The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone

by George C. Chesbro

  “On whose authority was that badge canceled?”

  “Dr. Slycke’s.”

  “He doesn’t have that authority!”

  “You’ll have to take that up with him, sir. Please give me your keys.”

  “I’ll give them back to the man who gave them to me,” I said as I pointed a trembling finger at the green telephone beside the guard’s right hand. “You call Slycke and get him down here. You tell him that if he won’t talk to me right now, a lot of high-level shit is going to hit a high-level fan.”

  The guard picked up the phone, dialed a single number; he spoke into it, listened for a few moments, hung up. “Dr. Slycke will come down to speak to you,” he said in a flat voice.

  It took Slycke, accompanied by two burly male nurses I didn’t recognize, five minutes to come down from his aerie on the fourteenth floor. In that time, two RPC Security patrol cars had appeared on the scene and were parked ostentatiously on the street at the foot of the walk leading to the entrance.

  “Where the hell do you get off canceling my badge, Slycke?!” I shouted at the portly, round-faced psychiatrist as he emerged from the building, squinting against the bright sunlight.

  Slycke flushed, swallowed hard. He looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Your brother has suffered a serious relapse, Frederickson,” he said quietly.

  That brought me up short, and suddenly my mouth and throat were very dry. “What? What do you mean, a relapse? He was fine yesterday.”

  “That was yesterday. During the night he lapsed back into a catatonic state which is perhaps worse than the previous one. Now his physical condition is deteriorating. We’re monitoring him very closely.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said as my heart began pounding in my chest. “Oh, Jesus Christ. Let me see him, Dr. Slycke.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Slycke said stiffly. “I’m not allowing him any visitors—and especially not you. I canceled your badge because, from the beginning, you have interfered with your brother’s medical treatment, and I will no longer have you endangering my patient’s health.”

  “I didn’t put him into a catatonic state, Slycke; I brought him out of the first one.”

  “And what we’re seeing now may be the price your brother is paying for your interference. The first priority now is to stabilize his physical condition. Then we’re going to have to begin all over again with a therapy program. I’m responsible for this man’s health, and in my judgment he must be treated in a strictly controlled environment, without any distractions or outside influences.”

  “You have no right to cancel my badge,” I said in a trembling voice, fighting against a sudden wave of nausea that made me want to gag. I was thoroughly frightened.

  “On the contrary,” the psychiatrist replied tightly. “This is strictly a clinical decision, Frederickson, not a personal or political one. When you call Mr. Lippitt, as I’m sure you’ll do the moment you leave here, he’ll tell you that I’ve acted within my authority, which takes precedence in all medical matters. I’m not barring you as an administrator; I’m barring you as a physician.”

  There was something in the other man’s voice that just didn’t ring true to me. Struggling to contain my fury against Slycke, and my piercing anxiety over Garth, I clenched my fists and glared at the psychiatrist. Slycke refused to meet my gaze. Despite the fact that it was a cool morning, he was sweating through his lab coat.

  “My God, you’re lying,” I breathed. “You son-of-a-bitch, you’re lying!”

  Now Slycke glanced at me; I could see the confirmation in his eyes … along with not a little fear of his own. He tried—too late—to cover his reaction by spluttering, “That’s preposterous!”

  “Prove it to me! I don’t want the badge back! Just let me see my brother for five minutes so that I’ll know you’re telling the truth!”

  “How dare you call me a liar!”

  “You listen to me, Slycke,” I intoned in a voice I hoped was sufficiently threatening to bring him up short the way he had brought me up short. “I don’t know what games you’re playing upstairs, but you’re not going to use my brother for them. I don’t need to call Mr. Lippitt—at least not until I’m ready to level some pretty heavy accusations against you. My brother wasn’t committed here by any court; he was admitted on a voluntary basis, and I was the one who signed the papers. That means I can get him out seventy-two hours after filing official notice that I want him out. When I walk away from here, the first call I make will be to my lawyer. RPC, under whose aegis you operate, will have my official request for Garth’s release on file before noon. In three days, exactly at the appointed hour, a private ambulance is going to pull right up to the entrance to this building. Then, no matter what shape my brother is in, he’s coming out of there. You got that, pal?”

