Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman

by Alan Edward Nourse

  "Frank, you've been shot?"

  "So I have." He ripped his shirt from his shoulder, moved the arm. "Got the deltoid and some skin, that's all, no bone. The other one went through the ceiling. Just nicked my ear. The bastard." He reached down, picked up the necklace with the little sapphire. "Blood on it again." He looked at Monique. "Sorry, kid, but I just couldn't let him have this."

  He sat down on the bed, shaking now, sat patiently while Monique scrubbed the superficial shoulder wound, applied a pressure dressing, fussed and fiddled getting his huge arm into a sling. "Come on, Florence, for God's sake. I'm going to make it."

  "You're sure the bullet's out?"

  "No, but we'll go find out. And call the cops, I suppose. Not (hat there's much point to it."

  "Let's go right now, then."

  "Not until you make your other call," Frank said. He tossed the sapphire necklace in his hand and then dropped it into his shirt pocket. "Call your friend Sally Grinstone and tell her she's got a couple of recruits."

  In Brookdale, Connecticut, Carmen Dillman watched her husband eating his breakfast across from her in the breakfast nook, slowly and methodically, munch, munch, sip, munch, munch, sip, his eyes turned to the window, staring out at the bleak, dead winter backyard of their comfortable home. Once there had been a respectable garden out there, climbing roses along the side fence, cut back and mulched with straw by this time of year, the mums also covered, only the neatly planted evergreens showing color-—a respectable garden. Now mostly weeds and junk scattered around after just one summer's neglect. Not much time last summer for gardening, nor much reason. Too many other unpleasant things going on, not much entertaining, hardly opened the barbecue. And not much likely to be done with it next spring, either, she thought, as far as she was concerned.

  Munch, munch, sip, taking far more time on breakfast than he ought to on a Tuesday morning, damn him. Same old breakfast every morning, two sausage patties, two eggs soft-boiled on a split English muffin, grapefruit juice, coffee. Every damned morning of his life. Let her make hot cakes once a month and he'd bitch about it all morning and then make two sausage patties, two boiled eggs on a split English muffin, et cetera for lunch. Carmen looked more sharply at him. Definitely getting a little more gray now, Jack Dillman was, definitely getting more paunchy, the faint yellow galley pallor of a Connecticut sunless winter spreading out under that last Florida tan, giving his face a vaguely jaundiced look. Heavy night's stubble still on his jowls, like a smudge of fireplace ash. Not that she was such a great sight herself. She was wearing paint-smeared jeans and blue workshirt, black hair pulled back in a bun, her least fetching of all possible hairdos. Without morning makeup she looked every bit of age forty-one going on thirty-nine; the little wrinkles on her lower cheeks and neck that would soon be screaming for face-lift, skin wrinkling a bit on the hands, too, little crows' feet at the eyes, the once-teasing sparkle and flash in those dark brown eyes now turned to a wary coldness. The King and Queen at breakfast, she reflected. Only thing missing was the morning Times, always used to be the morning Times at breakfast, too, but nowadays it only turned up on the porch one or two days a week and the man's telephone never answered when you called to complain.

  Jack poured himself more coffee, stared out the window as if he had all day to drink it. Not a word yet this morning except a grunt when she nearly tripped over him in the kitchen earlier. Well, it had been a nasty fight last night, an awful fight, the worst they'd had for months. Their fights had taken an ugly turn lately. Somehow she couldn't quite sense when to quit anymore, when to stop goading him, a skill she'd had down to a fine art years ago, except now all of a sudden her timing seemed to be off or something. She wasn't reading the signals right anymore, and Jack—of all people—was beginning to slug back, like last night, leaving her feeling depressed and gray and half sleepless all night instead of exhilarated. And oddly enough, there was no mention from him about just bagging it, this time. Strange. Didn't hardly seem fair to start changing the rules at this point, but somehow, she'd been sensing recently, a lot of things were changing. And now the inevitable long, silent breakfast. If he didn't get moving pretty soon, he'd miss the only train that made sense for him to take anymore. . . .

