Читать книгу Healthy, Wealthy, and Dead - Gregg Ward Matson - Страница 6

I went back to my office, phoned Loralee, talked to Clarissa, said I was on a trail and needed to talk to Loralee as soon as possible. Then I picked up the folder Clarissa had given me, took it a couple blocks to Kinko’s Copy Shop where I made copies of everything. I walked another four or five blocks to the Capitol Post Office. I mailed the copies, return receipt, to myself. Was I being too careful? I wasn’t used to dealing with dead people who suddenly never had existed. I walked two more blocks back to my office. So far I was getting paid for getting some exercise.

The mail had arrived: a catalog of fun police-type toys. My answering machine had two messages, first from a Shara Verche, distributor of Vita Green. Second, from Loralee Carlisle. I called back, told Clarissa to tell Loralee 'tag, you're it.' I called Shara Verche back and left a message on her answering machine. I reheated a cup of coffee in the microwave and sat down to wait.

Waiting and watching is hard. Waiting without something to watch courts madness. Attention Deficit Disorder has a free-for-all up in the head that way. To give myself a focus I doodle, read, stare out the window, take naps. I did them all. When the phone rang I noticed that only a half hour had passed.

The pleasant, ethereal alto of Shara Verche said she was glad to finally be speaking to the real me.

“Yeah,” I replied. “The great thing about modern technology is you don’t ever have to talk to anybody if you don’t want to.”

“Umm, heheh. What can I do for you?”

“I’m doing some investigating into the affairs of the late Aaron Carlisle—specifically, details about the Vita Green corporate structure.”

“Now, or then?”

“Both. Who did Loralee Carlisle sell the company to?”

“David Zaroff.”

“When?”

“Last October.”

“A month after Aaron Carlisle’s death.”

“Yes. Loralee told us at the funeral she was putting the company on the market.”

“Were you and the Carlisles close?”

“Like family. Of course, in the alternative health field we’re all like family.”

“Are you still close to Loralee?”

“We’re good friends.”

“Did she ever mention being uneasy about the circumstances of Aaron’s sudden death?”

“Are you a cop?”

“Definitely not.”

“Just curious.”

“Shara,” I said, probably a little too thin-skinned. “I’ll be glad to meet you later where I can show you my license.”

“Not necessary,” she laughed. She had a low, sensual laugh. “My intuition tells me you’re okay. You learn to trust your instincts, usually. But the truth is, that in addition to dispensing Vita Green products, I’m a certified massage therapist. Well, the law assumes we’re all prostitutes, so….”

“I get it. Sorry.”

“No problem. But since you ask, Loralee was never quite right about Aaron’s death. Not just the suddenness of it. Well, there goes intuition again.”

“Anything she said?”

There was a slight pause. “Let’s see. Let me think.”

“Take your time.”

“We talked business, we talked personally, we talked about other things, and everything was interwoven. Aaron was a marvelous promoter, a hard realist, but also a starry-eyed dreamer. Loralee is a dreamer without peer, but she has an edge of hard realism to her, too. It made a nice, complementary marriage, and it was a good business setup. We all made money, and they were constantly hinting that there were bigger things to come. I believed them.”

“Any specifics?”

Shara paused. “Not really. But—did you know that in the sixties and seventies Aaron made a fortune selling marijuana?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he got out of it because there were some people moving into the business that he didn’t relate to. On both sides of the law.”

“I understand. Not just a home-grown, down-to-earth enterprise anymore.”

“Good lord, no. From the stories he told, it was a wonder he got out of it with his spirit still intact, not to mention his life. But some of those people never really went away. Not that they harassed him, but they just kept hanging around, I guess trying to see if they could find an angle to hang on him.”

“We can’t avoid our past,” I said. “The best you can do is avoid having anything they really want.”

“That’s very good.”

“Thanks, I try. I would guess, though, that Aaron had plenty of what those guys want.”

“Gobs. So they never really went away. Aaron was good at pawning them off, though. And he was always interested in the effects of natural substances on the human mind.”

“Did he take drugs?”

“No. A glass of wine, smoke a little pot at a party, that was it. He was fond of saying how everything originally comes from natural sources. In our product line we’re involved with the overall effects of chemicals in plants on the human body, and it follows, the mind. Mostly, it’s light stuff, no extensive mind altering. But it is impossible to affect the body without also affecting the mind. Check out the difference when you eat a carrot, and when you eat a candy bar.”

