Extreme Measures

by Michael Palmer

  "Last seen?"

  "Well, actually, I haven't seen him for five months.

  "Five… months… " the officer said as he typed.

  For all the inflection in his voice, he might have just mitten five days. His manner made it clear that over his years on the force, he had seen and heard everything-which was to say, he had seen and heard enough. "I guess it doesn't make much difference what he was wearing when last seen," he said.

  "No," Laura said, her sarcasm ill-disguised. "I think you can leave that line blank."

  Boston Police Headquarters was about as far from the clear, crisp beauty of Little Cayman as she could ever have imagined a place could be. The floor in the old building was filthy, and the dim lighting succeeded only in keeping the stains on the walls from being definable.

  But most unpleasant of all was the smell. Odors of people-hundreds of them, it seemed-hung in the air like a miasma.

  It was just half past four in the afternoon of a somber, drizzly day. A day before, almost to the minute, Laura had left Communigistics and taken her cab to the D.C. address Neil Harten had given her. She'd been unable to find anyone in the small apartment complex who had ever seen or heard of Scott. She'd then checked into a downtown hotel and called il Harten at home to find out if he, or anyone he knew, had ever visited Scott at the apartment. Not surprisingly, his answer was no.

  Finally, after toying with the idea of trying to track down the landlord of the building, she had decided she would get a good night's sleep and then stop by the closest police station to file a missingperson report.

  After that, she would head to Boston to begin her search in earnest.

  "Recent photo?"

  "Pardon?"

  "Do you have a recent photo?"

  "Oh. Only this one."

  She handed over the photograph of herself and Scott. After barely a glance, the officer set it on his desk.

  "No, wait. I need that."

  Wearily, Sgt. Thomas Canpbell handed it back.

  "I… I'll have a blowup made of just Scott's face, and bring a copy to you, okay?"

  "Whatever you say."

  "Sergeant, are you going to be able to help me find my brother or not?"

  The aging policeman looked at her. For the first time, Laura saw response in his eyes.

  "Realistically now, Miss Enders," he said, "if you were me, how would you answer that question?"

  "I… I understand," Laura said, gathering her things together.

  "I'm sorry. The information you've given me is enough for us to put your brother in our computer, but not enough to assign-a detective to the case."

  "Sergeant Campbell, I said I understood. I'll drop the enlargement of this photo over as soon as I get it.

  Thank you for listening to me."

  She stood.

  "Wait a second," Campbell said. "I really can't do much on what you've given me, but I win at least check your description against, um…

  "Against unknown corpses. It's okay to say it."

  "Against them." He scribbled the name Bernard Nelson and a phone number on his note pad, tore off the sheet, and handed it to her.

  "This is the name of a decent private detective," he said. "He works for himself, not one of them big companies, so his rates might be a little better. Maybe he can help you out. And if I learn anything, I promise I'll call you. Where're you staying?"

  "The Carlisle. It's downtown on-"

  "Stiles. I know the place.

  In fact, everyone on the force knows that place. Miss, I don't know exactly how to say this, but, um, the Carlisle isn't exactly the best place for… What I mean is, a lot of their trade is daytime, for-the-hour stuffing Pros."

  "Prostitutes?"

  "There are a few here."

  "But… but I'm paying ninety-five dollars a night for my room.

  "Welcome to Boston," Sergeant Thomas Campbell said.

  Bernard Nelson's office was a ten-minute walk from the police station.

  On the way there Laura stopped by a photo store and, after sliding two twenties across the counter, received the guarantee that her enlargement would be ready by morning, rather than the "seven to ten days" the proprietor had initially promised.

  "Welcome to Boston," Laura muttered as she headed back onto the street.

  Over the phone Nelson had sounded as if he would be in his thirties or forties. In fact he was well beyond that-sixty at least, and by no means a young sixty. His office, on the second floor of a tawdry four story brownstone, consisted of a small reception area, which was empty, and a larger, cluttered inner office.

