Once bitten

by Stephen Leather

  "I didn't know that," he said, which surprised me because he devoured movie trivia like a vacuum cleaner sucks in dust, partly because it helped him when it came to writing showbiz features but mainly because he'd been a movie buff since he was a kid. You'd be hard pushed to name a movie he hadn't seen or a star he hadn't written about, and he had a near-photographic memory.

  "A Siamese cat," I said.

  "News to me," he said.

  "Elizabeth Taylor gave it to him. He took it round to his neighbour's house the day before he died," I said.

  Hardy frowned. "I thought I knew everything about James Dean," he mused. "Where did you read that?"

  "I didn't read it, someone told me."

  "Somebody who knew him?"

  "Hardly. She's far too young for that."

  "You been cradle-snatching again?"

  "I'm not sure who's being snatched at the moment," I said.

  Archie and Hardy asked me if I fancied going out for a meal with them to a new Thai place but I said no, I had work to do.

  I drove to the police station via my house so that I could change into a suit and pick up the computer. I'd promised Rivron the night off for covering me during the day so I had my hands full.

  There was an old guy, seventy-four he said he was, who'd been brought in for smashing a row of shop windows in Rodeo Drive. He hadn't stolen anything, just walked from boutique to boutique smashing the glass frontages with a tyre iron until a cruiser had turned up and then he'd hit two officers over the head before they'd subdued him with their night-sticks. The man sat in front of me with a bandage across his head and a plaster holding his nose together while he moved and pressed the mouse. According to the program he was suffering from Korsakoff's syndrome, probably induced by chronic alcoholism, so I recommended that they took him straight to a mental institution and didn't even bother charging him. He was just old and sick and would be better off in a geriatric ward than in a holding cell.

  I went back to my office and started writing up my report on the old man when the phone rang and I was called down to the interview rooms again, this time to run two black teenagers through the program. They were both cocky and aggressive, swearing at me and demanding their lawyers.

  They were wearing black and silver jackets with the logo of the LA Raiders and according to De'Ath they were both members of the Bloods, one of LA's more homicidal adolescent street gangs, and were well known as crack dealers. They'd raped and beaten up a teenage girl on her way back home after cheerleading practice, taking it in turns to hold a knife to her throat. The girl was in intensive care, De'Ath told me, and it would be some time before she was cheering for the High School football team again. Before they left her they'd stuck the knife up inside her, just for the hell of it. The surgeon reckoned she'd live, but she wouldn't ever have children. Sick world, isn't it?

  One of the black kids asked me if I had any games he could play on the computer and I wanted to smash it into his leering face and take a knife and stick it inside him the way he'd abused the girl. I put it out of my mind, ran him and his unsavoury pal through the program and told De'Ath that there was nothing clinically wrong with either of them. Nothing a lethal injection wouldn't cure.

  Later I sat at my desk with my head in my hands and tears in my eyes, grieving for a girl who I didn't even know. The phone rang and it was Terry, asking me how I was and why I was in the office so late. I lied and said I was fine and that I was just writing a few reports. She asked me if I wanted to go out for a late night snack and I looked at my watch and was surprised to see it was already one o'clock in the morning. The blinds were down and I'd lost all sense of time. I said OK and she asked me if I had my car and she said she'd meet me outside in half an hour.

  I finished the report on the old man and then went and told De'Ath I was calling it a night. Extra help had arrived in the form of one of the junior psychologists from a local hospital. He was in doing a shift and he'd been well trained in the use of the Beaverbrook program and I told De'Ath that I was wearing my pager if the shit really hit the fan.

  "You going out for a bite?" he said, gnashing his teeth together and imitating a vampire's bite.

  "Don't you ever give up, Samuel?" I asked dejectedly.

  Two patrolmen walked by and one of them crossed himself and laughed. His friend slapped him on his back.

  "And another thing, Samuel. Can you ask your men to stop putting rubber bats and garlic on my car. It's not funny. It's just not funny."

  "Hey man, no problem, I'll just put a note on the bulletin board. Vampire Hunter Demands Truce. How does that sound?"

  "Just fine, Samuel. Thanks a bunch."

