Stigma

by Philip Hawley Jr.

  “They ever teach you about connecting verbs at Cornell?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  They were in the living room of Sammy’s condominium, facing one another across a glass and chrome coffee table. The room was a study in black leather and polished metals. It looked out over the skyline of Los Angeles from the twenty-fourth floor of a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise, just west of the Los Angeles Country Club. Living in proximity to the city’s oldest money was probably Sammy’s way of mocking them.

  Luke said, “How does eighty thousand sound? That’s what I have in savings.”

  Sammy cocked an eyebrow.

  “You get me what I need,” Luke continued, “help me figure out what the hell is going on, and you can have all of it. I get caught, or something happens to me, and you get nothing.”

  He figured it was a long shot. Looking around the condominium, it was clear that Sammy wasn’t struggling financially. Was the pot big enough for the risks involved? Would Sammy trust him?

  “Someone is setting me up,” Luke added, “and they’re doing a damn good job. I need your help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sammy slapped his thighs. “Well, that’s a good start.”

  “There was another murder, five days ago. A woman. The two murders are somehow connected.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, but they are. A woman I haven’t seen in four years sent me an e-mail that has something to do with a boy who died in our E.R. Just before we were supposed to meet, she was murdered. A couple days after that, I’m framed for killing Erickson.”

  “And why’s Sammy supposed to believe you didn’t murder these nice folks yourself?”

  “Because you know me.”

  Wilkes waggled a finger at Luke. “Sammy once — as in, a long time ago — knew a guy that kept to himself, didn’t say much. Come to think of it, Sammy hardly knew this guy.”

  “Was the guy you knew stupid enough to leave tracks a Boy Scout could follow?”

  Sammy ran a finger across his chin, then gave Luke a small nod. “Okay, so let’s suppose you didn’t do these people—”

  “I didn’t.”

  “If that’s true, the question is, why does somebody want you outta the way?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If what you’re telling me is true, you probably do know. You just don’t know what you know.”

  Luke thought about that for a moment. “If I was their problem, they could’ve just come after me, taken me out.”

  “You haven’t been paying attention. I think they just did that.” Sammy came forward in his seat. “Look. Maybe killing you would draw too much attention to their problem, shine a light on ’em. Maybe this thing is closer to you than you realize.”

  Luke regarded his former colleague. He wondered if Sammy was even aware of the change in his phrasing and idioms. He was shifting into professional mode. The man morphed from one persona to the next as easily as a chameleon changed its colors.

  “Flash, are you drifting on me, or are you just deep in thought?”

  “You going to help me?”

  “I’m listening.”

  Luke described for him the events of the past several days. After telling Sammy about the mysterious arrival of Kate’s e-mail, he pulled the photograph from his pocket and handed it to Wilkes.

  “This came with the e-mail from Kate,” he said. “Look at the children. The boy that died in our E.R., Josue Chaca, had the same tattoo as the boy in that picture. And Jane Doe — her tattoo was identical to the girl’s.”

  “Wait a minute.” Sammy made a time-out sign with his hands. “You telling me someone’s feeding you stuff? Some guardian angel just dropped this e-mail on your doorstep?”

  “Looks that way. But now the police think that I was holding back. I told them about the e-mail a few days ago, told them I never got it. Then this morning, they storm into my apartment and find it sitting there.”

  “Shee-it. Even when things go right, they don’t go right for you.”

  The comment evoked in Luke an uncomfortable feeling: hopelessness.

  Sammy glanced at his watch and then turned on a plasma-screen TV that spanned half of the wall on which it hung. “It’s five o’clock. Let’s check out the latest on Doctor Fugitive.”

  Luke was the second item of the hour on the local news channel. A headshot from his hospital ID flashed on the screen behind the brunette anchorwoman’s right shoulder. A picture of Erickson appeared to her left. Most of the report centered on Erickson, including mention of the young girl left fatherless by the murder.

