End Time (25 page)

The Baltimore papers are very indignant to the action of our Board of Health in subjecting to detention at Quarantine all vessels arriving here in New York from that city.

Guy could hear Lauren's breathing; this wasn't any fun anymore. Then on September 20:
REPORTED YELLOW FEVER AT FAIR HAVEN, CT.

New-Haven, Wednesday Sept 19, A telegraphic dispatch has been published in some southern papers stating that three cases of Yellow Fever have occurred at Fair Haven. This is untrue, and the only foundation for it is the fact that a lady who arrived there recently from the South died suddenly of something akin to Yellow Fever.

Guy and Lauren sat back from where they huddled over the PC screen, slightly nauseated. Fair Haven, just north of New Haven. That was only twenty-five miles away! An easy afternoon's buggy ride. Maybe an hour on the train. Right next door!

Died suddenly? Something akin? Akin? Who the hell back then could tell what the poor lady succumbed to? Yellow fever, a stroke, a tooth infection? To make matters worse, Lauren clicked on symptoms: high fever, chills, vomiting, and backache. After a brief recovery period, the infection often led to shock, bleeding, kidney and liver failure. Jaundice, yellow skin, yellow eyes. Why they called it
Yellow Jack
. Then black vomit on account of the presence of blood in the—heck, just about everywhere you could name.

Guy muttered, “Black vomit—that's nasty.”

A mosquito let into the house by accident floated dreamily over the PC screen, hovered for a few moments, and thrummed off. After all this yellow fever panic, the humming of an innocent mosquito was simply too much to bear. Lauren leapt from the desk, lost it in a bar of light, then caught it at the French doors, where she managed to slap it dead. A splat of blood on the glass. “Ick.”

Guy wondered for a moment whether this was going to be the last time they saw the girl by the stairs, whether they'd exorcised her spirit or whether she had more to show them. And poor Eleanor sitting in the psych hospital in her nice room flitted into his head, and that silly ditty:
The ants go marching one by—

As if reading his thoughts, Lauren said, “I don't know. But I want to visit Eleanor and tell her what we saw. She always knew about family history, which is why I think she was upset when Auntie Whitcomb gave us the house. I never cared as much.”

She paused to stare at the den's flat-screen television; the DVR box had gotten into the habit of turning itself on at strange times. This time the channels were flashing zippity-zip. That tall fellow in the top hat and tails appeared picture-in-picture, holding a TV remote and furiously clicking away as if he were in control of the whole device, flashing one scene of depravity and destruction after another.

“Guy, sweetheart, will you turn that idiot off! He's everywhere.”

 

13

I've Been Everywhere, Man

The long kitchen in the lower reaches of the Grand Hyatt was a frantic syncopated dance—a cross between Leni Riefenstahl's
Triumph of the Will
and the flaming spectacle of a medieval auto-da-fé with slabs of meat and fish instead of burning heretics. A double aisle of stainless-steel sinks and preparation counters surrounded a long center island of flaming ranges and vent hoods. Two dozen hands, flipping, turning, slicin-'n'-dicin' under a cacophony of shouted orders: “Crème brûlée! Tournedos!” and bells going off
ding-ding-ding
as orders came due and uniformed waiters rolled carts through swinging double doors.

The whole get-a-job thing went exactly as Mr. Piper had said it would. Not without a few ruffled feathers, but that was to be expected. Mama Whore and Dimples applied for and were offered positions at the hotel—Dimples on kitchen staff and the Ho' in housekeeping, then waitressing in the evening. Between making food, making beds, and delivering room service the two had the run of the whole place.

Dalekto seemed to have a peculiar effect on them: The cobwebs of the past were brushed aside; they saw things clearly; they mastered the learned skill of absorbing information and giving it back on demand. Showing up on time, bathed, clothes pressed, the two skanks quickly mastered the social niceties of working around relative strangers—doing the job, lots of
please
s and
thank-you
s. Dimples got his tooth fixed, looked good in his kitchen whites, black-checked pants, and Mama Whore took on the guise of a naughty jailhouse matron in her housekeeper uniform. She gained a few pounds with regular eating and lost ten years in the process.

