The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone m-6

by George C. Chesbro

  Veil laughed. "You should have seen the look on his face; he was really getting frustrated."

  "The look on Mama's face was the last thing I wanted to see, Veil, I assure you. And he wouldn't have been frustrated much longer if you hadn't gotten to me when you did."

  "Yeah, well, I should have followed you in like I'd wanted to in the first place. It's the last time I ever listen to you."

  I turned to the old man with the soulful eyes and bald head. "So Slycke was K.G.B.?"

  "An informant, not an officer," Lippitt replied with a faint note of anger in his voice. "A traitor. He'd probably been feeding information to the Russians for years. They were blackmailing him. From what we've been able to turn up in the past twenty-four hours, it looks like they had the goods on him as a homosexual; he frequented some pretty heavy leather bars in the city. They probably entrapped him with K.G.B. personnel, took photographs and made tape recordings, and then threatened to expose and ruin him if he didn't cooperate by giving them information about who was in the clinic, and what went on there. That's the way these things usually work."

  "What the hell's such a big deal about being a homosexual?"

  Lippitt shrugged. "It's no big deal, as long as you don't care if people know you're one. Slycke cared very much; he had a wife and four children. The bars he patronized specialize in some pretty gruesome activities. It means I was almost certainly right about the connection with Prolix; it was Slycke who provided the information about Garth-"

  "Garth!" I said, sitting up. Pain sloshed around inside my head, and I swayed. Veil grabbed for me, but I pushed his hands away. "Where's my brother?!"

  Lippitt and Veil looked at each other. "He's missing, Mongo," Veil said at last.

  I looked at Lippitt. "Missing?"

  The Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency nodded. "He's not here, and he's not anywhere on the hospital grounds. He's missing, along with another patient by the name of Marl Braxton."

  "Oh, shit," I said.

  "Lie down, Mongo."

  "You're sure. . he's not …?"

  "We're not sure of anything, Mongo-except that he's not here at the hospital, and the police haven't found him wandering on the roads in Rockland County. The same with Marl Braxton. Everyone else is accounted for, so we're assuming for now that Garth and this Braxton took off together. There's also a male nurse who hasn't shown up for work for two days, and who doesn't answer his phone-but we're not sure if that's connected with any of this. He wasn't on duty when all of this happened."

  "Tommy Carling?" I said.

  "Yes," Lippitt replied, his eyes and voice registering surprise. "How did you know?"

  "Just a guess; Carling was Garth's nurse on the day shift. You know, Braxton's supposed to be very dangerous. I never saw him do anything violent, but-"

  "Marl Braxton is indeed dangerous," Lippitt said in a flat voice. "I've reviewed his file."

  "What's his story, Lippitt? I know information about Braxton is classified, but-"

  "Marl Braxton is fifty-five years old, although he looks at least a decade younger," Lippitt said evenly. "During the Korean War he organized and operated in a special, very secret unit which came to be known as Reprisals."

  "He was an assassin?"

  Lippitt nodded. "Of sorts. Reprisals could include assassinations, but they could also be other things-depending on what it was the North Koreans had done that called for reprisals. The North Koreans are a tricky bunch, and they started doing sneaky little things to annoy us and our allies after we sat down to negotiate with them at Panmunjom. That's when the Reprisals unit was set up. Marl Braxton was the principal operative in his own unit, and he was very good at what he did. Then the North Koreans caught him. They had him for five years, and he was severely tortured-with acupuncture techniques, of all things. First they ruined any chance he would ever have for a sex life, and then they ruined his mind. We eventually got him back in a swap of prisoners, but by then he'd become hopelessly damaged goods. He continued to carry out reprisals-killings; but he was carrying them out against our own people-people Braxton felt had betrayed him, or who were guilty of crimes that were only fantasies in Braxton's mind. When he does decide to kill, he's cold and calculating-which makes him far more dangerous, in a way, than the patient who wanted to kill you, Mongo. Marl Braxton gives no warning; but when he decides that a person should die, for whatever reason, that person usually dies. Over the years, the prognosis hasn't changed; he will never respond to treatment."

