The Syndrome

by John Case

  Missing?

  McBride went through the articles, one by one. Finally, he looked up at Adrienne and asked, “Did you read these?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

  “These clips.”

  There was something in his voice that got her complete attention. “No,” she said, turning to face him. “They’re newspaper clips is all. Why?”

  He didn’t answer, at first—just shook his head in disbelief. Then he raised his eyes to hers and said, “I think we just found the Institute’s hit list.”

  They copied the names—and there were a lot of names—onto a page of the legal pad, then tore it off and said their good-byes to Mamie. She gave Adrienne a big hug, and asked, with a coy smile, “Did you find your letters, dear?”

  Adrienne shook her head. “No,” she told her, and struck with guilt at the woman’s kindness, added, “You know, Mamie, there never were any letters, really. That was just—”

  Mamie smiled. “I know,” she said, and squeezed the younger woman’s hand. “But don’t tell me any more. I know what Cal’s friends were like. Just promise me that when you come this way again, you’ll stay for lunch. Is that a deal?”

  They shook on it.

  Half an hour later, Adrienne and McBride were on Longboat Key, sitting on the veranda of a conch house restaurant that specialized in “Floribbean cuisine.” The air was heavy with the aromas of charcoal steaks, olive oil, and old money. Ceiling fans turned overhead, but only barely. The sign on the door read CA D’EUSTACE.

  They ate by candlelight—fresh pompano, washed down with a bottle of cold Sancerre. By then, the rain had stopped, and the air was clear, fresh, and cool. Nearby, they could hear the surf, murmuring in the darkness.

  “I don’t know half these names,” Adrienne said, looking at the list. “I mean, who’s this first one: Forrestal?”

  “I think he was… what? The first Secretary of Defense. Had some kind of psychotic break—thought people were after him.”

  “And what happened to him?” Adrienne asked.

  “Fell out a window at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Top floor. They named an aircraft carrier after him.”

  Adrienne grimaced. “And Lin Biao?”

  “Chinese guy,” McBride said.

  “That would have been my guess, too,” she told him.

  He took the sarcasm in stride. “It’s not a guess. I know this. He was Mao’s second in command. Very bad man. Died in a plane crash.”

  She was impressed. “I know the next one,” Adrienne said. “Faisal. He was a Saudi prince, or something.”

  “King,” McBride corrected. “He organized the Arab oil embargo. Nephew shot him in a receiving line. I remember reading about it: the king was standing there, waiting to be kissed on the nose—”

  “What!?”

  “Local custom. Anyway, his nephew waits his turn and, when it comes, he passes up the kiss and shoots him in the head. Instead.” McBride paused, remembering. “The kid was a student at San Francisco State and, after the murder, everyone said he was out of his mind—even the Saudis. Then they realized they couldn’t execute him if he was crazy. So they changed their minds, decided he was fine, and cut off his head.”

  “How come you know so much?” she asked.

  “Double major. Psych and modern history.” Reaching for the bottle of wine, he refilled their glasses.

  “There are sixty or seventy names here,” she said.

  McBride nodded. “One or two a year, all the way back to the beginning of the Cold War.” He glanced at the list, and pointed to a name. “That’s the guy I was telling you about. The faith healer.”

  She looked at the page, where his finger rested beside an unpronounceable name.

  “‘Jew-ow doo Gwee-ma-rice,’“ he said.

  Adrienne tried her hand at a few of the other names. “Zia-ul-Haq. Park Chung Hee. Olaf Palme.”

  McBride took up the roll call. “Wasfi Tal. Solomon Bandaranaike.”

  She hesitated. “And they were all assassinated?”

  “The ones I recognize—yeah! Park was the President of South Korea. His intel chief shot him at the dinner table. Palme was the Swedish prime minister. Someone blew him away as he walked out of a movie theater with his wife.”

  Adrienne’s eyes moved down the list. “Some of the names are easy, but I’ve never heard of most of them,” she observed. “William Tolbert.”

