The Athena Factor

by W. Michael Gear

  “Hey, Lymon.”

  “Dot.” He gestured up the stairs. “She ready?”

  Dot gave him a look that said he ought to know better. “She slept through makeup. Try to keep her from flattening her hairdo when she nods off on the way, will you?”

  Lymon nodded. “Any way we can slip out of this thing early tonight?”

  Dot shrugged. “It’s up to her.”

  “She’s going to hurt herself,” Lymon muttered.

  Dot just watched him from the corner of her eye—a knowing stare. Then she added, “She said for you to go up when you arrived. Keep her safe tonight.” Dot stepped past, bursting into her fast walk as she headed for the door.

  “Yeah.” Lymon tapped his palm on the handrail as he climbed the stairs. He walked down the long hallway with its intricate carpet and carved molding on the doors. The white walls were hung with Southwestern art. Paintings of pueblos, rainstorms over mesas, and dark-eyed Indians stared back at him. The subject didn’t quite match the decor, but what the hell, it was Sheela’s. It made her happy.

  He stopped, knocked twice at the master suite, and heard “Come” from within.

  The latch clicked under his hand, and he walked into a large airy parlor. Several chaise lounges, an easy chair, and a small wet bar stood across from a huge seventy-two-inch TV. Bookcases lined the walls, packed with volumes that he knew Sheela had never had time to crack.

  The arched doors that led to the master bedroom were closed. To the right, he could see into the spacious dressing room. On one wall behind a raised barber’s chair was a rack filled with cosmetics. Two big walk-in closets were open to reveal lines of dresses. Sheela was bent over the counter, examining her face up close in the mirror. She wore a Ralph Lauren “prairie” dress that George Blodwell had talked her into. White and lacy under a short-cut Spanish-style jacket, the ensemble looked absolutely stunning in contrast to the reddish copper of her hair.

  “We’re ready,” Lymon called by way of greeting. His smile died when she turned to greet him. He could see the fatigue that even her expert beauticians couldn’t hide.

  “The studio gave in,” she said wearily. “We’ve got the original screenplay back. Rex and Tony got them to fold.” She gave him a hollow smile. “I can save this film, Lymon. I can make it work.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. You look like you’re asleep on your feet.” He asked, “Do you really have to do this?”

  “My best friend from high school has MS. Yeah, I have to.” She arched one of her famous eyebrows. “You really look concerned.”

  “It’s mercenary. If you kill yourself, I’ve got to find another client.”

  “You lie well.” She walked past him and into the parlor. “Tell me you rode here on your bike.”

  “Nope. Came in the Jaguar.”

  “Damn!” She turned after picking up her small beaded purse. “Wouldn’t it be a rush, I mean riding up to the Hilton’s front door on your BMW, dressed like this?” She struck a pose, her white dress swirling.

  “The helmet would do abominable things to your hair.”

  “When I got into this, I should have cultivated a different image. Wild and unkempt. Why didn’t I do diamonds and black leather, like Cher?”

  “Doesn’t suit you. How about ducking out early?” He offered her his arm as they headed toward the door. “I’ll get you home for a little real shut-eye before tomorrow.”

  She stopped short, tightening her grip on him. “Lymon, God what I’d give for that. Can you do it?”

  “Yeah. I promise.”

  “How?”

  “What time do you want to leave?”

  “Eleven?” She sounded so hopeful.

  “I’ll find you, slip up, and whisper something into your ear. You look suddenly excited, and we’ll walk quietly but firmly for the door. At risk of getting your dress stained, we’ll go out through the kitchen. Paul will have the limo at the employee entrance. By the time people notice, we’ll be gone. Tomaso will take messages when your phone rings off the hook all night.”

  She searched his eyes, reading his soul. “Thank God. Do it, Lymon. Then I won’t need these.” She pressed two little white pills into his hand.

  “Are those what I think they are?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t very well afford to fall asleep in my salad tonight, can I? People are paying three thousand a plate for the opportunity to eat in my presence.”

  Lymon tucked the pills into his pocket. “Where’d you get those?”

