Extreme Measures (34 page)

Laura sat on the dead man’s bed, trying to draw some sort of connection between Devine and the drug dealers who had killed not only her brother, but almost certainly Roger Ansell as well. Ansell and Devine: two men violently dead on the same day, and both of them connected in some way to her. She shuddered at the thought.

“Easy,” Nelson was urging. “Easy … easy … and … 
voilà!”

He grasped the handle and slowly swung it down ninety degrees. At the moment he pulled the small door open, they heard the sound of voices beneath the window.

“Quick, the lights!”

Bernard gathered up what he could from the safe as Laura shut off first the bedroom light, and then the others upstairs. Stygian darkness returned to the apartment as the front door was unlocked and opened.

“To the stairs,” Nelson whispered. “Up here we’re trapped.”

They felt their way to the stairs and tiptoed down, reaching the first-floor rear hallway just as the light snapped on in the front parlor. Reflexively, Nelson opened what appeared to be the basement door. The two of them stepped onto the staircase beyond it and pulled the door closed. Save for a sliver of light beneath the base of the door, they were once again enveloped
in blackness. They huddled on the staircase, Laura midway down and Bernard near the door, listening as what sounded like two men moved toward them.

“Can you hear what they’re saying?” she whispered.

“One of them’s furious because the other didn’t get Devine’s records before he killed him. The other one’s whining some sort of apology.”

“Do you have your gun?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, what are they saying now?”

“I think one of them’s headed upstairs. The other one may be coming here. You’d better move down a few more stairs; in fact, go all the way to the bottom. If he opens this door, I’m going to need some room to help him make a rapid descent.”

“Just be careful. It’s pitch-black down here. I can’t see a thing.”

“Shhhh.”

From upstairs they heard one of the men shout something.

“I’ll be right up,” the second voice called back from just outside the basement door. “I’m sorry, boss,” they heard him say. “I didn’t understand what you wanted me to do. Honest I didn’t.”

Several minutes passed. Laura remained motionless in the darkness on the bottom basement step. Above her, she could faintly discern the bulky silhouette of Bernard Nelson, pressed against the door.

“What’s happening?” she whispered.

“They may be leaving or looking for us. I can’t tell. Not another sound until I’m certain they’re gone—”

His voice dropped off suddenly. Laura could hear muffled footsteps and voices. Then she saw shadows moving in the thin slit of light beneath the door. Her heart skipped as a shoe scuffed against the wood. Bernard Nelson remained still. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the footsteps began to recede to
another part of the house. Fifteen silent minutes went by. The light beyond the door was turned off. Another fifteen minutes passed, then still another. Finally, Laura could stand the tension no longer.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Beats me. I think they’re gone.”

She worked her way up several steps.

“Do you want to risk opening the door?”

“I think so. First see if you can find a light down there. Maybe there’s a way we can get out of here without going through the house.”

Laura backed down the stairs and felt along the wall until she found a switch. After an hour of near total darkness, the bright overhead fluorescent lights were blinding. Bernard Nelson made his way down to her as Laura blinked and rubbed her eyes into focus.

Then the two of them stood side by side, staring incredulously at the space in which they had been hiding. The room was perhaps fifteen feet square, painted gleaming white, and equipped with a stretcher, a cardiac monitor, and other sophisticated-looking medical equipment. One wall was lined with shelves of linens, bandages, medications, and solutions. Against the wall opposite the stretcher were a small desk and chair, and hanging just over the desk, a set of metal and leather limb restraints.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Nelson muttered.

“It’s like an intensive care unit.”

“Not
like
one, child. It
is
one.”

They walked about the room, looking over the equipment and checking in the wastebasket and desk drawer.

“I’m no doctor,” Nelson said, “but this stuff looks like state-of-the-art to me.”

“I agree. Look at this medication. There must be fifty different drugs here. This place frightens me.”

“I’d be worried if it didn’t.” Nelson held up the folders and ledger he had taken from Devine’s safe. “Maybe these will give us a clue. From what I could
tell, our friendly visitors found the safe, so, there’s no sense going back up there. Whether they’re upstairs or outside watching the house, I don’t know, but I vote we try to get these out of here. Are you game?”

“The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

They turned out the lights, tiptoed back up the stairs, and then, ever so slowly, opened the door.

A
re you sure there’re no messages for me? Najarian, Eric Najarian … No, you don’t understand.
I’m
not registered at the hotel; Laura Enders is. But she might have left a—Look, forget it. When she does get in, just leave her a message that Eric called, and that I’ll call back later.… That’s Eric Na—”

The desk clerk had hung up.

Eric snapped the receiver back in place and wandered across the virtually deserted street. He was in one of the seedier areas of Allston, just half a block from the Sproul Court address that Anna Delacroix had written down for him.

For nearly two hours he had been calling Laura, both at her hotel and at his apartment. From what he could determine, she had phoned him at the hospital at least twice during the day, but had left no message other than that she had called. He was beginning to worry, but not unduly so. It was only a quarter often. He would finish his business with Anna Delacroix and then go straight to the Carlisle.

A city within the city, Allston’s crowded tenements and triplexes were home to many college students, as well as to ethnic pockets of Vietnamese, Thais, Hispanics, Haitians, Pakistanis, and first-generation immigrants from various Eastern European countries.

Sproul Court itself was a dingy, poorly lit, deadend side street, lined with wooden three-story structures, most of which had porches off the second- and third-story flats. All of the buildings, it seemed, had a shop or store of some sort on the street level The posters in the windows of the businesses suggested that the main clientele in the area was black.

