The Devil_s Workshop

Chapter 25

How and why this shooting took place are still pretty much a mystery, Steve," field reporter Shannon Morrison said. She was standing in front of the gate of Buddy Brazil's multimillion-dollar Malibu Colony home. "The body was wheeled out at about six A. M., and the police left a few minutes ago. The way the bizarre story pieces together: Dr. Gary Iverson, a Long Beach pediatrician, who had been living in famous 'bad boy' producer Buddy Brazil's pool house, apparently went crazy around midnight last night and tried to kill Mr. Brazil's maid"-she glanced at her notes-"Consuelo Gutierrez. The Oscar-winning producer heard gunshots and Miss Gutierrez's screams, then got a pistol from his gun cabinet and apparently saved Miss Gutierrez's life, shooting the doctor out by his pool. This strange incident occurred just hours after Buddy Brazil's son's body was inexplicably stolen from the Santa Monica morgue."

The TV shot switched to Steve Edwards, seated at his in-studio desk at KTTV in Los Angeles. Steve shook his head in dismay.

"Any idea if those two events are connected, Shannon? It would seem they must be."

"Again, Steve, it's all very tentative right now, so we'll have to wait until the police issue their statement. Possibly, one connection, according to neighbors, was that Dr. Iverson had been heavily involved in drugs, and had recently been to Windsong Ranch in Montana to take the cure. Michael Brazil also had a history of drug arrests when he lived here with his father two summers ago. But for right now, people out here in this secluded Malibu beach community are calling Buddy Brazil a hero for saving Consuelo Gutierrez's life, and it would certainly seem that's exactly what he is."

Similar reports were on every local channel and all the network news shows. There were "file" shots of Buddy with famous actresses smiling at premiers, waving at the press, showing his tanned, surgically enhanced face and white-capped teeth. They spewed out lists of his hit movies, along with opening weekend grosses. He was called a hero, a handsome hero, the bad-boy producer with the golden touch, a romantic outlaw. And on and on it went…

Upstairs in his bedroom, Buddy was watching it all from his bed, with the covers pulled up around his chin. He had been forced to endure the police for almost three hours. Thank God, he thought, that dumb bitch, Consuelo, got it right, or I would probably have been arrested for killing Iverson in cold blood.

The body had been taken out two hours ago, and after the cops left, Buddy locked the front door, wearily climbed up to his bedroom, then stripped and flopped. He turned on the TV and watched, deadpan, as his legend grew right before his eyes. He was on every channel. This sort of heroic notoriety was something he had struggled to achieve for twenty years. It was suddenly happening on a level far beyond his wildest dreams, but he felt corrupted by it. He could still feel the fearHe knew now that beyond any doubt, he was a coward. He had always styled himself as a bad-boy outlaw who played by his own rules, kicked ass, and was afraid of nothing. Ironically, now that the world was finally embracing that image, he wanted to run from the lie.

He stared at the TV in dead-eyed stupor, feeling nothing but a low-level dread about his future.

Consuelo knocked on the bedroom door. "Senor Brazil…?"

"Yes, what is it?" he snapped, and struggled to see over his barrel chest to the bedroom door. She was standing there, her fresh paramedic bandage covering her right arm, which was in a sling.

"Senor, dere ees mans downstair…" she said in her broken English.

"I don't wanna see anybody."

"Dey heff dis por jew."

"That's you, Consuelo, not Jew. Jews are agents, Sephardic ten-percent assholes."

"No. Por favor, dey give dis por jew." She was holding out something in her hand.

He sat up in bed, exposing his furry chest, and nodded. She came to him on tiptoes and handed him a gold ring.

Buddy had never had a particularly good personal relationship with Consuelo. He used to shout at her and tell her she was an idiot. Consuelo had told her sister in Cuemavaca that he was a pendejo, a gringo malo, who used bad drugs and took advantage of women and had kinky sex with prostitutes. She had called him el diablo pequeno, the little devil.

