Miracle Cure

by Coben, Harlan

  His head ached horribly. The pressure mounted until he was sure something was going to burst through his forehead. Suddenly, everything was falling apart and Eric was not sure what to do.

  Do whatever is necessary . . .

  He walked purposefully toward the lab room. Harvey, he knew, was downstairs, injecting Kiel Davis with SR1. Then Harv had rounds. He would not be on the third floor for some time now.

  It was safe.

  Eric crossed the room and unlocked his private file. Once again he slipped open the bottom drawer and withdrew the blood samples. He carefully lifted them free and placed them on the table. Then he examined them.

  Nothing yet.

  He sighed. Well, that was to be expected. The results would not be in for a little while yet. Thinking he could see something now had been little more than wishful thinking on his part. He would just have to be patient.

  With not-so-steady hands, Eric returned the samples to the drawer, locked it, and went back to work.

  MAX and Colonel T (as he liked to be called) sat in a taxi on Rama IV Road not too far from Patpong. Through the static of the car radio, a voice blurted out something unintelligible to Max. Colonel T picked up the receiver and blurted back something equally unintelligible.

  “Camron has left the bar,” the colonel explained. “He hired one of our tuk-tuks.”

  “Tuk-tuks?”

  “Think of it as a taxi.”

  Max nodded. “Then I guess it’s showtime.”

  “I will set up tuk-tuks wherever he is dropped off. We will try to stall him if he returns before you have a chance to free Mr. Silverman, but there is no guarantee.”

  “I understand.”

  “You will signal us if the room has an explosive device?”

  “I’ll raise and lower the shade,” Max said. “If I give you the signal, don’t try to stop him. He might blow the place sky-high.”

  The colonel nodded. “And you have the layout memorized?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then good luck.”

  “Thanks.” Knots began to form in Max’s stomach. “One last question.”

  “Yes?”

  “How do I go about hiring a prostitute?”

  The colonel smiled. “Sit at the bar and hold up a tendollar bill, Lieutenant. The rest will take care of itself.”

  SARA woke up late. For a brief moment she blindly reached out for Michael and clawed at the pillow before she remembered that he would not be there. Then she withdrew her hand and began to get ready to visit Harvey.

  An hour later she knocked lightly on the door to Harvey’s office and peeked in. “Can I come in?”

  He looked up from his desk. He smiled at her in a tired way and took off his reading glasses. “Of course.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt.”

  “No,” he said, “you’re not interrupting. I need a break anyway.”

  “When was the last time you got some sleep?” she asked.

  “Oh, let’s see. What year is it?”

  “You look awful.”

  He nodded, still smiling. “I’ve seen you look better too.”

  She limped toward the wooden chair in front of his desk and sat down. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the poster of Michael that Harvey had plastered on the wall behind him. Seeing his image soaring to the basket was oddly comforting. She adjusted her spectacles and stared for a few more moments, watching him glide in midair, seeing the mask of concentration that covered his face. Then she said, “I have something to tell you. Something involving my father and Reverend Sanders.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Oh?”

  “You are not going to like it.”

  “When something involves your father and Sanders, I rarely do. What is it, Sara?”

  She told him everything. Harvey’s mouth remained still while she spoke but his body language was another matter. It altered completely. His fists slowly closed and then tightened to the point where the knuckles turned white. His face grew scarlet, his features twisting in smoldering anger.

  “Sons of bitches!” Harvey shouted at long last. “Those ignorant, bigoted bastards!”

  Sara said nothing.

  Harvey stood up, his rage mounting with each passing second. “How could I have been so stupid? I knew it and I didn’t do a goddamn thing. Of course Markey was working for them, the callous son of a bitch.” He shook his head. “Sanders and Jenkins, I expected it from—but your father, Sara—he calls himself a man of medicine. A healer. Yet he joined forces with them. What kind of man is he?”

  Her voice was soft. “I don’t know.”

  “They’re going to pay. The world is going to know what they did.” His shoulders slumped, and the tired aura surrounded him again. “It’s a constant battle, Sara. It never ends. Bigots, homophobes, naive people. AIDS has so many strikes against it, I sometimes wonder if we will ever be able to rid the world of it.”

  He moved back to his chair and sat down heavily. He spun the chair one hundred eighty degrees and stared at the photograph of his brother. “Do you remember when the AIDS scare first began?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “There was talk of locking the carriers in concentration camps, remember? There was even talk of quarantining all known homosexuals. Nazi tactics, Sara. That’s what it started with. You don’t hear much talk about that now, but in a way the threat to gays is greater now than ever.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Guys like Jerry Falwell and Ernest Sanders have become more subtle now. They have the same bigoted aim, but they take a different approach. And it works. People fall for it. We are bombarded by arguments that say AIDS will never become an epidemic in the heterosexual community. Respected doctors like your father say it every day. But the larger question is not the severity with which AIDS will strike the heterosexual community, but why we feel it is necessary to argue the point so vehemently.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Harvey’s voice was both passionate and pained. “Okay, let’s assume for a moment it is true. It’s not. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume your father is right and that AIDS will be a true epidemic only amongst homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers. So what? If your father and his cohorts are not being discriminatory, as they claim, why should it matter what segment of the population is being killed by the virus? If we found out that AIDS was only killing little girls between the ages of five and twelve, would someone dare come out and say, ‘Don’t worry. It won’t affect you’? Of course not. Homophobia fuels these people, Sara. It’s a battle we constantly wage. The tune has changed but the song is still the same.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We scrape and claw and battle back. We do everything we can to fight them. We go to the media and destroy them.”

