The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure

by Bill Jones Jr.

  “What? Hey, whoa,” I protested, “this isn’t exactly up my alley.”

  “Maybe it’s up your partner’s,” Samuels said, indicating Dark with a tilt of her head.

  My dear friend Jeanne was seated behind me, filing her nails. Hearing herself mentioned, she made a great show of looking as though she were surprised to be included in the conversation. “I do not have alleys,” she said. “I simply investigate whatever is.”

  Samuels rolled her eyes again. I was beginning to feel like an overdressed referee in a cage match.

  “So how do you propose we find out where the people who killed Mr. Rao got their polonium?” I asked my confident friend.

  She exhaled and removed her sunglasses. It was the first time I could remember her doing so. She was squinting, but looking me directly in the eyes. I forgot the question. Fortunately, she answered anyway. “First, I would start by asking exactly who is Monsieur Rao and why he might have been targeted for death.”

  That was a damned good question and I wished I’d thought of it. I turned to Samuels, who spoke. “As far as we can tell, he’s nobody.” She shrugged. “He runs … he ran a great little Indian restaurant north of Oxford Circus. Who wanted him dead? We have no idea.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “If he’s a nobody, then why fly us all the way from the U.S.?”

  Dark answered, which didn’t surprise me as much as it should have. “Because, a rare toxin like polonium, as you suggested, would require the assistance or at least the knowledge of someone reasonably high up in government.” She put her shades back on. At that point, I realized I had been admonished like a schoolboy to stop flirting with the pretty lady and do my damned job. I was beginning to really like Jeanne Dark.

  “Let me see if I get this,” I said, speaking to Samuels. “A guy shows up with symptoms that look like food poisoning and then cancer. He’s not connected to governments in any way. In fact, he runs a nice little restaurant with, I’m guessing, his wife and kids.” Samuels nodded. “None of them show any signs of illness.” Another nod. “But for some reason, the United States and United Kingdom suspect this poor guy is the victim of polonium poisoning.”

  This time, she shook her head. “Not the U.S. or the U.K. Me. I was able to convince Hardesty it was worth looking into. She looked at Dark. “Thankfully, he believed me enough to bring in the big guns.” She gave both of us pointed stares. “The big, discrete guns.”

  “Oui,” Dark said.

  “Way,” I echoed. Dark gave me half a smile.

  Samuels gave us a brief thank you and leaned forward in the seat. “I have a theory,” she said, “but you’re not going to like it.” Just then, her phone rang and she gave us the single-index-finger signal to give her a moment.

  Dark pulled her chair next to mine and leaned towards me.

  “What?” I whispered to her.

  In French, she whispered, “She’s finally being honest.” I’d picked no deception up from the woman. My opinion was she’d always been straight with us. She was hiding details to see if we measured up. Like I said, the government was always throwing little tests my way.

  “That was my security lead,” Samuels said. “We have a problem.”

  “Let me guess,” said Dark. “Inspector Arnold has detained most of the medical and research staff.”

  “How did you know that?” Samuels’s eyes flashed.

  “Because, as I mentioned to the inspector, monkshood is fast-acting poison.”

  “How fast?” I asked.

  “In sufficient doses, within an hour, two max. In smaller doses, perhaps a day or two.”

  “Which is why you said he was already dead.”

  “Oui.”

  “Bloody hell,” Samuels said. “That means whoever killed him works here.”

  “Or somehow got access,” I added. “You better make a list of everyone who could reach Rao—staff and visitors.”

  Our little meeting got disrupted for the better part of an hour while Samuels worked the phone and the police, trying to get as much information as possible while giving as little in return as she could. Dark and I learned that Samuels suspected Rao was chosen mostly at random. We’d ruled out accidental exposure, as he was unlikely to have encountered it, and even the most incompetent of terrorists would have protected as rare an asset as a few grains of polonium. Rao’s exposure was a test, Samuels had surmised, to see if the poison could be administered in small doses without being detected for what it was. It probably would have worked too, were it not for the fact that whoever was behind this picked the city with the most notorious use of polonium in history.

