The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (6 page)

I blinked, took a deep
breath, remembering again that conversation with Paul Anson. I was
now sure my medical friend, Dr. Anson, had indeed spoken of a Henry
Hernandez—and had also used the word “quack”.

“
I see,” I said, not really
seeing at all. But I continued, “If I’m not mistaken, a quack is
either a maverick medical doctor who screws up almost beyond human
comprehension, or, more often, somebody not a licensed M.D., who
greedily profits from human misery by fleecing the sick and dying
of their money and pretending to have miracle cures for
everything.”

“
Boy, are you mistaken,
Sheldon. A quack—which is a word for horribleness spoken of others
almost entirely by orthodox allopathic physicians—is a doctor who
cures, a healer who heals, or could even be a layman who through
herbs or natural medicines or magnetism or laying on of hands makes
sick people well. One would think this healing a good thing, right?
However, if anyone restores strength to the weak or life to the
dying in ways disapproved by the monopoly, which in practice means
anything that actually works, this is defined—by the monopolists
themselves, of course—as dangerous quackery. Is it not fascinating,
Sheldon? We have been led to believe that saving a man from death
is dangerous to his health. So, a quack is me. I am almost the
perfection of quackissimo.”

“
You lost me, somewhere in
the middle there.”

“
Probably I lost you before
then. It is difficult to make sense of any concept which is
examined upside-down. First we must turn it right-side up in order
to begin seeing what it is.” He inhaled deeply, let out a long
sigh. “I would like to take time and explain fully, inform you well
of this particular upside-downness, but soon I have a patient. I
was able to see you easily at this time only because the Vungers,
two of my dear patients, have not appeared at ten o’clock for their
hour appointment. Again—twice now this has happened. It is
strange.”

I said, “Well, I’ve got
enough to start with, Doc—Hank. But before I leave, did you really
lose a dog, or was that just—”

“
Ai, Chihuahua, yes, my
Rusty! You read the mind, this was the final thing of which I
intended speaking to you, before the next patient. Rusty, this dog
I love with all my heart and bones and everything. He is three
years old, part of German Shepherd and part of maybe Saint Bernard,
and part of just dogs I think. He is gone now nine days, and I am
desolate.”

“
Nine days? Isn’t
that—”

“
Yes. When I leaped back
avoiding the green van, Rusty was coming forth from the back
yard—we do not tie him, and with great enthusiasm he can jump over
the fence—and racing to greet me by licking and jumping, you know.
With quickness, he understood the wrongness of that green vehicle,
and chased it down the street, barking as though to devour it. They
went forward on Mulberry one block after this intersection here,
then turned right on the street called Lemon. I was still watching,
not yet fully comprehending everything. Rusty disappeared there
also, a little more than one block away, still chasing, and he has
not returned. I have not seen him since that moment.”

Hank paused, frowning, the
usual brightness gone from his features. “Sheldon, we are now
associated, you are helping. More than anything else, more even
than those men of evil intentions, you will help me best if you can
find Rusty. Or what has come about for him. I fear he is not alive
or would have long ago returned.”

He looked so somber, his
gaze fixed on but not seeing me, that I didn’t speak immediately.
And before I responded, Hernandez blinked, shrugged, leaned toward
an intercom box on his desk and pushed a lever down, then said
something in rapid Spanish.

I caught a word or
two—some time ago I’d spent a few months, part investigation and
part vacation, in Mexico City—but all I could be sure of was the
name Vunger, and telefono and casa or telephone and house. Equally
rapid Spanish came back through the intercom speaker, and though I
could tell it was Eleonora’s voice I couldn’t decipher much else,
since both the doctor and his wife were speaking at approximately
several thousand words a minute.

I did hear “Vungers”
again, and something about salud or health and what sounded like
“eye-fie,” followed by “mejor, mucho mejor” or “better, much
better.”

