Hot Ticket (16 page)

The button microphone worked perfectly. “Tortillas are excellent here,” Louis said. Thin tenor voice. They ordered. As soon
as the waitress left, Louis plunged into a molecular analysis of malaria, not divagating from the topic even as he and Barnard
left twenty minutes later. He referred to Dr. Tatal once, praising her work during the last epidemic in Belize. On the way
out, Barnard rolled her eyes at the camera.

Next transmission August 10, again around lunch. This time the picture was acceptable but audio dicey: those button mikes
had been corroding in the jungle for several weeks. Although Louis looked even more disheveled, he still monopolized conversation:
fallout from a Mach 5 brain. Today’s subject was biological immortality and the advances scientists had made in keeping animals
alive far beyond their natural terms. Barnard wasn’t even trying to keep up with Louis anymore. As he spoke, her eyes roamed
the room, picking off men: she probably hadn’t had one in a month. Her eyes kept returning to a corner of the café, lingering,
toying. Finally even Louis caught on.

“You’re not listening to me,” he said.

“Yes I am. Ichneumonid wasps.”

Mollified, Louis resumed where he had left off. Barnard wasn’t through with her corner, however. Eventually Ek came to the
table. “I have our provisions,” he announced. “We can go now.”

“Pit stop.” Barnard exited. The camera picked her up at the back exit, a man at her heels.

Ek took her empty seat. Louis called the waitress. After a few shots of tequila, he looked impatiently toward the doorway
through which Barnard had disappeared. When she finally returned, her hair looked mussed. As Ek relinquished her seat, he
studied the far wall. I hit
PAUSE
as Barnard’s man returned to the dining room, face to the lens.

Simon.

Ek’s face betrayed nothing. Barnard suddenly became quite lively. Pulled Louis’s ear a couple of times, poured herself a slug
of tequila. She didn’t look again in Simon’s direction. Maybe he was gone. After a few minutes, she left with Louis and Ek.

“Nice little quickie,” Maxine commented.

“That’s Simon. Think she just picked him up?”

“She obviously wasn’t getting any action from Louis.”

“But hitting a stranger in a tortilla joint?”

“She’s done it before.”

“Maybe she wanted him on film.” His passport number was in my report so Maxine looked him up. Simon Kingsley was born in Liverpool.
Joined the Merchant Marine and brawled his way from sea to shining sea. Navy wouldn’t take him after he KO’d a captain so
he joined the Foreign Legion, abetting fifteen years of tribal warfare in Africa. When that became redundant, he moved to
Central America. Close body work his specialty.

“Nice guy to screw in a back alley,” Maxine commented. “The boy noticed. He didn’t appear very surprised.”

“You don’t think so?” I rewound tape. “Look. He’s in shock. Barely moving.”
Polly was not really a botanist, was she.
I forwarded to the next transmission. September 1, lunchtime. Louis sat alone at Koko’s. No audio: those buttons had been
in the jungle too long. He looked cadaverous, drained by the heat. Barking at a waitress, he flopped into a chair with an
International Herald-Tribune.
Turned the page and nearly dropped his tequila. Brought the paper inches from his eyes and read slowly, aghast. His mouth
was still open when Krikor Tunalian, patron saint of aspiring Nobelists, tapped him on the shoulder.

Louis coughed violently, pounded his chest. The microphones twitched on. “Hello, Louis,” the arms dealer said, seating himself
across the table. Delicate man with thick, drooping brows and a dangling earring, maybe a crucifix. The Indian motifs on his
shirt could not conceal crescents of sweat at the armpits. “I’m so glad you remembered our meeting.”

“What have you done to my brother?” Louis croaked.

Tuna looked amused. “You have a brother?” he asked with exaggerated dismay.

“Don’t joke with me! I know how you people operate!”

“You’ve been working too hard. I’m glad to see that.” Tuna laid a thick envelope on the table. “Here’s some spending money.
I understand you have a beautiful assistant. Spoil her a little.”

Oh Christ! Did everyone on the planet know Barnard was down here?

Louis was stunned. “What makes you think I have an assistant?”

“My friends eat at Koko’s, too. By the way, I’m delighted that you worked on my poison rather than visit that environmental
conference. You will finish on time for me, won’t you?”

“I’m going as fast as I can.” Louis shakily poured himself a long tequila. “My brother’s got hemorrhagic dengue. I just read
it in the paper. I don’t believe it. Something’s wrong.”

