“Sergio is a brave man, isn’t he.”
“Sergio is a brave and honorable man and what is done must be respected. He wants to do something else, and I have to help.”
“You can’t refuse?”
Blaise rolled up to the white passenger zone and parked without stopping the engine. “Were you able to abandon me?”
Helen pressed her tear wet face against his. He kissed her. There wasn’t anything else to say.
The door opened, throwing a spear of light into the car and Sergio leaned inside. “Time to break it up, lovebirds.”
Helen looked at Blaise.
“Stay in the hotel until I get back.”
She nodded and got out. The kitten purred with rusty efficiency in her hand.
“Good-bye, Miss McIntyre.” Sergio held out his hand.
Helen stepped past it putting her arms around Sergio’s neck and killing him. “I love you, Sergio. For everything you’ve done. Everything!” She whirled and rushed into the hotel.
Blaise didn’t look. He knew Sergio was crying and didn’t want to embarrass him.
The pursuit of greater intelligence is a search for a new beginning rather than an ending.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 34
Blaise drove up the peninsula with Sergio sleeping in the passenger seat. At a roadside motel tucked against a hill with a gray stone wall separating the grass from the road he swung the Mercedes onto a rock-edged driveway. Gravel crunching under the tires woke Sergio. “Gas?”
“Sleep.” The sudden silence hurt his ears after ten hours of eyestrain in the dark.
“What for?”
“I’m beat and you’re not much better.”
Swiveling his head, Sergio said, “It’s daylight. Morning. This is no time to stop.” l “Sergio, tired men make mistakes.”
Sergio sighed. “You’re right. But my time’s running out, Doc. I feel like I’m made out of lead.”
“You’ve got the amphetamines Gordon gave you?”
“Sí, signor,” Sergio patted his pocket. “You know, it’s a waste learning all those language and then never any chance to use them. I saw a world cruise ad: a hundred and twenty-seven countries in two years. I only had to learn forty-four languages and dialects to be a native speaker in all of them.”
“You’d still have to learn a hundred accents.”
“Hell, I could do that standing on my head, Doc. New Jerseyans know all about accents just naturally.”
“I’ll check in. Okay?”
“Oui. I might not have gotten French quite right, Doc. It’s a bitch to pronounce.”
“You’d have managed, Sergio.” Blaise winked slowly, the way Gordon always used to. At the reception desk he signed for a detached cottage and asked the clerk to arrange for a telegram. She connected him with the Western Union operator and he dictated a message to be delivered the next day.
They parked out of sight even though Sergio said the Mercedes was rented for a week. Blaise collapsed on one bed. His eyes throbbed in beat with the ringing in his ears and he tired quickly of the wallpaper’s endless rows of green vines and forget-me-nots. He heard Sergio sit, the other bed creaking slightly. Then the double thump of shoes hitting the floor.
Blaise shook Sergio in the early afternoon. At first touch his eyes popped open, but it took minutes to come fully awake.
While Sergio took a cold shower that seemed to last for hours, Blaise strolled the grounds, stopping finally at the pool where he sat in an orange deck chair and watched tourist ladies sunning in skimpy bathing suits while their hirsute husbands churned the pool to a froth.
“You’re out of place, Doc.” Sergio drifted up behind Blaise with the noise of a floating feather. “Naked, you’re one of the boys, but with clothes you’re a competitive stranger.”
Sergio’s eyes were bright and shiny with glistening black pupils and soft brown irises guaranteed to seduce girls who loved horses. The weights seemed cut loose from his arms and legs. He moved with the brisk assurance of strongmuscled, compact men. “You were right about the sleep.”
Unfolding long legs from the lounge chair, Blaise walked to the car feeling ungainly. Sergio had become a predator scenting prey. All the careless movements of just living had dropped away to reveal the grace of a hunter.
“You took the pills?”
“Yeah, Doc. If I sleep again, I might not wake up. It’s all or nothing now.”
“We’ll do it.”
