Drift

by Jon McGoran

  I was prepared not to like the guy, and I didn’t. But when his eyes went up and down Nola, the dislike intensified.

  When he was done looking at her, he stepped closer.

  Nola pulled back a bit and said, “This is my friend, Doyle.…”

  Before she finished the introduction, he had already dismissed me with a glance and resumed staring at her. “Professor Simpkins,” he said without extending his hand.

  “Detective Carrick,” I replied, because I can be a prick, too. Some people think I’m pretty good at it.

  He stopped and glanced back at me for a moment. I gave him a grin that said, “Yes, I am being a prick.”

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” he said, turning back to Nola.

  She held up the baggie with the ear of corn. “Jerry, I was hoping you could take a look at this.”

  He looked at the bag, then looked at her, his expression changing from curiosity to suspicion to disappointment at the realization that she was not there because she missed him. When he glanced over at me, he looked resigned, and I’d like to think a little nervous, too.

  As we stood there, the cluster of girls gave up and filed past us down the hallway.

  Simpkins turned back to Nola, looking hurt and annoyed. He put on his reading glasses and took the bag out of her hand, squinting as he held it up in the light from the windows.

  “Yech.” He smiled condescendingly. “There’s a lot that can go wrong being a farmer, isn’t there, Nola? What is this, Mexican Black?”

  “Lenape Blue.”

  “Looks terrible.”

  “I know. Do you recognize it?”

  He opened his mouth, like he expected an answer to come out. But then he just closed it. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “Let’s have a closer look, shall we?”

  We followed him to a lab in the basement, where he perched on a stool and put the corn on the work surface. He pulled over an illuminated magnifying glass on a spring-balanced arm and switched on the light, examining the corn closely from a number of angles. After grunting a few times, he wheeled his stool to a microscope a few feet away. Popping one of the gray kernels with his thumbnail, he smeared some of what came out onto a glass slide. He placed a glass cover over it and slid it under the microscope.

  After several minutes, he sat back and rubbed his eyes, gesturing for Nola to look in the microscope. As she did, he said, “I don’t know what you’ve got here. It doesn’t look quite right, that’s for sure, but there’s no sign of disease. No fungus or anything. The way it’s localized, I wonder if it is cross pollinated.”

  Nola looked up. “I wondered about that, but cross pollinated with what? Those strange kernels don’t look like anything I’ve seen in a seed catalogue. Or would want to.”

  “No, they don’t, do they?” He bit his lip for a moment, thinking. “I do know of a guy. Jason Rupp. A plant geneticist, among other things. I don’t know him very well, and he’s not here at the college, but he lives nearby. He might be able to shed a little more light. I’ve only met him a few times. An odd bird, but apparently quite brilliant. He was a finalist for the Gairdner Award. Very prestigious. Anyway, I could give him a call, if you’d like.”

  * * *

  We followed Simpkins across the hall, into a small, windowless room with books and papers everywhere. He sat behind the desk and flicked through a Rolodex for a moment, then picked up his phone and punched in the number.

  “Jason, hi. This is Jerry Simpkins.… Pine Crest, yes, that’s right. Oh, thanks, yeah, maybe one day.” He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’m here with a former student, and she has kind of an interesting problem with some Lenape Blue corn. I was wondering if you might be able to take a look at it.… Well, I don’t know, that’s why I’m calling you.”

  He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “He says he can call you in a few days, maybe he can look at it then.”

  Nola bit her lip. “Actually, can you ask if there’s any chance he could look at it today? I have a client coming tomorrow, and I need to know what to tell them.”

  Simpkins raised one eyebrow dubiously, and then took his hand away from the phone. “Actually, Jason, I know this is asking a lot,” he said, looking up to make sure we caught that. “She was wondering if she could bring it by today. It seems this is more urgent than I had realized.… Yes, I understand … I don’t know, Jason, that’s why we’re calling you.… It’s blue corn. It looks like maybe some kind of smut, but it’s only affecting isolated kernels, as if it was a pollination issue.… They’re kind of discolored, gray and bloated.… Okay, I’ll tell them. Thank you.” He scribbled on a piece of notepaper. “Yes, thanks again, I’ll think about that.”

  He hung up the phone and looked at Nola. “He can see you at his house, but he’s leaving in an hour, so you’ll need to get a move on.” He told us how to get there as he wrote Rupp’s address and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Nola.

  She glanced away, not meeting his eyes as she took it. “Thanks, Jerry.”

  He stared at her, aware of her averted gaze, and he smiled sadly. “My pleasure.”

  18

  Back in the car, Nola seemed pensive. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the encounter with Simpkins or the problem with the corn. She handed me the paper with Rupp’s address and I drove as fast as I dared, my previous run-in with the local authorities still fresh in my mind.

  Once we got onto the main road, the silence stretched out enough that I had to say something.

  “So, I’m perfectly fine going to see this guy right now. It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do. But why is it so important that we see him right now?”

  “Because the caterer is coming tomorrow, and I need to be able to tell them what’s wrong with the corn. I need to know if this is something I can cut around and use the rest. Is it something that can spread to my other crops? I need to know what I’m up against. Plus there are contractual aspects. Some things I’m not liable for, some things I am.”

