the Delta Star (1983)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Real sorry," The Bad Czech said. "Wrong Feldman. You can go back to sleep."

  He clicked the receiver down and handed the phone to the detective. "That's the guy in the pinstripe suit, Mario. He's got an unusual voice. It's him."

  "Then who the hell attacked me?" Mario Villalobos cried. Suddenly he scared the crap out of Dagmar Duffy by yelling, "Nacho Mendoza was right! I'm full of bull-ciii:i:t!"

  When they were helping the emotionally depleted detective into the car, and Dagmar was waving bye-bye, it occurred to Mario Villalobos who Dagmar Duffy had reminded him of in that moment of dejd vuy after he was knocked loopy. Standing on top of the landing, his blond perm bouncing, one hand pressed to his mouth and the other outstretched while he screamed, Dagmar Duffy looked exactly like Fay Wray in King Kong.

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM

  Mario villalobos couldn't sleep, not a wink. He lay in bed twitching, with a heating pad under his wrenched back. Both eyes were swollen and marbled and his nose felt fractured. He had drunk so much coffee that he could hardly close his eyes. He could only twitch, and wait for the dawn.

  He was at his desk very early. He was shaved, showered, combed, and wore a fresh suit. He thought he looked acceptable.

  "You look like hell" the detective lieutenant said upon seeing him. "You look like the phantom of the opera."

  The detective bureau was closed on weekends, but given the extraordinary events of the previous evening, the lieutenant was called from home to meet Mario Villalobos for a briefing. Ditto for a crime lab forensic chemist who bitched for half an hour about working on Saturday. He gave a preliminary report that the syringe contained sodium cyanide and that unfortunately it was an ordinary syringe, sold in any first-class pharmacy.

  It was noon before his lieutenant was completely informed about the sad state of affairs. When Mario Villalobos was finished, the lieutenant said, "That's it for roaming around alone at night all over Pasadena and Hollywood."

  "Whadda you mean, that's it?"

  "That's it, Mario. You can stay on this with Chip and Melody helping you, but no more playing solitaire."

  It was a relief, actually. His reach had too far exceeded his grasp. He was too tired to sleep. Too tired to think. He was wired to a short circuit from coffee, booze, cigarettes and exhaustion. He was inadequate.

  "Maybe it would be good to give it a rest," Mario Villalobos said.

  "Go home," the lieutenant nodded. "And rest your back and put some ice on your kisser and go to sleep for a couple days. See you Monday."

  By 1:00 p. M. Mario Villalobos was in bed trying to sleep. He couldn't remember when he'd been so tired. He couldn't remember when he'd been so embarrassed, nor when he'd been such a failure. He couldn't remember when he'd felt so sorry for himself.

  At 1:30 p. M. he switched on the radio, turning from the Dodger network to a local station that played music of the forties, day and night for lots of people like Mario Villalobos, obsessed with Time.

  At 2:00 p. M. he was in his private car on the Pasadena Freeway heading for Caltech, dizzily thinking of all the poor sharks in the sea. Never able to rest. To stop moving was to die of anoxia.

  Saturday and even Sunday were by no means days of rest at the university. There were always research groups at work. In fact, some scientists worked only at night due to the nature of their experiments or by personal preference.

  He made inquiries of a group of postdocs and found Ignacio Mendoza in a lecture hall in Noyes Laboratory. The lecture hall contained some ninety theater seats in six graduated rows descending steeply to a lecture platform. Ignacio Mendoza, dressed in a pink and green aloha shirt, gym shorts, sandals and black socks, was addressing his research group while they ate Kentucky Fried Chicken. The pink flamingos on the aloha shirt slithered on a field of slimy moss. The shirt was greasy from food, chemicals and perspiration.

  Behind the scientist were three enormous green chalkboards rising twenty feet, nearly to the ceiling. The chalkboards were covered with exotic chemical formulas, and Ignacio Mendoza, who was holding a pointer as long as a deep-sea fishing pole, could not have reached the top ones with it. That problem was solved when the Peruvian chemist touched a switch and the chalkboards were raised or lowered on a mechanical slide.