Odd. That curious word had
sounded a lot like the currently much-ballyhooed disease, IFAI,
pronounced eye-fie, but I had probably screwed something up between
Eleonora’s voice and my ears. Because, of the thousands of people
who “caught” IFAI, nobody got better, they all died. The name now
in common use made that clear enough: IFAI was an acronym for
“Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness.” So, no two ways about it:
catch IFAI and it followed with incontrovertible logic that, since
IFAI was invariably fatal, invariably you were a goner.

Hernandez rattled off a
few more comments in Spanish, then flipped up the intercom switch,
leaned back in his chair and said, “Sheldon, I am concerned about
so many things that I am becoming unstrung somewhat. These good
people I spoke of to you, Mr. and Mrs. Vunger, my patients who
failed to appear this morning, they also did not appear this past
Monday, appointments for both times having been made. It is most
unlike them not to phone for cancellation, or to explain. My wife
has several times phoned their home, without success, but this
morning she was able to speak with a neighbor, a Mrs. Brewster next
door to them. The Vungers—he is Guenther, she Helga—are not at
home, they have not been seen, newspapers have been left outside
for several days, near the front door.”

He paused. “I am
concerned, gravely, about Rusty. And I of course wish the two men,
those bastardos, found and done something crucial with.
But....”

He was taking a while to
get there, but I knew where he was going. So I said, “Give me their
address and I’ll do a quick check on the Vungers some time today.
If they don’t live clear out in the boondocks.”

He smiled, face
brightening, large teeth coming into view again. “It would be a
service. Probably it is nothing of import, but—I will appreciate
knowing something. They live not far. Thank you.”

“
No problem. Hank, I assume
you’ve told me all you can about that green van and the two
bastardos.” He nodded quickly and I went on, “So, about Rusty, have
you done some checking yourself, called the animal shelters, Humane
Society, that sort of thing?”

“
Oh, yes. Immediately when
Rusty did not return, that very afternoon” He described actions
he’d taken since then, and it seemed to me he’d covered most of the
likely areas already. Hernandez finished by saying, “I have running
advertisements in the newspapers’ lost-and-found sections, with a
thousand-dollar reward offered. The police I also notified, but
they were not greatly excited, being already familiar with my
numerous psychoses.”

“
Did you happen to check
with any of the people around that next intersection? Along Lemon
Street, where the van turned, with Rusty chasing them?”

His eyes widened. After a
long silence he said, “Estupido! That is so obvious. Now. Estupido!
I failed to even consider this obvious thing. I did all I could
think of. But—”

“
You did very well, Hank.
I’ll rattle some doors over on Lemon Street as soon as I leave
here. If there’s anything important to dig up, I’ll dig
it.”

“
Please do whatever else I
have probably forgotten.” He slowly shook his head. “I am a good
doctor, bad detective. But you are probably a lousy doctor, true?”
He started to smile, then said abruptly, “Aha! I will give you a
picture of Rusty. A photograph, from one month ago.”

He reached forward and
grasped one of the framed photos I’d casually glanced at earlier,
got up and stepped briskly around his desk, handing the
four-by-five color photograph to me. “There is Rusty, my most
wonderful loud-barking male dog person. Beautiful, yes?”

“
Yes.”

Actually, beautiful wasn’t
exactly the right word, but I liked the friendly-looking—even a
little funny-looking—animal immediately. He was seated on a green
lawn, front legs holding him erect, looking straight at the camera
with his red tongue lolling from one side of his open mouth.
Definitely the handsome appearance of a German Shepherd, but
showing more reddishness than normal mixed with the near-black and
creamy tan of his coat. The eyes were large and dark, and he seemed
almost to be grinning at the picture-taker. Also, above those
liquid brown eyes were bunches of strangely misplaced white hairs
that....

I took a closer look.
“Hey,” I said with some excitement, “Hank, take a gander at those
eyebrows—that’s what they are, eyebrows. They’re white—white, like
mine! How about that?”

