Runaway Heart (44 page)

     
There were no windows and no furniture, and Jack Wirta, America's
most engaging private dick, was forced to sit on the floor, contemplating
concrete. Does that make this a bad experience? Fuck no. Concrete can be
beautiful. Behold, its rough-hewn perfection. Study the poured-block worlds
below. There are shapes lurking behind this gray molecular mass . . . little
mountains and valleys, tiny fields of creation . . . microscopic and pure. A
complete gnat-size world full of itty-bitty bumps and crevices that make up a
carnival of untold beauty. Or an untold carnival of beautiful bumps and crevices.
. . or a concrete carnival of untold bumpy canyons. Anyway, all kinds'a good
shit.

     
Better still, Jack Wirta, heavy thinker, is having some world
class thoughts. Even Emil Matasareanu and his dim-witted buddy Gene Philips
couldn't fuck up this shoot-out. Jack was grinning, but suddenly, he felt sick.
Time out. . . need to vomit. Auggh . . . auggh. . . ahhh. . . wooph, splash.
Oh-oh . . . Jack did a boo-boo.

     
But, hold on . . . let's take a closer look. Even vomit can be
morphed into something beautiful. What used to be a Big Mac is now a pool of
regurgitated floor art.

     
He put his fingers in it and began to draw designs.

     
Sure it smells a little funky, but Jack Wirta, grinning
artist, can work
past that. Picasso had his oils. Wirta has his vomit.

     
The door swung open, crudely breaking his creative flow. Jack saw
two of the neatest-looking commandos coming toward him dressed in cammies, with
their heads in shiny metal pots.

     
"It's kicking in," one of them said to the other.
"He's stoned outta his mind."

     
"Let's get this fucking asshole outta here."

     
"Jack Wirta, fucking asshole, is ready to go,
sir!"

     
They yanked him up to his full forty-foot height. It was awesome
up there, his feet dragging a perfect line of vomit across the floor. Toe art.
Would the wonders ever cease? "I gotta go. Yes, yes. Here we go," he
caroled as they pulled him out the door.

     
They muscled him down the corridor. A beautiful concrete corridor
full of abstract microscopic crevices. How could he have missed all this
before? Oh yeah, he remembered now. He'd had his head in a canvas sack.

     
And then he was outside. "This is so fucking great," he
told the man on his left. "I've got to do this more often— get out in the
forest with all the little creatures." He smiled at the man on his right,
who didn't answer but shoved him into the back seat of a car.

     
"Shut your piehole, you moron."

     
"Moron Jack, shutting his piehole as instructed, sir,"
Jack giggled.

     
Valdez came out of the concrete block building. "Hey
Vinnie," Jack waved at him. "We're going for a
ride."

     
"Take him down the mountain, then put him behind the wheel.
Head him onto the 134," Valdez said.

     
"Hey, good idea," Jack grinned. "Bye, Vinnie."
He waved at Valdez.

     
The car started moving. Jack was having a ball. "We're going
on the freeway, we're going on the freeway," he chanted.

     
The two men in the car with him didn't seem to find
him amusing.
"Hey Wirta, for the last time, shut up!" one of them growled.

     
Jack put his finger to his lips and turned an imaginary key.
"Birds . . . I see birds," he shouted, and pointed out the window at
some hawks sailing above.

     
The man in the back seat with him hit Jack hard in the stomach. He
doubled over, gasping for breath. "No fair," Jack whined. After a
moment he struggled upright and looked over at the glowering man who had just
punched him. Something wasn't right. He felt strange.
What was it? Oh yeah,
I know.
"Gotta puke." And he let fly, hitting the commando in the
chest and lap with projectile vomit.

     
"Goddamn!" the man said.

     
They were down by the gate that went across Santiago Road, leading
them out of the Cleveland National Forest. A ranger opened the gate and waved
the car past.

     
"Hi," Jack grinned. "We're going to go on the
freeway."

     
The man didn't hear him. They continued on, heading down toward
the 134 Freeway that was coming into view a short distance in front of them.

     
Jack heard a helicopter overhead. "Hey!" he cried out
happily. "Helicopter!"

     
"Shut the fuck up," the man with the vomit on his
uniform growled.

     
"But, it's a
helicopter,"
Jack persisted.

     
The roar became deafening, then for a second Jack could see the
chopper was hovering in front of them, cutting them off. The car swerved, and
in that instant Jack thought he saw someone he knew hanging out of the
helicopter door. "Hey . . . it's Shane!" he called out.

     
The car skidded sideways attempting to maneuver around the
chopper, then careened off the road, down a dirt trail, and into the trees. The
helicopter was forced to pull up to avoid hitting the tall pines. Jack felt the
car come to a stop, then the two commandos were pulling him out of the back
seat.

     
"Are we here?" he grinned, as they shoved, him into the
front seat and buckled him in behind the steering wheel.

     
The man without the vomit got in beside Jack, butting him over
slightly so he could also squeeze behind the wheel. Then the car started
rolling again; The man wedged in next to Jack was driving awkwardly,
negotiating a narrow track through the overgrowth. The helicopter sounds faded.

     
"Wheee!" Jack grabbed for the steering wheel, but the
man knocked his hand away.

     
"Not yet, asshole."

     
"Okay," Jack grinned stupidly.

     
A half mile further, the car emerged from the trees and came to a
stop at the base of a freeway ramp. The man jumped out. "Now. Get it on up
there."

