The Methuselah Gene Page 6

  Dumb after all, I concluded. Thank God. Only the eyes gave me trouble. They were snake’s eyes, and shone steadily, like a fresh corpse or a mobster going to a hit. I made a circular motion with one hand, and it seemed to revive the man. He pulled out some keys, and opened the door, blocking entry with his linebacker body.

  “Yeah?” he asked me with an almost guttural voice.

  “Hey, listen,” I said, my own voice sounding weaker than I’d ever heard it. “There any place to stay in this town?”

  “There’s Mabel’s,” he responded flatly.

  “No, I mean without the roaches.”

  He huffed with a casual smile, as if in memory. Then he twirled his keys, thinking. But thinking seemed a chore he preferred to do without. “That’s about it,” he concluded. “‘Course there’s a Motel Six in Creston.”

  “Car broke down,” I told him. “Can you drive me there? I’ll pay you.”

  His face sagged under its own weight, like muscles do under the influence of certain relaxants, or after chugging a pitcher of Long Island iced tea. Then the face tightened again when he arrived at a figure. “Thirty bucks?”

  I nodded. “Sure, fine.”

  “Of course,” he suggested, pausing to glance behind him, “for that, you can sleep here. Got an apartment in the back. Plus a spare place to sleep, separate from mine.”

  I looked beyond him at the wide, bright door back there, wondering how many miles it was to Creston, exactly. “Can I . . . see it?” I asked hesitantly, just before considering shower or toilet facilities, and thereby regretting my request.

  “Why not,” he said, and turned.

  “Wait,” I said, backpedaling.

  “What is it?”

  I thought about renting another car in Creston. But how would that look? Then I thought about just how good a hot shower in a clean roach free motel would feel. Then again, would this big ape tell the Sheriff where he’d dropped me? Finally, I thought about just asking where I could find the Sheriff, and getting this over with tonight. But would I really be able to live with myself, going back to Virginia empty-handed to face Winsdon or Hepker?

  “Nothing,” I muttered. “Just . . . you have to promise not to tell anyone about me.”

  “Oh yeah?” He turned back to me, his upper arm muscles flexing. “And why is that?”

  “Well,” I paused, formulating a lie I thought he might believe, “my ex-wife is kinda looking for me. She’s hired a P.I.”

  “P.I.?”

  “Private investigator, detective, gumshoe. I’m from Florida, see. Naples, Florida. Name is Charlie.”

  He nodded, one hand to his chin, the other holding his elbow. The brown eyes fluttered slightly, then his head bobbed once. He took the hand I offered, and gripped it like I imagined a casting agent might. “Okay, then,” he said. “Deal. And you can call me George.”

  I followed him, wiping my hand across the side of my shirt. His palm had been damp. We went into the back, past the televised orgy, toward a second room that was a storage area. To my chagrin, I saw there was no separate bathroom, and no bed visible amid the stacks of boxes and store stock.

  Then I felt my own face slacken, and my mouth dropped open involuntarily at the sight of a large maple wood box supported on a heavy four legged utility table. Its lid was open, and the thing was large enough even for a big man like George.

  In shock, I turned to see George standing in the doorway behind me. One of his hands now rested on the door frame, blocking my escape. I eyed the steel back door, which was bolted against the night. At that, George followed my gaze and then stepped closer to me as if daring me to try for it.

  “You’re not a pharmacist, are you?” I said, a detectable waver in my voice.

  George laughed. It was a short, quick laugh with a smile that lingered. He nodded toward the open casket behind me. “No,” he confessed, “actually, I’ve always wanted to be an undertaker.”

