Chapter 35
43.
 Lee Collwood IV, CEO of Anaconda Chemicals, sat in his car on lower Broadway in downtown San Diego. In the passenger seat was his subordinate and local San Diego CEO, Henry Morton. They sat in the shade of the Koll Center, a spacious 20-story marble and glass office building two blocks east of the sparkling harbor water.
Collwood was on the phone, for the 15th time hearing a dumb voice message on the answering service of Lima Voyager's Captain Gus Tidjeman.
"Any luck?" Morton asked.
"No." Collwood slipped the phone into his inside jacket pocket near the side-holster of his 9mm Glock. "No, I think he may have skipped town." Collwood had considered taking Morton into full confidence. Telling Morton everything opened up new risks, but Morton was in fairly dire straits financially. He had a gambling habit he thought Collwood didn't know about. Collwood's detectives, hired through Syd Appelbaum the lawyer in Los Angeles, knew most of his corporate officers' terrible secrets. The time didn't seem quite ripe yet, but in another sense, time was running out. It wouldn't be long before this disaster spread, and the fingerprints of Anaconda Chemicals were all over Lima Voyager. The other option was to talk to the Coast Guard or the Harbor Police and come clean. After all, the fungal samples he'd had his agents smuggle out of Peru included the one responsible for the disaster that was about to unfold.
Suddenly, Collwood had a bright idea. Perhaps all his troubles might be over soon anyway. What if he developed a counter-toxin to the nightmare that was already spreading throughout San Diego? Somehow, he would figure out how to sidestep the bad publicity if more people died. That was what Syd Applebaum's legal team and the publicity team in Los Angeles got paid for. Ultimately, though, it was up to the man at the helm—himself—to figure out the broad strategic course. It would not be a defensive course. The best defense was offense, and already Lee Collwood was about to orchestrate a new campaign to rescue himself from the failing Offensor campaign.
"Tell you what," he told Morton, "let's drive by Captain Tidjeman's house one more time. I'll drop you off at your office."
"Oh God yes, I am days behind in my work."
They talked a little bit about work on the way to University City, where Tidjeman owned a sprawling two-story house with a pool overlooking a leafy canyon. Morton's San Diego branch of Anaconda Chemicals had been feeling the pinch of the home company's cash shortage for two years now. Sales were stagnating, and there had been two layoffs terminating 20% of the work force. Investors had downgraded Anaconda's stock and bond offerings twice already, with the result that a riskier kind of investor was gobbling up larger chunks of common stock in an ominous takeover mood. Morton was eager to get the new mycology research and development project that Collwood had promised him in glowing lengths, and now it must be starting to be clear to Morton that something was morbidly wrong with Anaconda. Keeping him and six other CEOs around the country at a subsidiary level allowed Collwood to cook the books creatively and hide it from his CEOs. It was just a question of how long, unless Collwood became even more creative. One thing Collwood's intelligence operatives had informed him of: Morton had his resume making the rounds on the East Coast under a John Smith cover name. Of course CEOs did that a lot, but it tipped Collwood off to be careful to trust Morton.
They drove I-5 north, east on State 52, and north on I-805, then exited at Governor Drive. Near Genesee, they drove down into a middle-class neighborhood, then into a cul-de-sac overlooking a canyon of eucalyptus trees and palms. It was the third time that day, and at least the tenth time in the last several days, that Collwood had made this drive—with or without Henry Morton at his side. He didn't want Morton tor realize how desperate he really was.
"My God," Morton said. "Look. There is a light on at the front porch. And the door is slightly ajar."
"There is his car," Collwood said. "He must have just rolled in from wherever he's been." He reached under his jacket to take the safety off the Glock. At the same time, he braked to a rocking stop directly behind Tidjeman's car, blocking it.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Morton said as they got out. "This is like Hawaii Five-Oh."
Instinctively, Collwood looked around so see if they were being watched, but they were surrounded by dense, tall ficus and willow trees blocking the view of nosy neighbors. The house, sporting two large pillars on a three-stepped portico, faced the sprawling canyon from the left. The only neighbors were one house behind, on the left, and one across the street beyond an ancient, giant ficus whose yard-thick trunk had broken up the sidewalk all around.
They walked up to the door. Morton knocked and stood waiting. Collwood stood just behind him and to his right. Collwood sensed that Morton was hungry to get his pharmaceuticals R&D going, and was even more eager than Collwood to confront Tidjeman.
"What is it?" said a booming voice with a slightly flat affect.
Collwood sensed movement behind the slightly open door. Maybe it was a shadow moving on the wall, or the wind blowing a leaf somewhere.
"Captain Tidjeman, I'm Henry Morton, CEO of Anaconda Chemicals. Mr. Collwood and I wish to speak with you about our missing shipment."
"Oh yes," said Tidjeman. He was a tall Dutchman with pale blue eyes (now looking strangely like smoky glass) and very white skin. He must have been blond in his younger years, but now his bulbous head featured a ring of closely shorn gray stubble around a waxy bald spot. He wore nice summer clothing, and smelled somewhat like loam as he opened the door with a pasty-skinned hand. "I'll let you in," he said.
