The Silk Code

by Paul Levinson

  “OK, fair enough,” Dave said. “I’m willing to grant that possibility—I’m a scientist first, just like you. I know my history. But even so—we still need evidence, right? The people who died of the plague were the evidence that something was wrong. Where’s your evidence? Where are the dead bodies piling up?”

  I thought again about the oddities of natural immunity. Clearly there were some things, probably the most important, that we didn’t understand yet about all of this.

  “Phil, I’m going to be honest with you. You’ve got to start carrying more of your weight. The Captain…some of the brass are beginning to talk. You wanna run off to Pennsylvania, you wanna sneak in and out of Toronto like some goddamn spy on a mission—fine, but do it on your own time. I’m saying this as a friend—when you’re on the job, do your job!”

  “OK,” I said quietly. No point in riling him up any further at this point.

  Dave forced a smile. “I don’t mean to be lecturing you like this. We go back a long way, you and I. It’s just—I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting too old for the job myself. Used to be—when I started out, in the late seventies—everybody looked up to us, looked up to an ME. Hell, it’s no pleasure what we do. But we do it. It’s a calling. But now—hell, we sell our testimony to O.J., to the highest bidder. That’s what they say about us. That’s why we can’t lose sight of the important things, like this poor girl here…”

  He was shaking—I’d never seen Dave so upset.

  “OK,” I said again. “I hear you.” I’d pick this up with him another day. I squeezed his shoulder and walked out the door.

  DAVE WAS BRAIN dead two days later.

  The doctors wanted to bury him. “What’s the point of prolonging it,” the young MD at the hospital said to me. “Life support’s all that’s keeping his body going. That’s no way to live—not for a man like him.”

  You didn’t know the man—you’re not entitled to a goddamned opinion on the subject. Save your textbook ethics pieties for someone else, I felt like saying. But I just thanked the kid for his opinion.

  I went to see Rose, Dave’s wife’s of thirty-six years.

  “Can I get you a cup of tea, Phil?”

  “No, Rose, please, sit. What can I get you? Something to drink?”

  “No, nothing for me. I’m OK Phil.” She started to cry. “I’m OK, really.”

  I put my arm around her.

  If I could just spend some time with Dave—just sit next to his bed, hold his hand a little, talk to him, on the remote chance that somehow he could hear me—maybe I would have been able to take this better. Maybe I’d get some kind of clearer insight into this nightmare. No, there was no chance that this could be any better. The neurologists were clear on that. Dave was dead in all things not serviced by the machines that moved the oxygenated blood through his physical frame. There was no way I could take this any better. The best I could hope for was a little more comprehension of what was going on.

  But Dave’s family was adamant: no one other than immediate family and tending physicians in his room.

  I suspected that edict had come from Dave’s children, not Rose. I wanted to respect it, but—

  “It was so sudden,” she said. “I guess it’s better that way. Walking around till the very end—never sick a day in his life. It’s better that way.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “That was Dave—so much vitality.”

  “He’ll be walking with Jesus soon. It’s better that way—better to walk with Jesus than limp on Earth. I’m a Baptist, Phil, did you know that? You’re Roman Catholic, right?”

  “Well, actually no. I’m a Marrano Jew—my ancestors pretended to convert, during the Inquisition, because they figured that was better than being tortured and killed, and they didn’t want to leave their homes. But my people kept the Jewish tradition, secretly, even though they gave up their Jewish names.”

  Rose nodded. “Yes, I remember now, Dave told me about that. I’ve always admired the Jewish people—imagine that, a religion that goes back over five thousand years!”

  “Yeah, we go back a long way. Dave and I went back a long way too. It was one of the last things he said to me…”

  Rose took my hand. “You and Dave were working on a case together, right? That’s why you wanted to come see me. The house is a mess, I haven’t had time—”

  “It’s OK.” I squeezed her hand. “Look, why I don’t I come back in a few days, there’s no real urgency. How about I take you out to lunch now?”

