The Blue Death

by Joan Brady

  Becky pursed her lips. ‘What’s funny about it?’

  ‘Don’t you see, Grandma?You wanted your town back, and one way or another, you’re going to get it. UCAI doesn’t need Jimmy any more. What with epidemics, terrorists and floods on their side, what use is a mayor whose main ambition in life is to own a football team?’

  ‘He’s still Mayor, Helen. They can’t take over without him.’

  ‘Why don’t they just kill him? Wouldn’t that be simplest?’

  ‘It’s the city and the Council we’re suing, not the Mayor.’

  ‘If Jimmy were out of the picture, would you withdraw?’

  Becky thought a moment. ‘I’m not certain how much choice I’ll be given in the matter.’

  ‘A.L.O.— What?’ The desk cop was tired even though it wasn’t the end of his shift. A very long day. Not that the days had been anything but long for weeks. Floods, riots, epidemics, armies. And garbage everywhere. Then wild celebrations, a visit from the President himself, endless funerals. And drunks all over the place as well as garbage. Media people too.

  Everybody in town was exhausted. Even the telephone sounded tired. It crackled and squeaked.

  ‘A.L.O.Y.S.I.A.,’ Marina Rodriguez said. ‘You deaf or something? That’s the third time I’ve spelled it for you.’

  ‘How do you pronounce it?’

  ‘Who cares? All I know is that I buried her after some kids found her on the banks of the Mississippi in Tipton County, Tennessee. Last name Gonzaga.’

  ‘A Hispanic, huh?’

  ‘Missing Persons says she’s English.’

  ‘Sounds Hispanic to me. How long she been dead for?’

  ‘She disappeared four months ago. It kind of fits. Hard to tell with a body in the water that long.’

  ‘Four months! Lady, you got any idea how many people got lost just since the flood? We got a heap of files here. Who’d have thought so many people could go missing all at once?’ He sighed wearily. ‘Dozens right from Springfield. What makes you think I could use another from Tennessee?’

  ‘Like I said’ – Marina’s voice was stony – ‘she’s on the Illinois Missing Persons website as missing from Springfield.’ Marina had tried to get through when she first recognized the similarities between the woman she’d buried and the listing on the site, but that was during the time when Springfield was incommunicado. She’d had to put the file aside. By the time she could have got through, her personal life was all-consuming: husband on leave from Afghanistan, storm of sex and exhilaration. She’d just plain forgotten Aloysia until she ran across the file in a sheaf of other papers.

  ‘The coroner took a DNA sample?’ the Springfield cop asked.

  ‘Of course he did.’

  The cop sighed again. ‘Get him to send it on. We’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you notify her family?’

  ‘Yeah, right. ’Course we will. Now if you’ll excuse—’

  ‘Is she somehow less important than your other cases?’ Marina interrupted. ‘You got something against a person with a Hispanic name? Like me for example? Rodriguez? Gonzales? What do people like us matter? She worked at the university. You have to talk to them too.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Sure. But look, lady—’

  ‘You’re going to do fuck-all, aren’t you? I will deliver the DNA sample and the coroner’s full report personally, and I will make sure the information reaches a detective. Her family needs to know. So do her colleagues.’

  ‘You don’t even know if it’s her yet.’

  ‘And I will file a complaint against you for racial slurs against Hispanics.’

  The cop sighed once more. ‘That’ll really make my day.’

  Marina slammed down the phone so hard that it broke.

  49

  LONDON, ILLINOIS: That evening

  London didn’t live up to the grandeur of its name. It didn’t even live up to its nickname.

  People called it the ‘Lily of Knox County’ because it had started out life famous for its painted ladies. There were forests and lumberjacks in the prairies a century and a half ago; that explained the painted ladies. Unregulated felling put an end to the trees. The lumberjacks left. The painted ladies went out of business, and London turned into just another prairie town, announcing itself as they all did: two rusting gas stations and an active one, a few houses, a clutch of tumbledown motels separated by empty lots and a supermarket. Main Street was a row of parked cars along the highway and a row of arc lights. Not that they did much lighting. The brightest thing in town at night was a ten-foot-tall neon woodsman; he lifted his axe and swung it down in half a dozen jerks to announce the Lumberjack Bar and Grill.

