Dr. Quake Read online

  Dr. Quake

  The Destroyer #5

  Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

  For Patricia Sapir

  and the kid with the funny name.

  Foreword

  EVERY MAN OWES GOD A LIFE.California owes him a disaster, payable about twice a century.

  For those people not hurled hundreds of feet in shifting earth; for those not buried alive in their homes along with the fear-triggered refuse of their bodies; for those not deposited deeper than any gravedigger’s plan, these disasters are considered a simple geological adjustment. A releasing of pressure.

  They are the result of an earth wound called the San Andreas fault, one of the many faults in California which make it a geological time bomb with a multitude of fuses. All of them burning.

  The San Andreas fault runs six hundred miles from Baja California in the South to Mendocino in the North. It is created by the Pacific Plate on the earth’s surface going northwest and the North American Continental Plate going southeast at a speed of several inches of year. The seam between those two plates runs the length of California, and when the two plates bump… earthquake.

  In one small area, east of Los Angeles, in San Aquino County, the plates lock together every so often, building up pressure. When they unlock, about twice every hundred years, nature pays its bi-centennial dues as the plates unleash their tension. For human beings within a few hundred miles, as the earth along the fault lurches, the universe appears to be ending.

  For some of them it does.

  Many geologists believe the next unspringing of the lock will make any nuclear weapons so far devised look like spears and stones. California is due for a bloodletting unrivaled in recorded history, so say these geologists. It will be in five minutes or in thirty years, but it will be. The earth only waits… with the human sacrifices enjoying the California sun until their moment in the pit… a moment in time known only to God.

  It was therefore considered unbelievable when official Washington was approached by a man with a plan to harness this terror. And later, it was considered unthinkable that anyone would purposely trigger this disaster.

  Unthinkable, until a government geologist in Washington, D.C. heard a detailed account of something he could not believe.

  “But that’s impossible,” he said. “That’s as impossible as… impossible as… ”

  “Impossible as throwing people into ovens,” said the harried visitor from San Aquino County, California.

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE. But it was happening right on time.

  Birds took flight. Rabbits scurried crazily across the vine-covered fields. Three squirrels scrambled up the dirt road, ignoring cover. Trees swayed, showering leaves like green confetti. Thin red dust rose from the San Aquino countryside as if someone were dynamiting the bowels of California.

  Four leading citizens of San Aquino and the county sheriff looked at their watches and groaned, almost in unison. They stood beside a well-polished Lincoln limousine at the entrance of the Gromucci farm where Sheriff Wade Wyatt assured them they could probably see best what would happen, while not being seen looking for it.

  “We don’t want to let ’em know we’re scared, you know,” he had told them.

  So now the sun was hot, the dust-clogged air made breathing difficult and it had happened.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Harris Feinstein, owner of Feinstein’s Department Store. “I see it, but I don’t believe it. Does your watch read 3:55 P.M., Les?”

  “Yes,” said Lester Curpwell IV, president of the First Aquino Trust and Development Company. “Three fifty five. Right on time to the second.” Curpwell was in his mid-fifties, taller than Feinstein by an inch and a half, his face strong and smooth, able to show concern but not worry, a face that planned but never schemed. He wore a dark pinstriped suit with white shirt and Princeton tie.

  Feinstein was more Hollywood, deeply tanned, his face evidencing meditation and tenderness. He wore a blue blazer and white slacks. Curpwell’s shoes were polished black cordovan, Feinstein’s soft Italian leather.

  “They can do it then,” said Feinstein. “Well, we know they can do this much at least,” said Curpwell.

  “If they can do this, they can do more,” said Feinstein.

  “That’s right,” butted in Sheriff Wade Wyatt. “They said they can do anything. Make any kind of earthquake they want. A little ripple like this. Or boom. The whole works.” He waved with his hands, indicating a massive explosion.

