Count Geiger's Blues (28 page)
54
A Lethal Diversion
Alex Meisel exploded a bombshell
that made Salonika—everyone in Oconee—forget the news that Xavier Thaxton was Count Geiger, and that his crusades against both crime and kitsch would continue despite the newspaper’s disclosure of his real identity. The story relegating the Thaxton/Count Geiger affair to virtual irrelevance was word that a radiation accident unassociated with Plant VanMeter had occurred in early May in Silvanus County. It was a long investigative story, which Xavier read with disbelief and a troubling, if still faint, taste of guilt:
At least 20 residents of Philippi, a farming community 60 miles west of Salonika, were stricken with radiation poisoning last week when a junkyard worker, Larry Glenn Wilkins, 29, dismantled the core of an obsolete radiation-therapy device improperly disposed of by a firm calling itself Environomics Unlimited.
Wilkins, his wife Missy, 24, and their 4-year-old daughter Carrie-Lisbeth, along with 13 other people, are now undergoing treatment for acute radiation poisoning in an isolation ward in Salonika General Hospital.
Ironically, the treatment machine responsible for their contamination was once in operation at the Miriam Finesse Cancer Clinic, an affiliate of Salonika General. The machine’s source, or energy supply, contained about 1400 curies of cesium 137, a radioactive substance with a half-life of 30 years.
Meisel’s story defined
curie
,
half-life
, and
therapy device
. It chronicled the steps by which, according to a reconstruction of events by representatives of the Oak Ridge-based agency known as reacts, a used Therac 4-J had reached the outskirts of Philippi from the cancer clinic. Meisel detailed the events leading to tragedy at a birthday party near Philippi, and he profiled a dozen different actors in the story.
Dr. Edward Di Pasqua, 52, director of the cancer clinic, delegated the task of disposing of the clinic’s radiation waste—“radwaste,” in industry jargon—to Head Administrative Nurse Teri-Jo Roving, 39, a veteran employee. Six years ago, Mrs. Roving used Environomics Unlimited to dispose of some used radium implants left in high-priority protective storage by Dr. Di Pasqua’s predecessor, the late Dr. Wyman Huguley.
“I was desperate to carry out the disposal when I found this firm,” Mrs. Roving said. “No licensed site anywhere would agree to accept our radwaste. Then EU appeared, as if by magic, and handled all the necessary arrangements. At that time, Environomics Unlimited seemed a godsend. Literally.”
From the beginning, Mrs. Roving believed that EU was licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Oconee Department of Natural Resources to transport and dispose of nuclear-waste materials.
“No company would handle radwaste unless they were licensed,” Mrs. Roving said. “We tracked our shipment of lead-encased radium needles from Salonika to Memphis to Wichita to Denver—the entire way to the Hanford Atomic Energy Reservation in Washington State. But for the company’s use of an unmarked truck, everything appeared to be in order.”
However, a recent check with officials at the Hanford site revealed that they have never heard of Environomics Unlimited, nor do they have any record of a delivery from the Miriam Finesse Cancer Clinic on the date noted by Mrs. Roving and confirmed by signed documents on file at the clinic.
“If that’s true,” Mrs. Roving said yesterday, “we have no idea where the men purporting to be licensed haulers took our radwaste or where they finally chose to dump it. Frankly, that horrifies me.”
Mrs. Roving hired Environomics Unlimited again, in late October of last year, to dispose of the obsolete Therac 4-J that a clinic janitor had found stored in a basement utility closet. This device, like the radium needles encased in lead cylinders, was a holdover from the directorship of Dr. Huguley. Dr. Huguley performed more than well as a physician, former colleagues note, but took a casual approach to record-keeping.
“It was a natural thing to turn to Environomics Unlimited again,” Mrs. Roving said. “They had been lifesavers before, and I felt reasonably confident they would dispose of the Therac 4-J swiftly and safely. I never imagined that our machine would reappear on the land of some poor family in Silvanus County. Never. I don’t understand it.”
Mrs. Roving was unable to answer further questions. Dr. Di Pasqua says that he intends to pursue an in-house investigation of his own, “to discover the facts and to fix responsibility for the machine’s improper disposal.”
When an executive rants about discovering the facts and fixing responsibility, usually that person is looking for a head to chop. Here, Xavier had no trouble deducing the identity of the likely guillotine victim. Meisel’s story then shifted from its tight focus on Environomics Unlimited to the impact of the accident on Silvanus County:
“The lot on which the Wilkinses had their home,” said Dr. Lusk yesterday, “is severely contaminated. The core of the therapy machine was kept in a bedroom closet. The machine itself was more or less destroyed in a fire initiated by Larry Glenn Wilkins’s efforts to cut it down for scrap with a welding torch.”