  Inside, the lights were low, the mirrors grimy, the bar battered, the bartender plump, young, a gold front tooth glinting through his smile as he watched David approach.

  ‘Johannsen?’ David said to him.

  The bartender nodded his head towards a booth off to one side. ‘What are you drinking, friend?’

  ‘Budweiser. What’s he drinking?’

  ‘Oban.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Most expensive Scotch I could find. A single malt. He said to put it on your tab. He’s already had three, and he wasn’t all that steady when he came in.’

  David nodded. ‘Better make this one a double.’

  ‘You don’t want none yourself?’

  ‘Not me.’

  David carried his beer and the Oban to the booth. The man who sat there was gazing at the drink in front of him. ‘You Johannsen?’ David asked.

  The Warden of South Hams State Correctional Facility looked up at him, then back at his drink. ‘I’d know you anywhere,’ he said. He hadn’t been warden in David’s time. He’d been living in Springfield then, but when Hugh Freyl got David released, there’d been publicity.

  David set the Oban down on the table and slid into the booth.

  The Warden swallowed back the remains of the glass in front of him, and pulled this new glass closer. ‘Compliments of Mrs Freyl, right?’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll have another after it. And maybe another after that.’

  ‘You live nearby?’

  ‘What the fuck is it to you?’

  ‘Just worried about you getting home.’ London was only fifteen miles from the prison.

  Johannson gave him an irritable glance. ‘There wasn’t anything my wife wanted more than to be a member of that fucking Arts Society of Rebecca Freyl’s. Fuck it all, man, I was Director of Consolidated Agricultural, Incorporated. Two secretaries and a staff of ten. And my wife isn’t good enough for that fucking society? She’s a nice lady, my wife. Not getting in damned near killed her. Gave her cancer instead. So now old Mrs Freyl wants a favour from me? For the price of a couple of drinks? I don’t think I’ll grant it. Whatever it is.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound friendly.’ David’s voice was mild.

  ‘I don’t feel friendly.’

  ‘You might regret it later.’

  ‘Look, Marion, I don’t talk to ex-cons, much less haggle with them. Or was that a threat? I don’t listen to threats from them either.’

  ‘But here you are, sitting and drinking with me just like we’re old pals.’

  ‘What is this? Blackmail or something?’

  David raised his eyebrows, and a flurry of fear skittered across the Warden’s brow. ‘I been hearing this rumour,’ David said, ‘about little girls’ pictures on a prison computer. Ring any bells? No? Sure about that? Oh, yeah, then there’s this other rumour about pharmaceutical-grade narcotics getting into South Hams as regular as clockwork.’

  Prison grapevines are notorious; some ex-cons stay part of the network, and even though the Warden had allowed himself to sample some of the products that Wolfie had for sale as a result of their deal, he hadn’t taken enough to dampen the stabs of anxiety that hit him every time he thought about possible consequences.

  ‘What does she want from me?’ h
e asked.

  ‘Mrs Freyl knows nothing about your drug supplies or your taste in entertainment,’ David said. This was the truth. He hadn’t told her about either. ‘But she has a nephew in the Heights.’ This was not the truth. The Heights was a UCAI correctional facility in Missouri, and no member of the Freyl family had been in prison there or anywhere else in America. Or in any other country. All David had told Becky was that he needed her to set up an informal meeting with the Warden; she knew better than to ask questions when she sensed she’d be better off not knowing the answers.

  ‘A Freyl?’ The Warden’s tension burst into laughter. ‘In the Heights? You’re shitting me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll appreciate that she wants to keep that confidential. She’s afraid he has HIV.’

  ‘They’ve all got HIV.’

  ‘She needs to speak to somebody with access to his medical records at source.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, why?’

  ‘Her reasons are also confidential,’ David said. ‘All UCAI prisons use Medical Services Direct, right?’

