Find Virgil (A Novel of Revenge)

by Frank Freudberg

  After a few minutes of pacing, he went back to work. Being nearly finished gave Muntor a newfound energy. His production rate accelerated. With a gloved hand, he took pack after pack from the box on the floor. Then he swung the adjustable arm of the illuminated magnifying glass into position. Using the knife, he cut through the cellophane wrapper, the cardboard, and finally the paper-backed foil inside the pack. Muntor’s design was to lay bare the ends of the three cigarettes at the extreme right of each pack. He had used flip-top packs instead of soft packs. Flip-tops have a front and back, and therefore a right and a left. He had observed that when most smokers opened packs, they took cigarettes from the far right.

  Later, when his body needed to shift positions, Muntor moved the tripod-mounted camcorder in and focused the lens on the close work. He filmed his hand using a syringe to inject the sodium cyanide solution carefully into the end of a cigarette, making sure none of the solution seeped out and stained the cigarette paper. The chemistry stuff was easy. He learned all he needed by reading.

  On screen, finishing one pack and reaching for another was his next cue to resume reading from the script.

  “The latex gloves were difficult enough to use, but worse, Muntor’s hands perspired profusely inside. The sensation made his skin crawl, and the trapped moisture impaired his sense of touch. After treating a pile of a dozen packs, he would stack them with the bottoms open and exposed and dry them with the portable hairdryer. At first he had used the high setting to speed up the process. The cigarettes dried in three minutes, but the heat caused the cellophane wrappers to crinkle. To avoid that, he used the low setting. That took six or seven minutes per batch.”

  Click.

  The last part of the procedure had been to reseal the packs. Muntor did that with meticulously placed droplets of quick-drying clear glue. For quality control, he compared the bottoms of adulterated packs with those he hadn’t touched. They looked good. His handiwork would not stand up to a close inspection, but it was more than adequate to fool the typical consumer. He’d done a great job.

  Again, letters appeared on the screen.

  11:20 a.m.

  Friday, September 29.

  The camera panned the living room where the worktables had been set up. This was not a tripod-mounted shot. Muntor had shot this live. No one, except Muntor’s cat, was in the scene. Muntor had zoomed in on the wall clock.

  Again, he read from the script.

  “Even though the FedEx office on Market Street stayed open for drop-offs as late as 7:30 p.m., Muntor wanted to be downtown and parked sometime between 5:30 and 6:00. At that hour, the facility would be a madhouse, and he’d stand out less. It was early in the day, but he needed at least several more hours to finish all the cigarettes. If he’d work fast, he’d make it.”

  Click.

  Last Friday, Muntor finally put down the last pack. His fingers ached, his neck seemed permanently cramped, and his back felt as if someone had taken a swing at it with a baseball bat. Hunching over the worktables had caused all of the muscles in his upper torso to knot. During the assembly and packing procedure, he had risen and stretched frequently to relieve the strain. Very little could have stopped him, not even the pulsing throbs of pain behind each of his weary eyes. Every heartbeat sent spears there. Through all the discomfort, he had kept going. When he had finished treating the packs, he used a mantra to get through to the end.

  Stuff the envelopes, seal them up, take them into town. Stuff the envelopes, seal them up, take them into town.

  A small pile of paper strips from the adhesive on the back of the FedEx envelopes lay curled like birthday-present ribbons on the floor. Then, all at once, there had been no more packs left to stuff. Muntor had finished the assembly procedure. He had not eaten all day. He chided himself, even though it didn’t matter anymore. His research had convinced him that a regular and exacting diet was necessary for maximum health. His insistence on eating the right things at the right times had been one of the many contributing factors in his divorce. Now, though, his mission took precedence. Eating well wasn’t going to save him. The only thing left was to teach his lesson after he was gone—those who did not respect their bodies would pay, and in dying, they would educate the rest.

  He set up the camera to shoot from the living room through the dining room and into the kitchen. He committed to making up for his failure to follow his dietary regimen by providing an example to his audience.

