22 Tricky Twenty-Two (13 page)

“It guides me.”

“Have you ever thought about seeing a healthcare professional? I could find someone who would help you better understand the power of the amulet.”

“Healthcare is just another way of allowing employers and the government to control you. What’s the first thing they do when you step into a doctor’s office? They take your clothes. It’s a power grab. A naked man has no power.”

Clearly he doesn’t know Ranger.

“So what does the amulet think about all the fleas?” I asked him.

“You know about the fleas? How could you know about the fleas?” He had a grip on the amulet, and red spots had popped out on his cheeks. “What else do you know?”

“I know about Unit 731.”

I was taking a winger here, but I thought why not? Throw it out and see if it goes somewhere.

“A hideous misuse of scientific experiment,” Pooka said. “The primary function of that program was to satisfy the prurient needs of a man who couldn’t get an erection.”

“I hadn’t heard about that part.”

“It’s blatantly obvious. The program could have been brilliant, but it was mired in sadomasochistic gratification.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

“That wasn’t even the most egregious part. It was all so crude and unimaginative. And they had wonderful pathogens like the plague, and they disseminated it in clay pots.
Clay pots!
Shame on them. The plague deserves better.”

“The plague deserves fireworks.”

“Yes!”

I was trying to look like I was really into this, but my skin had the creepy crawlies and had broken out in goosebumps.

Kenny came up behind Pooka.

“Here I am,” Kenny said. “Right on time. I’m very punctual.”

Pooka turned to him. “Who is this?”

“He’s sort of my date,” I said. “By the way, did you kill Harry Getz?”

“There are no answers,” Pooka said. “There are only questions.”

He whirled around and left, taking the stairs.

“Who was that?” Kenny asked. “He was wearing pajamas.”

“It’s complicated.”

By eight o’clock Kenny and I decided we had nothing in common. He ordered an appletini and I had beer. He ate sushi and I had a burger. He watched PBS and I watched ESPN.

He dropped me off at my door and asked if I’d stun gun him if he tried to kiss me. I said
yes,
and he shook my hand and left.

I WAS LYING
in bed wondering if I should just stay there all day, and a text message came in. It was from Lula saying she thinks my doorbell must be broken, because she’s at my door, and I’m not opening it.

I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door for her.

“You look like you just woke up,” Lula said.

“I had a horrible night. I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about fleas and plague. What time is it?”

“It’s almost ten o’clock. I just came from church, and I thought I’d stop in and find out about yesterday’s events.”

“You go to church?”

“Of course I go to church. I gotta compensate for all the things I do that would otherwise send me straight to hell.”

I went to the kitchen and got coffee going.

“Do you believe in God?” I asked Lula.

“Fuckin’ A I believe in God. Don’t you believe in God?”

“I believe in something. It’s vague.”

“You should come with me next week. I go to the Baptist church on State Street.”

“I’m Catholic.”

“That’s okay. We don’t care. Nobody’s perfect. Us Baptists say the more the merrier. We do some praying and singing and we praise the Lord. I’m all about the Lord. Especially on a Sunday morning.”

I put two frozen waffles in the toaster.

“That’s a new toaster,” Lula said.

“Morelli gave it to me. He used to like to have toast in the morning.”

“So tell me about yesterday. Last I saw you was when you were going over to see Ranger and you were all sexed up.”

“Ranger got me into Pooka’s apartment and the Zeta cellar.”

“How’d that go?”

“Pooka’s apartment is disgusting. He’s breeding fleas in aquariums, and he’s got a bag of blood in his refrigerator.”

“Say what?”

“I have no proof but I think Pooka might have intended to load the fireworks up with fleas and drop the fleas on the Kiltman campus.”

“Why’s he want to give everybody fleas?”

“Not sure.”

I couldn’t shake the possibility of plague, but I didn’t want to start a riot by telling Lula. I poured coffee for us, and we each took a waffle.

“You got maple syrup for this?” Lula asked.

“No.”

“Strawberry compote?”

“No.”

“What do you put on it?”

“I just eat it. I’m usually in a hurry.”

Gobbles called on my cellphone. “I started watching Pooka at six o’clock this morning just like always. You could set your clock by him seven days a week. He comes out at seven and goes to his office. He stays there until noon. Only he didn’t come out today. And then ten minutes ago he parked in front of his house in a junker van. He went in and immediately came out carrying a cardboard box. He went back in and got two aquariums, loaded it all in the back of the van, and took off. I couldn’t follow him. I haven’t got a car. Do you think I should break into his apartment? I think he’s moving out.”

