The door was ajar. Ford saw gloved hands, a glimpse of denim, the top of a jogging suit, the hood pulled up, saw papers and files being thrust into a black plastic sack.
He stepped back. It sounded as though there was only one of them. He would wait for the guy to leave, then hit him from behind at the base of the skull. He would wait at the end of the passage, around the corner, aim for the occipital bone. A bruise would be enough to render him unconscious, so long as he wasn’t high on something. No need for a fracture. Ford turned, anxious to get back, to get in position before the guy was finished. He didn’t see anyone behind him until it was too late.
The effect of the pepper spray was instant. It felt as if his eyes were on fire, melting in their sockets. The pain was unbelievable. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. He tried to cry out, dropping to his knees, choking, gasping for breath.
The last thing he sensed before he blacked out was somebody barging past him, knocking him on his face.
4
“Breathe, breathe. Just try to…”
Ford pulled hard, air rasping in his seared throat.
“That’s right. In and out. Try to fill your lungs.”
It sounded like Helen’s voice. He squinted up at the face looming over him but could see nothing through his streaming eyes.
“Hel…?”
“Don’t try to speak. Breathe.”
“You’re … You’re telling…”
Ford coughed, retched. He blinked the tears from his eyes, but they filled again immediately.
It was ten minutes before he could get to his feet.
Helen took him through to the kitchen and pressed a tumbler of cold water into his hand, watching as he drank thirstily, tumbler after tumbler. Finally he could make out her worried face.
“I got nervous waiting in the car,” she said. “So I decided to come up. What the hell happened?”
Ford refilled the tumbler under the faucet. His hand was shaking, and it was painful to swallow.
“Jesus. I thought… I thought I was going to die. I think it was pepper spray. LAPD uses it. Jesus.” He took another gulp of water. “I came in … The door was open, so I just came in. Helen, there was somebody in here. I saw them stuffing papers, documents into a bag.”
“And they zapped you with the spray?”
“No. I was waiting for them to come out of that”—he gestured towards the doorway—“that room down there. Then somebody else jumped me from behind.”
“My God. Did you get a look at him?”
Ford shook his head.
“No … no, I … Like I said. I was looking at this guy and the next thing I know my eyes are on fire and I can’t breathe.”
“Poor baby.” She pushed the hair from his forehead. “I think if you wash your eyes with water, it might help.”
When Ford came out of the bathroom five minutes later, he found Helen standing by the window in the huge living room, looking out into the gardens. Tall firs dipped and swayed in the wind, throwing shadows across a landscape of winding paths, fountains, and flowering shrubs.
Ford walked over to the answering machine. The red light was no longer flashing.
“I already listened to it,” Helen said. “There’s nothing. Just the sound of someone hanging up.”
“Pity,” said Ford. He looked around the room. “Can you believe this place? Must be worth a couple of million, at least.”
“Maybe he inherited some money.”
“Right,” said Ford, making a wry mouth. “He just inherited a couple of million and sank it in a superdeluxe condo he doesn’t use. I mean, there’s nothing here. No furniture, no pictures, nothing.”
“It could have been an investment. Palisades came through the earthquake more or less untouched. Maybe he got burned on the stock market, decided to switch into real estate.”
“I don’t know.” Ford looked away, shaking his head. “I don’t think so somehow.”
Helen walked through to the study. Ford could see that she was buzzing with suppressed excitement. He followed her, standing in the doorway, still rubbing at his throat.
There were filing cabinets, heaps of books, a desk, a lamp. Papers and floppy disk covers were strewn all over the floor, and something, a chart maybe, had been ripped from a bulletin board. Scraps of paper were still snagged on the pushpins.
“Well, even if he wasn’t living here, he was using it for work,” said Ford.
“Yeah, but why? Why not work at home?”
“Wait a second. Those Homicide cops told me Novak had been beefing up his home security. Maybe he was doing something … I don’t know, something he wanted to keep secret. He’d stand a better chance in a modern building than in some rickety old house in Topanga.”
“Well, if that was the reason, it didn’t exactly work out. My guess is whoever broke in must have known what they were looking for. I don’t think your typical thief is interested in this kind of material.”
She took a book down from a stack on the shelves and gave a low whistle.
“Look at this stuff: National Institutes of Health Study on Antibiotic Resistance Worldwide. Sanders and Sanders—Beta-Lactam Resistance in Gram-Negative Bacteria: Global Trends and Clinical Impact.”
“How about this?” said Ford, flipping through another stack. “Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus in U.S. Hospitals 1975-1991, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. Cohen—Epidemiology of Drug Resistance: Implication for a Post Antimicrobial Era. He was really on top of this.”
“But why? What was he trying to do up here?” Helen put down the book she was holding.
“What’s that?”
She was pointing to a map that had been taped to a bare wall. In fact, it was four large-scale maps stapled together showing Los Angeles and its neighboring areas, going up as far as Kern County and south to San Diego. They crossed the room to take a closer look. Cotton threads radiated from a galaxy of colored pins. All around the map were tiny cramped notes that gave dates and locations followed by three-digit numbers.
“An epidemiological study?” said Helen, touching a finger to her lips.
