The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone m-6

by George C. Chesbro

  Five minutes later the nun returned with a short man with long, greasy black hair liberally streaked with gray, who walked with a slight stoop. Even from where I was standing, I could see the ugly red and white scars on the man's face, and he wore dark glasses-which he slowly and dramatically removed as the lights came on, the camera focused on him, and the reporter stepped up to him with a microphone.

  That, I thought with a grim smile, would be Harry August, obviously a con man par excellence. Untold numbers of readers of The National Eye no doubt believed that my brother had cured Harry August of total blindness, and now the credulity of a broader television audience was to be tested; there was no doubt in my mind that a lot of them would believe it too. As my mother was fond of saying, some people will believe anything.

  I waited across the street for more than an hour, but still saw no sign of Garth. People continued to file into the building, and very few came out; those who did were dressed in clean clothes, looked as if they had washed, and walked considerably straighter. Finally the line of people began to thin out and shorten, and Carling seemed ready to take a break. He stepped over to the curb, lit a cigarette.

  Now I stepped out of the shadows and walked quickly across the traffic circle. Carling saw me coming, flicked away his cigarette, and held out his hand.

  "Mongo!" Tommy Carling said brightly.

  "Where's my brother, Carling?" I said coldly as I stepped up on the curb outside the entrance to the bathhouse, ignoring the other man's outstretched hand.

  Carling shrugged, then made the same gesture I had seen him make earlier with the television reporter. "I don't know. He's not back yet."

  "Back from where?"

  "He's walking the streets with Marl and a few of the Guardian Angels; they're looking for more people to take in for the night."

  "Marl? Braxton's here?"

  The male nurse nodded.

  "Braxton's dangerous, Carling. You told me that yourself; you said he was the most dangerous man in the clinic. You're supposed to be a Goddamn mental health professional. What the hell are you doing parading around with this freak show?"

  "Freak show, Mongo?" Carling said softly.

  "I'm not talking about these poor people, Carling, and you know it! I want to know why you let my brother go off walking the streets with a potential killer!"

  "Marl isn't dangerous any longer, Mongo," he replied easily. "Except, perhaps, to anyone who tried to harm Garth. That hasn't happened yet, and I don't believe it ever will. Marl is Garth's protector, not his enemy."

  "Carling, you son-of-a-bitch, why couldn't you at least have picked up a phone and told me that Garth was with you, and that he was all right?"

  The big man with the pony tail flushed slightly, dropped his gaze. "I guess I should have," he said softly.

  "You're damn right you should have! How the hell do you think my parents and I have felt all these months, not knowing whether Garth was dead or alive?"

  "I. . wasn't sure what your attitude would be, or what might happen if the D.I.A. got hold of him again. I knew. . what Slycke was planning to do, and I just couldn't let that happen. If there was any chance that Dr. Slycke might somehow still manage to-"

  "What the hell are you talking about? Slycke's dead."

  Tommy Carling looked at me, his mouth slightly open. He shook his head, swallowed. "What did you say?"

  "You didn't know?"

  "That Dr. Slycke is dead? Of course not. How did it happen? When?"

  "Is there someplace we can talk?"

  Carling nodded, then gestured toward the entrance to the bathhouse. I followed him inside, through a group of bag people who were still clustered at the entrance. I stopped just inside the entrance and looked around, stunned by what I saw.

  The interior of the building, that part which I could see, was huge; with all of the interior walls gutted, the space I found myself in looked as big as an airplane hangar. There was a lot of scaffolding spiderwebbing the interior space, and anchored to a stone balcony which went all around the hall. The entire roof of the building had been removed, and was now covered with layers of heavy plastic sheeting. Everything looked spotless-scrubbed where it was stone and freshly painted where it was wood. The line of people outside led directly to a long, gleaming counter where stew was being served out of huge, steaming cooking pots by men and women in green, logo-emblazoned jackets or headbands. People ate off paper plates in one section of the vast hall, while in another people rested in neat, tightly packed rows on air mattresses, covered by khaki army surplus blankets which looked new. At the far end of the hall, men and women wearing pale brown robes and paper slippers, with towels draped over their shoulders, emerged from two sets of swinging doors which exuded faint wisps of steam. The men and women filed behind separate partitions, emerged dressed in clothes that were obviously used, but clean. Then they left, or went to get food, or went to rest on an air mattress and blanket, which were being distributed by the nun.

  Music, unobtrusive but still clearly audible, filled the hall, piped in through at least a dozen loudspeakers hanging from the stone balcony. Siegfried.

  Men and women who were either doctors or paramedics moved quietly among the people on the air mattresses, checking throats, answering questions, listening to heartbeats, occasionally giving out something from the black leather bags they carried. Like the other workers, the medical people wore the distinctive green jackets or headbands.

  There was a strange odor in the air, rising above all the other odors, which caught my attention, but which I could not immediately identify. Outside the building, there had been the smell of the streets and unwashed bodies; inside was the smell of soap, disinfectant, steam, paint, washed stone, medicine, plastic, coffee, hot food-but the smell that had caught my attention was none of these. I found the odor vaguely ominous.

