Five days later, Tuesday, January 18, 1999
Under special circumstances, drug companies were allowed to treat the terminally ill with experimental therapies, a rule that had been instituted since the onslaught of AIDS, given that the devastation of the plague demanded a more aggressive approach. It was not permitted, however, to treat the merely sick with drugs that had not come through government channels and had scarcely been tested on live rats, let alone humans.
For those in the executive suite, letting kittens out of the bag by administering new therapies to the public was perceived as dangerous. Competitors could embark on similar designs, and the advantage of a head start might slip away if a rival happened to get lucky. Any spectacular result hoisted a red flag and brought attention where it was not desired. Competitors had been known to buy drug cocktails from test patients to jump-start their own research. Secrecy was preferred in treating those who were not yet terminal, and secrecy was desired at all times to keep the competitive wolves at bay.
For Werner Honigwachs, President and CEO of the BioLogika Corporation, covert testing provided a unique opportunityoutside the realm of science. BioLogika was a publicly traded company. Stockholders needed to be kept happy. And yet Honigwachs was not inclined to share the full bounty of his company’s potential with them. He was also a secret, silent partner and the majority owner of Hillier-Largent Global Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He had devised a plan whereby he would permit one company to flourish, driving up the market price of BioLogika, with the intention that ultimately, handed the right product or product-set, he’d allow Hillier-Largent to trump BioLogika. In this way he would be immunized from sharing the immense benefits, projected to be in the billions of dollars, with the riffraff—his word for stockholders.
The manoeuvres demanded finesse.
Compounding his troubles, the nature of the investors in his company was unusual. Honigwachs had begun his career as a scientist but had soon understood that nothing significant could happen in the lab without proper financing. He devoted his attention to attracting and, if necessary, extracting government research grants, which helped him to establish BioLogika in partnership with both Randall Largent and Harry Hillier. His next mission was to mine private funding. Biochemical research was difficult for banks to assess. They considered his projects wildly speculative, his results too far downstream. Confident that his people were moving into cutting-edge work, Honigwachs pioneered the field of contract research, doing the messy tests on human lab rats for his competitors in order to finance his own programs. Contract research was quick money, and so the banks were willing to finance his need for start-up capital in buildings and equipment, but he still needed bundles of cash for his more ambitious projects. He was engaged in a race in which winners ascended to enormous wealth while losers became blips on a computer screen, soon to be forgotten.
In his search for investors, Honigwachs fell upon an untapped and bottomless pool of funds. He developed methods whereby his company would assist certain illicit flows of hard currency, which drew him into a circle that included the criminal elite and their financial advisers. Laundering money advanced his company’s research. The next step, both in terms of keeping his financiers happy and moving his company forward, was an Initial Public Offering. Revenues from the stock sale benefitted both his secret partners and his company’s research, and put him in a position to be able to participate in laundering ever larger sums.
On the positive side of the transaction, he had created cash flow. As a negative aspect, he now had to share his future profits in BioLogika with millions of shareholders, and these included mobsters. A ruthless biker gang that operated in Quebec, a chapter of the Hell’s Angels, which did its business in cocaine, marijuana, prostitution and extortion—Honigwachs could only guess what else—generated millions, and the gang’s greatest problem was sanitizing truckloads of cash.
Honigwachs obliged them.
His relationship with the gang meant being subject to their supervision. Vice-presidents came and went, and no one understood why, or what they did while they were around. In fact, they were envoys from the mob. As his plans progressed toward fruition, he was assigned someone who, unlike the others, had particular expertise and also status in the mob. Honigwachs had controlled how Andrew Stettler came into his company, first as a lab rat, then soon after as a security guard and an internal spy. The full range of his talents was at his disposal. That Stettler had appeared at all, however, had not been his doing. The young man had been imposed upon him as the price to be paid for the value of his connections. Werner Honigwachs needed to make BioLogika a success, not only to participate in the immense profit potential of biotechnology, but also to stay healthy, free from the hazards of chainsaws and car bombs. Others with a vested interest were keeping a close watch.
He called Stettler in to see him. The young man lounged in one of the guest chairs, slouching down, putting his feet up on the desk. Honigwachs didn’t reprimand him. “What’ve you heard?” the company president asked.