  Ignacio Mendoza did not see Mario Villalobos enter. The students came and went as they pleased during Ignacio Mendoza's informal presentation on solar energy conversion.

  The Peruvian chemist was saying, "A particularly intriguing redox-active energetic species ees the delta to delta-star singlet excited state of octachlorodirhenate dianion, whose energy ees one-point-seven-five electron volts and whose excited state lifetime ees one hundred and forty nanoseconds een acetonitrile solution at twenty-five degrees centigrade. Various electron acceptors such as tetracyanoethylene, chloranil, and the phosphorus-twelve tungstate trianion, quench the delta to delta-star luminescence een solutions, thereby producing the octachlorodirhenate anion and the reduced acceptor."

  Mario Villalobos liked the sound of it. It was mysterious and hopeful and soothing like the pop music of his youth, music which lately had begun to call forth nostalgic sentimental moments he was afraid to indulge, given the wreckage and waste of his life.

  The informal lecture was over thirty minutes after the detective arrived. For the first time in thirty-two hours he had managed to doze a bit. He remained in his seat until all the students had gone. Ignacio Mendoza was gathering his papers when he noticed the detective sitting in the top row of the elevated lecture hall.

  "You have returned, Sergeant Villalobos," the Peruvian said.

  "Yes."

  "You have been playing football since last night?"

  "I had an accident, Professor. I ran into the killer I've been looking for."

  "Yes! Go on!"

  "He beat the crap outa me. It wasn't Professor Feldman."

  "Of course not. Who was eet?"

  "I don't know. He got away. He had a syringe full of sodium cyanide for the little pansy."

  "My God!" the chemist said. "I thought eet was all bull-cheet!" "It is."

  "But you have part of it! A sodium cyanide solution ees the favorite method of suicide for scientists. You are getting somewhere!"

  "I don't think so. I'm too beat-up and tired and inadequate. I'm ready to use the old 'police are baffled but an arrest is imminent' gag and let the whole thing slide."

  "What do you mean, slide?"

  "The guy that got sucked into the badger game wasn't the Stanford Nobel candidate. It was Jan Larsson, the Nobel Committee member."

  "My God!" Ignacio Mendoza cried.

  "For a guy that's so sure He doesn't exist, you sure call His name a lot," the detective said, lighting a cigarette.

  "Ees just an expression," the chemist said. "But Sergeant, that ees fantastic!"

  "Naturally I expect you to treat this confidentially."

  "Of course! But Sergeant, I cannot believe this. What then? Someone ees trying to influence the committee?"

  "You could say that for sure," the detective said, rubbing his neck and moving painfully in the seat.

  "But Feldman ees the only logical chemistry candidate, Sergeant," the Peruvian exclaimed. "Thees ees madness! We have other men who have done notable work but not approaching Feldman's body of work. Madness!"

  "I don't know," Mario Villalobos said, resting his head on the back of the seat. "I'm not thinking too well since he beat me up. Maybe Van Zandt's behind it. Maybe he'd resort to this to win."

  "But he's up een Stanford. Not here with access to our NMR spectrometer."

  "I know, I know," Mario Villalobos said. "Maybe if I go home and let it alone for a few days and get some sleep ..."

  "Let eet alone? Get some sleep?" the chemist screamed. "Estupido! Gringo with Hispanic name! You are on the verge or discovery and you talk about sleep? How did you get your Hispanic name? No, don't tell me! I don't even want to know!"

  Then Mario Villalobos g
aped at the Peruvian chemist in his nutty aloha shirt, with his red cockatoo topknot fluttering electrically as he charged up the steps in slapping sandals to the top row of the lecture hall. The scientist took a white capsule out of his pocket and boldly shoved it into the mouth of the astonished detective.

  "Here, gringol" the Peruvian thundered. "To help you live up to your noble Hispanic name!"

  "What is it?" Mario Villalobos said.

  "Swallow eet!" the chemist thundered.

  It took three tries before he could get it down. When he did, he said, "If I die before I wake ..."

  "Talk about death later, bourgeois cop!" the scientist shouted, descending back to the podium. "Die when your work ees completed and there ees time to die!"

  "But I don't know what to do next, Professor!" the detective said.

