George Chesbro: Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

Her swollen eyes went wide. "Something bad happened, didn't it?"

"Yes. Something very bad happened. I know now you were telling the truth about what happened on the street and how you got the pills. I apologize for not believing you, Margaret."

"But I was still crazy then. I don't know how much of what I told you was real."

"I think it was all real enough." I paused, pointed to the bag of capsules I had replaced on the nightstand after removing a few. "There are your pills, Margaret. I've borrowed a couple, and I'll try to put them to good use. The man who gave them to you was right when he said you have to take one every day. I helped you take one during the night while you were having your nightmare, so you might want to wait until this evening before you take the next. Then be sure you keep taking one every day at bedtime, until you hear differently from me."

"Then you're. . not going to make me leave right away?"

"No, Margaret, I'm not going to make you leave right away."

I gave her a bath towel to cover herself, helped her out of bed and into the chair, then brought her one of my brother's old, baggy sweatshirts to wear as a nightgown. I changed the sheets and blankets, then helped her back into bed and tucked her in. Her eyes were already closing, but she seemed to be breathing and moving without pain or undue difficulty, and I judged that she would be all right.

"Thank you, Mongo," she sighed.

"You're welcome. You should eat soon. Nap now, and Francisco will wake you in a little while and give you some breakfast; I hope you like liver, because that's what you need to eat. Then you can sleep as long as you want. I'll see you later."

My first stop was a nearby commercial testing laboratory owned and operated by a chemist and pharmacologist, Dr. Frank Lemengello, who was also a friend. The tall, handsome, sad-eyed black man who was going into another room when I entered the main office was not a friend; neither was he an enemy, at least I didn't consider him one, but he was a bit more than just an acquaintance. He was most certainly a victim, in this case of his own past hubris, arrogance, and greed, aspects of his personality that had been thoroughly squeezed out of him by the courts, serious hang time on Rikers Island, and the opprobrium of his ex-colleagues in academia.

Dr. Bailey Kramer had once been a rising star in the international science firmament, a brilliant organic chemist lauded for his pioneering research on some curious chemical beasts called mega-long-chain polymers. But Bailey Kramer had wanted to make some big money in a short time, and he'd taken a hard fall. In the course of an investigation into industrial espionage in the pharmaceuticals industry, Garth and I had uncovered the fact that Bailey Kramer, renowned researcher, was also the brilliant sole creator and hopelessly inept wholesale distributor of a certain illegal, cheap, and highly addictive "designer drug," a new amphetamine, that had begun turning up on ghetto streets around the country. We'd turned him in.

I had never seen an individual so thoroughly crushed, humiliated-and sincerely contrite, contrition being an exceedingly rare quality in the usual kinds of people who are involved in the making, buying, and selling of illegal drugs. Even the prosecutor had felt pity-an even rarer quality among New York City prosecutors. After agreeing to turn state's evidence and testify as a key witness against the others involved, he had been given a relatively lenient sentence. He had served time, been a model prisoner, and then been released on early parole. I'd gotten him his present job after I'd discovered him driving a taxicab, underemployment I'd considered a waste of knowledge and talent for society as well as Bailey Kramer. I didn't think that Kramer had lost sight of what I'd done for him, but neither did I think he'd forgotten what Garth and I had done to him. I could understand how his feelings toward me might be mixed.

Not so his boss, who simply considered me a rather good fellow. "Hey, Mongo!" Frank Lemengello boomed as he entered his office. "How're you doing, my friend?"

"I'm doing the usual. How about yourself?"

"I'm doing the usual too. Bring more river water for me?"

"Not this time. What about Kramer? Is he working out?"

The burly scientist finished pumping my hand, then rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Are you kidding me? Model employee. He's working out just fine. But it sometimes feels strange having an assistant who knows ten times more about your work than you do. He's taught me a lot. I'm giving him top dollar for a technical lab assistant, but I can't afford to pay him what he's worth."

"Don't worry about it. There isn't that much demand in industry or the academic world for organic chemists who are also convicted drug dealers. Actually, he's probably making almost as much money with you as he did as a research professor, and he's making a hell of a lot more than he was as a taxi driver. Besides, he likes what he's doing."

"Bailey told you that?"

"He hasn't told me anything; he doesn't much like talking to me. But he's a scientist, and he's doing science, which is something he probably thought he'd never be doing again."

The heavily muscled, curly-haired scientist shrugged his broad shoulders. "What we do here is pretty cut-and-dried. It must be boring for him."

"He's got an attitude problem?"

"Not at all. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he has any attitudes or emotions. He's always polite, but he doesn't seem to care much to talk to me either, so we don't talk. I just let him go on about his business, which he does just fine. This a social visit, Mongo, or have you got something for me?"

"I've got this for you," I said, taking one of the black-and-yellow capsules out of my pocket and handing it to him.

He rolled the capsule back and forth between his fingertips, then examined it against one of the bright fluorescent lamps in the ceiling. "Hmm. No brand name on the casing, not even a lot number. The gel feels just a tad thicker and heavier than what most American manufacturers use. I'd guess this was made in Europe."

"Ever seen one like it before?"

"Nope. Black-and-yellow is an unusual color combination; can't say it looks very appetizing. Patients and drug addicts usually like whatever they're taking wrapped in more soothing colors."

"I haven't seen anything about black-and-yellow capsules in police or FBI bulletins. Have you seen anything like this mentioned in the trade or professional journals?"

"Nope, can't say I have. What do you think this is, some kind of medication, or a street drug?"

"That's what I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me. It could be either. I want you to tell me all the ingredients in that thing, and then give me your best guess as to what effect taking it could have on the human mind and body."

"Where'd you get it?"

"I'd rather not say right now, Frank. I wouldn't want to influence your analysis."

He stopped studying the capsule and looked at me, raising his thick eyebrows slightly. "What, are you kidding me? I'm a chemist, not a palm reader. My spectrograph doesn't give a damn where what I feed it comes from, it just gulps it down and burps readouts. But there are tests, and then there are other tests. If you could give me some idea of where it came from, it could give me a clue as to what it might be. That could save me time, and you money."

"I don't mind paying for your time, Frank," I said, turning and heading for the door. "Just run a full analysis on whatever is in that capsule, and give me your opinion on what it does. Can you have something for me tomorrow?"

"No problem."

"Thanks, Frank."

My next stop was the public library. I read The New York Times every day, but the Times wasn't big on reporting what it considered routine street crime in the city, and I had seen no mention of anybody being shot on 56th Street. With the mounting toll being taken by the ice-pick killer, whose victims, as of that morning, now numbered twenty-five, it was more than likely that one more old-fashioned shooting hadn't made the news. When I found no mention of any killing in my neighborhood in the Thanksgiving editions of the Daily News or Post, I reluctantly headed for the Midtown North precinct station house.