Survival Of The Fittest

44

Thursday.

I'd slept fitfully but was awake at six, ahead of Robin for a change. Lying flat on my back, I watched her doze and thought about being Andrew Desmond.

At six-thirty she awoke and looked at me.

Her eyes were puffy. I kissed them. She lay there.

“Today,” she said.

“Just a bookstore visit,” I said. “Shouldn't take long.”

“Hopefully not. When's he getting here?”

“Nine.”

She touched my hair, rolled away from me.

We both got out of bed. She put on a robe, tugged the sash tight, and stood there for a moment.

I stood behind her and held her shoulders. “I'll be fine.”

“I know you will.” She turned sharply, kissed me hard on the cheek, almost an assault. Then she went into the bathroom and locked the door.

Yesterday, we'd made love twice. The second time, she said, “I feel like an adulterer.”

Daniel arrived at nine and sat me down in the kitchen. Covering me with a black barber's sheet, he snipped my hair with scissors, then used electric clippers to reduce it to a Marine-recruit buzz.

“You're a barber, too?”

“The Army,” he said. “You learn all kinds of things. Not that I'm ready to open a salon.”

He gave me a hand mirror.

Silver glints peppered my scalp; gray hair unearthed.

Bumps on my cranium that I'd never known about.

I looked ten years older, ten pounds thinner.

The haircut and the beard gave me the appearance of an Islamic radical.

I put on the tinted glasses. Scowled.

“Smile,” said a voice from the door.

Robin stood there.

I grinned at her.

“Okay, it's still you,” she said. But she didn't smile back.

Daniel set up a professional Polaroid camera on a tripod, took three dozen shots, left, and returned an hour later with Andrew Desmond's California driver's license. To my eyes, indistinguishable from the real thing.

I added it to the rest of the fake ID now occupying my wallet. “Hopefully I won't get stopped by a cop.”

“If you do, it's okay,” he said. “We've managed to enter the serial number into the system. Your graduate school's the Pacific Insight Institute. Have you heard of it?”

“No.”

“It closed down years ago. Master's degrees and Ph.Ds in education and psychology. Headquarters was a one-room office in Westwood Village. Fifty-three graduates. To our knowledge, none passed the state licensing exams.”

“So they went to work as psychic friends and made twice the money,” I said.

“Could be. Access to the spirits often pays off. So do diploma mills, apparently. Tuition was nineteen thousand dollars per year.”

“Couldn't buy licensure. Is that why it closed down?”

He shrugged. “Enrollment dropped each year. The former dean sells insurance in Oregon. His degree was self-granted. For the first year, Pacific was actually able to obtain partial federal loans, but that ended when the government clamped down on diploma mills.”

“You've done quite a bit of research.”

“More than we intended,” he said. “Because while finding a place for you, I learned that the Loomis Institute was involved in funding similar schools. Two in Florida and one in the Virgin Islands. Another possible profit-making scheme while claiming tax-free status, though all we know so far is Loomis awarded grants to these places.”

“Where'd you find this out?”

“A book written in response to The Brain Drain. One good thing that did come my way through the Internet. A collection of essays. The one that caught my eye was by a professor at Cole University in Mississippi whose field of study was diploma mills. He found out the school in the Virgin Islands had links to Loomis and may have really been a way to fund eugenics research.”

“A book,” I said. “Twisted Science?”

“That's the one. You've read it?”

“I checked it out but never got around to reading it, figured why waste time on something I agree with. What's this professor's name?”

“Bernard Eustace.”

“I assume you've contacted him.”

His gold eyes were steady. “We tried. He died fourteen months ago.”

“How?”

“Auto accident. He was visiting his parents in Mississippi, drove off the road late at night.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“It's recorded as an accident, Alex. Maybe it was. Milo and I agree that digging further right now is too risky because the crash site is rural, any questions from out-of-town police will be conspicuous.”

The fingers of his good hand had bowed, tips pressing into the tabletop.

“Mississippi,” I said. “Was Eustace black?”

“White. A historian, not a psychologist. We may eventually talk to his wife, but right now, following Farley Sanger and your meeting Zena Lambert seem more useful. Are you ready?”

“Yes. Where's Milo?”

“He'll be following you but we thought it better that you didn't know where he was. That way you'd be less likely to look his way accidentally. I'm sure you don't doubt his protectiveness.”

“Not a shred of doubt,” I said.

Before I left, I stopped in to see Robin again. The shop was quiet, all machines switched off, her apron still folded on a workbench, as she talked on the phone, her back to me.

Spike barked and trotted forward and Robin turned. “I'll call you when it's done. Bye.”

She put the phone down. “You look- like a French cinematographer.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Depends if you like French cinema- it does have a certain… hungry elegance. C'mere.”

We embraced.

“What's that cologne?” she said.

“Andrew's scent. Do you find it alluring?”

“Oh, yeah. Baguettes and pessimism.” She pulled away, held me at arm's length. “You're certainly giving them their money's worth. When will you be back?”

“Depends on how it goes,” I said. “Probably sometime this afternoon.”

“Give me a call as soon as you can. I'll get us something for dinner.”

I held her tighter. Her hand reached up and touched my bristly head. Paused. Stroked.

“Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,” I said.

“If I run out of.000 sandpaper, I'll draft you into service.”

She pulled away again. Studied me. “Definitely different.”

“Overkill,” I said. “It's a bookstore visit in Hollywood, not sneaking into Iran, but they're the professionals.”

“Have you seen Hollywood recently?”

I chuckled. Thought about Nolan's Hollywood.

She stroked my head some more. “Three kids, that blind man. Some things grow back.”