Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

by George C. Chesbro

  There was a prolonged silence, which was finally broken by the psychiatrist. "I think Mongo's right," Sharon Stephens said softly. "If you run out, you'll first lose your rationality, and then you'll die. Maybe it is possible for the doctors to come up with at least an interim treatment to prevent the cellular collapse that occurs when you stop taking the drug. Turning yourselves in now for treatment may be the wisest thing to do."

  Margaret, Michael, and Emily all looked at one another, and finally Michael turned to Sharon Stephens. "Does what you just said mean you think they'll let us keep taking our meds as long as we have them while they work on us?"

  "I don't know," the psychiatrist said in a small voice, looking away.

  I said, "Michael asked what you thought. Give us your best guess."

  "I . . . think not," the woman replied. There was anguish in her voice and expressive green eyes as her gaze swept around the table. "You have to understand the thinking of the medical establishment, which is conservative by nature to begin with. You have to look at things from their perspective. They'd see five people walking into an emergency room. Three of these people announce that they're schizophrenics, but they display absolutely no signs of mental illness, nor do they exhibit any of the side effects normally associated with any of the drugs used to treat mental illness. They talk about being patients at a mental hospital called Rivercliff, which these doctors have never heard of. Their records, of course, no longer exist anywhere. Then these people start talking about illegal experiments that were conducted at this place the doctors can't find listed anywhere. They also claim that the ice-pick killer on the streets also came from Rivercliff. So now the doctors start thinking that maybe these three people really are crazy, but they're going to be extremely cautious in diagnosing and treating them. It won't matter what Dr. Stephens or the highly respected Dr. Frederickson have to say on the matter. Doctors and hospitals are being sued all the time. Finally, these three people who claim to be schizophrenic pull out bags of capsules, supposed medication that doesn't have a name, and ask that they be allowed to continue taking one a day while the doctors check them out. I ask you, Mongo, if you were a hospital administrator, would you allow the people I've just described to self-medicate after you'd admitted them into your hospital?"

  "But you're an MD yourself, a psychiatrist. You'd be there along with me to back up their story."

  "My best guess that you asked for is that they're not going to take my word for anything—or yours. How long will it take them to check my credentials? And how do you know what kinds of trash stories my former employer may have already put out about me? Considering the legal consequences of what could happen to them if they make a bad decision, do you think the physicians at any hospital we go to will be able to check our stories and test that medication within twenty-four hours? I said I agreed with your recommendation because we're running out of time and it looks like that may be our best hope, our only choice. You know what's at stake as well as I do. I'm just not optimistic about our chances."

  I nodded. "You make some good points, Doctor."

  Michael said, "What you're saying is that if we go to a hospital now in order to save time while we still have almost a couple of weeks left, we risk ending up with only one more day to be well and alive."

  Sharon Stephens and I glanced at each other, nodded in agreement. I said, "That's about right, Michael."

  "Then I'm going to stay out and take my chances that you'll get us more meds, Mongo."

  "Me too," Emily said in a voice just above a whisper.

  I turned in my chair to face Margaret. She stared back at me, her expression filled with anxiety. "Michael and Emily are Dr. Stephens's patients, Margaret, so I'm not going to say anything more to try to influence them. But you're not anybody's patient; you're just my friend. I feel responsible for you. Time is running out—even more so for you than the others. I want you to listen to me and take my advice. I'll arrange for my own doctor to admit you to the hospital, and I guarantee you he'll, at least, listen to me and be on your side. I'll keep your meds with me, and if it looks like you'll be denied permission to keep taking them while they figure out how to treat you, I'll take you right back out of there. Okay?"

  "Things may not be that simple, Mongo," Sharon Stephens said in a firm voice. "It's possible the Company has spread disinformation about all of us to hospital personnel throughout the country, just in case we did try to turn ourselves in for treatment; I don't know if that's the case, but it would have been the logical thing to do after we escaped from Rivercliff. Hospital administrators could have been asked to alert their staffs to be on the lookout for people who come in and tell a certain kind of story. If that's how it is, then the police could show up to take Margaret into protective custody. I still concur with your recommendation, for the reasons you mentioned, but I think everybody sitting at this table should be aware of the risks involved. If you do take Margaret into a hospital, you may not have the option of taking her out again."

