Dead Seed Read Online Free PDF Page A

The Mustang labored on, groaning. But she is no quitter. We arrived finally at a wide pair of gates in a high Cyclone fence topped with barbed wire.
    A short, wide and ugly man in corduroy pants and a sweatshirt was sitting in a captain’s chair inside the gate, reading The Racing Form. He got up as I came from the car.
    “You got an appointment?” he asked me.
    I shook my head. “My name is Lester Tryden. I am a cousin of Carl Lacrosse. He phoned me from Bern last night and asked me to come up here and talk with his son.”
    He frowned. “Bern? Where’s that?”
    “In Switzerland.”
    He studied me doubtfully. Then, “What’s that name again?”
    “Lester Tryden.”
    He went back to the chair and picked up a phone next to it. He talked for about a minute and then came over to unlock the gate. “Go straight up this road,” he told me, “past those redwood barracks to that small white building at the end. That’s Mr. Sarkissian’s office.”
    The road inside the gates was wider and paved. Not a human being was in sight as I drove past a long two-story redwood building to the small white stucco building at the end.
    The white was trimmed in gold around the doors and windows. The sign next to the door read: Vartan Sarkissian, Founder.
    The door opened into an outer office. A slim and flaxen-haired girl in a simple charcoal denim dress was typing at a desk in there.
    “Mr. Tryden?” she asked me.
    I nodded.
    She pointed to a door in the far wall. “Go right in,” she said, and pressed a button on her desk.
    He was standing by his desk when I entered. It was a shock. I was looking at the spitting image of another of my old cinema idols, Tyrone Power. He was dressed in somber gray flannel.
    “So you are a cousin of Carl Lacrosse,” he said.
    I nodded. “You know the name?”
    “I should. I worked in a camera shop for four years. His middle name is Tryden, isn’t it?”
    I nodded again. “But I’m not really a—a first cousin. It’s kind of complicated.”
    “Sit down, Mr. Tryden,” he said.
    I sat in a straight-backed chair at the end of his desk.
    “You are telling me, then, that Joel Lacrosse is Carl’s son? He denied any relationship when I asked him.”
    “From what little I know, I guess he would. Carl doesn’t spend much time in Skeleton Gulch. To be frank with you, Mr. Sarkissian, Carl and I have never been close. I’m surprised that he phoned me.”
    “But the fact remains that he phoned you. He must have some concern about the boy’s welfare.”
    I shrugged.
    “What is he doing in Bern?”
    I shrugged again. “Maybe checking his Swiss bank accounts.”
    He smiled. “It’s strange but, despite his reputation, I never thought of Lacrosse as being rich.”
    “You can’t prove it by me. He was never real commercial, but my Aunt Lilah always claimed Carl still had the first nickel he had ever earned.”
    He nodded absently. He looked past me into space. “Since we moved up here, Mr. Tryden, we have been under constant harassment from our neighbors. That is why we need the high fence. But this is not a racket. This is a true religion.”
    I smiled. “And who has more right to the title? Weren’t Armenians the very first Christians?”
    He smiled back at me. “My parents always claimed they were. You know about Armenians, do you, Mr. Tryden?”
    “Very little,” I said. “I had a chauffeur years ago named Levon Apoyan and I learned that from him. And one more thing—they hate Turks.”
    He sighed. “With reason. That was a holocaust the history books have slighted or ignored. You may tell your cousin that his son is in good hands.”
    “I will. Could I speak with him for a few minutes?”
    He shook his head. “Not for at least two weeks. He is now in his incubation period.”
    “I get it,” I said. “He is being reborn. Would it be all right if I came back in a couple of weeks?”
    “Of course,” he said. “But phone first, won’t you?”
    “Of course,” I said. “And