Previous Segments:
Prologue and Chapters I-X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Radu-Chapter XVIII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
sixteen pages approximate
Grace loved having her pussy ate by another woman, preferably a younger one who knew what she was doing. It was the closet thing she ever experienced that approached true sexual satisfaction. Sierra Lawson was as good as any she ever had, and had good reason to do her best to try to please Grace. After all, she needed a place to stay. She also needed protection. Although all of her former fellow cult members now languished in jail, awaiting various multiple charges, from conspiracy, possession, murder, and tampering with evidence, they might yet pose a risk. Sierra particularly yet feared Joseph, who she maintained was capable of anything. He had a great deal of power that a jail cell could not contain, according to her.
Sierra managed to garner a great deal from the DA. She would turn states evidence against the outlaw cult. In return, she would receive a twenty-year sentence with a guarantee of probation. Naturally, she would have to continue therapy for a limited period, though in the relatively safe and comfortable confines of a halfway house.
She had Grace to thank for that. She now demonstrated her gratitude, in the vain hopes Grace would repay the favor. During her incarceration at whatever facility she ended up at, the state would monitor her closely. Who knew how long it would be before she could so much as touch another human being, let alone have any form of romantic or sexual relationship? Although the D.A.’s office guaranteed a maximum of five years at the most, to Sierra Lawson that sounded like an eternity.
Grace made it clear she seldom returned such favors. It was all a matter of control, of course. Besides, it was hardly a favor. It was payback. Sierra was earning her keep. Tomorrow, Grace expected her to wash the dishes, cook, and vacuum. Grace was now all Sierra had. She lost her part-time bartending job at The Crypt, this due as much to the revelations of Joseph’s connections to the 17th Pulse as to her involvement in the cult murders. Her landlord filed notice of eviction with the court, due to the presence of children in her building. He deemed her an undesirable presence, and a potential danger. Her night classes at University of Maryland, where she struggled to maintain a 2.0 average, would end due to the technicality of habitual absences. Although she certainly had the prerogative to finish her current make-up work, her counselor made it clear she would be wasting her time to attempt to continue past that date.
Even The Mocktones wanted nothing more to do with her. The group disbanded almost immediately after the news got out of Joseph Karinski’s criminal enterprises and Sierra’s involvement. They acted as though they never heard of her. Sierra realized then, their interest in music, in the group, in her hopes of eventual fame and stardom, were in the final analysis an act, little more than a sick joke.
As for her family, even her parents, they all disowned her years ago. That left no one she could turn to but Grace.
“I really love you”, Sierra told her in a voice of devoted sincerity.
“Well, if you love me, then it shouldn’t be that hard to clean the house tomorrow”, Grace replied. “This place is really a mess. Do you think you can have it done by the time I get home tomorrow?”
“Do you really have to leave?” Sierra asked her this while gazing up lovingly from between her knees. Grace smiled.
“I’m afraid I do”, she replied. “One of us has to work for a living”.
“I can do that too”, Sierra said. “I can bring the money in. You don’t really have to work another day if you don’t want to.”
“We’ll see”, Grace said. “Unfortunately, for the time being, I have to keep slaving away. I need to do that now, really. So, if you don’t mind, I need to be alone. You could probably use some sleep anyway. I seriously doubt you’re that rested yet from that jail cell.”
Sierra told her she loved her again, for the thousandth time, and then left her alone. Grace lit a cigarette, hoping she had not taken on more than she could stand. For the time being, Sierra was useful, however. She laid her cigarette on the nightstand ashtray by her bed, and turned on her television.
The DVD was already in place. It was all she watched over the last two days, but it continued to fascinate her. One more time, she focused her attention on the announcement of Greg Morrison, currently a Delegate of the Maryland State Assembly. He would soon be seeking the US House seat currently held by Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. He just recently hired a new campaign manager and a Press Aid, and intended to establish an exploratory committee, all for just this purpose.
He knew of course-he had to know-the odds were stacked against him. He was obviously aiming higher. Perhaps he sought enough public recognition to parlay into a later run for the Governors seat in 2010. He might possibly be aiming even higher than that. At the age of thirty-two, he had a long political career ahead of him as a Delegate, which with patience could eventually lead to bigger things. He was popular, handsome, well mannered in a naturally effusive sort of way, and was in fact quite charismatic. He was intelligent and quite well educated.
In this latest speech, he came across as more of a moderate than perhaps was wise, and Grace wondered how well that would play. Among his areas of expertise was the energy sector, and Grace had the idea he could probably recite every important speech, book, or film dealing with global warming by heart, and yet make it sound like it came directly from his soul. He described himself as an avid proponent of hydrogen fuel cells and hybrid automobiles, of increased fuel standards, of wind farms, of all the favorite proponents of the left. At the same time, however, he was an unabashed supporter of clean coal technology, nuclear energy, oil refinery modernization and expansion, and even drilling in ANWAR, positions which would put the left in a predictable fury.
He even called for continued tax breaks for all sectors of the energy producing industry, including the oil companies. Grace watched him now, giving a speech detailing his plans for ending hostilities in Iraq, shoring up the Iraqi government, gradual withdrawal of American troops, and continuing support for the global war on terrorism. He then called for stricter enforcement of border laws, and investment in the nation’s infrastructure. He insisted as well on increased funding for port security, as well as in airports, and increased police presence in the inner cities, as well as more funding for all first responders. He not only proposed, he demanded health care reform, and more money for what he insisted was perhaps the three most important things of all-“education, education, education.”
“Well, Mr. Morrison, you certainly are leaving no stone unturned”, Grace remarked to herself. “Quite an impressive set of proposals, for a mere third-term Assembly Delegate from Maryland. So why the hell throw a sure thing away for something that is all but out of your reach, at least at the present time?”
Grace learned enough about the American political system over the years to understand that any run for higher office by Morrison would necessitate him giving up his safe seat in the Assembly. He could not run for both at once, not and be taken seriously. He could not withstand a primary challenge against his seat in the Assembly and at the same time expect to run an effective campaign against the current incumbent from his own party for the US House.
The only other explanation of course-other than this being a trial run for a future even more important one-was that he had powerful backers, people who could easily clear the way for him. Insofar as he knew, his current known public supporters, consisting mainly of unions and various civil rights advocacy groups, while they had a respectable amount of influence, would not risk splitting the party against a man who already represented their interests in the House to an admirable degree, against a man who was such a relative unknown.
He was almost a wild card, a man who demonstrated a degree of independence that one time put him at risk potentially of losing funds for his district. He had vigorously opposed the spending cuts sought by the Maryland Governor in order to rein in the deficit of more than two billion dollars. Such a thing would necessitate a cut in the state payroll that would affect needed services. It was his one moment of crisis, but he maintained his public support, and funding. On top of that, he managed to work out a compromise with the governor’s staff that resulted in seven jobs saved. At the same time, not only did he save his own district’s funding, he managed to increase it by two hundred thousand dollars.
Nevertheless, he was not a candidate you would support against a US House member with a noted record of accomplishment. Of course, it was always possible something was going on behind the scenes. Grace was almost sure that was the case, and somehow she was almost certain that Greg Morrison had some unknown, silent backers who were heavy hitters. Somebody had big plans for him, somewhere down the road, and this latest salvo was merely the opening round of something bigger-much, much bigger.
Grace could not wait for her interview tomorrow. She would make certain of one thing, for sure. He would never forget it.
When she arrived at his downtown Baltimore office the next morning, he did just what she hoped he would do. He asked his secretary and press aide to leave the two of them alone. Grace dressed the part of what to Morrison’s eyes would be an obviously willing and attractive slut, though a suitably subtle one as well. She researched Morrison thoroughly enough that she was well aware of his current preferences, where women was concerned.
His own wife was overweight, and reportedly shrewish, yet he had three young children as well as a political career that bound him to her. There were no reports of any dalliances or extra marital affairs. Grace merely looked over the available photos of his younger female aids and closest campaign staff volunteers, as well as the one of his wife Barbara, in younger, happier-and leaner-days.
He offered her a drink, which she accepted-a gin and tonic. As he prepared her cocktail, he almost seemed to be testing a new stump speech, one about American jobs lost to globalization, the dangers of global warming, the budget deficit, and the war in Iraq.
She finished the drink, declined a second, and asked him what he thought about the issue of international sex slavery, particularly as it involved the use of children. He seemed puzzled by the question.
“It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to”, he admitted. “I don’t really know how to respond, other than to say it is a problem that should be dealt with on an international level. The United States should lead the way, of course, as I understand a significant percentage of women and children who are victimized by this scourge are within our borders.”
“Actually, I know a woman who was victimized as a young girl”, Grace said. “She was brought over from Romania, at the age of eleven. She was hooked on heroin, and forced to work as a prostitute from that age. It was not uncommon for her to engage multiple clients in the course of a single day or night. She slept on a cot in a basement that she shared at times with as many as twenty or more other girls and women. She lived this way for more than two years. To this day, she is an addict. Many of the men she serviced were not only older, but quite brutal with her. Because of this, she will never bear a child.”
Morrison seemed genuinely touched by this. For a minute, he seemed quite taken aback, to the point where he was, for once, speechless.
“That is terrible”, he finally said. “How did she manage to free herself from them?”
“Oh, in a way she never did”, Grace said. “In a sense, she remains bound to them, by invisible chains, the strongest kind to break, as they imprison the mind and soul. Her life is a daily struggle. There are times she wishes she were dead. Sometimes she even wishes she were still there with them. Life was hard for her, but simple and uncomplicated. As long as she did her work, she had food and a place to sleep. Clothes and drugs were also plentiful.
“Unfortunately, one night she saw something she shouldn’t have seen. At the time, she did not understand it, and walked in on the middle of something she had no business knowing about. She tried to reassure them even then of her loyalty, but they could not trust her, so they tried to kill her.”
Grace stopped and glanced at Morrison, who was taking it all in, aghast at the story, obviously curious for more details.
“Two of them one night took her out to a secluded, wooded area in the Maryland countryside, where she was to meet with some clients. There were four men, who purchased a young girl specifically to rape and murder. It was a birthday present, in fact, for one of the men in particular. Only one of the men, the one who purchased her and arranged it all, actually knew about it.
“All four of them raped her, brutally, in addition to beating her, choking her, and tossing her around as though she were little more than a Frisbee. Finally, after they all had enough, one of the men shot her in the head. Luckily, for her, for whatever reason, it was not a fatal wound. Whether the gun misfired, or she inadvertently moved at the right time, or he himself jerked slightly, or whatever the case, the bullet merely grazed her skull, though the blood was in sufficient quantities as to foster the illusion of a traumatic head wound.
“They dumped her down a steep ravine, into bushes, where the girl revived. She found as many as three other sets of remains there, in various stages of decomposition. One was a complete skeleton. Whether these were victims of these same four men, or others of similar character, she never knew. She left, and wandered off, until she was found, and rescued.”
Morrison now looked grim. He looked ashen, and afraid. His hands shook, as he put down his cocktail glass.
“I-don’t know what to say”, he said. “That is a horrible story. I am glad she survived, of course.”
Grace was getting bored with this game. He was obviously not going to break down and confess his part in the events of that night so many years ago.
“Do you have a brother?” When she asked this question, he breathed deeply, and then looked at her.
“I had one”, he replied. “He died with my father, in the same plane crash that took his life, in India.”
“He was older than you, correct?”
Morrison looked now at her with a growing intensity that suggested a controlled, barely hidden anger.
“He was actually only sixteen at the time”, Morrison replied. “I think I was twenty.”
“I see”, Grace said. “So at the time all of this transpired, he would have been a mere twelve years old, you yourself would have been closer to sixteen. It just occurs to me that the youngest of the four men was about that age. He was himself the son of the man for whom the nights festivities had been arranged.”
“What exactly are you saying, Miss Rodescu?”
Morrison himself now obviously tired of the little cat-and-mouse game Grace played with him.
“I was just wondering-is your father really dead? Some men have faked their deaths, you know, especially when they might be under investigation for bribery, or involvement in other illegal activities. Of course, there is a chance he could have been murdered, if some people thought he might turn states evidence against them.”
“It was an accident, Miss Rodescu”, Morrison assured her, now not bothering to attempt to disguise his anger. “Fourteen other people died in that crash besides my father and brother. It was a fact-finding mission, on behalf of some government agencies in conjunction with some private investment firms. At the time, they were looking into the prospect of loans to India for the purposes of modernization. It was not a controversial matter with a potential risk. If it were, he would not have taken my brother with him. Qualified forensics experts identified all the bodies, which matched with the flight’s manifest. There were also seven survivors, some of whom verified my father and brother’s presence, as well as others.”
He now looked at Grace firmly, in an attitude of assurance, yet seemed to be silently composing his coming words carefully.
“What does my father have to do with this story you told me anyway? Who is this friend of yours?”
“I am her”, Grace said simply. “I remember everything about that night. It took about three years for my memory to return, but when it did, I remembered it like it was just the night before. Everyday, in fact, I remember it as though it were the night before. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of that night. I remember every painful, excruciating detail of it. What I especially remember is the name of the man to whom I was a birthday present. In fact, he told me everything about himself. He told me his name, his job, everything down to his plans for the future.”
Morrison excused himself “for just a few seconds” as he paged his secretary. She was to cancel any further meetings or interviews for the day.
“That is really not necessary”, Grace said. “I don’t want to intrude on your time or work any more than necessary.”
This statement flabbergasted Morrison.
“What exactly do you want, Miss Rodescu”?
“I want to know the names of the other two men that night, the ones with you and your father the night you raped me and left me for dead”, she said. “I also want twenty million dollars. I expect the wire transfer to be accomplished within a reasonable amount of time. Do not worry. It is a one time only demand. I am not a greedy person. In fact, I feel I am being quite lenient. I only want what I deserve, and I deserve at least this much.”
Morrison was now red faced and choked by sobs, as tears streamed down his face.
“I never would have done that”, he said. “I would never have gone along with something like that, but we were drunk. Dad was always fucking with me, saying it was time for me to be a man, and”-
“I assumed as much”, Grace said, though this admission betrayed no hint of sympathy. “In fact, I think your father knew all the time I was to be his present that night. Not me in particular, of course, but he knew what was up. I think it might have been a regular thing with him. I am almost positive those remains I found were other examples of his-shall we call us hobbies?”
“Well, you’re wrong”, he said. “My father was fucked up that night. He stayed to himself the next week, anguished over what he did. He cut off all ties to those friends of his. Look at his record in the Maryland Assembly. It was right after that weekend that he became an advocate for children’s rights, pushing for more strident laws and punishments for child abuse, especially against child sex predators. In the meantime, he became more and more of a drunk in his private life. He withdrew socially, from the family, and especially from me. He could hardly stand to look at me.
“I lost my father that night. You can believe that.”
“Ah, but you gained so many friends, I am sure”, Grace aid sarcastically.
“I don’t blame you for being bitter”, he said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you called a press conference right now, and told everything. If you did, what could I do? Deny it, of course, but what would be the point? I would be ruined, whether I was ever prosecuted or not. No, if you want your twenty million dollars, I can arrange that. I warn you, though-it is incumbent on you to be content with that, to the extent that is possible.”
“I am afraid it is not”, she said, to his obvious dismay. “Oh, the money is plenty. There are however other things that I want. Those names, which I mentioned before. I also want to know the extent of Grady’s involvement in all of this. How long has he known and been involved? I also want to know about the poor unfortunate fellow who lost his life in the process of tracking me to Virginia. I want to know why I was being followed.”
“Grady Desmond is a worthless, corrupt old hack”, he said. “His editorial endorsements are for sale. That is one of the worse kept secrets of Maryland politics. Nobody says anything because it is not provable, and nobody wants to get on his bad side. I honestly do not know how long he has known about you, or the extent of his involvement with anything. Hell, I did not know about you myself until just now. You are an independent journalist with a penchant for the Gothic sub-culture. That is all I knew, or ever did know.
“As for somebody dying while following you, I have no idea what you are talking about. That is the truth. If it had anything to do with me, I am sorry, but I swear to you, I had no knowledge of it.”
This was all very interesting, and surprising. Someone was looking out for Morrison, protecting his interests, but at the same time keeping him out of the loop. This could possibly be to insulate him from a potential future accusation. It was even slightly possible he would not approve of anything illicit, if only for practical reasons.
Yet, it seemed that someone had a vested interest in Morrison’s fledgling political career, and was out to protect his or their investment, at all costs. She almost knew who her enemy was. The person she had to destroy was all but within arms reach. She could almost taste him. It was only a matter of time.
“The names?” Grace reminded him.
“I need to know what you are planning to do”, Morrison said.
“You need to pay me twenty million dollars and give me their names”, Grace answered him in an assuredly serious tone. “That is all you need to know. What I will do, I will do. Come on, Greg, you are used to being out of the loop. Do you really want to know?”
“Jason Talbert is the man that set the whole thing up”, Greg replied. “He used to be a brokerage firm executive, though he’s retired now. Gresham-Spurlock is the name of the company, I think. They specialize in foreign investments, particularly in Eastern Europe and China, along with India and Southeast Asia. Talbert was a real piece of work. He used to say all people in the world were born with a price on their heads, and there are only two classes, the buyers and sellers.”
“Yes, he was quite a philosopher”, Grace said as she tried to hide her surprise. She was familiar with this man. She had read an article written by him on foreign investments in Romania. She had even seen him interviewed on CNN, by Lou Dobbs. Yet, not at any time did it ever occur to her who he was. She even admired the skillful way he handled the aggressive and accusatory questioning of Dobbs, whom she considered jingoistic.
“The other man I want to talk to you about”, Morrison continued. “He’s dying, of cancer. He does not have that long to live. He lost everything. He lost his wife, his kids, his home, everything. He cannot do you any harm, or anybody else.”
“Oh, poor thing”, Grace replied. “I should really visit and extend my sympathies, like he did me when I screamed as he held me upside down, inserted a half-pint of vodka in my pussy, and emptied it inside me, after like the fifth time I was raped. What was it he said? Oh yeah, it was something like ‘shut up bitch or I’ll gouge your eyeballs out.’”
Morrison just stared at her, tiring now of the attempt to illicit some degree of forgiveness or understanding which he obviously was not going to get.
“His name is Lonnie Brock, alright? Are you satisfied now?”
Now it was impossible for Grace to hide her surprise.
“The Baltimore Orioles shortstop turned prosecutor-that Lonnie Brock? You are fucking kidding me, right? The same motherfucker who use to hold summer baseball camps for juvenile offenders, the-oh my fucking God! He ran for Baltimore District Attorney eight years ago, and then dropped out of the race for no apparent reason. He led in the polls by double digits, and no one ever knew why he quit. He is the one who did that shit to me?”
“Please-you can’t let anybody know I told you this shit, alright?”
“Why, are you afraid you’ll end up like your daddy?”
“I told you, that was an accident”, Morrison insisted. “Besides-where do you think I’m going to get the money from? Do you think I can come up with twenty million dollars just on my own?”
“I don’t know where or how you’ll get it, I just know you’d better come up with it”, she insisted.
‘Fine, but if you want it that badly, you have to hold up on both of these guys until I get it done. Then, do what you want. Shit, I do not care. They brought it on themselves, just as I did. They are even more to blame. Just go easy on Lonnie. He has changed, and does not deserve this, besides the fact that he has suffered enough. As for Jason, that is another story. I only ask that you hold off. Give me a chance to make this right, for both our sakes.”
“I’ll hold off, but not long”, she warned. “That leaves only one other thing. I promise, you are not going to like it. But my terms are unconditional.”
“Let me guess”, he said as he nodded his head and even vaguely smiled. “You insist that I resign my seat, withdraw completely from politics, and never run for any future office. Well, if that is it, to tell you the truth I am not so sure that is such a bad idea.”
Grace looked at him, and smiled.
She was right. Morrison definitely did not like her final demand. In fact, he never actually agreed to it. He would have to have some time to think about it. Grace figured as much, of course. It was not a move to enter into lightly. Of course, there was hardly anything casual about this demand.
“You want me to divorce my wife-and marry you?”
“I’m not saying you have to love me”, she replied. “In fact, I would prefer you did not. If you ever do, it would certainly be one sided. Still, I know you have a long, hopefully distinguished career ahead of you. You could easily become Governor, Senator, or possibly even President. In fact, I know you have something in your mind along those lines, and I have an idea you consider it a sure bet.
“Who knows, perhaps it is. Whatever you are thinking, I assure you, those dreams are going to come crashing down around you in flames if you don’t give me everything I want.”
Morrison lit up a cigarette, and took a deep drag.
“Wouldn’t be a good idea to be seen doing that”, she said.
‘I don’t care”, he replied. “Look, you wanting to be my Press Secretary-that is one thing. My wife-that is something else again. I have three kids, and I do love my wife.”
“Please”, Grace said. “How much does she weigh, 240 pounds? Do not tell me that you love her, because I do not believe it. More importantly, I do not care if you do. Look, I am going to make this very easy on you. You will be thinking about what I said, soon. You take your time, and when you are ready, give me a call. Do not wait too long, though. If I have to initiate the next contact with you, I will not be in a very good mood.
“You never have to worry about having a sexual relationship with me, I promise you. What happened between us out in those woods that night was very definitely a one-time thing that will never happen again, on any level. I expect your undivided devotion to me publicly, of course, regardless of the fact we will sleep in separate rooms. Most of the time, in fact, we will sleep in separate homes. I hear Camp David is quite an exquisite place, by the way.
“What you do in private, of course, I could care less about so long as you are discreet. I am sure you will agree discretion may not really be the better part of valor, but for a politician it would certainly be the height of wisdom. I, too, will be discreet in all my activities. That would only be fair, would it not?”
Morrison’s head was in his hands as he slumped down at his desk. She thought she heard him whimpering as she made her way toward the door.
“Oh, and just one more thing, Gregory”, she said, almost as an afterthought as she started to open the door. “When you get your divorce, you will want to give your wife custody of your kids. I hate children, you see.”
By the time Grace made it home, the apartment looked immaculate. She was pleasantly surprised at the diner that awaited her, kept warm in the oven, though Sierra was presently gone. The roast beef with corn and candied yams looked and smelled inviting. She hurriedly tore off a piece of the roast, and tasted it. Sierra had a penchant for rosemary. She seemed to know the exact amount to use. A pitcher of fresh iced tea sat on the table. Grace poured herself a glass. She tasted it. It was possibly the best iced tea she ever drank. Either most people that made iced tea tended to use not enough sugar, or they really overdid it. This was close to perfect.
She promised to help Sierra re-establish herself, in college and at work, and even encouraged her to develop her artistic talents, which were promising though presently rough. When she first moved in, she seemed obsessed with Marlowe Krovell. She rendered a sketch of him. Then, before Grace’s very eyes, she transformed the sketch into a seeming duplicate of the police sketch artist’s rendition of the unknown man currently wanted in connection with the murder of April Sandusky.
“You could probably do that with any other sketch of any other person”, Grace told her. Sierra demonstrated several times, however, that such a procedure did not come close to producing as startling a likeness with any other sketch. As impressed as Grace was, she downplayed it, and tried to get it off Sierra’s mind.
“Even if it was Marlowe Krovell, it doesn’t matter”, Sierra told her. “Marlowe is very definitely dead.”
She was not about to tell Sierra of her own suspicions. She wanted her focused on other things. She would help Sierra all she could, within reason. All she wanted from Sierra in return was for her to do, well, everything she told her. She would cook, she would clean, and she would service her sexual needs. All of this, of course, was incidental compared to her major function.
When Marshall Crenshaw lost his life, Grace lost the one and only lifeline to her heroin supply. Crenshaw was a trustworthy supplier, and she was one of his few elite private customers. He mainly dealt in bulk, through the 17th Pulse. Her interview in the Baltimore City Jail with Spooky Gold proved more enlightening than she ever would have imagined.
Crenshaw, it turned out, dealt not only with Marlowe Krovell, but also with Joseph Karinsky and his friend Milo Richmond. On some occasions, other members of Joseph’s band dealt with not only Crenshaw, but with the Pulse. Sierra now would be her lifeline to the gang, and to the heroin that she craved. The interview with Gold had been a mere excuse to set this up in private. Soon, Sierra should return with what she needed. Then, she had another task for her to perform, the details of which were in the planning stages, and all but worked out. Grace had no doubt Sierra was perfect for the little mission she had in mind for her.
For tonight, however, Grace merely looked forward to a well-deserved excursion out of this world, and into the nether world of more pleasant dreams. Sometimes she wished she never awoke from them. She understood it to be an illness. A flaw in her character, it could be a serious weakness. That was beside the point. She needed her little escapes into her nether realms. They were far too rare, but over the years, she learned to make the most of them.
Sierra returned more than an hour after Grace, and had the goods-the heroin, and one other thing, something that was perhaps even better.
“It was easier than you said it would be”, she said. “All it took was one phone call from Toby, and it was all set up.”
Grace was thunderstruck. She expected this to take at least a couple of weeks, but Sierra made it look as simple as boiling water. She now handed Grace the proof she needed.
