False Memory

65

In California, one time zone farther west than Santa Fe, Mark Ahriman ate lunch alone, at a table for two, in a stylish bistro in Laguna Beach. A dazzling Pacific vista lay to his left; a generally well-dressed and monied luncheon crowd was seated to his right.

Not all was perfect. Two tables away, a thirtyish gentleman — and this was stretching the word to its elastic limits — let out a bray of laughter from time to time, so harsh and protracted that all donkeys west of the Pecos must have pricked their ears at each outburst. A grandmotherly woman at the next table was wearing an absurd mustard-yellow cloche hat. Six younger women at the far end of the room were obnoxiously giggly. The waiter brought the wrong appetizer, and then didn’t return with the correct dish for a tedious number of minutes.

Nevertheless, the doctor didn’t shoot any of them. For a true gamesman like him, little pleasure was to be had in a simple shooting spree. Mindless blasting appealed to the deranged, to the hopelessly stupid, to waxed-off teenage boys with far too much self-esteem and no self-discipline, and to the fanatical political types who wanted to change the world by Tuesday. Besides, his mini-9mm pistol had a double-column magazine that held only ten rounds.

After finishing lunch with a slice of flourless dark-chocolate cake and saffron ice cream, the doctor paid his check and departed, granting absolution even to the woman in the absurd cloche hat.

Thursday afternoon was pleasantly cool, not chilly. The wind had blown itself to far Japan during the night. The sky was pregnant, but the rain that was supposed to break shortly after dawn had not yet been delivered.

While the valet brought the Mercedes, Dr. Ahriman examined his fingernails. He was so pleased by the quality of his manicure that he almost didn’t pay attention to the surrounding scene, didn’t look up from his hands — strong, manly, and yet with the gracefully tapered fingers of a concert pianist — almost didn’t see the stranger lounging against a pickup parked across the street.

The truck was beige, well maintained but not new, the type of vehicle that would never be collectible even a thousand years from now and, therefore, one in which Ahriman had so little interest that he had no idea what make or model year it was. The bed of the truck was covered by a white camper shell, and the doctor shivered at the thought of a vacation thus spent.

The lounging man, although a stranger, was vaguely familiar. He was in his early forties, with reddish hair, a round red face, and thick eyeglasses. He was not staring directly at Ahriman, but there was something about his demeanor that screamed surveillance. He made a production of checking his wristwatch, and then looking impatiently toward a nearby store, as if waiting for someone, but his acting ability was far inferior even to that of the movie star currently preparing for his once-in-a-career role as a presidential nose nosher.

The antique-toy shop. Just a few hours ago. A half-hour drive and six towns away from here. That was where the doctor had seen the blushing man. When he’d amused himself by imagining the surprise that would sweep the shop staff if he gut-shot the other customers for no reason other than whimsy, this was one of two patrons who, in his mind’s eye, had been targets.

In a county with a population of three million, it was difficult to believe that this second encounter in only a few hours was merely happenstance.

A beige pickup with a camper shell was not a vehicle one would ordinarily associate with either undercover police surveillance or a private detective.

When Ahriman took a closer look at it, however, he saw that the truck boasted two antennae in addition to the standard radio aerial. One was a whip antenna, attached to the cab, most likely in support of a police-band receiver. The other was an odd item bolted to the rear bumper: a six-foot-long, straight, silvery antenna with a spiked knob at the top, surrounded by a black coil.

Driving away from the restaurant, Dr. Ahriman was not surprised to see the pickup following him.

The blushing man’s trailing technique was amateurish. He did not stay on the bumper of the Mercedes, and he allowed one or even two vehicles to intervene and screen him, as perhaps he had learned from watching idiotic detective shows on television, but he didn’t have sufficient confidence to let Ahriman out of his sight for more than a second or two; he constantly drove close to the center line of the street or as near to the parked cars on the right as he dared get, shifting back and forth as the traffic in front of him briefly obscured his view of the Mercedes. Consequently, in the doctor’s rearview and side mirrors, the pickup was the only anomaly in the traffic pattern, unprofessionally visible, its big antennae slashing at the air, weaving like a Dodgem car in a carnival ride.

These days, with advanced transponder technology and even with satellite tracking available to them, the pros could trail a suspect all day and night without actually being within a mile of him. This tracker in the pickup was such a loser that his only professional act was not decorating his antennae with Day-Glo Styrofoam balls.

The doctor was baffled — and intrigued.

He began switching streets with regularity, steadily moving into less-traveled residential neighborhoods, where there was no traffic to screen the pickup. As expected, the stalker compensated for the loss of cover merely by dropping farther back, nearly one block, as though confident that his quarry’s mental capacity and radius of concern were equal to that of a myopic cow.

