Venom Business

by Michael Crichton

  He grabbed Jane’s hand. They started to run.

  “Hold it right there!”

  They stopped, and looked back. Richard was standing, the gun raised, pointing at them.

  “You leaving me here?”

  “Put the gun down.”

  “You taking my girl away, old buddy?”

  “Put the gun down,” Charles said, “before somebody gets hurt.” He released Jane’s hand, and whispered, “Move away.” She moved off to the right.

  Richard was laughing as he sighted down the gun. “I could plug you right there, old buddy.”

  A whistle blew, closer this time.

  “Come on, Richard. Cut it out.”

  “You think I’m worried?”

  “Come on, Richard.”

  Another whistle, from another direction, quite close. Richard laughed, and with a sudden movement, threw the gun into the pond. It splashed loudly; the ducks squawked and scattered. Still laughing, Richard ran to join them. They sprinted for the car.

  Minutes later, they climbed into the car and sped off. They drove west, past the Albert Memorial, then out back through South Kensington. Jane, in the aftermath of tension, was laughing; it was all funny, all crazy.

  Richard said, “You can let us off here, old buddy.” He pointed to the taxi rank up ahead. “I’ll see that Jane gets home.”

  “I’ll drive her.”

  “No, it’s all right”

  Silently, Charles pulled over. He was almost meek as he sat by the curb and waited for her to get out with Richard. She was astonished by his behavior. It was so unlike him she thought he must be drugged. Or perhaps this Richard-person had some hold over him.

  But damn him, anyway.

  She paused as she got out and said, “Mr. Raynaud, I hope we meet again sometime.”

  “Call me Charles,” he said, and gave her a slight, brief smile that was gone almost before it had come.

  In the taxi, Richard did the damnedest thing. He gave her a flask and told her to take a drink, and then he moved away and did nothing at all. She had been prepared, in a drunken sort of way, to fight him off. But he wasn’t having any. Son of a bitch, he didn’t even like her.

  When they finally came to the hotel, she was beginning to realize that Richard had been putting on an act for Charles. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t understand, and she didn’t like it.

  And Charles: “You may be in danger.” Wasn’t that what he had said? It was comic-book stuff. Intrigue. Fantasy. Danger from what?

  Richard said, “In a day or so, my car will be fixed. Then I can really show you around.”

  “I’d like that,” she said, thinking she would detest it.

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Do,” she said. “Do.”

  6. THE FIX

  DRIVING HOME, CHARLES RAYNAUD tried to control himself. He was totally, blindly furious. He would willingly have throttled Pierce a dozen times over during the evening.

  Which was, of course, the object of the game.

  Things were now much clearer, and for that he was grateful. Pierce had a strategy which was simple enough: to goad Raynaud into a murder attempt. Pierce had provided the weapon, and now he was providing the motive, the provocation.

  Humiliation.

  As he drove, Raynaud smiled. If Richard wanted Raynaud to kill him, Raynaud would oblige him. Raynaud would give him one hell of a murder attempt.

  And, of course, fail.

  But not quite the way Richard expected.

  Back at Richard’s flat, he found Dominique sitting alone in the living room, smoking a cigarette and rubbing her shoulders as if she were cold.

  “He back yet?”

  She nodded, and jerked her thumb toward the kitchen. She gave a slight shiver.

  Raynaud said, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

  She needs a fix, he thought. She needs it very badly. He leaned over her and gave her a reassuring smile, but was careful to notice her eyes. The pupils were dilated. Yes, he thought, she needs a fix.

  Raynaud walked out into the kitchen, remembering what Richard had said about Dominique and her heroin supply. Dominique had no money, and apparently no contacts. Yet she was getting stuff. Regularly.

  Richard was in the kitchen, his jacket off, his shirtsleeves rolled up, mixing a drink.

  “You were a bloody bore tonight,” Richard said.

  “I imagine you thought so.”

