by Gerald Lynch
“Then the deal’s definitely off.”
“He can charm!”
“But you definitely won’t be putting Bill’s name on your list?”
Again the silence. “Kevin, as I rudely said to you the first time we met: why don’t you leave that boy alone. For fuck’s sake, there’s a pornographic murder involving an inventive drugging and right away you think of Bill? Your own son!”
“Not right away, Nora. I have my reasons, and it’s my job to think everything. But you were right then, though it took me too long to see the wisdom in what you said.” He paused, then realized there was no reason not to say it to Nora: “I just want Bill back again. I want what’s left of my family back together again. That’s also what makes me think of Bill.” It had actually been easier than trying to say as much to Dr. Randome, and his chest deflated in painful relief as he exhaled slowly.
“Kevin, that might not be possible. We have to live in the world as it is, and as we’ve made it. But you’re making me cry again, so you’ll probably hang up without saying goodbye. You’ll take me to dinner when all this is over?”
“Promise.”
Energized, he was striding back along the first tunnel into Omphalos, bracing himself for the encounters with security. He reminded himself that what he’d said to Nora was true: he must be willing to think everything and anything if he was to find the one solution among all the possibles. (Nora did have to save Bill’s ass once by refusing to give evidence when he’d been caught fencing lab materials to that Lobos chapter in Troutstream.) But when the real case was finally closed behind him — the Widower — he and Kelly and Bill would get back together. We won’t live together, Nora, I know we can’t return to that nest. But together in spirit, wherever we are, a family again; together in love, Cynthia’s blessing. With Bill back home and staying with Kelly, for however long, it was becoming possible already.
But mad McNicol wrote that Cynthia and Kelly had got DeLint to help Bill? How help? For what? If Bill —
“Halt! Another step this way and your brain is shit.”
Chapter 14
Brigid Ertelle entered the operations room complaining: “You just can’t get enough of those DeLint vids, can you, Kevin?”
He stood from the monitor and faced her. “What took you so long? Where’s Frank? What’s the news from the McNicol scene?”
“MYCROFT crashed. We had to start over, Frank was in a state.”
“Your mighty MYCROFT?”
“The bots were hovering in front of the white board that covered the hole where the manuscript had been, doing their blue-cone MRI scans, with Frank banging away on his tablet — then they just dropped to the floor. No discernible cause. After the reboot, all ran according to the book. But Kevin, I swear to God: it was like MYCROFT was conflicted, or protecting someone. Very strange.”
“The machete? Anna Kynder?”
She’d been prepared to ask aggressively after McNicol’s manuscript, but his beating her to the punch — interrogating like this, and standing — intimidated her.
“Constable Abiki Ali dropped me off. Frank’ll be bringing along the results on the murder weapon. He dispatched me to check on Anna Kynder and to make sure you stay put. There’s only a skeleton Omphalos crew on the floor below, and security there says Kynder’s still not left her office. She’s as good as put herself under house arrest for us.”
“She should be checked. Did Frank not contact that Sam-Man Bantry I told him about, the man I asked to report on Kynder?”
“I don’t order my chief about. Really, Kevin, why the vids? You know what that machete is going to give us; this case is all but closed. I thought I’d find you reading McNicol’s book. Or down chatting up Anna Kynder yourself. Where is McNicol’s b —”
“Your Mike’s too young to be bothered with his prostate.”
“What? Christ, will you stop with the blindsiding…uh, please?”
“Sorry, it’s nerves, Brigid. I’ve always had nerves of jelly. That and age make me piss like a kitten in a room full of rockers. I’ll be right back.”
She called after him, “Who doesn’t know about the so-called prostate epidemic. Such whining! The macho disease that dared not speak its name is now on permanent conference call!”
He was near the door, laughing. “Not bad, Brigid. And so sympathetic, the very best of the maternal female. You’ll make the perfect mother.”
Her fading shout reached him through the shutting door: “May yours go supernova, Beldon! Where’s McNicol’s manu…”
He could use the bathroom on seventeen, but he wanted privacy.
At the security table, the lone guard grinned lasciviously at him. “Taking a break, Detective Beldon?”