“One time when we spoke on the phone, he asked me about an etiologic agent—said he was looking at a descriptive epidemiology sheet. Maybe the staph cases at the Willowbrook…” Ford peered closely at the South Central area. There they were: not the staph, but the pneumoniae cases. The Willowbrook was marked with a red pin. Following a cotton thread out to a scrap of paper, Ford read “Lynwood, Vernon, and Huntingdon Park.” Against each location, there was a date and then a number. “It’s all here,” he said. “What do you think the numbers refer to?”
“Files, maybe.” Helen turned and looked at the room. “In those cabinets. Or maybe on the computer.”
Ford continued to look at the map.
“There are cases going back nearly ten years here, if these numbers are dates, I mean. Look, ‘Loma Alta Pasadena, 8/1987. r. 143. Coronado Street, Placentia, 5/1988. r. 481,’ and then a question mark in brackets. Why … Why was he going to all this trouble?”
“We need to find out what the numbers refer to. There’s going to be a lot more detail there.”
They started with the filing cabinets. But whoever Ford had surprised had got there first. The cabinets had been all but stripped. Of the documents that remained, the latest cases dated from 1983. Either the intruder had taken everything after that date, or Novak had started to put his data onto computer at that time.
The computer was a chunky Compaq with floppy disk and CD-ROM ports. Helen flipped on the machine, but after several minutes of keying in instructions, pushed back from the desk in frustration.
“I think someone’s tampered with it.”
Ford took Helen’s place in the cheap swivel chair. But it was no use. They could get the operating system up, but as soon as they tried to access any of the utilities, the whole system crashed.
“He must have fed in a virus or something. Damn it!” He slammed his fist
against the table. Papers slid to the floor. “We’re so close to…”
Helen was watching Ford from behind.
“To what?”
“I don’t know. But this has to mean something—all this … all this stuff.” Ford looked around at the office with all its teeming detail and information. “What the hell was he doing?”
He pushed a hand back through his hair.
“Okay, okay. Let’s be … Let’s try to be logical.”
He got up from the desk. Helen watched him as he walked back and forth.
“Let’s start with what we know about him,” said Ford. “He came to me at the conference. He was interested in my paper. He was interested in the cases at the Willowbrook. Okay. He was putting the data into his … into his study. He was doing an epidemiological study of resistance cases in the area. He’s been doing it for a while. Maybe as far back as … it doesn’t have to go right back to the first cases, but my guess is he’s been doing it for a long time. Maybe even since he left Helical.”
He stopped pacing and looked back at Helen.
“You say he just dropped out of the picture after Stern bought Helical?”
“As far as I know. He didn’t take any other position.”
“And that was in…?”
“Ninety-two.”
“Okay. So let’s say he’s been doing this for a few years, at least. Following all the specialist press, getting as much detail on cases as he can without actually being inside the CDC. And he’s worried about somebody else finding out what he’s been doing, whatever it is he’s trying to prove.”
He stopped for a moment. Thinking about it didn’t help. It was just giving him a headache.
“So what was he trying to prove? I just can’t see … Wait.”
He started pacing again. Helen stayed where she was, watching him go back and forth, a serious, almost hostile, look on her face. She wanted to get out of there.
“He’s in touch with a group of people. The people he referred to as ‘the others’ when we spoke on the phone. No, that’s not right. What did he say to me? ‘I have to talk with … some people.’ Yes, that’s what he said. ‘Some people.’ He said it was a matter of professional etiquette, of protocols. I remember thinking he was some kind of Freemason, you know? Some kind of lodge member.”
“Right,” said Helen with cynical emphasis. “Freemasons.”
“Well, who—?”
“All I know is, we’re sitting in the apartment of a man who has just been choked to death. We’re sitting here, having broken in—I mean that’s the way the police would read it—with the lights on. I feel kind of vulnerable.”
Ford looked at Helen’s tired face.
“Helen, I can’t leave here until I find something. I don’t know … some kind of … There has to be something.”
He crossed the room and leaned against the map, staring at the scores of entries. There was no discernible pattern. No particular spread. He recognized the names of a number of retirement homes in the Beverly Hills area. Old people. People with depleted immune systems. There were drug rehab facilities too. And hospitals—public ones, private ones: Harbor USC, La Pacifica, Southwestern Healthcare Corp.
“Helen, take a look at this. There are nine, ten, at least a dozen sets of references here from this year, from this summer. If these are resistance cases, nearly half of them have cropped up during the past two or three months.”
Helen came over and stared at the map, scrutinizing the notes down each side.
“But they’ve nearly all got question marks beside them.
Looks to me like they’re only possible resistance cases. It’s just a hypothesis, Marcus.”
“A hypothesis that says—Jesus, Helen—this thing’s all over the place. It isn’t just the Willowbrook. It was never just the Willowbrook. It’s been spreading right through the city.”
“Oh, come on, Marcus. It can’t be that bad. I mean if a hospital had a rash of resistance cases, why wouldn’t they tell everyone? Why would they just keep quiet about it?”