Now that he had saved her from the mad doctor, she didn't know how to treat him or what to think.

"Thank you! Leave me alone," he snapped coldly, and she quickly left, quietly closing the door behind her.

The ring in his hand looked familiar. He had seen it before… a gold band with two snakes entwined. Then he remembered. It had been a gift to him from the head of the studio, when Snake Dancer went over one hundred million in domestic grosses. That was back in the seventies. Now when that happened, they gave you a fucking Mercedes. He hadn't liked the ring. He preferred bigger jewelry with diamond settings, but what the fuck had he done with it? Who could have taken it? Why wasn't it somewhere in the back of his jewelry box?

Then it hit him. He had given the ring to Michael when his son moved into the pool house after being thrown out of Pepperdine. A sort of "welcome home/bury the hatchet" present. He had lied and told Michael he'd had it designed especially for him.

Now, as he sat holding his dead son's ring, the taste of sour chocolate unexpectedly filled his mouth, startling him. He rolled over and hit the intercom.

"Jes?" Consuelo's voice came over the speaker into his bedroom.

"Tell them to wait out by the pool house. No… no, hold it, fuck the pool house, I'm never going in there again. Tell them to wait in the den."

And then Buddy Brazil got out of bed and put on a pair of new black jeans and a black silk shirt, his patented "Outlaw Buddy" attire. He slipped into a pair of custom-made black rhino cowboy boots that gave him an extra three inches in the heel. After inspecting his bloated face in the bathroom mirror, he gargled some Listerine and went downstairs.

There were three of them waiting, not in the den as he'd instructed, but in the living room, which was a mess, filled with shattered glass, empty Coke cans, and police cigarette butts. There was a slender, underweight man with a shaved head, and a rumpled, gray-haired porpoise with a bow tie. Last, but hardly least, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde of exquisite proportions, with aqua-blue eyes and a world-class bumper kit. Buddy focused on her, ignoring the two men. He slipped easily back into his old outlaw persona.

"How may I help you?" he said, trying to sound tired, but heroically resolute, like Alan Ladd after the big gunfight in Shane, his favorite movie, growing up.

"I'm Stacy Richardson. This is Dr. Wendell Kinney and Cris Cunningham," she said.

He looked over at the skinny, bald-headed man. "Cris Cunningham? There used to be a guy with that name who played quarterback for UCLA. They called him Lucky Cunningham 'cause he'd always complete some bullshit Hail Mary pass with seconds left on the clock. A real gamer. Not a bad player for a Bruin. Livin' in L. A., I bet you hear about him a lot," Buddy said, never for a minute suspecting that this underweight, bald, unhealthy-looking character in front of him was, in fact, that same man.

"Yeah," Cris said, "now and again." And that was all he said, so Stacy let it go.

"Sir, we've come to ask you a few questions about your son."

Again, it was the beautiful blonde doing the talking. Buddy would have truly liked to fuck her, but he hadn't had sex with a non-pro in almost five years. Now that Heidi Fleiss was out of the business and standing trial again, he was just using the few remnants from her old stable, who were still flat-backing around Hollywood. He preferred hookers. He had always been afraid of rejection. Prostitutes never rejected you. If you pre-ejaculated, or couldn't sustain an erection because of drugs, or whatever, they never said anything. Hookers always made you feel like your tool was a diamond cutter and you were the blue-vein prince of the city. He looked at this girl and desired her, but knew he would posture and strut, then probably never get up the nerve to take a cut at her.

"First, maybe you should tell me where you got this ring," Buddy said, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger.

"I got it off Mike when he died," the underweight young man said.

Buddy moved farther into the room, coming closer. He could see now that Cris Cunningham was surprisingly tall, at least six-three. Even in his custom boots, Buddy was a few inches shorter. "Why don't we go in here," he said, leading them into the den, which contained all of his showbiz trophies and pictures of him with celebrities, including shots with three different U. S. Presidents. "I'm sort of played out, so if we can make it fast," he said, going for a heroic pose by the bar, making it sound like his fabulous gunfight was nothing to really talk about, but maybe had tired him slightly.