  When the anchor moved on to a preview of tomorrow’s weather, Sammy leaned back into his couch, hands clasped behind his neck. “You need to get your hands on ten thousand, up-front cash. Sammy ain’t fronting expenses.”

  Luke gave him a nod.

  “And if you’re lying to me, there’s no place on earth that you can hide from Sammy. I think you know that.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Sammy framed Luke between his outstretched hands. “First thing you’ll need is a makeover. Just happens to be one of Sammy’s specialties.”

  “…Megan Callahan…” Luke heard the name through Sammy’s chatter. He lifted a hand to silence Sammy as he turned to the TV.

  “Today, University Children’s Hospital is making news on more than one front. Hours ago, an armed militia group in Guatemala took responsibility for the abduction of Dr. Callahan. The group claimed that, by interfering in the customs and practices of native Mayan tribes, she and other American doctors are practicing a form of genocide. Any further interference, they warned, will lead to the captive doctor’s immediate execution. A hospital spokesperson would not comment on what, if anything, is being done to secure Dr. Callahan’s release.

  “Abductions of U.S. tourists and relief workers in Central and South America have been on the rise for several years. The U.S. State Department says they have no knowledge of the group involved in this abduction. They advise U.S. citizens traveling abroad to…”

  35

  Barnesdale settled onto the couch in his library. A single flame-colored swath of light from a Torchiere floor lamp crawled up one corner of the walnut-paneled room.

  He picked up the remote from his coffee table and pressed play.

  The TV played an image of the Research Tower’s small marble-floored lobby, the tempered glass entry doors, and a small section of the walkway just outside the entrance. It looked more like a photograph than a video running in play mode. Except for the seconds counter on a time stamp in the upper right corner that read 7:12:23, nothing was moving.

  Twelve minutes after seven, Saturday morning, eleven minutes before Elmer McKenna had walked through the front doors.

  Barnesdale didn’t fast-forward the recording. He wanted to see if anybody had been milling in front of the building’s entrance around that time.

  He’d had all day to think about the scene that was about to unfold on his TV screen. There had been no reports of a stolen badge, and even Elmer would have noticed if his badge had gone missing. He knew he’d see Elmer enter the Research Tower at 7:23. One of the three Infectious Diseases laboratories was located on the eighth floor. Elmer had gone to his eighth-floor lab on Saturday morning.

  But Elmer had pressed both 2 and 8. That was no accident. He had pushed the button for a coworker.

  Barnesdale had walked the perimeter of the building a few hours earlier, looking for other points of entry. There were none. The only other doors at ground level were fire exits from stairwells on either side of the building. Neither door had an exterior handle, lock, or keypad. The only way to enter through those doors would be with a crowbar, and neither door showed any signs of tampering.

  Inside the tower, people used elevators to travel between floors because the exit doors on each floor couldn’t be opened from inside the stairwells. Presumably, that prevent
ed people from wandering between floors.

  But it wouldn’t prevent someone from leaving the building. Anyone could leave the building without having to use the badge-swipe system, merely by walking down either of the two stairwells and exiting through one of the side doors.

  Barnesdale sat forward on his couch. For the second time a pair of legs appeared briefly in the upper left corner of the image. It was a man wearing gray slacks, cordovan shoes, and a white lab coat. The time stamp read 7:20:03.

  In three minutes he would know who had switched the marrow samples. He pictured Elmer walking up to the front door in his usual cloudy state.

  Someone he knows, probably a coworker, approaches from behind and greets him. Elmer opens the door and the pair walk inside together.

  They continue chatting as they board the elevator. The Zenavax mole asks Elmer to save him the trouble and press 2. Elmer obliges.

  The mole wishes Elmer a “good day” as he gets off on the second floor. Fifteen minutes later, his work completed, the mole leaves using one of the stairwells.

  It seemed more than a small irony that Elmer had opened the door for the person who switched the dead boy’s marrow. The eccentric old fool had thwarted his own son’s efforts.

