Neighbors and Other Strangers

by Gordon Parker

  “I’m always up for a challenge,” Trent said, trying to sound cheerful for Darcey’s sake.

  “Well, you have yourself a stick of dynamite this time,” Dr. Slim said.

  Trent reached over to take Darcey’s hand.

  “I guess the important thing is the length of the fuse,” Trent laughed.

  “We don’t know that.”

  The acerbic answer came from Dr. Raymond.

  Darcey was silent. Pale.

  “What do we know?” Trent asked.

  “The bug that bit you is unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” she responded. “It has traits of the ticks that cause Lyme Disease. In fact, when we examined the spirochetes, the bacteria that cause Lyme Disease, that was our first conclusion. On closer examination we found an aberration in the microorganisms.”

  “And in English that means…” Trent questioned.

  “We’ve never seen anything like these spirochetes before,” Dr. Raymond said. “We haven’t seen anything exactly like what you have. It bears resemblance to Late Stage Lyme Disease but it isn’t. It’s something more than that.”

  “How do you treat this…this whatever it is?” Darcey asked.

  The doctors exchanged glances. Dr. Slim spoke.

  “We don’t have a definitive answer to that, Darcey,” he said. “Dr. Raymond and her colleagues will continue to study the spirochetes. We are hopeful they will find the answers. Meanwhile, we will treat it as we would Late Stage Lyme Disease. Heavy doses of antibiotics.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Dr. Raymond said. “In Late Stage Lyme Disease, the symptoms don’t show up for several months. Sometimes even years. In this case they could show up much sooner. Within days. We don’t know that for sure. It’s possible.”

  “What are the symptoms?” Darcey pursued.

  “There could be any of several. Confusion. Disorientation. A numbness in the hands and feet. A stiff neck. Joint pain. Headaches. In severe cases we’ve seen hallucinations. Hearing voices. Insomnia is common as is exacting fatigue. In rare cases the pupils will dilate allowing the patient to see clearly in total darkness but requiring glasses with heavily darkened lenses in light. Also, there have been rare cases in which the patient’s hearing becomes hypersensitive. Mood swings are common as are heavy sweating and tremors.”

  Trent sat quietly. He let Darcey do the questioning. He was thinking.

  “If any of these symptoms develop will they be permanent or temporary?” she asked, thinking of the numbness Trent had mentioned.

  “Hopefully, with treatment, they will be temporary,” Dr. Raymond said. “But we really don’t know. And I want to emphasize that Trent does not have Late Stage Lyme Disease. We think it’s something similar but more potent. Until we know more, our only option is to treat it as we would Late Stage Lyme Disease, as Dr. Slim said, with heavy antibiotics.”

  “Trent’s hands and feet were numb last night.”

  Dr. Raymond was surprised. “It’s highly unusual for a symptom to show up so quickly. May I examine your hands, Mr. Marshall?”

  “Examine away, Doctor,” Trent said, trying to sound cheerful as he held out his hands.

  “Close your eyes, please,” she said. With his eyes closed, she gently touched the palm of his right hand with her forefinger. “Do you feel that?”

  “Yes.”

  With her thumb and forefinger, she gave a moderate squeeze to the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “And that?”

  “Yes, I felt it.”

  She had him remove his shoes and socks. She repeated the process with his toes and the sole of his right foot, paying close attention to the plantar, the ligament connecting the heel to the toes. Trent showed no sign of numbness.

  “So, the numbness was temporary. I’d say that’s a good sign,” Dr. Raymond concluded.

  “Now I have a question,” Trent said. “Where did this bug come from? We recently traveled to London, Paris, and Tuscany, where we stayed in a rural villa just outside Florence. Could we have picked this thing up in any of those places?”

  “Perhaps,” was the doctor’s inconclusive answer. “There are ticks in Europe and in this country that carry the Lyme Disease spirochete. But, as I said, we’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s likely that it developed in a tropical region. Africa or South America. Perhaps Southeast Asia. With globalization and the accompanying movement of millions of people from those areas into Europe and North America we’re seeing many diseases we’ve not seen before. I suppose by some coincidence the insect could have been in a hotel room, brought there unknowingly by an immigrant worker.”

