Occultation (3 page)

The cook was an impeccable Hungarian named Gertz, whom Campbell had lured, or possibly blackmailed, away from a popular restaurant in Santa Monica. In any event, Gertz knew his business. 

Partridge slumped on a wooden stool at the kitchen counter. He worked his way through what Gertz apologetically called “leftovers.” These included sourdough waffles and strawberries, whipped eggs, biscuits, sliced apples, honey dew melon and chilled milk. The coffee was a hand-ground Columbian blend strong enough to peel paint.  Beasley slapped him on the shoulder and said something about chores. 

Partridge was sipping his second mug of coffee, liberally dosed with cream and sugar, when Nadine sat down close to him. Nadine shone darkly and smelled of fresh cut hayricks and sweet, highly polished leather. She leaned in tight and plucked the teaspoon from his abruptly nerveless fingers. She licked the teaspoon and dropped it on the saucer and she did not smile at all. She looked at him with metallic eyes that held nothing but a prediction of snow.

“And…action,” Nadine said in a soft, yet resonant voice that could have placed her center stage on Broadway had she ever desired to dwell in the Apple and ride her soap and water sex appeal to the bank and back. She spoke without a trace of humor, which was a worthless gauge to ascertain her mood anyhow, she being a classical Stoic.  Her mouth was full and lovely and inches from Partridge’s own. She did not wear lipstick.  

“You’re pissed,” Partridge said. He felt slightly dizzy. He was conscious of his sticky fingers and the seeds in his teeth.

“Lucky guess.”

“I’m a Scientologist, Grade Two. We get ESP at G-2. No luck involved.”

“Oh, they got you, too. Pity. Inevitable, but still a pity.”

“I’m kidding.”

“What… even the cultists don’t want you?”

“I’m sure they want my money.”

Nadine tilted her head slightly. “I owe the Beez twenty bucks, speaking of. Know why?”

“No,” Partridge said. “Wait. You said I wouldn’t show—”

“—because you’re a busy man—”

“That’s the absolute truth. I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger.”

“I’m sure. Anyway, I said you’d duck us once again. A big movie deal, fucking a B-list starlet in the South of France. It’d be something.”

“—and then Beasley said something on the order of—”

“Hell yeah, my boy will be here!—”

“—come hell or high water!”

“Pretty much, yeah. He believes in you.”

Partridge tried not to squirm even as her pitiless gaze bore into him. “Well, it was close. I cancelled some things. Broke an engagement or two.”

“Mmm. It’s okay, Rich. You’ve been promising yourself a vacation, haven’t you? This makes a handy excuse; do a little R&R, get some
you
time in for a change. It’s for your mental health. Bet you can write it off.”

“Since this is going so well… How’s Coop?” He had noticed she was not wearing the ring. Handsome hubby Dan Cooper was doubtless a sore subject, he being the hapless CEO of an obscure defense contractor that got caught up in a Federal dragnet. He would not be racing his classic Jaguar along hairpin coastal highways for the next five to seven years, even assuming time off for good behavior. Poor Coop was another victim of Nadine’s gothic curse. “Condolences, naturally. If I didn’t send a card…”

“He
loves
Federal prison. It’s a country club, really. How’s that bitch you introduced me to? I forget her name.”

“Rachel.”

“Yep, that’s it. The makeup lady. She pancaked Thurman like a corpse on that flick you shot for Coppola.”

“Ha, yeah. She’s around. We’re friends.”

“Always nice to have friends.”

Partridge forced a smile. “I’m seeing someone else.”

“Kyla Sherwood—the Peroxide Puppet. Tabloids know all, my dear.”

“But it’s not serious.”

“News to her, hey?”

He was boiling alive in his Aspen-chic sweater and charcoal slacks. Sweat trickled down his neck and the hairs on his thighs prickled and chorused their disquiet. He wondered if that was a massive pimple pinching the flesh between his eyes. That was where he had always gotten the worst of them in high school. His face swelled so majestically people thought he had broken his nose playing softball. What could he say with this unbearable pressure building in his lungs? Their history had grown to epic dimensions. The kitchen was too small to contain such a thing. He said, “Toshi said it was important. That I come to this…what? Party? Reunion? Whatever it is. God knows I love a mystery.”

Nadine stared the stare that gave away nothing. She finally glanced at her watch and stood. She leaned over him so that her hot breath brushed his ear. “Mmm. Look at the time. Lovely seeing you, Rich. Maybe later we can do lunch.”