They got into the car. Sergio didn’t speak again, even when they turned between hand-quarried granite block walls into the Burkhalter driveway.
The bell got faster results than Blaise’s last visit. Linda opened the door, drawing back in surprise and something else. She might have closed the door, only Sergio pushed, moving her back into the little hallway.
“Come in.” She walked ahead of them, hips moving with catlike grace under the black velour of a one-piece strapless sheath. “We have company,” she said as she led the way into Milo’s study. Blaise’s memories of the room had gnawed at him. Then it struck him: the room was like an office entrance, an affable facade behind which Milo Burkhalter concealed his motives.
Milo looked up from his desk with its bright-green glass land brass lampshade, the real thing, not plastic. “Dr. Cunningham.” Milo stared at Sergio. “And friend?”
“And friend,” Blaise affirmed.
“After last time I’m surprised you would have the temerity to return . . .” Despite what he said, Burkhalter seemed neither surprised or amazed. He picked up the telephone and began punching a long distance code.
Smoothly Sergio reached over the desk to unplug the cord. He smiled at Milo.
“What are you doing?” Linda’s voice rattled hysterically off book-lined walls and leather furniture.
“Yes, my dear boy. What are you doing?” Milo stared at Blaise, ignoring Sergio as he settled back into his chair. His white hair caught the light making a halo around his face.
“Sit down, Linda.” Blaise held a chair. She looked at him and he added, “Please.” She flounced but she sat. “I’ve thought of some things we didn’t talk about the last time, Milo.” Blaise sat where he could see both Milo and Linda. He nodded to Sergio, who stepped back from the desk and sat with unblinking eyes riveted on Milo.
Milo fidgeted with his desk drawers, his hands out of sight. “We have nothing to talk about, Doctor. You insulted me and embarrassed my niece.” He paused. “Your actions are inexcusable, Doctor. Have you forgotten how to be a gentleman?”
“You didn’t call me a liar, Uncle Milo.”
Milo looked startled at Blaise’s use of Linda’s name for him. “What’s to stop me from calling the police and having you arrested for breaking into my house?”
“Do you think he has the drawer open yet, Doc?” Sergio’s voice was relaxed from the highback leather chair.
“Why not show him, Sergio?”
Sergio opened his suit coat slowly until walnut pistol grips showed clearly against the white of his shirt. Milo’s face turned suddenly sullen and dangerous.
“I trust you note that Sergio has not bothered to draw.”
Shifting his eyes to Sergio and back, Milo carefully put his hands on top of the desk. He pulled his chair closer to remain comfortable in that position. “I recall that you do bring guns into my house and threaten me, Dr. Cunningham.”
“I want to ask some questions. Then my friend has a few.”
“I have nothing to say to you other than get out.”
Blaise contemplated Linda in silence while Milo waited for some effect from his words. “How’s Jonathan?” he asked.
In the soft black dress Linda appeared even smaller and more in need of defending. It was a quality that certain women had. She could be bigger than Helen and Blaise knew he wouild still have the same reaction.
“Not well.” She said it very softly and looked away.
“You were going o
ut?”
She shook her head. Looked at her uncle, then at Blaise.
“Time is running out, Linda. Do you know what is going to happen? Soon? In just days?”
She turned to Milo, eyes of imperial green, which is fuller and more alive than the apple-green jade prized for jewelry. For the Chinese, color was the prize, an elemental building block of the universe, not the setting.
“The priest is upstairs now,” she said. “I don’t know anything else.” Her eyes sparkled from unshed tears.
“Yes, you do,” Blaise said. “Tell me about Uncle’s women.”
Roaring, Milo erupted from behind his desk and surged toward Blaise, only Sergio had anticipated him and steered Milo to slam into a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Ignoring him, Sergio ran a finger across titles. “Interesting books.” His finger finally prodded Milo. “You’re in the way.”
Milo returned to his chair behind the desk and like a ghost in his shadow, Sergio drifted back to his seat.
