Zodiac Page 26

  “Give up already?” he said, without turning around.

  For once, I got to surprise him. “No. We found him.”

  “Really? How is he?”

  “Leaking, but aware. I’m not sure what they’re going to charge him with.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Boone said. “They can’t call it attempted murder.”

  Kelvin stood there watching us, then decided not to clutter his mind with an explanation. “I have some ideas on this,” he said, sweeping his hand across the blackboards.

  “Shoot.”

  “First of all, have you been following the news?”

  “Look who’s asking,” I said. “You haven’t heard about Pleshy?”

  “Shit, we’ve been creating the news,” Boone said.

  “I mean the Boston news.” Kelvin picked up a Herald that was sprawled on his pool table and flipped it over to expose the full-page headline.

  HARBOR OF DEATH!

  MIT PROF: TOXIC MENACE COULD “DESTROY ALL LIFE”

  There was a picture of a heavy white man with his shirt off, showing a vicious case of chloracne.

  “So they know about the bug,” I said.

  “Not exactly,” Kelvin said. “A lot of people know of it, but it’s not mentioned in there.” He nodded at the Herald. “And in the Globe, as you might guess, it’s just a farfetched speculation. Everyone thinks it’s just a toxic waste spill.”

  “So why do they say that it could destroy all life?”

  “To sell papers. If you read the article, you’ll find that the quote was taken out of context. The MIT prof said it could destroy all life in Boston Harbor that happened to eat a large amount of it.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Boone said. “That’s fine, from our point of view. We don’t have to beg the media to cover it. The news is out.

  Kelvin agreed. “It’s really only a matter of time before the whole thing is exposed.”

  “Publicizing it isn’t that important,” I added. “The catastrophe’s still going on. That’s what we should worry about. Publicity doesn’t kill the bug.”

  “Is that really you talking?” Boone said. “How do we kill the bug, Kelvin?”

  “The chlorine-converting bug is an obligate anaerobe—” Kelvin said, then added for Boone’s benefit, “—that means it has to live in an environment with no air in it.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said. “There’s oxygen dissolved in the water. It wouldn’t survive.”

  “Exactly. So they didn’t make just the one bug. They made two of them. The other is an aerobe—it has to have some air to survive. Its metabolism doesn’t hurt anything—it just uses lots of oxygen and creates a locally oxygen-poor region where its salt-eating buddy can live. The killer bug is a parasite on the aerobe. Or symbiotic, or one of those terms—I hate biology.”

  “Look, I know I’m no expert here,” Boone said, “but every environmentalist knows that a lot of water doesn’t have any air dissolved in it. Right? Polluted water, anything that’s got undecayed garbage or shit in it, doesn’t have air.”

  “Right,” Kelvin said, “because the organisms that break those things down use up all the air in the process. The more sewage there is in the water—that is, the higher the Biochemical Oxygen Demand—the less oxygen is present. When Dolmacher and company designed this bug, they had a simulated ocean environment for it to work in. They probably used something like an aquarium full of aerated seawater. The symbiosis worked just fine in that environment.

  “It didn’t occur to them that this pair of bugs might end up in an environment in which there wasn’t any air. They probably weren’t thinking of using it in a totally uncontrolled fashion, around raw sewage—or if they were, they didn’t think about the BOD. Even if they were aware of that problem, it didn’t matter because management got to the bug before they could test it in that situation. It was released into the Harbor.”

  “Into a part of the Harbor where there ain’t no dissolved oxygen—because of all the raw sewage,” I said.

  “And Spectacle Island. That’s got to be one big oxygen-sucker,” Boone said.

  Kelvin nodded. “Which means that in those bad parts of the Harbor, most of the aerobes are dead. Nothing to breathe. But the chlorine bugs, the ones we’re worried about, did fine, because they didn’t need the aerobes—in that particular situation. But if a lot of oxygen were injected into their environment, they’d all die.”

  “So if the contaminated parts of the Harbor can be oxygenated, the bugs die,” Boone said.

  “How do you propose we oxygenate whole, big patches of the Harbor floor? Get a shitload of aquarium bubblers?” I said. I was tired and I was wired. I was pissed and bouncing off the walls. Kelvin just stood there and took it calmly.

  “Ozone. They use it at the sewage treatment plant. Put it on boats. Run tubes from the ozone supply down to the Harbor floor. Bubble the ozone through the sludge. GEE can’t do it, it’ll take a big governmental effort, but it can be done. The Harbor will stink like a privy for a few weeks, but when it’s done, the bugs will be gone.”

  We enjoyed a moment of golden silence. Boone said, “Not much for us to do, then, is there?”

  Kelvin shrugged. “There doesn’t have to be. In this case, the governmental machinery might actually work.”

  Boone and I looked at each other and laughed.

  “Kelvin,” Boone said, “they can’t even handle sewage treatment.”

  “Couple of days ago I called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,” Kelvin said. “This was after Dolmacher had told me everything. I got through to one of their investigators. He’d heard all about this epidemic of chloracne in Boston. The local hospitals had already noticed it, especially City Hospital. So I explained the whole thing to them, about the genetically engineered bug.”

