by Janice Weber
“Certainly. But in your scenario they would have to be carrying the dengue virus.”
“Is that so hard?”
Louis smiled triumphantly: riddle solved. “Xenodiagnosis. Done all the time. You put the female Aedes aegypti in a test tube and cover the top with a nylon stocking. Place it on the skin of a dengue victim and let the mosquito bite through the nylon. Then you isolate the mosquito for a few days, feeding it only enough sugar water to stay alive. The virus will move through its digestive system and become concentrated in the salivary glands. The mosquito’s now ready for action. With the next bite, she’ll pump the dengue virus into her next victim.”
Silence in the tent. “Know anyone who’s been in a dengue ward lately?” Fausto asked no one in particular. “With nylon stockings and a couple of test tubes?”
How about with mesh balls and a young violinist? Ace plan, Bendix! Gretchen distracts everyone with Bach and tantrums while Uncle B puts a few balls laced with mosquitoes on dengue victims too exhausted to play with them. End of concert, Bendix palms a few balls back. Keeps the mosquitoes alive while the virus migrates, then his pal Aurilla steps into an elevator with Jojo. She finds a pretext to hand over a couple of balls, careful to keep her fingers on the decals so the mosquitoes won’t bite her. Jojo takes them, gets stung. Stepping out of the elevator, he unwittingly hands toys to Babette and Iris. They’re stung, too. Aurilla gets only one ball back without looking like the Wicked Witch. Takes the risk of her life and leaves the second ball behind. Her gamble pays off … for a while.
“Stockings and test tubes? I didn’t see anyone carrying that around the dengue ward.” I tried to look perplexed. “I don’t understand why the girls had simple dengue but Jojo went hemorrhagic.”
“Simple,” Louis replied again. “All his life he took aspirin.”
“So what?”
The great doctor tried to be patient. “Step one. Jojo’s stung. In two or three days, he aches all over as the simple dengue virus bores holes in his capillaries. That stupid cow Myrna tells him he’s under the weather and gets him to take a load of aspirin.”
“That’s what she said at Aurilla’s dinner, didn’t she?” Fausto asked me.
“Correct.” I thought Fausto hadn’t been listening.
“Jojo ate aspirin like M and M’s,” Louis continued. “Took it for everything. You know what aspirin does to the blood platelets, don’t you? It thins them. That means a lot more would escape through the holes in the capillaries than would normally. To make things worse, by now Jojo probably would be running a fever. That would constrict his capillaries even further, increasing his blood pressure. It’s like a water main break. You get a situation where the thinned platelets escape the capillaries faster than the capillaries can repair themselves. Full-blown hemorrhagic dengue, and before you know it there’s no going back. The victim bleeds beyond recovery.” He peered intently at me. “So who’s the mastermind behind your plot?”
I scratched an armpit. “Someone who knows Jojo takes aspirin. Myrna, I guess.”
Long silence. Fausto quaffed the rest of his drink. “Sounds a little farfetched, sweet. Not only Myrna but the whole story. Those girls play near puddles. They could have been bitten a hundred times in a hundred other places. We also overlook the possibility of Jojo just being near the wrong stinger at the wrong time.”
While I was glaring at my husband, Louis stood. “I’ve got kettles boiling in the cave.”
“Aren’t you interested in hashing this out?” I cried. “We’re talking about your brother, not some dipshit politician.”
“Nothing can ever be proven,” he retorted. “I’ve lost weeks of time already. Drink all of that, Fausto. Ek! Come with me!” He stomped out.
I watched the patient lie back on the cot, a big smile on his face. Finally I understood. “You know it was Bendix,” I said. “So does Louis. Both of you always knew. And you know I know.” Ah, what wonderful games we played! If only we could have kept the body count at zero!
Fausto seemed to be getting his color back. “Do tell me one thing, doll. Who was in the elevator with Jojo?”
“Aurilla.”
He whistled. “Brass balls! I would have thought he’d hand off the job to Gretchen. If the girl got sick, so much the better. Don’t be angry, love. With Bendix it was just a matter of time. He’s been on a direct course for the White House ever since he buried his operas. In a perverse way, it’s been inspiring to watch. He’ll get away with it, of course.”
“You could have stopped him.”