“Blaise, are you asking these stupid questions just to make things worse? My husband is dying upstairs, and you, you’re acting like some ghoul, asking about my uncle’s sex life. What does it matter?” Her voice broke hysterically.
“I don’t know. Until you tell me. You knew about Technological Intelligence Laboratories, didn’t you?”
“Yes. The family fund owns it.”
“How well did your uncle know the people who worked there?”
Linda stared at Blaise. “That’s dirty.”
“Did he know Esther Tazy? A pretty blonde about thirty with a Hungarian accent?”
Linda’s irises contracted as if a cattle prod had touched her.
“So Uncle Milo knew her.”
Linda stared at Milo’s unyielding face before nodding.
“When exactly did your uncle decide to send you to La Jolla?” Blaise’s voice turned gentle, pulling information as painlessly as possible.
“You know—” She stared at her hands and mumbled, “When you were at the laboratory.”
“We never settled what your uncle was really guilty of last time I was up here, did we?”
Linda shook her head.
“Do you want to know?”
She lifted her head to stare at Blaise, then at her uncle.
“You can go upstairs. You don’t have to listen.”
“Go upstairs, Linda!” Milo’s voice crackled.
“I want to know.” She said it very softly while Milo held her eyes with his own.
“Do you want to tell her, Milo?”
“Tell her what? That you’re crazy, a lunatic—”
Milo ran out of things to say. It is surrender in the face of fact—the sickening realization that the last lie has failed, which makes intelligent men die with less resistance than penned animals. Blaise considered Milo for a moment, then resumed.
“I met Esther Tazy when Dr. Hemmett sent me to Berkeley. She told me an important man had abused her friendship and that, with Dr. Hemmett’s help, she was going to get even. She told me this because she thought I was Hemmett’s emissary.
“At the time I didn’t understand or take any interest. I didn’t know you, your uncle, or even that Gregory West and Hemmett and Dr. Hill were already operating Human Enhancements, using Tillies the laboratory produced.”
Linda stared at Milo, who remained mute.
“Esther Tazy expected to make a name for herself out of some work she did for Dr. Hemmett. It took awhile for me to realize she had done more than just modifications laid out by Dr. Hill to enable the larva transplant to warm-blooded animals. She would get no acclaim by doing somebody else’s work. She had to do something spectacular. Something Esther was confident would avenge her on the man who had misused her.”
Linda thought about it and nodded. Sergio sat so quietly he seemed not there, but Blaise knew he was watching Milo.
“Esther genetically altered the larvae to allow maturation of egg-laying adults. She didn’t know what the larvae were being used for—only that by giving Dr. Hemmett a source of literally free, self-reproducing specimens she was going to bankrupt TIL.
“Conjecture.” Milo tried to wave it away. Rigid, wirelike muscles betrayed him. “What did I know about Miss Tazy? I’m sure she told no one. Why should she? It would have ruined everything for her if what you say is even half true.”
“Miss Tazy was not a woman to take her revenge in silence. She’d leave a clue, a hint so that somehow, later, the man she was doing unto would know who and why. Maybe too big a clue.
“Esther was furious when I helped myself to some orange juice in her refrigerator.”
“She kept specimens in her refrigerator?” Linda said.
“Very good. It took me longer to reach that conclusion.”
Linda screwed her face up thinking about Blaise and Esther and her uncle. “She kept the samples as proof of her work. I imagine frozen cells and prepared slides. I would have.”
“No.” Blaise shook his head. “The work on Tillies was finished, as far as reproduction went. Esther knew that true success was commercial success. Maturation would have been a fatal flaw in commercial use of larvae. Some other, less-gifted engineer would have gotten rich making Esther’s work commercially acceptable. She got me to set up a particularly complicated equation to do something else.”
Blaise closed his eyes. “Genetics isn’t my field. I didn’t know what I was working on. But I think Esther was developing a stable commercial strain of nonmaturing larvae. And she didn’t have it yet, because I had to do the program.
“The night I left San Francisco Esther Tazy was sexually assaulted and drowned in her bathtub.”
