Doubled or Nothing

by Warren Esby

  I remember, and not fondly at all, my first successful harvesting of regenerated rat livers. My success was to my detriment. Most of the rats in this batch had survived and regenerated their livers. There was a lot of liver and serum to collect. After collecting all the livers, I had to chop them up into little pieces and then mince them into even smaller pieces, almost like a pâté and then place them in culture fluid in the incubator set at whatever temperature rat liver cells like to live in. I didn’t finish until well into the afternoon. I was so hungry I could eat a horse, so I went down to the cafeteria to see what was on the menu. As you have probably guessed by now, the only thing left to eat in the cafeteria that afternoon was chopped liver. I couldn’t eat it then and I have never been able to eat it since. I went hungry that afternoon.

  In actual fact, I have always looked backed with fondness at that summer and the skills it gave me. For one thing, I learned to keep my hands very steady when I operated, which was not the case when I had started shooting. But with skill came steadiness in both cases. After a while I became used to killing rats and dispatching them quickly and humanely, which was a useful skill when I went to graduate school. And I got used to handling live laboratory animals as well which would also serve me in good stead while doing the research for my Ph.D. I also improved my skill at playing football and basketball because starting mid-afternoon on Wednesdays there was a pick-up basketball game in the area behind our building and on Fridays it was football in the field next to the parking lot. Those people had their priorities straight. They knew that all work and no basketball or football makes harvesting livers a dull job. It was the fond memories and the skill I had with laboratory animals that led me to the field of biology when I decided that chemical engineering was not for me.

  Chapter 7

  Getting back to why I had shifted fields after graduating in chemical engineering. It wasn’t a desire to help the world and push back the frontiers of science. It was because I had nothing better to do and the National Institutes of Health were giving out living expenses and tuition for those who wanted to pursue graduate studies in medical research. I didn’t come to this decision lightly. First I looked through the catalog to see what other non-engineering field appealed to me. I wasn’t going to be fooled twice by entering another engineering field just because it might have mechanical, civil, electrical, aeronautical or some other descriptive that would fool you into thinking it wasn’t really math. I thought long and hard and decided on biology because I had fond memories of playing basketball, football, drinking very strong coffee and killing rats during my summer job at Brandeis. And I presumed that if I stayed at MIT there wouldn’t be any chopped liver in its cafeteria. There never was.

  Because of my knowledge of rats, I ended up working on a project for my research thesis that had a lot to do with rats with an occasional rabbit, guinea pig and mouse thrown in for good measure. My previous experience with rats was a big plus. The project had to do with a disease that animals get that had certain similarities to Multiple Sclerosis that humans get. The idea was that if you can find a cure for the animal disease, then maybe you can cure the human disease. Make sense? I thought so at first, but when you think about it, it doesn’t. First, no one knows what causes Multiple Sclerosis, but we do know what causes the animal disease. It’s caused by a human injecting the animal with a concoction in a syringe that produces a disease called experimental encephalitis. It’s not a real disease. So even if you find a cure for it, what does that mean, unless you can find people who have been injected with that concoction. I suppose you could theoretically go around surreptitiously injecting people with the concoction, say in a crowded subway where they’d just think they got bitten by a mosquito. Then you would have people around with the disease you had a cure for. But how would they know what they had since it isn’t a known disease, and how would they know that you had the cure for it? Well I suppose, after you injected them you could give them a little card that said something like, ‘We have a cure for what ails you. Call this number for more information.’ Of course that probably wouldn’t work since I think you need a license to dispose of used syringes and they would probably catch you. The more I thought of it the more I realized that the whole process would be like wrecking someone’s car if you’re a body shop so they’d have to pay you to repair it. That didn’t appeal to me.

  What appealed to me was that by pursuing a Ph.D. I would receive a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health that would pay my living expenses and there would be very little math involved. Now I had some trepidations about having to deal with rats again, but it turned out my fears were unfounded. They used an entirely different strain of rats than the strain, the name of which I don’t remember, that could climb up their own tail. The rats of the strain they worked with at MIT were very laid back and gentle. You could just pick them up like a puppy or kitten and they would just let you do it without biting. You could hold them with one hand and pet them with another and still have all your fingers afterwards. They were so gentle that you could carry them around on your shoulder without them trying to bite your ear. Sometimes, if you did that, they would crawl around the back of your neck from one shoulder to the other which was really cool if you didn’t mind the little balls of rat turd that occasionally came rolling down the back of your shirt. But the rat turds were very hard and seldom stained your shirt so it was okay. And I even remembered the name of this particular strain of rats. They were called Lewis rats. You always remember the nice ones you meet, don’t you?