He watched her walk away. As his pulse slowed and his breathing loosened, he waited for his erection to subside and tried to pinpoint what it was that nagged him, what it was that tripped the machinery beneath the liquid surface of his guilt-crazed, testosterone-glutted brain. Nadine had always reminded him of a duskier, more ferocious Bettie Page. She was thinner now; her prominent cheekbones, the fragile symmetry of her scapulae through the open-back blouse, registered with him as he sat recovering his wits with the numb intensity of a soldier who had just clambered from a trench following a mortar barrage.

Gertz slunk out of hiding and poured more coffee into Partridge’s cup. He dumped in some Schnapps from a hip flask. “Hang in there, my friend,” he said drolly. 

“I just got my head beaten in,” Partridge said.

“Round one,” Gertz said. He took a hefty pull from the flask. “Pace yourself, champ.”

Partridge wandered the grounds until he found Toshi in D-Lab. Toshi was  surveying a breeding colony of cockroaches:
Pariplenata americana
, he proclaimed them with a mixture of pride and annoyance. The lab was actually a big tool shed with the windows painted over. Industrial-sized aquariums occupied most of the floor space. The air had acquired a peculiar, spicy odor reminiscent of hazelnuts and fermented bananas. The chamber was illuminated by infrared lamps. Partridge could not observe much activity within the aquariums unless he stood next to the glass. That was not going to happen. He contented himself to lurk at Toshi’s elbow while a pair of men in coveralls and rubber gloves performed maintenance on an empty pen. The men scraped substrate into garbage bags and hosed the container and applied copious swathes of petroleum jelly to the rim where the mesh lid attached. Cockroaches were escape artists extraordinaire, according to Toshi.

“Most folks are trying to figure the best pesticide to squirt on these little fellas. Here you are a cockroach rancher,” Partridge said.

“Cockroaches…I care nothing for cockroaches. This is scarcely more than a side effect, the obligatory nod to cladistics, if you will.  Cockroaches…beetles…there are superficial similarities. These animals crawl and burrow, they predate us humans by hundreds of millions of years. But…beetles are infinitely more interesting. The naturalist’s best friend. Museums and taxidermists love them, you see. Great for cleaning skeletal structures, antlers and the like.”

“Nature’s efficiency experts. What’s the latest venture?”

“A-Lab—I will show you.” Toshi became slightly animated. He straightened his crunched shoulders to gesticulate. His hand glimmered like a glow tube at a rock concert. “I keep a dozen colonies of dermestid beetles in operation. Have to house them in glass or stainless steel—they nibble through anything.”

This house of creepy-crawlies was not good for Partridge’s nerves. He thought of the chair and the woman and her tarantula. He was sickly aware that if he closed his eyes at that very moment the stranger would  remove the mask and reveal Nadine’s face. Thinking of Nadine’s face and its feverish luminescence, he said, “She’s dying.”

Toshi shrugged. “Johns Hopkins…my friends at Fred Hutch…nobody can do anything. This is the very bad stuff; very quick.”

“How long has she got.” The floor threatened to slide from under Partridge’s feet. Cockroaches milled in their shavings and hidey holes; their tick-tack impacts burrowed under his skin.

“Not long. Probably three or four months.”

“Okay.” Partridge tasted breakfast returned as acid in his mouth. 

The technicians finished their task and began sweeping. Toshi gave some orders. He said to Partridge, “Let’s go see the beetles.”

A-Lab was identical to D-Lab except for the wave of charnel rot that met Partridge as he entered. The dermestid colonies were housed in corrugated metal canisters. Toshi raised the lid to show Partridge how industriously a particular group of larvae were stripping the greasy flesh of a small mixed-breed dog. Clean white bone peeked through coagulated muscle fibers and patches of coarse, blond fur.

Partridge managed to stagger the fifteen or so feet and vomit into a plastic sink. Toshi shut the lid and nodded wisely. “Some fresh air, then.”

Toshi conducted a perfunctory tour, complete with a wheezing narrative regarding matters coleopteran and teuthological, the latter being one of his comrade Howard Campbell’s manifold specialties. Campbell had held since the early ’70s that One Day Soon the snail cone or some species of jellyfish was going to revolutionize neurology. Partridge nodded politely and dwelt on his erupting misery. His stomach felt as if a brawler had used it for a speed bag. He trembled and dripped with cold sweats. 

