Breaking Point

by Jon Demartino

  Just then, Madeline entered the kitchen from the dining room, carrying a tray of olives and pickles in one hand and popping some of the olives into her mouth with the other. She called out to her mother from the doorway.

  "Mom, there's no room on the table for this. Where do you want..?" Then she saw me and ran over. "Uncle Rudy," she squealed, setting the tray on a corner of the kitchen table and hugging my neck. While my nephew seemed to have gotten his father's stature, Madeline had apparently inherited her height from the shallow end of the gene pool. At twelve years old, she was shoulder to shoulder with her mother. She had the soft pudginess of Maxine's build, too, but that could change in a few years. Her reddish blonde hair was about the same shade as I remembered my sister's being, although I couldn't recall the last time I'd actually seen it displayed in its natural color.

  I introduced Woody to the kids and Maxine told Madeline to show us to the living room. As I passed the stove where she was lifting the lid from a huge roaster, I leaned over and whispered in her ear, "Nice set of wheels."

  She smiled sweetly up at me and said, "Thanks. I have new living room furniture coming next week." I chuckled and she went back to her basting. It seemed that Max had discovered a way to redistribute the balance of power in her home.

  Talmadge was seated in his high backed green leather chair, smoking a pipe and holding court with a woman who was seated on the end of the sofa. She was either interested in what he was saying or was too polite to let her boredom show. Madeline introduced Woody and me to the lady, Jessica something, and said she was a friend of Maxine's from a church group. I took a chair near the doorway and Woody dropped onto the other end of the couch, addressing Jessica before he was even seated.

  "So you're a friend of Max's, eh?" What kind of church thing are you two involved in, that mission thing?" The man had no tact at all.

  "No, not the mission. We're in a group that's kind of a combination Bible study and ethics discussion." She turned to look right at him. "Why, did you want to volunteer for the mission?"

  Woody stammered something about knowing the mission was one of Max's projects and wisely closed his mouth. Talmadge took a couple of puffs on his pipe and chimed in.

  "Jessie is a microbiologist over at the State Lab, up near your place, Rudy." He glanced over toward me, his glance briefly meeting mine then swiftly turning back to the couch. "We were just discussing the possibilities of terroristic attacks here in Iowa."

  "Wow," I said. "Terrorists? I thought that stuff went out with the Ayatollah."

  The woman chuckled softly and smiled at me, displaying white teeth with no lipstick smudges, always a plus. "Not the guys dressed in black with submachine guns," she said. "These are biological weapons, like anthrax or smallpox. Iowa's one of the first states to form a task force to deal with the possibility of biological terrorism."

  "No kidding." I leaned forward in my chair. Before I could say anything else or ask another question, Maxine appeared to call us in to the dining room for dinner. She'd removed the apron, revealing one of her signature, elaborately decorated sweaters. This one was black, with puffed silky patches, beads, ribbons and I thought, paint, applied to form a picture of a woman's profile. The yellow hair was some kind of gold paint, and a huge number of sequins formed a bow in the tresses. It was a long sweater, especially on her. It was loud. It was gaudy. It was undoubtedly expensive. It was Maxine.

  The dinner was more than ample in amount and variety. In addition to the crisp, juicy turkey with dressing, there were mashed white as well as sweet potatoes, tossed salad, cranberry salad, stuffed artichoke hearts, fresh green beans, hot corn bread and some sort of fried won-tons filled with spicy shrimp and crabmeat. As a tribute to my sister, I ate until I was technically a glutton. Woody ate more than I did, so I don't know what that made him, except very likely to be invited back.

  The conversation sailed along pretty well while we ate, with almost everyone adding a comment about either the food or some other harmless topic. I noticed that my nephew, Tucker, was silent for the entire meal, although his appetite seemed all right. When Maxine brought out the pies though, and he did start talking, I wished he'd kept his mouth shut. He started with me.

  "Did you ever have a tattoo, Uncle Rudy?" From the glare that his father gave him, I knew this wasn't the first time the subject had been broached. I had a mouthful of pie and before I could answer or change the subject, I heard Woody's voice to my left.

  "He didn't, but I have a great snake one I can show you." Getting to his feet, he pulled his left arm down and free of the sweater sleeve and turned to his right so we could all see. He flexed the biceps for the full effect, popping the blue and red snake out a little more. Across the table, I saw Jessie suppressing a smile as she dabbed her lips with a napkin. Talmadge looked like he'd swallowed a live frog, while Tucker jumped to his feet and made his way to Woody's side.

  "Wow. Cool," he exclaimed as he ran his fingers across Woody's bulging biceps. "Did it hurt much?"

  "Of course, it hurt," his father interrupted. "It hurts and can get infected and is almost impossible to get rid of when you decide you no longer want a cartoon displayed on your anatomy. And," he continued, "you are not getting one. So just put the idea out of your head right now."

  Before anyone could say another word, Tucker spun around to face his father across the room. "I will not put it out of my mind," he shouted. "I'll do whatever I want to do and I don't care what you think. I hate you anyway." He ran out of the room and through the living room, where we could hear his footsteps as he stomped up the stairs. It was suddenly very quiet in the dining room. Maxine cleared her throat.

