Margaret Truman's Deadly Medicine

by Margaret Truman

  “What’s this Alard company do?”

  “Beats me. Odd jobs. Paul never says much but he always has money in his pocket.”

  They returned their attention to Tagobe, who by now had to struggle not to fall off the barstool.

  “You work for Alard?” Walter was asked.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  Tagobe suddenly lurched from the stool, grabbed one of the men to keep from hitting the floor, stumbled outside, and vomited before bouncing off walls on his way to his room where he collapsed on the bed, still wearing his treasured blue suit jacket. When the other men realized that he wasn’t coming back, they laughed, paid their tab, and left to continue their barhopping into the hot, humid night, heading for the Lizard Lounge, a popular Wewak bar with more upscale patronage.

  “Look who’s here,” one of them said when they walked in and spotted Paul Underwood with two friends at the Lizard’s bar. “Just talking about you, mate.” They joined Underwood, a bear of a man with a buzz cut and wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and leather sandals, and his friends, including someone they knew only as Joey. One of the men who’d been with Walter Tagobe pulled out the note that Tagobe had shown him, and that he’d kept. “What’s with this Alard company you work for?”

  Underwood took the note and squinted at it through bloodshot eyes. “Where the hell did you get this?”

  The man explained about meeting “this ignorant native in a bar.”

  “He gave you this?”

  The man said through a laugh, “He says he’s some big shot waiting for a doctor to meet up with him. He’s a moron.”

  Laughter all around.

  “He say who this doctor is?” Underwood asked.

  The late arrivals looked at each other.

  “King, I think,” one said.

  “I’ll be back,” Underwood said, leaving the bar and going outside where he made a call on his cell phone. When he returned Joey asked, “A problem?”

  “No,” Underwood said, grabbing his glass from the bar and downing its contents. “Let’s go.”

  Underwood and Joey headed across town to the hotel in which Walter Tagobe slept.

  “What room is the native in?” Underwood asked the owner, who sat at the makeshift desk.

  “Who?”

  “The native.” Underwood turned to Joey. “What’s his name?”

  “Toboggin, something like that.”

  “Yeah, Taboge,” Underwood said. “That’s it.”

  “He’s expecting you?”

  “Yeah, he’s expecting us.”

  The owner gave him the room number, which was on the ground floor at the rear of the building. The men went to it and Underwood opened the unlocked door. “Hey,” he said, “wake up. Come on, get up.” They stood over Walter on opposite sides of the bed.

  Tagobe looked up through his haze, fear in his black eyes.

  “Hey pal, it’s me,” Underwood said. “Remember? I gave you the money to come here.”

  Tagobe managed to sit up. He rubbed his eyes and moaned against the throbbing in his head.

  Underwood and Joey reached down, grabbed Walter under his arms, and yanked him to his feet, holding him upright as he threatened to slip from their grasp and slide to the floor.

  “You’ve been going around talking, huh?” Underwood said.

  Walter didn’t understand and said nothing.

  “Come on, we’ll take a walk.”

  Tagobe pulled loose from Joey’s grip and stumbled back toward the bed. “The doctor,” he said. “Where is the doctor?”

  Underwood looked at Joey and grinned, said to Tagobe, “Right, the doctor. He’s here, wants to see you.”

  “Where?”

  “In the bar next door. He sent us to get you.”

  “The doctor is here?” Tagobe said.

  “That’s right,” Underwood said as Joey regained his hold on Tagobe. “The doctor is here.”

  Tagobe’s mouth felt as though it was stuffed with cotton, and the incessant pounding in his head hadn’t abated. But he nodded, and a small smile came to his face. “I go to see the doctor. Big man, important man.”

  With Underwood and Joey holding him up, they left the room, passed through the lobby where the owner pretended not to be interested, and went out to the street. Underwood nodded toward an alley that separated the hotel from the bar, and they escorted Walter into it, rats scurrying out of their path. Underwood slammed Tagobe against a wall and snarled in his face, “You don’t talk about nothing, damn it!”