  He laughed uproariously as I walked down the corridor.

  Terry was waiting for me in the precinct car park, leaning against the bonnet of my Alpine. She stepped forward to hug me and kissed me on the cheek. "Who's the comedian?" she asked, nodding towards the windscreen. Someone had put a plastic crucifix under the windscreen wiper on the passenger side. I grabbed it. It was a gory example of religious art, painted blood on its cheek, side and hands, a grimace of agony on the tortured face. It wasn't pretty. I threw it into the gutter.

  "You shouldn't do that, not, like, with a cross," she said.

  "I didn't know you were religious," I said, opening the driver's door.

  "I'm not," she said, getting in beside me. "Do you like Japanese food?"

  "Raw fish? I love it. But at this time of the morning?"

  "Night," she said. "It's still night. Trust me." She took me to a restaurant which was indeed open, and doing well by the look of it. It was close to Hollywood Boulevard and seemed to serve the same sort of clientele that went to the club Terry had taken me to. It was a combination of high-tech noise and neon and Japanese simplicity, with wall-mounted television sets showing Japanese game shows with the sound turned down, while a Japanese DJ behind a white metal console played deafening pop songs and jumped up and down a lot. The waitresses all seemed to be Japanese but wore white t-shirts and jeans instead of kimonos. A girl with waist-length hair and scarlet lipstick showed us to a corner table and handed us two menus. Terry asked me what I wanted and proceeded to order in Japanese.

  The waitress expressed no surprise at being spoken to in her native language so I guessed that Terry had been there before.

  "How many languages do you speak?" I asked Terry as the waitress went over to the sushi bar.

  "I dunno, I just kinda pick them up, you know," she said. "I've never found them difficult. I guess I've got an ear for them. So, how was your day?"

  "Same as usual. Full moon brings them out, as always."

  "You believe that?"

  "Sure." We chatted about the moon, and whether or not it affected people, while we waited for our food to arrive. I felt sort of guilty about not asking her about Greig Turner but I wanted to get my thoughts straight before broaching the subject. Also, I had a feeling that it might drive some sort of a wedge between us and I didn't want to risk spoiling it. Whatever "it" was I wasn't sure, but I knew that I wanted it to develop further and showing her that I'd been rifling through her apartment would show a distinct lack of trust. And without trust, so they say, there is nothing.

  The sushi arrived along with a Japanese beer for me. She mixed the green mustard stuff into a small saucer of brown soy sauce and watched as I ate. She only picked at her food, a small piece of cooked shrimp, some fatty tuna, a strip of yellowtail, and she did most of the talking. So what did we talk about? It was strange, really strange, but afterwards I had a hard job remembering what it was she said. I can remember the way she said it, the way she looked, the way she made me laugh, the way I felt, but I can't recall the topics. I can be more specific about what happened afterwards, when I'd driven her back to my house and undressed her and she'd kissed me all over, but I'd kind of like to keep that between the two of us, you know? Suffice to say that I went to sleep with a big sloppy smile on my face and her curled up in the crook of my arm.


  She was gone when I woke up. I showered and dressed and made coffee and I was just thinking about plowing through some back issues of Psychological Medicine when the phone rang. It was a jubilant Archie Hemmings.

  "Found him, Jamie!" he said.

  "What, you found his agent?"

  "Better than that, Jamie. Much better than that. I found the man himself!" I could picture him standing in his cactus-muraled lounge, stabbing at the air with his big cigar.

  "You found Greig Turner? But he must be a hundred years old!"

  "Almost. But he's still alive, Jamie. Maybe not exactly alive and kicking, but definitely alive.

  You want the address, or what?"

  "Way to go, Archie!" I said. Shit, I was as pleased as he was. He told me that Greig Turner was now in an old folks home outside Big Sur, about six hours drive from Los Angeles on the way to San Francisco.