  The time stamp now read 7:22:05. In one minute he’d have the leverage he needed to ensure his safety. Zenavax wouldn’t touch him once they knew there was a letter in his attorney’s safe, a letter to be opened in the event of his death.

  The Zenavax IPO was in eight days. On that day, the shares he held in a blandly named trust — shares he received for his “special services”—would be sold into the feeding frenzy that was developing around the company’s Initial Public Offering.

  And he’d be done with Zenavax.

  A strand of hair fell over his forehead. He fought a tremor as he tried to pat it back in place.

  Barnesdale forgot about the stray hair when he saw Elmer McKenna’s image appear on the video.

  Elmer trundled up to the front door and swiped his badge through a reading pad mounted on the door frame. He turned to his rear when a man wearing gray slacks and cordovan shoes appeared in the corner of the screen.

  The pulse in Barnesdale’s neck throttled up when the man stepped into the foreground.

  “You bastard,” he whispered. “I got you.”

  * * *

  “White guys just shouldn’t shave their head.” Sammy pruned his face and pursed his lips. “Uh-uh, no way. Just shouldn’t be done.”

  Luke ignored Wilkes’s chatter and examined himself in the mirror.

  Sammy had taken Luke’s full head of hair and turned it into a one-eighth-inch crop of dyed red stubble, but what drew most of Luke’s attention was the badly dimpled cleft lip scar. The scar was fashioned with a Krazy-Glue-like substance, and the jagged mark crossed through his upper lip and formed a pucker as it snaked its way into his right nostril.

  They were in one of the back rooms at Sammy’s offices, which were located in an industrial park complex about a mile from Burbank Airport. A makeup bench ran along one wall. The rest of the room looked like a photography studio.

  “The scar won’t last more than four or five days,” Sammy said while handing Luke a small tube. “Hold onto this. You’ll need it when you return. Don’t forget what I showed you, and don’t show up at a passport checkpoint without that scar.”

  Luke rubbed an eye. “How am I supposed to keep these contacts in? They sting like hell.”

  “You’ll get used to them, and anyway, you won’t need ’em once you get to Guatemala.”

  Sammy had created Luke’s new identity with the same proficiency and sense of routine that other men achieve only with a TV remote. He had perused the online obituaries from several southern California newspapers and found three recently deceased males in their mid-thirties. After a call to a criminal attorney, Sammy discarded one of the names because of a criminal record that could lead to unwanted scrutiny if Luke was stopped or questioned.

  Luke selected one of the two remaining names. He was now Edward Schweers.

  Next, Sammy had gone to work with his contact at the DMV. Two hours later they had the former Mr. Schweers’s Social Security and driver’s license numbers. It would be several weeks, or perhaps months, before dutiful public servants marked Edward Schweers’s state and federal records as deceased.

  Luke scrutinized the ID photos that Sammy had taken. The only difference between them was his eye color. In one pair of photos, his eyes were their natural dark brown; in the other, they were cobalt blue.

  “Forget the contacts,” Luke said. “I don’t want to have to explain to some Customs agent why my eyes are bloodshot. Use these.” He tossed the two brown-eyed photographs to Sammy.

  By morning one of Sammy’s vendors would create a passport and driver’s license from the photos.

  Earlier, Luke had reached Ben Wilson in his office. The pathologist agreed to leave a package with ten thousand dollars in cash on his front porch at exactly 10:00 P.M. Sammy would drive by at 10:03 and pick it up. A third of the money had been spent already on Sammy’s vendors, and Luke’s journey hadn’t even begun.

  “So let me see if I got this plan down,” Sammy said. “The one that Sammy’s betting eighty G’s on. You’re gonna make your way to Guatemala, which you never been to, find some people you’re not even sure exist, locate this woman—”

  “Megan. She’s got a name.”

