Blood Test (22 page)

Raoul would march till he dropped.

I’d always considered him a touch manic. Perhaps as
manic at the core as Richard Moody, but more generously endowed intellectually
so that the excess energy was channeled honorably. For the good of society.

Now, too many failures had converged upon him: the
Swopes’ rejection of treatment, which, because he lived his work, was seen as a
rejection of
him
, an atheism of the worst sort. The abduction of his
patient—humiliation and loss of control. And now, death, the ultimate insult.

Failure had made him irrational.

I couldn’t leave him there but didn’t know how to get
him out.

Before either of us could speak, the sound of
approaching footsteps punctuated the silence. Houten peered into the cell, keys
in hand.

“Ready, gentlemen?”

“I’ve had no luck, Sheriff.”

The news deepened the worry lines around his eyes.

“You’re choosing to stay with us, Dr.
Melendez-Lynch?”

“Until I’ve found my patient.”

“Your patient isn’t here.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Houten’s mouth tightened and his eyebrows lowered. “I’d
like you out of there, Dr. Delaware.”

He turned a key, held the door barely open and kept a
watchful eye on Raoul as I slipped through.

“Good-bye, Alex,” said the oncologist with a martyr’s
solemnity.

Houten spoke to him in clipped cadence.

“If you think prison is fun, sir, you’re going to
learn different. I promise you that. In the meantime, I’m getting you a lawyer.”

“I refuse legal services.”

“I’m getting you one anyway, Doctor. Whatever happens
to you is going to be by the book.”

He turned on his heel and stomped away.

As we left the jail I caught a last glimpse of Raoul
behind the bars. There wasn’t any good reason for me to feel unfaithful, but I
did.

HOUTEN MADE a phone call out of earshot. Ten minutes
later a man in shirtsleeves showed up and the sheriff came forward to greet
him.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice, Ezra.”

“Pleased to help, Sheriff.” The man’s voice was soft,
modulated, and even.

He looked to be in his late forties, medium-sized but
sparely built, with a scholar’s stoop. Everything about him was compact and
neat. The smallish head was covered with thin salt-and-pepper hair combed
straight back. The ears were elfin and close set. His facial features were
regular but too delicate to be handsome. His short-sleeved white shirt was
spotless and, despite the heat, free of wrinkles. His khaki trousers seemed
freshly laundered. He wore rimless octagonal eyeglasses and carried a clip-on
case for them in his breast pocket.

He looked like a man who never perspired.

I stood up and he appraised me mildly.

“Ezra,” said Houten, “this is Dr. Delaware, a
psychologist from Los Angeles. Came all the way down to take back the one I
told you about. Doctor, meet Mr. Ezra Maimon, the best lawyer in town.”

The neat man laughed gently.

“The Sheriff’s engaging in a bit of hyperbole,” he
said and held out a thin callused hand. “I’m the
only
attorney in La
Vista, and the cases I usually work with are made of wood.”

“Ezra owns a rare fruit nursery just out of town,”
explained Houten. “Claims he’s retired but we still get him to do a bit of
lawyering from time to time.”

“Wills and small estates are comparatively simple
matters,” said Maimon. “If this turns into criminal defense you’ll have to
bring in a specialist.”

“That’s all right,” Houten twirled one of his
mustaches. “This is no criminal case. Yet. Just a little problem, like I told
you over the phone.”

Maimon nodded.

“Tell me the details,” he said.

He listened quietly and impassively, turning once or
twice to smile at me. When Houten was through, the attorney placed a finger to
his lips and gazed up at the ceiling, as if doing mental arithmetic. After a
minute of silent contemplation he said, “Let me see my client.”

He spent half an hour in the cell. I tried to kill the
time by reading a magazine for highway patrolmen until I found that it
specialized in graphic photoessays of fatal road wrecks accompanied by detailed
descriptions of the vehicular horrors. I couldn’t imagine why those who
witnessed such carnage as part of their daily routine would be attracted to a
photographic reprise. Perhaps it provided distance—the true solace of the
voyeur. I put the magazine aside and contented myself with watching W. Bragdon
read about alfalfa culture while he picked at his cuticles.

Finally a buzzer rang.

“Go in and get him, Walt,” ordered Houten.

Bragdon said yessir, left, and came back with Maimon.

“I think,” said the attorney, “we may be able to reach
a compromise.”

“Run it by me, Ezra.”

The three of us sat around one of the desks.

“Dr. Melendez-Lynch is a very intelligent man,” said
Maimon. “Perhaps overly persistent. But not, in my opinion, at all malicious.”

“He’s a pain in the butt, Ezra.”

“He’s been a little overzealous in his attempts at
fulfilling his medical obligations. But, as we all know, Woody’s deathly ill.
Dr. Melendez-Lynch feels he has the means to cure him and he sees himself as
trying to save a life.”

Maimon spoke with quiet authority. He could have acted
as Houten’s mouthpiece but instead seemed to be functioning as a true advocate.
I didn’t think it was for my benefit and I was impressed.

Houten’s face darkened with anger.

“The boy’s not here. You know that as well as I do.”

“My client is an empiricist. He wants to see that for
himself.”

“No way is he going near that place, Ezra.”

“I agree with you. That would be inviting trouble.
However he did agree to Dr. Delaware’s conducting a search of the Retreat.
Promised to pay his fines and leave without a fuss if the good doctor finds
nothing suspicious.”

It was a simple solution. But neither Houten nor I had
come up with it. He, because his appetite for concession wasn’t hearty in the
first place and he’d already had his fill. And I’d been too overwhelmed by
Raoul’s fanaticism to think straight.

The sheriff digested it.

“I can’t force Matthias to open the place up.”