  The on-screen image showed Muntor in the kitchen, arranging a healthy and nutritious meal on a plate: slices of avocado, an orange, a handful of nuts, some sliced chicken.

  Muntor read from the script.

  “A proper diet is composed mostly of greens. Fat and protein should be consumed in moderation. Avoiding processed sugar and artificial ingredients is critical.”

  Click.

  The camera, now set up in a corner of Muntor’s bedroom, showed the emaciated man dressing. Muntor read again from the script.

  “After toweling off, Martin Muntor selected from his closet the prop he needed, a generic uniform purchased two days earlier at Sears. Perfect for a deliveryman. He had washed it twice to give it a worn look. Khaki pants and shirt and a brown cotton twill jacket, the name ‘Arnie’—he stitched it himself with blue thread—on the pocket patch.”

  Click.

  A close-up of a digital clock on a dusty nightstand.

  5:25 p.m.

  “On his way out, Muntor petted his cat, Bozzie. He was less than an hour away from committing a crime, a federal offense, of unprecedented proportion. At any time after he left his house, in theory, he could be arrested. There was a slight chance, very, very slight, but real, that he’d never see this house or his Bozzie again. He left an envelope addressed to the twelve-year-old son of a neighbor. The envelope contained two hundred dollars in twenties, a letter describing how to care for Bozzie, and a dozen KatCrunch cat food coupons. Just in case.”

  Click.

  Muntor carried the packages in heavy boxes to his car. It took several trips. Once inside the car and driving, Muntor propped the camcorder on the passenger seat, aiming the lens to shoot across him, past his face and out the driver’s side window. It was the first time he allowed his face to be seen on camera. The camera also picked up passing images of his ride down Roosevelt Boulevard, on the Expressway along the Schuylkill River and into Center City Philadelphia. The camera’s microphone picked up the sounds of traffic and Muntor’s troubled breathing.

  Once in town, at a traffic signal, Muntor swung the camera around and pointed it at the clock in the car’s dashboard.

  6:11 p.m.

  Next, he edited in a shot of the computer monitor displaying three words.

  Center City Philadelphia

  There was a sloppy edit, some choppy white static, and shots of Muntor riding around Nineteenth Street, up Sansom Street, and right on Twenty-Second, looking for a parking spot.

  He couldn’t find one until he pulled onto a side street. Once parked, he turned off the camera.

  All that had happened three days ago, and Muntor recalled it with vivid clarity. He remembered that while he had been in the car, he had to squirm out of the light blue windbreaker he had worn and into the brown deliveryman jacket. He had looked into the mirror on the sun visor, then outside. No one had seemed to be paying any attention. Muntor had opened the glove compartment and pressed a large gauze bandage on his chin. Earlier, he had dotted the underside of the bandage with iodine, and a little splotch of brownish-red seeped through. Perfect. The prop would draw the clerk’s eye to the bandage, he hoped, not his features. He put on a cap and tugged at its bill, bringing it low on his forehead. He put on a pair of sunglasses.

  “Hey, is anyone alive under all that?” he had said out loud. Muntor climbed out of the car and deposited two quarters into the meter. A slight tremor, a vague fear, had run through him. He noticed it in his shoulders and chest wh
en he raised his arm to check his watch. 6:20.

  He remembered thinking, just as he had locked the car door behind him, This is the first lesson.

  Muntor had tried to take a deep breath but had to choke back a cough. He was learning that deep, satisfying breaths were a thing of the past. A light breeze caught his jacket and flapped it at his waist. He had bent near the rear of the car and wrestled in the open trunk with the hand truck he had buried under the cardboard boxes.

  People had walked by, the sidewalks busy with workers heading home. No reason for anyone to notice the colorless little man wheeling boxes down the street. He watched them, fat and unhealthy, the stupid herd rushing here and there, the only thing on their minds the TV shows they would fill their evening hours with before retiring.

  He rounded the corner onto Market Street, the hand truck rattling over the sidewalk. Low clouds gathered and moved easterly toward New Jersey, obscuring Muntor’s view of the statue of William Penn atop City Hall.

