The Poison Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  “No!” the man pleaded, a hand extended in supplication.

  Was that blood frothing along his lips? One of the ribs had punctured a lung.

  Lang stood still. “Okay, who sent you, and how did you find me?”

  “Didn’t.” The man was having problems speaking. “You were in Athens airport this morning. Me, too. I called Kolstas’s office, heard he’d been killed. Figured you had . . .”

  A woman’s scream. Lang spun around to see a large woman at the alley’s entrance, hands over her mouth and eyes wide with fright. Within the second, the narrow space was filled with gawking tourists. It didn’t require a genius to guess they thought they were witnessing a robbery or murder, and it didn’t require a Harvard PhD to know the police would soon arrive.

  The man on hands and knees came to the same conclusion. He pushed himself up onto wobbly legs and staggered toward the street as the newly formed crowd parted like a human Red Sea to let him pass. Lang made it through, too. He didn’t wait for some over eager soul to take his duties as a citizen too zealously and try to stop him until the authorities arrived.

  Gurt was waiting a block away. She raised her eyebrows in an unasked question.

  Lang took her hand. “Later. Right now we need to disappear.”

  CHAPTER 59

  472 Lafayette Drive

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Two Days Later

  7:08 P.M.

  The sound of a Lawn Mower and the smell of freshly cut grass flowed through an open window of the kitchen where Gurt was rinsing tomatoes and onions in the sink. To Leon’s disappointment, the doctor had that morning pronounced him fit for light work such as guiding a self-propelled lawn mower. The tomatoes were the first from her garden behind the pool that had somehow survived the neighborhood squirrels.

  Lang peered over her shoulder into the backyard where Leon was walking behind the mower with only minor hindrance from Manfred’s efforts at assistance. “Looks like he’s finally got the hang of the Toro TimeMaster.”

  Gurt didn’t look up as she turned off the faucet. “How many times did you have to show him how to start it?”

  “Every time he uses it. He’s not a fast learner. He’d need help changing a lightbulb.”

  Gurt placed the vegetables on a wooden cutting board. “Perhaps. But he is not afraid of work. He weeds the garden weekly.”

  “He can tell the difference between vegetable plants and weeds?”

  Gurt was chopping the onions and tomatoes. She would add olive oil, dill, and a sprinkling of sugar to make a salad to go with the chicken breasts in mustard sauce that Lang would shortly place on the charcoal already smoldering in the Weber.

  In the warm months, she preferred food from the grill. It not only kept the heat of the stove out of the house, she said, but the unhealthy grease fell into the fire instead of soaking into the meat. Lang knew better than to point out the house’s air conditioning was more than capable of handling the heat, and the “unhealthy” grease could easily be removed from the cooking pan. Where matters of health or the house were concerned, silence was not only golden but wise. Enduring ravenous mosquitoes, inexactly cooked meat, and an occasional grain or so of dirt should something slip off a tray and be retrieved before Grumps could get to it were small inconveniences with which he purchased domestic tranquility.

  She changed the subject. “Have you called Miles?”

  Lang nodded. “About an hour ago. No telling when he’ll call back.”

  Miles Berkley, one of Lang and Gurt’s few remaining contacts within the Agency. An anachronism, Miles reflected the Agency’s early days when its predecessor, the World War II Office of Strategic Services’ initials, OSS, were said to stand for “Oh, So Social,” a commentary on the high social status of the blue-blood Harvard and Yale men who comprised the bulk of its operatives in those days. Miles’s family owned a substantial portion of Alabama. He had attended a prestigious New England prep school (Lang could never remember if it was St. Paul or Groton) and done his undergraduate work at Princeton before deciding on a career in the shadows of intelligence work rather than joining the family agribusiness. His contemporaries in the Agency, including Gurt and Lang, had speculated the man carried extra pinpoint Oxford cloth shirts in his briefcase, since the one he wore at any time of day was as crisp as the creases in the trousers of his single-breasted, vented, bespoke suits.