  I swallowed hard, found that my mouth had gone dry. "And this is the man who's with Garth."

  "Maybe they're together, maybe not. The police in the county have been notified, as well as the NYPD. There's a Missing Persons bulletin out for both Braxton and Garth."

  "I would think you'd have them put out an APB for Braxton."

  "We can't have the police put out an APB for Braxton without questions being asked about his background, and things like the Reprisals unit aren't matters we like to see discussed in the newspapers. Also, the police might want to try and interrogate Braxton after they picked him up; not good for Braxton, not good for us-and potentially deadly for any police officer who tried too hard to pick him up, or pushed him too hard afterward. Let's see how far we get with the Missing Persons bulletin. The police are simply supposed to notify us immediately if they spot either Garth or Braxton."

  "I have to call my parents," I said huskily.

  "I already have," Lippitt said. "They're taking it well. Your parents, as you well know, are strong and positive people. They're grateful for the fact that you're alive. I apologized to them for not removing Garth from the clinic as soon as I suspected something might be wrong. I apologized to them, Mongo, and I now apologize to you."

  "You don't have anything to apologize for, Lippitt. You immediately let Veil know what your suspicions were, and he let me know. At the time, I thought you were out of your mind. You gave me the information, and I should have paid more attention to it. It certainly does explain why Slycke was so paranoid about me."

  Veil said, "Sure. Slycke was caught between a rock and a hard place. He was forced to take orders from, and feed information to, his K.G.B. controller. In the beginning, he may have thought that Mr. Lippitt was on to him."

  "Which I wasn't," Lippitt said, anger and disdain resurfacing in his tone. "I only became suspicious when Garth first showed signs of regaining consciousness, and then the two operatives at Prolix took off."

  Veil grunted. "The K.G.B. must have been leaning on Slycke hard from the beginning to keep them up to date at all times on what was happening with Garth. But you were right here all the time, Mongo, keeping a close eye on things, and they perceived you as a threat to their interests-for whatever reasons. You even mentioned to Slycke the possibility of removing Garth from the clinic, and that must have had the Russians climbing the walls. They didn't miss any of the implications of what was happening to Garth as a result of the NPPD poisoning, and they wanted to keep a close watch on all developments. They ordered Slycke to cut you out of the picture, which he tried to do."

  "And then you started to make some very heavy noises, Mongo," Lippitt said. "Not only did you make it clear to Slycke that you still intended to remove Garth from the clinic, but you threatened to investigate his private life. You must have really rung his bell with that one, and he couldn't tolerate the danger of being exposed a second time."

  "Which was why I ended up being carted around by Mama Baker," I said. I was thirsty. Veil poured me a glass of water from a pitcher on a table beside my bed. I drank it down, sighed. I was feeling better-better, for certain, than the man who had tried to kill me would ever feel. "I thought I saw Slycke with a needle stuck in his brain. Was that real?"

  Lippitt nodded. "We don't know whether his controller ordered him to kill you, or whether it was his own idea. We're leaning toward the theory that Slycke thought it up on his own, since he was the one who felt most immediately and personally threatened; the K.G.B.
could have gotten rid of you in a number of other ways. No matter whose idea it was, it seems that Slycke got caught in the same trap he'd set up for you. He knew about this Baker's obsession with killing dwarfs, and he figured he'd simply arrange for Baker to nab you 'by accident' after you'd sneaked into the clinic for an unauthorized visit to Garth. He probably sent the nurses off on some errand before he went down to ambush you. He used your beeper to signal Veil at the appropriate times while he took you upstairs and shot you up with those drugs. Then he opened up the secure unit-and got ambushed himself, with nobody around to help him. He'd juiced up the men in that unit beforehand; the blood of Baker and the other patients in the secure unit showed definite traces of amphetamines. . definitely not the medication of choice for disturbed and violent men."

  "He'd primed them to go off beforehand," Veil said quietly, "and one or more of the patients in that unit blew up in his face. One of them got hold of Slycke's keys and-fortunately for you-opened up the whole place. Then the nurses came back and saw what was happening, but they were too late to save Slycke-or themselves. You were lucky Baker felt he had to make a special, ritual sacrifice out of you, or you'd have been killed right away, like the others."

