Anonymous Rex (18 page)

But beneath this is a passbook to First National Bank, and it seems that Dr. Nadel has been making deposits as of late. To be more precise, he’s been making deposits as of December 28, three days after Raymond McBride was found dead in his office, and then sporadically throughout the past year, and it is these numbers that match up with those in the notebook. The 6800, for example, represents $6,800 that was deposited in this account last December, the $3,200 coming a few months afterward. Now the only thing is to figure out the letters. DREV. I don’t see any deposit dates directly around the time of Ernie’s death—the closest is thirty-nine days after I got the news—though with diligent study, I’m sure a pattern will emerge.

But I’m sure as hell not gonna do my studying here. I pack up my new belongings, lock the file cabinets, and head back into the lobby, up the stairs, and down the hallway just in time to slip into a niche and watch a frazzled Wally entering the morgue to explain to Mr. Little that his dear Myrtle has, in the last ten hours, stepped down off her gurney and walked away, that she has somehow defected from death.

A
n unexpected and sudden lack of basil has left my body herbfree for over three hours, and despite the occasional stab of withdrawal pains radiating from deep within my chest, I am pleased to find the cobwebs in the corners of my mind clearing themselves away. I have no particular desire to remain this level-headed for any longer than necessary, but while it lasts I might as well get in some good and heavy thinking:

Without a doubt, there’s Judith and Raymond and Sarah Archer and that thing from the alley—all of this deserves more than a moment’s thought—but if I want to get back to the heart of the matter, I’ve got to begin at the beginning, if only to justify the expense account. I’ve got to start back at the Evolution Club.

Nightclub owner Donovan Burke was dating Metropolitan Council representative and all-around American gal Jaycee Holden, who then disappeared without a trace on a crowded subway platform, leaving her distraught lover to search fruitlessly for her throughout the northeastern United States. Fact. Donovan Burke then fled New York City and his failed romance for the quiet, simple, small-town values of Los Angeles, where he set up shop in a nightclub that burned to the ground despite a team of trained firefighters and eight thousand gallons of water. Fact. During this fire, Donovan Burke risked life and limb by staying inside the nightclub even as the flames
were licking his body. Fact. And now a bit of conjecture: Donovan Burke, beset by troubles of the heart, was not particularly attached to this world.

A flashback to the conversation with Judith McBride, and her assessment of Donovan and Jaycee’s relationship: “Donovan and Jaycee were very much in love,” she told me yesterday, “but infertility can change a couple in ways you can’t imagine.” Perhaps Donovan had given up on the whole shebang. Perhaps he set the fire as a grand suicidal gesture. Perhaps he’d had enough of the guising and the lying and the pain from knowing that he’d never be with the one he loved. Two different worlds and all that jazz.

And here’s where the aforementioned clearheadedness comes in handy. Judith McBride told me that the doctor who was treating Donovan and Jaycee, the one who allowed Donovan to hold out hope that they could beat the system that had served us so well for three hundred million years, the geneticist whose experiments might someday indeed make possible a Raptor-Coleo mix, was none other than Dr. Emil Vallardo.

Dr. E. Vallardo.

Dr. E. V.

DREV.

And so it is that an hour later, after a horrendous traffic jam on Park Avenue that made rush hour in Los Angeles look like the open plains of Montana, I find myself in Dr. Emil Vallardo’s private office, awaiting the arrival of the doctor himself. Even if my amateur cryptography of Nadel’s notes about DREV are way off, this is as good a place to start as any. Vallardo—the Spin Doctor, as they called him back in Council meetings because of the rumor that he used centrifuges in his race-mixing experiments—may have no pertinent information to bring to the case, but Ernie always taught me that nothing is coincidence. If a name pops up more than once, it’s a name that begs to be checked.

Dr. Vallardo is out of the facility right now, or so the receptionist told me, but he’ll be back any minute. After a stylish wash and blow-dry of charm by yours truly, the secretary was kind enough to offer me a seat in the doctor’s private office, and though I have a strong feeling that Dr. Vallardo won’t approve of her decision, I’m much happier
planting my rear in this cushioned leather recliner than sweating it out on those hard vinyl benches in the waiting room. At the very least, I can take this time to peruse the multitude of diplomas and certificates lining the wood-paneled walls. Unfortunately, all it serves to do is make me feel intellectually inferior.