  “And this blue corn, they can’t get it anywhere else?”

  “Not at this point. I doubt it.”

  “Maybe something just like it.”

  She sighed deeply, like she was talking to an idiot, like she was trying not to get annoyed but her efforts would not succeed indefinitely. “You don’t understand. The bride was very specific. She chose this particular strain of corn to match the bridesmaids’ gowns. The entire meal is going to be blue: The cake is blue, the pork medallions glazed in blueberry, the champagne will have a few drops of blue Curacao. It might be beautiful. It might be tacky as hell. But it will be very blue, and it will be very hard to replace at the last minute.”

  “Well, maybe they can—”

  “No,” she cut me off, “they can’t. Look, I appreciate your help. I do. And I know you’re just trying to help some more, but you really just don’t understand.”

  I’ve been single a lot more than I haven’t been, but one thing I know about women is that when they say you just don’t understand, any attempt to convince them otherwise simply proves their point. Instead, I looked straight ahead as I drove, kept my Smurf jokes to myself, and tried not to do or say anything to make matters worse, like telling her what I really thought—that this was a fool’s errand and that no matter what the guy said, she was screwed.

  * * *

  As we drove, Nola’s silence turned from stressed to exhausted. Before long, she let out a soft sigh and her head pressed against the window, near the smudge Moose’s head had left. I leaned forward to see if she was asleep, and looked back just in time to swerve out of the way of a black Saab coming at us way too fast and drifting into our lane. It had tinted windows, gold trim, and fat tires, but what stuck out in my mind was the face in the backseat, looking out the open window as it passed us.

  He had curly dark hair and a single eyebrow. Apart from that there wasn’t much memorable about it, except for the fact that I remembered it. In my line of work if you remember some
one’s face, they’re probably either a cop or they’re something bad. This guy was not a cop.

  “What?” Nola asked, sitting up and blinking as I straightened out the car.

  “Nothing,” I said, finishing my turn. “Guy was going pretty fast.”

  She mumbled something about young kids driving too fast on country roads, but my mind was somewhere else, flicking through the mug shot book in my head, trying to place that face.

  A few minutes later, she was asleep. I called Danny Tennison.

  “About five years ago,” I started, as soon as he picked up. “You and Ralph Ritchie took down some dumbass in an ice-cream truck in Port Richmond. Real badass, thought he was cool selling crack in the bottom of ice-cream cones.”

  He laughed. “Mr. Softee we called him. Yeah, I remember. Ugly kid with a unibrow. Why?”

  “I think I just saw him up here.”

  “Mr. Softee? Nah, he got like ten years, remember? Fought a little bit when we picked him up.”

  “Can you check?”

  “Dude.”

  “Just check.”

  “Do you have cable up there? ’Cause you can get a satellite dish, if that’s the problem. Even just for twenty days, it’d be worth it.”

  “I’ll look into that.”

  “You could probably even get one of those intro deals, first month free or something.…”

  He was still talking when I put the phone back into my pocket.

  19

  Jason Rupp lived in a small, nondescript, wooden ranch house. Apart from a shiny black Mustang looking out of place parked out front, there was nothing decorative at all: no window boxes, no shutters, no sign posts, no garden, no welcome mat, no lamppost. Nothing. Actually, it was probably what the outside of my place would look like if I didn’t rent an apartment.

  Nola woke with a start when I killed the engine. “Are we there?” she asked, looking out the window.

  She took a moment to collect herself, then we got out. She cleared her throat and pressed the doorbell.

  A voice from inside yelled, “Come on in.”

  The inside of the house was as spare as the outside, but it was clean, with modern furniture, a massive TV, and an elaborate computer workstation. Sitting on the computer chair, bending over as he pulled on a pair of socks, was a chubby guy with pale skin, frizzy brown hair, and bushy, uneven sideburns.

  He paused between socks and looked up at us. “Hey.”

  Nola cleared her throat again. “Jason Rupp?”

  “Yeah.” He looked at her appraisingly, holding his breath as he pulled on the second sock. “Are you the corn lady?” He had a tiny trace of an accent or an affectation, like he was from the same country as Madonna and Tina Turner.

  Nola smiled nervously and held up the bag.

  Rupp put out his hand and wiggled his fingers. As she crossed the room to bring him the bag, he glanced over at me. “Who’s he?”

  I thought about throwing out my own cheesy accent, and the phrase “I’m your worst nightmare” came to mind, but Nola was asking for a favor, so I didn’t.

  Maybe she sensed my temptation, because she quickly said, “He’s my friend Doyle. He drove me here.”

  Rupp looked back at me, lingering suspiciously for a moment before glancing at the bag. When he looked back up at Nola, he paused and smiled as if he was actually seeing her for the first time. “So you’re a horticulturist, huh? Are you one of Jerry’s kids?”

  “At Pine Crest?”

  He nodded.

  She smiled. “Oh, no.”

  “No?” He sat back, looking at her again, ignoring the bag. “So how do you know him?”

  “He was a grad student when I was a senior at Cornell. He was one of my teaching assistants.”

