True, Garth seemed distant and distracted-but I knew it was because he was thinking about Vicky Brown, not pondering whatever consequences might arise from his having roughed up and threatened Peter Patton. I was distracted by thoughts of Vicky Brown as well, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that I was being distracted by a lot more things than Garth was; I'd decided that the problem had to be attacked immediately, and the air cleared.
"I need to talk to you," I said as we entered his third-floor apartment in the brownstone and I tossed my parka over a coatrack in a corner of the wood-paneled foyer.
"I know," Garth said evenly as he took off his overcoat, hung it over my parka, then preceded me into the living room. "You want a drink?"
"No."
Garth's apartment, except for the furnishings, was virtually identical to mine, and now he went to the wall of glass at the south side of the room, gazed out into the brightly lighted night. "You weren't happy with the way I handled Patton," he said, his voice slightly muffled by the glass. "You didn't say anything, but I could see."
"There are a few things I'm not happy with, Garth," I said curtly. "Like, say, your little excursion into the bowels of the Blaisdel Building. What the hell did you think you were doing, for Christ's sake?!"
"Well, I wasn't trying to get into the freight elevator-that part of their story was bullshit, intended to put me into an even worse light if the decision was made to press charges; it's arguable as to whether going into the basement of a building warrants a trespassing charge. I could have been looking for a men's room."
"Is it just my imagination, or have you failed to answer my question?"
"I wanted to try to find out if they had a security alarm system in the building-and, if so, how good it is. They do, and it's state-of-the-art. The interesting thing is that the shops all have their own individual security alarm systems. The best one isn't for Nuvironment or any of the other office complexes up there."
"The penthouse?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sure the state-of-the-art system just covers Blaisdel's triplex?"
"I'm sure. And they have security guards to oversee the security system; that's how I got caught."
"Well, that's not all that surprising, is it? Henry Blaisdel isn't exactly John Doe."
"I never said it was surprising. You asked me what I was doing down there, and I told you."
"I still don't understand what you thought you were going to accomplish."
"I wasn't trying to accomplish anything but what I did-check out Blaisdel's and the building's security system. Those people in there have Vicky Brown-or they know where she is. Have you forgotten that?"
"No, Garth, I haven't forgotten Vicky Brown. But there is the possibility, however remote, that Patton is telling the truth."
"That isn't a possibility, Mongo."
"He admits talking to Valley, and he didn't have to do that. Craig Valley was mad as a hatter, so any direction he pointed us in has to be suspect. He arranged to bring the dirt into this country, sure, but he could have been acting for somebody else; that would make sense if it's true that he blamed Nuvironment for his troubles, which is Patton's story. Patton flat out denies knowing anything about the dirt, Vicky Brown, or William Kenecky."
"He's lying."
"How the hell can you be so damn sure? You were skulking around in the basement while I was talking to the man. And I don't want to hear about your damn nose."
Now Garth turned away from the window and stared at me for some time. Shadows moved in his brown eyes, and he seemed to be searching for words. "I can't explain it any other way, Mongo," he said at last as he came over to me and laid a hand on my shoulder. "I think it may have something to do with the nitrophenylpentadienal poisoning. I really can't describe to you what I was feeling and sensing while I was zonked out on that stuff, except to say that certain things about certain people became instantly clear to me. That still happens to me; I just know certain things. I knew that anyone you talked to in Nuvironment was going to lie to you even before you went up there. I sensed it."
"You know what that's called? Prejudice."
"You call it what you want, Mongo," he said quietly, taking his hand off my shoulder and moving away. "But I knew you weren't going to get any cooperation, so I figured my time would be better spent seeing if there was a way for us to get in there without anybody finding out about it. If Patton takes us through, he'll make sure we don't find what we want; if he offered to hire us, it was only so he could keep track of us-or to see if you were open to a bribe."
"That had occurred to me, Garth."
"Your visit served to warn him. Now, any records they have pertaining to the dirt and its dump site are going to disappear. We should have waited until tonight and tried to break in."
"Before we even tried to talk, and just because you thought you smelled evil when we walked into the lobby?" I said, making no attempt to mask my increasing impatience and rising anger. "You've got to be kidding me. Let me tell you something, brother. I'm getting just a bit tired of this new mystical, soft-spoken barbarian number of yours. I know I don't have to remind you that you're not a cop any longer-and if you were, I'm sure you wouldn't have acted the way you did up there; you wouldn't have engaged in a potentially illegal act of entry, and you wouldn't have manhandled and directly threatened Patton. Now you've put us both into a potentially vulnerable position. I don't know how hard Patton wants to push things, but if he does want to make trouble I suggest that your former employer, namely the New York Police Department, will lift our licenses faster than you can say Lieutenant Malachy McCloskey. I just don't see how losing the means to make our livelihood is going to advance our present cause."
Garth flushed slightly. His eyes flashed, and he abruptly pushed back a thin strand of his wheat-colored hair before sweeping his arms around him in a gesture: the contents of his apartment, and mine, and the building itself. "Mongo," he said tightly, "there was a time not so long ago when all of this shit that we have now wouldn't have mattered so much to you-not when compared to what's happening to Vicky Brown. Now you're worried about us losing our licenses because we've offended a piece of shit like Patton. Do you really care so much about protecting all of this?"
