Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

by George C. Chesbro

"Peter, I need to contact those women. Do you still have the photograph?"

  "Sure," he said, frowning slightly and looking around him. "Let's see now, where did I put it?"

  "Think hard, Peter. It would be most useful to me."

  He bent down out of sight behind his desk, and I heard him open a drawer and begin to rummage through it. Then I heard that drawer close, another open. I stood in front of the desk, a frozen smile on my face, fighting my impatience.

  "I was so happy to see them leave, I wasn't really thinking when I put away the photo," Peter said, his voice slightly muffled by the mass of oak between us. "I know it's around here someplace. Just give me a minute."

  "When I asked you before what sons of bitches you were referring to, you said it was the pinstriped pricks in Switzerland."

  "That's right," the muffled voice replied. "Those arrogant bastards treat me like I was a piece of shit."

  "Your people in Berne know about this?"

  Now he surfaced, empty-handed, looked around the cavernous office and scratched his head, absently tugged on his hoop earring. "Yeah. Sure, I was glad to get rid of them. But I was still curious, and I'd been struck by how desperate they'd seemed. It occurred to me that some of the woman's story, the part about people being in danger from the drug, might be on the level. There are a number of pharmaceuticals companies in Europe who don't do a lot of business in the United States and don't have offices here, so I figured it couldn't hurt to check with the pricks in Berne to see if they recognized the capsule, could tell me what kind of medication it contained, and might know who made the stuff. I faxed them a message about my little meeting along with a copy of the photograph. Usually it takes them about a week to respond to anything I send them, but this time I got a return fax in under five minutes. I was ordered to destroy the photograph, and fax them the phone number I'd been given, along with any other information I had on the women. Then I was supposed to forget about the whole thing; I was ordered not to discuss the matter with anyone. Like I said, fuck them. If there are people in trouble because of this stuff, I want to help."

  "Peter," I said, gripping the edge of the desk. "I know you disobeyed the order to destroy the photograph, because you said it's still around the office someplace. Did you fax them the telephone number the woman gave you?"

  There must have been considerable tension in my voice, because he looked at me with a puzzled, somewhat defensive expression on his face, then averted his gaze. "Yeah. I've gotten kind of used to doing most of what I'm asked."

  I reached across the desk and snatched the telephone virtually from under his nose, picked up the receiver, and started to dial my office number. "I need to use your phone, Peter. Just keep looking for the photograph. Take your time; concentrate on trying to remember where you might have put it."

  My secretary answered in the middle of the third ring. "Frederickson and Frederickson."

  "Francisco," I said, watching Peter Southworth as he suddenly snapped his fingers, rose from his desk, turned, and opened the top drawer of a metal filing cabinet that stood against the wall behind his desk, "go into my office and get out my New York City reverse directories. They're in the bottom right-hand drawer of my desk."

  I waited, sighed with relief when Peter, with a satisfied look of triumph, pulled the photograph from the file drawer. He handed it to me just as Francisco came back on the line.

  "I've got them, sir."

  "It's Manhattan. Give me an address on this."

  I read off the telephone number written on the back of the photograph, waited thirty seconds, and then Francisco gave me an address on Warren Street, downtown in the financial district. I thanked him, broke the connection, then quickly dialed the number. I got a busy signal. I waited a couple of minutes, tried again. It was still busy.

  Right. I wasn't going to bother to ask an operator to cut in, because I was certain I'd only be told the receiver was off the hook.

  "Thanks, Peter!" I called over my shoulder as I rushed for the door, snatching up the capsule off the coffee table. "You've been a big help! Gotta run! I'll get back to you!"

  I caught a cab down on the street, hopped in, gave the driver the address, and asked him to hurry because it was an emergency. The tall Rastafarian with shoulder-length dreadlocks merely looked at me as if I was crazy, then gradually eased his clunky taxi out into the clogged traffic.

  As we slowly rumbled down Seventh Avenue, I absently patted first my left armpit, then my right ankle—futile, somewhat bittersweet gestures that only served to remind me that I was unarmed, my Beretta and trusty little Seecamp—constant companions in the bad old days, before Garth and I wound up spending most of our time working for Fortune 500 companies—back in the safe in my apartment, which is where they now remained most of the time, except for occasional outings for target practice or semiannual cleaning and oiling.