  "It doesn't make any difference, Dr. Stephens," the middle-aged woman with the worn, leathery features said, still looking at me. "I'm not going to the hospital."

  I shook my head in frustration. "Margaret, I'll test the waters first. I'll—"

  "I know you're thinking of my best interests, Mongo," the woman interrupted. "But even if it was guaranteed that they would let me keep taking my medication, I would still have to answer all sorts of questions that could jeopardize Michael and Emily and the others out there who didn't come in with me. I can't do that. And if they took away my medication, and you couldn't take me out, then I'd end up . . . crazy again, like I used to be."

  "Margaret," I said in a slow, measured tone, "that's a risk you may just have to take. If you'll let me, I'll try to negotiate with the medical authorities, or the police, before I take you in with me. If Dr. Stephens and Emily agree, I'll take Emily with me when I talk to them to make sure they don't lie. I know a lot of people. I can try to get a guarantee that you'll be allowed to continue to take the medication you have now while they examine you and search for another way to treat you. But we have to use what little time we have left to the best advantage. If you run out of your meds before another way to treat you can be found, you'll die. That's what the blood on your bed the morning you woke up and found me sitting next to you was all about. With no meds or other treatment, your cells will rupture; your circulatory system will collapse, and you'll bleed to death. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Mongo. But it's not death I'm afraid of. I've been kind of dead most of my life. I'd rather be really dead than the way I was before. Maybe you can't understand that because you've never been insane; you've never heard a lot of voices in your head, never had to live in the cold on the street, never really been hungry and not been able to remember how to ask for help, never been hurt in a shelter. Your mind has never turned on you the way mine has. You know how to take care of yourself. You only understand what it's like to work with your mind, not to have it working against you like an enemy. You can think clearly, recognize your friends, have your mind tell you when it's time to go to the bathroom, and then help you get there. Your mind knows how to shut down so that it can sleep properly when you need rest. These are all things I wasn't able to do when I lived on the street. Mama Spit was what you and other people called me. You're saying that maybe the doctors can help me if I go to them now, with you. But maybe they can't. Maybe the police will take me and separate us. Maybe all I have left is ten days. Well, so be it. I'll take those ten days, and I'll die when I become Mama Spit again. But the only way I can be assured of spending those ten days as me is to stay here, with my friends—if you'll let me. That's what I'm going to do, Mongo, if it's all right with you. Ten days is a whole lifetime to me."

  For some reason I wanted to cry, but I didn't. Instead I rose, smiled, and nodded to Margaret and the others. "Of course you can stay here with your friends, Margaret. And I do understand, folks. I'm not sure I wouldn't make the same deci
sion myself if I were in your position. I just wanted to make sure you all knew you had another option." .

  "Finding more meds," Michael said in a low voice that trembled slightly. "You'll keep trying, Mongo?"

  I sighed. "Of course I'll keep trying. Thanks for letting me share your pizza."

  The first thing I kept trying, for the rest of the day, was Bailey Kramer's home phone number. There was still no answer. I kept trying until well past midnight, then finally went to bed.

  As I lay awake staring at the ceiling it occurred to me that I had been too impatient and careless in openly approaching Bailey on the street; anyone who might be following and watching me would have seen us talking, possibly guessed what the conversation was about, and what I was asking him to do. Because of me, Bailey Kramer might be dead.

  I did not sleep well.

  Chapter 12

  Veil was waiting for me in the hallway outside my apartment when I came out in the morning of the second day after I'd made my call to Heinrich Muller. The man with the shoulder-length blond hair, sea-blue eyes, easy smile, catlike movements, and deadly fighting skills was sitting on the landing, cross-legged and his back to the wall, sipping at a carton of coffee. He nodded and rose to his feet when I came out the door.