“Lucy’s moving south, finally, but she needs more product.” A glitch had slowed her progress. In Greenwich Village, more patients had turned up than they’d planned for, probably due to a breach in security. The unexpected numbers required that she see people over a three-day interval, and that extra day had inflicted changes on her timetable. Lucy had then contacted Camille Choquette back in Montreal to alert everyone down the line, but when she was finally through in the Village, Newark messed up the alternate date, setting her back further.
“How about delivering it yourself?” Honigwachs said.
“Me?” This was a surprise, given the risks.
Honigwachs sat in his own chair and leaned back with his hands behind his head. He hated feeling intimidated by this callow youth. “What better excuse to go down there and check things out? Delays bother me. I don’t want Lucy hanging around any one place too long.”
“I could catch her in Baltimore.”
“Excellent.”
“Anything else?”
“Why not go through New York? Check on things there first.”
“Isn’t—?” Andy stopped, and waited.
“Camille? Yes. But Camille … Well, I’d like to hear your perspective, as well as Camille’s.” Honigwachs put his hands down and swivelled around in his chair, looking out at the ice-covered lake beyond his window. “Keep your eyes and ears open, Andy. You don’t understand the science, so I’d run everything by me when you get back. This is an important move, the last link in the puzzle. I don’t want anybody to know more than they should, and that includes Lucy and Camille.” Andy nodded. He understood now why the mission was worthy of his talents. That Honigwachs might also appreciate having him out of his hair for a few days didn’t bother him. It was understandable. “I’ll pack a bag.”
“Do that. I’ll ready Lucy’s supplies.” “How do I take that stuff across the border?” Honigwachs waved a hand in the air, not interested. “You’re the one with the heavy connections. You figure it out.”
Andy nodded. He wasn’t thrilled about the plan—he’d rather have avoided criminal exposure—but the prospect of seeing Lucy Gabriel again was incentive enough to go along with it.
The next day, Wednesday, January 19, 1999
Camille Choquette moved down the dim corridor in search of Room 44. Behind the doors, televisions recited the news, conversations were interrupted by bawling kids, walls thumped with music. When a door opened up ahead, she increased her pace, and waiting for her there was the black man she knew as Wendell.
“Thank God,” he said.
“How are you?” she inquired as she came inside.
“I’ll need help to get back to bed, Camille, that’s how I am.”
Sores on his feet made walking difficult. His breath was short, and he was feeling dizzy. “I only answered because I hoped, I prayed it might be you.”
“That’s sweet. Take it easy now, Wendell. Take it slow.”
He groaned as she helped him into bed and immediately launched into a sustained coughing fit. “Am I going to die?” he asked when she was done.
“Why would I let you die?”
Camille took his temperature, checked his pulse and blood pressure, and examined the lesions that had erupted in a symmetrical design across his chest. She placed a stethoscope over his lungs and listened to the rumbling mucous there.
“I don’t think the new cocktails are working,” he surmised, his voice scarcely audible, as she was putting away her instruments.
“That’s hard to say. Obviously, you’re not doing very well.”
“I’d offer you a drink, but frankly, sweetheart, it’s too much effort.”
“Don’t worry about it, Wendell. But do you mind if I sit down awhile? That would be a huge favour. I’ve been run off my feet.”
She sat in the big, soft armchair and watched the man close his eyes. The room was a hodgepodge, with wigs on the furniture, makeup on the bookshelves, photographs scattered about on the floor, as though the man had been rampaging through his past, or his memories. Camille shut her own eyes to enjoy a brief catnap, and when she opened them again, Wendell was snoring lightly. Camille observed him. When eventually he stirred, she offered, “I can help you. For today. Would you like that?”
He nodded gently, coughed, and sat up. Not one to remain quiet for long, he asked, “Camille, how did you get into this business? Are you a nurse or a scientist?”
“I’m in it for the money.”
“Oh good. There are just too many damned saints in the world. I adore Lucy, though, she’s one of the best. Camille. Save me, before you go, will you, please? I’m feeling so rotten.”
Camille pulled up the sleeve on his pyjamas and dabbed the back of his biceps with rubbing alcohol. She returned across the room to her bag and loaded a needle, holding it up to the light of a floor lamp.
