20

“Andy, I’m afraid you’re in trouble,” David Seymour said through his mask. He looked at the chart in his hand. “Your electrolytes and kidney function are still okay, but you’ve got a PT of thirty-five, a PTT of sixty-five, and your platelet count is only ninety K.”

“Which means I’m probably in the early stages of DIC.”

“I think so. You’re also tachycardic and hypotensive and your hematocrit is thirty-two, so you’re probably losing blood somewhere, most likely into your upper GI tract.”

Broussard’s headache had changed from feeling as though someone was traveling across his brain on a pogo stick to a diffuse ache that extended down his neck and across his shoulders. He lifted his arms from the sheet covering him and checked the backs of his hands. The sudden shift to a closer plane of focus sent his head spinning. His vision blurred. A table in his gut tipped and his stomach slid off it. Mercifully, the episode passed as quickly as it had come and his vision cleared. So far, there was no sign of bleeding under his skin.

“Our first priority is to get that bleeding under control. So we’re going to start you on some fresh frozen plasma and platelets,” Seymour said. “Since we’ll also be drawing a lot of blood, I’ve ordered the staff to rig you up with an arterial as well as a venous line.”

Broussard groaned at the thought.

“I know it won’t be any fun, but we also need a nasogastric tube so we can monitor your stomach contents. I don’t think at this stage there’s any blood in your lungs, but I’m having a portable X-ray machine sent up to get a chest picture just to be safe.”

Standing next to Seymour, also gowned, gloved, and masked, Mark Blackledge said, “Andy, I’m really sorry this happened.”

“So am I,” Broussard replied. About all that was visible of Blackledge’s face were his eyes, in which Broussard saw himself already in his casket.

“I believe he’s a little jaundiced,” Blackledge observed.

“I’m not dead yet, Mark,” Broussard said. “And I’m still conscious. So don’t call me ‘he.’”

“Sorry. You look a little jaundiced.”

Seymour tapped the chart. “With these LFTs, that’s not surprising. Andy, we’ve got some ribavirin on the way, too. We’ll add that to the mix and then . . .”

I’ll either beat this or die, Broussard thought. Now that it was close at hand, Broussard found that death didn’t frighten him. The prospect that there might soon be a Broussardsized hole in the universe brought no terror or self-pity. It was where everyone was heading eventually, and it was, he believed, like falling asleep.

Of course, given the choice, he’d rather stick around awhile longer . . . haggle a few more times over the price of a painting with Joe Epstein, have afternoon tea again in Paris in the Salon Pompadour at the Hotel Meurice on the Rue de Rivoli. . . . He pictured the Meurice’s crystal chandeliers, the Louis XV almond-tinted wood-paneled walls with their gilt garlands, the portrait of Mme de Pompadour presiding over the patrons. And he’d really love to have read all of Louis L’Amour’s novels. But he’d had a fine, long life. Considering how many people younger than he had come through the morgue, and how many had showed up on the obituary pages of the paper, and how many friends he’d lost, he’d done all right.

On the other hand, departing this life hemorrhaging from every orifice wasn’t the most dignified way to go. In any event, he wasn’t going anywhere until he knew what that shiny speck was.

“David, I had a big test tube in my pants pocket when I came up here. Where is it?”

“Probably bagged with your clothes,” Seymour replied.

“Would you run it down for me? I’m gonna have someone come by and pick it up.”

“Sure. We should have it decontaminated, though.”

“Will you see to it?”

“Of course. I’ll leave it at the nurses’ station.”

“It’s important, so put it in the care of somebody responsible.”

“I’ll give it to Doris Knight, the unit coordinator.”

Despite his aching head and a touch of vertigo, he remembered her from when he’d visited Natalie. “I’ve got a banger of a headache and some nausea. . . .”

“I can give you something for the nausea, but I don’t want to be too aggressive with that headache. If you start bleeding into your brain, I don’t want you so doped up you won’t be able to tell me what’s happening. But I think we can safely go with some Tylenol. I’ll go and write the orders and check on that test tube. Meanwhile, get some rest and try not to worry.”

