Dust to Dust

by James M. Thompson

  He raised his eyebrows. “You mean you own a gun, too?”

  “Of course, silly. I’ve got a nice little Browning stainless-steel. 380 semiautomatic pistol, and I’ve even got a concealed-carry permit in case we get stopped by the police.”

  When she came out of the bedroom putting the pistol in her purse, he put his arm around her and said, “Saddle up, Annie Oakley, we got us an hombre to corral.”

  She shook her head, picked up the keys to her Mercedes-Benz, and said, “What a truly awful imitation of an Old West accent.”

  “Why, ah donn know what ya mean, pilgrim,” he drawled, hitching up his belt.

  CHAPTER 23

  Sheila put the liquor store, the Bottle Shop, into her dashboard navigation system, and in less than an hour, they were cruising Navigation Boulevard at twenty miles an hour checking out the neighborhood.

  Ramsey glanced over at her as she drove and was surprised to see a sheen of sweat coating her face. “Hey, babe. Are you nervous about the neighborhood?”

  “No,” she answered in a hoarse voice. “I’m nervous about what we are doing, the whole kidnapping and unlawful-experimenting-on-a-human-being thing.”

  “Jesus, Sheila. We’re not going to kidnap anybody. We’re simply going to find a wino and offer him some food and shelter in exchange for him helping us with our serum experiment.”

  Sheila glared at him. “Yeah, right! We’re not going to do anything wrong. We’re just going to perform unauthorized medical experiments on a human being without fully informing him of the risks he’s going to be taking, because we have no idea ourselves what the risks are of injecting an untried mixture of chemicals into his body.“

  “Look, Sheila, honey, we’ve been over this a dozen times. We’ve analyzed every separate chemical in our mixture, and there’s nothing in there that hasn’t been used in research on humans before.”

  “What about the fetal brain tissue that Kat has gone after? What if it’s impure, or has the AIDS virus, or something else we don’t know about?”

  Ramsey thought about Kat and how she was even then in Monterrey, using his medical contact, Dr. Humberto Garza, to obtain fetal tissue from abortion clinics there. She was to bring the tissue across the border in a thermos bottle, praying that the border guards wouldn’t check the contents. The plan was for Kat to separate out the fetal brain tissue and introduce the slurry into her serum just before injecting it into their subject, Jordan Stone.

  He reached across the seat and put his hand on her arm. “Sheila, relax. I told you, Dr. Garza is obtaining the tissue from private clinics that serve only upper-class clientele, the richest of the rich in Monterrey. All of the mothers were checked for AIDS and venereal diseases before the procedures were done.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But nothing, darling! We have done everything possible to make this experiment as safe as we can for Mr. Stone. And don’t forget, you yourself said he is as good as dead in the next couple of weeks if nothing is done. At least this way, he has a fighting chance for a better and longer life.”

  Finally, she nodded. “I know what you say is true, it’s just that I have grown to like this man, and I want to be sure that everything is done properly, including getting his informed consent as much as possible.”

  The discussion was interrupted as the car pulled up in front of the Bottle Shop liquor store. They sat in the car for a few moments and watched as a fairly steady stream of patrons shuffled in and out of the store.

  Ramsey said, “Jesus, what a sorry-looking group of people.”

  “Yes,” Sheila said, “one thing’s for sure. If the serum will work to reverse the ravages of alcoholism and disease represented here, then it will surely work on anyone, and we will have truly made a great discovery.”

  As they talked, a man stumbled out the door, a bottle wrapped in a paper sack clutched to his chest like a life preserver.

  He staggered over to a nearby street lamp and leaned against it as he began to unscrew the bottle in the sack.

  “I’m going to go over there and ask that man if he knows Jordan.”

  “No, you’d better let me go,” Ramsey said, putting his hand in his pocket and wrapping his fingers around the butt of his pistol.

  She shook her head. “No, you’re too big and you’ll probably just scare him. Let me try first. A woman is much less threatening at night.”

  “Okay,” he said, pulling his pistol out of his pocket and holding it in his lap. “But I’ll be keeping an eye out for trouble.”