“Actually, I came upon my profession honestly,” she told Wendell. “I had a brother. Paul. Loved him dearly. When I was fourteen I asked him to buy me drugs, I didn’t really care what. We were both on the wild side back then.” She moved back to the bed. “This’ll prick a little, Wendell, nothing serious.” She gave his arm a jab, to which he hardly reacted. “I don’t know what happened, but that night my brother was killed. First he was shot through the face, right in the eye, and then his neck was cut half off.”
“My God, Camille, I’m sorry. You poor thing.”
She put away her implements. “I thought it was my fault. Maybe he was trying to steal drugs for me and that cost him his life. Who knows? I remember the funeral as if it was last week. The bones on his face, they’d been smashed in by the bullet, he didn’t look like himself at all. He was painted in heavy, dreary makeup. The smell of the makeup made me sick. My father told me to kiss him, on the lips, that’s what I was supposed to do, so I did.” Camille dismissed her bad memory of the moment with a brief, sad smile. “I loved my brother, but I didn’t like doing that. It was too creepy.”
“No, that’s a very sad thing for a child.”
“Yes. Well. Life.”
“So… sad.”
“Are you feeling drowsy, Wendell?”
“Yes, I … suppose, I …”
The sedative was taking effect. Camille fluffed the pillows and adjusted the blanket around him. Tenderly, she kissed his cheek. His eyelids flickered.
“Sleep awhile, Wendell. You need your rest. It’ll help. It’s okay, I can find my own way out.”
So much devastation. So many sick men. She envied Wendell his afternoon nap, drug-induced or not. She herself hadn’t had many hours of sleep since her arrival in New York.
Nor did she enjoy many that night. Awakened by a telephone call, she was told the news of Wendell’s passing.
“Oh no. No. Oh no, that lovely man.”
Her caller was from their network, a patient himself. “There’s more bad news.”
“What? Tell me.”
“It wasn’t natural causes.”
“What do you mean? It was AID S.”
“He was smothered. Suffocated. With his own pillow, the police say.”
“Oh my God, no. No.”
“Whoever did it sutured his lips closed.”
“What? What are you saying? What?”
“His lips were sewn shut with thread. He was wearing make up, rouge spread messily on his cheeks. Lipstick. Silver eye shadow. With his lips sewn together. Who would do a thing like that?”
Camille remained awake in her hotel room, her stomach in a knot. At dawn, having given up trying to sleep, she ordered coffee. She had another day ahead of her, another round of visits. Everyone would be talking about Wendell. Probably they’d all be equally terrified and upset. She was not looking forward to her day.
The next day, Thursday, January 20, 1999
Luc changed, after Philadelphia. In Newark he’d had a fever, which had caused him to be drowsy and severely cranky, although the symptoms were appropriate for a body being introduced to a major chemical bombardment. He refused his breakfast on the cold, sunny morning of their departure from Philadelphia, and Lucy had to keep close tabs on him, making sure that he didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.
When he declined lunch she got mad. He showed her the lesions on his right leg then, and the two fresh marks that had appeared on his back. “I don’t feel right,” he told her. He complained about the drugs she was giving him. They just weren’t suited for him.
“Stick with the program, Luc. Without the cocktail, you’d be worse off.”
“That’s hard for my body to believe. My brain understands it. But my brain’s never been a smart cookie.”
After lunch, such as it was, at a roadside truck stop, Lucy drove. For a while, her companion felt ashamed about that, but he soon fell asleep. When she pulled over for diesel fuel, Lucy suggested that he move to the back of the truck, where he’d have air and light as well as a bed.
“I don’t know,” Luc told her.
“What don’t you know?”
“I can’t make it that far.”
“I’ll help you.”
He hung his weight on her shoulder and slowly they made their way around to the rear. Lucy used the hydraulic lift to hoist them up, and she supported him again across to the bunk that ran fore and aft. After making sure that the vents were open, Lucy loosely strapped him onto the bunk with electrical cord. He was already nodding off. She threaded the cord through the belt loops on his trousers and tied him down more snugly. Then she locked him in, climbed back into the cab, and drove on.
Outside Baltimore, in the parking lot of their motel, she pulled the detritus of Luc Séguin back up to his feet. Their rooms were on the second floor, which was unfortunate, but Luc seemed to be getting a measure of his strength back and he struggled up the stairs with her. She settled him into bed and propped him up. He was keen on watching television, and it didn’t matter what was on. With coaxing, he agreed to hot soup, which she made by pouring boiling water into a cup of instant mix, and Luc sipped it slowly. He seemed to be improving.
