She nodded, stood, and moved around the room, ending at the picture window. "It was nice of Buddy to get this room. It's beautiful." Cris nodded, but didn't say anything. He was starting to think that having Buddy along was a bad mistake.
The suite was a large corner room that overlooked a shopping center. The subtle colors and rich antiques were restful. The air-conditioning hissed perfect temperature.
She moved over and sat on the bed near Cris. "You don't look so good."
"Knock it off with the compliments--you're making me blush."
"You've lost even more weight since we met."
He dropped his head, and his eyes found the maps and carbon sheets on the bedspread.
"Cris, we need you. The three of us are in this alone, and the people at Fort Detrick have too much power. Plus, the Pentagon and God knows who else is involved. Conceivably, it could go all the way up to the President. They couldn't run a program this big without a lot of important people in the loop. We call the FBI, we could get locked up instead of listened to."
"I'm okay," he said. "I'll make it."
"You gotta eat. I'm ordering from room service. I'll get you some soup, maybe some oatmeal or yogurt."
"Okay," he smiled, "but I think I'll skip the yogurt."
"There's two showers in there. Go on, get washed up, and I'll get something up here for you."
He nodded, and got slowly off the bed. He had to admit he was getting weaker by the hour. He opened the bathroom door.
Buddy Brazil was naked and wrapped in a towel, standing by the sink with a rolled bill jammed up his nose. Two lines of chopped cocaine were tracked out on the tile counter. Buddy snapped his head up and grinned. "Oops," he said. "Kick that door closed, will ya? I've gotta Hoover up these two lines."
Anger flashed in Cris. He suddenly reached down and grabbed Buddy, spun him around, and threw him out of the bathroom into the suite. The towel fell off and he hit the floor naked, with the bill still up his nose. Buddy yanked the quilt off the bed and covered himself, then snatched the rolled-up bill out of his nose, as Stacy stood over him.
"This asshole was in there taking a sleigh ride," Cris said, adrenaline fueling his aching body.
"This is bullshit," Buddy shrieked, pulling the quilt all the way off the bed and wrapping it around him. The maps and carbon sheets fluttered to the floor.
"What other drugs have you got in there?" Cris demanded, as he moved into the bathroom and grabbed Buddy's shaving kit.
Buddy quickly moved after him, dragging the large quilt like a bridal train. Cris grabbed five or six prescription bottles out of his shaving kit and held them up to read the labels as Stacy joined Buddy at the door.
"It's for my asthma," Buddy chirped.
" 'Take one every four hours for depression,' " Cris said, reading the labels. "Morphine sulfate, Dexedrine, Clonidine. All of it prescribed by the poor asshole you shot in your backyard." He threw the bottles at Buddy. They hit him in the chest, then bounced on the floor.
"Look, I got medical problems."
"We all got problems. I'm vomiting up my breakfast 'cause my system's so shot I can't hold anything down. This is a joke. We're running a fucking clinic here. How're we ever gonna pull this off?"
"Please," Stacy said. "Please, let's stop shouting."
Cris moved out of the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bed, while Buddy slid into his pants and got down on the floor to gather up the vials of prescribed drugs.
"Flush them down the toilet," Stacy said.
"These are prescriptions," he whined. "I need these." Then, as he stood with the plastic bottles in his hand, he saw the disappointment in her eyes.
"I'm outta here. I'm goin' home." Buddy took the pills, threw them back into his shaving kit, and zipped it up. Then he packed up his stuff, dressed, and turned to leave.
"You can't leave. We need your help," Stacy pleaded. "They killed your son."
"I hardly knew him. The room's paid for until tomorrow." Then Buddy walked out, slammed the door, and left them standing there.
Chapter 35
POSSE
Buddy had left more out of embarrassment than anger. Now, as he sat in the Blazer under the porte-cochere of the Four Seasons with the engine idling, he was stuck for his next move. The sour-sweet taste was there again, filling the back of his mouth like sewer runoff; he was staggered by an unfathomable sense of loneliness so vast and full of self-hate that it pressed against him like a fateful warning.
