The Conspiracy Club

4

Two weeks to the day after the bookstore encounter, a second-year medical resident, an adorable brunette named Angela Rios, came on to Jeremy. He was rotating through the acute children’s ward, accompanying the attending physician and house staff on pediatric rounds. Dr. Rios, with whom he’d exchanged pleasantries in the past, hovered by his side, and he smelled the shampoo in her long, dark hair. She had eyes the color of bittersweet chocolate, a swan neck, a delicate, pointy chin under a soft, wide mouth.

Four cases were scheduled for discussion that morning: an eight-year-old girl with dermatomyositis, a brittle adolescent diabetic, a failure to thrive infant- that one was probably child abuse- and a precocious, angry twelve-year-old boy with a miniscule body shriveled by osteogenesis imperfecta.

The attending, a soft-spoken man named Miller, summarized the basics on the crippled boy, then arched an eyebrow toward Jeremy. Jeremy talked to a sea of young baffled faces, trying to humanize the boy- his intellectual reach, his rage, the pain that would only intensify. Trying to get these new physicians to see the child as something other than a diagnosis. But keeping it low-key, careful to avoid the holier-than-thou virus that too often afflicted the mental health army.

Despite his best efforts, half the residents seemed bored. The rest were feverishly attentive, including Angela Rios, who hadn’t taken her eyes off Jeremy. When rounds ended she hung around and asked questions about the crippled boy. Simple things that Jeremy was certain didn’t puzzle her at all.

He answered her patiently. Her long, dark hair was wavy and silky, her complexion creamy, those gorgeous eyes as warm as eyes could get. Only her voice detracted: a bit chirpy, too generous with final syllables. Maybe it was anxiety. Jeremy was in no mood for the mating game. He complimented her questions, flashed a professorial smile, and walked away.

Three hours later, Arthur Chess showed up in his office.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Oh you are, you are. Jeremy had been working on the draft of a book chapter. Three years before, he’d been the behavioral researcher on a study of “bubble children”: kids with advanced cancers treated in germ-free, plastic rooms to see if their weakened immune systems could be protected against infection. The isolation posed a threat to young psyches, and Jeremy’s job had been to prevent and treat emotional breakdown.

At that he’d been successful, and several of the children had survived and thrived. The principal researcher, now the head of oncology, had been after him to publish the data in book form, and a medical publisher had expressed enthusiasm.

Jeremy worked on the outline for seventeen months, then sat down to draft an introduction. Over a year’s time, he produced two pages.

Now he pushed that pathetic output aside, cleared charts and journals onto the chair that abutted his desk, and said, “Not at all, Arthur. Make yourself comfortable.”

Arthur’s color was high, and his white coat was buttoned up, revealing an inch of pink shirt and a brown bow tie specked with tiny pink bumblebees. “So this is your lair.”

“Such as it is.” Jeremy’s designated space was a corner cutout at the end of a long, dark corridor on a floor that housed nonclinicians- biochemists, biophysicists. Bio-everything, except him. The rest of Psychiatry was a story above.

A single window looked out to an ash-colored air shaft. This was an older part of the hospital, and the walls were thick and clammy. The bio-folk kept to themselves. Footsteps in the hallways were infrequent.

His lair.

He’d ended up there four months ago, after a group of surgeons came by to measure Psychiatry’s space on the penthouse floor of the main hospital building. Less glamorous than it sounded, the upper floor looked out to a heliport, where emergency landings sometimes rendered therapy impossible. Any view of the city was blocked by massive heating and air-conditioning units, and pigeons enjoyed crapping on the windows. From time to time, Jeremy had seen rats scampering along the roof gutters.

The day the surgeons came, he’d been trying to write and was rescued by their laughter. He opened his door to find five dapper men and a matching woman, wielding tape measures and hmming. A month later, Psychiatry was ordered to relocate to a smaller suite. No suite existed to accommodate the entire department. A crisis of space was solved when an eighty-year emeritus analyst died, and Jeremy volunteered to go elsewhere. This was shortly After Jocelyn, and isolation had been welcome.