“That is excellent”, Grace said. “I don’t know what to say. I was afraid I would have to do it myself. How did you do it so fast?”
“I lied about my age”, Sierra said. “I just said I was fourteen. It was over from that point. Believe me-I do know how to act the part.”
They both laughed heartily. Yes, indeed, Grace realized she could learn in time to love this girl, if she was not very careful.
They sat to eat, and then they decided to get high. They shot each other up simultaneously, much like lovers with intertwining wine cups. Afterwards, Sierra got her reward. Grace ravished her sensually, in a manner the younger, more inexperienced Sierra never before experienced. Her cries were of such intensity that, even through the haze of the opiate induced high, Grace wondered if they might be misconstrued.
Soon, however, she found herself completely swept away by her dream fantasies. She could see herself as the First Lady of The United States. She would meet foreign dignitaries, have dalliances with Prime Ministers and royalty, would know all the best people of the world on an intimate, first name basis. She would trade in secrets amongst the various intelligence agencies, and make billions of dollars. Whenever it suited her, she would have access to the best heroin the world had to offer.
In the meantime, she would advocate from her position as First Lady for the repeal of all drug laws, and would force her husband to support all such proposals, as well as legalization of prostitution. She would insure that he appointed judges who would throw out any state or federal laws of which she did not approve, and would uphold those ones she did approve.
She would have first hand knowledge of the activities of any Senator or House member she considered a problem, and would in this way make certain they came around to her point of view. Just for the hell of it, she would fuck a great many of them herself, as well as some of their wives, or husbands-and children.
Then, when it was all over with, and she had her finances securely and irrevocably arranged, it would be time for the coup de grace. During her husband’s last year in the oval office, she would call a press conference and tell everything that happened that night. By that time, she would have a death grip on the hearts and souls of the most powerful Senate and House members. They would not dare to prosecute her for anything.
If, however, some of them sought to do so, she would insure the new President would write her out a Presidential pardon. He would of course have previously been her husband’s Vice-President, and her own handpicked candidate, ready and willing to do her bidding at a moments notice. Her husband, of course, would be compelled to resign in disgrace. If not, he might well be impeached by the House, and then convicted by trial in the Senate. Grace really would probably care less by that time.
As she saw herself in her dream, fawned over by foreign dignitaries and attended by a highly trained cadre of obedient intelligence agents, she knew one thing for a fact. The world would never forget the name of Grace Rodescu-she would make sure of that, in fact, for she would keep her maiden name after her marriage. As of now, pleasant though her dreams were, Grace just wanted to sleep.
When she awoke the following morning, Sierra had breakfast cooked. Grace found herself hungrier than in years, and after a quick shower, she ate.
Later that day, Grace had a meeting with Cruiser Dietrich, of the Baltimore Explorer. The old man was one of the few people Grace knew that always brought as much of a smile to her face as she did to his own. He honestly seemed to like her, and did not give a second thought, as far as she knew, to getting in her pants. More importantly, Cruiser respected, and even admired, Grace’s work as a journalist. He once told her she was the only person working for him that deserved the title.
“Well, Grace, what have you got for me today?” the old man smiled expectantly, as though in anticipation of the story of the century. If anyone else talked to her like this, she would assume it was in expectation of other favors. Cruiser was all business, yet was cordial about it.
“Do you remember the Maryland State Assembly House Delegate who just a few days ago announced an exploratory committee to run for the House of Representatives, against Steny Hoyer?”
“Shit, that’s not going anywhere”, Cruiser said, trying to hide his disappointment. “He’d get killed in the primaries and lose his seat in the process. There are already three people I know of thinking of jumping into that. If he goes through with this he’s throwing his career away.”
“How would you like to help him in his career, and make it look like his potential primary opponent is responsible for digging up dirt?”
“That would be great”, Cruiser said. He hated Hoyer and wished him nothing but ill will, for reasons no one understood. Cruiser insisted he hated politicians in general-especially the ones that clung so long to their seats mold grew on their asses, as he put it.
“Feast your eyes on this”, she said as she handed him the photos.
“We can’t run these”, he said as he separated the questionable ones into a separate pile from the ones that would be considered unsuitable for his publication-family oriented as it pretended to be these days.
“Where in the hell were these taken?” Cruiser was obviously interested, though not yet totally committed.
“In a public bathroom”, she explained. “In The Red Lion Lounge, to be precise.”
“This girl looks familiar, but the woman escapes me”, he said.
“Barbara Morrison, the Delegate’s wife”, Grace explained. “The girl is Sierra Lawson”.
“You mean the vampire cult girl?” Cruise’s eyes widened. “My God, this is a bombshell. Why in the hell couldn’t this woman be the Governor’s wife, Hoyer’s wife, or Hillary Clinton? We need to hold on to these for a while. If he does officially announce a decision to run, we can really make waves two weeks or so before the election. Morrison will win. The sympathy vote will put him over the top. It would cause a big backlash against Senator Hoyer. If only we can invent a connection between Hoyer and this girl.”
“You read my mind”, Grace said. “Perhaps we can have this leaked from an operative strategically placed inside the Hoyer campaign. If we do it right we can even make it look like there might be a connection between Hoyer and Sierra.”
“Grace, I always did like the way you think”, Morrison said. He now called downstairs and ordered a payment of twenty-thousand dollars to Grace Rodescu.
“Not getting stingy in your old age are you, Cruiser?” Grace asked this, barely able to hide her disappointment.
“Oh, this is just an advance”, he said. “When we actually put the story out, believe me, there will be more-a lot more. In the meantime, consider this a no-strings attached bonus. Something could happen that would make this useless, you know. That twenty thousand is yours, regardless of how things develop.”
“Damn, thanks Cruiser”, Grace said, as she realized now that maybe the old buzzard possibly wanted in her pants after all.
“In the meantime”, she said, “I have an interview with Spooky Gold you might want to run. It’s a good one too, might be worth maybe another ten-or twenty?”
“Wow, you actually managed an interview with that thug, and his lawyer agreed to it? Amazing! We will say ten for that one. I will call back down in a few minutes. Let me read it first. We’re going to want to run on this one fast, before some worthless piece of shit judge imposes a gag order.”
Cruiser was still upset over the fact that the Karinsky gang’s attorneys had filed a restraining order to prevent any further media leaks that might go towards prejudicing a jury in their coming trial. When the judge affirmed the request-and so ordered it-Cruiser looked like he might have a complete meltdown, knowing as he did that staff photographer Antoine Phelps had taken relevant photos that were pertinent to the case. He decided on his lawyer’s advice, though against his own better judgment, to hold off on the photos to prevent their being used as an excuse for Karinsky’s attorney to call for a mistrial.
Cruiser skimmed now through the current article, determined not to make the same mistake he did the last time. He read how the gang leader proclaimed his innocence of the murder of Marshall Crenshaw, now known to be a dealer in hard drugs while alive. Crenshaw, he said, committed suicide. He admitted to the murder of the Reverend George, in retaliation for the rape of April Sandusky. He denied any knowledge of Sandusky’s own murder. The 17th Pulse, he said, had nothing to do with the death of the girl, who was actually an initiated member of the group.
“Damn, he admitted to killing George?” Cruiser picked up the phone and, obviously ecstatic, confirmed another check for ten thousand. “You got a hell of a bonus coming your way this Christmas, girl. The Baltimore Sun would kill for a story like this.”
“He’s lucky he’s in Maryland”, he continued. “Gold is as guilty as sin, and deserves to hang, at least for the murder of that preacher. He probably killed that girl too, him and that gang of his, despite what he says. The drug dealer I could care less about. Still, this is a great article. You did it again, my amazing Grace.”
As he talked Grace wondered what he would think if he knew that she had been one of that drug dealers best customers. As she mused so, she almost missed him bemoaning something about “those others.”
“What others?”
“That fucking creep Krainsky”, he said. “Him and all those cretins that run with him”
Suddenly, Cruiser’s assistant editor barged into the office, without knocking. In one of her rare outbursts of exuberance, she told him he needed to turn on the television.
“Any channel, it don’t matter which one”, she insisted.
It was Morrison, standing beside his wife, Barbara. She looked grim, but steady. Morrison looked distraught, yet determined, as he began to address the assembled reporters he had just summonsed for a news conference.
“Something here ain’t right”, he said. “He wouldn’t be calling a news conference to announce he’d changed his mind. He would definitely not call a news conference to announce a decision to run this quick. Hell, the exploratory committee he announced just a few days ago has not had time to explore their collective dicks. What the hell is this?”
Grace was anguished. She knew all too well what was coming. She tried to tell herself it could be any number of things. It could not be what it seemed to be.
“He can’t do this”, she said. “I won’t let him get away with it.”
“Get away with what?” Cruiser just looked perplexed.
By the time the press conference was over, all of Grace’s hopes were deflated. He admitted it. He told it all, every single bit, in excruciating detail. He admitted the role of his father. He admitted his own role. In the course of one five-minute speech, he managed to make Grace relive the rape in such a way as to make her feel almost as helpless as the night it transpired. In a sense, she felt more violated than she had not only on the night in question, but more than she ever believed was possible.
“Congressman, who was the girl”, a reporter asked him. Other reporters in attendance repeated the question numerous times it seemed in the space of ten seconds, but Morrison held up his arms.
“I never knew her name”, he said. “She was just a young girl, given up to die. Sold, it would seem, for the purpose of rape and murder. After we finished with her, one of the men shot her, then took her body somewhere and dumped her in the bushes, down a deep ravine. I have lived with this horrible event all of my life. I determined to do anything in my power to make it right. Of course, some things are unforgivable.. The fact that I was a young, naïve, insecure boy of sixteen, high on marijuana and whisky, on top of an unfathomable amount of beer earlier, while it may moderate my degree of culpability to a small extent, does not in any sense make up for the horror I helped inflict on that young, innocent girl.
“I was asked earlier, ‘why come out with this now? No one knows, and after all, this was fourteen years ago’”.
He looked down at the podium, steadied his composure, and then looked out on the sea of questioning faces.
“The answer is, of course, such a crime can never be forgotten. Although it happened more than a decade ago, it is as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday. Not a day goes by that I do not see that girl. I still see her face, begging for mercy, screaming in pain and terror. There is not a day-or night-that goes by I do not wish I could have died instead of her, and that she could live, and grow up to be a normal, healthy, happy woman, with a family, with real friends, and a career. Instead, she was taken in an act of savage lust before she ever got a chance to live life, or to make her own mark on the world. That, in my opinion, is the worse kind of theft, because it is something that is irreplaceable.”
“That son-of-a-bitch”, Grace shouted. “That motherfucker is going to get out of it. He is going to get away with it.”
“Grace, do you know anything about this?”
Yes, Grace thought to herself. The motherfucker is lying about the pot and booze. Actually, he was not so much lying as greatly exaggerating. He was high, but had control of his faculties, and knew exactly what he was doing. Greg Morrison was now trying to make it look like he was legally insane that night, and in a limited sense was his own self a victim of abuse.
Someone asked Morrison who the other men were.
“One of the men was Lonnie Brock”, Morrison said, and there was an audible, as well as a collective, gasp from the crowd of assembled reporters.
“Who was the other one”, demanded an elderly female reporter, who seemed particularly incensed at the disgusting revelations, while others asked him if he meant the former Oriole player and prosecutor, now near death from cancer. As for the other man-
“The other man was-”, he said as the assembled crowd fell into a hushed silence.
“The Reverend Christopher George”, he said.
“That lying son-of-a-bitch”, Grace said, to Cruiser’s great surprise.
“Grace, what the hell do you know about this?” he demanded.
“It wasn’t Christopher George, it was Jason Talbert”, she declared. “He told me earlier.”
She then realized she was helpless to confront him with the truth. She had no way of proving her own story. Even if she did, she ran the risk of being revealed as somebody more interested in using the story as a means of blackmail than in receiving justice, and in incarcerating criminals. She could not prove it was Talbert. She possibly now, thanks to Morrison’s public revelations, could not even prove she was the girl. He was doing this to protect Talbert, who would doubtless see Morrison received not only lenient treatment, but would continue to live well. His political career was in tatters, but Grace surmised Morrison could care less about this.
Morrison now explained that a great deal of the nights events was, according to him, geared toward garnering the support of Christopher George for the elder Morrison’s planned run for the Governor’s seat. Grace was certain that a perusal of the public records would reveal George’s endorsement of Morrison in the primaries right after this time. George, of course, was now dead, and helpless to defend himself. The recent revelations of his abhorrent treatment of his own wife, moreover, as well as her own very credible allegations of his rape of the Sandusky girl, would make the story all too believable.
Everything was down the drain. Grace had no doubt there were no bodies in that spot out in the Maryland countryside. They would have been moved long ago, perhaps destroyed. She was not sure at all, for that matter, where exactly it was. She could not be sure if it was actually in Maryland. It could have transpired in Virginia or Pennsylvania, as far as she knew.
She left now amid Cruiser’s suspicions of her. She revealed perhaps a little too much. Although it never seemed to occur to him that she was the girl in question, he had to wonder just what her connection was, and how she learned all of these details. What he said about Talbert reverberated throughout her head all the way home.
“Talbert is not a man to fuck with”, he said. “He has connections with everybody from the FBI to the CIA, and other agencies most other people don’t even know anything about. If you end up on his bad side, he can make your life a living hell.”
By the time Grace returned home, she was determined she would destroy Talbert, if she had to openly pull the trigger in front of witnesses. Somehow, she would get him. Grady would help her, whether he wanted to or not. Somehow, some way, she would do it. It was just a question of when and how. She wanted to shoot up so badly she could not stand it, but determined she would stay clean this night, and for the next few days. She was very likely now in danger, and could not risk putting herself at the mercy of someone that was obviously a very powerful enemy.
Sierra was not home, but it was just as well. She turned on the television, and sat and watched as the local news correspondent stood between the cameras and the home of the long retired baseball star and former prosecutor Lonnie Brock. According to his physicians, the amount of time he had left probably amounted to days, not weeks.
Minutes, not hours, is more likely the case, Grace realized. The reporter continued with the information that Brock, who has battled for more than two years against pancreatic and thyroid cancer, lapses in and out of a coma, and is presently in that state, with very little hope of being revived. The cancer, he explained, has spread to this brain.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, which made Grace tense up in a near panic. She tiptoed quietly to the door, and looked out the peephole, to see Phelps, looking severely agitated.
“Okay, it’s about time”, he said when she opened the door. “What’s up?”
“Probably you, come in and shut the door-and lock it”, she replied.
“I guess you’ve heard”, he said. “Where is your friend?”
“I don’t know, probably trying to smooth her way back in at The Crypt. She could be trying for a dancing job at The Red Lion Lounge. I told her I’d give her a recommendation.”
“Yeah, well it’s probably not a good idea for her to be out this quick”, he said. “Damn, this place is sure immaculate. She really is a hell of a house cleaner.”
“Excellent cook, too”, she said. “She can do it all. She has been a big help to me. I sure could not afford to hire help of her quality. Not that it matters. Everything else has gone to hell, though, so I guess I should count my blessings. I just today watched twenty million dollars fly out the window, and on national television at that. Easy come, easy go. I guess you heard about Morrison?”
“Huh? Who’s that?” Phelps asked.
“The Maryland Assemblyman”, she replied. “You know-the child murderer and rapist who suddenly found his conscience in the middle of a press conference?”
Phelps looked at her in disbelief, as if he was trying to process her words, but just could not comprehend what she was saying.
“You don’t know what’s happened, do you?” he asked in a firm and serious tone. “You really don’t have a clue.”
“Whatever it is, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than what happened to me today”, she moaned as she plopped down on the sofa beside him, then buried her head on her knee, her feet propped on the edge.
“My God, you really haven’t heard”, he said. “They let them all out. I’m talking about Joseph Karinski, and those other thugs, including the crazy bitch that shot you-and Rhino, and Milo. All of them have been released on bond, except Leighton.”
Grace almost seemed as though she could care less. Phelps’s news seemed to illicit no reaction from her. Her head remained face down on her knees, and she began to slightly rock from side-to-side.
“That doesn’t make any sense”, she said. “Not that I give a shit.”
“Well, you’d better give a shit”, he said. “When the cops found that pot in Joseph’s apartment, they went in without a warrant. They did not find the embalming fluid they were looking for, and the small amount of pot they found was untainted. They can’t hold him for that. He denied any involvement with anything else, and they all had a damn good lawyer that demanded their release on bail. There’s a good chance all charges will be dropped.”
Grace raised her head and lowered her feet, and the look on her face was as distraught as Phelps had ever seen from anyone. Still, she said nothing.
“Grace, are you hearing me? Do you have any idea what this means?”
“So why are they keeping the girl?” It seemed to Phelps that she asked this to keep him talking without asking her more questions, as though she truly no longer cared, about this or anything.
“Because she’s a juvenile, on probation from Virginia, where she is wanted for violation. She is not supposed to be in Maryland. Somehow, she just fell through the cracks. They are charging her specifically with conspiracy to commit murder, the would-be victim being one of her teachers. They’ll more than likely drop the other charge. Her lawyer is blaming that on the 17th Pulse, which is where the pot is supposed to have come from. There is no proof that she intentionally poisoned those kids.
“On top of that, the kids supposedly stole the pot from her after they raped her. She’s been claiming this all along, and according to the hospital report, they very definitely did rape her. The DNA evidence proves that, along with all her vaginal and other injuries from that night.”
Finally, Grace was noticeably concerned, or so it seemed. After all, the Pulse was her newest heroin supply. Surely to God that was not going to be fucked up as well.
“That’s bullshit”, Grace said, suddenly becoming aroused. “She confessed to setting the whole thing up. She even bragged about it in a police interrogation, and to jail informants. She even boasted about soaking the pot in embalming fluid.”
“Thrown out”, he said. “Police coercion, according to her lawyer. She is a juvenile, and they got all this without a proper guardian being present. I know it is fucked up, but that is the way it is. Now of course she denies everything, and since she is admitting to the plot to kill the teacher, they will probably drop it at that. The only reason they will charge her for that is the testimony of the kid she tried to coerce into killing him. Even so, she’ll probably be on her way back to Virginia within the week.”
“What about her parents?” Grace demanded. “What about Sierra’s statements to the police? What about the evidence they uncovered that the parents were dead way before the several times Debbie Leighton admitted having returned to the farm, with Milo Richmond? How can they just disregard all of that, and all of her statements?”
“All thrown out”, Phelps steadfastly repeated. “Nothing she said will hold up. The girl is obviously crazy, and her supposed visit to her parent’s house she now claims was a lie to her Aunt, just an excuse to get out and party. Her lawyer is claiming she just bragged about poisoning the pot to make herself look bad, like it was just another teenage thing.
“They cannot even charge Milo Richmond with statutory rape. Would you like to take a good guess why? Seems as if Debbie Leighton had a fake ID that gave her age as eighteen, and of course that is the one she supposedly showed Milo, who was her so-called boyfriend, and all the others as well. Never mind they are likely the people that helped her get the ID to begin with.
“As for Sierra, do you really believe anybody is going to believe a thing she said? That girl is a drug addict, a prostitute, and as if that is not enough, she is a proven, habitual liar.
“Speaking of drug addicts and prostitutes, do you really think they would believe you, if you told them about Larceny shooting you that night? As fucked up on heroin as you were when I called the ambulance, I seriously doubt it. Even if the cops and the DA believe it, a defense lawyer would rip you to shreds.
“It’s just a damn good thing I found your stash and got rid of it. At the same time, you were so obviously fucked up, even if you decided to press charges now, it would go nowhere.”
“You’re forgetting something”, Grace reminded him. “You’re forgetting about the pictures. The ones you took, at the farm, of the Leightons, of Larceny and Rhino, the dead cattle, the house burning, even the man Larceny killed. We will eventually be able to publish them in The Explorer. If they do drop the charges, the gag order will no longer apply. We can make them take up the case. The public would demand it.
“We can at least prove Larceny Adams and Rhino Dodd were involved, and they can verify Joseph and Milo’s involvement, and Debbie’s as well. Sierra will be fine. Her agreement with the DA’s office is still binding. Rhino would probably turn states evidence in return for a reduced sentence. He is the stupid one of the group, after all. I am sure he knows the truth about Debbie’s involvement with poisoning that pot as well.
“Shit, you saw the embalming fluid at the Leighton’s farm, Larceny even made sure he took it from there before they set the house on fire. The Pulse had nothing to do with that.”
“So when did you become so interested in protecting the 17th Pulse”, Phelps asked her. “Why should you give a shit about those fucking thugs? Even if they did not do it, if those guys are off the street, so much the better is the way I look at it. Is that who you are getting your heroin from, by the way? I am telling you, Grace, if you have that shit laying around here, you had better get rid of it, before somebody comes snooping around here. You know it could happen any time, right?”
Phelps had a point, Grace realized. Especially now that her plans regarding Morrison and Talbert had fallen to pieces, she was that much more of a target. She went into the bedroom and to her bureau, telling him to wait a minute. She needed to check on something.
She opened the drawer to see, to her surprise, the stash was gone, as well as the syringes and tourniquets. It was all gone. She looked wildly inside her drawers, haphazardly throwing things out as she went through them all. Everything was gone.
“What the hell did you want to see me about anyway?” Phelps asked.
“I enjoy your company”, she answered as she tried not to appear distracted or overly concerned about the loss of the product for which she now felt a near overwhelming need.
“You and me work and play well together”, she continued as she looked around the room with a casual intensity that made Phelps wince.
“You lose something?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’ve lost a lot of things today, Phelps”, she replied. “I don’t like to lose things, and I’m having a hard time coming to grips with it.”
“So why did you text me?”
Grace looked at him with a perplexed gaze.
“I didn’t do that”, she said.
“Well, here it is,” he said as he presented his cell phone, which now displayed the saved message:
“Phelps come to my place soon as u can its urgent-Grace.”
“I didn’t send you that”, Grace insisted. However, her address appeared as the sender of the text message. It came from her cell phone-the same spare cell phone that she saw plainly was missing from the charger where she always kept it.
“Oh my God”, she said. “Phelps, you’d better go home now. Strike that! Call your neighbor, have him check your apartment and call you back. How long have you been away from there?”
“Couple of hours”, he said as he placed the call to his neighbor. “What’s this about?”
Grace told him just to hurry and make the call. She looked around in all her drawers, but the key to her lockbox was in none of them. She rummaged through her purse until she found the spare. She hurriedly inserted it into the lock as Phelps returned to the bedroom.
“My neighbor says my place is a fucking wreck”, he said. “Somebody was there, and not only did they leave the door unlocked when they left, they tore the place upside down. What the fuck is going on, Grace? Never mind, I am heading back. I will call you in a few minutes. You damn well better be here.”
As he left, Grace opened the lockbox. Seven hundred dollars was missing, along with something else-the film.
“Sierra”, she said to herself.
The heat was sweltering, and the air-conditioning unit did little good. She realized how lucky she was to have central air, for if she had a window unit that might be gone as well. She sat and watched the TV, and as she stretched her legs out on the coffee table, she imagined the pretty little Gothic girl Sierra Lawson, with her head between her knees, inching her way up. She imagined her smiling at her seductively, gazing winsomely at her in devotion. Now, Grace could not help but imagine the same winsome smile turning into outright laughter.
Grace felt sick as the TV played, and the correspondent released the news of the death of Lonnie Brock. Following this, there was a replay of some of Brock’s most memorable moments, as shortstop of the Baltimore Orioles. The old tape from the mid-eighties showed him, in an extraordinary effort, catching a terrible throw from the outfield, just in time to tag out the base runner heading for second and almost instantaneously throw out the runner advancing toward third base.
It showed him arguing a long ago case in front of the bench. In an interview with a long forgotten local news anchor, he talked of his work in the inner city, his establishment of summer camps for delinquent and troubled youth, and his other work to clean up the crime riddled Baltimore inner city. He did so alongside such luminaries of social justice as the Reverend Harvey Caldwell, before the days of the falling out between Caldwell and the Reverend Christopher George, who especially was a long time associate, friend, and supporter of Brock. In fact, George encouraged Brock to enter public service, after Brock passed his bar exam.
Grace was at this point past caring. Then, Phelps called. His house was a wreck, he complained. He bitched that his liquor was stolen, along with his CD player and Ipod. It evidently never occurred to him to look for his copy of the film, as he made no mention of it. Grace did not have it in her to suggest he do so. He would be more devastated even than she was, at least about the film, which for now was the least of her worries.
She checked the guest room, where Sierra slept most of the few nights she was there, and where she kept her things. Everything was gone, with the sole exception of the two sketches, including the hideously deformed one, of Marlowe Krovell. They lay there on the bed, both of them seeming to taunt her.
She returned to the living room, and turned off the lights, as she sat upon the sofa. The television still played, as Grace stared at it numbly for minutes on end.
A news bulletin soon announced the sudden and unexpected death, from a massive coronary, of retired Wall Street financier, banker, broker, and executive Jason Talbert. The death occurred in the presence of family and friends, in the course of a dinner party.
