Lizardskin (48 page)

Greer sighed and felt a kind of sadness for the sheer mean-mindedness of saying such a thing to a little girl.

“No, honey. I don’t think your daddy is going to hell. If you wanna know what I think, I think your daddy is a real fine man, and I’m proud to have him as my friend.”

Bobby Lee was watching the storm front now. “Will there be lightning?”

Goddamn that Sprague bitch anyway.

“Uncle Dell, are you listening?”

Greer looked around at the storm system. Christ, bigger and blacker by the minute. “Oh yeah, I’d say so. Are you afraid of lightning?”

“No. Lightning is when God lights His pipe.”

“Your daddy smokes a pipe, too.”

“Yes. Mommy says it smells like a outhouse. What’s a outhouse?”

The screen door slammed open. Maureen was standing there, her shiny tanned skin flushing pink, her green eyes wide, and her mouth torqued in an angry twist. She was wearing a tiny G-string bikini in some shiny green material that matched her headband. Her hard little body glistened with suntan lotion and sweat. Her nipples showed like tiny bullets through the snakeskin fabric. Her breasts were hard and round, her stomach ridged and leathery. She had oven mitts on, and she was holding a goldfish bowl away from her face, out toward Bobby Lee and Moses.

The water was steaming. Bits of skin and flesh floated in a murky brown soup. The smell of fish and sewage drifted down the steps. Bobby Lee stood up and faced her mother, her mouth open and her eyes wide.

“
Bobby Lee!
I’ve told you never to play with the microwave!”

Greer stood up and backed away, trying to hide the grin.

“
Well?
Why did you put your goldfish in the microwave?”

Bobby Lee’s face closed up defiantly. “You said Daddy’s going to hell!”

“What does
that
have to do with it?”

“So I’m gonna go with him!”

“Don’t be stupid, Roberta Lee!”

Bobby Lee’s face was bright with childish anger. “And I’m gonna take Pete and Mikey with me!”

“I don’t understand!”

“They have to
like
it there, don’t they?”

The doctor’s sleeves were pulled down to the edges of his palms, French cuffs, closed with gold and lapis lazuli cufflinks. His hands, broad and ridged with blue veins, rested in his lap like a pair of fat pink pets. Beau could see several puncture wounds on the backs of both hands.

Apparently Sifton was on some kind of intravenous medication. Beau looked back up at the doctor’s face, seeing the gray in his skin and the pallor of his lips. Sifton was talking about Edward Gall.

“A very fine boy. Quite intense. He and his wife have a little house down in East Los Angeles. They had me down there once, for a dinner. Actually, it was to meet some singing group. I suppose Edward thought I might use my influence, get them something in the industry. Anyway, the point is, they were trying to have children, and there seemed to be something amiss.”

The Lincoln was idling roughly. Beau blipped the pedal, and it smoothed out. He turned the air conditioning down, wondering why the doctor wore suits and long-sleeved shirts if the heat bothered him. Well, come to think of it, the doctor looked like a man who could use all the heat he could find.

“I take it this is where the Sonesta Clinic comes into it.”

“Yes. I’m sure you know, modern times call for modern moralities. Wives work well into their late thirties, trying to put together the perfect life—the car, the beach house, the quintessential pale pink stucco Italianate in Sherman Oaks or Santa Barbara. It’s the same across the country. The trouble comes when older couples—people who, in a saner world, would have had their children in their teens or twenties, when nature intended them to have them—well, now they approach the great divide between youth and decline. And suddenly, perhaps as a final act of denial, they want to have children,
they want to live the youth they traded away for some chimerical illusion of career and professional accomplishment. Selfishness, really. I fear for all the young children who are being raised by middle-age work-obsessed parents who see the children in their lives as just another demonstration of their social skills, as additional trophies, or even—and this is worse—as small mirrors of themselves, to be dressed up like little mannequins in Oshkosh B’Gosh and Polo and paraded around as reflections of their own good taste and personal style. Rather vile, really.”

“About the clinic?”

Sifton looked over at him.

