Curse of the Afflicted Read online

  CURSE OF THE AFFLICTED

  by David Chill

  © 2017 by David Chill

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons living or deceased, is purely coincidental. The author assumes no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any inconsistency herein.

  For Paul Baron

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Post Pattern Preview

  Chapter 1

  The Assassin entered the glass office tower at precisely four o'clock. He strode quickly through the lobby, absently flashing an I.D. badge at the sleepy security guards. They would not look twice at someone who knew where he was going. He did catch the attention of a pair of serious men in cheap suits, their earpieces identifying them as Secret Service. They directed him through a hastily set up metal detector, and then gave a quick once-over with the magnetometer wand before waving him through. He knew they would. The Assassin looked like any other office worker, nondescript and unremarkable. White shirt, bland tie, jacket slung over a shoulder. He pretended he was distracted, another sure-fire sign of an everyday Joe. The Assassin was pleased with his persona, and was convinced he embodied his new role very well. But this was Los Angeles. Everyone was an actor here.

  He rode the elevator up to the thirty-fourth floor, stroking his black beard to make sure it remained in place. Removing his black-framed glasses, ones that had clear lenses, he folded them and put them inside his jacket. Once the doors opened, he moved briskly off the elevator and past the gilded logo of a law firm with an elongated name listing half a dozen partners. Walking straight into the men's room, he checked the stalls to make sure he was alone before removing the ceiling tiles. He pulled down the nylon gym bag he had stored there last week and smiled. For the moment, everything was going exactly as planned.

  Replacing the tiles perfectly, the Assassin strode down the hallway and entered the quiet stairwell. The gym bag was heavier than he had remembered. Suddenly, an unsteady feeling came over him and he became light-headed. He knew he needed to slow down. So unlike him. He grabbed the banister to maintain his equilibrium, silently cursing to himself. It took a few seconds, but the wobbly feeling finally went away. He descended carefully down the single flight of stairs, taking extra measures to not make any noise. When he reached the next landing, he swiveled his body and used his hips to push against the horizontal security bar, opening the emergency exit door. He had arrived. This was where he would take care of business.

  The renovation of the thirty-third floor was almost complete. The drywall was up, and the contractors only needed to install carpet and overhead lighting. The Assassin entered what would soon be someone's corner office, and he closed the door. Placing a number of cement blocks against the door would prevent a nosy security guard from gaining access. If they even bothered to patrol here. Most likely, he would be alone for the next six hours. He still wished he had the peace of mind that came with carrying that little handgun he normally kept in his pocket. The Ruger thirty-eight special was always a source of comfort to him. He wished he had packed it in the gym bag, but what was done was done.

  Noticing the soft glow of a single naked light bulb hanging down from the ceiling, he reached into his pocket and put on a pair of latex gloves. Picking up a long iron rod that was amidst the debris strewn on the concrete floor, the Assassin gave a quick upward swing and smashed the bulb to pieces, then carefully placed the rod silently back down on the ground. No one should be able to see him here. The white-hot glare of the media would be shining on this spot soon enough. Darkness would be his friend tonight.

  * * *

  My back was killing me, and the pain was coming at just the wrong time.

  Driving down the shady streets of Brentwood, I steered around potholes and fiddled with the lumbar support switch on my driver's seat. It wasn't helping. My doctor appointment would be at noon, a lunchtime accommodation from an old college friend. I'd just need to suffer through the agony of a painful client meeting. Next time I'd remember to bring along some Advil.

  June gloom was in full swing. The morning air was cool and damp, and the marine layer trapped a canopy of gray clouds hanging over the region. But June also meant the Jacaranda trees were blooming, an annual emergence of gorgeous flowers falling gracefully from long branches, dusting the lawns with lavender petals. In Los Angeles, this is the closest we get to snow; the accumulation not of frosty white flakes, but of soft purple blossoms.

  Blair had arrived early to the meeting, as good salespeople are taught to do. I sat down next to him, feeling small inside the soaring atrium of the Garter Vitamin Company's lobby. There was an odd plaque near the entrance, a sign boasting that Garter was now a wholly owned subsidiary of another wholly owned subsidiary. At the bottom of the plaque, it was noted their corporate headquarters were now in Ireland. What was not revealed was that Irish tax rates were far more attractive to wealthy companies.

  The lobby walls featured colorful photos of capsules and drinks, popular Garter products from around the globe. Many had names I couldn't pronounce, much less understand. But that was why we were here. Garter had an exciting new supplement and they needed an outside research company to help them. They needed to formulate a better marketing plan to launch the product. We were hired because we had been successful as pollsters, and corporations often sought out consultants who were successful in other fields, hoping that whatever magic we created for politicians would somehow rub off on them. Promoting political candidates was not unlike promoting any other consumer product. We did this type of corporate work to generate revenue between political campaigns. But Blair was in the midst of crafting something far bigger for us, a venture that would be much more lucrative, and could propel us into the upper echelon of our narrow world.

