- Prologue -
Some lose their souls in a single act; others lose them by the inch. I don't consider myself a bad man, but I'd done bad things in pursuit of worthy goals, things that brought me to the attention of someone whose influence ultimately led me to some very dark places. It began on that day in 1939 with me being hustled into a sedan at gunpoint, blindfolded, and driven to a warehouse that smells and sounds from outside told me was somewhere on the Los Angeles waterfront. Once I was inside the blindfold was removed and the man my captors served revealed. He was bald, middle-aged, and confined to a wheelchair. I recognised him immediately.
"Ultra-Humanite," I said, voicing the only name that criminal mastermind was known by to the public.
"Doctor Richard Marten," he replied, "the unorthodox but brilliant surgeon who secretly sells his services to the criminal fraternity in order to finance various... experiments."
He picked up a file from the table beside him and began to read aloud from it.
"Born in 1910 and raised in Norman, Oklahoma, as the only child of Albert and Olive Marten. Went to medical school here in L.A. where you met and married another student, Barbara Stanley. One child, your son Neil, who your wife took with her to Bakersfield when you divorced, and she won't let you see him."
"So now that we know who we are, what is it that you want?"
"Several things, but first I want to show you something."
So saying he took a scalpel and made a long incision in his left forearm, from which blood started to flow. He then dipped a finger in the tub of gel on the table next to his wheelchair and ran this along the incision. Almost immediately the cut began to close. Within a minute all sign of it had faded away leaving only unblemished flesh when the blood was wiped off, flesh that gave no sign it had been sliced open only minutes earlier.
"That... that was amazing!" I said, barely able to believe my eyes.
"I'm prepared to pay you two hundred thousand dollars to perform a particular surgical procedure, one I know you've carried out successfully on apes, namely a brain transplant."
"How can you possibly know that?!"
"I have my sources. Now that you've seen what the gel is capable of can you do it, Doctor Marten? Can you transplant my brain into another body?"
"With that miraculous healing gel, I believe I can," I replied.
"Good. Then here's the first half of your money," he said, handing me a fat envelope. "When I'm ready, and all the preparations have been made, I'll summon you."
- 1 -
"Quiet, now. If you're silent you'll be permitted to watch the filming of a scene starring Dolores Winters."
Dolores was a rising starlet and I was part of a tour group at the movie studio where she and her leading man Garrett Fairfield were filming their current production 'Monkey Trouble'. I adored her and envied Fairfield more than I can say, so I was glad he wasn't on set having already filmed all his stuff. I think my jealousy would've got the better of me if a romantic scene between them had been scheduled for today rather than the final pick-ups from Dolores needed to complete the serial.
It was three days since my meeting with Ultra-Humanite, three days during which I'd been able to use the advance he'd given me to get the loan-shark I owed money to off my back. The balance I'd be getting would pay off my whole debt and remove the threat of having my fingers cut off. Taking money from that thug had been a big mistake, but I was in a bad place at the time. My wife had left me and taken our son, my professional reputation was in tatters, and I'd gotten myself in so deep a financial hole that he was the only one prepared to throw me a rope. Still, things were finally looking up, and I was now about to see Dolores Winters in the flesh for the first time. I worshipped Dolores and the ground she walked on. I knew it was an unhealthy obsession, but I couldn't help myself.
And then there she was, standing in front of us, the screen goddess herself. I was entranced, so entranced that I never noticed a stagehand up in the overhead rigging pull out a gun. Fortunately, one of our party did.
"Look out!" he yelled, grabbing a trailing rope and yanking it hard. This wrapped itself around the gunman's foot and brought him crashing down from the scaffolding, the gun flying from his hand. A couple of real stagehands immediately apprehended him.
"If it hadn't been for you...!" he snarled at the man who had foiled his assassination attempt as he struggled in vain to get free.
"Get him out of here!" shouted the director.
Dolores came over to her saviour, a handsome jock type who probably got all the girls.
"I owe my life to you," she told him. "How can I ever thank you?"
"By permitting me to interview you. You see, I'm a newspaper reporter."
"Then I'll expect you to call on me tomorrow night, Mr...?"
"Smith, William B. Smith, here on vacation with Larry, my friend from college. I work for the Daily Star back east in Metropolis."
"OK folks, that's enough excitement for one day," said our tour guide, ushering us out. As we were led away I regarded Smith resentfully. I wished it had been me who had saved Dolores then it would be me she'd be entertaining at her home tomorrow. But that was a fantasy. Even had I spotted the gunman I'm just not the heroic leap-into-action type. I wondered about the guy and why he wanted to kill Dolores. He had to be a madman. Why else would anyone want to harm someone so lovely?