According to Dr. Lusk, agency teams in helicopters equipped with radiation detectors have been overflying every part of Silvanus County where they can logically expect to find hot spots.
“These flights began the day after Dr. Woolfolk alerted us to the danger,” said Dr. Lusk. “So far, we’ve found three contaminated dogs, a radioactive pig, and a wide array of ‘dirty’ furniture, cars, and money. Plastic-suited men on bulldozers are scooping radioactive soil into concrete-lined drums for shipment to nuclear-waste disposal sites.”
The cleanup, according to reacts, should be nearly complete in another two weeks. The well and the septic tank on the Wilkins’s property have been tested and do not appear to be dangerously contaminated. The trailer itself may have to be destroyed, however, along with a 1990 Toyota go-truck. More radioactivity exists in the homes of some party guests, but Dr. Lusk says, “We are dealing with it expeditiously.”
Late yesterday, a raid on the suspected offices of Environomics Unlimited by FBI agents and Salonika police came up empty. Agent Henry Avila believes the company consists only of an office with a telephone and a small fleet of unmarked vehicles parked elsewhere. The building housing the office is in a complex owned by HighSites Realty Corp. of Miami, Fla.
“Someone had been there just before we arrived,” Agent Avila said. “It was almost as if the occupants had been tipped we were coming. It appears to us that Environomics Unlimited may have been one of a number of cheapjack outfits to work their scams from this office.”
The accident in Philippi is unprecedented in the U.S. Most Americans expect a radiation-related disaster to have its origins either in the nuclear-power industry or in the military arsenals of our nation.
According to Dr. Lusk, medical-related radiation mishaps are not uncommon in other parts of the world.
“Algeria, the Republic of China, and Mexico have all had accidents of this kind,” Dr. Lusk says. “They’ve involved dangerous quantities of such substances as cobalt 60 and cesium 137. But for something like that to happen here, detailed regulations for the shipment and disposal of nuclear-waste products have to be flouted or ignored.”
Dr. Lusk said that officials at Salonika General and the Miriam Finesse Cancer Clinic have not behaved unethically. “I
do
fault them for failing to check out Environomics Unlimited more carefully.” The government investigation of the company continues.
Xavier digested Meisel’s story while sitting cross-legged on his pallet in Bari’s cutting room. What a relief to find that he had ceased to be Topic Number One on the
Urbanite
’s roster of hot local stories. Still, the cruel irony of the catastrophe that had befallen the Wilkinses and their friends appalled him. A type of accident that had altered Xavier’s life (giving him, via the Suit from SatyrFernalia, stalwartly powers) had meant only terrible sickness and death for others. Where was the justice in that? Why was he a living superhero when the Wilkinses were dying, in one of the most excruciating ways that he could imagine, as radiation victims? Their ignorance and innocence, along with an outrageous chain of events totally beyond their anticipation or control, had betrayed them, and had betrayed them to the grave. . . .
Bari entered. It wasn’t yet nine. She was up early. She wore blue silk sleeping shorts and a matching short-sleeved top, with a pale blue monogram, that exposed her svelte belly. She looked tasty as an eclair. Arms akimbo, she gazed down at Xavier with a moue at once endearing and hostile.
“Did you tell Howie to take a header out the window?”
“A
lovelorn
header. He’s hopelessly enamored . . . of you.”
“And you, smugly secure in your place, suggested that he kill himself?”
Xavier stared at Bari’s enameled toenails. “I told him to take a lovelorn header out a window. A figurative brush-off, like ‘go fly a kite,’ not a real invitation to splatter the pavement with his brains.”
“A brush-off? A macho
dare
, thrown from the heights of your stalwartliness.”
“Is that what Howie told you?”
Bari said, “Xavier, think of me no longer as your lover or your affianced.”
“
Affianced
. Wow. Impressive word.”
“I regard our relationship—our special relationship—as over. We’ve stagnated as an ‘item’ in both gossip-column and personal-growth terms. Your inability to find your own face under the ugly mask of this Count Geiger
creepture
, well, it sickens me.”
Xavier felt as he had after being shot: stunned, empty, frightened. “You want me to leave?”
“Of course not. Stay until it’s safe for you to go. You’re hardly underfoot.”
Xavier thought that maybe now she would soften a little, enough to give him a peck on the nose, a semiconciliatory smile. Instead, brow creased, she strode purposefully back into the atelier’s central loft.