Hernandez tilted the
framed photo in my hand, gazed at it, gazed at me, and said, “How
about that, yes. I knew, when I first saw you, Sheldon, that you
reminded me of something.”

He spoke very seriously,
soberly—but then he lost it, burst into a guffaw and laughed
uproariously, having a perfectly splendid time. All by
himself.

When the noise diminished
enough so he could hear me, I said stiffly, “Okay, I
quit.”

Well, he merely made more
whooping-type noises than he’d been emitting before. It took a
while, but when he was back behind the desk and in his chair again,
wheezing only slightly, I said, “Anything else before I get
going?”

“
All of importance—all, at
least, that is necessary now—has been said, I think. If you have
further questions? I may have neglected some things, like the
questioning of people on Lemon Street about Rusty.”

“
Couple of items,” I said.
“Probably not important, or even germane. But when you were
speaking on the intercom to your wife, and mentioned the Vungers, I
thought I heard a comment about IFAI. The disease, I mean. Or was
that something in Spanish?”

Hank looked straight
ahead, toward the wall behind me, then left and up toward the
ceiling, lips pursed, pointed gray mustache slanting downward.
After a few seconds of silence he responded, in his usual
rapid-fire delivery, “All right, I will tell you, Sheldon.
Normally, you understand, the patient’s affairs are not to be
discussed freely, they are confidential as if spoken to a lawyer or
priest. But the Vungers were so pleased with results from my
treatment, they urged me to tell others of their good fortune,
their success, saying I could take out large advertisements and use
in them their names if I wished—which, of course, I would not do
and would go to jail if I did. So, this is not the usual
doctor-patient secret relationship, under the
circumstances.”

He paused, narrow head
tilted to one side, as if examining what he’d just said, then
continued. “IFAI, yes, that is what you heard, Sheldon. Both
Vungers had been diagnosed as afflicted by the disease, and indeed
were very sick, looking like walking dead, almost gray people. That
is why they came to me.”

“
Well, hell,” I
interrupted, “maybe that’s why nobody’s seen them for a while,
maybe they’re already dead.”

Hank lifted his eyes,
rolled them back and forth slightly, his expression something like
that of a boy who’d slipped and forcibly straddled the bar on his
bicycle, which is a very tortured expression. Then he continued, as
if I hadn’t spoken.

“
Both Mr. and Mrs. Vunger
came to see me three months ago, having found no orthodox physician
who offered them any hope for permanent improvement in their
condition, or even possibility of survival. Each had been diagnosed
as infected with the IFAI virus while at the Omega establishment
where they worked until six months past. They were very ill, but
both responded to treatment with such rapid improvement even I
considered it remarkable.”

“
That is why this
circumstance is so strange,” he went on. “Guenther and Helga were
both so very pleased, very overjoyed even, with much enthusiasm and
eagerness for completing the last parts of my treatment—and, as
mentioned, even urged me to tell others of their ‘miracle,’ which
is how they called it. That is why their failure now to appear is
worrisome.”

“
Wait a minute,” I said.
“You’re saying they’re better? Do you mean they didn’t really have
IFAI when they came to see you?”

When Hank stopped wiggling
his eyes at the ceiling some more, and grimacing extravagantly some
more, he said in an odd tone, as though speaking to a large rock,
“No, it is not what I mean. Each of the Vungers unquestionably had
IFAI—I must use terms you understand, or will accept, at least for
now. Stated more comprehensively, repeated scientific tests—very
expensive scientific tests—confirmed the presence in their blood
and tissues and some organs, including lung and liver and heart, of
the virus which accompanies the symptoms of what is—today—named
Invariably Fatal Acquired Illness. Or, in the words of the
upside-down press, both of them had ‘caught IFAI.’ Five previously
consulted physicians—five orthodox ignoramuses who call themselves
physicians—had pronounced them terminal, kaput, dead ones, and had
not failed to so inform the Vungers. It took Guenther and Helga
many weeks to find me. But when I last examined
them....”