  "Well, that was nice, Talmadge." Then to her friend, "Jessie, would you mind helping Madeline and me clear the table?" Jessie looked relieved to be leaving the room and I considered offering to join them, but since I hadn't been invited, I stayed in my seat and reached for a second slice of pumpkin pie. Woody did the same.

  Chapter 20

  The remainder of Thanksgiving Day was surprisingly pleasant. While the bowl games were rolling along on the TV, Maxine asked Woody and me to set up a table in one corner of the living room. She soon had most of us playing some board games, starting with Huggermugger, which was a new one for me, and which Jessica won by a close margin over my brother-in-law. He didn't seem happy about that and was even less so when Tucker and I trounced all over him and Jessie in a heated game of Trivial Pursuit. My nephew had emerged from his self-imposed exile when he heard the games starting, but carefully avoided any contact, verbal or visual, with his father.

  Between games, I had a chance to talk a little with Jessie. I was curious about that terrorism thing and asked her how it worked. She explained it to me in terms that were probably simple to her, but still left me a little in the dark. I liked the way she talked, though, and something about her direct manner appealed to me. She started by explaining what some of the problems would be.

  "If there were a vial of something dropped or released, even in a small town," she said, "there would be a lot of events that would have to be coordinated in order to handle it properly." Leaning forward, she ticked them off on long tapered fingers. I noticed that her nails weren't polished, but were well shaped. She counted off a few of the details involved in a biological attack.

  "First, who takes charge of the specimen? Does the FBI go in and pick it up or is that a task for the state health lab? Do the first people on the scene dress for maximum safety, in level four protective gear? Where are the contents tested, at the site or at the CDC in Atlanta?"

  "CDC," I said. "Center for Disease Control, right?"

  "Right. Actually Centers, with an 's'. What we're doing here in Iowa is explaining to the various laboratories where they fall in the sequence of events, according to that facility's testing capabilities and the CDC guidelines. There are four levels of labs, with most hospitals being level 'A' labs. The people at those places need to be taught to recognize when an organism they recover may
be an agent of bioterrorism, like smallpox, for instance. Most of the smaller hospitals can only rule out a possibility. If they can't rule it out, they're to send it to a level 'B' lab, usually a larger hospital, where further testing can be done." She stopped and looked to see if I was still awake. I was. Nodding, I sent a smile of encouragement at her. Beside her, Talmadge sat listening attentively, offering an occasional grunt of understanding.

  "Level 'C' facilities would be state health labs," she went on, "where we could test further and find if the organism is susceptible to any antibiotics. Level 'C' labs have to have biosafety level three capabilities, which is next to the highest protection. The CDC is the main Level 'D' lab, where they have biosafety four capabilities. That's the special rooms and the outfits that look like space suits. At the CDC, they have the capacity to determine the genetics of the agent and could even discover if two such organisms had been molecularly combined. The CDC can also archive each one by freezing it at minus seventy degrees centigrade." She looked up from her hand and smiled at me.

  "There," she said, smiling and sitting back in her chair. "I'll bet that's more than you ever wanted to know about bioterrorism."

  "Actually, no," I began. "I was sitting here thinking about what would happen in the community itself, wondering how the scene would be handled. Say if there was a vial dropped at the mall or something" I leaned back and folded my hands across my stomach, at the same time tightening the old abs just a little. There wasn't a lot of room for compression after that big meal.

  "That's another facet of the problem," Jessie answered. "The community services need to be coordinated with the state and federal people who would also be taking part in the clean-up and security of the area. It's a situation that has a lot of unexpected complications. Just imagine, for instance that we suddenly need to vaccinate fifty thousand people against smallpox. Assuming that we can get that much vaccine, who gives the inoculations and where do we put all the people who need the shots? Where," Jessie stopped and smiled brightly at me, "do those fifty thousand people park their cars?"

  I whistled softly. "I didn't realize this was even going on," I said. It's interesting, though." Maxine appeared with snacks at that point and the conversation turned to topics of food and books, two of her favorites. I noticed that Jessie held her own with those subjects, too.

  Woody and I stuck around for a while after Maxine's friend had said her thank-you's and departed. We stayed long enough to down some turkey sandwiches and other leftovers and took a pile of foil wrapped packages home with us. It was after ten when we got settled down in front of my TV and cracked open a couple of bottles of George Killian's Irish Red.

  "Man,” Woody said, “I may never eat again."

  I agreed, although we both knew we were lying, and asked him what he'd thought of the presence of my sister's friend, Jessie.

  "Max never quits, Rude. She'll be bringing home potential wives for you until you finally give in to somebody's charms. This one was kind of neat, though. But then, she's smart and good looking, so you'll never get to first base, anyway."

  "Probably not, but you're right, Maxine is relentless." While we finished the beer, we mapped out a loose plan for the next day's surveillance of Frank Goodwin's cabin. I said goodnight and carried the empties to the kitchen, where I dropped my keys and wallet on the table before going to bed.

  In the morning, I left my houseguest asleep on the couch and drove over to the community center for a walk. If he awakened before I got back, he'd find a note taped to the bathroom mirror.