  “No, no,” Rose said. “You and Dave were working on a case, that comes first. That’s the way it always was with Dave. Would you like to look in his den? I’ll try not to get in the way. I didn’t see anything in Dave’s papers about anything recent he was working on with you, but you look around now. If it’s for your case, that means it’s important.”

  “You sure?”

  Rose nodded, tears in her eyes.

  “Thank you.” I squeezed her hand again, and headed towards the den. They lived in a co-op right down the street from the Dakota, on the upper West Side, across from Central Park. I’d been here at least a dozen times over the years.

  The first thing I noticed on his desk was the package I’d sent him from Pennsylvania—with the silk medication. It had been opened, but the contents hadn’t been touched.

  I sighed. So I now I knew why he was practically dead. Goddamned stubborn man…

  What I didn’t know is why he had been healthy so long.

  I walked from the den into their bedroom—the answer might be there. Rose was still sitting in the living room. I could do this quickly.

  I opened up the closet. There must have been two dozen ties hanging on the rack, all of them hopelessly out of date. Dave’s specialty. I smiled, sadly. I ran my hand around each of them. Only two had what I was looking for—not enough to make a difference, unless maybe he’d worn them every day, and these looked like they hadn’t been worn in a decade.

  I opened several drawers in the dresser, until I found one with shirts. Cotton, various blends, not a single one with any possible connection to this case.

  I looked around the room at the curtains, bedspread, pillows, anything for inspiration.

  Nothing.

  I was pretty sure I knew what had felled Dave Spencer.

  What the hell had kept him apparently well after the exposure—far more intensive than mine.

  What had he been doing, eating moths for breakfast?

  I joined Rose in the living room. I insisted that I make her some coffee, she insisted that she make me some tea, so I compromised and made both. Finally, I delicately began to broach the possibility of my visiting Dave. If I could get to see him, even in the state he was in, that might answer some questions—

  The intercom rang.

  Rose got it. “OK, sure, send him right up.” She looked at me, and started crying. “It’s the boy from the Chinese laundry,” she said.

  “Yes.” She was the first person I’d heard of in years who used a Chinese laundry, but that obviously wasn’t why she was crying.

  “He’s bringing back the sheets,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “I sent them out for cleaning—two days before Dave got sick. Beautiful satin sheets, real silk—we got them just this March—daughter Terry’s present for our anniversary. Dave said sleeping on them every night made him feel like a king!”

  DEBBIE TUCKER HAD an article in the paper the next day—“The Coroner’s Contagion.” It spoke of the death of Gerry Moses in Toronto, the near-death of Dave Spencer in New York, my illness on a trip to Pennsylvania. It spoke of corpses that looked like Neanderthals. It mentioned a silk cure, but nothing of the Amish, because I’d sworn her to secrecy on that. John Lapp wanted it that way—even though I suspected he well knew that sooner or later the world would find out.

  Mallory was quoted from London. “I had my DNA thoroughly examined a fortnight ago. My telomeres are all as they should be.”

  I was quoted from New York. “My superiors
have removed me from this case, and I can’t comment any further, except to say I intend to keep working on it, on my own time.”

  The article noted the price of silk skyrocketing on half a dozen commodity exchanges around the world.

  I put the paper down, and rubbed my eyes.

  The phone rang.

  It was a friend at the hospital. Dave Spencer had been taken off life support an hour ago. He had just been pronounced dead.

  I tried to call the attending physician, but could not get through.

  I MET TESA Stewart for lunch the next day.

  “Jesus Christ, Phil, you’re crazier than I am, and that’s saying a lot.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I refilled her glass with Beaujolais. Not likely it would dramatically improve her opinion of what I was trying to do.

  “And you think you’ll even get a judge to listen to you?” she asked.

  “Not me—but I know some top-notch people in the DA’s office—hell, I know the man himself. I’ve done plenty for them over the years. I got one of them signed on to present my argument in court. And with you as an expert witness—”

  Tesa shook her head. “What am I supposed to say that could be of any use in this mess?”

