Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

Real science.

Whitebeard smiled. "Interested?"

Nod.

Whitebeard continued to saw, pulled off the top of the scalp like a kike's beanie cap. Funny if the stiff had been a kike-the dick was too shriveled to tell.

"The cerebral cortex," said Whitebeard, pointing. "The cosmic jelly that creates delusions of immortality."

What shit.

He wanted to say: I know what it is, asshole. I've seen plenty of them scooped them out just as cool as you're doing.

Instead he just nodded. Play dumb. Play it safe.

Whitebeard lifted the brain, weighed it in a scale that looked like the one they used for vegetables in the supermarket.

"Heavy," he said. A smile. "Must have been an intellectual."

He didn't know what to say, just nodded and stared, until Whitebeard got this uptight look on his face and said, "Don't you have something to do?"

His drug sales alone were quadruple his shitty salary. It turned out to be a very profitable summer. In more ways than one.

For the first time in his life he got to watch Doctor in his natural habitat. The fucker was an even bigger asshole than he'd imagined-ordering people around, never passing a mirror without looking at himself, though why the hell would he want to look at that hook nose and that potbelly, the skin getting all red and blotchy? Red skin meant he was sick-fucker was probably going to drop dead of a heart attack one day, not be able to cut himself open and cure himself, that was for sure.

Drop dead and probably leave all the money to Sarah. Dr. Sarah, soon. But she wanted to be a psychiatrist, no cutting. Unfuckingbelievable.

He checked Doctor out real good, got to know him for the first time. Fucker never knew he was being studied. They could have been standing next to each other and he wouldn't have noticed.

To Doctor he was a freak. Weird. Some piece of shit that didn't exist.

It made him invisible, which was excellent.

Doctor liked the young ones. He found out there was truth to all her screaming about him fucking candy-stripers.

Fucker flirted with all of them, got serious with one in particular. Audrey, this little brunette, seventeen years old, fucking high school student just like Mr. Invisible. But she knew her way around.

Short but curvy-big ass, big tits, wore her hair in this ponytail and wiggled a lot when she walked.

Doctor could have been her father.

Yet they were doing it, he was sure of it. He watched her go j't.to Doctor's office after the secretary had gone home. At first she knocked and Doctor answered; later she started to use her own key. After a half hour, she'd peek her head out to see if the coast was clear, giggle, then wiggle out the door. Wiggle down the hall, swinging her purse, with this bouncy little high school walk that said I'm a winner.

Thinking no one saw.

Someone saw.

The invisible man, carrying a big carton that blocked his face. Even if he'd been visible he was safe. Pow.

He would have loved to cut her up, clean her up.

Mind picture.

Scream-picture.

Once Doctor and Audrey had a close call: One of the janitors got to work early, opened Doctor's office, and was immediately escorted out by Doctor, looking pissed. No white coat for the fucker now. Just pants and a shirt, the tie loose, the buttons not done right.

After that they started leaving the hospital. Going out, once or twice a week, to a motel just off Nasty Boulevard. Dirty-looking place, three dozen rooms around a sunken motor court, hand-painted signs on the roof advertising water beds and electric massage.

Really filthy. It offended him that people could stoop so low.

He followed them, walking because he still had no car, but it was close to the hospital, five blocks. He had long legs-no problem.

He set up his position behind a tall bush, squatted, and watched.

Doctor always drove. But he parked his car half a block away, on a dark side street, and the two of them walked to the motel, Doctor's big arm over her shoulder, Audrey wiggling and giggling. They were predictable: always went into the same room, number twenty-eight, way at the end. Borrring.

The clerk was this skinny slant, all yellow and sunken-cheeked, like he spent his off hours in an opium den. He had a small bladder, went to the bathroom every half hour or so. Or maybe he was shooting up-the guy wore long sleeves.

The room keys hung in duplicate from hooks on a particle-board rack just behind the reception desk.