Grace turned off the television, and then lay back down on the sofa. She buried her face in the cushion and cried.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Rove Just Goes Roving On
Michelle Malkin is just one of many Republicans who have pounced on the bloody carcase of Karl Rove. It's all his fault, she seems to say, for everything from The Harriet Miers debacle, the Dubai Ports Deal disaster, to the Amnesty Reform Bill-she evens seems to be blaming him for Iraq.
Of course, what she is inferring, or seems to be, is that Rove was not quite the boy genius at garnering public support for the President's Iraq war policy.
In other words, she seems to be unfortunately jumping on the "Save Bush Legacy-Blame Karl Rove Foundation" bandwagon.
At the same time, she seems reluctant to criticize him over the Valerie Plame affair, an incident in which he most assuredly was involved on at least some level, if in no other way than the shoddy manner in which the public relations battle played out.
Sure, a good lot of it is his fault. A good many other things are his fault, as well. In a sense, his electoral and political strategies are to a great extent responsible for a lot of the ill-will that has festered over the last six and a half years.
And you can make the same case in innumerable other instances of his encouragement and promotion of disastrous policies. Now that he has fallen on his sword in a calculated signal ("I want to spend more time with my family") that he will no longer be in the loop, it would seem to be in the hope that Bush can indeed salvage something worthwhile in his remaining short year and a half in office.
This is a change in tactics and strategy, but not of direction. It is a necessary move, however. When none of the current Republican contenders for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination seem to want anything to do with him, when GOP Senators and Congressmen want to avoid him as much as possible, how can Bush accomplish anything of value otherwise?
The answer is to sacrifice Rove in the hopes that he can salvage something before it is too late. Otherwise, in the eyes of future historians, he might well join the ignoble company of James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Herbert Hoover in a symbolic Mount Rushmore of shame-the worse Presidents in US history.
With Rove now gone, we will soon see a kinder, gentler, yet still assuredly tough and manly Bush. We will see the "real" Bush, the Bush who got along swimmingly with the Democrats of the Texas legislature, and who is willing to work now with Democrats "for the good of the American people".
After all, didn't he always from the very beginning bemoan the culture of incivility that permeated Washington national politics?
It was all Roves fault that he was led astray. Now, things will be the way they should have always been, since Rove has gone.
Of course, none of this will be said openly, but that will be the overall impression and the underlying message that will be put out there. Hell, it's probably Rove's idea.
But shit, remember, everything from beginning to end was all Bush's "charge to keep". Rove was only in charge of the sales pitch.
Of course, what she is inferring, or seems to be, is that Rove was not quite the boy genius at garnering public support for the President's Iraq war policy.
In other words, she seems to be unfortunately jumping on the "Save Bush Legacy-Blame Karl Rove Foundation" bandwagon.
At the same time, she seems reluctant to criticize him over the Valerie Plame affair, an incident in which he most assuredly was involved on at least some level, if in no other way than the shoddy manner in which the public relations battle played out.
Sure, a good lot of it is his fault. A good many other things are his fault, as well. In a sense, his electoral and political strategies are to a great extent responsible for a lot of the ill-will that has festered over the last six and a half years.
And you can make the same case in innumerable other instances of his encouragement and promotion of disastrous policies. Now that he has fallen on his sword in a calculated signal ("I want to spend more time with my family") that he will no longer be in the loop, it would seem to be in the hope that Bush can indeed salvage something worthwhile in his remaining short year and a half in office.
This is a change in tactics and strategy, but not of direction. It is a necessary move, however. When none of the current Republican contenders for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination seem to want anything to do with him, when GOP Senators and Congressmen want to avoid him as much as possible, how can Bush accomplish anything of value otherwise?
The answer is to sacrifice Rove in the hopes that he can salvage something before it is too late. Otherwise, in the eyes of future historians, he might well join the ignoble company of James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Herbert Hoover in a symbolic Mount Rushmore of shame-the worse Presidents in US history.
With Rove now gone, we will soon see a kinder, gentler, yet still assuredly tough and manly Bush. We will see the "real" Bush, the Bush who got along swimmingly with the Democrats of the Texas legislature, and who is willing to work now with Democrats "for the good of the American people".
After all, didn't he always from the very beginning bemoan the culture of incivility that permeated Washington national politics?
It was all Roves fault that he was led astray. Now, things will be the way they should have always been, since Rove has gone.
Of course, none of this will be said openly, but that will be the overall impression and the underlying message that will be put out there. Hell, it's probably Rove's idea.
But shit, remember, everything from beginning to end was all Bush's "charge to keep". Rove was only in charge of the sales pitch.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Suffer The Children
Amnesty International will never be one of my favorite organizations, for a variety of reasons, but in their recent dispute with the Catholic Church, they are right. They have recently announced a decision to back abortion rights for victims of rape. The Church, as a result, has threatened to boycott the organization, and insist that all Catholic lay members boycott them as well.
The change in Amnesty's policies stems in part from recent events in Darfur, where it is claimed that rape is often used as a weapon of war. Some women have claimed they were raped repeatedly by numerous men over a period of days. Some of them were then afflicted by sexually transmitted diseases, and forced to endure the burden of unwanted pregnancies. Additionally, many of their husbands disowned them.
The Catholic Church is now, and always has been, a radical extremist fringe group, who once had a lock on power in a significant part of the world, which they have lost. It is easy to see why they lost it.
This is not the only example of their extremism, but it will do for a start. One example of their pernicious influence on a nation's laws was related in this article from the Independent, which I highly recommend. A young seventeen year old pregnant girl in Peru sought an abortion when she discovered her fetus suffered from anencephaly. In other words, it would be born without a brain.
Not only was the girl denied an abortion, and forced to give birth to the infant, she was forced to breastfeed it for six days, until it finally died.
This kind of thing is why the Catholic Church has lost power over the last few centuries, and even more throughout the later decades.
This is an organization that preaches, and believes, that it is a good thing to live in poverty, and to suffer from illnesses and debilitating pain. It is good for the soul, to their curious way of thinking.
The Catholic hierarchy lusts in their hearts for the power the Church once held. They will hopefully never regain it. It would not be one iota more or less destructive for Islamic fanatics to establish total world domination than it would be for the Catholic Church to once more acquire it.
Even Jesuit Priest Father Daniel Berrigan, as fanatical a leftist in many regards as was ever birthed on US soil, has supported the Vatican on this issue.
Hopefully-and I say this in all seriousness-one of these days the Pope will be savagely ass-raped for a period of days on end, and then left somewhere for dead. I would hope, however, he would pull through and survive, preferably with combined cases of gonorrhea, syphilis, AIDS, and hepatitis. I would be curious as to what he would think of the prospect of enduring a nine-month pregnancy and giving birth to a child that came about as a result of such an ordeal.
The most maddening thing about their insane policy as regards to Amnesty's new stand-which is by the way expected to be supported and approved by a vast majority of the group's membership-is that they have not really changed their overall abortion policy. This policy is intended only for those cases of pregnancy resulting from obvious human rights abuses.
Still, the Church mindlessly prattles on, while women in third world countries and elsewhere suffer in many cases to an unimaginable degree.
Remember, though, to the Catholic Church's way of thinking, that is a good thing, right?
The change in Amnesty's policies stems in part from recent events in Darfur, where it is claimed that rape is often used as a weapon of war. Some women have claimed they were raped repeatedly by numerous men over a period of days. Some of them were then afflicted by sexually transmitted diseases, and forced to endure the burden of unwanted pregnancies. Additionally, many of their husbands disowned them.
The Catholic Church is now, and always has been, a radical extremist fringe group, who once had a lock on power in a significant part of the world, which they have lost. It is easy to see why they lost it.
This is not the only example of their extremism, but it will do for a start. One example of their pernicious influence on a nation's laws was related in this article from the Independent, which I highly recommend. A young seventeen year old pregnant girl in Peru sought an abortion when she discovered her fetus suffered from anencephaly. In other words, it would be born without a brain.
Not only was the girl denied an abortion, and forced to give birth to the infant, she was forced to breastfeed it for six days, until it finally died.
This kind of thing is why the Catholic Church has lost power over the last few centuries, and even more throughout the later decades.
This is an organization that preaches, and believes, that it is a good thing to live in poverty, and to suffer from illnesses and debilitating pain. It is good for the soul, to their curious way of thinking.
The Catholic hierarchy lusts in their hearts for the power the Church once held. They will hopefully never regain it. It would not be one iota more or less destructive for Islamic fanatics to establish total world domination than it would be for the Catholic Church to once more acquire it.
Even Jesuit Priest Father Daniel Berrigan, as fanatical a leftist in many regards as was ever birthed on US soil, has supported the Vatican on this issue.
Hopefully-and I say this in all seriousness-one of these days the Pope will be savagely ass-raped for a period of days on end, and then left somewhere for dead. I would hope, however, he would pull through and survive, preferably with combined cases of gonorrhea, syphilis, AIDS, and hepatitis. I would be curious as to what he would think of the prospect of enduring a nine-month pregnancy and giving birth to a child that came about as a result of such an ordeal.
The most maddening thing about their insane policy as regards to Amnesty's new stand-which is by the way expected to be supported and approved by a vast majority of the group's membership-is that they have not really changed their overall abortion policy. This policy is intended only for those cases of pregnancy resulting from obvious human rights abuses.
Still, the Church mindlessly prattles on, while women in third world countries and elsewhere suffer in many cases to an unimaginable degree.
Remember, though, to the Catholic Church's way of thinking, that is a good thing, right?
Looking For Heaven In The Middle Of Hell
I can understand why church/state separatists are upset about
this report, but I also know it should come as no surprise.
We are at war, after all, a war that has in Iraq claimed approaching 4000 lives. More than twenty thousand have been wounded, some severely, and permanently. A good many have accrued brain injuries, and an unknown number will struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome for years to come, perhaps throughout their lives.
A good many members of the military are faced with their second, third, and even fourth tours of duty-and there is no end in sight.
In situations such as this, many will seek spiritual comfort, and there are many others who, for good or bad reasons, will seek to provide it.
The problem here seems to be that a number of high ranking military personnel appeared in a video, in uniform, in promotion of an evangelical Christian group, which is against the military code of conduct. Such appearances could easily be miscontrued as amounting to military or Department of Defense official support of such groups, and so are not allowed.
This is a situation which would be easily remedied, it would seem, by a reprimand. If someone has valid reason to believe they have been denied promotion, or leave, or otherwise discriminated against due to objections to evangelizing efforts, or for failure to affiliate with such a group, then that is a different story.
Nevertheless, if someone wishes to affiliate with such a group, that door should be left open to them, as long as no special doors are opened to them that are denied to others as a result.
this report, but I also know it should come as no surprise.
We are at war, after all, a war that has in Iraq claimed approaching 4000 lives. More than twenty thousand have been wounded, some severely, and permanently. A good many have accrued brain injuries, and an unknown number will struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome for years to come, perhaps throughout their lives.
A good many members of the military are faced with their second, third, and even fourth tours of duty-and there is no end in sight.
In situations such as this, many will seek spiritual comfort, and there are many others who, for good or bad reasons, will seek to provide it.
The problem here seems to be that a number of high ranking military personnel appeared in a video, in uniform, in promotion of an evangelical Christian group, which is against the military code of conduct. Such appearances could easily be miscontrued as amounting to military or Department of Defense official support of such groups, and so are not allowed.
This is a situation which would be easily remedied, it would seem, by a reprimand. If someone has valid reason to believe they have been denied promotion, or leave, or otherwise discriminated against due to objections to evangelizing efforts, or for failure to affiliate with such a group, then that is a different story.
Nevertheless, if someone wishes to affiliate with such a group, that door should be left open to them, as long as no special doors are opened to them that are denied to others as a result.
Road Kill
It just occurred to me, a lot of people are pissed over the Minneapolis Bridge collapse not just because of the loss of lives, but the overall question of just what is the shape of our nation's infrastructure. Who is responsible for maintaining our roads, bridges, dams, sewers, power grids, etc?
Most people insist the government should put more money into maintaining these vital areas of infrastructure, and bemoan the money spent on Iraq.
One point here that should be made is that, technically,the war in Iraq is not taking a single dime from infrastructure investment. For that matter, it's not taking a dime from anything else, at lest not in the short term. The Iraq War remember, is the world's first, and hopefully last, credit card war. I seriously doubt that most of us would feel too comfortable about The People's Republic of China financing our infrastructure maintenance.
That leaves open the question of just who is responsible. It seems like a simple and uncomplicated answer at first glance.
The federal government is responsible for federal roads and bridges. State governments are responsible for state roads and bridges. County governments are responsible for country roads and bridges. City governments are responsible for city roads and bridges.
Unfortunately, where it gets murky is when you deal with just where this money comes from. A great deal of highway and bridge money used by the cities and counties comes from the states, and a great deal of that money, plus that which the state depends on for their own roads, seems to come from the federal trough.
This is exactly the reason why you are unlikely to come across a state where the legal drinking age is under twenty-one. No state wants to lose those federal highway funds.
Not that I have a problem with that particular law, but it does go to the point about how way too many even conservative Americans have become way too dependent on federal government in way too many areas of our lives, which is one of the more unfortunate outgrowths of The New Deal. States are in many ways artificial constructs, or have become so, with not much more autonomy than what I would assume a French Department has from Paris.
So, anyway, should the federal government repair the bridge over the Mississippi River? Well, if it is a federal road and bridge, of course they should. If it were a state road, then the state should be obliged to do it-with their federal funding, of course, or with FEMA money, which I am guessing this would qualify for.
The point is, whoever is responsible for putting the damn thing there should be responsible for fixing it, and should be obliged to do so. More importantly, all appropriate responsible parties should be obliged with maintaining all of our roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, sewers-and levees.
Whoever you are out there, time to show some responsibility and pull yourselves up by the bootstraps.
Oh, and in case the mayor of my little town might be reading this-remember, election day is coming up. My driveway could really use some new blacktop.
Most people insist the government should put more money into maintaining these vital areas of infrastructure, and bemoan the money spent on Iraq.
One point here that should be made is that, technically,the war in Iraq is not taking a single dime from infrastructure investment. For that matter, it's not taking a dime from anything else, at lest not in the short term. The Iraq War remember, is the world's first, and hopefully last, credit card war. I seriously doubt that most of us would feel too comfortable about The People's Republic of China financing our infrastructure maintenance.
That leaves open the question of just who is responsible. It seems like a simple and uncomplicated answer at first glance.
The federal government is responsible for federal roads and bridges. State governments are responsible for state roads and bridges. County governments are responsible for country roads and bridges. City governments are responsible for city roads and bridges.
Unfortunately, where it gets murky is when you deal with just where this money comes from. A great deal of highway and bridge money used by the cities and counties comes from the states, and a great deal of that money, plus that which the state depends on for their own roads, seems to come from the federal trough.
This is exactly the reason why you are unlikely to come across a state where the legal drinking age is under twenty-one. No state wants to lose those federal highway funds.
Not that I have a problem with that particular law, but it does go to the point about how way too many even conservative Americans have become way too dependent on federal government in way too many areas of our lives, which is one of the more unfortunate outgrowths of The New Deal. States are in many ways artificial constructs, or have become so, with not much more autonomy than what I would assume a French Department has from Paris.
So, anyway, should the federal government repair the bridge over the Mississippi River? Well, if it is a federal road and bridge, of course they should. If it were a state road, then the state should be obliged to do it-with their federal funding, of course, or with FEMA money, which I am guessing this would qualify for.
The point is, whoever is responsible for putting the damn thing there should be responsible for fixing it, and should be obliged to do so. More importantly, all appropriate responsible parties should be obliged with maintaining all of our roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, sewers-and levees.
Whoever you are out there, time to show some responsibility and pull yourselves up by the bootstraps.
Oh, and in case the mayor of my little town might be reading this-remember, election day is coming up. My driveway could really use some new blacktop.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The Honorable Doctor Ron Paul
I should say something about the Honorable Doctor Ron Paul, the Congressman from Texas and former Libertarian candidate for President, currently running for the Republican nomination.
Now here is a forced to be watched. His original party typically polls less than one percent in national elections, and no one expected him to ever rise above one percent in the polls.
Well, all those Paul supporters now have real reason to crow. As of the latest Iowa Straw Poll, the honorable Ron Paul has proven that there are more Republicans against the Iraq war than one might have thought.
He has proven that there are a significant percentage of the Republican party faithful that evidently agree with his argument that we should indeed talk to our enemies, such as Al-Queda. That we should indeed listen to what they have to say.
Yep, Paul is now up to two percent. That'll show all of you non-friendly to the enemy acting, non-terrorist talk-to-ers, whore-mongerin' war-mongerers.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Now here is a forced to be watched. His original party typically polls less than one percent in national elections, and no one expected him to ever rise above one percent in the polls.
Well, all those Paul supporters now have real reason to crow. As of the latest Iowa Straw Poll, the honorable Ron Paul has proven that there are more Republicans against the Iraq war than one might have thought.
He has proven that there are a significant percentage of the Republican party faithful that evidently agree with his argument that we should indeed talk to our enemies, such as Al-Queda. That we should indeed listen to what they have to say.
Yep, Paul is now up to two percent. That'll show all of you non-friendly to the enemy acting, non-terrorist talk-to-ers, whore-mongerin' war-mongerers.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Iowa Straw Poll
Mitt Romney won the Iowa Straw Poll, with 32% percent of the vote, just as everyone expected him to. Millions of dollars can drive many buses, and Romney spent two million dollars on just this one contest. That however is not the real story.
Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, came in second in the Iowa Straw Poll, polling a respectable 18% of the votes.
At first glance, of course, that does not sound like that big a deal. It is, though, in a bunch of ways.
Bear in mind that, of all the candidates who took part in the Poll, which Giuliani and McCain bypassed, the only candidate who didn’t put a lot of resources into the event was-Mike Huckabee. He did not buy a lot of advertising time and for that matter did not even go to the trouble of bussing his supporters to the polls. That, of course, is traditional practice for the event. Altogether, Huckabee spent something like one hundred fifty two thousand dollars.
Despite this, and despite the fact that he was a victim of some negative television campaign advertising, he still pulled ahead of his next closest competitor, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, who garnered 15% of the vote. Tom Tancredo got 14%, probably based on his well-known stand on illegal immigration, which also probably hurts him due to perception of him as a one trick pony.
I think Duncan Hunter came in fifth at something like 12%.
Everybody else came in single digits, and there is a good chance some of these candidates will be dropping put of the race. Most people think the next person to drop out will be Tommy Thompson who, like many of these candidates, should have known better than to get in this race.
So why is this so important? Well, it tells me that whoever gets the Republican nomination is probably going to seriously consider having Mike Huckabee for his running mate. For that matter, he could even end up being da man, based on the proposition that Social/Christian Conservatives distrust Romney, respectfully dislike Rudy's moderate position on social issues, hate McCain with a passion, and may well be tiring of waiting for Thompson.
However, if Giuliani, Romney, or Thompson either one does win the nomination, Huckabee has the right credentials as a running mate. He's obviously a good speaker and campaigner, is personable, and was a successful and popular governor of Arkansas.
He would provide regional balance to Romney as well as a sense of genuine conservatism. He might also light a fire under Thompson, whom many are starting to suspect may be little more than a Christian Conservative Trojan Horse. Fred Thompson the place-holder candidate much like Bob Dole in '96. In Thompson's case, he might well be put forward for the purpose of denying the nomination to Giuliani. Christian conservatives do, after all, tend to look at the New York mayor as a left-of-center moderate who would not be dedicated to their ideals. Still, if Giuliani was to pull it out, not only would Huckabee provide the same regional balance as with Romney, but a needed ideological balance as well.
He is a fiscal conservative without seeming to be a right wing thug. Having been a Baptist minister, he is a Christian without coming across as a Bible-thumping fanatic.
In the "this might be some kind of an omen" category, he also happens to be from Hope Arkansas, home of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, who is also a fellow musician.
Yep, Huckabee is also a damn good bass player in a jazz rock band, so how bad can he be?
Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, came in second in the Iowa Straw Poll, polling a respectable 18% of the votes.
At first glance, of course, that does not sound like that big a deal. It is, though, in a bunch of ways.
Bear in mind that, of all the candidates who took part in the Poll, which Giuliani and McCain bypassed, the only candidate who didn’t put a lot of resources into the event was-Mike Huckabee. He did not buy a lot of advertising time and for that matter did not even go to the trouble of bussing his supporters to the polls. That, of course, is traditional practice for the event. Altogether, Huckabee spent something like one hundred fifty two thousand dollars.
Despite this, and despite the fact that he was a victim of some negative television campaign advertising, he still pulled ahead of his next closest competitor, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, who garnered 15% of the vote. Tom Tancredo got 14%, probably based on his well-known stand on illegal immigration, which also probably hurts him due to perception of him as a one trick pony.
I think Duncan Hunter came in fifth at something like 12%.
Everybody else came in single digits, and there is a good chance some of these candidates will be dropping put of the race. Most people think the next person to drop out will be Tommy Thompson who, like many of these candidates, should have known better than to get in this race.
So why is this so important? Well, it tells me that whoever gets the Republican nomination is probably going to seriously consider having Mike Huckabee for his running mate. For that matter, he could even end up being da man, based on the proposition that Social/Christian Conservatives distrust Romney, respectfully dislike Rudy's moderate position on social issues, hate McCain with a passion, and may well be tiring of waiting for Thompson.
However, if Giuliani, Romney, or Thompson either one does win the nomination, Huckabee has the right credentials as a running mate. He's obviously a good speaker and campaigner, is personable, and was a successful and popular governor of Arkansas.
He would provide regional balance to Romney as well as a sense of genuine conservatism. He might also light a fire under Thompson, whom many are starting to suspect may be little more than a Christian Conservative Trojan Horse. Fred Thompson the place-holder candidate much like Bob Dole in '96. In Thompson's case, he might well be put forward for the purpose of denying the nomination to Giuliani. Christian conservatives do, after all, tend to look at the New York mayor as a left-of-center moderate who would not be dedicated to their ideals. Still, if Giuliani was to pull it out, not only would Huckabee provide the same regional balance as with Romney, but a needed ideological balance as well.
He is a fiscal conservative without seeming to be a right wing thug. Having been a Baptist minister, he is a Christian without coming across as a Bible-thumping fanatic.
In the "this might be some kind of an omen" category, he also happens to be from Hope Arkansas, home of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, who is also a fellow musician.
Yep, Huckabee is also a damn good bass player in a jazz rock band, so how bad can he be?
Market Of The Apes
"Ask not at whom the chimp smirks-he smirks at you"
So goes the logo for the website blogging community "The Smirking Chimp".
The following two linked articles, however, raises the question of just who are the chimps.
The Grim Reaper Pays A Visit To Wall Street
Subprime or Subcrime? Time To Investigate And Prosecute
The first involves the overall market plunge over the last week, which was engendered almost wholly due to panic resulting from the more specific problems expressed in the second article.
Chimp indeed. One of the main things that made me realize the human race probably is in the final analysis no more than an animal, albeit a higher evolved one (and that is arguable) is the simple fact they never seem to learn from history, do they?
Here is how real life works. Let's say you have a house that twenty years ago might have been worth 50,000 dollars. The value of your home goes up, up, up, and you mortgage yourself to the hilt, as it continues to go up in value to where it is eventually priced at 500,000 dollars.
Now the market crashes, these hedge funds are worth the paper and ink they are printed on, if that, and you want to come crying and begging for a bail-out.
My question is, WTF? What did you think was going to happen? Did you think if you held onto the house and kept mortgaging it, and all your other assets, the house would eventually be worth 5 million dollars? 50 million dollars? Did you think the motherfucker was just going to keep increasing in value, with no end in sight?
These people never learned from the tech bubble of the nineties, obviously. I bet if you mentioned the Great Depression to them, they wouldn't know what the hell you were talking about. Oh, some of them might have heard of it, but I bet even most of them couldn't tell you jack shit about what it was about, when it was, who the President was when it hit, the causes, or even what century it was.
Some of them probably think the Great Depression is when a birth mother gets post partum depression so bad she drowns her kids in a bathtub.
There is a very compelling section in the novel "Planet Of The Apes" by Pierre Boulle, one that unfortunately was never dramatized in either the first or the latest movie versions.
In this segment, the hero is taken by his intelligent chimpanzee handlers to a place that was remarkably like an Ape World version of Wall Street. Throngs of apes were calling out orders for various stocks, they were climbing ropes and chattering in typical true ape fashion. It became more and more raucous, the noise became deafening, as the apes continued to bark and swing and climb, hopping around and up and down on the floor madly.
In this one and only this one segment of the novel, the apes revealed their true natures-they were, in the final analysis, nothing but fucking apes, after all.
I thought that was quite revelatory, and always wondered why that never made it into either movie version. The author seemed to be putting Wall Street on the same level as something akin to a Wrestlemania event, a kind of setting where people, or in this case apes, just let go of their pretensions, and let flow their more savage natures through an outlet that is expressly for that purpose.
Perhaps Boulle was on to something. More chillingly, perhaps the Wall Street financiers and institutions have figured out a long time ago, that if you cater to mankind's basic human animal instincts-in this case greed (ok, I'll say it-for lack of a better word), you can manipulate the savage horde of beasts to go along with any trend.