  7

  The only pay phone in Zion hung on a post outside the town hall that also doubled as town church. The light bulb inside the phone’s opaque cracked plastic covering was dead. The phone directory, which hung inside the black casing on a flexible metal cord, was warped and desecrated with doodling. Squinting in the dim light from the adjacent marquee, I thumbed past the Des Moines yellow pages to the Adair county white pages, and located the two ragged sheets devoted to Zion. A rip across the lower part of the second page had taken out Wally’s Shell station in a cratered half moon. But the Deputy Sheriff, Zion’s only law enforcement, was spared. I stared at the address in surprise, then looked up to trace the numbers to a frontage between Zion Hardware and the tiny Zion Bank of America branch. The white emblem on the door across the street over there, which I’d imagined indicated some kind of utilities or government services office, might actually be a badge, I realized. Did police sleep, though? Apparently they did in tiny towns with little or no crime. So maybe there was no paranoid posse after me, after all. Maybe Earl and Wally and Clyde and whoever else I’d imagined them recruiting were at home watching Hee Haw on the nostalgia channel. No State Police cars would be converging on Zion from Omaha to join in the search for some stranger with an alias who’d skipped on his dinner tab. After all, they had my car. They had my camera and my binoculars. So they were covered. Right?

  I dropped a quarter into the phone, and started to dial Darryl, but chickened out, afraid of discovering that my suspicions were true. I thought about who I might call instead. David Thorne, my former research assistant? No, the man was like a lab rat now, busily networking in the hallways, obsessed with one day becoming the Big Cheese. Meticulous and professional, Dave couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret when loyalty to the company figured into it. Frank Fisher, maybe? Again, no. Frank, as head of Tactar’s security, was probably obligated to reveal any confidence told him, and directly to Jeffers and Winsdon, despite the fact that his agency was independent of Tactar. Next, I thought about Dad again. It had been years. I wondered what he would make of my asking his advice now. It seemed ludicrous. Since Mother died of the stroke that came like a bolt of lightning from God, he’d deliberately cut the cord to his old life, and retired to Florida on the life insurance. Let me reinvent my life now, please, was the unspoken message there.

  I settled on dialing Madison, Wisconsin instead. My watch read nine thirty-four p.m., the same time there. The same zone. Nonetheless, it was a sleepy voice which greeted me.

  “Alan?” Rachel said, with uncertainty.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Sis,” I confirmed. “Sorry to call you this way. I need advice, and I haven’t anyone I can trust anymore.”

  There was a pause, and I knew why. Rachel had always been the one to ask my advice in the past, if only to hear her own suspicions validated. Six years younger than I—and as pretty as Mom had been—she had occasional men problems. She wanted a baby, but could never quite find a man she could put up with for it. And I wondered on occasion if perhaps I was among the same class of men she usually talked about, just less experienced at being an ass.

  “Are you in trouble, Alan? Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m in Iowa,” I told her. “A small town southwest of Des Moines. And I don’t know how much trouble I’m in.”

  “What? What do you mean? What kind of trouble?”

  I paused at the edge of it, wondering how deep the hole before me fell, and if it was fair to pull her into it with me. I vacillated, opting at last to offer her the Reader’s Digest version. “It’s a long story,” I said, “but the short of it is I’m here tracking down a man who may have helped steal a drug we were hoping to develop. I’m not sure if I should go to the police here with what I know, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my boss will find out I was taking classified files home, to work on them. And talking about it, too. That may have resulted in the theft.”

  Rachel took to her new advisory role with surprising confidence, playing devil’s advocate. “You’re no
t in the nuclear weapons program, Alan, so what’s the big deal?”

  I sighed. “Maybe you’re right. What more can they do but fire me?”

  A brief silence, with the new consideration. “They’d do that?”

  “Why not? It’s the next logical step. Guess I’ve been hoping to uncover some big conspiracy that will get me back my old office. And of course my . . . drug.”

  “What kind of drug is it, exactly?”

  “Not a drug, exactly. But I can’t talk about it. I’ve talked enough. That’s what got me into this mess.”

  Rachel uuuumed to herself, then broached the hypothetical. “So . . . what if you don’t go to the police . . .”

  “Yeah?” I said, hoping for a new insight I hadn’t yet considered.

  “Well, what would you do then? You know what this guy you’re looking for looks like?”