Seymour left and Blackledge went with him. Through the glass in the door to the staging room, he saw Blackledge shake his head and say something to Seymour. Then they disappeared into the hall.

Turning to the nightstand, he picked up the telephone receiver, intending to call Charlie Franks, but his eyes were now functioning independently, so instead of one set of numbers, he saw two that slowly drifted toward each other until they almost touched before springing apart and beginning the cycle again.

He stabbed at the button for the operator and hit the faceplate. On his second try, he got it. He gave the operator the extension for the ME’s office and had his secretary page Franks, feeling too rocky to get into a conversation with her about where he was.

Finally, Franks answered.

Too nauseated to sit up any longer, he slid down in the bed and closed his eyes. “Charlie, hi, it’s me, Andy. I’ve got myself in kind of a spot and need some help.”

“If I help you this time, how do I know you won’t just get yourself in the same predicament again?”

“No games, please. This is serious. I’m upstairs in the TB isolation ward . . . as a patient.”

“Oh my God. You haven’t . . .”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Yes, sure, of course I’ll help . . . anything. God.”

“I need you to take somethin’ over to the Tulane EM facility for me.”

“Where is it?”

Broussard took a breath to answer and realized he didn’t know where the sample was.

“Andy . . . where is it?”

“I . . . It’s . . .” He had the distinct feeling it was somewhere close . . . not in the office . . . The nurses’ station. “At the Pulmonary Unit’s main nursin’ station. Ask for Doris Knight. She’s got it. It’s a sample of somethin’ I found on the body of that strangulation victim. I’ve already told the people at Tulane it should be treated as infectious, but you should stress that again to ’em. And also remind ’em I need the analysis ASAP. Call me as soon as it’s delivered. I’m at five-six-eight-three.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’ll be doin’ better when I know what that sample is.”

He then lay back to rest. With his eyes closed, he saw the image of Natalie sitting on the floor, her clothes covered with blood, her mind addled, unable to speak. If he didn’t get the results of that analysis quick, he might be in no shape to deal with it.

Before he realized it was going to happen, he vomited, spilling black blood in a large sunburst on the white linoleum floor.

“GET ME ANOTHER CUP of unleaded, will ya?” Dilly Dillenhofer said, slipping another dripping spoonful of fried egg into his ugly kisser. He had a fat face and slack rubbery lips that made him look like a special-effects creation that had a hand up his neck instead of an esophagus, but the eggs kept disappearing.

On the table was his eye patch and the corset he wore to keep from looking so well fed when he hit the streets with his cup. When anyone was so unkind as to point out that the crutch resting against the chair next to him was an unoriginal idea, he’d always say, “So sue me for plagiarism,” which he pronounced with a hard g.

Nick Lawson signaled the waiter for another cup of coffee. It was useless, he knew, to expect Dilly to tell him anything while he was eating.

Finally, when his plate was clean and he’d drained the last drop of coffee from his cup, Dilly let out a satisfied sigh. “Ain’t nothin’ like a big greasy breakfast to get the old ticker goin’ in the mornin’.”

“Talk to me, Dilly,” Lawson prodded.

“What I got for you is sort of a referral,” Dilly said, wiping at some egg yolk on his shirt and discovering it was from yesterday’s breakfast.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t personally have any information relatin’ to your problem, but I know a guy who might.”

“Who?”

“I get to keep the fifty, right?”

“Only if this guy delivers. Otherwise, it goes on my account.”

“Fair enough, I guess. Go over to the French Market and look for a guy sells straw hats.”

“What’s his name?”

“They call him Igor, on accounta he’s got funny shoulders.”

“How come I never heard of this guy?”

“Maybe you ain’t as smart as you think.”

“I HOPE THAT TUBE isn’t too uncomfortable,” David Seymour said through his mask. He was referring to the plastic fire hose running into Broussard’s stomach via his nose.