  There was always the slim possibility that three hours wasn't enough time for the Lorminix executives in Berne to have contacted Punch and Judy, and for Punch and Judy to have found and gone to the address—but, of course, in an age of direct overseas dialing, faxes, cellular phones, and beepers, there had been plenty of time. If Punch and Judy, or some other assassins, weren't already there, they were certainly on the way. I could only hope there was some reason why Sharon Stephens and her frail charge wouldn't be summarily executed like Philip Mayepoles, who had ended up in the Carnegie Hall Dumpster.

  We finally made it downtown. I paid the driver, got out, and looked up at the four-story building on Warren Street. There was a camera and electronics store on the ground floor, and another door next to the store entrance, presumably the one I wanted. I went into a deli down the block and bought myself a forty-ounce bottle of Colt .45 malt liquor as a beer-poor substitute for its namesake. Back out on the street I poured the beer into the gutter, then, gripping the empty bottle by the neck, I approached the door next to the camera-store entrance. It was open, and when I looked at the lock I could see that it had been jimmied. Not a good sign, but no less than I had expected.

  The door opened into a narrow hallway, with a steep wooden stairway at the end. On the wall to the right were three mailboxes, two of them labeled with company names. The third mailbox, for what I assumed was a loft on the top floor, had no nameplate or company logo. That looked to be where I wanted to go.

  I cautiously made my way up the ancient stairway, staying near the inside wall so as to avoid making the stairs creak, and peering around every corner before proceeding upward. As I made my ascent, I found myself growing increasingly depressed and anxious at the thought of what I was likely to find at the top—namely, the corpses of two women with neat, bloodless little bullet holes at the base of their skulls.

  At the top of the stairway, beyond a short, narrow landing, there was a sliding steel door that was open perhaps an inch. Gripping the neck of the beer bottle even tighter, I stepped up on the landing, hooked the fingertips of my left hand around the edge of the steel door, sucked in a deep breath, and gave a little tug. The door made only a slight scraping sound as it slid open wider. I peered around the edge of the door and found myself looking across an expanse of raw, open, unfinished loft space. A maze of beams, wires, and pipes crisscrossed the ceiling. There were only two hanging bare lightbulbs to light the place, and the atmosphere was decidedly dim and gloomy. Near the opposite wall were two mattresses covered with sheets and blankets, one chair, and a small coffee table, all of which looked like they had been scavenged off the street. There was a telephone on the floor, and its receiver was off the hook.

  When I cautiously poked my head in and glanced to the right, I found myself looking into the startled faces of two women—one a leggy blonde with green eyes, the other a very thin young woman with long black hair and the largest, most expressive eyes I had ever seen. Both were bound by the wrists and ankles with rope, and they had duct tape strapped over their mouths.

  I put a finger to my lips, then gestured to indicate that I needed to kno
w where their captors were. The psychiatrist motioned with her head and leaned over slightly to indicate that I should look the other way. I turned to my left, where there was a sink and toilet stall, and when I moved a few more inches into the loft, I could see that beyond the toilet stall there was an open doorway leading into a section of the loft that had been partitioned off. Through the doorway I could see kitchen cabinets and part of another sink. I nodded reassuringly to the women, then removed my shoes, straightened up, and, clutching my glass Colt .45 firmly in my right hand, shuffled past the sink and toilet stall to the entranceway. I could smell the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee, and I heard Punch and Judy talking; from the direction of their voices, I could tell that they were sitting, probably at a table, right around the corner, against the partition.

  "Shazam," I said as I stepped through the doorway.

  Judy was sitting closest to me, so she was the one who would need more, and extensive, plastic surgery after I gave her the beer bottle full in the face. As Punch knocked over his coffee mug clawing for the gun in his shoulder holster, I upended the table on him, sending him toppling backward in his chair. I pushed the table aside with my foot, then crouched down and cracked him in the jaw with the heel of my hand, a blow carefully calculated to knock him unconscious and perhaps remove a few teeth, but not break his jaw so that he wouldn't be able to talk.