His accumulated list of personal negatives was mind-boggling. He was a coward and a drug addict. He had no commitment to himself or to his craft. He had not one single relationship in his life that he valued or cared to maintain. All of his "intimate" associations were bought and paid for, professional friends who circled him like airliners stacked above a foggy field, waiting for his instructions, not one of them willing to give him a moment of unselfish concern. Buddy knew that it was his fault. He had constructed a world that was only about him. Buddy suspected that the hateful truth was that to gain respect, it was also necessary to give it. If he continued to focus everything inward, he would be nourished by nothing. Now, as the Blazer's engine idled, he had no place to go. He could not pick a new course of action. He only knew that he was through hiding; if he did not choose the right path, he would sacrifice what was left of himself.
He began grasping for solutions. Maybe he should call the Pelican, he thought.
Anthony Pelicano had been on his payroll on and off for almost fifteen years. The L. A. private eye had managed to get several actors and directors out of tight spots and drug busts while they were working on Buddy's pictures. Pelicano flushed more Hollywood toilets than the Polo Lounge bathroom attendant. Buddy had first employed the detective during his divorce. The Pelican had managed to turn up Tova's one lesbian affair, which Buddy hung over her like a sword of damnation during the property settlement negotiations. Pelicano would know what to do.
Buddy was startled by a tapping at his passenger window. He snapped his head around and saw a doorman in a high-collared braided coat, faintly reminiscent of his old Scientology uniform.
"Would you like me to park your car again for you, sir?" the attendant asked, smiling professionally.
Buddy shook his head and put the car in gear, pulling out from under the heavy stone awning into the shimmering Texas heat.
"I don't give a fuck what his office told you. Tell him it's critical I speak to him," Buddy screamed at Alicia Profit, who had just informed him, after ten minutes on hold, that the Pelican was in New Mexico getting one of Dick Zanuck's stars unhooked from a mescaline bust.
"They said he'll call you back," Alicia repeated, holding her ground like a Prussian general.
He could picture his beautiful assistant in his palatial Paramount office, standing behind his Ping-Pong-table-sized executive desk, flipping her black hair in stylish exasperation as he screamed at her over the speakerphone. He had spent more than one hapless night trying to talk her into the sack, but she had eluded him like an NFL running back, always leaving with both her honor and his grudging respect. Still, Buddy screamed at her endlessly.
"Is Rayce around?"
"Yes. He's in with Marty."
"Get him on the phone," Buddy snapped.
Then he was on hold again, listening to a recorded selection of his movie themes. After a moment he heard Rayce Walker; it was a comfortable, upholstered voice, soft and deep, like expensive furniture.
"How's it goin', pard?" the stuntman said in his Arizona-New Mexico drawl.
"Rayce, I need your help," Buddy answered. "I'm sending the G-III to get you. Get four or five guys who can handle themselves ... like Billy Seal, and that crazy fucking Indian we used on Sheriff of Apache Canyon, Little Boy, whatever--the one who drove the burning pickup into the lake."
"John Little Bear," Rayce corrected.
"Right. And go to the Malibu house and collect up some firepower outta my gun case. I have the Dominator and the two pisto
ls from the plane with me now. Get your ass to Fort Worth. I need you fast," he said.
"What's up, Mr. B.?"
"We gotta go kick some ass," Buddy said, trying to sound macho, but feeling weak and foolish. "Also tell Alicia I need her to come with you to handle details. Tell her to call Rob at the business manager's, and clear all my credit cards. Also tell her that I want her to line me up a motor home I can rent in Fort Worth--bill the studio location scouting account. Make it at least thirty-seven feet long, roomy, with a big engine. We're gonna be traveling. I'll need cellphones and booze. Bring some white lady and a bag or two of grass. I'm down to seeds and stems."
"Yes, sir," Rayce said. "What's going on?"
