Headcount: v5

by Frank Stein

  About an hour after sunset, I called off my search. The trees looked scary at night, and I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of looking for something called the Death Angel while alone in the woods. It also occurred to me that dawn might be a better time to go mushroom-hunting.

  So I woke before dawn the next morning. It was Tuesday, and my dinner date with the Patels was set for Thursday. I was in a pleasant sleepy haze as I drifted across the Bay Bridge and towards my hunting grounds. I stopped at a gas station on the way so I could relieve myself and pick up a second cup of coffee. Cash only, of course.

  The sun was breaking when I got to the state park. The night had been cool, and the trees and shrubs still glistened with morning dew. I was feeling lucky, and I even did a little hop as I scurried towards the tree line. I felt like Nintendo’s Mario or Luigi, out looking for a hidden mushroom that would give me superpowers. I pictured myself with a full Italian moustache and little red overalls, and I giggled like a madman as I poked around the underbrush.

  Then I saw her. She sat innocently under a majestic oak tree, and her soft white body called out to me. I smiled and nodded in greeting. Good morning, my lady. May I have this dance?

  The Western North American Destroying Angel. The Death Angel. Amanita Ocreata. Color: white. Edibility: deadly. Hell yes.

  I slapped on a fresh set of my sheer rubber gloves, a pair of which were almost always on me these days. Although I knew that amanita wasn’t deadly to the touch, I didn’t want to take any chances. There were two of them on the ground near a bulging tree root, and I grabbed both and placed them in a sandwich bag. Then I put the sandwich bag into another sandwich bag, and hurried back to the car.

  It was almost seven when I got back to the hotel. My frequent-guest status at Hilton Hotels entitled me to a suite, and my gigantic living room had a good-sized fridge in it. I put the mushrooms in the vegetable tray and took a shower, humming the Super Mario Brothers theme as I shampooed.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The next two days were business as usual. I tried to avoid Swami just in case he wanted to bring up the contract cancellation pattern again. But there was no need. We were busy running analyses on the transportation segment of SpacedOut’s supply chain, and so our attention was on some of the shipping companies that brought finished product from third-world manufacturers to SpacedOut’s retail warehouses in the United States.

  Mo didn’t spend much time with the consulting team. There were a few other C&C partners visiting that week—a common occurrence in the early stages of the first project for a new client. Consulting partners are salespeople first and foremost, and a new client meant that new relationships needed to be developed and old sales pitches could be reused and positioned as if they were exclusive to the client.

  Thursday came, and I didn’t see Mo at all until the very end of the day. We crossed paths as I was leaving the office, and since a few of the junior consultants were still around, we didn’t talk much. She wished me luck and motioned for me to call her. She meant call her when I was done with the evening. By now it was clear that the time leading up to a kill was personal time. Like how those downhill skiers plug their ears and close their eyes and visualize the course before the final run, I was playing out the various possible scenarios for that evening’s meal.

  The Patels were childless, which was a huge relief. That left the wife as the only other person to worry about. I figured that if Patel was guilty, his wife couldn’t be innocent. Still, although that would make her a bigot, she wasn’t the one who made the decisions that were unjustly keeping thousands of uneducated Muslims in crippling poverty in one of the world’s densest breeding grounds for Islamic fundamentalists. Good. Call me sexist and old fashioned, but I wasn’t ready to kill a woman just yet.

  But that complicated things, because it meant I couldn’t just poison the entire vat of a particular dish. I’d have to mix the amanita into the food on Patel’s plate itself. I’d have to do it at the dinner table.

  After having pondered the question all week, I came up with what seemed to be a reasonable plan. First, I chopped and ground up the mushrooms into a paste. After thinning out the paste with water, I loaded the mixture into a small syringe that had a thick spout and no needle. The syringe was small enough that with some practice I was confident about masking it in my hand and using the base of the same palm to depress the plunger.