“How true.” I was at that moment unwrapping a candy bar.

“We deal with extracts from plants that have favorable results on the body, so they make life more pleasant: St. John’s wort for depression, banana extract for hypertension, chamomile for sleeplessness. Good natural substances, new and old, to make more or less healthy people a bit healthier. We don’t claim to cure anything incurable, nor do we say to avoid standard medical treatment.”

“Okay,” I said between bites. My mental attitude was improving already.

“But all pretty much normal stuff for normal people. Nothing to, let’s say, alter reality.”

“Umm, hmm.”

“But Aaron was interested--even fascinated--by the tendency of human beings to want to go deep into their own minds. Not only in what’s down there, but why people seek what’s in there without knowing if it’s benign or terrible. Why they seek beyond their self-interest, why they take it to self-destructive extremes.”

“So he was involved with something more than just herbal remedies for common disorders?”

“Interested. I don’t know about involved. How would you define involved?”

“More than just idle conversation. Actually doing something. Even just discussing it seriously with people who would do something.”

“He was involved, in the very early stages.”

“Anything specific? Anybody specific?”

“I wouldn’t know. Aaron didn’t let cats out of bags. Loralee might know more about it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t, either. I do know that Aaron was intrigued by the human drive to self-abuse in the hopes of changing perception. And when he was intrigued, he followed through.”

I thanked her and hung up. There were no more voice mail messages, so I ate another candy bar, drank another reheated cup of coffee, and watched the rain. Along about 1:30 I reached for another candy bar, realized how ridiculous this was getting. I made myself stand, grab my coat and umbrella, and walk out of the office.

Two or three doors down there was a lunch room. I got a hamburger, French fries, and a milk shake. Afterward, in a frenzy of guilt I went down a couple more doors to a little market where I picked up a couple cans of tomato juice. Then I went up to my office, made another pot of coffee, and re-occupied my chair.

The phone rang about 3:30, by which time I had definitely concluded it was raining outside. I was listening to the classical station, and news flashes were warning of eminent flooding.

“Hello, Marvin, this is Loralee. How are you?”

“To tell the truth, I’m getting close to an altered state of perception.”

“Huh?”

"Private little joke. Too much coffee. But I’ve been piecing things together. I have some new information and a few more questions.”

“Good.”

“First, Aaron’s name was erased from the County records.”

“Erased? I don’t—“

“Just taken off the memory banks,” I told her. “According to the County, he never existed.”

“That’s—“

“Suspicious? Yeah. So I’ll keep looking around.”

She laughed without humor. “He really did exist, and I can prove it.”

“My guess is that somebody needed to change something, so they took him off the record only for a short time. They didn’t expect you to ask me to ask somebody for information about him, right now.”

“A lucky coincidence?” she asked, sarcastically.

“How well do you know Shara Verche?”

“Very well. We were in business together, and we’re good friends besides.”

“I talked to her today. She had high praise for you and Aaron.”

“Well, that’s mutual.”

“She mentioned that Aaron had been studying natural means of mind alteration.”

“You think he was back into growing marijuana?”

“No. Although if he was, there might be some natural suspects. I ought to have asked these questions yesterday, but the fact is I had no thought that we would come up with anything. Even healthy people can suddenly have heart attacks.”

“So you expected to just call me in a couple days and say you’re sorry about my grief, but Aaron died, right?”

“Pretty close. I was even ready to give you your money back.”

“I wouldn’t have taken it.”

“But then his name disappeared from the memory banks.”

“Another odd coincidence.”

“Yeah. So now we start looking around. I still don’t know if we’ll get anything. If there was foul play, whoever did it has some pretty big cards. We might be out of luck, finding any evidence of crime. Unless we can find a motive and a method, we could still come up with nothing. But now I’ve got enough to go on, to keep prying."

“Do you need more money?”

“No, I only bill a client when the job’s done. The costs so far have been minimal. And I already had a call in to Shara Verche and the other distributor—“

“Bobby Waldsten.”

“Right. He hasn’t called back yet.”

“He won’t.”

“Why not?”

“You didn’t say you were interested in Vita Green, did you?”

“No.”

