Frameshift (22 page)

“Justice,” said the female voice at the other end of the phone.

“Avi Meyer, OSI,” said Pierre.

“I’m sorry, Agent Meyer is out of the office today. Would you—”

“His voice mail, then.”

“Transferring.”

“This is Agent Avi Meyer. I’m at a meeting in Quantico today, and won’t be back in the office until tomorrow. Please leave a message at the tone.”

Beep!

“Avi, call me as soon as you can. It’s Pierre Tardivel — the geneticist at Lawrence Berkeley. Call me right away. It’s important.” Pierre read out his number, then hung up.

“He’s out of town for the day,” said Pierre to Molly, who was sitting on a lab stool. “I’ll call him again Monday if he doesn’t call first.” He moved over to her and hugged her. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll get through this.”

Molly’s eyes were still bloodshot. “I know,” she said, nodding slightly. “I know.” She looked at her watch. “Let’s go get Amanda from Mrs. Bailey. I want to hold my daughter.”

Pierre hugged her again.

Pierre’s conscience had been bothering him for days. It wasn’t as though he’d taken anything valuable. But, still, a man’s razor was a very personal item. It might have meant a lot to Bryan Proctor’s widow — an important way of remembering him. And, well, if things did get out of hand with Klimus, and they had to flee to Canada, Pierre didn’t want this continuing to prey on his mind. He wasn’t sure what pretext he’d use to explain his visit, but if he could get back into the apartment, he could return the razor to the medicine chest, maybe hiding it behind some other items so that its reappearance wouldn’t be obvious.

He pulled up to the dilapidated apartment building in San Francisco, walked into the entryway, and pushed the intercom button labeled super.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Proctor? It’s Pierre Tardivel.”

Silence for several seconds, then buzzing from the door. Pierre made his way slowly over to suite 101. Mrs. Proctor was waiting for him in the doorway, hands on hips. “You took my husband’s razor,” she said flatly.

Pierre felt his face grow flush. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

He pulled a small, clear plastic bag containing the razor out of his pocket.

“I’m — I’m a geneticist; I wanted a DNA sample.”

“What on earth for?”

“I thought maybe he had a genetic disorder that you didn’t know about.”

“And?”

“He didn’t. At least not a common, easily-tested-for one.”

“Which is precisely what I told you. What’s this all about, Mr. Tardivel?”

Pierre wanted to be a million kilometers away. “I’m sorry. It’s all crazy. I feel terrible.”

She kept staring at him, unblinking, golf-ball chin thrust out.

“I just had this crazy theory that maybe your husband’s death and the attempt on my life were linked. You know I’ve got a genetic disorder, and I though maybe he did, too.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No, he was in perfect health.”

The woman looked at Pierre, surprise on her face. “Well, I’d hardly say that. He was on a waiting list for a kidney transplant.”

Pierre felt his heart skip a beat. “
What?
”

“He had bum kidneys.”

Pierre was angry. “But I asked you if he had any inherited disorders—”

“He didn’t inherit this problem. It was a result of an injury. His kidneys were damaged in a car accident about ten years ago and had gotten steadily worse.”

“God,” said Pierre. “Jesus God.”

“Justice.”

“Avi Meyer, OSI, please.”

“Just a sec.”

“Meyer.”

“Avi, it’s Pierre Tardivel.”

“Hi, Pierre. Sorry not to get back to you yet. I was out of town. Say, any luck with your complaint against Condor Health?” Pierre had previously called Avi to find out whether the coercing of abortions was legal under federal law; it was.

“No,” said Pierre, “but that’s not why I’m calling. I’m phoning about Burian Klimus.”

“We don’t have anything new,” said Avi with a sigh.

“Maybe you don’t, but I do. You’re right about him. He’s Ivan Grozny.”

Avi’s voice was excited, but cautious. “What makes you say that?”

“You know the attempt on my life? The guy who tried to kill me was a neo-Nazi, right? Chuck Hanratty?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, Hanratty previously killed a guy named Bryan Proctor — and Proctor had bum kidneys.”

“So?”

“And Joan Dawson, a diabetic here at LBNL, was murdered, too, by a very similar knife to the one used in the attack on me; it wasn’t Hanratty who killed her, of course — he was dead by that point. But it could very well have been someone connected to Hanratty — meaning someone connected to the Millennial Reich.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And three Huntington’s disease sufferers were murdered recently in San Francisco — and Burian Klimus had met all three of them.”

