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  Peyton laughed. “Someday you’ll be a partner in the firm and you can fire old Pappas.”

  She didn’t smile, simply put the phone back together and worked at closing her bulging briefcase. Peyton pressed on it to help. “A good-morning kiss, perhaps?” He turned his head and puckered up. “Just one for the obvious road you’re about to be on?”

  She stood up, not even there anymore. Her eyes were vacuous, her face dark and set. She hefted her briefcase and made for the door. Peyton tagged along. “See you tonight? The proposal still stands, if you’ll have me.” He got the door slammed in his face for his trouble. He put his hands on his hips and regarded it, thinking that if he thought his job was tough, look at hers. He turned, shaking his head, then saw something that almost made him laugh.

  The deadly memo with its coffee stain was still on the table.

  He got dressed for another long day down at the river. Before he left, he folded the memo quite neatly and stuck it in his shirt pocket. Most likely Julie would show up at the shack looking for him and the memo, since the lab was closer. She would be pleased to know he was so thoughtful.

  He polished off his coffee and went out, already debating whether he should have a sausage-and-mushroom pizza for breakfast, or go crazy and have them toss on some green peppers too.

  Strack’s secretary allowed Julie in without hesitation, without even ringing Louis. She pointed to a door, a useless gesture because the words LOUIS STRACK, JR. were on an engraved nameplate, and said to go on in.

  Julie shrugged to herself. This was better treatment than she got at Pappas and Swain. Louis was one considerate man. A crook, probably, but considerate as hell. She tapped on the door, anyway, got no response, and went in. Louis had his back to her, staring through the huge window to the city below. He was on the phone.

  “Yes, that’s a buy on the Krugerrands. The price won’t get any better. And thank you for your kindness, Franz. It will be difficult to fill my father’s shoes.”

  He turned as he hung up and saw Julie standing half in and half out of the door, looking pretty much like a crook herself. “Julie! What a pleasant surprise! Get on in here and let me look at you.”

  She went in and clicked the door softly shut, then stood there, feeling awkward. He motioned to a chair in front of his huge executive’s desk. “Take a load off, Julie. And for God’s sake, let me see that smile again.”

  She sat down, unable to smile. She put her briefcase on her lap and popped the latches.

  “Can I get you something?” he asked. “Coffee? Brandy? Maison Rême 1987?”

  Now she did smile. He seemed pleased. “No thanks, Louis,” she said. “I’ve been going over some documents and I came across something that puzzles me. It’s a memo from your office to a Mr. Claude Bellasarious. It carries your father’s signature. It details certain payments—”

  “My father,” Louis repeated sadly. “Did you hear?”

  She almost slapped herself. “Good grief, Louis, I am so sorry. You’ve got all the condolences I can offer.” She almost stood up. “I’ll just go out and come back in, start all over.”

  He smiled. “Don’t feel so terrible. My father had been on death’s doorstep the last five or ten years. Bum ticker.” He poked a finger at his heart. “It was inevitable.”

  She frowned. “I thought he got shot.”

  “Indeed. At least it ended his suffering. The best the police can come up with yet is that a hunter or sport shooter let a bullet fly where it shouldn’t. It hit his hand and ricocheted into his chest. Happens occasionally. Last year a teenage girl was shot dead while driving on the freeway. The hunter was almost a mile away.” He tapped a finger behind his ear. “Killed her instantly.”

  “I think I read about that. Please forgive my stupidity.”

  He smiled. “Your intelligence is not a matter of debate. Now, what’s this about a Claude, ah, Bellery? Benson?”

  “Bellasarious. The memo spells it out pretty clearly.” She lifted the lid of her briefcase and soon found, to her horror, that the memo was gone. She remembered the coffee and that she’d laid the paper aside to dry. She had a sudden, almost desperate desire to cry.

  “Ah,” Louis said, and began to pace his spacious office. “Yes, I know the memo.”

  “You mean . . . you’ve read it?”

  “It?” He looked slightly ill. “Them, you mean. Hundreds, though not quite so well documented as the one in question.”

  She frowned. “It seems like a record of some strange payments.”