Then, as they ambled along a fence holding back the wasteland beyond the barn, he spotted a cluster of three satellite dishes. The dishes’ antennas were angled downward at a sizable oblong depression like aardvark snouts poised to siphon musty earth. These were lightweight models, each no more than four meters across and positioned as to be hidden from casual view from the main house. Their trapezoidal shapes didn’t jibe with photos Partridge had seen of similar devices. These objects gleamed the yellow-gray gleam of rotting teeth. His skin crawled as he studied them and the area of crushed soil. The depression was over a foot deep and shaped not unlike a kiddy wading pool. This presence in the field was incongruous and somehow sinister. He immediately regretted discarding his trusty Canon. He stopped and pointed. “What are those?”

“Radio telescopes, obviously.” 

“Yeah, what kind of metal is that? Don’t they work better if you point them at the sky?”

 “The sky. Ah, well, perhaps later. You note the unique design, eh? Campbell and I…invented them. Basically.”

“Really? Interesting segue from entomological investigation, doc.”

“See what happens when you roll in the mud with NASA? The notion of first contact is so glamorous, it begins to rub off. Worse than drugs. I’m in recovery.”

Partridge stared at the radio dishes. “UFOs and whatnot, huh. You stargazer, you. When did you get into that field?” It bemused him how Toshi Ryoko hopscotched from discipline to discipline with a breezy facility that unnerved even the mavericks among his colleagues. 

“I most assuredly haven’t migrated to that field—however, I will admit to grazing as the occasion warrants. The dishes are a link in the chain. We’ve got miles of conductive coil buried around here. All part of a comprehensive surveillance plexus. We monitor everything that crawls, swims or flies. Howard and I have become enamored of astrobiology, crypto zoology, the occulted world. Do you recall when we closed shop in California? That was roughly concomitant with our lamentably over-publicized misadventures in New Guinea.”

“Umm.” Partridge had heard that Campbell and Toshi disappeared into the back country for three weeks after they lost a dozen porters and two graduate students in a river accident. Maybe alcohol and drugs were involved. There was an investigation and all charges were waived. The students’ families had sued and sued, of course. Partridge knew he should have called to offer moral support.  Unfortunately, associating with Toshi in that time of crisis might have been an unwise career move and he let it slide.
But nothing slides forever, does it?

“New Guinea wasn’t really a disaster. Indeed, it served to crystallize the focus of  our research, to open new doors…”

Partridge was not thrilled to discuss New Guinea. “Intriguing. I’m glad you’re going great guns. It’s over my head, but I’m glad. Sincerely.” Several crows described broad, looping circles near the unwholesome machines. Near, but not too near.

“Ah, but that’s not important. I imagine I shall die before any of this work comes to fruition.” Toshi smiled fondly and evasively.  He gave Partridge an avuncular pat on the arm. “You’re here for Nadine’s grand farewell. She will leave the farm after the weekend. Everything is settled. You see now why I called. ”

Partridge was not convinced. Nadine seemed to resent his presence—she’d always been hot and cold when it came to him. What did Toshi want him to do? “Absolutely,” he said.

They walked back to the house and sat on the porch in rocking chairs. Gertz brought them a pitcher of iced tea and frosted glasses on trays. Campbell emerged in his trademark double-breasted steel-blue suit and horn-rimmed glasses. For the better part of three decades he had played the mild, urbane foil to Toshi’s megalomaniacal iconoclast. In private, Campbell was easily the dominant of the pair. He leaned against a post and held out his hand until Toshi passed him a smoldering cigarette. “I’m glad you know,” he said, fastening his murky eyes on Partridge. “I didn’t have the nerve to tell you myself.”

Partridge felt raw, exhausted and bruised. He changed the subject. “So…those guys in the suits. Montague and Phillips. How do you know them? Financiers, I presume?” 

“Patrons,” Campbell said. “As you can see, we’ve scaled back the operation. It’s difficult to run things off the cuff.” Lolling against the post,  a peculiar hybrid of William Burroughs and Walter Cronkite, he radiated folksy charm that mostly diluted underlying hints of decadence. This charm often won the hearts of flabby dilettante crones looking for a cause to champion. “Fortunately, there are always interested parties with deep pockets.”

Partridge chuckled to cover his unease. His stomach was getting worse. “Toshi promised to get me up to speed on your latest and greatest contribution to the world of science. Or do I want to know?”