OMEGA

by Patrick Lynch

  Ford raced back up the freeway, stopping by his house on the way to Century City. Somewhere in the garage was a gun. It had been Carolyn’s. Their first summer in LA, a friend of hers had been mugged downtown, and Carolyn had gone right out and bought one without even consulting him. They’d had a fight about it. Ford had wanted her to take it back. He knew exactly what guns could do to flesh, to bone. And he knew that people who owned them were more likely to end up shot. “I won’t have that thing in the house,” he remembered saying. And so, in the end, they’d compromised on the garage. Carolyn could keep her gun so long as it was well out of reach.

  He found the box at the back of the metal cabinet, behind an old portable heater and a jumble of tire tools. Brown cardboard, it was covered in dirt with a big smear of grease across the top. The make and model was printed in plain black type along the side: sig-sauer 220 .38 cal. He yanked off the lid. The Sig lay cushioned in foam. Despite seven years of neglect, it looked as pristine as the day Carolyn had bought it, the metal smooth and hard, like polished black glass. It felt heavy in his hand, powerful. Cheap at two hundred dollars. “Your basic automatic,” the guy in the shop had told Carolyn.

  The clip lay beneath the trigger, already loaded with its nine rounds. Ford snapped it into place, yanked the slide, took aim at his shadow on the back of the garage door, and tried to imagine himself pulling the trigger.

  He drove back up to Pico and then headed north on Avenue of the Stars, his heart thumping hard. He had already decided what had to happen next, but that didn’t make his part in it any easier. What it came down to was talking to Griffen. If anybody knew what Novak had been up to, he knew, and if anything was going to help Sunny…

  He flipped on the radio, tried to breathe deeply, tried to slow his heart. He didn’t want to think of Sunny’s chances, about his chances—about the odds stacked against them.

  Griffen was the next step. Not a step forward necessarily, but a step, an alternative to standing still, to waiting for bad news. He was going to ask the man a couple of questions, questions which, he realized, Griffen might not want to answer. If the money was as big as Helen had said, if the stakes were high enough to warrant Novak’s execution, if Griffen had learned by now of Novak’s death, then he might not want to cooperate.

  That was what the gun was for. If Griffen didn’t want to help, Ford intended to put the gun between his eyes, make him talk. Or maybe in his mouth—let the guy taste the cold metal. Ford checked his own tired eyes in the rearview mirror. Two days without a shave, and a week without proper sleep had made him look like a person who could pull a trigger. He just had to hope that Griffen would believe in the possibility.

  Fender to fender, the late afternoon traffic drifted forward through smoggy dusk. It seemed to take forever before Century City shimmered into view.

  Ford pulled into the short-stay parking lot off Constellation Boulevard and sat looking at No. 1 Century Plaza, the forty-story tower in which Apex had its main offices. He had ten free minutes before the meter at the gate started to run. After that time he would be losing $2.50 every sixty seconds—expensive parking even for Century City. But despite the niggling time pressure, he found he was unable to move immediately.

  He sat for a long time looking at the paper bag he had used to hide the .38. His heart was still pounding, and despite the airconditioning, he felt hot and clammy. He put his hand inside the bag—carefully, as though expecting to be bitten—then slowly withdrew the gun, feeling again its coldness and weight. Looking at it, his heart seemed to grow heavy, to sink. He knew there was no way he was going to be able to put it against a man’s head, let alone shove it in his mouth. Then, just as clearly, he realized there was absolutely no question of driving away, of going home. He pressed his eyes shut—wished he could talk to Helen, could let her know what he had in mind. There was always the possibility that she had already found something out. But why hadn’t she called? Why hadn’t she left a message on his answering machine? Surely she would have found out about Griffen by now. After all, all you had to do was look in the Apex brochure.

  But there was no time to get into that now. He had to focus. He considered the gun in his hand as though it were part of a puzzle. He could always put the safety catch on.

  The problem with that was Griffen might know enough about guns to see it. He would call security. It would all be over. For him. For Sunny.

  Then Ford had an idea. It was so simple, so stupid it made him smile.

