“It’s me, Frings.” Frings watched Westermann decelerate, still holding the gun but pointing it down now.
Pale and out of breath, Westermann asked, “What’re you doing here?”
“I told you that Ellen Aust is at my place.”
“I remember.” Westermann took a look over his shoulder at the empty street.
“Well, I was talking to her tonight because I knew that some of the Godtown people were treated by Vesterhue, and I wondered if maybe there was another doctor who they saw, too. Especially with Vesterhue MIA. So she says sure, she sees a guy named Berdych.”
Westermann had dark patches under his glazed eyes, his shoulders sagged. He looked at Frings and Frings understood that Westermann didn’t know who Berdych was.
Frings said, “Carla and Betty Askins and some businessmen have arranged for food and clothing and all that to be distributed down in the shanties?”
Westermann nodded.
“Well, they’re vaccinating kids at the same time, and the doctor who’s volunteered—”
“Is Berdych.” Frings saw Westermann’s eyes narrow as he understood the implications. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Frings had lain awake that night, thinking about Berdych, working through the implications. He remembered him from the meeting at Carla’s: a tall guy, skinny, short blond hair, little round glasses. Carried himself as if he were high caste. Frings wasn’t sure what to make of his connections to both the Church of Last Days and the Uhuru Community. The benign explanation was that he was a charitable doctor who, in his good deeds, happened to work with two groups, two groups with very different philosophical foundations, that seemed to figure in Lenore’s death. A coincidence, though that wasn’t quite the right word. An improbability.
The other possibility, the one that had kept Frings from sleeping, was that Berdych’s loyalties lay with Prosper Maddox, and volunteering his services to the Community was some sort of subterfuge. Frings knew from Carla that Berdych would be vaccinating shanty kids in just a few hours. Hours. Grabbing a couple of reefers, he’d headed out into the night.
He’d grabbed a jitney to Westermann’s building, riding in the back with his eyes closed, mind racing, wind from the open windows making crazed vortices around his head.
Westermann wasn’t home, and uncertain of his next move, he’d sat on Westermann’s stoop and smoked another reefer until he’d heard the sound of approaching footsteps and seen the figure moving at him with a gun in his hand.
Frings wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting at this tony address but the largely barren apartment had not been it. The place was beautiful, no doubt, but looked as if someone were moving in or moving out, as if no one actually lived there.
They drank beer while Westermann recounted for Frings the interview with Jimmy Symmes. Frings listened, eyes closed, picturing in his mind the scene Westermann described. He thought about Symmes unburdening himself of this knowledge, but certain things weren’t making sense to him—not so much the story, but Symmes’s intentions.
“What is Symmes doing here? Why did he come?”
Westermann frowned, scratched at his temple. “That’s the question, isn’t it? We didn’t get the chance to ask him.”
“Do you have a guess? Was he coming to see you, tell you his story?”
“That wasn’t my impression.”
“Did you say he brought a gun?”
“Yeah. Said he wanted it for protection. You know, a kid from the sticks in the City and all that.”
“He needs protection? That ring true to you? This gink was in the war, saw combat, and he’s scared to come to the goddamn City? You buy that?”
Westermann frowned. “He has some physical problems. I don’t know.”
Frings stood, suddenly restless, thinking that things might start moving fast. “So let me see if I can tell what you’re thinking. You think that somehow they—Koss, Vesterhue, maybe Maddox—figured how to infect people with this virus that Symmes and the others caught in Africa. Probably something to do with Koss, maybe giving them shots of his infected blood, something like that. Probably Vesterhue was experimenting with it on those girls and seeing what happened. Right?”
Westermann nodded. “But where are Vesterhue and the other girls?”
“That’s not part of what I’m working out right now. Anyway, I think that Maddox’s problems with commies in general and the Uhuru Community in particular are pretty well established. So I think you’re worried that Berdych is going to infect those kids when he’s supposed to be vaccinating them at the Community tomorrow.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No, I do. I really do. But it’s important that you think so because I can’t stop him. You can. Go arrest him, question him, whatever; but don’t let him get to those kids.”