  The FedEx office had been mobbed, but the line moved quickly. When he was next, he set the hand truck down, took a thick sheaf of shipping labels from atop the top box and handed them to the woman behind the counter.

  “I’ll need a receipt for this, please,” Muntor had said, placing a cashier’s check on the counter.

  The woman glanced at the check and then up at Muntor. Her eyes fell on his bandage. She looked back at the check while another employee removed all the envelopes from the boxes on the counter and put them in a processing bin. The woman tapped her keyboard and looked at the check again.

  “You got the exact amount,” she had said as a receipt materialized at the printer. She tore it off and handed it to him.

  “Do me a favor?” she had said, pointing to the six now empty cardboard boxes that had held the envelopes. “Take those with you.”

  Muntor had nodded, not saying another word. He put the boxes back on the hand truck and strode out of the office and back onto rush-hour Market Street. People moved by, traffic stalled.

  He remembered having checked his watch. It had read 6:33.

  He had gotten into his car, switched on the camera, and pulled out into traffic.

  Muntor read from the script again.

  “It was official. Six thirty-four p.m. and the war had begun. Martin Muntor had just fired the first, long overdue salvo. The missiles would fly all weekend long, taking serpentine paths to seven hundred targets with all the stealth of a cat on a moonless night, and the first ones would begin landing midmorning Monday. The death that the smokers—the cows—had been seeking for so long would find them.”

  Click.

  6

  Boston

  “Unit three-four to dispatch.”

  “Dispatch to three-four.”

  “Unit three-four. Priority request for a supervisor to our location. Tunn’s Tobacco, west side, Bay View Mall.”

  “Do you need me to launch LifeFlight?”

  “Unit three-four. Negative.”

  A moment later, the fire department’s East Division captain picked up the radio microphone in his car.

  “Charlie One to three-four. What do you have there, Gerry?”

  “Unit three-four. You’ll need to see this, Captain.”

  “Charlie One en route.”

  7

  Philadelphia International Airport

  The USAir flight from Asheville had landed at Philadelphia International at 1:31 p.m.

  Something about the airport bothered Rhoads. En route to the Avis counter with the pea-green duffel bag he used as a carry-on, he realized what it was. I’ve been using this airport for thirty years, and every time I’m here, it’s under major construction.

  Rhoads rented a car and headed east into New Jersey to his brother’s house. He was sober now but still in high spirits. He and Teddy were about to make their dream come true.

  The Deep Blue was being auctioned tomorrow. A big, creaky charter fishing boat hiding under a fresh coat of deep blue paint. Auctioned tomorrow at noon, and they were going to buy it, rename it Second Chance, and spend the rest of their days laughing their asses off, fishing, and overcharging tourists.

  A little over an hour later, Rhoads pulled into Teddy’s driveway in Cherry Hill. Before he could turn the car off, Teddy’s wife Linda stepped out of the house. Rhoads immediately felt a sense of dread. Linda met him at the car as he stepped out. She hugged him and said, “Teddy went to Atlantic City.” Her face displayed only a token sadness. The tears of disappointment she might have shed had been exhausted years before.

  “What?” Rhoads said. “Why?” But he knew.

  “Come on, Tommy.”

  “Shit,” Rhoads said. He knew Teddy: when he was up, he could always be counted on to try to capitalize on his holdings at the craps table. Years before, Teddy had agreed Linda would have control over the money, but obviously the lure of cashing out his retirement had been too much.

  Linda said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do. He lost his job, you know.”

  Rhoads hugged her again and said, “We’ll figure it out. We always do.” But he didn’t know if that would be true this time. If Teddy didn’t have a job and gambled away the boat money, what then? Rhoads’s business made enough to keep him afloat, but it wasn’t nearly enough to support Teddy and his family. His half of what the boat would cost had wiped out his savings, and if he was honest, the business wasn’t doing too well. He had always been a great salesman, but his disengagement lately had left the firm without new contracts going forward.