“He looked fine at the conference. A little drunk, but it could have been the heat.”

Louis stood up. “I’ve got to see Tatal. She’ll tell me what’s going on here.”

“Don’t get sidetracked,” Tuna warned. “You’re working for me now.”

“Go to hell! I work for myself!”

Not after accepting five million bucks in a Swiss account, he didn’t. “Good-bye, Louis,” Tuna smiled benignly. “You’ll see
me again soon. With results, I hope.”

After Tuna left, Louis emptied the bottle of tequila as he reread the article in the
Trib.
The camera followed him to the phone in the rear of the café. He made one quick call before hurrying out the back door, never
to be seen again.

“Zoom to his mouth,” Maxine said. “See if we get anything.”

Rewind, focus, patch to video decryption program. One syllable at a time, an electronic voice blurted through the speakers.
“
FAU-STO WE’VE GOT TROU-BLE I’M COM-ING UP
.”

The screen went black. “September first was a Monday,” Maxine said after a grand pause. “Tatal must have been out digging.
Could Louis have hitchhiked to the site?”

“Easily.”

“She probably helped him out of the country. Of course, the boy would have known Tatal wouldn’t be in her office. He took
Barnard there on purpose so Louis could meet Tuna alone. Smart little sucker.” That’s what I loved about Maxine: she always
looked for the best in people. “Too bad everyone’s dead,” she continued. “Now we’re left with Fausto and your Tarzan. And
Louis, if we can find him.”

“Don’t forget Tuna.”

A guttural laugh. “He flew from Panama City to Washington last night. Maybe he’s looking for a refund.”

“Apparently Louis is making a poison for him. Any idea whom he’d like to hit?”

“No. And I don’t particularly care.” Maxine sighed in disgust. “Louis didn’t have much trouble choosing between the Hippocratic
oath and five million bucks.”

That reminded me of something. “His file says he was disciplined for unethical conduct at Oxford. Could you look into it?”

We dabbled with a half dozen scenarios, all flawed. Finally Maxine told me to glue myself to Fausto, our only lead. Maybe
I’d get a little closer to solution than Barnard had before the curtain dropped.

I
WAS DRIFTING
asleep when the gouge in my thigh began to throb, as if a demon percussionist were beating
The Rite of Spring
—in my bone marrow. Soon all my other bruises were pulsating in sympathetic vibration, churning up a sweat. I switched on
the light, half expecting to see blood on the sheets, but the wound was clean, my stitches intact. I was already up to the
eyeballs in antibiotics; painkillers would lull me into a dangerous doldrum. So I lay back and tried to displace the pain
with music. That little exercise only brought me around to Fausto. Why had he gone to Belize? Suddenly I heard water and smelled
earth baking in the sun. I felt Ek’s steady eyes watching me from the mouth of a cave:
adios,
slumber. A man would have come in handy but bah, I was alone. Creaked over to the window. Clear night, about over. I’d take
a ride.

Before hitting the ignition, I searched every inch of the Corvette. No bugs: how insulting. Pulled onto the Beltway, scanning
the rearview mirror as I weaved past cars containing one passenger and one cup of coffee. Only the insane would commute to
work at four in the morning, but Washingtonians believed they were a superior race rather than a mutant breed of rat in a
toilet with a four-year flush. Traffic pressed forward at a grim seventy-five miles per hour as I veered into Virginia. The
roads were so smooth, cars so fast … nature so docile. A human could almost feel in control here. When light and heat dissolved
the dawn, I just cranked up the air-conditioning.

Left the highway near Richmond. Louis Bailey lived in a woodsy neighborhood that must have seemed futuristic about when the
Beatles did. Now all that plate glass and globe lighting looked merely inefficient. Bailey had the tallest crabgrass on the
block. Careful: his neighbors might be keeping an eye on the property, hoping that one blessed day a
FOR SALE
sign would appear out front. At the moment, they all seemed to be asleep. I parked the Corvette blocks away, cut through
several backyards, entered through Bailey’s back door. No alarm system, but nothing looked worth taking. Scientific papers
covered the sofas, beds, counters, floors. Reams of Internet detritus—all about the latest Nobel Prize winners—gathered dust
in the bathtub. Looked as if Louis had left in a rush: phones on, beer in fridge. I combed the house for artifacts but the
great doctor had left none behind. Maybe he didn’t live here at all. Maybe he slept at the university and just used this place
for storage. Outside the kitchen, sparrows twittered at an empty feeder. A car passed, then silence returned.

