Vitals (26 page)

They wanted my help, but what could I do? What were they up against? How could they possibly win? It all was piling up on my shoulders, and I did not know what my final decision should be.

The Rottweilers were still leaping and barking. "It's all the fuss and the people," Marquez said. "They'll get over it. They always do." He walked over to the cage and tried to calm them, but all three dogs went into a spinning frenzy. Two of them, hefty bitches, chewed at the wire, spit flying through the links onto the concrete. Marquez backed off with a dismayed smirk and stuck his hands in his pajama pockets.

Cousins approached from behind. The dogs caught his scent. The male started rolling around in his separate cage, gnawing at his paws, eyes rolling. I tried to get one of the bitches to come to the wire, but she ignored me and barked madly at Cousins.

"Who feeds the dogs?" I asked.

"Why?" Marquez said with a defensive look.

21-3

Cousins suddenly got it. "Oh, my God," he said. "Joe, who feeds them?"

"Sometimes Tammy or me, sometimes the bodyguards."

"Where do the bodyguards come from?" I asked, kicking myself for not seeing it earlier.

"A security firm in Van Nuys. They rotate out every other day," Marquez said.

Cousins took Marquez's arm and they backed away from the cages. The dogs settled down a little but watched them with keen interest. "Let's go into the house," Cousins said.

Inside, Cousins told Marquez the bodyguards would have to leave the compound. We couldn't trust them. Marquez paced around the living room, orating one long and monotonous apology, flinging his arms, swearing at his stupidity.

Watching him was the final straw.

I approached Cousins and said quietly, "This isn't Oz, this is Kafkaville. Banning isn't the only loon here."

The guards made Marquez sign a special form that their firm would not be held responsible, then piled into a black Nissan SUV and rolled off down the road, through the main gate.

Tammy took Marquez off to bed.

I peered into the theater, waiting for Cousins. The circus was still frozen on the big screen. The room was quiet and peaceful. None of it, on the screen or off, seemed real.

Cousins came back and closed the theater door.

"Looks hopeless, doesn't it?" he said.

"When did you guys meet?"

"Six months ago. Marquez had worked with Banning on an idea for a war movie, before Banning was tagged. When Tammy showed up

2 I 4

last year, Marquez called Banning to get his opinion. Not long after that, Banning called me."

"That is a remarkable string of coincidences," I said.

"All roads lead to people who make movies," Cousins said mildly. "Believe me, in Los Angeles, there are very few genuine coincidences. Before you go, let me show you what we've got on our side. What I'm working on. Might change your mind."

"I really don't think I want to see any more," I muttered, a little ashamed. "I might compromise your operation."

Cousins sighed. "Loot at us," he said. "We're amateurs. If you can't help us, it's time to give up. And that means ... well, you can guess. But I'll understand if you want to just get the hell out. Give me ten more minutes of your time, then I'll escort you down to the gate myself."

I followed him around the east side of the house, down a flight of steps and through a side entrance, below the level of the lawn, into the basement.

Cousins flicked on a light switch. There was a bright white room down there, like something in a hospital, with expensive-looking equipment, microscopes, refrigerators, ovens. Equations and sketches of molecules covered a white board on the wall. Off to one side stood a sunlamp, in the corner a small bath and shower stall, and beyond the benches, several stools and an easy chair.

"Is this where you made the stuff you fed me?"

"It is," he said.

"And you?" I asked. "Are you susceptible?"

"Yes. But I've been experimenting with myself over the last few years, in the interests of living longer. Before I knew about Silk, I altered my own gut bacteria and some of my cellular characteristics. Unwittingly, I gave myself some immunity. Now it's all I can do to stay just one step ahead of Silk."

"They know where you are," I said.

I I'll

Cousins made a wry face. "I thought Marquez's paranoia made this place ideal,"

I let that pass without comment. Civilians rarely know the best places to hide or whom to trust with their lives. "What about Banning? What do you know about him? He brings you all together, he provides the catalyst that unites all these people who could be dangerous to Silk. Have you ever considered the possibility that he's some sort of henchman or decoy?"

"I've thought about it," Cousins said. "It's not impossible. But I don't think it's him." His face loosened a little, sad, then thoughtful. "My wife, maybe."