  Trent was doubtful. He didn’t believe in coincidence.

  Darcey asked the question the others were thinking.

  “And if the antibiotics don’t work? If you can’t find a cure?”

  It was quiet in the room. The two doctors looked at each other. Dr. Raymond looked away. Dr. Slim answered the question.

  “Enjoy the time you have together, Darcey.”

  Jonathan Rossi took the call in his office. It was one of his associates in Rome. Rossi wasn’t happy with the news. Trent Marshall had met with the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, the Guardia di Finanza, and the Arma dei Carabinieri while he was in Italy. All three branches of the Italian police establishment dealt to one degree or another with money laundering. He was not pleased.

  “Molte grazie,” Rossi said before hanging up.

  He stared thoughtfully out the window for a few minutes. Then he placed a call of his own.

  “How long is it supposed to take for this bug to work,” he asked when Burgess answered the phone.

  “The directions that came with it said to expect about three months,” Burgess replied, nervously. Talking to Rossi always made him nervous. “But he will be very ill for most of that time.”

  Rossi didn’t thank Burgess. He ended the call. He had kept Marshall under surveillance since he returned to San Francisco from Europe. He knew about the appointment with the doctor today. He didn’t know how much the doctor knew or what he told Marshall and his wife.

  He wasn’t sure he had three months. And he had to consider his partners.

  Rossi had successfully wooed his three partners into a fiduciaria, a trust of sorts, by convincing them they all would see greater profits, which would be more quickly moved into legitimate businesses. He allowed them to convince him to be the amministrazione, the administrator, of the trust because of his contacts with key European contacts, which they believed to be more efficient, not to mention less risky, than were theirs.

  Rossi’s partners, however, were not aware that the fiduciaria was in reality a tontine. A 17th century financial structure in which the assets and profits were divided among the survivors if one partner was eliminated. The last surviving partner received all the assets and profits. Rossi had created a tontine of criminal organizations. He intended to be the last survivor. But the timing of the elimination of the other three partners was Rossi’s decision and his alone. Marshall could interfere with that. He was dangerous. Sick or healthy. He could cause a lot of trouble for them. Rossi thought he would have to move quickly against Marshall. He thought Burgess had outlived his usefulness. He placed another call.

  Burgess was alarmed. He didn’t like getting calls from Jonathan Rossi. He especially didn’t like getting calls when Rossi sounded displeased. He knew that when Rossi was displeased people disappeared.

  He was in the bar next to the cheap apartment hotel where he lived. He had been feeling good about the way things were going. He was celebrating with a bottle of cheap Champagne and two Chicago-style hot dogs. He didn’t know what fine wine was supposed to taste like so the cheap bottle seemed good do him. He was enjoying the piquant taste of the hot dog. Now Rossi had ruined his fun. He thought he should find another place to live. Another gun.

  He had found a baseball bat shoved into the back of the small closet when he first moved into the cheap apartment. It was the o
nly weapon he had. It would have to do.

  Darcey was late getting home. She carried two books. She found Trent on the terrace, a gin and tonic in his hand. He was staring at nothing.

  “Ivy warned me you get like this,” she said.

  He didn’t turn his head.

  “It’s not every day a doctor tells you to enjoy your time together,” he replied. “That’s medical talk for ‘You’re not going to make it, pal.’ ”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I stopped by a book store on the way home and picked up a couple of books I thought you might like to thumb through.”

  “Something like ‘How to Die with Dignity’,” he said, sarcastically.

  “No. That would be encouraging you to feel sorry for yourself,” Darcey said, “and I’m not going to do that.”

  She tossed one of the books to him.