Jeremy never came to regret the decision. He could come and go as he pleased, and Psychiatry was faithful about forwarding his daily mail. The chemistry lab stink that permeated the building was all right.

“Nice,” said Arthur. “Very nice.”

“What is?”

“The solitude.” The old man blushed. “Which I have violated.”

“What’s up, Arthur?”

“I was thinking about that drink. The one we discussed at Renfrew’s shop.”

“Yes,” said Jeremy. “Of course.”

Arthur reached under a coat flap and drew out a bulbous, white-gold pocket watch. “It’s approaching six. Would now be a good time?”

To refuse the old man now would be downright rude. And simply postpone the inevitable.

On the bright side: Jeremy could use a drink.

He said, “Sure, Arthur. Name the place.”

The place was the bar of the Excelsior, a downtown hotel. Jeremy had passed the building many times- a massive, gray heap of gargoyled granite with too many rooms to ever fill- but had never been inside. He parked in the humid subterranean lot, rode the elevator to street level, and crossed a cavernous Beaux Arts lobby. The space was well past its prime, as was most of downtown. Disconsolate men working on commission sat in frayed, plush chairs and smoked and waited for something to happen. A few women with overdeveloped calves walked the room; maybe hookers, maybe just women traveling alone.

The bar was a windowless, burnished mahogany fistula that relied upon weak bulbs and tall mirrors for life. Jeremy and Arthur had taken separate cars because each planned to head home after the tête à tête. Jeremy had driven quickly, but Arthur had gotten there first. The pathologist looked tweedy and relaxed in a corner booth.

The waiter who approached them was portly and militaristic and older than Arthur, and Jeremy sensed that he knew the pathologist. He had nothing upon which to base the assumption- the man had uttered nothing of a familiar nature, hadn’t offered even a telling glance- but Jeremy couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a favorite haunt of Arthur’s.

Yet when Arthur put in his order, there was no “The usual, Hans.” On the contrary, the pathologist enunciated clearly, careful to specify: a Boodles martini, straight up, two pearl onions.

The waiter turned to Jeremy. “Sir?”

“Single malt, ice on the side.”

“Any particular brand, sir?”

“Macallan.”

“Very good, sir.”

As he left, Arthur said, “Very good.”

The drinks came with stunning speed, obviating painful small talk. Arthur savored his martini, showing no inclination to do anything but drink.

“So,” said Jeremy.

Arthur slid a pearl onion from a toothpick to his lips, left the mucoid sphere there for several moments. Chewed. Swallowed. “I was wondering if you could clarify something for me, Jeremy.”

“What’s that, Arthur?”

“Your views- psychology’s views on violence. Specifically, the genesis of very, very bad behavior.”

“Psychology’s not monolithic,” said Jeremy.

“Yes, yes, of course. But surely there must be a body of data- I’ll retrench. What’s your take on the issue?”

Jeremy sipped scotch, let the subtle fire linger on his tongue. “You’re asking me this because…”

“The question intrigues me,” said Arthur. “For years I’ve dealt with the aftermath of death on a daily basis. Have spent most of my adult life with what remains when the soul flies. The challenge, for me, is no longer to reduce the bodies I dissect to their biochemical components. Nor to ascertain cause of death. If one excavates long enough, one produces. No, the challenge is to comprehend the larger issues.”

The old man finished his martini and motioned for another. Motioned at an empty bar; no sign of the portly waiter. But the man materialized moments later with another frosted shaker.

He glanced at the nearly empty tumbler of scotch. “Sir?”

Jeremy shook his head, and the waiter vanished.

“Humanity,” said Arthur, sipping. “The challenge is to maintain my humanity- have I ever mentioned that I served a spell in the Coroner’s Office?”

As if the two of them chatted regularly.

“No,” said Jeremy.

“Oh, yes. Sometime after my discharge from the military.”

“Where did you serve?”

“The Panama Canal,” said Arthur. “Medical officer at the locks. I witnessed some gruesome accidents, learned quite a bit about postmortem identification. After that… I did some other things, but eventually, the Coroner’s seemed a fitting place.” He took several thoughtful swallows, and the second martini was reduced by half.

