Drug of Choice Read online

  Peculiar, he thought.

  He stepped into the shower and turned it on, very hot.

  When he came out, he began to look for his clothes. They were not in the bedroom; he looked out in the hall and found a tie and a pair of socks. He picked them up and continued, finding his shirt, then his pants. He came into a living room, very simple and elegant. His jacket was thrown over a couch, his shoes on the floor, and two half-finished martinis stood on the coffee table.

  “Find everything?” Sharon called.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  He dressed and went into the kitchen. Sharon was scooping eggs onto two plates. He sat down and they ate; she was in a hurry: she had a beauty parlor appointment in an hour, and then the photographers an hour after that…

  He smiled. “Busy girl.”

  “Not really. Just pre-publicity for the next film. Actually, I’m going on vacation in a week.”

  “That’s funny. So am I.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Mexico City.”

  She made a face. “Don’t like it,” she said. “Too dusty. You should go where I’m going.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “San Cristobal. It’s a new resort in the Caribbean.”

  That explained why he had never heard of it. On an impulse, he said, “Why don’t we go together?”

  She shook her head. “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She gave him an odd smile. “Previous engagement. Maybe next vacation?”

  “All right,” he said. “Maybe the next one.”

  5. SHINE ON

  HE TOOK A CAB back to the Long Beach pier, got into his car, sat down and thought things over. He was feeling suddenly very peculiar. He had just spent the night with Sharon Wilder—every man’s dream—and he could remember nothing about it. He had slept in her bed, and showered in her shower, eaten breakfast in her kitchen and God knew what else.

  And he could remember nothing about it.

  Today was his day off, and he had intended to spend it with the travel agent, discussing his vacation plans. But he was puzzled, feeling off-balance. Reaching into his pocket, he found the list of doctors Sharon Wilder had been seeing. An internist, a dermatologist, a psychiatrist, and the mysterious Dr. George K. Washington.

  He decided, for no very good reason, to pay a call on the psychiatrist.

  Dr. Abraham Shine seemed to own two houses. One was located near the road, a modern, rectangular structure. There was a sign by the door which said, “Office.” Farther back, along a gravel drive, was a mansion of pink stucco, secluded among carefully tended shrubs and bushes. Clark parked and went into the office.

  He immediately found himself in a small but plush reception area. Two things attracted his attention. There was a massive modern structure sculpture of interlocking polished chrome spheres. And there was a receptionist with large eyes and spheres that did not interlock.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’m, uh, Dr. Clark, Roger Clark…”

  “Yes, Doctor. Do you have an appointment?”

  “Well, no—”

  “I’m afraid it’s necessary to make an appointment to see the doctor.”

  “Actually, I just wanted to see him for a few minutes—”

  The receptionist shook her head. Other things moved as well. “I’m sorry, Dr. Shine is very firm. You must have an appointment to see him. After all,” she said, in a reasonable voice, “if he took people without an appointment, where would we be?”

  Clark was thinking that over when she said, “I can’t tell you how many people—sick, troubled people like yourself—have come to us and asked to see the doctor for just a few minutes. He has to keep his schedule. Think of all the suffering, the unhappiness, the sad and lost souls that we treat here.”

  “In Beverly Hills?”

  “Rich people,” the girl said sternly, “are not necessarily happy people.”

  Somehow, the way she said it, Clark had the feeling she was quoting somebody. He had an idea who it might be.

  “Look, Miss—”

  “Connor. Janice Connor.”

  “Look, Miss Connor, I’m not seeking advice for myself.”

  “A relative? Your wife?”

  “No, I’m not married.”

  “I see,” she said. She began to smile at him.

  “Actually, Miss Connor, this is a professional matter concerning a mutual patient of Dr. Shine and myself.”

  “Well…”

  “And Miss Connor, I know this may be impertinent of me, but…”

  “Yes…”

  “Are you free for dinner?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Eight o’clock?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And about seeing Dr. Shine…”

  “He has a free half-hour,” she said, “at ten-thirty.”

  The office was large, furnished as plushly as a bordello. Clark entered to see Dr. Abraham Shine rising from behind his desk.

  “Dr. Clark, is it?” Shine said.

  “Yes.” Clark looked at Shine. It was a shock to see how old the man was. His face was heavily creased, his hair white and thin, his body paunchy.

  “I’m from LA Memorial.”

  “Oh, yes. One of your people called me about Sharon Wilder, if I remember.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I have a free half hour. If you don’t mind sitting by the pool, we can talk there.”

  “Of course.”

  They went through a rear door, and walked up the grassy lawn toward the mansion. Shine led him around to the back, toward a large swimming pool. Shine dropped into a deck chair and motioned Clark to another alongside.

  “Time was,” he said, “when I’d use these half-hour breaks to swim. Madly: five miles a day. Now, I couldn’t get from one end of that pool to the other.” He sighed. “I’m seventy-two years old, and feeling every minute of it.”