  "The vice president is supposed to call any day now," he said. "Sudeau needs a different approach if he's going to convince the public that he's really presidential material. The Phelan crew is out; they just couldn't figure out how to do polling for a national campaign. I just know we're in line for this gig, and it's going to be a massive payday. This is the Super Bowl. If Sudeau picks us and we get him the nomination, we can both retire. Become talking heads on CNN every other day. Work if we want, play golf if we don't."

  "What are our odds?" I asked.

  "Good," he responded. "Real good. After we unseated Governor Palmer last year, I thought we'd be in for sure. I can't believe Sudeau hasn't tapped us yet. Ned, I've been sucking up to the vice president's staff for months now. I swear if Randy Greece's ass ever snaps shut, it's going to break my nose."

  I looked across the room at a small statue, a bronze work of art depicting an asklepian. This was the snake-hugging rod named after Asclepius, the Greek god a
ssociated with medicine and healing. It reminded me of our partnership, a study in contrasts. Blair was tall, olive-complexioned, and strikingly handsome, in a way that could make some women swoon. I actually heard one of our clients refer to Blair's good looks as knee-buckling. I was none of those things; rather, my appearance could best be summed up as short, stocky and mildly blemished. Fortunately, I didn't need to get by on looks. Blair liked to refer to himself as Mr. Outside, the rainmaker who was a magnet for clients and to me as Mr. Inside, the nerdy grunt who manufactured the actual work. But the reality is rarely that clear cut.

  Blair Lipschitz was a master talker, a man who could ingratiate himself with complete strangers, allowing them to feel as if they were old friends within minutes. He was well spoken, but he also spoke very frequently. I used to view his act with no small amount of disdain, as phony and transparent as a huckster's money-back guarantee. But there was one fact, undeniable, which was simply that he attracted paying clients. And no matter how good my work was, and it was generally very good, without clients there would be no partnership, no money, no business. We were a matched pair, I thought, as I continued to gaze at the bronze statue across the room. The steady rod wrapped with an entwined serpent.

  "Gentlemen," boomed a voice from across the lobby. John Quinn, a portly man wearing a gray suit, finely tailored to hide much of his girth. He ambled over to us, a big man with a big smile. "Sorry to have kept you waiting."

  "Never a problem, Johnny-Boy," laughed Blair, as we followed him onto a chrome elevator. "We're here to make your life easier."

  What we were really here to do was earn a good living. Garter was about to unveil a supplement designed to enhance and extend female pleasure, a type of Viagra-for-women. They were certain it would be a boon to company earnings, and more importantly, to the executives' own personal wealth. I had nothing against people earning more money or getting more pleasure out of life. I did, however, hold serious qualms about how Garter would spread the word about their life-altering product.

  It was over ten years ago when my daughter, Angelina, just six years old and exceedingly precocious, wandered into our kitchen one bright Sunday morning to inquire as to the meaning of erectile dysfunction. My mouthful of Cuban roast coffee nearly spewed back into the mug. When my wife, Leslie, asked where she had come upon such an interesting malady, Angelina said it was while watching a cartoon on a heretofore safe kids' TV channel. She then asked us what bankruptcy meant. I deflected both topics by offering her a slice of cherry Danish, a ruse that temporarily focused her attention on something less disturbing. In addition to not wanting to educate a small child about subjects beyond her comprehension, I also didn't want her to know the ugly truth surrounding some of these kids’ networks. That these channels, ostensibly aimed at providing wholesome entertainment for young children, had audiences comprised of a remarkably high percentage of under-educated, under-employed, middle-aged men. The ads, an eclectic mishmash of products, promoted toys and candy for children, in between more mature commercials geared toward a wildly different demographic.

  John led us into a glass-enclosed conference room, a transparent bubble within a busy office. There were a half dozen executives already sitting around a large, black lacquer table, chatting amiably. They were all well-dressed and attractive, looking every bit the part of the successful corporate elite. A round of hellos and handshakes were exchanged, and we eased into our Monday morning meeting by floating tales of our weekends. Tennis matches, hikes in Ojai, box seats for an Angel game, and sailing trips to Catalina. The leisure activities of the well-to-do. I plugged my laptop's cable into the HDMI slot, waited for the small talk to subside, and hoped the pain in my back would ease up soon. When the eyes around the table began to settle on me, I invoked Blair's standard consultant posture, which was to tell the clients precisely what they wanted to hear, and gloss over the things they did not.

  "Folks, I have some very good news. Exceptional, in fact. Reaction to your concept was great. We did six focus groups, and virtually every woman loved the idea. Home run everywhere. Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas. The response was consistent. Their biggest question was simple. How soon could they get their hands on this product?"

  Smiling faces and knowing glances spread around the room. "I told you so," crowed Gretchen, a smiling, middle-aged woman with shiny, golden blonde hair that drifted down past her shoulders. Gretchen Heller was the general manager and the interim CEO of Garter, which was a fancy way of saying she was the one in charge. Their previous CEO, Glenn Keane, had been dethroned last year, as quarterly earnings missed the target Wall Street had established. They missed it by four cents a share.