  The initial reunion festivities over, I went back into the loft proper, put my shoes back on. I walked over to the women, removed the duct tape from their mouths, then began to untie the ropes from their wrists and ankles.

  "My God," Sharon Stephens gasped in a high-pitched, breathy voice. "Who are you?"

  "Well, Doctor, you know I'm not from the CIA, so I must be your fairy godmother." Without waiting for a reply from the psychiatrist, I turned to the frail woman with terror still swimming in her eyes, said, "Emily, my name's Mongo. I'm not going to hurt you, and neither is anyone else. You're safe now. Okay?"

  I watched as the fear in her incredibly expressive eyes was replaced by trust and relief, and she nodded tentatively.

  Sharon Stephens said, "Mongo? I think I've heard of you. Aren't you—?"

  "I've heard of you too, lady. To you, I'm Dr. Frederickson, or Mr. Frederickson, or just Frederickson."

  She smiled thinly as I finished removing the rope from her ankles, then started on her wrists. "I take it what you've heard isn't so good."

  "I'm trying not to be judgmental. Anybody who helped a dozen people escape from Rivercliff can't be all bad. Look, I don't want to spend a lot of time up here; our friends resting in the kitchen might have backup, and I don't know how long it may be before their friends show up. Why aren't the two of you dead?"

  The blond woman swallowed hard, replied, "They want Emily, and Emily doesn't function well without me. How did you know . . . ?"

  "Let me ask the questions for now," I said, removing the last length of rope. There looked to be enough of it for my purposes. "Why do they want Emily?"

  The woman rubbed her wrists and ankles to restore circulation, got to her feet, then helped the younger woman, whom I had freed first, get to hers. They stood for a few moments staring at me, their arms around each other. They looked at one another, then back at me. "She's an empath," Sharon Stephens replied at last.

  "An empath?"

  "Emily is extremely sensitive to what other people are feeling."

  "You mean she's like a mind reader, a telepath?"

  "No. Simply what I said."

  "Just what the CIA needs, somebody who's sensitive to other people's feelings," I replied curtly. "You can tell me all about it later. Right now, you can both give me a hand dragging those two hotshots in here. I want them under that low-hanging beam over there by your beds. Let's move fast."

  The women did as they were asked, each of them taking one of the bleeding, unconscious Judy's ankles and dragging her out of the kitchen, while I performed the same service for Punch. I tied their wrists separately with the ropes they had used to truss the psychiatrist and Emily. Then I tossed the ends of the ropes over the low-hanging beam above my head, pulled both assassins up until only their toes were touching the floor, tying off the ends of the ropes to an exposed pipe in the wall. Then I went back into the kitchen, retrieved Punch's .22 pistol, brought it back, and handed it to the blond woman.

  "Did your former employers teach you how to use a gun?"

  "No."

  "Well, it isn't rocket science. It's loaded. Just point it at the chest of anybody who comes through that door who doesn't look like me, and then pull the trigger. Don't hesitate, don't ask questions, and don't threaten. Just aim and shoot. Use both hands."

  "I'm not sure I can do that."

  "Then the chances are pretty good that both of you will be gone if friends of this couple show up before I get back. They'll be professional killers."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Not far. The electronics store downstairs. I need a tape recorder."

  "I have a small one in my purse."

  "Ah. That should save me a trip."

  Sharon Stephens retrieved her purse from the space between the mattresses. She took out a small, voice-activated tape recorder and handed it to me, along with the gun. I stuck the gun in my waistband, pointed to the small spool of tape inside the recorder, continued, "What's on here?"

  "Just conversations I had with various drug company executives. There's nothing on the tape worth keeping."

  "You've got that right," I said as I punched the rewind button. "Lorminix, the last place you visited, is the company that manufactured your little wonder drug."

  Her jaw dropped slightly, and she put a hand to her mouth. "How did you find that out?"