  ‘Why the fuck ask me? You sound as though you know it already.’

  David took a swig of his beer and leaned back in the booth. ‘Personally, I like the idea of a prison full of happy customers. I’d be the last man to try to upset your supply line. And I couldn’t care less about how you amuse yourself on the Internet. But I need a favour from you for Mrs Freyl. She’ll pay you well for it, and I’ll do everything I can to protect your secrets.’

  The Warden’s wife loved him. Truly loved him. She used to spend hours at the farmers’ market choosing the best melon for his breakfast and the finest catfish for his dinner. Now she was dying in a hospice, and he was alone. But at least – for the moment – there was Oban. He swallowed David’s offering in a single gulp and held out the empty glass. David got up and collected a replacement.

  ‘What’s the favour?’ the Warden asked as David slid into the booth with another double Scotch.

  ‘A meeting with the appropriate contact at Medical Services Direct.’

  ‘What’s it worth to her?’

  ‘Ten thousand.’

  The Warden laughed. ‘You’re fucking me.’

  ‘The offer is serious.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s rich.’

  The Warden shook his head. ‘You’re telling me this rich bitch is going to pay me ten thousand just to get somebody at Medical Services Direct who’ll talk to her? What is she? My fairy godmother? Why should I believe a dumb story like that? It’s nuts. What does she really want?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘You’re saying it’s about this kid’s medical record?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘There’d better be money in it for this person too.’

  ‘There is.’

  The Warden pushed his glass a little further away from him, pulled it back, then shook his head again. ‘Just how dumb does she think I am? A nephew’s medical records? Whatever she wants, I very much doubt that ten thousand is enough to cover the risk.’

  ‘How about twenty thousand?’

  The Warden thought a moment. ‘You ever been to Cairo?’

  ‘Used to drive through it regularly.’

  ‘Not Kay- ro, you dope.’ Kay -ro is how Hoosiers pronounce the name of the town Cairo, south of Springfield on Route 57. Illinois has an Athens, a Geneva, a Genoa as well as a London and a Cairo. ‘My wife wanted to see the Sphinx more than anything else in the world. We got the plane tickets, all that stuff. Twice we did that. Both times I cancelled the day before we were supposed to leave.’ He pushed his glass away from him and pulled it back as he had before. ‘Egyptians speak Arab or some goddamned thing. I don’t like it when I have to keep guessing at what people mean. See, I’m having a hell of a time guessing at what Mrs Freyl wants, and all twenty thousand tells me is that it’s even riskier than I been figuring.’

  ‘Thirty thousand,’ David said. ‘Top offer.’

  The Warden swallowed back the rest of his Oban. ‘Ever been to Gary, Indiana? No? Well, you have a real treat in store.’

  50

  GARY, INDIANA: The next morning

  ‘Is that Marion?’

  He couldn’t see her. ‘You’re the nurse? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m on the other side of the mesh guard. Don’t come any closer. You think I’m stupid or something? You’re not seeing my face. Let’s have the money.’

  ‘Talk first. Money later.’

  ‘That’s not the arrangement.’

  ‘It is now.’

  David knew voices like hers. Bully and bravado in a thin veneer over cowardice. The woman behind the screen went by the name of Jane Doe; the Warden had emphasized that Jane wasn’t her real name any more than Doe was. He’d also said that she could be in serious trouble for talking to an outsider like David. But since David had already talked to the Warden, she’d be in the same trouble whether she talked or not. She was right about not being stupid. If she hadn’t recognized the peril she was in either way, she’d have fought to get the money first – and told him nothing.

  ‘You bother to look at the warehouse?’ she asked David.

  ‘How come the sign on it doesn’t mention Medical Services Direct?’

  ‘Why should it? Medical Services Direct is just another offshoot of Premier, Inc. We only acquired the prison contracts last spring. Most of our business is private.’

  ‘Premier is medical insurance?’

  ‘One of the biggest in the Midwest.’

  On his way into Gary, David had circled what looked like a non-functioning warehouse surrounded by a huge parking lot and a chain-link fence. A tiny sign on the fence read:

  Not a public building.