  “But it might make them panic. If they are holding Michael . . .”

  He nodded, stepped back. “I see what you are saying. Have you told Lieutenant Bernstein?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not to do anything until he gets back.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In Bangkok.”

  “What is he doing there?”

  “He said he might have a lead on something.”

  “Christ, I hope so. We could use a break.” Harvey leaned forward. “So what are we supposed to do in the meantime? Sit around and let the murderers stay free?”

  “Max isn’t so sure that Sanders is behind the murders or the kidnapping.”

  “Then who?”

  “He doesn’t know. He just said he has his doubts.”

  “And what about you, Sara? Do you have your doubts?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “Well, it makes sense to me,” Harvey said. “Sanders kidnapped Michael to stall the clinic, plain and simple. Markey knew that I was the only person who had worked on Michael—”

  “And Eric.”

  Confusion crossed Harvey’s
face for a brief moment. “No, Sara. I mean, as far as having physical contact with the patient. I gave Michael all his SR1 injections. I always drew his blood. I—”

  “Eric took his blood too.”

  Harvey stopped. “When?”

  “I don’t know. A day or two before he was kidnapped.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. I was right there. Is that a problem?”

  He shook his head. “It’s just weird,” he said slowly. “I left strict instructions for no one to do any lab work or give any medication to Michael except me.”

  “Maybe he didn’t see them,” Sara said. “Or maybe he forgot.”

  “Maybe,” Harvey agreed, but he did not sound convinced.

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I will,” he said, “as soon as he gets back.” Harvey looked up and tried to smile reassuringly. He failed. “Don’t look at me like that, Sara. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “HEY, Joe, you want live sex show? Pea shooting contest, huh? Sound good, Joe? Pea shooting contest?”

  “Pea shooting contest?” Max repeated.

  “Yeah, sure, Joe. You like pea shooting contest. She aim straw and bust balloon. Guess what she blows with. Huh, Joe?”

  Max, no stranger to quirky sexual situations, was not sure he understood what the Thai teenager was talking about. He also wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Years ago, before he had met Lenny, Max and a couple of friends spent a week in Amsterdam’s red-light district. They had seen a show where a woman projected various objects across a room using a certain part of her anatomy. Admittedly, most people would consider Max’s sexual orientation bizarre, but he failed to see the show’s eroticism no matter which particular sexual persuasion you happened to follow. More like watching an amazing pet trick or a strange magic show.

  “What you say, Joe? You want nice woman. Make your head spin all the way around.”

  An interesting image. “Which head?”

  “Huh, Joe?”

  “Never mind. No, thanks.”

  He forced his way through the clusters of sex merchants, keeping his eye on the pink neon sign that read “Eager Beaver.” Two men stood at the door. The smaller man greeted Max with a wide smile and a firm handshake; the larger greeted him with a menacing glare. Mutt and Jeff.

  “Welcome,” the little one shouted above the loud disco music. “Please come in. You find everything you want here. No cover charge.”

  “Thanks.”

  Max ducked past the sumo-sized doorman and entered the Eager Beaver. The interior decorator must have worked on the original Dating Game. Very sixties. Very go-go-bar-like. Mod Squad decor. Psychedelic, multicolored lights.

  The music was strictly Saturday Night Fever. The singer screamed about a burning, burning disco inferno. Despite the fast beat, the topless women (a string bikini bottom made them topless rather than fully naked) danced slowly on the bar, the same steps over and over again. Max stared at their faces, but none looked back. Each wore a bored expression—dead, unseeing eyes that lit up only when money was jammed into their crotches.

  Michael is in here somewhere . . .

  “Swing it, baby!” a man yelled.

  The girl smiled and obliged. She got 100 Thai baht (four dollars) for her trouble. She lowered herself toward the man, enticing him to add to her booty, but he waved her off.

  The crowd was a mix. Hard-core hard-ups. Curious tourists. Married couples. Thais, Japanese, Americans, Italians, Germans, Australians—a horny United Nations. In a corner, people cheered a sexual act that defied both belief and biological realities. Ripley’s, Max thought. Or even Guinness. Two naked women were on their hands and knees, one Asian, one black. They were—Jesus, he couldn’t believe it—shooting bananas across the room with their vaginas. Bananas, for chrissake. A man marked the spot where they landed, measuring the distance traveled like he was working the discus toss at the Olympics. Another man kept loading their vaginas with bananas, as though the two women were human grenade launchers. Banana after banana rocketed across the room to the roar of the crowd.

  Max turned away.

  Michael is close by . . .

