T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 02 - Southern Poison

by T. Lynn Ocean

  A stray customer wandered into the kitchen. “Hey, do, uh, you guys know where I can get my raffle ticket for the drawing?”

  “What drawing?” Ox said to the girl, who looked like a college student.

  “The paper said there’d be dollar raffle tickets for sale, to win a year’s worth of free lunches. One a week. I’ll spend five dollars to try and win that!”

  “Paper?” I said. “You saw this in the newspaper?”

  “Well, yeah.” She held out a five-dollar bill.

  People kept piling in and, for the first time ever, Ox began to worry that we might exceed our allowable occupancy per the fire marshal. The band stopped playing promptly at ten and a professional auctioneer took the microphone. Apparently, Fran donated Road Rage for the cause, after she bought it from the insurance company. The auctioneer went full-bore, arms and body synchronized with his voice, as he put on a show that could have enticed an accountant to buy a fifty-dollar bill for a hundred dollars. Despite his rhythmic, melodic skills of persuasion, nobody bid on the Chrysler. The alligator brought a single bid of one hundred dollars, but the businessman retracted his offer when he learned that the tail no longer moved. Ever persistent, the auctioneer took a twenty-minute break to allow prospective bidders a chance to look at Road Rage and Nature’s Wrath one more time. During the second round of bidding, not a single person raised their hand. Nobody even lifted their arm to take a drink of their fifty-cent beer. Not surprisingly, the arts council folks had already left. Shrugging, the auctioneer found Spud sulking at the bar and asked for his fee.

  Spud’s voice came out in a high-pitched squeak. “Fee? You didn’t raise any money, for crying out loud! How am I suppose to pay your fee out of the profits when there ain’t no profits?”

  “Sorry, pal,” the auctioneer said. “This is how I earn my living. I can’t help it if nobody wanted your sculptures. I did my best. You could glue gold coins to those things and they still wouldn’t sell.”

  “How much does he owe you?” Bobby said.

  “Hundred dollars. But considering how things turned out, let’s make it fifty and I’ll get out of here.”

  Fran scrawled out a check, signing it with a flourish. The auctioneer pocketed the check and made his exit.

  “I ain’t gonna be no kept man, Frannie,” my father grumbled. “I can pay my own bills.”

  “Good, because I’m going to stop the music soon so we can get all these people out of here,” I said. “I’m sure the band will want to be paid before they go, too.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Spud stuttered. “I was going to pay them out of the profits from selling the sculptures.”

  Bobby and Hal and Trip pretended they had to go to the urinal and smartly sauntered away, not wanting to be near Spud when he started looking to borrow cash.

  Fran rubbed my father’s back. “I’ll pay the band tonight, sweetie, and you can pay me back later.”

  Spud grumbled his thanks. Since his poker buddies had collected eighty-eight dollars from raffle ticket sales, I let the band go ahead and give away the advertised prize of free lunch for a year. Ox put the eighty-eight bills in the register before Spud had a chance to pocket them.

  By midnight, the Block had mostly cleared out, Spud went to bed, and Cracker was so stuffed from all the dropped food, he wouldn’t move. One of the cooks threatened to quit, Dirk stopped by to tell me that I had to move Spud’s abandoned vehicle off my property or I’d be fined, and Ox estimated that we’d given away more than nine hundred dollars’ worth of food. Only Ruby, a bartender, and the other servers were happy with the evening’s outcome. All the free food and cheap beer had filled their pockets with wads of tip money.

  FORTY-SIX

  “What is this, Peggy?” Chuck said, holding up a pamphlet on prenatal diet tips.

  Peggy cringed. Her mind spun, trying to come up with a plausible reason she had the publication. “Wh-wha-what were you doing in my purse?”

  “I was looking for a pair of reading glasses. I’ve misplaced mine.”

  “I don’t use reading glasses,” she said.

  “Dammit, Peggy, answer me. What are you doing with this, unless—” He stopped in midsentence, instantly knowing she’d betrayed him. Ripping the pamphlet in half, he threw it at a trash bin. “You didn’t get the abortion.”

  Instinctively backing away from him, she put her hands over her belly. “I went to the appointment, I swear. But I couldn’t go through with it. I want this baby.”

