Charity frowned. “I hate all that much sense. Takes the fun out of life... This Grady, I suppose he’s years younger that Miranda Shaw. She’s over fifty and there aren’t many fifty-year-old lifeguards around. By that time they’re gone on to better things.”
“Or worse.”
“Whatever. Actually, Mrs. Shaw looks marvelous for her age. In a nice dark restaurant she could pass for thirty-five. It can be done if you’ve got the money, the time, the motivation, the right doctor and lots of luck.”
“That’s a heap of ifs.”
“I know. I’ve only got one of them, motivation. But I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting around dark restaurants anyway.” Charity glanced toward Smedler’s door as if to confirm that it was closed. “I heard a rumor about Miranda Shaw which I would like to repeat, I really would.”
“Force yourself.”
“Okay. I heard she gets injections made from the glands of unborn goats.”
“Where does she get these injections?”
“In the butt, probably.”
“No, no. I meant, does she go to a local doctor, a hospital, a clinic?”
“The rumor didn’t cover details, but it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you could have done locally. Santa Felicia is a conservative city. Unborn goats get born, not injected.”
“Where did you hear this about Mrs. Shaw?”
“Smedler. His wife picked it up at the country club. The injections are supposed to start working right away. You know, I wouldn’t mind having a face lift if it didn’t hurt too much and the results were guaranteed. But goat glands, that’s positively obscene. Though if I had to keep up with a young lifeguard, maybe I wouldn’t think so.” Charity was sixty. In a nice dark restaurant she could pass for fifty-nine. “What’s your opinion?”
“My opinion,” Aragon said, “is that you are a fund of information and I’d like to take you to lunch.”
Her eyebrows climbed up and hid briefly under her bangs. “Yeah? When?”
“Now.”
“Have you flipped? You can’t afford it on your salary.”
“We can go to some simple little place. Do you like chili burgers?”
“No.”
“Tacos? Burritos? Enchiladas?”
“No, no and no. I’m not a fun date at lunch anyway,” Charity added. “I have an ulcer.”
From his shoebox-sized office in the basement Aragon called the electric company and arranged to have Hippollomia’s truck released. Then he phoned the Penguin Club and was told Ellen Brewster had gone into town on an errand and was expected back about two o’clock. He didn’t leave a name, number or message; anticipating another visit from him probably wouldn’t improve Miss Brewster’s attitude.
He picked up a burger and fries at a fast food and ate them on his way to the public library.
The young woman on duty at the reference desk looked surprised when he asked for material on current methods of rejuvenation. “Starting early, aren’t you?”
“A stitch in time.”
“If we don’t have the information you need, you might try the medical library at Castle Hospital.”
“I just want a general idea of what’s being done in the field.”
“Okay. Be right back.”
She disappeared in the stacks and emerged a few minutes later carrying a magazine. “You’re in luck. The subject was researched a couple of months ago by one of the women’s magazines. It’s sketchy but it looks like the straight dope.”
“Thanks.”
“I get paid.”
“Not enough.”
“Now how did you know that?”
“A wild guess,” Aragon said, wondering if he would ever meet anyone who admitted being paid enough.
During the next half-hour he learned some of the hard facts and fiction about growing old and how to prevent it.
At the Institute of Geriatrics in Bucharest a drug called KH-3 was administered to cure heart disease, arthritis, impotence, wrinkles and grey hair.
In Switzerland injections of live lamb embryo glands were available to revitalize the body and prevent disease by slowing down the aging process.
A villa outside Rome offered tours of the countryside alternating with periods of deep sleep induced by a narcotic banned in the United States.
A Viennese clinic guaranteed loss of ugly cellulite, and not so ugly money, by means of hypnotherapy and massive doses of vitamins.
In the Bahamas the Center for Study and Application of Revitalization Therapies promised to help the mature individual counteract the pressures of contemporary life, and overcome sleeplessness, fatigue, loss of vigor, frigidity, impotence, poor muscle and skin tone, problems of weight, anxiety and premature aging. Many different techniques were used, including lamb-cell therapy, but here the cells were freeze-dried.
At an experimental lab in New York volunteer patients underwent plasmapheresis, a process in which a quantity of their blood was removed, the plasma taken out and the blood put back. The fresh new plasma which the body then created was the stuff of youth and supposed to make the patients look better, feel stronger and heal faster.
Nowhere in the article was there any mention of goats.
Aragon called Charity Nelson from the pay phone beside the checkout desk.
She wasn’t thrilled. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Listen, that rumor you heard about Mrs. Shaw, are you sure it was goats?”
“It was goats. What difference does it make? Where are you, anyway?”
“The library.”
“Wise up. You’re not going to find Mrs. Shaw at any library. She’s not the type.”
“I’m working on a hunch.”
“Well, don’t tell Smedler. He lost two grand playing one last week. Hunches won’t be popular around here until he figures out a way to deduct it from his income tax.”
“Will he?”
“Bet on it, junior.”
He reached the parking lot of the Penguin Club as Ellen Brewster was getting out of her car. It was a fairly new Volkswagen but it already had a couple of body dents that were beginning to rust in the sea air.
She didn’t notice, or at least acknowledge, his presence until he spoke.
“I see you got your car started.”
“Yes. The garage man came out and charged the battery.”
“Good.”
“Yes.”
“It could have been something more serious.”
“I suppose.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead with an impatient gesture. She had nice features. He wondered why they didn’t add up to make her a pretty woman. “Are you coming or going, Mr. Aragon?”
“A question I often ask myself.”
“Try answering.”
“I’m arriving. Is that all right with you, Miss Brewster?”
“It depends on what you want. If it’s the same thing you wanted this morning, I really can’t help you now any more than I could then. Really I can’t.”
“That’s one too many reallys.”
“It’s a speech habit I picked up from all the teenagers around this summer. You know, like you know.”
“I went to Mrs. Shaw’s house,” Aragon said. “It seems she took off in a hurry, didn’t even bother to lock the doors. What concerns my boss is that she was aware of the important papers she had to sign but she made no attempt to do it. Naturally there’s some question of whether she left voluntarily.”
“That’s a joke.”
“Is it private or do I get to laugh, too?”
“The question is not whether she left voluntarily but whether he did.”
The afternoon wind had begun blowing in from the sea, carrying the smell of tar from the underwater oil wells. It was a faint pervasive smell like a hint of doomsday.
“Forget I said that,” she added. “I’m not supposed to gossip about the members.”