The Conspiracy Club

The arches and the stone reminded Jeremy of something- a card Arthur had sent him. The bazaar in old Damascus. Could Arthur have been that prescient?

That scene implied bustle. Down here, all was silent.

No windows, no outside light.

Cool and damp. Jeremy half expected a bat to whoosh out.

No sign of life, not a rat, not an insect. Not a single cobweb, and when his fingers grazed the stone walls they came back free of dust. Even the floor was clean- swept spotless.

Four-star cave, pride of the demimonde.

Augusto Graves’s unit was at the end of the left-hand wing. Last door to the right.

Jeremy stopped, put his head to the door. Heard nothing.

The heavy iron key for which he’d bribed Kelvin Burnside twenty dollars (“Oh, you don’t have to do that, sir.”) rested in his hand.

He inserted it in the bolt, turned slowly, pushed the door open an inch, waited for a creak.

Silence. He touched the bolt, felt grease. The Tivoli Arms was all about perfection. Or, Dr. Graves had taken special precautions.

He pushed some more. Had to put a little muscle into it- the oak was dense, thick, seasoned hard as rock. Six inches open. A foot. Enough space to slip through.

At first, he’d thought he’d made yet another mistake.

No light inside the unit. No one there.

Then he heard the sounds. Humming. The snick-snick of metal on metal. A low buzz, like that of a very large bumblebee.

There was light. A trapezoidal patch of light, to the left, hitting the wall at an acute angle.

He stepped closer and saw why. Deflected. An L-shaped drywall partition had been installed facing the door- creating a tiny vestibule.

He inched past the wall.

Was bathed in light. More light than he’d expected, hot and white and piercing. Three halogen bulbs grafted into an overhead power line. Surgical light.

A cell, ten by ten, walls, floor, and ceiling of that same hewn rock. Down in the core of the city.

Augusto Graves stood at the far end of a table, dressed in surgical greens. His head was capped, but he wore no face mask. Earphones from a Walkman transmitted something into his head.

Music, from the looks of it. Graves swayed in time. A syncopated beat.

A jolly beat. Graves was smiling faintly, mustache tilting upward like the wings of a butterfly.

Memories of Brazil?

A pleasant-looking man. I

Not a surgical table, just a wide, slab door resting on three sawhorses. The platform had been draped in white plastic. At Graves’s right hand was a steel tray on a wheeled stand, gleaming with instruments. Next to the tray, a steel box on a similar stand, its contents out of view. An electrical cord trailed over the box’s lid and fed into a ceiling socket. In the corner stood several bottles of distilled water. A family-sized container of bleach. A spray can of room deodorizer. “Fresh Evergreen” scent.

Folded neatly in the opposite corner was a pile of clothing. Something dark and cotton. A white bra and matching panties. A flesh-colored wad- panty hose- rested on top. No shoes.

The floor dipped to the left, slanted toward a floor drain. The shiny, stainless drain cover looked new, and the stone in which it set had been bleached a lighter gray.

The woman was slender, naked. Her dark head to Jeremy- he viewed her upside down. No marks on her, but she wasn’t moving, and her color was too pale- he knew that kind of pale. Graves had positioned himself at her feet. Was staring at her feet. Her long, dark hair streamed over the edge of the table at the side nearest Jeremy. No movement from her chest. So pale. Around her neck, a faint, pinkish ring.

Wavy hair.

Oh God, Angela-

Graves touched the big toe of her left foot. Put his finger to his mouth and licked it. Reaching into the tray, he extracted a scalpel, and Jeremy got ready to lunge. But after examining the instrument, Graves put it down. Reached into the metal box and extracted what looked like an oversize metal pencil.

Tapered at the point. Electrical cord attached to the butt end.

Graves ran a finger up and down the rod. Pushed a button.

The bumblebee buzz returned.

Graves stood there, still swaying to the music, staring at the laser. He pushed another button, and the rod grew a bright red eye. By the time he turned to aim the laser at the woman, Jeremy was out from behind the partition and on him.

Graves tumbled, landed on his back but didn’t make a sound. Instead he stared up at Jeremy. Soft brown eyes.

His earphones had flown off and the portable CD player attached to them landed on the floor. From the phones came a ti

Graves stared at Jeremy, expressionless.

The man was somewhere else.

Jeremy went for the laser. Graves waved the instrument, managed to push another button. A thin red beam shot out.

The devil’s scarlet eye weeping.

Graves swung the beam toward Jeremy.

Jeremy kicked at the buzzing wand, failed to make contact. But his attack caused Graves’s hand to waver, and the red beam nicked one of the sawhorses supporting the table.

Sliced clean through it. The table canted, and the naked woman slipped to the floor and landed facedown with a thud.

OhgodAngela-

Jeremy threw himself at Graves. Graves scooted away. The laser wavered, nicked stone, threw off dust. Steadying his laser hand with the other, Graves gave a quizzical look, took aim again as Jeremy ran for cover.

Jeremy tripped on Angela’s corpse. Icy flesh. He fell on his face and rolled backward.

Graves stood over him.

“You’ve interrupted me,” he said, without rancor. His eyes were lucid, focused, nothing but intent. He had beautiful skin, the mustache glowed like sable.

Soft, sibilant voice. Gentle. Women would find it comforting.

He licked his lips. “This will hurt a bit.” Hefted the laser. A red dot appeared in the center of Graves’s forehead.

Someone else with a laser?

No, this was something quite different. A low-tech situation. Thunder followed half a second later and blood trickled, then gushed out of the black-edged hole in Graves’s brow. Not dead center, a few millimeters to the right. The frontal lobes.

As he bled, Graves stared blankly. Incredulous. Where has my personality gone?

The blood rush was followed by clots of gray-pink brain tissue, pumping out piecemeal, in oatmeal-like chunks. Like swill from a suddenly unclogged drainage pipe.

Graves shut his eyes, fell to his knees, went down.

The laser, still buzzing, had rolled out from between his fingers and landed on the floor. The ruby beam arced toward the clothes in the corner. Set them on fire. Penetrated the clothes and continued into the stone wall where it sizzled, sputtered, died.

No, not on its own. A big hand had yanked out the cord.

The room went silent.

Jeremy rushed to Angela, turned her over.

Saw the face of a stranger.

Detective Bob Doresh lifted him by the arm. “Doctor, Doctor, I never knew following you was going to be this interesting.”