by Scott Britz
“Don’t say it, Mom. It’s bad luck.”
“What? To say I love you?”
“Yeah, that.”
“But—”
“Just come back in one piece—okay?”
“All right. I promise.”
Unable to speak more, Cricket hung up the phone and went to the window. It was dark out on the tarmac. She felt so small, looking out into the immensity of the storm. Despite her assurances to Emmy, she knew all promises were off. She was up against an adversary of extraordinary mental and physical power, and a disease for which there was no resistance or cure. They both had to be stopped. She had to stop them.
The game, she knew, had no limits. Gifford had bet his life on the Methuselah Vector. Stopping him might very well cost her own.
Two
GIFFORD SURVEYED THE LONG, SLANTING SHADOWS of the early-morning sun as they cut across the gentle western-Connecticut hills, making them seem higher, steeper, and craggier than they really were, almost a badlands. Through the cockpit window he saw a dark green valley, still blanketed in shade, and marked out not by fences but by the straight, silver lines of irrigation ditches. A white farmhouse and barn glinted brightly at the edge of a highway.
Loscalzo was gesturing excitedly. This was the spot.
Their landing strip would be a dirt work road that ran through the fields, with a ditch alongside. Tricky, thought Gifford. Like landing on a rail. But my little Cessna can handle it. Gifford circled and approached from the west. He cut to eighty knots, descending sharply just above a grove of trees, letting the wheels touch down first before pushing the wing flaps up and pressing heavily on both brake pedals. The ground was rough. Gifford felt his stomach wound tear open as he and Loscalzo bounced up and down in their seats. But a moment later, all was quiet. The blue-bellied Cessna 400 Corvalis TT had come to a halt in a cloud of dust between two green fields, about a hundred yards from where the dirt road ended at the edge of a cross-connecting ditch.
As they climbed down from the cockpit, Gifford stood for a moment with his hand against his flank.
“You okay, Doc? Want me to carry that ice chest?”
“I can manage.”
As the pain subsided, Gifford adjusted his sunglasses, picked up the ice chest, and began to follow Loscalzo between two five-foot-tall rows of broad-leafed tobacco plants. Before long, a short, balding man in a faded red shirt ran up to greet them.
“Dom? That you? Holy shit! That’s some entrance you just made.”
“Travelin’ in style, man.” Loscalzo embraced his greeter with a few pats on the back. “Listen—I’ve got good news for Mama, Frankie. Really fucking good news.”
“Oh, yeah? Who’s your friend?”
“He’s a famous doctor, Frankie. You know about that Methuselah Vector?”
“Sure. It’s been on TV all week.”
“Well, he invented it. And he’s come here himself to give Mama an injection.”
“No shit.”
Gifford looked impatiently toward the house as Frankie gave him the once-over. He flinched when Loscalzo touched him on the shoulder.
“Doc, this is my brother Frankie. Frankie, Doc G.”
A handshake followed. Frankie’s grip was strong, his skin like sandpaper.
“Jesus Christ, I don’t know what to say,” said Frankie as they started for the house.
“How’s Mama doin’?”
“Bad. Vonda won’t touch her no more, so I have a girl come in to clean her and help with her bathroom duties. But at night she just lays in it.”
“Vonda home?”
“Naw, she flew out to see her sister in Wilmington.”
They’d stopped at the bottom of a concrete stoop leading to the kitchen. Gifford was impatient with the family discussion. In New York, he knew, a crowd of thousands was waiting. “Gentlemen, if you would show me to your mother . . .”
“Sure, Doc,” said Frankie.
They led Gifford to a little room in the back of the house, across the hall from the kitchen. Gifford was struck at once by the sound of a portable TV droning away on top of a dresser, along with the faint smell of alcohol, urine, and feces. For a second he forgot where he was. That smell, so familiar, brought him back to another room, five years ago. As he glimpsed the masklike face of the woman in the upraised hospital bed, with her puffy, gray hands arranged on top of the blanket, he felt a shudder of recognition.
Doreen?
But Frankie’s gravelly voice brought him back. “You want me to take your coat, Doctor?”