  “This is a biography of Frederik Faust. He wrote hundreds of short stories and novels. Most under the pen name of Max Brand. He was an alcoholic and had a heart attack at the age of 29. Doctors told him he had to stay in bed or he would die. He continued to work and drink for 23 years. He was a war correspondent during World War II. Killed in battle in 1944 at the age of 51. He lived 23 years, Trent, in a time when the only treatment for heart disease was bed rest.”

  Trent held the book. He didn’t know what to think. She tossed him another book.

  “This is a biography of John Holliday,” she said. “Better known as Doc. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1873 at age 22. There was no treatment. He traveled the Wild West as a gambler, a gunfighter, a killer. He feared dying in bed. He tried as hard as he could to get killed but nobody came along who could outshoot him. He died in a sanitarium in Colorado in 1887. According to Hollywood, his last words, as he looked at his bare feet at the end of the bed, were ‘Now that’s funny.’ He lived for fourteen years with tuberculosis at a time when there was no medicine for that disease. None. So, like Faust, he drank a lot.”

  “What’s the point, Darcey?” Trent asked.

  “The point is, Trent Marshall,’ she said, “is I love you. We’ve been married a month. You’ve contracted an illness, just like Faust and Holliday. The difference is they had no medicines. No treatment. No cure. Yet they lived for years. You are going to be pumped full of antibiotics. There are doctors studying whatever it is you have. They’re likely to figure it out and come up with a cure.”

  Trent pulled her onto his lap and took her into her arms. He held her close.

  “You’re quite a woman, Darcey,” he said.

  “You’re right. I am,” she replied, kissing him again. “And there’s no way I’m going to let you sit around feeling sorry for yourself. We’re going to beat this thing. Meanwhile we will enjoy the time we have together.”

  Trent laughed.

  “Now you sound like Ivy,” he said.

  “And there’s one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to get pregnant,” she said, softly.

  “What? Are you crazy?” he exploded. “What if I don’t make it? Then you’d have to raise a child all by yourself. No, Darcey. No way.”

  “You can be so selfish, Marshall,” she said. She leaped off his lap. “Can’t you understand this isn’t all about you?”

  “How do you figure that? I’m the one who’s dying. It seems pretty clear it is all about me.”

  “You’re the one who might be dying, Trent, with the emphasis on ‘might be’,” she replied, heatedly. “So yeah, what if you don’t make it? A few weeks ago, I promised to live the rest of my life with you. How do I do that if you’re not here? What do you think that would be like for me?”

  She paused, wiping the tears away with her fingers.

  “At least if we had a child, a part of you would still be here. Can’t you see how wonderful that would be for me?”

  Trent couldn’t think of anything to say. He held her in his arms. She clung to him. Tears flowed.

  When there had been enough tears, Darcey kissed him again.

  “Now I’m going inside to finish up some twice baked potatoes. You’re going to make each of us a gin and tonic. Then you’re going to grill us a ribeye. After dinner, you’re going to make us more gin and tonics, and we’re going to watch a rom-com.”

  “What’s a rom-com?” he asked, following her into the kitchen. He reached for the Hendrick’s gin.

  “A romantic comedy,” she said. “A chick flick.”

  “They told me marriage was give and take. I guess this is what they meant.”

  “If it makes you feel better,” she said, “you don’t have to pay attention to the movie. You can sit here with me and read about Doc Holliday. He ought to be testosterone provoking enough for you.”

  Friday, July 29th

  Darcey was surprised to find Trent sitting at the kitchen island drinking coffee and wiping a huge semiautomatic handgun down with a soft cloth. A very nasty-looking rifle lay on the island.

  “Are we going to war?” she asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee, adding a little cream.

  “We are at war, sweetheart,” he said. “Alexis’ murder was the declaration. I have no doubt it’s connected in some way to the case I’m working on with Christopher. That means someone knows who we are. They’ll probably come after us at some point. When they do, they’ll find out we don’t go down easily.”