  Nelson was standing in the doorway of that room as Laura entered.

  He was five foot nine or ten, but must have weighed over two hundred pounds, most of which was packed into a gut that made Thomas Carnpben's look trim. He wore a ragged green sweater that barely reached his belt, and had an unlit inchand-a-half cigar butt clenched in his teeth.

  Laura immediately pictured the man in a smoky tavern, seated elbow to elbow at the bar with Sergeant Campbell. She fought the urge to Turn and leave.

  Unlike Campbell, though, Bernard Nelson listened to her story with some interest. When she finished, he pulled a sinister-looking long-barreled revolver from his desk drawer, halted it expertly in his hand for a moment, and then used it to light his cigar.

  "That was very cute," Laura said.

  "Birthday present from my daughter. Actually, I have a real one locked up. I'm afraid to keep it in my desk like they do on TV, though, for fear that one day I'll mix the two of them up and blow my head-or worse, my cigar-to bits. After my coronary, I promised my wife I'd only smoke one a day."

  "It would be a shame to waste one that way."

  "Exactly." He took a single puff, tilted his head back, and sent a cumulus cloud of smoke swirling toward the ceiling. Then he set the butt in an ashtray shaped like a putting green. "So tell me, Miss Enders, why do you know so little of a man you feel so close to?"

  "I never thought about how little I know, really," she said. "At least not until the last few weeks. Scott is, I don't know, sort of private about some things, I guess." She felt a pang of guilt at using Nell Harten's assessment, but by now it seemed appropriate.

  "You mean things like where he lived, where he worked, what name he was using..

  Laura drew in a deep breath and then exhaled slowly.

  "Mr. Nelson, do you have any older siblings?" she asked.

  "A brother," he answered, his expression suggesting that he already understood the point she was about to make. "Five years older."

  "Still alive?"

  "And kicking."

  "Did he have much to do with you when you were growing up?"

  "No. Most of the time he acted as if I didn't exist."

  "And how did you feel toward him?"

  "I idolized him," Bernard Nelson said. "Still do, I guess.

  "Well, Scott is to me what your brother was to you. That and more. He's my only family, and has been since I was fourteen." She looked across at the detective for a moment. "I couldn't begin to tell you all the things Scott's done for me over the years. And I've never had a chance to do much of anything for him."

  "Point made and understood," Nelson said. He glanced at the cigar butt, but apparently. decided to save it. "Miss Enders, do you think there's a possibility your brother could have been involved in something shady?"

  "Shady?

  "Forgive the TV talk, but it was the best word I could come up with. You must know what I mean, though. Gambling, white-collar crime of some sort, drugs?"

  "Impossible," Laura said.

  "Why? Even John Dillinger had family.

  "Not funny. What makes you think such a thing, anyway?"

  IIwhat makes me not think it would be a better question. Miss Enders, people don't go around using false names and keeping their lives so private from their own family unless they have a damn good reason."

  "Perhaps in most cases. But I know- What I mean is, I feel th
at I have a good sense of Scott. And that sort of thing just doesn't fit.

  Now, will you help me look for him?"

  "I charge seventy-five dollars plus expenses."

  "Sounds reasonable enough, as long as your expenses aren't too high."

  Bernard Nelson stared across at her for a moment, and then he smiled.

  "Miss Enders," he said, "that's seventy-five dollars an hour."

  "An hour?!"

  "And starting from scratch, not even knowing if your brother's in Boston or not, looking for him's gonna take a hell of a lot of them.

  It roughs out to about-"I just did the arithmetic. Tell me, are you working on anything now?"

  "It may not look it, but the answer is yes. Several things."

  "At seventy-five dollars an hour?"

  No more."

  "And how many hours do you think it might take to know whether or not you can find Scott?"

  "Maybe fifty. Maybe a hundred. Finding someone is fifty percent legwork and fifty percent blind luck.

  It's impossible to say."

  "I… I have some money, but not that kind."