“Yes, Sergeant Ertelle and I have been hard at it, if you know what I mean. I’ll be right back. Where’s your partner? Run out of chocolate-flavoured lubricant?”
The guard snorted in appreciation. He lifted and shook an inverted Styrofoam coffee cup like a bell. It was a constant rub with cops on surveillance-security assignment, who goes for the coffee.
When the elevator doors closed, Kevin stalled, having forgotten what he was doing. Instead he was remembering getting lost in the sub-basement on his way to call Kelly and encountering that weird little guy…Jake Shercock. The maintenance man could know more about DeLint and Omphalos. He’d been here forever, and he was the one who’d discovered the body. He looked just the type not to know what he knew. But, Kevin wondered, would he be up for a little memory-mining?
His bladder urged him back to his purpose. He thumbed BAS and the box dropped like shot to hell.
A real old-style men’s room, the BAS bathroom at Omphalos: a white ceramic floor patterned with black diamonds, pale weeping walls, gleaming porcelain fixtures. High ceilinged, echoing the door’s thud. Cooler than A/C. Dank odour of wet metal piping. Drip of water as if a cave. Only at Omphalos, such waste. And no feet showing in the stalls, perfect. Privacy, always enticing. An eternity in hell would be tolerable as long as he wasn’t tormented by other damned souls. He would be alienated from heavenly Cyn, though. Bad pun. Apologies, love. Need to piss.
Such distracted thinking helped him go. He dribbled on, paused, was not finished, clenched and squirted a few drops, waited for the second coming, fondly remembering how he used to drill those old deodorizer pucks. He shoots, he scores!… How old was this underground part of the building? And Jake Shercock, yet another floor lower, he’d know how old, that and more. He might not need the recovered-memory technique.
He waited patiently…and had a second gush going. That’s the way it worked now: think you’re finished, wait a minute, then a more easeful flow.
Reluctantly he confronted his old-man’s reflection in the scallop-edged mirror that ran the length of the urinal trough. No red left in his hair, the ears like jug handles with big teardrops for lobes, the plentiful lines fanning from both eyes, the chin paunch. He grinned, because it was like a caricature of the younger face he still wore in his mind’s eye. One last hurrah then, old man. To the death with this DeLint case, the Widower case, then go to meet your maker in peace. Go to be with Cyn in eternity. Whatever that may be, they’d be sharing it, and maybe even together. Who knew?
He looked over both shoulders. What a lovely place to waste time, like some ancient Roman bath. What would happen if he lit a Panters down here? He would —
Whistling…“Yesterday”? The door opened. He wasn’t done, but choked off, shook off, and dropped off home. Stood waiting so as not to appear upset.
He winced — what a stink! Sewer gas? Or had his own stream stirred this up? Did he have an infection again? But he’d quit drinking and been eating better, hydrating regularly with water only. He cleared his throat to be noticed. In his factioning gut he knew it was Jake Shercock who had entered, and that the Widower’s identity was about to be revealed. He did need to pee
again.
“Who has found my private executive washroom?” The voice was melodramatically low and threatening, like someone doing Jack’s giant. As if on cue: “Fee, fie, foe — Oh.” It wasn’t said with much surprise, if still an octave higher. “Kevin, I had assumed you were someone else.”
In the mirror short Dr. Randome appeared to glide to a stop behind. Both their heads were fair but differently so, Kevin’s a white brush cut, the other as brightly bald as the shining fixtures.
Kevin stepped down from the platform and the whole trough flushed noisily, wastefully. They stood facing each other, between the urinal and the row of equally ancient sinks with their separate faucets for hot and cold, their handles like brass star-wheels, and their wasteful dripping onto corroded enamel.
Dr. Randome, strangely out of his white caftan uniform, was wearing a hunter’s-green turtleneck folded once, a black tweed jacket speckled with white, dark razor-creased slacks, and sandals showing black socks. The top of his head came only to Kevin’s chin, and it really did shine, reflecting the whiteness of the bathroom. Like all completely bald heads, it looked raw and sensitive, and alien.