"Sir," the beautiful blonde said.

"Buddy," he corrected her.

She rewarded him with a smile and went on, "Mr. Cunningham was with your son for several weeks just before he died…"

"And where was that? I heard he was hoboing up in Texas, for God's sake. Why Mike would be riding the rails, hanging with a buncha bums, sure beats the shit outta me."

"He was searching for himself," the tall, head-shaved man said. Buddy showed him to a seat on the sofa, while taking a high stool by the bar for himself. Buddy never let his head be lower than another alpha male's if they were both in the vicinity of prime pussy. From this angle, Buddy could now see a stitched wound in the back of the man's head.

"He was riding trains," Buddy said. "How do you look for yourself doing that?"

"I hoboed with him. We rode the SP line all across Texas. We had long talks about what he wanted. To tell you the truth, Mr. Brazil, he was lonely and confused, and didn't think anybody loved him. He was looking for a father, and I told him he should give you another chance. I took his ring after he died."

"You mean you stole his ring," Buddy snapped, angry that this stranger had asserted himself into his nonexistent relationship with Mike.

"No sir," Cris said. "I just gave it back a minute ago, but if I hadn't saved it for you, some railroad brakeman would have it now."

Mike was lonely, he didn't think anybody loved himLike father, like son. "You said you wanted to ask some questions. What do you need to know?" Buddy asked the blond woman.

"Was your son Jewish?"

Buddy first looked annoyed, then amused. Then he had no expression at all, as he leaned his elbows on the bar, and went for some Jack Nicholson cool. "How the hell is that any of your business, lady?" he said slowly, immediately regretting the remark because it made him sound like he was hiding something. He seemed to be having trouble staying in character. The Buddy Brazil outlaw thing he'd perfected over the years was suddenly wavering badly.

"I assume the doctors at the morgue explained the unusual conditions surrounding your son's death," Wendell said. "I'm sure they explained their suspicions about the reason somebody stole Mike's body."

Buddy nodded. Dr. Welsh had said to him that they feared his son had been infected by some rare bio-weapon that had gotten loose, and that somebody, maybe even a foreign government, had stolen Mike's body to get a sample of it. He'd been sworn to secrecy. They didn't want that on the news.

"I think that the weapon he was exposed to might have been designed to only attack people of Jewish origin," Stacy said. "So far, in almost every case we have confirmed, the victim was Jewish. Troy Lee Williams, who died from an illegal test of the weapon, was adopted. His natural parents were Jewish. Dr. Saunders, the retired dentist; your friend Dr. Iverson; the man who crashed his helicopter at Vanishing Lake, Captain Abrams-all Jewish. Only Sylvester Swift, an African-American who was transferred up there, wasn't Jewish. That still puzzles me. I've been giving a lot of thought to the fact that this is a protein bio-weapon. I've been reading up on it, and Wendell and I think it may be possible for a protein to genetically target an ethnic-specific section of a genome."

"Do what?" Buddy asked.

"If Dr. DeMille had attempted to use the protein markers that are in all human blood, I think it's very possible to target specific genetic groups. Blacks, for instance, are the only group to get sickle-cell anemia. Only Ashkenazi Jews get Tay-Sachs disease. This is because each genetic group has its own unique DNA, with its own specific protein markers. Prions could be engineered to attack only one set of genetic DNA markers. When you think about it, it makes both scientific and tactical military senseIf we were at war with the Arabs, or the Chinese, it would be devastatingly efficient to infect only that genetic enemy."

Buddy was starting to panic. "Is this shit contagious?" he shrieked, losing his Nicholson drawl.

"It can be passed, but it needs to be transmitted by ingestion, direct blood transfer, or mosquito bites. It's not a virus, so it's not very contagious. I wouldn't be too concerned," she said.

