The Pressure of Darkness (31 page)

The world hears about a new strain like SARS or bird flu, and reacts with trepidation. However, the minute the immediate threat has been eradicated, everyone in the press goes back to sleep; however, the medical community does not.

The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta sends out flu-season requests for reports on any fresh or seemingly aberrant strains of virus. Doc had recently seen one posted in the cafeteria at USC Medical Center, where he occasionally assisted the Pathology department with computer-generated disease vector demonstrations and audio-visual presentations.

Doc chews his lower lip, fishes in his pocket and palms a pair of Percodan. He washes the painkillers down with ice water. He is giving some serious thought to contacting the CDC directly and e-mailing them a detailed file on what he has thus far. But he doesn't want to get fired. The Assistant ME, a Nisei named Miyori, is known for his refusal to share credit with subordinates. Doc realizes all too well that he is endangering his career by disobeying orders. Going around Miyori without offering to share credit will be tantamount to writing a letter of resignation.

Doc leans back, closes his eyes and waits for the pills to take effect. As the drugs begin to increase the production of Dopamine in his brain, Doc comes, with great reluctance, to the logical decision. He unlocks his chair, steers it back to the computer keyboard with a slight whir, and sends his annoying boss a carefully worded e-mail.
RE: HOMELESS FEMALE. FOUND SOMETHING ODD IN BLOOD SAMPLE. POSSIBLE NEW STRAIN INFLUENZA. NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU SOONEST, JEFFERSON.

Doc rubs his head, wonders if he's goofed. Hey, what's done is done. He guides his wheelchair back to the electron microscope and resumes his work with renewed energy.

FORTY-ONE

Burke drifted down the hospital corridor like a wraith. As usual, the facility was nearly deserted. As he turned the last corner he heard sloshing and what sounded like faint, high-pitched squealing over toy drums: a scowling young janitor with massive, gym-rat arms was mopping the floor. The kid wore headphones and had a CD player strapped to the waist of his overalls. He did not look up.

Burke paused, placed his fingers gently on the pale green metal door as if expecting to feel a positive change in her condition. His stomach muscles knotted and invisible fingers seized his throat. He entered the room.

Mary Kelso Burke, supine under starched white covers that were rolled down to her absurdly thin waist; her cold, white, blue-veined arms were flat against the wizened body, fingers curved like talons. A vague hissing and clicking was all that kept this room from feeling like a morgue. This machine managed her breathing and kept hope alive. Burke approached, went down on one knee, and gently kissed her right hand.

"Hello, sweetheart."

Hello
, he heard it, the sound breeze-faint and carried on the upper tones of this chirping, impersonal machine. Burke kept his eyes squeezed shut, willed his heart to keep on believing.
She answered me. She always does.
But the logical side of him knew better.
She's gone, she's gone.
It fought back, and this time it seemed to be winning.

I miss you, Jack
. But then she didn't really say that. Or did she?

"I miss you, too."

"She looks like she has lost more weight."

A man's voice, from right behind him. Burke jumped back from the bed and sprang to his feet in one fluid motion. Before he pulled a weapon, his mind identified the speaker. Somehow it seemed appropriate. It was time for this confrontation to take place; in fact, it was long overdue. Burke turned to face Harry Kelso, father of his comatose wife. The Einstein look-alike, a soft-spoken blue collar man, stood leaning on the storage cabinet. He was nearing seventy, weathered visage giving ground, but the wide eyes were bright, alert and intelligent. "You've been avoiding me, Jack."

Burke pulled his chair away from the window. He reversed it and sat facing his father-in-law. "I suppose I have, Harry."

"There's no change."

"That's not true," Burke replied. He wanted his voice to sound convinced, but there was something fragile and foreign crackling there, like the surface of a thin sheet of ice. "She spoke to me the other day, just a word or two, but she spoke to me."

Harry Kelso's eyes moistened. In that moment it was impossible not to love him. "No, Jack. You imagined it, heard what you wanted to hear. I ought to know because I've done that myself."

"It was only a word or two, but I heard her."

"In your mind, not aloud."