  “They were payoffs,” he said without hesitation. “Payoffs to the zoning commission. Bribes, to call a spade a spade.”

  “Then you knew?”

  “Of course.” He looked at her with an appraising eye. “Does that shock you?”

  She sighed. “Actually, it does. But worst of all, I think, is that is disappoints me. But it’s not my place to pass judgment.”

  He continued to pace, his fingers linked behind his back. “That’s true, it is not your place. However, as Strack Industries’ consulting attorney, I do value your opinion.”

  “Does that mean you expect me to endorse the practice? Give my okay for bribes?”

  “Of course not. You weren’t supposed to know about them. That memo was not supposed to circulate, and you can bet your ass my secretary will be pounding the pavement tomorrow looking for a new job.” He slammed a fist into his open palm. “God, I wished this had never happened!”

  “But it did,” she said coolly.

  “Right. It did. But I am asking you to have some understanding here. I’m not going to bore you with that old speech about how we all have to swim in the same pond. But you know as well as I do that not so much as one mini-mall ever went up in this city without some grease being applied to the greedy palms downtown.”

  She deliberated. Did she know? If so, had it never struck her that someday she would be one of the greasers? She shook her head. “I believe in the old saw, the one that says honesty is the best—”

  “Policy. Right. But you’re not naïve. You know it’s just part of the cost of doing business. Ordinarily people don’t have to face it, but I face it every day. And I don’t let it turn me into a cynic. That’s the chicken way out, and I’m tougher than that. I don’t let it distract me from my dream. Come here and look at this.”

  She put her briefcase on the floor and followed. There was a large, thick beige curtain covering most of the south wall. He pressed a button and it slid open. A light popped on. On a huge table perhaps ten feet long was a scale architectural model, fantastically detailed down to the trees and shrubs and tiny cars in the parking lots. It looked like a wonderful toy for a very rich child.

  “This is Project Riverfront Development. What you see here is what everyone will see within three years: that trashy, polluted mud flat turned into a jewel. Dust into diamonds. Poverty into wealth. Take a long look at this model, Julie. It is the final touch of a dream. Acres of riverfront reclaimed from decay, thousands of jobs created, a building block—a very large building block—laid for the future. Not such a bad dream, as dreams go. And if the price of making this dream come true is greasing a few palms, well . . . I don’t run away. I say, ‘so be it.’ So”—he held his hands out to her, wrists together, palms up—“gonna book me?”

  She smiled in spite of herself. What a guy.

  “The point is, Julie, that my father is well beyond the reach of the law, but that memo could embarrass Strack Industries.”

  “I get the point, Louis,” she said. “But the fact remains that I’m in possession of evidence about the commission of a crime, and you can no more ask me to destroy it than I could ask you to destroy one of your new buildings.”

  He passed his fingertips over his mouth, staring at the floor, debating. Then he brightened. “Let me suggest this. You excuse yourself for a few minutes, go to the ladies’ room or some such, leaving your briefcase here. What happens to the memorandum while it’s in my custody is my responsibility.
Good?”

  “Very good, and I wish it were that simple. First of all, I don’t even have the memo with me. Second, I need to discuss this with one of the partners at Pappas and Swain. Did . . . perhaps . . . Pappas know anything about this?”

  He shook his head. “Not a chance. You are privvy to some very secret things.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll talk to Pappas over the weekend.”

  He darkened. “That would be a very grave mistake.”

  She flinched, her eyes growing wider. “Are you threatening me?”

  He moved with her and touched her arm. “I’m trying to protect you. Does the name Robert G. Durant mean anything to you?”

  “Sure. He’s an underworld figure. Racketeering, drugs, the usual stuff.”

  “And real estate, Julie. Robert Durant is a competitor for the riverfront and knows about the memo. Several times he has broken in here and trashed the place trying to find it. We even found blowtorch burns on the safe.” He smiled grimly. “He is a very dangerous man, Julie, and he will freely resort to crime to get what he wants. I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s dangerous.”

  “I understand,” Julie said, “and frankly I’m not sure what to do. You’ll have to trust me over the weekend so I have time to figure this out.”