  Chuck shoved her into a chair and stood towering over her. “Why did you lie, Peggy?”

  “I told you. I want this baby, and I knew you’d try to make me get rid of it. Besides, I didn’t lie. I just never told you that I didn’t do it.”

  Chuck paced the length of the lab to calm down. “Are you still committed to Project Antisis?”

  “Of course I am,” Peggy Lee said, just to keep his temper in check. She was no longer sure what she believed in, especially now that she’d experienced the bliss of pregnancy. She just knew she’d do anything to protect her miracle baby and keep it safe.

  Chuck sat in a chair next to his chemist. “With your help, Peggy, we have pulled off something that will alter the future of the world, do you realize that? Since people don’t have enough sense to stop reproducing, we’ve intervened. We have prevented several million potential pregnancies from happening in developed countries.” Chuck’s eyes had glazed over. “Do you realize how beneficial to the preservation of the earth that is? Do you?”

  Peggy Lee could only nod.

  “That’s several million fewer greedy, hungry, careless humans. Several million fewer plastic toys and multimillion fewer disposable diapers in landfills. We’ve impacted everything from water usage to polluting plastics to oil-gobbling cars on the road. We’ve made a dent, Peggy, a huge dent. We’ve made a difference. We have helped the people of this earth.”

  Wide-eyed, Peggy Lee nodded again.

  Chuck took a deep breath, eyes closed, face to the ceiling and paused that way before speaking again. “Isis was the goddess of fertility. You and I, Peggy, and a lot more environmentalists just like us, realize the benefit of being anti Isis. Project Antisis will be the savior of the earth, and Derma-Zing is just the beginning.”

  Chuck went to the refrigerator and removed a plastic bottle of spring water, irked that Peggy still hadn’t bought more of his favorite canned seltzer water. He returned to the chair and slowly drank. Derma-Zing had already exceeded his most aggressive expectations, Chuck thought. Usage was up to four million girls, and with the new formulation, sterilization could be caused with as little as two applications. Drinking the water, he made the decision to close out phase one of Project Antisis. Not only had his chemist betrayed him, but some users such as the Oxendine girl were demonstrating physical symptoms. It was just a matter of time before medical professionals started talking to each other and began searching for a common element.

  Chuck finished the bottle of water with a single tilt of his head and told Peggy Lee that they would immediately stop blending the secret additive into the Derma-Zing adhesive. Meanwhile, he’d list the Derma-Zing company for sale.

  Lost in her own thoughts, she nodded again.

  Chuck smiled. The single product’s huge success would ensure a quick sale, probably to one of the large cosmetic manufacturers. That would be his seed money to start phase two. And so it would go, for as long as Chuck could keep Project Antisis alive.

  Meanwhile, there were loose ends to take care of—two of them. He had to dismantle the lab and move production of the Derma-Zing adhesive back to his main facility in Virginia. And he had to keep Peggy Lee quiet, until he decided the best way to eliminate her. Chuck had enough foresight to know that the chemist might start to turn, and he’d bought the jewelry weeks ago, just in case she did. He went to his briefcase and returned with a small gift-wrapped box.

  Eyes opened wide, she ripped off the paper and opened the lid to reveal a gold ring with a big d
iamond in the center of it. “Oh, Chuck!”

  “Peggy, I had planned to propose to you after we sold off Derma-Zing, when we could take a break and travel for our honeymoon,” he said, trying hard to make the ridiculous lie sound sincere. “But considering the circumstances, I’m going to go ahead and ask you now. Will you marry me, Peggy?”

  Unable to speak, she stood and hugged him tight. When she found her voice, Peggy Lee remembered the tiny life that steadily grew inside her. “What about my baby?”

  “You’ll have the baby—our baby—and we will raise him to be a good person, who will take care of his environment.”

  Tears rolled down Peggy Lee’s flushed cheeks. “Oh, yes! Yes I’ll marry you, Chuck.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Saying the matter was urgent, Dr. Warner called and wanted to talk in person. We met at Le Catalan French Café, which for me was a short walk from the Block. Foamy balls of clouds crept across the sky and we sat outside, facing the riverwalk, to watch them. I ordered the chicken curry salad with fresh bread and she had the quiche of the day. Bypassing the extensive wine-bar menu, we both opted for ice water.

