Lethal Discoveries

by Erica Pensini

  “What’s up?”, I asked

  “I figured the police is investigating about the deaths at the NY cancer center hospital…some information leaked, and I heard from unofficial sources that the cross cancer institute is also under investigation. Now I know for a fact that there is a suspicious collaboration between the two institutes just as I expected all along, although I am missing many details and I haven’t pinned down any name yet. I tried to find the names you gave me, those Sandeep and Wilhelm guys, to know if they were involved in any collaborative project with the NY cancer institute but I couldn’t find them. The investigation is ongoing and the police is trying to keep it strictly confidential, don’t you worry though, just give me a bit more time and I’ll get there!”, Christine spoke without pauses, with a radiant, high-pitch of confidence in her voice, till she realized I wasn’t saying a word, not even humming in assent.

  “Are you still there?”, she asked

  “Yes…”, I said, feeling the fear gush from my lower stomach to my stern

  “Are you ok?”

  “I got out of the hospital this morning, someone tried to kill us”, I said quietly

  “What?!”, Christine almost yelled

  I told her what happened, and as I described the events, stating them out loud, I felt the fear flow out of me a bit at a time. Suddenly it all seemed so theatrical and unreal, as if it wasn’t happening to me but to a character I had read about and in which I was identifying myself during a dream or a daytime phantasy. And tomorrow I was flying out to Milan.

  “Tomorrow I am flying to Milan”, I heard myself say, as if watching myself from the outside

  Another stupefied reaction, almost shouted from the other end of the line, and again my explanation, the feeling of a surreal setting dwelling within me, the walls of my home oddly transforming, becoming known and unknown at once, as I ran my eyes across the room.

  Then I saw Jack stand at the bathroom’s door, towel wrapped around his waist, eyebrows arched, an ironic smile twisting his lips. I turned my palms upwards to mean “not my fault if she’s asking”, and he smiled again, shaking his head.

  “Ok Christine, I have to finish packing now…I’ll call you when I am back”, I said, brought back to reality by Jack’s skeptically amused expression

  “Why were you laughing?”, I said after I hang up

  “Laughing?”, he asked, laugher cracking the simulated expression of innocent perplexity

  “Well, you looked funny, as if you were acting in a Hitchcock movie or something”, he admitted after a pause

  “But that’s how I felt in a way…Christine told me she is sure that there is something going on between the cross cancer institute and the NY cancer institute, and the police is investigating. I wonder if Mariam Avery is involved but didn’t say…”

  “What about dinner and a good night sleep before tomorrow?”, Jack said instead of following up on my thoughts

  “Ehm uhm”, I nodded, and let Jack guide me through this strange night

  Chapter 60

  The next day we took off for Milan and twenty hours later we poked the clouds and began circling over the city, dense with brick-tiled roofs, churches, streets arranged in circular patterns, life swarming in the moist heat of this northern Italian morning, and finally we landed at Malpensa airport. I was nauseous with stuffy air in my lungs and bitter corporate airline coffee in my stomach, legs crumpled, head spinning from the broken sleep and yet electrified, waves of happiness and curiosity and excitement pulsing inside me, moving me on in spite of the physical exhaustion. Smell of coffee, richly fragrant, smell of croissants, people with stronger fragrances and more elegant outfits than what I was used to, words exchanged, rounded, intense and flirtatious or spicy with irritation, always lacking the cool quality of the English language.

  It was almost noon by the time we passed through the customs and picked up our luggage. We figured there was a train shuttle that could bring us straight to the center of the city, but then we thought we would struggle to find our way to the hotel, with the luggage in our way and tired as we were. There was a line of white taxis at the exit, and we picked one, a European car I had never seen before in the States. It looked good, and I thought that I would have liked to drive one of the same make, but black.

  “Where are you going?”, asked the taxi driver, his thick Italian accent marking the English words

  We handed him the printout of where the hotel was, he had a brief look, handed it back to us and nodded.