  “Liberia,” McBride guessed.

  “Who’s this?” Adrienne asked.

  McBride read the name. “Albino Luciani.” It was familiar, somehow, but… no. Luciani was one of the names he didn’t know. “We can look him up later,” he told her, and fell back in his chair. Like Adrienne, he was bewildered by what they’d found, and appalled by its magnitude. A minute passed, then two. Every so often, McBride shook his head and swore under his breath, a bitter little smile on his lips.

  “It’s just a list,” she said. “It doesn’t really prove anything.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, it’s just a bunch of newspaper stories. Maybe Crane was doing some kind of research project.”

  McBride nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably it. He was probably ‘doing a research project.’“ He paused. “Is that what you think?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I think it’s a hit list. And I think it means we’re dead.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, and took her hand in his. She looked scared—and why not? He was scared. Knowing the truth about any one of these murders would be enough to get you killed.

  “Now I know what he meant,” she told him.

  “Who?”

  “Shapiro. He said it was dark, but you know what? He was just guessing. He didn’t know how dark it really is.” She looked off, into space. “So what do we do?”

  McBride shook his head. “I don’t know. I think… I think I’ll have another drink,” he replied. “Anyway, you’re the lawyer—what do you think we should do? I mean, what do we have that we can take to the police? Or Secret Service—someone.”

  Adrienne sat back. “We’ve got your medical file.”

  “Which shows… what?”

  “That you had neurosurgery—and that the doctors found something.”

  “Okay, what else?” McBride asked.

  “Bonilla. They’ll have missed him by now.”

  “Go on.”

  She thought. “The rifle.”

  “Except… we don’t have the rifle.”

  “But I can tell them about it! I saw it.” She hesitated. Shrugged.

  “What else?”

  She shook her head. “I guess that’s it. There are the letters we saw—but they wouldn’t get us anywhere in court. They’re more like leads than evidence.”

  McBride sighed. “That’s what I think, too.” “And the list—”

  “—isn’t even a list. It’s just a bunch of clips. Which we also don’t have.” He paused, and summed up. “So… what we’ve actually got—that we can take to the police—is a missing detective, a missing rifle, some interesting leads and a photograph of something that was in my head.”

  “And Crane,” she added. “We have Crane, too. He was murdered, and we can prove that Nikki was here when he was killed.”

  McBride nodded. “Okay. Good. So, let’s say we go to the police with our little shopping list. Then what? What happens?”

  She thought about it for what seemed a long while. Finally, she said, “If we’re lucky? They’ll write it up… and then they’ll file it.”

  “That’s what I think,” McBride told her. “And by the time they get around to it—if they ever get around to it—you and I will be sharing the same astral plane as Eddie Bonilla and Calvin Crane. Not to mention Mr. Luciani—whoever he is. I mean, was.”

  “And ‘Jericho’?”

  The name coasted through his mind like an ominous wind. Jericho. The words from Crane’s letter to Opdahl came back to him. Jericho: a disaster. Jericho: beyond belief. McBr
ide knew that Jericho—whatever it was—was what all this was about. It was the dark star that had swallowed up years of his life. It was the force that had killed Calvin Crane, electrocuted Nico, chopped down Bobby Bonilla and pulped Raymond Shaw. What was it? He didn’t know but it filled him with dread. Still, Adrienne was looking at him and he managed to dredge up a sort of determined, upbeat look, a look that was light-years away from the helpless weariness he felt.

  “I don’t know,” he said to her, “but we’re going to find out.”

  Chapter 38

  Maybe it was the wine, or being under the gun the way they were. Maybe it was both. Or maybe it was just the right time.

  They were standing outside the Super 8—the proverbial “cheap motel”—waiting for the car to stop running. For whatever reason, the Dodge had acquired the habit of continuing to run even after the ignition was shut off. And while there was nothing that either of them could do about it, whenever it happened, they tended to wait by its side until they heard the engine sputter out.