  “The doctor,” Walter said.

  “The doctor doesn’t give a damn about you,” Underwood said. “You keep your black mouth shut, you hear me?”

  Walter tried to shake loose but the two big men had him securely pinned to the wall.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Joey said, and slapped Tagobe’s face, hard. He slapped him again, and Underwood rammed his fist into his belly, causing Walter to double over. He retched, his vomit spewing from his mouth; some of it landed on Underwood’s toes that protruded from his sandals.

  Underwood kneed Tagobe in the face, breaking his nose and neck. He slowly slid down, blood dripping from his broken nose and split lip.

  Underwood swore again. “Look what he did to my foot,” he growled.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Joey said.

  “Yeah,” Underwood agreed. “He got the message.”

  * * *

  Walter Tagobe’s lifeless body was discovered the following morning by the owner of the bar in which the Sepik River tribesman had done his drinking. Before calling the police he went to Tagobe’s room and removed the primitive bag in which Walter’s few possessions were wrapped. He then called the police, who dispatched a unit including a small white panel truck into which Tagobe’s body was loaded for a trip to the city morgue. He was stripped naked upon arrival, which revealed to the technician not only the raised welts on the back and torso of a man who’d undergone the ritual of the crocodile in his youth, but also a wad of kina banknotes that had been stuffed into his loincloth. The tech shoved the bills into the pocket of the lab coat he wore and continued readying the body for insertion into a vault.

  “Any ID on him?” one of the cops who’d responded asked.

  “Just this.” He handed the cop a wrinkled, smeared one-page letter from a nun at the Catholic school where Walter had studied as a boy. On it she had written that he was a good boy and did his schoolwork. Walter had carried that letter with him ever since, seldom leaving home without it, and it had been taken from the blood-spattered blue suit jacket he’d been wearing.

  “Walter Tagobe,” the cop muttered.

  “Must be from one of the tribes, maybe in Sepik,” the tech said.

  “Anything else on him?”

  “No.”

  “He got beat up? A mugging?”

  “Looks like it. Back of his head bashed in. Here.” He handed the cop half of the money he’d taken from the body.

  “Ta,” the cop said, slipping the bills into his pants pocket. He shook his head. “That’ll teach him to stay with his own. What’s a Sepik native doing here in the city? Serves him right. G’day, mate.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Private investigator Robert Brixton wasn’t anxious to start the day.

  The desire to remain in bed and pull the covers up over his head had been present ever since his youngest daughter, Janet, had been slaughtered by a terrorist bomber in an outdoor D.C. café two years earlier. Although he’d managed to help bring the brains and money behind the terrorist attack to justice—which was supposed to bring “closure” according to those who enjoy bandying about that word—he awoke each morning with vivid visions of Janet being blown up along with a dozen others in the name of God knew what, some warped religious fervor or sense of geopolitical justice? While those visions had been with him every morning since, they’d become more prevalent of late and lasted longer.

&
nbsp; Flo Combes, the love of his life—he considered himself too old to use the term “girlfriend,” live-in or otherwise—had tried a variety of ways to help mitigate these painful episodes, but had come to the conclusion that she was losing the battle. She’d sought mental counseling to help her formulate approaches to Brixton, and had put some of the professional advice into play, but ultimately she was told that the only hope for him to ever come to grips with his sorrow, and occasional bouts of rage, was to work with a psychologist or psychiatrist and hopefully banish the demons that lived within. She’d finally come to the point where she urged him—no, begged him—to see a psychotherapist, her pleas falling on deaf ears.

  Not that she was surprised by his reticence to seek the help of a professional.

  Brixton had been a cop, a good one, and had a cop’s mentality that tended to dismiss “shrinks,” who he claimed ended up in that business only because they were nuts themselves.