  Lang suspected Miles and Gurt might have had something going during the period Lang was married to Dawn. It was something she declined to discuss, pointing out that Lang had ended their relationship when he met Dawn.

  “Das geht dich nichts an,” she’d say with a smile. Don’t go there, or mind your own business. And she was right: what she did in the years they did not see each other, the years Lang was married, was hardly his concern.

  It bothered him anyway.

  “It’ll depend on where he is,” Lang added.

  Contacting Miles required calling a number with a Washington, D.C., area code and leaving a message with an operator who always announced in a bored voice, “Mr. Berkley is unavailable at the moment. Whom may I say called?”

  How long it took Miles to return the call seemed to bear a direct ratio to how far he was from the United States.

  Tonight, apparently not so far. The phone in Lang’s office, the former broom closet under the stairs, rang.

  Lang was there in less than five steps. The number shown on the receiver’s screen was “unknown.” Either Miles or a telemarketer ignoring the no-call list.

  “Miles?”

  “Good evening, Langford,” Miles’s mellifluous Southern accent had a faint echo, evidence it was being transmitted from its origin to multiple sources before reaching Lang, making tracing virtually impossible. “I trust you and Gurt are well. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I need a favor, Miles.”

  A short pause reinforced the fact the conversation was being re-transmitted, and then a sigh, the theatric quality of which was only slightly diminished by the electronics. “Alas, I had hoped you were calling seeking sage counseling, witty dialogue, enchanting company, or all of the above. Or better yet, that Gurt, that Aphrodite of a woman, had come to her senses and abandoned you.”

  “Not tonight, Miles.”

  Lang often wondered if Miles’s reports to his superiors were as grandiloquent as the speech he enjoyed. If so, explanations for some of the Agency’s worst gaffes might be at hand: by the time one got through the bullshit, whatever crisis was imminent had passed.

  “Just a favor,” he added.

  “And what poor service might I render my good friends?”

  “Information. I need to know whatever I can find out about a William Grassley, CEO of an outfit called Dystra Pharmaceuticals, based here in Atlanta.”

  The pause was so long Lang feared the connection had been severed. “Miles?”

  This time the sigh was for real. “Lang, you know very well the Agency is specifically prohibited from any domestic activities, most especially gathering information on U.S. citizens.”

  “I also know the Agency is supposedly restricted to those operations likely to gather intelligence relevant to our enemies abroad, and not assume a paramilitary role executing them by drone like you’re doing in Pakistan.”

  “Our actions there have authorization from as high as you can go,” Miles said stiffly.

  “I’m proud of you. Now, about that favor. You know, a gratuitous service. Like Gurt and I damn near getting killed in Haiti gathering information for you a few years ago. By the way, how ‘authorized’ was getting us to do the Agency’s business?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The line really did go dead this time.

  CHAPTER 60

  Law Offices of Langford Reilly

  Peachtree Center

  227 Peachtree Street

  Atlanta, Georgia

  The Next Morning

  By the time Sara Arrived at her desk and began taking numbers f
rom the answering service, her employer was already in a foul mood. Her first clue was a piggish grunt when she made the routine inquiry as to his coffee choice of the day.

  After an extensive Internet search a year ago, Lang had purchased a coffeemaker the size of a small refrigerator. The device was a caffeine lover’s dream. The face, only slightly less complex than the instrument panel of your average Boeing 757, presented choices of mocha, espresso, hot milk, or hot chocolate in addition to sub-selections of three different blends.

  All of that, and what she got was rudeness.

  Being a grandmother had given her experience in dealing with truculent children — and, to her, men were nothing but oversized children. She was about to give Lang a brief but cogent tutorial on manners when addressing a lady, particularly a lady far senior to him in years. Maybe even her semimonthly threat to quit, to seek other if not greener pastures, where at least the rules of etiquette were observed.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Law office,” Sara answered.

  “Lang Reilly?”

  In the spirit of general grumpiness that seemed to be prevailing this morning, Sara almost blurted out, “Do I sound like Lang Reilly?”

