In the House of Secret Enemies Read online

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Put it away!” Now Garth’s voice boomed. His fists slammed down on the plastic surface of the desk top. A stack of books on the corner teetered and fell to the floor.

  Angry men and guns make a bad mix. As a cop, Garth knew that better than anyone. I walked quickly around to the other side of the desk, opened a drawer and dropped the gun into it.

  Garth sat down hard in a straight-backed wooden chair. He planted his feet flat on the floor and gripped the edges of the seat. Instantly the flesh around his knuckles went white. His head was bent forward and I couldn’t see his face, but the flesh of his neck was a fiery red, gorged with blood. I could see his pulse, framed by muscle cords that looked like steel rods implanted just below the skin.

  I spoke very quietly. “You want to talk, brother?”

  Garth, in some soundproofed prison of rage, couldn’t hear me. He suddenly sprang to his feet, grabbed the chair and flung it across the room, snapping a pole lamp in two and mining an ugly hole in the plaster wall. The shattered pieces fell to the floor; instant junk. In the same motion Garth spun around and with one sweep of his hand cleared the top of my desk. A heavy glass ashtray made another hole in the wall about a foot too low to be a perfect match for the other. Considering the fact that my office wasn’t that large to begin with, I estimated that a complete renovation was going to take about three more minutes. I walked up to Garth and grabbed his arm. That was a mistake.

  Now, I have a black belt, second Dan, in karate, and am reasonably proficient in a number of the other lesser-known martial arts; when you’re a four-foot-eight-inch dwarf you develop a predilection for such things. Still, a man my size must rely on anticipation, leverage and angles, factors that don’t normally spring to mind when you’re merely trying to calm down your brother. Consequently, I found myself standing on my toes, Garth’s hands wrapped around my neck. The whites of his eyes were marbled with red, while the dilated pupils opened up and stared at nothing, like black circles painted on canvas by a bad artist.

  I knew I had only a few seconds to act. At the least, I could very well end up with a cracked larynx; at worst, there was the very real possibility I was going to end up as one dead dwarf, killed by my own brother. I didn’t like the options.

  I was floating in an airless void, Garth’s features spinning before my eyes. I extended my arms, then drove my thumbs into the small of his back, just above the kidneys. That didn’t do much except make him blink. I smashed my stiffened fingers up into the nerve clusters in his armpits. The animal that Garth had become grunted; his grip loosened, but it was nothing to cheer about; I still couldn’t breathe. Finally I raised one hand up between his arms and poked at his larynx. Garth gasped and his hands came loose. I collapsed to my knees, my lungs sobbing for air. I managed to reach the shattered chair at the opposite end of the room. I grabbed one of the broken chair legs and spun around, prepared to bounce the splintered wood off my brother’s skull. It wasn’t necessary. Garth was leaning against my desk, staring uncomprehendingly at his hands. His face had changed color like a traffic light, from a brilliant crimson to a sickly yellow-white. His gaze slowly shifted to where I was poised like a statue, my improvised club raised in the air.

  “Mongo …” Garth’s voice was a muffled whisper of pain.

  “I hope you feel better,” I said, trying to sound sardonic. It didn’t come out that way. It was hard for me to sound sardonic with a bruised voice box that felt as if it had been pushed back somewhere in the vicinity of my spinal column.

  Garth’s lips moved, but no sound came out. He was across the room in four quick strides, trying to lift me up in his arms. Enough is enough—I pushed him away with the chair leg. I was building up a little anger of my own, but it vanished as the door suddenly opened. The man who stepped into the room was of medium height, with close-cropped, warm-yellow hair that tended to clash with his cold gray eyes. I wondered if he dyed his hair.

  Garth glanced at the man, then quickly turned back to me. His face was a pleading exclamation mark as he shook his head. The movement was almost imperceptible, but I thought I’d received the message.