  The parking lot at the center was almost empty, which was rare at nine o'clock on a Friday, attesting to the fact that this was a holiday weekend. The library was closed until Monday, but upstairs there were several folks already on the track and three guys using the weight machines. While I was hanging up my coat, a man and woman came up to the track area and started their stretches. Apparently these were runners. Whenever I'd attempted getting back to some running, my back always complained about the impact for a couple of days afterwards.

  When I'd told Caroline about the infamous Tomato Wars, I'd neglected to mention that part of the large sum I'd come away with was compensation for injuries I'd sustained in a fall down two flights of metal stairs in one of the bottling plants. The bit of ketchup that had sent me sailing along the iron treads had also ruined my taste for the stuff. I was now a mustard man. I was also now a non-running man, unless there was a slavering dog chomping at my heels. That little dash for freedom in Iowa City the other night had left me stiff and sore. I was hoping that some walking would loosen me up a little for our planned hike in the woods.

  Today's traffic direction was counter clockwise, as indicated by the little arrow at the entrance to the track, so I checked my watch and stepped on behind a woman who was speed walking. She was in gray sweats and wore a small set of earphones, singing under her breath as she pumped her arms and legs in time to the music. The speakers at each corner of the second floor also piped out music, and I let if drift in as I walked and tried to empty my mind of conscious thought. In a few laps, my muscles warmed up a little and my strides were a bit more fluid, if not particularly swift. About every second trip around, the speed-walker passed me, stepping into the jogging lane until she was clear to move back in front of me. As I strolled along, thoughts of the trip to Keokuk began to filter in and images of how we should approach and depart the scene appeared in my head. I pictured us driving back and calling Bill Felton after we'd discovered the truth about the cabin and discovered what, if anything, was going on there.

  As I continued around the track, practicing my non-thinking form of meditation, other ideas and images crept in. What was it, I wondered, that was so important about that picture of Charlie getting an award? Why had he hidden the three negatives in with his meth stash? Was the picture connected somehow to the drugs? By the time I put my coat on a half hour later, I had noodled out the next couple of steps in my investigation.

  I made a lot of noise going in the house and managed to rouse Woody without laying a hand on him. Touching him was always a risky proposition when he was asleep. He'd once struck out in the middle of the night and broken the nose of his ex-girlfriend, who'd accidentally nudged his back while he was sleeping. That was the main reason she became his ex-girlfriend. I'd always preferred noise as a means of wakening him.

  While he got dressed, I pulled the tablet of sticky notes from my inside jacket pocket and peeled off the top sheet that I'd written on at Iris Wilson's. I stuck it to the corner of the desk and picked up the phone. It was still only eight o'clock in the morning in California, but the senior Wilsons may be early risers. If not, I'd help them along. They could always take a nap later. After the phone rang four times, the machine picked up and I heard Lois Wilson's voice come on the recorder. I left a message, telling them that I had a new copy of the photograph they were missing and that I wanted to talk to them about it. I wasn't sure if I'd left them my phone number the last time we'd spoken, so I rattled it off for the machine. If they had noted it, chances were they'd tossed it out anyway.

  There were still a few hours to kill until we started down to Keokuk. We'd need the cover of darkness for our walk up to Frank's cabin, so I figured leaving here at three would be about right. Luckily, there were plenty of ball games on television and an abundance of food, thanks to Maxine's culinary abilities and generosity. Woody went out for a run around the area after breakfast and I made a phone call to a jewelry store down in Iowa City. The manager was there and we agreed that I'd come down one day next week.

  While Woody was still working up a sweat somewhere on the streets around Oak Grove, my sister called. It wasn't unexpected. I thanked her again for the great meal and for bringing Woody out for the holiday. When I shut up, she jumped to the point of her call.

  "So, what did you think of Jessica? Pretty nice, huh?" I could hear the smugness in her voice that said she thought she'd finally hit this one just right. I smiled into the phone.


  "Why, Max, I thought she was perfect. I was wondering about kids, though. Do you think we should have two or three? I've bought a big house with a white picket fence and with six bedrooms, so it seems a shame to stop at only two children." She interrupted me before I could lay out any more of my plans.

  "Rudy, you are such an ungrateful toad. Do you have any idea what a wonderful person Jessica is? No, you do not." When she began answering her own questions, I knew I was in trouble.

  "Now, Sis, you know I'm just teasing you. As a matter of fact, I had a nice time yesterday. By the way, how is Tucker today? Is he still mad at his father?" Changing the subject might work its magic once more.

  "Well, he seems a little less sullen, but he and Talmadge still have a lot of things to get past before they can have a decent relationship. Tal was never very involved in Tucker's life anyway, so it's kind of hard. And don't think I'm unaware that you're changing the subject on me either, buddy."

  "OK, Max. You got me that time. Jessica seemed very nice. But I really am concerned about Tucker. I don't want to butt in, though, and cause more of a rift between them."

  Neither of us mentioned that I'd already committed the major butt-in when I'd spied on Talmadge and forced him to confess to Maxine. She said she'd try to talk to her son again and would let me know if I could help.