Without indicating his intention with a turn signal, the doctor abruptly hung a hard right, sped to the nearest house, shot into the driveway, shifted into reverse, backed into the street, and returned the way he had come — just in time to meet the pickup as it rounded the corner in lame-brained pursuit.

As he approached and passed the truck, Dr. Ahriman pretended to be looking for an address, as if utterly unaware of being tailed. Two quick leftward glances were sufficient to take a great deal of the mystery out of this game. At the corner, he actually stopped, got out of the Mercedes, and went to the street sign, where he stood peering up at the name and the block numbers, scratching his head and consulting an imaginary address on an imaginary piece of paper in his hand, as though someone had given him incorrect information.

When he returned to his car and drove away, he poked until he saw the beige pickup fall in behind him once more. He didn’t want to lose them.

But for the shared browsing at the toy shop this morning, the driver was still a stranger to him; however, the driver was not alone in the truck. Boggling in surprise and then quickly turning his head away when he saw Ahriman’s Mercedes, Skeet Caulfield had been riding in the passenger’s seat.

While Dusty and Martie were digging into the doctor’s past in New Mexico, Skeet was playing detective, too. This was undoubtedly his own half-baked idea, because his brother was too smart to have put him up to it.

The blushing man with the Mount Palomar spectacles was probably one of Skeet’s dope-smoking, dope-swilling, dope-shooting buddies. Sherlock Holmes and Watson played by Cheech and Chong.

Regardless of what happened to Dusty and Martie in New Mexico, Skeet was the biggest loose end. Getting rid of the cheese-headed doper had been a priority for two days, since the doctor had sent him toddling away to jump off a roof.

Now, relieved of the need to locate Skeet, Dr. Ahriman must only drive considerately, keeping the boy in tow, until he had time to assess the situation and to settle upon the best strategy to take advantage of this fortuitous development. The game was on.

Martie followed Chase Glyson’s Navigator into the parking lot of a roadhouse a few miles past the city line, where a giant dancing cowboy was depicted in mid sashay with a giant cowgirl, outlined in neon but unlit now, with a few hours remaining till the music and the drinking started. They parked facing away from the building, looking toward the highway.

Chase left his SUV and settled into the back of the rental Ford. “That, over there, is the Bellon-Tockland Institute.”

The institute occupied approximately twenty acres in the middle of a much larger tract of undeveloped sage. It was surrounded by an eight-foot-high, stacked-stone wall.

The building looming beyond the wall had been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, in particular by his most famous house, Fallingwater. Except that this was Fallingwater without the water, and it was overscaled in violation — perhaps even in contempt — of Wright’s belief that every structure must be in harmony with the land on which it rested. This massive stone-and-stucco pile, two hundred thousand square feet if it was an inch, didn’t hug the stark desert contours; it seemed to explode from them, more an act of violence than a work of architecture. This was what one of Wright’s works might look like if reinterpreted by Albert Speer, Hitler’s favorite architect.

“A bit Goth,” Dusty said.

“What do they do in there?” Martie asked. “Plan the end of the world?”

Chase wasn’t reassuring. “Probably, yeah. I’ve never been able to make sense of what they say they do, but maybe you’re not as dense as me. Research, they say, research that leads to…” Now he quoted from something he must have read: “‘Applying the latest discoveries in psychology and psychopharmacology to design more equitable and stable structural models for government, business, culture, and for society as a whole, which will contribute to a clean environment, a more reliable system of justice, the fulfillment of human potential, and world peace—’”

“And, at long last, the end of that nasty old rock-’n’-roll,” Dusty added scornfully.

“Brainwashing,” Martie declared.

“Well,” said Chase, “I guess I wouldn’t argue with you on that — or on much of anything you chose to say. Might even have a crashed alien spaceship in there, for all I know.”

“I’d rather it was aliens, even nasty ones with a taste for human livers,” Dusty said. “That wouldn’t scare me half as much as Big Brother.”

“Oh, this isn’t a government shop,” Chase Glyson assured him. “At least there’s not a visible connection.”

“Then who are they?”

“The institute was originally capitalized by twenty-two major universities and six big-bucks private foundations from all over the country, and they’re the ones who keep it running year after year, along with some large grants from major corporations.”

“Universities?” Martie frowned. “That disappoints the raving paranoid in me. Big Professor isn’t as spooky as Big Brother.”

“You wouldn’t feel that way if you’d spent more time with Lizard Lampton,” Dusty said.

“Lizard Lampton?” Chase asked.

“Dr. Derek Lampton. My stepfather.”

“Considering that they’re working for world peace,” Chase said, “it’s a damn tightly guarded place.”

Less than fifty yards to the north, cars entering the institute had to stop at a formidable-looking gate next to a guardhouse. Three uniformed men attended to each visitor as he came to the head of the line, and one of them even circled each vehicle with an angled mirror on a pole, to inspect the undercarriage.