  “Yeah, whatever. So when you find this woman, who may or may not be alive, you’re gonna do a Sherlock number and figure out how two dead kids figure into the murders of some scientist lady and a football player”—Sammy took an exaggerated breath—“then come back and explain to the cops how you were framed. Is that about it?”

  “It sounded better when I said it.”

  “And you gonna do all this while snooping around in a country where you don’t even speak the language.”

  “I understand enough.”

  “¿Cabalgará usted el cerdo al mercado?”

  Luke gave him an ambiguous nod.

  “Oh, I see.” Sammy’s head bounced up and down like a dashboard doll. “So you are going to ride your pig to the market.”

  “Look, eighty thousand dollars should buy me more than makeup and IDs. If you have a better idea, now’s the time to share it.”

  “I’m just saying there’s a lot of pieces missing from this puzzle. You may end up chasing your tail in Guatemala.”

  The cell phone in Luke’s coat pocket rang. It was the phone that Sammy had given him to call Ben.

  “Ignore it,” Sammy said. “No one has that number. That phone’s only used for outgoing calls.”

  Luke said, “Ben Wilson has this number. I gave it to him when we arranged the drop.” He flipped open the phone.

  “Ben?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” Luke said.

  “Stay away,” said a heavily accented Hispanic voice.

  Luke shot a glance at Sammy. “Away from where?”

  “Dr. McKenna, there is no need to insult me. I am sure you know what we are talking about, no?” There was a long silence, then, “I guess you want that we…how you say, make our point in a more direct way.”

  The phone went quiet for a moment, then a slurred female voice said, “What are you…No, no more…please.”

  “Megan!” Luke yelled.

  “No…please…” Another scream.

  The man’s voice again: “Are we understanding each other now?”

  Luke’s chest heaved. “If anything happens to her, you’re a dead—”

  A dial tone interrupted him.

  36

  “Flash, you still don’t get it, do you?” Sammy shook his head while driving east on Interstate 10. “These people aren’t trying to hide from you. They want you to know that they got you wired.”

  Luke squinted into a burst of sunlight rising over the horizon. “I don’t scare that easily.”

  “Maybe that’s what they’re countin
g on. It looks to Sammy like they’re reeling you in, using your doctor friend as bait. Think about it — they do you in Guatemala, use you as fertilizer in some banana orchard, and nobody ever hears from Doctor Fugitive again. You might be playing right into their hands.”

  Images of Megan, locked away in some dark hole, flashed in Luke’s mind. “I’m not running from these people.”

  Sammy adjusted his rearview mirror. “The cell phone you used to call Ben Wilson has caller ID block. No-way no-how anyone could get that number ‘less they work for the phone company. You’re dealing with pros. These people got juice — they wired Wilson’s office. They heard you give him your phone number.”

  A thought that had been floating at the edges of Luke’s mind suddenly dropped on him like a brick. “I need to call Ben. He’s in their crosshairs and doesn’t even know it.”

  “Whoa, you’re not calling anyone. By now the po-lice probably have a fix on every person you’ve called in the last six months. You can bet that Wilson’s on their list. You call him from a landline, they’ll probably be tracing it. You call him from a cell phone, they’ll have your location mapped on the cell grid in less than a minute.”

  “Then you get to him. Tell him to leave this thing alone.”

  Sammy nodded. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “And tell Ben to get ahold of my father, let him know that I’m okay.” Luke reached into the backseat and grabbed a small backpack with some clothes and travel items that Sammy had bought for him. “How much farther to Riverside?”

  “We should be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “So you’re clear on your assignments?” Luke asked.

  “Give me two days. I’ll have some dope on that company, Zenavax. But it’d help if you could tell me who mighta left the copy of Tartaglia’s e-mail on your doorstep.”

  “I have no idea.”

  Sammy started playing the steering wheel like a set of bongos. “I’m also gonna see if I can turn up anything on your lady friend, Megan Callahan.”