Rising Phoenix (29 page)

Beamon knew that Trevor had a bad habit of taking every failure personally, spending nights second-guessing himself. Not a healthy trait in a DEA agent.

“I do have some interesting stats, but they’re a little off the subject,” Trevor added.

“Go ahead, I’m not in a hurry.”

“We’ve compiled data from our street agents all over the country and washed it through the computer.
You’ll be interested to know that, as best we can tell, cocaine use is down about sixty percent.”

Laura looked up from her magazine, and an involuntary “Jesus!” escaped her lips before she could stifle it.

Sherman looked at her reproachfully and then turned back to Trevor. “Who told you to take that poll?”

“Uh, Director Calahan said he would be interested in any information we had on what effect the CDFS was having on drug use.”

“Well, stop,” Sherman said.

“Excuse me?”

“Stop. Under no circumstances are you to ever gather that kind of information again. You saw the poll,” he tapped his copy of
Newsweek.
“If your stats leak, well be fighting public opinion even more than we are now.”

Trevor obviously saw his point, but looked uncomfortable.

“I’ll talk to Calahan,” Sherman promised.

That seemed to satisfy Trevor, and he leaned back in his chair, indicating that his report was completed.

Sherman kept control of the meeting. “Laura, what’s happening in your world?”

“Hang on a second,” Beamon interjected. “I think Dick’s math bears a little conversation.”

“And what exactly would you like to discuss?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I think we could start with the observation that the CDFS, with a few guys and less money than the U.S. spends on studying the mating habits of the duck-billed platypus, has accomplished something that the entire law enforcement community will never get done.”

“So what’s your recommendation, Mark? Do we just stop looking for these guys? Let them kill off our problem citizens?”

Beamon looked at his shoes uncomfortably. He felt like a child being reprimanded by his teacher. “No.”

“Look, Mark, I understand what you’re saying. I’ve been hearing rumblings about the decline in drug use for a couple of days now, but our job is to catch these guys. Not to make moral judgments.”

Beamon turned back to Trevor. “How many people die from drug-related causes every year?”

“Dunno. Lots.”

“Stop right there, Mark,” Sherman cautioned. “I don’t want to hear it. It’s easy to punch numbers into a computer and come out with the quantitative benefits of poisoning our narcotics users, and ignore the qualitative issues. But what if it’s your kid dead?”

Beamon remained silent and let Sherman change the subject. “Okay, then. Laura, I believe that you were about to report on your end of the investigation.”

“Right. Well, we’re still groping for solid leads at this point. The check angle has really come to nothing. The suspect bought the checks with cash and then disappeared. We’re still doing some follow-up there, but I’m not hopeful.” She juggled the papers in front of her and started back in. “The hotline we set up has pretty much turned into a forum for public comment—mostly people applauding the CDFS and telling us to back off. At Mark’s suggestion, we’ve changed it from an 800 number to a toll call. Hopefully that’ll cut down on the traffic. As you know, we’ve publicized a five hundred thousand dollar reward for information.”

She stood and walked to the corner of the conference room. A large piece of posterboard leaned against the wall. She picked it up. “We’re up to roughly fifteen thousand eight hundred casualties.” She placed the edge of the posterboard on the table, giving the rest of the agents a closer look. It depicted a roughly bell-shaped graph. Next to it was a much smaller red bar.

“This blue curve charts the daily deaths from cocaine poisonings since the beginning of the outbreak.” Her finger traced the length of the graph. “As you can see, the first section, depicting the first week, is quite steep. That’s because of the unexpected delayed reaction in the drugs. Lots of people were using them thinking they were safe. It’s starting to level out now for a few reasons. One, because the poisoned coke seems to be getting used up. Two, as Dick pointed out, people are using less. And three, quite a few users are, well, dead. The last one doesn’t really have that much of a statistical impact, though.”

Sherman pointed to the center of the graph. “And what does it mean when the line goes from blue to black?”

Beamon rolled his eyes. It wasn’t enough that Laura spent half her life drawing graphs and charts. Now Tom was actually going to prolong the discussion of them.

“The black line represents our projection of remaining deaths. You can see along the bottom that the color change corresponds with today’s date.”

Sherman nodded. “You’re assuming that no more cocaine is poisoned, though, right?”

“That’s right. It’s hard to say what would happen if they got to some more drugs. It depends on how comfortable
people are feeling that the poisoned stuff is dwindling.”

“So what’s the other one?” Sherman pointed to the red bar.

“Oh, that’s just deaths to date. Fifteen thousand eight hundred.”

Laura leaned the posterboard against the wall and took her seat as Sherman turned back to Beamon. “What’s happening in your world, Mark?”

“Turns out Customs doesn’t have a record of anyone bringing in a shipment of mushrooms that couldn’t be traced to a legitimate source—grocery stores, restaurants, whatever. Scott Dresden, out of Bonn, is running down the mushroom angle—where they got ’em and how they got ’em here. No luck yet—he’s a good man, though.”

“Pretty tall order,” Laura observed sympathetically, “finding some guy running around the woods picking mushrooms in Poland.”

“And he’s got to do it without a single graph,” Beamon added.

She kicked him hard under the table.

Beamon turned to Fontain, rubbing his shin with the top of his foot. “Trace—you want to tell everyone what you told me?”