  “A concerned and helpful friend. Does it matter?” Her lips tightened. “Come on, you know what goes down people’s throats, up their noses, and into their veins at parties in this town.”

  “It’s a one-way trip,” he warned as he led her into the hall.

  “I was told that those were all right. You should recognize them. Aren’t they standard issue for the military?”

  “Depends on the mission, but yeah. We call them ‘Go’ pills. Uncle Sugar thinks it’s perfectly all right for a young soldier to screw with his metabolic rate when the alternative is seeing his dead body dragged naked through the streets by an angry crowd.” He made a face. “Thing is, either way, the soldier is the one who ends up paying the price.”

  She gave him a curious glance as they started down the stairs. “Tell me, Lymon. Did you ever use any of those little pills?”

  “Those and some other things you wouldn’t want to know about.”

  “Did they work?”

  Their eyes met as he said, “I’m alive today because of those little pills. They’re one of the reasons I quit, Sheela. Yeah, you can stay awake. You can wring wonderful things out of your body when it’s absolutely exhausted. What you’ve got to remember—the hitch, if you will—is that nothing comes for free. You’re burning yourself, using your blood and meat and soul for fuel.”

  “So, what’s the difference? I do that every day anyway. What’s one way over the other? Maybe it’s easier with pills.”

  Tomaso opened the door for them, bowing politely. “Good evening, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Tomaso.” Sheela gave him a smile.

  On the steps Lymon added, “Easier? Is it? Don’t you already have enough things feeding on you?”

  He held the door for her, had started to close it when she beckoned him inside with her. “Go ahead, Paul,” she called. “Lymon and I have some things to discuss.”

  As the car pulled away, she was frowning down at her gauzy white dress. “I want you to understand something. I’ve always had a strong will.”

  She waved him down when he started to speak. “Lymon, once, when I was fourteen, I got into trouble. Dad had an old Yamaha dirt bike he used to ride out to check the irrigation. It was missing one of the covers over the sprocket. I wasn’t ever supposed to ride that motorcycle.”

  She leaned her head back, closing her eyes. “So, of course, once when Mom and Dad were gone to Regina for a horse auction, I got that damn bike started. The first thing I did was fall over. That chain pulled the inside of my leg right into that sprocket. It was a real mess—took a damn fortune in cosmetic surgery to fix it.”

  Her face had begun to relax as she looked back into the past. “I slapped a bandage on it—wrapped it in gauze we used for the horses’ tails when we trailered them. God, I knew that Dad would be furious when he got home. I was scared silly about what he’d do and decided the only logical course of action was to run away from home until it healed.”

  She smiled. “Can you imagine that? You’re not real smart at fourteen. Anyhow, I caught a ride to Saskatoon on a wheat truck. I was riding in the back. August, you know, eh? Hot. Sometime flies got under that bandage. It started stinking and itching. I was too scared to look.”

  He watched her throat work as she swallowed. “The police picked me up at a Tim Horton’s two days later. When they took that bandage off, I threw up.”

  “Maggots?” he asked softly.

  She gave a slight nod. “That experience freaked me out.
To this day, I can’t stand flies. It’s made me very protective of my body.” She hugged herself. “This is all that I have left. It’s the only private me that I have to myself. The whole world has the outside. It’s only the inside that is still all mine.”

  Her fatigued eyes opened, and she gave him a miserable stare. “So, no drugs unless I just can’t help it. I’ll try to keep me to myself no matter what the cost.”

  “Let me know if I can help.”

  She blinked, stretching and yawning. “You just did.”

  9

  Christal parked the Chrysler in a lot off Peninsula four blocks from the Hilton. On the long walk she ruminated on the necessity of getting one of those parking permits from June when she finally got her car to California. Which gave her pause. Was her little squat Nissan still a prerequisite?

  Don’t ditch the past until you know you can pay for it.

