Trifecta (40 page)

S
tephan and Alexander Steinbrenner were awakened
at the godawful hour of six a.m.  An obnoxiously cheerful nurse opened the drapes
to stunning sunshine and told them to rise and shine.  The blinding light felt like
the sun was drilling directly into their brains.  The nurse left smiling cheerfully.

After she had gone, Alexander pulled the pillow off of
his head and muttered to his brother, who was blinking stupidly in the sudden light,
"We are in hell."

Both burly men were still in bad-ass moods after barely
three hours of sleep and having had uncomfortable bouts of trying to turn over with
casts on their legs.  Of course, it was worse for Stephan because he could not move
with both of his legs broken.  He had wrenched a back muscle while attempting to
turn over during sound sleep.  Even more demeaning, both men had had to use bed
pans, as they had virtually no independent mobility.

"Hell,"  Stephan agreed, nodding miserably.

"We're supposed to be at that deposition in a couple
of hours.  We can postpone it.  Get the sympathy vote, anyway, when we go in with
casts and crutches."

"I won't be on crutches.  I'll be riding a goddamn
wheel chair,"  Stephan snarled angrily.  It was normal for him to wake up cranky,
and as the picture materialized of future months with him immobilized in a chair,
he got into a totally despairing, crushing mind set.  After all, he had been leading
his new girl to the date this Friday night.  She would have finally succumbed. 
It was a no-miss situation, and he just bet that fucking with two broken legs would
be impossible.

A skinny man dressed in a white lab coat, pushing a shiny
metal dolly, came into the room without knocking, surprising the brothers.  The
tray on top had a plethora of nasty, sharp looking instruments and some skinny rubber
tubes.

"I'm your nurse, Teddy,"  the emaciated man said.

"What's all that stuff?"  Alexander said, eyeing
the tray with suspicion.  "Torture implements?"

Stephen looked at the man and decided the guy was not going
to touch him.  The 'nurse' was skinny enough to have some kind of nasty, filthy
disease.

Teddy smiled at Alexander and said, "Only your basic
injections for infections."  He laughed merrily at his own rhyme.

"Just you wait a minute.  I want to see my doctor. 
I don't need any injections,"  Alexander objected.

"Scared of a little pin prick?"  Teddy smirked.

"What are the rubber tube things for?"  Stephan
asked.

"Expanding the veins.  We wrap them around the arm
to help locate them.  But your's won't need popping.  You work out with weights?"

As he was talking the nurse was moving rapidly, picking
up a syringe, taking off the cellophane covering, and tapping it lightly with a
finger.  He quickly moved to Stephan, who was in the near bed, totally immobile,
and picked up his arm.  The needle was in the vein in a second.

"See? Doesn't hurt a bit."

Stephan's credo was, when in doubt be macho, so he said,
"Sure,"  and tried not to wince as the liquid went into the vein, but
he couldn't watch and averted his gaze.  The second shot stung but he didn't utter
a word.  Alexander, seeing his brother take the shots, decided protesting would
appear wimpy. 

Teddy was a talkative type and while he gave Alexander
his shots, he said, "You two got special treatment.  Guard outside your door
and everything."

"Yeah.  Real special,"  Alexander said sarcastically
as the injection struck home painfully.  He wondered what was going on.  A guard?
The guy must be mistaken.

When Teddy left with a smile and "Ta, ta,"  both
men bravely told the other that they hadn't felt a thing.

The breakfast experience wasn't much better.  An orderly
came in, again without a knock, adjusted trays over the beds and cheerfully presented
sticky oatmeal, watery fruit cocktail and cold toast with hard pats of butter to
tatter it.

Next, the doctor came in, and with the embarrassing help
of two nurses, got Alexander into a standing position so he could be measured for
crutches.  It was bad enough wearing the smocks that they gave patients to sleep
in, which were totally open in the back.  Now Alexander was sure that the nurses
got a good shot of his backside when they helped him out of bed.  The whole hospital
experience was humiliating beyond belief.