“Thanks,” Xavier whispered after her.
55
“Only Connect”
“The phone no longer rings off the hook
every time I plug it in. Folks are starting to get the message, Uncle Xave.”
“Meaning?”
“You could come home. If, like, you wanted.”
“I could, couldn’t I?” Xavier said. It surprised him to hear The Mick make this suggestion both uncoerced and unprompted. He had feared that Mikhail, left to himself, would convert his condo apartment into a high-rise replica of Salome’s or P. S. Annie’s; that he would take every step conceivable to prevent him from recrossing its threshold. But, Thomas Wolfe notwithstanding, The Mick was inviting him to come home again. Xavier hesitated before replying. He missed Mikhail. That was indisputable. Phil and Lydia’s son was his nephew. Family. Xavier felt it important that they share the same household, and
not
a household belonging to an unrelated third party.
He spoke into the receiver: “I’ll tell Bari.”
Bari was out again, discussing with the chief buyer at the biggest department store in Salonika Plaza the delivery of winter merchandise. A dozen workers labored in the studio’s main loft under the supervision of Marilyn Olvera and Howie Littleton. Xavier had a special phone line in the old cutting room, an instance of Bari’s thoughtfulness that he would repay by leaving and giving the space back. Living with Bari—in her business headquarters cum boudoir—had not been as idyllic as, shortly before Christmas, he would have figured. It’d been
anti-
idyllic, like pitching camp in an EleRail station at rush hour. Now, they were kaput as a couple, loverly has-beens.
When Bari came home that evening, Xavier was packed and ready to go. He had been with her so long—five days—that he saw himself as pale as a sheet of paper, the physical antithesis of a stalwart. At least they could talk in the studio proper, for Bari had dismissed her staff at five, an hour or two earlier than usual. Howie had gone home to brood upon the events that had brought his chief rival under his beloved’s roof.
“Xavier, I think it would be good if you
did
move out.”
“Maybe so. But am I interfering with daily operations?”
“Far from it,” Bari said. “Everyone works harder because you’re here. They fear you’re my spy. I told them if they leaked your whereabouts to the media, or anyone else, I’d fire them—
all
of them, if it came to that.”
“So what turned you around?”
“It bothers Howie you’re here. He can’t focus. His creativity’s fallen off.”
“He loves you, Bari.”
“That’s not very convenient for either of us. I should can him or marry him, but I don’t like my options.”
“And so
I
must leave?”
“Yes. The radiation accident at Philippi—”
“Ah. You’ve heard of it.”
“In passing. Anyway, media preoccupation with that story has reduced the glare on your predicament. Your going now shouldn’t work a major hardship on you.”
“So also saith Mikhail Menaker.”
“Despite his retropunk antiintellectualism, he’s a bright kid.”
“Anyway, we should probably begin seeing other people.”
Bari smiled. “For me, Howie’s out, him not being a stalwart. That leaves a pretty narrow field. The Decimator? Mantisman? Where do these fellas hang out when they’re not putting the hurt on evil-doers?”
“At First Stringers, eating grilled chicken while taking in
Masterpiece Theatre
. Never fear, Bari, my leaving’s no doubt for the best.” But it seemed to startle her to see him emerge later from the cutting room, gear all packed and laptop in hand. She frowned. He wanted to kiss her, a valedictory gesture, but her perplexed look would not allow it, and so they each simply said, “Goodbye.”
Dressed as Count Geiger—minus, now that publicity had made it superfluous, the constricting cowl—Xavier paid a visit to Teri-Jo Roving at the Miriam Finesse Cancer Clinic. He popped in unannounced, primarily to thwart her or Dr. Di Pasqua’s opposition to his coming, trusting that, once he was on-site, his identity as the Count would melt any reluctance to grant him an audience.
And it did. Mrs. Roving’s assistant buzzed him into her office as if he were the President of the United States. Mrs. Roving sat at her desktop computer. His glittery materialization seemed neither to nonplus nor to delight her.
“Good morning, Mr. Thaxton.”
“I’m here in my inescapable persona as Count Geiger,” he said gently.
“Is that supposed to be a joke? A sly reference to the people dying next door of radiation poisoning from our misdirected Therac 4-J?” Mrs. Roving squinted at Xavier. “A judgmental dig?”
“No, ma’am. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Join the crowd.” Her squint softened. “We’re each having our hour under the microscope, aren’t we?”
