Frameshift

  Bullen nodded, fascinated. “Do go on, sir. I’m all ears.” A writing pad bound in calf leather was sitting on the table. Bullen drew it to him, opened it up, and took a gold-and-black fountain pen from his jacket pocket.

  “What we’ve discovered,” said Pierre, “is, well, shall we say in the nature of a statistical anomaly.” He paused, looking significantly at Bullen.

  The man nodded. “Statistics are the lifeblood of insurance, Dr. Tardivel.”

  “Well said,” remarked Pierre, “for blood figures very heavily in all of this.” He looked over at Molly and raised his eyebrows a tiny amount, conveying the question of whether she was succeeding at reading Bullen’s mind. She nodded slightly. Pierre went on. “What we’ve discovered, Mr. Bullen, is that your company has a very low rate of major claims payments.”

  A few vertical creases joined the horizontal ones on Bullen’s bronzed forehead as he drew his brows together. “We’ve been very lucky of late.”

  “Isn’t it more than just luck, Mr. Bullen?”

  Bullen was becoming visibly annoyed. “We strive for good management. I don’t suppose you’ve read Milton Friedman, but—”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” said Pierre. He was pleased to see Bullen’s eyebrows go up—but Friedman had won the 1976 Nobel Prize in economics. “I know he asked the question, ‘Do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible?’”

  Bullen nodded. “And Friedman’s answer was, No, they do not.”

  “But staying within the law is the key point, no? And that’s very hard to do.”

  “I thought you had something to tell me about the Human Genome Project,” said Bullen, his face reddening. He placed the cap back on his pen.

  Pierre’s heart was pounding so loudly he suspected Bullen and Molly could both hear it. He was suddenly confused. It had been happening more and more lately, but he’d been denying it to himself. That Huntington’s had already robbed him of much of his physical prowess he could accept, but that it also was bound to affect his mind was something he’d been refusing to deal with. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to remember what he was supposed to say next. “Mr. Bullen, I believe your company is illegally taking genetic samples from its policy applicants.”

  Molly’s eyes went wide. As soon as the words were out, Pierre realized he’d said the precise thing they’d decided he would not say. All he’d intended to do was steer the conversation lightly around the issue, letting Molly listen to his thoughts. But now…

  Bullen looked first at Pierre, then at Molly sitting next to him, then back at Pierre. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said slowly.

  What to do? Try to backtrack? But the accusation was out, and Bullen was clearly on guard now. “I’ve seen the pens,” said Pierre.

  Bullen shrugged. “There’s nothing illegal about them.”

  To press on? Surely that was the only thing to do. “You’re collecting tissue samples without permission.”

  Bullen leaned back in his chair and spread his arms. “Dr. Tardivel, that chair you’re sitting in is upholstered in leather, and today is a nice, hot summer’s day, even with the air-conditioning. Your forearm is probably sticking to the chair’s arm, no? When you lift up your arm, your skin will peel away from it, and you’ll leave many hundreds of skin cells behind on the chair. I could freely collect those. If you used my bathroom”—he gestured at an unmarked door set into the redwood paneling—“and left a bowel movement in the toilet bowl, there would be thousands upon thousands of sloughed-off epithelial cells from your intestines coating the feces, and I could collect those, too. If you shed a hair with attached follicle, or spit out some mouthwash in my sink, or blew your nose, or did any of hundreds of other things, I could collect samples of your DNA without you knowing it. My lawyers tell me there’s absolutely nothing illegal about picking up material people are dropping all the time anyway.”

  “But you’re not just collecting cells,” said Pierre. “You’re using the information to determine which policyholders are likely to submit expensive claims.”

  Bullen raised his hand, palms out. “Only in general terms, so we can plan responsibly. It lets my statisticians forecast the dollar value in claims payouts we’ll likely have to make to existing policyholders in the future—and that is to the policyholders’ benefit, actually. We were totally unprepared for all the claims related to AIDS, for instance; there was a while there in the late eighties when we thought we might have to file Chapter Eleven.”