“No. No, I’m fine.”
“It’s kinda dark in here for sunglasses. Want me to hold ’em?”
“It’s all right. I have very sensitive vision.” Gifford pulled up a chair and sat down, placing the ice chest on the bed next to the woman’s legs. Now, in her presence, his impatience vanished. He saw only her. “Hello, Mrs. Loscalzo. I’m Dr. Charles Gifford.”
Gifford saw the woman’s lips move, but her voice was less than a whisper. “I know you,” she seemed to say, gesturing with her eyes toward the TV.
“Dom tells me you have multiple sclerosis. I’ve come to give you a treatment that might help. It’s called the Methuselah Vector. Have you heard of it?”
The woman’s lips trembled, as if trying to speak. In lieu of words, a single tear rolled down her cheek.
“Do you want me to give you the treatment, Mrs. Loscalzo?”
Her eyes closed and reopened. “Yes. Yes, Doctor, yes,” she whispered.
Gifford opened the ice chest and looked inside. “Dom, do you have any rubbing alcohol?”
Frankie held up a handful of square, red packages. “We got lots of these little alcohol pads.”
Gifford took a couple and tore them open, leaving just the tops of the alcohol-soaked gauze squares sticking out of the foil wrapper. He then gently lifted Mary Loscalzo’s arm and tapped the inside of her elbow gently, until he could see the blue tinge of a vein. After wiping her skin with alcohol, he tied a rubber tourniquet around her arm and waited for the vein to rise. “Mrs. Loscalzo, I understand a little of what you’ve been through.”
Again, she closed and reopened her eyes. Yes, he imagined her saying. It’s been a living hell. At least in hell you can scream.
Gifford tore open a paper packet from the ice chest and donned the sterile blue gloves inside it. The samples of Methuselah Vector had frozen in the dry ice. Carefully removing the tube labeled LOSCALZO, Gifford enclosed it in the palm of his hand to thaw it. “My wife endured something like this, Mrs. Loscalzo. It almost made me lose hope. But in the end, it was my memory of her that spurred me on to create the Methuselah Vector. I was too late for her, but I’m giving you the treatment that I once dreamt I could give her.”
Mrs. Loscalzo looked at him with sympathy.
“Yes. She’s gone,” said Gifford, answering her unspoken question.
The sample had thawed to body temperature. Peeling back a sterile wrapper, Gifford took up a small syringe, flipped open the top of the tube, and drew out all of the colorless liquid. With one hand he inserted the needle into the vein of the old woman’s arm. With the other he yanked off the tourniquet. Then he took a deep breath and pressed the plunger.
“There. I’m done.” Gifford withdrew the syringe and used a Band-Aid to tape a folded-up square of gauze over the pierced vein. “You will soon be healthy and strong again, Mrs. Loscalzo. You will acquire beauty that will not fade.”
The woman struggled to produce a whisper. “God . . . bless . . . you . . . Doctor.”
Gifford squeezed her hand. “No need to thank me. Thank Dom. He worked very hard to get this treatment for you.” After stripping off his sterile gloves, Gifford stood up and looked at the brothers. “Why don’t you let her get some rest now? There shouldn’t be any side effects, but with her condition, too much excitement is n
ot a good idea.”
“How long before this stuff works, Doctor?” asked Frankie.
“The Vector will reach full strength in three or four days. You may notice some changes by then. The plaques in her brain and spinal cord may take a week or two to heal. She should be walking and feeding herself and breathing normally after that. Of course, her muscles are severely atrophied from years of being bedridden. She’ll need exercise and physical therapy. But even so, improvement will come quicker than you might expect.”
Frankie glanced at Dom and then at Gifford. “Do we need to pay you?”
Gifford shook his head. “No. We’re done.”
“No more injections? Nothing?”
“No. That’s it.”
“Jesus Christ. If this works, you should get the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Gifford smiled. “Is there somewhere I could clean up a bit?”
“I’ll show him.” Loscalzo led Gifford up a long, straight, narrow, uncarpeted staircase, to a cramped, pink-tiled bathroom on the second floor. Loscalzo pulled out a box of four-by-four gauze pads from under the sink. “Mama’s always got bedsores. We have plenty of these if you need ’em.”
