Liquid Fear (13 page)

After Briggs withdrew the needle, the monkey man let out a final whimper and relaxed. Kleingarten also relaxed, although he was ready to pounce on the monkey man if he moved.

But Kleingarten’s 210 pounds would smash the guy, who probably weighed 120 pounds soaking wet. His ribs showed and his hair was nearly solid white, which had helped fuel the illusion that he’d been an albino monkey.

“Lot of strength for an old guy,” Kleingarten said, voice casual despite his hammering heart. He didn’t want the egghead to know he’d been rattled.

“He’s not so old,” Briggs said. “He’s only thirty.”

Kleingarten released the limp, shivering man and studied the doctor with a newfound interest. Briggs’s straight career had been derailed because he didn’t play by the rules, and Kleingarten could respect that.

Hell, he himself had been a security guard making ten bucks an hour until he realized once they let you inside with the keys, the place was yours.

CRO was another story. Corporations like that were nothing but smoke and mirrors, and on paper they looked legit, with their executives hanging around the White House and running charities to help ghetto kids buy shoes endorsed by basketball stars.

But Kleingarten’s digging suggested they were in deep with the military and national security organizations, people not necessarily allied with the White House. One thing for sure, CRO probably didn’t want Briggs to make the front page for running some sort of Nazi funny farm.

Which meant Kleingarten might have to double dip and see if CRO would pay him to keep an eye on Briggs as well as follow orders from Briggs.

“Your bosses know about this?” he asked.

“This is the part the bosses wouldn’t have the stomach for,” Briggs said. “And they wouldn’t understand it, anyway. Because they think they’re the bosses.”

Kleingarten surveyed the far end of the building, where closets and storage units had been added sometime after the factory had closed. “How many other monkeys do you have back there?”

“David is our only guest at the moment,” Briggs said. “But we hope to have more visitors soon.”

“The ones I’ve been sending invitations to?”

Briggs gave a distant smile. “We have plenty of room.”

“You’re not one of those Looney Tunes types, are you?”

“I work for a better tomorrow,” Briggs said. “Now, help me get him up.”

Kleingarten hesitated. He’d already gone outside the job description to chase the thing he’d thought was a monkey, and here was the doc expecting him to haul cargo. What next, a shoeshine?

Briggs must have read his mind. “Don’t worry, Mr. Drummond, there’s a bonus in it for you,” Briggs said, still using the false name Kleingarten had given him.

Apparently the doc wasn’t as shrewd about background checks as he was about his research. Another reason to worry about him.

“He’s not contagious, is he?” Kleingarten said.

“His disease is internal and self-inflicted, poor man.” There was no irony in Briggs’s tone. “Hopefully our research can one day help him return to society and lead a productive life.”

They stooped and lifted the naked man, who was half-conscious, eyelids fluttering. They walked him to the rear of the facility, and as they drew closer, Kleingarten saw the series of rooms were rigged with surveillance gear and outfitted like hospital rooms, with small observation windows in the heavy steel doors. The sterile, brightly lit environs were a stark contrast to the murky, dusty factory floor.

Somebody had spent more big money back here, which meant they expected big payback.

That was something Kleingarten could wrap his head around.

“Here we go, David,” Briggs said as they came to the last door on the right. The door was ajar and Briggs nudged it open. The walls were covered with images of eyes, hundreds, maybe thousands, every color, shape, and size. Some were artistic, others clipped from magazines, a few blown up to monstrous proportions.

Just entering the room made Kleingarten woozy. If this poor guy was staying here as a “guest,” it was no wonder he’d gone monkey-shit mad.

Kleingarten let Briggs finish the job of leading David to a small metal cot covered with clean linens. Aside from the wall art, the room was mostly bare, with the exception of some video monitors and speakers secured in the upper corners of the room, enclosed behind metal grates. A stainless-steel toilet and sink were bolted in place, like in a prison cell, except there was no mirror above the sink. The walls were covered in a thick white vinyl material, bradded into place, and it would take a sledgehammer to bust through.

Glints in small recesses revealed camera lenses, and the hundred-square-foot room stank of new carpet and chemicals. Kleingarten imagined the white background made a pretty good projection screen, and here and there were smears of blood, as if David had tried to beat and scratch the images away.

“Nothing to fear, David,” Briggs said, sitting the man on the cot. “You’re home.”

David emerged from his catatonic state long enough to smile. “Home, home on the range,” he spoke-sang, about as musically as a manhole cover grating across pavement. The tortured melody was made even more haunting by the echo in the building.

“That’s right, David,” Briggs said. “Home on the range.”

