"Even altering memories?"
Jack shrugged. "Nothing connected with that creature would surprise me."
Nadia looked at Jack, then at her mug. "Why did I pour this? I was too jumpy for coffee before and I'm way too wound up now." She half turned toward the door, then rotated back. "Do you want it?"
He'd already had a couple of cups, but it was always a shame to waste good coffee.
"How'd you make it?"
"Just black."
"Add a couple of sugars and I'll take it off your hands."
Nadia emptied two packets into the mug, then handed it to him. He noticed her hand was trembling. Looked like the last thing she needed now was caffeine.
"The good news is it's dying," he said.
"Dying?" Her hands flew to her face. "Oh, God! That's why he wants me to stabilize the molecule! He's going to lose his source!"
"And soon, I think."
"Dragovic's behind it all. He's forcing Dr. Monnet to do this. I know it, I know it, I know it."
"I don't," Jack said. He sipped his coffee: good and strong, the way he liked it. "And besides, Mr. Dragovic has other matters to occupy his mind at the moment."
Nadia brightened. "Yes! I heard about that." She narrowed her eyes as she looked at Jack. "You wouldn't happen to have anything to do with his troubles, would you?"
"His troubles are with the law and his image," Jack said and drank some more coffee.
"Anyway," Nadia said. "We've got to stop him, stop the drug."
"What do you mean 'we'?"
"All right, you. I wouldn't know—" She stopped as Jack began shaking his head. "What's wrong?"
"I don't do drugs… other than caffeine"—he hefted the NADJ mug—"and ethanol, that is."
"Well, good… great…"
"But what I mean is I don't sell them and I don't stop other people from selling them."
"But Dragovic's forcing—"
"You don't know if Dragovic's forcing anything, Doc."
"All right then, forget force. The thing is, Dragovic has somehow involved himself in GEM and GEM is somehow behind this Berzerk poison."
"Which people are buying and ingesting of their own free will."
Nadia turned and stared at Jack, disbelief scrawled across her face. "Don't tell me you approve."
"I think drugs are stupid as all hell, and I think people who drug themselves up are dumb asses, but people have a right to control their own bloodstreams. If they want to pollute them, that's their business. I'm not a public nanny."
"You mean if you saw someone selling Berzerk to a twelve-year-old, you wouldn't do anything?"
"Never been there, but I might break his arms."
Jack thought of Vicky. And maybe his legs. And his face.
Nadia smiled. "So you would make it your business."
"We were talking adults before. Now we're talking kids. I'm not into crusades, but certain things I will not abide in my sight."
She cocked her head and stared at him. "Abide… that's a strange word from you."
"How so?"
"It's something I'd expect to hear from a southerner, and you're very much a northeasterner."
Good ear, Jack thought. "A man who taught me some things used to use that word."
She looked as if she wanted to pursue that but changed her mind. Good.
"But back to Dragovic. His customers are committing crimes because of what he's selling them."
"And going to jail for them." Jack finished his coffee and stood. "As for me, I believe I've seen enough of Dr. Monnet and Mr. Dragovic for a long time."
"But it's not finished."
Jack sighed. "Yeah, it is. You wanted to know the connection between Dragovic and Monnet. It's this drug. You wanted to know what Dragovic has over Monnet: nothing. They're in this together, as in partners."
"I can't believe that."
"Monnet's the guy who discovered the stuff, he's the guy who's testing the stuff, and if you take a trip out the GEM plant in Brooklyn I bet you find he's manufacturing the stuff. Be objective for just two seconds, Doc, and there's no other conclusion."
Nadia half sat, half leaned on the desk and stared at the floor, saying nothing. Jack didn't like the job of telling her that her hero had clay tootsies, especially with her fiance missing…
"Tell you what, though," he said. "I'll ask around, see who's been boosting in the DUMBO area, and find out if anybody knows anything about Sunday night."
She looked up and smiled for the first time since he'd arrived. "Will you? I'd really appreciate it."
Jack left her with at least a little hope. He emerged onto Seventeenth Street with the morning sun warming the air and the traffic back full force after the holiday. Had the rest of the day pretty much to himself. So why not drop in on Gia? Vicky would be off to school by now. That meant they'd have the house to themselves.
Yeah.
Started walking east. Passing Stuyvesant Square he wondered if its heavy-duty spear-topped wrought-iron fence was meant to keep people out or in. Came to a cluster of medical buildings and wove through a throng of people in white coats with stethoscopes draped around their necks like feather boas. Why wear them out on the street?
Wassamatta? he thought. Afraid someone won't know you're a doctor? His irritation surprised him.
Hung a left onto First Avenue when he reached the faded brick slabs of Stuyvesant Village. Gia was about forty blocks uptown from here. A cab would be faster but he decided to walk it. Felt so full of energy—Nadia's coffee must have been superstrong—he'd be there in no time.
He was a good walker, had a stride that ate up distance. Strode up the east side of the avenue—one long strip mall—until he reached the Bellevue-NYU medical complex where every damn building seemed to be named after someone. That annoyed the hell out of him for some reason.
After he passed through the shadow of the brooding hulk of the Con Ed power plant, the street opened up into the UN Plaza with its big Secretariat building looking like something out of 2001, towering over the sway-backed block of the General Assembly.
Jack remembered posing as a tourist in there last summer while following one of the Indian diplomats all over town. What a load of bullshit he'd had to suffer through while waiting for Kusum to leave. Tempted to make a detour right now, stop in there this very minute and tell them how to get their act together. First thing he'd have them do was move the big tombstone of the Secretariat, maybe lay it on its side so it didn't block the morning sun when he was walking by, or at the very least cut a hole in its center to let some light through.
Later. Maybe he'd straighten them out this afternoon. Right now he felt too damn good to waste even a second of this beautiful morning on those jerks.
But the flags—all these goddamn flags really bothered him. Rows of flags, blocks of flags, flags everywhere, wasting enough fabric to clothe most of Bangladesh. Reached into his pocket and grabbed his knife. Had a big-time urge to run up to those poles and start cutting the ropes—free the flags!
But no… take too long. Especially with Gia home alone. She was waiting for him, he knew. Jack was sure she could feel his approach, his growing proximity.
Moved on, passing a statue of Saint George killing some stupid-looking dragon on the other side of the fence, and there in the bushes, was that an elephant, a brown elephant? And then it was all blending together and then reversing direction and he felt like he was coming apart, pieces of him floating away, sailing into the air and then curving and boomeranging back to reassemble and fuse into something new and wonderful, the new Jack, King of the City.