Chapter #24Chapter Three: A Hospital of Horrors by: Seuzz   Chapter Three
A Hospital of Horrors
"He don't say nothin' 'bout this?" Mike waved his hand in front of his own face and cocked his head at the retreating back of Dr. Gleckman.
"As a matter of fact, Dr. Gleckman performed the surgery himself," replied Dr. Dubois with a smile that had nothing to do with her eyes. "It was his own idea to give all our senior associates a standardized look, to demonstrate the subtlety, precision, and craft inherent in his procedures."
"So who had the face first," Mike asked. He clicked his tongue and hooked a thumb at the man standing next to him. "'Cos this guy here's the fourth goombah—excuse me, senior associate—I seen walking around with the same face as your Dr. Gleckman."
"Dr. Gleckman has his original face," she replied. "I suggested he model our associates' look after his own."
"How come?"
"As a kind of advertisement that would firmly associate the Luxe Clinic and its revolutionary techniques with himself."
"Yeah, well," Mike said in a much lower voice. "If that option gets picked up, you're gonna hafta put a stop to all that advertisin'. You get me, doc?"
Her smile widened by a fraction of a millimeter. "Of course."
"Good. Now this thing here." He gestured at the tank and at the gauzy, palm-sized flap of skin wafting in the currents of a transparent liquid. "Is that a little bit of Gleckman too? Because it don't look too human."
"It's a foundation layer used to bind the patient's own fine structures to the subcutaneous implants—"
"Whoa whoa whoa," Mike said, holding out his hands. "Words of less than twenty syllables, please. Is that thing a face?"
"It's part of one," she said in a pained voice. "Perhaps you'd be more interested in the software."
"Yeah I think so." He looked around; it was a very large room filled with lots of tanks which had lots of pale and ochre and bloody red bits floating in them. "Some of this stuff is giving me a queasy tummy. And I used to work in a hot dog factory. Inna summer." He slapped the male attendant playfully in the chest and gave him a meaningful glance. "You know nine outta ten guys what work in meat packing are vegan?"
"You're full of shit," the very pretty male attendant replied. "I used to work for the Bonanno family, you know."
Mike blinked. "Face work?"
"I carved a few guys up, but it wasn't their faces. Unless my shovel slipped."
"And this," said Dr. Dubois in a loud voice as she led them up to a monitor, "is a station where our clientele can custom-design their own faces. Naturally," she added, "we don't show them in here—" She gestured at the room and its gruesome contents. "But we can call up the same data and routines. Suppose, Mr. Ralston—"
"Mike. Please."
"Suppose, uh, Mike, that you wanted a new face."
"And why would I want that?" he laughed. "Any guy who wants a new face should have his head examined."
There was a fractional pause filled with the sound of humming electricity.
"Suppose you wanted a new face," Dubois repeated. "First, what racial classification? Caucasian, Asian, African—"
"You can make me out like I'm from China?"
"Certainly. Or Kenya."
Mike gave a low whistle. "Well, let's keep it simple. Italian."
"Uh huh." She punched some keys and tapped the screen. A bland and generic face appeared. "Eyes bigger or smaller?"
"Bigger. Bigger. Yeah, like that. A little closer together? Whoa."
"Nose longer or shorter?"
They continued like this, with Mike growing happier and more excited, and Dubois quieter and colder. When Mike pronounced himself satisfied with the design she regarded it stoically. "Well, we can't say you don't know your own face," she observed. The face he had designed was a dead match for the one he already had.
"Yeah, I know. I like how it is now. What can I say?" He shrugged. "We've grown close over the years."
"The point is, we could make almost anyone look like you."
"You know, that would be a neat trick," he mused. "Kidnap 'em, cut 'em to look like me, then charge 'em an arm and a leg to change back."
"In the next room," she said, and her heels clicked on the floor like ice cubes knocking against the sides of a cold glass, "I can show you the instruments we use to make 3D composite images of the patients' faces ..."
The tour continued in this way for several hours. At its conclusion, Dubois and Mike stood on a balcony overlooking a line of downs that fell away toward the ocean.
"So what do you think, Mr. Ralston?"
His expression, which had been blank and noncommittal, grew amused. "I dunno why you're askin' me again. I already got you your money from Jerry."
"I value your input, and not just because Mr. Bonderberg insisted I consult with you. With the financing you arranged, we're supposed to pull off a job like we described in our prospectus."
"Oh, you're asking what I think about your business proposal." He shook his head. "It's the goddamn screwiest thing I ever read."
"But you still recommended us."
"Sure. I can use the stuff you showed me. What you're planning to do with it ... Eh, that's a little sketchier."
"You don't believe we can pull off those kinds of substitutions?"
"People can be blind, doctor, but I also seen 'em pick up the strangest vibes. They can look at two identical fakes. Be totally fooled by one, but see through the other one—" He clapped his hands together. "Like your boss and his, uh, senior associates. Exactly alike, but the fake will never know what could trip him up."
"So you're not impressed by our idea for using the children as entry points."
He chewed his cheek in a way that looked like a lopsided grin. "You see, there's where my intuition breaks down. That's either a screwball too far ... or that's where you hit it outta the park. I ain't made up my mind on that. I won't know until you try."
She winced. "I was hoping for advice that was more solid. We have a long list of prospects and have started recruiting agents. This is the point where you could make a big difference."
He thought for a very long time, watching the distant, silent waves and the rustle of grass and leaves. Eventually something seemed to click for him. "Yeah, I can tell you where to steer." He took out a business card. "How come you picked Bayport?" he asked as he wrote on its back.
"It's the new East Hampton."
"Oh, you read that article too. Yeah, I pulled a job out here not long ago. Had to cut it short before we reeled in our catch." He handed her the card. "You know them?"
She read what he'd written and nodded. "Local celebrities, yes." She looked at him over the top of her glasses. "They're why you had to cut that job short?"
"A contributing factor." He pointed to the card. "They're the reason Bayport ain't where you should make your play." To her querying look he explained why, then added, "But if it's gotta be here, you gotta find some way to handle them. And if you really want to impress me and Bonderberg and the bigger boys behind us, find a way of doing it using your sausage makers in there."
* * * * *
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