  He dropped the magazine out of the grip and removed the bullets one by one, letting them fall into the paper bag. Then he snapped the magazine back into place. The gun looked exactly the same, but it was different now, no longer an instrument of destruction. Now he could be as threatening as he wanted—nobody was going to get hurt. Leaning forward, he pushed the gun down the back of his pants.

  Inside the elevator, Ford pressed the button for the twenty-seventh floor and then looked down at his feet as though they had just been pointed out to him. His shoes looked dusty, and he was ashamed to see that the left toe was spattered with something—coffee maybe. The other shoes he could see near to his own, but—was he imagining it?—turned away from him, at a slight distance to him, these shoes had a rich double-welted corporate luster. The building was full of attorneys, insurance brokers, accountants. He didn’t know how many people were in the elevator, but he was sure they were all looking at him—the bum with the .38 down his pants.

  They rode up to the twentieth floor. People got out. One guy, a technician of some sort in blue overalls that stank of perspiration, got in. Ford tried to stand so that the .38 didn’t press against his spine.

  But for a vase of lilies discreetly lit by a recessed spotlight, the Apex reception area was smugly unadorned. A woman behind a black melamine counter, her smile framed in the triangular logo of the corporation, stiffened as Ford made his way across the marble floor. Ford tried to smile himself. His clothes might be a little rumpled, but he was still head of trauma in a major city hospital. There was no reason to feel intimidated.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Yes, hello. I’m Dr. Marcus Ford, trauma director at the Willowbrook Medical Center.”

  The woman continued to stare. She had pale unblinking blue eyes like a seagull’s.

  “I’m here to see Dr. Scott Griffen.”

  The corporate smile was replaced by a frown.

  “Do you have an appointment, Doctor?”

  Ford realized with a jolt that he was unprepared for this. He had been so focused on the moment in which he would point the gun at Griffen that he had completely forgotten about how he planned to get into Griffen’s office in the first place. He looked beyond the woman—saw a series of closed doors.

  “I…”

  “Because Dr. Griffen just left.”

  “Left?”

  Ford refocused on the face.

  “Yes.”

  The woman pointed past him to the elevators.

  “He just went down.”

  Rushing out of the elevator on the ground floor, Ford almost ran into Griffen’s ostrich-hide attaché case. Griffen had placed it on the ground in order to chat with a colleague. Trying to look composed, Ford walked past the two men towards the Constellation Boulevard exit. He stopped at the door and made a show of checking something in his battered address book. Counted to five. Risked a glance at Griffen.

  He looked leaner than in the brochure, and he had a regular golfer’s rich tan. Obviously not spending too much time in labs these days. Looking at Griffen, Ford noticed the exit on the other side of the lobby. It led through to the plaza. That was where the underground parking would be.

  If Griffen went that way, Ford was going to have a hard time following him.

  Then it occurred to him that he actually stood a better chance of getting close to Griffen in the parking lot. Nobody would see him pull the automatic with all the cars in the way. He could even abduct him, make him drive to some quiet place. Ford was tryi
ng to think how this might work out when Griffen reached down for his attaché case. The two men shook hands, and then Griffen turned. He started across the lobby to where Ford was standing.

  As casually as possible Ford went out of the building and over to his car. He opened the door and got in. Taking his time. A valet wearing a red waistcoat had appeared from nowhere. He was holding open the door of a blue Mercedes.

  “Dr. Griffen! How are you this evening?”

  Griffen mumbled something in reply, keys jingled, and he climbed in. Ford watched from behind the wheel. Clearly Griffen wasn’t the kind of man to go to the trouble of fetching his own car from the underground lot. His time was too precious. His time was money.

  Ford followed the Mercedes out onto Constellation. They made a left on the Avenue of the Stars and another onto Santa Monica Boulevard, Ford staying a couple of cars behind, keeping his eyes on the back of Griffen’s head. As they turned right into Beverly Glen, he noticed the Mercedes’s license plate: 2 HELIX. It was the insignia of a man who had made it to the top of the biotech ladder, a man who probably knew all about playing hardball.

