Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“And your name, sir?” asked Culpepper.

“Henry Baskers,” said Holmes.

“Well, Mr. Baskers, I apologize, if your host has not, for the olfactory unpleasantness currently haunting our temporary place of business,” said Culpepper. “You’ve seen the local neighborhood, sir. Water has to be carried down here by hand all the way from Four-and-a-Half Street. There’s not so much as a single public pump in all of this Southwest quarter.” He squinted at Murtrick. “But that is little excuse, since civilization demands a price .”

Murtrick never took his eyes off Holmes, who had nothing to say to all of this. He allowed himself to show several subtle signs of nervousness without overplaying his role. Mr. “Baskers” would have purchased illicit drugs in unsavory places before this.

From time to time, Holmes allowed his nervous gaze to flick to Mr. J as if he were one gentleman appealing for help from another, but the tall man leaned against the counter with a withdrawn silence bordering on complete indifference. It was as if he weren’t there.

But Culpepper rubbed his palms together. “To business then, sir. My confederates tell me that you wish to purchase a modest amount of morphine and . . . how shall I put it? . . . a more significant amount of Mr. Bayer’s new heroic pharmaceutical.”

“Yes,” said Holmes. He repeated the amount of each he was ready to purchase.

“You’re aware, Mr. Baskers,” said Culpepper, “that Bayer has not yet fully released this miraculous heroin for general sale either in Europe or the United States. Soon it will be on every grocery store’s shelf, but right now it is undergoing—what do they call it?—trials in select hospitals, including Dr. Reed’s clinic.”

Holmes nodded impatiently. He allowed his gaze to remain riveted on the three bottles of heroin salts Culpepper was holding between the fingers of his right hand like a magician preparing to do a trick. Each label read FRIEDIR BAYER & CO., ELBERFELD, 40 STONE ST., NEW YORK.

In truth, Holmes was also noting the make and model of the pistol set in Culpepper’s tight waistband. It was familiar to the detective since not only was it British-made but had been standard issue for the British military until it had been replaced by the Enfield pistol in 1880. It was the .442-caliber Beaumont-Adams revolver that had become so famous in England’s war with the Zulus—this model almost certainly modified, as so many had been that had seen action in America’s Civil War, to take center-fire cartridges. This pistol had sported the first modern double-action system. Holmes knew that many American officers and cavalry in their Civil War had preferred it to the American military Colt due to the Beaumont-Adams’s superior trigger-cocking speed and more rapid rate of fire in close action. He wondered idly if Culpepper had been an officer in that war, now almost 30 years in the past, and if he kept this pistol for reasons of sentimentality. Based on the gray in the man’s sideburns and the obvious use of hair-darkening materials elsewhere under that homburg—perhaps the same patent goop Holmes was using in his Sigerson disguise—Culpepper could easily be in his late fifties or early sixties.

Holmes assumed that Mr. J was also armed, but almost certainly with a much smaller and more sensible pistol to carry in a city.

“The morphine will cost you only twenty dollars,” said Culpepper, holding the two smaller vials in his left hand. That was twice what Holmes would pay for it near one of the hospitals or in the Negro sections of town just a dozen alleys from here.

As if reading Holmes’s thoughts, Culpepper chuckled and said, “Yes, yes, you could get if for less in niggertown, Mr. Baskers, but God knows what our darky friends might have mixed into it. And as for the heroin . . . no, you have come to the one and only supplier in your nation’s capital, sir. You will find it nowhere else.”

Holmes knew that this wasn’t true either, but he said, “How much for the three bottles of salts?”

“One hundred and fifty dollars, sir,” said Culpepper. Even Murtrick glanced over at the well-dressed man in surprise. This was more than four times the street price Holmes would have paid for an equal amount of the drug in New York.

He wrestled visibly with the shock of the price, allowing only the slightest hint of the serious addict’s always-losing war between absolute need and mere money to show on his face.

“Oh, what the heck,” laughed Culpepper. “We’ll throw both morphines in as part of the price. A better deal you’ll get nowhere east of the Mississippi, Mr. Baskers.”

Holmes swallowed hard and nodded. “All right.” He watched both men’s eyes glint as he counted a hundred and fifty dollars from his absurd wad of American bills. He was carrying more than eight hundred dollars with him—every bit of what he’d brought from France and converted to dollars in New York.

When the transaction was completed and the morphine and heroin bottles nestled most carefully in Holmes’s various jacket pockets, Culpepper asked in a casual tone, “Will we be having the pleasure of your future business, Mr. Baskers? I can give you the address of one of my . . . ah . . . less fragrant and more convenient places of business.”

This was it. If Holmes told them that he was going to be a regular customer, they might let him live. At these extortionate prices for heroin alone, they could have his remaining $650 in a few months without resorting to violence. Over a year or two, he would be worth a true fortune to them.

“No,” said Holmes. “I’m leaving tomorrow for San Francisco. I’m from Philadelphia and didn’t know if the heroin was in use out there yet and so . . . I thought . . .”

“We understand,” grinned Culpepper. He gave Murtrick the briefest of glances. “Have a safe trip, Mr. Baskers.”

Mr. J did not even turn his head to watch as Holmes left the former blacksmith shop.

They’d sent one of the Finns to follow him up Casey’s Alley. Following a man surreptitiously up such a narrow venue, crowded as its sides were with a contiguous wall of shacks and tumbledown ruins, would have been difficult enough when the dirt street was dry; with the mud, it was impossible.

Holmes squelched northward, never looking back, assured that this Finn was merely keeping him in sight while the other three men—or possibly more by now—were moving up an adjacent north-south alley. When Holmes stopped, this Finn would get the word to the others in less than a minute.

Culpepper and Murtrick would be betting that this addict’s need was so great that he could not wait to get back to his hotel, but would seek out a private place along the way in which to inject his newly acquired heroin. They would also be banking that Holmes—“Mr. Baskers”—would do this before he left the slums of the Southwest quarter.

Holmes would not disappoint them.

He left the door of the abandoned hotel ajar behind him. The giant stain in the floor of the large room off the lobby remained just as disturbing as at first encounter and the three stories of cratered floorboards beginning with that room’s ceiling just as shocking. The cold spring rain had settled into a heavy drizzle and it continued to fall through the shattered rooftop more than three stories above.

Perhaps a meteor or comet struck the hotel , was the ironic thought that came from the most reasoned and deductive mind in England. Holmes was in great physical pain. The morphine he’d injected that morning had been the last of his store, had been far too little for the pain that had accrued over the past week, and pain continued to distract him despite his years of disciplining himself to ignore it. A gunshot wound, something less than mortal, would have distracted him less than this ferocious full-body ache that came from too long of an interval between applications of his ameliorative.