“Really?”

“And I’ve checked tissue samples from a hundred and seventeen victims of unsolved murders here in the Bay Area — a vastly disproportionate number of them had bad genes.”

“So you think — shit, you think Klimus is doing what? Purging society of defectives?”

“
Mein Kampf
, chapter one, verse one,” said Pierre.

“You’re sure about all this?” said Avi.

“Positive.”

“You better be right,” said Avi.

“I am.”

“ ‘Cause if this is just some disgruntled-employee shit — if you’re just making trouble for your boss — then you’re making a huge mistake. OSI’s part of the Department of Justice, and you don’t fuck with Justice.”

Pierre’s tone was determined. “Klimus is Ivan the Terrible. I’m convinced of that.”

Pierre loved his daughter — of that he had no doubts. But, well, he
was
a scientist, and he couldn’t help being intrigued by her special heritage. He knew that her DNA would differ from that of a modern human by far less than 1 percent. Hell, chimpanzee DNA deviated from modern human DNA by only 1.6 percent (chimps and humans having diverged some six million years ago). The differences between Amanda and other children who hadn’t bypassed the last sixty thousand years of human evolution were surely very subtle. Still, something — some tiny genetic change — had given the less-physically-robust modern humans some sort of advantage over the Neanderthals, leading to the disappearance of the latter. The attachment areas for Neanderthal pectoral muscles were twice the size of those in modern humans; they would have had Arnold Schwarzenegger’s physique without working at it. Yet something tipped the balance in favor of
Homo
s
apiens sapiens
. Even while reviling Klimus’s outrageous experiment, Pierre could understand the fascination with studying Neanderthal DNA.

Using restriction enzymes to break up Amanda’s DNA into manageable fragments, he started looking for differences, and was surprised to find some unexpected ones. They weren’t in her protein-synthesizing DNA but rather in several long strands of junk DNA.

Intrigued, Pierre decided to visit the San Francisco Zoo. Surely he could cajole an array of primate tissue samples from the curator…

Pierre and Molly attended another meeting of the Bay Area Huntington’s Support Group in San Francisco; by this stage, he really did need the support.

The guest speaker was a loud PR woman from a company that made wheelchairs, walkers, and other aids for the mobility-impaired. Pierre hadn’t realized so many high-tech options were available.

After the meeting, he spoke again to white-haired Carl Berringer. “Good meeting,” said Pierre. “Interesting speaker.”

Carl’s whole upper body was shaking. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

“Umm, yes. Pierre Tardivel, from Montreal, originally. I came to a meeting about fifteen months ago.”

“Forgive me. My memory’s not what it used to be.”

Pierre nodded. He himself had not yet encountered many mental difficulties, but he knew they were a common part of Huntington’s.

“It’s a mixed blessing, a speaker like that,” said Berringer, nodding in the direction of the woman. She was talking with some people on the other side of the classroom. “For those of us who’ve got insurance, we think, Great — look at all those neat ideas. But a lot of our members
don’t
have any coverage, and couldn’t possibly afford any of those gadgets.”

Although the California law that went into effect two years earlier let anyone with the Huntington’s gene get insurance so long as they weren’t yet displaying overt symptoms, those already manifesting the disease were still generally uninsurable. “I tell you,” Carl said, “that system you’ve got up in Canada is the only thing that makes sense in the genetic age — universal coverage, with the population as a whole sharing the risks.”

He paused. “You got insurance?”

“Yeah.”

“Lucky guy,” said Berringer. “I’m under my wife’s company plan now, but I had to quit my job to get that; it only covers dependent spouses.”

Pierre nodded grimly. “Sorry.”

“It probably wasn’t worth it,” said Carl. “She’s with Bay Area Health:

B-A-H. We call them ‘Bah, Humbug.’ They’ve got ridiculously low caps for catastrophic illness.” A pause. “Who are you with?”

“Condor.”

“Oh, yeah. They turned me down.”

“I actually own some Condor stock,” said Pierre. “I was thinking of going to their shareholders’ meeting this year, raise a bit of a stink about their policies. Is anybody else here with them?”

Berringer steadied himself by holding on to the brushed aluminum molding beneath the classroom greenboard. He looked around the room.

“Well, let’s see. Peter Mansbridge had been with them.”

That name had stuck in Pierre’s mind the first time Berringer had said it to him because by coincidence it was the same name as the anchor of

The National
, CBC’s nightly newscast. “Peter Mansbridge?” Pierre said.

