Old Poison

by Joan Francis

  As we stepped into the building, I saw a dozen or so cargo containers, all open. A couple containers were almost full, but most of the rest had been haphazardly emptied into messy unorganized piles around the building. I also noticed that Folger had joined us and stood just inside the door.

  With the dismay only a librarian could understand, Lucille began explaining the mess contained in these buildings.

  “The employees weren’t allowed to pack their own stuff. In fact, we weren’t even told the plant was moving. We went home on Thursday for a four-day weekend, and when we returned on Tuesday morning, the place had been emptied out, except for the personnel office. Of course there had been rumors . . .”

  She paused and eyed Folger. Her expression contained a mixture of distaste and knowledge I suspected she intended to keep to herself.

  “No one would give us an explanation for the unannounced relocation of the plant. We were simply offered a choice of moving to Costa Rica, taking a generous severance, or an early retirement. Take it or leave it.”

  Now I understood why the container I had been locked in contained employment records. It wouldn’t have been packed out until all the terminations and transfers had been completed. That was of little help now, but it was nice to be able to solve at least one of the little mysteries in this case.

  Folger abandoned his military stance, turned his head to the side, and seemed to be straining to hear our conversation. Finally he took up a position closer to us.

  “Movers stuffed anything and everything in boxes. The few boxes that were labeled were usually mislabeled; so, for the last two months, everyone has simply ripped through the containers. Once they had perfected the mix-master system of order, they called me back out of retirement to . . . how was it Jim put it? Oh, yes, to set up the new library. After a week here, I told him I’m just too old for this.”

  As we walked among the piles of boxes, she began to show me where she had started her organizing, and it became apparent that she expected me to take over the job. I hated to burst her bubble, but I had to explain my purpose here.

  “I’m sorry, Lucille, I’m not here to take over the library. I’m just here to set up a records retention program so the departments will know what to keep, shred, and scan.”

  She studied me a moment, and I could imagine what her forty years of experience thought of an outsider waltzing in and instantly determining such basic organization. She took it well, with no more than a sigh and a shrug, then launched into an outline of company departments and a list of department heads.

  During most of this, I listened quietly, taking notes while our shadow, Mr. Folger, made no attempt to hide his interest in what was said. It was when Lucille began to explain the company history that I saw his first nervous twitch.

  Lucille explained, “You see you are really dealing with two companies here. Once upon a time there was a wonderful man named Macdonald Duffy. Mac owned a small petroleum company back east, and he gave it the name of Blue Morpho because the swirling colors in gasoline reminded him of the Blue Morpho butterfly. Mac refined his own gas and used ethanol as an anti knock instead of lead. That’s what caused his downfall.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  Lucille was jarred from her monologue and took a moment to respond. “You know, the lead in gasoline.

  “All I know about lead in gasoline is that they took it out a few years ago because it contributed to smog. What does that have to do with this plant?

  “Well, I can see I will have to go back and tell you the wonderful, secret history of lead.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Folger reaching for his radio.

  Lucille noticed it too and said under her breath, “There’s a bit of paranoia around here on the subject of lead. I don’t know if I can find them in this mess, but I have several books and articles you should read if you want to really understand this.”

  She picked her way through the sea of boxes with the unerring certainty of a spawning salmon, pulled the lid from a box and rummaged through the contents. “There you are,” she declared. Librarians do amaze me. She handed me an article, “The Secret History of Lead,” by Jamie Lincoln Kitman, from an old issue of The Nation magazine. “Here’s a good short history to give you the overall picture.

  Folger turned his face away from us and spoke quietly but urgently into his radio. Lead might be gone from gasoline, but paranoia seemed to still exist at Blue Morpho. As Lucille began her story, I wondered what response this was going to bring from Woods.

  * * * * *

  THIRTY-NINE

  Under the hostile surveillance of our watchdog, Folger, Lucille began with a question that I knew she would soon answer. “How do you suppose lead got into gasoline in the first place?”

  I shrugged. “Does it come out of the earth that way?”

  “No. Lead, a known poison, was put into gasoline as an anti-knock fuel additive. It stopped knocking and raised the octane. ”

  Like the good student, I asked a leading question. “But back then they didn’t know it was poison?”

  She took a deep sigh and glanced sideways at Folger, then back to my face. For a brief moment I was afraid she would decide not to talk with me on this subject. Then she pointed toward the far end of the room.

  “Over in that corner is where I’ve started piling material for the engine design and development department. They have promised to send someone down to collect it today.”

  As we walked toward the pile of boxes, she spoke in a normal tone of voice but low volume. “Of course they knew it was poison; in fact, it is one of the oldest known poisons. The Greeks and Romans wrote about its deadly effects over three thousand years ago. The particular form of lead they used in gasoline, tetraethyl was first identified in 1854, but it wasn’t used commercially for sixty-some years, because science knew it was deadly.”

  “What does it do?”