  “I just don’t want to believe it,” Feinstein said. “It looks like a barrage, like after a barrage,” said Dourn Rucker, president of Rucker Manufacturing Company. “You know, the dust and everything. Like after a barrage.”

  “All right. There are good points. We should think about the positive points,” said Sonny Boydenhousen, president of Boydenhousen Realty and president of the San Aquino Chamber of Commerce. He was, like Rucker, over six feet tall. Both had pleasant bland faces and bellies going slightly potward. When they wore identical clothes, some people mistook them for twins. Today, they wore gray suits with pink shirts.

  “There may be good points,” he insisted. “Look, they’ve showed us they can make an earthquake. But they say they can prevent them. Now if they can, that’s great. It’ll do wonders for real estate values here. Do you think they’re reliable, Wade?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sheriff Wyatt. “All I know’s that they did what they said they was going to.”

  Wyatt was a red-faced balloon of a man with a neat Stetson and a diamond and ruby chip American flag pin in his collar. He wore a .44 with five notches in the grip. He had put the five notches in himself with his own hand, carving very carefully. He said they represented five men. What they represented was a cut finger.

  “Eight thousand dollars a month is not a bad price. I say eight thousand dollars a month is reasonable,” said Boydenhousen.

  “Like after a barrage,” said Rucker, still gazing at the dusty field. “Like after a barrage.”

  “Impossible,” said Feinstein.

  “Two thousand dollars too much for you?” asked Wyatt, a hint of contempt in his voice. He avoided Curpwell’s angry glare. He did not want another lecture on anti-semitism.

  “It’s not the money. I’d give ten times that for education. I’ve given more than fifty times that to the hospital. But this is blackmail money. Extortion money. Do you believe that? Do you know what country this is, Wade?”

  “Amurrica, Mr. Feinstein, in God blessed America.” His chest rose when he said that and he hoisted up his gun belt lest the sudden loss of belly let it slip to the ground. He had always had trouble with Feinstein, whose bleeding heart seemed always to bleed for the troublemakers, the riffraff, the loafers. Not for businessmen or sheriffs or the good people who made San Aquino one of the nicest little counties in the world.

  They had been told they could keep it that way, too, if everyone kept his head and was reasonable.

  After all, it was a very reasonable proposition. Sheriff Wyatt had been contacted by people over the telephone. They told him they could make earthquakes. As he related it, Sheriff Wyatt had told them to go to hell.

  They told him there would be an earthquake the next day at noon. And there was. The smallest possible. Just a tremor. Then they called again. This time, they said, they would give San Aquino another little gift. This time, a number two on the Mercalli intensity scale which measures earthquakes. Birds and small animals would be affected by it and you could feel it in your feet if you stood in an open field. It would happen at 3:55 P.M.

  They told Wyatt that they could also deliver the kind of earthquake that buried cities and made civilizations disappear. But they weren’t unreasonable. They cou
ld also guarantee no earthquakes. And all it would cost was $8,000 a month—$2,000 each from the county’s four leading citizens. All very reasonable.

  It was just after 3:55 P.M. and they had proved they could do it. But some people were unreasonable.

  “Blackmail,” Feinstein said again. “You’re right, Wade. This is America, and Americans don’t pay blackmail.”

  “I understand how you feel, Harris,” Curpwell interrupted. “So do Sonny and Dourn. And I think, if you simplified it a bit, so would the sheriff. But on the other hand, you could think of it not as blackmail, but as insurance. What do you think the people of San Francisco would have paid not to have had 1906?” He did not give Feinstein a chance to answer. “At any rate, think about it. And we’ll all meet tonight in my office at 8 o’clock. Then we’ll decide.”

  They drove back to town, mostly in silence, ignoring Wyatt’s attempts at conversation as he drove the black limousine.

  Feinstein was the last to arrive that night at the private office of Lester Curpwell. The faces all turned to him as he entered the rich paneled office and locked the door behind him.