  I’m an asshole, I do it for a living, so this shouldn’t surprise anyone: in a way, I resented Kelvin for this. He knew everything before I did. And he’d made the right phone call. I never thought of calling the Centers for Disease Control. He’d probably saved a lot of people. The real reason was probably this: I wouldn’t have the chance to make the Big Revelation, to call the press and inform them, to be the ecoprophet.

  “Every doctor on the Bay knows about it now. They’ve been treating it with activated charcoal—in gastric lavage and enemas—and with trimethoprim. And they just put out an alert late last night, not to eat any fish from the Harbor. That’s what inspired those headlines.”

  “Doctors can’t put out that kind of alert.”

  “Right. You see, all the state authorities are aware of the problem now. They’re dealing with it. I already called them and told them about this oxygenation idea. I have the impression they’re working on it.”

  31

  Boone and I sat down to wait for our laundry to run through the dryer. Charlotte went out to get some coffee and when she came back into the room, found us out cold. We woke up about four hours later. Boone felt spry as a puppy and I felt like someone had stuffed a rancid lemon into my mouth and flogged me with a hawser.

  Kelvin gave us a ride down into Allston. When we walked into the Pearl, Hoa stared at me for a minute but he didn’t say anything. I guess a Vietnamese refugee has seen it all. He recognized Boone, too, as the gentleman who’d brought in the message yesterday. Bard had received it, and he’d left a response: meet me at the Arsenal some day after work.

  It was after work now. I borrowed Hoa’s phone and called over there and asked for the long-haired guy covered with tire dust. The bartender knew exactly who I was talking about. “He just left,” he said. “He was here with his girl and they took off. I think they’re going to a concert. They were all decked out in leather.” That didn’t tell me much; they always looked that way.

  We hadn’t done any serious newspaper reading in a couple of days and, as Kelvin had pointed out, we were way behind on our current events. So I went down the street to a vending machine. I was feeling impatient so I made my
self get up and jog, and about halfway there decided I wasn’t sick, just stiff and tired. The trip to the emergency room hadn’t been a waste of time.

  When I went through my pockets looking for change, I found seventy or eighty bucks in cash. Kelvin and Charlotte had made a donation to the domestic terrorism fund. But there weren’t any quarters, so I jogged another block to a convenience store and bought my paper there.

  They had a TV going behind the counter, showing the seven o’clock news, and that was my first chance to see Boone’s performance on TV. I couldn’t hear the sound track, but when they flashed Boone’s picture up over the anchorwoman’s shoulder, they had him labeled as “Winchester.” So nobody had recognized him. That was probably good, though I didn’t really know if it mattered. They spent a while on Boone and Pleshy, then moved onward to Dolmacher, showing a police cordon around his house, and a closet shot of Bathtub Man being hauled out in a sack.

  Then it was Dolmacher’s picture, stolen from a frame of the videotape, above the anchorwoman’s shoulder. Why don’t anchor-people ever turn around and look at this parade of mugs behind them? I insisted that the Babylonian behind the counter turn up the sound.

  “… found a large number of photographs and documents on Dolmacher’s person which police and FBI agents are currently studying. While no official statement has been made, sources say that the information may be an attempt by Dolmacher to explain his reason for the bizarre assault.”

  The rest of the broadcast was about chloracne, and I didn’t bother to watch. I brought a Globe and a Herald back to Boone, who had set us up with some beers. He took the Herald, I took the Globe, and while we were scanning the columns and pouring back those frosty brews, I told him about the newscast and what Dolmacher had been up to.

  Boone was delighted. “You keep shitting on this guy, S.T., but he’s smarter than you give him credit for.”

  “Shit, no. He got the whole idea from me. From you and me. I tell you, Boone, he’s been following my career. If you want to get something covered in the media, do the loudest, most mediagenic thing you can and then you’ve got your platform.”

  “Pretty strange way of doing it. Shooting an ex-V.P.”

  “Pretty strange, hell. That’s Dolmacher’s way of doing it. He doesn’t even own a Zodiac.”

  “So maybe the guy’s not crazy.”

  “Let’s put it this way. He’s not irrational. I’ll lay you odds he never spends a day in jail.”

  “Maybe all the vital information is in there. The secret of how to kill the bug.”

  “You really think so?” God, what a thought. “You think Dolmacher’s that cool?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “But Kelvin is.”

  “Kelvin is. Kelvin can handle the bug. We’ve got to handle Pleshy. We’ve got to handle his ass. People need to know about this crime.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Spectacle Island. Tonight. I’ll lay you odds there are still some PCBs down under that barge. And plenty of bugs, too.”

  “All we have to do is hire a zeppelin to lift the barge off the evidence,” Boone said.

  “Just have to cut through the bottom of the barge. Or something. Have to go look at it first. Hell, it’s not going anywhere. We can take our time. Shit, I wonder what Laughlin was doing there?”

  “You never saw Laughlin on Spectacle Island, did you?”

  “No, but he had this brand new boat. And he was carrying a gun around in it. And he knew about the Pöyzen Böyzen-barge-Spectacle Island connection. I’ll bet you anything Laughlin’s been going out there regularly.”

