Hot Ticket

by Janice Weber

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.

  Chapter Seven

  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?”

  “Unlike victims of measles or chicken pox, who develop antibodies that prevent them from getting the disease again, people who suffer dengue once are more likely to get it worse the second time around.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a little complicated. It has to do with overstimulated immune systems.”

  I scribbled away. “What’s hemorrhagic dengue?”

  Furman deliberated a moment as I rearranged my ponytail. “Your heart pumps blood through the arteries. Those are the main highways in the circulation system. T
he highways get smaller and smaller until, in the capillaries, they’re only wide enough for one blood cell to pass through. When you’ve got hemorrhagic fever, the dengue virus bores holes through the capillary walls so that the platelets leak out.”

  “So you have a billion microscopic hemorrhages?”

  “Exactly. Your capillaries become sieves. Tiny red spots appear all over the skin as the subdermal bleeding continues. Eventually the virus overwhelms the circulation system. You’ll drown in your own blood.”

  “How horrible! There are no vaccines?”

  “Not yet. But we’re working on it.”

  Good luck, honey. “Was Louis Bailey involved with the vaccine?”

  “No, ma’am. He never came anywhere near that lab.”

  I chewed the tip of my fountain pen, as if it were a tiny, tasty penis. “My editor’s never going to buy this dengue business. It’s just so … African! Do you know where I could get in touch with Dr. Bailey? Maybe he’s working on something more cool now.”

  “You won’t find him,” Furman said. “And you’re not the only one looking.”

  I tried to shrug. “He doesn’t have an assistant?”

  “No, ma’am! Bailey works completely alone.”

  “Why’s he so paranoid?”

  “Researchers get that way, especially if they’re on to something.” Furman leaned over my ear. Maybe he was just getting a better angle on my blouse. “Last semester, just before he went on sabbatical, I saw him muttering to himself. You’ll never guess what was in his hair. A fat orange caterpillar. At first I thought it was a Cheez Doodle. Then it moved. I nearly passed out.”

  “Come on, Furman, I can’t write about this.” Perturbed, I brushed a few crumbs into the grass. “Is anyone around here working on something my readers care about? Like waterproof mascara?”

  “I’m researching the mating habits of catfish,” he said.

  I looked at my watch: get inside now, Smith. “That’s more promising. Could you show me just a little bit?”

  Behind the security desk sat a corpulent guard with fingernails as intricately painted as Fabergé eggs. She munched a doughnut hole as I signed in. Furman kindly showed me Louis Bailey’s locked office on the second floor. A dozen memos were taped to the professor’s door, as if the university weren’t certain whether he was really gone or just working antisocial hours. Little traffic, zero surveillance here. Bailey’s lock would resist me for about ten seconds. I oohed/aahed at Furman’s catfish then excused myself to begin writing my new article. He walked me to the door with exhortations to call any time.

  I hugged him. His neck smelled of soap and youth. “Thanks so much.”

  Circled the building before returning to the front desk. The guard was studying the box on her lap as if it contained doubloons rather than doughnut holes. “I must have left my car keys upstairs,” I told her. “Should I sign in again?”

  “Just change your Out time.”

  Across campus, a clock chimed eight as I entered Bailey’s office. Weak, fuscous light seeped through drawn blinds. More drivel about the Nobel Prize and some blank grant applications crowded his desktop. Forgotten cardigans drooped from every chair. As I was studying one of his honorary doctorates, I stepped on something about the size of a bullet. Held it up to the light and gasped: I had just crushed one of Louis’s button microphones. He had been here. I hit redial on the phone.

  Eleven digits, two rings. “You’ve reached the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” answered a machine. “If you know your party’s extension, you may enter it at any time.”

  I unscrewed the mouthpiece. There lay a tiny mike and a transmitter. Wonderful!

  “Find your keys?” asked the guard downstairs, tossing her empty milk carton into the trash.

  “Right where I left them.”

  As I was editing my sign-out time, another guard appeared behind the desk. “Leave me any doughnuts, Cheryl?”

  Her chair squeaked as she abandoned it. “Not this time. You’re late.”

  We left the building together. Within two steps Cheryl had freed shirt from belt. Now it fluttered like a tablecloth in the breeze. “You have the graveyard shift?” I asked. “I did that once in a restaurant. Only lasted two months.”

  “You get used to it after a while.”

  “I guess this building goes twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Yeah, those scientists never know when to quit. They’re all crazy. Ask them how to fly to the moon, no problem. Ask what they had for breakfast, forget it.”

  “I know what you mean. I had an appointment with Dr. Bailey.”

  “Bailey? He’s the worst.”

  “I came all the way from Atlanta and he’s been gone for months.”

  “Give me a break,” Cheryl said, peeling a Mars bar. “He was here about three weeks ago.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Sure. Four in the morning, middle of a thunderstorm. He looked like the Unabomber. Scared my pants off. Hey, have a good one.”