“You flatter me. The best I could do was slap his wrists with that hideous sonata. Louis tried to pull the plug by going to Washington and nearly got himself killed.” He shut his eyes. “It’s a stalemate. The three of us have too many skeletons in our closet.”
Wonderful. “Do you think Bendix hit Tatal?”
“Definitely. Bendix knew that the minute Louis found out about his brother’s dengue, he’d run to Tatal with a load of questions. She would have nailed Bendix with that visit to the hospital during the conference. Better she was out of the picture.”
“Where’d Bendix find Simon?”
“Where everyone else finds him. He’s the local contractor for all hired guns. Gets a cut of the action. If I need James to fly my plane, I talk to Simon first.” Fausto rolled his head my way. “Did you … ah …”
“Simon tried to kill me. Nearly succeeded. I think Bendix sicced him on Louis as well as Tatal.”
“Bendix had no choice. Louis figured out the dengue problem in ten seconds flat. He just didn’t know the mechanics. You gave us that. Smart girl.”
I went to the mat, daubed Fausto’s forehead with a damp cloth. “Let’s go to Paris. Berlin. Any place but Washington.”
He pulled me down beside him. “Whatever you want.”
Again I heard that enigmatic laughter. Felt a shudder as I realized I had gone through the eye of the needle to the land of the absolutely and defiantly happy: let the gods strike me dead now, while I stood as close as I’d ever get to the sun. “We’re flying out tonight. Louis will make you a year’s supply of his magic potion. By the way, where’s my violin?”
“There’s a button in the wall behind my dresser. Press it twice.” He touched my eyes. “I was just thinking about the taste of you. Moss and roses. And when you go over the falls …” He sighed. “Come lie here with me a minute. God, I want to live forever.”
Try twenty years if we were lucky. Two if I kept working for Maxine. I snuggled against a giant, protective bear. I could tolerate infidelity and intemperance, maybe even boredom, as long as a man protected me. Against what, I didn’t know. Shadows outside the cave. I was telling Fausto about the music I wanted to play together when I noticed that his fingers had stopped sifting my hair. For a second I thought he had fallen asleep but no, that would have presumed a happy ending, a contented winding down of days, oh Christ he had stopped breathing. I bolted upright. He was staring at me with the frozen horror I had seen twice before. But this time something in his eyes was not entirely human.
“Louis,” I screamed, tearing for the cave. “Come here!”
Crash from the tent: Fausto rushed out like a wounded bull and lumbered down the hill. Three times he lost his footing and rolled through the scrub toward that angry water. Twice I caught him but he was a runaway train and each time I managed to grab a branch, our combined weight uprooted it easily as crabgrass. “Fausto!” I shrieked. “Stop!” He fell on top of me, grunting like a hippo. I stepped into a hole, got stuck for just a few seconds while Fausto rampaged into the water.
Dove after him into the frothy green death. Catch up, Smith. Push him to the side. I couldn’t find him. His head would pop above the surface here, sink, resurface way over there. Sometimes all I saw was a swollen white hand before it cut back beneath the water. Once I almost caught up only to whop! hit a rock that could have saved us both and meanwhile that heavy thunder only grew louder. I skidded over a slimy shelf into the first
of three whirlpools. Running out of river. Swam like a maniac downstream because I saw him slide over the second shelf into the second whirlpool. He had the weight and momentum to flow ahead while I just got sucked back into the undertow but I was gaining on him and last time I had rushed to the edge of this falls a tree had stopped me. It would stop both of us now.
Didn’t factor in the rainy season: what had been a foot above water last time was barely breaking the surface now. Movement atop the current: Ek on the submerged trunk. Thickness at his waist: he had tied himself to the tree. Quick as a hawk he dove on top of me, caught me in a viselike hold. We blew forward then, with a violent snap, stopped: his knot held. Tons of water rushed over us. I tried to slither away but Ek was younger, stronger … with clearer dreams. As he dragged me backward I saw Fausto’s enormous body snag on the trunk just a few feet ahead of us yes! yes! then twist ever so slowly ninety degrees starboard. There he floated, suspended for a heart-wrenching second before the current took him. I screamed as he went over the edge.