  “Just talk about Neanderthal DNA—what you told me when we had our first conversation about this case. That we don’t really have much reliable evidence at this point about what Neanderthal DNA really looks like—that so many times when people try to nail it down, it gets contaminated with Homo sapiens sapiens DNA. Just say what you know—the truth—that’s all I need.” Jeez, the tritest coaching line in the witness book. But let’s face it, the likely reason things become trite is they’re true. What I didn’t get was why Tesa was being so resistant. It wasn’t like her.

  “And Spencer’s wife is OK with this?”

  “She’s not happy about it, of course not,” I replied. “But she was married to a coroner, for crissakes. She knows the score.” I sighed. “No, Rose doesn’t like it, but she’s not the one who’s behind the opposition to my request. It’s her kids—and she can’t bring herself to oppose them. But I can’t let that stop me. One of the last things Dave said to me was: ‘Do your job, Phil, do your job!’ That’s what I’m trying to do here. Those kids stopped me from seeing Dave in the hospital—I’m going to do my job now and see Dave out of the grave.” I sucked down the rest of my wine.

  “How about Moses? You going to exhume him too?”

  “Right,” I said sarcastically. “I might as well try to exhume the real Moses himself as get the Canadians to agree to a rush request from me. But we’ll get to Gerry eventually. Right now—first things first. We go after Dave.”

  Tesa helped herself to more wine. “When’s the hearing?”

  “Some attorney dropped dead unexpectedly, and the judge has an opening on his calendar—Friday afternoon, day after tomorrow, 2:00 P.M.”

  “Jesus—the burial’s tomorrow, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. In and out.”

  Tesa sipped her wine for a long time. “All right,” she said at last. “But just don’t tell me that that lawyer who dropped dead had anything to do with a Neanderthal.”

  JENNA WAS WITH me, so was Tesa, and two of the brass up from One Police Plaza. Rose Spencer and her family had declined to join us. I couldn’t say I blamed them.

  “What’s keeping him?” Tesa asked, nervously.

  “He’s new on the job,” I said. “He’ll be out soon.” That would be Herby Edelstein, stepping up to Dave’s job until a permanent replacement could be found. Or at least, as permanent as any job in this life could be. It hadn’t been too permanent for Dave—his was the body that Herby was presumably unwrapping, looking at, right now. We were outside those pitted doors, waiting for word, waiting to be invited in.

  “You ever see Hitchcock’s Frenzy?” I asked Jenna, anyone who was listening.

  “Sure, I saw it,” one of the brass, Jack Dugan, spoke up. “Guy strangles his best friend’s girlfriend with his necktie, right?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “And remember that scene, right after he strangles her? The camera gradually pulls out, out of the apartment, down the flight of stairs, out into the street. And as it pulls out, the sounds of the street gradually come in. Finally, the camera is looking at the apartment building where this horrible murder just took place, from across the street, and we see cars and people, the world going about its business, kids running around, and no one has the vaguest idea that right under their very noses this woman was strangled with her eyes left bulging…”

  “Yeah.” Dugan nodded. “Great example of Hitchcock using mise-en-scène.”

  I smiled. Only in New York—a top cop who’s a film buff. Well, maybe also in LA. “DNA is like that,” I said. “All these combinations and drill and deaths and battles going on under the surface, right before our eyes, only we don’t know it. We look at people, and see complete individuals—but they’re actually communities of underlying DNA, constantly in flux, constantly in battle.”

  “Yeah,” Dugan said. But his eyes were beginning to glaze.

  Jenna started to say something—

  The pitted door swung open.

  “You were right Phil,” Herby said to all of us.

  He looked pale.

  He ushered us in, and directed our attention to the table.

  Someone was talking, but I couldn’t hear anything.

  All of my perception was taken up with one thing: Dave Spencer stretched out on that table.

  I walked over to take a closer look.