  Her mother’s words echoed in her head as she remembered the time her father had traded in a perfectly good ‘79 Ford F-150 pickup for a shiny new ’93 Chevy three-quarter-ton with all the stuff you could pack into a truck. Three weeks later his boss sacked him when he showed up for work drunk. When it was all said and done, the bank repossessed the shiny new Chevy, and Mom had to drive him around looking for another job. Six months later, she filed for divorce.

  Christal frowned as she walked along the street, following in the wake of others trucking toward the Hilton. A breeze off the Pacific had sent the infamous brown cloud eastward over San Bernardino. The cool air was pleasing, not at all like the humid heat that mugged DC in the summer.

  The palm trees, the brown-skinned people in low riders, the numbers of signs in Spanish reminded her of home. Truth was, LA was more like her kind of city. Sort of like Albuquerque on speed and steroids.

  A crowd had already gathered at the drive into the Hilton. She stopped by the sign pointing to registration and studied the people. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. The guys with the expensive-looking camera equipment had a veteran certainty about them. Something about their body language, the way they moved, reminded her of hunters. Paparazzi, she decided.

  The fans she figured for the ones with the excitement in their eyes. Their cameras weren’t Nikon F5s, but the cheaper and more portable point-and-shoot kind. Finally, she figured the tourists to be the ones carrying the disposable cardboard Kodak and Fuji boxes. The clothes seemed to bear this out.

  Mingling with the crowd, Christal just walked and listened. A number of people were wearing i LOVE SHEELA pins. She caught bits of gossip, conversation about children, lots of discussion of movies and TV programs, some sports (particularly the Dodgers), a new restaurant on Wilshire, and bits and pieces of gossip about celebrity social life.

  “I’m just so sad,” one woman was saying to her friend as they gawked down the drive waiting for their glimpse of greatness. “De Giulio was just perfect for Sheela. God, what I’d give to have a guy like that crawl into my bed.”

  “He’s too fast,” her friend, a middle-aged woman in a pink stretch blouse, replied. “Trust me, you need a steady guy, not some slick who’s gonna be sniffing out every muff in town.”

  Christal arched an eyebrow, remembering Lymon’s description of Sheela’s affair.

  “Manuel de Clerk’s really going to be here?” another young woman asked her friend. “I can’t believe it!”

  Didn’t any of them have real lives? She thought back to the afternoon, to actually meeting de Clerk. Instead of giddy like her heart cried for, she had been professional, safe in her FBI mode.

  That she had declined to give him her phone number when he asked brought home just how scarred the affair with Hank Abrams had left her. But it was more. That look in his eyes had sent a quiver down her spine. Damn it, he’d looked at her as if she was just another sure thing.

  She walked on, hearing familiar names: Richard Dreyfuss, Jennifer Aniston, Michael Douglas, John Cusack, Mark Wahlberg, and Kate Hudson. At curbside, fit-looking men in suits stood at ease, eyes on the crowd. Obviously security.

  A cheer went up.

  Christal rose on tiptoes to see a long white limo round the corner. The crowd seemed to flow down the walk to the red velvet ropes. Christal stepped back, climbed onto a cement planter, and watched—not the occupant, Robin Williams, who stepped out to cheers—but the crowd.

  The loners immediately caught her attention. Was it the fixed expression, the posture? She could almost sense their isolation as they stood packed shoulder to shoulder with other people. Her gift had been the ability to see scars on the psyche the way others saw them on the body.

  Those are the ones to watch.

  Then a moving head marked by a red cap caught her attention. Another cheer went up as another limo came gliding down the drive. Flashes popped, and voices called out in giddy excitement. “Shaquille O’Neal!”

  Christal had no trouble seeing him tower over the crowd as he waved and called out, “Hey! Let’s all give for MS!”

  Another cheer went up.

  The red cap was coursing through the press of bodies, an anomaly like a ripple crossing currents; it worked like an advertisement. And then, glancing across, she could see a second hat slipping through the crowd on the other side of the drive.

  A single shriek set the stage as a black limo came ghosting down the drive.

  “Sheela Marks!” a shrill voice called.