Ek pulled me onto a smooth rock shelf. I lay facedown, finished forever. Wet the stone with my tears: maybe if I cried long enough, I’d shrivel up and blow away. But the body didn’t work like that. It just got more swollen. Finally I rolled over. Ek was staring at the horizon, his Mayan face impassive as the rope heaped at his side.
“I wanted you to live,” was all he said.
I pulled a leech off the welt at his waist and flicked it into the water. It went over the falls. Unlike Fausto, it would survive: what a strange world.
Louis came crashing through the brush. He stared a long moment at the two of us. “Fausto’s downstream,” I said finally. “You failed.”
The doctor crumpled to the ground: grieving for the end of his friend or the end of his experiment? “He was responding so well!”
Too well. He had tempted the Furies. “We’ve got to find him.”
“He could be a mile downstream by now. If we don’t reach him by nightfall, there will be nothing left.”
I stood up and, with great self-control, managed not to fling Louis into the water. “I know you’ve got more important things to do, but we’re going after the body.”
I loaded the boys in the Blackhawk and returned to the green river. Waterfall high as Niagara with a fearful clutch of rocks at the bottom: I knew at once that I was a widow. Again. The sun was skimming the horizon when Ek suddenly pointed into the shadows. “There.”
We saw Fausto’s body wedged between two rocks. I hovered over the Whitewater while Ek spun down with the hooks and tied him up like a bale of hay. “Winch,” I shouted at Louis, then concentrated on keeping my blades out of the trees. Louis and Ek finally hauled Fausto back inside the cabin. Fiery sunset as I carted my burden over the jungle canopy to the clearing on top of the mountain. Shut down the Blackhawk and stared at the instrument panel: in a few moments I’d have to turn around. Detach, Smith. The heat crushed me as I finally faced Fausto’s destroyed body. Half his skull was caved in and both legs were broken. Actually, everything was broken: ribs, neck, nose, shoulder … his skin alternated between milky white and bright purple. I turned away: perhaps I should have left him to the animals. I would have nightmares about this surreal, humiliated lump for the rest of my life.
Louis inspected the body with a doctor’s inquisitive, inhuman care. “Drowned,” he pronounced.
From another galaxy I said, “You’re going to arrange a proper death certificate. Then you’re going to fly the ashes back to Washington. I’m going to be there to pick them up.”
“Why not fly them back yourself?”
“You don’t understand. I was never here.”
Louis laughed harshly. As he laid Fausto’s crushed head back on the floor, phlegmy shreds of that wondrous brain clung to his fingers. Louis just wiped them on his khakis. “Besides blackmail, what’s your interest in all this?”
“Fausto didn’t tell you?” Of course not: I had asked him not to. “I’m his wife. And for the record, we all know Bendix is responsible for the death of your brother and Tatal. You might think about that as you continue your great humanitarian work.”
I threw Louis out of the helicopter. While he was moaning on the grass, I gathered my things and stalked into the darkening forest. The cicadas shrieked like air raid sirens, driving me away for good. Ek finally caught up with me. “Was Fausto really your husband?”
“I married him two days ago.”
“Does that mean you’re going to be rich?”
“That means I’m going to be sad.”
“You won’t forget your promise about Dr. Tatal?”
Ah, what could I say. This boy had saved my life twice, each time at great risk to his own. He had tied up a body while I dangled him over a raging river. Now I was leaving him behind with Louis, who would pretend I had never happened. “I’ll even the score,” I promised. “One way or another.”
Brushed his cheek then headed east.
Chapter Fourteen
I RETURNED to Washington. Bought a paper, read that Bobby Marvel would be farting around town vetoing legislation then gracing a campaign rally tonight. Aurilla Perle was in Baltimore at a conference for “concerned lawyers,” whatever the hell that was. Way back on page sixteen, a blip about the vice president. He had miraculously stabilized but no one cared because all interest had shifted to his successor. An editorial suggested it was time to declare him legally dead and let Aurilla take a spin at the roulette wheel.
I picked up the Corvette and returned to the hotel. Two messages on the machine in my dirt-free, air-conditioned room with chocolates on the pillow. One, Bendix thanking me for the drinking session. Two, Rhoby Hall still wanting to do lunch, breakfast, midnight snack, anything. No appetite for that so I went shopping. Drove to Silver Spring, where Cecil the impostor was holed up. I found him absorbed in a porno flick. His room reeked of beer and male effluent. “Rise and shine,” I said, tossing some clothes on the bed.
