by E. E. Giorgi
“Concussion for adoption?”
“She was seven. And she’d never heard either word before. She had a friend in school who’d been adopted and who told her parents give up their daughters when they no longer have money to feed them. And Rhani thought Ma and Pa were so mad at her for ruining the brand new bike they were going to give her up.”
Satish parked the vehicle and smiled. “You had to see Rhani’s eyes when she came back home. She’d left thinking she was never going to come back.”
That was the story for the day. No moral, although I could see it for myself this time, a lesson of wisdom learned from the most unexpected of teachers—a seven-year-old. Some things you have no control over. They make you feel powerless. The only way is to go along with it. Accept and endure. Satish was right, I’d read it in Chris Hopf’s eyes. And what was I going to do with my life? Was I going to let the currents carry me along or was I going to oppose it? And if I did, to what use?
* * *
“Nelson got five consent forms, Gregov another six. Looks like we’re almost there.” I closed the phone. We were two forms short before we could look at all the embryos we had seized from the Chromo labs.
“Good,” Satish said, staring at the mansion in front of us. “Because this is where it’s going to hit hard.”
Surrounded by impeccable lawns and lush palm trees, we were standing in the driveway of a Mission style home gone overboard, with red Italian shingles, white adobe, and two circular sections flanking the main entrance. Creeping bougainvillea decorated the three-bay garage with clusters of purple flowers. Arching glass doors carved the ground floor and showcased spiral staircases and crystal chandeliers. A sundeck sprawled over what looked like a ballroom and continued towards the back of the house, where the smell of chlorine gave away the presence of a swimming pool.
Satish walked under a two-story high gable and pressed the doorbell. It chimed with the opening notes of Amazing Grace—nice touch, given the setting. The mahogany door boasted stained glass panes laced with wrought iron swirls. A housekeeper with small, mousy eyes and pink, mousy hands opened it. She squeaked a few apologetic words before surrendering to our LAPD tins and letting us in. As soon as we stepped inside, Dan Horowitz came darting down the stairs. He stopped halfway down to point an index finger that wanted badly to be a middle finger. “Just so we’re clear. I know what you guys are after and I’m not cooperating.”
I looked up at him and squinted. “What exactly do you presume we’re after, Mr. Horowitz?”
He clutched the banister, his face as colorful as red grapes. Sour red grapes. “You have slandered my friend and colleague Jerry White. And now you’re trying to throw dirt on Chromo and its scientific accomplishments. This is a private home, Detectives. I’m under no obligation to welcome you inside.”
Satish bobbed his head. “Oh, we never expect to be welcomed when we talk to people—”
“Out.”
“Calm down, Dan. I answered the gate and let them through.” Mrs. Horowitz emerged from the loft in a black jogging outfit, which clung to her skin in a constrictive way, as if her naked body wanted to burst out of it. Her teats held taut and high, yielding the slightest nod as she walked down the stairs, her unflinching nipples staring down on us through her shirt. “Nice to meet you, Detectives,” she said in a mellow, flirtatious voice. She spoke like a Japanese cartoon character, with no other muscle on her face moving but her lips. Her cleavage was glistening with a film of perspiration, and her hand—as I shook it—felt warm and slippery, as if she had just stepped down from a treadmill. Her sweat smelled just as expensive as her clothes.
Horowitz watched his wife greet us with fuming eyes, then hobbled down the second half of the stairs. “Don’t get too friendly, Jenna.” His pursed lips promised belligerence at us, at the maid who’d let us in, and at the spouse who’d opened the forbidden gate.
“Mr. Horowitz, we have information about your daughter’s health,” Satish explained. “Her life may be in danger.”
Six-year-old Vanessa Horowitz was one of the few Proteus kids who was still in good health. The news we brought did not upset either one of the parents. Horowitz stuck to his part as the tough, resilient guy who wanted nothing to do with law enforcement, and his wife played along as the weak link willing to put in a good word, a few batting of fake eyelashes, and nothing more. The conversation moved over to one of the numerous living rooms in the mansion, and at times assumed louder and more colorful tones. Even when presented with the number of kids who’d fallen sick and died, the Horowitzes didn’t budge. Somehow, paying one and a half million for a few embryos was easier than jotting down their signature on a piece of paper.