  She eased out of the car and walked slowly over toward the man.

  When he looked up from taking a deep draught of his liquor and saw her, he started and looked like he was getting ready to run.

  Sheila held up her hands and began to talk to him in a low voice. After a few moments, he seemed to calm down and nodded at her a couple of times.

  Finally, he turned and pointed over across the street toward a group of ship containers and a couple of dumpsters stacked haphazardly in an empty lot next to an alleyway.

  She thanked him, pressed a bill in his hands, and trotted back toward the car.

  After she got in, she said, “He knows Jordan. He said they call him ‘the Professor,’ and that he stays over there near those old containers.”

  Her face screwed up in distaste. “The man said they sometimes spend the night in them to get out of the cold and that they use the dumpsters to find food.”

  * * *

  Billy heard a car at the end of the alley, but there were no headlights. A light rain and the Houston ship channel’s fog made it hard to tell in the gauzy darkness.

  “Prob’ly the cops,” Billy muttered, nudging Clyde with an elbow. “Toss that empty bottle in the dumpster over there. They only got one reason to be here, that’s to roust us. Wake Jordy up, if you can find him. He was in that second dumpster a while ago lookin’ for somethin’ to eat.”

  Clyde jerked upright from a slump against a steel wall. “The fuckin’ cops?” he mumbled drunkenly, blinking, turning his head back and forth. “Ain’t no cops, Billy. It’s darker’n shit an’ a cop’s got lights.”

  He looked down at an empty bottle of Thunderbird wine lying between his legs. “You got the fuckin’ DTs again, seein’ shit that ain’t there. There ain’t no cops ’cause there ain’t no lights . . .”

  Billy struggled to his feet, ignoring the stench of his own urine in dampened pants clinging to his bony legs. He threw an empty bottle of Mogen David 20/20 into the dumpster beside him and belched just as the glass shattered.

  “Go find the Professor.” He swayed to remain upright, peering into the misty fog, resting an unwashed palm against the rear of the ship’s container they were lying against.

  “Jordy’s more scared of goin’ to jail than any of us. He claims it’s ’cause they’ll find out who he is. I never did b’lieve all that shit, ’bout him bein’ a college professor one time, or almost gettin’ the fuckin’ Pulitzer Prize. He’s jus’ another drunk like you an’ me, livin’ in a stinkin’ container like a fuckin’ stray dog . . . but he’s still our friend, so’s we gots to look out for him.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yonder Jordy is. I can see his feet stickin’ out from between the dumpster an’ his container. Go wake up him so the cops don’t get him. I’d go, but my bad leg’s killin’ me.”

  Clyde managed to make it to his hands and knees, trembling with the beginnings of his own delirium tremens as he gave the end of the alley a closer examination. “Them’s Jordan’s feet, all right,” he said. “I’d have stole his shoes, only his feet’s so goddamn big they won’t fit me. He’s passed out, Billy. Won’t do no good to tell him ’bout the cops, only I don’t see no cops, just all those fuckin’ snakes ’round Jordan’s feet. See ’em? I never seen so many fuckin’ snakes in my life . . .”

  “There ain’t no snakes, Clyde. You’re comin’ down, is all it is. We need us ’nother jug, but we gotta keep them cops from gettin’ Jordy. He’s the best panhandl
er I ever did see. He’d ask the pope for d’rections to a whorehouse. Go wake him up so’s he can hide.”

  “Fuck him,” Clyde groaned, shaking more violently now. “I got my own troubles. Let Mr. Jordan whatever go to jail for all I care. I gotta have a drink or I’m gonna be sick.”

  Billy watched two shadowy shapes pause at the mouth of the alley, turning their way, barely visible in a shroud of humidity blanketing everything in Houston’s summer heat. “One’s a woman, Clyde,” he whispered, throat clotted with phlegm. “What the hell is a man an’ a woman doin’ down here so late at night? Somebody is liable to stick a dick in her. They ain’t dressed like cops.”

  “I tol’ you there wasn’t no cops,” Clyde croaked before his stomach muscles convulsed. He collapsed on his chest, making soft, retching sounds.