  "I didn't think you did. Miss Enders, I'd like to help you. Really I would. Jim Rockford always gets cases from beautiful, interesting women, and I'd love to do the same. But I've got two kids in college and a mortgage the size of vada. You need someone who's very good at this business, who can do your job full, and who charges considerably less than the going rate. That person doesn't exist. And if you make too many compromises in who you hire, believe me, you'll just end up losing what money you do have, all for nothing."

  "I appreciate your candor," Laura said, making no attempt to mask her discouragement'. "What do you think I should do?"

  "You could give up and wait."

  "Not a possibility."

  "Well, then, I suppose I could get you started in the right direction.

  If you get anything like a lead, come on back and we'll talk."

  That would be a very kind thing for you to do."

  "Maybe. But I feel like helping you. Probably it's because you didn't complain about my cigar."

  "I wanted to."

  "I know. But listen now, and listen good. Before I tell you anything, I want to be sure you know that this ain't Missouri, and it ain't some paradise island in the Caribbean. It's a city. And in cities, more people are out to use you than to help you."

  "That's reassuring."

  "That's the way it is. You have a nice way about you. A nice, trusting way."

  "Thanks."

  "Don't thank me. In this business, that's a criticism, not a compliment. Do you get the point?"

  "Yes," Laura said briefly. "I get the point."

  "Okay, then. To begin, I think you should have a poster made up.

  Include the photo you told me about, plus any information you can think of about your brother. Offer-a reward for information that leads to finding him, but don't say how much. And don't go meeting anyone in a nonpublic place to hear what they have to say. Take — the photo to this guy, and tell him you're a friend of mine." He wrote the name and address down. "Get, oh, a thousand printed. Offer him a hundred less than anything he asks for, and then give him what he asked for in the first place if he'll deliver the poster in a day."

  "I've already figured that maneuver out," Laura said. "Where do you think I should distribute them?"

  "Start with hotels and motels. And don't rely too heavily on the desk clerks or executives. Get to the housekeeping staff and to the hotel restaurants. Talk to people. Don't just shove the poster at them and leave. Next I'd hit the police precinct stations. Make sure they put it up on the wall someplace. Then stop by the papers. Take special pains to look real good when you go there. If you can interest some reporter, maybe they'll do a story and a picture. If nothing pans out, maybe it'll be worth shelling out some of that cash of yours for an ad.

  Your brother drink?"

  "Some, I guess."

  "Then try some of the downtown bars. Scott sounds like a downtown kind of guy. Also, hit the computer stores, just in case he's still in that line of work. Oh, and the hospitals. Especially the emergency rooms.

  Go to every one of them, even in the suburbs.

  Again, do whatever you have to, to ensure that your poster ends up on the wall and not in the trash."

  Laura felt dizzy as she scribbled down Nellson's suggestions.

  "This is going to be some job," she said.

  "It could be worse."

  "Really?"

  "Yeah. You could be paying seventy-five dollars an hour to get it done.

  Get a good map of the city, and keep track not only of where you've been, but where you're going. If you want to bring your map up here, I'll mark off the parts of town you're to stay away from.

  It's okay to take cabs around, but I want you to keep the doors locked.

  A few cabbies-not many, but some-have a scam going where they stop at a corner and some pals jump in and steal women's purses."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Lock your doors."

  "You know, I'm beginning to see why you might actually be worth seventy-five dollars an hour."

  "Just remember to send me a deck of Havanas when you get back to that island of yours."

  Laura stood and took his hand.

  "I'll send them to your wife," she said. "She can ration them out."

  A cool, damp evening had settled over the city by the time Laura left Bernard Nelson's office and headed back toward her hotel. The streets were already illuminated, some by quaint gaslights. The sidewalks were crowded with all manner of people, many of them business folk, hurrying home. And by and large, Laura liked the feeling of the place-its oldness and understated sense of purpose. She had been to New York twice, and never felt as comfortable there as she did after just a few hours in Boston.