“Wait for me. I’ll be right over.”

“What’s up?” Lula asked.

“It looks like Pooka is moving stuff out of his apartment.”

“The one with the fleas?”

“I need to get dressed. Put my coffee in a travel mug and give Rex a couple Cheerios. I’ll be right out.”

We took Lula’s car and made good time going across town. Not a lot of traffic on Sunday morning. Pooka’s street was quiet. Gobbles stepped from the side of a building when we parked.

“He hasn’t been back,” Gobbles said. “I went inside to take a look about five minutes ago and his door was locked.”

“How did you break in last time?” I asked him.

“I bumped the lock on the back door. I wouldn’t have done it, but I was hoping Becker was in there. I thought Pooka might have been holding Becker as a hostage. Or I guess I was half-afraid I’d find something awful.”

“What made you suspect Pooka?”

“Becker just had this feeling about Pooka. He spent more time with him than I did, and he thought he was creepy. And then when the lock got changed the second time, Becker was convinced there was something bad going on. When he disappeared I figured either he was afraid of Pooka or Pooka did something to him.”

“Let’s do it,” Lula said. “Let’s scope this place out.”

I didn’t totally share her enthusiasm. I was a teensy worried that there’d be fleas jumping around and they’d be shot full of bubonic plague. I was willing to peek inside and see if anybody was home, but at the first sign of a flea I was turning the project over to the hazmat team.

We trudged up to the second floor and knocked on Pooka’s door. No answer. The door was locked.

“Doesn’t look like much of a lock,” Lula said.

She took a screwdriver out of her purse, inserted it into the lock, hit the screwdriver with the butt of her gun, and the door popped open.

We cautiously looked inside.

“Yoo-hoo,”
Lula called. “Anybody home?”

Nothing. We crept in and moved through the rooms. I didn’t see any fleas. Not on the floor. Not in aquariums. The aquariums were all gone. No blood or mice in the refrigerator. No dead rats in the sink.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Lula said. “On account of he cleaned up. He’s got one of those bags that you see in the hospital holding blood and shit and it’s empty and in the garbage. It’s got writing on it. It says
Yersinia pestis.
Is that someone’s name?”

I googled it on my iPhone. It was the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague.

“Don’t touch it,” I said. “Everyone out. Now. Don’t stop until you’re on the sidewalk.”

I stomped my feet and checked myself over to make sure I didn’t have any fleas on me, and I called Morelli.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “I know it’s Sunday, and you’re not feeling great, but I think you’ll want to see this. And bring a hazmat suit.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

I gave him the address and told him about the empty bag in the garbage.

“I feel itchy all over,” Lula said. “I think I got a flea on me. And what if he’s got some of that
Yersinia
stuff in him? That can’t be good, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It wouldn’t be good.”

“Of course I just came from church, so I might still have some holy protection.”

Gobbles wasn’t saying anything. He had a grim set to his mouth, and I knew he had it figured out.

“There are going to be police here,” I said to Gobbles. “You might want to go home or wherever it is that you go.”

“You’ll call me?”

“As soon as I know something.”

“So let me see if I got this put together right,” Lula said. “Pooka was making fleas, and he was gonna shoot them off in the fireworks. And then all the people at homecoming would get fleas dropped on them, and the fleas might be infected with this
Yersinia.
Which we don’t want to have, either.”

“Right.”

“And just exactly what is this
Yersinia
?” She tapped it into her phone.
“Plague!”
she yelled. “It’s freaking plague. It’s the black death. Do you know what this shit does to you? It gives you boo-boos. And then your fingers and toes turn black and fall off. Good thing I don’t have a dick. Imagine what it could do to that!” She kicked her shoes off and looked at her toes. “I see a flea. I got a flea on me. Shoot it. Burn it. Somebody do something.”

I looked down at her feet. “I don’t see any fleas.”

“What’s that on my big toe?”

“It looks like a wart.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. I have to go home,” Lula said. “I’m gonna take a shower and boil all my clothes. If I leave can you catch a ride with Morelli?”

“No problem.”

I was alone when Morelli pulled to the curb.

“I have a hazmat team on the way,” he said. “Do you know if anyone’s in the house?”

“I haven’t seen anyone. I have a description of Pooka’s van but no license plate number. You probably want to sift through his office in the science building.”

A patrol car arrived and parked beside Morelli’s SUV, and Morelli gave the uniform instructions to secure the second-floor apartment but not go in.

“We don’t want this broadcast on the evening news,” Morelli said. “Who knows about this besides you?”

“Gobbles. And he’s not going to say anything. And Lula. She just went home to boil her clothes.”