  When we were alone, Dark voiced a different theory. “They picked London,” she said, “precisely because they expected it to be detected. They are making a statement that says, ‘We can deliver this anywhere, to anyone we wish.’”

  That made me shudder in the way that only truth can. “Then why go through all the trouble to kill the victim with the monkshood?” I asked.

  She gave her one-eyed thinking face for a moment. “Three possibilities. One, they expected to be detected, but not right away. After all, there are few places that can confirm polonium, and they will certainly require an autopsy.”

  “So bringing you in to do your intuitive detection threw off their timeline.”

  “There was no intuition about it. The chemical’s color chart is as accurate in my head as a scientist’s use of a color spectrometer.” Her jaw was firmly set in her usual, infuriating, intractable way. I considered pointing out she’d had no tangible signs that would have allowed an accurate “charting,” but that jaw told me not to bother.

  Instead, I clasped my hands, prayer style, and bowed. “Eight thousand pardons, memsahib. I meant no disrespect.”

  “You are an ass,” she said, grinning at me. “Nonetheless, you are right. They must have heard we were coming and knew the governments were onto them. Maybe they were planning other ‘tests’ and needed time to set them up.”

  I thought about that. “It makes sense. One incident in London followed up by a few other major cities. Let the papers hit in the UK before taking the other victims out, and then you can create a worldwide panic.”

  “Oui.”

  “But you know what that means, don’t you?”

  She gave me one of her rare puzzled looks. “Not really, no.”

  “That we need to keep whatever information we find restricted to each other and Hardesty.”

  “I would anyway, but why?”

  “Because if the killers did know we were coming, then there’s a leak somewhere. I’ve known Hardesty for five years. He’s an idiot, but a trustworthy one.”

  “Agreed,” Dark said.

  “So what’s the second possible reason for killing the victim with the monkshood?”

  She touched my arm. “Perhaps it was a different message. ‘We have multiple skills and can reach anyone we want at any time.’ Maybe we haven’t affected their timeline at all.”

  “Meaning they could have expected this kind of response. The second poisoning would have been sort of a calling card, announcing they’d arrived.”

  She nodded. “Yup.”

  “Seems a little James Bondish. Nowadays, it would have been simpler to post a YouTube video and send out a tweet.”

  “Not if the press is not the audience you wish to impress.”

  “That would make these guys skilled and freaking dangerous.”

  Dark peered at me over her third cup of coffee for the day. “Yup.”

  “So, how will we know if the second scenario’s the one?” I asked. I knew the answer. I just hoped she could convince me I was wrong.

  “Other people will begin to show up with symptoms of both polonium and monkshood poisoning, and perhaps a few others as well.”

  I exhaled a great gush of tension and noted that Dark was staring at me. “What?” I asked.

  “There is another big piece, one that I didn’t want you to mention in front of Samuel
s. Now, I am thinking perhaps you missed it.” I thought long and hard, but came up empty. “Think timelines,” Dark added.

  Then it hit me, the details I had in my head of the old Litvinenko case. He’d died some three weeks after being exposed to polonium poisoning via a cup of tea. “Hardesty told us we’d be coming to London over six weeks ago,” I said.

  Dark nodded. “Oui. There is no way our Mr. Rao could have survived that long.”

  “Meaning, perhaps, there was another victim before this one.”

  “And for some reason, Ms. Samuels no longer wishes to discuss it.” I thought about that reasoning and found a major hole. “There’s a three or four-week gap between when we were selected for this mission and when Rao showed up with polonium poisoning.”

  “More like two months. M. Hardesty was recruiting me for some time before I met you.”

  “Okay … still, that doesn’t mean the original reason for the trip was related to polonium poisoning.”

  “I never said it was. I simply suggest that we have not been briefed on whatever the bigger picture is. Perhaps Mr. Rao’s case is related or simply a distraction to be resolved so Ms. Samuels can deal with the real issue.”