  He took an envelope from his back pocket, dropped it on the table. It contained $2,000 in fives, tens and twenties, none of them new.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Two thousand. My one and only contribution to this extortion racket. We can buy a month. I’m going to Washington tonight to tell the government.”

  “Do you remember we were warned?” Rucker said. “If we talk, there’ll be an earthquake. A giant one. Everyone in San Aquino may die.”

  “I don’t think so,” Feinstein said. “They’ll have their eight thousand. And no one has to know that I’ve gone to Washington.”

  “You don’t think so?” said Boydenhousen loudly. “You don’t think so? Well, I can’t live by what you think.

  “Look,” he said. “We opened up this community to you Feinsteins, way back in the 1920’s when a lot of towns just weren’t too all-fired happy to have your kind. We welcomed you. And I’m not saying you didn’t like build the hospital and everything, but I am saying, you’re a part of this community, dammit, and you don’t have any right to endanger us. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “And I’m saying, Sonny Boydenhousen, that we weren’t all that welcome, but we made some good friends, of which there was never a Boydenhousen, which also is no great loss. What I’m saying is I’m part of a larger community and that’s every poor town in this state. Every town that may someday be digging its babies out of piles of rock because they can’t afford to pay. That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “And I’m thinking,” yelled Sonny Boydenhousen, “how fucking grateful I am that we can feel safe and not have to worry about that. How grateful that my kids are safe from that. You want to kill my kids, Harris? Is that it?”

  Harris Feinstein lowered his gaze to the corporate table, a glistening, polished oak masterpiece, handed down from Curpwell to Curpwell, through generations of San Aquino patricians. The Curpwells were good people. He knew their family well. So did his father.

  That was one of the grievously hard things about this decision. He wavered for a minute, looking at the faces of the men around him. Friend, enemy, he did not want to endanger one life. They were part of his life, all of them. They meant, really meant, more to him than someone living in Los Angeles or San Francisco or any of the other California communities that might be the next to be blackmailed for earthquake insurance.

  Really, Harris, he told himself, aren’t you being a bit prideful? Remember how you and Sonny were keychain guards on the 1938 San Aquino football team, the year you beat Los Angeles Gothic. And how when you were labelled the dirtiest football player in the state, the whole team celebrated by stealing a keg of beer and getting drunk? And Wyatt. Wyatt never made the football team, saying he had to hunt to keep food on the family table. But everyone knew the reason Wade Wyatt went hunting in the fall was because he didn’t want to be accused of chickening out on football. Wade’s father always put food on the table, but Wade had seen a movie in which the young frontiersman didn’t go to school because he had to hunt for the family’s supper.

  And Dourn, loverboy Dourn. Dourn who got Pearl Fansworth pregnant in the junior year of high school and how Pearl had to go away. And how Dourn got Sonny’s sister pregnant in his senior year and how he had to marry her.

  And of course, Les Curpwell. A beautiful human being.

  Harris Feinstein lowered his eyes to the table again and wondered why everything wasn’t as clear as when he was in school or studying the Talmud with his father. Then, things were clear. Now, nothing was clear but that he felt very unintelligent and longed for someone to tell him what was right and good and which way to go. But that could not be. God had given him a mind. And meant for him to use it. So Harris Feinstein looked at his friends, and at the jeweled flag pin on Sheriff Wade Wyatt’s collar, and he said, very sadly and very slowly:

  “I must do what I must do and it is not an easy thing. And I am only sorry that you are not doing this thing with me.”

  His envelope sat on the table. Sonny Boydenhousen took a similar envelope from his attache case and put it on the table. Curpwell added another and so did Dourn Rucker.

  Sheriff Wyatt gathered the envelopes together and pushed them into a small plastic garbage bag. The four other men watched silently as he closed the bag with a red covered wire tie. He made a small bow of it.

  “Leakproof,” he said. No one smiled. Harris Feinstein avoided the other men’s eyes.

  “Well, goodbye,” he said.

