Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (4 page)

"Hmmm. Is that why my
kitty carries on so when she's with her boyfriend?"

"Oh I'd say so, yes. See, human is much
nicer. Bovine, now, bovine is really terrible. Talk about wham bam.
One stroke, that's all, for a bull—just one gigantic lunge, and
it's thank ya, ma'am."

"I don't think I'd like that."

"Course not. Uh..."

"What?"

"If you don't mind me saying it, you give
great foot."

She giggled. "Thanks. So do you. Where'd you
get so smart about sex?"

"Am I?"

"You sure are. I'd never heard any of that
stuff before. Is it truer'

I said, "Well, I've never done any direct
research into it, but... I read it somewhere."

"Not at Annapolis, surely."

I said, "Possibly. You read a lot of shit at
Annapolis, same as anywhere else."

"Did you learn to talk like that at
Annapolis, too?"

“
Talk like
what?”

"You have a potty mouth."

"Oh. Sorry. I just do that when I'm nervous
or upset."

"Are you nervous or upset now?"

I replied, "I think, uh, yes, I may be."

She did one of those nice laughs. "Please
don't be. I promise that I will be very gentle."

I said, "Really? Oh. Well. Okay, then."

See? There are compensations. My life isn't
all folly, you know.

Chapter Four: A Tilt With Candor

It turns out that the house was owned by
Isaac Donaldson. He'd bought the land back in the forties, when
dirt was still as cheap as dirt, and built the house many years
later from a lifetime accumulation of book royalties and other
unneeded earnings. Ditto, with regard to the art collection, though
a substantial number of the objects came as gifts from friends and
"disciples" who knew of his passion for art and could not pass up a
good buy on his behalf.

And I guess the guy had a
bunch of admirers. According to Jennifer Harrel, the man was
practically a saint. "There is no way," she told me, "to even begin
to calculate the impact Isaac has had on the advancement of
science. Not so much that he's such a great scientist, though he's
certainly no slouch in that department, but because he is such a
tremendous person. His influence on several generations of students
and young scientists is simply incalculable."

Seems that he had a habit of taking on not
only the educational thirsts of young aspirants but very often
their physical sustenance, as well.

"He fed the multitudes," is the way Jen put
it.

Jen, yeah. We had progressed way beyond the
formalities of rank even before we quit the bubbly waters of the
Jacuzzi. Have you ever made love with a total stranger and noticed
how easily and quickly postures and pretenses evaporate between
delightfully polarized bodies? It's true. Sexual intimacy is the
quickest route to absolute honesty. We should all think about that,
maybe, while we take another look at our social institutions and
wonder if we've gone about things all wrong. Maybe our politicians
and business leaders should shake cocks instead of hands—and, you
know, just don't be intimidated by all the talk of latent
homosexuality; let it all hang out for awhile and see where it
takes us. You know, like, "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Jones, and
what great tits you've got"— "Thank you, Mr. Smith; while you were
admiring my tits, I was noticing the exciting bulge in your
pants."

That's honesty, see. Cuts through all the
phoney baloney and puts human relationships on a candid footing, at
least. A suffering world weeps for candor.

Anyway, yes, we had
progressed to first names and total intimacy then on to pet names
and intimate frenzy; after all that, what's a little candor? I told
Jen the whole dissolute story of my life, including the bit about
being conceived on the backseat of an automobile—wherefrom came the
"family name"—great-grandpappy was an admiral, you see, an Ashton
of the South Carolina line; and "son of a gun" is an ancient naval
term denoting illegitimate children conceived under the guns of the
old sailing vessels in the days when women went down to the sea in
ships as well as men, and, or course, things have always been the
same between the sexes; there were a lot of sons of guns in those
days. My own mother, never at a loss for wit, thought of me as a
"son of the Ford" and that's the way it went on my birth
certificate. Jen thought it a charming story and idly wondered how
many sons of telescopes and Bunsen burners were being born in these
days of sexual equality, then went totally candid and related to me
her "first orgasm with a man," experienced in the shadow of the
200-inch telescope at Mt. Palomar.