  We drove in silence for a while, crossing the outskirts of the towns, still far from the city, asphalt and fields around us. I looked at the cars passing us by, most of them unknown to me, most of them small.

  “Do you know a good place to have lunch?”, I asked after a while

  “Your hotel is in the center. There are many restaurants, you can pick”, he said accompanying the explanation with a contained gest, before returning his hand on the steering wheel.

  I nodded, and we were silent again. I would have imagined Italians to be more talkative, but was I being stereotypical? Although my ancestors had been Italian I was American down to the bone, but with high expectations and earnest excitement to know about my forgotten heritage. I imagined to be very much Italian, the way second or third generation kids of Italian immigrants do, with a national pride that Italians born and raised in Italy don’t have.

  After driving for a stretch of time the city buildings began to appear, tall modern constructions of grey concrete, paper ads glued on large boards displaying food, bikinis, tropical beaches, invitations to eat, buy, pack up and go written with words I could guess from the pictures rather than understand, and tunnels lit with orange lights, graffiti, graffiti everywhere, scribbled in impossible spots where I would have bet nobody could get, bold and rudely outspoken in the summer air of the city, thick with heat and humidity.

  Then the streets got smaller, the buildings older and not as tall, concrete giants giving way to brick facades, the plaster crackled here and there painted with light pink or yellow or faded white, and I began seeing shops, many of them, bread shops, coffee shops and tiny grocery shops where old ladies walked in and out, very decent in their pressed shirts and skirts, carrying bags or dragging shopping carts, moms with their kids, ice-creams melting in their hands, scooters zig-zagging around the streets, adults driving, teenagers driving with their sweethearts clinging onto them on the passenger seat.

  “I like this!”, I exclaimed, taking it all in from the window

  Jack smiled tiredly and squeezed my hand.

  “We are not far from your hotel”, the taxi driver said looking at me through the mirror

  I nodded, grinning, and began looking out the window again.

  As we drove the atmosphere transitioned gradually from rustically urban to classy, and five minutes later we were surrounded by marble facades and precious small shops, the wheels of our taxy jerking on the broad stones blocks of the paving, cut by trails on which fashionably démodé orange streetcars made their way, slowly but surely.

  “Look!”, I told Jack, pointing at a building with flowery balconies, bright in its antiquity against the hot blueness of the sky.

  “This is Via Manzoni, we are very close to your hotel”, the taxi driver informed us

  “I love this area!”, I exclaimed

  “Can we go for a walk later?”, I asked Jack, infantine notes resounding in the joyful eagerness of my voice

  “Sure”, said Jack, fascinated himself now in spite of the tiredness, my excitement pouring into him as the beauty of the city unravelled at each turn of our cab.

  Few moments later the taxi driver stopped in front of our hotel. It looked smaller than on the picture posted on the booking site, and I thought it was better that way. We paid for the ride, and I was stunned at how expensive our trip had been, but was too happy and strained from travelling to worry about it.

  There was a very Italian looking man standing under a cantilever roof to greet new
hosts. He nodded slightly as he saw us and opened the door, as detached as the cab driver had been. But then we found a plump girl at the reception, who spoke pushing back her curly hair, smiling and gesturing generously as she spoke.

  “I can give you a map later if you want, I can tell you which places to go see”, she told us as she handed us a key chained to a massive metal key holder, which must have weighted half a pound.

  Our room had the touch of stuffiness of old things, but the overlapping smells of linen and detergents conferred a cheerfully airy flavour to the place once we opened the window, letting the sounds of the streets spill in and animate the stillness of the room.

  We arranged our clothing in the closets, showered hastily and out we went again, Jack wanting food, and me wanting the thrill of the novelty from the ancient city of my ancestors. We had about four hours before we would meet Dr. Mori about the polymer business, which at that moment seemed further than an ocean and a day away from me.