They’d put the arterial line in at his right wrist and the venous line at the front of his left elbow. He also had cardiac monitor leads taped to his chest. Next to the bed on the side opposite the nightstand, four IV monitors slyly winked numbers at him. Overhead, his cardiac monitor showed his blood pressure and his heart waves.

The Tylenol hadn’t done much good and he was having trouble concentrating, so that before he could formulate a reply, Seymour’s question broke up and fell to the floor. Then he remembered . . . the ng tube.

“You couldn’t find one a little bigger, could you?”

Seymour’s eyes attempted a smile. “I’ll see if we can find one,” he said. “Maybe with a big brass nozzle on the end.” He patted Broussard’s shoulder. “That’s good, Andy. Fighting back with humor . . . I’ve always thought that humor, even with a sarcastic twist, helps the immune system. I’ll check on you later.”

Lying there alone, plumbed and wired like a physiology experiment, Broussard didn’t feel humorous. He felt lousy and defeated. With only machinery for company, he turned inward, imagining himself in the land of L’Amour, as a great black horse galloping alongside a herd of stampeding buffalo, the prairie stretching before them. The buffalo . . . so powerful, their onslaught unstoppable, their hooves shredding the turf . . . And while he was with the buffalo, their strength became his and he felt better, so that when the phone rang, he let the herd go on without him and he stayed behind to answer it.

“Broussard.”

“Dr. Broussard, this is Monica Martin at the Tulane Fine Structure Facility. We have the results on that sample you sent over. It’s an alloy of chromium, molybdenum, and cobalt, called F seventy-five.”

“What’s it used for?”

“Almost exclusively for making surgical implants and instruments.”

“Okay. Thanks for respondin’ so quickly.”

He hung up and closed his eyes. Surgical instruments . . . That rang a bell, but the sound was muffled by his aching head. He let the thought go and rejoined the buffalo, which had merged with another herd, so they now spread over the prairie from horizon to horizon. Intent on overtaking the leader, the great black horse ran hard, his mane blowing in the wind . . . the smell of buffalo overpowering, the sound like ten Niagara Falls . . . so powerful, so strong, and their strength was his.

Broussard’s eyes opened wide and the buffalo disappeared. Grinding wheels . . . the final polish of surgical instruments . . . the glitter . . . S and I Fabrication on N. Peters Street, out of business since John Cates died, but he was sure the building was still there.

He reached for the telephone and called Phil Gatlin.

“HEY, BUDDY, COME HERE.”

Roy shifted his grocery bag to his other arm and studied the flea market vendor beckoning him.

The fellow was standing in a stall that sold huge straw hats with lots of floppy loose ends around the brim. He carried a disproportionate amount of his weight in his shoulders, which were lumpy, as though he’d stuffed his shirt with socks. His face was wide and he had stiff, dry hair that formed a corona around a circular bald spot on his crown, so that his head resembled the hats he sold.

Believing this was just a flea market come-on, Roy turned to go.

“Don’t leave,” the guy said. “I don’t just sell hats; I also deal in information, and I have some that you very much need.”

Roy turned, appraised the guy again, and walked to the stall.

“What information?”

“No.” The guy shook his head. “Payment on delivery.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

Roy started to leave, but the guy grabbed his arm, quickly pulling his hand back to safety when Roy fixed him with a cold stare.

“It’s about a warehouse,” the guy said, “and something about to happen there.”

That got Roy’s attention. “How do you come by this information?”

The guy shrugged and glanced toward the gate that led to the trailer where Roy had kept Kit and Teddy. “I’m an observant guy and a good listener.”

“How much?”

“Fifty.”

Roy put his sack down on the edge of a table and got out his wallet. After buying the things they’d needed to make the warehouse semihabitable, only seventy-three dollars was left from the money he’d taken from Kit and Teddy’s accounts. He withdrew two twenties and a ten and held them out. When the guy reached for them, he snatched them back and grabbed the guy’s wrist. “I wouldn’t proceed unless I was absolutely sure I was offering a product worth the price.”

“It comes with my guarantee.”

Roy let him go and handed over the money.

