man.”
Kleingarten squeezed a little common sense out of the mumbo jumbo. “Like that guy in the comic book who gets mad and turns into the Incredible Hulk, right? And then starts smashing shit.”
“Yes, but anger is just one of the possible impulses. Each subject will have a reaction unique to their personality, which is why I need to observe their behavior and verify my thesis. The doctor, she’s proud and ambitious and aggressive. Roland is an alcoholic, so he’s his own evil twin just waiting for permission to mess up, but he’s also our problem child who needs additional exposure. Anita Molkesky is insecure and craves attention. Wendy…”
Briggs glanced at the framed nude drawing on the wall, confirming Kleingarten’s suspicions.
So you got the hots for the Slant, huh, Doc? And you don’t want to say what her weakness is. But I got a pretty good guess. Yes, sir, indeed.
The drumming was louder now and Kleingarten squinted up at the high sheets of gray windows that girded the uppermost five feet of each side of the cavernous facility. The glass was so smoky and dirty that he couldn’t tell how much of the gray came from rain clouds.
Then the drumming increased and Kleingarten saw movement in one of the cameras. It was gone before he could focus, but his impression had been of a hunched, pale form, as if maybe the monkey cages held one of those albino chimps they showed on Animal Planet. “There he is!” Briggs said, rushing from his office.
Kleingarten looked at the monitors and saw Briggs appear in one of the screens, gracelessly jogging between two rows of corrugated metal storage containers, leaning and peering anytime he came to a crevice. Briggs was near the end of the aisle, beneath a baler chute that had metal packing straps dangling from its opening.
The pale blur exploded from the darkness, slamming into Briggs.
“Easy!” Briggs’s shout echoed through the cavernous structure as Kleingarten ran toward the commotion. He wasn’t on the clock at the moment, but he was curious.
Curious Fucking George, that’s me.
The pale form scuttled over the machinery and Kleingarten wondered if he should draw his firearm. Maybe the doc had been testing monkeys on the side. He seemed like the kind of guy who could never get enough data.
Briggs was shouting and cursing, searching through the maze of abandoned equipment. Kleingarten followed, glad the old building was relatively isolated, especially for the Research Triangle Park. If Briggs had let loose a crazy monkey, it might need a round or two from Kleingarten’s Glock, and he hadn’t packed a silencer.
One bullet, maybe charge them five thousand bucks. Sounded like a fair deal, especially if the monkey attacked Briggs again.
Kleingarten was out of breath by the time he caught up with Briggs, who was also panting. The doc stood with his hands on his knees, peering under a metal work table whose top was pitted and scarred. The form was huddled beneath it, mostly in shadows, and emitting a low murmur that bordered on a growl.
“Need help grabbing your monkey?” Kleingarten asked, trying to hide his exerted breath.
“Shh,” Briggs said. “Keep your voice calm.”
“You’re the one who was yelling,” Kleingarten observed.
Briggs took a hypodermic needle from his pocket, removed the cap, and squinted at the tip as he pushed the plunger. A dewdrop of fluid oozed from the tip. It looked like the same kind of rig Kleingarten had passed to the jock to stick in Alexis Morgan.
“This is a special part of the experiment,” Briggs said. “Can I trust you?”
“Sure.” Kleingarten didn’t deal with people who expected trust. People like that deserved being lied to. “Don’t the bosses know about this?”
“Of course,” Briggs said, leaning low and approaching the huddled form. “But they don’t know that they know.”
Kleingarten braced for the monkey to come bursting out of the cranny and slam into the doc again. He didn’t think much of a man who couldn’t control his monkeys, no matter how well he paid.
The doc knelt, talking in soothing tones. “Come on, David, it’s going to be all right.”
David. That wasn’t a good name for a monkey. You named your monkey George, or Roscoe, something silly like that. You didn’t give it a regular name because monkeys were too much like people and both of you might get the wrong idea.
But Briggs seemed to have some practice with this game. Maybe David the Monkey had escaped before and the doc knew just how to get the job done. When Briggs reached in with the syringe, the creature scuttled away to the far end of the table. Kleingarten went around it, figuring to scare the monkey back toward Briggs.
With a screech, the animal burst from the shadows, all claws and waving arms, a liquid hiss coming from those too-wide lips. The monkey was on Kleingarten before he could react, and though he’d trained in boxing and self-defense, he found himself falling backward onto the cold concrete.
Kleingarten managed to twist and avoid cracking his skull as moist, rancid breath spritzed his neck, and he wondered if Briggs’s monkey had rabies. Despite the small, wiry frame, the monkey was strong, and Kleingarten didn’t want those claws digging into his skin. He’d seen monkeys in the zoo throwing shit, which meant those nails were nasty.
He spun and flexed, jabbing his thumbs toward the creature’s eyes, but stopped when he realized they weren’t primate eyes.
A man. Sweet Mary in a manger, it’s a man.
The naked man clambered away, passing up the chance to rip at Kleingarten’s skin.
“Get him,” Briggs yelled, rushing around the table.
Kleingarten blinked alert and grabbed at the man’s leg, encircling one thin ankle. He tugged and the man fell flat, his bony chest slapping against the floor. The man immediately curled into a fetal position, quivering beneath Kleingarten’s grip.
“Easy, David,” Briggs said, moving in and sliding the needle into the man’s arm. “You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
Nobody besides whoever did this to him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Wallace Forsyth took a sip of Glenlivet single-malt scotch. He liked to think of it as his solitary moral weakness. But a forgivable one. After all, Jesus drank wine and gave it to others.
It was a ritual in which he often indulged while visiting Senator Burchfield. However, the senator was a teetotaler and had none of the common failings of the flesh. No, Burchfield’s addiction was power and influence, and even though he’d achieved success in the business world, he cared little for money. All money did was help him control those who didn’t share his views, a means to an end.
But as a rising star on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Health, Education, Labor amp; Pensions Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, Burchfield was uniquely situated to change people’s minds.
Many of them.
Burchfield’s library was elegant, with polished maple shelves, marble busts of Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson, and a dark leather sofa that sucked Forsyth into its depths. A fire crackled cheerily in the fireplace, though the room’s air was carefully controlled to protect the vast collection of books.
Burchfield was proudly pointing out some of his prized editions, such as an early printing of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and a copy of Lyndon B. Johnson’s biography signed by the late president.
“Top of your head, Wallace, who was the most intellectual of our nineteenth-century presidents?” Burchfield said.
Wallace went for the easy pick, mostly because he could only name half of those presidents. “Lincoln.”
Burchfield pulled a hard plastic sleeve from the shelves and held it aloft. The clear sleeve contained a ragged, salmon-colored paper. “Wrong. Millard Fillmore. He had a personal collection of more than five thousand volumes, and he established the White House library. He presided over the slavery compromise of 1850, which was the last time a senator drew a pistol on the Senate floor.”
