Drug of Choice Page 7

  “Yes.”

  “You sound a little groggy.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. He didn’t feel groggy. He didn’t feel the least bit groggy. He felt clear-headed and fine, very fine.

  “Roger?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “About the trip.”

  She paused. He waited. “I’m alone,” she said. “As it turns out”

  “Oh.”

  “And I have two tickets. They were given to me.”

  “Oh.”

  “And it seems a shame to waste one.

  “Yes, it does.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Roger, are you all right?”

  “What time?” he said.

  “Nine-fifteen.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “Check in an hour before flight.”

  “An hour before.”

  “And pack light clothes.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “You’re a love,” she said. “Good night.” He heard a smacking sound as she kissed the phone, and he hung up, feeling a strange sense of power.

  11. OLIVE OR TWIST?

  HE HAD TO KNOCK on the door for several minutes before anyone answered. And then it was Jerry, pulling the bathrobe around his waist, looking tired and cross.

  “Jerry, I have to talk to you.”

  Jerry Barnes blinked in the light of the hallway. “Rog? Is that you?”

  “Yes,” Clark said. “Listen, I have to talk to you, it’s important.”

  “Rog…” Jerry fumbled with the robe, pulling back one sleeve to look at his watch. “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  “I know,” Clark said, walking into the apartment “I’ll barely have time to pack.”

  “Pack?” Jerry was scratching his head, looking at him. “Pack what?”

  Clark went into the living room, sat down, and turned on a light. Jerry winced.

  “Jerry,” he said, “you’re a stockbroker, and I need—”

  “I’m a stockbroker,” Jerry said, “from nine to five. Less, if I can help it. At three in the morning I’m—”

  “Jerry,” called a sleepy voice from the bedroom. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, love,” Jerry said, frowning at Clark. He moved close and whispered: “Can’t we make it another time, Rog? Huh?”

  “Who is it?” Clark said.

  “Linda. A little dividend.” Jerry managed a sleepy grin. “She just split three for two.”

  “That sounds exciting.”

  “Tiring,” Jerry said, rubbing his face. “Very tiring.”

  “You selling long or short these days, Jerry?”

  “Rog,” he said, “for Pete’s sake, it’s three in the morning—”

  “I need information. About a corporation.”

  “Jer-ry,” called the sleepy voice. “Come back home to momma.”

  Jerry rolled his eyes and looked at Clark. “This really is a bad time, Rog, no kidding.”

  Clark got up and went to the refrigerator. Jerry Barnes always had a pitcher of martinis in the refrigerator. He poured himself one, looked inquiringly at Jerry, who nodded; he poured a second one.

  “Make it quick, huh?”

  “Okay, Jerry. Very quick. I want to know about a corporation in Santa Monica called Advance.”

  Jerry Barnes gulped his drink and said, “Oh no. Not another one. You too? How about an olive?”

  “Twist,” Clark said, swirling the cold liquid in the glass.

  Jerry dropped a twist of lemon into it. “Everybody wants to know about Advance.”

  “Everybody?”

  “At least six people have called me in the last month. They’ve seen the building, or heard about the corporation, and they’re interested. I checked it out a while ago.”

  “And?”

  He shook his head. “Not for sale. Private corp. It’s not on the big board, it’s not on the American, it’s not anywhere. The stock is all privately held.”

  “What else do you know?”

  Jerry Barnes took a long gulp of the drink, and rubbed his face again. He seemed to be waking up. “It’s a funny bunch, Advance. Started two years ago with a handful of wizard-types, doing biological research. They were located in Florida then. The original group, which includes the president, this guy Harvey Blood, was all marine scientists.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And they were doing government research. They discovered a thing called SVD.”

  “Which is?”

  “A viral disease of sharks, transmitted in the, uh, sexual secretions or whatever it is that sharks do.”

  “SVD?”

  “Stands for shark venereal disease. Locally known as the finny clap.”

  “Jerry, are you pulling my leg?”

  “At three in the morning? Come on.”

  “Jer-ry, ba-by…”

  “In a minute, love,” Jerry said, pouring himself another martini. “Jeez, Rog, she really is something,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe it. I used to hear stories about girls like this—”

  “Advance,” Clark reminded him.

  “Yeah, Advance. Anyway, they discovered this fish disease and isolated the virus, or some damned thing, and sold it to the government for a big fee. It was going to be a huge new breakthrough in biological warfare. From there, they went on to investigate Arizona Sleeping Sickness.”

  “Arizona—”

  “Shhhhh. Yeah. Arizona Sleeping Sickness. Another new disease they invented. Carried by the eight-legged nymph of the sagebrush caterpillar in northwest Ariz—”

  “I hope,” said a voice, “that I’m not breaking up the party.”

  Clark turned. There was a girl standing in the doorway to the bedroom, wearing a man’s pyjama top and a sleepy frown.

  “Linda, this is Roger.” Jerry sighed. “Roger is a crazy doctor.”

  “Oh,” Linda said. She padded across the room to the refrigerator and poured herself a drink. “He must be crazy,” she said.