  “Who the hell are you?” I said to the man in the doorway. Oddly enough, my voice sounded quite normal, with just the right seasoning of surprise. It hurt only when I swallowed.

  “Name’s Boise,” the man said, surveying the damage. “I came looking for my partner here. Saw your name on the directory down in the lobby. Didn’t know Garth had a brother.”

  Or that the brother was a dwarf, judging from his expression. I knew that look from scores of experiences with potential but unsuspecting clients. I didn’t like it. Boise wasn’t exactly getting off on the right foot with me.

  “Garth doesn’t feel well,” I said. “Why don’t you tell MacGregor I’ve taken him home? I’ll call in later and let him know how Garth is.”

  Boise didn’t move. “What happened?”

  “I’m redecorating.”

  “Must be expensive,” Boise said without smiling.

  “Look, Boise,” Garth said tightly, turning to face the other man, “my brother’s right. I can’t cut it the rest of the day. Cover for me, okay? I’ll be in tomorrow.”

  Boise glanced once more at the wreckage of the room, then shrugged and walked out into the corridor. A few moments later I heard the whine of the elevator and Boise was gone.

  “Where’d you pick him up?”

  “We were assigned as a team for a case I’ve been working on,” Garth said without looking at me. He had begun to tremble. “I don’t know why. Look, get me out of here, will you?”

  I went to the desk, took out Garth’s gun and slipped it into my own pocket. Garth didn’t object. He wheeled and walked out to the elevator ahead of me. I glanced at the clock as I closed the door. Less than ten minutes had passed from the time Garth had walked into my office. It struck me that Boise was a very impatient man.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m being touchy,” I said, guiding my compact out of the parking garage and into the cacophony of New York’s midmorning vehicular insanity. “Still, the fact remains that you did try to kill me back there, and I don’t even owe you money.” I glanced sideways. Garth’s face was stony, his eyes fixed straight ahead. “You knew enough to dump the gun,” I said seriously. “That was smart, but a man doesn’t do something like that just because he’s feeling a little annoyed. I saw you get out of that car. You looked like Lon Chaney Junior running from a full moon. You climbed right out of your tree, and my guess is that it’s not the first time something like this has happened. It’s happened before, and you’ve done nothing about it. That’s not so smart. It doesn’t take a master detective like myself to figure out that you need a vacation—a long one—and some medical attention. I know a good shrink who teaches up at the—”

  “Pull over a minute, will you?”

  I debated with myself for a few moments, decided there was no sense in possibly provoking another attack, and pulled over to double-park beside a No Standing sign.

  “You’re right,” Garth said, still staring straight ahead of him. “It has happened before—four times in the past three weeks. Each time it gets worse. I can’t think of any words to tell you how sorry I am about what happened back in your office, so I’m not even going to try. But I am telling you I can’t go to a hospital or see a shrink. Not yet.”

  “Like hell!”

  Garth shook his head. Still, he remained calm. There was no sign of the terrible rage that had wracked him just a few short minutes before, but my neck still hurt. “Look,” Garth said quietly, “you yourself said I knew what was happening. I know I need rest, and I’m going to take it. You can take me to anyone you want, and I’ll cooperate fully, but just give me four days.”

  “What happens in four days?”

  “I have to testify before the grand jury—with Boise. I have to be there. It’s very important.”

/>   I grunted and slammed the car into gear. Garth reached out and touched my arm. I tensed, ready to drop him, but his touch was very gentle. “Just listen, Mongo.” I put the gears in neutral but left the engine running. “Have you ever heard of anethombolin?”

  I’d seen the word somewhere but couldn’t place it. I said so.