With some time to spare, Eric wandered the length of the street, past the “grocerette” and the package store, Craissou’s Tailor Shop, and the Treasure Island Used Clothing Boutique. There was little that was quaint about the decaying buildings, sooty windows, and trash-cluttered alleyways, and he found it difficult to connect the street in any way with the enigmatic, exquisitely beautiful woman he was to meet there.

Still, he felt tense and excited. If she was true to her word, Anna Delacroix would provide the proof he could use, along with the fruits of his library investigation, to convince some of the powers at the hospital—and even more importantly, to convince Reed Marshall—of the validity of his tetrodotoxin theory. He would then gain some allies, and his efforts could shift from determining whether such poisoning was possible to why it had happened … and
how
.

Although he had not yet found a specific description of the cardiographie pattern in tetrodotoxin poisoning, he had catalogued a number of accounts of the clinical presentation, all of which included the classic signs of rapidly progressive heart failure: shortness of breath; intractable coughing; cyanosis, first of the lips and fingertips, then later of the face, hands, and feet; frothy fluid building in the chest and welling
into the throat; air hunger leading to panic leading to even worse air hunger; and finally somnolence, loss of consciousness, and death.

“Dr. Eric, over here.”

Anna Delacroix was standing in the shadow of a storefront, not far from one of the few lampposts on the street. She was wearing a wide floppy-brimmed hat, and had a bandanna of some sort tied loosely about her neck.

“Did you believe I’d come?” he asked.

“Of course I did. You have doubts, and you are desperate to have those doubts assuaged.”

“Can you assuage them?”

“Not I, but there is a man inside this store who has some things to say that you will find most interesting.” She gestured at the window behind her, which was filled with the trappings of a hardware or dry goods store. The uneven hand-painted letters on the glass said simply:
BENET’S
. Beyond the display, a dark shade was drawn. “I had to convince him that you would never divulge his name to anyone,” she went on. “You will honor that pledge?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Because as you will see, any indiscretion could cost either him or me our lives.” She looked at Eric gravely.

Anna led him into the alley, knocked once on a side door to the shop, and entered. Inside, seated on a stool, was a gaunt, willowy man with silvering hair and a face that spoke of illness or perhaps merely of a life of too much pain. He shook Eric’s hand with no firmness. Anna introduced him as Titus Memmilard, her mother’s brother and once the proprietor of Benet’s, which was now run by his family.

Titus mumbled a greeting. His speech was slow and thick, and his accent, which Eric assumed was Haitian, was so dense that Eric had to concentrate to understand the man’s words.

Benet’s was a cluttered melange of tools, fabric,
electrical supplies, canned goods, and grain. It was illuminated by a single low-wattage bulb, suspended beneath a metal reflector. Whether intended or not, the effect of the subdued lighting, the drawn shade, and the hushed tones was dramatic and mysterious.

“You wanted proof of your suspicions,” Anna said. “Well, my uncle here is that proof. Look into his eyes as you listen to us, and you will know that what we share with you is the truth. Once, he was the most vigorous and vibrant of men—a musician and a poet, a leader in our community. Now he is a shell. Our troubles began several years ago when word began spreading around our community of the arrival here from Haiti of a most powerful
houngan
—a priest with the power and knowledge of
vodoun
. The
houngan
, we were told, was to be known only as Mr. Dunn.”

At the mention of the name, Titus Memmilard seemed to stiffen.

“Evil and pain,” he said. “The
houngan
brought evil and pain.”

Anna patted the man’s hand.

“What he brought,” she said, “was the
coup poudre.”

“The magical powder,” Eric said.

“Exactly.” Anna looked impressed with his knowledge. “Death powder, mystical powder; take your pick. In Haiti, the
coup poudre
is the sword of the
houngans
. There are government courts and officials, but the
houngans
are the real judges, and a living death is their only punishment.”

“Go on.”

“This rogue priest, this Mr. Dunn, is known only to the group of thugs with whom he has surrounded himself. He is a criminal in every sense of the word—a mobster. It is rumored that in Haiti he was one of the Tonton Macoutes, François Duvalier’s secret police. He preys on people’s weaknesses and superstitions. He extorts money from our businesses and sells narcotics to our children. Two years ago, after several
attempts to enlist the aid of the police, my uncle attempted to organize the merchants to fight back. One of Dunn’s collection men was beaten up. Another was robbed of his stash of drugs before he could sell them. Word came from Mr. Dunn that my uncle was to be made an example—that he had been marked for living death. His family tried to protect him, but several of Dunn’s men came with guns and took him away. Uncle, are you able to tell this doctor what happened next?”

Eric turned to the old man. “Please try,” he urged.

“I received the
coup poudre
from the Evil One himself,” Titus said, weakly clearing phlegm from his throat. “Across my mouth and under my arms.” He demonstrated by drawing his hand across the areas.

Eric remembered reading in several sources that absorption of tetrodotoxin was nearly as rapid and complete through the skin as through the gastrointestinal system.

“Did you see the man’s face?” he asked.

“It was the face of hell.”

Eric looked to Anna, who shrugged and shook her head.

“Perhaps a mask,” she said. “Go on, Uncle.”

“They tied me down, but soon they cut me free. There was no need to bind me, for I could no longer move.”

“You remember all of this?”

“Some things he remembers clearly. Some not at all,” Anna explained. “What we do know is that two days later, this man who now sits before you was found lying on a cot in this very room, cold and quite dead. His eyes were taped shut. A note by his body warned against moving him or calling for medical help. Over the following two days, though he was watched constantly, not once did anyone see him take so much as a single breath.”