  "I don't know! I don't know! That ees what I hate about Meeckey Mouse people een this bourgeois world!" the scientist roared, pacing back and forth on the stage at the bottom of the lecture hall. "Ees why I don't own a gun or knife! Think! And you shall know!"

  Three steps one way, three steps back. Whirling quirkily. Topknot jumping on his cockatoo's head. His fingers kneaded each other, as though he were weaving the warp and woof of the mysterium tremendum. Finally he said, "I am going to write for you a formula that even a Meeckey Mouse bourgeois cop can understand."

  He wrote on the blackboard, in letters two feet high: NP = I.

  "What's that?" Mario Villalobos asked.

  "All the bull-cheet you throw at me! To blow my mind!" the chemist shouted up to the detective, his topknot dancing. "Bull-cheet about money motivating a scientist to compromise a Nobel Committee member! And after being blackmailed himself, to murder once, twice! Eet ees not rational, but I let myself be seduced by estupid, irrational cop thinking. Money? Money sucks! But een your own way you were achieving some rational results with irrational reasoning. Would Ignacio Mendoza murder for money? Never! But Ignacio Mendoza would murder."

  "For what then?" the detective asked, staring down at the crazy chemist, who was standing on tiptoes, his index finger pointing heavenward.

  "One can work an entire life doing science. I have. One can do great and famous work een science. I have. One can receive fulfillment and satisfaction beyond the dreams of ordinary people. I have. But until some estupid bourgeois Meeckey Mouse cocksuckers in Stockholm select my name, I cannot live foreverl The money directly or indirectly gained ees meaningless. For the same reason that Khufu killed ten thousand slaves constructing his monument, I would kill. For nothing more nor less than immortality!"

  He pointed to the NP = I and said: "Nobel Prize equals Immortality!"

  Suddenly he started erasing the formulas on the lower chalkboard. He dropped the eraser, cursed in Spanish, picked it up and frantically wiped.

  He drew three enormous symbols on the chalkboard: 5 8 *

  "There ees the key to your solution."

  Mario Villalobos was starting to feel an energy rush. The scientist's "medicine" capsule was working. "What's that mean?"

  "Eet's delta to delta-star!" the scientist thundered, cracking his pointer against the chalkboard until it snapped in two. "Eet ees a new kind of excited state whose peculiarly long lifetime was discovered here at Caltech. Let's call eet a lingering excited state. Look at you. A cop burnout. Anyone can see eet. Still a young man and yet you project like you are seventy-no, eighty years old! Eef you could ever get eento a delta to delta-star excited state, just long enough to be creative for once een your bourgeoisie cop life, perhaps you could find what you are looking for!"

  "Delta to delta-star?" the detective said.

  "Did you see my research group?" the scientist said. His topknot red as sunset threw fluttering moth shadows. "They are all smart. One was a prodigy who entered university as a child. Are they necessarily creative? Not at all. I believe that pure creativity can only be achieved een an excited state. Like an electron gone mad! I am not asking you to be smart. I am asking for infinitely more than that. Show me a dramatic change een your creativity. Show me the excited state of delta to delta-star!"

  At four o'clock that afternoon, Mario Villalobos lay on the campus grass beneath a California white oak that was perhaps 150 years old. At first he felt as old as the tree. He watched a sparrow veer on the wind and wondered if its fall would be of any more cosmic significance than that of a leaf or a Hollywood whore. The clouds were white as linen over the university and darting squirrels played on the limbs of the ancient oak.

  The "medicine" that the scientist gave him was causing him to see things differently, like a drop of water glistening on the petal of a camellia, sun-splashed among mottled shadows. He saw a hawk hanging like doom directly overhead and he feared for the carefree squirrels. He dozed and awoke days or seconds later. He watched students come and go, and they all walked lightly on cat's feet or floated before his eyes like The Gooned-out Vice Cop.

  Gradually things assumed more familiar essences and he was left with a residue of unaccustomed energy. He was a man, he thought, who had been a consummate failure up to this moment in his life. He was, he thought, without the love of a single human being on earth, and had had not a moment in forty-two years of which to be particularly proud. And his mortal machinery was now taking him frighteningly fast toward the last end-of-watch.

