The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (43 page)

Hank glanced at his
wristwatch. “Since I called Geraldo, it has been twenty, thirty
minutes. It should not be much longer, Sheldon.”

I paced some more,
thinking, then sat down again. “Well, we know one thing we didn’t
know before—didn’t know for sure, anyhow. I would expect Grinner to
lie—no way he’d admit he and his friend cooperated in trying to
blow my head off. But, with the deputies’ testimony, now we know
Wintersong and Belking are also lying.”

“
So, they are both liars.
This surprises you?”

“
Well, no, I don’t know. I
don’t like Wintersong—or Belking, for that matter. But one’s a
Laser Award Winner, maybe future Nobel Laureate, almost as big a
saint as Dr. Salk, if you believe the newspapers.”

“
This is your
saint?”

I didn’t rise to the great
expected bait this time. “I’m just saying one of these guys is an
honored physician, considered practically a saint, and the other’s
a respected billionaire, philanthropist, friend of Congressmen and
Senators.”

“
Belking has even had
dinner with our President at the White House. And both of them,
together with all our federal health agencies, are preparing to
wipe the scourge of IFAI from the face of the earth, because they
are so deeply concerned about sick people. This certifies that both
of them must be honest men?”

I shook my head, not
answering. Hank’s mention of IFAI reminded me of the recently
speeded-up approval for Wintersong’s vaccine, the growing chorus of
urgent calls for mass immunizations. And I couldn’t help but shiver
at the thought.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

At that moment, there was
the quick beep-beep of a vehicle’s horn, sound of tires in the
adjacent driveway, squeaking of brakes.

Hank jumped up, sped to
the open window in the wall behind his desk, unhooked and pushed on
the screen, stuck his head outside. Then he turned back to me,
smiling widely.

“
Geraldo!” he cried. Then
he looked at his watch, adding “Less than an hour, as predicted.
Verdad?”

He was right. But that was
still two hours since I’d split from Omega. From Grinner, and his
hot Colt .45. Also, apparently, from Belking and Dr. Wintersong.
Unquestionably, from Dane Smith. Two hours too many.

I started getting out from
my chair, but Hank was already speeding past me, opening his office
door again.

“
Come,” he called over his
shoulder—a smile on his face, eyes bright, looking excited, as if
he was about to charge into battle somewhere, or was preparing to
break into the Omega Medical Research Center himself.

“
Come quickly, Sheldon, ah!
We are on our way now, are we not?”

Then, zip, he was out the
front door, turning right, trotting toward the driveway.

I had watched him for a
moment, simply stood there briefly, unmoving. Partly that was
because he’d zipped out of here so fast. But mainly it was because
when he sped past me and to the door, I had experienced a strange
and almost overpowering feeling, more like sudden knowing, that
from this moment on everything was going to zip and dash and speed
along like Henry Hernandez racing for his driveway...that time for
careful choices or reflection was past...and that events now being
set in motion would, once started, accelerate inevitably to their
own already-fixed but still unknowable conclusion, with me just
hanging on, going along for the ride.

With that weird conviction
of certainty also came a hair-prickling sensation of alarm. It just
came out of the blue, without any discernible reason for it, but
strong, compelling disturbing. I didn’t like the sense of something
already out of control—a pale, watered-down version of what a man
might feel upon changing his mind after jumping from a downtown
building’s fortieth floor.

So I simply stood there
briefly, rooted like an oak, mentally counting those floors as I
plummeted past them; thirty-nine, thirty-eight....

Forget it. Must’ve been
something I ate.

Then I sucked in some air,
whooshed it out, and set myself in motion.

* * * * * *

Hank was standing next to
a flatbed truck parked in the driveway, cab’s bumpers almost
touching his garage door. “Bueno,” he was saying, looking at a
large—at least five feet on each side—white-pine crate resting on
the truck’s bed. Or, rather resting upon a wooden palette that
raised it about four inches above the truck’s bed.