  "What are you doing here at this hour?" I asked, glancing at my watch. It was 8:30. "Your shift was over a half hour ago. I'd think you'd be home in bed by now. I hope you don't think I'm going to pay you overtime."

  Veil smiled thinly. "We had a little incident last night. I wanted you to be aware of it."

  I quickly glanced behind me to make sure my apartment door was closed so that Michael, who was busy in the kitchen washing up our breakfast dishes, couldn't hear us. "Are my guests downstairs all right?"

  "I presume so. I haven't looked in on them. I don't think they heard anything."

  "I didn't hear anything either."

  "We had two visitors about three o'clock this morning. They came in through the attic, jimmied the window off the fire escape. They were experts, heavily armed, no identification. They were also well equipped, and it looked like they were prepared to firebomb the whole building if they found what they were looking for."

  "My guests."

  Veil nodded. "And, presumably, you. I didn't have a chance to interrogate them. I was patrolling the bottom two floors, and Jerry was up here. He confronted them on the landing just below the attic, judged the situation was too dangerous to risk failure if he tried to disable them, so he just killed them both. It was the right decision."

  "Ah," I said, thinking that it did not bode well that a brace of assassins had arrived in the middle of the night, instead of a crate of capsules in the morning.

  "I got rid of the bodies and the equipment they were carrying."

  "Where'd you put them?"

  "In the Dumpster down the street by Carnegie Hall."

  I smiled grimly. "That Dumpster is becoming quite the in place for corpses."

  "The cops are sure to be around the neighborhood asking questions. I considered not telling you, so that you wouldn't have to lie, but then figured that wasn't such a good idea. I figured you should know."

  I nodded absently, my mind racing. "No, I'm glad you told me. The police aren't going to bother to canvass the neighborhood; they'll come right here. The precinct captain is going to have a pretty good idea where the corpses came from, if not exactly who made them corpses, but I don't think he'll press it. I'll make sure Francisco understands that I'm the only one who does any talking to the police, and I'll keep your people out of sight. What concerns me more than the police is the fact that I think I just received a very negative message."

  "Indeed. When those two don't report in, we're likely to get more visitors."

  "The message is the fact that anybody showed up here at all. I managed to tag the outfit that manufactured the drug for the agency, a company called Lorminix with headquarters in Switzerland. I called over there to the guy who was apparently in charge of the program. I tried to pressure him into sending me more of the drug so that I'd have an emergency supply for the three people we've got here, and the nine others we're supposed to rendezvous with on Christmas Eve at Rockefeller Center."

  Veil shook his head. "It doesn't look like he's planning to send you the drug, Mongo."

  "Nope—and, in a way, I can't say I blame the son of a bitch. I told him I'd try to help him and his company out if he cooperated, but there's no way anybody can help them if the whole story comes out. The man and his company share responsibility for the serial killer who's loose on the streets out there now; he got that way because of the drug. He's a product of the Company's tests of the drug, and an analysis of his blood, and the blood of the other patients, will prove it."

  "Forty-six deaths as of this morning, Mongo."

  "Jesus," I sighed. "Lorminix is finished if the truth ever comes out. Every single executive who isn't in prison will be fighting personal and corporate lawsuits until there isn't a penny left in the coffers. They don't know I have patients here, but both the CIA and Lorminix know I'm here. The Company and Mr. Heinrich Muller must figure they have no choice but to take me out, destroy any evidence I might have gathered, and then keep hunting for the patients. They will definitely send others."

  Now it was Veil's turn to smile without humor. "Well, I hope they clean out that Dumpster on a regular basis, because it may be getting a lot of use. I'm going to double the guard."

  I nodded my thanks, and we started down the stairs together, passing yet another one of Veil's students, an attractive redhead in her mid-thirties, who was on her way up. "Where the hell are all these people coming from?" I asked my friend. "I didn't think you took on that many pupils."