Now Buddy was wondering if he'd touched Iverson after he'd blown half his head off. Shit! Had he stood in the blood with bare feet? He barely remembered any of it. He'd been in emotional shock for an hour after the shooting.

"Was Mike Jewish?" Stacy asked again.

"Yes," Buddy stammered. "My name is… it used to be Peter Olenchuck."

"Polish?" she asked.

Buddy winced. "Yeah, it's fucking Polish. What about it?" he snapped, and again immediately regretted it, because she looked startled and hurt.

"Look, Miss… what was it…?"

"Richardson. And it's Mrs.," she said.

Now Buddy winced inwardly. She was married.

It was news to Cris as well.

"Mrs. Richardson," Buddy continued, "I'm very sorry. It's been a while since I killed anyone. I guess I'm a little outta practice." At last, a good delivery. He had put just the right amount of tired distress into the reading.

"I understand," she said. "And Michael's mother, was she Jewish?"

"With a name like Tova?" Buddy smiled ruefully. "Tova was one of the great Eastern European Jewish Princesses. She was Tova Rosen, and before you think we're all running around Hollywood changing our names to deny our heritage, this is a billboard society we're in out here. Olenchuck. I didn't want to go around town dragging that Polish piano behind me."

"It's okay," she said softly.

Again he felt stupid. He'd overreacted. He was all over the road.

"Mr. Brazil, I think you should get your blood checked immediately. It's just a precaution, to be on the safe side. Not that I think you have anything to worry about."

Then the chocolate bread thing was back in his mouth, tinny and gross. He wanted to turn and spit into his bar sink, but he restrained himself.

"And just what are you people going to do?" he asked.

"We've decided to go back to Vanishing Lake," Cris Cunningham said. "We want to find out what really happened up there. Stacy thinks we should look at the prison. See if we can find anything they missed when they pulled out. Wendell is going to stay here and work on the science in case we turn up something."

"Vanishing Lake? Where the big fire was?" he said, remembering it from the news.

"It's where your son was infected," Stacy said.

"Isn't that dangerous, going up there?" Buddy asked. "If there's been a bio-weapon outbreak?"

"The government says that all infestation has been contained. They've even reopened the highways," Stacy said.

"I hope they're right," Buddy said. Then, apropos of nothing, he added, "Will your husband be going?" Buddy smiled, trying for some of the old Brazil bullshit, but missing by a mile. Without even looking in the bar mirror, he knew that his smile was lecherous. He had never felt more awkward.

"My husband is dead," she finally said softly. "He was murdered by the people at Fort Detrick, Maryland. They said he committed suicide, but they murdered him because he found out what they were doing."

So Maximilian Richardson was her husband, Cris thought, and he was murdered because he stumbled onto this.

"They killed Mr. Cunningham's four-year-old daughter, with U. S. Government-manufactured pyridostigmine, part of a chemical weapons cocktail used by Iraq in the Gulf War, and brought home inside some of our soldiers," Stacy went on. "And now they've killed your only son. We're not going to quit till we prove they were all murdered."

Buddy Brazil suddenly felt a range of new, different emotions sweeping over him. In his car on the way to the morgue he had wanted to cry, or have some reaction to Mike's passing, but he couldn't. Then in his dream, when Mike was falling, he knew he had lost something very important, and had cried in his sleep, although that had just been a slice of his subconscious. Now he felt guilt, overwhelming Jewish guilt, and burning, unreasoning anger.

He also knew he couldn't live with himself as a coward. He would rather die than carry that around with him. His self-loathing was swamped by his cowardice. He had denied Michael at birth, and accepted him only at DNA gunpoint. Now he felt crushed by Mike's loss.

"There's a hospital a mile from here. Let's go get my blood checked," he said softly. "And then if you want, I'll go with you. We can use my private jet."

It was the first sentence he had uttered since they arrived that felt right. The taste of stale bread was no longer in his mouth.