Hot Ticket (36 page)

Crossed two mountains, dreading what lay in my path. Gradually I heard thunder that sounded heavier than the whole planet.
The floor of the forest began to slide downward. I skidded to water’s edge and nearly cried when I saw the thick green torrent.
God, I’d never make it across!
He’s on the other side.
Hiked upstream, looking for stones, logjams, maybe a ferry. Night was losing its grip when I finally discerned a rope connecting
two trees on opposite sides of the surging water. Gave it a vicious shake, warning the snakes. Put my boots in the knapsack,
tested the knot, waded in. Warm as a bath: typhoid pudding but I could worry about that after I got to the other side.

Lost my footing almost immediately. River turned cold and the rope sagged as the current sucked me toward the falls. I went
underwater.
Kick up, slide left.

Did that a half dozen times, inhaling more water than oxygen each time I surfaced. Slimy amphibians brushed my legs. When
the current warmed again, I knew I was close to land. Swallowed another quart of sewage before the rope broke the waves. I
pulled myself ashore. Refreshing little swim. I had lost the machete. Rope burns scored my forearms, boots weighed a ton.
I hiked back to where I thought the path might continue. The sun barely peeped above the horizon but the temperature had already
begun to rise. Finally I saw a notch.

Every bird in the jungle awoke with a
wee-wee-wee-wee
or
wakKK-wakKK.
Legions of cicadas shivered in retaliation. Eerie gray green light perfused the forest as I struggled uphill, toward the
limestone caves. Sweat ran past my eyes, down my legs: my clothes would rot before they dried. What if Fausto wasn’t there?
Don’t think. Just move.

Outside Barnard’s cave I saw a tent, a dead fire. Peered through the mesh: there lay my husband, in almost the exact position
I had left him in Washington. I sat on the low stool next to his cot. His skin was a mélange of unhealthy pastels. I didn’t
like the noises he was making. Sniffed the empty glass on the floor: more of the vile stuff he had been drinking back home.
I was monitoring his pulse when a few pebbles moved outside the tent. Looked up as Ek looked in.

We stared at each other for a long moment. “I knew you’d come,” he said finally, without the hint of a smile. “So did Fausto.”

“He’s not going to make it, is he.” Ek didn’t answer. Beside me, the zipper rasped. I glanced at a thin man with the face
of a hawk. “Dr. Bailey, I presume. My name’s Cosima.” Louis came in. I didn’t shake his hand. “Why’d you lug him all the way
out here?”

“We took a helicopter in. Landed in a clearing on top of the mountain. All he had to do was walk down.” Louis felt Fausto’s
forehead. “We almost lost him last night. You do know about his medical condition, don’t you?”

I smiled ever so gratefully. “Why don’t you explain.”

First, Louis told Ek to make coffee. “I became fascinated with this case thirty years ago, when Fausto’s mother died. In simple
terms, the family goes mad. The first episodes occur around age seventeen and return at random with seizures that precipitate
deep psychosis. Then all symptoms may disappear for years. But they always return. I’ve named it the Kiss syndrome and documented
it through three generations. No one has ever survived the fourth recurrence. By then the chemical and electrical disturbances
are insuperable.” He tested Fausto’s pulse and frowned. “He’s up to number four.”

“What are you doing for him?”

“The first time I treated him with human secretions.” Raw material kindly donated by med school cadavers and Morris Morton.
Nothing like killing two birds with one music critic. “That didn’t work. When he was thirty, I tried hallucinogens.”

“Strike two,” I smiled. “The seizures returned and he nearly burned to death in the bargain.”

“I told him to quit smoking in bed,” Louis snapped. “Next time I tried lasers.”

“What do you have in mind this time around?” I asked. “Eye of newt?”

“I’ve spent seventeen years in the rain forest. I know more about plant compounds than anyone on earth. I think I’ve found
a phytochemical that stimulates the vagus. That’s the nerve that tells the brain to shut off the seizures. If they can’t get
started, the whole cycle might be suppressed.”

“This stuff?” I sniffed the empty glass. “Then why’d he have a bad night?”

“The supply’s low and stale. Ek and I are making fresh distillate now. He needs it immediately. If it works, I’ve made a major
medical discovery.”

Patents, riches, Nobel Prize: strike two for the Hippocratic oath. I brushed a fly off Fausto’s eyebrow. “When’s he going
to wake up?”

“He might be out all day. He might smell the coffee and snap to life. It varies.”