“Wasn’t he the fellow you said was shot to death?”

Berringer nodded. “Real shame that. Nicest guy you ever wanted to meet.”

“Anybody else?”

Berringer moved his left hand up to scratch the side of his head. His hand made the journey like a fluttering bird. “I used to know all this.” He shook his head sadly. “Time was, I had a memory sharp as a tack.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Pierre. “It’s not important.”

“No, no, let’s see…” He turned to face the room. “Excuse me!” he said loudly. “Excuse me!”

People turned to look at him; the caregivers in the group stopped moving.

“Excuse me, everybody. This fellow here, um—”

“Pierre.”

“—Pierre here is wondering if anyone else has insurance with Condor?”

Pierre was embarrassed that his simple question had been made into a big deal, but he smiled wanly.

“I do,” said a stunning black woman of about forty, holding up a manicured hand. She was standing next to a wheelchair; a black man was seated in it, his legs moving about constantly. “Of course, they won’t cover Burt.”

“Anybody else?” asked Carl.

A white fellow with Huntington’s raised his hand, his arm moving like a sapling’s trunk in a variable wind. “Wasn’t Cathy Jurima with them?” he said.

“That’s right,” another caregiver said. “She was an orphan — no family-history records. She got in years ago.”

“Who’s Cathy Jurima?” said Pierre.

Carl frowned. “Another of our members who was murdered.”

A crazy thought hit Pierre. “What about the other one who was killed?

Who was he insured by?”

Carl raised his voice again. “Anyone remember who covered — oh, what was his name now? Juan Kahlo?”

Heads shaking around the room — some in negation.

Carl shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Thanks, anyway,” said Pierre, trying to sound calm.

Pierre and Molly left the meeting. Pierre was quiet the whole trip home, thinking. Molly drove. They parked in their driveway, then walked next door to pick up Amanda from Mrs. Bailey. It was 10:40 p.m.; they begged off from the offered coffee and cake.

Amanda had been sleeping, but she woke up when her parents arrived.

Molly scooped up her daughter — it wasn’t safe for Pierre to carry her when they had to walk down the cement steps that led up to Mrs. Bailey’s front door. Molly hugged Amanda close, and as they walked back to their house, she said, “No, sweetheart, that’s all right… Did you, now? Did you really? I bet Mrs. Bailey was surprised at how good you are at drawing!”

Pierre’s heart pounded. He loved Amanda with all his soul, but he always felt like there was a wall between him and her, especially when Molly was carrying on what sounded like onesided conversations, detecting Amanda’s thoughts and replying to them.

The three of them came into their house, and Molly moved over to sit on the couch, Amanda perching herself in her mother’s lap.

“Would Joan Dawson have been under the same health plan as you?” asked Pierre.

Molly was stroking Amanda’s brown hair soothingly. “Not necessarily.

I’m on the faculty-association plan; she was support staff. Completely different union.”

“Remember Joan’s funeral?” said Pierre.

Amanda was apparently thinking something at her mother. “Just a second, dear,” said Molly to the girl. She then looked up at Pierre. “Sure, I remember the funeral.”

“We met Joan’s daughter there. Beth — remember?”

“Slim redhead? Yeah.”

“What was her husband’s name?”

“Umm — Christopher, wasn’t it?”

“Christopher, right. But what was his last name?”

“Good grief, I don’t have the foggiest—”

Pierre was insistent. “It was Irish — O’Connor, O’Brien, something like that.”

Molly frowned, thinking. “Christopher… Christopher… Christopher

O’Malley
, that was it.”

“O’Malley, right!” He went into the dining room and got the phone book from a cupboard there.

“It’s too late to be calling anyone,” said Molly.

Pierre didn’t seem to hear her. He was already dialing. “Hello? Hello, is that Beth? Beth, I’m sorry to be calling so late. This is Pierre Tardivel; we met at your mother’s funeral, remember? I worked with her at LBNL.

That’s right. Listen, I need to know who provided your mother’s health insurance. No, no — that’s a life-insurance company; her
health
insurance.

Right, health. Are you sure? Are you positive? Okay, thanks. Thanks very much; sorry to disturb you. What? No, no, nothing like that. Nothing for you to worry about. Just, ah, just some paperwork back at the office.

Thanks. Bye.”

He put down the phone, his hand shaking.

“Well?” asked Molly.