  Premier, Inc

  ‘How do you get into that warehouse anyhow?’ he asked her.

  ‘An electronic badge and a phone system that uses passwords.’

  ‘No people?’

  ‘People cost money.’

  Gary, Indiana, hardly seemed like the place for a medical service of any kind. It stank. Not like Springfield, not spoiled meat, shit and garbage but rotten eggs, sulphur, raw coal tars and a stew of other toxic chemicals thrown off from blast furnaces, steel mills, oil refineries. Half a century ago Gary had produced two-thirds of the world’s steel supply, mile after mile of industry along its shoreline. In those days, the stench killed people; it inflamed the lungs, weakened the heart, paralysed the nerves. A quarter of a century later, when Asia promised a better profit margin, US steel moved out. The foundries have been silent and empty ever since, great rusted relics of a bygone age; Gary itself became that rare phenomenon, a major metropolitan ghost town.

  But not even time could get rid of the stench. On his way in, David had smelled Gary before he’d seen it. And its once-booming centre was as dead and redolent as the foundries. His eyes were smarting and his stomach uneasy as he parked on a deserted and litter-strewn street, walked through an abandoned shopping mall, doors open, windows broken, nothing on display but filth and debris. At its height, Gary was the murder capital of America; all its official buildings were armoured against attack. Jane Doe had agreed to meet him in the wreckage of a post office, where she could hide her face behind an iron-mesh screen that once protected postal clerks.

  ‘Tell me how Medical Services Direct works,’ he said to her. He lit a cigarette from the butt in his mouth; tobacco seemed to help the nausea some if not much.

  ‘I thought you wanted to ask about some patient in the Heights.’

  ‘What’s a nurse do in that building? Just talk on the phone?’

  ‘I am not a nurse.’ Her sarcasm was heavy. ‘I’m an “agent in production”, and I sit in a “production area”. I do not use a phone. It’s an “aspect”, and we never touch it.’

  ‘You don’t like your job much, do you?’

  ‘Everything I do – everything – is computerized, set by
computer or monitored by computer, how long I talk, what I say, if and when I consult a doctor, even my bathroom breaks.’ She’d started speaking more quickly. ‘A beep in my headset, and the stopwatch on the screen in front of me starts a countdown: more than seven minutes and twenty seconds with a single patient and I lose my job. A “transfer box” pops onto my screen: name and location of patient, patient’s medical history, call history, medications. I enter the chief complaint, and a symptom-based algorithm in the form of “yes” and “no” questions walks me through the consultation in “member service language—”’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You’re slowing me down. I only have half an hour. I thought you just wanted to know—’

  ‘What’s “member service language”,’ he pressed.

  A shaft of sunlight entered the far side of the post office through a gauze of cobwebs. ‘It’s a verbatim speech I read out to get the patient’s history as quickly as possible.’ By now she was speaking so quickly herself that he had to lean closer to catch what she said. ‘If the condition sounds really bad I click “yes” on the category “911” to get an ambulance. If it doesn’t sound quite as bad as all that I “send a message” by email as “clinically urgent – response time within four hours”. That is, I can do it, if there isn’t a pop-up box advising me that the option of a doctor is not available and to reassess the patient for an alternate plan.’

  ‘That might be a prescription?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  ‘Nurses can’t write prescriptions.’

  ‘Of course they can’t.’ The sarcasm was heavy again. ‘I make “alternate plan proposals” that magically appear as correctly processed prescriptions at the patient’s local drugstore. With the prisons, it’s a little trickier. What’s this got to do with an HIV case?’

  ‘How do I know that he’s not getting some cheap drug instead of what he really needs?’

  ‘You think American pharmaceuticals are made in America? You nuts or something? The profits aren’t high enough. US drugs come from all over the place: India, Venezuela, Egypt, China. Especially China. The pay is so low that there’s barely a wink when workers skim off drugs for private sale. It’s the only way they can eat. Lots of that skimming comes here too – much cheaper than legit drugs. Our couriers collect regular shipments from the airport.’