Zod Wallop (9 page)

“Why?”

“Gainesborough somehow figures in the boy’s delusional system. Apparently Story was almost drowned as a child, so he feels a bond to this man whose daughter drowned. Schizophrenic systems are not, by definition, rational, and since Story’s problems are not amenable to interactional therapy, I’ve never been much interested in his case. I have very little time for any individual therapy these days—I make an exception in your case, Gabriel—and speaking of time, I’ve got to go.”

Dr. Lavin stood up, swept the book from the table, and strode toward the door.

“I can remember my father licking my kneecap!” Gabriel screamed at her psychiatrist’s retreating back. “I once grew sexually excited while fondling a kitten. When I was in the third grade, I bit a boy on the ankle, clean through his sock, made him bleed. I didn’t even know him.”

Dr. Lavin had his hand on the door.

“I am terrified of ants. I think, I think it is their smallness that frightens me. They shouldn’t be so small, you see, and so busy at the same time. You understand me, Theo?” Gabriel shouted, coming quickly across the lush carpet. “I need some answers here!”

“Come to my office tomorrow morning,” Lavin muttered. “We’ll discuss it then.”

He opened the door, intent on doing what males did best, abandoning her, and Gabriel screamed.

“You old whore!” she yelled, and she swung the full bottle of wine, clutching it by its thick neck, and it traveled proudly at the end of her arm, a heavy, aerodynamically confident instrument suddenly recognizing its purpose, and it struck the psychiatrist’s head, the back of his skull, eliciting the sort of sound you might get by hitting a waterbed with a baseball bat. Dr. Lavin rocketed forward, colliding with the opening door that instantly slammed shut and then bounced open again as the psychiatrist tottered backward. The door swung wide as Dr. Lavin fell straight back, a stiff cartoon of a fall, something a stuntman might execute with impunity but hardly the sort of thing a man of Dr. Lavin’s fifty-some years should have attempted. A cool, lilac-laden breeze tossed Gabriel’s hair as she caught the front door and quickly shut it.

The next half hour was a fuzzy one. When it became clear that Dr. Lavin was dead, Gabriel called her hairdresser and canceled that day’s appointment. Then she found a corkscrew and drank some of the contents of what was, she supposed, the murder weapon. Then she saw the book lying next to Lavin, and she took it into the living room and sitting on the sofa she opened it and began leafing through its pages. They were dark, murky drawings, but they did have a certain power.

The drawing of the woman named Lady Ermine did, Gabriel had to admit, seem a vicious caricature of Gabriel Allan-Tate herself.

“I can't catch my breath,” Lady Ermine said. “My breath has outdistanced me. Ever since that beastly child tried to strangle me.”

Lord Draining sighed. “There’s a lesson to be learned,” he said.

Lady Ermine raised an eyebrow. “I mean,” said Lord Draining, “one wants to be absolutely sure the child is tied down, quite secured, before getting too close.”

“Children are treacherous,” said Lady Ermine.

“Truer words were never uttered,” said Lord Draining.

Stranger yet, and certainly a sign, she recognized another face. It was the face of Dr. Roald Peake.

She found Dr. Peake’s number in the directory, and she called his office.

The secretary was disinclined to connect Gabriel.

Gabriel said, “I am the major stockholder in Corwin-Smart and Chairman of the Board. I am also a friend of Dr. Peake’s.” She was transferred.

“Gabriel,” that large, hearty voice boomed. “How are you?”

“I’m in trouble,” she said.

“I’m so glad you thought of me,” he said.

“Well.” Gabriel was always uncomfortable renewing an acquaintance with a request for a favor. But there was no way around it. “This is serious trouble, Roald. I’m afraid I’ve killed someone. In fact, he is lying here on my carpet, even as we speak.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Theodore Lavin.”

The phone exploded with laughter. “I’m sorry, Gabriel,” Peake said. “I just…if you were going to kill someone…well, you are just so consistent, Gabriel. Your taste is always impeccable.”

“None of this is funny,” Gabriel said, on the verge of tears.