Undergraduate work at Cornell. Big deal. I knew a Stegosaur who went to Cornell and now he’s working on cars for a living. Okay, he’s designing them, but still … Medical degree, specializing in obstetrics, from Johns Hopkins. Overrated. Oh, and a Ph.D. from Columbia in genetics. See, the problem is, this guy’s got too many letters after his name—Emil Vallardo, M.D., Ph.D., OB-GYN. Doesn’t ring half as nice as Vincent Rubio, PI. Mine sounds infinitely cooler, and would certainly make a hipper TV show.

“I so rarely entertain visitors,” comes a voice from behind me, tinged with an accent, no doubt, though I can’t figure out exactly which one. It’s a European bouillabaisse. “The scientific life is a lonely one, yes?”

“Know all about it,” I reply.

Dr. Vallardo, a big, beefy beast with a big, beefy grin, envelops my proffered hand in his and pumps my arm like an auto jack. His left hand is not as strong; it trembles madly, a victim perhaps of spot palsy. “Good to meet you,” he says, and maybe there’s some Dutch in there? His scent, a stew of anisette, pesticides, and cleansing creams, doesn’t give me any clues as to his origin. “Would you like a coffee? Soda? Mineral water? Yes, yes?”

I beg off the drinks, though my throat is a little parched. “I’m a private investigator from LA,” I tell him, and he nods rapidly, his shoulders hunching into peaked hills. “I have a few questions, won’t take long.”

“Yes, yes, so Barbara said. I’m more than happy to help out with … official matters, as always.” The grin spreads wider, and—Lord have mercy—I do believe it is genuine. “Where should we begin?”

“Your work here … fascinating. Perhaps we should start with your experiments.”

“My experiments.”
Which of the millions?
his tone implies.

“Yes. Your
experiments
.” Hard accent on the last word.

“Ah, yes. My
experiments
. Yes, yes.”

I love speaking in vague generalities. It’s much better exercise for the brain than simple, direct conversation. Dr. Vallardo squinches his nose—perhaps taking in a whiff of my old Cuban stogie scent—and plops into the seat behind his desk.

“There is no need to couch our terms. You may speak freely in here, Mr.… ”

“Rubio. Vincent Rubio.”

“As I was saying, Mr. Rubio, we may be open in this office. Soundproofed, for various reasons. Yes, yes. Even if we were out in the hallway, we might speak freely. All of my support staff are … of our kind, and though I will see the occasional human obstetrics patient, most of my clients are dinos as well.”

“Your receptionist—”

“Barbara.”

“An Ornithomimus?”

He applauds, his cheeks rippling in genuine delight. “Yes! Yes! Very good! How did you know?”

“Part smell, part hunch. Get ’em all the time.”

“Aha! Very nice. Very nice. Allow me to venture a guess …” He sizes me up, eyes roving, and if he says I’m a Compy, case be damned, I’ll have to kill him. “You are no Sauropod, that is evident. Perhaps … a Chilantaisaur?”

He’s flattering me, while at the same time acknowledging that I am not the grandest thing he’s ever seen. Chilantaisaurs were the largest of the large, massive sentient mountains with decidedly little brain matter. One of the few species of dinosaurs to survive the Great Showers but die out before the Age of Man, the last Chilantaisaur passed into the great beyond nearly two million years ago. His name was Walter; at least, Walter is the closest English pronunciation to the series of whoops and roars he would have been known by in days of yore. Walter’s remains, preserved these eons by sharp dino archivists, can be found on display in the anteroom of World Council headquarters in Greenland. I was there only two years ago, and let me tell you, that Walter is one fortunate Chilantaisaur to have died out when he did. He would have had a hell of a time outfitting himself in the modern era, let alone finding anything to slim down those hips.