  “Anethombolin is a hormone produced naturally in the body under certain conditions,” Garth continued. “Recently it was synthesized. Among other things, anethombolin may provide a cure for asthma, male infertility, high blood pressure and a host of other ailments. It also induces spontaneous abortions, and that’s what makes it potentially worth millions. I say ‘potentially’ because, so far, nobody has come up with a way to control certain very unpleasant side effects. A New York laboratory named Whalen Research Associates has spent a lot of money trying to find ways to neutralize those side effects, and they’ve developed a lot of patents along the way. With the liberalized abortion laws, you can see what a drug like this would mean to some people here in this country, not to mention its value to the governments of underdeveloped, overpopulated nations like India. Because a lot of the work was government-financed, agreements were made that would provide for controlled, low-cost distribution. Those agreements go out the window if some other company comes up with the same thing, and that’s exactly what may have happened.

  “A few months ago an outfit calling itself Zwayle Labs announced that it was on the verge of developing synthetic anethombolin fit for human consumption. Whalen claimed that Zwayle couldn’t possibly have done the work without violating one or more of the patents Whalen holds—in other words, industrial espionage. A secret investigation was ordered, the results to be presented to a grand jury. I pulled the case, and Boise was assigned as my partner because he’d worked on similar cases before. We started the preliminary undercover work and discovered possible leaks on Whalen’s staff. The nature of the business makes it all very tentative, but we did find prima facie evidence of industrial espionage and patent violation. What’s needed now is a full-blown investigation, but first our evidence must be presented to the grand jury. If it isn’t, a lot of time will have been wasted, not to mention the fact that an injustice will have occurred.”

  That would have sounded naive—even funny—coming from a lot of cops I know; coming from Garth it didn’t.

  “Patent law. That sounds like a job for the feds.”

  “It is, but some aspects of the case come under our jurisdiction. Besides, we were asked to cooperate. We did the groundwork.”

  “Why can’t Boise testify?”

  “He can and will, but it’s a very sticky deal, and the grand jury is going to want to hear corroborative testimony from either one of us. In other words, Boise needs me and I need Boise if we’re going to make a case. Do you understand?”

  “No. It sounds like a hell of a way to run an investigation.”

  “Industrial espionage and patent violations are very difficult things to prove—you’ll just have to take my word for that. In any case, I must be at that hearing, and my testimony isn’t going to mean much if they have to wheel me in from the psycho ward.”

  “I don’t buy it, Garth. I saw you back there. You’re not going to do anybody any good if you’re dead—or if you’re responsible for making somebody else dead.”

  “That’s not going to happen, brother.” Garth’s voice was harder now, determined. “Four days. That’s all I need. After that, a long rest. Agreed?”

  Actually, there was nothing on which to agree. I couldn’t make Garth enter the hospital and he knew it. He was asking for my cooperation—in effect, my approval, my belief that he could control the strange fires in him long enough for him to complete a task he had set for himself.

  “Most of the work is done?” I asked.

  “Right. Now it’s mostly just a matter of waiting around for the hearing.”

  “Full checkup when it’s finished?”

  “Full checkup.”

  I didn’t like it, but I made no move to stop him when he opened the car door and stepped out into the street.

  “I’ll need my gun, Mongo,” Garth said quietly.

  It was true. If Garth would have a tough time testifying from a psychiatrist’s couch, he’d have an even tougher time explaining how and why his dwarf brother took his gun and wouldn’t give it back. I took the gun out of my jacket pocket and gave it to him.

  I hate hospitals. I’d spent too much time in them as a child while doctors struggled to cope with the results of a recessive gene eight generations removed. The hospitals ran through my childhood like trains through a station. I stayed the same.

  Now it was my brother, strapped to a bed in a psychiatric ward, too doped up even to recognize me.

  I made arrangements to have him transferred to a private room and took a cab down to Garth’s precinct station house. MacGregor, Chief of Detectives, was floundering around behind a desk strewn with stacks of coffee-stained papers. He was wearing his usual harried expression.

  “What the hell is my brother doing up in Bellevue?”

  “Easy, Mongo,” MacGregor said. “I was the one who called you, remember? How is he?”

  “Drugged right up to his eyeballs. I asked you what happened.”