  They were climbing now, crossing Wilshire, going up to Sunset. The properties on either side of the road were getting steadily smarter, the vegetation in the front yards becoming thicker until suddenly the house fronts were no longer visible, hidden behind lush cascades of bougainvillea and manicured spruce.

  They entered Bel Air, Ford holding back now, giving Griffen plenty of room, going through big iron gates, past signs advertising the presence of Bel Air Armed Patrol. There were no police visible, but Ford became acutely conscious of his budget car with its smashed bodywork. He reached across and put the bag hiding the .38 into the glove compartment.

  The road wound upwards, the taillights of the Mercedes disappearing from time to time. Then Ford was passing Griffen, Griffen sitting tight, his curly head tilted slightly, waiting for the electronic gates to his substantial-looking property to ride open.

  Ford drove on a little way, hoping to God that Griffen hadn’t recognized him from the Plaza parking lot. Then he pulled over. For five minutes he sat listening to the engine cool, his headlights extinguished. Nothing had gone according to plan, but here he was—so close. Entering Griffen’s world, albeit marginally—seeing his car, his house, sensing his money—somehow it made Omega seem more real.

  But now that he was here, he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t go back and ring the guy’s doorbell. That would be even more suspicious than turning up at his office unannounced. Then the thought that Griffen might have a study similar to Novak’s, a study packed with information—about the resistance problem, about Helical, maybe Omega itself—the idea of this possibility started his heart thumping again.

  He pulled the car round and went back up to where he had seen Griffen stop, slowing as he went past to read the house number stenciled on the curbstone. He drove another hundred yards and then came back, looking for a place to park now. There were a couple of large trash containers standing by the side of the road and next to them a shadowy space overhung by eucalyptus trees. He didn’t want to find Bel Air Patrol waiting for him when he got back, and there was always the risk that they might come by while he was creeping around. So the shadows looked good. He cut his lights and put the Buick into reverse.

  He had the wheel hard over, was trying to squeeze in behind the trash cans, when there was a jolt and the flat pop of busted plastic.

  “Damn it!”

  He tensed up, expecting the inevitable car alarm. But nothing came. Then he got out of the car and took a look. Somebody else had already parked there. It was a blue Pontiac by the looks of it—pushed into the shadows nose first. He had taken out the right rear taillight with his twisted fender. Leaning through the door, he took his car out of park and rolled it forward a foot. Fragments of plastic fell onto dry eucalyptus leaves. A bumper sticker on the Pontiac read if you think education is expensive, try IGNORANCE.

  Ford stood absolutely still, listening to the chirping of crickets and the distant whoop of a police siren. There was no sign of anybody coming out of the houses to investigate the noise. He took the gun out of the glove compartment.

  Fifty yards away, Earl Rothenburg, Scott Griffen’s nearest neighbor, looked up from the bundle of old newspapers he was tying. It had sounded like an accident—someone parking sloppily and clipping someone else’s bodywork. He had bought his two-story hacienda to get away from the LA traffic, but these days the cars were everywhere. And the drivers were getting worse all the time. He decided to go take a look.

  The gates to Griffen’s house were set in imposing granite posts. On either side there was a thickly growing spruce hedge, which hid a chain-link fence. Ford moved along the hedge, trying to find some sign of a gap, or a place where he could climb over, but it looked more or less impregnable. He was on the point of turning back when he saw dirt on the road.

  He bent down to take a closer look. It was fresh, still slightly moist. Turning, he noticed that at the base of one of the spruces someone had dug at the earth until there was a gap under the fence. He looked up and down the road. Kids maybe? A dog? He thought of the Pontiac hidden in the shadows, but dismissed the idea of a connection.

  It was a tight squeeze, but he got through, tearing his shirt and grazing his back quite badly. He touched at the spot and felt blood. Just as he started to get to his feet, he saw headlights approaching along Bel Air Road. Police. The car slowed to a halt outside the property. After a moment Ford heard the gates open with a low hum. The car rolled on up the driveway. At the same time the front door of the house opened. Ford thought he heard a man’s voice, but it was impossible to see anything because of the shrubs and bushes. He pressed himself against the hard ground, waiting for whoever it was to go into the house.