  Shine shook his head, and stared at the Water. There was a moment of silence; Clark waited, then said, “About Sharon Wilder…”

  “Oh yes. Sharon. Remarkable young woman. She’ll go far, I think. Very far, in this town. When she came to me, of course, she was rather upset.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, she was just beginning her, ah, campaign to appear on the cover of everything published in the western world. She is a sensitive girl, and she was bothered by a recurrent delusion.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. She was convinced that she was just a pawn, an instrument being manipulated by some shadowy organization.”

  Clark thought of Tony Lafora. “But her agent is—”

  “Not her agent,” Shine said. “It had nothing to do with her agent. She was bothered by thoughts of some kind of giant, scientific corporation which was controlling her life and career. She dreamed about it.”

  “Very peculiar.”

  “Not really. It’s a rather common delusion among young girls in this town. I suppose because it isn’t really a delusion—for many of them, it’s absolutely true. The studios manipulate them, humiliate them, exploit them, use them. And then discard them when they begin to show the wear and tear.”

  “What corporation was Sharon worried about?”

  “She couldn’t say. That was the trouble. She couldn’t get that clear in her own mind. It was a sort of free-floating, American anxiety. Fear of the great corporation—”

  “—in the sky.”

  Shine laughed. “I suppose. Anyway, I cured her of it by my usual method: hypnosis. My techniques are unorthodox, but they work. I put her into a deep trance, and then counter-suggested various ego-affective principles. After three sessions, she was convinced that her destiny was in her own hands, that she was free. That’s not really true, of course, but it is an easier delusion to live with.”

  “I see,” Clark said.

  At that moment, a strikingly beautiful blonde girl appeared by the pool. She could not have been more than eighte
en or nineteen, and she wore a very small, very thin red bikini. “Your daughter?”

  “My wife,” Dr. Shine said, with a contented sigh.

  The girl nodded to them, and dived into the pool. She swam back and forth with long, easy strokes. They watched for a while, then Clark said, “Did you prescribe any drugs for Sharon?”

  “No. I do not believe in drugs. They are a waste of time. Psychoactive drugs depend heavily upon suggestion; every clinical study has proven that, beyond question. I prefer to give the suggestion directly, and skip the chemicals.”

  “Do you know if she was taking any drugs from other sources?”

  “Yes. Certainly she was. Her sexual frustrations were driving her to seek satisfactions in other areas. At one time I was afraid she would become a narcotics addict, but that never happened, fortunately.”

  “Did she talk much about drugs?”

  “Only in the beginning. They fascinated her: part of her preoccupation with manipulation and artificial personalities, supplied from some external source. She believed, for a time, that drugs could really change her, make her something else, something different. I was able to correct that attitude.”

  “What is your opinion of her present status?”

  “Sharon’s? Excellent. One of my most successful cases.”

  Clark nodded politely. He was obviously getting nowhere. He stood, thanked Dr. Shine for his time, and was about to leave when a thought occurred to him.

  “By the way,” he said, “have you ever treated any Angels?”

  “Angels?”

  “Hell’s Angels.”

  “Funny you should ask. I have one under treatment now.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Arthur Lewis. A wild one. His father’s a television producer, and there is a lot of money. The boy’s assimilating it badly. Victim of affluence, you might say. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondered,” Clark said.

  Ten minutes later, after Clark had gone, Mrs. Shine climbed out of the pool and towelled herself dry.

  “Who was that?” she asked her husband.

  “A doctor. He’s been treating some of the coma people, and I’m afraid he’s puzzled. He didn’t come out and say it, but it was on his mind.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all,” Dr. Shine said, smiling.

  “You mean he’s—”

  “Exactly. He’s the one.”

  “Poor guy. He was kind of cute.”

  “Don’t worry,” Shine said. “He’ll be well taken care of.”

  6. INTERLUDE: SYBOCYL

  RETURNING TO HIS APARTMENT, Clark found Peter Moss in the lobby. Moss was the detail man for Wilson, Speck and Loeb, the drug company. As usual, he carried a huge satchel stuffed with samples.

  “Hello, Roger. I was just calling to see if you were home.”

  “Come on up,” Clark said.

  They rode the elevator together. “Got some great new stuff this time,” Moss said, patting the satchel. “Great new stuff.”

  “What is it this month? Antihypertensives?” There had recently been a spate of new antihypertensive drugs from several companies. The detail men were pushing them like mad.

  “Naw. That’s old stuff. Now we’re working with Sybocyl.”

  The elevator arrived at the tenth floor. Clark unlocked the door to his apartment. “Sybocyl? What’s that?”

  “New stuff, just finished clinical testing. The FDA is going to release it in about a week.”

  “Yes; but what is it?”

  “Marvelous stuff,” Moss said, sitting down and opening his briefcase.

  Clark took off his jacket and tie. “Yes, but what?”

  “The FDA is just finishing up on it. Testing the rats and monkeys. For a while, we didn’t think we could market it, because it caused toxic reactions in the yellow ostrich.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Seems it drove them insane. Lost all desire to bury their heads in sand. Of course, it only affected female ostriches.”

  “Who discovered this?”

  “The FDA. They also discovered that it turned the second molars of immature Hamadryas baboons an odd brown color. That was a setback, too.”

  “I’m sure. But what about people?”