  “Think I do now. But I don’t know what I’d do. Take photos of him, follow him. Maybe confront him.”

  “That sounds dangerous, Alan. Confronting him, I mean.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I agreed, now suspecting that I’d called her only to validate my own decision, much like she’d done with me in the past.

  Another pause. “But you’ll be fired if you tell them?”

  “Probably,” I confirmed. Then I laughed as a word reverberated in my mind.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just ‘them.’ Who are they? What will they do, right? The paranoid THEM. Like in the movie THEM. I sound like Dad. Did you know I thought about calling him just now?”

  “Why don’t you?” Rachel asked me. “You could find out what’s really up with him, if nothing else.”

  “Meaning you couldn’t? What would I say to open this hypothetical conversation?”

  “I don’t know. How about ‘Hi, Dad, been in any good hurricanes lately?’ That would be a start.”

  I thought about it. “No, he’s probably too busy propositioning old biddies in the park, trying to make up for lost time. Or young ones, like The Donald. And this might really freak him out, too. He might try calling the President or something.”

  “Did you know his dog died?”

  “Lucky? Don’t tell me this, Sis. You’re starting to sound like Mom now. Everyone is, in fact.”

  “Who . . . you mean your friends?”

  “What friends? Hey, I live for my work. Darryl always said so.”

  “Darryl?”

  “I don’t even know if he’s my friend, anymore. He might be involved in this. If he is, I’m in deeper ca-ca than I thought.” I waited for more. “So that’s it? No sage wisdom, feminine intuition? I feel like I’m playing Russian roulette with an automatic here.”

  I didn’t know what I expected from her. A beauty consultant, a cosmetologist and manicure specialist. Sis to the rescue? At least she’d possessed more common sense than me about getting out of the crib before it turned into a concentration camp. But then what she gave me was an obvious third option I hadn’t considered. “Why don’t you just go home and forget about it? Maybe they won’t fire you. Maybe YOU are just being paranoid about THEM.”

  I chuckled at the simplicity of her suggestion. “You mean just keep my nose clean, and maybe one day I’ll be back to square one?” She was silent as I mulled it over. “That’s good advice, actually, Sis. But I don’t think I can take it. I’d always wonder what happened, see. It’s bothering me so much I’m even sleeping in a casket tonight, in a drug store stock room. Because I think they’ll be looking for me at the Black Flag Roach Motel.”

  “Huh? Did I . . . just hear you say . . . what I think you said?”

  “Uh huh. George covers his drains, though. So no roaches there.”

  “Say again? George?”

  “Nice guy. Little weird. The casket is actually comfortable. I tried it out. Has extra padding, and it’s roomy in there, too. George bought it for his father, but his dad’s last wish was to be cremated. Left George this drug store in his will. George was studying to be a mortician, you know. I told him I was a school teacher . . . bad marriage, too much traffic in the city . . . you know, the whole schmeer. I slipped a ten dollar bill and a note of apology under the door at the Slow Poke next door, too. It closed half an hour ago.”

  “What the devil are you talking about, Alan?” Rachel asked, in exasperation.

  “Nothing, Sis,” I said. “Forget it.”

  “I can’t forget it, now!”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but don’t worry, I promise I’ll let you know if I get into any real trouble. Or if I need to be bailed out of something. Okay?”

  A significant pause. “Alan . . . I worry about you sometimes.”

  “So do I,” I admitted.

  When we finally hung up, I happened to look across the street to see the shadow of a man walking along the sidewalk toward the post office from the north. He carried what was possibly a letter, barely visible in one hand. I moved behind the phone, and then slipped back against the wall of the church, out of the light from the marquee. When the man entered the post office, I saw his profile in the dim ceiling light above the postal boxes.

  Hannibal Lecter.