Hank was spewing rapid
Spanish at a man squatted next to the box, his back to us. The man
was doing something to the side of the crate, left hand pressed
against it and right hand holding a queer-looking gizmo—a small
spray gun. It sent a fine spray of black paint through a
bulky-looking stencil, lettering a message on the porous white
pine.

The final letters,
apparently, because he put down the spray gun and, with both hands,
removed the stencil—as Hank, leaning forward, said softly, “Bueno,
bueno, pero,” adding more rapid Spanish ending with “pocito mas por
favor.”

The man nodded, patted and
rubbed the letters with a soiled cloth, then banged it a few times
with a claw hammer, looked at Hank. “Esta bien?”

“
Perfectamente!”

The guy slid from the
truck bed to the driveway and stood facing us. I had time to note
that he was about five and a half feet tall, over two hundred
pounds, swarthy, with a large black mustache, and looked not unlike
Pancho Villa overdosed on steroids, when Hank said, “Sheldon, this
is Geraldo, our good friend. Good—and very speedy. Geraldo, Sheldon
Scott, he who will do what we spoke of en telefono.”

We told each other
Hi-Hello, and shook hands. Geraldo looked at me from very dark
brown eyes and said, “Vaya con... God go with you.”

I grinned. “Thanks, I’ll
take all the help I can get.” Then I looked at the crate, at
Geraldo’s handiwork, and said, “You are speedy. Must’ve finished
that stenciling on the way here, right?”

“
Si. Robert was careful to
miss potholes.”

Robert turned out to be a
young red-haired guy who waved through the cab’s rear window but
stayed behind the wheel. Looking at the crate, I said to Geraldo,
“Beautiful job,” and meant it.

In neat, slightly fuzzy
black letters was printed: OMEGA MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER and an
address in two lines below that. Top left, in smaller print, was
the shipper’s name: United MediTech. On both the left and right
sides of the panel were black arrows pointing up.

Geraldo leaned over the
trailer’s side, reached for the crate’s top panel resting flat on
the truck bed and muscled it onto one edge so I could read words
there: Nuclear Resonance Analyzer. I remembered Hank saying on the
phone that Omega was expecting shipment of something that had
sounded like what I was reading. Also boldly printed—I was pleased
to see—was: THIS SIDE UP.

I turned toward Hank.
“Looks good to me. Should work, I think. Hope. Guess.”

“
Will work, Sheldon. You
will make it work, verdad?”

“
Yeah, sure.”

About a minute later I
said, “Well, I guess that’s it, friends. Time to get back to Omega,
back to...” But I was thinking of that doomed guy I’d made up,
leaping like a goose honking away from that skyscraper, flapping
his arms in the air and strenuously desiring, an instant too late,
to go back up, but instead inevitably going:
...thirty-seven...thirty-six....

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

While Geraldo added some
final touches to the crate, Hank stood with me on the lawn before
his office and spoke earnestly for a couple of minutes, describing
the interior of all three Omega buildings in so much detail that he
might have been the architect.

More than three hundred
people were employed at Omega, he said; but on weekends there were
normally only four employees inside the three buildings—and the
same number of guards outside—the employees primarily supplying
water and food to the experimental animals, and disposing of any
that died. Which meant, I thought, that if I got inside today
there’d be only four people to look out for; plus, perhaps, Dr.
Wintersong and Hobart Belking.

Hank told me where
laboratories were, experiments believed to be in progress, the
location of certain animal pens and cages. He spoke rapidly, eyes
half closed and appearing unfocused, aimed not at my face but
somewhere around my shoulder, almost as if he were looking inward
at mental images of plans or blueprints. He seemed to know as much
about the layout of those three buildings and their numerous rooms
as would someone who’d worked in the place for years. But he didn’t
explain how he’d come into possession of so much intimate detail
about the research facility, and I didn’t ask.

