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  “I understand.”

  “I thought you would, Doctor.”

  He retrieved his hat and put it on.

  “Let’s go see how the renowned expert is doing.”

  The bolt on the metal door responded noisily to Houten’s key. On the other side were three cells in a row. I thought of the Laminar Airflow rooms. The jail was hot and humid, and it stank of body odor and solitude.

  “He’s in the last one,” said Houten.

  I followed his bootsteps down the windowless passageway.

  Raoul was sitting on a metal bench bolted to the wall, staring at the floor. His cell was seven feet square and contained a bed, also bolted down and covered by a thin stained mattress, a lidless toilet, and a zinc washbasin. From the smell of things the toilet wasn’t in peak condition.

  Houten unlocked the door and we walked in.

  Raoul looked up with one eye. The other was blackened and swollen shut. A crust of dried blood had formed under his left ear. His lip was split and the color of raw steak. Several buttons were missing from his white silk shirt, which hung open, exposing his soft hairy chest. There was a blue-black bruise along his ribcage. A shirtsleeve had been ripped at the seam and it dangled vestigially. His belt, tie, and shoelaces had been taken from him and I found the sight of his alligator shoes, caked with dirt, the tongue protruding, especially pathetic.

  Houten saw my expression and said, “We wanted to clean him up but he started fussing so we let it be.”

  Raoul muttered something in Spanish. Houten looked at me, his expression that of a parent faced with a tantruming child.

  “You can go now, Dr. Lynch,” he said. “Dr. Delaware will drive you home. You can have your car towed back to Los Angeles at your expense, or leave it here to be fixed. Zack Piersall knows foreign ca—”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” snapped Raoul.

  “Dr. Lynch—”

  “It’s Melendez-Lynch, and your deliberate failure to remember that doesn’t intimidate me. I’m not leaving until the truth comes out.”

  “Doctor, you’re in a lot of trouble, potentially. I’m letting you go with fines in order to simplify things for all of us. I’m sure you’ve been under a lot of strain—”

  “Don’t patronize me, Sheriff. And stop covering for those murderous quacks!”

  “Raoul—” I said.

  “No, Alex, you don’t understand. These people are close-minded imbeciles. The tree of knowledge could sprout on their doorstep and they wouldn’t pick the fruit.”

  Houten moved his jaws as if trying to bring up a cud of patience.

  “I want you out of my town,” he said softly.

  “I won’t go,” Raoul insisted, gripping the bench with both hands to demonstrate his intransigence.

  “Sheriff,” I said, “let me speak to him alone.”

  Houten shrugged, left the cell, and locked me in. He walked away, and after the metal door closed behind him I turned to Raoul.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you!”

  “Don’t lecture me, Alex.” He stood and shook a fist in my face.

  I stepped back instinctively. He stared at his upraised hand, dropped it to his side and mumbled an apology. Collapsing as if he’d been fileted, he sat back down.

  “What in the world possessed you to conduct a one-man invasion of this place?” I asked him.

  “I know they’re in there,” he panted. “Behind those gates. I can feel it!”

  “You turned the Volvo into an assault tank because of feelings? Remember when you called intuition ‘just another form of soft-headed hocus-pocus’?”

  “This is different. They wouldn’t let me in. If that’s not proof they’re hiding something I don’t know what it is!” He punched his palm with his fist. “I’ll get in there somehow and tear that place apart until I find him.”

  “That’s crazy. What is it about the Swopes that’s turned you into a damned cowboy?”

  He covered his face with his hands.

  I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. He was soaked with sweat.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” I urged.

  “Alex,” he said hoarsely, his breath sour and strong, “oncology is a specialty for those who are willing to learn how to lose graciously. Not to love failure or accept it, but to suffer with dignity, as a patient must. Did you know that I was first in my medical school class?”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “I had my pick of residencies. Many oncologists are the cream of medicine. And yet we confront failure each day of our lives.”

  He pushed himself up and walked to the bars, running his hands up and down the ragged and rusty cylinders.

  “Failure,” he repeated. “But the victories are uncommonly sweet. The salvage and reconstruction of a life. What could create greater illusions of omnipotence, eh, Alex?”

  “There’ll be many more victories,” I assured him. “You know that better than anyone. Remember the speech you used to give at fund raisers—the slide show with all those pictures of cured kids? Let this one go.”

  He swiveled around and faced me, eyes blazing.

  “As far as I’m concerned that boy is alive. Until I see his corpse I won’t believe otherwise.”

  I tried to speak but he cut me off.

  “I didn’t go into this field because of mawkish sentimentality— no favorite cousin died of leukemia, no grandpapa wasted away of carcinoma. I became an oncologist because medicine is the science—and the art—of fighting death. And cancer is death. From the first time, as a medical student, when I viewed those monstrous, primitive, evil cells under the microscope, I was seized with that truism. And I knew what my life’s work would be.”

