Necropolis (22 page)

Nicole waggled a finger at Crandall. “You had me very worried, Doctor.” She turned to me. “Hey, Donner.”

“Ms. Struldbrug.”

“Nicole, please. We’re all friends here.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

“Brought along your talking mannequin, I see.”

Maggie flinched.

“Nicole,” I said. “Why are you here?”

“Now, baby, that was
my
line.” She sashayed toward us. I moved forward to meet her. The outer lab was a less confined space. If things went south I’d want as much room as possible. Crandall and Maggie stayed close behind.

“If you’d wanted to see the lab,” said Nicole, “all you had to do was ask.”
 

“I did. Dr. Gavin doesn’t like me very much.”

She flicked cold eyes at Crandall, then past him to the open vent. “Been hiding in the walls, have we, doctor? I suppose you consider that clever.” She ran a finger across the man’s grizzled jaw. He flinched at her touch, as I had done. “Welcome back.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Crandall whispered.

She didn’t even bother to feign hurt or shock. “I’ve been trying to save you.”

“Like you saved Smythe? And Hakuri?”

Nicole tapped her shoe impatiently. “Why would I kill my own scientists? Especially when they’re on the verge of a
breakthrough
?” To me: “You believe me at least, don’t you?”

“I’ll believe you a whole lot more if you tell your boys to lower those guns.”
 

“Do you like them? The outside is vintage 1928AC, the inside is pure plasma.”

“Impressive. Planning to use them?”

“We’ll see how the evening develops.”
 

As if on cue, the security men moved forward in lockstep. The snouts of their Tommy guns raised to chest level.
 

She’d heard us talking. Enough, at least, to know we’d discovered Retrozine.
 

“Don’t do anything rash, Nicole.”

“Sorry, baby, can’t hit the brakes now. Pedal to the metal, that’s my motto.” She withdrew a cigarillo from an enameled case and lit it with a matching lighter. The smoke hung next to her like a thought balloon. She was debating her options.

So was I. I didn’t like any of them.

Then she noticed Crandall staring vacantly into the air, his tangled eyebrows working up and down like he was factoring
pi
to the twentieth decimal. “What’s the matter? You get buggy in the wall, Doctor? Am I going to have to re-socialize you?”

“Paul Donner,” he said. “Memory’s not what it used to be. Why is that name—”

Panic swept across Nicole’s cheeks so abruptly it made her maroon lips go white. The scientist’s face had also gone ashen. His smugness shattered off him.
 

“Elise Donner’s husband. You hired Elise Donner’s husband to find me! He came back, and you hired him.” He cackled wildly. “Oh God, you crazy bitch.”

And like that, the world tilted. There was thundering in my ears. The lab twisted sideways. I knew a train was coming, and in a moment it would roar over me, reducing me to pulp. I felt the vibration of its approach.
 

“Whoa,” came Maggie’s voice, from Pluto. “Plot twist.”

My palms found the desk edge, clutching. It was suddenly too hot, too dry.

Nicole had recovered admirably. She flicked lint from her lapel. “You have a big mouth, Morris. I don’t know why I tell you anything.”

“I had nothing to do with it!” he said to me. “It was before my time!”

“I do wish you’d shut up,” said Nicole.

My voice was a despair-shredded thing. “What does Elise have to do with all this?” My feet were moving toward her. My eyes were so locked on Nicole that I didn’t see the goon sling his weapon and raise the blackjack.

Then the train rushed forward again and I was gone.

***

I’m carrying a bouquet of blue roses and whistling. The sight of me is enough to make anyone who sees me grin. The guard grins as I sign for my temporary pass. The elevator passengers grin as I downshift politely from whistling to humming. And the receptionist on the 23rd floor grins as I ask for my wife.

I think she can spare a few minutes, she says, giggling.

I check my hair in the glass partition between reception and the offices. The glass reads:
 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Office of Research Integrity

I navigate down the hall past the workers that are buzzing in and out of cubicles, stealing momentum from their smiles.

I reach the last door in the hall and push it open.

Elise’s back is to the door. She’s immersed in some document on her monitor. I feel a thrill as soon as I see the copper hair on her shoulders.
 

Uh, excuse me, I say nasally, I, um, invented a new kind of tomato that’s twenty feet high and, um, makes everybody who eats it vote Republican. Is this where I show it to the government and get rich?

That’s the FDA, she says, still staring at the screen.
 

What about Democrat?

She swivels, a wry smile on her face. The next thing I know she’s flown around the desk at me. The impact knocks me back a step.

Uff! Hey, watch the flowers!

She snatches them up. What’re these for?
 

I open my mouth, but she holds up a finger. Let me guess. Another of your made-up anniversaries. Let’s see… first date?

My eyes roll. Nothing as pedestrian as that.

First carriage ride in Central Park? No. First time we ate Thai food? No.
 

Okay, I give up. I whisper in her ear. She slaps my arm. I don’t think there’s a Hallmark card for that. She takes the flowers to an empty vase. Blue, she says. They’re beautiful.

I register the stacks of paperwork with dismay. Any chance of you blowing this pop stand early?

Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I’ve got a biotech company that’s not playing by the rules.

Gonna slap ’em on the wrist?

More like shut the bastards down, if they’re doing what I think they’re doing. But first I have to prove it.

Sounds big.

Big enough to lead the national news.

I whistle. My little private eye.