  “Chapter Eleven?”

  “Bankruptcy, Dr. Tardivel. It doesn’t do a person much good to have a policy with a bankrupt insurer. This way, we’re able to responsibly plan for the claims we’ll have to pay.”

  “I don’t think it’s that at all, Mr. Bullen. I think you’re doing it to avoid having to pay claims. I think you’re doing it to identify in advance and eliminate policyholders who will make substantial claims in the future.”

  Molly shook her head slightly. Pierre knew he was going too far. Damn it, why couldn’t he think straight?

  Bullen tipped his head to one side. “What?”

  Pierre looked over at Molly, then back at Bullen. He took a deep breath, but it was too late now to stop. “Your company is killing people, isn’t it, Mr. Bullen? You arrange the murder of anyone you discover might make a big claim against you.”

  “Dr. Tardivel—if you are a doctor—I think you should leave.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” said Pierre, wanting to resolve it once and for all. “You killed Joan Dawson. You killed Bryan Proctor. You killed Peter Mansbridge. You killed Cathy Jurima. And you tried to have me killed, too—and probably would have tried again, except that that would have aroused too much suspicion.”

  Bullen was on his feet now. “Rosalee!” he shouted. “Rosalee!”

  The heavy door opened a bit, and the stunning brunette poked her head in. “Sir?”

  “Call security! These people are crazy.” Bullen was moving quickly back toward his desk. “Get out, you two! Get out of here.” Rosalee was already on the phone. Bullen opened the top left drawer of his desk and pulled out a small revolver. “Get out!”

  Pierre lifted his rump onto the table, slid across its wide, polished surface, got off on the other side, and quickly interposed himself between Molly and Bullen’s line of fire. “We’re leaving,” said Pierre. “We’re leaving. Put that away.”

  Rosalee reappeared. Her collagen-injected lips opened wide when she saw Bullen’s gun. “S-s-security is on its way,” she stammered.

  Soon four burly guards in gray uniforms appeared. Two of them had large revolvers drawn.

  “Eject these two from the premises,” snapped Bullen.

  “Come along,” said one of the guards, gesturing with his gun.

  Pierre started walking. Molly soon followed. The guards took them immediately to the elevator lobby. One of the cars was locked off on-service; they were hustled into that one. A guard turned a key in the control panel, and the elevator dropped rapidly down the thirty-seven stories to the ground, Pierre’s ears popping as it did so.

  “Outside,” said the same guard who had spoken before.

  Pierre and Molly hightailed it into the parking lot, two guards following them. They got into the Toyota, Molly driving, and sped out of the lot.

  Pierre was shaking from head to toe, his chorea aggravated by the adrenaline coursing through his system.

  “What happened in there?” said Molly.

  “I—I got confused.”

  “You said far more than you were supposed to.”

  Pierre closed his eyes. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. It’s—damn, I hate this fucking disease.”

  The road curved to the left. The tires squealed slightly as the car followed the bend.

  “What about Bullen?” said Pierre at last.

  Mo
lly shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Nothing’?”

  “Bullen just kept thinking things like, ‘My God—he’s a lunatic,’ and ‘He’s out of his mind,’ and…”

  “Yes?”

  “And ‘Look at the way he’s shaking—he must be drunk.’”

  “But nothing about the murders?”

  She turned down another road. “Nothing.”

  “No guilt? No sense of shock that he’d been caught?”

  “No. Nothing like that. I tell you, Pierre, he honestly didn’t have a clue as to what you were talking about.”

  “But I was so sure. All the evidence…”

  They came to a traffic signal. Molly stopped the car. “Evidence that you’ve seen,” she said softly. She looked at him briefly, then dropped her eyes.

  “No,” said Pierre sharply. “Dammit, no. What happened in there was a fluke. This isn’t a hallucination. I haven’t lost my mind.”