  Christal balanced on precarious tiptoes, watching as the door opened and Lymon stepped out, his hard hazel eyes on the crowd. He glanced at the security, then reached inside to offer his hand to Sheela.

  The popping strobes reminded Christal of full automatic muzzle flashes. Sheela smiled, waved, and threw a kiss to the ecstatic crowd. The roar drowned anything she said for the benefit of multiple sclerosis.

  “You a Sheela Marks fan?” a voice asked.

  Christal looked down, seeing one of the red hats. A young man, perhaps twenty, dark-haired, slightly bored looking, wore a white T-shirt stenciled with the words GENESIS ATHENA. A stack of fliers was in his hand, something photocopied on chartreuse paper.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Of course.”

  “Here.” He handed her one of the papers before he turned away. She watched him walk from person to person, handing out the sheets.

  She folded it between her fingers, looking back in time to see Sheela, in a lively white dress, step through the double doors, Lymon walking a step behind on the right.

  By the time the last of the celebrities had arrived, teenagers were circulating through the crowds with ornately decorated coffee cans, soliciting donations.

  Christal chipped in a five-dollar bill. Only then did she look down at the flashy green paper she held.

  GENESIS ATHENA was prominently printed across the top. “What would you give to share your life with the impossible?” she read. “GENESIS ATHENA makes dreams come true. You can bring her into your life.”

  Below the words was a picture of Sheela Marks. When she turned it over, the same words were written with a photo of Manuel de Clerk. A phone number and the Internet address www.genesisathena.com were printed at the bottom.

  Lymon locked his BMW RT, undid the D rings on his helmet, and climbed the stairs to his office. The clock in the motorcycle’s fairing had told him it was six-forty. He yawned, figuring that he could sneak home before noon and nap prior to meeting Paul at the studio. They needed to finalize arrangements for Sheela’s trailer.

  He slipped the key into the lock, stepped inside, and hung his helmet and leather jacket on the peg in the storeroom. Equipment was stacked on the shelves, and a big gun safe lurked in the rear. Walking down the hall, he was surprised to see a light on in his office. A greater surprise was finding Christal seated at his desk. She was hunched over the computer monitor, her raven hair a jumbled mess falling over her shoulders. A half-empty cup of coffee rested to one side. Evidence she’d been there for a while. A yellow legal pad lay askew to her right as her fingers tapped keys.

&nbs
p; “Make yourself at home.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, her large dark eyes might have looked right through him. “What is obsession worth?”

  Lymon stepped in and walked over. “Whatever the market will bear.” He flicked a finger back and forth. “You’re in my chair, at my desk, using my computer.”

  Her gaze seemed to clear, and she looked up at him. “This is yours?”

  “So, tell me, did you just make yourself at home in the SAC’s office at the FBI? Or do things like your employer’s privacy just not rate very highly on the Christal Anaya scale of propriety?”

  An eyebrow arched, and he could see fatigue behind her shapely face. “Sorry, boss man. You should put a sign on the door. I didn’t know this was yours. I needed a computer. June’s looked daunting at the front desk. I know this model of Compaq.”

  “Dudette, you’re getting a Dell.” He waved his finger again. “Two questions. One, what the hell are you doing on my computer? Two, how long have you been here?”

  She glanced at her watch. “Shit! Is that the time?”

  He noted that half the yellow pad was folded under the backing. “Start at the beginning, Christal.”

  She pushed back in his chair, seemingly ignorant of her continued violation of his sovereign territory. A frown incised her forehead. “Have you ever looked at Sheela Marks’ Web site?”

  “Sure. Back when Dot first had it up and running. So what?”

  “It’s got a lot of information in it. Her whole career is there. It took me over an hour just to skim through it. Did you know that no less than fifteen different Web addresses are linked to her site?”

  “You’ve lost me. Why is that important?”

  “Because there is a whole Sheela Marks subculture on the Internet. I can take you to five different chat rooms dedicated to nothing but her. One of them, wow!”

  “What does ‘wow’ mean?”

  “The address is ‘share-la-sheela.’ It’s sick.” Christal studied him. “Did Sheela ever do porn films?”