No, sweetie, that’s your fantasy. I just want to make sure the next bio-engineered tomato we eat doesn’t kill us because somebody skipped important parts of the research process.

You’d think they’d learn.

She sighs. Time is money. Why waste years on animal studies when you can fake the data and go right to human testing?

And we already have such great tomatoes.
 

She smiles, but with weariness. I wish this was just about tomatoes. Human gene therapy is a hell of a lot more dangerous. She looks at her watch. One of their people’s coming by. I’m giving them a chance to explain themselves before I drop the hammer.

Always the fair one.

She pecks me on the cheek and turns me around, pushing me toward the door. Thanks for the beautiful flowers. Now scat!

Just promise to get home as soon as humanly possible.

My right butt cheek receives a playful squeeze. Cross my heart and hope to die.

I saunter back toward reception quite pleased with myself, the very model of the thoughtful modern male.
 

I register the other woman as she passes, in that reflexive cop way, the auburn hair, the furious, purposeful strides as she approaches Elise’s door, the dark skin…
 

And the strange veil obscuring her features.

***

For a while, there was only nausea and colors and grunting like an animal. A smell. Something rotten. I summoned my will and lifted my head. Bright needles jabbed my brain, and my gorge lurched threateningly, but I hung on until my eyes could focus. I touched the back of my head and my hand came away sticky.
 

I was no longer in the lab.

“Maggie,” I whispered.

“Your girlfriend flew the digital coop.” She held up Maggie’s globe. “Poof!”

I squinted and the light resolved itself into a couple human-shaped blobs. There was a drain in the center of the floor. A wall with a long observation mirror.

Nicole toyed with a diamond at her throat. “You got sapped,” she said. “You looked like you were rushing me and one of my overeager bodyguards stepped in.”

I licked my lips. Like licking asphalt.

“Doctor, get him some water, would you?”

Crandall, who’d been in the shadows, grunted and went out the door.

C’mon, Donner. Put on the tough. So you got your brains rearranged a little. Suck it up
.
 

“Stinks.” I tried to straighten myself in the chair and my head went off like a claymore.
 

“Take it easy.”
 

Crandall returned with the water. I took an experimental sip. My stomach didn’t object to the point of open rebellion, so I took a little more.

“Better?” said Nicole.

Then the dream, the memory, came back, just like that.
Visiting Elise, hearing about the genetics firm conducting illegal research, then passing that woman in the hall with the veil…
 

“What?” she said.

“Forty years ago, in the hall. Elise’s office. You… you…”

Nicole’s face lit with delight. She turned to Crandall. “Doctor, give us a moment.”

Without a word, he left the room.
 

“Finally! I thought you’d never remember. What do you think, baby? Was it destiny?”

“Tell me,” I said.
 

“We were just beginning our bio research. Your wife had the unfortunate job of enforcing the government’s laws concerning scientific experiments.” She snorted in disdain. “Those first years of the new millennium, everyone was terrified. No cloning, no stem cells! My god, the mountains of red tape and restrictions!”
 

“You faked data to get permission to do human studies.”

“Time is money.”

Elise had said that. A whole new kind of pain surfaced. “She sniffed you out,” I said.

“That day, after you and I passed each other in the corridor, I tried to explain to her the value of our work. She wouldn’t listen. There’d be an investigation. She’d hold us up in court for years. I couldn’t allow that. She gave me three days to come clean on my own before she filed the injunction. It was a window of opportunity.”

And then it hit me, the whole package, a sledgehammer between the eyes.
 

“Elise was the target,” I said. “This was never about me at all. In the bodega—you were after Elise.”

“But you were there, too. Just as well. You’d never have rested until you found me. I hired a nasty man named Ewan McDermott to arrange it.” The man with the scar. “Quite a psychopath. I believe he met his maker a few years later in Bolivia.”

“This can’t be true. You’re as young now as you were then. Forty years ago, the drug didn’t exist. And the Shift hadn’t happened yet.” Nicole didn’t reply. “Answer me!” I screamed.

Crandall and the Tommy gun goons burst back in. Nicole waved them off in irritation.
 

“I will someday, if you cooperate. I still need your help, Donner.”

“Someone’s killing your people.”

“So it seems.” She went to a chair and sat, making a lot of business of arranging herself into it. “Help me stop these murders and I will set you up in luxury for life—a life that will be considerably longer than you could imagine.”

Another piece fell into place. “Jesus, you
know
who’s killing your people, don’t you? You’ve always known.”

A nerve in her cheek gave me my answer.

I leaned over and spit. There was blood in the phlegm. It hit the tiled floor and I saw for the first time the remains of something awful there, like fungal gelatin. I looked back at her. Nicole’s face changed subtly, hardening, and like that, she was no longer beautiful. Hers was the symmetry of a dime store mannequin. Beneath it, she was all monster.

“It always comes back to time, doesn’t it?”

“And now with Retrozine, it’ll be your servant. Then the world’s your oyster, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” said Nicole, coming forward, all grace again and promises of sinewy delight. “So what do you say?”

“I’ve got nothing to lose,” I replied.

Nothing to lose at all.

Crandall saw it and opened his mouth in warning, but I was already in motion, reaching for the guard’s weapon with one hand while my elbow made contact with his combat visor. I snatched it out of his astonished hands and swung it toward Nicole, finger settling on the trigger.