The doc exited the room, closing the door behind him, and a wave of relief washed over Kleingarten. He’d killed a few people in his day, old-fashioned, honest, hands-on killing, but he’d never been this unnerved.

“Aren’t you going to lock it?” Kleingarten asked.

“That would defeat the purpose of the experiment,” Briggs said. “They have to
want
to be here.”

“And it doesn’t have anything to do with that joy juice we’re sticking in people?”

Briggs sighed and stared off into the distance, as if envisioning a better future for everyone, where people danced in meadows and ate fruit and didn’t worry about the beasties roaring in the night or inside their own heads. “Surrender is the first step to victory.”

Kleingarten was going to have to conduct a little more research on this guy. He doubted if CRO knew what they’d turned loose.

The game had changed a lot in the fifteen years since Kleingarten had taken the field. In the old days, power was power. You got hit, you hit back harder.

In this crazy-assed twenty-first century, though, knowledge was power, and if Kleingarten learned more about what was going on than anyone else involved, he might make this his retirement project. He hadn’t really enjoyed cutting up that whore in Cincinnati. The thrill was gone, and when the focus faded, a fatal mistake was sure to follow.

Yes, it was time to get out. A few more paydays and then maybe a rice plantation in Thailand, or a little cottage on the beach in Puerto Rico, or whatever the hell they did in Madagascar.

He followed Briggs back to the ape-cage office, and Curious George told him he’d wasted half an hour in the lab. Briggs slid open a desk drawer, and Kleingarten saw a recent color photograph of Wendy Leng.

So, you’re hung up on her? Good. It’s about time you showed me something I could use.

Briggs touched the photo tenderly for a moment, then nudged it aside and withdrew some documents and maps.

Smart egghead
.
If you sent out e-mails or phone calls, anybody could be listening.

CRO wouldn’t get its hands dirty but wouldn’t have any problem keeping an eye and ear on the doc from the safety of a computer somewhere.

That was one of the tricks of the Information Age. You didn’t always have to outsmart people. Sometimes you could out-dumb them.

“Roland Doyle will be the most difficult,” Briggs said. “He’s always been my problem child.”

“Is that why we did that ‘David Underwood’ thing with the fake IDs? To help him remember?”

“Roland has serious identity issues. He loves himself as a drunk, and when you take that away, he doesn’t know how to deal with himself. He’s a man of unreliable character. But one thing you can always count on with Roland—anytime there’s trouble, he comes crawling back to the ex.”

“The Chinese woman, right?” Kleingarten said it just to see the reaction in the doc’s eyes. It was a mixture of anger, lust, and jealousy.

He’d seen idiots fall in love with hookers and heroin addicts and AIDS sluts, and he never failed to be amazed at the shit guys let their dicks do to them.

“She was actually born in Tibet, and we could engage in a political discussion about that, but we both have work to do.”

“Okay. I bring the four people and then I get the bonus? All done?”

Briggs frowned. “Yes, but I’m afraid we’ll lose one.”

“Lose one?”

“Anita Molkesky will finally succeed in the one thing she was put on Earth for, which is to destroy herself. Her final cry for attention. But she’ll need the others to help her with her mission. Bring her first.”

“What do I use? You just want me to kidnap her?”

“She’s already broken, Mr. Drummond. All you have to do is sweep up the pieces and bring them to me.”

“She’s been talking to shrinks. It might be trouble.”

Briggs broke from his dark reverie. “Don’t worry, you’ll be paid for that one, as long as you bring in the others.”

“Do I look worried?”

Briggs smiled, back to his usual self. “No. Not at all. You know the way out.”

The doc turned to his bank of high-tech gear and flipped some switches and triggered the front-door lock. As Kleingarten wended his way through the skeletal machinery, he heard the strains of the old cowboy ballad, “Home on the Range,” once sung by Willie Nelson, who wasn’t a whole lot better than David Underwood at carrying a tune.

The music was concentrated in the area of the holding cells, and Kleingarten shuddered as he pictured David Underwood in that brightly lit room in front of all those eyeballs, with a dope-headed hippie droning on about where the buffalo roam. He told himself he was only hurrying because he was on the clock and headed for retirement, but he knew that was a lie.

The Monkey House was not a place anybody stayed too long if they wanted to keep their marbles.

It wasn’t until he was in his Jeep and headed toward Chapel Hill that he realized he’d been humming.

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.

He punched up the radio and blasted the tune from his mind with ordinary, idiotic pop-rock, where there were plenty of discouraging words.

Damn, Wendy, never there when I need you. Some things never change.