“Where have you been?” he said. “I thought you were dead.”
Correct. We drove to Aurilla’s empty guest house. I took my packages and Cecil upstairs. “Get naked. We’re going to play in the bathtub like you and Polly.”
His eyes bulged. “How do you know about that?”
“Only one detail will be different. You’re not really going to screw me. Wait until I call.”
I went into the bathroom. Poised the champagne on the side of the tub and ran water. I stripped and slipped into the suds. Tiddled with the soap and booze before calling, “Bobby!”
Cecil entered on cue with a towel wrapped around his middle. He stared at me exactly as he had with Barnard, then dropped the towel. Great ass and one hell of an erection, twice the size of the first take. Maybe it was all those porno flicks he had been watching. I shook the bottle. As Cecil stepped into the suds, I hosed the swelling with a stream of cold champagne.
“You’ll need more than champagne to get me down, darlin’,” Cecil said in a voice staggeringly close to Marvel’s. He dove on top of me. I got my neck licked, my boobs sucked, then the fake rear hump. All this warm, frothing water brought back pictures of Fausto floating at the edge of the waterfall, twisting serenely starboard … Block it, Smith! Do your job! Forever later, with a mighty grunt, Cecil was finished. He stepped out of the bath exactly as he had with Barnard, only this time he took the champagne instead of a towel with him. I followed to the bedroom across the hall.
He was guzzling directly from the bottle. “Jesus! Don’t ask me to do that again! I’d rather shoot a nun!”
“Shut up and get dressed.” I went to the basement. Found the circuit box, killed the electricity. Then I brought Cecil back to the bathroom. “See anything above that cabinet?”
He swore. “That whole scene was taped?”
“You got it.” We crossed to the bedroom. “There’s another camera. Let’s find the VCR.” The cables led to a locked closet down the hall. Phone relay: someone had been informed that there had been
action out here. I sent Cecil back to the basement while I connected the VCR to a second unit I had bought that afternoon. When he got the power back on, I made a copy of our home movie.
He finished the champagne. “Who’s the voyeur?”
“Don’t know.” Embarrassing.
“Polly knew tape was rolling when she got me in the bathtub?”
“Camera’s hard to miss,” I answered, packing everything up. “Of course, you had other things on your mind.”
He cringed. “Why’d you have me do it again?”
“Same reason she had you do it in the first place. I want someone to come gunning for me. Wrap this job up and go home.”
“What’s the copy for?”
“Insurance.”
He chuckled: no such thing in our business. “Am I done now?”
“Hell no. You’re going back to your room and work on elocution.”
Maybe he thought that was a new form of torture. “Anything the lady wants.”
I drove him back to his hideout for another siege with the adult film channel. Then I went to a pet store and bought an iguana. Called my little friend, who had just returned from school. “Gretchen! I’ve got something for you. Can I bring it over?”
Another new maid, this one from Indonesia, answered the door. Maybe she and her charge had been fingerpainting with ketchup and tapioca. “I’m here to see Gretchen,” I announced.
My playmate came sliding to the front door on the lid of a garbage can, gouging a ten-foot trail on the parquet floor. “Hi Miss Frost!” she cried, springing off. “Did you bring my pet alligator?”
Opened the lid to the long box I was carrying. When the iguana stuck one taloned claw over the edge, the maid retreated with a scream to the kitchen. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Dumped the box on Gretchen’s bed along with a care and feeding book. “You read that and watch your fingers. I’ll be right back.”
Blew down to the first floor. Aurilla was at her conference in Baltimore, which meant so was Wallace. Had to gamble on Ben-dix’s whereabouts but two to one he was with the team. Aurilla’s office was not locked for long. Stuck my head in. No surveillance so I clipped a tiny microphone in a vase of roses on the corner of Aurilla’s desk: trite as Mission Impossible but they’d get chucked in another day or two and I planned to be in Berlin by then. Charged back upstairs, past the room where Fausto and I had dallied before a concert. I thought I heard his voice and almost looked in.
