Against Nature

by Casey Barrett

  “Fuck,” she said.

  “Fucking hell, right?”

  “We gotta figure out how much to tell your detective friend tomorrow.”

  “You tell me,” I said. “Your turn. What did you find out today?”

  Cass stubbed out her latest cig, pushed herself up, and stretched her arms over her head. Her shirt inched up to reveal an expanse of pale stomach, the piercing in her belly button. She pulled it down before my eyes could linger long. “You got any wine here?” she asked.

  “Apartment’s dry, if you can believe it,” I said. “You want me to order a bottle?”

  “ ‘Order’?” She smiled at that. “I forgot everything is deliverable here. In the country you actually have to get in the car and drive to get things you need.”

  As opposed to Manhattan, that offered five-star-hotel room-service options from any room in the city. It was better than any hotel. From the comfort of my couch I could have any service imaginable delivered to my front door within the hour. There was Seamless for any cuisine, numbers and websites for endless, more unsavory options. In less than sixty minutes, without stepping outside, you could have a feast of lobster and champagne spread before you on the coffee table, followed by a dessert of the highest-quality cocaine and a two-thousand-dollar-an-hour escort who would treat you to the full Girlfriend Experience. Money was the only requirement. Oh, Gotham, you abusive lover.

  “Duck? Earth to Duck?” Cass was snapping her fingers in front of my face.

  “Huh? Sorry, spaced out.”

  “I said a couple bottles of Pinot Noir would be nice. Want me to call?”

  “No, no, I got it, they know me. Hang on.”

  I called Beta at Gramercy Wines, didn’t have to give my name or address. He recognized my voice. My orders had become more restrained, less frequent than the past, but he knew not to question a top customer. When you start buying a few less pills from the dealer, he doesn’t question it either. Sometimes scaling back is good for business. When your product is an addictive substance that provides pleasure, a good seller knows that long-term addicts are the best kind. The hell-bound, death-wish types, they never work out in the end. Plus, dealers don’t like the guilt. Folks assume they have no conscience, but that’s not true. They want their customers functioning for as long as possible.

  I ordered a couple Pinots for Cass. Then, before hanging up, I added a bottle of Bulleit. I could sense Beta smiling on the line. “You got it, buddy,” he said. “Julio will be over in five minutes.”

  “I’m quite the enabler, aren’t I?” asked Cass.

  “We make our own beds,” I said. “Now tell me about these emails.”

  Chapter 16

  Over the previous year Victor Wingate and Carl Kruger exchanged over a thousand emails. It was the first draft of a story that seemed bound for best-seller lists. The inspiration and flushed excitement that Cass witnessed in her lover had been warranted. In Carl Kruger he discovered a character and a source that writers dream of. Abused and talented girl transformed into a doped champion, and then transitioned into a determined, proud man. Somehow he found the improbable happy ending in the city—married and in love with a partner that respected his past, had lived it too, and together they operated a business where they welcomed other souls to sip away their demons.

  But this was no biography that Victor was writing. Perhaps it should have been. If he’d stopped there, if he kept quiet about the rest of it, both of them might still be alive. It was what Carl told him next that must have set off these storms of violence. Inevitable lawsuits should have been minor among their worries. These guys were plotting to out some of the standard-bearers of sport itself. If exposed, it threatened to topple the entire edifice. Teams and leagues worth billions could not let that happen.

  My bones were weary after the spikes of adrenaline through the day’s events. I brewed a French press of strong coffee and resisted peeling open the new bottle of bourbon. There was something calling me back from my usual annihilation, my factory setting for dealing in times like this. I kept recalling the words in that letter.

  “Your son, Stevie, is a good boy, isn’t he? So smart, so full of promise . . .”

  The mocking tone addressed me personally: “I do hope he’s reading this . . . !”

  Followed by the almost-playful, rhetorical warning: “It would be a shame if Stevie did not come home one day, wouldn’t it?”