  Now I often wonder how various animal strains get their name. In the case of the Lewis rat, I thought it may have been named in honor of the ex-comedian named Jerry Lewis. You know, the one who had the telethons asking you to contribute to ‘Jerry’s Kids’ so they can treat whatever childhood diseases Jerry’s kids may have. I thought that this gentle strain of rat might have been developed to study childhood diseases in rats and named after Jerry Lewis for this reason. But children didn’t get Multiple Sclerosis until they were adults, so it couldn’t be for that purpose. Then I remembered how fat Jerry Lewis looked in the pictures from his last telethon and thought that maybe the Lewis rats were bred to study obesity and named after him for that reason. But I had never seen a fat Lewis rat. But then again, they usually didn’t live long enough to get fat. After they were given the concoction, they usually came down with a disease in about ten days that looked a little bit like Multiple Sclerosis. They would exhibit partial paralysis. Most would end up not being able to use their hind legs or their tails. You could tell the start of the paralysis because they had what we called a limp tail. If you picked them up and turned them over on their back while holding them, they didn’t like it. But they were too nice to bite you. Instead they would use their tails to try and turn over and the tail would whip around like a windmill. If they were beginning to get sick the tail would just hang there limply like I did after one of my weekend encounters with Julie, or even before if I wasn’t particularly horny. Anyway, after a while, the rat would also be unable to use its hind legs and would just drag itself around by its front legs. You would think this was cruel, especially since they didn’t have rat sized wheel chairs to put them in like they have for Multiple Sclerosis patients. But not to worry. The rats would recover after four days anyway and were back to crawling on my shoulder. So we really didn’t need to develop a treatment for this disease in rats after all. They cured themselves. And we couldn’t use this cure on patients. You couldn’t just tell a Multiple Sclerosis patient after their diagnosis to just go home and you’ll feel better in four days because it would be a lie, and that was not truthful as I’ve said before.

  Now my whole research effort was aimed at getting the rats to drag themselves around for only two days, rather than four days. This was considered a worthwhile treatment. I tried injecting these animals with a variety of other concoctions in various ways. I became an expert at various ways to inject things into animals: intramuscularly, subcuta
neously, intraperitoneally, intravenously, to name just a few. I also got so good with a syringe that I could draw blood from the tail vein of a rat or mouse. My mother always used to say you can’t get blood from a turnip. Well a mouse’s tail is a lot smaller than the average turnip and I could get blood from it. I was very good with a syringe. Unfortunately, the reward for any Lewis rat that recovered from a disease, no matter how gentle they were, was to be immediately killed so you could do a pathology evaluation. That’s why they didn’t live long enough to get fat. The same fate awaited the occasional rabbit, mouse or guinea pig I treated. I killed so many animals during my career and saw so much blood and guts that I became inured to death, which was why I wasn’t at all squeamish about looking at Ivor with his head blown apart in the basement pistol range. I was good at killing animals. I became used to dispassionately dispatching them. This was one of the things that the CIA liked about me when they learned about it and decided to hire me as a double agent. They liked people who could dispassionately dispatch other people who they thought needed to be dispatched dispassionately.

  Now how did the CIA find out about this talent that I had? To them it was a talent. It was a kind of oblique recommendation on the part of the professor who had been my thesis advisor. When they questioned him after I left Boston about my character and whether he thought I could have killed Ivor if I had the opportunity, he didn’t realize he was giving me a compliment as far as they were concerned when he told them he certainly thought I could have based upon his observations of my behavior in his laboratory. As far as he was concerned, I had no feelings towards the animals I dealt with and was a cold blooded killer, of animals at least, and I had ice water in my veins. Describing me as being cold blooded and having ice water in my veins was kind of redundant, but remember, he was a professor of biology not of English, and biology professors don’t usually write coherently anyway and are often redundant. He didn’t seem to realize that your blood definitely would be cold if you had ice water in your veins along with the blood, and he called himself a biologist.

  The reason the professor felt that way about me, I’m sure, was because of what had happened during the last six months I was there. At that time, I was the only one left in his research group who knew all the ways to inject and kill laboratory animals. I had been taught by his seasoned technician who was even better than I was. The technician resigned to take a better paying job as a butcher and, since I was leaving, the professor decided that he had better learn what I knew. He wanted to watch me inject and kill laboratory animals. We never got to the killing part so I don’t know why he said what he did to the CIA. The first thing he watched was my injection of some animals with the concoction that we used. It was not an easy concoction to make up and every drop was valuable. It had to be given into the tarsus area of the footpad which didn’t tickle the animals, believe me. I had made up two syringes, and I handed him one syringe to hold while I injected the first animal with the other so he could watch. As I turned towards him after finishing the injection, I noticed he was glassy-eyed and swaying and looked like he was about to faint. I did what you would expect. I grabbed the syringe with the concoction and let him fall to the ground. He banged his head a little but that was all. By the time he woke up, I had finished doing the other animals we had planned to do. He apologized for being so squeamish and said he hadn’t done an injection in years and didn’t know what had come over him and that he would be all right. He was being very brave. So we went to do some tail vein bleeding and, you guessed it, he fainted again. By this time it was lunch time and he left to go to the faculty club while I went down to the sandwich machines. Around two weeks later, he hired a new technician so that I could teach her all my skills and they would not be lost to his research laboratory. Unlike me, the new technician was not at all dispassionate about the work. I would say she was passionate. In fact I thought she was a sadistic little bitch if you must know, and I often wonder how the two of them are getting along. Before I left I ordered a whole batch of the tail climbing strain of rats for her ‘by mistake.’ I only regret not being there to watch the fun.