  “I can’t believe this,” Adrienne told him, as they stood there. “That list, everything.” The air was cool. Palms trembled in the wind. The asphalt, still damp from the rain, shone under the parking lot lights. “I mean—every once in a while I step back from it, and I think: no. And then I think of Nikki. In the bathtub. And Eddie.” She was looking out, away from the motel. Traffic hissed down the damp street. A splash of blue from a neon sign zigzagged along the asphalt. “That candle,” she said. “The house in Bethany exploding.” He watched her push one hand up until her fingers were anchored in her hair. As if she had to hold her head there. He saw the glitter of tears in her eyes. “And then… all those murders.”

  The Stratus finally coughed its last. “I know,” McBride said. “It’s dark.” He put his arm around her.

  They were always stiff with each other, meticulous and careful during any incidental physical contact—but this time she sagged into him, tears rolling down her cheeks, her body trembling against his. After a few moments, he turned her head toward him and brushed the tears away. And then he leaned over and kissed her as tenderly as he’d ever kissed anyone. Her lips were cool, moist as the air; she tasted like mangoes. It was meant to be—and it was—a doting-uncle kiss, or something like that. Chaste. She drew back fractionally, made a little sound: “Oh.”

  And then their lips came together again and this time the kiss got away from them. It didn’t take long—maybe ten seconds—and then they were up against the car, fumbling at each other’s clothing, teetering on the edge of public indecency. They were saved by a couple emerging from one of the motel rooms: the woman, blond, her ringleted mane bouncing, tapped along in her spike heels. She said to her companion in a loud, accented voice: “You want a TicTac?”

  Adrienne started to laugh, a whisper of a giggle that bubbled up from inside her and then took on a life of its own. Together, they staggered toward 18-B, engulfed in laughter and desire. They barely managed to get the door closed before they were on each other. Adrienne seemed almost incandescent and as for himself…

  Clothing proved far too obstructive and difficult to remove under the circumstances, the circumstances being that he was beginning to lose contact with where his body stopped and hers began. They parted to remove it. “This is a mistake,” Adrienne said in a sultry voice that dissolved into a giggle as she executed a kind of warp speed striptease.

  “I know,” he gasped, flinging a sock across the room.

  “It’s just going to complicate things,” she continued, throwing herself onto the bed.

  “We should wait,” he told her, taking her in for about a nanosecond—the wonders of Adrienne—then falling on her as if there was no tomorrow. And it was a free-for-all. Adrienne, so buttoned up and buttoned down, was inexperienced, but fearless, in bed. They did everything. At one point, when McBride—pinned to the sheets by sweet exhaustion—thought they might be done, Adrienne propped herself up on an elbow. And then she said—as if their making love required justification—“Well, you know, we’re healthy young animals. What did we expect?”

  “Well ‘animals,’—I’ll give you animals.”

  “Hey.”

  “And ‘healthy,’“ he continued, “I’ll give you healthy. But—”

  “You’ll pay for that,” she said, a gleam in her eyes. She rolled on top of him, pinned his elbows with her knees, crouched above him.

  He atoned.

  She felt guilty, she said afterwards, laughing, about extracting payment.

  “We have a cure for guilt,” he told her.

  “Let me guess… “ She took the cure.

  Afterwards, they lazed in each other’s presence, enjoying their newfound intimacy. McBride found a deck of cards in the desk where a Gideon Bible was supposed to be and, sitting on the bed, entertained her with them. He could cut the deck with one hand—which looked easy, until she tried it herself, and the cards exploded all over the room.

  “You got a hat?”

  “No,” she replied with a little laugh. “Why?”

  “Because if you had a hat, I could show you how to toss cards into it from the other side of the room.”

  “And why would I want to do that?”

  “Because you could win a lot of bar bets with it—I mean, in case the law doesn’t work out.” Then he made her pick a card.

  “‘Any card’?” she asked.

  “What are you—psychic?”