“Then he won’t call you back.”

“I take it you don’t like him?”

“No. I don’t. I don’t really dislike him,” she said flatly. “But I don’t like him either. In our line we’re all part save the world, part entrepreneur. I relate to the ones who want do something for humanity. Bobby’s the kind who always sees his own enrichment as the ultimate good for the human race. Still, he’s decent, as far as that goes.”

“Would you say he’s greedy?”

“Ambitious. Now remember, Marvin, I’ve never lacked for anything. I came from a good family. It wasn’t ‘Leave it to Beaver,’ but no real family is. I was well-off starting in my late teens. Since my early thirties I’ve been rich. I can’t say where someone else might be coming from.”

“Sounds like the kind of guy I’d really like to talk to. What sort of mind enhancement was Aaron looking into?”

“Oh. I thought we were discussing Bobby. Is this a bait-and-switch technique to get people to reveal secrets?”

I laughed. “No, I’m just not interested in Bobby Waldsten right now.”

“Good, because you know tricksters are the most easily tricked.”

“And liars have to remember. Which I can’t do.”

“So a problem becomes a strength.”

“I suppose.”

“It impressed Aaron enormously that people pursue total destruction in order to change reality.”

“Any particulars?”

“Well….Aaron and I knew, along with our closest friends, that the Great Reality—“

“What?”

“God consciousness. The Over Soul. It goes by many names.”

“Okay.”

“It can be reached in a way that is profound and lasting, simply by practicing the basic principles you find in every religion.”

“What are they?”

“Love your neighbor, love your Creator, love yourself because they reflect both, and honestly try to live by the Golden Rule, which, by the way, is the same in all religions.”

“Go on.”

“But some people try to take a short cut, to ingest something, that brings up a false perception of the Great Reality. Ultimately these methods are superficial, insidious, and deadly. And we know it. Still, people keep trying. They persevere right to the grave.”

“Did Aaron dabble in any drugs?”

“No. He was quite the teetotaler. Not from dogma, but he actually liked being straight. He’d smoke a joint with people because he was selling it. If we had a party, we’d serve beer or wine, but I never saw him empty a glass.”

“And nothing stronger?”

“What do you think?” Her tone could freeze hell.

“I don’t mean to upset you, Loralee. It’s my business to ask a lot of questions. Some of them seem stupid. If you’d like to knock off for now—“

“It’s all right. For some reason I’m a little thin-skinned. I should apologize.”

It was obvious, though, that neither of us intended to apologize. Maybe neither of us needed to. “Okay, I’m going to go from stupid questions to jumping to conclusions.”

“Another bait-and-switch? Or am I just nervous? Please, go ahead, Marvin.”

“It looks to me like Aaron believed that no matter how destructive, dangerous, and even useless drugs, booze, cigarettes, and such things are, people still lust after them. And he probably thought that, with his knowledge of natural herbs and stuff, that somewhere there exits a substance that could do what all the drugs we have now can do, with few if any of the risks. And whoever could discover that would be doing an unbelievably huge service for mankind.”

“And?”

“There’d have to be a lot of money in it. Money interests most people. Some of them might not be the kind of folks you’d like. Did Aaron make any discoveries?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he have any note books, computer files, whatever, stashed away?”

I could hear her sigh over the phone. “The upstairs of this house has been rebuilt. My meditation room and studio is part of that. We have some guest rooms. And Clarissa’s room. Aaron’s office is in another part. It’s chockfull of files and notebooks. He also had an office at the herb farm in Sloughhouse. My son and daughter came over one Saturday just before we sold the farm. Now that they’re grown, they get to see me. We got into our grubbies, Clarissa too, and cleaned out all Aaron’s personal files. Then we put them into a storage cubicle. I’ll give you the key.”

I don’t get paid enough for that. “I might, just in case, but for now I’ll stick with other methods. Was Bobby Waldsten interested in Aaron’s research?”

“Very. In fact he even got a bit rude about it. Aaron finally had to remind him, in his gentlemanly manner as always, that he was in charge of product development, and that Bobby’s job was to sell the stuff as it came out. Bobby can be quite smooth, and agreed, said he was just excited about new products and all.”

“Then there was something?”

“There’s always something.”