“But you switched to academia,” said Jeremy.

“Oh, yes… it seemed the right thing to do.” The old man smiled. “Now about my question: What’s your take on it?”

“Very bad behavior.”

“The very worst.”

Jeremy’s stomach lurched. “On a purely academic level?”

“Oh, no,” said Arthur. “Academia is the refuge of those seeking to escape the big questions.”

“If it’s hard data you’re after-”

“I’m after whatever you choose to offer. Because you speak your mind.” Arthur finished his drink. “Of course, if I’m being offensive or intrusive-”

“Violence,” said Jeremy. He’d spent hours- endless hours, all those sleepless nights- thinking about it. “From what I’ve gathered, very, very bad behavior is a combination of genes and environment. Like most everything else of consequence in human behavior.”

“A cocktail of nature and nurture.”

Jeremy nodded.

“What are your thoughts about the concept of the bad seed?” said Arthur.

“The stuff of fiction,” said Jeremy. “Which isn’t to say that serious violence doesn’t manifest young. Show me a cruel, bullying, callous six-year-old, and I’ll show you someone worth watching. But even given nasty tendencies it takes a bad environment- a rotten family to bring it out.”

“Callous… you’ve treated children like that?”

“A few.”

“Six-year-old potential felons?”

Jeremy considered his answer. “Six-year-olds who gave me pause. Psychologists are notoriously bad at predicting violence. Or anything else.”

“But you have seen youngsters who alarm you.”

“Yes.”

“What do you tell their parents?”

“The parents are almost always part of the problem. I’ve seen fathers who took great joy when their sons brutalized other children. Preaching restraint in the presence of strangers- saying the right things, but their smiles give them away. Eventually. It takes time to understand a family. For all intents and purposes, families still exist in caves. You have to be inside to read the writing on the wall.”

Arthur waved for a third drink. No sign of intoxication in the old man’s speech or demeanor. Just a slight increase in his high, pink color.

At least, Jeremy mused, a slip of his scalpel wouldn’t kill anyone.

This time, when the waiter said, “For you, sir?” he ordered a second Macallan.

Finger food came, unbeckoned, with the drinks. Boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce, fried zucchini, spicy little sausages skewered by black plastic toothpicks, thick potato chips that appeared homemade. Arthur hadn’t ordered the hors d’oeuvres, but he was unsurprised.

The two men nibbled and drank, and Jeremy felt warmth- a lacquer of relaxation- flow from his toes to his scalp. When Arthur said, “Their smiles give them away,” Jeremy was momentarily confused. Then he reminded himself: those obnoxious, pathogenic dads he’d been talking about.

He said, “Do as I say, not as I do. It never works.”

“Interesting,” said Arthur. “Not counterintuitive, but interesting. So, it’s all about families.”

“That’s what I’ve seen.”

“Interesting,” Arthur repeated. Then he changed the subject.

To butterflies.

Specimens he’d come across while serving in Panama. Off-duty forays into the jungles of Costa Rica. Weather that “had one drenched in sweat even as one showered.”

The old man drank and fooled with his bumblebee bow tie and ate skewered sausages, and a dreamy look came into his eyes as he embarked upon a story. A patient he’d seen back in Panama. A young officer in the Corps of Engineers who’d returned from a jungle hike, felt an itch under his left shoulder blade, reached back and fingered a slight swelling and believed himself bitten.

He’d thought nothing of it until a day later when the swelling had tripled in size.

“But still,” said Arthur, “he didn’t come in for examination. No fever, no other discomfort- the old machismo, you know. On the second day, the pain arrived. Wonderful messenger, pain. Teaches us all sorts of lessons about our bodies. This pain was electric- or so the fellow described it. A high-voltage electric shock running continuously through his torso. As if he’d been hooked up to a live circuit. By the time I saw him he was deathly pallid and shaking and in quite a bit of agony. And the swelling had trebled, yet again. Furthermore,” Arthur leaned forward, “the lad was certain there was something moving within.”

