the Devil's Workshop (1999)

by Stephen Cannell

  The problems came from a totally unexpected place. Buddy had agreed to fund a hair transplant for the balding doctor. After Windsong, Dr. Iverson had cut back to a baby habit, taking only sporadic hits off of someone's ganja stick, or doing an occasional half-line of white ghost. But the pain from the transplant had quickly driven him to self-prescribe some heady painkillers. He started shooting Toradol, which caused him depression, so he began taking Prozac for mood swings, but that caused anxiety, so he shot a few loads of Vistaril, and so on. Now Gary Iverson could barely haul his drugged ass and new plugs of bushy gray hair out of bed to piss. Worse still, Buddy was having trouble getting the doctor's eyes to focus long enough to write his own prescriptions. He began to fondly remember the good old days when he could just meet his dealer and get hooked up in some gas station bathroom.

  "Mike's dead," Buddy said to Gary, going for shock value and getting nothing.

  "Who the hell is Mike?"

  "You're sleeping in his bedroom, asshole. Michael my son ... he's dead! They sent his body to the morgue in Santa Monica. I'm on my way there now."

  "Oh," Gary said, and from his tone, Buddy knew that was going to be the whole reaction.

  "You've got to meet me there on the double. Get out of bed and get truckin'. If you're too zooted, have Consuelo drive you."

  "What's the hurry?"

  "He's in the Santa Monica morgue. We gotta go! I don't know where it is yet, so get the address out of the phone book!"

  "Is he deceased or have they got some new back-from-the-dead Code Blue unit that's gonna revive him?"

  Shit, he's right, Buddy thought, and backed his foot off the gas. "Look, Gary, I wanna know why my son is dead, and I don't want those county clucks sawing him up. I want him ... y'know, in one piece for the funeral.... I'm thinking like, doing the whole deal. A temple funeral, sit Shiva at the beach house, invite everybody. You gotta meet me at the morgue, kill this idea they got of doing an autopsy. It's against my religion to desecrate the body," Buddy said, forgetting to mention he hadn't been to temple in ten years, not counting Bar Mitzvahs. "You gotta do this. You know how to talk to doctors."

  "My scalp is on fire," Gary whined.

  "Don't go back to sleep, Gary. You go back to sleep, I'm gonna evict you. You'll be writing prescriptions under a fucking bridge someplace." He hung up.

  Before he got to Olympic, Alicia Profit called back and gave him the address of the morgue. "They said you can't get in there. It's not open to the public."

  "I ain't the public!" he snapped maniacally, and hung up.

  The morgue was on Lincoln Boulevard, halfway between Wilshire and Olympic. He parked in an emergency lot in a space marked "Doctors Only" and walked toward the hulking five-story concrete structure that looked like it had been designed by the same people who made Lego.

  He had still not focused on the loss of his only son. He was sort of hoping he'd get some kind of emotional reaction, maybe even cry, so his faltering opinion of himself wouldn't take another direct hit. So far, he felt nothing. Of course, he told himself, he barely knew his son. Mike had been a love child with a beautiful but vapid model named Tova Conte. She didn't want the baby because it's hard to screw Italian royalty with a kid sucking on the other tit. For almost six years, Buddy had legally avoided being Mike's father. Then Tova hired Gloria Allred. That evil cunt had chased him with papers until they made him give blood. His DNA had sealed his parental obligation. Mike had become his legally designated offspring, which meant Buddy now had to pay for boarding school and summer camp, while Tova traveled through Europe bone-dancing with her fop princes. His ex had eventually died in a speedboat accident off the coast of Cannes. It didn't even make USA Today.

  After Mike had spent two abysmal years at Pepperdine, Buddy finally agreed to let him move into the pool house. It lasted for six months. They barely saw each other, because Buddy had been in production on Silver and Lead, which was ten million over budget after only three weeks of shooting. He was practically sleeping on the set. During that summer, Mike had crashed the Porsche on Mulholland, trashed all his front teeth in the accident, and been busted three times for possession. Soon there was a small tent city of vice cops with long lenses living in the hills behind the Malibu house because of Mike's drug parties. That surveillance had inevitably overlapped to Buddy, who was now also under police observation. Buddy explained to his son that he had to be more discreet, but Mike just told him to eat shit, a flavor Buddy had never acquired a taste for despite twenty years in Hollywood.