  “Unh-huh.”

  “Well, pick one anyway”

  She did.

  “Now, remember which card it is… got it? Okay, now put it back in the deck.”

  She did.

  Holding the deck between them in his right hand, he cut the cards—again, and again. Then he shuffled them, and handed the deck back to her. “Now take your card out,” he told her, “and press it against your forehead.”

  First, with a skeptical look, and then with a deepening frown, she looked through the deck, searching for the card she’d picked. Finally, she said, “It isn’t there.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah,” she said, with a laugh. “How’d you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Find the card!”

  “What card?” he asked.

  “The card I picked!”

  “You mean… the queen of hearts?”

  “Whoaa!” she exclaimed. “How’d you do that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just a trick. And, anyway, I don’t have it.”

  “Yes, you do,” she insisted. “Give it to me! It’s under your T-shirt, or something. It has to be!”

  “But it’s not!”

  “Is!”

  “Isn’t!”

  Getting to her feet, she patted him down—which wasn’t hard, since the only article of clothing he was wearing was a T-shirt. “Then, where is it?” she demanded.

  He thought about it for a few seconds, his face settling into a solemn mask. Finally, he said, “It’s in the bathroom sink.”

  She gave him a skeptical look. “No, really!”

  “It’s in the bathroom sink,” he repeated.

  “No, it’s not! It can’t be!”

  He turned the palms of his hands toward the ceiling and gazed at her with the po-faced innocence of charlatans everywhere. What can I do with this woman? his eyes seemed to ask. Why won’t she believe?

  “Okay,” she said, getting up from the bed. “But stay where you are. Don’t move!”

  “I won’t move.”

  “Don’t get up!”

  “I won’t get up.”

  Keeping her eyes on him, she walked slowly backward toward the bathroom, opened the door, stepped inside and—screamed. A second later, she burst into the bedroom with the queen of hearts in her hand and her eyes as round as saucers. “How did you do that!?” she shouted.

  McBride laughed. “You’d be amazed at what I can do.”

  “But where did you learn how to do that?”
<
br />   “When I was a kid. I read every book anyone ever wrote about Houdini. You want to know the truth? If I hadn’t discovered basketball and girls, I’d probably be a lounge act in Vegas. The Great McBride.” He smiled. Sighed. “I’d forgotten all about it until… just recently.”

  Soon after, they ventured into the shower, where they laved each other with soap, an activity that each of them knew could only end in one way, which it did—with the two of them on the floor, exhausted by each other’s enthusiasm and inventiveness. Finally, Adrienne struggled to her feet, and went to the sink, where she drank long and deep from the tap, cupping the water in her hands. By the time McBride went to join her in bed, she was sound asleep, with the covers pulled up to her chin and a childlike smile on her lips.

  Adrienne was the first to wake up, and when she did, she decided she might as well let McBride sleep. She liked the way he looked in bed, with his right arm thrown up over his head—as if he were swimming through his dreams.

  After she’d dressed and brushed her hair, she wrote a note.

  Hey—I’m at the library checking

  names. Back in a bit.

  Love, A.

  No.

  Not love. It was way too soon for that. She’d never loved anybody—not really, not that way. Maybe last night would be the first of many nights and then again, maybe it wouldn’t. So she tore up the first note and wrote a second, which she left on the counter in the bathroom, next to his toothbrush:

  Hey—

  I’m at the library,

  checking out names. Back by Noon.

  Worker Bee

  She asked at the front desk for directions to the library. The woman gaped at her as if the question were a joke. “‘Lie-berry’!?” she winced. “Sorry, hon’—I got no idea.”

  Using a pay phone in the lobby, Adrienne got the number from 411, called and got directions. As it happened, the library was only three blocks away. Five minutes later, she was there. And an hour after that, she was done.

  McBride was still in bed when she came back. Hearing her come in, he stretched luxuriantly and groaned with pleasure. “Mmmmm. Mmmmmmm. C’mere,” he said.