“Hi again, Ewan.” It was strange too meeting him for the first time outside his Sandy Hill office, here where its personal revelations now aroused embarrassment, even some shame, especially way down here in an old-style men’s room.
Kevin remembered Randome’s resignation: Wait to see if he tells you.
Randome blinked once, slowly, like someone dipping inside himself. He came up with a brief bright laugh.
“It feels strange meeting like this, doesn’t it, Kevin? It’s like meeting for the first time someone with whom you’ve been only cyber-acquaintances. Try not to be uncomfortable, please, for my sake. Because I like to think we’re friends anywhere, Kevin.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled, and there was a flaring of those small nostrils on that nose like a miniature of Kevin’s own shark’s fin. His right hand moved, fell back, and his left came up to shake, then he dropped it too with a smirk. “Whoops. It’s the water brings me down here. I don’t like the Pneumasand in my Psychiatric Wellness ensuite. Are you a fellow traveller, Kevin? Or are you one of those who does not mind having his anus sand-blasted, whatever the powdery touch?”
Randome’s powdery touch mocked a Macro ad for Pneumasand, and Kevin laughed.
“Does the sound of water help get the old tap running for you, too, Kevin?”
“I prefer water — who doesn’t? — and toilet paper, when I can get it. But I guess it is fair to say our personal talks don’t end in your home office, Ewan.”
Randome laughed. “I’m more pleased for this fortuitous meeting than you could know, Kevin.”
He’s going to tell me he’s leaving.
Randome nodded slowly, almost a bow. “I’ve long wanted to talk freely with you about the matter we discussed at our first session and touched on again only this morning: last year’s denial of your search warrant for Omphalos. That was entirely the late Eugene DeLint’s doing. He called in his highest-ranking favours to block you. Out of a misplaced sense of loyalty and increasing concern for the security of my position here, I supported him, if only by just keeping quiet. Omphalos security still insists I’m not to talk with you, especially at this time. But to hell with them, eh? I won’t lie to you, Kevin: recently Eugene was attempting to terminate my position at Omphalos. It’s not just that I know too much about his doings: he wanted me to do things I simply could not do, things that I now suspect were indeed related to matters close to your own heart.”
Kevin’s head was inflamed with hot pinpricks. “Perhaps we could go somewhere now and talk.”
Small smile, regretful shake of the head. “I wish we could, Kevin, but, as I’ve intimated, my lips are sealed. In the present crisis, security is more paranoid than ever.” He mouthed just above a whisper: “I believe Eugene was having me followed, and since his murder I fear more than ever for my personal safety.”
Dr. Randome glanced at the urinal mirror, squinted. His pale-blue eyes widened. Having done nothing, he turned away from the urinal to wash his hands. The ancient taps hawked up and spat out some old air pockets, rumbled, continued dripping.
Dr. Randome turned from the sink, his hands wet and held aloft like a scrubbing surgeon’s. He spoke normally: “I came in only to wash sinfully. I don’t suffer public-urinal anxiety, if that’s what you’re thinking, Kevin. My penis is no smaller or bigger than it should be. I have nothing to hide. It’s okay; in your role you must be suspicious of everyone here, I understand. And I, well, I mean, look at me: I look like some sort of Doctor Evil. And I do possess many of the ancient secrets of Omphalos.”
As always, Kevin found himself impressed by Dr. Randome’s candour and touched by his washed-out-sky eyes. He said, “Then it is lucky we met down here where no one comes.”
Randome yanked two brown paper towels from the dispenser, dried off, and stood crunching the bundle into a ball. “Kevin, the universe teems with meaningless coincidences, chance encounters, deluding parallels, good fortune and bad in precise equal measure. Only we humans are meaning-makers. The material creation in itself has no meaning. But I’m boring you.” He smiled and, practising, waggled his paper basketball for the garbage slot.
“Whatever you say, Ewan. But yes, for a long time I’ve wanted to talk with you about Omphalos. You spent a lot of time with Eugene DeLint and his mother. Apart from her, you’re the only other who’s ever been up in the Dome, right?”
“At first Eugene and I were friends as well as professional associates. To tell you the truth, Kevin, I’d be surprised if I weren’t a suspect in his murder.”