  He’d put in a short tenure on the D.C. police force before heading for Savannah, Georgia, where he retired after twenty years on that southern city’s MPD, and became a private eye. Savannah was also where he’d fallen in love with the feisty, attractive Flo, like him a transplant from Brooklyn, and who gave as good as she got to the crusty, cynical Robert “Don’t Call Me Bobby” Brixton. Flo told friends that while Brixton could be difficult, he could also be “adorable”—her word for him—and they’d been together ever since, aside from occasions when Flo decided she needed a break from his jaded view of the world and the people who populate it. Those separations never lasted long. The fact was that they loved and needed each other.

  Getting up this day was no different from the others since Janet’s murder except that there was one added reason to dread it. He’d finally agreed with Flo that a session or two with a psychotherapist might be helpful, or, as she’d couched it, couldn’t hurt. She’d made an appointment for Brixton with one of the professionals she’d consulted, John Bradford Fowler, whose office was in his Capitol Hill apartment.

  “I don’t trust somebody with a name like Bradford,” Brixton groused as he joined Flo at the small table in their kitchen after showering and dressing.

  “His name is John Bradford Fowler,” Flo countered. “What’s wrong with his name?”

  “What is he, some nerdy little guy with a beard and big glasses?” Brixton said.

  “He happens to be a very handsome man, and a very smart one, too.”

  “What’s he want me to say, that I’m crazy?”

  “Robert, stop it!” she said. “All he wants is for you to talk about what’s bothering you. By discussing it you can hopefully put it to rest.”

  “Put it to rest? How do I put to rest the fact that some whack job blows herself up and takes my daughter with her?”

  “That’s why you’re seeing him. You can work out those feelings so that they don’t dominate your thinking all day, every day.”

  He guffawed. “Fat chance of that,” he said as he slathered an English muffin with cherry preserves.

  The conversation continued in that vein until Flo put a stop to it. “Robert,” she said with finality, “you go see Dr. Fowler and see whether he can help you. If he can’t, that’s fine, but you at least have to try. You can’t continue living this way, and neither can I.”

  He knew that she was right and didn’t argue the point any further. They left the apartment together, she on her way to open Flo’s Fashions, he to keep his appointment with Dr. John Bradford Fowler. As he headed for Fowler’s office he felt as though he was about to face the guillotine. “John Bradford Fowler,” he muttered to himself as he searched for a parking space within walking distance of the psychologist’s apartment and office. He’d faced many tense situations as a cop and private investigator but had never felt the anxiety he suffered as he stood in front of the townhouse and summoned the courage to climb the short set of steps and ring the bell.

  * * *

  Lobbyist Eric Morrison also had reason not to want to get out of bed that morning.

  He and his wife, Peggy Sue, had entertained sixteen people at their expansive home in Chevy Chase the previous night, and Eric was hungover. Eric and Peggy Sue were known for their parties—or “soirees” as she preferred to term them. While their gatherings always included friends, Eric also used them to cement relationships with those who could do him and his lobbying group some good, congressmen, congressional staffers with clout, and media types.

  It had been a pleasant evening. Drinks flowed freely, a sumptuous array of hors d’oeuvres were passed by two uniformed servers from the caterer, and a young musician played popular tunes on the living room’s black grand piano. But halfway through the party Morrison received a call from the VP of the Pharmaceutical Association of America’s biggest and most powerful member.

  “Can you talk?” the VP asked, cued by the sounds of music and cocktail party chatter in the background.

  “Not at the moment,” Morrison said. “We’re entertaining guests and—”

  “This is important, Eric.”

  “Can’t it wait until morning?”

  “Yes, it can, but no later than the morning. Meet me at eight at Hains Point at the eastern end of Potomac Park.”

  “What’s this in reference to?” Morrison asked, put off by the VP’s tone.

  “I’ll tell you in the morning, Eric. Get back to your guests.”

  “Who called?” Peggy Sue Morrison asked.

  “Oh, just a client. Get the piano player to play more up-tempo songs. The party’s dragging.”

  * * *

  The VP was waiting when Morrison arrived. Tourists had already begun to show up; a family posed two children for photos.

  Morrison and the VP shook hands and walked to a bench away from the gathering crowd.

  “What’s this all about?” Morrison asked.