  “I’ve seen three other patients with the same symptoms Lindsey exhibited. After checking with the other physicians at Daisy Obstetrics&Gynecology, we’ve identified eleven girls going through the same thing,” Pam said.

  “All from the same high school?”

  “No, that’s the first thing I checked. Several go to Lindsey’s school, but one goes to a private school and one is home schooled. Another is a student at UNC. And one eighteen-year-old lives in Ohio. She was vacationing with her family.”

  “There must be a common element,” I said, when the obvious plowed into my brain with the force of a jackhammer. “Good God. It’s the Derma-Zing.”

  “Come again?”

  “I think it’s the Derma-Zing, Pam.” I thought of Lindsey’s television spots and the help I’d given Holloman by suggesting college-logo stencils, and felt sick. “Did you happen to notice if your three patients wore Derma-Zing designs?”

  “That stuff is so popular that we see it on kids all the time. None of the doctors in our practice would bother to note whether or not a patient had a design. No reason to.”

  I rubbed my temples, my old concussion headache creeping back. “There is now.”

  Our lunch arrived. Neither of us bothered to pick up a fork.

  “My girls love drawing their little designs on each other,” Pam said. “They’ve used the product for a couple of months now and they’re fine. But tell me why you think the Derma-Zing is causing Lindsey’s symptoms.”

  I downed some ice water to stop the queasiness in my stomach and told her exactly why. Holloman’s odd behavior that could have been an ad for bipolar disorder and his obsessive interest in Derma-Zing, when the product was less than 4 percent of the total net revenue for ECH Chemical Engineering&Consulting. The hardcore environmental causes that he supported. The fact that he’d built a satellite lab in Wilmington, where only one chemical additive was manufactured, by only one employee. And that employee was a loner who’d spent years researching a fertility drug. Plus, the timing worked. Lindsey’s health problems became evident just after she became a heavy user of the product.

  Pam cut off a corner of her quiche but didn’t eat. “You think they are intentionally putting something in Derma-Zing, which is causing—”

  “Problems with the girls’ reproductive systems,” I finished, flashing back to a conversation with Holloman at the Block. “When talking about marketing, Holloman said his goal was to expose as many girls to the product as possible. He used that exact word. Expose.”

  Pam’s face went pale. “This sounds like something out of a futuristic horror movie. Do you think he’s purposely trying to sterilize young females?”

  I was slowly nodding, my cerebrum working, when recall of another conversation caused a chill to shoot up the back of my neck. “His goal is population control. Peggy Lee said that Holloman thinks the world is already overpopulated. Apparently, they’ve been having sex and she got pregnant.”

  “Wait a minute,” Pam said, thinking. “Is that Peggy Lee Cooke? I think she’s been seen at our practice.”

  “Exactly. That’s where I first met her—in your waiting room. Anyway, Holloman told her to get an abortion. He doesn’t know she’s still carrying his baby.”

  Our server stopped by to refill water glasses and ask if anything was wrong with the food. We assured her the food was fine, and no, we didn’t need any to-go containers.

  “Jersey, I called you because you’re a personal friend and I’m concerned about Lindsey. I was just trying to clarify in my own mind what the next step should be. Contact all the other area physicians’ offices to see if there’s a pattern? Notify CDC?”

  “All of the above.”

  “But I still don’t have a diagnosis. And we don’t have any proof that Derma-Zing is tainted.”

  “Then you need to get those tests on Lindsey done,” I said. “I’ll take care of rounding up evidence. We’ve got to stop him, Pam.”

  Pam chewed on the lemon slice from her water glass. “Wait a minute. What if it’s the chemist? Maybe Holloman doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “They both know about it,” I said. “They’d have to.”

  “I pray to God that you’re wrong about all this, Jersey.”

  “Me, too,” I said, but knew I wasn’t. “Where’s the closest lab that will analyze the product, quickly, without questions?”

  “I’d go through your cop friend, to take advantage of the forensics lab they use,” she told me. “Plus, I’d use a second lab, so you get two independent results. As soon as I get back to my office, I’ll call you with the name of a good one. But let me warn you, analyzing the product for proof of tainting will be hard, if not impossible.”

