to be!”
“Yeah. C-three: Chiquichano, three? Can you find C-one and C-two?”
“Hell yes, I can find them.”
He did, and gradually more of the code began to make sense. The figures were amounts of money received for the tissue or organs the donors supplied, the dates were the dates of removal and transfer, the initials indicated disbursement. “P & D” could mean almost anything, but the dates were important there— they coincided with the disappearances. Antibodies Research (AR) received most of the income, and my guess was that someone like Matheney would get his pay from Antibodies’ cut as a dividend or consulting fee. That would be recorded somewhere else in the system, and with enough time Bunch would be able to find it. Prominent in this series of C donors was AC, who received five thousand dollars for C-l and C-2, and ten thousand for C-3. I photographed the screen and Bunch rummaged through the secretary’s drawer for a blank floppy disk. Then he began punching keys.
“What’re you doing?”
“Copying the disk. Take a couple minutes.”
It did, the hum and twitter of the machine startlingly loud in the silence of the building. I checked my watch—we’d been in for almost three hours—and guessed that the guard would be coming along the hallway in another twenty or so minutes.
“How much longer?”
“Just finishing up.”
He replaced the disks in their sleeves and inserted the original, and we eased into the hallway. Three minutes later, we were sliding down the rope. We flipped the hook free and it clattered dully to the gravel drive. We even relocked the gate on our way out.
Through the open window over the kitchen sink, I heard the faint music of Mrs. Ottoboni’s stereo. A tenor rose to an achingly pure note and held it for a long count before giving way to the matching melody of a soprano. The two distant voices chased each other like butterflies in the hazy late-morning sunshine, which washed a golden mist over the clumps and swirls of color that were Mrs. O.’s flower beds. Beyond them, the answering call of birds told me there was a whole world of beings that never fretted about human greed or missing people or murder. It was good to wake up rested and remember that.
But flowers and song were only temporary respites from a too-insistent world, and after breakfast I played back the messages that had collected on my home answering machine. The only one of interest was a voice I recognized, “Dev, lad, it’s your old mentor Perce. I’ve got something you’ll be wanting to hear, so give me a jingle when you can.”
I made the call from the office where I could tape the conversation. Percy was away from his telephone, his mechanical voice told me, and as per instruction I left my name, number, and the time I called. It always puzzled me how, in detective stories, the hero picked up the telephone and got right through to the person he was calling, including the chief of detectives or even the governor. I figured I called people who we
re a hell of a lot busier; certainly Percy was, but he managed to get back to me within the hour.
“You know, Devlin, I had a time of it to make somebody at that hospital open up his soul to me. Suspicious they were, and downright shy of strangers asking even stranger questions. Blushingly mortified, in fact.”
“They’re hiding something?”
“Oh, you’ve been in this nasty business too long, laddie. You’ve grown a mean and sneaky mind. Corrupt. Far different from the naive young lad with pink cheeks who nestled under my wing so many years past. Now your eye is on the evils men do, and you’ve no thought for the sweetness that dwells therein.”
“You’re telling me they’re hiding something.”
“Of course! But they swear their skeletons are the legal sort found in every doctor’s abode, and they cite the rights of patient confidentiality, professional ethics, government regulations. The more I’d ask, the quicker they’d deny, damn their eyes, which of course made me persevere the more. At any rate, I was able—through my legendary Irish charm and Jesuitical machinations—able to pierce to the heart of the matter. Percy’s Pierce, I call it, and indeed demonstrate occasionally to the awe and delight of the female population.”
Percy had always been his own best audience. I let his laughter subside before prodding him back to the subject. “Did they ask for an Rh null donor?”
“They did. They did indeed. It seems there was this very rich Arab sheik whose fifteen-year-old son by one of his wives—I never did get it straight which one—needed a kidney transplant. But the lad had extremely rare blood, so no one offered much hope to the poor kid. It’s hard enough, they say, to find your run-of-the-mill kidney, since not everyone wants to part with theirs. But to match this Rh null blood, well, Dev, it’s statistically awkward, to say the least. But the dialysis machine wasn’t doing the job anymore; the lad was drifting toward that final rest that awaits us all, sinner and saint. So his father, desperate and sorrowful but by no means destitute, came to the famous Empire State Hospital in search of wonders. He offered a million petrodollars cash for an Rh null donor. That latter part is very hush-hush, you understand, since it’s illegal to peddle parts, spare or otherwise. But the chap who told me was in a position to know and, after drinking an extraordinary amount of fine Irish water of life, was in a frame of mind to tell me too.”