Dr. Vallardo amends his guess, correctly assuming that I am a Raptor. Then, getting back to the subject, he says, “So you want to know about my experiments. You don’t happen to be a Council member, do you?”

“I was.”

“Yes?” Distrust now, and a whiff of dislike.

“Stress the past tense,” I say. “This is unrelated, I assure you. Nothing we discuss will be forwarded to them.”

“I see,” says Dr. Vallardo, and for the first time, I notice a crack in that cheery façade. Then it’s back up again, all smiles and chuckles. “No problem whatsoever. Always happy to oblige. Yes, yes.”

I stand, move behind my chair. It’s time to check out the laboratory. “Shall we?”

He didn’t expect this so soon in the interview. Flustered, he clambers to his feet. Triceratops, as a rule, are not the swiftest of our kind, but Dr. Vallardo is moving more lethargically than his race would indicate. “Is there a problem?” I ask.

“No problem,” says Vallardo, his body alternately moving toward the door and toward his intercom. “I am unprepared to leave the office, that is all.”

“Unprepared?”

“I have … men. Dinos. They follow me.”

Oh no. “Are you saying that you’re being followed?” The last thing I need is another case with a paranoid schizophrenic for a witness—don’t ask, don’t ask.

Vallardo chuckles, shakes his head. “I want them to follow me, Mr. Rubio. For lack of a better term, they are my bodyguards.”

Since when does a doctor need bodyguards? “Since when does a doctor need bodyguards?”

“Since the Council leaked the first report on my genetics work,” he says, more than a hint of condemnation snaking between each word. “Some members of the dino population were not pleased with my results.”

Quickly, then, almost as if he doesn’t mean to do it, Dr. Vallardo pulls aside the collar of his shirt and bares a long, wide scar, still healing, an obvious claw mark to those who know how to spot these things. “This is the most recent attack,” he says. “A female Raptor
who screamed that I was a sinner even as she was reaching for the death blow. A sinner, she called me. In this day and age. Yes …”

Releasing any Council-gathered information before an official decision has been made, and before the subject of the investigation can be notified, is a strict no-no, and though I had heard that someone on the NYMC was guilty of lip-flapping, I’d had no idea it had come to this. Once again, I assure the Nobel shortlist geneticist that there is no way that the Council will ever release any information he sees fit to give me this day. I do not tell him that this is because I would sooner live the rest of my life as an outcast than rejoin that group of hypocrites.

A few moments after Vallardo buzzes his receptionist, we are joined by two Brontosaurs in human guise, introduced to me as Frank and Peter. Their costumes designate them as twins, and so far as I can tell from their comparable enormity, they may very well have been actual littermates as well. The evolutionary process that shrank the rest of us dinosaurs into somewhat manageable heights—some of us too manageable—didn’t have as much an effect on Brontosaurs, resulting in their current status as the largest dinosaurs on earth. It is no wonder that so many of them play for the National Football League.

Our quartet ready, we set out for the laboratory.

Dr. Vallardo’s assigned area inside the Cook Medical Center is deceptive in its size, a tricky optical illusion. At first glance, it is nothing more than a pedestrian suite, comprised mainly of the waiting room, a few examining rooms, and his private office. But through a sliding door behind Barbara’s counter, down a claustrophobic hallway, and beyond a series of key-coded metallic portals, lies a budget-busting research center that renders obsolete anything I have ever seen on
Star Trek
.

I am appreciably awed, and Dr. Vallardo does not seem surprised. “Yes, yes, I can see you like it,” he says. Pulling at my arm now, his own excitement feeding off mine in a synergy of anticipation, Dr. Vallardo draws me farther into the heart of the operation. Frank and Peter, unmoved, follow right behind.

Aside from the buzzing and the beeping and the whooshing, aside from the spinning and the shooting and the swirling, aside from the
beakers and the test tubes and the flasks, I am most taken aback by the scientists. Dozens of them, over a hundred, lined up in rows, bent at the waist like plastic straws, eyes attached to microscopes, to petri dishes, to seed samples. Chalk up one work-intensive environment. It’s Manny’s, only higher-tech and with better air-conditioning.