  "What the hell?" I murmured.

  "Are you impressed, Mongo?" Tommy Carling asked quietly.

  "Who runs this place?"

  "Everybody; nobody."

  "Who owns the building?"

  "It belongs to Garth; the deed is registered in his name."

  "Oh, yeah? Not bad for a guy who's never had more than two thousand dollars in the bank, and who hasn't even been bothering to pick up his disability checks."

  "The money comes from many sources, Mongo. God provides. Shall we go someplace where it's quieter?"

  I followed Carling across the hall, through a maze of pipe scaffolding, through a door and into a medium-sized office. Like everything else, it had been freshly painted. There was a desk, and a couple of chairs. The entire wall behind the desk was covered with a rendering of the rings-and-knife logo. Siegfried was playing here, too.

  "You mind turning off that music?"

  Carling sat down behind the desk, turned a rheostat on the wall; the music grew softer, but continued to play. "It always plays," Carling said simply, motioning for me to sit down in one of the straight-backed chairs. "We prefer it that way. We've learned from Garth to let that music serve to remind us of all that needs to be done; it focuses the concentration."

  "I find it distracting."

  Carling shrugged. "Yes, well; there's the difference, I guess."

  "What difference?"

  "Between you and us."

  "How does God provide, Tommy?"

  "You seem fixated on financial questions, Mongo."

  "I'm curious; I'm curious as to what Garth is a part of, and who's financing it. If the deed for this place is registered in Garth's name, it could make him legally, or morally, responsible for things he might not want to be responsible for."

  "Did you see anything illegal or immoral happening out there?"

  "I just got here."

  "Some people might say that it's none of your business," the other man said evenly.

  "Some might."

  "Would you believe that we picked up this place for a ten percent down payment against the back taxes owed by the previous owners?"

 
"I don't know. Why shouldn't I believe you?"

  "Because you're a very skeptical man, Mongo-some people might even describe you as cynical."

  "Yeah, but I've never tried to buy a bathhouse."

  "It was foreclosed some years ago by the city after they closed it down. At the time, this wasn't exactly a target area for real estate developers, and the city was more than happy to unload it. It was a white elephant."

  "There are a lot of other things going on around here that aren't financed by payments against back taxes."

  "Word gets around."

  "Word of what?"

  "Word of good people with good intentions doing good things. Most people really do want to help people who are less fortunate than they are, Mongo, if you only give them a chance-and if you set an example and lead them. There are individuals and corporations, as well as various relief and funding agencies, which heartily approve of what we're doing, and they've been contributing substantial amounts of money, goods, and services. They like what's happening here. Most of the construction and mass organization you saw out there has only begun to happen in the past month or so."

  "What is it that's happening here?"

  "What you see."

  "I'm not sure what I see."

  "That doesn't surprise me, Mongo," Carling said in the same even tone-which was beginning to irritate me. "Each person must finally be responsible for what he sees-or doesn't see-with his own eyes, how he feels about what he sees, and what he does about it. That's one of Garth's lessons; it seems simple, but it certainly isn't."

  "I'm Garth's Goddamn brother, Tommy, and I've been searching for him for four months! Why is it that none of this great 'word' ever got around to me?!"

  Tommy Carling studied me with his expressive, hazel eyes. "Perhaps you didn't have the ears to hear, Mongo," he said at last in a very soft voice. "Somewhere it's written, 'Seek and ye shall find.' "

  "You've got to be putting me on," I said in a low voice, feeling my anger begin to swell in me.

  "I don't understand what you mean."

  "No? Let me tell you who else has been just a tad concerned about Garth, my friend. Did it ever occur to you that his mother and father might have liked to receive just one little ring-a-ling to inform them that their son wasn't dead or lying comatose and unidentified in some strange hospital?!"

  "But, if Garth chose not to-"

  "Garth's sick!" I snapped. "He's not responsible for anything he thinks, says, or does. You're the one I hold responsible, Tommy!"

  "Garth is not sick," Tommy Carling replied somewhat petulantly. "He's probably the healthiest person on the face of the earth."

  "You've got to be kidding me."

  "I admit I-we-may have handled things badly, and that maybe I should have pressed Garth to contact you and your parents; but I told you that I was very concerned about what could happen if Dr. Slycke ever got hold of Garth again."

  "And I told you that Slycke was dead."

  "I didn't know that, Mongo. It's the truth; if I had known, I would have handled things much differently. Do you care to tell me what happened to him?"

  "Why don't you tell me how you come to be here with Garth and Marl Braxton in this super-Salvation Army operation."

  "The Salvation Army totally supports our work here, Mongo, and they might not think much of your attitude. You tell me your story first. How did Dr. Slycke die?"

  Watching Carling's face very carefully, I told him what had happened up in the clinic the night I had gone there in response to Slycke's phone call. When I had finished, Carling tugged absently at his earring and shook his head.

  "That's incredible, Mongo; you were incredibly lucky to get out of there alive."

  "So I've been told."

  "I didn't know about any of this. Naturally, since the clinic is a secret facility, news of Dr. Slycke's death wouldn't have been in the newspapers-even if I'd been reading them."

