"I … I don't know. I feel so tired, Mongo. I don't know what's wrong with me. I had. . this terrible nightmare."
"Yeah. Me too. I know about your nightmare, Margaret. I shared it. That's why I'm here."
She pulled back the blanket covering her, started to try to get out of bed, stopped when she saw the blood-soaked bedding beneath her. "Oh," she said in the same weak voice. "I must have gotten my monthly. I'm sorry."
"There's nothing for you to be sorry about. I'm the one who's sorry."
"But I've ruined your sheets and blankets. And I think I'm late for work."
"Don't you worry about the sheets and blankets; I've got more. And you're not going to work. I'm your boss, and I'm ordering you to take the day off. I'm going to change the bed and give you one of Garth's sweatshirts to wear, and then I want you to get right back into bed and stay there. I have things to do, but I'll have Francisco look in on you from time to time, and he'll bring you your meals. If you need anything, just press the blue button on that intercom on the wall next to you. That will connect you to the office downstairs, and Francisco will come right up, or take care of whatever it is you need. Okay?"
Her swollen eyes went wide. "Something bad happened, didn't it?"
"Yes. Something very bad happened. I know now you were telling the truth about what happened on the street and how you got the pills. I apologize for not believing you, Margaret."
"But I was still crazy then. I don't know how much of what I told you was real."
"I think it was all real enough." I paused, pointed to the bag of capsules I had replaced on the nightstand after removing a few. "There are your pills, Margaret. I've borrowed a couple, and I'll try to put them to good use. The man who gave them to you was right when he said you have to take one every day. I helped you take one during the night while you were having your nightmare, so you might want to wait until this evening before you take the next. Then be sure you keep taking one every day at bedtime, until you hear differently from me."
"Then you're. . not going to make me leave right away?"
"No, Margaret, I'm not going to make you leave right away."
I gave her a bath towel to cover herself, helped her out of bed and into the chair, then brought her one of my brother's old, baggy sweatshirts to wear as a nightgown. I changed the sheets and blankets, then helped her back into bed and tucked her in. Her eyes were already closing, but she seemed to be breathing and moving without pain or undue difficulty, and I judged that she would be all right.
"Thank you, Mongo," she sighed.
"You're welcome. You should eat soon. Nap now, and Francisco will wake you in a little while and give you some breakfast; I hope you like liver, because that's what you need to eat. Then you can sleep as long as you want. I'll see you later."
My first stop was a nearby commercial testing laboratory owned and operated by a chemist and pharmacologist, Dr. Frank Lemengello, who was also a friend. The tall, handsome, sad-eyed black man who was going into another room when I entered the main office was not a friend; neither was he an enemy, at least I didn't consider him one, but he was a bit more than just an acquaintance. He was most certainly a victim, in this case of his own past hubris, arrogance, and greed, aspects of his personality that had been thoroughly squeezed out of him by the courts, serious hang time on Rikers Island, and the opprobrium of his ex-colleagues in academia.
Dr. Bailey Kramer had once been a rising star in the international science firmament, a brilliant organic chemist lauded for his pioneering research on some curious chemical beasts called mega-long-chain polymers. But Bailey Kramer had wanted to make some big money in a short time, and he'd taken a hard fall. In the course of an investigation into industrial espionage in the pharmaceuticals industry, Garth and I had uncovered the fact that Bailey Kramer, renowned researcher, was also the brilliant sole creator and hopelessly inept wholesale distributor of a certain illegal, cheap, and highly addictive "designer drug," a new amphetamine, that had begun turning up on ghetto streets around the country. We'd turned him in.