“We are. In fact, the accident at Philippi rescued me from a few extra minutes on an ever-hotter glass slide.” He thought Mrs. Roving might ask him to sit. She didn’t. He had showed her he was no finger-pointing zealot, but she still meant to keep him on probation, to give him more time to undergird his reputation as a Stalwart for Truth. He said, “I may be able to help you. If, of course, I could ask you a few questions—”
“You’d be joining the nonexclusive ranks of Dr. Di Pasqua, the FBI, the city police, the NRC, and state and national media, but go on—ask your questions.”
“Alex Meisel’s
Urbanite
story claims the clinic twice employed Environomics Unlimited to dispose of radwaste. True?”
“Dead on.” Mrs. Roving grimaced. “Cruel pun unintended.”
“We know what happened to the Therac 4-J, but Alex says the whereabouts of the radwaste from EU’s first job—if the Hanford site didn’t receive it—are still unknown. That suggests that another major radiation hazard for the public could exist, an accident in waiting, maybe right here in Oconee again.”
“I understand that all too well, especially since Environomics Unlimited didn’t haul the Therac 4-J any farther from the cancer clinic than a warehouse in Satan’s Cellar. For all I know, they could have dumped the junk from that first job off a city bridge into the Chattahoochee.”
“How was the radium waste shielded? In what form did EU haul it away?”
“The old radium implants were plugged into lead cylinders and stoppered with more lead. There were heaps of cylinders. Dr. Huguley let them back up on us.”
“Are there any more here at the clinic?”
“Radium-waste cylinders? No. For the last ten years, we’ve been using cesium implants. Cesium’s the stuff that’s killing the Wilkinses and those other poor people from Silvanus County. If you break a cesium needle, it doesn’t release a radioactive gas the way a broken radium implant releases radon.”
“Do you dispose of cesium the same way? In lead cylinders?”
“Yes. But we keep better records than Dr. Huguley did, and the drug company that supplies the implants must take back and dispose of the used needles. It’s licensed to do so. A system that spares users the agony of finding an authorized disposal site and a firm willing to dump their radwaste there.”
Xavier was sweating. The amorphous suspicion that had plagued him ever since his visit to the Hazeltons’ place—the vague hunch that he’d seen illegally dumped radwaste near Plant VanMeter—eroded into a hard nugget of certainty. Perhaps if he had not impersonated Alex Meisel to get into the Hazelton house, he would have revealed this suspicion to the authorities months ago. He computed that that still would not have been soon enough to stop Environomics Unlimited from taking the Therac 4-J and depositing it in an ill-secured warehouse in Satan’s Cellar, but it might have been soon enough to spread the news that a dangerous piece of medical equipment was unaccounted for and that anyone finding it should (1) avoid toying with it and (2) report its location to the NRC or the Oconee Department of Natural Resources. Had he done that, the folks dying in Salonika General might have escaped that fate. Xavier now felt as he often had, in the days before the Suit, when listening to Mahler or beholding a Vermeer: feverish, weak-kneed, queasy. Mrs. Roving’s office did a stately but disorienting wheeling maneuver around him. “May I sit down?”
Mrs. Roving, whom he had not even seen leave her desk, had a hand on his forehead. “My Lord, you’re on fire. Here.” She helped him to a chair.
“I know where your misdirected radium waste is,” Xavier said. “Apparently, it’s been there for six years.”
“Where?”
He told her.
“How do you know?”
“About two years ago, radon seeping from canisters dumped into that stream made me sick with the peculiar intermittent ravages of the Philistine Syndrome.”
“Come again.”
Xavier gave a dismissive wave. “More recently, the radiation percolating through the water altered my cell structure and my body chemistry—on a second exposure to it—so I became the augmented being known to Salonika as Count Geiger. I became a living stalwart.”
“Sounds like balderdash, Mr. Thaxton—er, Count Geiger. A second exposure to radiation would have just made you sick again. Depending on its intensity, it could have even killed you.”
“I wish it had.” Xavier’s self-pity prompted only an eyeball roll. “
Sometimes
I wish it had,” he corrected himself. “No mere physical augmentation can make up for a person’s moral poverty, Mrs. Roving.”
“I’ll make a note in my Bartlett’s. How long have you known about the radwaste up there? How do you know you’re not jumping to a wild-eyed conclusion?”
“Cockroach,” he answered. “The six-legged racehorse now running for Hallelujah Stables in Tennessee. Also, a three-eyed catfish.”
“Would you like a glass of water? A cold compress?”
“I’ve never seen Cockroach, except on TV, but I did see the catfish, Mrs. Roving. It looked like the get of a surrealist’s feverish imagination. It was bioluminescent, it glowed, it watched me. Swear to God.”