  “Cornell, huh? Good program.”

  “Yes, it was great. How about you?”

  He paused, and his expression soured. “Pine Crest, briefly. Then Penn State, and grad school at MIT.” He paused again like he was thinking or making a decision. “So now you’re a farmer?”

  “That’s right.”

  He looked her slowly up and down. “You don’t look like a farmer.”

  I couldn’t argue with his conclusion, but I wasn’t crazy about his methodology. Still, this was Nola’s show. And my previous attempts at chivalry hadn’t gone so well.

  “Where’s your farm?”

  “In Dunston. On Bayberry, just up from Valley Road.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “You didn’t sell?”

  She shook her head and smiled. “No, so far I’ve been able to resist all the pressure.”

  “Pressure? What kind of pressure?”

  I think she may have blushed. “Oh, nothing. I’ve gotten some calls, that’s all. But I’m staying.”

  “Calls? Like what?”

  “Nothing, just hang-ups, but—”

  “You probably could have made a lot of money selling.”

  “If I was in it for the money, I wouldn’t be farming.”

  He smiled as if he thought that was cute. “Good for you.”

  I would have wanted to smack him—hell, I did want to smack him—but Nola just smiled nervously and looked down at the bag with the corn.

  Rupp’s eyes lingered on her for another second. Then he pulled the bag closer and flattened it out so he could see it better. He turned on a desk lamp and grunted.

  Nola leaned closer. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said abruptly, shaking his head. “This corn is not well.”

  “I know. I thought at first it might be some sort of weird smut,” she explained, nervously rubbing her fingers, “but the way it only affects certain kernels, I thought it had to be some sort of cross-pollination issue, only there’s no other corn nearby.”

  He looked up at her with an unpleasant smile, his condescension now undiluted with any effort to charm. “Cross-pollination?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “And Jerry agreed that—”

  “Cross-pollination with what?”

  “Well, I, I…” Nola stammered. “What do you mean?”

  “Look at these kernels. They are obviously diseased. With what, I don’t know, but something. There are so many different types of smut. There are wilts, kernel rots. I can’t say for sure.”

  “But Jerry said—”

  “Jerry said what?”

  “That it looked like a genetic issue, too. Look at how—”

  Rupp waved his hand dismissively. “Everybody thinks everything is genetic these days. Look, the simple fact is that there are thousands of bacteria and viruses and fungi out there, all of them waiting for a chance to infect a host, for a weakness they can exploit—too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy, whatever.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Why did Simpkins tell you to ask me about this?”

  “Why? Well … he said you’re an expert.”

  “Exactly. More of an expert than him, that’s for sure.” He snorted. “If he were an expert, he wouldn’t be teaching at Pine Crest, would he?”

  Nola’s mouth hung open.

  Rupp paused for a moment. “Look, I have to get going. If you’d like, I can examine this more closely.” He looked up at her again, up and down, a bit of the leer returning to his smile. “Maybe we could meet in a couple of days, discuss it over coffee.”

  “Well, um, actually, I need it asap. I have a client coming up to check on it tomorrow. Maybe I should just take it to the county agent. If it is some rare disease, the Department of Agriculture is going to—”

  Rupp laughed, shaking his head. “Look, I can tell you just by looking at it, this is diseased. But I’ll look into it. Give me your number, and if I can find out anything more about it, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Nola gave Rupp her card and moments later we were standing out on the front step with Rupp’s front door closed firmly behind us.

  20

  “What a putz,” I said as we got into the car.

  Nola s
hook her head. “Academia is filled with that type. I so don’t miss them.”

  Rupp was indeed a putz, but he had become noticeably more so halfway through the conversation, and I hadn’t said a single word. Maybe I no longer needed to speak to have that effect on people, or maybe it was something else. Usually, when I get that reaction, it’s a reaction I am trying to get. If we had been asking about anything other than corn smut, I would have thought Rupp was acting as if his cage had just been rattled.

  When we got back to the house, Moose was sitting on the steps, right where we’d left him.

  “Did you find anything out?” he asked as we got out of the car.

  Nola sighed as she walked up to him. “Probably some sort of smut. We might know more tomorrow. Simpkins sent us to another guy, Jason Rupp. He said he would try to study it tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Hmm. You want to know what I found out?”

  “Actually, Moose,” she said, “I think I want to go inside and take a bath.”

  He held up another big plastic Ziploc bag. Inside it were half a dozen stripped ears of corn. Instead of a sprinkling of bloated grey kernels, these ears were composed entirely of them, swollen and baggy and sickly and misshapen. “I found an entire field of this stuff growing next door.”

  Nola rushed over and took the bag from him, studying it closely. “Where?”

  “Next door.”

  “You went in there? How did you know?”

  “Because I’m a genius.”

  We followed Moose across the street, through Nola’s tomato and herb patch, past the blue corn, to the split-rail fence that separated her property from the adjacent land. Just past the fence was a massive wall of dense green foliage, twenty feet high.

  “Siberian elm,” Nola said, looking up at it. “It’s amazing how big those trees have grown in two years.”

  “They planted that two years ago?” I asked.