by E. E. Giorgi
“Medford mentioned gene therapy experiments when we talked to him. And a woman who supposedly confronted Tarantino about them.”
“Could’ve been Huxley.”
“It would explain a lot of things, including why she mailed him Gaya White’s funeral note. You know what I’m thinking? The pamphlet Elizabeth Medford gave you: what did it say?”
The elevator doors opened, we stepped out, and Diane’s scent dispersed. “It was about genetic screening and counseling for perspective parents.”
“Yeah, right. Counseling my ass. They did a lot more.”
Diane sighed. “Whatever they did, they screwed up.”
She clacked her heels through the Glass House doors and across the San Pedro parking lot. I tagged along, nose and all. Mostly nose. Her lime-colored VW was wedged between two cruisers, and her parking would’ve been perfect had the white lines on the pavement been drawn along the opposite diagonal. She popped the trunk and then stepped aside. I stared at the inside of her car and had a moment of deep cerebral activity.
“Did a macho guy from Trace sell you those?”
She flinched. “Sell me what?”
“The box of Tyvek shoe covers,” I replied, dropping the ream of e-mail printouts next to the box I’d just noticed sitting in her trunk. “They’re very popular lately. Can be found in hospitals and at crime scenes.”
She didn’t get the irony. Or maybe she didn’t want to. “Of course they are. They’re mandatory for all Field Units. Speaking of which.” She opened the passenger’s door and retrieved a plastic evidence bag, which she held up to my nose. “Do you know anything about this?”
Ha. Do I know anything about an empty beer can, not-so-legally obtained from a privately owned trash can? I scowled. “What’s it doing in your trunk? I left it at the Serology lab.”
“I know you did. I’m the DNA specialist, remember? It came across my technician’s desk together with the sample from Huxley’s car.”
“Yes. I wanted a comparative analysis.”
She tilted her head. My eyes tripped down her neckline. “Did you make up the log number, Track? It didn’t match anything from Huxley’s logs.” She wasn’t scolding. In fact, her voice was mellow, her half smile conspiratorial. I stared, she stared back. And then her lips twitched. Upwards. Darned cute.
“Non-kosher?” she asked.
“Plain view.” Still staring. Lips stretching further. “Sort of.” Lips sneering. “Hell, D., it’s inadmissible, okay? I just need the DNA comparison to prove a hunch of mine.” Damn it, they should have women grill suspects in interrogation rooms.
She lowered the plastic bag and stared at the empty can inside. “Budweiser. Funny, it’s Jim’s favorite.” A high-pitched snort forced its way out of my mouth.
The hell of a coincidence.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said with a sly grin. “You buy me lunch and I’ll tag it and log it for you.”
She gazed at me, her eyes sparkling. Waiting for me to play along.
“You’re letting me corrupt you, forensic scientist Kyle?”
“Only under very particular circumstances.”
I was doped. My eyes skimmed over the box of Tyvek shoe covers in the open trunk of her car, then back to the beer can in her hands. Diane. She smelled heavenly today. Not like last week. Last week was light-years away. Hell, last week could’ve dwelled in that limbo called imagination. I smiled. She smiled back, my non-kosher piece of evidence secured in her hands.
“Tomorrow,” her lips whispered.
“Tomorrow,” I replied, watching her slide behind the steering wheel.
You’re an asshole, Ulysses.
No, I’m not. Diana Krall’s voice hummed in my head. I saved the fuzz for her pillow.
* * *
“How about this one?”
“It’s good.”
She groaned and tossed it away. “I hate it.”
I shrugged and didn’t take it personally.
The place was warm and cozy. Hortensia instead was frenzied and jittery. She was going through her studio like a caged animal, picking up, tossing, hurdling, pushing away. A manager in Santa Barbara had approached her for a show in his gallery and requested ten of her paintings. From what she’d told me of the guy, I had an inkling the manager wanted to request her bra and panties too. Given the torpedo mood she was in, I kept the thought to myself. I sat on her sofa, sipped a glass of the Barolo I’d brought along, and nodded on cue whenever she lifted a canvas to prod my judgment. I can be a good puppy when I want.
