The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (36 page)

Yes, life was coming back,
the blood was warming. So naturally I thought of Dane. In my
Cadillac, rolling down the driveway and into Macadamia Street, I
thought of Dane and Mrs. Belking’s comment about her, plus a couple
of other comments that had been made during the last half
hour.

It was of considerable
interest to me that, when I casually offered “congratulations” to
Belking and his pharmaceutical company, he had not only known I
must be referring to Wintersong’s IFAI vaccine, which was natural
enough since news of the FDA’s blessing was being hyped by all
media, but also had responded with what struck me as an unnatural
comment: “I wondered when you’d get around to that.” I wondered why
Hobart Belking would have expected me to “get around” to discussing
the vaccine with him at all.

But there had been another
comment, at least a thoughtless comment that might or might not
mean trouble—not for me, but for Hank—and I’d made it. That had
also been during discussion of the vaccine, when I later referred
to it as “bugshit.” That was Hank’s word for the Belking-Gray brew
already being injected experimentally into bloodstreams to prevent
deadly IFAI animalcules from swimming around among endangered
corpuscles. At least, it was from Hank that I’d first heard the
pejorative term, and it worried me that Belking might guess that’s
where I’d got it. Might guess, certainly, if he knew I was working
for Dr. Henry Hernandez. Which he probably did.

Still, Hank also had said
bugshit was the word used by Belking-Gray researchers themselves,
when referring to the vaccine they’d personally concocted. So I was
probably making a mountain of an unimportant molehill. Probably.
But that faint thread of worry kept wiggling in my brain, like a
wee bug crawling among the convolutions.

So I gave Dr. Hernandez a
call. I’d been wanting to check with him anyway, to fill him in on
what I’d been up to and find out what kind of severely unbearable
conniption this morning’s IFAI-vaccine news had produced in
him.

Mrs. Hernandez answered,
that low lilting voice saying softly, “Dr. Hernandez’ office, may I
be of assistance?”

Her soft voice caressing
my ear with liquidly-accented English—“may I be of ahzzeezztahnss?”
was nice enough to repair most of the damage Sybil had done to
it.

“
Eleanora,” I said, “Hi,
this is Shell Scott, the guy your hus—”

“
Ah, Mr. Sheldon, my
husband’s friend I like so much!”

“
Oh? Ah. Well,
that’s...that’s nice.”

“
Yes, Mr. Sheldon, who will
keep my Henry from being run over and destroyed, or ruined by the
doctor monsters, or turned into a farmer of potatoes—”

“
Well, I’m not sure. I’ll
do what I can of course, but I’ve really just start—”

“
I told you before, when
yesterday we met, I knew you would be the good man for my husband.
You remember, I mentioned I have a little of the seeing, the other
sight.”

“
Yeah, and I wish I had
some. Eleanora, is Hank available for a consultation with
me?”

“
Oh, yes. He has not
patients every half hour as before, some have stopped coming—they
have been working on those.”

“
They—on those? You mean
somebody’s working on... who? Hank?”

“
No, no, on his patients,
making some believe they are stupid foolish to consult with such a
quack. They have been very busy.”

“
Who’s this
they?”

“
The same as always, the
doctor businessmen those my husband calls members of the union for
upside-down doctors of bassackward medicine.”

“
Come on, you don’t mean
doctors—regular physicians, other M.D.s—are looking up Hank’s
patients and leaning on them, do you? That sounds
crazy?”

“
Si, sounds like, as you
say, paranoia? Little funny men following? But is true, is not a
new thing. It has happened often before, with others. Henry can
tell you. They do not ever threaten them, or do obvious menacing of
those patients. Just helpfully convince those that they are putting
themselves in foolish risk of illness, even of death maybe, from
trusting in greedy unorthodox quacks instead of wonderful qualified
physicians like them.”

“
You’re not
kidding?”