  So you can see why the CIA agents got the response they did. When the CIA agents questioned him further about me and asked him whether he was certain that I was in the department at the time of my oral exam, he remembered how I had looked when he came out of his conference room, all out of breath (not true) and sweaty (true) and pale (true). He also told them that he didn’t understand why I had insisted on leaving right after my exam since I knew they were going to have a faculty meeting right after and he had plenty of time to spend with me if I wanted to stay. Huh? As you may have guessed, the CIA agents who questioned him never bothered to report that conversation to the local police and they asked him to keep it confidential. If I ever find out he did go to the police with his new found suspicion, I may have to break my rule and passionately dispatch someone.

  By the time my thoughts of what had transpired during my last few months in Boston and hundreds of others had all passed through my mind, I was well past Omaha and looking for a place to go to sleep since it was just about dark. I saw what appeared to be a suitable cow pasture and left the interstate and got on a small country road. I wanted to be far enough away from the interstate so the highway sounds wouldn’t bother me, so I went about a mile down the road to the point that I could barely see the overpass over the highway at the exit and pulled to the side of the road. As I got out of my car, I saw another car get off the interstate. It must have made a mistake because it immediately got back on. It looked black, but I really couldn’t tell since it was almost dark and I definitely couldn’t tell if it was a Buick Regal. I chose a cow pasture that looked free of cows and unrolled my sleeping bag in a cow pie free zone and went immediately to sleep. It was the first sound sleep I had in two nights because Muffy had kept me awake so much of the first night and the stomach ache had the second night.

  Chapter 8

  I was so tired that I didn’t wake up until daylight. It was the best night’s sleep I would have the entire trip. Even though it was daylight when I woke up, I realized I was in the shade although I did not remember there being any trees in that field, or in Nebraska for that matter. You know when you just wake up and are in that twilight between dreaming and full awareness. Well somewhere in that time period I realized that a cow was grazing right on top of me, and I thought as I looked up at its belly that it must be a pretty high quality cow since it didn’t have ‘Made in China’ printed on its belly. I wriggled out from underneath the cow, which didn’t miss a mouthful while I did so, rolled up my sleeping bag and hot footed it towards the fence before the bull showed up. I got into my car and drove to the next truck stop. It had showers you could use, which I did. The reason I did was as a result of having to sit at a lunch counter to eat breakfast. I wonder why they don’t call them breakfast counters, at least until noon. I sat next to a little boy and his mother. I heard the little boy ask his mother quietly, he was very polite and didn’t think I could hear him, why I smelled so funny. His mother was very knowledgeable in the ways of rural America and whispered back that I was obviously a cowboy and that’s how cowboys smell. She actually whispered it almost wistfully, as if it brought back memories.

  Completely refreshed after a shower and change of clothes, I went on towards Denver. The first part of the trip was very relaxing. The Buicks were in the distant past and probably an insignificant coincidence I thought to myself naively. I had had a good night’s sleep and was well rested and in a good mood. That was the way the trip lasted until I stopped for lunch. I stopped for lunch at a rest area and went into the rest room for a pause before continuing. As I was coming out, I noticed a black haired woman walking towards the women’s restroom across the hall. She looked vaguely familiar. She had very black hair that looked like it might have been a dye job. The hair hung straight down on either side of her face until it reached her chin. She had bangs cut straight across her forehead just above her eye
brows and she wore very bright red lipstick. Her very pale white face looked like it was set in a square black picture frame. She was dressed in a black short sleeved cotton sweater and black jeans, but had red sneakers on. I learned later that Olga always liked to dress in black but also liked to have a little splash of color, usually red, somewhere along with the black. Anyway, just before she went into the restroom she looked up at me as I was coming out and, as if in recognition, she winked at me and then went into the women’s restroom. So it was the woman I had seen while talking to Tommy, I thought to myself.

  I wanted to talk to her but I couldn’t very well follow her into the rest room so I decided to wait. I waited for a half hour and she didn’t reappear. There must have been at least a hundred women who went in during that time period and they all came out, except for her. I realized then that there must be a back door that she escaped through so I walked to each side of the entrance to the women’s rest room but kept it in sight. No other exit. I did notice a rather large man with a round face and curly black hair talking animatedly on the phone just outside the main entrance not far from where I had parked my car. I waited for another ten minutes and she still hadn’t come out, and the man with the curly black hair was still there, sometimes talking and sometimes just listening with the phone to his ear. He glanced at me on occasion just as I glanced at him on occasion. I finally realized that she would not be coming out until I had left, and I suspected that the man on the phone would let her know when I did. I finally went outside and got into my car. The man with the curly black hair followed me as far as the curb and watched me get in my car and drive off, still with the phone to his ear. As I drove out, at the end of the parking area, just before the entrance ramp to the interstate, I saw two black Buick Regals parked side by side. They both had Colorado license plates on them. A chill went down my spine and I touched the little .25 ACP caliber Beretta I had kept in my pocket for comfort. It didn’t work. That little gun wasn’t going to protect me from anything. Anyway, as I drove away I was no longer relaxed and in a good mood, and I remained that way all the rest of the way to Denver.