Frankie called up the stairs, “I’ll fry up some tagliatelle and make coffee while you’re in there.”
Dom went to the banister and shouted back, “The doc don’t drink coffee. Just orange juice, if you have it. And no sausage with the noodles. He don’t eat meat.”
“Chicken seasoning okay? Olive oil?”
Gifford nodded. “That’ll be fine,” he said softly as he closed the bathroom door. Alone at last, he let out a weary sigh and sat on the edge of the bathtub. Opening his trench coat, he saw a dark red stain on the front of his shirt. When he pulled the gauze pads from his wound, they were soggy with blood. The wound didn’t seem to be actively bleeding, but a slight push against the blue-tinged edges of the bullet hole brought out a burp of dark red blood. That’s old blood, not fresh. It’ll be all right.
After putting clean dressings in place, Gifford rinsed his shirt under cold water. Then he wrung it out and put it back on, still damp. It felt as if his head were splitting. Maybe a face wash will help. When he took off his sunglasses, he was startled to see that his eyes had turned completely red—red as rubies, with his irises like two insets of blue topaz. But there was no pain. No problem seeing. Hyposphagma, he concluded. A harmless hemorrhage beneath the conjunctiva. It will clear up in a day or two.
When he ran his hands through his hair to massage his migraine, he was alarmed to see strands of hair clinging to his fingers. Only an inhuman degree of stress could produce such changes. I’ll never forgive them for what they’ve put me through. Cricket. The press. Niedermann. Eden. His blood boiled up inside him. As he stood shaking, a Hieronymus Bosch–like procession of grotesque images of revenge and mutilation passed through his mind. He wanted to hurt Cricket worst of all. To strangle her as he had Niedermann. To tear her limb from limb. His thoughts were so savage that they frightened him. He wished he could get back into his plane and take off for Newfoundland, or Bimini, or any place where he could live alone and undisturbed. But today he must endure, he knew. Today there were sacrifices to be made. He would have centuries ahead in which to find peace.
Gifford combed what was left of his hair, put on his trench coat and sunglasses, and went back down to the kitchen. He sat with Loscalzo at a small Formica table, but didn’t feel like eating. He barely touched a forkful to his mouth before he dropped it back onto his plate. The smell of the fried noodles turned his stomach.
“Not hungry, Doc?” asked Loscalzo.
“Not just now.”
I will not eat nor drink . . . I will not drink . . . He searched his memory for a saying that came to him, something from the Bible. I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until I have entered the kingdom. Yes, the kingdom was at hand. The Age of the Methuselah Vector. Eating and drinking could wait. His inner spirit would carry him through the next few hours.
Loscalzo seemed to sense it was time to go. “Frankie, the Doc and I need to borrow your car for a while. Business in the city.”
“Sure, Dom. I’ve gotta pick up a load of PVC pipe with the truck this morning. But you can have Vonda’s Merc.” He took a key from a ring and tossed it to Loscalzo.
“Grazie bene.”
A strand of hair drifted through the air past Gifford’s eyes, settling upon the table. “Might I trouble you for a hat?” he asked Frankie. “I seem to have gotten a bad sunburn.”
Frankie shrugged. “There’s a nice fedora hangin’ on the front porch. Size seven and a half.”
“That will do nicely. Thank you.”
“Hey, anything in this house is yours. After what you did.”
Loscalzo collected his and Gifford’s plates and set them in the sink. As an afterthought, he grabbed a pinch of Gifford’s uneaten noodles and dropped them into his mouth. “You ready, Doc?”
Gifford nodded. “How long to New York?”
“Forty-five minutes by the Major Deegan Expressway. Maybe more if we hit rush hour.”
They went out quietly through the front porch. The car, a four-year-old white Grand Marquis, was parked on the grass to one side of the house. Mindful of his wound, Gifford eased himself into the front passenger seat, with the ice chest on the floor between his legs. Loscalzo got behind the wheel, jerked his seat forward a notch, and adjusted the mirror. As the car started, he rummaged through some compact discs in a bin between the seats.