  She laughed. “You mean other than kill you? It’s a potent neurotoxin, odorless, colorless and tasteless. Possible symptoms associated with lead poisoning include blindness, brain damage, kidney disease, convulsions, cancer, hypertension, strokes, heart attacks, and miscarriage. Children are the most quickly damaged, with lowered IQs, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention span, hyperactivity, and behavioral problems. I sometimes wonder if the increased incidence of attention deficit disorder isn’t due to the increased amounts of lead.”

  ‘How much has lead increased?’

  “During the leaded-gas era an estimated seven million tons of lead was burned in gasoline in the United States alone, and it’s still in use in most of the Third World countries. This stuff doesn’t go away. It doesn’t break down over time. It doesn’t vaporize. It never disappears. It’s in our soil, our air, our water, our food supply, our bodies. It’s estimated that modern man’s exposure to lead is three hundred to five hundred times greater than natural pre-leaded-gasoline levels.”

  “If all this was known, how could the government allow it?

  She smiled a mirthless smile and glanced at Folger who was again mumbling into his radio. Quietly she said, “Mr. Duffy’s opinion was that it was due to what he called three sacred Ps: Profit, Power and Perpetuation. Supposedly, lead was added to gas because it stopped engine knock, but Duffy already had what he believed was an excellent anti-knock that wasn’t so lethal. It was plain old ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. You know, like the grain alcohol they can make in stills. It was plentiful, renewable, easy to make, and it not only stopped engine knock, but could have been an alternative fuel. Before the Civil War alcohol lit our lamps, and later it powered two of the first internal combustion engines. It produced higher engine compression without smoke or disagreeable odors. Henry Ford even built his first car to run on it and predicted it would be the fuel of the future. Duffy figured there was just one little problem with ethanol: No one could patent alcohol and any idiot could make it in his back yard.”

  I laughed.
“So you could fuel your car from the backyard still. That would have changed a few oil industry fortunes. Didn’t health officials do anything?”

  “In this country we make the manufacturers of a product responsible for the safety testing of their own product, you know, like tobacco companies, drug companies and food companies. Mr. Duffy thought that was like setting the fox to watch the hen house. But for seventy-five years those who claimed lead was a health hazard were ignored, and all attempts at independent testing, regulation, or oversight were defeated. Use of lead expanded until almost every gallon of gasoline sold in the world contained lead. The corporations that produced it made billions of dollars.

  We heard the sputter of Folger’s radio and realized he had crossed the room and was just on the other side of a container. We only caught a word or two before he either turned down the volume or moved off.

  “Well, look at this. What’s this box doing here? Give me a hand, Dolores. These records are from the emissions control research department. I have those piled over there.”

  We hoisted the box between us and headed across the end of the room. On the way we could see Folger walking back toward the door, radio to his ear. Lucille laughed quietly. In an undertone she said, “Did I mention the paranoia around here?” We set the box down and stood where we could keep an eye on Folger.

  “I doubt that we will finish this story in much detail this morning. To make the story short, through the late twenties and early thirties Duffy’s little company of Blue Morpho Petroleum tried to hold its own against Jim Marko’s Marko Oil. They each had gas stations in the same major cities along the east coast. Marko used a lead formula and Blue Morpho was one of the last companies standing that still used ethanol. Lead interests were determined to wipe Duffy out.

  “It was like urban war, and Marko used every trick imaginable. He fought Duffy at the banks and blocked his money supply; fought him in the courts with constant legal harassment that cost him millions; fought him in congress with legislation to make alcohol production either illegal or too expensive to be viable. He also fought him at the pump. If Marko couldn’t drive Duffy’s dealers out of business with low prices he strong armed them out. Marko, who drank like a fish, even became a strong supporter of Prohibition and lobbied for higher taxation on Duffy’s alcohol distillery. During Prohibition he used to call federal enforcement regularly and report that Duffy was shipping his alcohol to the mob to make booze. He wasn’t, but it cost him a small fortune to prove it each time.”

  “But Blue Morpho must have survived all these years?”

  “Only in name. In 1933 there was an explosion at one of Duffy’s gas stations in Laurel, Maryland, where he lived. It killed his wife and almost killed his son Douglas. Mac knew the explosion was set by Marko, but couldn’t prove it. The death of his wife was the final blow. Duffy could fight no more and made Marko a deal. Marko could have Blue Morpho Petroleum if he just left Duffy alone. After Blue Morpho in Maryland sold to Marko, Duffy moved to California and set up his new firm of California Automobile Research Facility. He spent the rest of his life trying to develop and patent a fuel that would replace gasoline.”

  All of a sudden I was very alert. “A fuel that would replace gasoline?”

  She hesitated for some moments, then looked right in my eyes and said each word with a deliberate pause for precise delivery of both words and message.

  “He could have succeeded too, but he had a conscience. He wouldn’t produce a fuel that would damage health or environment.”

  Zing! It was like all the extraneous bits of information, all the people I had met in this weird case, all the seemingly unconnected ideas, suddenly slipped into place like puzzle pieces locking into a finished picture. At that moment I knew, no mater how incredible it might seem, that Evelyn Lilac’s Red 19 was real. Did that give credence to the diary? No, I couldn’t go that far. It didn’t matter whether her information came from Martians or from someone inside the Blue Morpho. Red 19 was real, and Duffy had discarded it as deadly.