  “I’m not sure. We’re still trying to sort everything out. Garth called in sick yesterday. He came in this morning to go over some paperwork with Boise. You knew he’s been working on a big case?” I nodded. “Your brother and Boise were having coffee,” MacGregor continued. “A few minutes later Garth comes out and gets into an argument with Lancey over some little thing. Anyway, your brother wouldn’t let it go; he broke Lancey’s jaw for him, then he tries to pistol-whip Q.J. Took four guys to get him down. We called the hospital, and then I called you. We’re just as anxious to know what happened as you are.” MacGregor leaned forward confidentially. “He really wigged out, Mongo. You had to be here really to appreciate what he was like. Boise says he’s been acting funny for some time now.”

  “Is that right? What about the case Garth was working on? The grand jury is supposed to hear it day after tomorrow. What happens now?”

  “Nothing. They won’t be hearing anything from this department.”

  “Why can’t the hearing be postponed until Garth is better?”

  “Because it wouldn’t make any difference. Boise says we don’t have a case.”

  “Now why would Boise say a thing like that?”

  “Ask him.”

  I did.

  “You know about that?” Boise asked.

  “Garth mentioned it to me.”

  Boise carefully stirred the coffee in front of him. The sound of the spoon bouncing off the sides of the cup grated on my nerves. “There was never a case to begin with,” he said evenly. He punctuated the sentence by dropping the spoon on his saucer. “I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but this whole affair was a result of paranoia on your brother’s part, and that’s all.”

  “Uh-uh. He wasn’t the one who asked to initiate the investigation.”

  “No. We were asked to investigate—we did, and found nothing. Everything Zwayle Labs had done was on the up-and-up. They just worked faster and cheaper than the Whalen people. Certainly we found nothing to present to a grand jury. Some circumstantial evidence, a little hearsay, most of which was sour grapes from staff members who hadn’t been able to handle the competition within their own departments. Nothing concrete. The evidence just wasn’t there.”

  “Garth said it was tricky, and you’d have to corroborate each other’s testimony.”

  Boise had finished his coffee and was signaling for another. “What can I tell you? Somewhere along the way your brother took a real strong dislike toward the guy who runs Zwayle Labs, a man by the name of Hans Mueller. Don’t know why, but that’s the way it happened. Guess whatever it was that finally put him away was working on him even then. He swore he’d get Mueller, and he started inventing evidence in his mind to do it.”<
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  The second cup of coffee was served and Boise started clanking around in it with his spoon.

  I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. “Why didn’t you tell MacGregor all this before?”

  “Because I didn’t want what happened to Lancey and Q.J. to happen to me. With me it could have been worse; I was alone with him all day. Besides, Garth’s a brother officer. I wasn’t about to tell him—or anybody else—that he was crazy. I was hoping he might straighten up after the grand jury shot us down.”

  “What’s going to happen to him now?”

  “They’ll probably give him an extended leave of absence.”

  “It’s more likely he’ll lose his shield.”

  “Probably,” Boise said, averting his eyes to his coffee. He didn’t have to tell me that the camaraderie between police officers did not extend to asking taxpayers to keep a psycho cop on the payroll.

  I didn’t like it; all of the pieces seemed to fit, but the finished puzzle was ugly, misshapen.

  “You mind if I look at the files?”

  That stopped the stirring. “I think I would,” Boise said after a pause, “and I think MacGregor will back me up. First of all, you’re close to calling me a liar. Second, it’s not the policy of the New York Police Department to let private citizens—especially private investigators—examine its files.”

  I bit off my next remark, rose and turned to go. I was stopped at the door by one of those inspirations I usually know enough to keep to myself. I walked slowly back to the table wearing my innocent, concerned-brother face. It hurt like a mask of nails.

  “Mueller. That’s a kraut name, isn’t it?”

  Boise’s eyebrows flicked upward. His eyes followed. “How’s that?”

  “Mueller,” I said. “Isn’t that a German name?”