“Really?”
“No, I forget what I told him. Look, I got a headache today, Doctor. Can you give me the bottom line?”
“Well, it appears that you were right. Of course, we suspected you were, given the inhibiting of cholinesterase.”
“What?”
“Has to do with the nerve enzyme level. The pesticide destroys the enzyme.”
“What did the toxicology tests say? The bottom line.”
“That his death is consistent with organophosphate poisoning, specifically, azinphos methyl. I think we could give an opinion that the exposure to Guthion could’ve caused the behavior that contributed to his accident.”
“Indirectly led to his death, you mean.”
“I’m not a lawyer. You’ll have to talk to the district attorney about all that directly and indirectly stuff.”
“How long does it take that kind of insecticide to kill a person?”
“Depends on the exposure. One of the textbook cases tells about a preacher who decided to take a few gulps of malathion and read the Twenty-third Psalm to his flock. He got to ‘the shadow of death’ and fell into the collection plate. Another one concerns a woman who died in ten minutes after soaking her tampon in paraquat.”
Nell was silent for a second, then said, “Wait a minute! Why would anyone …”
“I know, I know,” the pathologist said. “They never say why anyone would.”
After talking to the body snatcher, Nell wasn’t sure whether she’d be better off trying to upchuck or work. With march-or-die grit, she opted for work and located a Spanish-speaking secretary to help with a call to the Hospital Civil in Tijuana, where any emergency case would be taken.
After three calls over a period of an hour, they were able to reach a Doctor Velásquez. He spoke excellent English and confirmed that there was not one but two patients, both young boys, who were brought into the hospital on Saturday, and who showed every symptom of pesticide poisoning.
After Nell explained the case she said, “Doctor, we know the truck was carrying Guthion. That’s an organophosphate.”
“I am familiar with it,” he said to Nell. “There are a great many insecticides still being used in our country, including some very dangerous ones that you have banned.”
“Could you send blood and tissue samples to our lab in San Diego? We could verify if it’s Guthion. And if possible, we’d like someone to talk to the boys and find out how they got contaminated.”
“As to talking with the boys it will not be possible,” Doctor Velásquez said. “One child is in a coma and the other one is very ill. Perhaps in a day or two he will be able to talk to us.”
“If you could get the samples to us as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it.”
“We are perhaps not as primitive as you might think, Ms. Salter,” the doctor said. “We do have a somewhat reliable laboratory. And now that you have identified the substance I would wager that our people might even be able to verify it.”
“Of course, Doctor,” Nell said. “I didn’t mean to …”
“That is all right,” Doctor Velàsquez said. “I am grateful for your call. And I shall personally see to it that the laboratory work is done at once. Personally.”
After she hung up, Nell said to the secretary, “I just offended him. I’ll bet he does a real job on this one so he can show a thing or two to this patronizing gringa bitch.”
Shelby Pate was even more hung over than Nell Salter that morning, but he had ingested his drugs of choice in far greater quantities. During the lunch break, the ox was at last able to hold down his food, and was munching his second bag of Fritos when Abel suggested that they go rest in the shade by a stack of waste drums.
When they were sitting alone, Abel said, “Joo throw away paperwork?”
Shelby looked puzzled for a moment, and then said, “Oh, you mean the manifest? Tell the truth, I didn’t get home till two-thirty in the morning, and my old lady was seriously bummed. I couldn’ta chilled her out with tickets on a love-boat cruise. She says to me, she says, ‘Through your nasal canal has passed more white than they see at the Pillsbury Mills.’ And me, her sugar man, I says to her, ‘I’m on’y tryin to do my part fer local lab workers.’ She’s a hardworkin bitch though. I gotta give her credit fer that much.”
“Throw away papers, Buey.”
“Yeah, sure,” the ox said. “There ain’t nothin to worry about. Don’t let that little navy cop scare ya.”
“I don’ know, Buey,” Abel Durazo said. “Remember when joo get bad feeling? Now I got bad feeling about shoes. Bad.”
If the San Diego Yacht Club had lost its America’s Cup cachet, Jules Temple might’ve resigned his membership. He never would’ve had it in the first place were it not for the fact that his father had been a longtime member. However, keeping up the membership only cost $70 a month, and Jules always hoped that he could use club connections to help in business.
When he was a teenager, Jules used to steal snatch blocks from other members’ sailboats docked at the club marina, and sell them to weekend sailors. Other members’ sailboats were also good places to steal liquor, and even binoculars, since most boat owners kept a good pair on board.
The San Diego Yacht Club was perhaps an unlikely keeper of the America’s Cup. It was a laid-back club, far more egalitarian then the tony New York Yacht Club where the cup had resided for so long amid blazers and white ducks. In San Diego the cup lived with flipflops and Levi’s, and yachtsmen talked a lot more about prime rates than crime rates, as in New York.
The San Diego Yacht Club occupied several acres across from Shelter Island on the end of the channel. The members had a swimming pool and other amenities, but the main attraction was the large private marina where millions of dollars’ worth of pleasure craft floated, and no doubt distressed their owners during hard economic times. It was a square structure, two sides of which faced the marina. The building was functional but not unattractive, with a modified pagoda roof, and a crow’s nest on top that added a nautical touch.
San Diego Yacht Club member Dennis Conner had probably done more than anyone to put the esoteric gentleman’s sport onto America’s sports pages by the introduction of financial syndicates, corporate sponsors, television coverage, and greed. His successor, millionaire Bill Koch-the Donald Trump of yacht racing-showed promise of doing the same, proving that you could buy an America’s Cup if you were willing to scuttle more treasure than Hitler’s U-boats.
Occasionally, Jules would go out for a beer-can race on a sailboat owned by an old school friend, and once in a while he’d be invited for booze-cruises on large powerboats. Jules didn’t own a boat of his own and didn’t want one, using the club as a place to get a decent meal and some business gossip in a high-tech city that was feeling the ominous recession as much as anywhere. San Diego was overdeveloped, at least as far as hotels and office buildings were concerned, and in the California real estate-driven economy, people were nervous. What Jules often got from his visits was free legal advice from the many lawyers who were part of the yachting community.
Jules found that the club wasn’t particularly busy that weekday afternoon. There were a few visitors gawking at the old black-and-white photos of past commodores that lined one wall along the peg-and-groove corridor. And a few kids were pressing their noses to the glass case that housed the America’s Cup, at least until the next regatta, when a Japanese billionaire would probably be ready to take it.
Jules walked into the bar, acknowledging a few people at the cocktail tables. There was a fair-sized luncheon crowd out on the back deck seated at tables under blue umbrellas. A sixty-foot Bertram convertible sportfisher was side-tied to the dock just below the porch. Jules saw that her name, painted across the transom, was Peligrosa.