  He sat at the bar in a seat that spun all the way around. Max liked it and began to twirl himself like a kid at a diner. Nearly two seconds passed before a Thai girl approached him, dressed in Classical American Hooker Drag. Tank top with satin shorts that not only rode up the crotch but actually dug a deeper crevice. The whores varied in age, but this one looked like she had just gotten a hold of Mommy’s makeup case.

  “Hi,” she said.

  She was no more than fifteen and had smooth, beautiful skin. Her looks were startling fresh and engaging, in the baby-doll mode so many men found attractive.

  “Hi.”

  Her smile was wide, bright, and somehow cunning. “You buy me drink?”

  “Why not? What would you like?”

  “What you having?”

  “Vodka on the rocks.”

  “I have same, please.”

  Max signaled the bartender and gave him the order. The bill came to twelve dollars—five dollars for his drink, seven for the girl’s. Before Max could protest, the bartender pointed to the sign. “Beer—$3 Liquor—$5 Hostess Drinks—$7.”

  Hostess?

  “What your name?” she asked.

  “Max.”

  “Nice name. You live in America, Max?”

  He began to twist his hair around his finger. “Yes.”

  “Nice place, no?”

  “I like it.”

  “How come you always moving, Max?”

  “We call it fidgeting.”

  “How come you always fidgeting, Max?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You in Bangkok on business or pleasure?”

  Max tried to smile, tried to get into the role of adventurous womanizer. It wasn’t him. “A little of both, if you get my meaning.” He winked pitifully.

  Jesus.

  Her tiny hand found its way to his leg. “You like me, Max?” She licked the air as though it were an ice-cream cone and leaned forward. Her eyes burrowed into his until he had to turn away.

  “Very much.”

  “How much pleasure you want, Max?”

  “A hundred dollars’ worth,” he said, “to start.”

  She nodded. “What you like?”

  Max cleared his throat. “The Kink Room.”

  She froze. “You been here before, Max?”

  “No. A friend told me about it.”

  She nodded again, more professional now. “Kink Room expensive.”

  “I can pay.”

  Yet another nod. Her hand was about a millimeter away from his groin now. Her very long, red-painted fingernails skimmed the surface of his pants with a feathery stroke. Surprisingly, something close to arousal crept in. Her touch was soothing, relaxing. It felt frighteningly good—sort of strange for a man who usually got excited by male bodybuilders. Not that Max had never been with women. He had. He just preferred men, that’s all.

  She moved her hand away. “Pay man over there, Max, and then we go upstairs. We have much fun together. I tear you whole world apart.”

  He nodded, wondering if that was better than having his head spin all the way around. Tough choice.

  He bit down on a little piece of skin hanging off his fingertip and did as he was instructed. The young pimp looked like a welterweight contender—small, muscular, without an ounce of body fat.

  “How kinky you want it?”

  “Very.”

  “You sure you want Kink Room?” the pimp asked. “Very expensive. Very dangerous.”

  “I’m sure. How much?”

  “Two hundred dollars for entrance. But if you want to use red wall, extra. Much extra. You let me know, okay?”

  The red wall?

  After a few moments of negotiating, they settled on a price tag of $175.

  Max paid the money. Immediately, the Thai girl appeared at his side and led him up
the stairs, whispering the usual whore expressions about what fun they were going to have and what a hunk he was.

  “What is your name?” he interrupted her.

  “Bambi.”

  A traditional Thai name.

  “How old are you?”

  “Old enough.”

  “For what?”

  Again, the ice-cream-cone lick. “To make you happy.”

  “Why do you do this, Bambi?”

  “Do what?”

  The oppressive heat was even worse here than downstairs. They were in the darkened hallway now, the painting chipped, the lighting nearly nonexistent. Max shuddered as they passed the door in the corner with a “Do Not Enter” sign stapled to it. He managed not to hesitate. “Prostitute yourself.”

  She looked at him. “Why?”

  “Just asking. You seem like an intelligent—”

  For a brief moment the smile disappeared and he could see the naked hatred underneath it. “You going to take me away from all this, Max?” A touch of scorn had slipped into her voice. But then the moment was over. Like a candle that had flickered, the smile came back and seemed to brighten. “Come,” she said. “I will be your fantasy. Then you go home happy, okay?”

  She opened the door. The first thing that hit him was the odor. Some sort of cherry room freshener had been sprayed in heavy doses, trying to conceal the still unmistakably foul smell of . . . of sleaze. Sleaze permeated every part of the room, as if the very acts had nestled into the walls like thousands of tiny cockroaches, rotting the foundations. Max shivered.

  Where did his unease come from? he wondered. He had been in bathhouses, even heavy-duty mass orgies, and yet something about this room intimidated him. There was just something so . . . so blatantly dehumanizing about it.

  As far as the physical layout, well, suffice to say that room was aptly named the Kink Room. On one wall hung dildos, lots of them, of shapes and sizes that boggled the imagination. Some were barely phallic. Whips, chains, handcuffs, ropes, straitjackets, leather masks, bondage and submission devices of all sorts covered shelves on his left. And then straight ahead, on a red-colored wall . . . He walked over to get a closer look.