“He had no signs of a recurrence before you went on your wild goose chase to Washington?”

“Absolutely not! This malady is totally unpredictable. And it wasn’t a wild goose chase.”

The cicadas suddenly rioted: had their noise been water, the tent would have washed down the hill like a toothpick in a typhoon.
Wake up, husband.
“That catches me up with Fausto,” I said. “How about filling me in on yourself. We can begin with your pal Krikor Tunalian.”

Louis’s eyes went muddy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He wired five mil to your Swiss account on July second. Met you in Koko’s about a month ago to check on progress. You blew
him off and went to Washington with a head full of assassination plots. Got yourself waylaid at the FBI, so Tuna had to help
Fausto spirit you out of prison and back in the saddle.” I picked a leech off my elbow. “He wants you to make a poison.”

“You’ve been spying on me!” the great doctor snapped. “Who are you?”

“A friend of Polly’s. She’s been murdered, by the way. Followed you to D.C. and stepped in someone else’s cow pie.”

“My God! Who killed her?”

“You tell me.” I accepted a gourd from Ek. “Has anyone brought you up-to-date on Yvette Tatal?” Louis looked violently at
Ek, who averted his eyes. “She ran into a fer-de-lance. I guess it’s been classified an accident.” Bitter coffee here. “So
you see, Louis, your little sideshow with Tuna is the least of my headaches.”

He sank to the ground as the enormity of my news hit. A month ago I might have felt sorry for him. Now he was just the last
domino in a long, toppling row. “Tell me about Tuna,” I repeated.

Louis flecked a beetle off his neck. “He wanted an irreversible poison absorbed through the skin. I’m still working on it.
It’s not quite ready.”

“You got that right. All it does now is reduce grown men to diarrhea factories.”

“Since you seem to know everything, perhaps you could tell me what happened to Yvette Tatal.”

I reported her death concisely and without a trace of emotion. After Louis called me a liar, Ek went to the cave and returned
with a small mesh box. “She tells the truth. I found this on the shelf above Dr. Tatal’s body.”

Louis flung the box into the corner. “Who did it?”

“A hired killer.” I glanced at Ek. “Now dead. Was Tatal working on the poison with you?”

“For God’s sake! She was a doctor!”

Fausto shuddered then went still. I kneeled by his ear, whispered his name. He didn’t respond. Again I smelled that terrifying
odor of spoiled meat. “Get back to your distillery,” I told Louis. “I’ve had enough of you for the moment.”

Louis stumbled out of the tent, Ek two steps behind. I swore under my breath before returning to the cot. As I was neatening
Fausto’s hair, his putty lips edged slowly into a smile. “And you call
me
a troublemaker.”

Alive: I forgave everything. “How long have you been listening, you schmuck?”

“I was awake when you came in.”

Covered his face with kisses. “How do you feel?”

“Lousy.”

“You’ve got to get to a hospital.”

“Won’t do any good. Have a little pity on Louis, sweet. He’s been trying to save me for thirty years.” Fausto patted my hand,
felt no ring. “Still married?”

“I’m a covert government agent,” I said. “So was Polly. She was supposed to find out what was going on with Louis and Tuna.”

Again that cherubic, doomed smile. “I’m perfectly innocent, of course. I only needed Louis to make some more medicine for
me.”

“You went through all the hassle of a double to get Louis out of prison? Why didn’t you just tell Bobby to write a pardon?”

“That’s no fun, sweet. And I had a small point to make with Bobby. He needed reminding that all his beloved power was just
an illusion. That perhaps he had sold his soul and gained nothing.”

Of course these lessons in piety were much easier to pull off when you had limitless disposable income and a healthy disregard
for the laws of the land. “The hell with humbling Bobby,” I scowled. “You just wanted to see if your scheme would work.”

“That too,” Fausto admitted. Then he got serious. “I couldn’t risk telling Bobby about Louis. Too many nervous advisers in
the Oval Office, especially in an election year. The fewer people who knew Louis was in jail, the better. His life was in
danger.”

“What did he plan to do in Washington? Meet the press?”

“Darling, Louis doesn’t often get fits of conscience. When he does, he’s not terribly practical. It took him days to buy a
Guatemalan passport and get to D.C. First thing he did was call me. I told him to sit still in his office until I got there.
Instead he called the FBI. Someone intercepted the call and tried to kidnap him. Fortunately, our girl Rhoby alerted the cops
first and Louis ended up in jail. I knew I had to move him out of there quickly, so I enlisted Tuna. Obviously, he was eager
that the doctor get back in the saddle.”