After she’d grabbed a bite for herself, she brought Luc his nightly dosage. He visibly recoiled, his body edging back into the pillows. His feet made slight, involuntary kicking motions under the blankets. “Now, Luc,” she said.
“For other people it’s good. For me, maybe not so much.”
“You’ve caught a fever. That’s all. The drugs came along after the fact. So let’s be a big boy.”
He was obedient, he did consume his medication, but in the middle of the night he pounded on the wall to wake her in the adjoining room. Lucy had kept his key, so she barged right in. Luc wasn’t weak this time, he was energized and animated, but Luc was in agony, his muscles convulsing. He raved, spouting nonsense in French. Lucy soothed the tantrum of his body with cool compresses and comforting words. He’d had trouble breathing, which had brought him to the brink of panic. With a soft light on, and her easing touch and the tender lilt of her words, he relaxed, and the ordeal became manageable. Luc apologized for being a pest.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I don’t know what is wrong with me. I don’t feel right.”
“But you’re feeling better now?”
Not wanting to be a greater nuisance, he agreed. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Lucy? Can I ask you something? I keep thinking about it.”
She suspected that this might be a ploy, that he was scrounging for questions to delay her departure. “Go ahead.”
“Why is it that you were in the garage?”
“Excuse me?”
“When your father’s house got burned down, you were in the garage. Why? You wouldn’t tell Andy, but I keep wondering that to myself.”
She could tell him, the story wasn’t as complicated as he might imagine, but she was curious about his interest. “Why do you want to know?”
“It seems so sad to me.” He shrugged with the weight of his gloominess. “I’m glad you didn’t burn, that’s not sad, but why did a little girl not go to sleep in her own house?”
Lucy sat down again on the edge of his bed. She smiled. “My father built the apartment above the garage for his father, but my granddad lived in it for only a few months before he died. A natural death, peaceful. Old age. I missed him, he was a great old guy, and he always had time for me, so I played in his apartment a lot. It was a bit like being with him. Then shots were fired at my house. Warning shots. They weren’t intended to hurt anyone. Just to make a point. My dad was on the Grand Council and a few hotheads didn’t like what he was doing. After that, he put me in my granddad’s place to sleep. He was scared about stray bullets. As it turned out, being in the garage did save my life, only it wasn’t a bullet that missed me.”
She didn’t tell him that she had watched the house burn. That she had seen her father through a window, arms raised, walking, on fire. She had never told anyone that and she never would.
“You were meant to live,” Luc put in.
“I think that’s true, Luc. But I don’t think my parents were meant to die.”
Luc watched her with a steady gaze. “You’ve been mixed up in things all your life.”
“That’s true too. You also. My intuition tells me that.”
Luc responded with a slight shrug of his bony shoulders. “Nothing in my life was easy.”
“Is easy,” she corrected him.
“You are changing my English now?”
“Not your English, Luc, your attitude. You’re a long way from dead. You’re in the hands of Saint Lucy, didn’t you know? Your luck has changed!”
“Tell that to my insides. After all this luck I’m having, my insides want back their old misery.”
Lucy laughed with him and planted a kiss on his forehead. She sat on his bed with her legs curled under her and rested her chin in her palm. “Now, Luc,” she directed, “you tell me something. How come you know your way around New York?”
Luc was shy about telling the story. In his late teens he had worked with an older friend who would journey to the Big Apple to buy electric guitars and other instruments. The quality instruments were rarely available second-hand in Canada, and when they were the prices were exorbitant. The two would respond to ads in the papers and run around from Queens to Harlem, Manhattan to Brooklyn, the Bronx to Staten Island. Returning to Canada, they’d pay the duty at the border, then sell the guitars and organs at a terrific mark-up in Montreal.
Lucy was puzzled by the story. Why was Luc embarrassed by his past?