“Of course not. He has every right to refuse. If he
does we’ll reapproach the problem.”

An eminently logical man.

Houten turned his attention to me.

“What about it? You up for it?”

“Sure. Whatever works.”

Houten went into his office and returned saying
Matthias had okayed the visit. Maimon had another talk with Raoul, buzzed, was
retrieved by Bragdon and left, telling the sheriff to call him if he was
needed. Houten put on his hat and absently touched the butt of his Colt. He and
I climbed down the stairs and out of the building. We got into a white El
Camino decaled on the door with the sheriff’s star. He gunned the engine, which
sounded super-charged, and turned right in front of city hall.

The road forked a half mile out of town. Houten headed
right, driving quickly and smoothly, accelerating around turns that would have
given a stranger pause. The road narrowed and grew dim in the shadows of
bordering conifers. The El Camino’s tires churned up dust as it sped past. A
jackrabbit in our path froze, quivered, and bounded into the shelter of the
tall trees.

Houten managed to pull out a Chesterfield and light it
without reducing speed. He drove another two miles, sucking in smoke and
surveying the countryside with a cop’s scanning eyes. At the top of a rise he
turned abruptly, drove a hundred feet, and braked to a stop in front of a pair
of black-painted arched iron gates.

The entrance to the Retreat was unlabeled as such.
Prickly mounds of cactus squatted at the outer edges of both gates. A tide of
electric pink bougainvillaea flowed over one of the abode gateposts. A single
climbing rosebush awash with scarlet blooms and studded with thorns embraced
the other. He turned off the engine and we were greeted by silence. And all
around, the deep, secretive green of the forest.

Houten stubbed out his cigarette, dismounted the
truck, and strode up to the entrance. There was a large columnar lockbox
affixed to one gate, but when he pushed the iron door, it swung open.

“They like it quiet,” he said. “We’ll walk from here.”

An unpaved path lined with smooth brown stones and
meticulously barbered beds of succulents had been excised from the forest. It
climbed and we moved briskly, the pace set by Houten. He hiked rather than
walked, muscles swelling through the tautness of his slacks, arms swinging by
his sides, military fashion. California jays squawked and fussed. Large fuzzy
bees nuzzled up to the labia of wildflowers. The air smelled meadow-fresh.

The sun bore down relentlessly on the unshaded path.
My throat was dry and I felt the sweat trickle down my back. Houten seemed as
crisp as ever. Ten minutes of walking brought us to the top of the road.

“That’s it,” said Houten. He stopped to pull out
another cigarette and light it in the shelter of cupped hands. I mopped my brow
and gazed down at the valley below.

I saw perfection and it unnerved me.

The Retreat still looked like a monastery, with its
towering cathedral and high walls. An assortment of smaller buildings sat
behind the walls and created a maze of courtyards. A large wooden crucifix
topped the belfry of the churchtower, a brand burned into the azure flanks of
the sky. The front windows were leaded and supported by wooden balconies. The
roofs and the tops of the walls were layered with red clay tile. The walls were
fresh vanilla stucco splashed dove white where the sun hit. A great deal of
care had been taken to preserve the intricate moldings and borders scored into
the stucco.

A running brook circled the compound like a moat.
Above it floated an arched viaduct that bled into a brick pathway at the point
where solid ground reasserted itself. The path was hooded by a stone arbor
caressed by tendrils of grape vine, ruby clusters of fruit ponderous amid the
green leaves.

To the front of the compound was a small patch of lawn
shaded by ancient gnarled oaks. The big twisted trees danced like witches
around a fountain that spat into an enormous stone urn. Beyond the buildings
were acres of farmland. I made out corn, cucumbers, groves of citrus and olive,
a sheep pasture and vineyards, but there was plenty more. A handful of
white-garbed figures worked the land. Heavy machinery buzzed wasplike in the
distance.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” asked Houten resuming the hike.

“Beautiful. Like out of another time.”

He nodded. “When I was a kid I used to climb around
the hills, try to get a peek at the monks—they wore heavy brown robes no matter
how hot it got. Never talked to anyone or had anything to do with folks in
town. The gates were always locked.”

“Must have been nice growing up here.”

“Why’s that?”

I shrugged.

“The open air, the freedom.”

“Freedom, huh?” His smile was abrupt and bitter. “Farming
is just another word for bondage.”

His jaw set and he kicked at a rock with sudden
savagery. I’d hit some kind of nerve and quickly changed the subject.

“When did the monks leave?”

He sucked on his cigarette before answering.

“Seven years ago. The land went fallow. Scrub and
brambles. Couple corporations thought of buying it—executive resort and all
that—but all of ‘em backed out. The buildings weren’t suited to it—rooms like
cells, no heat, looked like a church any way you cut it. The cost of renovation
would have been too high.”

“But perfect for the Touch.”

He shrugged.

“Something for everyone in this world.”

The front door was rounded at the top, a slab of stout
boards braced by wide iron bands. Inside was a three-story white-walled
entrance floored with Mexican pavers and skylit from above. A smear of color
reflected from the stained-glass windows rainbowed the tiles. The spicy aroma
of incense suggested itself. The air was cool, almost to the point of
refrigeration.

A woman in her sixties sat at a wooden table in front
of a pair of oversized doors that were rounded and banded like the one out
front. Above them was a wooden sign that said SANCTUARY. The woman’s hair had
been tied back in a ponytail and fastened with a leather thong. She wore a sack
dress of raw white cotton and sandals on her feet. Her face was weathered,
bland and pleasant, and free of makeup or other pretense. Her hands were in her
lap and she smiled, reminding me of a well-behaved schoolchild. The teacher’s
pet.

“Good afternoon, Sheriff.”

“Hello, Maria. Like to see Matthias.”