  “Well, you know how it is. With such odd reactions in animals, the FDA was unwilling to release it for clinical trial. And after the business with the Norway rat—”

  “What was that?”

  “Well, they discovered that administration of the drug to the Norway rat, research strain K-23, induced uncontrollable vomiting.”

  “Unfortunate,” Clark said.

  “A mechanism involving the chemoreceptor trigger zone in the medulla was postulated.”

  “Quite naturally.”

  “Well, no,” Moss said. “After all, there might have been a peripheral effect as well as a central one.”

  “Yes,” Clark admitted. He had learned long ago that you had to let Moss talk for a while. Like most detail men, Moss had attended a junior college in business administration; he knew nothing about science or drugs, but had read the journals and dutifully memorized them.

  “Of course,” Moss continued, “there was one hitch. In order to induce the vomiting, they had to administer rather heavy doses.”

  “Oh?”

  “In fact, they had to administer the rat’s own weight in the drug.”

  “I see.”

  “Hardly a physiologic condition. After all, can you imagine giving a 150-pound man 150 pounds of penicillin? Make anyone sick. Still, the FDA was suspicious. It was months,” Moss said, “before we started the clinical trials. They were done in Baltimore, Chicago and Cleveland, and fortunately, responses were gratifying. Sybocyl passed with flying colors.” Moss reached into his satchel and produced a small bottle of pink capsules. “And here it is!” he cried dramatically, thrusting it into Clark’s hands.

  “Very nice,” Clark said, looking at the bottle.

  “Sybocyl,” said Moss, “is the ultimate wonder drag. It stops cardiac arrhythmias, is a bronchodilator, has direct diuretic effects, stimulates the myocardium to increase contractility, is bactericidal, and is a CNS stimulant and sedative.”

  “A stimulant and sedative?”

  “Strange as it seems,” Moss said, “it is. The ultimate wonder drug. You can give it for anything except measles and clap.”

  “Remarkable,” Clark said, frowning. “Any side effects?”

  “None.”

  “None?”

  “None at all.” Moss chuckled. “It has so many therapeutic effects, there’s hardly room for side effects, eh?”

  “What about contraindications?” Contraindications were medical situations in which the drug could not be given.

  “Relatively few. There are one or two.”

  “What are they?”

  “Here,” Moss said. “I’ll give you the literature.” He stood and looked at his watch. “Time for me to be off. Can I leave anything else with you?”

  “Some aspirin,” Clark said. “I have a headache.”

  Moss frowned. “We have something much better than aspirin. Have you tried Phenimol?”

  “No.”

  “Great stuff. Antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, and very strong analgesic. No side effects. And it works very well on cancer of the colon, if you happen to have—”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, it’s just great for headaches. Just great.”

  “Addicting?”

  “Well, yes…”

  “I’ll take the aspirin,” Clark said.

  Moss gave it to him regretfully. As he was leaving, Clark said, “By the way, Pete. You keep up with the experimental drugs, don’t you?”

  “Well, I try.”

  “Heard anything about a drug that changes urine color?”

  “Changes it how?”

  “Turns it blue.”

  “Blue? No. Why?”

  “How about
a drug that puts you into a coma?”

  Moss laughed. “I can’t imagine a market for it.”

  “Neither can I,” Clark said. But the joke started him thinking: suppose Sharon Wilder and Arthur Lewis hadn’t taken the drug accidentally. Suppose they had taken it for a purpose, a specific reason, and the coma was an unrelated side effect…

  He shook his head. He didn’t even know that Sharon or the Angel had taken a drug.

  After Peter Moss had gone, Clark picked up the bottle of Sybocyl and read the sheet of effects, indications, and contraindications:

  Contraindications: Sybocyl should not be used with diabetics, hypertensives, pregnant women, males over 40, infants, children, adolescents, persons with myopia or dental caries. The drug may otherwise be prescribed with absolute safety.

  “Great stuff,” Clark said. He crumpled the sheet and took the bottle into the bathroom. He poured the pills down the toilet and flushed it, watching as the pink capsules swirled, and were gone.

  7. ADVANCE, INC.

  HE SAT IN HIS apartment and thought over what had happened to him. He decided that it had all been very peculiar, and very unenlightening. He could, of course, make further calls; he could check with Sharon Wilder’s other doctors, and with George K. Washington, whoever he was. But he had the strange feeling that nothing would come of it, and meantime, there was his Mexico trip to plan for. He was about to call his travel agent when the phone rang.

  It was Harry, the intern. “Listen, Rog, I thought you’d want to know. Andrews, the Chief of Medicine, just called. Wanted to know about people urinating blue.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I told him about the two cases you had, and described them.”

  “And?”

  “And he thanked me and hung up.”

  “No explanation?”

  “None. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he called you later.”

  “Okay,” Clark said. “Thanks.”

  As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again.

  “Dr. Clark speaking.”

  “Clark, this is George Andrews.”

  “Hello, Dr. Andrews.”

  “Clark, I’m calling about some patients you’ve seen. An Angel named Arthur Lewis, alias Little Jesus, and—”