  Chapter 61

  We jumped on one of the orange streetcars I had noticed while riding in the cab to the hotel, which brought up close to the square dominated by the Duomo – the Dome, the symbol of the city as the girl at the hotel told us, is an ornate cathedral, with a foamy façade protruding towards the sky, its white pinnacles tending themselves towards white clouds with playful lightness.

  We walked around till we found a pizzeria in a side street, close to Duomo’s square and yet concealed, strangely quiet compared to the porticos running along the streets irradiating from the square, where flows of people slowly dragged from one fashion shop to the next, going in and out, bags, ice-creams and granitas in their hands, indolent in the intensity of the summer heat.

  We ate our pizzas voraciously, not so much because we were hungry, but because the crust was thin and the mozzarella had a soft creamy taste and the tomato sauce was mouth-watering, and the whole restaurant had a marvellous smell of stone-oven baked pizzas that made one long for food. It was only when we had swiped our dishes clean that we realized we had too much and too fast, and when we stepped outside on a full belly the hot day seemed hotter and the tiredness from the trip plunged in heavily, making us dizzy with drowsiness. We had a coffee, creamy and fragrant, served by a barrister in a white uniform, a tie around his neck.

  “Prego”, he said, placing two small chocolates on the dishes holding our small porcelain espresso cups.

  The price was 80 eurocents per coffee, something like a dollar, and I couldn’t believe it. La dolce vita…life was good here, or at least so it seemed to my American tourist eyes.

  The hours flowed mellifluously as we unhurriedly lingered in the streets around Duomo’s square, and 4 pm came too early. I had plunged into a timeless dimension, and the realization we had to get on a streetcar again to reach Mori’s research institute impinged on me like needle inexplicably hidden in the soft folds of clean bed linens.

  “But really? Is it 4 pm already?”, I asked plaintively when Jack looked at his watch and said it was time for us to get going

  “If you ask me I have no drive to meet Mori now, but what can we do?”, said Jack pinching my cheek the way adults do with kids

  And so we headed to the streetcar, hands laced, romantically heading to discuss the potentially lethal effects of a compound I synthesized as a game, gambling with chemistry in the mint-whiteness of certified corporate labs.

  Chapter 62

  Mori’s office was a spacious room with two large windows, but dimmed by old metal blinds of the economical type. There was a controlled disorder in the room, with piles of papers and books stacked according to some logic, and yet misaligned. And there were objects of all sorts sprawled on the grey metal cabinets and the shelves, some models of the human body, some small clay sculptures and a toy, a fabric multi-coloured turtle. And there were pictures on the wall, photos of Mori with a woman, Mori holding a kid by hand, Mori in his bathing suit, grinning with a drink in his hand. There were posters and prints of modern paintings, and childish drawings, probably sketched by the kid in the picture, his child.

  “I love your office”, I said, after landscaping the room, bluntly and thoroughly, without trying to conceal my curiosity in any way

  Mori laid his gaze on me, dark and sharp through the rounded black-rimmed spectacles, and smiled. The smile was balanced, detached and enigmatic almost, its coolness an oxymoron with the charcoal intensity of his eyes. His dark-brown hair fell softly on his squared face, above the jaw, framing the slightly bloated cheeks.

  “Thank you”, he said after a moment

  “Thank you for having me here. I haven’t told you about the last episodes, but the situation has slipped out of my hands”

  He waited for me to continue, without changing expression, with the same burning attentive gaze in his eyes. I told him about the “accident”, and the hospital and all the rest, wondering if I was pushing myself too far and yet unable to stop at this point.

  When I finished my account he said, “If you bring your sample tomorrow we can test it on some cells. After we obtain some preliminary results we can run further tests on some human organs. We are able to reproduce organs starting off from human cells, it’s still a pilot study but it is promising. Testing substances on animals has limited scientific validity when you think about the differences between species. From a scientific standpoint, extrapolating information from animals to humans is a meaningless exercise”

  Curt sentences and confidence, a life ethics implied seamlessly in Mori’s scientific choices, stated with a calm that left no room for discussion. I felt small and safe in front of this man, and I loved him for letting me uncoil, for showing me that I got it all wrong but that I could still have some faith in this world.