  Instead, she politely asked, “May I tell him who is calling?”

  “No. Just let me speak to him.”

  Should she alert the CDC of an epidemic of bad manners?

  Instead, she put the mystery caller on hold. “There’s a call for you. Won’t say who he is,” she said through the open door to Lang’s inner sanctum.

  He hardly looked up. “Screw him.”

  That was it.

  Sara had had enough.

  She carefully arranged the pink callback slips, locked her desk drawer and the file cabinet behind her desk, and stood.

  “Where are you going?” Lang wanted to know.

  “Home, or someplace where civility reigns. I do not need to be spoken to in that manner, and I won’t. If you’re lucky, I may look in on you tomorrow to see if you’ve suddenly remembered the manners your momma taught you.”

  Lang came from behind his desk, all apology. “I’m sorry, Sara. It’s just that . . . Well, the court has scheduled a pre-trial hearing on Wipp. That guy has leeched off society all his life, and now he’s leeching off me. We aren’t getting paid, you know. It just piss . . . aggravates me no end, defending a criminal like that for free.”

  Only slightly mollified, Sara stopped halfway toward the door. “Guess you’ll just have to — as those weird EST people say, ‘Ride that horse the way it’s going.’ You’re the one who took him on as a client, knowing what sort of a person he is and what a scam that EST thing was.”

  “Sara, we do a criminal practice. Nobody walks through that door who isn’t at least suspected of doing something illegal. We don’t get paid to represent choirboys.”

  Sara sat back down behind her desk, making moves indicating she might stay. “You ask me, we should cater to a better class of criminal.”

  Simultaneously, they both became aware they were not alone. In the doorway to the outside hall, a man was standing.

  “Hope I’m not intruding.”

  Late twenties, early thirties, inexpensive suit, cheap haircut, shoes with thick rubber soles that screamed “cop.”

  He extended his right hand. “I just called, but it seems we got disconnected. Mr. Reilly, Langford Reilly?”

  Lang shook it. “You’re in the right place. Who might you be?”

  The man withdrew his hand as he shot a glance toward Lang’s office. “It might be better if we spoke in private.”

  Lang turned with a shrug. “Have it your way.”

  Lang stood aside to let the mysterious visitor enter before following and shutting the door behind them. As he slid behind his desk, he couldn’t help but notice the man across it seemed to be taking in the furnishings, the subtle colors of the Kerman rug on which floated a Thomas Elfe breakfront with its trademark lazy eights, one of perhaps a dozen pieces by the colonial cabinetmaker still in existence. Gilt-inscribed leather bindings of first editions of both Blackstone and Coke were visible through its wavy, handblown glass. The centerpiece was the Boule desk with its ornate brass fittings and fruitwood inlays, behind which a Turner was highlighted. Two eighteenth-century French wing chairs upholstered in toile faced it, a French commode between them.

  “This an office or a museum?”

  It was a commentary on the criminal practice that it was the rare visitor that recognized the furnishings had not come from Walmart.

  Lang smiled. “A little of both, I suppose.” He sat behind the desk. “But then, I doubt you came here for a tour of European antiques, Mr . . .”

  The man settled into one of the French wing chairs. “I could give you a name but it wouldn’t be mine, so what’s the point? Suffice it to say, Mr. Berkley is a mutual friend.”

  No wonder for the mystery. The Agency believed in secrecy for secrecy’s sake. Believed? Worshipped would be more appropriate. And not even giving a name, albeit a fictitious one? The arrogance was typical of any number of federal agencies whose alphabet soup initials stood for names frequently paradoxical. Bureau of Army Intelligence, for instance.

  Lang regarded the Man with No Name as he picked up a ballpoint pen and began to run it from finger to finger. “Okay, so we both know Miles. I assume you’re here at his direction.”