  Billy saw the man and woman take a few tentative steps into the alleyway—it appeared they were talking to each other. “It ain’t the cops,” he said again, weaving, fighting the pull of bad balance and a swimming sensation inside his head. “Whoever the hell they are, they’s headed straight for Jordy like they already know he’s there. Maybe they can see his damn feet.”

  Clyde was unable to answer, caught in the throes of a series of dry heaves.

  Billy remembered Jordy . . . Jordan, when he first came to the streets, rambling on about some car wreck that had killed his wife and daughter, telling everybody he was a Ph.D. in something or other. And, of course, nobody believed him because everybody in the alley had been “somebody special” a long time ago, before wine and vodka, or both, turned them into street people. But Jordy was different. He knew big words, and when he was sober he could talk about real scientific-sounding shit. When he wasn’t crying.

  The man and the woman stopped where Jordy was lying between what he called “his” dumpster and “his” container.

  “They found him,” Billy muttered quietly. “Poor ol’ Jordy. Wonder what they want with him?” Jordy didn’t have any money, so they couldn’t rob him. It was hard to figure what they were doing.

  The woman bent down near Jordy’s legs. Billy couldn’t hear what she said because Clyde was still retching, but the woman did say something to the big guy with her. “She’ll smell where Jordy pissed his pants an’ they’ll leave him alone.” Jordy couldn’t stop pissing his pants when he was drunk, Billy remembered.

  To Billy’s amazement, the heavyset man leaned over to pick Jordy up, cradling him in his arms like a limp rag doll. “What the fuck are they gonna do?” Billy asked himself aloud, but not loud enough to be heard at the other end of the alley.

  Jordy was carried around a corner, the woman walking beside the guy holding him like an infant. “I gotta see what they’re gonna do with the poor bastard, so’s I can tell everybody when they ask what happened to the Professor.”

  Billy staggered away from the steel wall, almost falling until he caught himself, stumbling down slippery concrete littered with garbage until he came to the end of the alleyway.

  He saw the guy putting Jordy into the trunk of a dark car, a dark blue or black Mercedes sedan, his sleeping face momentarily lit by a small lightbulb in the trunk lid until the trunk was closed. Both the man and woman seemed in a hurry to get back in their car as soon as Jordy was locked in the trunk.

  Billy heard the motor start. Tail lamps and headlights came on, and a license plate light illuminating numbers he couldn’t quite read. There was a white sticker on the rear window of the car, and he managed to read part of it before the Mercedes was in gear, pulling away from the curb down an empty street.

  “Hey, Clyde!” Billy shouted. “They kidnapped Jordy, an’ the guy’s car had a parkin’ sticker on it sayin’ Physician Parking Permit, Ben Taub Hospital. Wonder who the hell at that hospital would snatch ol’ Jordy? I’ll bet that guy stole some doctor’s car tonight, so he could take his bitch ridin’ around in a fancy Mercedes, only I can’t figure why he’d wanna steal Jordy. Looks like he coulda smelled how Jordy always pissed all over himself . . .”

  Clyde’s answer was another bout of gagging on his own bile, and it was beginning to make Billy feel sick himself.

  “I gotta get my hands on a bottle,” Billy muttered, putting what had happened to Jordan Stone from his mind. Nobody would remember him after a while. He was just another stray dog, a lost soul among the street people of Houston. Someone would come along to take his place. There was always someone new showing up with a story to tell, about how he used to be somebody special until booze got its claws in him.

  “Too bad ’bout Jordy,” Billy said to himself, reeling down a dark sidewalk toward the ship channel’s wharfs, where he might beg a few swallows of wine from the River Gang . . . It wasn’t a gang in any real sense, just a community of street people who claimed the bounty from dumpsters in another part of town, their “territory.”

  He reminded himself to tell the River Gang about Jordy, that a man and a woman had snatched him in a doctor’s stolen car. In all his years living on the streets, he’d seen some mighty strange things, but nothing quite like this. Who the hell would want to kidnap an old drunk like Jordan Stone, even if he was who he said he was, almost winning the Pulitzer prize, whatever the hell that was. The only prize Jordy was capable of winning now was for pissing in his pants more often than anyone else in Houston.