In that moment, seeing the man's oddly dilated black pupils, Collwood had a sense that he was up to no good. As Collwood reached into his jacket for the gun, Tidjeman formed his mouth into an 'o' and blew some dark air in Morton's face.
At that, the Glock was in motion.
Morton dropped like a sack, and Tidjeman caught him with both hands to prevent Morton's head from smashing on the concrete. Tidjeman was in a forward-bending, slightly squatting posture looking up into the muzzle of Collwood's Glock.
"The shipment," Collwood said.
Tidjeman blinked thoughtfully.
"Don't think about shooting that crap at me or I'll empty this gun into you before you can blow."
Tidjeman, still with that thoughtful look on his face, took Morton in a head-hanging, under the shoulders grip and dragged the limp man into the dark hallway.
Collwood took a step closer and blocked the door with a foot against its bottom edge. "Don't get cute with me, Tidjeman. I don't care how much dope you smuggled or whatever atomic bombs you brought in to blow the whole country up. I don't give a shit. All I want is my fungus."
"I am the fungus," Tidjeman said in that flat voice.
"What?"
"Maybe we can do business," Tidjeman said. "You need raw pharmacopia, and I need hydroponics space in you laboratories out in Brawley so I can develop my own little project."
"I've already done my business and paid cash," Collwood said. "That's why I carry insurance." He waggled the gun. "I'm used to dealing with people who try to take my money and run. Don't screw around with me. I warn you."
"You need me," Tidjeman said, laying Morton's body against the wall for later action. He straightened up and dusted his hands. Collwood noticed that fine clouds of skin cells fell of his hands as he slapped them against each other. "You won't hurt me. You'd be crazy to."
For a second, Collwood felt himself wavering. What to do? If anything happened to Tidjeman, who else could he turn to?
In the next second, Tidjeman started forward while making that 'o' mouth to blow spores in Collwood's face.
Collwood was faster. The gun barked one, two, three times.
A mix of dry gray stuffing and wet black slime hit the wall behind Tidjeman. What was left of Tidjeman dropped to the floor with the sound of a department store dummy dropping. He even bounced, stiffly a few times. His head rolled like a big ball of papier mache down the hallway and came to rest against a sliding glass door overlooking a concrete patio with red steel railings overlooking a canyon.
As Collwood stood thinking about what to do next, the headless body stirred. It rolled over onto one elbow. The other hand went flat on the floor. Pulling up one knee, then the other, and pushing with both hands, the headless body rose into tottering standing position. Collwood recoiled, stepping back. He glimpsed the inside of the creature's neck—a mass of gray pulp, with vestigial streaks of human bone and nerve endings amid rusty-red streaks of blood and other human body fluids. Several tough but resilient black tubes hung inches out of the severed neck. Each of the tubes was about the thickness of a pencil, round, and shiny gray-black like wet eel hide. The tubes seemed to probe about for their missing ends.
With the head gone, and therefore the stabilizing mechanisms of the inner ear, the body lurched toward Collwood. Its arms stiffly rose as if to embrace him. He stepped back, glancing to his right at the distant head. Its eyes were open and its mouth was round. Maybe it was sending messages to its body, so Collwood thought, for small gouts of black air came out of the flattened bronchial openings in the bare neck. Collwood unloaded two more rounds into the head. He aimed dead at the 'o' shaped mouth. The bullets trashed the lower face so that shattered teeth pebbled the jelly mass now exposed and slowly dripping. The rounds left huge spider web cracks spreading in the plate glass behind the head.
Collwood kicked the torso away from him, so that it sprawled over Morton's inert form. He unloaded the rest of this rounds into the torso. He went into the high-tech kitchen and pulled drawers out, leaving cascades of silverware to sail and dance in rows and curves on the dark blue concrete floor. He found the inevitable junk drawer and took out a roll of sturdy twine. He pulled a ceramic knife from a fancy Japanese cutlery block. With knife and twine in hand, he went back through the living room to the front hall.
The torso had risen again, and stood groping its way erect along the wall. Collwood judo-swept it by the feet. It smacked down on its side. Collwood cut a length of twine to tie its ankles together. It tried to lean forward and unleash a feeble gout of black air at him. He rose and kicked it in the chest so it stretched out with the neck pointing away from him. He tied its hands together behind its back, and threw a little rug over the neck so it would stop shooting spores at him. He tied the rug down, looping twine under the armpits and up around the back. He went into the kitchen, and found a fancy black and white plastic shopping bag from some upscale fashion shop in University Towne Center Mall. He went through the back area and kicked the head into the shopping bag with one foot. Returning to the front door, he dragged the still feebly struggling body outside. Making sure as best he could that nobody was watching, he threw the shopping bag and body into the trunk of his car. The body and head weren't as heavy as a fully functioning human's, there being less liquid than in a human body.
What to do with Morton? Leaving him here would make one more loose end enabling the authorities to track their mystery to Collwood's doorstep all the sooner. He dragged the unconscious Collwood by the ankles, and effortfully lifted him into the trunk. He slammed the lid down.
He stopped to get gas, and stocked up on cold sodas and sandwiches. It would be at least a four hour drive to Brawley. At least now he had some material to work with.
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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