- 2 -
The following day the summons came. Barely a week after my initial abduction, Ultra's lead henchman Rocco collected me and drove us to Cedars-Sinai. In a back-up operating theatre not currently in use was Ultra-Humanite, leaning heavily back in his wheelchair and obviously seriously injured. Lying sedated on the operating table, partially covered by a sheet, lay the person he had chosen to be his unwilling body donor.
It was Dolores Winters.
No, oh no! It couldn't be her, it mustn't be! I felt sick.
"Being hit by that ray would have meant the end for most men," wheezed Ultra, gazing avidly at Dolores, "but then I am not most men. My brain, the repository for my magnificent intellect cannot, must not be allowed to die!"
I barely heard what he was saying as I struggled to contain my horror at what I was expected to do, my mind racing as I tried to see a way out of the situation. There wasn't one. If, having taken his money and agreed to reform the procedure, I now refused to do so the consequences for me would be dire, possibly lethal. So I had no choice, none at all.
To my surprise, one of Ultra-Humanite's goons had trained as an anaestheologist in a former life, so with another acting as my nurse-assistant I was able to perform the surgery. Carefully cutting along her hairline and peeling back Dolores's scalp, I then used a special saw to take off the top of her skull and surgically removed her brain. This was placed in a glass container filled with a fluid that, Ultra assured me, would keep it alive for a while. I then repeated the procedure on him, removing his brain and transplanting it into her skull. It took a long time to make the connections to his brain, as it had done to sever the connections to hers. When I was done, the miracle gel having been applied, I closed the skull, replaced Dolores's scalp, and applied the gel to accelerate the external healing too. And then it was over. It had taken several hours, but Ultra-Humanite's brain now resided in the body of Dolores Winters.
She awoke groggily at first, the result of the anaesthetic wearing off, but when she raised a hand and looked at her slender fingers, women's fingers that tapered to long, elegantly shaped and painted nails, she smiled, knowing that the operation had been a success. She sat up, the sheet that had been covering her slipping off to reveal the green silk dress cladding her body, hugging that tiny waist and those lovely breasts.
"Whoa, don't exert yourself too much yet," I said, grasping her shoulders and steadying her.
I'd dreamed of holding Dolores, but not like this. My god, what had I done? As the old adage says, be careful what you wish for.
"Bring me a mirror!" she ordered, snapping her fingers and looking momentarily surprised on hearing her new voice for the first time.
One of her henchmen came forward with a hand-mirror and she studied her face avidly.
"The beautiful Dolores Winters, Hollywood movie star," she said, chuckling with delight, "and now her beauty is mine."
I'd turned the clock back two decades and she was now 22 years old once more. She touched the faint red line on her forehead, all that remained from having the scalp removed at the hairline. Already the line was fading; soon it would be gone.
"That should take weeks to heal," I said, marvelling again at the sight, "but thanks to that miraculous gel of yours you're already almost healed. We may be only months away from the start of the 1940s now but that stuff is light years ahead of any medicine we've yet developed. Where did it come from?"
"That's none of your concern, Marten," she said, swinging her shapely legs off the operating and standing on her own two feet for the first time in who knows how long. "Just be thankful that genius recognizes genius and that I knew you were the only man who could perform this procedure."
She took a few careful steps, clearly delighted to be able to walk again after many years in a wheelchair.
"A genius," I replied, bitterly. "Try telling that to the medical board who took my licence, disbarring me because of my 'unorthodox experiments'."
"Fools, all of them," she said, sympathetically. "Men like you and I are cursed always to be judged by mental pygmies. Be that as it may, our business is now concluded. Rocco, pay the man."
Rocco, handed me another fat envelope. I stuffed it into a jacket pocket without bothering to check all the money was there in order to conceal the vial of the miracle gel I had palmed and was stealing.
"You'll keep my name out of this, as we agreed?"
"Of course. If it comes up I'll say it was one of my assistants who transplanted my brain into Dolores Winters' body."
"That's ridiculous!" I said, frowning.
"I know, but as Herr Goebbels over in Germany has so ably demonstrated, most people will swallow anything. What will you do now?"
"Before I leave here I need to gather up all my tools and equipment and clean them," I said. "I'll be here for a least a little while after you've left. What should I do with this?"
I pointed at the spherical receptacle Ultra-Humanite had designed to house and maintain a living brain in a special nutrient fluid, one currently containing the disembodied brain of the original Dolores Winters.
"I don't care what you do with it," she replied, shrugging. "Do whatever you want."
Rocco turned to her.
"It's good to see you up and about, boss," he said, "but me and the boys was wondering - why a dame? I mean, we coulda grabbed Clark Gable or Cary Grant for you."
"Because most cops are male and underestimate women. Plus, who would ever suspect such a famous public figure as the sweet Dolores Winters could be the mastermind behind a vast criminal enterprise? When they weren't being thwarted by masked 'mystery men' my various extortion schemes netted us a lot of money, as they will continue to do so. But now it's time for me to take a back seat from day-to-day operations. Let the identity of your new mastermind remain a mystery."