  Jack finally finished his coffee, stood up with a last look out the window, refilled his cup from the pot on the table and started for the stairs. "I'll be up in the study," he said.

  She looked up sharply. "Aren't you going down to the city today?"

  "Nope."

  "But you always go to the city on Tuesdays."

  "Not anymore, I don't. Not after last week."

  "Didn't you finish that Upjohn layout last night?"

  "Yep. It worked out just fine."

  "So how are they going to use it here in Brookdale, Connecticut?"

  Jack shrugged. "Let the mailman do the walking. Let them send a courier up for it if they want to. They don't need it today anyway. And if they have any questions when they do get it, the telephone's still working. Part of the time."

  Carmen frowned. "Jack, is that smart? They aren't going to like it, getting a layout in the mail. And you know you need a day a week in the city, anyway." She spread her hands, sensing that her voice was a little too strident. "I mean, the contacts you make, your lunches with Ed or Barry or Jocelyn—"

  Jack turned and stared at her. "You got some kind of plans that I'm queering somehow?"

  "Well, of course not. I mean, nothing special. I was going out later, down to have coffee with Edna maybe, do a little shopping. . . ." Her voice trailed off.

  "Well, don't change your plans on my. account. I'll be up in the study all day, starting the sketches for the new Northwest Rockwell campaign, just working up some ideas. Business ideas." He paused. "Fact is, I'm not going down to New York anymore, period, whether I need to or not. You catch the news last night? This whole last week or two? The place is a sewer. It's falling to pieces. Nothing works anymore, not even the elevators. Do you have any idea how many people are sick in just Manhattan alone right now? Well, neither do I, and nobody's saying, but a whole lot of people aren't turning up for work. And as for deliberately, voluntarily going down there when I don't have to—well, no more of that, thank you. Not after last week."

  "What happened last week?"

  "You've forgotten already? I told you all about it."

  "You didn't tell me a thing. You were just very late getting home that night, was all I knew."

  "Well, maybe I didn't tell you. I was just very lucky to get down there at all, and even luckier to get back home again. I nearly got killed down there."

  "Killed! Jack, what on earth happened?"

  He spread his hands. "It's not just a nice, quiet train ride anymore, baby. Last week there was a truck turned over on the tracks just above Van Cortlandt Park, and when the train stopped we had a little boarding party of thugs. Then the cops came and there was a big shoot-out right there on the train. They finally got us all out of the train, at least, and onto the street—in the middle of the Bronx. I grabbed a cab with four other people, and we had a couple more impromptu hijacking attempts on the way down. The man next to me got shot right through the window, this guy on the street just stuck his arm in and blasted away. So then we had to make a hospital stop for the poor guy, and if you think that wasn't a mess, one man merely shot in the neck and bleeding all over—they nearly laughed us into the East River. There was a line of sick people four deep and six blocks long outside that hospital emergency room, and you think they liked us driving up and trying to shove this guy in first—we left him on the sidewalk and got out of there. We had to, by then they were trying to turn the taxi over."

  Jack took a deep breath. "So I finally got downtown by one-thirty, too late for lunch with Jocelyn, but that didn't matter because Jocelyn hadn't been to the office all week anyway. Neither had half of her graphic-arts department, so I might as well have mailed the stuff in the first place. The only one there to go over the layout with me was Mooney
, so Christ only knows what's going to go back to the client. By three-thirty I figured I'd better get a train out of town if I was going to, but there was some kind of riot going on in Grand Central, something about trainmen striking in sympathy with the sanitation workers. I just went down to the platform and sat in the train for three hours—it seemed safer than standing around up in the station—and I figured the train was going to go somewhere sooner or later, or else it wasn't and I wasn't going anywhere anyway. So it finally took off and made it to Stamford before something broke down, and we got to sit there for another hour before the man came by and told us it was going to be buses or cabs. I stood up on a bus all the way to New Haven and then took a cab from there. I think it was the only cab still operating there, and I had a regular fistfight to get into it, I mean I had to slug my way through a crowd. So I got back here about eleven-thirty and you were already in bed so I figured why disturb you." He looked at her oddly. "I'm sure I told you all this. You just weren't listening. Anyway, I decided that was my last trip to New York for a while. Just a little bit more than I want to put up with."

