Rising Phoenix

by Kyle Mills

  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 g
ravel road and headed directly into the sun.

  At the crest of the hill, he slipped the gearshift into neutral and let the car’s momentum fade and then reverse itself. After rolling back ten feet or so, he reluctantly yanked on the emergency brake and brought the car to a skidding stop.

  Beamon hated Colorado. He hated the shining mountains, the clean air, and the annoying bicyclists who waved as he passed them in his rented subcompact. Funerals deserved more somber settings. And the funeral of a family member—a child—should, at the very least, rate a good steady rain.

  Beamon put the car in gear and forced it forward without releasing the emergency brake. He stopped again when he reached his previous high mark, and surveyed the scene below.

  To the left of the cemetery’s imposing front gate were no fewer than four white vans, each adorned with a satellite dish and elaborate logo. The logos were illegible from this distance, but it was a safe bet that the vans represented local affiliates of national news organizations. Beamon didn’t even bother to count the cars nosed up to the fence, or the people perched on their roofs, peering through camera lenses as long as his arm.

  Releasing the brake, he started down the hill. On the drive from Denver, he had started to feel a little guilty about the scene he had made in the rental car agency when they had told him that they didn’t stock cars with tinted windows. As he watched the enormous lenses of the press swivel toward him, though, he made a mental note to find out who ran the rental car agency and have someone shoot out his porch light.

  Beamon slowed to a stop ten feet from the cemetery’s gate and rolled down his window. The camera flashes went wild, but finally dissipated when a large man in dark glasses positioned himself directly in front of the car window.

  “Sorry to hear about your nephew, Mark.”

  “They’re not,” Beamon said, jerking his head in the general direction of the press. “It’s good to see you, Frank. I really appreciate you helping out.”

  Frank grunted and looked at the ground. “No problem. I just can’t believe these vultures have the balls to come out here like this.”

  “Are you kidding? When my nephew dies from snorting bad coke, they clear their calendars.”

  Frank shrugged and rose to his full six and a half feet. “It’s already started. You’d better get going.”

  Beamon pulled the car forward, keeping his bumper within two feet of another somberly dressed man slowly pushing the gate open.

  Frank had always been a good friend. He hadn’t offered a word of protest when Beamon called and asked him to take on the distasteful and only marginally legal job of bouncer at his nephew’s funeral. Frank was the only man for the job, though. One look at his heavily pockmarked face and solid two hundred and fifty plus pounds would make even the most obnoxious reporter think twice before spouting off about the publics right to know.

  Beamon pulled in too close to a blue Toyota pickup, purposefully blocking it to give himself an excuse to make a run for it at the end of the service. With some effort, he separated himself from the tiny car and weaved his way, alone, through the snowdrifts and headstones toward a small knot of black-clad mourners clinging to each other for support.

  He was thankful that no one looked back as he found a strategic position behind a man whose head blocked Beamon’s view of the coffin. He peered around the man’s shoulder for a moment, looking briefly at his sister. Her head was lowered and her stare was fixed on the thing he couldn’t bring himself to look at.

  The service went on forever.

  The priest alternatively mumbled and shouted, but said nothing about the guest of honor. He talked only of the pervading godlessness that had led to the boy’s death. Beamon’s mind wandered, and he looked around at the small group of people gathered around him. He recognized almost no one in his sister’s life. That wasn’t surprising though—they had never made any kind of real connection when they were children. They spoke now only on holidays, and the conversations consisted of the self-conscious prattle of complete strangers.

  Beamon was interrupted from his daydreaming by the sudden silence of the priest and the brief crush of people as they moved past him. He looked up and watched his sister moving purposefully toward him. The tear in the corner of her right eye was quickly lost in her cold stare.

  “You’ve never been much of a brother to me, Mark.”

  He didn’t see much point in denying it and remained silent.

  “Now’s the time to make up for it. Find out who did this to Kevin. Find out and kill him.” She brushed past him and headed for the cars.

  Kevin.

  Hearing his name and looking at the dirty snow around his grave brought back the few fleeting memories Beamon had of the boy. He’d been impossibly bright and completely out of control for most of his life, much like Beamon himself had been. Fortunately, the stifling atmosphere of the early sixties had kept the young Mark Beamon from straying too far from the straight and narrow. The nineties had offered no such barriers. Until now.

  “Franz—nein,” Scott Dresden pleaded, performing his best tired look from behind the large desk.

