The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (17 page)

He nodded. “By intravenous
infusion, slow drip for twenty-four hours or often
more.”

“
I don’t think I can
believe that.”

“
I don’t think you can
believe it, either. So you will not believe this also: There are a
thousand other helpful things that could be done and aren’t, but if
hospitals would routinely give such IV vitamin C treatment to all
their patients, at least half of them would get well and go home.
This would be wonderful for patients but ruinous for hospitals,
which would all go broke. So this is definitely one of the thousand
things not done.”

“
Look, forget your damned
C, will you? These four patients, or people as you keep calling
them... Don’t say it!”

I knew what he’d been
about to say to me, I knew. That I was beginning to understand, at
least I’d learned patients are not people! But I’d stopped him
before he could even get his mouth open. “These four
people-patients,” I went on smoothly, “all of whom were presumably
about to croak, none of them died?”

“
No, none. Well, maybe one
later of something else, I do not know. I lost track of her, but
the other three all still send me gladsome cards at Christmas. It
is gratifying.”

“
And that first trial
fifteen years ago, you beat the rap—you weren’t
convicted?”

“
No. But the fluke is, I
did all those intravenous infusions in the hospital where I still
had such privilege then. Unless I was found innocent, the hospital
would also have to be found guilty, which wasn’t supposed to
happen. And, therefore, didn’t. The more recent trial of me was
less flukey, but it is the second one they lost. The second of
many, for certain. There will be a third, then a
fourth—”

“
Maybe not.
Maybe—”

“
No maybe. They do not
stop. The same people, the same kinds of peoples—the same AMA/FDA
criminals along with the usual unindicted and invisible
co-conspirators—sued Hoxsey a hundred times.”

“
Hoxsey. That was way back.
Wasn’t he some kind of cancer...quack?”

“
Some kind of, yes. Harry
Hoxsey, using his herbal remedies, turned thousands of people with
cancer into thousands of people without cancer. I hope you are
beginning to suspect that might be why he was sued a hundred
times.”

“
Back to you, Hank. In your
second trial, three years or so ago, were the charges the same as
in your first trial?”

“
Almost. I was charged—in
layman’s language, for your understanding—with many crimes
including illegally, and for personal profits to get rich, using
methods not ‘authorized and approved’ for treating cancer, with the
result that three cancer patients died who might have been helped
through use of ‘authorized and approved’ orthodox treatments—or by
cutting them up, burning them up, and embalming the corpses while
they were still alive. That wasn’t part of the legal language. I
just threw it in.”

“
I’d guessed. Did three of
your patients die, as they charged?”

“
Yes, died. As charged,
no.”

“
Was this one before a
judge, or jury?”

“
Jury, thank God. With that
particular judge, elected mostly by a doctor-PAC, jury was the only
chance of winning. I will shorten how we won with the jury. Said
briefly, fifty of my patients, who had before been diagnosed by
allopaths as having cancers of various names, and who after me were
free of any such diagnosable illnesses, came into court for
testifying in my interest. Not one of them was allowed, none could
give testimonies, for the pronounced reason it would unfairly
prejudice the jury for me. But many doctors, allopathic physicians,
spoke against me. Many cancer doctors, radiologist,
chemotherapists—no healed patients. Do you follow this?”

“
Yeah. So far.”

“
The jury did not get to
hear my patients speak, but they did hear the disallowing of their
speaking for me. My attorney, very good attorney, made sure they
thought twice about this—despite being threatened by the judge not
to do it, you must know how that goes. I testified, and was
cross-examined. But the criminals who charged me with crimes made
two mistakes. First they charged, in their writings or complaints,
that I had used not-allowed methods to treat cancers. Second, two
of the three dead patients chosen by them as examples had, before
coming to me, been treated by respected physicians with extensive
surgery—which of course caused the cancers to metastasize, as they
well knew it would—and then radiation supposed to kill those
metastases. Plus, one of those two was disasterized with healing
chemotherapy, which caused him to lose all his hair and fingernails
and toenails and go from one-sixty pounds to ninety.”

“
And the third one? No
conventional treatment?”

“
True.” Hank nodded slowly.
“She was told by her longtime family doctor, allopathic doctor, her
only hope was intensive radiation and chemotherapy, but she refused
this. A second doctor, a famous oncologist or cancer specialist,
said the same thing. Both promised her she would die if she did not
undergo radiation and poisonous chemicals infused into her
already-poisoned blood, one said in three months, the other genius,
two months. She still refused, and was again and again told—with
much anger and red-faced argument, she informed me later—that she
would die, she must die, if she did not submit. Her own
physician—the optimist—told her, ‘I give you three
months.’”

Hank continued, “Imagine
this, an ignorant doctor, a fool with M.D. after his name, giving
people life, or death, or so many months out of his generosity!
Well, I treated her for only seven months. I was unsuccessful. She
died. In time I could maybe have cured her body, but her mind was
already made up. She believed what those wonderful doctors told
her, accepted and deeply embraced the death they both promised
her.”

“
The other two patients
also did not respond,” he continued mildly. “With the approved
orthodox treatment their immune defenses had been mostly wiped out,
destroyed. There was almost nothing left to stimulate, to
restore.”

“
Well, you beat the rap.
I’m starting to wonder how you managed it.”

“
They had mistakenly
charged me with wrongfully treating cancer. I testified I did not
treat cancer, I treated people, patients. Maybe they had cancer
symptoms, maybe they didn’t, it was no difference to me. I never
once mentioned ‘cancer’ to any patient. My effort was to strengthen
the person, the things in him or her that restore homeostasis or
balance and produce health, as we have discussed a
little.”

I nodded.

“
In my testifying, I quoted
other doctors—not me, many others—who demonstrated that one with
cancer could pay fifty thousand or even two-hundred thousand
dollars for orthodox treatment and die in two years, or take no
treatment at all and die in about seven or eight years, these are
averages.”