The greed with which they clung to their frozen gene pool baffled me. “We haven’t decided what to do with the embryos,” Horowitz said. “And until we do, those embryos are ours and we want to keep them.”
Ours. What a peculiar concept. My genes, my DNA. What’s ours when it comes to what we are?
Pulsing lights reflected off the surface of the swimming pool outside and blinked through the arching glass doors. A Picasso-like lady with a giraffe neck and abnormally large eyes gaped from above the stone fireplace. A bronze cupid played in a corner, and an alabaster dancer on the side table defied gravity in the most graceful way. I almost wanted to jump and catch her in midair. Above us, the ceilings soared; below us, the Italian tiles floored us. It was all part of the Horowitzes’ ours: imported rugs, granites, marbles, and natural stones. The pale face of a child, her head leaning against the doorframe at the back, her naked feet propped one over the other, and clear blue eyes lost in a world too big for her. Yes, sometimes money can buy that, too.
Jenna Horowitz followed my eyes and whirled her head to find her daughter peeking at us from the open door. “What are you doing here, Vanessa?”
A pudgy nanny emerged behind the child. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Horowitz. She really wanted to see you. Her knees hurt.”
Vanessa’s legs were as white and thin as the alabaster dancer’s. She ran towards us and sunk her face in her mother’s lap. A mesh of purple capillaries netted the inside of her knees, and small, round bruises bloomed all over her arms. I scowled, my LE training quickly surmising child abuse.
Jenna Horowitz gently pushed the child back to the nanny. “It’s too cold for shorts, honey,” she said, her voice as motherly as a GPS recalculating the route. “Dorothy, please bring her upstairs to change.”
Dorothy came to grab Vanessa’s hand. I asked, “Where exactly does it hurt, Vanessa?”
The girl turned and stared at me, the faintest brows hanging above her blue eyes. “Here,” she said, pointing to her right knee. “And here. And here. And here.” When there were no more joints to point at, she wrapped her small fingers around the glimmering heart hanging from her neck and said, “Do you like it? Aunt Gracie gave it to me for my birthday.”
Jenna Horowitz shot to her feet, closed her hands around her child’s shoulders, and turned her to the nanny. “We took her to the doctor last week, Detective. Vanessa is perfectly fine. These are just growing pains.”
“Did you have the doctor check those bruises?” I prodded.
“My wife told you already.” Dan Horowitz got up from his seat. “Dorothy, take the child upstairs. And you two get out of my house. We’re through talking.”
CHAPTER 39
____________
Friday, October 24
She lies on the ground with her eyes closed. Her cheek is pressed against a hard surface, scratchy, cement, most likely, pebbles painfully poking her skin. She tries to stir. Each fiber in her body throbs. Get up. She opens her eyes. Everything is blurry. Her head feels heavy, her tongue pasted and sore. She tastes blood.
It happened again.
Slowly things come back into focus. A lawn, a few feet away from her, three steps, a door. Unfamiliar. Where am I? And then she remembers. She raises her head, the movement too brusque, it makes her nauseated. The sun is pounding
on her, and the cement underneath scalds her knees and hands. And yet she’s shivering cold.
She sits up, at last, and stares at the house in front of her. The doorbell. Nobody was there. I rang and rang and nobody ever came. Nobody. She feels threatened, scared, defeated.
She remembers walking up those three steps and pressing the doorbell, lightheartedly at first, assuming somebody would come to the door. Nothing happened. The curtains remained drawn, the place held still and silent. Her plan fell apart. She recalls the smell of camphor invading her nostrils, the odor of her grandmother’s clothes at every turn of the season. Her fingers started to tingle, as numbness oozed up her arms and legs, and her mouth filled up, thin threads of saliva drooling down her chin. And then came the familiar taste of bitter almonds flooding her palate, the memory flashing before her eyes. She’s a child again. She climbs up the almond tree and plucks off the green nuts, when they are still fresh and tender. She breaks them open and eats the inside, soft and crispy at the same time. She suddenly feels deceived, as the one she just popped into her mouth is horribly bitter. She grimaces and spits it, staring incredulously at the broken shell in her hand.
