The next week another local girl went missing. Again, it was quiet and if the authorities hadn't been looking for it, she would have gone completely unnoticed. As it was, this poor girl was only missed because she had been a regular volunteer Saturday at the animal shelter. Once a month, like clockwork. When she didn't show up, someone asked a question, then a report was filed. And forgotten. Almost.
An hour later, I was standing in Gertie's office. As I looked around, I noticed there had been some subtle and some not so subtle changes lately. There was a new picture on her desk of a large young woman and a painfully bent young man. They were happy. The picture was in a silver frame with a soft blue velvet ribbon draped artfully over it. The ribbon didn't detract from the frame or the photo, but highlighted the colors of the woman's dress, making her seem somehow attractive. I recognized Simone's delicate touch.
I heard her clear her throat behind me. It took me as second before I realized Gertie was in the same room with me and my eyes weren't watering. No perfume! I spun around to face her, astounded. I was even more amazed at the transformation in her. Make no mistake, she was still a large, large woman. But she looked somehow less formidable. Almost feminine, if I could be so bold. I stared, speechless.
"Close your mouth, Mr. Sampson. As nice as it is to have you silent, I assume you are here for a reason?"
Good old Gertie. "I, uh, yes. We have to talk."
"Is this official? I got word of your activation. Congratulations. I think."
She, better than most people, knew what this was going to do to me. My only hope was that she would be there to patch me back up after. Again.
"No, Gertie, this isn't official."
"Can it wait? I have an appointment."
"At this hour?"
She blushed. Then I noticed the make-up, lightly applied. The fresh lipstick, artfully done. Simone had been very busy, indeed! Gertrude Schwartz, MD had a date or my name wasn't Lawrence Sampson.
"Can it wait? Please?" She was pleading with me. This was unprecedented!
I shook my head. "It won't take long, Gertie, but it is very important," I said gently.
Sighing, she picked up the telephone. She dialed a four-digit extension. Oh-ho! A local boy, an intra office romance. She turned her back to me for a brief moment and held a mostly whispered conversation. I didn't try to hear.
She turned back to me, put her massive capable hands flat on the desk and lowered herself into her chair.
"I remember a fable from grade school," I started. "A kindhearted woman is out for a walk on a cold winter's day. She comes across a snake in the path, cold, freezing, dying. Her heart goes out to the dying snake. She picks it up, slips it inside her coat and hurries home. Over the next several days she would feed and cuddle the snake and eventually the snake recovered. One day following, as the woman picked up the snake and kissed him gently, the snake bit her on the neck. The venom rushed to her brain, and the kindhearted woman fell to the ground, dying. As she lay there, she gasped out to the snake, 'Why? Why did you bite me?' The snake replied, 'Because I'm a snake. What did you expect?'"
Gertie sat there puzzled, then started to get up. She looked angry. I held up my hands, a plea for time. She sat back down, but she glared.
"The American people have long held the medical profession in the highest esteem and rightly so. Years ago, family physicians made house calls, delivered countless babies in bedrooms, saved countless lives from sickness and pretty much wiped out serious diseases. We owe our health and our lives to your profession. We have been trained over the past generations to trust our doctors implicitly, without question. We tell our doctors about everything in our lives and our family's lives, from Aunt Peg's lumbago to crazy Uncle Willie's wooden leg. We tell them when our family grows, when someone dies and how it happens.
"The doctors moved from visiting us to us visiting them. It made sense, it was more efficient. They could help more of us and there were certainly more of us that needed help. The population was exploding. The doctors needed hospitals. Hospitals cost money to run. Insurance companies were formed to cover the costs of the medical care. Medicine became a business."
Gertie was getting madder, now. This was her profession and she didn't like where this was headed. But I needed her to hear this. She had no idea where I was headed. I held up my hands for patience once more. I didn't think it would work again. She was pissed...
"Businesses run on information. The information we entrust to hospitals is total, absolute. They know where we live, where we work, how much money we make, how we are going to pay them, they have our credit card numbers, social security numbers, telephone numbers. They know the size of our families and who to contact in case of emergency. In short, the hospital databases contain all the information you would need to determine if you could safely make a person disappear."
"Mr. Sampson! That's quite enough. Those databases are secure!"
"Are they, now? Suppose a person worked for a government agency in a sensitive position. The FBI runs a security check on that person to the level appropriate to the position. You know that. And even with those measures, some of that secure information still gets out.
