I stuck around for a few more minutes, listening to a story about her
dogs. But I was thinking about two-legged creatures.
It was 3:45 when I drove out of the parking lot. A few feet from the
exit a motorcycle cop was giving a jaywalking ticket to a nurse. The
nurse looked furious; the cop’s face was a blank tablet.
Traffic on Sunset was obstructed by a four-car fender-bender, and the
accompanying turmoil wrought by rubberneckers and somnolent traffic
officers. It took almost an hour to reach the inanimate green stretch
that was Beverly Hills’ piece of the boulevard. Tile-roofed ego
monuments perched atop hillocks of Bermuda grass and dichondra,
embellished by hostile gates, tennis court sheeting, and the requisite
battalions of German cars.
I passed the stadium-sized weed-choked lot that had once housed the
Arden mansion. The weeds had turned to hay, and all the trees on the
property were dead. The Mediterranean palace had served briefly as a
twenty-year-old Arab sheik’s plaything before being torched by persons
unknown-aesthetic sensibilities offended by puke-green paint and
moronic statuary with blacked-in pubic hair, or just plain
xenophobia.
Whatever the reason for the arson, rumors had been circulating for
years about subdivision and rebuilding. But the real estate slump had
taken the luster off that kind of optimism.
A few blocks later the Beverly Hills Hotel came into view, ringed by a
motorcade of white stretch limos. Someone getting married or promoting
a new film.
As I approached Whittier Drive, I decided to keep going. But when the
letters on the street sign achieved focus, I found myself making a
sudden right turn and driving slowly up the jacarandalined street.
Laurence Ashmore’s house was at the end of the block, a threestory,
limestone Georgian affair on a double lot at least two hundred feet
wide. The building was blocky, and impeccably maintained. A brick
circular drive scythed through a perfect flat lawn. The landscaping
was spare but good, with a preference for azaleas, camellias, and
Hawaiian tree ferns-Georgian goes tropical. A weeping olive tree
shaded half the lawn. The other half was sun-kissed.
To the left of the house was a porte-cochere long enough to shelter one
of the stretches I’d just seen at the hotel. Beyond the wooden gates
were treetops and the flaming red clouds of bougainvillea.
Prime of the prime. Even with the slump, at least four million.
A single car was parked in the circular drive. White Olds Cutlass,
five or six years old. A hundred yards in either direction the curb
was vacant. No black-garbed callers or bouquets on the doorstop.
Shuttered windows; no sign of occupancy. The placard of a security
company was staked in the perfect, clipped grass.
I drove on, made a U-turn, passed the house again and continued home.
Routine calls from my service; nothing from Fort Jackson. I called the
base anyway and asked for Captain Katz. He came on quickly.
I reminded him who I was and told him I hoped I hadn’t interrupted his
dinner.
He said, “No, that’s fine, I was going to call you. Think I found what
you’re after.”
“Great.”
“One second-here it is. Influenza and pneumonia epidemics over the
last ten years, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, far as I can tell, we only had one major flu epidemicone of the
Thai strains back in 73. Which is before your time.”
“Nothing since?”
“Doesn’t look like it. And no pneumonia, period. I mean, I’m sure
we’ve had plenty of isolated flu cases, but nothing that would qualify
as an epidemic. And we’re real good about keeping those kinds of
records. Only thing we usually have to worry about, in terms of
contagion, is bacterial meningitis. You know how tough that can be in
a closed environment.”
“Only one I observed personally was two years ago, and that was serious
enough-soldiers died.”
“What about sequellae-brain damage, seizure disorders?”
“Most probably. I don’t have the data handy but I can get hold of
them. Thinking of changing your research protocol?”
“Not quite yet,” I said. “Just curious.”
“Well,” he said, “that can be a good thing, curiosity. At least out in
the civilian world.”
Stephanie had her hard data, and now I had mine.
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