I had never seen an individual so thoroughly crushed, humiliated-and sincerely contrite, contrition being an exceedingly rare quality in the usual kinds of people who are involved in the making, buying, and selling of illegal drugs. Even the prosecutor had felt pity-an even rarer quality among New York City prosecutors. After agreeing to turn state's evidence and testify as a key witness against the others involved, he had been given a relatively lenient sentence. He had served time, been a model prisoner, and then been released on early parole. I'd gotten him his present job after I'd discovered him driving a taxicab, underemployment I'd considered a waste of knowledge and talent for society as well as Bailey Kramer. I didn't think that Kramer had lost sight of what I'd done for him, but neither did I think he'd forgotten what Garth and I had done to him. I could understand how his feelings toward me might be mixed.
Not so his boss, who simply considered me a rather good fellow. "Hey, Mongo!" Frank Lemengello boomed as he entered his office. "How're you doing, my friend?"
"I'm doing the usual. How about yourself?"
"I'm doing the usual too. Bring more river water for me?"
"Not this time. What about Kramer? Is he working out?"
The burly scientist finished pumping my hand, then rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Are you kidding me? Model employee. He's working out just fine. But it sometimes feels strange having an assistant who knows ten times more about your work than you do. He's taught me a lot. I'm giving him top dollar for a technical lab assistant, but I can't afford to pay him what he's worth."
"Don't worry about it. There isn't that much demand in industry or the academic world for organic chemists who are also convicted drug dealers. Actually, he's probably making almost as much money with you as he did as a research professor, and he's making a hell of a lot more than he was as a taxi driver. Besides, he likes what he's doing."
"Bailey told you that?"
"He hasn't told me anything; he doesn't much like talking to me. But he's a scientist, and he's doing science, which is something he probably thought he'd never be doing again."
The heavily muscled, curly-haired scientist shrugged his broad shoulders. "What we do here is pretty cut-and-dried. It must be boring for him."
"He's got an attitude problem?"
"Not at all. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he has any attitudes or emotions. He's always polite, but he doesn't seem to care much to talk to me either, so we don't talk. I just let him go on about his business, which he does just fine. This a social visit, Mongo, or have you got something for me?"
"I've got this for you," I said, taking one of the black-and-yellow capsules out of my pocket and handing it to him.
He rolled the capsule back and forth between his fingertips, then examined it against one of the bright fluorescent lamps in the ceiling. "Hmm. No brand name on the casing, not even a lot number. The gel feels just a tad thicker and heavier than what most American manufacturers use. I'd guess this was made in Europe."
"Ever seen one like it before?"
"Nope. Black-and-yellow is an unusual color combination; can't say it looks very appetizing. Patients and drug addicts usually like whatever they're taking wrapped in more soothing colors."
"I haven't seen anything about black-and-yellow capsules in police or FBI bulletins. Have you seen anything like this mentioned in the trade or professional journals?"
"Nope, can't say I have. What do you think this is, some kind of medication, or a street drug?"
"That's what I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me. It could be either. I want you to tell me all the ingredients in that thing, and then give me your best guess as to what effect taking it could have on the human mind and body."
"Where'd you get it?"
"I'd rather not say right now, Frank. I wouldn't want to influence your analysis."
He stopped studying the capsule and looked at me, raising his thick eyebrows slightly. "What, are you kidding me?
I'm a chemist, not a palm reader. My spectrograph doesn't give a damn where what I feed it comes from, it just gulps it down and burps readouts. But there are tests, and then there are other tests. If you could give me some idea of where it came from, it could give me a clue as to what it might be. That could save me time, and you money."
"I don't mind paying for your time, Frank," I said, turning and heading for the door. "Just run a full analysis on whatever is in that capsule, and give me your opinion on what it does. Can you have something for me tomorrow?"
"No problem."
"Thanks, Frank."
My next stop was the public library. I read The New York Times every day, but the Times wasn't big on reporting what it considered routine street crime in the city, and I had seen no mention of anybody being shot on 56th Street. With the mounting toll being taken by the ice-pick killer, whose victims, as of that morning, now numbered twenty-five, it was more than likely that one more old-fashioned shooting hadn't made the news. When I found no mention of any killing in my neighborhood in the Thanksgiving editions of the Daily News or Post, I reluctantly headed for the Midtown North precinct station house.