  She sipped her coffee and stared at me, letting the words sink in. No wonder she didn’t trust the woman. Now, neither did I. The silence lingered heavy in the air as one of Samuels’s staffers arrived to escort us down and to the exit. We reached the cool dampness of the evening, which was a refreshing change from the oppressive air in the old building. “I’m afraid to ask the third possible reason for the second poison,” I said.

  Dark leaned heavily on her cane, walking slowly toward the street. “There is always the chance that the two poisonings are unrelated.”

  “One guy, a nobody, affected by two rare poisons and they aren’t related? That’s not very likely.”

  “Perhaps not, unless, say his wife discovers her husband is very sick and takes him to hospital. However, he does not die, much to her dismay.”

  “And then poisons him to finish the job someone else started,” I added.

  She nodded. “I admit, it seems a bit of a stretch.”

  “Plus, it leaves open the question of who else would have wanted him dead in the first place,” I said.

  As a breeze passed, Dark shivered and pulled her collar tighter against her neck. “I suppose we will have to speak to her to find out.” As if in punctuation to our conversation, a cold, misty rain began. Dark shivered once again, and I put my arm around her. Fortunately, Samuels had one of her admins call us a cab, which pulled up just as we reached the curb. It was emblazoned along both sides with an advert for a Caribbean resort.

  “The cab mocks me,” Dark said, her teeth chattering.

  “From now on, we only take jobs in the Caribbean.” She nodded her agreement. I opened the door and she climbed in with me behind. It was chilly in the car too, and she sat near me, gathering some of my body heat, most likely. I don’t think she was even consciously aware of her shudders or how close to me she sat. I put a tentative arm around her, and she lay her head against my shoulder, trying to catch a few winks before our next stop. We’d had a long day, but something told me the evening was just getting started.

  4 - Curry no Favor

  Foss woke me outside of the restaurant, an unassuming stone building named “Chennai Concourse.” Initially, I was nonplussed as to my whereabouts, as I had been dreaming I was back home. We were in my grand-père’s house, just south of Paris. It was raining, with the sound of a strong summer storm setting a percussive rhythm against the window. I always loved the rain—it had a brown sound that always calmed me, but this one was rich with thunder that painted the storm with booming waves the color of jade. I recall many such nights when I was a little girl, wherein I would lay awake in bed unaware that everyone did not see colors at sound of raindrops nor could they smell the freshness of fruit at the sight of backlit globules streaming against the windowpane.

  In my dream, as I swayed with the meringue rhythms of Grand-père's soprano saxophone, its taste bright and tart in my mind, I could hear his notes admonishing me to stop dancing, as Maman might be watching and would not approve. “It is not a dance,” I tried to explain to him. “My body is just singing the notes you play.”

  Grand-père stopped playing, laughed, and said, “That is the definition of dancing, and you must stop if you want to heal.” I looked around to ensure Maman was not about, as mothers were the things of nightmares meant only for battering free spirits into concrete boxes of conformity. My grandfather and I were safe and alone, ensconced in his jazzy reverie with the outside browns raining syncopation to his horn, and I could dance and twist without pain; my body could sing the notes, and for a moment I was free. When his solo was done, we laughed at the insanity of my seeing his notes in space about my head. It was a natural transmutation of the dream, since on many nights, we would, in fact, argue about the precise location of notes, like A over C sharp on my guitar. I knew it was behind my right ear, but he was adamant it must sit on the left, since the nearest notes on the guitar to A over C sharp formed on my left. Although I knew he could not see my notes, I loved him for his belligerent insistence. It took me years to realize he was teaching me about music, but also about acceptance. From his welcoming of my “madness,” the only one who ever did, I learned to accept myself.