  “Bloody right I thought so. I’m paying you to keep me alive, not to be a bore.”

  “You don’t look dead yet.”

  “No thanks to you.” Richard poured two drinks and nodded to Raynaud to take one. “By the way, what did you think of her?”

  “I liked her well enough.”

  “Did you,” Richard said. “I hadn’t noticed. I thought you were indifferent to her.” He lit a cigarette, and said, “The poor girl, all alone in London, such a big city. We’re meeting for lunch, you know.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yes. Just the two of us.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I’d invite you along,” Pierce said, “but you know how it is.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Pierce laughed. “Why the long face, old buddy? I’ll be good to her.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  Richard appeared surprised “You don’t mind?”

  “Frankly,” Raynaud said, “I couldn’t give less of a damn.”

  7. FACE CHANGE

  JANE MITCHELL SAT IN the pink vinyl chair, wearing a pink smock, with a fluffy pink towel around her neck. She looked at her image in the pink-tinted mirror and thought: My God, I look like some kind of poodle.

  Standing behind her was Godfrey, caressing her hair with his eyes closed.

  He did it for a very long time. Finally, when she got tired of staring at herself in the mirror, she said, “What are you doing?”

  “I am listening,” Godfrey said, wrinkling his brow in concentration. “Listening to the message of your hair. Hair speaks to me. It is an organic, living, vital thing. It has a message for me and I want to hear it.”

  “I want it cut,” Jane said. She was irritable today, hung over and irritable. She had called Richard and broken her luncheon date. She didn’t really want to see him anyway. She could have been interested in seeing Charles, but not Richard.

  Besides, she had other things to do today. Things to buy, and things to change.

  “It is not so simple to cut hair,” Godfrey said. He opened his eyes and examined the cut ends of her blond hair. “Who did this to you?”

  “Kenneth,” she said.

  “Oh,” Godfrey said, dropping her hair. “Him.”

  “He’s a good friend.”

  “No doubt, no doubt. And I must say he is adequate, for an American dresser.” He sighed. “I understand he has his own place, now that he’s left Lilly Daché. I’m told it’s all done in yellow.”

  “Yellow is his favorite color.”

  “Mine,” said Godfrey firmly, “is pink.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Flattering.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Godfrey was a funny little man, barely five feet tall. He worked while standing on a small vinyl-covered box. He was immaculately dressed in a pinstripe, mod-cut suit. His hair was long, combed straight forward, and cut in bangs just below his eyebrows.

  “I must tell you that I do not hold with Kenneth’s artiness,” Godfrey said. “He claims simplicity, but he is really too mannered.”

  “I see.”

  “Your hair, for example. These cut ends—like corded hemp. Arty.”

  “Just cut it,” Jane said.

  “Yes, yes, but the crucial question still stands—cut it how. We must cut it as the hair demands, as the message speaks forth. Otherwise it will be all wrong. Your color is lovely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Real, too,” Godfrey said, in mild surprise, po
king amid her roots.

  “So they tell me.”

  Jane was feeling impatient. Godfrey had been recommended to her by several friends as an absolute wizard, the finest in London. But she had little patience with hairdressers, especially the good ones. They were too damned gay, that was the trouble. Porsche dealers, poodle clippers, and hairdressers—hopelessly gay, the whole batch of them.

  “You must have a manicure and pedicure,” Godfrey said. “At once. I cannot think while I look at those hands of yours. What do you do to them?”

  “I walk on them, of course.”

  “Dear me,” he said, with a little tittering giggle.

  Oh, Christ, Jane thought. Another one. But she had to go through with it—she was here, and draped in all this pink crap, and Godfrey’s healing hands had already touched her unworthy locks. Besides, it was true that everyone said Godfrey was worth it. A pain in the ass, but worth it. Even Givenchy, whom she had seen the last time he was in New York, even Givenchy towering over her had announced that Godfrey was the only hairdresser in London.