The commander of the precinct was one Captain Felix MacWhorter, and our relationship dated back to the days when Garth was an NYPD detective. MacWhorter hadn't liked Garth or me then, and he still didn't like us-the reason I had tried the library first. I didn't know why. I suspected there had been bad blood between Garth and MacWhorter over something, but Garth had never said anything to me about it, and I hadn't inquired, so I put it down to a personality conflict between two cops which, by reason of family ties, had included me. I had never exchanged more than a few words with the man, but I had always felt his hostility. I didn't plan on exchanging any words with him now. I was on my way to the desk to talk to the booking sergeant, who was a friend of mine, when MacWhorter spotted me through the glass wall of his nearby office, rushed out, and intercepted me in the middle of the stained tile floor. I hadn't done more than walk into the building, and already I could see that he was angry. His green eyes flashed, the tendons in his thick neck were straining at his shirt collar, and his face and the flesh of his scalp showing through his close-cut, thinning brown hair were pink.
"What do you want, Frederickson?" the big man growled.
"Take it easy, Captain. I'm just visiting my local outpost of peacekeepers. "
"We're a little busy, and we don't give tours. I don't want you in here wasting the time of any of my men."
"Hey, hang on a minute. I'm a taxpaying citizen, I don't have any outstanding parking tickets, and I have as much right to come in here as anybody else."
"Other taxpaying citizens aren't all private investigators who are always trying to use the police station as a reference library whenever they want some information. And other private investigators don't suck up to cops and ask the cops to do their work for them."
"You must have this confused with another planet, Captain. Every private investigator I know sucks up to cops all the time, and most of them, including my brother, used to be cops. If we couldn't get cooperation from the police from time to time, we'd all be out of business. Sometimes that cooperation works both ways. So why the attitude, MacWhorter? How come you've got such a hard-on for Garth and me?"
Shadows moved in MacWhorter's emerald eyes. "The Frederickson brothers just piss me off. The media thinks both of you walk on water."
"You've never seen us do that?"
He was not amused. "If a cop fires his gun at a suspect in self-defense during the commission of a crime, he's more than likely to end up before some civilian review board. The two of you leave corpses piled up all over the world, and you're treated like heroes. The cops solve thousands of crimes a year, and most of the time we get shit on; you bust two or three off-the-wall cases, and you wind up rich and famous. Now the two of you don't even get your hands dirty; you spend all your time doing donkey work for fat-cat corporations and collecting fat fees. If your brother had any real balls, he'd still be a cop, instead of a pussy who went running to you when he got into trouble and ended up cashing in big as your partner."
I glanced around me. Cops, perps, and suspected perps had all stopped whatever they had been doing and were staring at the sight of a six-foot-two-inch, two-hundred-twenty-plus police captain and a dwarf carrying on a one-sided, heated colloquy in the center of the station house. Angel Gonzalez, the booking sergeant, averted his gaze and bowed his head slightly in embarrassment. Captain Felix MacWhorter, who was obviously more than just a tad jealous of Garth, was looking to embarrass me, not Angel, but all he had managed to do by his reference to my brother was get me riled a bit.
"You've got your fat head up your fat ass, MacWhorter," I replied in a voice that wasn't as loud as his but was of sufficient volume to be heard by everyone. "If the NYPD hadn't thrown Garth to the wolves, he'd still be a cop-and I'd have been killed a long time ago. Garth had the guts to stand up to a bunch of corrupt Feds, and the NYPD brass didn't. First they caved, and then they cut Garth loose. My guess is that you don't have a clue about what happened back then, so I don't want to hear any more of your horseshit. Fuck you and have a nice day. I'll take my business downtown."
"Hey, Frederickson!" MacWhorter shouted as I headed for the door, smiling at a couple of hookers who were sitting on a bench to my left, staring at me. When I didn't react, he tried again, louder. "Frederickson!"