Jack Burke lowered head to hands. "Harry, I can't do it."

"We have to. It's time to let her go."

Burke felt hot tears coursing down his cheeks. He loathed himself for such an involuntary expression of weakness. "Why are you in such a hurry?"

Harry Kelso touched his shoulder. "I'm in no hurry, Jack. She has been brain dead for over two years now, nothing has changed. And this is something Mary said she never wanted to have happen. You know that as well as I do. She would hate being like this."

And Kelso was crying, too. He moved away and leaned against the storage cabinet before continuing. "I had her when I was half-way to fifty, remember? Hell, no man wants to bury his own child, but I never figured to live long enough to see grandchildren. The last thing I expected . . ." His voice trailed off, words winding down to entropy.

Neither man wanted to articulate the harsh and hurtful flash of a manufactured memory they both shared:
they are on vacation and Mary is driving down an icy road, coming back from seeing a friend higher in the mountains, alone in the car in that freak snowstorm. She is trying to call home on her cell phone when the truck appears, looming like a dinosaur in the dense fog. Mary is screaming and spinning out on the frozen highway, maybe thinking of how much she loved one or both of them until the lights went out and most of her mind died
. . .

"It's time."

"No."
Because Jack Burke is no longer in the hospital, he is back in the snow, holding her body, rocking it and himself
. . .

Harry Kelso had crossed the room now, come closer to touch him again. Burke opened his eyes. "I should have been there and we both know it, Harry. I took a job I didn't need to take just because I was bored, or I would have been there with her when it happened. Maybe I would have been driving. Maybe I could have . . ."

Harry Kelso grunted. "Jesus, boy. You mean you haven't stopped playing the 'maybe' game yet? Everyone does, but the truth is, what is . . .
is
. And the rest is bullshit."

Burke wiped his eyes. "I have to go, Harry. I have something I need to take care of, and it could get heavy."

Kelso did not know the details of his son-in-law's work, but he knew that it was clandestine and often dangerous. "You saying goodbye?"

"Maybe. Could be."

Kelso nodded. "Long as you are alive, you have the legal right to decide if Mary stays or goes. Something happens to you, it's my choice."

"I understand."

"Even with that, I pray you come back okay."

"I know, Harry."

"But please think on it some more, kid. She would loathe being like this, brain fried, always in a coma. I can't allow it to go on much longer. Neither can you. Think."

"I know. I do. I will."

FORTY-TWO

Gina Belli sits quietly in Nicole Stryker's home office. She is using every dirty trick she knows. Using codes provided by Major Ryan, she has hacked into the database of VISA Credit and is searching for any numerical combination that might lead her to the real owner of the specific card used to rent the adjoining suite at the Universal Sheraton. Gina is operating on the assumption that the card, which is a brilliantly constructed fake, was created by combining the real names and numbers from two disparate accounts into one new, almost legal identity.

"Gina?" Nicole Stryker, at once comforted and disturbed by her presence, keeps offering refreshment. "How about some coffee?"

Gina mollifies her. "Sure. Black." She returns to work, but Nicole remains in the doorway like an expectant puppy. "Something on your mind?"

"How long have you worked with Jack Burke?"

"Too long. He's a pain in the ass."

"I heard that."

The two women smile, although clearly for different reasons. Gina softens a bit. "Let it go, girlfriend," she says, finally. "He's been in love with somebody else for a long time, now."

"Who?"

"Does it matter? It's not you, that's all. Let it go."

"I see." Nicole's pretty features grow pinched. She nods rapidly and turns away before the hurt can show. "Black, right?"

"Black." Gina slowly goes back to the computer screen, feeling a sudden, odd sadness deep in her chest. The numbers from one account, the names and identification information from another, and yet the Visa database failed to catch the fraud. Somehow, someway, the creators of this new identity managed to fool a very sophisticated system. Gina wants to know how it was done, and by whom. She works quietly, diligently. She is only vaguely aware of the passage of time . . . and completely unaware of the man who stands in the shadows across the street from Nicole's home, watching her through the open window. He is a muscular man with heavily tattooed arms.