“Oh!”
“The police should have found the samples. An inspector from San Francisco seemed to like the idea of arresting me for a crime of passion. He told me no specimens were in Esther’s flat.”
Blaise examined Milo thoughtfully. “Your uncle’s white hair makes him seem older than he is in reality. I was a suspect because the apparent killer was seen leaving the flat. He wore yellow oilskins and had very light yellow hair.”
“Uncle Milo’s hair is white!”
“Yes. A natural mistake in the rain seeing hair surrounded by a glaring yellow hood. It would look yellow, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s no proof!” Milo stood behind the desk. “I want you out of this house!”
“Sit down, please, Mr. Burkhalter.” Sergio spoke softly. “We’re almost finished.”
“I don’t need enough proof to convict you in court, Milo.”
“What do you want?” Milo slumped back into his chair. “What do you want?”
“You murdered Esther because she or Dr. Hemmett said something to alert you. We already know you’d do anything for money. You prostituted your niece. Sergio has made me understand that murder to some people is simply a step toward a goal.”
“How would a common drunk know what motivates other people?”
Blaise shrugged. “If you killed Esther, and if you cleaned out her refrigerator, you knew the larvae were capable of completing metamorphosis. So you sent Linda to me to learn how to profit from that information.”
Milo’s mouth opened soundlessly.
“Don’t deny it, Milo. I was a drunk. Scum from your viewpoint. I might even agree with you. It always disturbed me that Linda wanted something bad enough to seduce me when I couldn’t stand myself. I wouldn’t have me. Why should she?”
Linda’s eyes fastened on her uncle’s face. “You knew what would happen and you let it go on—let it happen to Jonathan?”
Milo seemed to fold inward.
“He’s killed Jonathan,” she said to no one in particular. Linda stood in a single, lithe movement and ran to the staircase. Her footsteps reverberated until she was up too high to be heard.
“Do you want to talk to us now?”
Milo’s lips worked but no sound came out. His pale skin was the color of old parchment and he looked twenty years older.
“So m
uch on your head, Milo.” Blaise’s voice was alien even to himself. “Killing Esther condemned thousands of people to slow, bitter, certain death. Not just Jonathan.”
“Esther—” Milo said.
Blaise shook his head. “Esther didn’t know. She was just cinching her Nobel Prize. But you knew, Uncle Milo.”
“What do you want?” The words were hoarse.
“Where is Gregory West?” Sergio spoke pleasantly, as if asking directions from a stranger.
“I don’t know.”
Sergio looked at him.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Milo shrugged.
“You were going to call him.”
“That’s all I have. A telephone number.”
“Write it down.”
Milo looked at Sergio a moment, then scribbled a number and passed it across the desk.
Sergio read it. “North of San Francisco. The area code is probably in the Sonoma-Mendocino area.”
Nodding, Blaise thought of Giovanni Oesti passing him the wine label with the Mendocino location when he wanted to know about Gregory West. Gregorio Giovanni Oesti could not cut loose from his past any more than the rest of them. It was a comet’s tail of detritus that every man dragged.
Blaise took the paper from Sergio and added the name of the vineyard in neat, block letters with rounded corners.
“You should have been a counterfeiter,” Sergio said as he put it in the breast pocket of his suit coat. He took a brown leather case from his inside coat pocket and set it on the edge of Milo’s desk. Blaise had seen the case before when Gordon went to the hospital to see Helen.
“What are you going to do?” Milo asked the question of no one in particular. “There’s no proof, of course.”
The whine of the elevator came through the wall. It was more pervasive than Blaise remembered from his earlier visits to the house, but then his purpose and interests had changed. The whine stopped followed by silence and the sudden clanking of the elevator hall door.
Linda came in with Father Argyle. The priest wore his cassock and held Linda’s hand, speaking in a low voice. Milo’s expression changed to relief. “Father. It’s good to see you.” Milo looked at Sergio, challenging him. Sergio yawned.
The Cunningham Equations Page 31