The ruffled feathers came from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 6 shop steward, a grizzled little woman who kept a small cubbyhole of an office off the kitchen. Like so many in life she didn't like upstarts and newcomers having the way of a place she had taken so long to bring under her own control.

So when she saw Dimples lending an extra helping hand with the sous chefs, or his woman folding towels in the laundry that were assigned to someone else, the tin-hat bureaucrat went on red alert. Waiting like some kind of weasel in the straw, she bided her time till she could really get them on something, staking out the long hallway outside the kitchen, peeking over the stacked produce boxes, skulking around the barrels of MSG or behind the tall racks of fresh silverware and crockery.

A dedicated lurker in the maze of modern kitchen chrome, the grizzled union hag got them on Dalekto, spotting Dimples doing the hand-and-cash switch in the long hallway between the kitchen and the elevators. She sidled up to him afterward with a self-satisfied, “Ahhh … so, Handsome, is this your version of motivational therapy?” Clearly not a reprimand—more like putting Dimples on notice.

Luckily, Mama Ho' was on hand to defend her man; long ago she'd spotted the spotter, and some skills left over from the streets still came in handy. Emerging from behind a box tower of frozen steaks and chicken, Mama Ho' sneaked up like a cobra, put her hand on the back of the grizzled hag's neck, and pushed her face into an open crate of sour, Dumpster-bound cabbages.

The limp cabbages were still partly hard, and the poor woman's face went
crunk-crunk,
into the layer of round vegetables. And with each crunch, Mama spat, “Keep,”
crunk,
“your stinky nose,”
crunk,
“outta our bidness.”
Crunk.

The woman's face emerged, slightly bruised, tears sprouting from her red eyes. A Ziploc sandwich bag topped off with shimmering Dalekto was thrust into her wrinkled hands. And Dimples said quietly, but seriously, “Now take this stupid bag. Come back when you want more; we need your little butthole of an office, so clean it on your way out. And leave it spotless.”

The double doors to the kitchen swung open, and one of the day chefs emerged with the purposeful steps of a potty run. He paused for a second, taking in Dimples, Mama Ho', and the shop steward hag blinking tears from her eyes, clutching the Ziploc. Mama Ho' put the fellow on his way with a simple, “Whattaya looking at?” Eyes snapped back in his head, and the day chef vanished around a corner.

From then on Piper's two Vice Presidents for Distribution really did have the run of the joint. After straightening out Local 6, their duties became light and pleasant. Everyone in the crowded kitchen said more
please
s and
thank-you
s than either Dimples or his lady were required to return, paying the two new employees a kind of unspoken homage, much like that offered to ward bosses and inner-city politicians—but at least with Dimples' and Mama's ongoing concern everyone got some bang for their buck instead of just empty promises for votes.

The two hustlers ran their little cubbyhole off the main kitchen with all the efficiency of an automated production line in a Fizzies Factory, as Dalekto now also came in tabs. Still, they kept regular hours and a serious work ethic, leading by example. If a kitchen job was dirty or a room job unappealing or someone called in sick, Dimples and Mama Ho' would step in as required, no questions asked. And so no questions
were
asked.

Dimples kept a Wi-Fi PC link and his cell phone on speed dial to the Kid “upstairs,” whom he now called “The Boss
.
” As one of the top brains of the operation, the young man now told him what to do; their roles reversed. And Dimples felt lucky that he and Mama Ho' had been chosen out of the faceless throngs available in a city of eight million. Fortune knocked, and Dimples was damn glad he'd answered.

Exposure to Mr. P. and Dalekto seemed to have improved Dimples' mind, his wits—everything came easier now. The best he could reckon, Mr. P. was like some great social engineer and the world his laboratory. Dimples began to see how the business and commerce of drug addiction brought everyone who touched Dalekto under the Piper's influence, and he was glad to help. It didn't even seem strange answering to a boy for his every move, if that's what Mr. Piper wanted.

So part of Dimples' job was to keep the young boss constantly informed of pending Dalekto deliveries, either by phone or e-mail, and give a strict accounting of unit, bulk, and discount sales, along with their revenue stream. Discount sales were rare, but used with new clients—the easiest way to lure them into dependency. In this manner the whole of the city seemed to stream past the little cubbyhole off the kitchen, people traipsing in and out from seven a.m. to midnight, seven days a week.