Her large, rustic worktable was encrusted with dried spatters of paint and cluttered with jars, oil tubes, and diluents. Frazzled paintbrushes of all sizes sprouted from old cans on her shelves, and rolled canvases filled every corner of the room. Worn out aprons covered in a rainbow of stains hung from the wall next to a vintage tub sink. Two painted eyes stood on the easel and stared, begging for a face. The reek of turpentine mingled with the mouthwatering fragrance coming from the kitchen—pork ribs in barbeque sauce, heavenly roasting in the oven.
Given the state she was in, Hortensia would’ve made me dizzy, had I not kept my mind occupied with other matters. It was finally coming together. Chromo offered genetic counseling to affluent and ambitious perspective parents. It wasn’t just a screening. It was an expensive promise.
“Track.”
“What?”
“Are you listening?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed the rest of my wine. “Something about your hair. I’m starving, any chance those ribs would be ready by now?”
Hortensia hurdled the box of junk she had collected from all her old painting supplies and dropped it at my feet. “Hell, Track. I don’t know why I even bothered making you dinner.”
“What? Wait—” No use. She’d already run out of the room, pouting. I heaved the box and took it outside to the trashcan. The night was nippy and a few stars were out, dimmed by the grin of a crescent moon. A warm, yellow halo blanketed the jagged horizon of roofs. The streets were quiet, save for the usual droning of the freeway in the distance. A bicycle squeaked its way along the sidewalk; a TV blinked muted pictures from a window next door; a child cried and a parent hushed her.
Random images of ordinary lives.
Why can’t you have a normal life, Ulysses?
Because I’m not normal, Ma.
Hortensia crouched by the oven, checking on the ribs. I waited until she dropped the pan on the stove, then brushed her hair to the side and kissed the back of her neck.
“You weren’t listening,” she scolded, softly this time.
“I’ve got a lot on my plate these days, Hort.”
She passed me her glass. “Intoxicate me, then. I might rant more, but then I won’t mind if you’re not listening.”
I poured the wine, and then helped her set the table. She transferred the ribs onto a serving dish. The aroma of the braised meat made my stomach growl.
“What about sending ‘Chimeras’ for the show?”
After I told her Watanabe had finally come up with a diagnosis for me—epigentic chimera—she decided to title “Chimeras” the painting she had dedicated to me.
“Only if you change the title,” I said.
“Aw… I love the title!”
I looked out the window above the sink. It framed a square of pitch black, a well of light scooped out in the middle by an arching streetlight. A jogger slid out of the darkness and looked up. For a fraction of a second our eyes met, then the night swallowed her again, a frame of my life retained on her retinas for a moment longer and soon forgotten. Not worth remembering… Does my life look normal when gazing from far away?
Half way through dinner Hortensia pursed her lips, put her fork and knife down, and frowned as if she had completely given up on me. “What kind of nutcases are you dealing with this time?”
“The rich and spoiled.”
“Ooh. Spicy.”
“Yes, that too,” I added, thinking of Dan Horowitz’s comment
s back at the cemetery, and the conversation I had with Oscar Guerra.
“Anybody crazy and handsome enough to model for me? I just fired the last one. I couldn’t take the smell of joint on his breath.”
“No, another kind of crazy. These people want everything perfect in their life, even when things are supposed to go wrong.”
“Supposed to?”
I nodded, absent-mindedly. We call them mistakes, when in fact they’re explorations: the search for new paths in the rugged landscape called life. There is no evolution without change.
“And why do you consider them crazy? Just because they wanted perfect genes?”
I winced. “You don’t think they are?”
Hortensia refilled my glass. “You’re funny sometimes, Track. Of all people, shouldn’t you understand best? Something switched in your DNA, and your doctor told you the changes are hereditary.”
I swished wine in my mouth and then swallowed. “For a few generations only. Because the actual genes didn’t change, it’s not like—”
“So then suppose there was a way to fix your genes. No matter how crazy the cure sounded, wouldn’t you want to try it? Wouldn’t you want to jump on that one chance to have a normal life?”