  "I don't understand why Garth didn't try to help me," I said, looking away from the two men.

  "You don't know whether or not Slycke medicated the nonviolent patients," Veil said quietly. "He may have doped everybody up, and Garth slept through it all."

  "Then where is he now?"

  "There's no sense in speculating on what he could or couldn't have done until we find him, Mongo," Lippitt said. "And we will find him; or he'll turn up on his own. How far could he have gone?"

  Part II

  Missions of Mercy

  14

  About thirty-three miles, depending on construction detours.

  I was out of the hospital two days later. There was no word on Garth or Marl Braxton. There was also no sign of Tommy Carling; I made it my business to check on his apartment in the staff quarters, and he was gone, the apartment stripped of his personal belongings.

  There seemed nothing more to be done in Rockland County, so I moved back into Garth's apartment in the city-which by now seemed as much my home as his. I called my parents every few days, even though there was nothing to tell them; they had not heard from Garth, either.

  As first the days, and then the weeks and months, went by, I tried to accustom myself to the strong possibility that my brother was dead, perhaps killed by Marl Braxton during one of the fallen D.I. A. operative's psychotic episodes. Then, on a bitterly cold afternoon in mid-fall, a Wednesday four months later, while I was standing in the express line in a Gristede's supermarket, I found a grainy picture of Garth staring back at me from the front page of one of the lurid, always ridiculous, tabloids sold at the checkout counter. With trembling hands I lifted the paper out of the rack, stared in disbelief at the, photograph and the blurb under it. Disbelief and a growing disorientation. I felt as if I had been struck, or drugged again, and for a moment I feared I would loose consciousness. Slowly, I became aware of a kind of Greek chorus of cursers in the stalled line behind me, and when another cart "accidentally" banged into mine I snapped out of it. I pushed my cart ahead. Then I flipped to the two-page spread and blaring but skimpy text inside the newspaper, cursed aloud when I could not find what I wanted.

  Leaving my groceries in the shopping cart, I dropped two dollars on the checkout counter, then ran the three blocks back to the apartment. I was just reaching out to pick up the telephone to call the editorial offices of the tabloid when the phone rang. Irritated, I snatched up the receiver.

  "Yeah?"

  "Frederickson, this is Sergeant Mclntyre."

  "Ah, yes, Sergeant Mclntyre," I replied tightly, still fighting a sense of disorientation and dizziness, trying and failing to mask the deep scorn and anger I felt. "Perchance, would you be calling to fill me in on what the massive forces of the NYPD have been doing in their attempt to find a missing colleague?"

  There was a prolonged silence on the other end, and I half expected Sergeant Alexander Mclntyre, who had been in Garth's precinct and whom I considered a friend, to hang up on me. "You've seen The National Eye," he said at last in a flat voice.

  "As a matter of fact, I just picked up a copy at Gristede's. There's nothing like going out for a few groceries and finding out that the brother you'd feared dead has become a local celebrity, of sorts. Mclntyre, can you explain to me how, with a Missing Persons report in the hands of the NYPD, I end up finding Garth's picture on the front page of a Goddamn fish wrapper like The National Eye? You worked with him for twenty years! What the hell's the matter with you people?! What the fuck have you been doing for the past four months?!"

  "Just hold on a minute, Frederickson." Mclntyre's voice had grown cold, hard. "New York City, in case you haven't noticed lately, is a very big place which is easy to get lost in-if that's what you want to do. Also, in case you haven't noticed, we're in the midst of a crime wave caused by a crack epidemic; we don't have a lot of resources to look for a grown man who's just happened to have dropped out of sight. If their picture isn't on a milk carton, we don't spend a lot of time looking for them. We thought from the beginning that there was something not quite right about that MP request, and we kind of filed it away; we figured if Garth and this other guy they were looking for wanted you to know where they were, they'd have told you. Like I said, your brother's a big boy."

  "Okay," I said curtly. There was no percentage in arguing with the other man.