He laid out his plan, ran it through his head for three weeks in a row. Just watching, trying to ignore the roaring in his head that got louder when he thought of what they were doing in there.

The key was to plan.

Week number four was action time. He'd brought his equipment, dressed in black like some ninja, feeling all tight and good and knowing he was fighting for a good cause.

The first day it didn't work. When the clerk went to pee/shoot up, there was another slant in the office, also looked like a junkie. Slant Two just stood around. When the clerk came out they talked to each other for a while.

The second day, it happened. Slant One split. The minute the office was empty, he ran in, vaulted the counter, grabbed the duplicate to twenty-eight, and vaulted back. By the time One was back, he was outside the door to twenty-eight, all ready with his equipment.

It was dark. There were a few cars; some of the other rooms were occupied, but all the drapes were drawn. No one was around-it was the kind of place you didn't want to be seen in.

He waited, with a giant hard-on, so hard he felt he could break down the door with it.

Put his ear to the door and heard mumbling, what sounded like sex-noise.

Waited some more until they had to be doing it, then slipped the key in, pushed, and ran in, turning on the lights and dancing around the room laughing and snapping pictures.

He caught them in a good pose. Audrey was sitting on Doctor, playing the egg game, just like she used to. Her eggs were smaller and firmer and kind of tan, but it was the same game, in and out.

Snap.

Screams.

What the hell-You't

Snap.

Audrey got hysterical, started crying, struggled to get off. Doctor holding on to her out of fear, shouting at him, but it ended up in her ear.

Comedy.

It looked like they hated each other, but they were still connected, couldn't get free of each other!

Excellent. Snap, snap! The mind pictures would be even better than the real ones, watching them struggle and scream, he was close to coming in his pants.

Snap.

They tried to disconnect. Fear made them clumsy, and they fell sideways.

Snap, another pose.

Snap snap.

Finally Audrey was loose, running naked and sobbing to the bathroom. He kept snapping Doctor, heard her throwing up-probably a habit with women.

Doctor's face was deep purple, his hard-on fading. He grabbed at sheets, tried to cover himself.

Snap.

"You little-" Doctor sprang up and came at him.

The guy was flabby, unhealthy. He pushed him on the chest and Doctor tumbled backward on the bed, ass to the camera.

Snap.

Doctor stood up again.

He put the camera away, smiled, and sauntered to the door.

"See you later, Dad."

The next day there was a note on his bed.

What kind of car do you want?

He got two. A Jaguar XKE Roadstar for fun, a Plymouth sedan for when he didn't want to be noticed.

He drove them for a couple of weeks, let Doctor think that was it. Then walked, one afternoon, past the secretary, without even asking permission, opened the door marked private, went in and shut it behind him.

The fucker was at his desk, writing in a medical chart. He looked up, tried to look stern, put on the head-honcho look, but couldn't pull it off. Obviously scared shitless.

"What is it?"

"We have to talk. Dad."

"Sure. Sit down."

There was a cedar humidor full of cigars on Doctor's desk. Stupid for a heart surgeon, but the guy had never practiced what he preached anyway.

He stared at Doctor, took a cigar out, licked it, and lit it.

Doctor started to say something. Something parental. Then stopped himself.

"What do you want?"

Straight out with it, no "son," no pretending it was anything other than business.

He didn't answer, let an ash grow on the cigar, flicked it on the carpet.

Doctor clenched his jaw to keep from talking.

He blew smoke rings.

"Well, Dad," he said finally, "the pictures are in a safe place with instructions to open them if anything happens to me, so if you've been thinking that fucking me over will help you, forget it."

"Don't be ridiculous. Harming you is the furthest thing from my-"

"Right."

"Believe me, all I've ever wanted for you-"

"Cut the shit." He leaned forward, dropped a gray worm of ash on the desk. On Doctor's charts. Picked up a chart.

"You can't look-"

"Why that?"

"It's confidential patient information."

"Tough shit."