Roland had been lucky enough to find the last working pay phone in the mountains of Virginia, at a run-down gas station where the pumps turned numbers on dials to tally the bill. Roland had made change inside, drawing a long look from the cigarette-huffing woman behind the counter.

He wondered if he looked suspicious as he staggered toward the phone. He was running from something, but that was nothing new. However, this one felt bigger than all those other forgotten failures.

And that damned David Underwood driver’s license stared at him as he stood at the counter. He had to remind himself again that he was Roland Doyle, and in forcing the name into his brain, Cincinnati came back in a rush.

Hell of a week. Fall off the wagon, kill a woman, and turn into somebody else. That sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would happen to me.

“Can I help you, sir?” It was the woman from the counter, who’d taken a break from her cigarette break. She’d rolled the sleeves of her Jeff Gordon racing jacket to her elbows.

Roland realized he’d been leaning with his head against the phone, idly fingering the change slot. He might have been muttering to himself, because the words “Monkey House” spun around his skull like the metal ball of a roulette wheel. “I’m fine.”

“You sure don’t look so hot.”

“A little touch of the flu,” he said.

The woman jumped back as if the virus had wings. “You can keep it.”

“I’m not contagious,” he said.
Insanity is only catching in a crowd.

“You ought to take something for that,” she said, retreating to the safety of the store and its carcinogenic atmosphere.

Roland took the vial of pills from his pocket and held them aloft. “Got it right here. Just what the doctor ordered.”

He looked at the vial’s label and then checked his watch. Ten minutes to go. Until what? How many had he taken?

More importantly, how many did he have left?

Three.

The thing that would happen if he didn’t take the pill was already building inside him. It was like a black tsunami, a force that would crush all thoughts and sweep away the foundations of all that made him Roland Doyle.

And as fucked up as Roland Doyle was, it was all he had.

He dropped coins in the slot. As he tried Wendy’s number again, a dark Lexus with tinted windows pulled alongside the pumps. The car had that suspicious sheen of officialdom, though the plates were standard Virginia issue. Roland let the phone ring seven times, just for luck, before he gave up.

No one had moved from the car, though a large, hand-painted sign by the road said “Self Serve Only.”

Could be anybody. Or it could be him.

Now why did I think that? And who is “him”?

Roland wondered if this was how schizophrenics thought just before they slid into an episode. Just clued in enough to know they weren’t thinking quite right, but unable to escape their own buggy thoughts. He headed for his rental car, determined to be casual, though his legs wanted to break into a run.

He was sweating and lightheaded by the time he slid behind the wheel. He’d be in Chapel Hill at about the time he’d have to make a decision about the last pill. First he’d find Wendy, and maybe they could call their friend, the chemistry professor. He knew the professor’s name but couldn’t summon it. All he remembered was her glittering blue eyes, a beauty mark on one side of her chin, and sweeping auburn hair.

And someone else.

Susan? Was that her name?

He pulled onto the road, driving carefully, afraid of weaving and drawing police attention. He couldn’t afford to get arrested, not like this. He’d only been driving a couple of minutes, five miles under the speed limit, when the dark Lexus gunned past him on the left.

Guess they had enough gas after all. Must not have been THEM, whoever they are.

But it could have been. He could run from a murder scene, but he couldn’t run from whatever had happened ten years ago, and he couldn’t hide from himself. Whoever he was.

He tried to concentrate on Wendy, because she reminded him he was Roland. As long as he had her, he couldn’t turn into David Underwood.

He had met her as an undergrad in Wilson Library, literally bumping into her at the DVD archive, a popular destination of budget-minded students. She was looking for anything zany and breezy and he’d had a craving for a big-bug science-fiction movie.

They’d been one of those cases of “opposites attract,” which they both should have taken as a warning, but the attraction hit hard and they never had a chance. The Tibetan artist and the Rocky Mount trailer-trash boy trying to make good.

It sounded like a quirky rom-com. Both struggling financially, they’d found ways to improvise, including showing up at artist’s receptions to scarf down cheese and grapes, and they’d also sold their own plasma. Then they’d accepted that offer to serve in the experiment.

The experiment. Me, Wendy, that professor. Wasn’t there some more people?

He had a headache so he went back to picturing Wendy, standing in the brilliance of a sun-splashed room, painting naked, breasts swaying sensually as she danced with the brush.

Then his vision shifted to what she was painting—Susan after what they’d done to her—and he nearly drove off the road.

He popped open the vial with one hand and swallowed the pill even though it went down like a bone.

God, please don’t make me see that again.