  "Your turn, Tommy. The three of you took off even before Slycke called me, which means you must have snuck Garth and Braxton out from under Slycke's nose."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Garth never had any kind of relapse, Mongo. Slycke was lying."

  "I'd gathered that," I said dryly.

  "You talked to Slycke after you talked to me, about the same thing-the possibility of removing Garth from the clinic. You shouldn't have done that. It was why I didn't plan to report the conversation to Dr. Slycke; I knew it would make him very nervous. In fact, he panicked. I'm not sure why he reacted as severely as he did, but my guess is that he was under pressure-as you suspected might happen-from his superiors in Washington to keep Garth under close observation at all times, in order to monitor the effects of NPPD poisoning." Carling paused, seeming to study the opposite wall for a few moments, then continued: "Still, he was so upset that you might even be thinking about taking Garth out. I'm not sure I understand it. How could his superiors hold him responsible for potential actions of yours which you had every right to make? It doesn't make sense."

  "Slycke's problems weren't with the D.I.A., Tommy, and they weren't the ones putting the pressure on him. He was an informant for the K.G.B., and they had their hooks into him good."

  Carling's eyes opened wide, and he blinked slowly. "What?"

  "Slycke was passing on information to the Russians, as well as taking orders from them. It was the K.G.B. making him nervous."

  "Ahh," Carling said distantly, once again focusing his gaze on the wall behind me. "That could certainly explain a few other things."

  "Like what?"

  "I'd told you that Charles Slycke was a good doctor-and I sincerely believed that. It was why what he was planning to do came as such a shock to me."

  "What was he planning to do?"

  "He was going to institute a clearly experimental-and potentially dangerous-drug therapy program with Garth. There was absolutely no reason to do that, and it was unethical; he planned to do it in secret, without informing either Garth or you, or even trying to get permission. That made it illegal, as well."

  "Just what kind of a program was this?"

  "He was going to medicate Garth with a whole series of very powerful psychotropics. In effect, from what I could understand, his only motive was simply to see what might happen. I couldn't believe my ears when he told me what he was planning to do, or my eyes when I saw the medication orders on the daily sheet."

  "He came up with this plan just before he barred me from the clinic?"

  "Yes. Even a layman could see that Garth had made tremendous progress in a very short time. He wasn't violent, certainly no threat to himself or others, and he was lucid. Under no circumstances would any responsible psychiatrist want to do absolutely anything but continue to observe patiently, listen, and perhaps counsel. Yet Dr. Slycke was planning to saturate Garth with these drugs. I couldn't make any sense out of it-and then I remembered some of the concerns you'd expressed to me during the course of our conversation outside on the grass. I realized then that you'd been absolutely right. I also understood then why you'd been barred from the clinic. I guess I panicked."

  "Why didn't you call and tell me about this when it happened, Tommy?"

  "There was so little time. I was to begin administering doses to Garth-in any way I could manage-that very evening. I didn't know if you'd be able to stop Slycke, or what would happen to Garth, or me, if I tried to stop him. I'm just a nurse, and he could have ordered me off the premises out-of-hand-and had me locked up, to boot, as a suspected security risk. I was. . very upset. By that time, as I think you know, I'd become very attached to Garth-and to you, if I may say so. I just couldn't let Dr. Slycke do something that could destroy Garth's mind. So I did the only thing I could think of at the moment."

  "You took Garth out."

  "Yes," Tommy Carling replied quietly. "I just had to do something. I hadn't even thought about what I was going to do afterward. . I just acted."

  "Thank you, Tommy," I said simply. "Garth and I owe y
ou more than we can repay."

  "Oh, no," the other man said quickly-and then looked at me in a way that made me slightly uncomfortable. I'd seen a similar look before-on Marl Braxton's face, when he had started to talk about Garth. "It's I who owe the two of you. Garth is. . very special."

  "How did Marl Braxton get to join the party?"

  "I took him out with Garth. Garth wouldn't leave without him, and. . well, there just wasn't a lot of time to argue; I only had two or three minutes' leeway. If I didn't take Garth out then, the chances were slim that I would be able to do it at all before he was drugged."

  "A hell of a big decision, Tommy."

  "Yes," the male nurse replied simply.

  "How did you know Braxton wouldn't kill you the moment you got them away from the clinic? For that matter, how do you know he still won't kill Garth or you one of these days?"

  Carling shook his head. "Garth assured me that Marl would be fine, and that he wouldn't cause any trouble. It's hard to explain, Mongo, but somehow I knew instinctively that Garth was right. He was."

  "So far."

  "He was right."

  "Garth has an apartment." I said tightly. "I happen to be living in it. Why didn't you bring him back there?"

  "For the same reason I didn't contact you; I was afraid the authorities would catch us, and somehow force Garth to go back to Slycke. Besides, Garth didn't want to go back there. He told me he wanted nothing more to do with anything in his past.

  "We ended up in a flophouse not too far from here. I had — some cash with me, but it wasn't going to go very far with the three of us." Carling paused, spread his hands on the surface of the desk. "Mongo, I don't really know how to explain easily all that's happened since then. Four months is such a short time, but. ."