“Who’s Tuna trying to dispose of?”

“Who cares? Some sleazeball who’s undercutting him. Try to think of Louis’s work as humanitarian.”

“He should have been busting his ass on your case, not Tuna’s.

“Louis is capable of working on two things at once.”

I glanced irritatedly at the cave. “When’s he going to have your medicine ready?”

Fausto brought my hand to his mouth. Even now, the slow, exhausted touch of his lips quickened me. “It’s a long shot. You
know that. God, I love you.”

I leaned over his mosquito-nibbled ear. “Cecil tells me you thought I killed Polly.”

“I did at first. Then I realized you were looking for her murderer.” Large frown. “When did Cecil speak to you?”

“He stayed in Washington to wrap up a few loose ends. Like me. Calm down, he’s on my payroll now.”

Fausto drifted off for a while. Then he said, “I knew you were more than a Gypsy fiddler the minute you took Polly’s seat
at Ford’s Theatre. When Cecil saw you hanging off her balcony and half the town started breathing up your thigh, I knew you
were slightly illegal. A girl after my own heart. Then I heard you play and it was all over.” His fingers crawled over mine.
“I kept seeing your eyes. Diamonds and ashes.”

Great line. I hoped it wasn’t another joke. “Brought you something.”

Fausto admired his wedding band in the greenish light. “You came all the way through the jungle to give me a ring?”

“No, a bloody nose.” I looked impatiently toward the cave. “What the hell’s he doing in there?”

“Let him be. I’m ridiculously happy just talking with you.” Fausto coughed weakly. “Could you get me a little water, sweet?”

I went into the cave. Barnard’s dried flowers still hung on the wall. Louis and Ek were boiling crud in a beaker. The place
reeked of guano, herbs, unwashed human. “Step on it,” I said. “He’s fading.”

When I returned to the tent, Fausto was hemorrhaging water. He drank more and fell asleep. Nothing I could do but fan the
flies away and watch massive shudders overtake him every few minutes. The creatures of the forest cawed louder as the temperature
rose twenty degrees. Suddenly the sky turned to coal and a typhoon pounded the tent. Just as swiftly, like life, it passed.

Fausto woke with a start. He didn’t immediately recognize his surroundings or me. “What day is it?”

I had to think about that. “Thursday.”

“No, the date.”

“October second.”

“Hmm. I don’t think I’m going to make my fifty-first birthday.”

Great talons of fear crunched my ribs. I took his hand: distract him with mind games. “Don’t say that. Who do you think killed
Polly?”

“I don’t know. Depends on whose dreams she was closest to destroying. And everyone dreams in Washington.”

I sighed: lousy answer. Correct but lousy. “Is Louis right about Jojo’s dengue?”

“Yes. But we can’t figure out how Jojo got infected in the first place.”

“What were you doing at the conference?”

“My God! Who’s tattling on me?”

“Gretchen. She loved her plane ride home with you and the monkey.”

“I was keeping an eye on Polly. Louis didn’t know what to make of her.”

“Was she in love with him?”

“Love isn’t always physical, you know. Not completely.” Fausto drifted off again. Then, “Did you sleep with Bobby?”

“Almost.”

“I’m sorry to have to set you up like that. I needed the ultimate seductress to divert him while the double went to Lorton.
You may have saved my life. Well, prolonged it, in any event.” He kissed my hand. “I’m sorry I never got to fuck you properly,
Leslie. Serves me right. I should have taken better care of myself. I just didn’t care to live until the night I saw you in
that little blue dress at Ford’s Theatre. By then it was just too late.”

Beyond the valley, thunder. Maybe it was the waterfall. “We’ll get out of here and throw a huge party. Then I’ll tie you to
the bedposts and feed you nothing but oysters until you lose a hundred pounds. Then we’ll have ten kids. They’ll all play
instruments and we’ll tour the country like the von Trapps. Your dreams of world domination will dissolve in a mountain of
dirty diapers.”

“Keep talking,” Fausto whispered. “I love this.”

Louis zipped open the tent flap. “Brought you something, Fausto.” He gave the patient a gourd filled with vile brown liquid.
“It’s a strong dose. You ought to know that there may be side effects. The vagus might overreact. Instead of telling the brain
to interrupt seizures, it might signal to begin them.”