“Of course it isn’t,” Peake said. “I’ll be right along. I’ll bring Karl; he’s handy in a crisis.”

“Wait,” Gabriel said, afraid he would hang up. “I can’t stay here another minute. I’ve got to go out. I’ll leave the key in the mailbox.”

“Of course. Of course.”

One last distasteful task remained after she put down the receiver. She had to find Gainesborough’s address in the psychiatrist’s pocket. She had seen Lavin tuck the piece of paper away, and so she knew where to look. It could have been worse. But it was nonetheless a terrifying experience. What if he suddenly grabbed her. The way his head was pooched in like a punched milk carton and the large, garish quantity of blood on the carpet were strong arguments that he was dead. But there was a long tradition of corpses coming alive, and although this tradition was a Hollywood one, Gabriel thought it might be based on careful observation, might really be a commonplace occurrence.

Lavin did not grab her however, and ten minutes later, in possession of Harry Gainesborough’s address, Gabriel locked the door, dropped the key in the mailbox and marched down the drive to her Mercedes.

“What do you have in your tea?” Helen asked.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “Anything will be fine.”

D
RIED
B
LOOD
H
AD
glued the psychiatrist’s face to the carpet. Dr. Peake shook his head as he watched his assistant, Karl, peel Theodore Lavin from the floor, a task accompanied by an ugly, rasping sound.

“Theodore,” Dr. Peake said, “I believe you may be on to something here. Quite an extraordinary therapy. The ultimate transference. You have allowed Gabriel to kill her father.”

Karl, a large, broad shouldered man, grunted as he wrestled the body onto the stretcher. He threw the plastic sheet over the body, covered it with a blanket, and began securing the straps.

“You’ve made a mess of the carpet, though,” Peake said. Roald Peake pursed his lips in thought. His brow displayed distinct ripples, like corrugated cardboard, while he thought. He was the sort of man who was almost handsome, nature having embarked on good looks and overdone it, creating a caricature, the jaw a little too square, the cheekbones too wide, the mouth too full. He wore a dark suit, impeccably tailored to his tall, thin frame, and he held an unlit cigarette between the first and second fingers of his left hand.

Karl stood up, and Peake put an arm on his assistant’s shoulder. “I can’t see replacing the entire carpet,” Peake said. “Let’s improvise here, Karl. Why not a tiled area here, by the door? Black and white tiles, something tasteful and simple. If Gabriel doesn’t approve…well beggars can’t be choosers can they?”

Karl Bahden studied the room with a workman’s eye. He was a square-faced man with clipped, white hair and a perpetual squint. He nodded his head. “Yeah, we could just take a six-foot square, lay down tile there. A design element. Good idea.”

“Thank you. I’ll leave it to you. But first let’s remove the good doctor.” Peake walked into the living room. “I’d better take a look around, see if Gabriel hasn’t left any other bodies lying about.”

Peake put the cigarette between his lips as he walked into the living room. He was trying to stop smoking—and having some success—but he still liked the feel of a cigarette in his mouth; it focused him somehow.

“What’s this?” he said, picking the book up from the end table. He sat in an armchair and opened it.

He was unaware of Karl speaking his name, and it was not until his shoulder was touched that he looked up.

Karl’s face seemed far away.

“Ah,” Peake said, resurfacing from a welter of thoughts and emotions. “Karl.” Peake closed the book and rested it in his lap.

“You okay?” Karl said.

“Karl,” Peake said, “I have found something quite extraordinary.” Peake stood up. He noticed that the cigarette was still between his lips, and he lit it and inhaled. Just the one. “You remember that unfortunate business with Gabriel’s husband?”

Karl nodded. “Yeah. That’s one of the things we don’t talk about.”

Peake nodded, beaming. He slapped Karl on the shoulder. “Well, it was too painful to talk about, of course. It was so full of frustration and failure. All that work destroyed. And the widow, dear Gabriel, she was no help at all, another dead end. Well, this just demonstrates the truth of my philosophy.”

Karl blinked. “What’s that?”