FORTY-THREE

Scotty Bowden was the Homecoming King, also the dude voted "Most Likely To Succeed." Hell, he was also the college quarterback who would have made the pros if he hadn't blown out a rotator cuff during his senior year at Arizona State. The Cardinals gave him a tryout anyway, but they cut him before the start of the season. That's how he ended up joining the Army. Now he sits in a strip bar drinking beer and wondering how his promising life has dwindled down to this, gone from excellent to tawdry.

This is Darwin's Delight, Bowden's second favorite hangout. It's a bump and grind in an industrial area located out near the Burbank Airport, situated so businessmen traveling through won't have to strain the brain too much in order to find a lap dance between flights or right after their dinner meeting. Stella Starr has just done her thing on the round wooden stage, figuratively and literally, masturbating against the chrome-plated pole that seems to hold up the ceiling. Bowden's ears are still ringing from the DJ's speakers and some generic turkey of a rap song.

The kid calls out: "Give it up for Stella," and feeble applause follows. There are a handful of other losers scattered around the cheesy, Vegas-style bar. Bowden doesn't look them over; they mind their own business. The DJ takes a break and the sweet and sour odor of marijuana wafts across the room. Bowden doesn't react, just smokes a Camel. Once you break one law, the next comes easier. He stares down into his overflowing ash tray like he's trying to read somebody's future in it, perhaps his own.

Right now, like so often lately, he's going up and down his life, peeking into corners with a lit match, seeking out the major turning points. Every man reads his life backwards from time to time:
how did all that come to this?
But Scotty Bowden figures he might soon hold a patent on self-pity. It all started fumbling with bras in the back seat of his car, quick doggie-style humping under the night sky in his old, rag-top Mustang. He seemed bottomless then, could handle liquor like some kind of automaton and never act drunk or make a fool of himself, not really. Damn, he'd get up the next morning with a fresh hard-on and a headache and run five miles. That Scott Bowden was immortal, invulnerable, and even somewhat admirable.

This Scotty Bowden feels old, beat up and increasingly ashamed.

That Scotty aced his physical and mental exams for Special Forces and blew through Hell Week with a barely disguised smirk. He talked back and took a beating without ever giving up his pride. The first Scotty Bowden saw eight combat missions in and around Somalia and collected human ears on a bloody string of leather. He was young, tough and bad.

This middle-aged man is dented, aching and scared shitless of dying.

This is not my story,
Scott Bowden thinks miserably.
I'm half way to dead and living some other fool's life.

Bowden is waiting for Lacey, the pole dancer. In fact, he has booked her for a 'private dance,' the local euphemism for a dry-humping, tits-in-the-face lap dance in the back room. After five lukewarm beers, some watered-down scotch, the dance and a blowjob, Bowden will be out yet another hundred and fifty bucks he cannot afford. Still, that's how it's going down. Some weeks you just can't win for losing. The DJ in the back of the room stumbles back to his equipment and plays an antique seventies disco hit. Bowden finishes his beer and reads the dirty jokes on the napkin. He finally places the moaning, groaning singer as Donna Summer.

"Fuck me, it stinks in here."

Bowden looks up and to the right. Bud Holm sits down heavily on the next bar stool. Holm is a desk jockey who had been a homicide dick in South Central, back in the day. Bowden barely disguises his annoyance about having his contemplations so rudely interrupted. He ventures a jibe. "They fuck you, it's bound to stink worse."

Holm whistles for the topless waitress, a vacuous bovine who goes by the name of Holly. All the girls here give fake names. Bowden finds that both sad and funny. Some can't even keep their own stage names straight from one week to the next.

"Babe, a beer and a shot!"

Holly takes the order without missing one chew of her bubble gum. She relays it to the surfer-dude bartender, who couldn't look any more bored if he were a gay gynecologist.

"You off duty, Scotty?" Holm has the kind of personality booze doesn't improve. "Me, I was sort of in the neighborhood."

Yeah, right.
Instead, he drones: "I pulled a double, so now I've got forty-right free."

"You believe those fucking Packers, man? They laid out Minnesota last week like they was a bunch of girl scouts playing soccer."