Buddy didn't answer, just hung up. He'd been driving aimlessly down a Fort Worth street with no destination. Now he pulled the Blazer over and parked it by the side of the road. His hands were shaking and he needed something. At first he thought it was a zoot of cocaine, a pick-me-up that would blur the edges and lift his spirits, but as he reached for the shaving kit, he stopped. He realized it wasn't dope he wanted. What was it? It wasn't something he had; it was something he was missing. A new craving much harder to recognize. His mind ran down a list of physical needs, but he could check none of the mental boxes. And then, like a TV uplink that finally locked on the right satellite, the picture became clear.
As Buddy Brazil sat in the heat of his rented Blazer on the side of a road in Fort Worth, he realized what he craved more than anything else was his own self-respect.
Chapter 36
HOT TRAIN
Max was a hero," Stacy said. "He went to Fort Detrick and found out about all this, and he tried to stop it. It's exactly the kind of thing he would do. He would risk everything, even his life, if he saw injustice or deceit. It's why they killed him." She whispered these words as if in church, kneeling in the gravel beside the SP tracks, bathed in moonlight.
They were a quarter mile east of Sugar Shack Jungle waiting for the ten-p. M. priority train carrying automobiles, which Cris had found on the Yardmaster's line-up sheet. The night was warm, and a few hundred yards up the grade they could see a cluster of hobos crouched below the tracks, also waiting to catch out, their voices rattling on the wind like water-churned rocks.
"Sometimes I think I'm going crazy, I miss him so much," she added.
Cris nodded his head. Her memories of Max brought back his own thoughts of Kennidi. He could feel his daughter's remembered warmth touching him, her child's breath on his cheek, her arm around his shoulder as she nuzzled up against him. The memory of her painful death couldn't destroy these tearful recollections.
"The thing about Max was he just seemed to understand. He could read your thoughts like a Gypsy. He would always know what frightened you, and then would find a way to help."
Cris looked over at her, struck by both her strength and beauty. The subtle moonlight lay in the shallows of her cheekbones, like pools of liquid silver, as she looked down the track for the freight.
After hearing Stacy describe her husband, Cris wondered why Max Richardson would work at Fort Detrick with such evil company. It didn't add up. "Why did Max go to study with Dexter DeMille?" he finally asked.
"Max had become extremely worried about Prions," she answered. "He told me that he felt they represented one of the most dangerous and potentially deadly situations in the global environment. He felt outbreaks like mad cow disease could be just the beginning. Mad cow was badly mishandled by the Brits in the early eighties. They didn't believe it would jump the species line, but it did, infecting sheep and cattle. The Brits have now identified over ten cases of human infestation, proving that Prions can also jump to Homo sapiens. These human cases of mad cow disease behave just like the Aboriginal Kuru that Dexter DeMille helped Carleton Gajdusek isolate in the seventies. Kuru was caused by a bizarre religious custom the Abos had of eating the brains of their dead relatives, so with both Kuru and mad cow, ingesting the rogue Prion is what passed it on. Max thought science was not equipped to deal with Prion sickness if it got out of control. Right now, in its pure state, it's slow-acting. We haven't seen too many human cases, but Max felt there could soon be a wave of human disease caused by infected beef. This was why Max wanted to work with Dr. DeMille--to find a cure and to understand how it spreads, and how long it incubates in humans before signs of the early stage of the disease show up, marked by mood swings and rages."
Cris was watching her closely, and she seemed to be kneeling at the altar of science.
"The problem in England was exacerbated because the government didn't fully subsidize the farms. If a farmer discovered a downer cow that he suspected had died of mad cow, the government only paid a tenth of the value of the carcass. Max said the result was that the farmer wouldn't report a diseased cow, but would sell the carcass to a feed company for full price without warning the chopping house of the cause of death. The feed company would grind it up and turn it into bonemeal and it would be used as food for other cattle. The Prions would survive in the bonemeal and would be passed to whole herds. Max was also studying the ease with which it jumped the species line. Wendell and Max ran a lab study last year and found that even vegetables fertilized with infected bonemeal carry the rogue Prion. Those vegetables could conceivably pass it to people if ingested. Not to be ultradramatic, but a case could be made that unchecked Prion disease could poison the whole earth, killing all mammalian species on the planet."
They were silent for a long moment.