  It is thus that I rode in the taxi with Foster, cloistered in dreamt remembrances of the few joys of my early life. In the waking world, I was also moved to dance with Grand-père’s music. As he played, I would stand, crutches under each arm, and begin. But before he could complete a single song, Maman would come. She would always come, pull my crutches from me, and I would fall, from grace to despair. If I was lucky, my chair was close by and I would sag glumly into it. On most days, however, luck was an unwelcome stranger in our household, and I would crawl to my wheelchair, promising to behave so that she would give me back the supports and free me from my rolling prison. But she never did, not until I had succumbed again to sallow desolation. Maman would sit in the sun, her blond hair gleaming, and lecture me that each of her abuses was for my own good—to heal my body, to strengthen my resolve, to sharpen my wit, and to focus my concentration. Mostly, she wished only to remake what the universe and my accident had created. And God help me if I cried.

  “Emotion is the devil’s mistress,” she would say and hit me until I stopped crying. The irony of her abusive stupidity was not lost on me, but I would stop. Grand-père would watch from his seat and say nothing. He could not speak or she would send him away. But when she left, he would play again, and the song would be hot with tears and twists to the left where she couldn’t reach the notes. I would cry blues and sixes and left-hand turns, all in my mind, where no one could find me. None could reach inside but my grand-père and his battered saxophone—its curved bell, like me, damaged, but insistent on playing the notes. As soon as she shut her bedroom door I would stand again, barely able to move without the support of my crutches, and I would dance once more, if only in my mind.

  It was from this mental state that Foss shook me to consciousness. I remember calling him by Grand-père’s name and seeing the puzzled look he gave me before I realized where I was. I needed his assistance to exit the car, as the chilly autumn rain had stiffened my hip. Initially, I thought to have more coffee to ease my pain. This late at night, however, it would likely end in another long, fruitless battle against insomnia. After my brief but pleasant dream, I was anxious to see if I could again conjure up my grandfather once we returned to the hotel. I pushed off the seat and must have tinted my face with pain, as Foss lifted me from the taxi. Had I not objected, I believe he would have carried me into the building. Such intimacy is private, however. Still, the smooth warmth of his skin and the chocolate cologne that he evoked in my mind made me want to dip into him like a mocha pot de crème. But, I fear my dear, sweet Foss would lose focus were I to relent. With a lapse in willpower, his soft lips and la
ntern jaw would call, and I would overwhelm him as surely as if he were an eagle flying against a hurricane.

  Reluctantly, I pushed the trigger my sister designed, which released a dosage of my medication via her adapted intrathecal pump. Normally, these are implanted inside the body to release pre-programmed dosages of pain medicine directly to the spine for those of us with chronic pain. However, I had convinced Juliette I could be trusted not to abuse the privilege of controlling my own dosage. Moreover, since she is as much an inventor as a doctor, she created a temporary device that I can carry inside my clothing, but outside the body. Frankly, although the medication works, it caused significant enough disruption to my thinking that I rarely used it. More often that not, I leave it at home. Eventually, Juliette will remove the pump and provide me with a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation device, commonly called a TENS unit, that will reside completely outside the body. I am not certain the pain relief will be as effective, but my mind has always been more important to me than my body. I am certain a man like Foss would agree to be trained in the administration of the TENS device, since I cannot do it myself. My challenge will be in convincing my stubborn sister.

  No more than five seconds after triggering the pump, there was the white, cool surge of relief followed by the dizzying blurring of my senses. I waited for it to pass as the colors in the room waned and then waxed to normal levels. The small dose would be enough to get me through the evening’s activity, at least until we reached the hotel. I could manage the interview we’d planned without being fully alert. I had Foss to worry about the minor details of the room and our witness. I would focus on channeling her feelings, and that required only that I be awake. Still, the surge of medication was intellectually nauseating, as if someone had vomited on half my mind, smearing it with a thin fog.

  Having gathered myself, once the hostess arrived to lead us to our seats, I began a slow crossing to get my bearings on the room. To my dismay, my disloyal hip still throbbed a low, brown-orange pain, and my knees began to stiffen as well. I could not take more medicine if I wanted to be even a little alert. If the pain persisted, I hoped to convince Foss to give me the massage he promised me the day we met. I had waited, but it never materialized. If he refused, well, there was always Gershwin to help influence him. Foss, you is my partner now.