  Beads of perspiration had collected on his high dark forehead. The coffee bean eyes glistened and roamed the cell.

  “I won’t give up,” he said, radiating defiance. “Only the conquest of death, my friend, allows a glimpse of immortality.”

  He was unreachable, caught up in his own frantic vision of the world. Obsessive and quixotic and denying what was most probable: Woody and Nona were dead, buried somewhere in the shifting mulch beneath the city.

  “Let the police handle it, Raoul. My friend’s due to come down here soon. He’ll check everything out.”

  “The police,” he spat. “A lot of good they’ve been. Bureaucratic pencil pushers. Mediocre minds of limited vision. Like that stupid cowboy out there. Why aren’t they here right now—every day is crucial for that little boy. They don’t care, Alex. To them he’s just another statistic. But not to me!”

  He folded his arms in front of him, as if warding off the indignity of confinement, unaware of his derelict appearance.

  I’d long thought that a surfeit of sensitivity could be a killing thing, too much insight malignant in its own right. The best survivors—there are studies that show it—are those blessed with an inordinate ability to deny. And keep on marching.

  Raoul would march till he dropped.

  I’d always considered him a touch manic. Perhaps as manic at the core as Richard Moody, but more generously endowed intellectually so that the excess energy was channeled honorably. For the good of society.

  Now, too many failures had converged upon him: the Swopes’ rejection of treatment, which, because he lived his work, was seen as a rejection of him, an atheism of the worst sort. The abduction of his patient—humiliation and loss of control. And now, death, the ultimate insult.

  Failure had made him irrational.

  I couldn’t leave him there but didn’t know how to get him out.

  Before either of us could speak, the sound of approaching footsteps punctuated the silence. Houten peered into the cell, keys in hand.

  “Ready, gentlemen?”

  “I’ve had no luck, Sheriff.”

  The news deepened the worry lines around his eyes.

  “You’re choosing to stay with us, Dr. Melendez-Lynch?”

  “Until I’ve found m
y patient.”

  “Your patient isn’t here.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  Houten’s mouth tightened and his eyebrows lowered. “I’d like you out of there, Dr. Delaware.”

  He turned a key, held the door barely open and kept a watchful eye on Raoul as I slipped through.

  “Good-bye, Alex,” said the oncologist with a martyr’s solemnity.

  Houten spoke to him in clipped cadence.

  “If you think prison is fun, sir, you’re going to learn different. I promise you that. In the meantime, I’m getting you a lawyer.”

  “I refuse legal services.”

  “I’m getting you one anyway, Doctor. Whatever happens to you is going to be by the book.”

  He turned on his heel and stomped away.

  As we left the jail I caught a last glimpse of Raoul behind the bars. There wasn’t any good reason for me to feel unfaithful, but I did.

  16

  HOUTEN MADE a phone call out of earshot. Ten minutes later a man in shirtsleeves showed up and the sheriff came forward to greet him.

  “Thanks for coming on such short notice, Ezra.”

  “Pleased to help, Sheriff.” The man’s voice was soft, modulated, and even.

  He looked to be in his late forties, medium-sized but sparely built, with a scholar’s stoop. Everything about him was compact and neat. The smallish head was covered with thin salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back. The ears were elfin and close set. His facial features were regular but too delicate to be handsome. His short-sleeved white shirt was spotless and, despite the heat, free of wrinkles. His khaki trousers seemed freshly laundered. He wore rimless octagonal eyeglasses and carried a clip-on case for them in his breast pocket.

  He looked like a man who never perspired.

  I stood up and he appraised me mildly.

  “Ezra,” said Houten, “this is Dr. Delaware, a psychologist from Los Angeles. Came all the way down to take back the one I told you about. Doctor, meet Mr. Ezra Maimon, the best lawyer in town.”

  The neat man laughed gently.

  “The Sheriff’s engaging in a bit of hyperbole,” he said and held out a thin callused hand. “I’m the only attorney in La Vista, and the cases I usually work with are made of wood.”

  “Ezra owns a rare fruit nursery just out of town,” explained Houten. “Claims he’s retired but we still get him to do a bit of lawyering from time to time.”

  “Wills and small estates are comparatively simple matters,” said Maimon. “If this turns into criminal defense you’ll have to bring in a specialist.”

  “That’s all right,” Houten twirled one of his mustaches. “This is no criminal case. Yet. Just a little problem, like I told you over the phone.”

  Maimon nodded.

  “Tell me the details,” he said.

  He listened quietly and impassively, turning once or twice to smile at me. When Houten was through, the attorney placed a finger to his lips and gazed up at the ceiling, as if doing mental arithmetic. After a minute of silent contemplation he said, “Let me see my client.”