  He nodded, looking strangely sad. “Is that the best I can get?”

  “For now, Louis.”

  “All right, then.” He offered her a hand, which she accepted, confused. “I’m in your hands now, Julie. Together we’ll see this thing through. Coffee now, or would you like that brandy?”

  She chose coffee. And then, mercifully both for him and for her, they chatted about other things.

  Four hours later she was in her tiny office at Pappas and Swain, attorneys-at-law, who were perpetually busy with other high-paying things, leaving the lion’s share of petty legal duties, research, and minor torts to the underdogs, Julie and the like. She had a yellow legal pad on her cluttered desk, and she was writing. Her free hand fingered the gold necklace as she wrote:

  Julie Hastings

  Mrs. Peyton Westlake

  Mrs. Julie Hastings-Westlake

  Peyton’s Old Lady

  She smiled and threw the pen against a stack of unread briefs in bulging folders, a stack that crawled all the way up the wall and almost to the ceiling in the far corner of this oversize closet of an office. And then she went to lunch, though she wasn’t even hungry.

  She got back an hour later and dialed Peyton’s lab phone to see if he had the memorandum, or if it was still at his apartment.

  “Groovy,” she said aloud as the phone rang and rang. “Hey, Peyton baby! This is your old lady calling!”

  But no one answered.

  6

  Peyton

  AT THE SAME moment Julie was beginning her discussion with Louis Strack, Peyton was hiking through the weeds and cattails that infested the riverbank, making his way toward the crumbling nightmare that was his cut-rate laboratory. The air was thick and humid on this Friday, the stench of the river blowing off the water like a putrid gas. Peyton reminded himself that as soon as this skin thing was over (for better or for worse), he would conquer pollution. After that he would take a year off in Tahiti.

  Yakky was already waiting at the door. He popped to his feet and almost bowed; Peyton suppressed a smile.

  “Good morning to you, Yak, old chum. How’s the world?”

  Yakky looked perplexed. “The world? Well, I believe there is a famine under way in Africa. A jet plane crashed last night and killed everybody. The weather is supposed to be hot today, and—”

  “Please,” Peyton said. “Local news only.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” He unlocked the door and waved Yakky in. “Today we make a breakthrough, Yak, and may the nasty ninety-nine plague us no more. Stopwatch ready and able?”

  “Stopwatch upstairs, Dr. Westlake.”

  “Peyton, Yakky. Just Peyton.”

  “Okay, Dr. Peyton.”

  They went up the stairs. Yakky eyed the ruined fifth step hatefully; Peyton stepped over it as if it had been broken years ago. “Sorry I didn’t make it back yesterday,” he said. “I got tied up with some personal stuff. I owe you a pizza, I guess.”

  Personal stuff? You mean, like making a total ass of yourself at Bowser’s, where people eat on the effing sidewalk?

  “Is no problem, Dr. Peyton. I locked up good.”

  “I knew you could handle it, Yak. Did you see what happened to the skin at ninety-nine minutes?”

  “Yes. It melted. It was almost on fire. Didn’t smell good, either.”

  “Did you cut a slice of it and watch the cell destruction under the microscope?”

  “Uh-huh, but I was almost too late. Complete fragmentation. The skin self-destructed. How come?”

  At the top of the stairs, Peyton flipped the light on. The lone bulb stuttered on, not seeming sure if it wanted to do this today. “Yak,” he said, “if I knew why its life span is only ninety-nine minutes, I would be a happy man indeed.”

  “Have you tried an alkaline solution?” Yakky asked, slipping into a fresh lab coat. “Maybe ten percent?”

  Peyton smiled sadly as he rummaged through the bag for a coat. “You’re good, Yak, but yes, I’ve tried ten percent, twenty, even fifty or more. They all were busts.”

  “Bust?”

  “Failure.”

  “So what next?”

  “We keep on trying, I guess. Any more suggestions?”

  Yakky shrugged. “Maybe try some heat?”

  “Sorry. Heat speeds up the fragmentation.”