  * * *

  John Palmer Ashby scowled at the bedside clock when his phone rang just after ten o’clock that night. He grabbed the receiver and growled, “This had better be damn important to call me at this time of night!”

  “This is Harold Gelb, Mr. Ashby, and it is.”

  “Okay, Harold. Tell me.”

  “The lady doctor, Williams, and her lab assistant got on a plane for Monterrey, Mexico, this afternoon. My man Johnson, who was following them, just managed to get on the same flight, and he is tailing them to see where they go and who they talk to in Monterrey. It may just be there that they are planning to set up that other clinic you were wondering about.”

  Ashby pursed his lips, then shook his head. “Nah, I doubt that. Traveling across an international border would be too cumbersome for them to have a satellite lab there. It must be something else. Tell your man to keep a close eye on them, expense is no problem.”

  “Okay, Mr. Ashby. Also, Dr. Ramsey and his wife took off early this evening and drove down toward the waterfront. I have Gomer following them.”

  “The waterfront? What the hell would they be going down there for?”

  “I don’t know, boss. ’Bout the only thing down near the ship channel this time of night is stray dogs and homeless bums.”

  Ashby nodded. “Of course,” he said, realizing they were probably looking for a suitable specimen to try the formula on. “That’s alright, Harold, I think I know what they are doing. Call Gomer off, I don’t want him to interfere with their mission.”

  “Are you sure, Mr. Ashby?”

  “Goddamnit, just do what I say, Harold!” Ashby growled and slammed the phone down.

  He laid his head back against the pillow. At last, he thought, things are finally progressing. Maybe soon he’d be out of this damn bed and in possession of a formula that would make him king of the world.

  CHAPTER 24

  While Kevin and Kat were standing in the long Customs line at Houston International Airport, he glanced at her and thought, Oh shit!

  Her face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat, and he could see the whites of her eyes as she glanced rapidly back and forth. She was obviously terrified that Customs would look into the thermos sticking up out of the backpack she wore.

  Casually, he put his arm around her shoulders, pulled her close, then bent down and kissed the side of her neck.

  She jumped and turned to stare at him. “What are you doing?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.

  He put his lips next to her ear and whispered back, “I’m trying to make you relax and think about something other than that thermos. You look about as guilty as someone with a kilo of heroin
in their luggage, and the Customs agents are trained to recognize nervousness.”

  She leaned away from him and tried to smile, but it didn’t quite come off. Oh well, here goes nothing, he thought.

  He put his hand behind her head and drew her to him, kissing her full on the lips with all the built-up passion he had been experiencing.

  After a few moments, he felt her relax into him and even felt the touch of her tongue against his for a second.

  She leaned back and now had a genuine smile on her face. “There, is that better?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Damn straight!”

  “Of course, now the Customs agents are thinking I’m some old grandmother molesting a child,” she said self-consciously.

  “Did that feel like a kid’s kiss?” he asked, his face serious.

  She took a deep breath and stared into his eyes, for perhaps the first time since she’d known him. “Now that you mention it, definitely not!”

  Now he smiled and put his arm around her shoulders again. “Good, ’cause now we’re at the front of the line.”

  “Passports,” the Customs man behind the kiosk said, holding out his hand while giving Kevin a sly wink.

  By the time they got to their car in the long-term parking lot, Kat was a different person. It was as if breaking the law and getting away with it had freed her from some constraints of conservatism and now she felt like some flower child of the sixties, reveling in her new “outlaw” status.

  “God, I’m wired,” she gushed as Kevin put their luggage in the trunk and then got behind the wheel. “Smuggling that thermos through Customs was a real rush.”

  Kevin glanced over at her in the passenger seat as they exited the airport parking lot and pulled out onto the freeway leading to downtown Houston.

  “Is this the first time you’ve ever broken the law?” he asked, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly.

  She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, thinking about it. After a moment, she nodded. “Yep.”