  She cut into a parking lot. I wandered to a phone inside the gym. “Maxine? Trivia question. Did Jojo ever have dengue?”

  “Hold on.” Heavy clicking. “Never. Why?”

  “The chance of getting hemorrhagic fever first time out is practically zero.” I smiled at a guy wearing sweat pants, no jock. Pecs smooth as pears and a soft mound between his legs. “I’m at Louis’s lab. He’s been here. His phone’s bugged. Any reason why he’d be calling the FBI at four in the morning?”

  “Give me a date.”

  “About three weeks ago, during a thunderstorm. Security guard saw him. I was at his house this morning.” I told Maxine about the lingerie. “Looks like Barnard finally got her man.” That earned a derisive laugh so I skipped to the videos of Bobby Marvel and the gun.

  “I hope you left everything there.”

  “I left the videos.”

  Silence, then a sigh. “Whatever.”

  A jogger puffed up to the phone. His tiny, erect nipples made my tongue ache. “Check out the thunderstorm, would you?” I hung up.

  “Mornin’,” said the boy. His sweat smelled like apple juice. That body would stay hot and hard all day. I saw myself slung over his shoulder, carried off to a sunny room with white sheets. Ah, for just a few hours with this sweet, unsullied creature … but that would be vampirism, wouldn’t it. Handed him the phone and drove back to Washington, where I spent the afternoon practicing Bendix Kaar’s thorny sonata. When that turned rancid, I stared at the old recital program that Fausto’s mother, once upon a time, had tucked into the violin part. Her boy had played Beethoven, Liszt, and Scriabin … then jumped into the Thames.

  Wished I could have been there.

  I arrived at his house promptly at five. Fausto eyed my outfit with wry dismay. “Who died, darling?”

  “What’s the problem? We’re going to a fund-raiser, not a nightclub.”

  “I don’t see much skin,” he lamented.

  No kidding. Too many bug bites and scratches. “I’m a modest girl.”

  “Aha.” We began a long, rather unnecessary rehearsal. The only piece that still needed work was Bendix’s sonata. Fausto’s part sounded better than mine, but he had probably given it more thought. “Get yourself a drink. I’ll be right back.”

  I went to Fausto’s kitchen, opened a few cupboards. Found the phone box in the utility closet: his wires were red and white. Glass in hand, I returned to the music room. My host appeared minutes later in a green linen suit. He drew what looked like a handful of marbles from his pocket. “Just so we don’t disappear into the woodwork. Turn around.” He draped a rope of black pearls around my neck. “That should help.”

  Help what? “They’re stunning.”

  “They were my mother’s. So was this. Don’t move.” He combed my hair with three lascivious fingers before snapping a diamond barrette into place. His body was close, warm, enormous as the sun: for a depraved instant, I wanted him. “I love dressing women. Go freshen your lipstick and w
e’ll leave.”

  The air was thick and hot, sick with rain. Street was clogged with cars, students, and beggars with just enough appendages to simultaneously smoke and hold a tin cup. Fausto drove. I found myself staring at his round hands, wondering if he liked to undress women as well as dress them. Ah lust, fallout from that errant .38 this morning at Louis’s. Fausto’s silence only aggravated my curiosity. “Why are we going to this fundraiser?” I asked finally.

  His round eyes flickered absently to my face; his thoughts had been elsewhere. “I promised the hostess.”

  “Really? I think you’re just looking for trouble.”

  Fausto cornered smoothly onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “I never look for trouble, dear. Diversion, maybe. Trouble, never.”

  “Isn’t trouble more gratifying?”

  “Trouble is far too easy. Diversion takes finesse. It’s like the difference between playing Chopsticks and Clair de lune.”

  “I see. Do it right and no one ever knows what hit them.”

  Fausto’s cool eyes met mine. “You seem to know a lot about diversion.”

  “Not really. I’m more familiar with delusion. This town’s got plenty of it.”

  “That’s what makes the diversion so much fun.”

  “Cut the word games, Fausto. I think you’re just a gambler who likes to play with everyone else’s chips.”

  His plump hand patted mine as we pulled in front of a suburban mansion. Its owner was famous for parties and ex-husbands. “The chips are all mine.” He braked under the portico. “You say the word, we leave.”

  First a little touchie-feelie with the metal detectors at the front door, then air kisses from the indebted hostess, an elf in a blue jersey gown. All that cling looked slightly obscene on a bulimic seventy-year-old. “Fausto! I’m so glad to see you!”

  “Wouldn’t let you down, Judith. Not for ten grand a plate. This is Leslie Frost.”

  Fausto hadn’t mentioned violins, therefore Judith didn’t either. As her eyes breezed over my half million bucks of jewelry, a sixth sense told her that whatever wealth I had, little of it would end up in Bobby Marvel’s coffers. “Hello.”