  The actual delivery couldn’t be planned beforehand. I didn’t know the layout of his place and the setup for dinner. Would we formally sit at a table with the dishes laid out? Would we serve ourselves from the kitchen and eat in the living area? Or would the Patels surprise me by grilling spicy tandoori chicken in their backyard? I rehearsed each option in my mind until I felt comfortable that I would find a way to squirt the deadly paste into Patel’s food. But of course I would make sure he was good and drunk first.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  It turned out that getting Patel drunk wasn’t a problem. When I pulled up at his single-storey house in Fremont, California, he walked out to greet me holding the dregs of what must have been a stiff whiskey-soda. The sun was setting as I locked my car. I looked around before I entered the house. The house lots were small, but the neighborhood seemed very quiet. No sounds of children, and I figured that perhaps the houses belonged to young busy professionals who weren’t at that stage yet. Patel’s was a corner house at the beginning of the street, and so he had, in effect, just one neighbor. I took note of the dark windows of the neighbor’s house, and guessed that they were out. This meant they’d be coming home at some point, and I’d have to check for their car before exiting so I wouldn’t run into them. The fewer people who saw me, the better. After another quick scan of the block, I entered the house.

  It was a simple home. A full carpet that was thin but not worn. Cane and bamboo living room furniture. A dining table that looked like it came unassembled from Target. And reasonably tasteful wall art that looked Indian enough to me.

  Shalini Patel was a quiet, quick woman. She spoke excellent English, but didn’t seem to have much to say. I got the sense she was a bit annoyed with her husband for inviting me over, or perhaps she was uneasy with the reasons for my being there. Probably both. After pouring me a drink, she said something about having to finish up some work, and then disappeared into a back room.

  Patel and I chatted aimlessly for the first two drinks. He could certainly hold his alcohol, and I began to worry about whether I’d be able to hold mine. As he walked to the bar to measure out my third Johnnie Walker Black along with his fourth or fifth, he looked over his shoulder at me and I could tell from his expression that he was ready to talk business.

  “So, my Hebrew friend. How are things with your consulting assignment?”

  “Busy as hell.” I smiled. “We’re trying to justify our billing rates, you know. And your boss, the new COO, is a real hardass. We’re up half the night every night preparing to give him his daily status updates.” I nodded as Patel handed me my fresh drink.

  Patel laughed. “Yes. He is quite a tough man. Very good, though. He will do well for the company.”

  I nodded again and took a sip. “So,” I said.

  Patel smiled. “So,” he said.

  “So you and your wife are from Gujarat State, originally?” I asked.

  “Yes. I am from Ahmedabad, and Shalini is from Baroda.”

  “How are things in Gujarat these days?”

  Patel shrugged. “Peaceful. And optimistic. The local government is pro-business, and has put a lot of money into infrastructure like roads and telecommunications. It’s good for the people.”

  I took another sip. “So things are back to normal after the 2002 riots?”

  Patel smiled. “What do you know about the 2002 riots?”

  “Only what I’ve read.”

  “And what have you read?”

  “That it all started in a town called Godhra, when a train carrying mainly Hindu families was attacked and burned by Muslim militants.”
I knew that the cause of the train fire was still a topic of dispute. Many said it was an accident, and some said that it was a setup by the right-wing Hindu movement to make a push with its anti-Muslim propaganda. Still, I had to stoke Patel’s fire here.

  Patel nodded. “Good. At least you got the facts right. The leftist media in many places is denying that the rail car could have been set on fire in the way it was. Some are saying it was an accident.” He laughed. “There are no accidents like this.”

  “Of course not. Anyway, after word got out about the innocent Hindus that were killed, there was naturally some retaliation against the Muslims.” I shrugged. “Tit for tat. They were basically terrorists, after all.”

  “Exactly. And it was a long time coming, anyway. The Godhra incident was just the final straw. The Muslim situation was a time bomb waiting to explode, and we brave Hindu warriors were the ones who shielded the world by throwing our bodies on the bomb to smother its effects.” Patel spat an ice-cube back into his empty glass and made himself another drink.