“Yes, the Sonesta Clinic. That’s certainly a part of all this. It started there, anyway. I’m not … my career is a sorry one, Sergeant. I have this position with Offshore, but you know what kind of doctors work for—maybe you don’t. A doctor who works for a film company, his job is to keep the talent sober or stoned or whatever it takes to get the picture done. I’m considered safe because I have my own needs.”

“Montana has its own share of ugly realities, Doctor. What’s the Sonesta Clinic?”

“It’s a fertility clinic. Very expensive. Clientele from the film industry, that sort of thing. I’m not on the staff, but I had some connections with a doctor there. I wanted to help Edward. Edward was—they were an attractive couple. How is she, anyway?”

“Donna’s in an ICU ward in Billings. She has a severe skull trauma.”

“How did she get it?”

“I gave it to her.”

“Really. How sad for you.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I called the clinic and persuaded them to—the phrase is
pro bono
, isn’t it? They resisted, naturally. The usual routine with young people is to send them off to try again. But Donna was—she’s a forceful woman. She was convinced that there was a problem. So they relented, I think just to pacify her. But as it turned out, Edward did have a minor problem.”

“That’s what the Sonesta Clinic deals with?”

“It provides a variety of services in the field of fertility—dysfunctional obstetrics.”

“A variety of services?”

“Yes. Hollywood provides an intriguing range of clientele for them. For example, a female celebrity, obsessed with fame, for whom heterosexuality offers no charms, but who nevertheless feels that the … illusion of normality requires that she conceive … also, she wishes to recreate herself, to achieve biological immortality. Well, they are in a position to assist her. To provide a suitable donor, with the proper genetic antecedents, in order that she might bear, might be
seen
to be bearing, a child. And it’s achieved without the nasty physicality of coitus.”

“Wonderful for the kids, I’ll bet.”

“That’s how Hollywood breeds actors. Psychopaths, emotionally traumatized children, predators—Hollywood thrives on them. Trust me, I’ve seen them up close.”

Man. Hollywood. Beau was leaving it tonight, if he could.

“And Gall? You said he had a problem. What was it?”

“Edward’s sperm count was low. There were several treatments available. They had every chance of a normal conception.”

“I saw the card he had, from the clinic.”

“Yes. He was admitted in March, and they gave him the card because they were monitoring his sperm count, to see if it was responding to treatment.”

“How does this connect with my case?”

“Well, the clinic is also funded for research. They have a wonderful range of talents and resources. The community here … there is a great deal of money. And a certain sense of dynastic obsession seems to develop here, in the film community and the older families as well. They place a lot of importance on continuing the line—and improving it.”

“And the Sonesta Clinic helps them.”

“That’s their service. They’re in a position, because of their independence from federal funds, to pursue lines of inquiry that are closed to more traditional organizations.”

Beau considered the man carefully. “Why are you telling me this?”

The doctor’s heavy face rose up on his neck, as if against a psychic resistance.

“I have a terminal condition. As do we all. I treat myself, and I prescribe certain palliatives that are not usually available to the general public.”

“How long do you have?”

He shrugged. “When Edward was in for treatment, he—Edward was a very inquisitive boy. He wanted to do a documentary on this whole phenomenon of fertility treatments. I think his instincts were more journalistic than cinematic. Offshore has a documentary branch, Hologram. Edward became very interested in the research and development operations of the clinic.”

“And he found something?”

“They acquire materials for their researches. I believe that Edward found something there that disturbed him.”

“What do you think that was?”

“From what little he was prepared to say, I inferred that it was something on paper. A connection. It was something he found in a box containing research materials.”

“What kind of materials?”

“I’ve told you all I can about them. You can’t get to them anyway. Nobody can, not in this city.”

“Where do they get these … materials?”

“They say they operate in conformity with ‘industry ethics.’ They say they are doing nothing illegal. But the public … there are understandable instinctual taboos.”

“Against what?”

“These matters are far too complex to examine here. And you don’t have the time, Sergeant.”