  Six hours in a 1966 Sunbeam Alpine is not the most pleasant way to spend a day but as soon as I'd thanked Archie from the bottom of my heart I grabbed the photograph of Terry Ferriman and drove up to Big Sur. I had to stop for directions when I saw the first giant redwoods and by five o'clock in the afternoon I was driving up to a large white stone house, the sort of place that very rich city-slickers retire to at weekends for a spot of hunting, shooting and fishing. It was composed of a main block and two wings, and behind were the rugged mountains of Los Padres National Forest. It was a good place to retire to, I thought as I climbed out of the car. The air was fresh and good and the place had a tranquil aura and it looked as if it would take a fair amount of money to buy your way in.

  I went in through the main entrance and found the administration office and introduced myself to the resident physician, a white-haired guy in his fifties called Dr Gerard Lyttelton. He wore a starched white coat with three pens neatly lined up in the breast pocket and with his swept back hair and steel-rimmed spectacles he looked a bit like Einstein. I thought I was going to have problems convincing him to allow me to speak to Greig Turner but it turned out that he was a fan. Of mine, that is, not of Greig Turner. He'd read a couple of papers I'd written on the Beaverbrook program and was keen to talk to me about it. I hadn't brought the computer with me, unfortunately, but I discussed a few case histories with him over a cup of weak tea before I turned the subject around to Turner.

  "What is your interest in him?" he asked.

  "I'm trying to trace a friend of mine," I said. "Somebody he used to know."

  "Ah," said Dr Lyttelton thoughtfully, replacing his cup in its white saucer. "Dr Beaverbrook, you must realise that he is a very old man." he said.

  "Jamie," I said. "Please call me Jamie. He's in his nineties, yes?"

  "He is, but chronological age is not the most crucial factor. There are some people who live to be a hundred and never lose their faculties. Others can be virtually senile in their sixties."

  "And what exactly is Mr Turner's state of mind?"

  He sighed and walked over to a tall, grey filing cabinet. "He has senile dementia of the Alzheimer type, but that is really to be expected in a man of his age." He pulled out a pale blue file and walked back to his desk. He didn't open it but toyed with it as he sat down. "You know about Alzheimer's Disease, of course."

  I nodded. "Memory disorders, delusions, dementia," I said.

  "Then you know that as the patient's memory lapses become more marked, there is a tendency to fill in the gaps with guesswork. Or fantasy. But Mr Turner's case is made more complex by late paraphrenia, a form of schizophrenia in which the most obvious manifestation is the delusion of persecution. He periodically hallucinates, he hears voices, he feels that forces are out to kill him.

  At times he can appear quite lucid, and he is quite capable of taking real conversations and events and slotting them into the most complicated fantasies. If you are planning to ask him for information I'm afraid you are going to have your work cut out."

  That wasn't what I wanted to hear, but nonetheless I wasn't going to leave without speaking to Turner, ga-ga or not. "I'd still like to try, if that's all right with you."

  He drummed his fingers on the file. "Of course, of course. I'll take you to him."

  He took me out of the office, along a green-carpeted corridor and into a pleasant conservatory full of lush green plants and cane furniture. A group of residents, two men and two women, were engrossed in a game of poker, and a young girl in a white uniform was serving them with what looked like cocktails. The place was more like a high-class health farm than an old folks home.

  We went through French windows, over a stone-flagged patio and onto a beautifully-manicured lawn where a game of croquet was underway. We skirted the edge of the game and then walked through a clump of willow trees. I heard the gentle burble of a stream and then saw a wheelchair in the shade of one of the trees. A pretty blonde nurse was sitting nearby reading a paperback book and she looked up as Dr Lyttelton and I approached.

  "Good afternoon, Jean. How is Mr Turner today?"

  "We're fine, Dr Lyttelton. We had a good lunch and later we're going to watch some television."

  She was an attractive girl, her hair tied back in a neat bun, big blue eyes and high cheekbones. She looked at me curiously but the doctor didn't introduce me, just led me by her so that we stood in front of the wheelchair.