  He spent half an hour in the cell. I tried to kill the time by reading a magazine for highway patrolmen until I found that it specialized in graphic photoessays of fatal road wrecks accompanied by detailed descriptions of the vehicular horrors. I couldn’t imagine why those who witnessed such carnage as part of their daily routine would be attracted to a photographic reprise. Perhaps it provided distance—the true solace of the voyeur. I put the magazine aside and contented myself with watching W. Bragdon read about alfalfa culture while he picked at his cuticles.

  Finally a buzzer rang.

  “Go in and get him, Walt,” ordered Houten.

  Bragdon said yessir, left, and came back with Maimon.

  “I think,” said the attorney, “we may be able to reach a compromise.”

  “Run it by me, Ezra.”

  The three of us sat around one of the desks.

  “Dr. Melendez-Lynch is a very intelligent man,” said Maimon. “Perhaps overly persistent. But not, in my opinion, at all malicious.”

  “He’s a pain in the butt, Ezra.”

  “He’s been a little overzealous in his attempts at fulfilling his medical obligations. But, as we all know, Woody’s deathly ill. Dr. Melendez-Lynch feels he has the means to cure him and he sees himself as trying to save a life.”

  Maimon spoke with quiet authority. He could have acted as Houten’s mouthpiece but instead seemed to be functioning as a true advocate. I didn’t think it was for my benefit and I was impressed.

  Houten’s face darkened with anger.

  “The boy’s not here. You know that as well as I do.”

  “My client is an empiricist. He wants to see that for himself.”

  “No way is he going near that place, Ezra.”

  “I agree with you. That would be inviting trouble. However he did agree to Dr. Delaware’s conducting a search of the Retreat. Promised to pay his fines and leave without a fuss if the good doctor finds nothing suspicious.”

  It was a simple solution. But neither Houten nor I had come up with it. He, because his appetite for concession wasn’t hearty in the first place and he’d already had his fill. And I’d been too overwhelmed by Raoul’s fanaticism to think straight.

  The sheriff digested it.

  “I can’t force Matthias to open the place up.”

  “Of course not. He has every right to refuse. If he does we’ll reapproach the problem.”

  An eminently logical man.

  Houten turned his attention to me.

  “What about it? You up for it?”

  “Sure. Whatever works.”

  Houten went into his office and returned saying Matthias had okayed the visit. Maimon had another talk with Raoul, buzzed, was retrieved by Bragdon and left, telling the sheriff to call him if he was needed. Houten put on his hat and absently touched the butt of his Colt. He and I climbed down the stairs and out of the building. We got into a white El Camino decaled on the door with the sheriff’s star. He gunned the engine, which sounded super-charged, and turned right in front of city hall.

  The road forked a half mile out of town. Houten headed right, driving quickly and smoothly, accelerating around turns that would have given a stranger pause. The road narrowed and grew dim in the shadows of bordering conifers. The El Camino’s tires churned up dust as it sped past. A jackrabbit in our path froze, quivered, and bounded into the shelter of the tall trees.

  Houten managed to pull out a Chesterfield and light it without reducing speed. He drove another two miles, sucking in smoke and surveying the countryside with a cop’s scanning eyes. At the top of a rise he turned abruptly, drove a hundred feet, and braked to a stop in front of a pair of black-painted arched iron gates.

  The entrance to the Retreat was unlabeled as such. Prickly mounds of cactus squatted at the outer edges of both gates. A tide of electric pink bougainvillaea flowed over one of the abode gateposts. A single climbing rosebush awash with scarlet blooms and studded with thorns embraced the other. He turned off the engine and we were greeted by silence. And all around, the deep, secretive green of the forest.

  Houten stubbed out his cigarette, dismounted the truck, and strode up to the entrance. There was a large columnar lockbox affixed to one gate, but when he pushed the iron door, it swung open.

  “They like it quiet,” he said. “We’ll walk from here.”

  An unpaved path lined with smooth brown stones and meticulously barbered beds of succulents had been excised from the forest. It climbed and we moved briskly, the pace set by Houten. He hiked rather than walked, muscles swelling through the tautness of his slacks, arms swinging by his sides, military fashion. California jays squawked and fussed. Large fuzzy bees nuzzled up to the labia of wildflowers. The air smelled meadow-fresh.

  The sun bore down relentlessly on the unshaded path. My throat was dry and I felt the sweat trickle down my back. Houten seemed as crisp as ever. Ten minutes of walking
brought us to the top of the road.

  “That’s it,” said Houten. He stopped to pull out another cigarette and light it in the shelter of cupped hands. I mopped my brow and gazed down at the valley below.

  I saw perfection and it unnerved me.