When I went downstairs to my office, I found Francisco in a foul mood. Precisely those qualities that made him such an excellent administrator and assistant also made him an occasional pain in the ass. He was obsessive about having clean desks-mine as well as his; he considered it his sworn duty to see that all business-mine as well as his-was taken care of promptly, and in the past week I had certainly let things slide. He knew nothing about what I was involved in, but he did as he was told and never asked questions, in this case not even about the miraculous transformation of the woman who, until a week before, had sat in rags on a grate and cursed and spat at him every time he passed by. Francisco had no objections whatsoever to playing butler for my two mysterious guests and monitoring their movements to make sure they stayed out of sight; what he did object to was the small mountain of unsigned documents, unfinished reports, and unanswered messages that were piling up on the desk in my office, which was behind his. When he began to mutter darkly about how he was going to have to look for new employment after Frederickson and Frederickson lost all its clients and could no longer afford to pay him, I saluted, then dutifully marched on my cramping legs into my office and closed the door behind me.
The first call I made was to Veil Kendry, a friend who, along with my brother and Chant Sinclair, was one of the three most dangerous men I knew. In addition to being a world-class painter, a creator of eerily beautiful murals that could be divided up into segments, he was a consummate martial artist, my personal sensei, who had, on more than a few occasions, taught me more than a few things about wreaking havoc on people who were trying to wreak havoc on me. Veil had other students, men and women from whom he accepted no payment and whom Veil chose through a selection process I did not understand; Veil, something of a mystic, would say only that they had been "sent" to him, as I had been "sent" to him. I didn't care how he selected them, but at the moment these were the kinds of people I needed sent to me.
I trusted Veil completely, and so I told him the whole story about Mama Spit, Michael Stout, Rivercliff, Raymond Rogers, the drug, the shepherdess and her lost flock, Punch and Judy. He immediately understood the nature of my problem; Punch and Judy knew where I lived, and I had to worry about a return visit, if not by them personally, then by other assassins who might be in the employ of the people responsible for Rivercliff. I had to worry not only about myself but also about Francisco, if they came during the day, and Margaret Dutton and Michael Stout were a surprise package the assassins would be most delighted to find and dispatch. Whoever was sent was certain to be highly skillful at breaking and entering as well as killing, and it was possible everyone in the brownstone could be murdered in their sleep unless precautions were taken. We needed protection.
Veil told me he would assume responsibility for the security of everyone in the brownstone, around the clock; two-person teams would be assigned to eight-hour shifts, with one guard on the ground floor and one on the top. He would take the midnight-to-eight shift himself, since that was the time he usually painted and he would use the hours to work. I declined his offer to have somebody follow me around when I left the house. I insisted on paying him and his students, but he only laughed, reminding me that he would be dead if not for me. I reminded him that I would be dead if not for him, and argued that at least his students should be paid. He explained that his students were not allowed to take money for the use of the skills he taught them, and that the people he chose to guard the brownstone would be only too happy to have the opportunity to practice something he called "vigilance technique." I thanked him profusely, and hung up.
I spent some time returning what I considered to be the most important calls, canceled some appointments and rescheduled others in order to provide myself with blocks of time to do whatever it was I was going to have to do to prevent the tragedy that was going to take place in less than three weeks if I couldn't find a fresh supply of the drug the escaped patients were taking. A half hour later the first team of bodyguards arrived, a black man named Ted, who appeared to be in his mid-twenties, and a slight, fresh-faced Asian woman named Kim, who looked as if she could be bowled over by a good sneeze, which I knew was not the case. I showed them around the brownstone, introduced them to Margaret and Michael and Francisco, then left them to their own devices.
Punch and Judy, or anybody else who tried to enter the brownstone uninvited, were going to get the surprise-maybe the last-of their lives.
Step Four.
I did some paperwork, hid the rest of the stack behind a filing cabinet when Francisco wasn't looking, and at eleven-thirty sneaked out past Francisco and walked the few blocks to Frank Lemengello's lab. His was a report I wanted to hear in person.
"The reason the capsule is so big is because there's so much stuff in it," the husky, bushy-haired chemist said as he ushered me into his office. "There isn't just one component, but a whole slew. It's like a soup-a cocktail, if you will. There's a mixture of different drugs, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them didn't actually counteract each other. Here's the breakdown."
He handed me a computer printout listing the chemicals by name and molecular structure. I noticed one long line of letters and numbers with a big question mark beside it. I didn't much like what I was hearing, which sounded very complex, or the sight of the big, hand-drawn question mark on the printout, which was worse than complex, and did not bode well. "Can you be a little more specific, Frank? How many ingredients can you identify?"
"I can put a name to five. There's lithium, Thorazine, Ritalin, a chemical analog of Prozac, and even what appears to be an analog for Roxian, a Swedish medication for schizophrenics used for a while in Europe, until a couple of patients died. Most are heavy-duty psychotropics, used for treating the seriously mentally ill."
"By 'analogs' you mean they're not the actual drugs, but close to it?"
"That's right. It's all noted on the printout, along with the relative proportions found in the capsule. I've never heard of mixing those drugs together like that. Most of them can have some pretty unpleasant side effects."
"Like what?"
Frank shrugged his broad shoulders. "The side effects can range from simple things like dry mouth and constipation to serious depression and dyskinesia-uncontrollable muscle contractions and rigidity. Lithium, for example, is actually toxic. It's almost never given in the same dose to different patients. Usually the physician takes into account the body weight of a patient before prescribing a particular dosage, and then the blood is closely monitored for levels of toxicity."
"I know about the side effects you mentioned. What about others?"
"They'd all be listed in the literature, or on the labels or in the pamphlets given out by the various companies that manufacture the drugs. You can look them up in a pharmaceuticals manual."
"What about side effects that aren't listed on labels or in the literature?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know-anything."
"All side effects that have been observed in human testing have to be described in the written materials put out by the pharmaceuticals companies licensed to manufacture the various drugs. It's the law. If you can tell me what it is you're rooting around for, maybe I can be more helpful. The things I mentioned are the major side effects associated with those drugs-that I know of. But then, I'm not a physician."
"Frank, I don't know what I'm rooting around for. Tell me about the drug you can't identify."
"Now there's a puzzler. As you can see from the printout, more than half of the compound in the capsule was this stuff, more than all of the other drugs combined. But it's new, with a molecular structure not described in any of the pharmaceuticals or chemical manuals. It doesn't have a name. All I can tell you is that it's a large molecule, a really big mother. It's very complex, and almost certainly man-made."