  The figure sitting there bore little or no relation to the smiling movie star in the photograph in Terry's apartment. It looked for all the world like a turtle out of its shell, wrapped in a thick wool blanket despite warmth of the afternoon sun. All that remained of his black hair, so immaculately groomed in the photograph, were a few wisps of white, and the scalp was pockmarked with dark brown moles and liver spots. The forehead was furrowed and there were deep lines around his pinkish, watery eyes. There were huge bags under the eyes which gave the impression of being full of a bluish liquid, and his nose appeared to have grown more bulbous. The skin of his face was drooping as if it had been made of wax and he'd been sitting in front of a hot blazing fire, and it had lost most of its colour. His mouth was slack and slightly skewed as if he'd had a small stroke some years earlier and there was a trickle of saliva running down his chin. His eyes were blank and he showed no signs of noticing either the doctor or myself.

  "Jean," said Dr Lyttelton, and raised his eyebrows.

  She put the book down on her chair and came over. "Oh, Mr Turner, we're dribbling again," she cooed and took a white handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed his chin. When he was dry she went back to her book. Turner didn't appear to react at all.

  "So, how are you today, Mr Turner?" the doctor asked.

  For the first time Turner seemed to become aware of us. Something flickered in his eyes and he forced a smile. His voice, when it came, was as dry as his ancient skin.

  "Dr Lyttelton?" It was a question, and the doctor nodded. "Life goes on," said Turner. I thought he was making a joke, and I smiled. "And on. And on. And on," said Turner. He was definitely joking.

  "Have you had any visitors today?" the doctor asked.

  Turner shook his head. One of his hands came out from behind the blanket and rested on the side of the wheelchair. It looked like a mummified claw. "No visitors," said the cracking voice.

  "No one left. Just me." He seemed to be making sense, though I didn't doubt Lyttelton's diagnosis.

  He obviously knew his stuff and he'd cleverly picked my brains about the Beaverbrook program in his office. He'd given me a few good ideas for further research, too, and suggested a few papers that would be worth reading. So if the good doctor said that Turner sometimes went a bit loopy, I believed him.

  Lyttelton put his hand on my shoulder. "Mr Turner, this is Dr Beaverbrook. He would like to talk to you for a while." Turner looked at me and smiled. He dribbled again.

  Lyttelton turned to me. "I'll leave you alone with Mr Turner," he said. "Nurse Orlowski will be close by if you should need her. Just bear in mind what I said earlier." He patted me on the back and then walked through the trees towar
ds the house. The nurse looked at me, smiled, and then resumed her reading.

  I squatted down in front of the old man so that my head was at his level and he didn't have to look up at me. I smiled at him but there appeared to be nothing behind the vacant eyes. My mouth felt dry and I had difficulty swallowing, not because I was nervous but because I knew I was looking at myself in fifty or sixty years time, assuming that I lived that long. Great choice, don't you think, sitting in a chair with a brain like scrambled eggs, or death. That's all there is, there is no other choice, and Turner was a reminder of what lay ahead. I wanted to run away and drink and blot him out of my mind but there were things I had to know.

  "I saw one of your films, Mr Turner," I said, speaking slowly. "Lilac Time. Do you remember it? Lilac Time?"

  His eyes seemed to focus on my face and he inhaled, the sound of his breath like a wind blowing through a derelict chimney.

  "Lilac Time," he repeated.

  "Lilac Time. You were the star. You made it in 1932. Do you remember?"

  His thin lips curved up into a smile. "Lousy movie," he said. "Shot the whole thing in under six days. Can you believe it?"

  The words came slowly, almost painfully, from the slit of a mouth. He had a slight lisp and whenever the mouth opened up enough for me to see inside I was looking into a pink hole devoid of teeth. I wondered what the former movie star had eaten for lunch, and guessed it had been put through a liquidiser first. We begin with baby food and we end with it. We start out helpless and that's how we end our days.

  I was surprised how quickly he'd remembered the film which he'd made more than sixty years earlier, but Alzheimer's Disease can be like that, wiping out whole chunks of recent memories but leaving other, more distant ones, untouched. Maybe I'd be lucky.

  "I enjoyed it," I lied, and smiled.

  "Bullshit," he said.

  "It was a good story."

  "What are you, a critic?" he wheezed. His chest shuddered and I thought for a second that he was having some sort of attack and then I realised that the old man was laughing. The only sound coming from his mouth was a rasping wheeze but his eyes had crinkled up and the furrows either side of his mouth had curved into a smile.