“Looking for what?” Dusty wondered. “Stowaways, bombs?”

“Maybe both. Heavy electronic security, too, probably better than out at Los Alamos.”

“Maybe that’s not saying much,” Dusty noted, “since the Chinese waltzed out of Los Alamos with all our nuclear secrets.”

Martie said, “Judging by all this security, we don’t need to worry about the Chinese making off with our peace secrets.”

“Ahriman was deep into this place,” Chase said. “He had his own practice in town, but this was his real work. And when strings had to be pulled to save his ass, after the Pastore killings, these were the people pulling them.”

Martie didn’t get it. “But if they aren’t government types, how can they make cops and district attorneys and everyone else dance to their tune?”

“Lots of money, for one thing. And connections. Just because they aren’t government doesn’t mean they don’t have influence in all branches of the government…and the police, and the media. These guys are more connected than the Mafia but with a whole lot better image.”

“Creating world peace instead of peddling dope, counterfeiting CDs, and loan-sharking.”

“Exactly. And if you think about it, they’ve got a better setup than if they were government. No congressional oversight committees. No humbug politicians to answer to. Just some good guys, doing good stuff, for a good tomorrow, which makes it unlikely anyone would take a really close look at them. Hell, whatever they’re doing in that place, I’m sure most of them believe they’re good guys saving the world.”

“But you don’t.”

“Because of what Ahriman did to my folks and because he was in so tight with this place. But most people around here, they don’t think about the institute. It’s not important to them. Or if they do think about it, they just have this sort of fuzzy-warm feeling.”

“Who are Bellon and Tockland?” Martie asked.

“Kornell Bellon, Nathaniel Tockland. Two bigwigs in the world of psychology, professors once. The place was their idea. Bellon died a few years ago. Tockland’s seventy-nine, retired, married to this knockout-looking, smart, funny lady — a rich heiress, too! — about fifty years younger. If you met the two of them, you’d never in this life figure out what she sees in him, because he’s as humorless and dull and ugly as he is old.”

Martie’s eyes met Dusty’s. “Haiku.”

“Or something like.”

Chase said, “Anyway, I thought you ought to see this. Because somehow, I don’t know, but somehow it explains Ahriman. And it gives you a better idea what you’re up against.”

In spite of its Wrightian influence, the institute nevertheless looked as though it would be better suited to its environment if it were situated high in the Carpathians, just down the road from the castle of Baron von Frankenstein, wreathed ever in mists and struck with regularity by great bolts of lightning that sustained rather than damaged it.

Following a fine lunch, Dr. Ahriman had intended to swing by the Rhodeses’ residence and have a look at what the fire had wrought. Now that Skeet and the reincarnation of Inspector Clouseau were on his tail, taking that scenic route seemed unwise.

Anyway, his day was not entirely given to leisure, and he did have a patient scheduled this afternoon. He drove directly, though sedately, to his offices in Fashion Island.

He pretended to be unaware of the pickup as it parked in the same lot, two rows back from his Mercedes.

His suite on the fourteenth floor was ocean-facing, but he went first to the offices of an ear-nose-and-throat specialist on the east side of the building. The waiting room featured windows that looked down on the parking lot.

The receptionist, busy with typing, never looked up as Ahriman went to the window, no doubt assuming he was just another patient who would have to wait with the rest of the runny-nosed, red-eyed, raspy-throated, forlorn bunch sitting in uncomfortable chairs and reading ancient, bacteria-infested magazines.

He spotted his Mercedes and quickly located the beige pickup with the white camper shell. The intrepid duo had gotten out of the truck. They were stretching their legs, rolling their shoulders, getting a breath of fresh air, obviously prepared to wait until their quarry reappeared.

Good.

Arriving at his suite, the doctor asked his secretary, Jennifer, if she had enjoyed her sandwich of tofu cheese and bean sprouts on rye crackers, which was her Thursday lunch. When he was assured that it had been delicious — she was a health-food nut, no doubt born with less than half the usual number of taste buds — he spent a few minutes pretending to be interested in the nutritional imperative of taking huge regular supplements of ginko biloba, and then closeted himself in his office.

He phoned Cedric Hawthorne, his house manager, and requested that the least conspicuous car in his street-rod collection — a 1959 Chevrolet El Camino — be left in the parking lot of the building next door to the one in which the doctor had his offices. The keys were to be placed in a magnetic box under the right rear fender. Cedric’s wife could follow in another car and return him to the house.

“Oh, and bring a ski mask,” the doctor added. “Leave it under the driver’s seat.”

Cedric did not ask why a ski mask was wanted. It was not his job to pose questions. He was too well trained for that. Very well trained. “Yes, certainly, sir, one ski mask.”

The doctor already had a handgun.

He had arrived at a strategy.

The game pieces were now all in place.

Soon, playtime.