  Slycke’s face had gone pale, and the dark pouches beneath his eyes began to quiver. “I wouldn’t do that, Frederickson.”

  “Let me go up to see him!”

  “I … can’t.”

  Struggling to keep my voice and emotions under control, I took a deep breath, slowly let it out. “Then there’s something you should know, Slycke, and I’m saying it in front of these witnesses so that you will most definitely take it as a threat. If anything happens to my brother before that private ambulance can take him away—if he’s in any kind of damaged state which I even suspect could have been caused by your games—I am going to take it very personally. You were worried about me spying for Lippitt when I wasn’t; now you’re just likely to have cause to worry. If I don’t like what I find when I see Garth, if I think there’s been any monkey business with his head or body that I think you’re responsible for, then I’m going to start spying on you with a persistence you won’t believe. If I ever start digging, Slycke, then your personal life and your stewardship of this clinic had better be purer than the Virgin Mary. If you don’t want to find yourself up to your ass in alligators, you make damn sure Garth Frederickson is in good shape when I pick him up in three days.”

  And then I turned on my heel and stalked away. When I was certain I was out of sight, I ducked behind some bushes and threw up.

  By the end of the day I had filed official notice that I wanted my brother released from the clinic within seventy-two hours. I’d also made arrangements for a private ambulance to transport him, and booked a room in a private sanitarium in New York just in case Garth really was out of it when I got him back.

  Then there was nothing more to do but wait—which I didn’t like at all. I tried to call Lippitt, just to keep him informed, but he wasn’t in his office. By using “Valhalla” as a password, I could have been put in touch with him, no matter where he was, almost immediately, but I did not choose to use this emergency procedure. There wasn’t an emergency—yet. I felt I owed him the courtesy of telling him I was removing Garth from the clinic, and why, but I wasn’t yet ready to push any panic buttons. I left a message asking him to call me, at his convenience.

  Everything that could be done had been done, I thought. And so I continued to wait.

  I no longer had access to the secret clinic, but I still had my apartment on the grounds of the hospital complex, and that’s where I waited after filing notice that I intended to take my brother home. Slycke called me early in the evening of the second day.

  “Frederickson, this is Charles Slycke.” He sounded out of breath, as if he’d been running.

  “I know who it is,” I replied curtly. “Is my brother all right?”

  “I must speak with you.”

  “I asked you about my brother!”

  “He’s … all right,” Slycke said with what I considered rather ominous hesitation.

  “He damn well better be.”

  “I must speak to you, Frederickson. Alone.”

  “Come on over. You know where I am.”

  “No. I must meet you here. There’s something I have to show you.”

  “What?”

  “Not over the phone.”
/>   “I’m on the way.”

  “No!” Slycke said quickly. There was a lengthy pause, during which I could hear the psychiatrist breathing heavily. Finally he continued, “There are too many people around now. Tonight there won’t be so many, and I can arrange to keep the night staff busy elsewhere. Will you come to my office at eleven?”

  “You took my badge, remember? I’ve still got my keys, but I can’t get in the building without the electromagnetic strip on that badge.”

  “All right, I’ll come down and let you in at eleven.”

  “Why do we have to meet in your office at eleven? Why can’t we meet someplace else right now? For that matter, why can’t you tell me what’s on your mind over the phone?”

  “I just can’t speak over the phone about this, and I can’t remove what I want to show you from the building. You have to come here; eleven o’clock. We won’t be disturbed at that time.”

  “Put my brother on the phone.”

  “I can’t do that, Frederickson.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would look suspicious.”

  “To whom?”

  “Not over the phone, Frederickson.”