Fontain didn’t like meetings, and had protested when Beamon had asked him to come. He spoke reluctantly. “You know that we’ve been trying to get around and interview just about everyone who’s been poisoned. We’ve been trying to track where people got the bad coke, to help the DEA pinpoint its origin.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, we interviewed
a young man yesterday who swears that he hasn’t done a line of coke in six years. We did some tests this morning and confirmed that he was telling the truth. He’s a heroin addict.”

“Goddammit,” Sherman exclaimed in a rare use of profanity. “Where’d he get it?”

“L.A.”

Beamon jumped in to divert Sherman’s attention from the frail-looking scientist. “I typed up a press release a couple of hours ago, Tom. The press should be running a story within the hour.”

“Goddammit,” Sherman repeated for good measure. “How many people are they gonna get this time?”

Beamon shrugged. The number of deaths was just noise to him—irrelevant to the investigation, and a subject that he found particularly depressing. The last thing he needed was a constant reminder of the lives being lost because he hadn’t caught these guys yet.

Sherman’s gaze turned to Laura.

“I don’t know, Tom. There are so many factors …”

“Well, speculate then,” he shot back impatiently.

“I can’t. We have no idea how much product they hit—in the end, that’s the most important variable.”

Beamon agreed. “Yeah, but I think we can count on all the poisoned stuff getting used up. There’s nothing quite as desperate as a heroin addict in need of a fix. They’re gonna take a hell of a lot more chances than some guy who likes to do a few lines before he hits the clubs on Friday night.”

“So good of you to come personally to give me the news!” Luis Colombar crossed his expansive living room and gave his physician a firm handshake.

Colombar was dressed impeccably in an off-white linen suit and maroon silk shirt. He showed off the thousands of dollars worth of ongoing dental work correcting years of youthful neglect.

Santez followed him to the bar, where Colombar poured him a Stolichnaya and tonic. Even there, in his beautiful home, in his expensive suit, with his practiced accent, the drug lord was surrounded by an aura of violent insanity. It wasn’t just the memory of his recent experience with Colombar—it was something in the drug lord’s gait. Something around his eyes.

The doctor accepted the drink gratefully, downing a good portion of it in the first gulp. It burned its way down but didn’t kill the butterflies below.

“And so what news?” Colombar asked.

Santez didn’t understand what he was involved in, but his churning stomach told him that it was big. Regret coursed through him—regret for the greed that had prompted him to take the job as Colombar’s physician and had entangled him in the invisible web of the cocaine trade that blanketed his country.

“We have not been able to fully complete our tests on Ma—the subject’s—organs.” Somehow speaking Colombar’s victim’s name out loud seemed impossibly dangerous. “However, based on information provided by Johns Hopkins Hospital in the States and our initial review of the damaged liver, I believe that there is a ninety-five percent probability that the subject was
poisoned by the same substance that is being used to poison drug users in the USA.”

There, he’d said it. He watched Colombar’s face carefully.

To his relief, the drug lord appeared to be unaffected by the news. He just stood there and sipped his drink. Finally he laid down his glass and clapped Santez on the shoulder.

“I really appreciate your help on this, Doctor.” He took the drink from Santez’s slightly trembling hand and began leading the old man out.

“Drive carefully!” he called as Santez slid behind the wheel of the Blazer that he always rented when he came into the mountains. Santez held his breath as he turned the key—sure that the car would explode into a ball of fire. The engine roared innocently to life.

“You heard?”

Alejandro Perez had appeared like magic and sunk into one of the large chairs by the entertainment center. He wore white shorts and a white Polo shirt. A tennis racquet was propped next to him.

“I heard. I think I know how it was done, too.”

Colombar dropped into the chair across from him. His jaw was clenched tightly.

“One of the men you brought back goes with the truck to pick up kerosene every week. He tells me that a few weeks ago, they stopped to relieve themselves and found an old drunk hitching a ride on top of the barrels on the back of the truck.”

Colombar’s expression changed from sullen to hopeful.

“They let him go.”

“Fuck!”

“I’ve doubled our guards on the refineries and told them that one man is to ride on the back of the trucks with the kerosene. We’re also going to start using different suppliers on a random basis.”

Colombar was still seething at the thought of just barely missing the man who’d done this to him. He took a deep breath, quelling the rage that was building up inside him. “I want the motherfucker who let this happen dead! Send the other son of a bitch back to the refinery—but give him something to remember me by.” Guards weren’t that easy to come by, and he seemed to be losing them fast.

Perez looked embarrassed. “He, uh, passed away during his conversation with Rico.”

“Oh.” Colombar stood and paced behind the sofa, a habit his interior designer had complained about on numerous occasions. A light-colored swath was becoming visible on the hand-tied Oriental.

“When do we get the analysis back on the kerosene sample that we sent out?”

“Probably not for another two weeks.”

“No matter. I know what it will say.” Colombar stopped pacing and leaned against the couch. “Somebody must know something—this guy must have been going around town asking questions.” He stopped and turned to face Perez. “Put the word out, Alejandro. I’ll pay two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for information on this son of a bitch.”

The thick clouds that almost delayed his flight into Denver International had miraculously disappeared. Mark Beamon squinted his eyes almost shut as he swung his car onto a steep gravel road and headed directly into the sun.