  He decided that for once in his life, for whatever reason, he was going to seek the answer for the sake of knowing. And he'd have to be far better than himself in order to do it. He also realized that unless life imitated soap opera, no one was going to run up to him and confess to being the man he sought, and without an admission of guilt he had absolutely no chance of arrest and conviction.

  Still, it seemed that for the first time in his life he felt an exquisitely urgent need to know. For the sake of knowing.

  When he tried to stand, his back sent a shaft of pain straight down his right leg all the way to the knee. He walked apelike until the back permitted him to walk like a human being.

  He thought it the greatest of ironies when, upon entering Millikan Library, he saw the man in the pinstripe suit. Even on a weekend Professor Richard Feldman wore a suit and tie. He was a refined, well-tailored man. Nothing like the scientists the detective had seen in the basement pub. Nothing like Ignacio Mendoza.

  He couldn't help noticing that Professor Feldman's graceful fingers were unmarred. He would have given a great deal if another scientist had walked into the library with a bandaged left hand from punching plaster walls in the night.

  The library on weekends was open only to faculty and students. A student was on duty to check identification and was impressed when the detective showed his badge. The boy eagerly helped the detective find what he wanted.

  Mario Villalobos read all that he could absorb about the Nobel Prize. He read old Caltech newspapers with accounts of the ceremonies in the Stockholm concert hall. It appeared that the whole country closed down to entertain the Nobel laureates. The detective paid particular attention to whatever news items he could find on American chemists who had traveled to Sweden for the festivities, and there were many. He saw pictures of some from Caltech in the concert hall in Stockholm, dressed in white tie and tails for an event that was sold out ten years in advance.

  He could see that most of the chemistry prizes were given to Americans, and he read of complaints that other nations had tried to exert national pressure on the committee to bridle the American race for prizes. And that some scientists believed Japan had been recently successful in exerting national pressure.

  One of the articles showed a map of Sweden and told of the tour of a group from Caltech, Stanford, Harvard and M. I. T. The tour took place during the Nobel festivities of 1981, just a few weeks after a Soviet sub ran aground near the Karlskrona naval base and shocked the nation.

  The detective looked at the map and considered the Swedish navy at Karlskrona facing the Soviet colossus directly across the Baltic in Kaliningrad. And of course he could not help b
ut think of a coked-out street whore from Normandie and Santa Monica who months later was reading of an event which all but the Swedes had nearly forgotten.

  He had not slept for thirty-five hours. He read until the print started to blur and it became impossible to continue. He politely thanked the student and went out to his car and drove toward the Pasadena Freeway and home. He tried not to think of how pathetic and dreary his life's work had been when seen in light of delta to delta-star.

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  THE GOONED-OUT VICE COP

  Mario villalobos was able to sleep for three hours. He awoke in pain. l ie had been grinding his teeth as he slept and had bitten the inside of his cheek. His hands were trembling and he was instantly alert. When he sat up, his head hurt. He walked to the window of his apartment and looked out at the smog-shrouded streets of the Los Feliz district. It was dusk and the sun was fiery copper against a mauve and redolent sky.

  He looked at his swollen eyes in the mirror. The eyes looked dead and gutted. The marbled flesh was precisely the color of the Los Angeles smog-layered sky at dusk. He went into the kitchen in his undershorts and took one of his week's supply of TV dinners from the refrigerator. He smoked a cigarette and stared at the tinfoil tray for a moment and put it back. Instead, he poured himself a very large glass of orange juice and whipped three eggs into it.

  He drank it, and smoked, and listened to "Stella by Starlight" on his favorite radio station, and experienced what he supposed was an unconscious pathetic try for a creative moment. He got dizzy, or rather, light-headed with occasional dizziness. He felt alternately as though he were going to have a coronary, faint or vomit. He was so weak that his knees actually buckled as he paced the kitchen. He knew that he was too tired to sleep without drugging himself with alcohol. He sensed that while asleep his brain had been working at capacity, thus allowing him little rest.

  "I can't!" he actually cried aloud.

  Mario Villalobos believed that if he kept this up he'd blow his usually desensitized neurons right through his marinated brain matter. Delta to delta-star might be very injurious to what was left of his health.