  Maybe it wasn’t Dave?

  No, this was Dave. No doubt about it.

  Except in three days of life support he had begun to develop features that were distinctly Neanderthal. They were clear as day, embalmed now in death.

  TWELVE

  “It’s worse than you think, Phil.”

  I swallowed the scrambled egg I had in my mouth and looked at Tesa, who had just joined me for breakfast at Le Bistro in the Village, some 45 minutes later than our appointment. “I doubt it.” I beckoned her to sit, and reached for the tea.

  “I’m sorry I’m late, I—”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “Believe me. I’m late for everything. I’m sorry I started without you, but I was starving.”

  She sat down. She looked terrible.

  “Tea, whole wheat toast and jam, and one poached egg,” she told the waitress, who must have been a college student. I had trouble keeping my eyes off of her stone washed jeans.

  “Juice?”

  “Yes,” Tesa said. “A small glass of orange juice, please.”

  “And I’ll have a refill in my large glass, please,” I said.

  “Sure,” the waitress said. Probably an NYU student.

  I looked at Tesa. “So tell me.”

  “Dave’s remains are carbon dating at thirty thousand years now.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what the first series of tests show,” Tesa replied. “You want to bet that they won’t be confirmed?”

  I shook my head, in disbelief as well as no. “So this means, what, that the other corpses are recent deaths as well? I suspected that there might be some connection between this telomere illness, whatever it is, and looking like a Neanderthal—that’s why I had Dave’s body exhumed. Something about the way the family didn’t want anyone to see Dave when he was in the hospital got me thinking about that… But how the hell could a virus, or whatever causes the illness, also throw off the carbon-14 dating like that?”

  Tesa wiped her mouth with a napkin, even though she hadn’t eaten anything as yet. “You tell me.”

  “Carbon-14 dating measures the amount of radioactive carbon that remains in an organic compound after death,” I thought out loud. “The living organism incorporates carbon-14, it stops doing that when it dies, we know how long it takes for the carbon-14 isotope to decay into carbon-12, we do the math and bingo we have an estimate as to how long ago the organism
stopped incorporating carbon-14—how long ago it died.”

  “So far, so good,” Tesa said. “But how could a virus possibly interfere with that?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “What do viruses do? They rearrange molecular material…”

  Tesa nodded. “Yah, but then what? Taking over the machinery of cells, messing with their molecules, is a far cry from leaching neutrons from a carbon-14 nucleus. To do that, the virus would have to pierce the atom’s subatomic structure—an order of magnitude at least two levels lower. Totally unheard of.”

  The food arrived.

  Tesa poked at hers, as if it were carbon. “The way you break into the nucleus of an atom,” she continued, “is you aim a high-energy particle at the nucleus in a suitable high-tech chamber.” She teased the white of her poached egg with her fork. “And even that doesn’t cause the kind of rapid decay of the carbon-14 isotope we’re considering here.”

  I drank my orange juice and smacked my lips. As frightening as some things were, I found the attempt to understand them among the most exhilarating feelings in this world. “Is there nothing other than high-energy particles that ever molests, undermines, an atomic nucleus?”

  “What are you driving at?” Tesa asked.

  “I’m not sure. What are we overlooking? On the one hand, perhaps the same thing that got into Dave Spencer’s cells and killed him, and hijacked his DNA enough to half turn him into a Neanderthal before he died—let’s call that a virus for now—perhaps that same thing was also able to penetrate the atoms in his body, and change their subatomic composition, reduce the carbon-14. On the other hand, we run up against the wall that nothing short of bombardment by high-energy particles can breach the nuclei of atoms. Are we completely sure about that? Is there anything in the literature about alterations of atomic nuclei outside of particle accelerators?”

  “Well…” Tesa began. She looked down at her plate, then stabbed the center of the poached egg with her fork. The yolk leaked a pool of yellow onto her plate. “There’s cold fusion, of course. But cold fusion is itself controversial…”

  “Go on,” I prodded.