  “But he is awake.”

  “Yes … he’s awake.”

  “All right, Slycke. I’ll see you at eleven.”

  “And you’ll come alone?”

  “I’ll come alone.”

  Slycke hung up. I pressed down the receiver bar, released it, and got a dial tone. I called Veil, grimaced with frustration when his telephone answering machine came on. I was starting to leave a message that I needed to speak to him as soon as possible when there was a click and he came on the line.

  “Hi, Mongo. I was painting, and I didn’t want to be bothered by some idiot trying to sell me something.”

  “Sorry for the interruption, Veil.”

  “You’re never an interruption. What’s up?”

  “I could use some help tonight. Can I pick you up?”

  “No. I can get hold of a car and save you the trip into the city. What’s the problem?”

  Quickly, I filled Veil in on what had been happening with Garth, my banning from the clinic, my filing of the seventy-two-hour notice, and Slycke’s phone call.

  Veil’s laugh was sharp, without humor. “He’s got to be kidding. He really said that he wanted to meet you at eleven, and you should come alone?”

  “Maybe he thinks I never go to the movies. But he could be on the level, and in any case it’s an opportunity for me to try and see if Garth’s all right. I have to go. I want you to ride shotgun.”

  “You’ve got it. I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time, so you don’t have to rush. Can you make a stop in an electronics store?”

  “What do you need?”

  “A miniature tape recorder, and a pair of paging beepers with matching frequencies and signal buttons.”

  “I’m not sure I like the idea of using beepers,” Veil said as he sipped coffee at my small kitchen table and nodded at the two pocket-sized instruments in front of him. “Why don’t I just come up with you?”

  “He’s going to be meeting me downstairs.”

  “You’re going to have to find a way to leave the door wedged open, anyway. I’ll follow the two of you up. He said he’d be keeping the staff busy elsewhere.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t know where ‘elsewhere’ is. There’s too much open space up there, Veil, too many long corridors. It would be hard for even a ninja to keep visual track of me without risk of being spotted.”

  “I can do it, Mongo,” Veil said evenly. “Nobody will know I’m there.”

  “Let’s stick with the beepers. I’m pretty sure I can distract Slycke with a little sleight of hand, and I’ll use a credit card to wedge the door open. If I do need you, then you can come running. Did you bring a gun?”

  Veil patted his right ankle.

  “Well, let’s hope neither of us will be needing it,” I said, shoving my keys across the table to him. “You take these. The little one will open and operate the elevator; the one with the M on it will open any other door in the clinic once you get up there. You’ve got the floor plan I drew for you, and I’ve put an X over Slycke’s office—which is where I assume we’ll be.”

  “Are you taking your gun?”

  I shook my head. “In my situation, I don’t think it’s a good idea to take a gun into a mental ward. If something does happen to me, it’s conceivable that a patient could get hold of it and start spraying bullets around for no reason at all. I don’t want to be shot with my own gun, and I don’t want to take any undue risk of innocent people getting hurt or killed. You’ll be my gun—if I need you.”

  Veil nodded, then slipped my keys into his pocket.

  “I’ll be at the entrance to Building 26 exactly at eleven,” I continued. “Precisely ten minutes later you’ll get a beep—if everything is okay. You’ll be in your car out on the street. After that, if I’m in there for any length of time, I’ll beep you once every half hour to signal that I’m all right.”

  “Let’s make it every fifteen minutes, Mongo.”

  “All right, twenty. After the first beep to signal I’m in no danger, twenty-minute intervals should be enough. If Slycke is dealing with me straight, and if I have to pay attention to something he’s saying or showing me, I don’t want to have to keep looking at my watch. One beep means that Slycke and I are having tea and crumpets and don’t wish to be disturbed. Two slow beeps means I don’t like something I’m seeing, but that there’s time to involve RPC Security and bring some cops up with you; those keys you’re carrying should get their respectful attention. Three quick beeps—or no beep at the proper interval—means that the bad guys are tying me across the railroad tracks, and the train’s coming around the bend; I’ll need you in a big hurry.”