  Buddy entered the county building and found the morgue on the third floor. He'd approved half a dozen morgue sets in his thirty or so movies. He always thought morgues should be low-lit dungeons with no sunlight. The theatrically dead needed low lighting and dank windowless privacy. This morgue was sunny and bright.

  He stopped a woman doctor and told her he wanted to talk to somebody about a deceased: Michael Brazil.

  "Are you here to view his body and make an identification?" she asked.

  "Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm doing. An identification." He was now well off the cocaine train and seesawing into a miserable paranoid snap. His mood swings were getting bigger and wider; he knew he had to head for another detox before he began hitting psychological curbs instead of concrete ones.

  Buddy waited in the brightly lit human chop shop while the woman went to summon the right person to help him. After a minute, a fifty-year-old heavy-set man came out of a door at the end of the hall. "I'm Dr. Rackovitch," the white-coated, gray-haired man said.

  "I'd like to make an identification," Buddy said. "Michael Juan Brazil." He'd always hated the "Juan," sitting like an uneducated brazero in the middle of an otherwise acceptable name. Tova had put it there to honor her liberal leanings and Hispanic mother.

  "I'm afraid that's not going to be possible," the doctor said. "We've been contacted by a doctor of biology at USC and warned of extenuating circumstances. The County Medical Examiner is coming over this evening to personally conduct the autopsy. The body is in bio-containment."

  "What're you talking about, asswipe? What extenuating circumstances?" Buddy snapped.

  "You won't get anywhere talking to me like that."

  "You know who I am?" Buddy said, glowering at this bone-cutter, who was obviously such a schmendrick they'd only let him practice on dead people.

  "I'm afraid who you are really isn't the point."

  "I'm Buddy Brazilhe said, spitting it out. "Buddy Brazil? Movies? I wanna see my son's body. This is going to happen, so let's not shed blood over it." Buddy didn't really want to see Mike's body, but he hated anybody telling him he couldn't.

  "It's not going to happen, Mr. Brazil. Leave, and in a day or so, we'll release the body to the next of kin. If that's you, fine."

  Buddy moved to the payphone in the lobby, which was only a few feet behind him. "Okay, who gets me past you? Huh? Who's your scout leader?"

  "Nobody gets you past me," Dr. Rackovitch said.

  "That's not the way the world works, buster. Could the Governor of the State of California press your grapes?"

  "We have reason to believe your son may have died of a highly contagious unknown fatal disease. You can call the Governor, the U. S. President, or the Crown Prince of Liechtenstein, but that body stays in quarantine until we find out what killed him."

  "Is that supposed to be a joke? The fucking Crown Prince of Liechtenstein?" Buddy shrieked, thinking he remembered reading that Tova had actually gone out with the asshole. Why had this doctor mentioned that? Was it some kindai plot? Was this some crazy plan aimed at driving him nuts? Could the world be that small? Or was he just paranoid from all the drugs?

  Chapter 18

  CONNECT

  They were on the no Freeway heading toward Pasadena. Wendell Kinney had been quiet ever since they transitioned off I-5. Stacy worried he was driving his green station wagon too fast. He was deep in thought, but his rumpled hair and personality still gave off their characteristic warm
th. Finally, he pointed to a green off-ramp sign.

  "There it is," he said, flipping on his blinker and pulling into the right lane. He shot up the off-ramp and came to a full stop before turning right onto Orange Grove Avenue, which she knew was the same manicured street that was seen by millions every New Year's Day as floats from the Rose Parade made their turns in front of banks of cameras at that exact corner.

  "I've been running it over in my mind," Wendell finally said. "Everything you say, all the symptoms you witnessed, are almost exactly like Kuru, except magnified."

  He was going slowly now, heading past cross streets looking for La Loma Road. Stacy had the Thomas Street Guide open on her lap as Wendell continued, "If Dexter DeMille was designing a Prion bio-weapon, he would have needed to shorten the incubation period to make it effective. We need to get a blood sample--more than one if we can--so we can isolate the components. We should get one from you too. You were at Vanishing Lake, so you were exposed."