Unaccustomed as he was to intimacy, he was reluctant to confess the true burden of his tale. He had been involved in the wheeling and dealing because it had helped make ends meet while he pursued his real interest. He had wanted to be a musician. “Me,” he said, “in a band. Pretty dumb, huh?” An ambition that had died hard, and Luc was ashamed to admit that he had once had a dream, one that, today, seemed hopelessly farfetched.“One time, we stopped at this roadside restaurant, and when we came out the truck was gone, stolen. All the instruments, gone. I was so mad. My friend, he was bent out of shape, because all the money he had left in this world was in those guitars. We never had no insurance. Know what I did? I stole ourselves another truck, a small van, to get us home. My dad was a car thief and a truck-jacker himself, and his dad was that, too, before him, so it seemed like the right thing to do. Trouble was, we never made it across the border. I did time for that heist, and after that I was just another criminal, you know? When I got out I hadn’t touched a guitar in five months, so I just started up stealing trucks with my dad.”
One mistake had caused a slide. From a youthful dream of playing in a band, to dying of AID s. Lucy felt the sorrow, the regret, of the man’s life. She climbed off his bed and kissed him gently between the eyes, letting her lips linger there, consoling the very depth of him. After that, she fluffed his pillows, turned out the lights, and returned to her own room.
Just as she was closing her door, a foot was thrust in the jamb. Lucy gasped and jumped six inches. Instantly, she flung herself against the door and caught the intruder’s knee in the gap. She propelled her weight against the door repeatedly, ramming the knee. The intruder cried out, “Lucy!”
She stopped a moment, keeping the knee pinned with her weight. “Andy?”
“Lucy, you’re hurting me. Jesus!” She opened the door for him. He was holding his injured leg, while nodding to the room where she’d just been. “Are you sleeping with Luc now?”
“What’re you doing here?”
“Are you cheating on me?” He looked like a wolf with his long wild hair and his dark eyes and the shadows of the night around him. He was wearing his usual bomber jacket but also a baseball cap she hadn’t seen on him before, with the famous NY symbol of the New York Yankees.
“Ah, cheating? Like you don’t cheat on me? Luc’s sick. I was helping him out, that’s all.”
He closed the door behind him, as though he had needed that explanation first. Andy took her in his arms and kissed her.
Lucy had to reach up and move the peak of the baseball cap out of her way. Suddenly, the misery and sadness of the past days welled up inside her. Her work was exciting, but the endless kindnesses and the stream of suffering men took a lot out of her, more than she had thought she had to give. And now a man, whole and healthy, rocked her in his arms and his kiss plundered her senses and she hung onto him with all her might. The instant Andy broke away Lucy peeled off her dressing gown, and he was reaching under her top and she kissed him wildly, then yelped, as he lifted her off the floor and they tumbled onto the bed.
“Heaven help me,” Lucy pleaded.
“What for?” He bounced right down on top of her. The bedsprings made a racket and Lucy laughed. He still hadn’t taken that silly cap off and she did it for him, tossing it across the room. His hair, as black as her own, nearly as long, fell across both sides of her face as he peered down upon her. “What for?” he asked again, quietly.
“I always fall for bad boys.”
“Am I a bad boy, Luce?” He worked himself up to a crouch, his mouth moving down to her thighs and legs quickly until he’d kissed her ankles, then grazing up her body, nibbling her like a beast on all fours, kissing her shins, knees, thighs, hip.
“You’re so bad. The worst.” Inner thighs. Her waist. He pulled her panties off.
“Yeah? You going to save me, Lucy? You going to reform me?”
“That depends.” Her body twisted, and she cried out under the fury of his kisses.
“On what?” He gave her pubis a quick, teasing lick.
She was breathing harshly now. She didn’t want to talk any more.
“On what?” he asked her again, and he licked her again, just as quickly.
“On how bad you are.”
He laughed. He came up on his knees and turned her around on the bed. “You already said I’m the worst. You going to reform me, Lucy? Me, I got that to look forward to?”
“No,” she whimpered.
“No?” He held her wrists behind her back in one hand, and leaned over to kiss her neck. She bucked under his grip, and thrashed her head around.
“No.”
“You want me bad as I am.” He turned her over again. “Huh?”
“Unhunh.”
“Was that a yes? You want me as bad as I get?”
“Stop teasing me!”
“Answer me.”
“Yes!”
He pushed her little top up and roughened her breasts with kisses, his whiskers scratching her, and then he returned to her mouth as he pressed his weight down upon her. She interrupted him by punching his back.
