The Blacker Death: An Ebola Thriller (9 page)

“So, what the hell was he doing at the hotel?”

“We don’t know, Bam. We checked. He wasn’t registered there.”

We spun our wheels until I got hungry. Jimmy and Eland wanted to order in and keep working. I needed some air. Izzy and I left, picking up coffee at the stand on the corner across from the station before heading back to the car.

“Where to now?” I said.

“We have a few hours before my next appointment,” she said. “Is there anything you want to do?”

I thought a minute. “Yeah, there is.” I pulled out my phone, logged into the Citrix server, found the address I was looking for in the information Billy had compiled, and keyed it into the car’s GPS.

“What’s there?” she asked.

“Lunch.”

The GPS wanted to take us up the Schuylkill Expressway, across the river to Roosevelt Boulevard, and into Northeast Philly. Not the way I would have gone, but I had a few calls to make. The first was to Dr. Williamson.

“How’s Billy?” I said, when he answered the phone.

“His condition hasn’t changed.”

I knew he had more to say but wasn’t going to. I didn’t press him.

“What about his blood test?” I said.

“The first sample was negative.”

“So, he doesn’t have it?”

“We drew a second sample this morning and sent it to Atlanta. It can take up to three days for the virus to become detectable after symptoms first present themselves.”

“That’s right. You did say that. Anything else?”

He paused before he said, “No. He’s comfortable for now.”

“Thanks, Doc. I’ll be by later on.”

I hung up and looked out the window at two guys rowing a skull on the river, heading right for the spillway below Boathouse Row. They had to know it was there. No one in his right mind would go rowing on that river without knowing it dead-ended at a manmade falls, just like no one would travel from New York to Philly if he knew he had Ebola. No one except someone who either didn’t know he had it or was out of his mind. I stopped watching when they turned around and headed back upstream.

“What did the doctor say?” Izzy asked.

“It’s what he didn’t say,” I said, dialing the next number.

When Tom Stalter answered, I said, “Thanks for keeping me in the loop, buddy.”

“Sorry, Bam. I got your voicemail. We’ve just been so swamped here.”

“That’s all right. I already know.”

Dead silence.

“Billy’s going downhill fast,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Bam. I really am, but things have gotten worse, much worse.”

“How so?”

“The PCR came back positive for Ebola antigens in the Luxembourg sample, and we just got more samples in this morning from two other European countries, one in the Middle East, the Baltics, and another from East Africa. I don’t understand what’s happening. It seems to have jumped from Africa to everywhere. This is our worst nightmare. I’ve got a teleconference call in ten minutes with scientists from six continents about coordinating a worldwide response to the epidemic. Sorry, Bam, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.”

I hung up.

“What did he say?” Izzy asked.

“FEMA’s going to need more trailers.”

 
Rocket Sandwich Shop sat on the corner of Bustleton Avenue and some side street whose name had been erased when someone stole the street sign. It was a greasy-looking hole in the wall with a rocket-shaped placard in the window that just said “Eats.” My kind of place. Most of their business was takeout, but they had three booths by the windows. We took an empty one and Izzy picked out something from the placemat menu. I went over to the counter to order for us.

“What’ll it be?” said the stick of a woman behind the counter. I got the impression that if she had skipped a meal, she would have died of starvation. I checked out the two guys making sandwiches. One looked like he’d played defensive tackle in high school but let himself go when he didn’t make it to college. The other was an older guy with one of those ice cream hats covering the top of his bald head.

“What’s good?” I asked.

“Everything on the menu.”

“I understand you have another menu with some specials on it.”

The old guy stopped slicing tomatoes. He didn’t look up, but I knew I had his full attention.

“You a cop?” the woman asked.

“What makes you say that?”

She scowled at my suit. “You look like a cop.”

“Maybe I just came from a funeral.”

“Yeah, right. Like I said, one menu, everything’s good.”

I leaned in closer. “Then, why don’t you pick me out something, and the lady wants a corned beef on rye. We’ll take black coffee with that.”

I went back to the table and lit up a Pall Mall.

“Hey, can’t you read? No smoking,” said the stick.

“No kidding?”

Ice cream hat backed her up without ever looking up from his tomatoes. “State law — you can’t do that in here. Take it out back.”

I apologized, went outside, and headed around to the back where they’d found Vincent Taney’s body. There was a dumpster, a trashcan, a lot of broken bottles, and cigarette butts everywhere. It was the kind of place underage kids came to drink and grown-ups came to deal drugs. The old man came out the back door.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Just a few questions.” I pulled my badge out and showed it to him.

“Feds? I already talked to the police, and like I told them, I don’t know anything about Gyro’s murder.”

“I’m not here about that, pal, and I don’t give a shit about your side business. Understand?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How well did you know Vincent Taney?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yeah, that’s a fact.”

I kicked over the trashcan, grabbed the old fart by the back of his neck, and pushed his face down toward the mess until he was on his knees looking into the sharp end of a hypodermic.

“What about now?” I said.

“Listen, man, I’ve got nothing to do with that. I just run the place.”

“And look the other way when Gyro comes by in the ice cream truck?”

“I’ve got a wife and kids. I need this job.”

“If you want to keep it, tell me about Vincent Taney.”