  Franz Gullich looked down his long straight nose at him, continuing to screw the top off of a fifth of Jack Daniels. When the cap was freed, he followed a tradition that Dresden had come to dread. He threw it in the trash can.

  Gullich hadn’t become the head of the German police based on sobriety. In fact, his ability to perform magical feats of deduction while half-cocked was the marvel of two continents. He and Dresden had become fast friends during Dresden’s tour as an assistant legal attaché in Bonn—a friendship based on mutual respect.

  Gullich’s lack of political ambition made him a joy to work with. He’d started as the German equivalent of a beat cop almost twenty years ago on the streets of Munich. Today he was still just a cop. Dresden had come to miss the company of cops in his current position as FBI agent/diplomat.

  Gullich pulled two large commemorative mugs from their display case and blew the dust out of them.

  The glasses cleaned to his satisfaction, the German worked himself into the sofa at the opposite end of the office and placed the bottle ominously next to him. Dresden hit the intercom button on the complex-looking phone on his desk.

  “Hello, Kip? Kip?”

  “Hi, Scott. Finally figured out how to use the intercom, huh?”

  “Yeah. Hey—Franz is here, why don’t you come over for a drink?” Dresden knew that the bottle would be empty by the end of the night and figured to spread out the pain a little.

  “I’d love to, Scott, but I’ve got an appointment that I’m already late for. Tell him I’ll catch him when he gets back. I’m anxious to hear what he has to say about Quantico.”

  Dresden flicked off the intercom and came out from around his desk. His mind wandered to how he was going to get back at his assistant for that little white lie.

  Gullich was already pouring healthy slugs of the brown liquid into the mugs, emptying almost a third of the bottle. He slipped his shoes off and put his feet on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The table top wasn’t attached and it tipped wildly, almost upsetting the bottle. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Cheers,” he said holding up his mug.

  “Cheers.” Dresden settled into a love seat positioned perpendicular to the sofa.

  The Austrian took a long pull from the glass. The corners of his eyes scrunched up a bit as he swallowed, accentuating the deep crow’s-feet that were a relic of his years walking the streets in the harsh German winters.

  The conversation moved smoothly from subject to subject, starting with general politics and economics and becoming more and more personal as the liquor took effect. An hour later they were having a heartfelt discussion of the perils of in-laws. Dresden’s head felt light as a feather, a sensation that he was becoming used to, and one that he knew guaranteed a tough morning. Gullich was less affected, though his English was becoming worse and worse. Dresden was indistinguishable from a nat
ive in German and French, but Gullich’s English needed work, so he insisted that all conversations between them be in that language.

  Tiring of the in-law issue, Gullich fell silent and held up the nearly empty bottle. Dresden offered his cup to be topped off. The Austrian looked mildly disappointed as he tipped a splash into the nearly full mug.

  “So how goes the mushroom-hunter hunting?”

  Dresden scowled clumsily. His facial muscles were a bit more relaxed than he’d thought. “It’s hopeless. They’ve got me trying to find one lone American, running around the woods somewhere in Eastern Europe, stuffing mushrooms into a garbage bag.” He put his glass to his lips, shaking his head. “I might have gotten lucky in Western Europe, but you know the condition of law enforcement in the East.”

  Gullich swung his feet up on the sofa and leaned his head against a pillow. Dresden thought he was preparing to pass out and watched him carefully during the long silence that ensued. Finally his friend came back to life. “I think you’re approaching this whole thing wrong,” Gullich said, switching to German.

  Dresden leaned forward slightly. He’d known Franz long enough to know not to dismiss his drunken musings out of hand. “Care to elaborate?”

  “You grew up here, didn’t you?”

  “Not here—Berlin,” Dresden answered. “My father was in the army. But you know that.”

  A smile spread across Gullich’s face. “It always makes me laugh—how out of touch you are with your countrymen. Let me ask you a question. What do you see when you bump into an American tourist in Bonn?”

  They were getting way off the subject here, and Dresden relaxed. His friend must have had a few drinks before he had arrived. He was rambling.

  Getting no response, the German answered his own question. “You see a fat, poorly dressed person with no understanding of our culture or language. Without their tour guides, most of them wouldn’t be able to find their hotels and would die of starvation in the streets.”

  Dresden opened his mouth to defend his countrymen but closed it again when he came to the realization that his friend was ninety percent right.