  "Not now, Doctor," I said, striding over to the steel door, which I closed and locked. "I don't know how much time we've got before somebody tries to contact these two, or comes looking for them, and I don't want to be interrupted. You two might want to excuse yourselves into the kitchen for a few minutes, maybe turn on the water if it gets too noisy in here. You're not going to like what I'm about to do."

  The women stayed where they were. Both Punch and Judy had regained consciousness, and were beginning to moan in pain. I quickly searched through Punch's pockets until I found what I was looking for, his stun gun. Both grimaced and looked away, obviously not liking what they saw.

  I continued, "I guarantee the two of you are going to get a charge out of seeing me again."

  "Don't," the woman whispered weakly, blood dribbling out of her broken mouth.

  I pressed the voice activation on the tape recorder, set it down on the floor at their feet. Then I held up the stun gun. "Now, let's see if

  I can get the hang of how this thing works," I said, and jabbed the steel prongs into Punch's exposed belly. I held it there for a second or two while he screamed and thrashed, then took it away and let him hang and twitch while I turned my attention to Judy. One of the woman's eyes was swollen shut, but the other was open wide, glittering with terror as I held the stun gun up in front of her. "You know the drill, madam," I continued. "I need the answers to a few questions, and I'm going to use the interrogation technique you taught me. First, I get your attention—"

  "Stop it!" Sharon Stephens shouted as I started to extend the stun gun toward Judy's rib cage. "You don't have to torture them!"

  "I appreciate your fine sensibilities, Doctor," I said over my shoulder. "I'm sure they were honed at Rivercliff. I told you to excuse yourself. Information these two have might be able to save the lives of the rest of your patients, and I don't have time to fool around with lies."

  "You don't need to torture them. Emily can tell you what they're feeling."

  "Believe me, lady, I already know from personal experience how they're feeling. They feel downright rotten."

  "That isn't what I mean. She'll know if they're telling the truth."

  "Explain," I said, turning around to face the psychiatrist.

  The woman shrugged, then
glanced at the frail girl, who was still clinging to her. "Emily's just very sensitive to people's feelings—their reactions, body language, tone of voice. She can tell if people are lying or telling the truth. She just senses it."

  Well, well. An empath. Emily was beginning to sound remarkably like my brother, and some things I'd only suspected about the CIA's motives were becoming clearer to me. "How reliable is she?"

  "I told you she's the reason we're both still alive. She's more reliable than any polygraph. I'm not just saying that; she's been thoroughly tested."

  I nodded. "And that's the reason the Chill Shop wants her."

  Sharon Stephens frowned. "I don't understand what you mean. What's the 'chill shop'?"

  "The Company's BUHR—Bureau of Unusual Human Resources."

  "I worked for the CIA, yes, but I've never heard of this BUHR."

  "Well, Doctor, my guess is that they're the people who paid for the work you did at Rivercliff. Listen up, and you may learn something." I paused, extended my hand toward the frail younger woman. "Emily, will you help me? I need to know if these two people who came for you answer my questions truthfully."

  Emily looked at Sharon Stephens, who nodded. Then the dark-haired woman took my hand, and I led her over to where Punch and Judy were strung up to the ceiling beam. She sat down on the floor at their feet, next to the tape recorder, crossed her legs, and stared up into their faces. Punch and Judy, looking decidedly unhappy, stared back at her.

  "What about you two?" I asked, looking back and forth between the two assassins. "You ever heard of the Chill Shop?"

  Neither answered. I clucked my tongue in disapproval, waggled the stun gun at them, then stepped toward Punch.

  "Yes!" the man said quickly. "We . . . work for them. It's like you said."

  I glanced down at Emily, who looked up at me and nodded her head.

  "Excellent," I said, and crouched down close to the recorder. "Hello, Captain. This is the arrogant, publicity-seeking, interfering dwarf prick speaking. I trust I have your attention. I have here for you a couple of early Christmas presents, along with their taped confessions—inadmissible as evidence, of course, but they should help you get your very own confessions. Now you'll know everything I know, and I'm sure you'll put the information to good use. I'm leaving Punch's gun here next to the tape recorder, and I'll bet you a dinner that ballistics tests will match it to the bullet found in the skull of the corpse in the Dumpster. Ho-ho-ho on you."