I saw sweat bead on Morelli’s upper lip.

“Cramps?” I asked him.

“It’s okay. It’ll pass. Probably. We need to contain Lula. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to babysit her for a couple days.”

“What all would that involve?”

“Twenty-four-seven. You could bring her over to your apartment.”

“Are you insane? Live with Lula? She snores.
Loud.
And she would be in my bathroom. I don’t like other people in my bathroom.”

“You let me use it.”

“I didn’t mind you using it. It felt
friendly.
I was in love with you.”

“I notice you used the past tense. You’re not still in love with me?”

“I am but I don’t want to admit it. And I certainly don’t want to say it out loud.”

“I’d kiss you, but I have cramps,” Morelli said.

A hazmat van rumbled up and parked.

“This is going to be a long day,” Morelli said. “If it turns out the bag of plague is for real, this place will be crawling with every three-letter agency in the country.”

“I’d go home and clean my hamster cage, but I don’t have a car.”

Morelli gave me his keys. “Take my SUV. I’ll pick it up when I’m done here.”

“Can I bring you a yogurt or something?”

“No, but thanks. I’m off dairy.”

“Is there anything left that you can eat?”

“Alcohol, as long as it’s not made with grain.”

I put Rex in the bathtub while I cleaned his cage. I returned him to the cage and scrubbed the bathroom. I vacuumed the floors, dusted the few things that collected dust, washed the kitchen floor, and took the garbage out to the trash chute. My mother and grandmother seem to get satisfaction from this. I get nothing. I would get satisfaction from paying a housekeeper once a week to clean my house. Unfortunately I’m not in that income bracket. I’m almost in the
no
income bracket.

Morelli showed up at three-thirty.

“Do you need to use the bathroom?” I asked him.

“No, but it’s comforting to know there’s one close by.”

“I’d offer you something to eat, but I don’t think I have anything.”

“It’s okay. I just had a gluten-free, dairy-free snack bar that tasted like sawdust. I’m going to go home and eat half a loaf of gluten-free, dairy-free bread. I think I can put grape jelly on it.”

“Can you eat chicken? We could make a roast chicken.”

“You know how to roast a chicken?”

“Almost. My mother roasts chickens all the time.”

“I appreciate the offer but I think I’ll go home and stick with the bread. The good news is that Becker might be alive and with Pooka. The bad news is that he might not be in great shape. It turns out that Pooka doesn’t just rent that apartment. He actually owns the house and rents out the other three units. At the back end of the property there’s a single-car garage where he’s been keeping the white van. The van isn’t there anymore but he’s left behind a load of garbage. Without going into gruesome detail, we’ve collected evidence that would indicate someone was being kept in the garage. It looks like he was sedated and restrained and either giving blood or getting blood. My guess is he was
giving
blood and that Pooka was using it to feed his fleas. Nothing has been analyzed yet, so this is all conjecture. Some of the containers left behind were labeled and some weren’t, so we don’t know exactly what we’re seeing. The bag in the garbage in the apartment is being looked at by the CDC. We’re going on the assumption that it’s real.”

“I thought plague was eradicated.”

“Not entirely. A small number of cases pop up every year. It can be treated with antibiotics, but it’s still life threatening and it’s an ugly disease. And it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to get hold of an infected rat or even a rogue vial. Pooka is a biology professor. I imagine he knows how to get his hands on all sorts of stuff.”

“That’s scary.”

“Yes. And it’s now considered domestic terrorism, so along with the FBI, the CDC, and the state police, we have Homeland Security digging around in every garbage receptacle from here to Camden. I’m happy about it because I’m out of the plague business. All I have to do is solve three murders.”

“Sorry I dragged you into this.”

“You didn’t drag me in. I was dragged in when I pulled the first homicide. And, honestly, I’d be all about this if I didn’t feel so lousy.”

“Don’t worry about Lula. She’s home and she’s busy doing laundry. I’ll see her first thing in the morning, and I’ll take control.”

“I expect it’s no longer an issue. We have guys running around in biohazard suits. The only thing missing from the circus is a detonation robot. The SAT truck cruised in just as I was leaving.”

I watched Morelli walk down the hall, I closed my door, and locked all three of my locks. This still didn’t make me feel entirely safe. I’d been threatened with a horrible death by a lunatic who’d most likely already killed three people. All it would take was a single infected flea. It could hop under my door. It could sit in the hallway and wait for me to walk to the elevator. And just like that I’d have bubonic plague. At least my apartment was clean. If I got the plague my mother wouldn’t be embarrassed about my housekeeping.