“
Not kidding, why would I?
It is even sometimes the doctors themselves who do this, but not
usually in person. Most often they send around others, like social
welfare or the health department people, sometimes even men with
badges from the District Attorney, asking questions for supposed
investigations of malpractice of crooked doctors. Like—usually it
can just happen to be mentioned, somehow you know anything about
this crook quack? There are many ways.”

“
Maybe. And maybe I’ve
still got a lot to learn.”

She laughed, for some
reason. “Henry said to me he thinks you learn better than most who
drive him crazy, because you are no dummy. My husband, Henry is
excited with hopefulness that you will soon be filled with knowing
and determination for doing, and accomplishing his great purposes
with much success. I will buzz him for you, he will be
glad.”

“
Wait.”

Nothing.

“
Listen, Eleanora,” I said
severely, “you just threw those purposes at me again,
‘accomplishing his purposes’ you said. Could you perhaps be a
little more specific about what the hell that purposes means?
Sometimes I get a hunch I’m playing in a different game here, like
I missed something along the way... hello? Eleanora?”

Still nothing. I was a
little frustrated, but in a moment became aware that I was smiling.
Just a bit. I liked Eleanora. She was a nice old gal. Really nice.
Yeah, I liked her a lot. I guess it’s hard not to like people when
they really like you.

Still, every once in a
while I got this eerie sense that Hank wasn’t telling me nearly
everything, and was leading me to the edge of a cliff but making
sure I didn’t look over the edge, look from the precarious
precipice down into a great, black, yawning pit with no bottom,
just down and down and down.

And, moreover, a spooky
sense that even Eleanora might be doing the same subversive thing
to me somehow. How about that? Each of the conspirators working on
me, nudging me, poking at me, each of them conspiring at me in his
own way. Or her own. Or their own. Well, each doing a different
thing but with the same end in mind. Maybe my end. Or, could be I
was getting really paranoid, and soon there’d be little funny men
following me. On the other hand—

I never got wherever I was
going. Because the familiar rippety-pop voice was exploding
staccato phrases in my left ear:

“
Sheldon, my friend! Good,
it is good you phoned. Come over, we will talk. The news is
sickening, verdad? I am filled with eagerness to hear from you. Can
you do it, Sheldon?”

I glanced at my watch. Not
even ten a.m. yet. I wouldn’t pick up Dane until eleven-forty-five.
I had a few questions to ask Hank, and he probably had some for me.
There was time enough.

“
I have no patient for over
an hour,” Hank said. “Either everybody is healthy, or quackery is
slowing down these days.”

“
Okay, Hank. Give me twenty
minutes.”

“
Is good. But I cannot wait
to ask, did you read some of the medical papers, those excitements,
which I gave you? Any?”

“
Read ‘em all,
Hank.”

“
Ahh...” It was a pleased
sound, and I could almost see Hank’s quick smile, sharp ends of
that neat gray mustache rising. “Mucho bueno,” he continued. “Come
speedily. It will be good to speak with you again, my
friend.”

I hung up. And realized I
was smiling, just a bit, as I had after talking with Eleanora.
Maybe something was wrong with me.

* * * * * *

When I walked through the
door of the office, Eleanora smiled brilliantly and said,
“Hola!”

“
Hula yourself,” I said,
grinning. “Is the doctor in? I have this little pain in my
brain.”

“
He will fix.”

She leaned toward the
intercom box on her desk, but before she could buzz Hank, his
office door flew open and he bounced into the outer room, grabbed
my hand and pumped it.

“
Good, speedily you did
come,” he said. “What things have you been doing, Sheldon? I am
eager for you to tell me everything happening. Come.” Then, zip, he
was back in his office, waiting for me near the open
door.

I went inside and to the
same chair I’d used yesterday, as Hank closed the door and walked
over to sit down behind his desk. He was handsomely eye-catching
this morning, almost dazzling in red slacks, a pink sport shirt
open at the throat with its wide collar worn outside the collar of
a nicely cut white jacket. Part of a silky red handkerchief
projected from the jacket’s breast pocket and soft-looking white
loafers were on his feet. Henry Hernandez, M.D., projected the air
of a man who’d just had a shave and massage after a jog on the
beach, and to me still didn’t appear to be a day over
sixty.