  The light turned green. Molly pressed down on the accelerator.

  They drove the rest of the way home in silence.

  C h a p t e r

  37

  A month later.

  Pierre, exhausted, came through the back door and immediately felt his spirits lifting. Their house wasn’t expensive, and their IKEA furnishings weren’t elaborate. But it was comfortable—the kind of life he never thought he’d have. A wife, a child, the smell of dinner cooking, toys scattered across the living-room floor, a fireplace.

  Molly came into the living room, carrying Amanda. “Look who’s here!” she said to her daughter. “That’s right! It’s Daddy!…I don’t know. I’ll ask him.” Molly looked at her husband. “She wants to know if you liked the cookies we made for you.”

  Pierre always brought a bagged lunch to work these days; it was easier to eat right in his lab than making his way down building 74’s long corridors to the snack bar. “They were delicious,” said Pierre. “Thank you.”

  Amanda smiled.

  Molly gave Pierre a kiss, Pierre sat down on the couch, and Molly transferred Amanda to his waiting arms. He lifted her above his head. She made little gurgling sounds of joy.

  “How’s my girl?” he said to her. “How’s my little girl?”

  Molly stepped briefly into the kitchen to stir the stew, then rejoined them. Pierre sat Amanda on his knee and bounced her up and down. Sesame Street was on the TV, the sound turned off.

  “Were you a good girl today?” asked Pierre. “You didn’t give Mommy any trouble, did you?”

  Amanda was squirming with delight, as if the suggestion that she might be a troublemaker pleased her greatly.

  “Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes,” said Molly.

  Pierre smiled. “Thanks. Sorry I wasn’t home in time to make it. I know it’s my turn.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, hon. I’m enjoying this time.”

  She looked a bit wistful. Neither of them knew exactly what they would do with Amanda when Molly’s two-year leave was over. They couldn’t put a mute child in a normal day care, and they’d yet to find a special-needs one that seemed suitable. There was one nearby for deaf children, but none for those who could hear but couldn’t speak. Molly had talked about not going back to the university at all, but they both knew she couldn’t do that. She was on the path toward tenure, and would need to build a solid career for the time when Pierre was no longer with them.

  Pierre picked up Amanda again and held her in front of him. He started making goofy faces at her, and she giggled wildly. But after a few moments, she started flapping her hands about, trying to say something. Pierre put her down on his lap, so that she could move her hands freely. Drink, she signed.

  Pierre looked at her sternly, and signed, What do you say?

  Please, she signed. Drink, please.

  Molly smiled. “I’ll get it. Apple juice?”

  Amanda nodded. For a while, Amanda had resisted learning sign language; it had seemed a needless bother—until she came to understand that although her mother could hear what she was thinking, neither her father nor anyone else could.

  Molly reappeared a few moments later with a small plastic glass half-filled with juice. Amanda took it with both hands and drained it in a couple of gulps. She handed the glass back to her mother.

  “I’ve got to make the salad,” said Molly.

  “Thanks,” said Pierre.

  She smiled and went away. Pierre lifted Amanda off his lap and placed her on the couch next to him. He knew that sign language was, at best, a poor substitute for spoken language, and an even worse one for having thoughts read directly, but to be able to communicate with her meant the world to him. When they were signing, it was like that wall between them had disappeared. Pierre’s hands moved. What did you do today?

  Played, signed Amanda. Watched TV. Drew a picture.

  What did you draw?

  Amanda looked at him blankly.

  What did you draw? Pierre signed again.

  Amanda shrugged a little.

  Pierre didn’t get as much practice as he’d like at signing. He figured he must be making a mistake, so he tried a different way of asking. You drew a picture of what?

  Amanda’s eyes were wide.

  Pierre looked down at his hands…and saw that they were shaking. He hadn’t felt it at all. He gripped his right hand with his left, attempting to steady it. He tried to make the signs again, but they weren’t coming out properly. He couldn’t get his left palm to open correctly for “drew,” couldn’t get his right index finger to move smoothly across the fingers of his left hand for “what.”