  She nodded. "If this bio-weapon is attacking proteins with DNA markers, that could explain why some people are getting it and others aren't. According to Max's e-mail, two prisoners were transferred to Vanishing Lake just before the fire. They perished in the blaze and nobody knows or will admit knowing why they were sent there. I've been checking into their backgrounds. One of the soldiers was named Troy Lee Williams. I did an Internet news article search when I got home last night and found some four-year-old stories about his trial. He raped and murdered a girl in Rosemont, California. I'm trying to get in touch with his family to investigate his genetic background. The other soldier was an African-American. There's got to be some reason Dr. DeMille chose them, if he did.... Max's e-mail to me said they were about to do human testing."

  Wendell furrowed his brow, but said nothing as he continued for several more blocks. "La Loma," he finally said, pointing at a street sign and turning right.

  They headed down a steep hill. The houses were beautiful and getting larger and more imposing with every quarter mile they traveled. When they got to the bottom of the hill they saw the arroyo which carried water down from the Angeles Crest Mountains. They turned left, then right, and passed over an old concrete bridge that spanned the aqueduct. Once on the other side, they found themselves driving past beautiful old Pasadena mansions with imposing brick or concrete driveways and acres of rolling lawns, guarded by ornate wrought-iron fencing complete with gatehouses. They pulled up in front of the address that Stacy had in her hand and looked at a huge Spanish-style house sitting behind an eight-foot spiked iron fence.

  "There it is," he said. "Be it ever so humble."

  "This can't be right," Stacy said, staring at the slip of paper in her hand.

  They got out, moved to the walk-in gate, and rang a buzzer. After a moment, a man's voice came through the speaker, squawking angrily, "Who is it?"

  "We're here to see Cris Cunningham," Stacy said.

  There was a long silence, and then without further comment, the electric lock buzzed. They pushed open the walk-in gate and moved onto the three-acre estate. They walked up a brick path toward the imposing house. A hundred yards to the right, an Olympic-size pool glistened in the afternoon sunlight. Dragonflies hovered. On their left, an empty tennis court shimmered with late-afternoon heat. Dusty brown birds did showy aerobatics over the huge lawn before climbing abruptly, then landing in the leafy elm trees.

  The front door opened, and a tall, thin, gray-haired man moved out of the house. He stood defiantly on the front porch. His unfriendly glower was muted by his slightly comic wardrobe: a lime-green shirt over dark green golf slacks. As Stacy neared him, she thought his body posture sent a mixed message. Like a defeated general, he seemed both overbearing and apologetic.

  "Yes, what is it?" he said warily as they approached.

  "Is this Cris Cunningham's house?" she asked.

  "And you are ... ?" He let the question hang in the unfriendly space between them.

  "I'm Stacy Richardson, and this is Dr. Wendell Kinney, from USC. We wanted to talk to a man named Cris Cunningham. We understood this is his address."

  "He isn't here right now," the gray-haired man said.

  "I see. When do you expect him?"

  "I'm Richard Cunningham, his father. What's this regarding?"

  "It's about..." She looked over at Wendell. "If he's the one we're looking for, I really think we should speak directly with him. Although it's also possible we have the wrong person."

  "How so?"

  "The man we're looking for doesn't really seem like he belongs in this neighborhood. He's sort of..."

  "Rundown?" Richard said sadly, then nodded and relaxed his posture slightly. "Why don't you come wait inside?"

  He led them into a large entry hall with polished hardwood floors and a curving staircase. A huge chandelier hung above the foyer dangling expensive crystal. He led them into a den. The room was furnished in the warm colors and textures of an old tavern. Prints of horses hung above red leather couches and antique wooden tables. Outside, intense afternoon sun filtered through dense oak trees and fell without heat in dappled patterns on the emerald-green carpet.

  "Would you like something to drink?" Richard asked.

  "Ice water, if you have it," she replied, and Wendell nodded.

  "The maids take Sunday off. I'll be right back."