“Vinnie was just a guy from the neighborhood. A nice guy. He’d stop to pick up a sandwich for dinner between jobs. That’s all.”

“Was Gyro here the night Taney died?”

The old guy nodded.

I pulled him to his feet and brushed him off. “What about other times?”

“Yeah.”

“Gyro was his dealer?”

“Like I told you, I stayed out of that.”

“Who’s taken over that end of the business?”

“No one, as far as I know. Gyro took on a backer when he opened up a new shop a few years ago, but I don’t think he knew anything about the dealing.”

“One more thing. Do you want a cat?”

The old guy looked at me like I was crazy. He was right.

“Gyro had a cat,” I said. “I’ve got it now. You want it?”

“You have Baby?”

“That’s the cat’s name?”

“Yeah. He took that cat everywhere. I don’t think I ever saw him without it. It was his good luck charm.”

That tied up two loose ends. One, the hit wasn’t a hostile takeover. No one had taken over. And two, Gyro wasn’t clever, just unlucky. If he hadn’t dragged that cat around with him everywhere he went, our surveillance would have picked up that he’d left his room at the Hyatt, and he might be alive today. I gave the old guy my card and a fifty for his time, thanked him for the information, and headed back inside.

“Better?” Izzy said.

“If they’re going to make me stand out back by the trashcans to smoke, I may have to give it up.”

“Good. It’s never too late.”

The sandwiches were good and greasy. I left a nice tip. When we got back to the car, I asked Izzy where and what time her next stop was.

“We have an hour. Here is the address,” she said, handing me the business card.

I looked at the card. “What’s Research Voorhoede?”

“Jacques Birot’s business.”

“Jacques Birot, as in the father?”

She nodded. “Jacques is a good man. I want to pay my respects.”

“And you’re meeting him at his office?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a funny place to be grieving.”

“He has a home in Villanova, but he doesn’t go there much since his wife died three years ago. It reminds him too much of her. His work is all he has now.”

I took out my phone and logged into the Citrix server again to look up another address. I asked Izzy if she minded if we made a quick stop on the way. We had the time. She didn’t, so we did. The address was Taney’s row house not too far from the Rocket. We pulled up in front and stopped by the “For Sale” sign. The postage stamp lawn hadn’t been mowed in a while and junk mail littered the sidewalk. I called the number on the sign.

When someone answered, I asked for the real estate agent whose name was under the number.

“How can I help you?” he said.

I gave him the address and told him that my wife and I were interested in looking at the place, but we had two kids in grade school and were concerned about the neighborhood being safe.

“Safe as can be,” he told me. “I live in the next block over. Could you give me your name, sir, and your phone number?”

“Why did the people move out?” I asked. “It didn’t have anything to do with crime in the area, did it? We heard that it’s pretty bad around there.”

“Oh, no, no, no. Nothing like that. They just moved back to New York. That’s all. That’s where they’re from. If I could just have your name and number, sir, or maybe you’d like to come in to the office. I’d be happy to go over this listing and others in the area.”

I hung up.

“Aren’t you on administrative leave?” Izzy asked.

“Just keeping busy.”

“Do we have time to visit Billy?”

“Not now. Maybe later.”

I directed Izzy back to the Boulevard and over to the Schuylkill. We were headed to the Main Line, last bastion of old money Philadelphia and haven for the nouveau riche. Jacque Birot’s company was near Route 202, an area fast-becoming a corridor for high tech and new tech.

“How much do you know about the elder Birot?” I asked.

“He’s in his sixties, widowed, very rich, and very generous with his money. He supports many charities here and in Belgium.”

“What brought him over here?”

“Like many people, he came to your country in the 1970s looking for your streets of gold.”

“Streets of gold. Is that what everyone thinks?”

“It is true. America is a land of great opportunity. He met his future wife here, they got married, and he became a citizen.”

“She was American?”

“Yes.”

“Does he have dual citizenship?”

“Oh, yes, as did his son.”

“What line of business is he in?”

“Research.”

I looked at the business card again. “What does Voorhoede mean?”

“I guess you would say vanguard? Avant-garde, perhaps?”

“Advanced Research?”

“Yes, that’s good.”

My phone rang. It was Roberts.

“Are you sitting down?” she said.

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Carmine and his friends pled guilty this morning and agreed to a fine of $7,000 each. They have to appear in New York for a hearing on revoking their gun permits. We had to let them go.”

“What about the murder charge?”

“The D.A. said there wasn’t enough to make a case, and Gyro wasn’t worth it.”

I should have been happy that Carmine had helped clean some of the scum off the edge of pool, but I wasn’t.

“Bam, are you still there?”

“What about the harassment?” I said.

“They dropped the charges as part of the plea deal. Evers wants you back in the office tomorrow.”

“Who’s got surveillance on Carmine?”

“No one. Fink said to drop it.”

“That man’s going to drive me to quit drinking.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be the other way around?”

“It’s the only way I’ll ever get promoted past that son of a bitch so I can fire his ass. Who’s working research today?”

“Travis.”

“Can you patch me through to him?”

“Sure, hold on. Will you be in tomorrow?”

“Most likely.”

“Okay. See you then, Bam. Hold on.”

I waited until Travis came on the line. We rotated the juniors through different office duties to get them familiar with things. Travis was a good egg. He and Billy came through the academy together.