  I bummed a rare smoke from Cass and told her I was taking a walk. Since Elvis died, I hadn’t been able to shake our evening ritual. As night fell, I was compelled to walk around a few blocks, stopping by the same trees. Maybe it was a form of mourning, or maybe a sign of denial, probably both. Either way it provided a measure of comfort that I did not feel any need to end. Cass glanced up as she handed one over with her lighter and went back to the trove of emails. I lit it, said I’d be back in a few.

  It was a gorgeous spring evening, the sky a cobalt blue lit by an almost full moon. Wisps of clouds were visible in the night sky, but never any stars. The city lights below would forever drown the universe above us. I crossed the street and strolled tree to tree around the perimeter of Stuyvesant Square. There were thin maples standing in fresh mulch, which was always a roadside attraction for dogs on the leash. Many street trees were now protected by low iron fences and admonishing signs, asking dog owners to please take their business elsewhere. They were trees, for Christ’s sake, isn’t that where dogs were meant to go? I always took a perverse pleasure when Elvis decided to spray right on one of those signs. At the gates on Second Avenue I turned and entered the park. Inside, it was all darkness and shadow under a canopy of thick oaks and elms. They were among the oldest living things in this city. Allowed to grow free for centuries, they were the true natives of New York. How many dogs had pissed on them through the ages? How many bewildered men and women had sought brief shade and refuge beneath their limbs? The city was still beneath them, in these carved-out parks, and quieter, though we remained just steps away from the traffic moving down the avenue. There was a whispered danger in these parks at night that I relished. It wasn’t the bums or the junkies littered on nearby benches, or the antiquated threat of petty crime. It was something more elemental than that. In certain parts of New York, in aged darkened rooms and under ancient trees, you could almost feel the ghosts reaching out and touching your shoulder. They were malevolent spirits, there to remind you of all the suffering and evil that had come before in this fallen city.

  I considered Carl Kruger, impaled through the throat with his javelin, on the floor of his bar. I remembered the blood around his neck like a bright red scarf. I remembered the vibrations of death that hovered over the barroom. It was a black energy I knew well; I’d become acquainted with it on multiple occasions. I wondered about the dead in each of those cases. The spirit of each of them was out there somewhere. I had no faith to speak of, but I was sure that death in this life was not final. The soul moved on. Sometimes it didn’t move far, and seldom did it go happily, without a fight.

  I stopped walking and found myself standing before the statue of Peter Stuyvesant, the peg-legged OG leader of this island. Back in the mid-1600s, when the settlement was still owned by the Dutch, Peter was the director-general of New Netherland. This was his land I was standing on now. At least land he’d stolen from the Lenape natives and claimed as his own. His presence was still pronounced over these parts. His grave was just a few blocks south.

  My mother, when she was sober, loved to regale me with city history. In college she’d written her thesis on the “inevitability of Manhattan” as the world’s center. It had everything a settlement could wish for: a port, fertile soil, and that spirit of place that vibrated beneath the feet of anyone paying attention.

  My thoughts were scattered as I stared up at peg-legged Pete. I read that he lost his right leg during an expedition in the Caribbean, while working for the Dutch West India Company. A cannonball hit him during a battle with a rival Spanish fleet, an
d medicine being what it was back then, the lower leg was amputated with a lack of surgical precision. They say you can still hear that wooden stump tapping against his coffin in the cemetery next to St. Marks Church on certain nights. Soon enough I figured I’d be joining him, along with my mother and countless other spirits still tossing and turning in the soil and the winds around the city. I never expected a long life and a peaceful old age. I couldn’t imagine it. I knew my end loomed sooner than later.

  The breeze stirred and rustled the leaves overhead. I nodded to Peter and walked under the moon and the trees along the path and exited beneath the high black iron gates. I checked my cell for messages, found none, and returned to the apartment.

  Cass was yawning in front of the computer as I walked in.

  “Death,” I said. “It takes a lot out of you.”

  “I can’t believe this stuff I’ve been reading,” she said. “It’s so fucking disturbing.”