  He turned and went on up the stairs to the big north-facing skylighted studio, sipping coffee as he went. He sat down in the soft swivel chair in front of the huge drafting board, brought the Luxor lamp around behind his shoulder and switched it on. A big, comfortable room, bright without glare, the place where he had been doing his work for—Lord, how many years now? He couldn't even remember. Everything about the room reflected Jack Dillman's personality: neat, quiet, meticulous to the point of obsession. The drafting board itself, built for comfort and ease; the soldierly rows of paint jars and brushes, oils and solvents, pencils fresh-sharpened, inking pens, nibs cleaned and set in the graduated holders. A wall full of references and catalogues on orderly shelves to the left, within easy reach. The big north window looking out onto the cul-de-sac occupied by two or three other prosperous, expansive exurban homes much like this one. Green lawns, broad driveways leading to double garages.

  It was a pleasant, quiet, secluded place to live and work, and he'd done very well indeed by the standards of his friends and neighbors in Brookdale, Connecticut. A topflight commercial artist, heavily in demand, his fees escalating far beyond reach of inflation every year. He could have done twice as well, probably, if he'd stayed with Milk and Sanders and worked his way up the ladder in a major ad agency like that. But that would have meant living in the city, and spending half his work time cutting throats, and he prized the freelance scene far more than money could spell out, and he'd done just fine with it, really. Not much sweat to stay on top, considering the crop of wobbly-kneed young punks coming up in the field, he thought. Expecting it all to fall in their laps, mistaking their marijuana highs for creative inspiration, unaware of what "have it by yesterday '' means to a harried ad exec, just unable to hack the pressure, unable to produce the steady, solid, reliable work, always right on target, always there and more than just presentable and always on time when the name of the game is ' 'do it fast and do it right' '—that was where Jack had always had them whipped. Who, for God's sake, wanted to mess around with some kid who was liable to try to paint a four-page layout with his toes, when they already knew what Jack Dillman would do without any wet-nursing and turn it in yesterday too. Of course, he was getting a little paunchy now, drinking too much every night, smoking too much all the time, never getting any exercise. Short of breath at funny times, a little aching chest pain now and then when he had to sprint for a train—but then, there wasn't going to be any train anymore now, at least not for a while. That last trip had scared him shitless, and life was too short-

  He looked up, suddenly, and saw Carmen standing at the studio door, watching him strangely—Christ, had he been muttering to himself? "Just getting down to work," he said.

  "You really didn't tell me, Jack," Carmen said.

  "You mean about the trip last week? Oh, well. I thought I did."

  "You didn't say a word about it. I wish you had." She hesitated, as though debating taking that one forbidden step across the threshold into the studio. "I hear a lot of people are getting sick in Bridgeport and Westport now. Big TV interview the other morning with the Fairfield County Public Health Department, a big appeal for cooperation and staying calm. It was scary."

  "It's scary, all right. And it's going to come. The Public Health people aren't going to stop it."

  "Jack—what are we going to do when it gets here?"

  He shrugged. "What else? Just sweat it out, I suppose. Just plant our feet in the ground right here and sweat it out.''

  "Seems like—" She broke off and shook her head. "Well, I'm not going to worry. I'm going to change my clothes and go shopping."

  "Sure thing," Jack said. As she started back down the stairs, Jack got up and closed the door firmly, went back to his chair, brought out a big sketch pad. He sat staring out the window for a long while, soft-lead pencil in hand. Then he began sketching rapidly.

  At CDC in Atlanta, Mandy was just putting down the telephone when Dr. Ted Bettendorf headed out of his office for a five-minute sandwich in the commissary. "Now that's interesting," she said, giving him an odd look. "I think that's a call you'd better return yourself."

  Ted stopped in midstride; Mandy never bothered him with trifles these days. "How so?"