"Now suppose a group of people skilled in the art of subversion and seduction was suddenly out of a job. Their government no longer needed them. They immigrate to another country whose people welcomed them with open arms. These kindhearted people just wanted to help these unfortunate souls.
"The immigrants are industrious but this is not their country, not their culture, not their landsmen, not their laws. Many of them are bitter and hold a grudge against their naïve hosts. Some of them gravitate to the shadier side of the law where they are more comfortable, where there is less competition. Probably by accident, one of them meets or picks up a stray girl. They take her in. Things happen, she panics, tries to get away. An unfortunate trip, a fall, she dies. No one misses her. No one cares. She vanishes. They are astounded in the age of technology that something like that can occur.
"A seed is planted. They've seen other girls like her. On the streets, in the malls. But who to take? Who has no one to care? Who will no one miss?
"Then one day, one of them has an illness and requires hospitalization. They are astounded at all of the personal information they need to provide to the hospital for admittance. That starts them thinking. Where does all the information go? What is it for? Does everybody have to provide it? You can imagine the questions.
"Remember, Gertie, these are people skilled in subverting and recruiting others to do their bidding, even to the point of convincing someone into betraying their own country. One day the pieces fall together. A pretty young girl approaches a bored middle-aged married man. She seduces him. The next day, he is presented with the photographic evidence. His life is ruined if his wife/family/church ever found out. But they don't want money. In fact, they want to give him some. Just give us the name of that young person who was here last weekend. Oh, her address and telephone number, too.
"He does and he is hooked. They probably don't even want the data on the first person they ask for. What they are after comes later, after he has lost all conscience about what he is doing. Nothing happened to the woman after all and it is always women they ask about. He knows it is harmless because they make sure he finds out that nothing happened to the first woman or two.
"They begin looking for certain types of women. He may even do a search on the database for them. They look for divorced or single women, 18-40 years old, one child is OK as long as it is a girl. Credit checks are run, at hospital expense, of course. Bank balances, savings accounts, it's all available.
"Then a certain young woman is targeted. Younger, well-off, single, lonely, recently divorced, and horny. She meets a tall, dark, mysteriously handsome man who sweeps her off her feet. He's probably in town on business. It may take a week, a month, a year, but he convinces her to move to his town with him. He lives out of state. He has a new job for her, he tells her, with better pay. Or maybe he moves her out of the country, to the Bahamas, far away from familiar people. Then she simply disappears. Gone."
"Oh God! Angela!" Gertie gasped, pale now.
"What?"
I hadn't quite finished before she interrupted me but it was obvious she wasn't upset with me now. I don't recall her ever calling me 'Angela'.
"Angela, a secretary who used to work here. Just divorced, she had sold her house and got a large cash settlement from her ex. She met this guy, all sudden like. He was here on business. He said he lived in Cincinnati, wanted her to move. He got her a great job at his company. We had a party for her, but at the last minute he had to cancel. We never met him. Then, later, when we tried to send her some of her personal stuff ... The new company didn't know anything about her. Or him." She broke down. "Oh God! Oh God!"
I let her cry. There was more I had to tell her.
"There is another woman, older, divorced or widowed, well off. A kid or two. Another guy or maybe even the same one. A real seduction, she falls in love. Romance for the first time in her life ever. Funds begin to disappear from her accounts, siphoned off at an alarming rate. Cars, jewelry, gifts she can't afford. When the money is gone, so is he.
"Another woman, this one with elderly parents. Another seduction. This man meets the family. Probably poses as an insurance salesman or has a relative who is one. Gives them a great deal on a huge term life insurance policy for the mom and dad. Parents have a tragic accident on Christmas. There's an investigation, the daughter is cleared. The insurance pays out millions, tax-free. Since the boyfriend is there, supportive, loving, before all of this happened, he couldn't possibly be after her money, could he? She, he and the money disappear together."
"Ok, Ok. You've convinced me. But why?"
"That bothered me, too. None of the tapes, none of the photos turned up here in the States. None of that crap had been sold to the agents who routinely look for this stuff. Then it hit me. Gertie, do you know how many people in this world hate Americans? I mean, really hate us? With loathing, with deep dark jealousy, who are angry at everything American? I'll tell you. Billions.