“Calm down, Mr. Thaxton. Relax a few minutes.”
Xavier leaned his head against the wall and took a series of slow breaths. His nausea abated. His flushed skin clocked down to a cool off-white, and he asked, “Who actually did the pickups for Environomics Unlimited? Could you describe these people? Do you remember their names?”
“I’ve tried to answer those questions twelve times each.”
“Then let’s make it a lucky thirteen. This is important.”
“Two men came the first time and two the second, but only one of the two came both times, and that was the guy in charge, the driver of the unmarked truck.”
“Who was he?”
“He called himself . . .
Will
. His first name was Will. I signed the transfer forms. He didn’t. He and his partner—a kid the first time; a Latin-American guy named Gooz the second—took our stuff and skedaddled.”
“What’d he look like, this Will?”
Mrs. Roving emitted a sing-song recitation that Xavier interpreted as annoyance with having to repeat it: “A white guy ten or twelve years older than me. A thin but paunchy, brown-eyed, rusty-haired white guy in company overalls. The second time he was here he didn’t feel well. He knew enough to boss his partner around, but he was no college grad. Or so I’d wager. He
may
not’ve graduated high school. Will: a paunchy, middle-aged, brown-eyed, rusty-haired white guy.’ End of portrait.”
“Why don’t you think he graduated high-school?”
Mrs. Roving hesitated, as if none of her interrogators had ever asked this question. “He had a countrified Oconee way of talking. An accent that was recognizably rural but at the same time all his own. A signature way of talking.”
“Give me an example.”
Mrs. Roving stared at the picture molding above Xavier’s head. “He said
awl
for
all
. He said
arf
for
off
. He said . . . my God, he said
thonks
for
thanks
. It was as if he sometimes got his
a
’s and
o
’s mixed up, sort of.
Sarta
, I should say.” She chuckled reminiscently. “I remember that even better than the way he looked.”
“I know who he is,” Xavier said, startled by the insight that Mrs. Roving’s testimony had triggered. “Son of a bitch.”
Mrs. Roving said nothing. She waited.
“Sorry. Will is Wilbon Stickney. The only other man in the world, so far as I know, victimized by a form of the Philistine Syndrome.”
As if Xavier had just spelled the final word in a competition that over several hours had eliminated every contestant but him, Mrs. Roving shut her eyes. Xavier felt relief, gratitude, a fresh sense of mission. Stickney was even more responsible for the fate of the Silvanus County’s radiation victims than he. Knowing this didn’t fully alleviate his guilt, but it eased it. It also gave him a solid reason to put Operation Uplift on hold. His attention belonged to matters of higher moment, greater urgency.
“Tell whoever needs to be told about the radwaste cylinders in the Hazeltons’ stream,” Xavier said. “The Hazeltons, the NRC, whoever. I’ve got to find Stickney.”
“Maybe you’d like to meet the Wilkinses. I could probably arrange it.”
“Yessum. It’s just that—”
“Wait too long and . . .” The consequences of waiting too long twisted before them like a trio of hanged innocents.
*
As Count Geiger, Xavier paid his visit to the radiation ward on the eleventh floor of Salonika General. Mrs. Roving escorted him. Gowned and masked, they stopped at the bedside of each medicated and IV-dependent patient. Most were too drug-befogged or ill to talk. Dr. Avery, the specialist treating these people, had determined that all but four had suffered damage to their internal organs and hematopoietic systems too severe to allow bone-marrow transplants. Despite the poor prognosis in every case, the FDA had refused to grant an emergency approval for the experimental hormone, GM-CSF. Xavier, along with Mrs. Roving and Dr. Avery, cursed the obstinacy and shortsightedness of the FDA. Given that several of these patients were otherwise doomed, why did the agency manifest such a hard-hearted scrupulosity?
The Wilkinses—Larry Glenn, Missy, and Carrie-Lisbeth—lay in beds in an enlarged cloister at the end of the set-apart sick bay. Mrs. Roving said that Carrie-Lisbeth was critical. She could die in the next day or so, possibly within hours. If Dr. Avery determined that the time was shorter rather than longer, he would advise his staff to put Carrie-Lisbeth behind her own set of curtains again. The trauma of watching their only child die, even if medication eased her going, was hardly one that he relished inflicting on the parents, who would suspect the worst when she was moved. Consequently, he had frequently second-guessed the wisdom of uniting the family at all. Mrs. Roving shared these doubts, for she had often second-guessed herself.