“
Hank, if that were true,
nobody would take any treatment at all from—“

“
Of course they would. The
proof is, they do. I testified, as my personal opinion, that
despite morbidity and mortality figures showing cancer increasing
and so-called ‘cancer deaths’ now six-hundred thousand a year, very
few people died from cancer. I said most were killed by the
treatments for cancer, which is why untreated people live so much
longer than the killed ones—this was struck, or stricken, out of
the record so nobody can read it. But I said it.”

“
I’ll bet you did. But can
you prove that? Or any of this stuff?”

“
I can prove one goddamn
hell more than just about the cancer killing, I can prove all of
allopathic drug-medicine is bassackward and health ruinating. Which
someday, if I can stay out of jails, I plan determinedly to
do-which maybe explains why they are so excitedly frantic to lock
me away somewhere. They go crazy fearing people may hear even a
little of this, knowing even small truths can destroy large
lies.”

Without waiting for any
comment from me, he went on, “The other thing helpful was my
testifying that my enemies chose these three named people as
examples to get rid of me—three ones I did not treat for cancer,
including two already treated by them with unscientific
death-producing methods—only because of my many patients these
three were the only dead ones they could find. Of all my patients
then and in the previous year and a half no others had died. Only
the two annihilated by them with cutting and radiation-burning and
chemical poisoning, plus the untreated one promised death by them,
had succumbed. At the same time, dozens sent home to die by my same
accusers were, after treatment by me, again well, were healthy, and
willing to so testify loudly—if not prevented by the law’s
protection of real cancer quacks. For this saying I was admonished
with force by the judge, he having ruled this truth
unmentionable.”

Hank frowned slightly,
gray brows lowering over the glowing eyes. “Happily it did not
happen, but for un momentito I thought the judge was going to
incarcerate me in a dungeon, at least overnight.”

“
Or at least sentence your
mouth to execution, right there in the courtroom. Perhaps
understandably. You can, Hank, at times be a wee bit
irritating—”

“
Truth is
irritating.”

“—
but let that go. I
noticed you mentioned your attorney favorably a couple of times,
but not by name. I understand he’s the notorious Webster Montrose,
sometimes called the Mob’s Mouthpiece. Is that right?”

“
You bet. Most of the
things he advised me to do, I did. Without such a one as this
notorious Mr. Montrose, and his experienced wisdom concerning
crooks and killers and many legalities, I would be in prison now.
Serving my thousand years.”

That took some of the edge
from my implied criticism. But I said anyway, “Don’t you feel
people might think it strange that you hired, to defend you, an
attorney who’s represented murderers and thieves, most of them
undoubtedly guilty, and even successfully defended several members
of organized crime, of what’s called the Mafia?”

“
Strange? People? What
should I care if people think I hired Stalin or Hitler or a Morris
Fishbein to prevent me from vanishing into federal dungeons
forever? He has defended Mafias? Good! My enemies, those who lie
and persecute me and all like me are the goddamn medical Mafia,
assessinos, they are professional assassins. I help people to heal
themselves. They legally kill millions and stand atop their
mountain of dead corpses yelling all together like one single idiot
voice, they did everything orthodoxically possible, the slaughter
was ‘authorized and approved,’ not even God could have done better,
so it must have been the fault of those corpses. To fight such
monsters, and keep them from squashing me before I have finished my
work, I would hire the Devil and pay him with my blood.”

“
Okay, okay. Maybe I was a
little hasty in jumping—”

Hank interrupted me, his
voice dropping from expressing outrage to an almost conversational
tone again. “If I were them, Sheldon, I think I would have to
squash me too. There is another reason, not mentioned yet, why Dr.
Wintersong—and his allopathic peers, about whom I have been
attempting to educate you—wish fervently to see me prevented from
practicing my medical profession. And probably any other
profession. This reason...”

I waited.

“
... is that the filmstrip
of Jock-Jock, which became the flipping-pages book you have seen,
was made of an experiment performed—several times—at the Omega
Medical Research Institute. It was not personally performed by, but
was under the direction and close supervision of Doctor William
Wintersong.”

“
Interesting.”

“
More than that. He does
not know, at least I do not believe he knows, which of his
employees surreptitiously removed and later returned the
Omega-produced film of that brutality. But he does know—and,
therefore, so do all his allopathic friends, like those frantic to
squash me—that the film was delivered to Henry Hernandez, M.D.,
Doctor Quackissimo, who arranged that the flip-book be printed and
given wide distribution. To a man like Wintersong, this is a more
unforgivable act than the cutting off of his testicles. Assuming he
has any.”

I thought about that, all
of it, then I said, “Who did heist the Jock-Jock film from Omega?
Is that something I should know?”

“
Probably so. The two
employees were Guenther and Helga.”

CHAPTER TEN

“
The Vungers.” I nodded
slowly. “Your recovering patients. The good people with a bullet
hole in their kitchen wall.”

“
The same. This is curious,
no?”

“
Is curious, yes. Did they
deliver any other material to you besides the Jock-Jock
tape?”

“
Some. About other cruel
experiments, crazy research. But no other films or
tapes.”

“
I understand Wintersong
fired them several months ago. Could he have found out they were,
well, working for the enemy?”

“
I do not think so,
Sheldon. I spoke much with the Vungers while they were beginning my
treatment, and they do not believe their activities, for the enemy
as you say, were suspected. Eventually, of course, Wintersong knew
someone had revealed these things to us, but he did not then know
it was the Vungers. No, they were discharged as soon as it was
determined they were infected with the IFAI virus—or, more
accurately, when it was determined antibodies of the virus were
present in their blood, which is not the same thing. But that is
the crazy test used.”