Fine, so they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. So should the housing contractors who took advantage of the situation by hiring illegal immigrants, whom they paid peanuts in comparison to what they would have been obliged to pay an American worker-yet they still charged exorbitant prices. How's that for a real kick in the nuts?
Yeah, for sure, there is plenty of blame to go around. Not only should they be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but there should be new and more strident laws and regulations aimed at hopefully preventing this from happening again, or at the least severely punishing those who perpetrate it.
Otherwise, you just know it is eventually going to happen again. There will eventually be another bubble, and the same kinds of ignoramuses will jump right on the bandwagon, same as always. In some cases, I wouldn't be surprised if many of them will be the same exact people that fell for this latest scam.
And of course, when that as well bottoms out, which of course it eventually will, they will be looking for a bail-out. Just like the people who fell for it now are hoping for a bail-out.
Should there be a bail-out, though?
I look at it this way. Your stupidity harmed more than your own selves. It didn't affect me, but if it continued much longer, I might eventually have ended up in the same boat as a lot of people in other locales-having to pay increased property taxes. Your stupidity in a great many cases caused them to increase in some areas more than should have been the case, thereby causing a real hardship for a good many people that didn't deserve to be caught up in the middle of your ignorance and affected by it.
You also made it harder in other ways, such as for example by making it more difficult for working class Americans to be able to afford a decent home in their price range.
You are as much responsible for that as the Wall Street pimps and the Private Contractor whores. You're just another set of johns that got caught with your dicks hanging out.
Don't expect any sympathy from me.
Rudy Tells Some Whoppers
"Nearly six years after 9/11, Rudy Giuliani is still walking through the canyons of lower Manhattan, covered in soot, pointing north, and leading the nation out of danger's way."
So begins The Village Voice article "Rudy's Five Big Lies About 9/11".
I've been kind to my readers, courtesy of The Voice, who allows you the option of viewing an entire article on one page, which is the page the link above accesses.
As for my views, I felt it was a pertinent and well-written piece deserving of attention, even though, as of now, I am tentatively leaning toward supporting Rudy for President.
Yeah, hopefully that should tell you at least one thing-just imagine how rough I'm going to be on the other guys.
So begins The Village Voice article "Rudy's Five Big Lies About 9/11".
I've been kind to my readers, courtesy of The Voice, who allows you the option of viewing an entire article on one page, which is the page the link above accesses.
As for my views, I felt it was a pertinent and well-written piece deserving of attention, even though, as of now, I am tentatively leaning toward supporting Rudy for President.
Yeah, hopefully that should tell you at least one thing-just imagine how rough I'm going to be on the other guys.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Radu-Chapter XVII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
Previous Installments:
Prologue And Chapters I-X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Radu-Chapter XVII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
(Nineteen pages approximate)
Chou could not believe what he was seeing. The blood cells were replicating, and they seemed to be in the process of becoming cancerous, but they never did. They just continued until, over a period of little more than half a week, what started out as one not quite full vial of blood was suddenly an ounce. By the time a two full weeks went by, this supply increased until it reached an apex of two and a half pints of blood. It was the most incredible thing he had ever seen in his life.
Then, inexplicably, the process slowed. Soon, though the blood doubled in volume, it took much longer. Then, the replication processed came to a complete halt. He tested the blood one more time. It was all the same blood, the same DNA genetic markers. There was absolutely nothing to suggest any contamination of the samples. Finally, the blood began to break down. He separated them into four distinct groups. He had made a discovery far beyond him and, if he could determine the origin, the cause, of this incredibly unique biology, he might conceivably win a Nobel Prize.
With the first sample, of about pint, he elected to separate the white and red blood cells, and so he did. This unfortunately told him nothing. Perhaps he waited too long, he should have done this before the blood started to break down. It was dying now.
For the time being, he froze one of the samples. The other he would allow to deteriorate until it was to all intents and purposes dead. It should coagulate, like any other blood sample left in the open and untreated. It should dry and become useless. That left one final sample. He took a fresh vial of blood from the same source, and he added it to the larger sample.
Amazingly, the supply seemed reinvigorated. Given enough time, he had no doubts this one sample of roughly one pint of blood would quite possibly double in volume over the course of a week. It was amazing. Yet, if he were to publish his findings in such a way as to leave his imprimatur, let alone develop a treatment he might patent, he had to find whatever enzyme, or protein, or DNA mutation was responsible for the anomaly.
He took the newly strengthened blood supply, and he ran it as well through the centrifuge device that separated the white from the red cells. He immediately saw that the replication process occurred in both samples in such a way as to evenly distribute the replication process. This was all that prevented the cells from becoming cancerous.
It would take some time to discover whatever enzyme or protein was responsible-he had all but eliminated the potential for the DNA mutation, as that should have been immediately evident, or at least it should have revealed itself by now. Yet, according to the DNA lab to which he sent the blood for analysis, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, he had to send it off after the replication process ceased, so he could not yet be one hundred percent sure there was not a genetic explanation, though it certainly seemed unlikely.
In the meantime, while he was waiting for the remaining test results to come in, he had more background research to conduct. For that matter, he was uncomfortable at the prospect of involving Grace Rodescu in anything, but the woman was adamant that she had seen Marlowe Krovell in her room-not when he, Chou, had discovered Krovell to be in her room, before the horrific explosion, but immediately afterwards.
What she claimed to witness was of course impossible, as rescue workers discovered Krovell’s body in Tariq’s office. The likely explanation was that her vision of Krovell was a hallucination, perhaps augmented by her subconscious mind’s awareness of his presence earlier. Despite this, the woman seemed insistent as to what she saw, though at the same time, mysteriously secretive.
Then, workers made a gruesome discovery. On top of one of the University Hospital complex buildings, across from the window of the room that housed the Rodescu woman, the discovered skeleton of a human infant proved that of the son of James Dooley, who had been Marlowe Krovell’s physical therapist.
Reportedly, a vulture had made off with the infant. In one of the most eerie coincidences in modern history, the skeleton of the infant turned up on the grounds of the hospital where the father worked-eight miles from where allegedly abducted. There were reports of a vulture flying around the hospital grounds that night. Finally, in perhaps the most bizarre twist of all, a very small sample of vomit found on the floor of Grace Rodescu’s hospital room, upon testing, proved to contain what apparently was human DNA, along with what seemed to be the digestive enzymes common to that breed of scavenger known as the black vulture.
And of course, the security reinforced steel mesh screen outside the window had been pried open, apparently with a crowbar wielded by someone of superhuman strength and determination.
Chou had never been a religious person. In fact, he was an atheist. Yet, when he was shown two feathers, found in Rodescu’s room, from what appeared to indeed be a black vulture, and he considered the improbability of the chain of events, he knew there was something going on that was beyond the mundane explanations of science.
Dooley did not know, of course, nor did the public. In fact, this was determined, in the course of an emergency meeting of hospital administrative staff, that this would be treated in as confidential a matter as possible. Unfortunately, the Dooley’s fell under suspicion of complicity in the disappearance of their child, especially the mother. Her story, despite the fact that her lover-who was also Mr. Dooley’s longtime rival-verified it, was simply not credible.
The Dooley’s lives destroyed by this affair, their marriage a technicality that would soon end by legal decree, Mrs. Dooley now openly moved in with her lover. Dooley now stayed drunk and quit work. Chou felt the Administrators of the hospital may have done the correct thing, for the good of the hospital, but it hardly seemed to be the human, compassionate thing from the standpoint of their employee, whose life was a wreck.
He wanted an explanation, and he knew that explanation had something to do with Marlowe Krovell. Grace Rodescu knew something she was not telling, and so as she began her final stages of release from the hospital, he approached her. To look at her, you would never know she had been here for more than a full month, had somehow narrowly avoided either dying, or being paralyzed from the neck down. The bullet wound she suffered merely needed one-sixteenth of an inch one way or another to accomplish either one of these results. She was lucky on both counts, yet seemed nonchalant. Perhaps she simply did not care. Yet, she was driven, and determined, in some strange way that was obviously apparent, yet unspoken.
“You say Krovell was in your room, so what I want to know is, after he took the reinforced screen off your window, what did he do when the vulture entered the room?”
“I wasn’t aware he removed the screen”, she said. “I guess he must have done that before I woke up.”
Grace was annoyed at Chou’s visits and his questions. She seemed to be annoyed mainly at herself for talking too much. Of course, she could not have been aware of Krovells death in the explosion in Tariq’s office.
“It was a damn dream, all right- Doctor Chou, is it?” Grace was making it clear she felt no obligations to answer him. “I don’t know how the screen came off the window. Maybe the damned explosion did it, did you ever think of that? But if you must know, in my vision, or dream, or whatever it really was, the fucking thing fed him, like Marlowe was its own baby. I guess you know how vultures feed their young. If you do not, go read up on it. I haven’t had lunch yet and I’d as soon not go into it.”
Chou left determined he had to find the truth, if not from Grace Rodescu, then from somebody. For the time being, his only option was the unfortunate patient whose blood seemed afflicted with the same unorthodox replication faculties as Marlowe Krovell’s had been. Her name was Lynette Khoska, a young girl about Marlowe’s age, yet who evidently had no contact with Krovell. In fact, she was originally not native to Maryland but was from New Jersey.
She recently experienced the grim tragedy of discovering her boyfriend dead in her own home, the victim of a gunshot would to the inside of the mouth. It would have seemed to be suicide were it not for the fact no gun was present. That gun turned up in the possession of a man who went by the gang moniker Spooky Gold, who was in fact the leader of the 17th Pulse. He apparently was responsible for not only the death of Marshall Crenshaw, but also the brutal murder of the Reverend Christopher George as well. Two reliable witnesses identified him as being at the apartment on the night and general time of the death of Crenshaw, along with the noted and controversial civil rights advocate, the Reverend Harvey Caldwell. Caldwell, unfortunately, was now legally insane, by any standard, and could give no reasonable account of the night’s events. Gold simply denied the murder of Crenshaw while refusing to discuss the death of George. Still, legal experts considered it an open and shut case, and Gold now waited in the Baltimore City Jail for his eventual trial.
As for Lynette Khoska, she was herself quite understandably distraught at the death of Crenshaw, while at the same time incensed at her parent’s objections to her relationship with the man whose connection with the Pulse was nebulous. Obviously, her parents objected due to the race of the man, and at first, she even accused them, especially her father, of complicity in his death. This further widened the breach between them.
At the same time, he understood her anger. Her father had the nerve to ask if his daughter was still a virgin, which was a question that infuriated Chou. It would be easy enough to assume she was not-the two of them after all lived together for going on three weeks before the murder, or, as the gang leader insisted, suicide-and to just forget about it. Martin Khoska, however, seemed to take his daughter’s relationship as more of a slight to him than as a matter of her daughter’s preference and judgment, be that for good or bad. From that point on, he dreaded seeing the man, and was relieved to see neither he nor his ex-wife here this day.
“You can tell my father I’m still a virgin”, she said upon his query as to whether they had this day been to see her. “He ain’t going to shut up about it until you do. And by the way, it is the truth.”
“I know it’s the truth, but I’m not telling him”, Chou declared. “It’s not just that it’s none of his business, it’s also of no interest to me. My main concern is your health, and from what I see, you are getting much better. I will need to take some blood from you, of course. I still have not isolated whatever enzyme it is that is causing your blood to replicate, but it seems to be gone from you now. Your blood pressure and pulse is almost completely back to normal, your breathing is good, your appetite is back to normal, and there seems to be no lingering fever, weakness, or dizziness. Therefore, I would say you are ready to go. I still want to keep in touch with you, of course, as an outpatient.”
“Of course”, Lynette replied, but she seemed melancholy.
“You are feeling better, are you not? If you need to see a therapist to help you cope with your loss-which I strongly recommend, by the way”-
“It’s more than that”, he said. “It’s my grandfather, Aleksandre. He’s furious with me. He can’t help it, he’s an old man, from Romania. He’s actually an Orthodox Priest, and I’m afraid he’s very troubled by all this. Damn, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I never intended to fall in love with Marshall, it just happened. Not only was he there when I needed a friend, he was so warm, and tender, and supportive. It just happened. But I never relaxed my standards, not even for him. Nor did he press me to do so. We slept in separate rooms, but to hear dad tell it, I’m ready to screw everything in Baltimore-just for starters.”
Chou just smiled sympathetically.
“I’m afraid this is pretty much out of my line of expertise”, he said. “’Try not to worry about it, it will eventually work out’ is about the best I can do and I doubt that is any comfort.”
Chou took the blood sample, and was about to leave, when suddenly a new visitor entered the room, one he knew only too well.
“Mr. Marlowe”, he said. “Were you looking for me?”
“No, I came to see Lynette”, he said. “She called and asked to speak with me, but I can come back later.”
“No, that is fine, I am finished here”, Chou said. He said his goodbyes to Lynnette, but lingered slowly outside the room. This was curious to Chou, but on the other hand, Brad Marlowe had recently reopened Krovell’s Funeral Home, having hired three new assistants to help him run the re-established business, which now included a crematorium. One of the first customers turned out to be Marshall Crenshaw, and from what he gathered from what seemed to be contracts Brad carried with him, Lynnette Khoska was now in the process of arranging for a future burial-or cremation, perhaps.
Whatever the case, though it was just one more of a long lime of curious coincidences, Chou decided it too was really none of his business. He proceeded back to the lab. The hospital granted him access for the purpose of experimentation that was really out of his realm. At the same time, he could not afford to trust anybody with a discovery of this magnitude. He was lucky the Administration was too overwhelmed by events of the last month to take the time to run him through a bureaucratic runaround that would end with a denial for request. Still, he endeavored to use his time wisely. He wondered what the result would be if ordinary blood from a different source was added to the samples from Lynette Khoska, and so he casually drew some blood from his own finger and added it to one of the samples. It actually seemed as though there was a subtle reaction, but nothing he could put his finger on.
Then, almost on a lark, he added some more of his own blood to one of the dried samples. Amazingly, the dried blood seemed to come to life. It was the most incredible thing he ever saw. The biggest shock, however, was yet to come. He elected to take some blood stored from Marlowe Krovell’s earlier test. They were completely dried, but when he added a drop of Lynette’s blood, they as well roared back to life.
All of the samples he ran through the various quick tests to determine RH Factor. Curiously, all samples seemed homogenous. It was as if no mixing of blood cells occurred. Of course, this was impossible, but one thing an electron microscope was worthless for was fabrication.
However, just to be certain, he decided he would take a more voluminous amount of his own blood. It was unorthodox, and against protocol and procedure, but he extracted an ounce of his own blood. Thankfully, by the time he finished the lengthy procedure, he noted that no one entered to see him do this. It would raise red flags, and he really felt foolish taking such a risk. Nevertheless, he had to make sure of this. Therefore, he added an appreciable amount of his own blood to Krovells sample.
Then, something happened that was totally unexpected. The Krovell sample reacted violently to the infusion of blood from Chou. Although not visible to the naked eye, under the revelatory light of the microscope, it seemed to actually bubble slightly. It seemed even to vaguely fume, as though determined to reject the foreign substance. It was the most unnerving reaction Chou ever saw.
He added some more of his blood, this time to one of the Khoska samples, which did not illicit the same kind of reaction. It was the same as before. What, he wondered, could possibly be the difference? The Krovell sample still waved and fumed. It put him in mind of a bizarre high school class chemistry experiment with two of chemicals added for the express purpose of gauging what the reaction would be. Most such endeavors were ill advised, and in some rare cases resulted in appreciable damage to high school lab equipment. If this reaction occurred at more than the molecular level, it might well elicit a similar reaction.
Hurriedly, he added a large amount of the Khoska sample to the Krovell. Amazingly, the reaction ceased almost immediately. Within under a minute, it was completely back to normal. This time he had to be sure, and so he took the sample to the main lab workers, and asked if they could kindly test the blood to see if they could spot any abnormalities. Their curiosity roused, the two men present in the lab agreed, but advised him it might take a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, depending on what he was looking for.
He agreed. What else could he do? It occurred to him he would be obliged at some point to involve others in these investigations, as he would need witnesses for confirmation of his findings. Yet, for now, he had to begin thinking of other things. He had let his life get off track, and though his career had far from suffered for it, he felt himself becoming obsessed over events that were wholly out of his control.
James Dooley’s problems, while deserving of sympathy, were not his own. He had his own problems with a wife who was far too generous with his money, and children who unfortunately took after her spendthrift habits. One of them had already run upwards of twenty thousand dollars in debt and, now in her senior year of college, her grade point average was a dismal 2.4.
He found his attraction to alcohol a constant struggle, and had no understanding as to why this was. His life was not that bad yet. In fact, on balance it was pretty damn good. Still, he looked a little too forward to the time he could unwind, and when he did, away from parental and marital responsibilities, he would get a little too loaded, and end up feeling miserable.
Perhaps this obsession was a replacement for alcohol. If so, it was understandable. It was not often that you ran across a blood specimen that seemed to replicate. Two such specimens discovered over a period of less than one month, from two different people who had no notable personal or otherwise immediate connection, in the same city, the city to which one of them just recently relocated to-what were the odds of something like that.
He made it a point to stop by the home of James Dooley. The grass was a little high, but Chou told himself if he did not know the Dooley’s situation, he might not even have noticed this. Besides, the Dooleys would be leaving this home soon, would be selling it as joint property and dividing the proceeds down the middle. Just as well, Chou thought. Dooley did not need this large a home just for himself, and he seriously doubted he would be likely to get married any time soon, if ever.
Dooley invited him in for a drink, but Chou declined. The last thing the unfortunate man needed was for him to get soused and cry on his shoulder, and around Dooley it would be next to impossible to not do that. At the same time, Dooley seemed content, even casually satisfied with his life. It was an act, of course. Nevertheless, all of life was an act, was it not?
Dooley of course was yet unaware of the discovery of the infant’s skeleton on University Hospital property. It just turned up somewhere on the outskirts of Baltimore, he was told, a few miles from where he lived. Luckily, he was strangely uninterested in the location. Some jogger and his dog found the skeleton with the sheet nearby, in a park, and phoned it in to the police in the form of an anonymous tip. The jogger, of course, was a hospital staff member who actually picked out what seemed a suitable spot for the skeleton to be “found”.
Dooley now mentioned something to the effect of starting a fund for a memorial at the site, but then almost immediately changed his mind, to Chou’s relief.
“Why memorialize a place like that, right?”
“I would not want to personally”, Chou replied.
“I wish I had been at the hospital when that damn bomb went off”, the man now said. “Fuck it, anyway. Who can believe in God after you go through that kind of shit? I used to be a devout Catholic. Ain’t that a fucking laugh? It wasn’t but three days before the shit happened I had James Jr. baptized and consecrated into the church. Yeah, God, thanks a bunch, you hear? Talk about watching out for the weak and helpless. Here my baby dies what has to be as horrible a death as you can think of, I get so upset I leave the hospital, and the damn place blows up. Just an hour later, and I would be just another statistic.
“Of course, that would have made Jan and Willard happy, huh? Not that they ain’t doing great now. No, my loving wife seems to be doing just fine.”
Chou was beginning to see he might have made a big mistake in coming here. This man was obviously not ready for any kind of conversation, and he felt guilty actually coming here. Nevertheless, he had to ask.
“I really am sorry to bother you, James, but I did have a reason for coming here. It is about the patient you were with the day you left the hospital. If you would prefer not to talk about it-“
“Radu, you mean”, Dooley said with a cynical smile. “Yeah, how could I ever forget him? The motherfucker was standing there laughing when the cops brought me the news. I was too fucked up to think about it at the time, but I think the cops wanted to knock his ass out. I didn’t really think about it until later.”
“He called himself Radu?”
“Yeah, and he said something about waiting for a visitor”, he explained. “He kept saying, over and over again, that this Mircea, whoever that is, was sending a mutual friend over with lunch. He said it was somebody named-Cynthia, I think.”
“He called her Cynthia?” Chou asked, obviously bewildered. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, because he couldn’t digest the fucking hospital food-his words”, Dooley replied. “Otherwise, he just talked the usual senseless bullshit, same as usual.
“Oh yeah, and he mentioned something about you, and bad blood”.
“Bad blood?”
“Yeah, that was it. Like I said, the guy was a real whack job. Marlowe was his name, right? Yeah-Marlowe Krovell. He got it in the blast too, didn’t he?”
They talked for a few minutes more, whereupon Chou encouraged him to seek therapy, and even in time to think about returning to work. Suddenly, Dooley broke down and began crying. He tried to stop, but could not. Chou embraced the man, though he felt like a hypocrite. He waited a few minutes, and gave the man time to pull himself together, and then he decided he would leave. He was just one small step away from taking him up on his offer for a beer. Chou knew all too well how that would end up.
“James, I know it is none of my business, but if you ever decide to come back to work, I promise you I will do all I can for you. I do have some pull there, not that it should be necessary. And if you ever decide to see a professional, I would be happy to help you find a qualified practitioner.”
“Yeah, I’ll think about it”, he replied. “You know what I was thinking of doing? Getting a construction job, believe it or not. I was by the hospital the other day to pick up my check, and the noise from the repair crew was deafening. I thought to myself, just what I need, something where I can expend some energy and not have to hear myself think.
“But anyway, thanks. I’ll give it some thought.”
Chou left, and decided to return home. It was a struggle after that to keep from going to the nearest bar. Instead, he would return home to his wife and the one child who was still home, a daughter who seemed to hate him even more than she did his wife, and her mother. He would just eat a cold pastrami sandwich, as his wife was far too busy selling real estate to cook any more. He could easily hire a cook and housekeeper of course, but it seemed so unnecessary, even extravagant.
On the other hand, the place was a mess. His wife seemed to adopt the philosophy that if you cleaned one room well, you could spot clean other rooms here and there so it would just look like it was time to clean them again-not that, in reality, they hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned in half a year.
God, he wanted a drink.
Susan was bitching about some concert her mother refused to allow her to attend-a rap concert, of all things.
“I guess you are going to tell me no too, no doubt”, she said hatefully.
“You guessed right”, he said. “I’ve heard enough of that crap blasting out of your room to know it’s no place for you, no matter how badly you think you have to go there. The next thing you know you are going to be some “ho” for the 17th Pulse, dancing suggestively on one of Toby Da Pimp’s videos. Or maybe you’ll be the female cop down on her knees unzipping his leather pants while he has a gun to her partner’s head.”
“That was a white cop”, she said. “And you can go to hell”.
She stormed upstairs to her room, and Chou decided he could not take it any more. He unlocked the bottle of scotch that his wife insisted they keep on hand for the mythological guests she insisted could stop by any time, but which he suspected she really wanted to keep there to just taunt him.
He opened it and poured himself a double. He had no sooner put it to his lips than Susan reappeared, storming down the stairs and staring at him indignantly.
“Well, it finally happened, huh? How many of your patients have died from you being a drunk? You are disgusting.”
“Where was that fucking vulture when I could have used her?” He downed the double immediately after saying this, and realized it was a really shitty thing to say, even if he couldn’t help but think it.
“What vulture?” she asked. “You’re already soused, ain’t you?”
“Young lady, I’ve about had it with your mouth”, he said angrily.
“Oh, what the fuck ever!” She practically screamed in his face as she lowered her head to where their eyes were at an even level. He could not help but think it was the most hateful tone, with matching expression, he ever heard in his life. She was now on her way to the phone, as he poured another drink.
He looked at her and thought to himself, is it wrong for a father to despise his own child the way he does this one? She sat there, not eight feet away from him, and talked as though he were not even there, about how some alleged stud she liked the last school year was going to, when school resumes, “give me some of that whether he knows it or not”.
“Virgin?” she then said with a derisive laugh after a couple of minutes of silent listening to what amounted to teasing from her friend Amanda. “Sweetie, that virgin thing is like about two years in the past and about fifty seven cocks ago. Oh, and that other thing you asked me about a couple of nights ago? Believe it. It don’t taste that bad after the fifth or sixth time.”
“Susan” Chou now said to his daughter. “I need to tell you something.”
“You’re still here?” Susan replied. “What the fuck! Amanda, I have to hang up for a minute, I’ll call back later.”
Chou was amazed his daughter even considered acceding to his request to talk, but she solved that mystery herself when she lit into him.
“Do you make a habit of listening in to other people’s private conversations?”
Chou apologized as he reached into his pockets and extracted a set of keys, from which he separated two, which he then proffered her.
“You want to get out of here, be my guest”, he said. “If you drive fast enough, you might make the concert in time.”
She looked at him in a way that suggested disorientation by this sudden change of heart, but immediately recovered her composure.
“I guess you don’t have any money, do you?”
“Two hundred dollars-will that do it?”
“Yes, and if I could have my credit card back that would be even better”, she sniped. “I don’t suppose you know where mom hid it, do you?”
“No, and I’m afraid that’s something you’ll have to take up with her”, he replied. “I’m not getting into that.”