  "I have enough," Veil replied evenly. "You let me worry about security. Oh, one other thing. Some guy by the name of Theo Barnes was around the other day looking for you and asking questions about Michael. He obviously knows both of you."

  "Ah yes, good old Theo. Michael was his meal ticket."

  "Problem?"

  "I don't think so."

  "He was told there was no Michael here, and advised not to call you, you'd call him."

  "Advised?"

  "Very strongly."

  "Good."

  "What are you going to do now?"

  "First, I'm going to call that prick in Switzerland to let him know I'm alive and very disappointed in him sending me goons instead of the drug. Maybe it will shake him up. If he finds out I'm not so easy to get rid of, thanks to you, he may reconsider his options and send me more of the medication—assuming there's any of it left. After that ..."

  "What?"

  I was thinking of Bailey Kramer, whom I hadn't heard from and couldn't reach. There didn't seem to be any sense in going out to search for him, because I didn't know where to start looking. By now I was almost certain he'd been killed or captured and put on ice for the duration as a result of our little chat on the street. I felt very bad, and I didn't want to talk about it. "I don't know," I replied at last. "I don't know what else I can do, and the clock is ticking."

  We paused at the entrance to my office on the first floor, and Veil said, "You should have somebody with you when you go out."

  I shook my head. "There's nothing any of your people could do about a sniper if somebody wants to take a shot at me, and I can take care of a tail myself. In fact, I'd like to find somebody following me, and whoever it is better have either answers or disability insurance. You're already doing way more than your share by securing the brown-stone. But thanks anyway. I appreciate the offer."

  "You sure?"

  "I'm sure. Go home and get some sleep."

  Veil gave me a rather reluctant nod, then poked me on the shoulder and left. I walked into the reception area, said good morning to a rather concerned-looking Francisco, then went into my private office at the rear of the suite, closed the door behind me, then sat down at my desk. I tried Bailey's home again, but there was still no answer. I desperately w
anted to find him, rescue him if he was in trouble, but there was nothing to go on. I knew nothing of his habits or friends. The only places where I knew how to reach him were his apartment, where the phone wasn't being answered at any hour of the day or night, and his place of work, which was closed for the holidays. I spent the better part of an hour calling hospitals and morgues in all five boroughs, but there was no record of any patient or corpse identified as Bailey Kramer, and his general description would have fit thousands of New Yorkers. There was always the possibility that he had been arrested for something and was languishing in jail, but I couldn't risk using any of my police contacts to try to trace him.

  It was time for another talk with Herr Heinrich Muller, if he hadn't yet left the office. When I called his private number I heard a recorded message telling me it was no longer in use. Cute. I found out the number of the main office, dialed it, got a receptionist who claimed to speak no English. In my own laborious French I asked to speak to Heinrich Muller. I was informed not only that there was no Heinrich Muller working there now, but that Lorminix had never employed anybody by that name. Even cuter. No, I could not speak with any other executive, unless I knew that executive's name and submitted a written request for a telephone interview; no, it didn't make any difference if I wanted to talk about the CIA, a place called Rivercliff, or two people named Punch and Judy.

  Outrageous.

  I slammed down the receiver, leaned back in my chair, and ground my knuckles into my eyes in frustration. So Heinrich Muller was on an extended leave of absence—or perhaps even dead. And the giant drug company, perhaps after consultations with the CIA, was going to stonewall right to the end. I couldn't see how they could successfully deny that a Heinrich Muller had ever worked there—but then again, maybe they could; Lorminix wasn't exactly governed by the laws of New York State. There was no way I could disprove their story in the short time I had left, and no point in even trying—at least not over the telephone. With Bailey Kramer missing, getting the help, however grudgingly, of Lorminix executives was my last hope of avoiding a Christmas Eve deadline that was probably hopeless anyway, since I expected most of the patients would be dead soon afterward. A more personal approach to the people at Lorminix was needed. It was time for the approach Garth would undoubtedly have taken, but it was my job to do, not his.