OMEGA
PATRICK LYNCH
A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Published by Signet, an imprint of Dutton NAL, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.
First Signet Printing, September, 1998 10 987654321
Copyright © Patrick Lynch, 1998 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10014.
This book is dedicated to the staff of the King/Drew Medical Center in South Central Los Angeles
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the following for their generous help with this book.
At the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles: Dr. Arthur Fleming, Chairman, Department of Surgery and Trauma Director, for opening up a Level One trauma center and guiding us through the detail; Dr. Jessie Sherrod, Chief of Infection Control, for her insights into the war against the microbes; Dr. Pat Fullenweider, Deputy Administrator, for explaining how the system works; Cherie Allmond, Nurse Manager for ER, and her colleagues for walking us through the wards. Thanks are also due to Medical Director Edward Savage, Jr.; Dr. Tessie Cleveland, Director of Public Relations and Social Service, and her assistant, Ronda Durrah, for making it all possible in the first place.
Elsewhere: Lieutenant Raymond Peavy and Deputy Ron Lancaster of the Homicide Bureau, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and Dr. Pedro Ortiz, Deputy Medical Examiner, Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, for their instruction on the conduct of homicide investigations; Kay Atwal, associate editor of Pharma Business magazine, for information on the Pharmaceuticals industry and its products; the Public Health Laboratory Service in Colindale, London, for access to their medical data; and, last but not least, Dr. Rupert Negus and Dr. Helena Scott for their help on antisense research.
If we go on abusing antibiotics as we now do, we are faced with a return to a medical dark age, in which antibiotics no longer work against a vast range of infections, some created by antibiotics, some perhaps epidemic and deadly… . Idealists who seek to alert us to the damage done are opposed by an unholy alliance of those who supply and those who demand.
—Professor Graham Dukes Professor of Drug Policy Studies University of Groningen The global Pharmaceuticals business is worth at least $270 billion a year.
—Vikram Sahu Credit Suisse First Boston
PROLOGUE
SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES
Dzilla was at the corner of La Salle and Florence reading his mail-order catalogue when he saw the Shark coming along the heat-buckled sidewalk, a package under his left arm. The Shark was looking preoccupied, his left hand massaging his throat. Dzilla frowned, not really believing what he was seeing. The whole neighborhood was talking about the Shark, about what he and Tyrone Garret had done over in Walnut Park the night before—talking about the drugstore they knocked over and the girl that was blinded. And here was the Shark, dumb pipehead that he was, walking around like everything was cool.
“Yo,” said the Shark. “Wha’s happenin’, Dzil.”
“Mister Tibs,” said Dzilla, dipping his head, but not moving from his perch on the bench. He pointed at the Shark’s throat.
“Look like you swallow’ a hambone, brother.”
“Man”—the Shark rubbed at his throat—“it’s like a … like I’m swallowin’ glass the whole time, like a piece at a time.”
Dzilla tapped the tubed catalogue against his thigh, thinking the throat was not the Shark’s main problem, thinking maybe he should tell him what was going down.
“So where you been, man?” he said, looking away, making nothing of it. Just talking.
“Oh, you know—aroun’.”
“Cos people been aksin for you.”
“Yeah? Like who?”
“Just people.” Dzilla looked back at the Shark, considered him for a second. “You over in Walnut Park last night?”
The Shark got a shifty look and tightened the hold on his package. For the first time Dzilla wondered what he had in there. Thought maybe it was cash from the stickup.
“Who says so?” said the Shark, focusing on Dzilla’s face now, so that his left eye drifted inward slightly.
Dzilla smiled and shook his head. The Shark scored crack from his corner on a regular basis, but the brother’s stupidity always came as a surprise because he had what you would pick out as an intelligent face.
“Man, everybody,” said Dzilla, looking up and down the street, checking on his people. “Whole ‘hoods talkin’ ‘bout what went down last night at that drugstore.”
The Shark left off rubbing at his throat.
“Say what?”
“You sayin’ you didn’t do it?”
“I didn’t do nothing, man.”
Dzilla nodded slowly, pushing out his lips.
“I don’t know, man. That’s not what they’ sayin’. That’s not what I’m hearin’.”
The Shark tried to swallow. It reminded Dzilla of Wile E. Coyote—it was that kind of noisy, cartoon gulp.
“Who’s sayin’? Who’s sayin’ what?” said the Shark, making a face because of the pain.
“Like I say, man, everybody. It’s all over the ‘hood how you and Tyrone Garret shot up this place—blinded some Chicano bitch.”
The Shark started to undo his package, and for a moment Dzilla thought it might be a gun. But then he saw it was cash—cash and what looked like tubes of cream and bottles of pills. It came to Dzilla that the Shark had done the drugstore for the medicine. Not for the money at all. But that couldn’t be true. Nobody was that stupid.
Making a kind of low moaning sound now, the Shark put all his junk on the ground and started to sort through it. Dzilla got up from his bench and walked away, checking the street. Cars were passing every couple of minutes, and he felt nervous standing near to the Shark when any moment some desperados could drive by and gun him down.