“There’s a newspaper reporter on his way to your warehouse right this minute,” the guy said. “Is that worth the price?”

“Why would he be interested in my warehouse?”

The guy lifted his eyebrows. “It’s not so much the warehouse as what’s inside.”

“What does this reporter look like?”

He hesitated, as if he was thinking about asking for more money.

“I wouldn’t press my luck,” Roy said.

“He’s blond and wears his hair in a ponytail.”

Roy had more questions, but he could spend no more time asking them.

“I think I’ll take one of your hats, too,” he said.

Obviously puzzled, the guy reached for one on the table, but Roy stopped him. “One of those,” he said, pointing at a pile in a box on the stall floor.

“They’re all the same,” the guy said.

“I like that one, on top,” Roy insisted.

Shrugging, the guy turned and bent down to get the hat.

As Roy cut the vendor’s throat, he made sure he severed his trachea so he couldn’t cry out. He wiped his knife on the vendor’s shirt, returned the knife to his pocket, and picked up his bag of groceries.

“CALL HIM,” TEDDY SAID. “If he’ll go for it, there’ll never be a better time.”

Breakfast for all of them but Roy had been a commercial packaged sandwich and a carton of orange juice. Wanting apple juice with his sandwich, Roy had gone out to find some, leaving Larry as the only obstacle to freedom.

Kit took a long look at Teddy and inhaled deeply. “Larry, I need to use the bathroom,” she shouted.

The door opened and Larry said, “You’ll have to wait until Roy gets back.”

“I can’t. I have to go now.”

Larry didn’t answer, but his manner became hesitant and unsure.

“I’m not kidding about this,” Kit said.

His face full of conflict, Larry walked to the mattress and helped Kit to her knees. “Wait there.”

He went back into the other room, quickly reappearing with his knife in one hand and his gun in the other. Circling behind Kit, he knelt and cut the twine binding her feet.

“Okay,” he said. “Take everything slow now.”

From her kneeling position, it was a simple matter for Kit to get on her feet. Heart beating so hard in her ears she was sure Larry could hear it, she moved to the doorway, Larry following a few feet back.

At the bathroom door, he instructed her to swing her hands away from her body. He cut them free and quickly stepped back.

“I’m also going to wash my face,” Kit said, going in without looking at him.

With the door shut behind her, Kit grabbed the roll of toilet paper, stripped off enough to reduce it to the proper size, and squeezed it as flat as she could before wedging it under the door, taking care that it didn’t show on the other side.

Now, the nail . . .

She reached in her pocket . . . Where was it?

Her finger’s scoured the pocket, digging at its corners. . . .

No . . .

Her fingers found a hole in the fabric.

Gone . . . it was gone.

NICK LAWSON EASED HIS car onto N. Peters and appraised the bleak landscape before him. On his right, a twenty-foot-wide strip of grass littered with blow-around led to a tall brick wall, over which he could see the superstructure of freighters tied up at the docks. To his left was a succession of dreary structures that began with a power substation and its Frankenstein movie-set clutter of high-tension electrical gizmos.

He gave the car some gas, aimed it between potholes big enough to swallow it, and went on past two men loading lettuce into an old pickup in front of a one-story wooden eyesore with the word PRODUCE fading into oblivion over the entrance.

Next was a fairly decent-looking brick building from which coffee was distributed; then came a large vacant lot that bordered Spain Street. On the other side of Spain was the place the hat vendor had told him about, a battered corrugated-metal warehouse with no windows.

He pulled onto the shoulder and studied the place, which actually seemed to be two warehouses joined at the back so that water from the peaked roofs of each would accumulate in a long trough between them. Or maybe the water was somehow directed to that little pipe he saw coming out the front on the right, where whatever had poured from it had made an orange stain on the metal. Next to the stain, in vertical lettering, he could make out S AND I FABRICATION. Access to the warehouse seemed to be through a sliding door facing the street. On the door, some moron with a can of blue spray paint had proven that he’d mastered the spelling of four-letter words.