As a doctor I didn't buy that explanation for one minute. No, Ultra-Humanite was now a woman because she wanted to be a woman. There had always been men who felt that way, and she was one of them. No, becoming female was her heart's desire. She glanced over to where her old body was slumped in its wheelchair, bloody bandages littered all around.
"My former body will be found the next time this operating theatre gets used," she said, "and the Ultra-Humanite declared dead. Now it's time for you and the boys to slip out of the hospital quietly while I head on home."
"Home?" said Rocco. "Where's home?"
"Why Dolores Winters's fabulous mansion, of course," she said.
And with that the new Dolores Winters swept out, looking every inch the beautiful young Hollywood starlet. Which is when it hit me. The way she moved, her every mannerism and vocal inflection, was perfect. This could only be the result of Ultra-Humanite studying Dolores intensively. Which meant that for his own very different reasons he'd been as obsessed with her as I was.
- 3 -
'DOLORES WINTERS RETIRES FROM SILVER SCREEN AT 22', screamed the newspaper headlines the next day; 'Throwing Big Farewell Party on Her Yacht Tonight!'
The announcement come as a shock to everyone, of course, but it made sense to me. Ultra-Humanite wasn't an actor so continuing Dolores's career wasn't really a viable option for her. I don't imagine she needs the money a Hollywood career provides to maintain that expensive lifestyle either since she has lucrative criminal revenue of her own coming in.
Even given the short notice, the cream of Hollywood still turned out for the party. Newsreel footage of the event I saw later showed Dolores on the deck of her rented yacht the 'Sea Serpent', greeting her guests as they arrived. The actor Lane Danby was with her, an arm around her slender waist.
At the same time the party was taking place I was secretly performing an operation on a recent suicide at Our Lady of Snows' General Hospital. The drug overdose that had killed her had fried her brain but after a complete blood transfusion the body itself was in good condition. Surgically implanting the brain of the real Dolores Winters went well, particularly with the aid of accelerated healing from the miracle gel I'd stolen. Why was I doing this? Because I'm not a killer.
Though I'd saved her life, I wasn't expecting her gratitude. Nor did I get any. Dolores had been a great beauty, but no more. While the suicide was also in the movies her quirky looks had consigned her to the category of 'character actress'.
"What have you done to me?!" she cried when I handed her a mirror.
"I... I saved you," I said. "The Ultra-Humanite forced me to transplant his brain into your body, after you were kidnapped for him by Garrett Fairfield."
"Garrett?" she said, looking puzzled.
"You don't remember the kidnapping?"
"No, I..."
"He was secretly working for Ultra," I said.
This was a lie and very petty of me, but I was jealous of the guy. Little did I know that this lie would be passed on and grow in the telling, completely muddying accounts of what truly happened.
"Ultra can never know you survived," I continued. "You can imagine what he'd do if he ever found out."
She contemplated this for a while then gripped my shoulder.
"Fix me or kill me," she said, tears rolling down her face. "Just don't leave me this way."
I should have refused, but such was my guilt at what I had done to this poor innocent that I agreed.
"You can't call yourself Dolores Winters anymore, though," I said, "nor use the name of your body donor, who's legally dead."
"Rita," she said.
"Rita?"
"I was born Rita Gumm in a small town in Minnesota, from where I followed in the footsteps of my cousin Frances. And I was well on my way to having a glittering Hollywood career like hers."
"Frances...?" I said, puzzled. "Should I know who that is?"
"You do. Frances Gumm now goes by the name Judy Garland. We were never close, so if I was going to get anywhere I knew I'd have to do it without Franny's help. The one thing I had going for me was my looks. I knew the effect they had on most men - and quite a few women - but unfortunately I was naive and ended up with a local hood named Johnny Hartigan. He had lots of money and paid for a dentist to give me a perfect Hollywood smile, my acting lessons, a professional photographer for my portfolio, and stuff like that. But he was jealous. He had always said that if he couldn't have me no one would. I knew I had to get away from him so one night I did just that, and made my way to Hollywood. For a long time I worried about what he might do. When time passed and he did nothing I figured it was an empty threat. Then he turned up on set with a gun."
"I was there when it happened," I said.
"You were?"
"Purely by coincidence. I saw that reporter save you."
"Ah yes, the reporter and his friend from college. Both jock types, yet there was something about them, something a bit...'swishy'."
"You're saying they were homos? Really? I never picked up on that."
"Men often don't, but a woman can usually tell, particularly one who's spent any time in showbiz. Your eyes would bug out if you could see what some of the Hollywood heartthrobs women swoon over get up to with each other behind closed doors."
The relish with which she said this made me frown. Was it possible she wasn't quite the innocent I had believed her to be?