"Max died trying to stop this," she went on. "We've got to get the Pale Horse Prion away from Kincaid before he further pollutes the bio-stream. The weapon that DeMille designed seems to run its course in hours, not years. That means DeMille and his team at the Devil's Workshop have juiced it up somehow. At Vanishing Lake it acted very quickly. A bio-weapon with a two-year lag time would be worthless. I know this sounds over-the-top, but if Kincaid tries to use these targeted Prions against large segments of society, he could perpetrate an event that would substantially alter the evolutionary process of mankind. If people with specific genes were eliminated, survivors who were not killed outright might share linked but weakened genes. In fifty years, who knows what downstream effect this could have on human development? We've got to prove that those bastards at the Devil's Workshop are actually developing this shit, and if we're going to get anybody's attention, we need a sample so we can choke Admiral Zoll on the evidence."
When she finished, Cris was again swept by a sense of his own inadequacy. "Stacy, I'm not sure I have what it takes. I'm not a hundred percent. Things have changed for me. I'm not like I used to be. I'm just not sure I can do it."
She looked at him, and wished Max were here. Max would take the challenge no matter the outcome. The ex-Marine kneeling beside her was no substitute for her dead husband, but with Buddy gone he was all she had. She couldn't let him quit. She finally reached out, took his hand, and squeezed it. "I know," she said softly. "I feel the same way, but we have to try. Too much is at stake."
"I'm still shaky," he confided. "And I still crave alcohol. Sometimes it's all I can think about. I'm not sure I can even stay sober. Buddy took the guns, and we're outnumbered thirty or forty to one. We need a plan, and I haven't a clue"
When she looked over at him, for the first time she could see the Marine in the picture behind his father's bar. Cris's youthful intensity burned in blue eyes that reflected moonlight. Then, just as quickly as the vision materialized, it was gone.
Suddenly, a light appeared against a line of trees in the distance. Then the wide yellow-and-red nose of a five-thousand-horsepower MK5 engine came around the curve 150 yards away. The headlights now turned toward them and zigzagged figure eights across the rails as it rumbled slowly in their direction. The night birds and the distant hobos fell silent as the creaking, groaning monster moved up the tracks, straining to pull a hundred loaded stack cars up the 2.3 percent grade.
The engine moved past, followed by two B-unit power packs and a s
econd MK5 hooked backward. As the four-piece multiple unit locomotive lumbered by, they felt the ground shaking. The hot wind from the blower duct that cooled the traction motor rippled their clothes like a desert wind. Then, for as far as they could see, there were car carriers. Three decks high, the multicolored Japanese, German, and American cars creaked and rocked on their chained-down axles. Shimmering acrylic rainbow colors glistened in the moonlight like endless iron necklaces.
"Now!" Cris shouted, as he grabbed Stacy's hand. They ran up alongside one of the car carriers. The train was moving only five miles an hour up the two-mile grade, and it was easy to get alongside the car Cris had chosen.
"Grab the front handle. Watch your feet!" Cris yelled, as he sprinted alongside the car. Then he jumped for the foot stirrup, caught hold of the side grab-iron on the car, and swung aboard. Once he cleared the space, she also lunged for the handle, catching it and jumping up onto the slow-moving foot stirrup.
The car they were on rumbled past a second group of hobos, who were now also running beside the train, trying to catch a ride a few cars back. The rattling, rocking freight now swayed energetically under their feet.
"Where do we sit?" she asked, her heart beating with exhilaration.
"Follow me," he said.
They began to climb a small red ladder, the metal wheels rumbling and growling on the steel rails below them.
"Be careful--don't slip. It's a Cuisinart under there," he warned.
They climbed up to the top of the train, where a line of new Mercedes were rocking on their axle chains. He edged along from car to car until he was at the front of the carrier. Then Cris took a pocketknife out of his pants, popped the chrome strip off the door of a white Mercedes sedan, reached through the crack, and released the lock. He opened the door and got in, sliding across the German leather to make room for Stacy behind the wheel. She joined him in the front seat and closed the door. He opened the ashtray and pulled out the keys.
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