“Waldsten wasn’t bothered then? Just shrugged it off?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s always looking for an angle. When he comes to a dead end he looks for another one. He’s one of those businessmen who in most cases can’t be offended. And he only distributes Vita Green in his spare time.”

“What’s his day job?”

“Sales manager for the local O-My-Micron. He does well, so he wants to live longer. That’s why he’s interested in our health line.”

“O-My-Micron. He works for Jerry Loader?”

“Right. He introduced us to Jerry, as a matter-of-fact. Aaron and Jerry got along famously. Jerry and I are still close. He’s been one of those Eskimos who seemingly came out of nowhere to bring strength and support.”

So this was the filthy rich boyfriend she’d mentioned. “What do you mean, Eskimo?”

“You haven’t heard the story?”

“Guess not.”

“A man is telling his friends why he has no faith in a supreme being. He was lost in the Arctic, in a snowstorm. Cold and hungry, near death, he prayed to be rescued, but God ignored his prayers. Finally one of his friends said, ‘Look, you’re here to tell the tale, so if your prayers weren’t answered, what happened?’ The man with no faith replied, ‘Oh, an Eskimo came along with his dog sled and took me back to civilization.’”

“Haven’t heard that one. Was Jerry Loader interested in mind enhancement?”

“He could have bought and sold us a hundred times over.”

“Sometimes plenty doesn’t seem like enough to the guy who has it.”

“He was only interested in being our friend.” Back to the ice cap voice.

Looking out the window at the wet and gray, I said, “Well, Loralee, I’ll keep digging. Still no guarantee I can come up with anything, but my curiosity is aroused. I’ll let you know.”

We said our polite good-byes.

I stood up to stretch, yawn, and watch more rain. I had some vague suspicions based on some flimsy vanished records and some general observations about human nature. The rain couldn’t add much to that.

I got the phone book, looked up O-My-Micron. The sales office was only a few blocks away, to be close to all the government action. I called. Waldsten was a manager, and managers as a rule stick close to the base. It was not a nice day for a walk. Maybe I could get him on the phone.

“Good afternoon, O-My-Micron,” said the cheery receptionist. No better day to buy a computer, her tone implied.

“Hello,” I said, trying to match her cheeriness. “Could I please speak with Bobby Waldsten?”

“I’ll connect you to his office, sir.” And as perkily as she said it, she did it.

“Mr. Waldsten’s office.” The secretary spoke in a voice that had no time for perky—not unfriendly, but laden with awareness of the valued treasure she guarded.

“Good afternoon,” I said, trying to match her sense of guarding gold, but also to add a sense of authority—as if I had an entitlement to partake of said treasure. “My name is Marvin Kent. I’m a private investigator looking into the affairs of Mr. Waldsten’s late associate, Mr. Aaron Carlisle. Is Mr. Waldsten available, please?”

“Mr. Waldsten’s with clients right now, Mr. Kent.” Her voice let me know she did not consider private detectives to be even close to deserving part of the prized treasure. “I’ll take your number and give it to him.”

“I’d appreciate that. And since I’m not calling on company business, I’ll give you my after-hours number as well.”

There wasn’t much more I could do: keep bothering his voice mail and his secretary, both of which were impervious.

It was close to quitting time. I don’t work eight-to-five, but I had a pretty good idea I was done. I flipped off the radio, made sure the coffee maker was off, got my coat and umbrella, and left work.

I stopped at Uptown Market for a TV dinner and a carton of chocolate milk. I also got a box of cinnamon graham crackers to dip in the chocolate milk. I went home, heated up the TV dinner, watched TV. Most of the programs had been pre-empted to show news of the local flooding. But not all. Flipping through the channels I noticed some stations were showing their regular programming without any bothersome interruptions about other peoples’ troubles—and I didn’t even have cable. Maybe that perfect drug, the one that short-circuited reality without detriment to a minimal ability to function in society, was already here.

I flipped back and forth, ate, and philosophized. It would take a major event, like North America slipping into the ocean, to truly interrupt TV, and maybe not even then. Satellites could keep broadcasting the regular shows to whatever continents were still above water.

I woke up on my couch—it’s a foldaway bed and I often don’t bother—in the first blink of morning light with a vague hint that I needed to do something. I made a pot of coffee and took a shower, acting like a human being, even though I didn’t really feel like one. For breakfast I had more graham crackers dipped in chocolate milk. I got dressed—casual, slacks and sport shirt, this being after all California—and opened the blinds to look at the rain.