Doctor sighed, put on a nicey-nicey tone: "Listen, I know our relationship hasn't been-"

"Cut the shit, I said!" He said it loud. Doctor looked nervously at the door.

He leafed through the chart. No good pictures. Borrring. Put it down.

"The photos are in packets. Dad. One addressed to Mom, one to Or. Schoenfeld, one to Audrey's parents. I can do anything I want to."

Doctor stared at him. His eyes got narrow.

Neither of them said anything for a while.

"What do you want?" Doctor finally said.

"Favors."

"What kinds of favors?"

"Whatever I want."

Doctor kept staring at him.

The cigar was starting to taste like shit. Fie ground it out on the shiny wooden surface of Doctor's desk, left the butt lying there like an old turd.

"Not a lot of favors. Dad. Just a few important ones."

"Such as?" Trying to tough it out, but totally scared shitless.

Now it was his turn to smile. "I'll let you know."

He got up, walked around to where Doctor was sitting. Slapped him on the shoulder and smiled again. "We'll be in touch, stud."

At one-fifteen Daniel received news from Tel Aviv that Aljuni, the Gaza wife-stabber, had passed his polygraph. At one-thirty p.m. he made radio contact with the Chinaman. Nothing new from the Old City.

"What's with Cohen?" he asked.

"Still feels like a dumb shit about Malkovsky, but he seems to be doing his job."

"How's Daoud doing with Roselli?"

The big man laughed.

"Share the joke," said Daniel.

"Daoud spend the morning dressed as a beggar with palsy, whining for alms near the Fourth Station of the Cross. Did such a good job that an Arab policeman smacked the soles of his feet with his baton, screamed at him to stop defiling the holy places."

"How is he?"

"Proud as hell, and sore. You should see him, Dani-all shaking and filthy. If anyone can pick up idle chatter, he can."

"Drop a shekel in his can for me," said Daniel.

"I already did. Talk to you later."

At two o'clock, Shmeltzer called in.

"The Hebrew U. archaeology department and the nature people promise to get me their hike lists as soon as possible. I had breakfast with the lady. Our request to look for the Nasser whore is being taken under consideration."

"That the best they could do?"

"There was cooperation floating between the lines-I got a breakfast date immediately, so they're taking it seriously. My feeling is they'll look for her if they can do it safely. Problem is the Amman operatives took a long time to plant-they're not going to shut down the entire operation because of something like this."

"Stay in touch with it," said Daniel. "If we need to push a little, let me know."

"I don't think pushing will help," said Shmeltzer. "Something else came up. I'm in Tel Aviv, at Beilison Hospital-the reason I didn't call sooner. I got a call from one of the doctors I talked to a couple of weeks ago-eye surgeon named Krieger, had something to say about one of his colleagues, anesthesiologist named Drori. Remember the flap last year about the doc who refused to give gas to an Arab kid? A cross-eyed baby-they were wheeling him into the operating room and the mother started praising Allah for straightening her little lion's eyes so he'd be able to throw stones at the Zionists. The doctor got pissed off, told her to screw herself, he hoped the kid went blind, then walked off the case. That was Drori."

"I remember. One of the leftist MKs wanted him brought upon charges."

"Right-Sardoffsky and his usual Marxist crap. Anyway, it blew over in two days-that was that. But according to this Krieger, Drori has a real thing for Arabs. Since the incident with the baby, he's gotten even more militant, interrogates Arab patients before he agrees to work on them, has them recite this pledge that they support the state and think Yasser Arafat's a perfidious dog. If anyone on the staff tries to talk to him about separating politics and medicine, he gets irrational-that's Krieger's term. It's come close to blows. On top of that, he's a loner, unmarried, antisocial. Krieger says several times when he's been on night shift, he's seen Drori leave the hospital, get into his car, and come back early in the morning wearing the same clothes, unshaven. Says it's obvious the guy hasn't slept, has been doing something else all night."