“What’s up, man? What you got down there?”
The Shark continued to search.
“I’m … I’m lookin’…”
Then he was back on his feet, breathing noisily through his nose. He shook out a couple of capsules from a small bottle and crammed them into his mouth. For a moment it looked as if he wasn’t going to be able to swallow them—moving his head around, making his Coyote gulps. Then they were gone. Dzilla took the bottle from him and checked out the label.
“Mac-ro-dan-tin. What is this shit, man?”
“Tyrone say it’s what I need for my thing. It’s a antibiotic.”
He took the bottle and dropped it back into the bag.
“Some ser
ious shit,” said the Shark. “Can’t just buy it. You gotta have it prescribe’.”
He took out a couple more bottles and showed them to Dzilla, Dzilla reading to himself, his lips ghosting the difficult names—Achromycin, trimethoprim, oxytetracycline.
“This from the store?” asked Dzilla, looking up.
“Ain’t no other way I’m goin’ to get it.”
Dzilla gave back the last bottle.
“I don’t know, man. You got to be careful with that shit. Can’t just put any old thing inside you.”
But the Shark was rolling up his package now. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
The show over, he looked down at the ground. It was obvious he didn’t know what his next move should be. He didn’t know anything about blinding a girl. The whole thing had gotten out of hand. That was all. Eventually, he looked back up.
“Number one,” he said, “I didn’t shoot nobody.”
Dzilla shrugged as though it made no difference to him.
“Number two, it was fucking Tyrone.”
“But why Walnut Park, man? Stirring up the goddam Chicanos. Next thing you know it ain’t safe on the street no mo’.”
The Shark shrugged in his turn. It was all fucked up. That was all he knew. All he wanted to do was get high—at least that way he could forget about his throat. He took a twenty-dollar bill from his pants and pushed it into Dzilla’s hand. Dzilla turned to a kid standing twenty feet away.
“Gimme two,” he said in a flat businesslike drawl. Without a word the kid jogged off down the street. Dzilla went back to his perch on the bench.
“You say ‘blinded’?” said the Shark. Dzilla watched his runner disappear around the corner.
“That’s what I hear, Mr. Tibs. Kid lost an eye, anyways.”
The Shark shook his head.
“Don’t be calling me that, man.”
The Shark didn’t like Mr. Tibs. It was short for tiburon, a name the Mexicans had given him in school. Tiburon was okay—it actually meant “shark” and sounded kind of deadly—but Mr. Tibs was like a cat or catfood, and the Shark didn’t like it, whatever people said about Sidney Poitier. Dzilla knew that, but like everybody else in the neighborhood, sometimes he forgot.
The Shark tightened his package again. It seemed he couldn’t get it small enough.
“Anyway,” he said, waiting for his crack now, stepping from one foot to the other.
“So … what?” said Dzilla, bringing his bony shoulders up. “Storekeeper had a gun … what?”
The Shark was watching for the runner to reappear.
“Naw,” he said. “Wadn’t like that.”
Then he squared up to Dzilla, planting his factory-fresh Nikes, wanting to get it straight.
“We’re leavin’, you understan’—walkin’ out the fuckin’ store—and Tyrone’s still waving his .45. Job’s done, man; storekeeper don’t even got a tire tool, but Tyrone he don’t wanna put that thing away. He likes it. Make him feel big. We leavin’ and he says to me, ‘Look out, look out. ‘There’s someone coming out of the storeroom or bathroom or whatever it is. And I see it’s this kid. This Chicano bitch. Maybe twelve, thirteen years old. She sees Tyrone, and her eyes like pop out of her fuckin’ head, man. But she ain’t about to do nothin’ ‘cept scream maybe. Tyrone goes and pulls the fuckin’ trigger.”
“Say what? Tyrone shot the kid?”
“No. He’s all gassed up, man—he don’t know what the fuck he’s doing. He pulls the trigger—brings down some ceiling tiles—and then he puts a couple of rounds into this … into this baby food. Baby food, man. Like a stack of these little jars up to the fuckin’ ceiling. Bam, bam! There’s like carrot and shit everywhere, and this kid, this girl, she goes down screaming. We don’t stop to aks wha’s wrong, you understan’. We on our way out.”
Dzilla’s runner reappeared with his KFC carrier bag, pimp rolling his way back towards Dzilla’s bench. Twenty feet away he dropped the bag into a trashcan. The deal was done.
“Anyway,” said the Shark, setting off to get his bottles.
Dzilla called after him, “Word is she lost a eye, man.”
The Shark halted. Turned.
“Yeah, you already say that.”
“They took her into the ‘Brook,” said Dzilla. “And they lookin’ for you, man.”
“Who’s lookin’?”
“Cos they don’t let shit like that slide.”
“Who, man?”
“Locitas. The kid, the kid got hurt? Her sister’s a Locita. You know, one of them girl gangs in Walnut.”