  Circling around the back of the church hall, I rushed back to Main Street from the other side. Whether the man was on foot, as I suspected, or would be returning to some hidden car, I was determined to follow him and glimpse a license plate number, if nothing else. Whoever he really was, he appeared to be in no hurry. He was comfortable, secure in himself. Having mailed his letter—perhaps in reply to Darryl’s?—he now emerged from the post office, and walked casually back in the direction from which he had come.

  I followed cautiously, keeping to the shadows. But I had to stop at the end of my cover as my quarry walked on into the open, toward Wally’s Shell station two hundred yards away. Unexpectedly, he then turned to the right, just midway before reaching the station, and began to cross an empty field toward the corn. The dark hill beyond it was clustered on top with the silhouettes of pine trees.

  If I was exposed in the open, I suspected I would be seen. This was mainly due to the light from the high rear windows of the Shell station, where I imagined Wally had dissected my Taurus, looking for drugs. So I waited as long as I dared, then I ran lightly, keeping to the grassy, weedy spots. And while praying that Walter Mills—if that’s who he was—wasn’t packing a concealed weapon.

  I entered a chest high thicket at the base of the low hill, where crickets lived. I turned to look back toward the distant road to see how well Walter may have seen me. There was no way to tell. Side lit from the Shell station’s oblique windows back there, I imagined being discernible only as a moving human shape, since I now wore the black oversize tee shirt George had lent me. That my face was identifiable at this distance in the dark seemed improbable, although I wasn’t happy that I’d opted for caution in waiting, because now I couldn’t tell whether Walter had changed directions, or if he was laying in wait for me.

  I paused and tried to listen past the sound of the crickets for any sign of movement. Some rustle of vegetation, or scrape of foot. There was nothing. Momentarily I felt a flush of panic, not knowing what to do, but knowing that I had to do something. Where was he going? Was there a cabin up there, guarded by Dobermans? I had to know.

  I moved forward, lifting and placing my feet carefully, mindful of any sound in the trees ahead. To my left, the corn stood as silent as an army of sentinels. Like dark rows of soldiers awaiting orders to attack. I began to go uphill, leaning forward, slipping and stumbling on occasion into the deeper night. Well beyond the light of the station now, I was looking up, despite myself, at the uneven ridge of trees. A mosquito buzzed into my ear, protected from my slap until I dug an index finger in there to silence it. At that, another stung my neck.

  Then I saw it. Up there, against the stars. An oval shape, a massive squat silhouette blocking out an entire constellation like a black hole. I rushed higher, up the incline, moving more
quickly through the trees now, trying to keep the hulking shape in view among the spiky tops of a grove of evergreens, my breathing becoming labored.

  Then I stopped and squinted, blinking at what it seemed to be.

  A water tower?

  Yes. And at the base of the tower, a figure appeared.

  I froze, taking slow, deep breaths.

  Suddenly, a powerful flashlight came on. Its narrow beam sidelit the man’s face as he stood there, as motionless as I. Like Darth Vadar with light saber lifted to the ready. The beam stabbed at the sky, reaching to infinity as I inched further behind a tree which was too thin to completely hide me should that sword swing in my direction. Another mosquito sank its spear into my neck, but I couldn’t move, even as my blood was sucked into the insect’s tiny but expansive belly, as if through a straw. I thought about West Nile virus, and then—more disturbingly—about HIV.

  The dark underside of the water tower loomed above the treeline, so large I wondered how I'd missed it in the daylight. It was squat, like a frog about to squash the figure below it. As I grew more accustomed to the darkness, I made out something at the man’s foot. Something oblong, with a handle.

  A toolbox?

  I stared in fascination as the flashlight beam next angled down to probe the metal box. The man with the flashlight knelt to open it. Metallic sounds as he riffled through it, looking for something.

  A gun?

  I began to edge away. I would find the Deputy Sheriff, I decided. I would bring him here, and expose the truth once and for all. This was too bizarre, especially if this was the very man who pretended to be a fashion model on the Internet with me. Could it be possible? This skulking figure at the base of a water tower in Zion, Iowa, in dead of night—a man who resembled a serial killer in the movies I collected on DVD?