  She stopped at a small newsstand, bought a good street map of the city and a copy of Skin Diver magazine, and decided to take Boylston Street down to the Public Gardens. She had just crossed Dartmouth when, in a slow motion nightmare, two youth the black and one white-began racing up the sidewalk toward her. It wasn't until she noticed the older woman walking just ahead of her that she realized what was about to happen.

  With what seemed practiced precision, one of the youths jostled the woman, sending her off balance.

  The other boy, a step behind, snatched the woman's purse as she was falling to the pavement, and then accelerated. Laura's reaction was pure reflex. As he neared her, she pulled her shoulder bag free and swung it as hard as she could, catching the boy in the arm and sending the woman's purse spinning across the sidewalk. The youth stumbled and whirled about.

  "Don't!" Laura barked, stepping between him and the purse.

  The boy stopped short. His eyes locked with hers.

  "Don't do it," she rasped, hoping that the determination in her own eyes held even a fraction of the fury in his. Behind him, she saw the other youth hesitate, and then Turn and run. In continued slow motion, several male passersby began to close in on the confrontation.

  She saw a flicker of confusion replace the anger in the remaining youth's eyes.

  "Fuck you," he spat. Then he bolted off, shoving his way between two startled businessmen.

  Several people were mumbling praise and patting her on the shoulder as Laura, her pulse pounding in her ears, retrieved the purse.

  The old woman was being helped to her feet.

  "Are you okay?" Laura asked.

  "I… I think so," she said, apparently unaware that she was talking to the woman who had helped her.

  "Good. Here's your bag."

  "Th-thank you, dear."

  The woman still seemed dazed. Laura stepped closer to hand her the purse. Not ten feet away, a tall man dressed in a windbreaker and jeans ducked quickly into a doorway, out of her sight. Laura checked to be certain the old woman could walk.

  Then, barely aware of the smattering of applause, she headed off down Boylston.

&n
bsp; A beat later, the man in jeans stepped out from the doorway and followed.

  The pin was no bigger than Eric's fingernail, but in its remarkable detail and craftsmanship it was a work of art. Set in black stone, the caduceus was hand-sculpted in gold, with fine enamel accents at the head of the staff and along the wings flaring out from just beneath it.

  The intertwining serpents below the wings were etched so meticulously that under a microscope, Eric could discern their scales, and even the facets in the flecks of ruby that highlighted their eyes.

  We are Caduceus, your brothers and sisters in medicine. We care about the things you care about.

  We care about you.

  The words had echoed in Eric's mind since the unexpected decision by the search committee to hold off for several weeks in making their selection. And although he had been unable to recall with exactitude all the phrases spoken by that eerie electronic voice, the sense of the message was clear. Some kind of secret work was going on at White Memorial, something arcane but important; something that he could be a part of if he was willing to step beyond currently allowable medical therapies to administer an unusual treatment to a patient.

  Joe Silver, Haven Darden, Sara '%a garden-they were the heaviest of the heavyweights at the hospital, and at least one of them, Eric felt certain, was part of Caduceus. At list one of them stood ready to assure his selection as associate director of emergency services.

  Over the four days that had followed the search committee meeting, Eric had kept the caduceus pin in his desk. And although he had tried to ignore it, to approach his job in — a business-as-usual fashion, rationalizations for pinning it on his clinic coat reverberated in his mind like distant ocean waves. He reflected on the physicians who made major breakthroughs by flying in the face of medical convention. He reasoned that in point of fact, by using the pericardial laser, he had already demonstrated to others, and to himself, his potential for similar vision and action. He argued that once he learned what Caduceus had in mind, he could always refuse to get involved.

  But in the end, neither the promise of the promotion nor any amount of rationalization was persuasive enough. This was not the laser he had developed himself and knew so intimately. It was someone else's work-someone else's priorities. The struggle within him was constant, but again and again his inner voice kept at bay the urge to find out what Caduceus was up to. More than five years of study and total dedication to his work had proved, as far as he was concerned, that he was the better man for the E.R. job.