“You are.”
He didn’t blink. “Well then, just to get that out of the way: you’ll recall, because we communicated late Sunday morning, that I was at a conference-cum-mass-treatment re eco-psychosis, in what’s left of the Florida Keys. Pull my communicator records if you like, Kevin, I won’t be offended. I have nothing to hide, and, again, I understand perfectly.”
Kevin watched fascinated as Randome bobbed with his paper basketball and tossed it along a strobing trajectory — it scored. He followed the shooting hand as it returned briefly to Randome’s own breast, then up to his face and those eyes.
Facing Kevin squarely with his back to the mirror, Randome reached a hand up to each of his shoulders, held his eyes. He mouthed a whisper: “Don McNicol, Anna Kynder.” The names hissed about the bunker bathroom like a loose hose. Randome snapped a forefinger to his sealed lips and shook his head rapidly, squinting, and turned away.
Kevin collected his wits just as Randome was reaching for the door handle. “I hear you’re leaving Omphalos, Ewan. Weren’t you going to tell me?”
He twisted at the waist and his face actually seemed to elongate towards Kevin. He came about fully like catching up with himself, and returned a few steps.
“Why, yes, yes I was…though I’ve only just made it known to the board here. But I am leaving Omphalos, Kevin, to which I’ve felt no emotional-slash-spiritual connection in a long long time. It was my sense of duty kept me here, my responsibility to humankind, I say with all humility, however bombastic it must sound. Of course, Chief Thu would have been informed of my decision immediately and Frank would have told you. I’d have told you soon enough myself, Kevin, and reassured you that I’d be continuing my private practice, and our sessions, at my home office. I didn’t want to muddy the waters here and now, if that metaphor still has any meaning.”
“You know Chief Thu?”
Randome flickered just the briefest doubt before returning wholly to himself. “Yes. But Ke-vin,” he drew out the two syllables, as if indulging a child. “You’ve been keeping this anxiety, what could only be more disturbing news for you, from me all this time of our meeting here. Tch-tch. We must maintain a trusting relationship, Kevin, or we have nothing.” He again fro
wned towards the mirror before whispering, “I fully intend to continue helping you in your personal and now your professional life.” He leaned closer to Kevin and whispered more lowly: “I know what you want, or whom rather.”
Kevin felt a rare blush. “I apologize, Ewan. It’s an old habit, especially when I’m on a case: trust no one.”
Dr. Randome smiled sympathetically. “Your wife’s untimely death made you feel betrayed forever, Kevin. I know the feeling, from personal experience: lied to by life, by love. And if I may continue to tread on feelings that remain as sensitive as the instant they were first violated” — and here again he whispered — “I have never accepted that your wife’s death was a suicide. I believe more than ever that it was connected to…other crimes. I am free now to help you in that, now that Eugene DeLint is no longer with us. But not here,” and he again snapped the finger to his lips.
Kevin controlled the flare of his nerves until he could manage levelly: “You have information connecting the Widower to Omphalos and Eugene DeLint, Dr. Randome?”
Randome, as if struck by Kevin’s volume, blinked hard and stretched his brow in an extended wince. He whispered continuously now:
“I admire frankness above all else, Kevin, as you know from our sessions. So much of a psychiatrist’s work would be rendered unnecessary by straight-talking honesty of the kind you exemplify. I have suggested two names to you, and I have more to say on the subject dearest to your heart, but not here.”
Again the glance at the mirror, the pause, and Randome had determined something. “My experiences in Haiti taught me about the power of suggestion and hypnosis, and about the uses for good and ill of illusion. All that helped me to see that some events, especially a particular suicide dearest your heart, may not be as it appeared.”
Watching Randome’s shiny eyes fill up, Kevin’s own shocked feelings abated and he felt…funny. This poor childlike man, standing here in a men’s room with another man, and a tall cop to boot, afraid to take the leak he’d come in for. And his head, his dome of a head, actually seemed to be getting larger, and more vulnerable, like a big baby’s. He was about to cry over Cyn’s death, Randome was, and alarmingly, Kevin suddenly felt the same.