I stared at the purple-red shade of the wine in my glass, tiny bubbles clinging to the surface. The normality I longed for on nights like that one. The ordinary lives I stared at as if looking out from a window, as if separated from me by a screen, shouting at me, This is what you’ll never be, Ulysses. If given the opportunity, wouldn’t I want another chance?
CHAPTER 28
____________
Wednesday, October 22
I checked my cell phone: everything was quiet from the Glass House. Satish was booked all day in court. I decided to take a low-key day and catch up on a few overdue reports. I got out of bed, pulled on a pair of sport shorts, and went jogging. The sun was rising and the air brisk.
I love the chilliness of Southern California mornings. During the day, temperatures in the valley can rise to ninety degrees, and yet mornings are almost always crisp. The strips of lawn by the sidewalks smell of dew. Whiffs of slowly brazing wood logs creep out of the chimneys and waft down the streets. Sycamores, turned yellow overnight, surprise the eye with wavering brightness. The sounds are hushed: a garage door opens, lets a small car whir out, and then closes again. A crow caws from the top of a telephone pole and then stops, as though baffled by its own voice. Announced by a gargling hiss, a sprinkler goes off. The lawn welcomes the moisture releasing a nippy fragrance of wet soil.
My feet bounced along the sidewalk in consecutive thumps. My lungs pumped air in rhythmical whooshes. A dozen kids whose cancers did not respond to therapy, at least one of them linked to Chromo. A couple poured their anxieties for the child they wanted to conceive into a search for perfection. A religious woman accused Chromo of “playing God” and harming innocent lives. The same woman ended up dead, after being lured over the promise of unspecified data.
Damn it. Yes, justice is indeed imperfect, Hannah. Still, you have choices in life, and murder shouldn’t be one of them. Jennifer Huxley chose to fight. I know what you expected to find in the cryogenic tank, Jen. I just have to prove it.
I stopped to catch my breath, and the phone in my arm pouch buzzed. I flipped it open.
“Did I wake you up?” Diane’s voice was scratchy, her words pasted.
“No.”
She hesitated for a second, then drew a deep breath. I imagined her fingers as they pulled a strand of hair away from her face, still warm from bed. “I had a rough night. I told Jim I had enough of him.”
I pressed the phone against my ear and said nothing. She didn’t like it.
“Are you going to say something? It would be nice if I weren’t just talking to myself.”
I agreed. She sighed again. “What time are you coming? There’s something I need to show you.”
* * *
“Diane, what the hell are you doing?”
She startled. “I’m crossing the street.”
I grabbed her arm and pulled her back on the sidewalk. Going fifteen miles over the speed limit, a truck driver swooshed by showing a dexterous use of his middle finger. His honk trailed off, soon covered by the jingling of the wind chimes hanging from a nearby shop.
“Hell, Diane, this is L.A., not Boston! Didn’t your parents teach you to look out for cars when you cross the street?”
“No.” Diane’s voice slipped into high-pitched indignation. “They taught me to look out for pedestrians when I drive.”
Nice utopian view of traffic and other related matters in life. “It might work at cattle crossings where you grew up. It doesn’t work in L.A.” I was still clutching her arm, squeezing in fact. I let go and stared at the packed sidewalk. North Broadway was a colorful patchwork of striped awnings and store signs covered in elegant ideographs. The usual odors of L.A. streets—sweat, urine, gas exhaust—mingled with the wafts of the merchandise in the store windows: fruits and vegetables laid out for everybody to touch and smell; dried fish and birds hanging from the ceilings; ginger, cloves, anise, and fennel, sold in large jute sacks.
“Why Boston?”
“You could buy a house if you ticketed all the jaywalkers in Boston on any given day. Why did we come to Chinatown?”
Diane smiled. “Because I know a place where they serve the best dim sum you’ll ever eat.”
“As long as there’s enough meat. I’m a carnivore.”
“Relax. You’ll love it.”
She was already walking away, her gait confident as she jostled the eclectic crowds around us. Faces from different worlds emerged through the folds of an urban landscape: a genderless figure, standing still behind a shop window; a feminine oval, as white and flawless as a porcelain mask, peeking through the sheer curtain of a restaurant; young men walking briskly, their spiked hair and puffed chests a bold statement of past puberty, though their cheeks so smooth they had yet to see a razor.