  A smiling, rather apologetic girl appeared and began to work on her nails. Jane sat back and Godfrey continued to stroke her hair. His hands had a faggoty kind of touch. If he didn’t stop it soon, she’d go out of her mind.

  “We must be decisive,” he said. “Strong, decisive lines. Nothing frilly. Oh, no, that would be a disaster.”

  “But I feel very frilly today,” Jane said, just to annoy him.

  “No matter. In your heart, you are not frilly.”

  “That’s very uncomplimentary.”

  “Artists must speak the truth.”

  “Oh.” She could barely contain a giggle.

  “Now, then. Janice.”

  Another girl appeared, holding a tray of scissors and instruments. She stood alongside him, handing him the instruments one by one as he called for them, like a surgeon.

  Godfrey worked in silence for several minutes. Jane looked down and saw her hair falling to the floor.

  “Don’t move your head!”

  “Sorry,” she said meekly.

  “Don’t ever move your head while I am working!”

  She sat rigidly, staring forward into the mirror as her hair was cut off. As he had promised, Godfrey worked decisively, pausing before each cut, then lunging forward with scissors gaping. The hair fell away in long clumps.

  “It’s taking shape,” Godfrey announced. Jane looked at her hair, which was ragged and formless. She looked like a refugee from a fire or a bombing raid. “Taking shape nicely. Very nicely,” Godfrey said. He patted her head reassuringly.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  He continued to work, and she lapsed into her own thoughts. Peter Dickerson had called her earlier in the day, to keep her abreast, as he said, of the developments. Peter Dickerson was very pleased with the developments, and obviously very pleased with himself. He had been full of mumbo-jumbo about that stocksy-bondsy crap. Something about the Dutch wanting this, and the English wanting that.

  Jane understood none of it. And she didn’t want to understand. It had always seemed odd to her that anyone could get very excited about money. True, you got excited when you had a lot, or when you had very little. But in between, who gave a damn?

  There were people, she knew, who really liked money. Not what it could buy, or even what it could do—what power it could give you. They just liked money. Plain and simple. They liked to play with it, to invest it, to buy and to sell and to make it grow.

  Rather like gardening, she thought. Watering your money every day, tending it, feeding it, pruning it.

  Gardening was also dull, she thought.

  “Ah,” Godfrey said. “Beautiful. Can you see it happening? I always find this exciting, these changes, this living sculpture, right before your eyes. Exciting!”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Godfrey chattered on, still cutting, his tongue working as fast as his scissors. But in the end, when all the sprays and goos and lotions were finished, she had to admit it was astonishing.

  She stared in the mirror for a long time, unable to speak. She looked different. Her hair was short, curled tight, falling to just below her jawline. It somehow made her look hard and tough and self-sufficient

  Godfrey paused, then said, “You like it?”

  She grinned, trying the grin on her new face, her new self. It was a tough, confident grin. A good grin.

  “I like it,” she said.

  On King’s Road, in the endless boutiques, she searched out what she wanted, and finally settled on half a dozen dresses. She had to have new dresses; hers were all New York length, too long for London.

  She bought them as short as she possibly could. She realized that if your cheeks didn’t peep out underneath, it just didn’t count. One of the salesgirls tried to dissuade her from one purchase.

  As Jane turned in front of the mirror, the girl said, “Well, frankly…”

  “I like it,” Jane said.

  “Yes, but the cut is wrong. It’s made for a less busty girl. You pull it up too far, if you see what I mean.”

  “I like it.”

  The girl looked quizzical. “Makes sitting a bit drafty, ducks.”

  “Then sell me some pants.”

  They showed her pants. All kinds of pants. Frilly pants and silvered pants and rubber pants and bikini pants. They were all pretty bloody awful. Finally they showed her a pair of white lace panties with LOVE written in vertical letters right down the front. And another with an embroidered cherry.

  God, they were awful. The most vulgar things she bad ever seen.