  Then he could smell chlorine. Faint but distinctive. That meant a pool somewhere, and patio windows maybe … possibly unlocked. He started to skirt the perimeter of the property, keeping his eyes on the house.

  It was built in a money-is-no-object modern style somewhere between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. Through enormous windows, Ford could make out warm colors of old leather and terracotta punctuated by the occasional canvas. Griffen liked his art big and abstract. Towards the back of the property, Ford heard the sound of the pool filter pump. Being extra cautious now, he started up the slight incline towards the house.

  He found cover behind a low box hedge. Slowly—his whole body shaken by his thumping heart—he rose until he was looking at the back of the house. He took in rough-hewn stone slabs, an unlit pool, scattered deck chairs. And windows. A sliding patio window had been pushed back to let in the cool evening air. He could see the corner of a richly colored Turkish rug, a coffee table, and then Griffen.

  He was standing with his back to Ford, a drink in his left hand. He was talking to somebody—lifting his drink to his mouth, gesticulating in a jerky, agitated way. Beyond Griffen, Ford could make out a woman’s bare, suntanned legs. He needed to move if he was going to see who it was, but feared exposing himself to view.

  In the end, it was Griffen who moved. Taking a step to the right, he reached for a decanter. What Ford saw brought him upright, rigid, no longer thinking of concealment, unable to believe his eyes.

  It was Helen.

  She brought a glass to her lips, sipped, and then nodded, agreeing with what Griffen was telling her. Griffen moved back. And she was gone from sight.

  Ford dropped to his knees, his mind racing, flashing through jumbled images of the past two weeks. There was a moment of terrible clarity in which he understood that he had been betrayed, felt it—felt constricted, unable to breathe. Then, as if a voice had spoken inside his head, he knew that he must be mistaken, that Helen had not betrayed him, that she was simply doing what she had said would be necessary—talking to Griffen. And, unlike him, she had obviously found some clever way of doing it, some way that did not involve blundering around in the dark with an empt
y gun. Because only a fool would do that. If she hadn’t called him, it was because she had been too busy working her leads, following up, closing in. Despite these attempts to rationalize, Ford felt weak. For a long time he crouched by the hedge, rocking back and forth, looking at the gun in his hand. Finally, when he was ready to move, he made his way back down to the car.

  And he drove. Drove without stopping, following the sweeping curves of Sunset down to the Pacific Coast Highway, where he turned north, drove as far as Ventura, made a U-turn, came back down the coast towards Santa Monica. Lights changed, traffic slowed, stopped, and he responded—mechanically, unable to think, feeling only the need to keep moving, to keep going forward, as if he were surfing a towering black wave that would otherwise engulf and drown him.

  He ate a greasy hamburger in a roadside diner, trying to fill the emptiness that was growing inside. Then he found himself on Lincoln Boulevard, and he had to stop, had to think. The car had brought him, as if of its own accord, to 940, Helen’s apartment. There was no sign of her car and no light on in her front room. Sitting in the warm dark, Ford forced himself to go back—think back to the moment he had first seen Helen Wray at the conference—so confident, so beautiful. He remembered how, later, she had turned up at the hospital, remembered his own confusion, his instinctive rejection of the idea that she could be attracted to him. And he had been right. He saw that now. Because she had never been interested in him. It was Novak she had wanted to get close to.

  He recalled Novak’s reticence: one minute open and communicative, the next—when Helen came back with the coffee—clamming up, anxious to be gone. And Novak had clammed up because he had known—had known that Helen was a Stern employee, had known that what she wanted was to get to the bottom of the Omega rumors, to find out if Stern really had been fucked over by Helical five years ago. She had probably already tried to get to Novak and had found him elusive. What was it she had said? He’s a difficult person to get to see. She obviously hadn’t been having much success with him at the conference. Then, once she had realized that Novak was opening his door to the zealous doctor from South Central, he, Marcus Ford, had become useful to her.