  “How so?”

  Pam explained that any number of potentially suspect substances could be found in Derma-Zing, but if they weren’t known toxins, they wouldn’t cause alarm. If the chemist was manufacturing something new, especially an ingredient derived from a plant hormone, discovering its long-term effect could take months or years of trial testing. The bottom line, my doctor friend said, is that Derma-Zing was considered a cosmetic and therefore not regulated by the FDA.

  “It’s something like a forty-billion-dollar industry. Cosmetic products contain thousands and thousands of chemical ingredients, which aren’t screened for safety or FDA tested,” she said. “If you read some of the reports that I do, you’d be scared to use deodorant or body lotions, much less wear wrinkle-reducing creams and skin-firming makeup.”

  Pushing the uneaten quiche around on her plate, she threw out some shocking examples, including cancer-causing chemicals found in children’s bubble bath, toxins found in nail polish, and traces of lead found in lipstick.

  “Derma-Zing is just like any other unregulated cosmetic product,” she said. “They can put anything from beeswax to synthetically manufactured chemicals to exotic plant and berry extracts in there.”

  “And it’s all being absorbed through the skin,” I said. “But the difference with Derma-Zing is that they are willfully trying to sterilize an entire generation of young women.”

  “Possibly,” Pam said, her scientific training mandating caution.

  Although Lindsey’s appointment for the additional tests was a week away, Pam agreed to do them tonight, in her office, after hours. Leaving our uneaten lunches behind, we headed out, spotting a couple of college students with ankle designs.

  I was waiting to pick Lindsey up when school let out for the day and we drove straight to the Block. I dragged her upstairs and used nail polish remover and baby oil to get all the Derma-Zing off her body. Afterward, I made her take a shower and scour her skin with an exfoliating body wash. Even though she thought I was overreacting, she was good-natured about it, and promised to tell everyone at school to stop using the product.

  “I’m going to feel reall
y silly, though,” she said. “I mean, like, here I’ve been on television telling everybody how great this stuff is, you know? And now, I’ve got to tell people that it’s bad for them?”

  “Until we get the proof we need for a national recall, you’ve got to get your friends and those at your school to stop using it.”

  “But if I tell somebody it’s bad for them, I’m going to sound like an idiot,” she complained. “Hey, I know. I’ll put the word out that little kids are into Derma-Zing. You know, like twelve- and thirteen-year-olds? Then nobody will want to be seen wearing a design. It will be totally uncool. I can even tell them how to get their designs off, with nail polish remover and baby oil.”

  “Good idea. You do whatever works. Don’t talk to anyone from Derma-Zing, not even the PR lady or ad people,” I said. “If Holloman calls you, just hang up. And if you see the man, stay away from him, okay? This is a serious situation, Lindsey.”

  “You are like, so wigged out. And you’re not even sure that Derma-Zing is what caused my period to stop.”

  “Lindsey, I am sure. I just can’t prove it yet.”

  Unconvinced, she shrugged.

  I tried a different route. “Here’s the thing. If anything bad happens to you, your mother will make you go back to California in a skinny minute and none of us wants that.” It was a cheap shot, but at least I got through to her.

  “You know I don’t want to go back to live with Mom and Albert.”

  “Then you must promise to do what I’ve asked, even if you don’t necessarily agree.”

  “Okay,” she finally said. “I promise. The whole Derma-Zing thing was getting kind of old, anyway.”

  When she went downstairs to work her shift, I tried to shove my personal feelings aside and figure out a course of action. The headache I’d acquired at lunch hadn’t quite gone away, and it was difficult to think. There was simply no plausible way to alert the millions of Derma-Zing users that they might be poisoning their reproductive systems. At least not yet. We had to get something tangible to take to Ashton, and CDC, and NIH, and anyone else who’d listen. Even the national press wouldn’t touch the story until they had substantiating evidence. With help from a chemist, Soup was still trying to make sense of the data copied from the laboratory’s computer. The testing facilities wouldn’t have conclusive results from the samples for days, maybe weeks. Pam Warner couldn’t prove what was causing her young patients’ similar symptoms. The immediate answer was to put pressure on the chemist and see what she’d divulge. I’d have to pay her a visit in the morning.