“Whatever”, she replied. “It’s not like I run up a ton of debt the way Chrissie has, I only owe about two hundred dollars. But of course, Prissy little Chrissie is special, we can’t say anything to her, we’ll just make Susie suffer to make it up. Nobody else, mind you, just-“
“Goddammit do you want to go or not?”
He shouted this, which shocked her. She seldom heard this kind of reaction from him.
“Wow, I was about to say you should drink that shit more often, but I’m not so sure now. Okay, damn, I’ll go.”
“Be damned sure you keep it down when you come in, your mother is a light sleeper.”
“Yeah, right”, she said as she snatched the keys and money out of his hand. She was out the word without a word of thanks or as much as a goodbye. As she slammed the door, Chou realized how the term “fucked up” applied to his life in an excruciating fashion. What was worse, he found himself unconcerned as to whether she ever returned. In fact, by the time he made it up to the bed, following another double-shot, he forgot all about her.
When he awoke the following morning, he saw that he was alone, though his wife was home. She was downstairs, already heading to work. He walked quietly downstairs and saw her in the process of checking herself out in the full-length mirror, which she had positioned by the door for just that purpose. One last, final check before she was out the door. She did have houses to sell and quotas to meet, and by God in today’s market that was not so easy.
He walked down the stairs, in pain. The morning light streaming into the room seemed like high noon. He walked over toward the sofa. As he did, he looked over toward the liquor cabinet.
“The next time you decide to drink the scotch, would you be so kind as to put the lid back on?” his wife said. “I hope you didn’t drink out of the bottle, by the way.”
“Of course I didn’t”, he said. “Since you saw the open bottle, I would assume you saw the shot glass as well. I am even guessing you put it up.”
Mia’s cell phone then rang, and she answered. She immediately adopted a more casual, even light-hearted tone as she walked into the kitchen. A client had called and she was in the process of telling him she would be no more than fifteen or twenty minutes late, at the most. She had as many as seven houses she could show him today, but one in particular she was sure would be to his liking.
“Byyye”, she finally said as she hung up from the call and walked one last time to the mirror.
“Must be quite a catch there”, Chou observed.
“Well, it helps pay the bills”, she said matter-of-factly as she once more perused herself in the mirror, taking special pains to pinch her cheeks, after which she turned her backside to the mirror and glanced back as she swooped down the back of her somewhat but not uncomfortably tight short skirt with her right hand.
“By the way, are you going to go to the conference this weekend?”
“Uhhh-what conference is that?” Chou was unaware of any conference.
“The Asian American Leadership Conference”, she reminded him. “You know-the one in Washington that I told you about two weeks ago, and have mentioned two or three times since then. I am going and I would greatly appreciate it if you would accompany me.”
Accompany her? What the fuck kind of wife talks this way to her husband in private, he wondered.
‘Look, if you don’t want to go, I don’t really care, but let me know something by noon, all right? I’ll call you when I take off for lunch”
The more Chou thought about it, the more he thought he might well go and drink like a fish, just to embarrass the shit out of her. On the other hand, he realized that would suit her fine.
“You go on”, he said. “I really am not interested in going.”
“Suit yourself”, she said, and then went out the door. He looked around for the key to the scotch drawer. Fuck it, he said, I’m going to drink the whole fucking bottle-and I’m not going to use a fucking glass, either.
Before he made it half the way to the cabinet, Mia re-entered with an obviously concerned look on her face.
“Where is the car?” she asked him.
“How should I know where your car is?” he demanded.
“Not mine, yours”, she said. “It’s not in the driveway, and it’s not in the garage. So what the hell is going on?”
“It’s in the shop for repairs”, he said. “I think it needs a new alternator, but I don’t know. I had it pulled in from the hospital and took a cab home.”
She looked at him suspiciously. Chou was a seasoned, expert liar from way back and could think of a suitable cover story for any situation at a moment’s notice. She was all too aware of this, and was one of the few people that could detect the little subtle signs that David Chou was lying his ass off.
“You didn’t wreck it, did you?”
“No, I did not wreck it”, he promised.
“Do you need a ride to the hospital”, she asked. “It’s not that far out of my way.”
“I’m taking the day off”, he said. “If I am called in I’ll take a cab.”
She looked at him curiously, as she suddenly drew closer to him. He almost cringed at the thought of her touching him, but she suddenly stopped. As unusual as it was for him to take off a day from work, she decided it was not anything that could not wait. She had houses to sell.
“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
He left and then he almost collapsed in his recliner. Susie, he had forgotten all about her. She had not returned home yet, and it was eight o’clock in the morning. What in the hell was going on? Where could she have gone, and with whom? He also wondered what in the hell he was thinking giving her his car keys. He decided to take a shower, and after that, he ate a bowl of cereal. He needed to keep his strength up, despite the fact that his stomach churned in rebellion at the thought of any food.
He wanted to hit the scotch again, but he was amazingly calm about it. He wanted to, but he would not. He had to stay clear-headed today, of all days. After a couple of hours of trying not to think about it, but doing so anyway, it occurred to him-the phone was turned off. He would never have heard it ring, but the answering machine might have picked up her attempt to call last night or early this morning.
Unfortunately, no messages from Susie or anyone else waited. This would be one hell of a miserable day off, he decided. When the phone rang, he felt as if he wanted to jump through the window. He was struggling with one tenacious hangover. He wanted to vomit, but dreaded it. He picked up the phone, to hear Scott, from the Hospital Administration.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I wondered if you might be able to come in for just a little while”, he said.
“Sure”, Chou replied. “It might be a little while, though, as I’m having somewhat of a problem with my vehicle. I will have to take a cab.”
The Administrator told him it could wait, but Chou said he would try to be there within the hour. He hated that. It was obviously important, to call him in on a day off, he would be god damned if he would wait out the weekend with yet another worry on his mind. He changed the message on the answering machine to reflect this abrupt departure from his weekend plans, and then he called a cab.
Scott Reese was one of those hands-on Administrators that wanted to be in the loop in everything, whether it was vital or not. He had little if any trust in the various department heads. He should not have been here on a Saturday, so obviously something was afoot. As usual, when Chou entered his office, Reese extended his hand with a curt smile, and then invited him to sit. He apologized for any interference in Chou’s weekend. Chou just asked him what was on his mind.
“I’m interested in the experiments you have been conducting”, he said.
“They are not experiments”, Chou said. “Lynette Khoska is my patient, as was Marlowe Krovell. They share a blood anomaly which is most curious-as I’m sure you are aware.”
“Shared”, Reese replied. “Since Krovell is dead, I see no point in speaking as if he is still among the living, do you?”
“I never meant to imply otherwise”, Chou replied. “However, his blood samples are still most active.
Reese looked now at Chou in that questioning manner which Chou read as more critical than was necessary.
“I’ll get right to the point, David”, the man said. “There are specialists that are eminently qualified to research blood anomalies. It is already a matter of record that you discovered the replication faculties of these extraordinary samples. No one wishes to take credit away from you. At the same time”-
“They are mine”, Chou replied. “No one is taking a goddamn thing away from me, I will promise you that.”
“Well, actually David, that is not true”, the man replied with a bemused smile. “The samples first of all belong to the donors, but in the second place, they are currently the property of Johns Hopkins University Hospital. You are of course a visiting attending physician here. This is not a matter of territory, however. This is a matter of what is in the best interests of your patients, particularly your surviving patient. What is in her best interests is of the paramount importance.”
“And you should never forget that she is my patient”, Chou replied.
“Uh, well-that is because she was referred to you, specifically by me”, Reese said. “There was a reason for that, having to do with Krovell. She claimed to have seen him, on numerous occasions, after his death. Were you aware that she was near death at one point before her admittance here? Upon her admittance here, in fact, she demanded we release her, because she needed to be with him. Are you aware that her blood level was dangerously low, but nothing was ever determined as to what the cause of this was?
“Are you aware”, he said as he stood and glared at Chou, “that several people remarked as to having seen a strange man exiting a hospital window, from the fourth floor? Were you aware this man, when described, bore a striking resemblance to Marlowe Krovell? Did you know a vulture reportedly flew into and out of the same window, immediately before Krovell’s sighting there? As if that were not enough, the woman who was a patient in that room reported seeing him in there when she awoke from her coma.”
“That is a lot of poppycock”, Chou replied. “I saw Krovell. His body was mangled, but it was his, and not only did his uncle verify this, but dental records proved it was him. What are you saying?”
“I am wondering exactly what you are saying”, Reese replied. “You were informed about the vulture’s presence on this facility’s grounds, and the finding of the Dooley infant’s skeleton, due to some curiosity about your activities. We extended you a professional courtesy out of suspicions as to your patient’s involvement in these matters. These things are not only strange-they are downright bizarre. Records can be fabricated, by the way.”
“Well, I did not fabricate them”, Chou said. “I certainly do not make a habit of stealing infants to feed to vultures. Could you explain to me what the point of that would be?”
“I don’t know”, the man said. “I do know this. When the police informed Dooley of the circumstances surrounding his son’s disappearance, he was so distraught he lost track of the patient he was at the time attending. That patient, Marlowe Krovell, found his way to the hospital room of Grace Rodescu, where he seems to have managed to pry apart the screen that enclosed her window-a reinforced steel mesh screen, at that. He later managed to make it back to her room, at just about the time of the explosion. Yet, curiously enough, you were both seen to exit that room less than an hour prior to this.”
“Yes, I found him there. I went looking for him for an appointment we had, and a nurse directed me to the part of the hall where she had just seen him. I checked several rooms before I found him.”
“Would you like to hear something interesting?” Not waiting for a response, Reese pushed a button on a tape player. What Chou heard chilled him to the bone.
“There is a bomb in the basement. It will go off sometime today, probably very soon. When it does, it will destroy the entire area, and do severe damage to other floors as well. You are advised to leave as soon as possible.”
Chou had no doubt whatsoever as to whom the voice belonged.
“Marlowe”, he said. “Play that back, please.”
Reese did as Chou requested, and Chou not only was sure of who he heard, but noted that Marlowe, at the end, right before hanging up, seemed to restrain himself from laughing out loud.
“So, do you have an explanation for this?”
“He was insane”, Chou said. “Otherwise, it proves nothing. Furthermore, if you are accusing me of culpability, I would advise you-I can afford damn good lawyers. I would imagine Mr. Dooley, while a man not quite of my means, would certainly find someone willing to take a case such as his. Assuming of course he was to learn the truth as to what happened to his son, and where the remains were truly found.”
Reese looked at Chou, thunderstruck.
“Oh, you son of a bitch, you are good”, he said. “You know, I’ll be honest, I was against bringing you into this from the start. I always suspected you of complicity in Krovell’s actions. Most of the staff thought you were an innocent pawn at most, so I was overruled. But you know something, I’m glad you were brought into it, because I think the others just gave you enough rope for me to hang you with.
“You see, I don’t really think you are much of a physician, to be blunt. I do however think you know enough to be able to identify a body. Not being a physician myself, about all I know is it is impossible for a living human being to have the same identifying characteristics as a dead body.
“And as for Mr. Brad Marlowe, I wouldn’t hitch my saddle to that horse if I were you, because Mr. Marlowe is under investigation himself. Seems certain families might well exhume the bodies of loved ones he worked on. I don’t know why, but he is under a restraining order for the time being, and can temporarily no longer practice. I’m sure if we look into Krovell’s dentist we might find something like a drug or alcohol problem, or perhaps gambling. What about you, Chou? Might there be any skeletons on your rooftop?”
“You go to hell you son of a bitch”, Chou said. “As you pointed out, I am not an employee of this hospital, I am a visiting resident. I can leave any time, and when I go, I will take my patient’s samples with me. There is not a fucking thing you can do about it, besides see me in court. And if you breathe a word about my involvement with any of these ridiculous conspiracy theories you have spouted today, I will soon be moving into a new home-after I have auctioned off what parts of your furniture I don’t particularly like, that is.”
“Looking for a new home, Chou?” Reese asked him, not in the least impressed or dismayed by the doctor’s threats. “Why, problem with the wife, or the kids?”
“Yes, they don’t like my pet vulture”, Chou replied. “Are we finished here?”
Reese looked at Chou as though he were the scum of the earth, and then told him they were through for now. Chou was hopping mad, and determined he would remove the blood samples from this hospital today. First, he had to inform his patient-his lone one presently at John Hopkins-that he would no longer be seeing her there, and so would discharge her. When he went to her room, he was surprised to see an old man who was evidently a priest. He realized this had to be the grandfather she spoke of earlier.
Lynette seemed not only awake, but also aware, and according to her charts, her blood supply was completely normal. He talked to her at length, and asked her if she ever knew Marlowe Krovell. She informed him she did, but only through an on-line dating site. She never met the man in person. She was surprisingly unaware of ever having mentioned seeing him while in a disoriented state. She completely forgot about it. The old man was surprised at all this, and genuinely concerned. Why, he never elaborated, nor in fact did he say anything. Chou just knew.
Chou advised her there was no reason to keep her here any longer, as he felt the hospital was “no longer safe”. He already prepared her discharge papers, so she could leave within two hours. He then made a stop at the lab, where Bernie, the main lab tech on duty that day, told him he was under orders not to release the samples to Chou. He was incensed, and demanded to know why.
“Well, it’s really a matter of public safety”, he said. “Those samples contain trace amounts of latent bubonic plaque, in addition to syphilis. Actually, it is probably only a matter of very little time before we will be required to hand them over to the CDC. I’m very sorry, Dr. Chou.”
Chou was livid, and had to restrain himself from assaulting the lab tech. They would pay for this breach, he decided. He went to his sparsely furnished office, provided him as what he jokingly now thought of as a mere professional courtesy. Soon, he had no doubt the hospital would reassign it. He unlocked the bottom drawer on the desk, and extracted the fifth of Scotch. Why in the hell not, he asked himself. He poured a shot and quickly downed it.
He wondered if he should really do what he now planned. He wondered if one more shot would help him make the proper decision. He decided it could not hurt, and so he downed another double-shot, and called James Dooley. His new friend was understandably upset, and hurt, by the information Chou provided, but after all, what were friends for, but to give them as many reasons as possible to hate the people they hated themselves?
James Dooley was no longer hurt by the time he made it to the hospital, and to the office of Scott Reese-he was madder than hell, so much so, the first part of him that entered through Reese’s door was his right foot. Reese looked at him in terror, as he assured the now vicious former employee that he knew nothing about his wife’s dalliances with other hospital employees, including two Administrators. If this were true, he assured him that he was not one of them.
“So how is it my baby’s remains were found on top of one of the buildings, on this property? Why was I lied to? Don’t bother to deny it, because I have fucking proof. I want answers, now.”
Reese mumbled something about looking into it, though he was sure it was nothing but a vicious rumor, when Chou entered, encouraging Dooley to calm down.
“Oh, I’ll calm down, all right”, Dooley replied. “It will help when I go see my fucking lawyer-my civil lawyer.”
Dooley then stormed out of the office.
“You son of a bitch”, Reese hissed. “You’d better straighten him out, or”-
“Oh, stop worrying, Scotty”, Chou replied. “I’m sure once the truth comes out, James will be more than happy to settle for a quite handsome sum, say ten million dollars, for example. I would settle fast if I were you. Otherwise, you might not dissuade him from telling his soon-to-be ex-wife, and who knows how much she will demand? Who knows if she will even agree to settle? However, have no fear. I’m sure I can-how is it you put it-straighten him out.”
Reese sunk back in his chair. Chou had him, and he knew it. The victorious, though yet agitated and now obviously drunken Doctor leaned over Reese’s chair and leered at him with a malicious smile.
“Me, I don’t want that much”, he said. “I just want my fucking samples, and I want them now.”
By the time Chou made it back home, Susie had returned, with his car, thankfully still intact. She was noticeably sour, though this was actually an improvement.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “Do you know what your mother would say if I told her you’d been out all night? What the hell is wrong with you, Susan?”
“I stayed with some friends last night”, she replied. “I had some things I had to think about, so I just-did something I needed to do. It’s no big deal.”
She was definitely upset, Chou decided. Not once did she say or even imply that where she was amounted to none of his fucking business. No rolling of the eyes, no sarcastic tone, not so much as a hateful look. She seemed depressed. Then, he noticed the plastic bracelet around her wrist.
“Have you been to the hospital? Oh my God, that is it-you are pregnant.”
“Damn!” the girl exclaimed, obviously annoyed at herself for having forgotten to remove the bracelet.
“No, I went to the clinic”, she informed him. “No, I am not pregnant-not anymore. God, I feel sick.”
Chou was not surprised in the least. He was in fact somewhat relieved.
“You should go upstairs and rest, those procedures take a lot out of you. We will keep this between the two of us. Your mother will raise holy hell with the both of us if she finds out. Just go up to your room. I would like to take some blood from you, if you do not mind. Those facilities are far from pristine in their conditions, despite what you might have heard. I assume they gave you a prescription for antibiotics?”
“Yeah, and some pain medication as well”, she said. “Look, there might be some friends coming over later, I hope you don’t mind.”
“Fine, fine”, Chou said, growing ever more impatient. “The blood?”
“Alright, alright”, she said, after which Chou extracted a pint of blood from his daughter in the basement in his makeshift home lab.
“You need this much?” she asked.
“Just go up to your room and rest. When you wake up, make sure you eat something with a lot of iron and protein. That will help you build it back up. Oh, and by the way, you should stay here for a couple of days until your strength is back up to normal. I know you hate the idea, probably, but I am a doctor, remember?”
“Fine”, he said. “I’m not in the mood to argue”, she said.
After she left, he could not set up his lab quickly enough, determined to add her blood to the Krovell samples. He would look for the same effect as the day he added his own blood. Did the earlier reaction have something to do with a strange aversion to Oriental blood? No, he decided, that was ridiculous. There was only one thing different about Lynette Khoska from himself and his daughter that he knew of. They all three, in fact, had the same blood types, which was O-. Krovell’s was O+, so the reaction made no sense.
Marlowe Krovell was obsessed with bad blood. He wanted to leave the hospital because Chou insisted on giving him a blood transfusion, and even remarked he should have the blood of a virgin. Lynette Khoska was in fact a virgin, while his daughter was the biggest whore in town that he knew of. When the Khoska sample was added to Krovell’s, the latter sample reacted positively. It reacted negatively to his, yet returned to normal after the addition of the Khoska sample that also contained his own blood.
There was no such reaction when he added his blood to the Khoska sample, even though it exhibited the same replication process as Krovell’s. This, he decided, was quite a selective anomaly. What could it mean? He now added the blood of his whore daughter to both the Khoska and the Krovell samples. Now, he determined to see what the long-term results would be. He was certain that such an effect as he witnessed in the actual blood supply of a person would result in serious incapacitation, along with physical deformities and running sores. Left uncorrected, the long-term result would inevitably be death.
Yet, he now was stunned to note that the blood from his daughter Susan had the same effect on the Krovell sample as it did the Khoska one. In fact, both samples reacted positively. Under his electron microscope, he noted that the replication faculties of both samples seemed enhanced by the addition. This was wholly unexpected.
He was strangely disappointed, yet did not know why. There would be no valid scientific reason for Krovell’s blood, or anyone else’s, to react negatively to infusion of blood from a non-virgin and positively from a person of chaste character. There was no genetic or otherwise scientific reasoning for such a thing, and what he thought smacked of superstition. He should be relieved, in fact. If his suspicions were correct, how would he present his findings? How could he hope to prove such an outlandish claim?
He could not let it go. He had something he had to do, as foolish as it seemed. He called Brad Marlowe, but the only answer he received was the answering machine. There was no way he could leave a message about a topic this important. He would have to go to the Krovell Funeral Home.
He made sure the samples were secure. He was not completely convinced the CDC would not attempt to find them, and come to his home in an attempt to do so. If they did, Reese would regret it, and so would Johns Hopkins, but he could hardly sit and guard them day in and day out. It would do him no good if he did that anyway. He went upstairs, and saw that his daughter was talking quietly on the phone to someone. He went on out. He was not in the mood for yet another confrontation.
When he arrived at the mortuary, he entered quietly once he ascertained the sound of a familiar female voice. He drew closer to the main office, and was certain the voice belonged to Grace Rodescu. He overheard Brad Marlowe telling her he was relieved she found the DVD, that it held a lot of personal memories, and feelings, for him. She asked only one thing in return.
“I don’t know who he was”, Brad said. “All I know for sure is he was a friend of Marlowe’s grandparents, Martin and Nancy. He’s not even visible, yet you claim you recognize the voice. Are you sure? This was like fourteen years ago.”
“Believe me, you never forget certain things”, she said. “That voice is one of them. You don’t remember anything about him, other than he filmed this home movie?”
“I don’t remember even so much as what he looked like”, Brad assured her. “I only saw him that one time, and never again to my knowledge. Neither Martin nor Nancy ever mentioned him again. Actually, I believe they were only casual acquaintances, someone they met at some function involving Americans of Romanian descent, friends for a brief time that just drifted apart. I’m really sorry I can’t be of more help. Believe me, I am more than happy to pay you for the DVD.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are”, Grace said. “And believe me, I’m sure you will. I hope twenty thousand dollars doesn’t seem exorbitant.”
Chou noted the two of them fell into silence for a few seconds, and he suddenly wondered if he should announce his presence. On the other hand, he was here to learn. Perhaps he inadverdently stumbled onto something he had not expected. He felt sneaky, almost dirty even, but still”-
“It’s a lot”, he said. “It will take me a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, to round up that much, but yeah, I guess I can do it. That will be it though.”
“Of course”, Grace replied. “I am not an unreasonable person.”
So, Chou thought. Grace Rodescu was blackmailing Brad Marlowe. Though he was hardly surprised, he was indeed curious. Reese mentioned something to the effect of Marlowe being under investigation. If that was true, it seemed likely he was privy to a connection somewhat with the nature of his investigation, though he certainly had no idea what it could be.
“Hey, wait a minute”, Marlowe suddenly said. “I just thought of something. I don’t know if this will be any help to you or not, but I remember Richard had a nickname for that guy. He called him ‘The Molecule Man’.”
“The Molecule Man?” Grace repeated.
“Yeah, I think that was some old comic book character from way back. Richard was a comic book collector from the time he was a kid. It remained a lifelong hobby. I remember the guy was curious about that, like he did not get it, but to Richard, it seemed to fit. I was in and out that day, so I did not get all of what was said. I just kind of put it out of my mind until now. It was just idle chit-chat to me that didn’t really mean anything. Does it make any sense to you?”
“You never heard an actual name?” Grace asked.
“Not that I remember”, Brad replied. “We were introduced, shook hands, spoke briefly, and that was it. I just never gave it any thought afterwards.”
Chou decided at this point that it might be a good idea to make his presence known. Whatever this conversation was about, it obviously did not concern him, and he had no business spying. Also, he was in a hurry and wanted to get this over and done. He addressed Brad from outside the door, and asked if he was busy. Brad walked to the open office door, asked how long he was there, whereupon Chou said he just came in.
Grace looked at him suspiciously when she walked through the door out into the main reception room, having decided she no longer had a reason to stick around.
“Are you still engaged in your dream research, Doctor Chou?”
“Something to that effect”, Chou said cordially. “I am happy to see you up, out, and about. You are recovering nicely, it would seem.”
“I’m still a little weak”, she replied. “But yes, I seem to be coming along nicely, thank you. Brad, I have to be going. We’ll talk some more in a few days.”
“Of course”, Brad said. He motioned Dr. Chou into his office as Grace saw her way out.
“I’ll get right to the point”, he said. “I understand that there is a Krovell family mausoleum down in the basement of this building, so I am assuming you have Marlowe’s remains entombed there. Am I correct?”
“Yes, that’s true”, Brad said, obviously upset, but whether over the current topic of discussion or his former one with Grace, Chou could not discern.
“I know this is going to be a very unorthodox request, but I would like to see the remains”, Chou announced to Brad’s immediate discomfort. “You are sure they are his, by the way.”
“Of course I’m sure”, Brad replied. “What is this all about? You identified them yourself.”
“Yes, but you do concede they were quite mangled. Unfortunately, a DNA analysis was not required, or this unpleasant business would be unnecessary. But as it happens, certain questions have arisen, questions that cast a shadow over the legitimacy of our respective identifications.”
Chou went on to explain to Brad the recent suspicions of his nephew as told him by Reese, suspicions currently held by a small number of hospital administrative staff. Brad was becoming angrier by the minute.
“I should sue those bastards”, he said.
“It would suit me if you did, in fact I would willingly help you should you decide to do that”, Chou replied. “Unfortunately, it might not be that easy. It is a fact that Marlowe did indeed phone in a bomb threat to the hospital, not more than an hour before the actual explosion. In fact, his activities, while they might have been innocent, circumstantial, and coincidental, might have provided a good deal of inadvertent aid to the persons who did indeed plant the bomb.”
“Marlowe was crazy”, Brad replied. “He wasn’t responsible for his actions. He would be incapable of hatching such a bizarre plot, for that matter even of thinking up something like that up, let alone carrying it out. I think these people are just trying to cover their asses for their own lax security and using an innocent, insane patient as a convenient cover, someone who can no longer defend himself. Hell, he was incapable of defending himself when he was alive at that time. Those fucking bastards!”