  “Enough to kill for?”

  She nodded, closed the laptop.

  “Look forward to catching up on it.”

  “Think I’m gonna turn in,” she said.

  She squeezed my shoulder as she shuffled past. I tried not to look at the full sealed bottle of bourbon on the counter. I needed clarity now, and memory. If I was going to continue pursuing this, and I knew I had no choice, then I was putting Stevie in danger. The least I could do was make an honest, sober effort of it. Well, sober-ish. I settled on the couch and reopened Cass’s computer, read an exchange between Carl Kruger and Victor Wingate. It was dated February 16, time-stamped at 3:13 a.m. It read:

  Herr Viktor,

  You sure you want to keep going with this? It will get unpleasant, ja? Too much money and power is at stake. Too much fame too. When they learn what you are doing they will try to stop us. They will sue, as you said, but maybe worse. Uli is worried. She tells me I should keep my mouth shut. She reminds me of the people we once knew who did not keep quiet. Another time and place, I tell her. No, she says, it is no different, only now is more dangerous. There is even more to lose. Perhaps she is right. I am torn.

  CK

  Victor’s reply was full of righteousness. He was blinded by the story. He refused to acknowledge the dangers that so worried Carl’s wife. In response, he wrote:

  Carl,

  I hear you, but we need to forge ahead. Remember what wise Edmund Burke said–“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” You are a good man, Carl. I’d like to believe the same of myself. And this is evil. Neither of us can deny that. We need to expose it. We’re talking about some of the most famous men on earth, treated as far back as their teens, their achievements built on endless layers of lies and drugs. The guilty have not only escaped punishment for too long, they’ve continued to practice their dark art. They feel no shame or remorse for those they’ve hurt, and they will continue to enrich themselves with their sinful science until the day they die. You were brave to tell me about it. We cannot stop now.

  Vic

  Carl did not reply for a few days. When he did, it appeared he’d chosen to side with the writer over the wife. He asked Victor to meet him at Kruger’s that Friday. Uli would be away for the weekend. There would be time to talk. The next email came from Victor the following Monday. He was thrilled and outraged.

  C,

  I am still buzzing from all we discussed. I need to get down to that clinic in Coral Gables as soon as possible. This Dr. Lipke is shameless. Did you know his bio on the BioVida website boasts of having over 50 years of experience in the field? Unreal! Does he tell these clueless parents what his early years involved? Does he tell them he was convicted in German court of child abuse, for his role in all that doping?! How is this allowed to go on? They operate in plain sight and no one seems to care. All these parents care about is their kids’ sports, how they can boost performance by any means possible. Who cares about the damage or dishonor if it might mean millions later! It used to be state-sanctioned, by an unconscionable few. Now it’s open season. This country is worse than any communist regime. And Lipke’s partner, this Dr. Crowley, what do we make of him? BioVida claims to be “an anti-aging and hormonal health clinic.” What does that even mean, that they treat old folks, desperate to find the medical fountain of youth? It’s a convenient front, especially down there with all the retirees refusing to admit their mortality. Do you realize that the names you mentioned, many are icons across the globe? This isn’t Lance or A-Rod or Barry Bonds. Everyone always knew they were bullshit. We’re talking the most beloved, beyond suspicion, the most powerful of all. Do you realize how much they have to lose by being tied to something like this? And yet, they continue to go to BioVida. They can’t help themselves. As soon as their skills begin to fade, they get desperate. They’ll do anything to extend their time in the sporting sun. But fuck them. They’re not the ones who trouble me. They’re soulless self-obsessed stars who need to feel worshipped. I’ll be happy to bring them down, but they’re not the real problem. No, my friend, our target is those parents who sacrifice their children at the altar of performance, and those doctors who’ll inject anything into these kids, never mind the side effects, just to make them faster, or stronger, or physically superior in any way. We are going to stop this, you and I. You are a brave man, Bruder.

