CHAPTER 6
A pounding, driving headache pulled Burton Ramsey from the depths of slumber. He came reluctantly awake and ran a dry tongue over gritty teeth. As he smacked his lips, he thought, Jesus, my mouth tastes like something crawled in it and died. He brought his arm up before his face and squinted, trying to read the dial of his Timex. Wednesday, 9:45 a.m.
He placed his fingertips to his temple and rubbed, trying to ease the knife-like pain in his skull, and rolled over, falling heavily to the floor off the sofa in his living room. Confused, he wondered briefly what he was doing fully dressed and sleeping on his sofa instead of in his bed in the next room.
Memory came slowly, in bits and pieces. Tuesday night he had gone to Bennigan’s restaurant on the Southwest Freeway for supper. After eating a chili burger and fries, he had retired to the bar. A group of secretaries, taking advantage of the happy hour special—two-for-one drinks—had invited him to join them. Once he’d concluded that none of them had much more than a high school education, he joined them and drank until well past midnight, bored by hours of meaningless conversation. He despised yuppie, professional women, believing them to be uppity, ball-busting harridans.
Being drunk, but not stupid, he had driven very carefully to his apartment, navigating the evening Houston traffic with as much care as his besotted brain would allow. One more DWI and his license would be history.
He shook his head, figuring his sofa was as far as he’d been able to make it before he passed out with all of his clothes still on.
With trembling hands, he put a K-Cup of French Roast Bold coffee into his Keurig coffee machine, thanking God he’d splurged and bought the damn thing, ’cause he knew in his present state he’d never have been able to make a drinkable brew in his old Mr. Coffee machine. He prayed caffeine would clear his mind and stop the damn pounding in his head.
When the contraption finally hissed and spurted, signaling it was finished filling his cup, he picked up his coffee and downed a handful of Excedrin with his first swallow, hoping they would stay down until the coffee dissolved them.
Three K-Cups later, he thought he might survive his night of frivolity. He threw off all of his clothes into a pile and stumbled into his bathroom to take a shower and brush the vile tastes out of his mouth, feeling almost, but not quite, human again.
It was almost noon on Wednesday before Ramsey pulled into his parking space in the lot behind the Institute. He was hungover and in a foul mood, which was his usual demeanor until his first drink in the afternoon.
He had no more than turned off his ignition key, when one glance at the white sign that designated the space as his parking slot sent him off into a fusillade of cursing. The sign said simply, DR. BURTON RAMSEY. But the sight of it caused him to cry out loud, “That dumb son of a bitch! How many times do I have to tell the cretinous bastard that I am a Ph.D. and not some M-fucking-D doctor! I’m a scientist, not some overpaid prescription peddler!” He was referring to the assistant director who was in charge of housekeeping.
On several occasions, Burton Ramsey had made it quite clear to the man that he wanted any written material that was either directed to him or about him to bear the legend, BURTON RAMSEY, PH.D., and he was not under any circumstances to be referred to either vocally or in writing as “Doctor” or “Dr.”
The assistant director had promised him faithfully that he would have the sign changed. But he had been promising that for the better than four years Ramsey had been at BioTech. Ramsey would have torn the sign down long ago, but it was set in concrete. Besides, he intended on seeing the little worm of an administrator do it himself.
It was well known to anyone who knew Burton Ramsey that he did not like MDs, and that included that part of his estranged wife from whom he was technically separated. He would never tell anyone why he felt that way or how he proposed to support the hypothesis that MDs were a hindrance rather than a help to medicine. His standard answer to any such question was, “It’s none of your business. Understand?”
Most people seldom bothered to ask, and those who actually knew him hoped the subject never came up in their presence.
He got out of the car and slammed the door. It was late May, and the air was warm and muggy, typical spring weather in Houston. Ramsey liked to say that Houston had only two seasons: summer and almost summer. Today, Ramsey had on a light-colored linen sports coat that was rumpled and slightly stained. His dark slacks were neat and pressed, because the last time he’d visited his wife she’d done his laundry for him, insisting on ironing his pants and several of his dress shirts.
Today he was wearing the slacks and one of the clean shirts, though, of course, he wouldn’t wear a tie. He also refused to put on any socks, claiming his scuffed loafers felt more comfortable to his bare feet. He also secretly enjoyed the looks of dismay his attire engendered in the scrubbed, polished, and pressed yuppies he passed in the halls of the lab.
He gave the sign a malicious look as he passed it, but he didn’t aim a kick at it. That was a losing proposition, even when he didn’t have a hangover—and on this morning, he had one of epic proportions. He’d tried to show the secretaries at Bennigan’s he could outdrink them, an obviously losing proposition as he’d gotten drunker than a skunk.
After his shower this morning, he’d gone to his tried-and-true hangover remedy of three fingers of vodka, four more Excedrin, half a glass of orange juice, and one raw egg, blended well and drunk straight down. After that, he had found a steak in his freezer, defrosted it in the microwave—a dehumanizing piece of technology that he would ordinarily never use to cook food for himself—and then broiled it in the oven along with some onion and tomato slices. He ate the lot, along with four more eggs and a glass of eggnog sweetened with twelve-year-old scotch.
While he was eating, his thoughts strayed. He reflected that his estranged wife, Sheila, was a good woman even if she was an MD, and an endocrinologist at that. She wasn’t perfect, but then God had not chosen to create such a thing as a perfect woman. If Sheila had been perfect, she’d have renounced the prescription pad and been content to work the rest of her life as his lab assistant.
She was one of the few who knew why he hated MDs. And though she found his reasoning a trifle excessive, she’d accepted it, just as she’d accepted many of his ways because she loved him. She’d once told him that, even though they were separated, she had no fear of losing him. “Any other woman except me would very quickly cut your throat after you fell asleep. God knows I’ve been tempted plenty of times.”
He went through the staff entrance to the lab and strolled down the hall, making it a point to nod or speak to only the service employees of the laboratory, then he pushed open the door to his own space. As he walked in, he could see that his assistant, Dottie, was busy at the sink washing something. It was a good sight. He had little enough to keep the girl busy; he never entrusted her with any of the more secretive details of his work, even though she was working on her master’s in biology at the University of Houston.
He actually didn’t need an assistant, but she was handy in her own way. Basically, he delighted in forcing through raises for her every six months or so. By the hour, she was probably making more money than he was. It gave him a perverse sort of pleasure to screw the medical establishment and run the lab in any way he could.
He suddenly sensed that something was amiss. He looked straight toward the cages of rats and saw that one was missing. “Dottie, where in the hell is cage twelve?” he growled.
She was slow in turning her head. “Sir?”
His voice rose. “Sir, my fat ass! Where in the hell is that lot twelve, you ninny? That lot I finished with before I left.”
Dottie’s eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, looking anywhere but at Ramsey.
“Damn it, look at me! Where is cage twelve?”
“Uh . . . a friend of yours borrowed it, sir.”
Ramsey’s eyes narrowed. He knew that was a damn lie. He didn’t have any friends.
He took a deep breath when he saw tears start to form in Dottie’s eyes. Best to go easy on the lass, he thought, or she’ll have a stroke.
“That’s okay, Dottie,” he said, forcing his features into the semblance of a smile.
He took a seat at his desk and opened the drawer to pull out a bottle of Chivas Regal, figuring he was going to need it before he got to the bottom of this.
He poured two fingers into his coffee cup, took a deep draught, and then he asked, in as reasonable of a voice as he could manage, “Now, why don’t you tell me all about what happened to my rats?”