He now slammed his fist on the desk so hard Chou was surprised it didn’t break either the desk top or his fist. Brad was exhibiting a fury, hatred, and strength Chou thought previously would have been beyond him. He was quite taken aback by this display. Brad Marlowe had always seemed like a mild mannered man, the kind of man who was generally a doormat for other, stronger, more assertive and aggressive personalities. He was now pacing back and forth in the office, ranting about the hospital being responsible for his nephew’s death. He would see them all in hell, he exclaimed, as David Chou wondered, what in the hell has come over him?
Then, as quickly as it flared up, his anger seemingly evaporated into thin air, he regained his composure, and actually stammered an apology.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what come over me”, he said. “It’s not your fault.”
“That is quite all right”, Chou said, though he regarded Brad with some degree now of wariness and caution. “Nevertheless, it might well be advisable to check on the remains, just to be on the safe side.”
Brad agreed, and so they made their way down into the basement, and toward the one area that housed the coffins, encased within the concrete wall, each separate enclosure memorialized by the name of a different Krovell family member. The oldest one was a girl named Martha Krovell, who died in 1903 at the age of fourteen. Two younger children, a boy aged six and a girl aged four, died the very next year, seemingly on the same date in February, while yet another boy died later that same year at the age of seventeen. More than a century ago, Chou considered, this one family underwent the heart wrenching tragedy of four children dead within the space of little over a year’s time.
Brad Marlowe was busily removing the bolts that held on the engraved tomb marker for Marlowe, the latest Krovell tragedy, himself dead just a few months following the deaths of his parents. He considered how little he knew about the family, though he had been the family physician for going on seven years. How little did he really know about all of his patients, in fact? It was considered advisable to refrain from any kind of personal relationship with a patient, and though this was ethical and wise, it was such a loss. He would never have imagined Richard, for example, to be a comic book collector. How else did they live their lives, pursue their dreams? They were dead all in under a years time, yet their lives, though they were his patients, were every bit as much a mystery as those of the four unfortunate children who died more than a century ago.
He no longer even knew his own wife, his son and two daughters. Their lives were complete mysteries to him, in a sense, so far apart they drifted over the last few years. All he knew for sure was that Chrissy was going to bankrupt him with her addiction to credit cards and shopping. Brian was a drifter, going from job to job. Susan was a slut party girl who imagined abortion was just another form of birth control. His wife could care less about any of it so long as the real estate market made her enough spending money to fill her boredom. Meanwhile, she could pretend to be a concerned Asian-American politically active businesswoman. Of course, the housing market was going into a slump, and if it did not pull out of it soon, it would have a negative effect on all their lives
As for David Chou, sometimes he knew less about himself than he might a perfect stranger. He was an alcoholic with a preference for Scotch, who was tired of fighting his addiction. His determination to remain the one sane, stabilizing force in his family had made him an emotional wreck. Like his wife and kids, he was approaching that nebulous area of non-concern that seemed to lead to, if not happiness, then at least a form of contentment that comes with acceptance of reality.
Brad finally succeeded in removing the bolts out of the sealed crypt memorialized with the name of Marlowe Krovell, but as Chou approached, he saw something that took him by surprise. Beside Marlowe’s crypt was another, with no dates, either of birth or of death, and with only one given name-Radu.
“Who was this”? Chou asked.
“I think that was Magda’s husband”, he said, going on to explain that Magda was an old gypsy woman that came with her daughter and son-in-law to America from Romania in 1887. These were of course the ancestors of this branch of the family, the only branch in America, in fact.
“He may actually have been her father, I’m not sure.”
“But this is a new crypt”, Chou said suspiciously. “It looks to have been recently inscribed, right about the same time as Richard’s, Mabel’s and Marlowe’s.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a long story”, Brad replied. “To tell you the truth, Marlowe found him in an old trunk, buried with Magda out in the yard. It was an iron trunk, partially rusted, but sealed with some kind of pitch. He actually opened it up thinking there might have been money or jewels in there, but there wasn’t anything but this old mummy. The most horrible sight I ever saw in my life. I had nightmares for two weeks afterwards.
“The worse part of it was, it stunk up the whole place for two whole days”, he said. “I still get sick just thinking about it. Anyway, Marlowe demanded he should have a decent funeral, so we gave him one, and this crypt. At the same time he kept the old woman out in the yard where she was at, as that was what she wanted.”
Brad now stopped and looked at the crypt that held the ancient set of remains, and looked morose.
“You know, I think that’s when Marlowe really started to get crazy”, he said. “He was getting weird and maybe even a little crazy before, in fact he always was, well, kind of different. Okay, very different. But after he dug this thing up, he really went into a different dimension. He just got worse and worse every day, and then, to top it off-I don’t know this for a fact mind you, but I think he might have murdered that black girl they found ripped apart, drained of all her blood.”
“The Sandusky girl?”
“Yeah, that’s her”, Brad confirmed. “He came back here in the most horrible shape I’ve ever seen anybody in. He didn’t even look human. He had all these welts all over him, running sores, all over his body and face, and he was weak and in pain. He actually seemed to be in agony. Then, when I helped him up to the bathroom, he”-
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell me anymore”, Chou said as Brad hesitated. He did not want to be in the position of being an accessory after the fact of such a heinous crime as this, if it were true. At the same time, his curiosity was aroused to such an extent he offered not even a meek objection when Brad persisted.
“I’ve kept this to myself so long, I really need to tell somebody”, he said. “We do have a patient-doctor confidentiality thing, right?”
“Yes, of course”, Chou replied. He honestly was unsure whether that would apply in this situation, but he was loath giving voice to this concern.
“He vomited up blood, that night. I mean, it looked like one or two gallons of it. It looked like an entire person’s blood supply, to be sure. It wasn’t his blood, he told me that. I just heard about the murder, and asked him if he knew anything about it, because I know he knew the girl. She was supposedly a virgin, someone he met on a Christian dating site. He said it was all a filthy bunch of lies.
“The strange thing was, after he vomited all that blood, he started to change back to normal. The welts and sores went almost but not quite completely away. Then, later that night, he attacked someone he thought was me. He intended to kill me, but actually attacked an emergency tech sent by the hospital in response to my calls. If I hadn’t sent for them I’d probably be in one of these crypts right now. He was like a madman that night. It was almost like he was possessed. Believe me, the more I think about it, the more I think about Radu, and those gasses.”
“Gasses”? Chou asked. “What sort of gasses?”
“Those gasses that stunk the place up when he opened that trunk. Those were bodily gasses, built up over God only knows how long, held in place by the strength of that old cast iron trunk and the pitch, and the fact they were buried in the ground most of the time. This guy was, to tell you the truth, supposed to have lived centuries ago. I don’t even know what his full name was, or even if he was a Krovell-or a Krovelscu. I assume he was just some ancestor of Magdas.”
“The gasses might well explain the bubonic plaque”, Chou said. “It might possibly even explain the syphilis. It might well explain a hell of a lot more. You need to come back to the office for another checkup, by the way. Your exposure to those gasses might have affected you as well. I doubt it, as it should have manifested in some way by now, particularly if you came down with syphilis, or the plaque. Still, just to be on the safe side”-
“Sure thing”, Brad said. “I’ll come in Monday, will that be all right?”
“That should be fine”, Chou replied. “Now, if you will be so kind as to extract Marlowe’s coffin, we can look at him and get this unpleasantness over with.”
Chou assisted Brad in withdrawing the coffin, held in place by a pulley with wheels by which they guided it to its position some four feet from the ground. Brad then unlocked the coffin, and they proceeded to open it. Chou stared at the remains. Yes, it was definitely Marlowe, he was even surer of it now than he was when he first identified him. Even his face was by now almost back to normal. He was quite impressed with Brad’s work. Brad explained to him that, while he probably should not have engaged in this endeavor, as he also did with Richard and Mabel, it did not feel right to entrust them to the hands of relative strangers.
As he talked, Chou realized something. This was definitely Marlowe, but something was missing. There were no tattoos on his hands. He opened the shirt. Missing was the bat wing tattoo and the spider web that adorned his chest. He checked Marlowe’s tongue, only to find no evidence of any piercing, as was also the case on his ears. There was also no evidence of any resulting healing scars from the piercings.
Yet, there was no doubt that this was Marlowe. At the same time, Chou noted something even more disturbing. In his first examination of the corpse, Chou noted evidence of trauma because of the explosion. Although some of this evidence was still present, it seemed not as bad as before. Other things faded completely, as though they never existed.
Brad had moved away during the course of Chou’s examination, briefly, but not returned.
“So are you sure now it’s him”, he asked.
Chou was not sure of what to say. The improvements Chou noted in the condition of the corpse seemed not accomplished through any kind of mortuary cosmetology, and possibly occurred sometime between the time of the body’s release to Brad Marlowe’s care, and the time the mortician embalmed the body.
It, like the blood, replicated. Chou found himself wondering, if Brad had delayed embalming the corpse, might it have continued replicating. Might it even be capable of sustaining life?
“Yes, it is obviously him”, Chou replied. Those missing tattoos still bothered him, but he said nothing.
Brad was almost crying openly when he said goodbye to his nephew, and closed him back up in the crypt. Chou knew of course what one explanation was, but dared not say it to Brad or to anyone. The replication faculties of Marlowe Krovell’s blood went further than what he imagined they would in his wildest dreams. He was not about to mention any of this to Brad Marlowe, however.
Chou was unable to sleep that night, and lay in bed as Susan and her friends talked, and laughed. He could not make out what they were saying, but he was almost surprised when they left the house close to twelve midnight, yet Susan remained home. Yes, he thought, the world is definitely turning on its head.
He decided he would call his other kids. Chrissy, however, was not home, and Brian said he just got in from work, and had to go in early the next day. He sounded beat, so Chou let him go. The hell with it, he decided. He may as well call Mia. It was twelve midnight exactly, which meant either Mia was at some Washington nightclub, or in some hotel room with God knows whom. He almost hoped she was. He thought that would be quite humorous, to hear her act as if she was all alone. Unfortunately, she never answered, so his little joke would have to wait for the next Asian American conference.
To his surprise, by the time he woke up the next morning, she was home, had in fact been home for three hours.
“You’d better be glad you didn’t attend”, she told him. “The food was atrocious, the lectures and seminars were all boring as hell, and the people there acted like a group of Chinese peasants pretending to fawn over a bunch of Communist Party officials. It was disgusting.”
“I told you”, he said. “I don’t know how many times you have to attend these things to see it’s just a way to get money from the gullible, people who cannot seem to comprehend that these people are only concerned with justifying their six figure salaries with nothing but promises and hot air.”
“You might have actually enjoyed the seminar on Chinese herbal medicines and their growing acceptance by the American medical establishment”, she told him.
“No I would not”, he said indignantly. “You have no idea how many patients I have who have asked me if I perform acupuncture, or if I could recommend ginseng or dong quai as an alternative to everything from Demerol to Viagra. I have had one so far this month. I average about two a month. One month, about a year ago, I had seven. It is very insulting, and frustrating.”
“Well, I didn’t sell a single house, after spending all day Friday”, she said. “At least you don’t have to worry about the market for physicians falling through to the basement-or the sewer.”
“Well, that is what you think, as I most certainly do have to worry about it”, he replied. “Any time the economy takes a hit in any sector, I feel a pinch. Not that I am complaining, mind you, as it would do me no good.”
His wife obviously had something on her mind, as she seldom engaged him in conversation this long. He knew he was only two short years away from divorce papers being filed, and was always squirreling money away, whenever possible, for that eventuality. Unfortunately, after going on five years of squirreling, what he amassed amounted to roughly the equivalent of a pile of acorns. He looked at her and knew something bothered her.
“Do you have something on your mind?” he asked.
“What is all this with Susan?” she asked. “She has been acting so strange.”
“I have no idea”, he replied, and immediately regretted it, as Mia’s eyes now narrowed with even greater suspicion.
“So I take it you had no plans whatsoever to tell me about the abortion”, she said. “Yes, David, she told me about it, this morning, so don’t try to deny it. And what is this about taking her blood? Was there anything wrong with it?”
“Of course not”, he replied. “Those facilities are very thorough in guarding against infections. I am sure the medication they gave her is quite appropriate. Abortions are actually quite simple procedures, especially in her case. I am sure she was early in her second trimester at the latest.”
“According to her you said the exact opposite”, Mia said, now becoming cold and distant in her matter-of-fact tone of disapproval.
“I don’t want her to think abortion is a convenient way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy”, he said. “That kind of thinking will lead her to nothing but trouble.”
“A lot of her thinking will lead her to nothing but trouble”, Mia replied. “That never seemed to bother you before”.
“Damn, Mia, I’m sorry I concerned myself with my daughter’s welfare, I promise you it will never happen again”, he almost shouted, growing more irritated as he glanced toward the liquor cabinet.
“There is something going on with you”, she said. “You are up to something. I do not know what it is, but these last few weeks you have been acting very strangely. If it involves Susan, or any of my children, I want to know about it.”
“It doesn’t involve them”, he replied. “It is just some research I am conducting which I am not at liberty to discuss. My interest in Susan’s blood was just an incidental distraction. Considering the kinds of friends she typically has, I would think you would actually be relieved to see her do something that is arguably responsible. At the same time, I feel it is my duty as her father to insure her health has not been damaged. Is that so hard for you to comprehend?”
“So, I see I will not get a straight answer from you”, she said. “Well, I don’t have time for your foolishness. It is time for mass, which is where I am on my way to. I would ask you to come along, but I know what my answer to that would be. I am going”.
She made it to the door, stopping to check her appearance in the full-length mirror. As always, she checked her backside, this time as well the slits that ran two thirds of the way up her medium length black skirt. She opened the door, and then turned to face him.
“We aren’t finished with this, David”, she said. “Not by a long shot.”
“No”, Chou replied, “I am quite afraid we are not”.
By that time, however, Mia was already out the door.
Prologue And Chapters I-X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Radu-Chapter XVII (A Novel by Patrick Kelley)
(Nineteen pages approximate)
Chou could not believe what he was seeing. The blood cells were replicating, and they seemed to be in the process of becoming cancerous, but they never did. They just continued until, over a period of little more than half a week, what started out as one not quite full vial of blood was suddenly an ounce. By the time a two full weeks went by, this supply increased until it reached an apex of two and a half pints of blood. It was the most incredible thing he had ever seen in his life.
Then, inexplicably, the process slowed. Soon, though the blood doubled in volume, it took much longer. Then, the replication processed came to a complete halt. He tested the blood one more time. It was all the same blood, the same DNA genetic markers. There was absolutely nothing to suggest any contamination of the samples. Finally, the blood began to break down. He separated them into four distinct groups. He had made a discovery far beyond him and, if he could determine the origin, the cause, of this incredibly unique biology, he might conceivably win a Nobel Prize.
With the first sample, of about pint, he elected to separate the white and red blood cells, and so he did. This unfortunately told him nothing. Perhaps he waited too long, he should have done this before the blood started to break down. It was dying now.
For the time being, he froze one of the samples. The other he would allow to deteriorate until it was to all intents and purposes dead. It should coagulate, like any other blood sample left in the open and untreated. It should dry and become useless. That left one final sample. He took a fresh vial of blood from the same source, and he added it to the larger sample.
Amazingly, the supply seemed reinvigorated. Given enough time, he had no doubts this one sample of roughly one pint of blood would quite possibly double in volume over the course of a week. It was amazing. Yet, if he were to publish his findings in such a way as to leave his imprimatur, let alone develop a treatment he might patent, he had to find whatever enzyme, or protein, or DNA mutation was responsible for the anomaly.
He took the newly strengthened blood supply, and he ran it as well through the centrifuge device that separated the white from the red cells. He immediately saw that the replication process occurred in both samples in such a way as to evenly distribute the replication process. This was all that prevented the cells from becoming cancerous.
It would take some time to discover whatever enzyme or protein was responsible-he had all but eliminated the potential for the DNA mutation, as that should have been immediately evident, or at least it should have revealed itself by now. Yet, according to the DNA lab to which he sent the blood for analysis, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, he had to send it off after the replication process ceased, so he could not yet be one hundred percent sure there was not a genetic explanation, though it certainly seemed unlikely.
In the meantime, while he was waiting for the remaining test results to come in, he had more background research to conduct. For that matter, he was uncomfortable at the prospect of involving Grace Rodescu in anything, but the woman was adamant that she had seen Marlowe Krovell in her room-not when he, Chou, had discovered Krovell to be in her room, before the horrific explosion, but immediately afterwards.
What she claimed to witness was of course impossible, as rescue workers discovered Krovell’s body in Tariq’s office. The likely explanation was that her vision of Krovell was a hallucination, perhaps augmented by her subconscious mind’s awareness of his presence earlier. Despite this, the woman seemed insistent as to what she saw, though at the same time, mysteriously secretive.
Then, workers made a gruesome discovery. On top of one of the University Hospital complex buildings, across from the window of the room that housed the Rodescu woman, the discovered skeleton of a human infant proved that of the son of James Dooley, who had been Marlowe Krovell’s physical therapist.
Reportedly, a vulture had made off with the infant. In one of the most eerie coincidences in modern history, the skeleton of the infant turned up on the grounds of the hospital where the father worked-eight miles from where allegedly abducted. There were reports of a vulture flying around the hospital grounds that night. Finally, in perhaps the most bizarre twist of all, a very small sample of vomit found on the floor of Grace Rodescu’s hospital room, upon testing, proved to contain what apparently was human DNA, along with what seemed to be the digestive enzymes common to that breed of scavenger known as the black vulture.
And of course, the security reinforced steel mesh screen outside the window had been pried open, apparently with a crowbar wielded by someone of superhuman strength and determination.
Chou had never been a religious person. In fact, he was an atheist. Yet, when he was shown two feathers, found in Rodescu’s room, from what appeared to indeed be a black vulture, and he considered the improbability of the chain of events, he knew there was something going on that was beyond the mundane explanations of science.
Dooley did not know, of course, nor did the public. In fact, this was determined, in the course of an emergency meeting of hospital administrative staff, that this would be treated in as confidential a matter as possible. Unfortunately, the Dooley’s fell under suspicion of complicity in the disappearance of their child, especially the mother. Her story, despite the fact that her lover-who was also Mr. Dooley’s longtime rival-verified it, was simply not credible.
The Dooley’s lives destroyed by this affair, their marriage a technicality that would soon end by legal decree, Mrs. Dooley now openly moved in with her lover. Dooley now stayed drunk and quit work. Chou felt the Administrators of the hospital may have done the correct thing, for the good of the hospital, but it hardly seemed to be the human, compassionate thing from the standpoint of their employee, whose life was a wreck.
He wanted an explanation, and he knew that explanation had something to do with Marlowe Krovell. Grace Rodescu knew something she was not telling, and so as she began her final stages of release from the hospital, he approached her. To look at her, you would never know she had been here for more than a full month, had somehow narrowly avoided either dying, or being paralyzed from the neck down. The bullet wound she suffered merely needed one-sixteenth of an inch one way or another to accomplish either one of these results. She was lucky on both counts, yet seemed nonchalant. Perhaps she simply did not care. Yet, she was driven, and determined, in some strange way that was obviously apparent, yet unspoken.
“You say Krovell was in your room, so what I want to know is, after he took the reinforced screen off your window, what did he do when the vulture entered the room?”
“I wasn’t aware he removed the screen”, she said. “I guess he must have done that before I woke up.”
Grace was annoyed at Chou’s visits and his questions. She seemed to be annoyed mainly at herself for talking too much. Of course, she could not have been aware of Krovells death in the explosion in Tariq’s office.
“It was a damn dream, all right- Doctor Chou, is it?” Grace was making it clear she felt no obligations to answer him. “I don’t know how the screen came off the window. Maybe the damned explosion did it, did you ever think of that? But if you must know, in my vision, or dream, or whatever it really was, the fucking thing fed him, like Marlowe was its own baby. I guess you know how vultures feed their young. If you do not, go read up on it. I haven’t had lunch yet and I’d as soon not go into it.”
Chou left determined he had to find the truth, if not from Grace Rodescu, then from somebody. For the time being, his only option was the unfortunate patient whose blood seemed afflicted with the same unorthodox replication faculties as Marlowe Krovell’s had been. Her name was Lynette Khoska, a young girl about Marlowe’s age, yet who evidently had no contact with Krovell. In fact, she was originally not native to Maryland but was from New Jersey.
She recently experienced the grim tragedy of discovering her boyfriend dead in her own home, the victim of a gunshot would to the inside of the mouth. It would have seemed to be suicide were it not for the fact no gun was present. That gun turned up in the possession of a man who went by the gang moniker Spooky Gold, who was in fact the leader of the 17th Pulse. He apparently was responsible for not only the death of Marshall Crenshaw, but also the brutal murder of the Reverend Christopher George as well. Two reliable witnesses identified him as being at the apartment on the night and general time of the death of Crenshaw, along with the noted and controversial civil rights advocate, the Reverend Harvey Caldwell. Caldwell, unfortunately, was now legally insane, by any standard, and could give no reasonable account of the night’s events. Gold simply denied the murder of Crenshaw while refusing to discuss the death of George. Still, legal experts considered it an open and shut case, and Gold now waited in the Baltimore City Jail for his eventual trial.
As for Lynette Khoska, she was herself quite understandably distraught at the death of Crenshaw, while at the same time incensed at her parent’s objections to her relationship with the man whose connection with the Pulse was nebulous. Obviously, her parents objected due to the race of the man, and at first, she even accused them, especially her father, of complicity in his death. This further widened the breach between them.
At the same time, he understood her anger. Her father had the nerve to ask if his daughter was still a virgin, which was a question that infuriated Chou. It would be easy enough to assume she was not-the two of them after all lived together for going on three weeks before the murder, or, as the gang leader insisted, suicide-and to just forget about it. Martin Khoska, however, seemed to take his daughter’s relationship as more of a slight to him than as a matter of her daughter’s preference and judgment, be that for good or bad. From that point on, he dreaded seeing the man, and was relieved to see neither he nor his ex-wife here this day.
“You can tell my father I’m still a virgin”, she said upon his query as to whether they had this day been to see her. “He ain’t going to shut up about it until you do. And by the way, it is the truth.”
“I know it’s the truth, but I’m not telling him”, Chou declared. “It’s not just that it’s none of his business, it’s also of no interest to me. My main concern is your health, and from what I see, you are getting much better. I will need to take some blood from you, of course. I still have not isolated whatever enzyme it is that is causing your blood to replicate, but it seems to be gone from you now. Your blood pressure and pulse is almost completely back to normal, your breathing is good, your appetite is back to normal, and there seems to be no lingering fever, weakness, or dizziness. Therefore, I would say you are ready to go. I still want to keep in touch with you, of course, as an outpatient.”
“Of course”, Lynette replied, but she seemed melancholy.
“You are feeling better, are you not? If you need to see a therapist to help you cope with your loss-which I strongly recommend, by the way”-
“It’s more than that”, he said. “It’s my grandfather, Aleksandre. He’s furious with me. He can’t help it, he’s an old man, from Romania. He’s actually an Orthodox Priest, and I’m afraid he’s very troubled by all this. Damn, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I never intended to fall in love with Marshall, it just happened. Not only was he there when I needed a friend, he was so warm, and tender, and supportive. It just happened. But I never relaxed my standards, not even for him. Nor did he press me to do so. We slept in separate rooms, but to hear dad tell it, I’m ready to screw everything in Baltimore-just for starters.”
Chou just smiled sympathetically.
“I’m afraid this is pretty much out of my line of expertise”, he said. “’Try not to worry about it, it will eventually work out’ is about the best I can do and I doubt that is any comfort.”
Chou took the blood sample, and was about to leave, when suddenly a new visitor entered the room, one he knew only too well.
“Mr. Marlowe”, he said. “Were you looking for me?”
“No, I came to see Lynette”, he said. “She called and asked to speak with me, but I can come back later.”
“No, that is fine, I am finished here”, Chou said. He said his goodbyes to Lynnette, but lingered slowly outside the room. This was curious to Chou, but on the other hand, Brad Marlowe had recently reopened Krovell’s Funeral Home, having hired three new assistants to help him run the re-established business, which now included a crematorium. One of the first customers turned out to be Marshall Crenshaw, and from what he gathered from what seemed to be contracts Brad carried with him, Lynnette Khoska was now in the process of arranging for a future burial-or cremation, perhaps.
Whatever the case, though it was just one more of a long lime of curious coincidences, Chou decided it too was really none of his business. He proceeded back to the lab. The hospital granted him access for the purpose of experimentation that was really out of his realm. At the same time, he could not afford to trust anybody with a discovery of this magnitude. He was lucky the Administration was too overwhelmed by events of the last month to take the time to run him through a bureaucratic runaround that would end with a denial for request. Still, he endeavored to use his time wisely. He wondered what the result would be if ordinary blood from a different source was added to the samples from Lynette Khoska, and so he casually drew some blood from his own finger and added it to one of the samples. It actually seemed as though there was a subtle reaction, but nothing he could put his finger on.