"Astronomy is primarily a nighttime science,
you know," she added. "And the atmosphere for sexual seduction is
just darned near-perfect."

So much, I was thinking, for hallowed halls,
but not for long, because her little story, I guess, stirred both
of us again and we sort of abandoned everything else for another go
at pure physical candor.

An hour or so later, while we lay in
blissfully exhausted contemplation of the city lights spread before
us like a lush carpet of sparkling jewels, Jen found the minimal
articulation required to tell me about Mary Ann Cunningham. "There
is a connection," she said in a whispery voice. "I didn't know her
personally. Not sure I actually saw her, before today. But I knew
that she came to Isaac about six months ago and told him she was
dropping all her classes for awhile, maybe forever. She was
pregnant. One of those chance encounter things, I take it; never
saw the boy again, didn't even know his name. But she was pregnant.
Couldn't face her parents with it. She was moving out of town,
somewhere up north—had a job offer, I think, intended to have the
baby, maybe place it for adoption, maybe raise it herself—she would
decide that later.

"Isaac was fit to be tied. Had her pegged as
a sure winner in the golden science sweepstakes, terribly
distraught about losing her to mere motherhood. 'Any woman can have
a baby,' he fussed. 'Only a few can master universal dynamics.'

"Long and short of it, he
talked her into an abortion, paid for it himself, got her the job
at Griffith. That's the connection, and that's all the connection.
I can't recall hearing him mention her name again. Don't believe I
heard it from anyone until a couple of days ago, when I heard the
news that the police were investigating her disappearance. I just
thought, well, maybe she met another boy and Isaac's not around to
help her,
this
time. Today was only the second time. I have visited Griffith
myself since he's been gone. Went down there one day last month and
searched his office for a clue, found nothing. No reason to go
back, until today."

I asked, lazily, "You work at... ?"

"Sort of loosely, for Cal Tech—in research,
not teaching, and—"

"What does that mean?—'sort of
loosely'?"

"I'm called in on special projects. Usually
at Palomar."

"That's way down toward San Diego."

"Yes. And I do consulting for JPL, and
occasionally for Hughes."

"Hughes Laboratories?—up
near Pepperdine Malibu?"

"Uh huh."

"Hush-hush stuff," I said.

"Yes."

"What exactly is your field?"

"Creation physics."

"You don't mean, uh..."

She giggled deliciously. "Not that kind of
creation, no. I am trying to determine the nature of the universe
before the big bang."

I was impressed, and I said so. "Nice work,
very nice."

She punched me lightly in the belly and
said, "I'll tell you a big secret one day if you'll stay nice, very
nice."

"Why can't you tell me now?"

"Because first I have to find out how very
nice you can really be."

She was not kidding, either. The candor was
gone, the fun was gone, and Doctor Universe was again in the
saddle. The mood was not exactly brooding—but it was certainly
sober and darkly contemplative.

"Thank you for today," she said, very
quietly. "I don't get many of these."

The way she said it made
me think of "folly" and the human need for same. So maybe I'd had
the privilege to serve as Doctor Universe's folly for the day.
Which is okay enough. I'd had my tilt with total candor, too, and
that was okay enough for its own sake alone.

But I found myself hoping that I would
qualify, one day soon, for the beautiful doctor's "big" secret.

I could not help
wondering, too, if saintly Isaac Donaldson had a secret folly
somewhere which right then could be eating him alive. Or eating his
corpse. And I decided that I would not rest this case until all the
secrets had stepped forward and identified themselves...in perfect
candor.

I rolled off the playing field and made my
way a bit unsteadily toward the shower. Night had fallen completely
and enshrouded this house on the mountain, but the glow of city
lights far below and far away had found a stopping place within the
window bay of the bedroom of the House of Isaac. I paused at the
bathroom door and turned back to see what Dr. Jen was up to. She
was softly illuminated in the glow from the window, totally
absorbed with something within her own mind and totally oblivious
to the lights of man.