  Yakky walked over to the lab table beside the computer. He picked up what remained of the nose Peyton had made yesterday. It was mushy and dripping, looking for all the world like wet toilet paper. There were large blisters and holes in it. Yakky made a face. “How about electricity? You use it to make the substance, so why not keep it charged?”

  Peyton sat down on a tall metal stool and hooked his heels on the bottom rung. He put his hands together. “That would be defeating the purpose, Yak. This is supposed to be synthetic skin for burn victims. Are they supposed to walk around with a dozen car batteries on their backs? Actually, I did try electricity. Results: el crappo.”

  “Crappo?”

  “Failure.”

  Yakky frowned. “Some language this English is. You have five words for the same thing.”

  “Keeps us occupied,” Peyton said. “Any more brainstorms?”

  “Brainstorms?”

  Peyton sighed. “Ideas, Yak. Got any more?”

  He thought about it. “How about freezing?”

  “What, and keep the patient in a meat locker for the rest of his life? No way.”

  “Some sort of sealant? To keep the air away from the artificial tissue?”

  “And have the patient walk around inside a giant Glad bag?”

  “Glad bag?”

  “Ah, Christ. Let’s just make a batch and see what happens. What would you like today? Lips? Chin?”

  “How about a whole face? Have you ever tried that?”

  “Just makes a bigger mess when it fragments.” Peyton hung his head. “Yak, why in the hell can’t I give up on this? Thirty thousand dollars and fifteen months later, I’m back where I started. The vivification process was easy. Tissue rejection? I beat that monster. So what’s missing? Why can’t I make the cells stable? Tell you what—why don’t we chuck everything out the window and see what floats.”

  He saw Yakky doing mental battles with his vocabulary. “Chuck equals toss, Yak. See what floats means see if anything is salvageable. Oh, no. Salvageable means worth saving. Follow me?”

  Yakky took off his half-pound glasses and wiped them on his shirt. “Certainly, Dr. Peyton. In Osaka I was the best English talker of the whole school.”

  “Any more ideas, then, you English talker, you?”

  “Pizza break?”

  “Sounds fine. Do you like green peppers?”
>
  Yakky wagged a hand. “So-so.”

  “Let’s find the phone, then.” He pointed to the floor. “Follow that wire.”

  Yakky followed it. The phone was behind the aquarium tank of pink soup, for reasons only Peyton might know. Yakky carried it to him.

  “Got this one memorized,” Peyton said, bringing the receiver to his ear. He frowned suddenly. “Wait, I forgot my wallet. Have you got any cash?”

  “Not until payday.”

  “To hell with it.” He put the receiver back onto the cradle. “Let’s make you a new face.”

  Yakky found his stopwatch and hung it around his neck while Peyton fiddled with the camera. He posed, and after the strange, waffled-looking pictures rolled out, Peyton began to process them through the computer. Yakky looked on without much obvious interest. Peyton guessed he would last about three weeks before going insane. Oh, well.

  He fed electricity to the electrodes on either side of the reservoir tank, or, as Julie liked to say, the ThinkTank-PinkTank, whatever that might mean. While the bullet charge built up he switched on the Bio-Press and let it warm up. This one Julie liked to call the Bio-Mess. It struck him that she had pet names for just about everything, except him. Was that a good sign or a bad one? He had no idea.

  He put a hand on the pipette that fed into the Bio-Mess, ready to open it after the bullet charge, nearly two thousand volts, whipped the soup into something more respectable. Yakky yawned and stretched, looking like he could use some more sleep. Peyton shrugged to himself. How come nobody got a kick out of this anymore? Even Julie tended to doze off while the ninety-nine minutes crept along toward inevitable cell fragmentation.

  The bullet charge arced noisily through the tank, flashing blue and white, heating the fluid to an instant boil. Peyton opened the pipette, making mental apologies to Michigan Power, which was now operating in the dark. Pink soup flowed over the Bio-Mess’s face, blue sparks dancing over its surface. The tiny pins raised up, forming a perfect likeness of Yakky’s face. When it was dry and the color had changed, he peeled it off and held it up.