Then, almost on a lark, he added some more of his own blood to one of the dried samples. Amazingly, the dried blood seemed to come to life. It was the most incredible thing he ever saw. The biggest shock, however, was yet to come. He elected to take some blood stored from Marlowe Krovell’s earlier test. They were completely dried, but when he added a drop of Lynette’s blood, they as well roared back to life.
All of the samples he ran through the various quick tests to determine RH Factor. Curiously, all samples seemed homogenous. It was as if no mixing of blood cells occurred. Of course, this was impossible, but one thing an electron microscope was worthless for was fabrication.
However, just to be certain, he decided he would take a more voluminous amount of his own blood. It was unorthodox, and against protocol and procedure, but he extracted an ounce of his own blood. Thankfully, by the time he finished the lengthy procedure, he noted that no one entered to see him do this. It would raise red flags, and he really felt foolish taking such a risk. Nevertheless, he had to make sure of this. Therefore, he added an appreciable amount of his own blood to Krovells sample.
Then, something happened that was totally unexpected. The Krovell sample reacted violently to the infusion of blood from Chou. Although not visible to the naked eye, under the revelatory light of the microscope, it seemed to actually bubble slightly. It seemed even to vaguely fume, as though determined to reject the foreign substance. It was the most unnerving reaction Chou ever saw.
He added some more of his blood, this time to one of the Khoska samples, which did not illicit the same kind of reaction. It was the same as before. What, he wondered, could possibly be the difference? The Krovell sample still waved and fumed. It put him in mind of a bizarre high school class chemistry experiment with two of chemicals added for the express purpose of gauging what the reaction would be. Most such endeavors were ill advised, and in some rare cases resulted in appreciable damage to high school lab equipment. If this reaction occurred at more than the molecular level, it might well elicit a similar reaction.
Hurriedly, he added a large amount of the Khoska sample to the Krovell. Amazingly, the reaction ceased almost immediately. Within under a minute, it was completely back to normal. This time he had to be sure, and so he took the sample to the main lab workers, and asked if they could kindly test the blood to see if they could spot any abnormalities. Their curiosity roused, the two men present in the lab agreed, but advised him it might take a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, depending on what he was looking for.
He agreed. What else could he do? It occurred to him he would be obliged at some point to involve others in these investigations, as he would need witnesses for confirmation of his findings. Yet, for now, he had to begin thinking of other things. He had let his life get off track, and though his career had far from suffered for it, he felt himself becoming obsessed over events that were wholly out of his control.
James Dooley’s problems, while deserving of sympathy, were not his own. He had his own problems with a wife who was far too generous with his money, and children who unfortunately took after her spendthrift habits. One of them had already run upwards of twenty thousand dollars in debt and, now in her senior year of college, her grade point average was a dismal 2.4.
He found his attraction to alcohol a constant struggle, and had no understanding as to why this was. His life was not that bad yet. In fact, on balance it was pretty damn good. Still, he looked a little too forward to the time he could unwind, and when he did, away from parental and marital responsibilities, he would get a little too loaded, and end up feeling miserable.
Perhaps this obsession was a replacement for alcohol. If so, it was understandable. It was not often that you ran across a blood specimen that seemed to replicate. Two such specimens discovered over a period of less than one month, from two different people who had no notable personal or otherwise immediate connection, in the same city, the city to which one of them just recently relocated to-what were the odds of something like that.
He made it a point to stop by the home of James Dooley. The grass was a little high, but Chou told himself if he did not know the Dooley’s situation, he might not even have noticed this. Besides, the Dooleys would be leaving this home soon, would be selling it as joint property and dividing the proceeds down the middle. Just as well, Chou thought. Dooley did not need this large a home just for himself, and he seriously doubted he would be likely to get married any time soon, if ever.
Dooley invited him in for a drink, but Chou declined. The last thing the unfortunate man needed was for him to get soused and cry on his shoulder, and around Dooley it would be next to impossible to not do that. At the same time, Dooley seemed content, even casually satisfied with his life. It was an act, of course. Nevertheless, all of life was an act, was it not?
Dooley of course was yet unaware of the discovery of the infant’s skeleton on University Hospital property. It just turned up somewhere on the outskirts of Baltimore, he was told, a few miles from where he lived. Luckily, he was strangely uninterested in the location. Some jogger and his dog found the skeleton with the sheet nearby, in a park, and phoned it in to the police in the form of an anonymous tip. The jogger, of course, was a hospital staff member who actually picked out what seemed a suitable spot for the skeleton to be “found”.
Dooley now mentioned something to the effect of starting a fund for a memorial at the site, but then almost immediately changed his mind, to Chou’s relief.
“Why memorialize a place like that, right?”
“I would not want to personally”, Chou replied.
“I wish I had been at the hospital when that damn bomb went off”, the man now said. “Fuck it, anyway. Who can believe in God after you go through that kind of shit? I used to be a devout Catholic. Ain’t that a fucking laugh? It wasn’t but three days before the shit happened I had James Jr. baptized and consecrated into the church. Yeah, God, thanks a bunch, you hear? Talk about watching out for the weak and helpless. Here my baby dies what has to be as horrible a death as you can think of, I get so upset I leave the hospital, and the damn place blows up. Just an hour later, and I would be just another statistic.
“Of course, that would have made Jan and Willard happy, huh? Not that they ain’t doing great now. No, my loving wife seems to be doing just fine.”
Chou was beginning to see he might have made a big mistake in coming here. This man was obviously not ready for any kind of conversation, and he felt guilty actually coming here. Nevertheless, he had to ask.
“I really am sorry to bother you, James, but I did have a reason for coming here. It is about the patient you were with the day you left the hospital. If you would prefer not to talk about it-“
“Radu, you mean”, Dooley said with a cynical smile. “Yeah, how could I ever forget him? The motherfucker was standing there laughing when the cops brought me the news. I was too fucked up to think about it at the time, but I think the cops wanted to knock his ass out. I didn’t really think about it until later.”
“He called himself Radu?”
“Yeah, and he said something about waiting for a visitor”, he explained. “He kept saying, over and over again, that this Mircea, whoever that is, was sending a mutual friend over with lunch. He said it was somebody named-Cynthia, I think.”
“He called her Cynthia?” Chou asked, obviously bewildered. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, because he couldn’t digest the fucking hospital food-his words”, Dooley replied. “Otherwise, he just talked the usual senseless bullshit, same as usual.
“Oh yeah, and he mentioned something about you, and bad blood”.
“Bad blood?”
“Yeah, that was it. Like I said, the guy was a real whack job. Marlowe was his name, right? Yeah-Marlowe Krovell. He got it in the blast too, didn’t he?”
They talked for a few minutes more, whereupon Chou encouraged him to seek therapy, and even in time to think about returning to work. Suddenly, Dooley broke down and began crying. He tried to stop, but could not. Chou embraced the man, though he felt like a hypocrite. He waited a few minutes, and gave the man time to pull himself together, and then he decided he would leave. He was just one small step away from taking him up on his offer for a beer. Chou knew all too well how that would end up.
“James, I know it is none of my business, but if you ever decide to come back to work, I promise you I will do all I can for you. I do have some pull there, not that it should be necessary. And if you ever decide to see a professional, I would be happy to help you find a qualified practitioner.”
“Yeah, I’ll think about it”, he replied. “You know what I was thinking of doing? Getting a construction job, believe it or not. I was by the hospital the other day to pick up my check, and the noise from the repair crew was deafening. I thought to myself, just what I need, something where I can expend some energy and not have to hear myself think.
“But anyway, thanks. I’ll give it some thought.”
Chou left, and decided to return home. It was a struggle after that to keep from going to the nearest bar. Instead, he would return home to his wife and the one child who was still home, a daughter who seemed to hate him even more than she did his wife, and her mother. He would just eat a cold pastrami sandwich, as his wife was far too busy selling real estate to cook any more. He could easily hire a cook and housekeeper of course, but it seemed so unnecessary, even extravagant.
On the other hand, the place was a mess. His wife seemed to adopt the philosophy that if you cleaned one room well, you could spot clean other rooms here and there so it would just look like it was time to clean them again-not that, in reality, they hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned in half a year.
God, he wanted a drink.
Susan was bitching about some concert her mother refused to allow her to attend-a rap concert, of all things.
“I guess you are going to tell me no too, no doubt”, she said hatefully.
“You guessed right”, he said. “I’ve heard enough of that crap blasting out of your room to know it’s no place for you, no matter how badly you think you have to go there. The next thing you know you are going to be some “ho” for the 17th Pulse, dancing suggestively on one of Toby Da Pimp’s videos. Or maybe you’ll be the female cop down on her knees unzipping his leather pants while he has a gun to her partner’s head.”
“That was a white cop”, she said. “And you can go to hell”.
She stormed upstairs to her room, and Chou decided he could not take it any more. He unlocked the bottle of scotch that his wife insisted they keep on hand for the mythological guests she insisted could stop by any time, but which he suspected she really wanted to keep there to just taunt him.
He opened it and poured himself a double. He had no sooner put it to his lips than Susan reappeared, storming down the stairs and staring at him indignantly.
“Well, it finally happened, huh? How many of your patients have died from you being a drunk? You are disgusting.”
“Where was that fucking vulture when I could have used her?” He downed the double immediately after saying this, and realized it was a really shitty thing to say, even if he couldn’t help but think it.
“What vulture?” she asked. “You’re already soused, ain’t you?”
“Young lady, I’ve about had it with your mouth”, he said angrily.
“Oh, what the fuck ever!” She practically screamed in his face as she lowered her head to where their eyes were at an even level. He could not help but think it was the most hateful tone, with matching expression, he ever heard in his life. She was now on her way to the phone, as he poured another drink.
He looked at her and thought to himself, is it wrong for a father to despise his own child the way he does this one? She sat there, not eight feet away from him, and talked as though he were not even there, about how some alleged stud she liked the last school year was going to, when school resumes, “give me some of that whether he knows it or not”.
“Virgin?” she then said with a derisive laugh after a couple of minutes of silent listening to what amounted to teasing from her friend Amanda. “Sweetie, that virgin thing is like about two years in the past and about fifty seven cocks ago. Oh, and that other thing you asked me about a couple of nights ago? Believe it. It don’t taste that bad after the fifth or sixth time.”
“Susan” Chou now said to his daughter. “I need to tell you something.”
“You’re still here?” Susan replied. “What the fuck! Amanda, I have to hang up for a minute, I’ll call back later.”
Chou was amazed his daughter even considered acceding to his request to talk, but she solved that mystery herself when she lit into him.
“Do you make a habit of listening in to other people’s private conversations?”
Chou apologized as he reached into his pockets and extracted a set of keys, from which he separated two, which he then proffered her.
“You want to get out of here, be my guest”, he said. “If you drive fast enough, you might make the concert in time.”
She looked at him in a way that suggested disorientation by this sudden change of heart, but immediately recovered her composure.
“I guess you don’t have any money, do you?”
“Two hundred dollars-will that do it?”
“Yes, and if I could have my credit card back that would be even better”, she sniped. “I don’t suppose you know where mom hid it, do you?”
“No, and I’m afraid that’s something you’ll have to take up with her”, he replied. “I’m not getting into that.”
“Whatever”, she replied. “It’s not like I run up a ton of debt the way Chrissie has, I only owe about two hundred dollars. But of course, Prissy little Chrissie is special, we can’t say anything to her, we’ll just make Susie suffer to make it up. Nobody else, mind you, just-“
“Goddammit do you want to go or not?”
He shouted this, which shocked her. She seldom heard this kind of reaction from him.
“Wow, I was about to say you should drink that shit more often, but I’m not so sure now. Okay, damn, I’ll go.”
“Be damned sure you keep it down when you come in, your mother is a light sleeper.”
“Yeah, right”, she said as she snatched the keys and money out of his hand. She was out the word without a word of thanks or as much as a goodbye. As she slammed the door, Chou realized how the term “fucked up” applied to his life in an excruciating fashion. What was worse, he found himself unconcerned as to whether she ever returned. In fact, by the time he made it up to the bed, following another double-shot, he forgot all about her.
When he awoke the following morning, he saw that he was alone, though his wife was home. She was downstairs, already heading to work. He walked quietly downstairs and saw her in the process of checking herself out in the full-length mirror, which she had positioned by the door for just that purpose. One last, final check before she was out the door. She did have houses to sell and quotas to meet, and by God in today’s market that was not so easy.
He walked down the stairs, in pain. The morning light streaming into the room seemed like high noon. He walked over toward the sofa. As he did, he looked over toward the liquor cabinet.
“The next time you decide to drink the scotch, would you be so kind as to put the lid back on?” his wife said. “I hope you didn’t drink out of the bottle, by the way.”
“Of course I didn’t”, he said. “Since you saw the open bottle, I would assume you saw the shot glass as well. I am even guessing you put it up.”
Mia’s cell phone then rang, and she answered. She immediately adopted a more casual, even light-hearted tone as she walked into the kitchen. A client had called and she was in the process of telling him she would be no more than fifteen or twenty minutes late, at the most. She had as many as seven houses she could show him today, but one in particular she was sure would be to his liking.
“Byyye”, she finally said as she hung up from the call and walked one last time to the mirror.
“Must be quite a catch there”, Chou observed.
“Well, it helps pay the bills”, she said matter-of-factly as she once more perused herself in the mirror, taking special pains to pinch her cheeks, after which she turned her backside to the mirror and glanced back as she swooped down the back of her somewhat but not uncomfortably tight short skirt with her right hand.
“By the way, are you going to go to the conference this weekend?”
“Uhhh-what conference is that?” Chou was unaware of any conference.
“The Asian American Leadership Conference”, she reminded him. “You know-the one in Washington that I told you about two weeks ago, and have mentioned two or three times since then. I am going and I would greatly appreciate it if you would accompany me.”
Accompany her? What the fuck kind of wife talks this way to her husband in private, he wondered.
‘Look, if you don’t want to go, I don’t really care, but let me know something by noon, all right? I’ll call you when I take off for lunch”
The more Chou thought about it, the more he thought he might well go and drink like a fish, just to embarrass the shit out of her. On the other hand, he realized that would suit her fine.
“You go on”, he said. “I really am not interested in going.”
“Suit yourself”, she said, and then went out the door. He looked around for the key to the scotch drawer. Fuck it, he said, I’m going to drink the whole fucking bottle-and I’m not going to use a fucking glass, either.
Before he made it half the way to the cabinet, Mia re-entered with an obviously concerned look on her face.
“Where is the car?” she asked him.
“How should I know where your car is?” he demanded.
“Not mine, yours”, she said. “It’s not in the driveway, and it’s not in the garage. So what the hell is going on?”
“It’s in the shop for repairs”, he said. “I think it needs a new alternator, but I don’t know. I had it pulled in from the hospital and took a cab home.”
She looked at him suspiciously. Chou was a seasoned, expert liar from way back and could think of a suitable cover story for any situation at a moment’s notice. She was all too aware of this, and was one of the few people that could detect the little subtle signs that David Chou was lying his ass off.
“You didn’t wreck it, did you?”
“No, I did not wreck it”, he promised.
“Do you need a ride to the hospital”, she asked. “It’s not that far out of my way.”
“I’m taking the day off”, he said. “If I am called in I’ll take a cab.”
She looked at him curiously, as she suddenly drew closer to him. He almost cringed at the thought of her touching him, but she suddenly stopped. As unusual as it was for him to take off a day from work, she decided it was not anything that could not wait. She had houses to sell.
“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
He left and then he almost collapsed in his recliner. Susie, he had forgotten all about her. She had not returned home yet, and it was eight o’clock in the morning. What in the hell was going on? Where could she have gone, and with whom? He also wondered what in the hell he was thinking giving her his car keys. He decided to take a shower, and after that, he ate a bowl of cereal. He needed to keep his strength up, despite the fact that his stomach churned in rebellion at the thought of any food.
He wanted to hit the scotch again, but he was amazingly calm about it. He wanted to, but he would not. He had to stay clear-headed today, of all days. After a couple of hours of trying not to think about it, but doing so anyway, it occurred to him-the phone was turned off. He would never have heard it ring, but the answering machine might have picked up her attempt to call last night or early this morning.
Unfortunately, no messages from Susie or anyone else waited. This would be one hell of a miserable day off, he decided. When the phone rang, he felt as if he wanted to jump through the window. He was struggling with one tenacious hangover. He wanted to vomit, but dreaded it. He picked up the phone, to hear Scott, from the Hospital Administration.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I wondered if you might be able to come in for just a little while”, he said.
“Sure”, Chou replied. “It might be a little while, though, as I’m having somewhat of a problem with my vehicle. I will have to take a cab.”
The Administrator told him it could wait, but Chou said he would try to be there within the hour. He hated that. It was obviously important, to call him in on a day off, he would be god damned if he would wait out the weekend with yet another worry on his mind. He changed the message on the answering machine to reflect this abrupt departure from his weekend plans, and then he called a cab.
Scott Reese was one of those hands-on Administrators that wanted to be in the loop in everything, whether it was vital or not. He had little if any trust in the various department heads. He should not have been here on a Saturday, so obviously something was afoot. As usual, when Chou entered his office, Reese extended his hand with a curt smile, and then invited him to sit. He apologized for any interference in Chou’s weekend. Chou just asked him what was on his mind.
“I’m interested in the experiments you have been conducting”, he said.
“They are not experiments”, Chou said. “Lynette Khoska is my patient, as was Marlowe Krovell. They share a blood anomaly which is most curious-as I’m sure you are aware.”
“Shared”, Reese replied. “Since Krovell is dead, I see no point in speaking as if he is still among the living, do you?”
“I never meant to imply otherwise”, Chou replied. “However, his blood samples are still most active.
Reese looked now at Chou in that questioning manner which Chou read as more critical than was necessary.
“I’ll get right to the point, David”, the man said. “There are specialists that are eminently qualified to research blood anomalies. It is already a matter of record that you discovered the replication faculties of these extraordinary samples. No one wishes to take credit away from you. At the same time”-
“They are mine”, Chou replied. “No one is taking a goddamn thing away from me, I will promise you that.”
“Well, actually David, that is not true”, the man replied with a bemused smile. “The samples first of all belong to the donors, but in the second place, they are currently the property of Johns Hopkins University Hospital. You are of course a visiting attending physician here. This is not a matter of territory, however. This is a matter of what is in the best interests of your patients, particularly your surviving patient. What is in her best interests is of the paramount importance.”
“And you should never forget that she is my patient”, Chou replied.
“Uh, well-that is because she was referred to you, specifically by me”, Reese said. “There was a reason for that, having to do with Krovell. She claimed to have seen him, on numerous occasions, after his death. Were you aware that she was near death at one point before her admittance here? Upon her admittance here, in fact, she demanded we release her, because she needed to be with him. Are you aware that her blood level was dangerously low, but nothing was ever determined as to what the cause of this was?
“Are you aware”, he said as he stood and glared at Chou, “that several people remarked as to having seen a strange man exiting a hospital window, from the fourth floor? Were you aware this man, when described, bore a striking resemblance to Marlowe Krovell? Did you know a vulture reportedly flew into and out of the same window, immediately before Krovell’s sighting there? As if that were not enough, the woman who was a patient in that room reported seeing him in there when she awoke from her coma.”
“That is a lot of poppycock”, Chou replied. “I saw Krovell. His body was mangled, but it was his, and not only did his uncle verify this, but dental records proved it was him. What are you saying?”
“I am wondering exactly what you are saying”, Reese replied. “You were informed about the vulture’s presence on this facility’s grounds, and the finding of the Dooley infant’s skeleton, due to some curiosity about your activities. We extended you a professional courtesy out of suspicions as to your patient’s involvement in these matters. These things are not only strange-they are downright bizarre. Records can be fabricated, by the way.”
“Well, I did not fabricate them”, Chou said. “I certainly do not make a habit of stealing infants to feed to vultures. Could you explain to me what the point of that would be?”
“I don’t know”, the man said. “I do know this. When the police informed Dooley of the circumstances surrounding his son’s disappearance, he was so distraught he lost track of the patient he was at the time attending. That patient, Marlowe Krovell, found his way to the hospital room of Grace Rodescu, where he seems to have managed to pry apart the screen that enclosed her window-a reinforced steel mesh screen, at that. He later managed to make it back to her room, at just about the time of the explosion. Yet, curiously enough, you were both seen to exit that room less than an hour prior to this.”
“Yes, I found him there. I went looking for him for an appointment we had, and a nurse directed me to the part of the hall where she had just seen him. I checked several rooms before I found him.”
“Would you like to hear something interesting?” Not waiting for a response, Reese pushed a button on a tape player. What Chou heard chilled him to the bone.
“There is a bomb in the basement. It will go off sometime today, probably very soon. When it does, it will destroy the entire area, and do severe damage to other floors as well. You are advised to leave as soon as possible.”
Chou had no doubt whatsoever as to whom the voice belonged.
“Marlowe”, he said. “Play that back, please.”
Reese did as Chou requested, and Chou not only was sure of who he heard, but noted that Marlowe, at the end, right before hanging up, seemed to restrain himself from laughing out loud.
“So, do you have an explanation for this?”
“He was insane”, Chou said. “Otherwise, it proves nothing. Furthermore, if you are accusing me of culpability, I would advise you-I can afford damn good lawyers. I would imagine Mr. Dooley, while a man not quite of my means, would certainly find someone willing to take a case such as his. Assuming of course he was to learn the truth as to what happened to his son, and where the remains were truly found.”
Reese looked at Chou, thunderstruck.
“Oh, you son of a bitch, you are good”, he said. “You know, I’ll be honest, I was against bringing you into this from the start. I always suspected you of complicity in Krovell’s actions. Most of the staff thought you were an innocent pawn at most, so I was overruled. But you know something, I’m glad you were brought into it, because I think the others just gave you enough rope for me to hang you with.
“You see, I don’t really think you are much of a physician, to be blunt. I do however think you know enough to be able to identify a body. Not being a physician myself, about all I know is it is impossible for a living human being to have the same identifying characteristics as a dead body.
“And as for Mr. Brad Marlowe, I wouldn’t hitch my saddle to that horse if I were you, because Mr. Marlowe is under investigation himself. Seems certain families might well exhume the bodies of loved ones he worked on. I don’t know why, but he is under a restraining order for the time being, and can temporarily no longer practice. I’m sure if we look into Krovell’s dentist we might find something like a drug or alcohol problem, or perhaps gambling. What about you, Chou? Might there be any skeletons on your rooftop?”
“You go to hell you son of a bitch”, Chou said. “As you pointed out, I am not an employee of this hospital, I am a visiting resident. I can leave any time, and when I go, I will take my patient’s samples with me. There is not a fucking thing you can do about it, besides see me in court. And if you breathe a word about my involvement with any of these ridiculous conspiracy theories you have spouted today, I will soon be moving into a new home-after I have auctioned off what parts of your furniture I don’t particularly like, that is.”
“Looking for a new home, Chou?” Reese asked him, not in the least impressed or dismayed by the doctor’s threats. “Why, problem with the wife, or the kids?”
“Yes, they don’t like my pet vulture”, Chou replied. “Are we finished here?”
Reese looked at Chou as though he were the scum of the earth, and then told him they were through for now. Chou was hopping mad, and determined he would remove the blood samples from this hospital today. First, he had to inform his patient-his lone one presently at John Hopkins-that he would no longer be seeing her there, and so would discharge her. When he went to her room, he was surprised to see an old man who was evidently a priest. He realized this had to be the grandfather she spoke of earlier.
Lynette seemed not only awake, but also aware, and according to her charts, her blood supply was completely normal. He talked to her at length, and asked her if she ever knew Marlowe Krovell. She informed him she did, but only through an on-line dating site. She never met the man in person. She was surprisingly unaware of ever having mentioned seeing him while in a disoriented state. She completely forgot about it. The old man was surprised at all this, and genuinely concerned. Why, he never elaborated, nor in fact did he say anything. Chou just knew.
Chou advised her there was no reason to keep her here any longer, as he felt the hospital was “no longer safe”. He already prepared her discharge papers, so she could leave within two hours. He then made a stop at the lab, where Bernie, the main lab tech on duty that day, told him he was under orders not to release the samples to Chou. He was incensed, and demanded to know why.
“Well, it’s really a matter of public safety”, he said. “Those samples contain trace amounts of latent bubonic plaque, in addition to syphilis. Actually, it is probably only a matter of very little time before we will be required to hand them over to the CDC. I’m very sorry, Dr. Chou.”
Chou was livid, and had to restrain himself from assaulting the lab tech. They would pay for this breach, he decided. He went to his sparsely furnished office, provided him as what he jokingly now thought of as a mere professional courtesy. Soon, he had no doubt the hospital would reassign it. He unlocked the bottom drawer on the desk, and extracted the fifth of Scotch. Why in the hell not, he asked himself. He poured a shot and quickly downed it.
He wondered if he should really do what he now planned. He wondered if one more shot would help him make the proper decision. He decided it could not hurt, and so he downed another double-shot, and called James Dooley. His new friend was understandably upset, and hurt, by the information Chou provided, but after all, what were friends for, but to give them as many reasons as possible to hate the people they hated themselves?