It struck me, then, that
she had not told me anything at all about her own relationship with
the owner of the manse or how it worked out that she now lived
there as the obvious mistress of that manse.

Do saints have mistresses?

I decided that it was none of my business
and none of my concern, not even in total candor.

Chapter Five: Players

I stopped at the first pay phone along the
return route and bought a call to Souza's twenty-four-hour number.
I figured it was time for all the players to stand up and identify
themselves, and he was first on my list. What I got, though, was
Souza's "anchor," a 22-year-old named Foster Scott who wanted
desperately to be a detective someday but probably never would if
he stuck with the Souza Bureau of Private Investigation. Souza
knows a good thing when he sees it and he knew he had the perfect
anchorman in Foster Scott.

"Put Greg on, Foster," I growled.

I did not bother to identify myself because
this kid never forgets a voice; furthermore, he never takes notes
but can deliver verbatim an entire daylong list of messages. So I
knew something was up when he failed to "recognize" me, coming back
instead with a very formal, "Sorry, sir, he's mobile. But if it's
important, please hang up and call right back and I'll put you on
the automatic forward."

I hung up without another word, punched the
number again, and this time got my man.

"I was hoping you'd call,"
he said, and the tone—even

considering the
source—raised my hackles just a mite. "We're on radio relay so keep
that in mind. What'd you get from the girl?"

Leave it to Souza to refer to a Ph.D. in
creation physics as "the girl," for God's sake.

I replied, "First you tell me, pal."

'Tell you what?"

"Exactly what is going
down here. Precisely who is paying your freight. Approximately what
are you expecting from me."

"Can't go into that right here, old
buddy."

"Then stop the goddamned car at the nearest
phone booth and call me back. I'll give you the number."

"Don't know if I should do that. Think
something is at my tailgate. Uh, well, maybe I better, though. We
really do need to talk."

I gave him the number and had to repeat it
twice. Damned guy was probably speeding along a freeway somewhere,
trying to look forward and backward at the same time while also
jotting a telephone number. I could picture it in my mind, and had
to wonder if Ma Bell had finally reached too far in the effort to
bring the world a little closer.

But I got the callback in
about two minutes, and now the paranoia was unrestrained. "Listen,
Ash, let's make this quick. If these guys are at state of the art,
then you know as well as I do that they could have been scanning
for my voiceprint and locked me in on the 'hello.' Don't
go—"

"Wait, wait," I interrupted. "Which guys are
these?"

"Beats hell out of me.
They barged in on Foster 'bout an hour ago, flashed ID's at him.
All he could make out were the screamin' eagles of some federal
agency, but he says they didn't look, FBI. Foster thinks the office
is under surveillance right now, and so do I. I was up your way. So
don't go home."

He could be the most exasperating son of
a...

"Tell me about it, Greg."

"Well, you know me. Once I've seen a face,
I've got it locked. Right?"

I sighed and bowed to the inevitable drama.
"Right, Greg, right. You have an unbelievable mind." Amen.

"Well, I saw Hank Gavinsky tonight. Remember
him?"

I did not.

"Remember?—the NSC case."

I said, "Right" just to keep him moving;
didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

"Word got out just after that, maybe old
Hank was doubling on us. And he flat dropped out of sight. I saw
Jimmy Casaba last year during that thing with Guatemala. He told me
Hank was tripling, as a double cover, and he's really a CIA hitman,
now."

I said, "Greg, for God's sake...will you
just tell me—I thought we needed to make this quick."

"Right, I'm making it as quick as I can."
But the tension was building in that voice and it was even starting
to infect me. "I told you I saw Hank tonight. I was out your way
when Foster alerted me. So I dropped through your neighborhood,
figured it was better than risking the telephones. Know where I saw
Hank? Just off your driveway, pal, just parked and waiting. Don't
go home tonight, Ash. Smear mud on your license plates and check
into a hotel under an assumed name until I get this thing
straightened out. Someone has made a terrible mistake."