  The nameless man looked anything but comfortable in one of the wing chairs. Lang had seen to it they were rock-hard. Cozy clients tended to linger past their time. “Assume what you wish, Mr. Reilly. I’m here because of a reference you made to an international crime kingpin, a Greek, a certain Alkandres Kolstas.”

  Lang said nothing. Long ago he had learned that silence often produced results conversation did not.

  The Man with No Name could play the same game.

  After a full minute, Lang said, “And . . .?”

  “I was informed you knew Kolstas.”

  Lang hadn’t mentioned the Greek to Miles. No Name was connected to one of the many bureaucracies whose chief function was to indiscriminately snoop on a public just awakening to the fact. “I met him.”

  No Name leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “And the purpose of that meeting?”

  Now it was Lang’s turn. “Personal business.”

  The man in the chair waited, obviously anticipating an explanation that wasn’t forthcoming, before, “You are aware Kolstas is dead?” Lang mimed surprise.

  “The Greek police think it was an intra-gang affair, someone in his own organization who wanted to be the boss.”

  Lang stopped moving the pen around. “And you’re telling me this because . . . ?”

  “Oh! I thought you knew: you mentioned one of Kolstas’s associates, business partner, whatever, to Miles Berkley.”

  Lang had shucked oysters with more ease than getting information out of this guy. “And?”

  “Exactly what do you know of the relationship between a William Grassley and Kolstas?”

  Lang thought a moment. The problem with information was that it was a highly perishable commodity. Once revealed, it quickly lost value. Conversely, this particular set of facts had little value to him. “Just why do you want to know?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Lang stood, extending his hand. “I think our conversation is at an end.”

  No Name had not expected this. He motioned for Lang to sit back down. The bluff had worked. “Let’s say that certain law enforcement agencies have an interest in Mr. Grassley and his company, Dystra Pharmaceuticals.”

  “You might tell them to look at Barclay’s Bank of the Cayman Islands. Grassley and/or Dystra have an account there from which they pay people like Kolstas for work that doesn’t bear watching by law enforcement.”

  The Man with No Name seemed incredulous. “Kolstas told you this?”

  “He did.”

  “I can’t imagine circumstances that would cause him to reveal that sort of information.”


  “Then you are lucky.”

  No Name sat, staring at Lang for a moment, before standing. “You’ve been a help to your government, Mr. Reilly. By the way, this little conference never happened. You don’t know who I am or for whom I work, right?”

  How many times had Lang heard that? He said nothing but stood and drew a finger across his mouth, zipping his lips. “Mum’s the word.”

  He watched his visitor depart.

  “Who was that?” Sara asked as the outer door shut.

  “Didn’t get his name, but we have — had — an acquaintance in common.”

  She shook her head, muttering. She knew when her boss wasn’t going to explain.

  CHAPTER 61

  Piedmont Driving Club South

  Two Months Later

  Lang watched francis line up his putt with the precision of a sniper aiming at his victim: slope of the green, windage, resistance of the immaculately cut grass. The click of the putter against ball sent it rolling left of the cup before swerving and heading straight as a homing pigeon, ending its journey with a metallic sound as it fell in the hole.

  “How did you do that?” Lang asked.

  “I didn’t. There’s a slight change in gradient that makes the ball break.”

  Lang wasn’t so sure, but what the hell? With a score that already averaged six to seven strokes a hole, what was there to lose? He squatted to line up his shot, not because he needed to, but because the pros he had recently begun watching on the Golf Channel did it with great result. A couple of practice swings, and he thought this would determine if he broke a score of 80 for the first nine holes for the first time.

  He tapped the ball.

  It rolled pretty much along the line of Francis’s putt until it broke right, in the opposite direction. Adding injury to insult, it continued along the all but imperceptible slope of the green back onto the fairway, where the angle of descent increased abruptly. Down the hill it went, building speed until it disappeared into the lake.

  To Lang, that lake was Charlie Brown’s kite-eating tree right out of the Peanuts comic strip. He was convinced that, lurking somewhere beneath its surface, there was a shark-sized bass that had reached gargantuan size feasting on his golf balls.