  “OK, I won’t argue with you. That thing you’re so lovingly caressing looks like the biggest hand gun I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s as big as you can get,” Trent said. “It has a ten inch barrel and fires a .50 caliber round. Because of the size, the magazine only holds seven rounds but it’s so powerful you shouldn’t need that many. It’s a Desert Eagle. Developed by the Israelis. Now produced in this country under license. It has a range of over two hundred yards. There are rifles that aren’t effective at that range.”

  “Is that for me?”

  “No, this one will be going with me. This is for you,” he slid the rifle toward her.

  “You’re joking, right?” she said. “I can’t walk around San Francisco with this thing. What is it anyway?”

  “It’s the latest model of the M16,” Trent explained. “It was first used in Vietnam but had some defects back then. There have been some improvements and it’s now an effective weapon. Thirty rounds in magazine. It’s fully automatic but if you have to use it that way remember it works best if you fire three round bursts. It has a range of five hundred yards. At closer range it’s more accurate if you aim a little high. As to carrying it around town, here’s your gym bag.” He tossed the pink and black bag onto the island.

  “Trent, I’m not going to lug this thing around with me, gym bag or no gym bag.”

  “Darcey, we’re dealing with some seriously bad guys here. We need serious firepower to protect ourselves.”

  “No, Trent. We’ll do it like we’ve done it before. If I sense trouble you’re on my speed dial. You can come running with that small cannon. But the big one stays here.”

  “Well, keep it under the bed on your side then. The gym bag, too. At least you can protect yourself if they come at us here and I’m not around.”

  “Life with you is never dull, Marshall,” she said as she picked up the rifle to get familiar with it. Trent showed her where the safety was, how to chamber a cartridge, and change out the magazine.

  “Yeah, boredom is what we fear most,” he said, kissing her. “I’ll talk to Christopher today about getting us into a shooting range to practice with these things.”

  “Good idea,” Darcey said. “I grew up with a rifle in my hands but never one that was fully automatic. Meanwhile, I feel sorry for anyone who comes at us. We have a fair chance of taking them out.”

  “Better than fair. Hey, we need to take a selfie to send to Jack Blake. He’ll be envious.”

  Trent spotted the tail as soon as they pulled onto the street from the parking lot. Two swarthy men in a BMW Z4 hard top two-seater. He smiled. They thought t
hey were driving a hot car. Fast enough to keep up with their quarry. Had it been anyone else in any other vehicle they would have been right. They didn’t know Trent Marshall. They didn’t know he was driving the fastest passenger car on the road.

  “If you can give me directions and get us out of a speeding ticket I can lose the guys tailing us,” he told Christopher. Booth was an experienced cop. He didn’t turn his head to look.

  “Go for it,” he said.

  “Hang on. I’ve always wanted to be Steve McQueen,” Trent said.

  They teased the tail for a while, twisting and turning through the city. Christopher’s expert knowledge of which streets connected to which interstate and where served them well. As they approached the entrance to one interstate Trent pushed the accelerator to the floor and crossed two lanes of traffic, ignoring the blowing horns and obscene shouts coming from the cars he shot past. The tail didn’t have time to respond.

  To be on the safe side, Christopher had directed Trent onto an interstate that went north when they wanted to go south. Less than two miles and just over a minute later he directed Trent onto a second interstate that would curve to the south. The tail was nowhere in sight. Trent slowed down. But not much.

  He brought the Bentley to a halt in front of a modest home in Palo Alto. Modest for a billionaire. For normal working people it would be a palace. It was the home of a man whose name most people had never heard. He was a technology genius. It was his mind behind many of the technological developments that changed the world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

  Unlike many of his fellow high-tech luminaries Ross Brown wasn’t greedy. Money bored him. His wife had to force him to attend monthly meetings with the people who handled their investments.

  He wasn’t interested in power. He had turned down offers to be CEO or at least a director of several companies.

  He liked tinkering. Sometimes his tinkering made him, and others, billions. He seemed oblivious to his net worth. He bought the huge house for his wife and two children. His parents lived in the guest house. He spent most of his time, as he always had, in his basement workshop.