  “He’s also leaving,” Jerry said, with a stern look at Clark, who was staring at the girl’s legs. They were very nice legs.

  “Yes, just leaving,” Clark said. “But about Advance—”

  “All right, look: the thing about Advance is that they got started with these two diseases, sold them to the government for a big fee, and then moved into the private sector. Completely. They’re doing other things now.”

  “Like what?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Nobody seems to know, really. There are rumors about thought control, and drugs, and test-tube engineering…. wild stuff. But nobody knows for sure.” He sighed. “And anyway, it’s not for sale. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Clark said. He finished his martini and stood.

  “Good night, crazy doctor,” Linda said, with a sleepy smile. “Nice having you.”

  “You haven’t had him yet,” Jerry said.

  “Yes,” Linda said, “but you never can tell.”

  12. TRIPPYTIME

  “ONE MORE! HOLD IT!”

  The flashbulbs popped.

  “Now around, that’s it. A little leg, Miss Wilder!”

  Flashbulbs, white silent explosions in the air. The photographers scurrying, moving around her.

  “Give us a smile, Sharon! Good! Another!”

  She turned, waved, and smiled once more, then walked up the steps to the airplane. “That’s it, boys.”

  “Aw, Sharon.”

  “Just one, Sharon.”

  “Miss Wilder…”

  But she was climbing the steps, and a moment later ducked through into the interior of the airplane, and moved down the aisle to her seat in the first-class section.

  Roger Clark was waiting. He had watched it all from the window seat.

  “God, photographers,” Sharon said, dropping into her seat. “I hate posing,” she said, “in all these clothes. Is the suit all right?”

  S
he wore a severely cut suit of black leather, with a red scarf at her throat.

  “The suit is fine,” Clark said.

  “You’re such a dear,” Sharon said, and kissed his cheek. She settled back in the seat and buckled her belt. “Well,” she said. “At last: it’s trippytime, darling.”

  “So it appears.”

  “It was good of you to come,” she said, “on short notice. I felt terrible about calling you.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  There was a whine as the jet engines were started. The few remaining passengers filed down the aisle to their seats; up in front, they could see the stewardess closing the door. The steps were wheeled away.

  “This is going to be a marvelous flight,” Sharon said. “I’ve decided.”

  Clark said, “What exactly do we do?”

  “It’s very simple,” she said. “We fly direct to Miami. Then we have a little stopover, and get the plane to Nassau. From there, we go by seaplane to San Cristobal.”

  “Which is where?”

  She laughed. “Silly, that’s part of the thing. Nobody knows. It’s a secret.”

  Clark remembered seeing the tickets in her bedroom. They had been paid for by Advance. “Tell me,” he said. “How did you hear about this place?”

  She sighed. “You doctors. You never get away from your patients long enough to…”

  She picked up the latest issue of Holiday magazine and thumbed through it quickly, finally turning back a page. She handed the magazine to Clark.

  The full-page ad read:

  EDEN ISLAND

  Everything Under The Sun

  Never was there a resort like this before! Name your game: tennis, swimming, badminton, skin-diving, deep-sea fishing, hunting (wild boar), water-skiing—Eden Island has the finest, most modern facilities for everything. Or you may prefer to spend your time in our casino, dancing and dining at one of our twelve different clubs. Everything has been provided for you, all under the most expert management.

  The sun, of course, takes care of itself.

  Eden Island: there’s never been anything quite like it before.

  There was also a large color photograph showing a beach, a dock with sailboats, and back from the shore, secluded in manicured grounds and shaded by palms, an enormous white resort complex of hotels, swimming pools and tennis courts. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

  “Ads like this,” Sharon said, “have been running for weeks. Everybody’s talking about it. Everybody’s going. They say it will be the resort of the century, when it’s finished.”

  “It’s not finished?”

  “No. San Cristobal—that’s the real name of the island—is five square miles. The company that is developing it says they won’t finish for twenty years.”

  “What company is that?”

  She shrugged. “Some American corporation.”

  He looked at her steadily. “Advance?”

  “Advance what?”

  “The Advance Corporation,” Clark said.

  For a moment, she seemed puzzled, and then she laughed. “You really did check up on me, didn’t you? That’s George’s company. He’s such a dear—but no, Advance has nothing to do with this.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because George told me about it. They’re into all sorts of stuff—electronic control of the brain, and new birth control chemicals—but not resorts, love.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” She was looking at him in an odd way, as if she might become angry.

  “Where’d you get the tickets?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “You’re a glutton for punishment.”

  “Just curious.”

  “George got them for me,” she said. “You see, I was originally going with him.”

  “Oh.”

  “But he canceled out at the last minute. Some conference on enzymes in Detroit.” She looked out the window as the plane taxied down the runway, gathered speed, and began to climb into the air.

  “And now,” she said, “I’d like to change the subject.”

  An hour later, over drinks, he said, “You were right about one thing. I did check up on you. I even went to see Abraham Shine.”

  “He’s a dear man,” Sharon said, biting into a shrimp hors d’oeuvre.

  “He mentioned that you were concerned about corporations.”