Stephan was given a pamphlet showing different styles of
wheel chairs.  He insisted on a motorized chair designed like a miniature golf cart. 
The doctor protested that Stephan might like to get upper-body exercise from a manual
type chair, since he would be sitting for a few months, but Stephan wanted the expensive
job and insisted on it.

Just as Stephan and Alexander were finally lying back and
dozing a young, pimply, lank haired, gum popping, Candy Striper, came in with a
trolley and presented reading material.  The brothers rolled their eyes at each
other.  The goddamn people in this place were so fucking cheerful.  Both men picked
some magazines, just to get rid of the nuisance of having the girl chatter at them. 
They tried to doze again, but the noise from the corridors kept them awake, so finally
Alexander turned on the television and Stephan picked up one of the magazines. 
It was 7:30 a.m.  and both men were exhausted.

"I can't take much more of this."  Stephan was
flipping the pages of a magazine.

"Me neither,"  Alexander said, concentrating
on the news.

"Goddamn woman's magazine,"  Stephan said.  "And
an old one, at that."  He threw it on the floor and picked up another used
magazine.  He flipped pages and then stopped, transfixed on one of the advertisements. 
"We got her!" Stephan said excitedly.

"Who?"

"The girl the computer was cloned to.  Look," 
Stephan said, and held out the decrepit magazine.  "She's a model."

"I can't see,"  Alex complained.  "Throw
it over."

Stephan rolled up the magazine and threw it.  The pages
flew open and it landed on the floor.  Neither man could reach the magazine, so
they rang repeatedly for the nurse.

"Fuck.  When you don't want 'em they come in, and
when you do, they won't,"  Alexander said peevishly.

When they finally got the slow moving nurse in the room
and she had the magazine, they insisted she show Alexander a picture of a car with
a girl walking by it. 

The girl was pretty if you like the emaciated look, the
chubby nurse thought to herself, but she wondered what the nasty lawyers were so
excited about. 

When the nurse left she heard one of the men calling the
editorial staff of the magazine, impatiently asking who the girl was.  The nurse
walked past the guard on the way out of the room.  Maybe the police were afraid
the creeps would be murdered by the same person who had broken their legs.

Alexander went through a dozen phone calls.  He finally
got the advertising department for the magazine.  Then he got hold of the Pontiac
headquarters back East and found out who did their advertising layouts three years
ago and called the firm.  He finally had the modeling agency.  The agency proved
reluctant to tell Alexander the name of the women, until he told them that he was
a designer and wanted to use her in some fashion advertisements.  They said that
they would be glad to send over several of their wonderful models.  They did not
know if Sabrina Miller would be available, but they would try to find out.

Alexander wrote down the name and then began buzzing the
nurse for a telephone book.

"Did you hear that? Great way to meet girls!"
Alexander enthused, explaining what had transpired over the phone.

"Sure,"  Stephan said moodily.  "We get
the perfect scheme to meet women, and I have two broken legs."

"We could get them up to the office,"  Alexander
went on excitedly, "for interviews.  Get numbers.  Tell them we'll call when
we make a choice.  If we do it right, we'll have dates for years."

"You really are a shit,"  Stephan commented.

"Oh, hell.  What's the matter with you, anyway?" 
Alexander asked.  He thought that Stephan was a little morbid in his depression
this morning.

"Nothing."

The nurse came in and was ordered to get a phone book. 
She took her sweet time, but Alexander found Sabrina Miller right away.

Then Stephan, in his usual pessimistic style, went into
a monologue.  "It might be difficult to obtain the computer.  If she doesn't
want to go with us, even if she's been programmed to obey, she could do much more
physical damage to us.  We can't risk a gun.  A gun might really kill her, even
if she is supposed to have regenerating abilities." 