  Amanda’s brow was creasing. She could clearly see that Pierre was upset. Pierre tried again, but the gestures looked clawlike, unfriendly. He realized he was scaring his daughter, but, damn it, if he could only control his fingers he would—

  Amanda began to cry.

  “You know, hon, the Condor shareholders’ meeting is coming up next month,” said Molly that weekend. They were having steak, barbecued in their backyard. Molly had cut Pierre’s sirloin into manageable pieces; he had no trouble using knives on soft food, but had difficulty when consecutive slices in the same spot were required.

  Pierre nodded. His hands moved constantly now, and his legs moved most of the time. “But they probably won’t let us in after what happened when we saw Craig Bullen.”

  “They can’t legally bar you from attending. You’re a stockholder.”

  “Still, it might be easier if we kept a low profile.”

  “We could go in disguise,” said Molly.

  “Disguise?” Pierre’s tone indicated his surprise.

  “Sure. Nothing major, but—well, you could grow a beard. You’ve got four weeks after all, and…” She trailed off, but Pierre knew what she was thinking—that his jobs of shaving had been getting worse and worse as his hands had been shaking more and more. A beard would simplify his life anyway.

  He nodded. “Okay, I’ll grow a beard. What about you?”

  “No, I’d have to take testosterone pills for that.”

  Pierre grinned. “I mean, what are you going to do about a disguise?”

  “Well, I know Constance Brinkley over at the Center for Theater Arts pretty well. A lot of her acting students take psych courses. I’m sure she’d let me borrow a brown wig.”

  Pierre considered. “Real undercover work, eh?”

  Molly smiled. “Why not? That’s always been one of your strongest points…”

  After a month of growth, Pierre’s beard turned out to be much more satisfactory than he’d imagined. Molly had brought home the wig the previous night. Pierre was startled by how different it made his wife look: her skin seemed almost porcelain white by comparison, and her cornflower eyes stood out piercingly. He’d talked her into wearing the wig to bed that night, and it inspired him to new levels of creativity. Molly gently teased him about being her six-foot vibrator.

  The next day, Molly drove them to San Francisco; Pierre had qui
etly given up driving after an uncontrollable arm movement had almost sent them off Highway 1 into the Pacific.

  As they approached the Condor Tower, Pierre caught sight of a small helicopter flying overhead. Although he couldn’t make out the markings on it, it was painted yellow and black, the Condor corporate colors. He shook his head as he watched it land on the roof of the forty-story building. More premiums well spent.

  They parked the car and went inside.

  Molly and Pierre got off the elevator in the basement of the Condor Tower. For the last few weeks, Pierre had been walking with the aid of a cane. There were long tables set up for shareholders to register, and he made his way slowly over to them, where he received a copy of the meeting agenda. Hundreds of people were milling about, drinking coffee or mineral water and snacking on canapes served by women in stylish uniforms. Molly and Pierre entered the auditorium, which had about seven hundred seats. They found two chairs together near the middle, one of them on an aisle. Pierre took the aisle seat and held tightly to the handle of his cane, trying to control his shaking. Molly sat down, adjusted the position of her dark wig slightly, and read over the agenda.

  On the stage, a line of nine white men and one white woman took seats behind a long mahogany table. Craig Bullen was in the middle. He was wearing a charcoal gray suit with a red carnation pinned to his lapel. He conferred with the men on either side of him, then rose to his feet and moved over to the podium. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the mike, “welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Condor Health Insurance. My name is Craig Bullen and I’m the president of the company.”

  A few latecomers were still in the process of seating themselves, but everyone else broke into applause. Pierre resisted the urge to boo. The applause continued longer than mere manners would have required. The auditorium was three-quarters full. Many of the people were apparently individual stockholders, but Molly had pointed out several suited types who were probably representatives of mutual funds that had invested in the company.