"You're afraid of your wife?"

"We're getting divorced. I got suspicious. Lots of little things."

"Shit." Nastier and nastier. I rubbed the back of my neck and stretched, looking around the setup in the basement. "How long have you been working on your vaccines?" I asked.

"Six months."

"And how long has Silk been out there?" I had already done the math, I was making a point.

"Seventy years, maybe."

I held up my hands as if surrendering. "These guys have been scouring channels and making contacts, creating their little operatives, breaking trails of subversion, for seventy years. That's way outside my league. No, thanks. Pardon me, boys, but that's the fucking Chattanooga ChooChoo."

Cousins stared at me sadly. "I know we have a chance," he persisted. "We can't just let it all go!"

Tammy opened the basement door and poked her head in. "Interrupting?" she asked.

"Not at all," I said, dropping my hands and walking off. I did not want that woman in the room, not when I had made my decision, when my instincts told me to get the hell out and fast. Something

melted in me when she was near. Not even Janie had evoked such a reaction, and that made me angry.

"I put Joe to bed. He sleeps like a baby." She sighed and closed the door behind her. She had put on a block-print caftan, warmer and almost able to conceal her shape. "He is sensitive about Jews, especially with Mr. Banning. He does not understand."

"Tammy didn't finish her story," Cousins said. "Maybe now's the time?"

"I can guess," I said.

Tammy stood beside Cousins. They both looked at me expectantly.

"Tammy saw Golokhov," I said. "That's what this is all about. He's Goncourt, isn't he?"

Tammy rewarded me with a sad, lovely smile.

"We're pretty sure," Cousins said.

"He'd have to be, what, a hundred years old by now?"

"Closer to a hundred and five."

"And you want me to help you do something in the Bahamas."

Cousins looked me straight in the eye. "Eventually. If you're up to it."

"I tell why I leave Philippe?" Tammy inquired.

Cousins nodded.

"Yeah," I said, giving up. It had been a very long day. Surely there was a point to it all.

"I was ill in Los Angeles just after Philippe and I arrived. Something inside, turistas"

"Theme of the day," I said dryly.

"There was a banquet. Fancy hotel, beautiful people, from Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, China, Puerto Rico, Las Vegas, Bahamas, Disneyland. I became sick in our big room. Philippe was angry, he wanted to show me off, but what can he do?" Her voice was so exotic, a touch sad, with unpredictable up beats and downbeats. Just achingly beautiful. "I don't know it, but I am coming out of their control."

"Hardy constitution, tough on out-of-town bacteria like Gon court's," Cousins said. "From living in the slums. That's my guess."

Tammy rubbed her eyes and peered dramatically, demonstrating new insight. "I suddenly see the room, the city, all different. It is like suddenly losing faith in God, you know? But it is a big city, I am afraid, I know nobody and nothing. I go with Philippe to another hotel, the Beverly Hilton. He introduces me to a woman. The woman is blond, beautiful, tall. She is with two shorter men I do not know, but they also have the look of circus performers. I think of them as the Gray Men. Philippe says they represent Goncourt in California and the West Coast."

"Runners," Cousins said.

"He tells me he is going to leave me with the Gray Men, and they will train me." Her face wrinkled in revulsion. "Leave me In a strange town, away from my family!"

"The bastard," I said.

"The two men ask Philippe how obedient I am. The blond woman acts as if I am a dog or a cat. Obedience is essential, Philippe tells me. We are a cell in LA, and we do important work for Dr. Goncourt. It is a fabulous life, he says, you go everywhere, sneak around in the dark. The Gray Men say I will become like them, masters of being inconspicuous."

I wondered how she could ever be inconspicuous.

"They will teach me all the necessary skills, even how to kill without touching."

I heard a low, choppy rumble outside. Not like thunder. No windows in the basement. My neck hairs twitched.

"I escape the next morning," Tammy said. "I hang out on the streets, at YWCA, until I am picked up by Beverly Hills police. I tell them my story. I tell them it is about drugs, and maybe it is. Then, two, three people help me, I am lucky. One of them is a psychiatrist, she knows Joe. Joe's house is isolated. Secure. Nobody bad will find me."