  Vic

  I read late into the night. I Googled every unfamiliar name and company mentioned in the correspondence. A picture began to form of the world we were entering. It was an underworld of shameless cheating and warped ideals, of parents determined to juice their children to college scholarships, at the least. If all went according to plan, their enhanced offspring would perform all the way to the pros, where they’d sign eight- and nine-figure contracts that would set up generations of family. The stakes were high, the risks deemed worth it, or not contemplated.

  * * *

  Dr. Eberhard Lipke knew all about those side effects. In the 1970s in East Germany he had been one of the regime’s top sporting scientists: Director of High Performance was his title. From his lab in Leipzig, Dr. Lipke oversaw the doping programs of all East German athletes in track & field and swimming. He was among the first to pioneer the use of a little blue pill called Oral Turinabol, an anabolic steroid that bolstered athletes’ hormones—and helped transform their bodies into unnatural gold-medal-winning machines. Tinkering with the chemistry of young bodies, as if they were his personal property, Lipke fed them a rainbow of drugs. With the blue pills came yellow ones and gray tablets and green powder, and then came the syringes, needles to hard-muscled asses. Do not ask what’s inside. Ignore the troubling changes to your body—the morphing facial structure, the back acne, the deepened voice, the sudden sexual urges. Pay no mind to such things, just enjoy the added strength and speed. Enjoy standing atop the podium.

  Yet the real problems came later. The drugs bulked bodies to such artificial size that the bones and joints could not accommodate the muscle. Soon these doped bodies began to break down like brittle thoroughbred horses. But that did not concern the doctors and the coaches; the athletes were easily replaced. As they aged, the ones cast aside would often suffer brutal long-term effects: children born with birth defects, heart problems, infertility, not to mention the psychological damage inflicted on a generation of athletes abused with needles and pills without their consent.

  When the Wall came down and the records poured out, Dr. Lipke was among those arrested and tried in a unified-Germany court. The evidence against him was overwhelming. He was convicted on eighty-five counts of causing bodily harm to minors. His punishment? A fine of 7,500 German marks, less than four grand, and a fifteen-month suspended jail sentence. Lipke got off with a shrug of a check and served no time. He left Germany and offered his in-demand expertise elsewhere. First, in Austria, for their vaulted ski program; then in Norway, leading a performance center for Winter Olympians, until it appeared he tired of cold, dark European winters.

  He moved to South Florida
and founded BioVida. His partner was a clean-cut American doctor named James Crowley. A university diploma and medical degree from Stanford, an athlete himself, Crowley’s bio boasted of his dozen Ironmans and All-American past as a cross-country runner as a Cardinal undergrad. While other anti-aging clinics had come under fire for having doping ties to professional athletes over the years, BioVida had escaped scrutiny. It appeared to be a cottage industry in South Florida, a land of body-beautiful worship, masses of aging folks determined not to die, and a fertile sun-drenched ground for developing young athletes. Miami was also a place where a dubious past in another country had never been a problem. Lipke was just another drug dealer, allowed to set up shop and blend into the sunny, shady landscape.

  As I finished the emails and my Googling, I was left with two nagging questions: How much of this did Cass already know? And how did Carl Kruger come by his information? Cass must have heard something from her dead lover. She had accompanied him to the city, to Kruger’s, where she must have listened to at least some of Victor’s conversations. And Carl, how would he have known about those superstars allegedly lining up at Lipke’s clinic, or about the parents of young athletes, eager to dope their children to success? There was so much I longed to ask them.

  But dead men keep quiet.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning I woke on the couch to the smell of coffee brewing and bacon sizzling. I heard Cass cracking eggs over the stove. I heard Dylan’s “Romance in Durango” playing from her phone on the counter. I stretched my arms overhead and yawned loud enough for her to hear.

  “He’s risen,” she said.

  I rose. Ambled around the corner to the kitchen. “Smells damn good in here,” I said.

  “I picked up some basics from Raffi’s deli. Got you a fresh six-pack of Beck’s too.”