“Always be a friend.”

“Ah,” Karl said.

“Yes. Here we are, helping out Gabriel for no better reason than a desire to be of service, and perhaps, one day, acquire Corwin-Smart Pharmaceuticals, and because our hearts are in the right place, because we are doing the right thing, we are rewarded.” Peake clasped the book to his chest. Suddenly he thrust it forward. “Do you know what this is?”

Karl squinted negatively.

Peake nodded. “Well, of course you don’t. It’s a book written—I’m sure of this—under the influence of Ecknazine. These drawings are of Harwood patients and staff.” Peake paused, such a wealth of good feeling rising within him that he was suddenly mute with joy.

Karl grinned.

Peake nodded twice, shook off the paralysis of delight and said, “There’s even a caricature of me. I am someone called Lord Draining. It’s quite good, actually…although I could choose to be offended at the length of my nose and the way he’s given me such an excessive number of sharp teeth, but all and all…” Peake stopped. “The point is this, Karl: unless I am sadly mistaken—and I’m not Karl, I’m not—these are the subjects.”

Karl smiled, but it was the smile of a man trying to share a joke that had eluded him.

Seeing his assistant’s confusion, Peake spoke slowly. “These are the Ecknazine subjects. These are Marlin Tate’s guinea pigs. We only have to find out who these faces belong to and…” Peake paused, shrugged. “Well, I don’t know what exactly, but I think…I think we’ll be back in business.”

Peake held the book in front of him and gazed at it lovingly. He stood enraptured until Karl coughed.

Peake looked up. “Of course. We have pressing business. Let’s get the good doctor out of here. Let’s get him back to the lab and reduced to a more compact and elegant form.”

They carried the stretcher out to the van, moving under a vast canopy of stars. Peake had waited until dark to visit Gabriel’s mansion. If the body had been discovered in the interim that would have been too bad—there were limits to the risks he was willing to take in order to secure a better bargaining position with Gabriel.

Peake stood in the darkness under the stars, clasping the book to his chest. He heard the muffled sound of the rear doors slamming shut on the company van. He inhaled the rich, turned-earth air, fruit of the gardeners’ industry.

“Mother,” he said, looking heavenward, “don’t let me be disappointed.”

“I hope I’m not disappointed,” Lord Draining said.

“Ah,” said Lord Lepskin.

“I hope, for everyone’s sake,” Lord Draining said, studying the Frozen Princess as she lay on the table, “that I’m not disappointed. You remember the last time I was disappointed, don’t you Lepskin?”

The Lord Lepskin nodded gravely. Oh, he remembered. The servants had been a week scrubbing the blood from the council room walls.

T
HE
Y
OUNG
M
AN
, Allan, was driving Helen Kurtis’s big, white Lincoln. He leaned forward, studying the road with that intensity characteristic of new drivers. The girl Rene sat next to him, her black hair alive in the night wind.

The side of her face was silhouetted against the pale headlight glare, and Harry, from his vantage point in the back seat, was struck again by her beauty. It was a rare beauty that could assert itself in shadow.

Raymond was speaking. “We must make haste. Things are happening too fast. I hadn’t anticipated the princess awakening so soon. If we can find the Duke quickly, we’ve got a chance. But I won’t sugarcoat a bitter pill, Lord Gainesborough. There is a possibility the Duke will be dead, or so immersed in spiritual matters that our interests will mean nothing to him.”

Harry felt as though he were coming out of anesthesia. The source of his immediate confusion crowded him on the car’s seat. Raymond’s blue eyes glowed with the off-kilter ardency of a nun who has gone over the edge. Those large, sky-blue eyes were less than a foot from Harry’s face—Raymond was no respecter of personal space—and Harry slid back on the seat until his spine pressed painfully against the window crank.

“Raymond,” Harry said, speaking slowly, “Don’t call me Lord Gainesborough. Call me Harry.” It seemed to Harry that he might wrest control by degrees. Fear had caused him to flee a hospital, and fear had put him in a car full of maniacs, but he was all right now; he had his faculties in tow again.