  “I’ll take them,” she said. There were other things to buy. Purses—you had to have the sling-over-the-shoulder, drawstring type. Or you were nothing. A watchband as thick and bulky as you could find. Kinky shoes.

  She did the complete thing, head to toe, top to bottom. And finally she stopped off in the salesroom and ordered the last straw. The man said they could deliver in two days’ time, and she gave him a check.

  Walking out, back into the sun, with the cool air on her legs and that delicious sense of half-nakedness, and her hair short, she felt better. Much better than she had felt in a long time.

  As she went back to the hotel she found herself wondering if Charles had called and left a message for her. She asked at the desk.

  He hadn’t.

  Well, what the hell, she thought. No point getting uptight. Not about him. Not about anything. And swinging her new purse, she went to the elevator and up to her room.

  8. DEAD CATS

  JONATHAN BLACK BENT DOWN for a closer look. The bars of the cage were thick and sticky with red, drying blood. The cat lay on the sandy floor; across its head was a large gash.

  “We found it this way,” the assistant said, “an hour ago. Apparently the meprobamate wore off.”

  “Dashed itself to pieces,” Black said, frowning. He unlocked the door and reached in to touch the cool, lifeless body. Dead of an overdose of anger, he thought. Amusing in a way—and also frightening.

  “Clean it up,” he said to the assistant, and left the room. He returned to his office, frowning, and his secretary gave him a sympathetic smile. She assumed he was bothered by the loss of the cat, but in fact his mind was on other matters.

  He was making the final plans, and it required great delicacy. There was the stock sale—that had to be handled carefully. And then, of course, Richard had to be informed in such a way as to anger him. That would require care. And then the business with Dominique: another touchy problem.

  Not, of course, that he did not believe he could deal with it. There was too much at stake now to permit a mistake. And too many things going for him.

  Like Jane Mitchell, he thought. That was really too beautiful to be true. When he had sent the invitation to her hotel, he had merely hoped that Richard might meet her. Instead, he seemed to have got entangled with her and Charles in some tense triangle.

  That was delightful.

 
; Because it would provide the final stimulus for the Dezisen, the ultimate direction for the drug’s action.

  He lit a cigarette and thought about it. As he sucked back the first puff, he felt a slight twinge of pain in his left chest, and a little tickle in his left arm down to the wrist.

  Damn.

  He stubbed the cigarette out quickly. And relaxed, breathing easily, closing his eyes for a moment. The pain went away.

  He was all right, so long as the pain went away.

  9. NIGHTMARES

  CHARLES RAYNAUD SAT IN his car, parked across the street from Richard’s Belgravia flat. He was annoyed with himself; it had been a wasted day. He had waited until Richard went off to lunch with Jane, and then had decided to follow Dominique, who had told him she was going shopping. Something about the way she said it struck him wrong. He remembered Richard’s comments about Dominique and how she had gotten into the country. To say nothing of how she was getting her heroin.

  So Charles had followed her. All day long. Dominique had spent most of the day in Harrods, and she had, indeed, gone shopping. He had watched her closely, because for a long time he had suspected that she would make her pick-up at one of the sales counters. Who would suspect a drug pick-up at Harrods? But it hadn’t happened, obviously.

  She had simply gone shopping. And she had bought a cigarette lighter, and a cigarette case covered in black Morocco leather, and a coin purse. And she had looked at fur coats.

  For a very long time.

  Jesus, what a waste. He could have spent the afternoon sleeping and learned as much.

  When he returned to the flat he found Richard in the living room, seated on the couch, with Dominique lying naked across him. They were laughing; the new Stones album was on the record player.

  “Welcome.” Richard laughed. He was not drunk, though he had a drink in his hand. His face was flushed: sex, Raynaud thought.

  “I have wonderful news,” Pierce said. “My car is coming back tomorrow. I’ve called Jane and asked her if she wants to go for a ride; she said yes. We’ll all leave at ten tomorrow morning.”

  “We?”

  “Certainly. You’re coming.”