F. Paul Wilson - The Tomb

"Miss Gia?" It was Eunice calling from the back door. "Mrs. Paton says lunch will be early today because of your trip to the dress shop."

Gia bit down on the middle knuckle of her right index finger, a gesture of frustration she had picked up from her grandmother many years ago.

The dress shop… the reception tonight… two places she most definitely did not want to go, but would have to because she had promised. She had to get out of here!

4

Joey Diaz placed the little bottle of green liquid on the table between them.

"Where'd you get ahold of this stuff, Jack?"

Jack was buying Joey a late lunch at a midtown Burger King. They had a corner booth; each was munching on a Whopper. Joey, a Filipino with a bad case of post-adolescent acne, was a contact Jack treasured. He worked in the city Health Department lab. In the past, Jack had used him mostly for information and for suggestions on how to bring down the wrath of the Health Department upon the heads of certain targets of his fix-it work. Yesterday was the first time he had asked Joey to run an analysis for him.

"What's wrong with it?" Jack had been finding it hard to concentrate on Joey or the food. His mind had been on Kolabati and how she had made him feel last night. From there it flowed to the odor that had crept into the apartment and her bizarre reaction to it. His thoughts kept drifting away from Joey, and so it was easy to appear laid-back about the analysis. He had been playing everything low-key for Joey. No big thing—just see if there's anything really useful in it.

"Nothing wrong, exactly." Joey had a bad habit of talking with his mouth full. Most people would swallow, then talk before the next bite; Joey preferred to sip his Coke between swallows, take another big bite, then talk. As he leaned forward, Jack leaned back. "But it ain't gonna help you shit."

"Not a laxative? What will it help me do? Sleep?"

He shook his head and filled his mouth with fries. "Not a chance."

Jack drummed his fingers on the grease-patinaed, wood-grained Formica. Damn ! It had occurred to him that the tonic might be some sort of sedative used to put Grace into a deep sleep so she wouldn't make a fuss when her abductors—if in fact she had been abducted—came by and snatched her. So much for that possibility. He waited for Joey to go on, hoping he would finish his Whopper first. No such luck.

"I don't think it does anything," he said around his last mouthful. "It's just a crazy conglomeration of odd stuff. None of it makes sense."

"In other words, somebody just threw a lot of junk together to sell for whatever ails you. Some sort of Dr. Feelgood tonic."

Joey shrugged. "Maybe. But if that's the case, they could have done it a lot cheaper. Personally, I think it was put together by someone who believed in the mixture. There are crude flavorings and a twelve percent alcohol vehicle. Nothing special—I had them pegged in no time. But there was this strange alkaloid that I had the damnedest—"

"What's an alkaloid? Sounds like poison."

"Some of them are, like strychnine; others you take every day, like caffeine. They're almost always derived from plants. This one came from a doozy. Wasn't even in the computer. Took me most of the morning to track it down." He shook his head. "What a way to spend a Saturday morning."

Jack smiled to himself. Joey was going to ask a little extra for this job. That was okay. If it kept him happy, it was worth it.

"So where's it from?" he asked, watching with relief as Joey washed down the last of his lunch.

"It's from a kind of grass."

"Dope?"

"Naw. A non-smoking kind called durba grass. And this particular alkaloid isn't exactly a naturally occurring thing. It was cooked in some way to add an extra amine group. That's what took me so long."

"So it's not a laxative, not a sedative, not a poison. What is it?"

"Beats hell out of me."

"This is not exactly a big help to me, Joey."

"What can I say?" Joey ran a hand through his lanky black hair, scratched at a pimple on his chin. "You wanted to know what was in it. I told you: some crude flavorings, an alcohol vehicle, and an alkaloid from an Indian grass."

Jack felt something twist inside him. Memories of last night exploded around him. He said, "Indian? You mean American Indian, don't you?" knowing even as he spoke that Joey had not meant that at all.

"Of course not! American Indian grass would be North American grass. No, this stuff is from India, the subcontinent. A tough compound to track down. Never would have figured it out if the department computer hadn't referred me to the right textbook."

India! How strange. After spending a number of delirious hours last night with Kolabati, to learn that the bottle of liquid found in a missing woman's room was probably compounded by an Indian. Strange indeed.

Or perhaps not so strange. Grace and Nellie had close ties to the U.K. Mission and through there to the diplomatic community that centered around the U.N. Perhaps someone from the Indian Consulate had given Grace the bottle—perhaps Kusum himself. After all, wasn't India once a British colony?

"Afraid it's really an innocent little mixture, Jack. If you're looking to sic the Health Department on whoever's peddling it as a laxative, I think you'd be better off going to the Department of Consumer Affairs."

Jack had been hoping the little bottle would yield a dazzling clue that would lead him directly to Aunt Grace, making him a hero in Gia's eyes.

So much for hunches.

He asked Joey what he thought his unofficial analysis was worth, paid the hundred and fifty, and headed back to his apartment with the little bottle in the front pocket of his jeans. As he rode the bus uptown, he tried to figure what he should do next on the Grace Westphalen thing. He had spent much of the morning tracking down and talking to a few more of his street contacts, but there had been no leads. No one had heard a thing. There had to be other avenues, but he couldn't think of any at the moment. Other thoughts pushed their way to the front.

Kolabati again. His mind was full of her. Why? As he tried to analyze it, he came to see that the sexual spell she had cast on him last night was only a small part of it. More important was the realization that she knew who he was, knew how he made a living, and somehow was able to accept it. No… accept wasn't the right word. It almost seemed as if she looked on his lifestyle as a perfectly natural way of living. One that she wouldn't mind for herself.

Jack knew he was on the rebound from Gia, knew he was vulnerable, especially to someone who appeared to be as open-minded as Kolabati. Almost against his will, he had laid himself bare for her, and she had found him… "honorable."

She wasn't afraid of him.

He had to call her.

But first he had to call Gia. He owed her some sort of progress report, even when there was no progress. He dialed the Paton number as soon as he reached his apartment.

"Any word on Grace?" he said after Gia was called to the other end.

"No." Her voice didn't seem nearly as cool as it had yesterday. Or was that just his imagination? "I hope you've got some good news. We could use it around here."

"Well…" Jack grimaced. He really wished he had something encouraging to tell her. He was almost tempted to make up something, but couldn't bring himself to do it. "You know that stuff we thought was a laxative? It isn't."

"What is it, then?"

"Nothing. A dead end."

There was a pause on the other end, then, "Where do you go from here?"

"I wait."

"Nellie's already doing that. She doesn't need any help waiting."

Her sarcasm stung.

"Look, Gia. I'm not a detective—"

"I'm well aware of that."