  “You going to Washington?” asked Dourn Rucker.

  “Tonight,” said Harris Feinstein.

  “Oh,” said Sonny Boydenhousen. “Look. Those things I said about your family being welcomed here in San Aquino, like we were doing you a favor… well, you know what I mean.”

  “I know,” said Feinstein.

  “I guess you’re going to do it,” said Curpwell.

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I could say I thought you’re doing the right thing,” said Boydenhousen. “And I wish I could say I would want to do it with you. But I think you’re doing a very wrong thing.”

  “Maybe, but …” Harris Feinstein did not finish his sentence. When he had shut the large brass-studded door to the most hallowed sanctum of power in San Aquino, the Curpwell office, Sheriff Wyatt made a suggestion.

  He did so fingering the notches on his gun.

  Les Curpwell didn’t bother to answer and Dourn Rucker told Sheriff Wyatt that Feinstein would probably pound him into dentifrice anyway, so Wyatt might as well put away the gun.

  Curpwell noted that Feinstein might be right. So did Rucker. So did Boydenhousen. But they all agreed that they all had families, and hell, weren’t they all really doing enough—paying for everyone who lived in the town and county of San Aquino?

  “I mean we’re acting like damned philanthropists. Two thousand dollars from each of us, every goddamned month. We didn’t ask anyone else to chip in, not even the sheriff because he doesn’t have the money,” said Rucker. “So shit, nobody’s got any right to point a finger at us. Nobody.”

  “All I know,” said Boydenhousen, “is that we’ve got a chance to be quake-proof. Now going to Washington may louse it up. And that’s just not right. We should just pay up and keep quiet.”

  “Gentlemen, you are right and Harris is wrong,” said Les Curpwell. “Only I’m just not sure how much righter we are.”

  Then Sheriff Wyatt announced a plan.

  “Look, I get my instructions on delivery in the morning. Suppose I go to the place, wherever it is, and hide. You know, camouflage, like the Ranger training I picked up in National Guard summer camp. Then, when whoever it is comes for the money, I follow. All right. When I get ’em all, using my Ranger techniques, bam! I let them have it. Let loose with a Carbine. Bam. Hand grenades. Whoosh! Bam! Whoosh! Kill or be killed. I give you the word of a captain in the National Guard of the State of Cali
fornia.”

  The voting of the three leaders of San Aquino was unanimous.

  “Just leave the money where they tell you.”

  · · ·

  Les Curpwell sat in his office a long time after all the others had left. Then he walked to his desk and telephoned a close friend who was an aide to the President.

  “If what you say is true, Les, they have the power to gut the whole state of California.”

  “I think it’s true,” Curpwell said.

  “Wow. All I can say is Wow. I’m going right to the top with this. I can get to see the President immediately on this one.”

  The aide was shocked by the President’s reaction. He had delivered the report thoroughly and professionally, the way Les Curpwell had given it to him.

  Lester Curpwell IV, former OSS agent, thoroughly-reliable Lester Curpwell. The time. The threats. The earthquake. No guesses. Hard information.

  But when the aide was through, the President said:

  “Okay. Forget about it. Tell no one.”

  “But, sir. Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you.”

  “But this is something for the FBI. I can give them all the details.”

  “You will give nothing to anyone. You will be absolutely quiet about this. Absolutely. That is all. Good evening.”

  The aide rose to leave but the President halted him.

  “Leave your notes here, please. And don’t worry. We’re not defenseless.”

  “Yes sir,” said the aide, placing his notes on the President’s desk.

  When the aide had gone, the President threw the notes into an electric wastebasket by his desk, the basket that assured that no information would leave with the garbage. It ground up the notes with a whir.

  Then the President left his office and went to his bedroom. From the top bureau drawer, he removed a red telephone and lifted the receiver.

  Before one ring completed itself, the call was answered.

  “We’re on it,” came the voice.

  “The California thing?”