  “That doctor in Papua New Guinea.”

  “What about him?” Morrison asked, twisting on the bench against a knot forming in his gut. He hadn’t told the VP about Dr. King’s murder.

  “He was murdered,” the VP said.

  “Murdered? Who? How do you know?”

  “We have a source in Papua New Guinea who reported to me, but who told us is irrelevant. The question is who did you make arrangements with to burn and plow that plot of land?”

  “Who did I—?” Morrison shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. But if you’re suggesting that whoever I hired killed the doctor, you’re wrong.” He didn’t sound convincing.

  “Who did you hire?” the VP repeated. “Whoever it was failed to get ahold of the doctor’s research results.”

  “Please, I can’t reveal who it was. It’s a very reputable group. All I know is that the acreage was destroyed, per your instructions. As far as the research results, something must have kept it from happening. Maybe the doctor’s murder had something to do with it. Maybe whoever killed him took the results. Yes, that must be it. Look, the doctor’s murder is news to me. Sorry to hear it but it has nothing to do with what I did on your behalf.”

  Did the VP buy his lie? Did it matter? Did the murder of some crackpot doctor in a far-off place like Papua New Guinea matter? Had Alard and his people not only uprooted the plants but also killed the doctor? If so, so what? He, Eric Morrison, had made it clear to Alard that no one was to be hurt. Besides, Alard’s people had nothing to do with the doctor’s death. He believed that. Probably some drug addict. Why question me about it?

  The VP answered his unasked question.

  “I just hope that you didn’t do anything to put the company in an awkward position, Eric.”

  “Of course not. Look, I accomplished what you wanted by getting rid of this doctor’s field. His murder had nothing to do with us. Relax. Everything is cool.”

  “That’s what I want to hear,” said the VP. “We’ll just forget about the whole thing.”

  “Exactly,” Morrison said, feeling the tension ebb.

  “Before we go,” the VP said, �
��what’s new with Senator Gillespie?”

  “He’s in our pocket,” Morrison assured him. “He’s working both sides of the aisle to get the legislation you want passed. No concern on that front.”

  “Are you making any progress in helping defeat that goddamn bill that Senator Barnes has been pushing to reward pharmaceutical companies who develop drugs that can immediately be marketed as generic instead of waiting twenty years?”

  “That doesn’t have any chance of even coming up for a vote,” Morrison said. “Gillespie is fighting it tooth-and-nail. The bill will fail big-time.”

  “Good.”

  The VP got up, shook Morrison’s hand, and walked to where he’d parked his car. Morrison waited a few minutes before doing the same. The meeting had gone okay. The VP seemed to buy his denial of knowing anything about the murder of the doctor. Hopefully this conversation marked the end of it, for which Morrison was grateful. He’d never imagined that arranging for a four-acre plot of useless land to be bulldozed would also involve a murder. Did one thing have to do with the other?

  It didn’t matter.

  He drove to his office feeling considerably lighter than when he’d gotten up that morning.

  * * *

  Jayla King wore her new dress with the “Flo’s Fashions” label to work that morning.

  While getting ready to leave the apartment she’d reflected on her dinner with Nate Cousins, and was glad that she’d accepted his invitation. She knew that it was important for her to try and live as normal a life as possible while simultaneously mourning the death of her father. She also thought back to the evening spent with Flo Combes, Robert Brixton, and the others at the Smiths’ Watergate apartment. The journalist Will Sayers had been entertaining with his stories of political figures in the news, and the judge and his wife and the Smiths had been welcoming and intelligent dinner companions. She’d wondered at times about Brixton, Flo’s boyfriend. Aside from his iconoclastic view of the world, she sensed a pervasive despondency and wondered what was at the root of it. She didn’t know, of course, about his having lost a daughter in a terrorist bombing. Had she known, her having recently lost her father would have given her a sense of kinship with the brooding private investigator. Before leaving the apartment she took a final glance at her desk. Everything was in place, papers neatly aligned with each other, two pencils and a pen lined up like soldiers.