  “Concerned? That wasn’t it at all.” She munched on the shrimp. “I was terrified.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It was this kind of irrational thing, a fear. Like there were so many huge complex companies, and I was just a little person, all alone. I felt… powerless.”

  “And you were worried about—”

  “Being controlled,” she said, nodding. “I was. It was an awful period in my life. I would go to bed at night and dream that some giant corporation was manipulating me, like a puppet and its master, behind the scenes, pulling the strings. I felt I couldn’t control anything, that I was just being tugged this way and that.”

  “Why did you feel that?”

  “Listen,” she said, taking a sip of her drink. Her face was already flushed from a previous drink; she looked young and pretty and very sexy. “I’ll tell you something. The life of a young girl in this town—I mean LA—is pretty miserable. You want to get into the business, and you grow up thinking, dreaming about it, how wonderful it would be, attending your opening night and climbing out of the limousine wearing a chiffon gown and a white fur coat… And then you start working on it, you quit school one day at sixteen and you say the hell with algebra, I’m going to make pictures, and you start working. You get an agent. I had a jerk named Morrie Sandwell. He set up some meetings with producers, sort of introducing me around. The producers explained how tough it was for a newcomer to break in, how a new girl really needed the guiding touch of an experienced person in the business, someone with contacts. So okay, you get your contacts, you go along with the touch, because you have that dream of the opening night, and getting out of the limousine and looking up at the marquee with your name there. It’s a good dream.”

  She pushed her drink away.

  “And then one day you wake up and realize what the hell you’ve been doing, hanging around with a bunch of nasty old guys and nasty old hotel rooms and too many drinks and too many sour laughs. And all you’ve got to show for it is a walk-on in Gunslinger and two lines as the cook in Gorman’s Heroes. And you just see it, clear and plain: you’ve been used.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you start seeing someone like Dr. Shine. He was very good for me. He got me out of this corporation-manipulation thing, and into something else. He made me believe that I could control my destiny. So I fired my agent got a new one, and started fresh. I played with a new set of rules—my rules—and it was a whole new game.”

  She looked at him steadily.

  “And I’m winning,” she said. “This time, I’m winning.”

  It was raining in Miami—a cold, October rain that presaged a hurricane brewing to the south. They had two hours in the airport and wandered around together, looking at the shops, having a hamburger and a drink. Then Sharon said she wanted to try on sweaters in one of the airport stores, and Clark went off by himself. He walked aimlessly, not paying much attention to anything.

  And then he realized.

  He was being followed. It was a short man with a plastic clear raincoat which showed a rumpled blue suit underneath. Clark walked on, then looked back.

  The man was still there. He had a bland, expressionless face. Clark wondered if he was one of the passengers on the plane, but could not recall his face. But he was attentive when he boarded flight 409 from Miami to Nassau, New Providence. The man in the raincoat did not board the plane with him. Odd, he thought. Sharon was already in her seat. As he sat down, he said, “Find anything?”

  “No,” she said, “they were all wrong for me.”

  There was a hazy, hu
mid sun in Nassau. They were met at the small terminal by a representative of Eden Island, who helped them all through Bahamian customs with remarkable ease, and then led them outside to a bus. It was a normal sort of bus, except that it was painted flame red and hot orange, with black lettering on the side: EDEN ISLAND EXPRESS.

  They climbed aboard and were given grapes and other fruit while the man explained that the bus would take them to the seaplane.

  “Purely a temporary arrangement, folks,” the man said. “You see, we haven’t yet built the airstrip on Eden. But they’re working on it. Of course,” he said, “most people find a seaplane quite an experience, yes indeed, quite an experience.”

  Clark stared out the window for the duration of the dreary trip from the airport to the port of Nassau, set down beneath the crest upon which the old fort was erected. The bus drove directly to the waterfront, and pulled up before a large seaplane. Everyone got on board.

  The passenger section was quite dark; the windows had all been covered with black paint.

  “So it’s true,” Clark said.

  “Oh yes,” Sharon said. “The location is a big secret.” She smiled. “Of course, it’s only a publicity stunt. By now all sorts of people in private planes and yachts will have found the island and charted it. But it’s a good gimmick.”

  Drinks were brought around as soon as the plane was in the air, but Clark didn’t have one. He was tired, and the monotony of the dark cabin was conducive to sleep. He must have dozed off, because when he awoke the airplane was rocking in a steady, rhythmic way, and he could not hear the sound of the propellers.

  “What’s happened?”

  “We landed,” Sharon said, smiling. “They just tied up to the dock.”

  The passengers were already beginning to stand and stretch in the aisles.

  Clark said, “But if we’re tied up, then—”

  “In a few moments, we’ll see Eden Island,” Sharon said, and smiled with radiant excitement.

  The forward door was opened, and sunlight streamed into the cabin. The passengers began to file outside.

  13. EAST OF SAN CRISTOBAL

  HIS FIRST SENSATION WAS of the air: it was clear and warm and redolent of foreign scents, strange spices. Though the sun was setting behind the far hills of the island, and the sky beginning to deepen to purple, the air remained warm, with a mild breeze. He breathed deeply and looked around him.