She dropped her shoulders and her chin, then looked at the far

wall, the white board with the cryptic writing. "I remember the codes," she said. Before she could explain that, Cousins interrupted.

"There's no escape, really," Cousins said. The hollowness in his voice was startling. He sounded like a ghost. "Think about it. What can they force people to do? Anything. Who can they touch? Anybody, anywhere. Jesus, I'd like to make them know how it feels." He lifted his fist and swung at empty air. "Smash them right in the fucking nose."

The low-level noise--a harsh, distant whickering--was at first familiar and even welcome. My heart thumped in unison with the slicing blades, so like the rush of angels' wings to an old jungle warrior. But that hope didn't last for more than a couple of seconds.

I wasn't in the bush.

"What is it?" Cousins asked.

I had been working over Marquez's challenge some more. How would I breach his security, invade his fortress? Like most civilians, he had made the basic assumption that there are boundaries in life, that what you've never experienced and can't imagine just won't happen.

Marquez had neglected air superiority. I pointed my finger up. "Listen."

Tammy cocked her head.

"It's just a helicopter," Cousins said. "Probably on its way to

LAX."

By then, the sound of two, maybe three choppers, blades laying down rhythm to a steady turbine roar, would have drowned out my voice anywhere but in the basement.

"They're too close," I said. "Flying formation."

"Police?" Cousins said, but he didn't believe it.

I opened the outside door. Cousins stood with me in the doorway in the early-morning coolness. Behind us, Tammy busied herself moving things around. I knew without looking what she was doing. She was piling up furniture and hiding.

Cousins and I started up the steps, me first. Without thinking, at the grind of a new and terrible noise, like Satan clearing his throat, I dropped into a crouch. Cousins nearly fell over me.

My body recognized that awesome roar. I hadn't heard it in over thirty years, and it was still supreme: the air-ripping, saurian bawl of the gun that kills a village.

I lifted my head over the edge of the concrete retaining wall. Three AH-1 SuperCobras, Marine Corps jobs, little more than silhouettes in the deep gray dawn, snooted their floods down on the next house along the ridge. The first chopper's thirty-millimeter cannon bawled again, followed by the second, then all three opened up on the house and the grounds. Braaaappp-Roarrr-hum-buzz-ROARRR and red tiles flew up in spinning fragments. Hundreds of shells per second carved away the roof. Walls flapped and curled like surgically sliced tissue. The swimming pool erupted in a thousand geysers.

A figure in a white nightgown ran over the grass and just turned red. She seemed to disappear, like a chicken leg down a garbage disposal.

I said something to Cousins, I don't remember what. Even in Vietnam the damn gunships chopping up the paddies and hamlets had made me cry, and these were infinitely worse. Here I was, thirty years later, sobbing like a child.

The third Cobra pushed back a few dozen yards and went to work on the house below the cliff. I could not see the destruction but I could hear it.

The floodlights on our lawn went dark.

"Not now," I said. Don't let them know you're here.

The guns stopped. Cousins poked his head up next to mine. We squatted in the well outside the door.

Marquez ran out on the grass in his pajamas, a gnomish shadow against the glow from the valley. "What the fuck?" I heard him shout.

The house on the next lot had caught fire. A flare of natural gas shot up like a giant Bic lighter.

Marquez straightened and held out his arms, mesmerized by the spectacle. Not good to live a life of movies. Everything is special effects, nothing seems real.

"It's a mistake," Cousins said. I knew what he meant. The pilots i had screwed up.

Just as he spoke, all three of the gunships backed off, hesitated for a few long, loud seconds, as if checking their maps, Aw shit.

They yawed right like three toys on sticks, pitched their noses down, and flew right at us.

IMPERIAL VALLEY -AUGUST 10

Lissa drove. We didn't speak until we were on 5 heading south through the long valley.

"Don't look at me that way," she said. "He would have shot you."

"Who in hell was he?"

"He had a gun."

I was still in shock.

"I couldn't stand seeing you both get shot," Lissa said.

We stopped at the Spanish Baron's Ranch House Inn to eat. We hadn't had dinner and it was 10:00 P.M. Rain left big clean splatters on the windshield. The air smelled wet off the asphalt in the parking lot and I realized I was happy just to be alive.