“Nothin’ but fuckin’ opera. Jeez, that’s Vonda for ya.”
“Opera would be just the thing, Dom.”
“Oh, yeah? Pick one.” Loscalzo made a right turn onto the highway.
Gifford flipped a couple of CDs. “This one. Madama Butterfly. Callas.”
Loscalzo inserted it, while Gifford lowered his seat as far as it would go and closed his eyes. Immediately a woman’s voice rose over the rumbling of the automobile—clear, incisive, like a cup of cool water drawn from an alpine spring.
Un bel dì, vedremo
levarsi un fil di fumo
sull’estremo confin del mare.
One bright day, we’ll see
A thread of smoke arising
Over the far rim of the sea.
Was it Callas he heard? Or did memory carry him back to another voice, a voice that once sang for him alone. Five years gone? No, not gone at all. He felt her presence, as though the five years of loneliness were but a catnap of a lazy summer’s afternoon, and now, just now, she had awakened him, ice clinking, as she carried a sweating pitcher of lemonade onto the veranda.
For a moment, he felt as if he were home, really home. He pressed his eyelids together, and for the first time in a week, he slept.
Three
AS CRICKET AND HANK STEPPED OUT of Paul Hobbs’s twin-engine Baron G58 onto the tarmac at Teterboro, they were met by a New Jersey state trooper in a sky-blue jacket with a military-style Sam Browne belt slung over his right shoulder and a round, visored cap that set off his broad, dimpled chin.
“Dr. Rensselaer-Wright?”
“Yes.”
“Trooper Chris Dayton.” He stiffly extended a hand.
“From the radio?”
“Yes, ma’am. Unfortunately, your man’s not here. Tail number N364CG has not been spotted or picked up on radar. I’m afraid you may be on a wild-goose chase.”
“No, I’m certain he’s headed for the city. Rockefeller Center. That’s where the Lottery was going to be held.”
“You mean that Methuselah business?” Officer Dayton let slip a lopsided smile. “My Uncle Louie and Aunt Verna signed up for that. Camped out all night to get near the stage.”
“Can you take us there? It means crossing state lines.”
“I’ve got orders to take you anywhere you want to go, ma’am.”
Moments later, they were speeding down Route 17 in a white police cruiser, heading for the Lincoln Tunnel. Sitting with Hank in the backseat, Cricket could see the flashing blue roof lights of their cruiser reflected in the side-view mirrors. She studied the gray-brown skyline of Manhattan across the Hudson, home to 1.5 million—the most densely populated county in the nation. Behind each window of those colossal buildings sat a living, breathing, working, playing, loving, and beloved person—every one of them a target for Nemesis. It was the mother of all breeding grounds for an epidemic.
Gifford had to be stopped. But how? Since yesterday, Cricket had carried with her a manila folder stuffed with blood-test results and DNA sequence data, hoping to use it to persuade Gifford that the Methuselah Vector had created Nemesis and that he himself was sick. But he had already rejected that idea. He had killed Niedermann for listening to it. What more could she say?
Even then, they would have to find him first. Out there—one man on an island of 1.5 million.
As they came out of the tunnel onto Forty-Second Street, traffic seemed more chaotic than usual. Sixth Avenue was snarled in gridlock. On every corner, police were out diverting cars away from Rockefeller Center. When Dayton tried to turn down Forty-Eighth Street, the roadway was blocked by a throng of pedestrians that extended as far as Cricket could see. The same with Forty-Ninth and Fiftieth Streets.
“Whoo-hee!” said Dayton. “This is like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.”
“The Lottery’s being held on the Lower Plaza. Are we near there?”
“Couple blocks. Through that. Lemme see if I can get us a little closer.”
He gave two blasts of his siren and forced his way up to Fifty-Second Street. Finding it clear, he cut through to Fifth Avenue and tried to swing back toward the Promenade—a broad, open walkway that led to the Lower Plaza. But the crowd was denser here than anywhere else, and sullenly unimpressed by a flashing blue light or a screaming siren. After an interminable shift of nudging forward a foot at a time, Dayton pulled over in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.