“What? Lucy?”
“Get out of those damn clothes!”
While he was doing that she peeled her top off, and kissed his flesh wherever it suddenly appeared, his chest, back, neck, stomach. Then thighs. And finally she devoured his penis and hugged him. All the while he infuriated her with his little laughs and salacious chatter, and then they were kissing again, body to body, and she wanted him as much as she had ever wanted a man.
“Condom!” she instructed breathlessly. “Condom!”
“Oooo, maybe yes, maybe no.”
He took his penis and rubbed the head against her sex, and she fought him and squirmed underneath him. “Andy, no!”
He laughed that maddening laugh again and rubbed her pubis and that felt so good, but no, she couldn’t. “Andy! No! Andy!” His laughter so infuriated her that she could just kill him, and then he was reaching into his cast-off trousers and retrieving his wallet. She watched as he pulled the condom over his penis and asked him again, “What are you doing here?” Then suddenly there was no time for talk and he entered her and held her arms pinned, and she moved with him. She let him do the work for a while, until he squatted above her and said, “Your turn,” and now she was responsible for the movement, twisting and bending and humping her body against him, against his penis, until suddenly he slipped out and in the same movement he flipped her over, clutching her legs at the right moment and entering her from behind. She loved this attention and realized how much she had missed him, or this, or anyone, health, life, any respite from sickness and death, and her orgasm was upon her, and she reached back with one hand behind his muscled thigh and pulled him deeper, harder into herself, and when she came she knew that she was waking up the motel guests but she didn’t care, she wanted to be loud and she could not help herself anyway.
She flat out yelled.
Andy wasn’t done with her. He teased her to desire again, and made love to her again, more violently the second time, with her head pounding up against the wall, and this time when her release overwhelmed her he immediately followed. They lay in one another’s arms, warm and spent and delighted.
“Andy,” she asked after they had both napped awhile.
“Mmm?”
“What are you doing here?” She could hardly tell where her body ended and his began.
“What do you think? We got the word. You needed more product. So I’m here. Your delivery man.”
She found this curious. “Who sent you?”
“I’m probably not supposed to say.”
“You’re moving up the ladder pretty quickly.”
“I’ve got a nose for what’s going on. To tell the truth, I begged for the job.”
She liked the sound of that.
“So how’s it going?” Andy asked.
Snuggling into him, she made a few noises he couldn’t interpret.
“What does that mean?”
“Luc, for one thing. He’s sick. I’m treating him, and he thinks the fever he caught was caused by the cocktail I made for him—”
“You’re treating Luc?”
“He’s full-blown, Andy. He’s not just pos, he’s full-blown.”
“Shit,” Andy said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just, it must be crummy for you with Luc not feeling well.”
“It’s a drag, yeah. I’m sure he’ll be better soon. How long are you staying?”
“I’m allowed to make the delivery, that’s it.”
She lightly traced his arm with her fingers. “I’m glad you came,” she said.
“Is that some kind of pun?”
Lucy giggled. “No. Maybe. Yes! Why not? I meant, I’m glad you’re here.”
They kissed awhile before turning themselves to sleep.
In the morning, Lucy was disappointed but not surprised to find herself alone in the room.
After washing and dressing, she went in to see Luc. He related astonishing news. “Andy told me. Something’s wrong with the drugs. I’m not supposed to take them no more.”
She stood there, stunned, shaking. “What?” Lucy asked. “What?”
“They’re killing people,” Luc said. “The same as me, they’re dying.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“Your drugs, they’re killing people. They’ve been killing me. Andy, he said he just came in from New York. Everybody’s dying there, Lucy, from this, everybody you treated. It’s a terrible thing that’s happening.”
She felt herself go light, woozy, faint. She could only dimly make out Luc’s face, only vaguely discern his voice. Seeing him, she tried to tell herself, she tried to convince herself, that she could not possibly have been killing him all along. Luc. Dying. Not just sick, but dying. Because of her. Then she thought of the others, so many others, and Lucy Gabriel slumped to the floor and folded her knees up against her chest, and she rocked herself, and no matter what Luc did or said, she would not stop rocking. She sat on the floor of the motel room in Baltimore and continued to rock.
Where? she wondered. Where’s Andy? Why did he go?