  “Why? He can’t move the barge either.”

  “Basco put him in charge of Biotronics for one reason: to destroy the evidence under that barge. And he’s nothing if not effective. Ever hear of hands-on leadership? I think Laughlin must have read some books on the subject. So maybe he has a way of getting through the bottom of the barge, getting access to the shit down there.”

  We went through several beers before we thought about ordering food. I’d eaten enough at the Pearl to earn this privilege, and Hoa seemed to enjoy playing bartender for a change. As much as he enjoyed anything, that is. He was always cheerful but I was never sure if he was happy. Of course, happy is a concept for fat Americans. Immigrants don’t seem to care about happy very much. Healthy, wealthy and wise, yes, but happiness alone is something their children worry about, maybe. Now, the surly, toxic busboy, he was unhappy and wanted to do something about it. He didn’t seem to be around tonight.

  When we finally ordered some food, I asked Hoa about him. “Where’s the busboy?”

  He didn’t understand. Since he was obsessed with my bicycle, I tried a different tack. “The one who rides the scooter?”

  Hoa got serious for once, lost that fake pixie smile, and bent forward just a hair. “Very sick.”

  “Had a rash on his body and so on,” Boone suggested, rubbing his hand around on his chest.

  “We took him to the hospital and now they giving him medicine for it.”

  “Good, Hoa, they know exactly how to make it better.” Which probably sounded kind of patronizing. But the Vietnamese got a little weird about their medicine sometimes, tried to cure themselves by putting containers of boiling hot water on their backs and so on. Which might work with evil spirits but not with the particular type of possession that busboy had.

  “What, did he collapse at work, or something?” Boone said.

  Hoa didn’t understand.

  “You said, you took him to the hospital.”

  “My wife took him. That boy is Tim. Our son.”

  At which point Boone and I both felt like assholes, apologized and said all the things one says, wishing Tim well and so on. Hoa was unruffled. “He going to get better soon, then I bring him back here and work him nice and hard.”

  We hung out there, leafing through papers and planning our reentry into impolite society. Things had to be done in the right order. We had to get drunk, I had to get in touch with Debbie, we had to tie up some loose ends on this whole PCB business and then we could make some noise.

  Comics were entertainment and so what I had was the Entertainment section of the paper. They had a little advance-press article about a heavy-metal group that was playing a concert down at the Garden tonight: Pöyzen Böyzen. Unfortunately for Boone and me it was sold out. No Satanic rock for us tonight, but Bart and Amy were certainly in that number.

  Boone was sitting there, going through the fine-print pages. “Hey,” he said, “remember the Basco Explorer?”

  “Never had the pleasure. But I know about it.”

  “Big old freighter of theirs,” he said, wistfully. “They use it for ocean dumping, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Once we were harassing it out off the Grand Banks, and it dropped a big old drum full of black shit right into my Zode. A direct hit—snapped my keel. That was back before everything kind of turned sour.”

  “Back in your salad days. Boone, what is the reason for this mistyeyed crap about the Basco Explorer?”

  He showed me the back page of the Business section, the one with the bankruptcy notices and exchange rates. They run a column back there listing what ships are in port now, what’s coming in and going out. The Basco Explorer was going to be arriving in Everett tonight, coming in from the Basco plant in Jersey and probably going to their main Everett plant.

  “That’s pretty routine,” I said. “It’s almost like the Eastern Shuttle. It’s always transferring crap back and forth.”

  “You don’t think this might have anything to do with the bug?”

  “Unless it’s full of trimethoprim, no. I mean, what good would it do them to have the ship there? Use it for Pleshy’s escape vessel?”

  He shrugged. “I just thought it was an interesting coincidence.”

  Hoa brought our food, and we hovered, moaning with delight and breathing through our noses. Once Hoa saw
the way we were chowing on this stuff, he turned away and didn’t show up again until we were picking through the steamed rice.

  “You talking about Basco?” he said.

  “Yeah, Hoa, you familiar with them?”

  “This is the company that poison Harbor?”

  “We think so. Hell, we know so.”

  Hoa took the unheard-of liberty of pulling up a chair. He looked around the room kind of melodramatically. It would be melodramatic for an American, anyway. Hoa had spent six years in a reeducation camp in Vietnam and had led three escape attempts. This wasn’t melodramatic for him.

  “What you going to do?” he said.

  “Go to the Harbor; get evidence against Laughlin. I mean Pleshy. Pleshy and the, uh, man who works for him.”

  “You think Basco—Pleshy—going to be punished? He should go to jail for long time, man!”

  It was a little odd to hear this from Hoa. Hoa was a right-winger and I couldn’t blame him. He had no respect at all for antiwar types. He thought the U.S. should have stayed in his country.

  I was remembering an old black-and-white photo of Pleshy, in Vietnam, back when he was the world’s leading exponent of chemical warfare, before the Sovs and the Iraqis took over the business. In my patronizing way, I hadn’t imagined that Hoa was much into politics, or that he’d be aware of who the hell Alvin Pleshy was. That idea was dispelled by the way he pronounced Pleshy’s name, the look in his eyes when he asked.