"Oh, it may not be the first thing they think of when they get up in the morning, but at some point in the day, they will come across some reminder of the difference between them and us. A plane will fly overhead, a boat or a car will speed by, they will glimpse a old episode of 'Dallas' on the community TV. Something will happen and they will be reminded, again and again of how much they hate us.
"Now, Gertie, imagine giving those billions of people the opportunity to see soft white American bitches being humiliated, being beaten, to hear them screaming, begging, to see them bleed. To see them die, horrible, painful deaths. How much would they pay? Now feed that pornographic perversion slowly over time. They would be like junkies and would need more and more, ever more horrible and graphic. Or give those men the opportunity to fuck a real American cunt, pink and tender. Let them fuck it to death. Don't worry about the damage, they're cheap. There's more where it came from. Tell me. How much would they pay for a piece of revenge?"
Gertie was weeping openly now. "Why? Why are you telling me this? What am I supposed to do?"
I paused. "In the hospital, with Simone, you asked her for one name. Just one. You wanted revenge. You felt what I do now. You feel that way again, now, don't you?"
I paused letting her think.
"Simone couldn't give you a name. I can. Do you still want it?" I asked the woman quietly.
Gertie stared at me, in anguish. I knew that particular torment she was in.
"He is involved?"
"Yes."
"Positive?"
"Gertie, you know me better than that."
She nodded.
"I ... I..." She took a deep breath.
I thought she was going to ask me for the name.
"I can't do it."
I stood and walked towards the door. Just as I reached it, she said, softly, almost to herself, "I'm sorry I'm so weak, Larry. I - I just can't."
Without turning, I replied, "It isn't you who is weak, Gertie, because you can't do this. I'm the one who is weak, because I can."
The Analyst had confirmed the name I had put in the envelope when I had handed him the briefcase. He was involved and had been for years. Dumbo had identified him by what he wore — a white lab coat with a red carnation. I had seen him before. I had met him. I knew his name.
I picked him up from his home one night later that week. He wasn't expecting me but then, if he had been, he wouldn't have been sound asleep. He would have been out of the country, if he was smart. I left his wife and children untouched, asleep in their beds.
Carl Anderson, Assistant Hospital Administrator, did not enjoy the last three days of his life. He spent them screaming, strapped to the bottom of a 3-ton counterweight of a freight elevator in a 12-story apartment building. I visited him on the second day, after he had been riding the bottom of that heavy weight in the terrifying darkness of the elevator shaft. As I hung there by my harness, riding up and down with him, he told me everything I wanted to know, everything he knew or thought he knew. He probably even made stuff up, just for me.
He had been so helpful that I left a light on at the bottom of the shaft so he could see the floor rushing up at him as the ballast plunged down, lifting the elevator higher and higher. When would someone push the button to top floor? When would the weight crash down on those closely spaced heavy iron I-beams down below? Sometimes shedding a little light on something can be more terrifying than being in the dark. Apparently Carl Anderson thought so. He went insane before night fell. I was almost disappointed he wasn't with it and lucid for the grand finale. I had gone to so much effort, just for him, too.
Two elderly women returned from a surprise trip to the country late Sunday evening. They had won yet another free weekend in that lovely spa upstate. The younger woman pushed her older sister onto the freight elevator, the wheelchair gliding smoothly over the worn wooden slats. She pushed the button to their floor, the penthouse. The elevator rose smoothly, then it stopped short of the 12th floor with a lurch. The doors opened and she noticed they were about three inches too low.
For a moment she was frustrated as it was Sunday and the building superintendent wouldn't be there until Monday morning. Then she remembered what that nice repairman had told her to do when this happened. It had happened before, in fact, several times a couple of years ago. Dutifully, she pushed the button to close the doors, sent the car down four floors, then sent the elevator back up to her floor, just like the nice man had shown her. The third time she did this, the elevator arrived at their floor with only a fraction of an inch difference in the floor heights. The younger woman knew that by tomorrow even that little difference would be gone. Smiling, the ambulatory woman was able to push her invalid sister up over the small inconvenience once known as Carl Anderson and into their apartment.
I died a little when I saw the lights on the twelfth floor come on. But this was just the first of many, many free weekends in the country for those two nice old ladies and I knew I would die a little more each time they came home. I reached for the special cell phone I had for these occasions. I dialed the number I had memorized and gave the pre-arranged signal.
"Clean up."