  “Come on in. The kids want to see you,” said Linda.

  Rhoads opened the car door, grabbed the gifts he had gotten them and followed her inside.

  8

  Asheville

  In the office of W. Nicholas Pratt’s executive secretary, a large television peered out of a massive, elaborately carved teak credenza. Someone had turned the volume up too high. The CNN news anchorman’s booming voice filled the room.

  “… deaths now reported in Cincinnati, Boston, Boca Raton, New Orleans, San Diego and Tacoma. And as we’ve said, additional reports continue to come in. There is no way at present to know the full scope of this disaster. The FBI has issued a preliminary statement warning all consumers that cigarette packages may contain lethal poison. To this moment, however, we can confirm only that the 122 known deaths, and many, many injuries, are thus far associated with the Easy Lights brand manufactured by Old Carolina Tobacco, Inc., of Asheville, North Carolina. An FBI press conference has been scheduled for…”

  Executive secretary Genevieve DesCourt, a trim older woman in an expensive dark blue suit, stared, flustered and aghast at the screen.

  The intercom on her desk squawked, startling her. “Have you located Rhoads yet?”

  “No, Mr. Pratt, but I have gotten hold of one of our pilots, Jack Fallscroft. He and Rhoads are close friends. He said to tell you he has an idea about where Rhoads may be. He’s checking. And Mr. Pratt? The men from the FBI, they’re getting impatient. I told them…”

  “All right, Genevieve. Send them in.”

  She rose and started around her desk to lead them to Pratt’s office, but Deputy Director of the FBI, Oakley Franklin, stopped her with a wave.

  “Additional agents will be arriving,” he said to her. “Tell them I said to wait here.”

  He took a moment to check his watch, then crooked a finger at another FBI man. The two walked across the office to the oversized redwood door that separated Pratt from the rest of the world.

  The Deputy Director was built like a linebacker, big, black and humorless. The other agent, no more than twenty-five, was forgettable, average in looks, weight, and height. His name was Brandon. His father was a congressman from northern California, and he was part of an experimental fast-track FBI training program. Franklin found him annoying but efficient.

  Frank
lin motioned for Brandon to step in ahead of him. The two men strode toward the huge desk at the far end of the room. It was a considerable walk on the thick carpet.

  Pratt stood staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows, silhouetted against the darkening skyline of Asheville and the Smoky Mountains. He looked as if he was born with the title of CEO. Tall, sleek, with skin bronzed by many hours on the back nine of the most exclusive golf courses. His gray suit fit as if Pierre Cardin himself had been his tailor, and his shiny-as-steel silver-and-black hair looked good atop the dark face and dark suit.

  Pratt shook the Deputy Director’s hand perfunctorily and ignored the junior man.

  “I’m Oakley Franklin, Mr. Pratt. Deputy Director of the FBI. This is Special Agent Ben Brandon. We flew in from FBI headquarters in Washington.”

  “I’m not particularly pleased to meet either of you.” Pratt swallowed as if pained by a severe sore throat. Then he looked behind Franklin at the woman with the double-take legs seated on a couch. A stack of manila file folders weighted her down. “This is Anna Maria Trichina,” he said, “one of our assistant vice presidents.”

  “So, what do you have?” Pratt said as he sat down. The two FBI agents remained standing.

  Franklin looked at the woman. Trichina, a voluptuous redhead with shoulder-length hair, had been out of sight on the couch until Pratt stepped aside and introduced her. She began to move the folders from her lap to get up and shake hands. Pratt preempted her by waving the FBI agents to the chairs on the other side of his desk.

  Franklin spoke. “Well, Mr. Pratt, Ms. Trichina, what I have is a mess. Apparently, someone has injected packs of your cigarettes—we believe hundreds and hundreds of them—seven hundred to be precise—with a sodium cyanide solution and shipped them all over the country. It looks as if they’ve arrived at tobacco shops as some kind of consumer opinion survey. The packages came with a cover letter. A cover letter that had been printed on your company’s letterhead and signed by you.”