     
"Yes sir. On the case, sir."

     
The man slammed the door shut and Jack hit the gas. He was
shooting up onto the freeway. "Here I come!" he shouted at the
windshield.

     
Damnedest thing, though. Cars were honking at him and the drivers
all seemed angry. "What'd I do?" Jack whined.
Something is
definitely wrong. What the heck is it? What is pissing these other drivers off?
Is it .
 
.
 
. yes, yes.
 
.
 
. maybe this is it: The cars are coming at
me.
"Hey, everybody! I'm going the wrong way!" he shouted.

     
Suddenly, the helicopter was in front of him again, flying
sideways along the freeway, trying to warn oncoming traffic, rising
occasionally to pop over an overpass, then dropping down again. It was trying
to block him.

     
Traffic was pinwheeling everywhere, tortured rubber burning and
squealing. Jack was aiming the car more than driving it. He spun the wheel to
the right as a horn blared and a big rig started jackknifing, all eighteen
tires smoking. "Good one," Jack shouted.

     
His car began pinwheeling as well—round and round, trees and signs
and off-ramps whirling by in a confusing array of colors and shapes. Then it
shuddered to a stop.

     
The helicopter hovered in front of him, and landed on the freeway.
Men were running around waving their arms and stopping traffic. Jack was still
sitting behind the wheel
smiling when the door was yanked open. Shane Scully unbuckled him
and pulled him out.

     
"Shane, we're taking a trip. We went up the freeway
off-ramp," Jack grinned.

     
"What the fuck's wrong with you?" Shane asked, looking
into Jack's eyes, staring at blown-out pupils.

     
"Nothing, Shane. Nothing," Jack said. "I'm having
great thoughts. Oops, Gotta vomit."

     
And he threw up on his ex-partner's shoes.

J
ack's head was throbbing. It felt thick
as oatmeal, heavy as a fifty-pound medicine ball. He was in the back row of
Federal District Courtroom Sixteen, wedged between two more unlikely
characters. On his right was a skinny old man with a string bean. On Jack's
other side, snoring like Bluto's wife after a hard night of drinking, was the
fattest woman he had ever seen. She was slumped over sleeping, and kept oozing
toward him.

     
The TRO against DARPA was back in court and Herman was droning on.
Susan was sitting next to him at the plaintiff's table, making notes. Warren
Krookshank was up on the bench. He was a handsome African-American judge with
silver-gray hair, rimless glasses, and a quiet, no-nonsense demeanor. The
defense counsel, all ten of them, were gathered around their rectangular
mahogany table in a pregame huddle.

     
Jack tried to focus on Herman's argument and ignore the old geezer
muttering on the wooden bench next to him.

     
". . . reviewed the whole question of Charles Chimera's
DNA," Herman was saying as Jack's attention returned.

     
"Objection, Your Honor," shouted Joe Amato. He was on
his feet, his white cuffs and porcelain caps glittering. "The law clearly
dictates denial of this TRO solely on the issue of standing. Counsel is
attempting to sue my clients using an animal as his plaintiff. So before we get
into the merits of the TRO, or whether this beast even exists, I want to get a
ruling with regards to whether counsel can stand over there and represent a
chimpanzee."

     
Herman was also on his feet.

     
"Not a chimpanzee, Your Honor, a being who has DNA closer to
human homology than that of a Down's syndrome child. Judge King has already
accepted the stipulation of the parties, that DNA is the yardstick for
measuring humanity. That fact has already been established in this case."

     
"I know what Judge King ruled regarding stipulation, Mr.
Strockmire. I've read the court transcript." Krookshank removed his
glasses and looked down at Herman sternly. "Before I rule on that
objection, is there anything else you want to submit, counsel?"

     
Herman moved out from behind the plaintiff's table. "Yes,
Your Honor." He cleared his throat, then took a breath to center his
thoughts. "Inequalities have existed for as long as people have been on
this earth. We are a species that seems to treasure our ability to defend and
fight for our inequalities, and there are many. We have religious, racial, and
gender inequalities. We have inequalities of social status and of wealth. There
are even commercial inequalities like those afforded to people flying first
class as opposed to those flying coach. As a society, in order to grow we have
to learn to embrace the natural inequalities that exist between us and reject
the artificial ones. I'm not in favor of banishing all inequalities, Your
Honor. Perhaps some of these differences exist between us for a reason, and
perhaps some of them aren't bad—at least the nondiscriminatory ones. Perhaps by
seeing certain people differently, others will strive to be better.

     
"But what happens, Your Honor, when a person, no matter how
hard he or she tries, cannot redefine their station in life, and for that
reason they are discriminated against? For instance, no matter how hard each of
us tries, we will always be our same race, we will always have our same genetic
or gender differences. Therefore we must accept that there are some things that
simply cannot be changed. For instance, the makeup of our own DNA. Our DNA is a
map of our personal genetic history, and up till now it was unchangeable no
matter what we did.

     
"But my client's DNA has been changed to within a few tenths
of a percentage point of human DNA. This, I will remind you, was done without
his permission. Should the fact that Charles Chimera's DNA does not now exactly
match the rest of us be enough to deny him Constitutional rights? Should that
fact cause him to have to suffer further torture and inhumane testing? Because,
Your Honor, this is what is happening here. Charles Chimera and his John Doe
chimera co-plaintiffs have had their DNA altered, causing them grave bodily
harm. Only this court stands between them and any future irreparable
experimentation."