  Chapter 63

  “Mori looks like a good man”, I said as we walked away from the Molecular Research center

  “He does, but you should have some reserves the first time you meet someone. You told the guy everything about what happened, and you don’t really know who he is. I would have kept it simple, science-related, but after all it doesn’t matter”, Jack replied with a shrug

  “Yeah…”

  “What about trying this area for dinner?”, Jack said producing the map we got from the hotel, and pointing at an area around which the girl at the front desk had hastily sketched a circle, shooting an arrow pointing to its name scribbled in capital letters “Navigli”.

  “Navigli are canals, you can have a good lunch or dinner there!”, she had said with her simple, thickly accented English.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking!”, I said, a high pitch of excitement peaking midway through the sentence, making Jack laugh a hearty laugh

  “But can we also go have an aperitif in the other place she told us about?”, I said

  “Who told us to go where?”

  “The girl at the hotel…she said Corso…corso...let me see”, I said, tugging the map from Jack’s hands to find the place

  “Aha! Corso Como, here!”, I said, pointing at the street the name of which had eluded me

  “All of this tonight? Aren’t you a bit tired?”

  “Ehm…”, I said pouting, and then, “We don’t have to”, my pout breaking into a smile

  “Let’s go to Corso Como”, Jack replied, shaking his head and leading me to the streetcar’s stop, pushing me by the elbow, sliding amused glances to the mischievously happy curiosity of my face

  Chapter 64

  Our streetcar left us close to Corso Garibaldi, from which, based on our map, we could reach Corso Como in a short while. Corso Garibaldi had a more selectively chic population compared to the areas immediately adjacent to Duomo’s square, and although vivid it had a touch of the quiet flavour typical of residential areas. I walked lightly, dancing my feet in playful moves every now and then, mesmerized by the colourful melody of the shops’ glasses, with their displays of elegantly exotic clothing, flowers, classy bicycles, cakes and cookies, and other objects, all of which,
even ordinary ones, had an unordinary taste to them. But above all, it was an ice-cream shop that attracted my attention. The bottom part of the glass was satin, with flowers decorated on it, while the top was transparent and I could see the lady dressing a cone for an eager kid, a smile on her face as she carefully placed a third scoop of chocolate on top of what looked like cream and pistachio.

  The view of the kid’s cone and of the tasty palette of ice-cream colours made my mouth water and I said, “Let’s go in!”, dragging Jack by the arm. And yet there was something disturbing about the ice-cream shop, although I couldn’t pin it down.

  Jack noticed the initial eagerness, and then the doubt alternating lights and shades on my expression, and looked at me curiously, “Are you sure you want it or are you simply set on taking it all in, no matter what?”

  “I don’t know…the ice-cream looks good, no?”

  “Sure, let’s go for it”, Jack said, still observing me as we opened the door of the shop

  We stepped in the shop just as the kid was walking out, lapping on his cone happily, eyes crossed by looking at it from a close distance. The place was cool and sweetly scented. The lady smiled and said, “Un attimo solo”, raising her finger and walking away at the back. We figured she meant “One moment”, and were glad we were gaining some more time to decide since there were about 20 tastes of ice-cream among which we could choose from. I noticed there was a copper bell at the counter, one of those you see at the hotels, and its presence made me anxious for reasons I couldn’t yet define. I turned around, looking at the street, and caught a glance of a familiar face.

  Jack followed my gaze, “Everything ok?”, he asked and I shook my head no.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think I saw the cleaning lady…”, I replied faintly, almost in a whisper

  “Where?”

  “Out there…”, I said, trying to spot her, but she was gone already, so fast I was no longer sure about how much of what I had seen was real and how much of it was imagined

  “You mean the camouflaged cleaning lady who tried to shoot you?”, Jack frowned, and I nodded