  Richard Cunningham turned and moved out of the den, leaving them standing alone, looking at the masculine decor. Behind the bar was a large framed color photograph that was almost four feet by three, mounted under glass. It froze a moment and a memory. In the photo, a lithe quarterback in the powder-blue-and-gold uniform of the UCLA Bruins was crossing the goal line. The number 9 on his jersey was full to camera. His gold helmet glinting in the Coliseum sunlight was turned away, looking toward the coffin corner of the end zone just inside the marker. In the picture, the quarterback held the ball tightly in both hands, slightly in front of him, while stepping through the outstretched arms of a USC Trojan tackier. The Coliseum scoreboard was out of focus but readable in the background: USC 9, UCLA 7. There were fifty-three seconds left in the fourth quarter. It was a picture of the moment before victory.

  "That was Cris," Richard Cunningham said, strangely using the past tense.

  They turned and looked at him as he handed them cold glasses of water. "He won the game." There was a soft, wistful quality to the way he said it, as if the memory was too fragile to address forcefully, hanging only by a very slender thread in his mind.

  Also on the back wall behind the bar were a Silver Star and a combat ribbon from the Gulf War, in a frame with a picture of a young, extremely handsome blond man with Marine-short hair.

  Stacy recognized the decorations from her years as an Army brat. She looked hard at the Marine, but didn't recognize him at all.

  "This is Cris?" she asked.

  "That was taken the day he graduated from Special Forces Recon training," his father said. Again his voice contained the wistful echo of faded memories.

  "I got this address from the police," Stacy said. "They have an alias database on people with police records. The man I'm looking for was using the name 'Lucky.' The Pasadena police had a Lucky in their files. He'd been arrested for vagrancy and plain drunk in Old Town, up by Colorado Boulevard, four years ago. They said his real name was Cris Cunningham and gave me this address, but I don't think this is the same man."

  Richard Cunningham shifted his weight slightly. "After Kennidi died, he was drunk all the time. He left home and was sleeping in doorways. I'd go find him, but he wouldn't even look at me. His wife, Laura, divorced him. Then he left town on the rails." Richard looked suddenly very fragile. "Cris doesn't look like that picture anymore," he said.

  "Who was Kennidi?" Stacy asked.

  "His four-year-old daughter. When she died, it changed him." Richard paused, then corrected himself: "It destroyed him."

  "I'm sorry," Stacy said softly.

  "Why do you want to see my son?"

&nb
sp; "He was at a place called Vanishing Lake, in Texas. The man he was traveling with died of a new, fatal disease. It could be contagious. We don't know yet what the incubation period is, but he needs to be checked immediately, and we need to take a sample of his blood."

  Richard stood, silently dealing with this information. Then he nodded, as if it was just another chapter in his family's horrible medical odyssey.

  "He left early this afternoon. His mother took him to the doctor and the dentist. They should have been home hours ago, but I think I know where they went" Then he added, "I've been kind of worried, so if you want, we can go check. I'll lead you there."

  The clothes from his past life were too big, and draped him like oversized memories. He had been standing beside the grave for an hour. His mother had finally gone back to the air-conditioned visitors' center to wait. He was looking down at the small brass plaque that silently screamed his daughter's name in uniformly correct ten-inch-high letters:

  KENNIDI BISHOP CUNNINGHAM BRAVE BEYOND HER YEARS 1991-1995

  He seemed rooted there, looking for something meaningful, but he could find no elevating factors. The remembered taste of the "heart starters" he had snuck from his father's bar that morning consumed his thoughts, intensifying his need for a booster. As he stood looking down at the grave, he no longer wanted to blame himself for his daughter's sickness, but self-loathing hovered on the shifting winds of grief and loss. Then his thoughts jumped. Perhaps when he'd started drinking, he'd really only been looking for a way to escape his golden life. Had it been intentionally self-destroyed? Had he been afraid to raise the bar one notch higher, as he had time after time since elementary school, until even heroics in the Gulf War weren't enough to validate him? Had Kennidi's torment been his escape? Had he ducked out on his life using her death as his exit card? Was it possible that he was that hollow, or that selfish? Why, he wondered, did he have such an emptiness? Why was it that nothing he did fulfilled him?