Tiny click as I went from kitchen to book-lined den. Two videotapes lay on a new VCR. The first was a puffy campaign documentary
about Bobby Marvel’s life, the second a dub of the interview wherein a tearful president swore off adultery forever as Paula
beamed at him adoringly. Behind the desk hung an autographed photo from Bobby Marvel—“To my great friend Louis”—as well as
a framed baloney letter thanking him for his generous contribution to the party. A copy of the letter lay on the desk, with
Bobby’s signature traced in red pen.

I crawled under the desk to check for valuables in the wastebasket and noticed red near the wall socket. Panties, French,
expensive. Slid my hand in the narrow space between desk and wall, pulled out a matching bra. Barnard’s size, her favorite
push-up style. Put it to my nose and smelled Miss Dior, the only perfume she wore. I went to the wide plush sofa, found two
long blond hairs: Barnard had definitely been here naked.
With whom?

Another click as I left the den: bad coincidence so this time I stopped. Backed up a step: click. I dropped to the floor.
Embedded in the door frame, about knee height, was a metallic eye no larger than an iguana’s. Fresh sawdust beneath it. Passed
my finger in front of the infrared beam, tripping the sensor a fourth time.

The bookcase sputtered. Behind me, Bailey’s refrigerator coughed as the bullet tore a hole in its side. Had I been standing,
my lungs would have been blown all over the kitchen cabinets. Nauseating thought so I rolled to the bookshelf, where specks
of paper still floated in the delicate sunlight. Found the gun, a Smith & Wesson .38, in a wrecked dictionary.

Would have preferred a bar but I settled for a diner near the highway, swallowing a dry bagel and Lestoil-tinged coffee as
I tried to figure out who would be smug enough, or desperate enough, to plant that little booby trap.

“More coffee?”

No, more brains. I drove to Richmond, where Louis Bailey taught when he wasn’t defoliating Belize. His lab stood at the edge
of a beautiful campus where the boys looked masculine and the girls feminine. The scene was a little unbelievable, like colonial
Williamsburg. I brought a smoothie and a steno pad to the patio outside the lab. Sipped, smiled, waited: soon the great-great-grandson
of a Confederate joined me. He introduced himself with first, middle, last name, and
ma’am:
ah, nothing like southern manners to wilt a lady’s honor. Furman was a graduate teaching assistant. Once again I became Cosima
Wagner, researching an article on dengue fever for a leading women’s magazine. It was a chic disease now that the vice president
had it. My editor had told me to get a few quotes from Dr. Bailey, world authority on the topic. Bailey hadn’t returned any
of my calls so I thought I’d catch him in person.

“That might not be possible,” Furman said, tearing his gaze from my open blouse. “He’s on sabbatical.”

“But I’ve got to finish this article tonight!”

“Maybe I could help.”

“That’s so sweet! Thank you!” I opened my pad. “Can you catch dengue by … ah … making love?”

“No, ma’am. It’s not a sexually transmitted disease.”

“Our readers are going to be
very
happy to hear that. How do you catch it, then?”

“Generally, you’re bitten by an infected
Aedes aegypti
mosquito, which breeds in standing water in urban areas. That would most commonly be slums where rainwater collects in basins
and tires.”

When the hell had Jojo been near slums, basins, and tires? “Is it a big mosquito?”

“No, it’s small, green, and quick. The female is the carrier.” Furman cast his first line. “As usual.”

I obliviously wrote that down. “Could you describe the disease in simple terms? For girls who will be drying their nails while
they’re reading this article?”

“Shortly after they’re bitten, victims will develop a rash, fever, headache, and horrible pain in their joints. That’s why
the disease is sometimes called breakbone fever.” Furman tried again. “The victims will definitely not feel like making love.”

“Then they die?”

“Hardly ever. There are four strains of dengue. But even the most virulent form, hemorrhagic fever, kills only about ten percent
of its victims. And that death rate has a lot to do with genetic predisposition.”

“So it’s not fatal like AIDS? My editor’s not going to like that.” Frowning, I flipped a page. “What do you mean, genetic
predisposition?”