I wasn’t relaxed. My hunch had proven wrong. I was irritated. “You’re sure you did the analyses correctly?”
“Yes. The answer hasn’t changed from five minutes ago: whoever drank from the beer can you handed over for DNA analysis didn’t leave his precious stuff in Huxley’s car.”
“Damn it.”
She sent me a sideways glance. “Why are you still thinking about it?”
“I hate to be wrong.”
My nose is never wrong. I rely on it. The beer can carried his smell.
Diane froze in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at me, her face hung somewhere in between bewilderment and resentment. “And by what chauvinistic and dick-waving principle should you never be wrong, Track? Or is it a woman telling you so that throws off your testosterone levels?”
I winced. A carillon chimed its hypnotic tune from a shop crammed with knickknacks, souvenirs, and a rainbow of wind spinners and cheap plastic gadgets. A hideous face standing by the door grinned at me for no reason. I stared back at Diane and didn’t reply. Yes, I could be plain wrong and let it go. Something told me otherwise, though.
Diane ran the analyses, Ulysses. She’s hiding something.
If she is, she’ll get me the assassin. It’s just a matter of time.
She averted her eyes and resumed walking. “Sorry, you probably meant it as a joke and I overreacted. I had a rough night, I think I told you already.”
“Yes, you did.”
We turned into a narrow street. “If it’s of any consolation, the two DNA strains could be related.”
“In what way?”
“Cousins. Maybe even brothers. There’s a high chance of them sharing the same father. I only looked at the Y chromosome, so I can’t speak for the mother.” Without looking at me, she disappeared behind a glass door out of which wafted warm aromas of simmering onions, sesame, and fermented spices. The hall was large and crowded. Waiters circled the tables pushing around carts. A petite woman in a purple Chinese blouse and
black slacks came to offer us a wide smile and an incomprehensible welcome. She motioned to a table where a stiff looking waiter was flipping plates as if they were Frisbees. The waiter bowed, the lady bowed, Diane sat down and asked for an iced tea.
At the opposite corner, a fish tank mumbled soothing sounds. All around the walls, white scrolls of paper depicted young women dancing and bathing along a yellow riverbed.
I hung my jacket at the back of the chair, ordered a Corona, and sat down. “Tell me again what you found out about those genes in the Chromo virus.” Diane had spent the night at the lab. She blamed it on insomnia. “What do you think they’re for?”
She crossed her arms on the table. There was a dark smear of tiredness beneath her eyes. It didn’t make the spice in her scent any less enticing. “It’s not easy to explain.”
“Try me. I can take scientific jargon. I just can’t overdose on it.”
She didn’t smile. Scientists get so serious when they talk science. “As we age our cells’ replicative capacity diminishes. In a child, cells undergo from twenty-five to thirty cellular divisions before they die. In a senior, those division cycles get down to three, possibly four. It’s how our body ages: there’s less turn over in cell population.”
“Skin sags, you lose muscle tone and get wrinkles,” I said.
“Basically, yes. Have you ever wondered though, what tells the cells they’ve reached the end of their replicative cycle? How do they know when they’re supposed to die?”
I took the napkin and unfolded it on my lap. “I’ve been losing sleep over that question, Diane.”
She served me a scornful look, with a side of condescending tone. The first cart docked at our table and delivered a plate of shrimp toast and sesame boa. We took one each, did some acrobatics with the chopsticks and chewed.
“Each time a cell undergoes a division, the chromosome ends in the DNA shorten a bit. It’s a natural phenomenon and it doesn’t have consequences because that part of the chromosome is non-coding—it doesn’t carry information. When the ends get too short, the cell dies. It’s all part of the aging process. Now, the counterpart of that is an enzyme called telomerase. It prevents the chromosome ends from degrading, and it’s believed to increase the cell’s replicative capacity. The theory behind it is that by preserving the chromosome ends one can allow the cells to replicate more and lengthen the span of human life.”