I opened the window. It wasn’t cold outside. Sacramento was getting Panama’s weather. You could take a trip without moving. A couple years before, we were getting Baja’s weather. The sun shone, and shone. Sacramento is not only close to everything, it moves around, too. This year we’d been moving from the Olympic Peninsula down to the Panamanian jungle and back. This year a stop in Baja would be nice. Back in the drought years, when we got all that Baja sunshine, we moped, worried, and missed the rain.

Whenever the weather strays from the average we start worrying. The problem is, it’s almost never average. It’s either too wet or too dry, with the average in between. Normal is abnormal. Wait around, the sun will shine. Wait around, it will rain. You learn that as you get older.

So here we are, in a world where the only thing we know for sure is that events rarely go our way. Still, we’re all looking for a loophole. There’s the problem. What we want is an average, normal day, day after day, which is exactly what we probably won’t get. And if we do get it, we get so bored we start to do insane things. Then we overstep the bounds of law, or common decency (sometimes both) and make trouble.

That’s where I come in. I carry a private investigator’s license.

A rich man died suddenly. A little later I met his widow, who I once had known, who hired me to investigate his death because it didn’t smell right to her. I didn’t think the job could be done, but she really looked good, so I took the job…made some calls…got a call back telling me the man was not in the record book. I looked around some more and found out he had been fascinated by chemical enhancements for the human mind.

Then he died. And I found that interesting. But it’s amazing the amount of trivial sludge that interests me. I have A.D.D.

Had somebody, trying to beat the natural system, committed outrages against the law? Common decency? Both? I could see where that might have happened. But that was a long way from proving that it did.

The rain was coming down, hard. It was a warm rain that was melting a lot of snow up in the mountains, so floods and chaos were happening all over. Nature was all-powerful. We humans were still quite puny.

Those were the facts I had.

The phone interrupted my meditations. I looked at the clock. 8:01 A.M. Someone was right on duty.

“Marvin Kent.”

“Hello, Eight Ball. Bill Farley here.” Loud and jocular.

“Spill the beans.”

“Boy, you sure keep banker’s hours. I tried to call you half an hour ago. You self-employed bastards have it made.”

“I know, that’s why so many government employees are quitting in droves for the independence of working for themselves.”

“Yeah, come to work when you feel like it, take super long lunch breaks, knock off early. What a life.” He laughed curtly, then his voice was hushed. “Listen, your friend, Carlisle?”

“What about him?” I found myself whispering.

“He’s back on the record. Dead, just like you said he was. And I know who took him off and put him back on. It was Boscombe.”

“The tall guy out front by the alley there?”

“Yeah. I figured if there was anything, he’d have something to do with it. As soon as something fishy happens, you suspect the psycho, right?”

“It’s a good place to start.”

“Okay. So I start following him around yesterday. Nothing obvious, just keeping an eye on him. He’s so friggin’ paranoid, he suspects everybody. So he’s not worrying about me any more than anybody else. But it turns out, he was also tailing me.”

“You sure you aren’t paranoid?”

“No, it was real. Too many coincidences. He was everywhere I went. Believe me, we don’t have that much in common.”

“You sure?”

“Believe it or not, he and I just don’t hang together. Not only that, just now I could hear him in his cubicle. He got really still as soon as I lowered my voice.”

“What was he doing in there before, to make so much noise?”

“Jerkin’ off, probably. Again, I don’t want to know that much about him. And yesterday, when I looked up Carlisle, I hear Boscombe, suddenly making some intense phone calls. I can’t hear what he’s saying, any more than he can hear what I’m saying now, but I know it’s important to him, because as soon as he gets off the phone, he starts fidgeting around.”

“But why do you suspect Boscome for erasing Carlisle from the data banks?”

“I kept going back to Carlisle, while I was listening to Boscombe. And that isn’t too hard, because like I said, he was watching me. He was acting like I was his long lost Siamese twin.”

“Did he make any more of those secretive, urgent calls?”

“A lot of them. All day. Every time he’d make a call, I’d check on Carlisle. Still didn’t come up. Close to quitting time I was beginning to wonder how long I was going to have to stay. No problem coming up with an excuse, guys like me are notorious for having no life, so we work late a lot. But I do have a life, and I wanted to get out of here. But finally, Boscombe connects.”