“
You sure don’t look like a
doctor, doctor,” I said. “You look like you just got off one of
your yachts.”

He smiled, then said,
“Well, Sheldon, what have you been doing, is there anything new for
reporting to me?”

I filled Hank in on what
had happened since I’d last seen him yesterday afternoon. He was
concerned, and looked angry, as I told him of the action in the
Halcyon’s parking lot following my dinner with Dane Smith,
surprised when I mentioned identifying the Mercedes-Benz as
belonging to Hobart Belking.

At one point he did say,
soberly, “You could have been killed. It was clearly the intention
of those two men, verdad?”

“
Yeah, you bet. The hell of
it is, I don’t have any idea who they were. But I got a pretty good
look at them. Probably good enough to pick their chops out of the
police mug books. If they’re in them. Which I’ll most likely check
at Parker Center this afternoon.”

For the next few minutes
we just sort of chatted. I told him about visiting the Wild Animal
Museum and meeting Belking there, and Hank asked my impression of
the “dead animals” and seemed pleased by my lack of enthusiasm. He
knew that Dr. Paul Anson was my next-door neighbor at the Spartan
Apartment Hotel, and I found myself telling him about my three
rooms and bath, the two tanks of tropical fish, even the painting
of Amelia and her fetching fanny—at which point, for some reason,
he seemed briefly to go off into a different space somewhere,
gazing intently past me toward the wall, and smiling.

What’d I say? I wondered.
Amelia? Fanny? Something else profoundly fascinating?

But Hank’s whatever-it-was
lasted only three or four seconds, then he said more soberly, “I
would speak to you of the IFAI vaccine, this ominous concoction of
Wintersong and Belking-Gray. Speak very seriously. But to do so, to
fill your understanding with how dangerous it can be, I must say
some things you would not have believed yesterday, maybe not today
either. But I think you may now be ready for most of this, Sheldon.
We will see. On the phone, you mentioned reading all those articles
and medical papers I gave you concerning some of the craziness and
unbelieveableness of modern medical thinking and practice. Is true,
all?”

“
Yeah, Hank. Every word,
some of it a couple times.”

He nodded slowly, looking
pleased. “That is good, Sheldon. Very good. It was a considerable
quantity.”

I’d mentioned that I was
later going to pick up Dane and drive the lady to Omega for her
interview. Hank had scowled fiercely then, which I assumed was his
normal scowling at the mention of Dr. Wintersong, but hadn’t asked
at what time that would be. Until this moment.

I checked my watch. “I’m
meeting Dane just before noon at her hotel, the Halcyon. A little
over an hour from now.”

“
Bueno. That is
enough.”

I could feel my eyebrows
squeezing together a little. “Enough for what?”

But he didn’t answer.
Instead, burning those piercing eyes into me, he asked another
question. “Of your reading, in all that considerable quantity, what
to you seemed of most special importance?”

“
Just about everything, if
you want the truth, Hank. Maybe because it was all new stuff to me.
But I guess what really knocked my socks off was the Royal Rife
info, plus the history of Dr. Koch and his Glyoxylide. In both
cases it was like reading about magic.”

“
Yes. But that is because
we have strayed—no, been led—so far away from the magic within us,
within every miraculous cell inside us. Led to believe we and all
the miracles of us are helpless, and only drugstore pills and
potions have magic. Doctor magic.”

He sighed. “Muy triste,
very sad. Rife and Koch, both the same history. Both of those good
men, and a hundred other good men, destroyed by the same agents of
medical monopoly—mainly AMA, but supported by FDA and all the other
alphabet of orthodoxy I have mentioned to you.”

“
Yeah, I’ve almost got them
memorized. NIH, ACS, NCI, and...ah, I’m working on it.”