Lawson doubted there was any place in the world that looked more abandoned. In the weedy strip bordering the warehouse and Spain Street, he saw a mop, a small pile of broken concrete, and a bunched-up piece of plastic sheeting. A little beyond the warehouse, between the old railroad tracks that ran in front of all the buildings on that side of N. Peters, was a rusting eighteen-wheeler trailer sitting like a mother hen over a clutch of old tires. Overhead, a jockstrap hung from the warehouse’s power line.

It was only a quarter of a mile from the French Market, yet the whole area was practically deserted. Back at the produce business, he’d seen the two guys loading lettuce, and far ahead, where the street seemed to end, a big truck was backing up to a loading dock, but there was no other sign of human activity. Across the vacant lot, he could see a row of small houses lining the street, but no one was around them, either.

With the top down, he could hear a foreign language being broadcast from one of the freighters, mixing with the plaintive cry of gulls wheeling through the cloudless blue sky. A crow landed on one of the major power lines in front of him and added its voice to the others.

Could Kit really be in there?

KIT SEARCHED THE BATHROOM for something else she could use to cut the paint seal, but there was nothing. Frantically, she looked under the sink for something she could pull loose and use. . . . Nothing.

Her eyes fell on the metal switch plate by the door. Its corners were very sharp and one of the screws that held it on was missing. She stepped to the switch plate, pressed her thumb against the remaining screw, and tried to back it out, but it wouldn’t budge. Nor could she turn it with her fingernail.

Her search turned to something she could use on the screw. But the room was equally unproductive for that. Without a plan in mind, she took the lid off the toilet tank and looked inside. Her eyes traveled over the contents—to the flush lever, the float, the flapper valve . . . the metal clip that held that little tube to the overflow. . . .

The metal clip . . .

She removed the clip, intending to use it as a makeshift screwdriver, then realized its corners were very sharp, too. Afraid to believe she’d found the answer, she turned on the cold-water faucet, setting the pipes vibrating. Under cover of their rattle, she began raking the edge of the clip along the paint sealing the window.

And it seemed to be working. But was it going deep enough?

By the time she’d made her way along the entire bottom of the window and had gone as high as she could reach vertically, her finger was aching from the pressure of the thin edge of the clip. To reach the upper part of the window, she got on the toilet and stepped across to the sink, praying it would hold her weight.

It was nearly impossible to use the clip in any manner but the way she’d been using it. And she couldn’t change hands. Ignoring the pain in her finger, she went back to work.

Two minutes later, with six inches of the horizontal seam still to go, the sink shifted under her, dropping slightly. Whatever was holding it to the wall was giving way.

NICK LAWSON CONSIDERED HIS options. He could drive to a phone, call the cops, and let them handle it. But there was no assurance the hat vendor knew what he was talking about. He hadn’t dealt with him before, so the guy had no track record. Considering all the cops who’d love for him to fall on his face, he couldn’t risk turning in a false alarm. Besides, backing off wasn’t the Lawson way.

He looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t about to jump into the path of a vehicle coming up from the rear, but his view was blocked by a brown paper bag three inches away. At the same instant that he heard the sound of the gun firing, his face was speckled with hot gunpowder and a bullet ripped through his cheek, came out his neck, and penetrated the passenger seat and floorboard before skidding off the pavement into the grass.

AT LAST, THE PAINT seal was fully scored. Kit reached down, disengaged the latch, and yanked on the handle. The window didn’t budge. She yanked again, nearly pulling her arms out of the socket, but the window remained stuck.

Gathering her strength, she gave another mighty tug. The seal broke with a loud crack and the window swung open, so unpredictably, she nearly went over backward off the sink.

Looking out the window, her heart sank. She’d assumed the meal they’d had was breakfast, but there was no sunlight beyond the window. To the contrary, it was so dark, she could see nothing.

Suddenly, through the bathroom door, she heard Roy’s voice.

“Get her out of there. We’re leaving . . . for good.”

As Larry tried to open the door against the toilet-paper roll wedged under it, Kit went through the window.