“It isn’t always that simple, Helen. People come in sick from some other disease or with some terrible wound. It isn’t always easy to tell what exactly kills them in the end. Besides, if you were running a private hospital, would you want the whole world knowing you’d had a staph outbreak among your patients? What good would it do you?”
“All right, all right. Suppose Novak was right. The problem’s bigger than we realized. I still don’t see how that helps us. I don’t see how it explains anything.” She sighed and sat down behind the desk.
Ford studied the map once more, running his fingers over the stiff paper. At Box Springs Mountain Park in East LA there was a fold in the map that caused the heavy paper to bulge, making it difficult to read the scribbled note there. Ford pressed it flat, hoping to see better.
“Wait a minute.”
Helen turned in the chair.
“What?”
“There’s something here. Underneath.”
Helen stood up, but she didn’t move from where she was.
Ford turned back to the map and, detaching one of the taped corners, pulled it away from the wall. Pins fell. Scribbled notes fluttered to the floor. He had the terrible feeling he was destroying any chance of reconstructing Novak’s work.
Then he saw the photograph.
It was in a beechwood frame, the frame itself fixed to the wall with brass screws. A group of maybe ten men smiled out of the picture in oddly-saturated color. Most of them were in shirtsleeves. Written at the bottom of the picture were the words Helical, January 1992.
Helen had joined him at the wall. Ford could feel her warm breath on his neck.
“It’s just a photograph,” she said, sounding almost relieved.
Ford stared at the three rows of faces. There was Novak, sitting down in the front row, an empty wine glass in his hand. Next to him was a thin guy with a crew cut. They had been celebrating. But what?
“It’s the Helical team,” said Ford, blankly.
“Novak, Finegold.” Helen pointed. “That’s Walter Auerbach. There’s Lewis Spierenberg just behind Novak. Scott Griffen. They’re all there. Novak was part of the Helical team. We already knew that.”
“It’s the only picture,” said Ford reflectively. “The only picture in the whole apartment. And he’s gone to the trouble of fixing it to the wall with brass fittings.”
He looked at Helen. Nervous exhaustion and extreme anxiety plucked at the corner of her right eye.
“They’re all holding wine glasses. It’s a celebration, Helen. What were they celebrating in January 1992?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they had just finished some important project.”
Ford smiled.
“Omega, maybe. Maybe they’d just…”
Helen was already turning away. Ford went after her, taking hold of her by the arm.
“Maybe they had just finished some preliminary trials.”
She looked up into his eyes.
“Marcus, we’ve been through all this. Stern bought Helical, remember? Omega was just an idea, a good one maybe, but just an idea. It never really got off the drawing board.”
“So how come Novak has just been killed? How come somebody broke into his apartment?”
“Look, Marcus, we’re standing in a multi-million dollar condo that belongs to a dead man. We don’t know what he was up to. Maybe he just got mixed up in some dodgey real estate deal, borrowed money from the wrong people and paid the price. Isn’t that the simplest explanation?”
Ford was no longer listening. He stared at the photograph.
“Helen, what if the people he wanted to talk to were the other members of the old Helical team?”
“What?”
“When I spoke to him on the phone, he said he had to talk to some people. Maybe it was the guys from Helical.” He turned to her.
“I don’t see what difference it makes.”
She put her hands flat on his chest.
“Marcus, we have to get out of here. The police could turn up here any—”
They both froze, staring at each other wide-eyed. The telephone was ringing.
Ford hurried back down the corridor towards the main room. The phone kept ringing.
“Don’t answer it!” said Helen. But Ford was already there.
He picked up the phone on the ninth ring.
“Hello?”
Helen came after him. She was shaking her head, willing him to put the phone down. Ford pressed his ear against the handset. A man’s voice. Out of breath. Annoyed. A man who called himself Scott, a man who thought he was Novak.
“Jesus Christ, Chuck, I’ve been trying to reach you all day. I’m fed up with hearing your voice on that damned answering machine.” There was a long rasping sigh, and then the sound of a cigarette being lit. Ford was about to say something—he didn’t know what—when the man went on. “Anyway, I’ve talked to the others. They’ve all been contacted, just like I thought. And the message is loud and clear: as things stand, the protocol will not be invoked. That’s the decision. And we’re all expected to abide by it. They’re watching, Charles. So if you’re still planning to shortcircuit the system, you can count me out, okay? Charles? Charles, are you there?”
Ford gripped the phone, tried to think of something. He felt the blood pulsing in his temples. All he could blurt out was—“Yes.”
What else could he say?
There was an agonizing pause. Ford thought he heard the man draw on his cigarette. Then the line went dead.
Ford put the phone back down. Helen was on her knees beside him, a document trembling in her right hand, her left hand still pressed against her mouth.
“Who was it? What did they say?” she said, her voice shrunk to a whisper.
“He said his name was … Scott.”
“Scott?”
“Yes. I’m sure I’ve … Wait a minute, Helen. The photo. It was Scott Griffen. Griffen, right?”
“Could be. What did he say?”
“He thought I was Novak. He said he’d talked to the others about this … this decision. About some protocol. ‘We’re all expected to abide by it,’ he said.”
“Abide by it…” Helen repeated the words, trying to make them fit somehow.
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