He selected a potato chip, slid it between his lips, chewed deliberately, dusted crumbs from his beard and continued.

“My assumption upon hearing that- motion- was crepitus. Fluid buildup secondary to infection, nothing alarming on the face of it. But the poor lad removed his shirt and as I observed the mass I became intrigued.” Arthur licked salt from his lips. In the dim light of the bar, his eyes were the color of fine jade.

“The swelling was huge, Jeremy. Highly discolored, the beginnings of necrosis had set in. Black flesh, somewhat bubal, so one had to consider plague. But there was no serious probability of plague, the corps had cleaned the Canal Zone quite thoroughly. Still, medicine is predicated on surprise, that’s the fun of it, and I knew I had to culture the mass. In preparation, I palpated- the wretch could barely contain himself from screaming- and as I did I noticed that there did, indeed, seem to be some sort of independent movement beneath the skin. Unlike any crepitus I’d ever seen.”

Another potato chip. A slow sip of martini.

Arthur sat back again.

Jeremy had moved forward on his seat. He relaxed, consciously. Waited for the punch line.

Arthur ate and drank, looked quite content. The old bastard hadn’t finished. Too drunk to continue?

Jeremy fought the urge to say, “What happened then?”

Finally, Arthur drained his martini glass and gave a low sigh of contentment. “At that point, rather than commence with the examination, I sent the fellow for an X ray and the results were quite fascinating, if inconclusive.”

Munch. Sip.

“What did it show?” said Jeremy.

“A gelatinous mass of indeterminate origin,” said Arthur. “A mass unlike any neoplasm or cystic formation I’d ever seen. My reference books were of no help. Neither was the radiologist- not the brightest fellow in the first place. In any event, I decided to cut the lad open, but gingerly. Which was fortunate because I was able to preserve it, intact.”

Arthur stared at the empty martini glass and smiled in reminiscence. Jeremy busied himself with the last drops of single malt.

Unbuttoning his vest, the pathologist shook his head, in wonder. “Infestation. Larval infestation. The poor lad had been selected by a little known jungle beetle as the nutritional host for its new family- an unusually petite ectoparasitoid of the Adephaga family. The insect is equipped with a set of biochemical tools that prove extremely useful to its survival. It’s brown and unassuming and, hence, hard to spot, and, to the uninformed, appears minimally threatening. Furthermore, it exudes a chemical that repels predators, and its excrement possesses anesthetic properties. Its modus is to deposit its feces on the victim’s skin, which accomplishes the dual goal of relieving itself and numbing the host epidermis. That allows for a swift, clean incision large enough to accommodate an extravagantly curved ovipositor- a beak, if you will, connected to the creature’s reproductive tract that allows for rapid injection of eggs. Of even further interest is the fact that it’s the father beetle who accomplishes this. I was reminded of all this by your mention of violence-enabling fathers.”

Smile. A rueful glance at the empty glass. Arthur went on, “Once his mate’s eggs have been fertilized, the male takes it upon himself to assume full responsibility for the family’s future. He reenters the female, extracts the eggs, injects them into his own thorax and feeds the brood with his body tissue until a suitable host is found.”

“Liberated man,” muttered Jeremy.

“Quite.” Arthur twirled his martini glass, ate the pearl onion, placed his large hands flat on the table.

“What happened to the patient?”

“I scooped out the entire mass, taking pains to do it cleanly. Thousands of larvae, all quite alive, thriving quite nicely, thank you, because of the high protein content of young, American military musculature. No lasting damage to the poor lieutenant other than a scar and some tenderness for several weeks. And several months of rather disturbing dreams. He applied for and received a discharge. Moved to Cleveland, or some such place. The larvae didn’t survive. I tried to come up with substitute nutrition for the little devils. Agar, gelatin, beef broth, bonemeal, ground insect parts- nothing worked. The fascinating aspect of the case was that the very existence of this particular beetle had been under speculation for some time. Many entomologists believed it extinct. A rather interesting case. At least I thought so.”

“The male beetle,” said Jeremy. “Sins of the fathers.”

Arthur studied him. Gave a long, slow nod. “Yes. You might say that.”