“So what?”
“Warner, that man was ready to die. I don’t try to bring back anybody who belongs dead.”
Echols looked at him oddly for a moment. “I see. Uh, how do you decide, Mac, who should stay dead and who comes back?”
Fain studied the agent. “You don’t think I can do it, do you, Warner?”
“Let’s just say there are a lot of things I don’t understand. Whether I believe or don’t believe is not important. My job is to make you rich and famous.”
Fain nodded slowly. “I really can, you know. Don’t ask me how, or why it should be me and not somebody else, but I can do it. I can make dead people live again. This all started out as a scam, but I’ve tried it twice now, and twice it’s worked. It’s no scam.”
“Of course not. Nobody said it was.” Echols slapped his well-tailored thighs and stood up. “I have some details to talk over with Victoria. Why don’t you look through the letters and pick one where we can put on a good show.”
“Good show,” Fain repeated.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll look them over.”
With a smile that didn’t quite make it, Echols walked out of the room. Fain riffled through the letters, giving only a few seconds to each.
A shop worker in Torrance had been caught in a conveyer belt and ripped in half before the machinery was stopped. His wife hoped Fain could restore her man to life. Maybe he could, Fain thought, but he doubted the woman would want the mangled remains shuffling around the house.
A twenty-three-year-old suicide victim in Burbank was a possibility, but he passed over the parents’ plea. The decision to end your own life should be final.
A four-year-old girl was run over by her father’s car. Fain winced at the man’s pain, but the child had been buried for a year now. Too long.
And so it went. The victims were too old or too torn up or had been dead too long. Or maybe Fain just felt they were not right. How he felt this, he could not say, but he knew as surely as he knew his name that he must reject all of the applications before him.
In an effort to relax, he moved to the recliner, kicked back, and thumbed on the television set with the remotecontrol unit. A blow-dried newscaster he remembered from an earlier interview was winding up a cutesy feature on a baby parade in Norwalk. The camera moved in then, and the newsman shifted his handsome features into a solemn expression.
“Tragedy struck today in the gymnasium of North Compton High School.”
A yearbook picture of a smiling black youth filled the screen.
“Kevin Jackson, honor student and member of the North Compton basketball team, collapsed during a pickup game with other students.”
The newsman’s face reappeared.
“When school officials and paramedics were unable to revive him at the scene, Kevin was taken to Martin Luther King Hospital, where he died less than an hour ago.”
Fain levered the chair upright and leaned forward, staring at the television screen.
“Now here’s Cindy with a report from Santa Monica where landlords and tenants clashed in a council meeting over changes in the rent-control ordinance …”
Fain killed the television picture and jogged out of the room. He took the stairs two at a time and found Warner Echols and Victoria going over a computer readout in the second-floor room that served as an office.
“I’ve got him,” Fain said, bursting in on them.
Echols looked up, startled. “What? Got who?”
“Our candidate. A high school basketball player collapsed on the gym floor. He just died at Martin Luther King Hospital. Let’s get over there.”
“That wasn’t one of the letters.”
“It was on TV just now,” Fain said. “We’ve got to hurry.”
“Basketball player,” Echols said. “Is he black?”
“Yes, yes; now can we get going? The longer we delay, the harder it’s going to be.”
“Black is good,” Echols said. “I’ll need time to clear it with the office. Get the wheels turning, contact the media. Want to be sure we get the right kind of coverage.”
“Come on!”
“What if the kid’s parents don’t want you to try anything?”
“Simple — then I don’t do it.”
Echols looked deep into Fain’s pale gray eyes. What he saw there made him speak more softly than was his habit. He said, “Mac, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Hell no. It’s a feeling, that’s all.”
“You’re not going to rush into this and blow everything we’re working for?”
Fain answered slowly and distinctly. “Warner, until now this has been your show. And you’ve run it well. Now it’s my turn. You just leave this part of the action to me.”
“Okay, Mac,” Echols said softly. “Victoria, will you take care of the details?”
She nodded and was already on the phone as the two men headed down the stairs and out.
Chapter 19
News of their arrival had preceded them. When Echols and Fain pulled up to the entrance of Martin Luther King Hospital in the Federated Artists limousine, three television mobile units were already there with a dozen cameramen and a like number of technicians. There was a swarm of reporters from the print media and their more photogenic brethren from television, clutching their ubiquitous ice-cream-cone microphones. The husky limo driver and a pair of armed security men pushed an aisle through the clamoring news people to get Fain inside.
Although his concentration was elsewhere, Fain could not mistake the cynical mood of the press. He tried to ignore the muttered remarks about miracle workers and frauds and followed his escort up the steps past the rude shouted questions and background laughter.
They were hurried into an office where a thin, antiseptic man sat behind a desk. Perched uncomfortably on a vinyl couch was a weary-looking black woman with fine, handsome features. The man got up reluctantly when they entered.
“Mr. Fain? My name is Ivan Tibbs. I’m the chief administrator here. This is Mrs. Urbana Jackson. She’s the mother of the boy who was injured.”
“I’m awfully sorry about your son, Mrs. Jackson,” Fain said.