In reply, I mumbled something under my breath that I did not intend for him to hear.
"What?" Garth said irritably, taking a step back in my direction.
I motioned for him to come even closer and bend down toward me, which he did. "I said, you sure are getting to be a self-righteous, insensitive, narrow-minded pain in my ass," I whispered in his ear, and then brought my right fist up into his nose. I thought I felt and heard the cartilage snap; blood spurted over the front of my slacks and shoes and over the carpet.
Garth, his nose streaming blood, straightened up and stepped back. His brown eyes were wide with shock, pain, and bewilderment; then, finally, came understanding. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it to his nose.
"I think you broke it," he said evenly. He seemed to be merely stating a fact, not registering a complaint.
"Yeah," I said, still seething with anger. "But you bled all over my pants and shoes, so I figure that makes us even."
"I'm sorry, Mongo."
I sucked in a deep breath, waved at my brother in disgust, slowly exhaled. "It's all right."
"I have been acting a bit self-righteous, insensitive, and narrow-minded lately, haven't I?"
"Yeah."
"And overly zealous?"
"Yeah. That too."
Garth grinned at me. "What about stupid?"
Despite my best intentions, I couldn't keep from laughing. "Okay, okay, enough; stop. You've engaged in sufficient self-recrimination to enable me to forget the outrageous things you said to me. Just watch yourself in the future, brother."
Garth's smile vanished, and the laughter winked out of his eyes. "You're also absolutely right about our not having to lose our licenses in order to find the girl; but I looked a
t that twitching son-of-a-bitch behind that desk, thought about the fact that he could probably tell us where to find the girl, but wouldn't, and I. . just lost it. These days. . ever since getting drugged with the nitrophenylpentadienal, I just go a little crazy where hurting kids are involved."
"I know, Garth," I said quietly. "But you've always felt deeply for anyone who was hurting; it's one of the reasons why I've always loved you so much. I think what the poison did-and what you have so much trouble explaining-is to take away some of your controls while giving you other, different ones. I think you've become as close a thing to a true empath as anyone alive on the planet today. You don't just feel sympathy for people; you virtually experience their mental and physical pain. I love you for that, too-but I also pity you. I guess, in a way, you really can 'smell evil,' as you put it."
Garth grunted, shrugged his broad shoulders, then walked out of the living room to the bathroom. He was gone for about fifteen minutes. When he returned, he had three strips of adhesive tape over the bridge of his nose, and he had stuffed cotton into his nostrils to stanch the bleeding. The nose looked straight enough, but the flesh under both eyes was already beginning to swell and darken; he was going to wake up in the morning with two significant shiners, and I hoped he owned a good pair of dark glasses. I almost felt bad-until I remembered the words that had triggered my little outburst of violence. Also, I observed that my punch in his nose seemed to have had a positively therapeutic effect on the empath who was my brother.
"I'll call Patton tomorrow and apologize, Mongo," he said quietly as he sat down on the sofa in the living room and put his feet up on his coffee table. "You're right; it was stupid for me to grab and threaten him like that, and I've put us in a vulnerable position."
"Let's not go overboard with the sackcloth and ashes, brother. What's done is done, and we should forget about it until and unless he tries to throw some grief our way. Besides, he told me the office was being closed down and he was flying off to Europe. If he's hiding things, and I do agree with you that he is, I doubt he'll want to make waves and call more attention to himself and Nuvironment."
"The son-of-a-bitch knows," Garth said softly, the muscles in his throat and jaw beginning to twitch. "He knows where the girl is."
"Okay, he knows. But we don't have any room left to move in that direction. And I agree that any record they may have had of the shipment is gone by now."
"Which means that we're going to have to start looking elsewhere."
I nodded. "For openers, we'll check out all the maritime shipping companies-especially any that we find out are owned by Blaisdel Industries. Also, we can try to find out what other companies do business with Nuvironment-plastics, steel, glass, whatever. If they've reached the stage where they're actually trying to build a biosphere, they need a lot more than just dirt. If we can identify some of their suppliers and talk to them, we may be able to pick up a clue."
"Right," Garth said, getting to his feet. "That means a lot of browsing through the business journals. Let's go; the library's open until nine."
"Tomorrow, Garth," I replied. "It's beginning to look like we're going to have to pace ourselves. It'll only take one of us to do the shipping companies. I'll do that, since we don't want your black eyes to scare anybody away. You'll work the library."
Garth shoved his hands into his pockets, frowned. "I hate to lose any time, Mongo."
"I know, Garth. So do I. But we're not going to find the girl tonight. And no matter what information there is to be found in the library, the fact remains that we won't be able to talk to anybody until tomorrow; offices are closed now."
"Okay, you're probably right," Garth said quietly. He pulled the cotton from his nostrils, wriggled his nose, then looked at me inquiringly.
"It's not bleeding anymore."
"I don't think you broke it after all, Mongo."
"I didn't? Shit. I hit you as hard as I could."
"Well, you had a bad angle. Don't feel bad about not breaking it."