“Condor,” said Pierre, as if it were a swear word.

“Christ,” said Molly.

“One more,” said Pierre, putting away the Berkeley phone book and pulling out the much thicker San Francisco one.

“Hello? Hello, Mrs. Proctor. It’s Pierre Tardivel. I’m really sorry about calling so late, but… yes, that’s right.” He did his best Peter Falk. ‘“Just one more little thing.’” Back to his normal voice. “I’m wondering if you can tell me who provided your husband Bryan’s health insurance. No, no, I don’t mind holding on.” He covered the mouthpiece and looked at Molly.

“She’s checking.”

Molly nodded. Amanda was now fast asleep in her arms.

“Yes, I’m still here. Really? Thanks. Thanks a million. And sorry to have disturbed you. Bye.”

“Well?” said Molly.

“Do the words ‘the Pacific Northwest’s leader in progressive health coverage’ mean anything to you?”

“Holy shit,” said Molly.

“Where’s that Condor annual report?”

“Down in the den, I think. In the magazine rack.”

Pierre left the dining room, hurried down the half flight of stairs — and tripped at the bottom, an unexpected movement of his left foot having caught him off guard. Molly appeared at the top of the stairs, holding Amanda, who, having been awoken by the crash, was now crying.

“Are you all right?” Molly called, her face contorted in fear.

Pierre used the banister to haul himself back to his feet. “Fine,” he said.

He continued on down the short corridor and emerged a moment later holding the annual report. He came up the stairs more carefully and sat down on the living-room couch. Amanda had stopped crying and was now looking around curiously.

Molly sat next to Pierre, who was rubbing his shin. He handed her the report. “Find that part you read aloud when we first got it — the part about how many policies Condor has.”

She folded back the yellow-and-black cover, flipped past the first couple of pages, then: “Here it is. ‘With foresight and a commitment to excellence, we provide peace of mind for one-point-seven million policy holders in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington State.’”

Pierre tasted bile at the back of his throat. “No wonder their stock is doing so well. What a great way to increase profitability: eliminate anyone who is going to make a major claim. Huntington’s sufferers, diabetics going blind, a superintendent about to have a kidney transplant…”

“Eliminate!”

“Eliminate — and for that, read ‘kill.’ ”

“That’s crazy, Pierre.”

“For me or you, maybe. But for a company that coerces abortions? A company that forces people to take genetic tests that might drive them to suicide?”

“But, look,” said Molly, trying to bring a note of reason back to the conversation, “Condor’s a big company. Think of how many people they’d have to get rid of to have any real effect on their bottom line.”

Pierre thought for a moment. “If they knocked off a thousand policy holders, each of whom were going to make claims averaging one hundred thousand dollars — the cost of a bypass operation, or a couple of years of at-home nursing — they’d increase their profits by one hundred million dollars.”

“But a thousand murders? That’s crazy, Pierre.”

“Is it? Spread them out over three states and several years, and no one would notice.”

“But how would they know who to go after? I mean, sure, they knew you were going to come down with Huntington’s because you told them, but they wouldn’t know in advance in most cases who was going to end up making a big claim.”

“They could get genetic reports from the policyholders’ doctors.”

Molly shook her head. “Not in this state. That’s part of the same law that prevents them from doing genetic discrimination: it’s illegal for an insurance company to request genetic data from a person’s doctor.”

Pierre got up and began pacing in a shaky fashion. “The only way to pull it off would be by doing their own genetic tests on all their policyholders, detecting in advance the ones who might file claims. After all, if you wait until the claims are filed before killing the person, someone would surely notice the connection.”

“But insurers don’t routinely take tissue samples. Lots of medical insurance is granted based on questionnaires, and if a checkup
is
required, it’s usually done by the family doctor. But, again, the law says the doctor can’t turn over genetic results to the insurer, at least here in California.”

“Then they must get tissue samples some other way — some
clandestine
way.‘’

“Oh, come on, Pierre. How could they possibly do that?”

“It would have to be during the initial interview with the customer — that’s the only time someone from the insurance company normally is physically close to the policyholder.”

“So what about your own interview? Did the salesperson touch you?”

“No. No, we didn’t even shake hands.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “I don’t remember everyone I meet, but, well, I remember her.” He shrugged. “She was, ah, quite fetching.”

“Well, if she didn’t touch you, she couldn’t have taken a tissue sample.”

“Maybe,” said Pierre. “But there’s one way to find out for sure.”