“What happened, Lizzy?” her brothers call from a tree nearby. “Did the ogre come eat your bum?” They laugh.
Horrified, she gazes at the little worm crawling out of the cracked nut in her palm. “I just ate a worm,” she squeals over her brothers’ guffaws. The more she screeches, the more they sneer.
That memory never left her, nor the bitterness. It had become the ill omen of her disease, the premonition of the storm to come. She recalls feeling the surge, quickly gnawing at her. Who knows how much time I’ve been here, she thinks, staring at the driveway. Familiar blotches of maroon decorate the spot where she’s been lying. She touches her head, prodding, feeling the tenderness where she hit falling down. Her hair is hot, heated by an unmerciful sun, and her hands and arms are scraped, from the thrashing. Her tongue is swollen and sore, the taste of blood fresh in her mouth.
She looks around, dazed. A crumpled piece of paper and her open cell phone strewn a few feet away. Crawling, she collects them both. I’ve called the number, she realizes, staring at the display. She’d brought with her the scribbled address and phone number and then called, one last resort when nobody answered the door.
Oh my God, she gasps, touching her pocket. And then she exhales a sigh of relief. Still there. Safe, in her pocket. The storm has passed, the damage has been contained. Time to pick herself up and call a cab. Plan B, she thinks, staggering back to the street, her hand caressing the gun in her pocket. Plan B.
CHAPTER 40
____________
Friday, October 24
The tank stood on the counter. A display attached to its side monitored the internal temperature. Perched on a stool next to it, Diane nibbled the tip of her thumb and glared. A centrifuge hummed in the background. The rest of the lab was deserted, the weekend anticipated in the list of unfinished jobs hanging from the pin board.
I set the papers on the counter next to the cryogenic tank. “These are the logs with the IDs,” I said. “We can take out all the embryos but the Horowitzes’.”
I waited for a reaction but none came. Her eyes were as beautiful and stony as a Helmeted Athena’s. Silence clung to her lips like a drip to a faucet. Any second and it’d break loose.
“Can we discuss stuff later?” I offered.
“You trashed me.” The drip broke loose.
“I did not.”
“Then why did you leave? You could’ve left a note. You could’ve called to say, ‘hey.’ To say something, anything.”
Right. I could’ve said, What the hell’s the assassin’s smell doing on your bra? But I was greedy. I wanted her in my bed and the killer in handcuffs.
She’s the key to him.
“There are things you don’t know about me, Diane.”
And things I don’t know about you.
“You’re right,” she replied, her voice creamy and sour like yogurt. “I believed you were different. Instead, you’re just like everybody else. I know what you’re going to say. That you’re another no-commitment guy who freaks out the morning after.”
I banged my fist on the counter and turned away from her, seething. Not at her, at myself.
Diane’s eyes were shiny with tears. “I thought you were human, Track.”
“I’m less human than you could imagine.” It was a paradox. I’m not human and I’m not an animal. I’m both.
And yet it was me as a whole who longed for her.
What kept me away was my human part, exactly the one she didn’t recognize as such.
Because the animal couldn’t care less. The beast just wanted her. Who feared for her safety to the point of denying himself—that was the human side of me. I’m a killer and a predator. I have no control over my instincts. How was I ever going to explain any of it to her?
I paced across the lab, while Diane nibbled her little thumb. Until Christopher Hopf’s eyes materialized through the anger fogging my mind. Endurance, they said. I froze. Who was I to damn my own existence when there was a child who didn’t even know if he was going to blow out one more candle on his birthday cake? I blew so many candles, Christopher. If I could go back, I’d pluck them off all those sugary cakes my mom made and give them all to you. If I could, Chris, I’d duel Clotho with my bare hands, yank my thread off her claws, and knot it to yours. Make yours longer. Make it last through the years of college, through your first kiss, through the scholarship flying you off to space one day, like you dream of when you close your eyes at night. My own damned existence I would give to you.