  “So you were in India during the riots?”

  Patel nodded. “Indeed.”

  “In Gujarat?”

  “Yes.” He turned and flashed a proud smile. “Yes. Shalini and I both. We worked with some of the organizers.”

  “Oh, really?” I nodded at him as a show of respect. I thought about the reports claiming that the mob attacks were far from spontaneous uprisals and closer to well-planned strikes on Muslim residences and businesses. The mobs had been given lists of Muslim targets. The circumstantial evidence pointing to an organized genocidal effort was hard to ignore.

  “Yes,” said Patel. “We did what we could to help. Muslims have no place in India. They have their Islamic countries like Pakistan and those places in the middle-East. They should live there in isolation. Then they can have their loud prayer calls and marry their four wives and do whatever the hell they want. You understand all this, of course. The Jews and Hindus have a common enemy in Islam.”

  I nodded and raised my glass. “And you are continuing to do what you can even though you’re now in the United States. I respect that.”

  Patel smiled. “Yes. If I can starve even one of those bloody butchers by taking away his livelihood, then I will do so. It is my duty as a Hindu warrior.”

  That was enough for me. I couldn’t tell if it was the alcohol or the conversation, but I was feeling a bit queasy, and I figured it was time to move on with the evening. I excused myself and went to the restroom. As I had hoped, Shalini was bringing out the food when I got back. I went up to the dinner table and smiled politely. Shalini gave me a sharp look and nodded and forced a smile. After placing a stack of fresh hot rotis on the table, she gestured to a chair and then called out to her husband.

  “Come on now, eat. Enough drinks for you.” She waited until Patel had walked to the table, and then she left the room.

  “Your wife isn’t joining us?” I asked.

  Patel waved his hand towards the door to the back room in a flippant gesture. “She must have eaten already. Let it be. We have some private matters to discuss, anyway.”

  I nodded. “This food looks amazing. The smell itself is making me full.”

  Patel smiled. “Yes. Shalini is a superb cook.”

  The spread on the table really did look appetizing. There were at least three main dishes: chicken in a thick yellow gravy, shrimp that had been fried in a red spice, and a vegetarian dish that looked greenish-brown. I stared at the vegetarian entrée. Yes, that would be my delivery mechanism. The consistency seemed right—vaguely mashed, but with lumps that protruded through the thick pasty exterior.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Guchi,” said Patel. He was busy serving himself some chicken, and didn’t notice my puzzled expression until he was done. Then he smiled at me. “Sorry. That’s the Indian name. It’s just mushroom in an onion and tomato gravy.”

  My heart jumped and I was afraid that my change in expression would give me away. I couldn’t help but smile at how perfect this was. I was certain that my intense visualization of the evening’s plan had generated a cosmic shift that was making things flow exactly as I wanted. The mushroom dish was the universe’s way of giving me a hint that I was destined to succeed without a problem.

  “So,” said Patel as he tore a piece of roti. “You have some ideas of how to handle the paper trail of the cancelled cotton supplier contracts?”

  I pretended like my mouth was full, and just nodded. I hadn’t thought too much about it, but I wasn’t worried. “Electronic trail, you mean.”

  Patel smiled, but he wasn’t amused.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Bad joke.”

  Patel smiled again, and reached across the table for the vegetable dish. I felt my breath catch as I watched him heap the sticky mush onto his plate. As he reached for a fresh roti, I knew I had to act soon. This was my chance. I felt into my pocket for my syringe, and cupped it in my right hand. I slowly plucked the cap off the tip and positioned the syringe so that I could squirt it in one quick motion. After glancing at Patel’s face, I decided he wasn’t drunk enough to not notice my hand over his plate.

  I drained my glass of water and then inhaled loudly through my mouth. “Can I trouble you for a fresh glass of cold water? The food is excellent, but it’s a bit spicy.”