“I can get real interested in this. A lot of very weird things are happening in Montana, and now you’re telling me that it’s connected to this clinic, and I know there’s a clinic in Montana involved. So it looks like I could get the FBI
very
interested. So let’s cut the bullshit and start straight here. You help me, and I’ll help you.”

“There’s no help for me. And as far as the FBI is concerned, you wouldn’t get past the district attorney. You’d be on a plane back to Montana by nightfall.”

“I doubt that.”

“You don’t understand Los Angeles. Los Angeles lives on the surface of things. Any organization that provides prolonged health, or drug therapy, or the promise of offspring in the face of every biological obstruction, those institutions are the life-blood of this city. The Sonesta Clinic is an intrinsic part of the community here. I doubt very much that the political infrastructure here would allow any indictment to go forward that would result in profoundly revealing disclosures about the community. There are forces here, much older and far more influential than the film community. Most people think of Los Angeles as an entertainment center. But before that, there was water, and land, and oil. And now there is a valuable technological base, weapons, aerospace, the software industries. This is a very rich and very powerful town.”

“Bullshit. If what I think is happening is
really
happening—we’re talking about fetal tissue, about stealing dead babies for research. That’s a situation … nothing could stop the law from running something like that down, no matter where it went.”

Dr. Sifton shook his head slowly. “You still don’t have the picture, Sergeant. And anyway, I wish merely to advise you as to what is possible and what is not, within the context of Los Angeles. As a police officer, you must have run into situations like this. Montana’s not the moon. Power is still power.”

“Did Edward tell
anyone
?”

“Yes. He told the old man who was living with them.”

“Jubal Two Moon? Did Jubal believe him?”

“Obviously they took it seriously. You saw them.”

“When’s the last time you saw Edward?”

“About a month ago. I treated him for wounds. He had become mildly septic, and I gave him some antibiotics.”

“Did you treat the wounds?”

“Of course. I recognized them for what they were.”

“And what was that?”

“I think you know, Sergeant. A ritual, a kind of purification ceremony. Prior to battle or struggle. Many of the Plains tribes used it. It’s called a Sun Dance.”

There was a long silence in the car. The old man’s breathing was short and labored. Beau realized that he was in pain.

“Doctor, why tell me all this?”

“I feel responsible.”

“Why? Because you turned him on to the clinic?”

“No. The clinic does what is required of it by the real world. Power manifests itself and sees to its conclusions. No, I think a casual barb sometimes cuts very deep. I said something to a man last week, I think that man may have … I may have set something loose that was better restrained.”

“Are you talking about Gabriel Picketwire?”

“Yes. He was injured. I was treating him for a small tortion. I was on the set, and he interested me. He’s a very interesting man. There are few of his kind left in the world. Sometimes, under the influence of my injections, I develop a certain detachment. I wanted to see what this animal could do. Have you ever gone to see the big cats, at a zoo?”

“No, but I’ve seen them in the mountains.”

“Free, then?”

“Yes.”

“Then you wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“I wanted to set it free.”

“Why? Pity?”

“No, nothing so admirable.”

“What then?”

The doctor heaved and relaxed again. His hands were locked together in his lap, the knuckles white. Beau could feel the pain in the old man, a cold chill consuming him cell by cell.

“I suppose … to look the animal in the face. To see it without the glass wall. To watch it in action.”

“Watch it do what?”

Beau’s cellular phone began to shrill. Beau picked it up as the doctor smiled and opened the car door. Heat and hard
white light flowed over him. Silhouetted, his face in darkness, he waved a languid hand and stepped out of the car.

“Go back to Montana, Sergeant. See for yourself.”

The door slammed shut. In the cold leather interior of the car, Beau felt the phone vibrate in his hands, and the shrilling bell hurt his ears. A massive tiredness settled over him. He keyed
SEND
and put the phone to his ear.

“McAllister.”

“Beau. This is Eustace.”

“Hello, Eustace. I don’t like L.A. Can I come home now?”

“No, you can’t. Listen, I talked to Bucky Blitzer. You were right. He
did
hear that joke from the Wozcylesko kid. I need to know where you are right now!”