James Dooley was no longer hurt by the time he made it to the hospital, and to the office of Scott Reese-he was madder than hell, so much so, the first part of him that entered through Reese’s door was his right foot. Reese looked at him in terror, as he assured the now vicious former employee that he knew nothing about his wife’s dalliances with other hospital employees, including two Administrators. If this were true, he assured him that he was not one of them.
“So how is it my baby’s remains were found on top of one of the buildings, on this property? Why was I lied to? Don’t bother to deny it, because I have fucking proof. I want answers, now.”
Reese mumbled something about looking into it, though he was sure it was nothing but a vicious rumor, when Chou entered, encouraging Dooley to calm down.
“Oh, I’ll calm down, all right”, Dooley replied. “It will help when I go see my fucking lawyer-my civil lawyer.”
Dooley then stormed out of the office.
“You son of a bitch”, Reese hissed. “You’d better straighten him out, or”-
“Oh, stop worrying, Scotty”, Chou replied. “I’m sure once the truth comes out, James will be more than happy to settle for a quite handsome sum, say ten million dollars, for example. I would settle fast if I were you. Otherwise, you might not dissuade him from telling his soon-to-be ex-wife, and who knows how much she will demand? Who knows if she will even agree to settle? However, have no fear. I’m sure I can-how is it you put it-straighten him out.”
Reese sunk back in his chair. Chou had him, and he knew it. The victorious, though yet agitated and now obviously drunken Doctor leaned over Reese’s chair and leered at him with a malicious smile.
“Me, I don’t want that much”, he said. “I just want my fucking samples, and I want them now.”
By the time Chou made it back home, Susie had returned, with his car, thankfully still intact. She was noticeably sour, though this was actually an improvement.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “Do you know what your mother would say if I told her you’d been out all night? What the hell is wrong with you, Susan?”
“I stayed with some friends last night”, she replied. “I had some things I had to think about, so I just-did something I needed to do. It’s no big deal.”
She was definitely upset, Chou decided. Not once did she say or even imply that where she was amounted to none of his fucking business. No rolling of the eyes, no sarcastic tone, not so much as a hateful look. She seemed depressed. Then, he noticed the plastic bracelet around her wrist.
“Have you been to the hospital? Oh my God, that is it-you are pregnant.”
“Damn!” the girl exclaimed, obviously annoyed at herself for having forgotten to remove the bracelet.
“No, I went to the clinic”, she informed him. “No, I am not pregnant-not anymore. God, I feel sick.”
Chou was not surprised in the least. He was in fact somewhat relieved.
“You should go upstairs and rest, those procedures take a lot out of you. We will keep this between the two of us. Your mother will raise holy hell with the both of us if she finds out. Just go up to your room. I would like to take some blood from you, if you do not mind. Those facilities are far from pristine in their conditions, despite what you might have heard. I assume they gave you a prescription for antibiotics?”
“Yeah, and some pain medication as well”, she said. “Look, there might be some friends coming over later, I hope you don’t mind.”
“Fine, fine”, Chou said, growing ever more impatient. “The blood?”
“Alright, alright”, she said, after which Chou extracted a pint of blood from his daughter in the basement in his makeshift home lab.
“You need this much?” she asked.
“Just go up to your room and rest. When you wake up, make sure you eat something with a lot of iron and protein. That will help you build it back up. Oh, and by the way, you should stay here for a couple of days until your strength is back up to normal. I know you hate the idea, probably, but I am a doctor, remember?”
“Fine”, he said. “I’m not in the mood to argue”, she said.
After she left, he could not set up his lab quickly enough, determined to add her blood to the Krovell samples. He would look for the same effect as the day he added his own blood. Did the earlier reaction have something to do with a strange aversion to Oriental blood? No, he decided, that was ridiculous. There was only one thing different about Lynette Khoska from himself and his daughter that he knew of. They all three, in fact, had the same blood types, which was O-. Krovell’s was O+, so the reaction made no sense.
Marlowe Krovell was obsessed with bad blood. He wanted to leave the hospital because Chou insisted on giving him a blood transfusion, and even remarked he should have the blood of a virgin. Lynette Khoska was in fact a virgin, while his daughter was the biggest whore in town that he knew of. When the Khoska sample was added to Krovell’s, the latter sample reacted positively. It reacted negatively to his, yet returned to normal after the addition of the Khoska sample that also contained his own blood.
There was no such reaction when he added his blood to the Khoska sample, even though it exhibited the same replication process as Krovell’s. This, he decided, was quite a selective anomaly. What could it mean? He now added the blood of his whore daughter to both the Khoska and the Krovell samples. Now, he determined to see what the long-term results would be. He was certain that such an effect as he witnessed in the actual blood supply of a person would result in serious incapacitation, along with physical deformities and running sores. Left uncorrected, the long-term result would inevitably be death.
Yet, he now was stunned to note that the blood from his daughter Susan had the same effect on the Krovell sample as it did the Khoska one. In fact, both samples reacted positively. Under his electron microscope, he noted that the replication faculties of both samples seemed enhanced by the addition. This was wholly unexpected.
He was strangely disappointed, yet did not know why. There would be no valid scientific reason for Krovell’s blood, or anyone else’s, to react negatively to infusion of blood from a non-virgin and positively from a person of chaste character. There was no genetic or otherwise scientific reasoning for such a thing, and what he thought smacked of superstition. He should be relieved, in fact. If his suspicions were correct, how would he present his findings? How could he hope to prove such an outlandish claim?
He could not let it go. He had something he had to do, as foolish as it seemed. He called Brad Marlowe, but the only answer he received was the answering machine. There was no way he could leave a message about a topic this important. He would have to go to the Krovell Funeral Home.
He made sure the samples were secure. He was not completely convinced the CDC would not attempt to find them, and come to his home in an attempt to do so. If they did, Reese would regret it, and so would Johns Hopkins, but he could hardly sit and guard them day in and day out. It would do him no good if he did that anyway. He went upstairs, and saw that his daughter was talking quietly on the phone to someone. He went on out. He was not in the mood for yet another confrontation.
When he arrived at the mortuary, he entered quietly once he ascertained the sound of a familiar female voice. He drew closer to the main office, and was certain the voice belonged to Grace Rodescu. He overheard Brad Marlowe telling her he was relieved she found the DVD, that it held a lot of personal memories, and feelings, for him. She asked only one thing in return.
“I don’t know who he was”, Brad said. “All I know for sure is he was a friend of Marlowe’s grandparents, Martin and Nancy. He’s not even visible, yet you claim you recognize the voice. Are you sure? This was like fourteen years ago.”
“Believe me, you never forget certain things”, she said. “That voice is one of them. You don’t remember anything about him, other than he filmed this home movie?”
“I don’t remember even so much as what he looked like”, Brad assured her. “I only saw him that one time, and never again to my knowledge. Neither Martin nor Nancy ever mentioned him again. Actually, I believe they were only casual acquaintances, someone they met at some function involving Americans of Romanian descent, friends for a brief time that just drifted apart. I’m really sorry I can’t be of more help. Believe me, I am more than happy to pay you for the DVD.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are”, Grace said. “And believe me, I’m sure you will. I hope twenty thousand dollars doesn’t seem exorbitant.”
Chou noted the two of them fell into silence for a few seconds, and he suddenly wondered if he should announce his presence. On the other hand, he was here to learn. Perhaps he inadverdently stumbled onto something he had not expected. He felt sneaky, almost dirty even, but still”-
“It’s a lot”, he said. “It will take me a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, to round up that much, but yeah, I guess I can do it. That will be it though.”
“Of course”, Grace replied. “I am not an unreasonable person.”
So, Chou thought. Grace Rodescu was blackmailing Brad Marlowe. Though he was hardly surprised, he was indeed curious. Reese mentioned something to the effect of Marlowe being under investigation. If that was true, it seemed likely he was privy to a connection somewhat with the nature of his investigation, though he certainly had no idea what it could be.
“Hey, wait a minute”, Marlowe suddenly said. “I just thought of something. I don’t know if this will be any help to you or not, but I remember Richard had a nickname for that guy. He called him ‘The Molecule Man’.”
“The Molecule Man?” Grace repeated.
“Yeah, I think that was some old comic book character from way back. Richard was a comic book collector from the time he was a kid. It remained a lifelong hobby. I remember the guy was curious about that, like he did not get it, but to Richard, it seemed to fit. I was in and out that day, so I did not get all of what was said. I just kind of put it out of my mind until now. It was just idle chit-chat to me that didn’t really mean anything. Does it make any sense to you?”
“You never heard an actual name?” Grace asked.
“Not that I remember”, Brad replied. “We were introduced, shook hands, spoke briefly, and that was it. I just never gave it any thought afterwards.”
Chou decided at this point that it might be a good idea to make his presence known. Whatever this conversation was about, it obviously did not concern him, and he had no business spying. Also, he was in a hurry and wanted to get this over and done. He addressed Brad from outside the door, and asked if he was busy. Brad walked to the open office door, asked how long he was there, whereupon Chou said he just came in.
Grace looked at him suspiciously when she walked through the door out into the main reception room, having decided she no longer had a reason to stick around.
“Are you still engaged in your dream research, Doctor Chou?”
“Something to that effect”, Chou said cordially. “I am happy to see you up, out, and about. You are recovering nicely, it would seem.”
“I’m still a little weak”, she replied. “But yes, I seem to be coming along nicely, thank you. Brad, I have to be going. We’ll talk some more in a few days.”
“Of course”, Brad said. He motioned Dr. Chou into his office as Grace saw her way out.
“I’ll get right to the point”, he said. “I understand that there is a Krovell family mausoleum down in the basement of this building, so I am assuming you have Marlowe’s remains entombed there. Am I correct?”
“Yes, that’s true”, Brad said, obviously upset, but whether over the current topic of discussion or his former one with Grace, Chou could not discern.
“I know this is going to be a very unorthodox request, but I would like to see the remains”, Chou announced to Brad’s immediate discomfort. “You are sure they are his, by the way.”
“Of course I’m sure”, Brad replied. “What is this all about? You identified them yourself.”
“Yes, but you do concede they were quite mangled. Unfortunately, a DNA analysis was not required, or this unpleasant business would be unnecessary. But as it happens, certain questions have arisen, questions that cast a shadow over the legitimacy of our respective identifications.”
Chou went on to explain to Brad the recent suspicions of his nephew as told him by Reese, suspicions currently held by a small number of hospital administrative staff. Brad was becoming angrier by the minute.
“I should sue those bastards”, he said.
“It would suit me if you did, in fact I would willingly help you should you decide to do that”, Chou replied. “Unfortunately, it might not be that easy. It is a fact that Marlowe did indeed phone in a bomb threat to the hospital, not more than an hour before the actual explosion. In fact, his activities, while they might have been innocent, circumstantial, and coincidental, might have provided a good deal of inadvertent aid to the persons who did indeed plant the bomb.”
“Marlowe was crazy”, Brad replied. “He wasn’t responsible for his actions. He would be incapable of hatching such a bizarre plot, for that matter even of thinking up something like that up, let alone carrying it out. I think these people are just trying to cover their asses for their own lax security and using an innocent, insane patient as a convenient cover, someone who can no longer defend himself. Hell, he was incapable of defending himself when he was alive at that time. Those fucking bastards!”
He now slammed his fist on the desk so hard Chou was surprised it didn’t break either the desk top or his fist. Brad was exhibiting a fury, hatred, and strength Chou thought previously would have been beyond him. He was quite taken aback by this display. Brad Marlowe had always seemed like a mild mannered man, the kind of man who was generally a doormat for other, stronger, more assertive and aggressive personalities. He was now pacing back and forth in the office, ranting about the hospital being responsible for his nephew’s death. He would see them all in hell, he exclaimed, as David Chou wondered, what in the hell has come over him?
Then, as quickly as it flared up, his anger seemingly evaporated into thin air, he regained his composure, and actually stammered an apology.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what come over me”, he said. “It’s not your fault.”
“That is quite all right”, Chou said, though he regarded Brad with some degree now of wariness and caution. “Nevertheless, it might well be advisable to check on the remains, just to be on the safe side.”
Brad agreed, and so they made their way down into the basement, and toward the one area that housed the coffins, encased within the concrete wall, each separate enclosure memorialized by the name of a different Krovell family member. The oldest one was a girl named Martha Krovell, who died in 1903 at the age of fourteen. Two younger children, a boy aged six and a girl aged four, died the very next year, seemingly on the same date in February, while yet another boy died later that same year at the age of seventeen. More than a century ago, Chou considered, this one family underwent the heart wrenching tragedy of four children dead within the space of little over a year’s time.
Brad Marlowe was busily removing the bolts that held on the engraved tomb marker for Marlowe, the latest Krovell tragedy, himself dead just a few months following the deaths of his parents. He considered how little he knew about the family, though he had been the family physician for going on seven years. How little did he really know about all of his patients, in fact? It was considered advisable to refrain from any kind of personal relationship with a patient, and though this was ethical and wise, it was such a loss. He would never have imagined Richard, for example, to be a comic book collector. How else did they live their lives, pursue their dreams? They were dead all in under a years time, yet their lives, though they were his patients, were every bit as much a mystery as those of the four unfortunate children who died more than a century ago.
He no longer even knew his own wife, his son and two daughters. Their lives were complete mysteries to him, in a sense, so far apart they drifted over the last few years. All he knew for sure was that Chrissy was going to bankrupt him with her addiction to credit cards and shopping. Brian was a drifter, going from job to job. Susan was a slut party girl who imagined abortion was just another form of birth control. His wife could care less about any of it so long as the real estate market made her enough spending money to fill her boredom. Meanwhile, she could pretend to be a concerned Asian-American politically active businesswoman. Of course, the housing market was going into a slump, and if it did not pull out of it soon, it would have a negative effect on all their lives
As for David Chou, sometimes he knew less about himself than he might a perfect stranger. He was an alcoholic with a preference for Scotch, who was tired of fighting his addiction. His determination to remain the one sane, stabilizing force in his family had made him an emotional wreck. Like his wife and kids, he was approaching that nebulous area of non-concern that seemed to lead to, if not happiness, then at least a form of contentment that comes with acceptance of reality.
Brad finally succeeded in removing the bolts out of the sealed crypt memorialized with the name of Marlowe Krovell, but as Chou approached, he saw something that took him by surprise. Beside Marlowe’s crypt was another, with no dates, either of birth or of death, and with only one given name-Radu.
“Who was this”? Chou asked.
“I think that was Magda’s husband”, he said, going on to explain that Magda was an old gypsy woman that came with her daughter and son-in-law to America from Romania in 1887. These were of course the ancestors of this branch of the family, the only branch in America, in fact.
“He may actually have been her father, I’m not sure.”
“But this is a new crypt”, Chou said suspiciously. “It looks to have been recently inscribed, right about the same time as Richard’s, Mabel’s and Marlowe’s.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a long story”, Brad replied. “To tell you the truth, Marlowe found him in an old trunk, buried with Magda out in the yard. It was an iron trunk, partially rusted, but sealed with some kind of pitch. He actually opened it up thinking there might have been money or jewels in there, but there wasn’t anything but this old mummy. The most horrible sight I ever saw in my life. I had nightmares for two weeks afterwards.
“The worse part of it was, it stunk up the whole place for two whole days”, he said. “I still get sick just thinking about it. Anyway, Marlowe demanded he should have a decent funeral, so we gave him one, and this crypt. At the same time he kept the old woman out in the yard where she was at, as that was what she wanted.”
Brad now stopped and looked at the crypt that held the ancient set of remains, and looked morose.
“You know, I think that’s when Marlowe really started to get crazy”, he said. “He was getting weird and maybe even a little crazy before, in fact he always was, well, kind of different. Okay, very different. But after he dug this thing up, he really went into a different dimension. He just got worse and worse every day, and then, to top it off-I don’t know this for a fact mind you, but I think he might have murdered that black girl they found ripped apart, drained of all her blood.”
“The Sandusky girl?”
“Yeah, that’s her”, Brad confirmed. “He came back here in the most horrible shape I’ve ever seen anybody in. He didn’t even look human. He had all these welts all over him, running sores, all over his body and face, and he was weak and in pain. He actually seemed to be in agony. Then, when I helped him up to the bathroom, he”-
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell me anymore”, Chou said as Brad hesitated. He did not want to be in the position of being an accessory after the fact of such a heinous crime as this, if it were true. At the same time, his curiosity was aroused to such an extent he offered not even a meek objection when Brad persisted.
“I’ve kept this to myself so long, I really need to tell somebody”, he said. “We do have a patient-doctor confidentiality thing, right?”
“Yes, of course”, Chou replied. He honestly was unsure whether that would apply in this situation, but he was loath giving voice to this concern.
“He vomited up blood, that night. I mean, it looked like one or two gallons of it. It looked like an entire person’s blood supply, to be sure. It wasn’t his blood, he told me that. I just heard about the murder, and asked him if he knew anything about it, because I know he knew the girl. She was supposedly a virgin, someone he met on a Christian dating site. He said it was all a filthy bunch of lies.
“The strange thing was, after he vomited all that blood, he started to change back to normal. The welts and sores went almost but not quite completely away. Then, later that night, he attacked someone he thought was me. He intended to kill me, but actually attacked an emergency tech sent by the hospital in response to my calls. If I hadn’t sent for them I’d probably be in one of these crypts right now. He was like a madman that night. It was almost like he was possessed. Believe me, the more I think about it, the more I think about Radu, and those gasses.”
“Gasses”? Chou asked. “What sort of gasses?”
“Those gasses that stunk the place up when he opened that trunk. Those were bodily gasses, built up over God only knows how long, held in place by the strength of that old cast iron trunk and the pitch, and the fact they were buried in the ground most of the time. This guy was, to tell you the truth, supposed to have lived centuries ago. I don’t even know what his full name was, or even if he was a Krovell-or a Krovelscu. I assume he was just some ancestor of Magdas.”
“The gasses might well explain the bubonic plaque”, Chou said. “It might possibly even explain the syphilis. It might well explain a hell of a lot more. You need to come back to the office for another checkup, by the way. Your exposure to those gasses might have affected you as well. I doubt it, as it should have manifested in some way by now, particularly if you came down with syphilis, or the plaque. Still, just to be on the safe side”-
“Sure thing”, Brad said. “I’ll come in Monday, will that be all right?”
“That should be fine”, Chou replied. “Now, if you will be so kind as to extract Marlowe’s coffin, we can look at him and get this unpleasantness over with.”
Chou assisted Brad in withdrawing the coffin, held in place by a pulley with wheels by which they guided it to its position some four feet from the ground. Brad then unlocked the coffin, and they proceeded to open it. Chou stared at the remains. Yes, it was definitely Marlowe, he was even surer of it now than he was when he first identified him. Even his face was by now almost back to normal. He was quite impressed with Brad’s work. Brad explained to him that, while he probably should not have engaged in this endeavor, as he also did with Richard and Mabel, it did not feel right to entrust them to the hands of relative strangers.
As he talked, Chou realized something. This was definitely Marlowe, but something was missing. There were no tattoos on his hands. He opened the shirt. Missing was the bat wing tattoo and the spider web that adorned his chest. He checked Marlowe’s tongue, only to find no evidence of any piercing, as was also the case on his ears. There was also no evidence of any resulting healing scars from the piercings.
Yet, there was no doubt that this was Marlowe. At the same time, Chou noted something even more disturbing. In his first examination of the corpse, Chou noted evidence of trauma because of the explosion. Although some of this evidence was still present, it seemed not as bad as before. Other things faded completely, as though they never existed.
Brad had moved away during the course of Chou’s examination, briefly, but not returned.
“So are you sure now it’s him”, he asked.
Chou was not sure of what to say. The improvements Chou noted in the condition of the corpse seemed not accomplished through any kind of mortuary cosmetology, and possibly occurred sometime between the time of the body’s release to Brad Marlowe’s care, and the time the mortician embalmed the body.
It, like the blood, replicated. Chou found himself wondering, if Brad had delayed embalming the corpse, might it have continued replicating. Might it even be capable of sustaining life?
“Yes, it is obviously him”, Chou replied. Those missing tattoos still bothered him, but he said nothing.
Brad was almost crying openly when he said goodbye to his nephew, and closed him back up in the crypt. Chou knew of course what one explanation was, but dared not say it to Brad or to anyone. The replication faculties of Marlowe Krovell’s blood went further than what he imagined they would in his wildest dreams. He was not about to mention any of this to Brad Marlowe, however.
Chou was unable to sleep that night, and lay in bed as Susan and her friends talked, and laughed. He could not make out what they were saying, but he was almost surprised when they left the house close to twelve midnight, yet Susan remained home. Yes, he thought, the world is definitely turning on its head.
He decided he would call his other kids. Chrissy, however, was not home, and Brian said he just got in from work, and had to go in early the next day. He sounded beat, so Chou let him go. The hell with it, he decided. He may as well call Mia. It was twelve midnight exactly, which meant either Mia was at some Washington nightclub, or in some hotel room with God knows whom. He almost hoped she was. He thought that would be quite humorous, to hear her act as if she was all alone. Unfortunately, she never answered, so his little joke would have to wait for the next Asian American conference.
To his surprise, by the time he woke up the next morning, she was home, had in fact been home for three hours.
“You’d better be glad you didn’t attend”, she told him. “The food was atrocious, the lectures and seminars were all boring as hell, and the people there acted like a group of Chinese peasants pretending to fawn over a bunch of Communist Party officials. It was disgusting.”
“I told you”, he said. “I don’t know how many times you have to attend these things to see it’s just a way to get money from the gullible, people who cannot seem to comprehend that these people are only concerned with justifying their six figure salaries with nothing but promises and hot air.”
“You might have actually enjoyed the seminar on Chinese herbal medicines and their growing acceptance by the American medical establishment”, she told him.
“No I would not”, he said indignantly. “You have no idea how many patients I have who have asked me if I perform acupuncture, or if I could recommend ginseng or dong quai as an alternative to everything from Demerol to Viagra. I have had one so far this month. I average about two a month. One month, about a year ago, I had seven. It is very insulting, and frustrating.”
“Well, I didn’t sell a single house, after spending all day Friday”, she said. “At least you don’t have to worry about the market for physicians falling through to the basement-or the sewer.”
“Well, that is what you think, as I most certainly do have to worry about it”, he replied. “Any time the economy takes a hit in any sector, I feel a pinch. Not that I am complaining, mind you, as it would do me no good.”
His wife obviously had something on her mind, as she seldom engaged him in conversation this long. He knew he was only two short years away from divorce papers being filed, and was always squirreling money away, whenever possible, for that eventuality. Unfortunately, after going on five years of squirreling, what he amassed amounted to roughly the equivalent of a pile of acorns. He looked at her and knew something bothered her.
“Do you have something on your mind?” he asked.
“What is all this with Susan?” she asked. “She has been acting so strange.”
“I have no idea”, he replied, and immediately regretted it, as Mia’s eyes now narrowed with even greater suspicion.
“So I take it you had no plans whatsoever to tell me about the abortion”, she said. “Yes, David, she told me about it, this morning, so don’t try to deny it. And what is this about taking her blood? Was there anything wrong with it?”
“Of course not”, he replied. “Those facilities are very thorough in guarding against infections. I am sure the medication they gave her is quite appropriate. Abortions are actually quite simple procedures, especially in her case. I am sure she was early in her second trimester at the latest.”
“According to her you said the exact opposite”, Mia said, now becoming cold and distant in her matter-of-fact tone of disapproval.
“I don’t want her to think abortion is a convenient way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy”, he said. “That kind of thinking will lead her to nothing but trouble.”
“A lot of her thinking will lead her to nothing but trouble”, Mia replied. “That never seemed to bother you before”.
“Damn, Mia, I’m sorry I concerned myself with my daughter’s welfare, I promise you it will never happen again”, he almost shouted, growing more irritated as he glanced toward the liquor cabinet.
“There is something going on with you”, she said. “You are up to something. I do not know what it is, but these last few weeks you have been acting very strangely. If it involves Susan, or any of my children, I want to know about it.”
“It doesn’t involve them”, he replied. “It is just some research I am conducting which I am not at liberty to discuss. My interest in Susan’s blood was just an incidental distraction. Considering the kinds of friends she typically has, I would think you would actually be relieved to see her do something that is arguably responsible. At the same time, I feel it is my duty as her father to insure her health has not been damaged. Is that so hard for you to comprehend?”
“So, I see I will not get a straight answer from you”, she said. “Well, I don’t have time for your foolishness. It is time for mass, which is where I am on my way to. I would ask you to come along, but I know what my answer to that would be. I am going”.
She made it to the door, stopping to check her appearance in the full-length mirror. As always, she checked her backside, this time as well the slits that ran two thirds of the way up her medium length black skirt. She opened the door, and then turned to face him.
“We aren’t finished with this, David”, she said. “Not by a long shot.”
“No”, Chou replied, “I am quite afraid we are not”.
By that time, however, Mia was already out the door.
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