Alexander was finally absorbing Stephan's mood.  Another
problem was telling the two women apart.  Ferd said they looked exactly alike, so
what if they took the wrong one? Not that it mattered much.  They planned to kill
the girl anyway, so that computer could take her place.  Then no one would ever
suspect that the woman was really a computer and they could get on with their numerous
and profitable schemes.  After that they would sell her to the highest bidder. 
Their friend in Defense, whom Alexander had talked to about possible uses for the
computer, had been very interested.  Let them bid against Hashimoto, one of the
wealthiest men in the world. 

Alexander lay back to scheme.  Maybe the government would
make an army of super-computers.  It was a little awesome to think of what the government
would do with such an army, though, so first they would make use of the computer's
abilities to increase their wealth. 

Alexander thought he would go to the tanning salon and
take pictures of the equipment.  Then, even if his dad would not cooperate with
the government and tell them how he had made the computer, he could sell the pictures
for an enormous sum to the low bidder.

Another thought was to destroy the machinery.  Then they
would have the one and only human computer, because Alexander knew that his father,
Ferd, did not have much faith in the government and would probably never give them
the specifications.  Right now it was a one-of-a-kind, which made it much more valuable
than if it was just one of many to be made in the future.

Alexander knew he would have to go and tell his dad that
they really never really intended to kill Sabrina Miller.  Not that it mattered
much.  Ferd would want to believe, so he would.  And it might be a good thing that
Ferd was in the hospital.  At least it gave him access to the machines, to take
the pictures, something he was sure his father would never let him do otherwise.

Alexander rang the bell for the nurse to find out the earliest
time that they could leave this miserable place.  When he found out that it would
be later that afternoon, when Stephan's wheelchair arrived, he thought he had better
face the music and go visit his father.  Anyway, he wanted to practice on his crutches,
so he found out where the intensive care ward was located and crutched in that direction.

Cedars Sinai is such an enormous hospital that Alexander
got lost several times.  He was almost glad.  Even being a lawyer, a professional
at arguing, Alexander knew he always ended up at a loss with his father.  For such
a little guy, his father could be formidable.

Soon Alexander was confused and, since he was dyslexic,
totally turned around.  He had to ask for directions several times, but he finally
found the intensive care ward and went to the nursing station.  He demanded to see
the doctor handling his father's case.  The nurse checked a file.  Then she looked
at him over half-rim glasses and whispered confidentially, "Do you know that
the most famous cardiologist in the whole world has been specially flown here to
take care of Dr. Steinbrenner.  And he has a guard outside his room.  Is your father
famous or something?"

Alexander stood with his head cocked to the side and did
not answer immediately.  When he had left his own hospital room there had been a
man sitting outside the door.  The man did not have on a uniform of any kind, just
a business suit.  But the nurse, Teddy, had said the man was a guard. 

If Alexander hadn't been so confused and lost in the hospital
he wouldn't have noticed where people were going, but he had been looking for someone
to help him and had seen the same guy several times.  When you're dyslexic you are
constantly turning around to try and find your nonexistent sense of direction. 
Each time he had seen the same man.  He thought he was being paranoid.

Alexander furtively scanned the area.  He spied the man
he had seen several times previously sitting across the lobby of the nursing station. 
He had covered his face with a magazine. 

Alexander was shrewd, if not as intelligent as his father,
and all the pieces were suddenly fitting together.  He was stunned.  If he and his
brother really had government surveillance, they would have an awful time with their
own loss of mobility.  When he and Stephan tried to take the computer they would
be leading the government directly to her.  If they went to dad's place they would
be leading the agents there.  Although, if there was this careful a watch on the
three of them, the place was probably already under surveillance.

Alexander felt betrayed by his old college dorm-mate, now
in the Defense Department.  He had called him back the night they first saw the
computer, that fat fleshy thing that resembled a human whale, to tell him that the
computer had died and could no longer be a special weapon for the government. 

One of his best friends had evidently sicced a bunch of
spies on his family.  It was a frightening and dangerous situation.  And it would
totally interfere with his plans.  The government would not ask; they would take
the computer.  All three of them, he, Stephan and Ferd could end up in prison for
using a human baby in an experiment.  Then the government could do what it pleased
with the computer and no one would be the wiser.