Michael Palmer - Extreme Measures

A city within the city, Allston's crowded tenements and triplexes were home to many college students, as well as to ethnic pockets of Vietnamese, Thais ifispapics, Haitians, Pakistanis, and first-generation migrants from various Eastern European countries.

Sproul Court itself was a dingy, poorly lit, deadend side street, filled with wooden three-story.structures, most of which had porches off the second- and third-story flats. All of the buildings, it seemed, had a shop or store of some sort on the street level. The posters in the windows of the businesses suggested that the main clientele in the area was black.

With some time to spare, Eric wandered the length of the street, past the "grocerette" and the package store, Craissou's Tailor Shop, and the Treasure Island Used Clothing Boutique. There was little that was quaint about the decaying buildings, sooty windows, and trash-cluttered alleyways, and he found it difficult to connect the street in any way with the enigmatic, exquisitely beautiful woman he was to meet there.

Still, he felt tense and excited. If she was true to her word, Anna Delacroix would provide the proof he could use" along with the fruits of his library investigation, to convince some of the powers at the hospital-and even more importantly, to convince Reed Marshallf the validity of his tetrodotoxin theory. He would then gain some allies, and his efforts could shift from determining whether such poisoning was possible to why it had happened… and how.

Although he had not yet found a specific description of the cardiographic pattern in tetrodotoxin oxin poisoning, he had catalogued a number of accounts of the clinical presentation, all of which included the classic signs of rapidly progressive heart failure: shortness of breath; intractable coughing; cyanosis, first of the lips and fingertips, then later of the face, hands, and feet; frothy fluid building in the chest and weg into ' the throat; air hunger leading to panic, leading to even worse air hunger; and finally somnolence, loss of consciousness, and death.

"Dr. Eric, over here."

Anna Delacroix was standing in the shadow of a storefront, not far from one of the few lampposts on the street. She was wearing a wide floppy-brimmed hat, and had a bandanna of some sort tied loosely about her neck.

"Did you believe I'd come?" he asked.

"Of course I did. You have doubts, and you are desperate to have those doubts assuaged."

"Can you assuage them?"

"Not I, but there is a man inside this store who has some things to say that you will find most interesting." She gestured at the window behind her, which was filled with the trappings of a hardware or dry goods store. The uneven hand-painted letters on the glass said simply:

BENET'S. Beyond the display, a dark shade was drawn. "I had to convince him that you would never divulge his name to anyone," she went on. "You will honor that pledge?"

"Of course."

"Good. Because as you will see, any indiscretion could cost either him or me our lives." She looked at Eric gravely.

Anna led him into the alley, knocked once on a side door to the shop, and entered. Inside, seated on a stool, was a gaunt, willowy man with silvering hair and a face that spoke of illness or perhaps merely of a life of too much pain. He shook Eric's hand with no firmness.

Anna introduced him as Titus Mennilard, her mother's brother and once the proprietor of Benet's, which was now run by his family.

Titus mumbled a greeting. His speech was slow and thick, and his accent, which Eric assumed was Haitian, was so dense that Eric had to concentrate to understand the man's words.

Benet's was a cluttered melange of tools, fabric, electrical supplies, canned goods, and grain. it was illuminated by a single low-wattage bulb, suspended beneath a metal reflector.

Whether intended or not, the effect of the subdued lighting, the drawn shade, and the hushed tones was dramatic and mysterious.

"You wanted proof of your suspicions," Anna said.

"Well, my uncle here is that proof Look into his eyes as you listen to us, and you wig know that what we share with you is the truth. Once, he was the most vigorous and vibrant of men-a musician and a poet, a leader in our community. Now he is a shell. Our troubles began several years ago when word began spreading around our community of the arrival here from Haiti of a most powerful houngan-a priest with the power and knowledge of vodoun. The houngan, we were told, was to be known only as Mr. Dunn."

At the mention of the name, Titus Memmilard seemed to stiffen.

"Evil and pain," he said. "The houngan brought evil and pain."

Anna patted the man's hand.

"What he brought," she said, "was the coup poudre."

"The magical powder," Eric said.

"Exactly." Anna looked impressed with his knowledge- "Death powder, mystical powder; take your Pick. In Haiti, the coup poudre is the sword of the houngans. There are government courts and officials, but the houngans are the real judges, and a living death is their only punishment."

"This rogue priest, this Mr. Dunn, is known only to the group of thugs with whom he has surrounded himself- He is a criminal in every sense of the worda mobster. It is rumored that in Haiti he was one of the T)nton Macoutes, Franqois Duvaher's secret police. He preys on people's weaknesses and superstitions. He extorts money from our businesses and sells narcotics to our children. 'two years ago, after several attempts to enlist the aid of the police, my uncle attempted to organize the merchants to fight back.

One of Dunn's collection men was beaten up. Another was robbed of his stash of drugs before he could sell them. It came from Mr. Dunn that my uncle was to be made an example-that he had been marked for living death. His family tried to protect him, but several of Dunn's men came with guns and took him away. Uncle, are you able to tell this doctor what happened next?"

Eric turned to the old man. "Please try," he urged.

"I received the coup poudre from the Evil One himself," Titus said, weakly clearing phlegm from his throat. "Across my mouth and under my arms." He demonstrated by drawing his hand across the areas.

Eric remembered reading in several sources that absorption of tetrodotoxin was nearly as rapid and complete through the skin as through the gastrointestinal system.

"Did you see the man's face?" he asked.

"It was the face of hell."

Eric looked to Anna, who shrugged and shook her head.

"Perhaps a mask," she said. "Go on, uncle."

"They tied me down, but soon they cut me free.

There was no need to bind me, for I could no longer move."

"You remember all of this?"

"Some things he remembers clearly. Some not at all," Anna explained.

"what we do know is that two days later, this man who now sits before you was found lying on a bed in this very room, cold and quite dead. His eyes were taped shut. A note by his body warned against moving him or calling for medical help. Over the following two days, though he was watched constantly, not once did anyone see him take so much as a single breath."

"MY wife mourned over me," Titus said hoarsely.

"I could hear her and feel her hand when she brushed it over my face."

"You were awake?" Eric asked.

"I was." Eric saw himself staring down at Laura's brother as he pronounced the man dead, and felt a painful queasiness churn in his gut.

"After those two days, Dunn's men came again," Anna said. "And once again they dragged my uncle away. A day later he was found wandering down an alleyway near here, retarded in mind and body and quite incapable of caring for himself.

"When he could tell us, he claimed that his captors had forced some sort of Powder into his mouth, and then injected something into his arm.

Finally they beat him with their fists and set him free. His senses have returned somewhat over these years, but he remains a man without a soul, and no one outside his family will have anything to do with him."