I grabbed Diane, pulled her down from the stool she was stubbornly perched on, and squeezed her, burying my face in her hair. “I saw a terminally ill child today,” I said. “We need to stop this insanity. He’ll die anyways, but at least we can make it stop.”
Diane wrapped her hands around me and said nothing. Only when the catharsis was complete we let go of one another.
“Let’s get on with it,” I whispered. Diane nodded, her eyes averted.
The price of forgiveness.
She rested a hand on the tank, lifted the lid, and said, “I pick the canister, you pick the straw.” Like mermaid’s hair wavering in the currents, the vapors of liquid nitrogen billowed out, puffed upwards for a second, and then drooped down on the countertop. Diane pulled up one canister—a long, hollow tube with five sticks poking out at the top. “Pick one, quick,” she instructed, and as I complied, she briskly placed the canister back and closed the lid again. I held the straw from one end as if it were some sort of unidentified and suspicious object.
“Hold it in your closed fist.”
“What?”
“In your closed fist, Track, like this.” She took my hand, placed the straw on my palm, and then closed it. She kept her hands over mine, closed her eyes and counted. I stared at her closed eyelids and thought of how enticing her lips tasted.
“…ten,” she whispered, opened my fist, took the straw, and placed it into a glass pan she had previously filled with liquid warmed to body temperature. “It’s thawing.” She touched the pockets of her lab coat. “Shoot, I forgot—You don’t happen to have a paper clip, do you?”
“Of course I have a paperclip.” I dug one out of my pocket. “It’s a little misshapen, but—”
“I need to stretch it anyways.”
She took it and straightened it into a wire. She removed the straw from its little tub, cut the two ends with a pair of scissors, inserted the paperclip through one end, then tilted the straw and transferred all its liquid into a small dish filled with biological solution.
“There,” she said, staring at the transparent liquid. “Our first baby, Track,” she joked without meaning to be funny. “Just woke up, ready to be killed.”
“Diane, please.”
She snorted. “You don’t think we’re killing babies, do you?”
“They’re no babies
. They’re man-made creatures with a death sentence built into their genes.”
Diane sighed. “We’re all born with a built-in death sentence, aren’t we?”
Geez. Between her and Satish I was surrounded by philosophers.
“D.— ”
“Defrost the other ones just like we did for this one. I’ll prepare the PCR solutions.”
I was on my second straw, when Diane said, “There. I just killed a human being.”
“It’s a single cell, not a human being,” I replied, placing a new straw in its warm bath and lifting the tank lid to retrieve another one.
“How can you be so detached?”
I couldn’t tell her why. When you live the mistake, you can’t help but wonder: had I been given a choice—live as a monster or succumb to a brain tumor—would I have spared my own life?
Fully aware of the potential monster held within, would I have thrown the miscreation down Mount Taygetos, or would I have graced its life? And if I did let it live, would you have called it a grace or rather a curse?
My phone rang, putting an abrupt end to my digressions. “Detective, I have a Dan Horowitz on the other line,” the dispatcher said. “He said he needed to talk to you. Shall I pass him on?”
I pondered. Horowitz. Quite unexpected.
“Yes.” There was a moment of silence on the other line, too short to hang up, too long not to wonder whether the guy had played a prank on me.
“I’m calling you from the UCLA hospital, Detective,” I finally heard. And it was Dan Horowitz’s voice. The tone, though, was different. The waterfall had turned into a weeping trickle. “My daughter—” his voice broke. I waited. “The doctor had ordered some blood work at her last visit. The growing pains—they’re not what Jenna and I thought they were.” Another pause. Silence is the harshest judge. “They called us at home right after you guys left. She’s got it. Just like the other kids. And it’s advanced already.”