Finally he said, “All of
the buildings face south, as you know, toward Los Angeles. The
central building, the one you have been inside, is bisected by a
corridor extending from north to south and ending at double doors
adjacent to loading facilities in the rear. Do you see
this?”

I closed my eyes. Hank was
precise when he wanted to be, so “bisected” meant in the middle of
the building. I remembered walking away from the reception desk, at
the main building’s east end, starting down the long polished
hallway that had stretched ahead of me. But I hadn’t walked very
far, just to the “second door on your right.”

“
Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t
get down there, but it would be beyond that big room where
Wintersong has his own office, right?”

“
Correct. If you had
continued on, and turned right at the next corridor, halfway down
it you would have seen a large metal bin, about ten feet long and
four feet wide, four or five feet high, similar to the large
garbage or trash bins placed sometimes in alleys, but smaller. Next
to it, in the wall, is a sliding metal door, beyond which is the
chute.”

“
Chute?”

“
Metal chute, or slide,
leading down into the incinerator below ground level for cremation.
But I am not concerned with this incinerator, does not function
efficiently. I wish you to look into the metal bin. It is usually
closed by a heavy lid, but one man can lift it. Just lift the lid,
and look.”

I felt a slight oiliness
in my throat. “Animals?”

“
Dead animals. The things
of experiments. It will not be pleasant.”

I swallowed. The taste was
vaguely like olive oil and garlic, and something else. Hank handed
me a small expensive looking mini-camera. Just handed it to me,
without further comment.

The camera was only about
three inches long and an inch square. As I stuck it into the breast
pocket of my jacket, I heard the heavy chunk of the truck’s door
slamming. Geraldo had finished his work, adding a line of letters
to the crate, and gotten into the cab’s right seat next to Robert,
who was already behind the wheel.

Hank continued intensely,
his eyes focused now on my face. “There, and in rooms, in cages,
you may see things that, ordinarily, you might consider evidence of
crimes. Things you might call the police or sheriff to report. I
ask you, should this impress you as desirable, that you instead
call me, Sheldon, and I will phone the sheriff, or appropriate
authorities, if in my judgment this is necessary. You have no
objection?”

I shook my head slowly.
“Suits me. I’d just as soon not jaw with Sergeant Lerner again,
anyway. But, hell, Hank, you’ve already educated me pretty well
about what’s done to animals in labs these days, including what was
done to Jock-Jock. So you need not assume I’ll yell for fuzz if I
merely see a bunch of dead mice and guinea pigs in that
bin.”

“
My real concern is not the
burn-bin—this is what they themselves call it, those who slide
animal corpses down the chute. It is the other rooms, the other
cages, and things in them. More important, Sheldon,
you...”

He paused. At first I
thought it was because Robert had started the truck’s engine, was
backing slowly toward Elm Street. But Hank had hesitated for
another reason.

“
Excuse blunt truth, por
favor. I commenced to say, you are not competent to judge medical
crimes, Sheldon. Virtually no laymen are thus competent, because
they are unfamiliar with proper definitions.”

“
Definitions
again?”

“
Always. Is important. Most
things done in allopathic medicine are, in truth, criminal, often
murderous—but they are not defined as criminal acts. They are
defined as ‘authorized and approved,’ ‘finest health care in the
world,’ et cetera. Similarly, in research laboratories, there are
almost no prohibitions against killing animals, electrocuting,
drowning, squashing, cooking alive in ovens—”

“
Hank, even I know there’s
an Animal Protection Act to prevent the worst—”

His eyes were bright,
brows raised above them. “The passage of this ‘wonderful’ act, does
little.”

During the last of this,
I’d walked toward my Cad, Hank alongside me. The truck was in the
middle of Mulberry Street now, slowly pulling forward and
straightening out. I got into the Cad, settled behind the steering
wheel and started the engine. Hank was standing next to the car, in
the street on my left.