  "One of the uniformed officers in the precinct saw the picture, and he recognized Garth. That's why I'm calling you."

  "Okay. I appreciate it, Sergeant."

  "Did you read the story about Garth and the other guy in the picture with him?"

  "The story was long on horseshit and short on facts. It didn't tell me what I need to know. Where the hell is that place Garth is supposed to be living?"

  "There was a cop on the scene when that incident happened; he didn't recognize Garth, and he didn't know there was an MP blip floating on him."

  "I don't care about that crap, Mclntyre. Where is he?"

  "It's a big, converted bathhouse down in the Bowery-five blocks south of St. Mark's. The city shut it down when the AIDS scare first started. You'll recognize it right away by all the people hanging around it." Mclntyre paused, and when he spoke again, his tone had become softer. "Like I said, there was a cop on the scene when that business happened-and the cop drew the photographer. A report was filed, and maybe I can let you see it if you're interested; you stop around, and I'll see what I can do for you. I can understand how you'd be pissed, and maybe we could have done a little more than we did. Don't quote me."

  "Thanks for the offer, Sergeant, but I'm not really interested in that nonsense. See you."

  "Frederickson?"

  "Yeah."

  "What the hell's the matter with Garth?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine," I replied carefully.

  "The way he's acting. . it's why the Missing Persons report was filed, right?"

  "Right."

  "Is he crazy?"

  "Aren't we all?"

  "He's sure got some funny stories to tell."

  "Yeah."

  "He told me he killed Orville Madison. Can you believe that?"

  "You've talked to him in person?"

  "He was-is-my friend. After I heard about the newspaper story, I drove down to check out the situation. I called you before, but you weren't in. I didn't want to just leave a message on your answering machine."

  "Why didn't you bring him in, Sergeant?"

  "On what charges? He was reported missing, and now he's not missing anymore. There's definitely something the matter with Garth's head, Frederickson; you wouldn't believe the collection of people he's got down there in that mission of his."

  "Mission? I thought you said he was living in a bathhouse."

  There was a pause, then: "You'd better
go down and see for yourself, Frederickson."

  That was precisely what I intended to do. I thanked Mclntyre again, hung up.

  I took the subway down to the Bowery, went up to the street, and walked five blocks south, until I came to a large traffic circle. Darkness had fallen, and I stood across the street, huddled against the cold in my parka, watching the proceedings on the opposite side of the circle, in front of a building of freshly scrubbed stone which took up half the block. There appeared to be a lot of construction going on inside and on top of the building, where the roof seemed to have been torn away, but business was obviously going on as usual. It was eerie, seeing the huge symbol painted above the entrance-four interlocking rings, skewered by a great knife with a jewel-encrusted handle. Valhalla and Whisper. I wondered if the logo had been designed to Garth's specifications, somehow doubted it. Unless Garth had changed once again, my brother certainly wasn't into symbols of any kind.

  A line of bedraggled people snaked down the street and disappeared around the corner. The men and women, some cloaked only in rags and pushing rickety shopping carts or carrying shopping bags filled with their personal belongings, patiently shuffled forward, waiting their turn to be ushered into the bathhouse. A number of well-dressed people-young and old, black, brown, white, and yellow-moved up and down the line, clasping hands, occasionally hugging the bag people, evidently offering hope and encouragement. All of the aides wore green jackets or headbands-sometimes both-emblazoned with the rings-and-knife logo.

  Tommy Carling, still wearing an earring and his long, blond hair in a ponytail, was there, wearing a green jacket. He was standing near the entrance, talking with a woman who also wore a green jacket, along with a black nun's cowl that fell over her shoulders.

  There was no sign of Garth, and I assumed he was inside the building.

  As I stood in the night shadows and watched, a television news truck pulled up to the curb in front of the entrance. A well-known local news reporter, accompanied by sound and camera men, got out and went up to Carling and the nun. The reporter said something to Carling, who shrugged his shoulders and made a gesture with his hands that seemed to indicate the line of people. There was a conference between the three people, and then the nun turned and went into the building. Lights were set up, and the reporter and his team began walking down the line of people, interviewing those who were willing.