Kevin Hearne - Tricked

Albert made a face. “Man, are you sure?”

I’ve often been flabbergasted by modern pharmaceutical ads on television. The list of side effects for some maladies often sounds worse than the condition they’re supposed to treat. Once I even heard “heart failure” listed as a side effect, and I wondered how that happened. Heart failure sounds like a pretty major event to me, and if you’re willing to risk heart failure in order to avoid the mild discomfort of some other condition, then may the gods shield you from harm, since you’re obviously seeking it out.

I sought out a drugstore because most every medicine is actually a poison: The dosage is simply much lower. I prefer working directly from plants, of course, but scooping up a few bottles of pills will work when I’m in a hurry, and in this case I was in quite a hurry indeed.

“Sensei,” Granuaile whispered to me on the way out of the Blue Coffee Pot to Albert’s truck. “I heard you say you don’t have a prescription for all these drugs you need, right?”

“Right.”

“That means you’re going to steal them, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

She sighed in exasperation. “Things like that don’t matter to you, do they?”

We paused to climb into the back of Albert’s truck. Frank rode shotgun and told him where to go. Once we were on our way, I picked up where we’d left off. “Not when people’s lives are at stake, no. I never steal for mere personal gain, if that makes a difference. Well, I take that back. There was that one time in Egypt. And a few years ago I stole some art and precious gems from a businessman in Hong Kong just so he would have a really bad day, and that gained me quite a bit of satisfaction. But I called the cops after a couple of days and told them where to find everything, along with a note telling him not to be such a vag badger. He got most of it back.”

“What? Why didn’t he get all of it?”

“The cops kept some and told him that was all they found.”

“No!”

“Yes. I had to steal the stuff again and give all the crooked cops wedgies. Look, if it makes you feel better, we can make a list of what I pull out of this place, look up the costs elsewhere, and then reimburse them with an anonymous envelope of cash later.”

“That would make me feel better.”

“Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Thank you.” She gave me a couple of patronizing pats on the shoulder. “You’re a very considerate sensei.”

“I’ll say. I haven’t done half the things I’m supposed to yet. Usually there’s a ritualistic leeching after the second week, and here we are three months or so along.”

She squinted at me doubtfully. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Lucky for you there aren’t many leeches in this part of Arizona.”

She cringed a little. “Seriously?”

“But I suppose we can let that slide since I made you eat a steer sack.”

“Shut up!” I shook with laughter and she scowled at me, folding her arms across her chest. “Auggh! You can be so immature sometimes!”

At a quarter to nine we pulled up next to a drugstore to make sure we were out of range of any surveillance cameras, and I got out and walked around to the back. As I left them there, I heard Albert say, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Once out of sight of Frank and Albert, I cast camouflage on myself and concentrated on the door. Locks aren’t that difficult when you can bind the metal inside to the unlocked position. Security systems are another matter; I’m not sophisticated enough with electronics to tackle those, and much of it is dead plastic anyway. I would doubtless trip something as soon as I walked in, so it would have to be a dash to get everything I needed before the cops arrived.

The first thing I did was grab a plastic bag, and then I went hunting among the shelves. I wasn’t familiar with brand names, so I had to scan active ingredients to find what I needed. I was trying to find the various chemical components of Atropa belladonna , the plant known commonly as deadly nightshade. Chew one leaf as an adult and you’re toast; the collected tropane alkaloids mess with your nervous system so that it can’t regulate involuntary activities like sweating, breathing, and heart rate. But isolate and regulate the dosage of those alkaloids, and you can turn an extremely deadly plant into a medicinal one. I found atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine all sitting on the shelves under various brand names. According to the dosages, it looked like we’d have to hit another store to make enough poison for a decent spread of caltrops. I picked up a package of surgical gloves on my way out; I didn’t want to get any on my skin once I began combining these.

I returned to the truck bed and didn’t dissolve my camouflage until I was in it. Granuaile had heard the rustle of the plastic bag and knew I was there, but Albert and Frank jumped a bit when I tapped on the back of the cab window.

“Let’s go,” I hollered, and Albert peeled out of there with admirable haste. We passed a police car with flashing lights heading toward the store as we drove deeper into town. Frank directed us to a hardware store, and once we got out of the back and could talk, I explained we needed to visit one more drugstore.

“Sure, don’t see why not,” Frank said. “First one went without a hitch.”

Feeling saucy, we walked into the hardware store — which smelled like pressboard and paint — and asked for a buttload of nails.

“We actually have those on sale,” the sales associate said without blinking at our denomination.

Granuaile leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Ask if he sells them by the fuckton.”

Nails and a good stash of drugs in hand, we were (or I was) perhaps too confident when we hit the second drugstore. It wasn’t time for them to open yet, but I surprised a pharmacist who had arrived early to do some paperwork. The alarm to the building was already turned off, but she raised plenty of alarm when the back door seemed to open and close all by itself and my camouflaged form cast a shadow on the floor. She was fast. She made it to the phone and dialed 911 before I could render her unconscious with some deft kung fu. I can’t quite do a Vulcan nerve pinch, but my Druid Doomhold is fairly quick and leaves victims with nothing more than a dire need for aspirin. I looked at her name tag, which read Gina Wachtel .

“Sorry, Gina,” I said. “I do not envy you the headache you will have when you wake up, but until then, rest well, and dream of …” I trailed off. What do pharmacists dream of? Caribbean vacations paid for by GlaxoSmithKline? Sample packs of Percocet?

Her emergency phone call was still a problem. Even though I hung up, dispatch would send somebody out regardless, so close on the heels of the previous visit to the other drugstore. The cops would come running, assuming that the same perpetrator was going Full Stupid with another hit, and they’d be right. I didn’t have much time.

I knew what to look for, thanks to my experience at the first store, and I filled up my bag much faster. Though I got out of there in record time, I still heard sirens approaching as I hoofed it for the truck parked next door. Frank and Albert looked distinctly nervous sitting in the cab; they were in front of a convenience store, in full view of security cameras.

Tossing the bag of camouflaged drugs into the back of the truck, I said, “Granuaile, hop out and go into the store to buy a couple of fountain drinks. I’ll join you in a moment.”