Now I stopped, turned back. MacWhorter's face and scalp had gone from pink to a beet red, which gave me a certain satisfaction. He was apparently tired of crossing words with me in public, because he motioned with his head toward his office. I went in. He followed behind me, shut the door and closed the blinds, then turned to where I stood, leaning against his desk.
"I know you've got friends in all sorts of high places, including One Police Plaza," he continued. "Do you really think I give a shit if you go over my head to get whatever it is you want?"
There was still fury in his voice, but he'd turned down the sound level, and that was a welcome relief. "You don't know whether I want anything, Captain," I replied quietly. "You never bothered to ask. You just went apeshit when you saw me. You keep losing it like that, and One PP is going to be packing you off to a police shrink."
MacWhorter continued to glare at me, but the green fire in his eyes gradually cooled. He took a deep breath, then abruptly brushed past me and sat down behind his desk. "You want something. What is it?"
"I just came in to verify that a man's body was found within a block or two of my home a week ago, last Tuesday night. That's something any citizen would want to know. He would have been shot. I checked in the papers, but there wasn't any mention of it."
"Did you see it happen?"
"No. If I had, I'd have reported it."
"Then how do you know a man was shot-if a man was shot?"
Now I had to be very careful what I said. Becoming an NYPD commanding officer is not the easiest thing in the world. MacWhorter might be a hothead on occasion, and harbor all sorts of twisted feelings about Garth and me, but I knew from casual conversations with other cops that he could also be cold and calculating. His irrational outburst in the other room notwithstanding, he was by no means a stupid man. There might not be much hair on his head, but there wasn't any moss growing there either. This could be round two of the fight he had tried to pick with me a few moments before, a variation on a theme. There were all sorts of nasty rhythms, like obstruction of justice or withholding evidence or even illegal possession of a dangerous drug, MacWhorter would almost certainly love to tap out on my skull if given the opportunity, and I was going to have to do some serious bobbing and weaving if I hoped to act in the best interests of my houseguest.
If the police, or any other city agency, found out about whatever it was Margaret Dutton was taking, the black-and-yellow capsules would undoubtedly be confiscated pending analysis and investigation, and no amount of pleading or claims that without them she would suddenly plummet back in
to madness and spontaneously bleed to death would be heeded-until it was too late. And there was no doubt in my mind that that was exactly what would happen to the woman if she did not ingest a capsule every twenty-four hours. She would die. Horribly.
"Frederickson?" MacWhorter continued quietly. "It seems a simple enough question. What's taking you so long to answer it? What makes you think a man was shot in your neighborhood last Tuesday night?"
"Somebody saw it."
MacWhorter raised his eyebrows slightly. "An eyewitness? Who?"
"Mama Spit," I replied evenly, watching him.
His lips drew back from his teeth in a thin, wry smile, but there was no hint of amusement in his eyes. "Mama Spit? You've got to be kidding me. Mama Spit wouldn't recognize her own hand if she was holding it in front of her face."
"Even schizophrenics can have their lucid moments, Captain."
"Oh, can they? Well, thank you, Dr. Frederickson. I didn't realize your degree was in medicine."
"You know it isn't."
"Did Mama Spit say Martians did it?"
"She said a couple of teenagers did it-a boy and a girl. They might be young, but they were cool and professional. They trapped him, pinched him in when they came at him from opposite ends of the block. So now, if there was somebody killed on my block, you have a description of the killers."
MacWhorter was no longer smiling. Now he was studying me very carefully, like a cobra measuring a small, furry candidate for lunch. I hoped I could successfully play mongoose. "If Mama Spit is the eyewitness, why isn't she here?"
"Like you said, most of the time she wouldn't recognize her own hand. Schizophrenics may have their lucid moments, but they're still only moments."
"And she told you all this during one of those lucid moments?"
"Yes."
"If Mama Spit saw these killers, why didn't they see her? Why didn't they kill her?"
"It's possible they didn't see her; the streetlight was out, and she was back in the shadows. Or maybe they did see her, but weren't worried about some homeless woman who was probably crazy."
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