Where the devil the rainbow dust came from, Dimples and Mama Ho' couldn't say; that was above their pay grade. What they did handle was the endless parade of delivery boys bringing in the goods and taking them out again. Like skycaps handling your luggage at the airport, they boosted it along. And the name stuck,
skycaps
becoming the tag for anyone involved in the Dalekto drug business—the Kid's personal army. Everyone in the hotel got a little touch of lucre, from the sweeties at the front desk, down through the bowels of the place right out to the security guards at the employees' entrance.

Dalekto's magic glow made the world go round.

*   *   *

The Gulfstream G650 private jet sailed through the thin air at forty thousand feet, the barest whisper of its Rolls Royce engines penetrating the cabin. The young boss from Avenue A watched as vast vistas of mountainous clouds formed and broke apart; below the clouds the green and golden pastures of flyover country glimmered under the shifting sun. On a plush club chair, Mr. Piper slept in climate-controlled comfort; at least Mr. P.'s eyes were closed, safe and secure at 600 mph. No better ride for love or money.

Fly-by-Wire digital technology sent instantaneous impulses to the flaps and tail, with no lag or delay. A Synthetic Vision-Primary Flight Display in front of the pilot's eyes enabled him to land in fog or blizzard and still visualize the terrain ahead. The jet's Enhanced Vision System III fed the magic window surface radar topography down to the smallest detail, and a special subcontract modification made by Lattimore Aerospace, an Aerogel translucent sighting panel and lead-infused Aerogel baffles, meant that the thing would work even after an EMP blast—just like Air Force One.

Another specialty that Lattimore Aerospace sold to Gulfstream: small escape pods in the belly of the plane, each a two-person cushioned EZ-access encased lifeboat under a triple parachute with automatically deployed Ultralite paraglider airfoils in order to land. The pods could float on water or float safely to the ground. With duplicate pretasked Enhanced Vision III topography and Vision-Primary Flight images just like the cockpit flight display, the escape pods could detect a clearing in a dense forest at cruising altitude and home onto the range like a guided butterfly for touchdown.

So far in the history of this device, no one had ever had to bail out of a Gulfstream and actually use them. But ask any man in the heart-stopping panic of some technical malfunction whether the price tag of five million per to survive a plane crash seems too high.

Instead of buying the aircraft outright, Mr. Piper and the lad from Avenue A leased it from a Dubai princeling suddenly in need of extra capital. Amazing what unlimited credit could do. And Piper Holding Ltd.'s credit cards were better than gold. Who cares if they were borrowed?

In business terms, Piper Ltd.'s New York Local Operation under the direction of Dimples and Mama Ho' was ahead of schedule and running more or less on its own, microscopic tentacles of Dalekto slithering down the nerve stem of society. However, some employees on the West Coast and in the Mountain divisions were falling down on the job. So the time had arrived for a business trip. Time for Mr. P. to set matters straight, a long-term assignment, thirty days or more—and this required a comfortable ride. A month on a Gulfstream wasn't so bad.

By nature, Mr. Piper wouldn't necessarily have stirred himself to action after the Grand Hyatt project came together so swiftly. Keeping various minds in the extended orbit of Piper Ltd. in line, not to mention casting himself into every television show through a dish or cable box—as a daily exertion—he needed dream time. Added to that, he could clearly hear the million squeals from every rat in every corner of the country. Legions of them. The little rodents squirmed and writhed in every drain and gutter, yearning to break free and run amok. With one part of his mind, whether sleeping or awake, he was holding them back.
No, not yet …

Mr. P. absorbed ambient energy like a rainforest sucked up heat and sunlight; he could absorb anything, emotional energy the easiest, anxiety the most prevalent from millions of troubled souls who walked the face of the Earth. But he could also absorb the energy from a lifeless rock, from fields of wheat, or the motion of tides. He soaked up energy like a sponge, stored it like a battery; but like a fuel cell, he could only power so much for so long. Turn lead into gold? Sure, but don't ask him to influence a billion rat brains while he smelted the bullion.