  "You called it, Gretchen," said Victor, one of the young product managers, exhibiting not the least bit of shame in flattering the boss. "Got to give you all the credit. You fast-tracked this baby a few months ago."

  "Good team effort," she corrected him. "We need something. Our numbers have to get back up quick. The board wants to see earnings turn around by end of year."

  This reminded me of something, many decades ago, when I had registered for a finance course in college. On the first day of class, the professor harped repeatedly on his definition of money. There were three basic and unquestionable rules. More is better than less, sooner is better than later, and certain is better than uncertain. He told the class that if we recalled nothing more from him that semester, his job would be done. I took that as a sign, dropped the finance course, and enrolled in abnormal psychology.

  "So, tell us," Victor said, turning to me. "How much can we charge for DX-101?"

  "We can't really make that call with focus groups," I cautioned, thinking of the best way to lead them into the next paying project. "You need hard data now. Price testing has to be quantitative. Discrete choice modeling would be a good method. We can handle that. If you're interested."

  "Believe me, we're interested," Gretchen smiled, and a low level of chuckling could be heard around the table. "We also need a consumer-friendly name for it."

  "Of course," said a round, balding man named Jack, whose face had a natural sneer to it, as if he had shoved a pair of peppermint lifesavers on the inside of his upper lip, "we're going to need your full attention on our business. We're assuming you two guys aren't going to be distracted by doing polling for politicians in the near future."

  "What?!" Blair interrupted, displaying mock outrage but making sure to keep a smile pasted onto his face. "Come on Jack, it's not an election year. Besides, one thing I can say and I can guarantee this to be true, your business comes first. It always comes first. We love working with you guys. Garter takes precedence over everyone. Even the president. And I'm going to tell him that next time we speak."

  More laughter around the room. The president wasn't running for anything now, and in fact, the last time he even spoke to Blair was twenty years ago when he was still a fledgling mayor in Phoenix, and Blair was managing the primary campaign of a woman who was trying in vain to unseat him. The gist of the president's comment to Blair was to angrily admonish him to stop lying about his record, or he'd be scattering Blair's ashes across the Arizona desert.

  I led Garter's executive team through the remaining details of the focus groups, findings that should have come from our moderator, Haley Comey, who had conducted the groups last week. I omitted the gnarly details of our traipsing through airports choked with too many people, eating room-service sandwiches at midnight, and staying in supposedly smoke-free hotel rooms that still had the faint, lingering smell of stale cigarettes. I also didn't discuss Haley's flattering advances toward me, which of course, was my problem, not theirs. I regaled them with anecdotes about the women Haley interviewed, ones who described their marital relations in remarkably candid detail, single women who were intrigued by Garter's fast-acting supplement. The new product could supposedly arouse them in mere minutes, evoking smiles from a few seniors whose eyes glimmered at the thought of jump-starting their sex lives again. The team listene
d rapturously to our results, as if I were relating how their young child swished a game-winning basket in a YMCA league.

  "This is great stuff," said Luke, a sturdy-looking young man with the hint of a brown beard covering a square jaw. "But why isn't Haley here? You normally have the moderator present findings."

  Taking a breath, I considered how best to respond to this. I also noticed my back starting to hurt whenever I breathed hard, and I tried to put the pain out of my mind. I normally moderated the focus groups, but in this instance, when the subject was of a sexual nature and the participants were all female, there was no way a man could lead this intimate conversation. Haley was one of our employees; the operative word being was, because I needed to dismiss her upon our return to L.A. Her work had been good, but her advances, both coquettish and churlish, had reached a breaking point on the trip. I had warned her about her behavior, but the warnings went unheeded, as they often do with people who maintain agendas.

  After conferring with Blair when I returned to the office on Friday, I finally convinced him there was no other option. His argument for retaining her bordered on the personal. Blair and I were remarkably different in so many ways, but we managed to find common ground. Our company was the equalizer; we normally agreed to do what was best for the business. We had seemingly incongruous backgrounds, but they managed to come together to shore up the other's deficiencies. My South Carolina-low country sense of decency and morality, coupled with Blair's breezy L.A. sophistication. Our partnership had meshed, though at times it was jagged and uneven. We still moved in concert, but lately the dance had been strained. I was a little surprised at his resistance to dismissing Haley, but apparently there was more there than met the eye, mine being partially blind. That he had slept with her was a subject that went unspoken, but confirmed nevertheless.

  I had taken Haley aside on Friday and delivered the bad news, told her that her services would no longer be needed, her personal belongings to be gathered and taken with her immediately. She demanded to speak with Blair, a request that would not be fulfilled, as he had conveniently departed the office for an exceedingly long lunch. After the initial wave of shock wore off, she angrily responded that a lawsuit would quickly be filed, and she also took the opportunity to relay her fervent wish that both Blair and I would rot in hell. Needless to say, it was not the type of professional parting one hopes for.