  “Holy Shit!” I whispered. Then asked, “Duffy’s dead?”

  She nodded again. “For many years. His daughter, Catherine ran the plant until she died in 1999.”

  “Who owns the research plant now?”

  “The stockholders of Marko’s Blue Morpho Petroleum bought it after Catherine died. They didn’t care about the research, of course, but Duffy had branched out to keep enough money coming in to continue his research. Other departments in the company are quite lucrative. We provide design, development and testing services for engine, vehicle and component manufacturers. After the California Automobile Research Facility was sold and once again became part of Blue Morpho Petroleum, we added several government contracts with the army and air force for fuels and lubricants research.”

  “When we started getting into government contracts, the toy solders and wannabe James Bonds started showing up in the company.” With a slight nod of her head, she indicated Folger. “Speaking of which, I think someone must have wound his spring. Story time is over.”

  I looked up to see Folger marching toward us. His face held a hint of a sneer as he stopped in front of me. “Ms. Gomez, Mr. Woods has ordered you to cease your inquiries regarding this company until after your security clearance has been completed. You are to accompany me to his office immediately.”

  I turned to Lucille. “More wasted time, and I have clients waiting in New York. I am going to have to tell James that this is not working out.”

  Lucille picked up my call for help. “I’m heading that way. I’ll let him know you need to speak with him.”

  Folger stepped in front of her blocking her path. “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Owens. You are to accompany me to Mr. Woods office also. He wishes to speak with you regarding security protocol.”

  Lucille removed her thick glasses, polished them with the edge of her long blouse, and replaced them.

  “Sonny Boy, you tell Harry Woods that I won’t be needing his security lecture for two reasons. First, I have already retired and am returning to the States this afternoon. If he wants this mess picked up, he will have to find someone else to do it. Maybe some of his young toy soldiers, if he can find any of you who can read. And, second, tell Harry that I have a long memory for security matters, memory that goes all the way back to 1989 and a certain young congressman’s wife.”

  Then she carefully unpinned her security pass, opened Folger’ hand and thrust the badge into his palm, pin first.

  He jumped back, his aggressive expression changing to one of confusion. “Hey, God damn it! Watch it.”

  Lucille turned to me. “Good luck, Dolores.” Then she turned and walked out of the building, leaving Folger sputtering and me almost choking as I tried not to laugh.

  * * * * *

  FORTY

  Any compulsion I might have had to laugh disappeared when I entered the office of Harriman Woods. He was about six feet tall and, despite the paunch, in better physical condition than I had noticed in our previous brief encounters. His face was bony and hard with age lines that drew a permanently grim expression. His small, dull brown eyes were rimmed with red, reminding me of my uncle’s old Yorkshire sow. She was the meanest animal I have ever met . . . and the smartest. Here in his office, under his control, I should have had the good sense to feel afraid, but I remembered the story Sam had told me of how he had butchered those children, and all I could feel was rage that such an evil person should be allowed to live.

  Without looking up he growled out, “Sit down, Gomez.”

  I studied him a minute, steadying myself to gain voice control. “And good morning to you, Mr. Woods. How kind of you to offer me a chair.”

  He looked up from the papers on his desk. The expression in his eyes was hollow, as if there were no soul behind them.

  “We won’t waste any time on pleasantries or verbal banter, Ms. Gomez, if that’s your name. I’ve checked your CV. It all checks out, as I expected. It would probably get by most investigat
ions; but you see, I have planted enough phony covers to recognize one when I see it. Yours has no depth. Some places I can find a computer record or a personnel clerk who can verify your employment, but not one employee who remembers meeting you.”

  “Since I am an outside consultant, that should hardly be surprising.”

  “Uh huh. You’re an outside consultant here, too, and I believe you have been here less than twenty-four hours, but every employee in the plant could identify you and tell me what your job is supposed to be.”

  “Right. In a tiny compound in a foreign jungle. Try the same thing in New York or Dallas. Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but your boss yanked me away from other jobs to come here as a favor to him and help with your records. Now if you have a problem with that, talk with him.”

  “I have, and as soon as I get through with my job, you can get on with yours.”

  He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a box and opened it on the desk top. It was a fingerprint kit, one of the old-fashioned ones with nasty, real ink.

  “So let’s just run your fingerprints, and if your ID checks out, you will be allowed to work with non classified records.”

  “I don’t believe this. You want to fingerprint me like some sort of criminal?”

  “No, Gomez, like every other employee in this plant. It’s standard security protocol. You should have no objection, unless of course you have something to hide.”

  My brain was scrambling for an out. If he just checked the states where my CV said I had worked, he would find no record, but there was no doubt in my mind that he would run it through the FBI repository. There he would nail me. I had been fingerprinted in California for both my PI license and my guard card. The only question was, how long would it take? The FBI’s new automated fingerprint identification system can kick back an answer on a criminal search in two hours. That wouldn’t even be time for me to get to the main road, unless I could snag a car. But he would have to run me as a civilian request, and that would take at least twenty-four hours. That was time enough to get away, but I would leave empty-handed.