She studied him with dark eyes clouded by grief. “He was a good boy. Never messed with gangs or dope or any of that truck. Why should he be dead when so many bad ones ain’t?”
“I don’t know,” Fain said. “I don’t think there’s any answer to that question.”
Ivan Tibbs cleared his throat carefully. “I think I should make it clear that neither I nor the medical staff of Martin Luther King played any part in bringing you here. That decision was Mrs. Jackson’s alone.”
The woman ignored him and spoke directly to Fain. “The people I talk to on the phone say you can bring my baby back to me. That true?”
“I can try, Mrs. Jackson, if you want me to.”
“Doctors say they can’t do nothing more. You might as well try.”
“I’d like to have the father’s permission, too.”
“Ain’t no father around. He long gone. I raise Kevin all alone. Done a pretty good job, too. You got my permission, Mr. Fain. If that’s all you need, you go ahead, do what you can.”
Warner Echols said, “Er, Mr. Tibbs, about the reporters outside …”
“What about them?” demanded the chief administrator.
“I think they deserve to have a representative present.”
“Out of the question. I will not have a bunch of reporters and photographers shoving their way through my hospital.”
“Naturally,” Echols said quickly. “I would suggest they select a minimum group from their number to serve as a pool and share their coverage with the rest.”
“I suppose,” sniffed Tibbs, “if it can’t be avoided.”
Echols hurried from the office and was back in minutes. “It’s all set. A three-man team from Channel Five will cover it. They’ve promised to stay out of the way.”
; “Then we might as well go up,” Tibbs said, casting a doubtful glance at the TV crew as they left his office.
While they waited for the elevator, a thin-lipped man in a white lab coat joined them.
Ivan Tibbs gave curt introductions. “Dr. Quarles. He handled the Jackson boy’s case.”
Dr. Quarles looked Fain over as though he were a slice of diseased tissue and found nothing to say. He exchanged a long-suffering look with the chief administrator as the party entered the elevator.
The boy was in a private room on the hospital’s third floor. He lay under snowy sheets in a tall bed in the intensive care section. The boy’s eyes were closed, his complexion a muddy gray. His body was still attached to the various life-support machines. They hummed and beeped and muttered electronically, but none of the monitors showed any sign of activity in Kevin Jackson’s heart, lungs, or brain.
Fain spoke to the disapproving doctor. “There are no vital signs?”
The doctor shook his head. “Nothing. He’s been gone almost three hours.”
“Then can we disconnect the machines?”
The doctor looked to the mother. “That decision belongs to Mrs. Jackson.”
“Go ahead and unplug ‘em,” she said. “Ain’t doing my boy no good, anyways.”
“You do understand,” said the doctor, “that the hospital accepts no responsibility once the life-support systems have been removed.”
“I understand that,” said Mrs. Jackson. “Now let this man get on with it.”
While the tubes and wires were being removed from the boy’s body, Warner Echols edged over next to Fain. Speaking in a low, confidential tone, he said, “Mac, are you sure about this? What you do here can affect your whole future.”
“Just let me be,” Fain said. “I can’t stop now.”
It was true. Some force outside himself seemed to be driving him on. A part of his mind carried the old what-am-I-doing-here feeling, but he knew there was no turning back.
He did not spend any time on the chanting rigmarole over Kevin Jackson. The experience with little Miguel Ledo had shown him he did not need it. He stood alone at the boy’s bedside and stared down at him while his mother, the doctor, the chief administrator, Warner Echols, and the Channel 5 camera team looked on. Fain could sense the varying emotions in the others — hope, doubt, anxiety, fear — but he forced all of it out of his mind and fixed his concentration on the still, silent body of the boy.
When his mind was clear of all distractions, Fain spread his arms, closed his eyes, and intoned, “Ralé. Méné. Vini.”
The seconds crept by. Fain clamped his jaws together as the sweat broke out on his body. He could hear the tense breathing of the onlookers.
Again. “Ralé. Méné. Vini.”
The Minicam purred softly.
A sheet of paper rattled.
Someone stifled a cough.
The dead boy moved.
A murmur from the watchers.
Kevin Jackson opened his eyes, looked around, and said, “Man, what’s happening?”
Fain stepped back as the others in the room surged forward to surround the bed. Mrs. Jackson hugged and kissed her son while the doctor went for his pulse. The cameraman ground away. The reporter thrust his microphone at everyone.
Warner Echols stayed back. He looked at Fain with new eyes.
“My God, you did it.”
Fain nodded. He was weary. Anxious to be away from here, somewhere he could rest.
“You really did it.”
“Can we get out of here?”
But the reporter and cameraman were coming at him now.
“Give the people a short interview,” Echols said, “and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
The questions posed by the young man were polite and restrained. Once, when Fain held up a hand to ward off the too close approach of the cameraman, the reporter crisply ordered him back. When Fain indicated he was through talking, the reporter thanked him profusely and hurried out, taking the cameraman and technician with him.
“Are those the same people who were laughing at me out in front?” Fain said.
“Converts,” said Echols. “I think you’re going to see a big difference from now on in the way people react to you.”