“What time was this?”

“Four thirty-eight. I could tell he’d got ahold of who he wanted because every now and then he’d raise his voice, say something like ‘Listen,’ or ‘Look here,’ and then he’d go back to that intense low tone. After about two minutes he rang off. I could hear him tapping on the keys. So I looked up Carlisle again. Suddenly he was back. Born, lived, died. Wowie. Well, I didn’t say anything to Boscombe, but I couldn’t hold back a laugh.” Then, in a normal voice, he said, “What a jerk!”

“You wouldn’t know where Boscombe lives, would you?”

”What do you think?”

“It was worth a try,” I said. “We have other ways to find these things out.”

“Something else,” Farley added. “First thing this morning, my boss came in and told me I’d been transferred to the Sheriff’s Department. I asked him why, and he said he didn’t know. It was orders. Suspicious or coincidence?”

“Sounds suspicious.”

“I don’t know if I can stand all those cop types around all the time. Think of it, a whole building full of serious eight balls like my buddy here.”

“What are you going to do for the Sheriff?”

“Good question. Mostly bother the shit out of Personnel trying to get a transfer.”

“And what if that doesn’t happen?”

“It’ll happen. Everybody jumps ship in this organization. If I can’t get a transfer I can quit. I’m a computer programmer. Know what that means? I can earn a miserable pittance anywhere I might go.”

“When are you going?”

“Monday. That gives me the rest of the week to goof off.”

“Can they send you over like that? Legally?”

“Sure, they can. Anyway, they did.”

“Come to think of it, I can really pump you for info over at the Sheriff’s Office.”

“Serving you is my life’s only goal.”

I had a sudden thought. “Do you still keep printed records?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. We still have them around someplace. Locked in a cave maybe. Lawyers and all, they like to have hard copies to bring into court. But you’d have to look in the computer to know where to look for print files.” He said, loudly, “When a guy’s off the screen he’s gone!” Then he whispered, “Bet that made Boscombe’s heart skip a few beats.”

“There’d have to be a way to find printed files without the computer.”

“Like trying to find a tootsie roll at the bottom of a latrine. Big shots are always bragging how the bureaucracy used to be full of file clerks, trapesing around like ants. They paid them squat, treated them like lower life forms, and kept records of everybody and everything in acres and acres of file cabinets. More records, more people, more files and more clerks. A nightmare. So they solved it by putting everything on computer. Saved the taxpayers a bundle, they say. Now instead of an army of clerks they have a platoon of computer geeks. They pay us a little more, treat us a lot worse, and everybody’s happy. The new millennium!”

“It’d be easy to throw a cog in the whole system.”

“Easy? That ain’t the word, my friend. It happens all the time without anyone even trying. Don’t delude yourself into thinking there’s a system. It’s a giant trashcan. And someday, somebody’ll screw up and dump it all.”

“Sounds scary.”

“It’ll make it tough to keep tabs on people. On the other hand, maybe trading beads and trinkets will be fun for us too. I’ll see you around.”

I looked up Boscombe in the phone book. There were several, one an L. Boscombe, with a downtown number, no listed address. I jotted it down.

I had a name, a name that had been erased from the records, and a day later, put back on. The suspect was a computer nerd with mental problems.

I went outside, had breakfast at a corner restaurant. At that time I had the place to myself. Then I took a three-block walk in the rain to the new Library and Courts building.

The new Library and Courts is a cheap knockoff of the old one, which is a classy place. Built in 1928, the old one has statues and engravings and a fountain in front, surrounded by flowers. Inside it’s all marble and varnished wood. It went up when buildings were still supposed to convey a sense of recognition of the species using them. The new one went up a couple years before this tale. It’s bureaucratic, modernistic, built on the cheap, to meet minimum standards…cheesy, hard to use, leaky, already falling apart. It lets everyone know that those who fronted for it have no respect for those who will be paying for it long into the future.

But the Library staff is competent and helpful. They quickly got me the microfilms of the papers at the time of Aaron Carlisle’s death. I checked the obituaries and official death notices, and learned nothing new. He died of a simple heart attack, and no inquest was held.

In cases of sudden death, there is always an autopsy.