  "Damnedest thing I ever heard. That was a Perry Haglund. He's one of our Shoeleather Boys in Lincoln, Nebraska. That is, he was one of our EIS people in Lincoln until Lincoln got hit and he packed up and went back home to Willow Grove, Nebraska, allegedly to help out there if the plague came, but more likely to get out of Lincoln."

  Ted motioned her to follow him. "Come talk while I eat. Why should I call somebody in Willow Grove, Nebraska, when I've got exactly four minutes to eat in before I have to come back here and spend an hour of delight with a team from Sealey Labs? Wait a minute—Haglund. Rings a bell. Used to be in Lincoln, you say? You're right. A good guy, had some public-health background. And he was one of the crew that helped Carlos in Canon City."

  Mandy nodded. "You've got him. I don't know how good a guy he is; after Haglund ran for home we lost seven CDC people in Lincoln in one fast week waiting for your Mr. Mancini to produce, but maybe his conscience is bothering him now or something—"

  "So what did he want?" Ted pushed open the commissary door, stood aside for Mandy.

  "He just wanted us to know that a couple of weird con artists are trying to set up some kind of phony drug sale in Willow Grove, Nebraska, and he's been rung in on it, and he wants to know what he should do."

  "Phony drug sale?"

  "Some kind of homemade antibiotic."

  "In Willow Grove, Nebraska?"

  "Right."

  Ted wolfed down half a sandwich. "I would laugh, except I don't think you think I should laugh." He looked at her. "Look, I'm trying to goose Sealey Labs into springing enough 3147 to help get the city of Pittsburgh off the ropes, and you want me to worry about somebody peddling snake oil somewhere in Nebraska. Why?"

  Mandy shrugged. "According to this Haglund guy, these people are operating very strangely. So far, Willow Grove has had no plague, but they don't think it's going to be long before they have it. Willow Grove is a county seat, about twenty thousand people, but there are a whole bunch of little nearby towns where everybody's kind of holed up, following Haglund's advice about no public meetings, no church services, everybody stay home and eat out of the freezer and so on. So this woman turned up from somewhere down in Kansas and went straight to the local doctors, there are two of them, pretty sharp guys, and she also went to Haglund as the nearest semblance of a public-health officer around, and she set them up that she has a way to keep Willow Grove and all those other little towns free of plague."

  "By magic or by willpower?" Ted said.

  "She says her partner is whomping up some new antibiotic that's supposed to stop the plague in its tracks. They want to supply Willow Grove with all they can use—before the plague gets there."
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  "I see," Ted said. "And what's the asking price on this new antibiotic?"

  "They don't want to sell it. They just want to trade it for all the plain tetracycline these doctors and the local pharmacies can lay their hands on."

  Ted scowled. "Well, that's a new wrinkle. But it's still just a con, Mandy. Or else they're a couple of nuts."

  "Maybe so. They're sure claiming the world for the new drug—and nobody has any except them."

  "I see. And they want to run a nice little clinical test on Willow Grove, Nebraska—is that it?"

  Mandy leaned toward him. "Ted, that's exactly it. Haglund called because that was exactly what they told the doctors. But they also told them that it had already been tested. In our own CDC facility at Fort Collins. They say it's the drug that Sealey buried and ran 3147 in as a ringer. The exact same drug. And these people say they can make it in quantity

  "And kill everybody in Willow Grove, Nebraska. God! Remember that guy peddling the fake vaccine to half the people of Joplin, Missouri? You know what happened to all those people—" Bettendorf stood up very suddenly. "Look, maybe I'd better do something. Let's get back to a phone. I can damned well check with Fort Collins and find out why nobody around there denied that newspaper expose about a phony drug switch after the first tests—Monique Jenrette did the testing, she should know, and she's still out there."

  Back at the office, he turned to the girl. "Where's this Haglund's number? Okay, fine, let's hope a couple of trunks are open all the way. It should be eleven in Colorado. You get me Fort Collins and get Monique on the line for me first. Just Monique, nobody else. Then you go downstairs and stall Sealey Labs. I'll come rescue you as soon as I can."