While Fain was thinking that over, Dr. Quarles approached him.
“Mr. Fain, I owe you an apology.”
“Oh? I didn’t think you said anything.”
“The apology is for what I was thinking. I don’t pretend to know what it was you did in there, but I saw the results. I know — I mean, I was certain that boy was dead. Somehow you restored him. I still can’t say I approve of your methods, but your results are undeniable. My congratulations.”
He put out a hand. Fain waited a moment, then took it. “Thank you,” he said, and turned away, steering Echols toward the elevator.
“What did I tell you?” Echols said from the side of his mouth.
Back out in front of the building, the waiting media people surged toward him in a wave, brandishing microphones and cameras and shouting questions. This time they were eager, but there was no mockery. The security men moved in to hold back the crush, but one smallish reporter with thinning black hair and an overbite wriggled past them and planted himself in Fain’s path.
“We heard what you did in there, Mr. Fain, and I want to say that like everybody else I’m impressed.”
“Thank you,” Fain said, and tried to get by.
“I wonder,” the reporter persisted, “if you could spare just a couple of seconds to tell me your feelings about reviving the Jackson boy.”
“You agreed on the reporting pool,” Echols broke in. “They got it all on tape.”
The reporter ignored him. “Just a brief comment for my column, Mr. Fain. I’m with the Times. You may know my work. Dean Gooch.”
Echols motioned for one of the security men, but Fain held up a hand. “We’ve talked before, haven’t we, Mr. Gooch.”
“Uh, yes, briefly. On the telephone.”
“And you even wrote a column about me. In kind of a smartass vein, if I remember.”
“Well, that was before I’d actually seen what you can do.”
“But that didn’t stop you from writing about me, did it.”
The reporter gave him an oily smile. “We’ve all got to make a living, Mr. Fain.”
The smile slid away as Gooch looked into the pale gray eyes. They seemed to glow with a light from somewhere inside the man’s head.
“Tell you what, Mr. Gooch,” Fain said. “You go make your living off somebody else. I’ve got no time for cheap little fucks like you.”
Gooch staggered back as though he’d been slapped. Echols and Fain moved on behind the security men to the limo and got in as the car pulled away into the dusk.
“I’m not sure you should have talked to Dean Gooch like that,” said Echols. “It’s a bad idea to make enemies in the press.”
“He’s an asshole,” Fain said. “And we don’t need him anymore, do we?”
“You’ve got a point there,” Echols said. He pulled out a small leather-bound notebook and began making swift notes as the limo pulled onto the Harbor Freeway. “This is going to change our whole campaign.”
“You mean now that you know I can do it.”
“I mean now that the whole country will be seeing you do it on the eleven o’clock news.”
The agent paused in his jotting and looked at Fain. “Mac, if I had any doubts — and I admit I did — forgive me. I’ve been handling phonies and hustlers and liars and cheats for so long, I can’t recognize the genuine article. You are something special, Mac, and I promise you it won’t go unrecognized. Or unrewarded.”
Fain said nothing. He eased back into the plush upholstery of the limo and let the tension drain away from his body. Echols was right. He was something special. From now on things were just going to get better and better.
• • •
They ran into a traffic jam at the f
oot of the road leading up to Eagle’s Roost, caused by people who had already heard the news from Martin Luther King Hospital. It took the combined efforts of the F-A security force and the LAPD to clear a path for the limo to drive up to the house.
Once inside, Fain headed for the master bedroom to lie down. Victoria came in with a tall, cool drink for him, but he sent her away. For a little while he just wanted to be alone to empty his mind.
Downstairs in a conference room that evening were gathered the top executives of Federated Artists. Warner Echols, who heretofore had been given only the agency’s second-string talent to handle, was elevated to new prominence by his association with the new star, McAllister Fain. Plans were made, schedules laid out, logistics studied as in a major military campaign. When the star came downstairs to join them after an hour of meditation, they received him with respectful deference.
Fain sat in the most comfortable chair, while the others arranged themselves around him. He listened calmly to their grandiose plans for him, commenting now and then, amused by the eagerness of these powerful men to agree to any small change he suggested.
It was past midnight when the agency executives began to gather their materials to leave. One of the uniformed security guards entered. He looked from Echols to Fain and back again, unsure of who was in charge now.
Fain resolved it for him. “What is it?” he said.
“There’s a, uh, woman outside who says she has to see you, Mr. Fain.”
“Take care of her,” Echols said testily. “That’s your job.”
“This one is very determined,” the guard said.
“Everybody’s determined. Get rid of her.”
“Wait a minute,” Fain said. “Did you get her name?”
“I was coming to that,” the guard said. “The lady says she’s your mother.”
“That’s impossible. My mother’s dead. She died a long time ago.”
“Yes, sir, I read that on your fact sheet. But this lady was really determined.”
“She is not my mother,” Fain said.
“Right.” The guard touched his cap. “I’ll send her on her way.”
Half an hour later the F-A executives and Warner Echols had left. Fain sat alone in his favorite room, tipped back in his recliner. His hands were clasped across his chest. He watched shadows from the fireplace dance across the ceiling.
Carrion Page 17