The Shark reached into the trash can and took out his bottles. Slowly. Trying to look cool.
“Well, let her look, man. I ain’t going nowhere. Wasn’t me was carrying the gun. I’ll tell her straight.”
Dzilla saw the Corvette first. It came gliding along the street—black windows and a red eagle on the hood. The look on Dzilla’s face brought the Shark round with a jerk, reaching for his .38. But it was only Tyrone. The door was punched open and he stepped out into flat morning light, smoothing himself down like the pimp he was. He nodded in the direction of Dzilla and then looked back at the Shark.
“Get in the car, man.”
The Shark’s hand came out from under his shirt. Tyrone’s hair was in new dreadlocks, so the Shark knew he’d stopped by to bang Shannel, his whore.
“Where d’you get the wheels, Tyrone?” he asked.
Tyrone slapped the roof, the proud owner.
“Check it out, nigger. Eighty-three Corvette.”
“You hear about the kid?” said the Shark, wanting, as always, to get Tyrone back down to earth.
Again Tyrone looked at Dzilla before fixing on the Shark.
“Why d’you think I come lookin’ for you, man? Word is out. You looking to get shot in the head standin’ around out here.”
He watched the information sink in. Then opened his door.
“Now, you goin’ or stayin’?” he said.
They drove back down La Salle to 79th Street, where they took a right, Tyrone explaining about this motel he knew by the airport, the Shark thinking about all the girl gangs that had sprung up in the city, how it didn’t used to be that way—thinking also about Tyrone and how he wasn’t going to run with him anymore because he was a stickup-artist, sneaker-dealing, crackhead motherfucker.
The problem was the Shark was in the car now and they were making their getaway. He was too scared of Tyrone to just tell him, “Stop the car, let me out.” He had to find some kind of excuse. Then it came to him.
He slapped his hand against the dash.
“Pull over, man.”
Tyrone’s head jerked round.
“I said, stop the car.”
Tyrone pulled over to the side of the road at the next light. Twisting round, he lay his left arm along the back of the seat. He was breathing heavily and the Shark could see that he was real pissed.
“So…”—Tyrone shrugged—“what’s the problem? You got to take a pee? What?”
“Gotta find me a drugstore,” said the Shark.
Tyrone pushed back against the door.
“You shittin’ me, brother? Tha’s how we got into this mess in the first place.”
“No, man. I gotta aks me some questions.”
“You gotta what?”
The Shark gave his bag of medicines a shake.
” ‘Bout the drugs, man. I been takin’ all kinds of shit, and Dzilla says maybe I should think twice.”
He tried to get the concern into his face.
“For my throat, man.”
Tyrone opened and closed his mouth. He looked as if he was going to blow his top.
“Fuck Dzilla, man—fuck your throat.”
He wrenched the car into drive. But the Shark grabbed the wheel.
“I’m serious, Tyrone. I got this throat, man. You don’t believe me, take a look.”
He opened his mouth as wide as he could. Tyrone turned, looking away.
“
Get out of here, man. I don’t wanna be lookin’ into that motherfucker.”
The Shark pulled out the Macrodantin.
“I been takin’ these, man—like you said—but maybe they’ no good for me.”
Tyrone reached across and snatched at the bag. He rummaged around inside.
“Ain’t you got no instructions, man … something…? I don’t know, on the bottle or on the … on the package.”
“Tyrone, I just grabbed this stuff in the drugstore. This shit’s all loose. There ain’t no instructions. There ain’t no package.”
Tyrone looked the Shark in the eye, and for a moment the Shark thought Tyrone was going to see that he was just looking for a way out. But then he checked the rearview mirror and pushed out a big sigh.
“Shark, everybody in the ‘hood knows we did that drugstore. Just a question of time before the po—lice come looking for our ass.” He looked across at the sidewalk. “That’s if the motherfuckin’ Locita bitches don’t nail us first.”
“I just wanna aks a few questions, man. Tha’s all.”
Tyrone took his hands off the wheel.
“You step out of that door, I’m gonna leave you here.”
The Shark met Tyrone’s stare. Then he pulled on the door handle.
He walked north on Western, the package under his arm, waiting to hear the shriek of Tyrone’s wheels. About fifty yards up he found an old-fashioned pharmacy and paused in the doorway to look back down the avenue. The Corvette was still there. Waiting. Tyrone having second thoughts about letting a key witness to the shooting just walk away. The Shark considered making a run for the next cross street. Then he thought that maybe there was a back way through the store.
Inside the shop he was confronted by a nervous-looking Indian guy standing behind a counter.
The Shark touched his throat.
“Yeah, I jus’ wanted to aks you a question,” he said, his eyes roving around for a way out. He looked down at the bottle in his left hand and then showed it to the Indian.
“My doctor prescribe’ these here capsules for my throat, and I’m worried that maybe they ain’t the right thing. You understan’ what I’m saying?”
The Indian considered the bottle for a moment, and then handed it back. He looked a little confused.
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