"I must be getting old."
Garth smiled, came over to me, and gently laid an arm over my shoulders. "We're both getting old, brother."
"You want to go out and get something to eat?"
Garth shook his head. "I'm just going to have a sandwich and a beer while I look through the Manhattan yellow pages for companies selling things that might be useful in building a biosphere. It's probably a waste of time, but I need to feel like I'm doing something."
I nodded, walked across the living room, stopped and turned back at the entrance to the vestibule. I decided that I wanted to share something else that was bothering me. "How high would you rate my paranoia index?" I asked.
"Extremely high-which is perfectly normal for a New Yorker. Why?"
"All right, let's look at what we've got. First, a nutty plant man who killed himself rather than risk telling us something he didn't want us to know. Then we have Patton playing games-but he offers to give us the run of his offices and labs after the first of the year, which is a little less than a week and a half away. Why?"
"He told you Nuvironment was closing down until then."
"Yeah, but why make the offer at all? He's got more than enough time to destroy files, sure. But what about his people? Valley knew something, and he killed himself rather than reveal it. Why should Patton be so willing to give us access to his people-after the first of the year? I'm thinking-''
"You're thinking that it may not matter what we discover after the first of the year because by then it won't matter to them? That whatever it is they're so anxious to cover up won't make any difference then? That by then it will be too late for us, or anybody else, to stop them?"
"Yeah," I said, blinking in surprise. "Something like that."
"The thought occurred to me too, Mongo. You're not the only one with a high paranoia index."
I smiled thinly. "But then, you've got a nose for evil, don't you? I must have some of the same genes in my nose."
"I really wish that fruitcake Valley hadn't killed himself," Garth said seriously. "After he told us where to find Vicky Brown, I'd have liked to ask him to be a bit more specific about when the world was going to end, and just what he thought was going to happen when it did."
7
Malachy McCloskey seemed oddly subdued and distracted when Garth and I went in the next morning to make our formal statements concerning the suicide of Dr. Craig Valley; I had the feeling that the few days he had left before retirement were weighing heavily on him, and that we made him decidedly nervous. Despite the fact that the police detective apparently believed our story, the process was still maddeningly time-consuming, and it was past eleven by the time we got out of the precinct station. Garth headed for the 42nd Street library, while I hailed a cab.
Pier 42, on the Lower East Side, was the last maritime shipping facility left in New York City, and it was used primarily for the importation of bananas. But bananas came from the tropics, and I considered it a good possibility that one of the container ships might have been persuaded to bring in some soil along with its bananas.
I visited five offices and warehouses, talked with secretaries, warehouse foremen, and longshoremen. Not a few people thought I was joking when I asked if they knew anything about a load of a hundred tons of dirt. Then I told them why I wanted the information and quickly got their cooperation. What I didn't get was any useful information.
It was four o'clock by the time I finished working the area around Pier 42, and I realized with a growing sense of frustration that by the time I went back for my car and then made it through the rush hour crush of traffic in the Holland Tunnel, all of the shipping offices in Jersey City and Hoboken, across the river, would be closed.
I hailed a cab, went to the library to help Garth.
My brother was not encouraging; just in Manhattan, there were close to a hundred companies that supplied glass or plastic.
The next morning, the day before Christmas, I was up bright and early, drivin
g Beloved-a modified Volkswagen Rabbit-down the East Side and through the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey, where most of the shipping companies had fled over the years to lower taxes and modernized container-shipping facilities.
I started in Jersey City, visiting companies in alphabetical order. At my first stop I found that a Christmas party, complete with jug wine, cookies, and a huge grab bag, was already in progress, although it was only nine thirty in the morning. I decided that did not bode well.
It didn't. Everywhere I went, Christmas parties were in progress, sometimes covertly, and more than one person I talked to had glassy eyes and liquor breath. Christmas music was everywhere, on the streets and in the offices; people were smiling, eager to cooperate.
Nobody knew anything about any shipment of Amazon rain forest soil.
By noon, I had covered less than half the companies on my list, and I still had Hoboken to visit. I tried to keep my frustration and anger tamped down, because I knew these emotions would only drain me of energy, but it was difficult; the good cheer that was evident everywhere only underlined the fact that somewhere-perhaps only a short distance away-there was a little girl who was not going to get any puppy for Christmas, only rending physical and psychological pain. To make matters worse, Christmas this year fell on a Friday, which meant that it would be three full days before Garth and I would be able to resume our search through corporate America.
After yet another fruitless visit, I put on my parka and trudged out of the shipping company office into a raw, gray afternoon that perfectly matched my mood. There was a cold drizzle that I was certain would soon change to snow, making my trip back into Manhattan even more slow and miserable. I was suddenly very tired, and depressed; my instincts told me that the rest of the day was going to be equally unproductive. I thought I might be coming down with a cold. I wanted to get back into Manhattan well before the heavy traffic started, but I knew I couldn't; I had to keep slogging along until I ran out of offices or they closed, because there was always the possibility that the very next one I went into might be the one that had shipped the dirt. If I quit early, I thought, Garth would have the right to punch me in the nose.
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