  “Of course,” said Patel. He looked over his shoulder as if he was hoping his wife would be waiting there to serve us. Then he slowly wiped his hands with a paper napkin and grabbed my glass and walked to the kitchen.

  I stood up fast and leaned over the table and squirted the deadly juice into Patel’s plate and immediately sat back down. After carefully replacing the cap on the empty syringe and putting it back into my pocket, I looked around in panic, half expecting Shalini to be standing there, quietly watching me while dialing 911 to report an attempted murder. But no, the universe appeared to be firmly on my side. I heard the sound of the bathroom door closing, and guessed that Patel had gone to hit the head. I relaxed and thanked the universe one more time.

  As I casually looked at Patel’s plate again, I noticed that my poisonous paste had been deposited as a white, bubbly, grainy patch on the surface of the food. That wouldn’t do. After looking around and then holding my breath to listen for approaching footsteps, I picked up his fork and gently pushed the amanita solution deep into Patel’s helping of the mushroom dish. Then I stirred the mixture to remove the depressions that my fork had left. Satisfied, I put the fork down and polished it with a napkin. Not that anyone would check, but I couldn’t have my fingerprints on Patel’s fork. Paranoia is king, I remembered. Mo would be proud.

  Then I realized that too much paranoia can sink you.

  Shalini Patel looked shocked as she approached me from the doorway that led to the back rooms. Although she couldn’t have seen me use the syringe, anything she saw after that would have looked equally suspicious. Perhaps she saw nothing, but it didn’t matter. My startled reaction would have left no doubt that I had been up to no good. I jerked back in my chair so hard that its two front legs briefly left the ground. I felt my face warp into an involuntary look of absolute panic. I was like a McDonald’s employee who’s just been caught in the act of pissing in the mustard.

  FIFTY-SIX

  “I thought there was a bug or something in his food, so I used the fork to poke around,” I said. “Please don’t be offended. The food is all wonderful. You really are an amazing cook.”

  Shalini was quiet as she came up to the table, but I could see the tightness in her lower jaw. She looked me in the eye, and I shrank under her gaze. Her stare was cold and heartless, and in those dark pits I could see the images of blood-soaked men, women, and children begging her for mercy. If she was capable of compassion, I didn’t see it. I’d like to say it was my own guilt that made me feel this way, but there was no guilt at play here. My only thoughts were towards self-preservation. That, and completing my assignment. I was a professional, and I would get the
job done. That’s what professionals do, even if things go wrong. In fact, that’s what defines a professional: the ability to go to work even if you’re having a bad day.

  And right now it looked like I was going to have a very bad day indeed.

  “What did you put in his food?” she asked in an accentless deadpan.

  “Are you serious? Why would I put anything in his food? I told you, I thought I saw a fly or something sit on the food and I was checking.” I could feel the sides of my jaw hurt as I forced a smile.

  “I didn’t trust you the moment I saw you. You are a bloody liar. I don’t know what you’re trying, but I know you’re trying something.” She moved closer to the table.

  Now I stood up and raised both hands in protest. “Look, there’s no need for this. I’m probably a little drunk as well, so perhaps I lost track of what I was doing and just felt like mixing his food up with a fork. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it’s kind of a habit of mine. I used to do that to my brother’s food to annoy him when he was a kid, and maybe I just unconsciously felt at home here.” I shrugged and shook my head. “God, this is so embarrassing. Please forgive me.”

  She smiled, but it was not a comforting smile. “Nice one. But I read your bio on that social site. It said you are an only child.”

  I gulped as I remembered the cute, upbeat, self-deprecating paragraph I had written to describe myself on my public social networking profile. Universe, why are you abandoning me now, I thought.

  Then Patel walked back into the room with a glass of water. “What’s happening?”

  Shalini folded her arms across her chest. “I told you this guy was up to something. He put something in your food. Maybe some drug. Or poison.”