  “Got it,” Veil said evenly as he came around the table to synchronize his watch with mine while I buttoned my shirt over the miniature tape recorder taped to my chest. The wall clock read 10:55. “You watch your ass, Mongo.”

  “Yep,” I said, rising to my feet and reaching inside my shirt to turn on the recorder. “Let’s do it.”

  We left the staff building thirty seconds apart, with Veil going to his car while I cut behind the chapel to Building 26. I’d been expecting Slycke to be waiting for me outside, by the empty kiosk. He wasn’t there. I gave it three minutes, then tried the door. It was open. I stepped inside, stopped in the vestibule in front of the elevators, looked around. The lights were on in the corridor, but they were decidedly dimmer than usual.

  Suddenly I wished I had brought my Beretta.

  “Slycke?”

  There was no answer.

  I’d done a few stupid things in my life, but over the years I hoped I had learned not to confuse stupidity with courage. I was getting too old for heroics, stupid or otherwise, and I’d already seen enough of this dimly-lit-corridor nonsense to convince me that I was walking into a trap. I wasn’t going to walk any farther. It was certainly a classic two-beep situation if ever I’d seen one, but I didn’t even plan on signaling Veil and waiting until he showed up with the cops. I’d go with him to get RPC Security, and would give Mr. Lippitt an emergency call for backup troops.

  I was heading back to the main entrance, feeling quite smug with myself for displaying such obvious good sense, when something very hard hit me on the back of the head, and even the dim lights in the corridor winked out.

  13.

  Someone was singing, “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go …”

  I’d never much cared for that song, and I particularly disliked it now that it was being sung in a low, rasping, ominously familiar voice.

  “The voices will stop after I kill you, dwarf,” Mama Baker said.

  “Blauugfh,” I said—or something to that effect. My ears seemed to be working perfectly well, but not my tongue.

  The fact that I couldn’t make my tongue and lips form w
ords didn’t really make any difference, since Mama Baker obviously wasn’t interested in hearing anything I had to say, but only in sacrificing me to the cruel, demanding, maliciously chatty gods he carried around with him inside his head.

  “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go …”

  Nothing else seemed to be working right, either. My vision consisted of blurred, wavering images that only occasionally came into focus, then exploded or dissolved into wisps of luminous vapor that were sucked down long, multicolored DayGlo tunnels. My head felt as if the skull had melted and fused with my brain into a ball of thick rubber that was rolling around on my shoulders; I was very conscious of my own breathing, slow and deep, and the air in my lungs bubbled, fizzed, and popped like sparkling champagne; I imagined I could feel my blood, like warm milk, coursing through my veins and arteries, hear my heart pumping.

  Somebody had shot me up with something seriously psychotropic, I thought, and wondered if this was how some psychotics experienced the world before they were medicated.

  I was floating in the air face down, gently bobbing up and down like a toy blimp caught in a light breeze. I could feel my legs, and even managed to move them, but my feet weren’t in contact with the ground, and so my feeble kicking was futile. My arms, however, weren’t hanging in their accustomed places, and I wondered where they could have gone.

  “I’m going to hang you up and slit your throat, dwarf,” Mama Baker said. “When all the blood has drained out of you, I’ll be free.”

  “Mmfltelkpt!” I replied as I rolled the ball of rubber that was my head to the left and, just for an instant, clearly saw the figure of Charles Slycke slumped against the wall just outside his open office door; the thick plastic barrel of a good-sized hypodermic needle was protruding from his right eye.

  Somebody had shot Slycke up pretty good.

  “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go …”

  Human shapes appeared, dissolved, reappeared in the rainbow mists swirling around me. Patients I recognized.

  “Fmmlptzxchpht!” I cried, shouting for help and feebly kicking my legs.