"Can you find me something to use as a cane?"
The curtain rod was stainless steel, and not as cheap as everything else in the motel. It made a halfway decent cane. Stephie found a robe and followed him out to the parking lot. He asked aloud the question that had gnawed at him ever since he had smelled Shaun-assy's blood—
"Damn it, why?"
He hobbled to the wreck of the remote. The power 262
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plant was still alive. The wheels were trying to drive it away despite the broken axle. He walked up to the vehicle. Green, just like Smith's van. Hell, it could be Smith's van. "The whole thing was blown. The Fed has everything." He slammed his left fist at one of the dangling pneumatic doors. There was a slow hiss, and the door slid aside with the smell of leaking hydraulic fluid. There were guns and a dozen white plastic crates in the back. Most of the crates had burst open. Little vials of red liquid rolled out the rear of the van. Hypo cartridges-flush, a few million dollars' worth.
The DEA would be happy.
Nohar leaned in and looked at the crates more closely. They were labeled. "NuFood Inc. dietary supplements—MirrorProtein(tm) *'
MLI was using NuFood as a drug lab.
There had to be another reason for NuFood. The Zips had only come on the scene recently. MLI had been dealing with NuFood ever since MLI's inception. MirrorProtein?
What was it Manny said about the chemical analyzer? They had been cataloging amino acids and the display was reversed. Nohar had thought the picture had been coming up backward.
What if it was the amino acids themselves that were coming up reversed? "Stephie, do you know any biochemistry?"
Stephie was already at the Zips' room checking on Angel. "What?"
Nohar hobbled after her. His thoughts were flying, trying to remember things, put them into place. "This is important. Really important. Biochemistry, proteins, amino acids, what do you know?"
"Next to nothing." She had her hand on Angel's neck. "She's still alive— What the hell are you talking about?"
"I need to remember if we're based on levo or dex-tro amino acids ..."
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"Derry was the chemistry major. Where the hell are you getting this from?" Stephie was looking worried, as if she thought he had gone over the edge.
Far from it. Things were making sense. "I don't know if you'll understand this." He was racing to get it all out. "I lived most of my childhood with Manny— a doctor and an expert on moreaus. I got a biology lesson every time I asked a question like, 'Why am I different from the other kids?' "
Even to him he sounded like he was rambling. He slowed down. "You can't live like that and not pick up on biological trivia. Like the fact our amino acids all have their mirror image versions." He finally remembered. "Almost all the life in this world is based on levo amino acids—"
"So?"
Nohar shook his head. "Just tell the cops when they get here. You have to talk to an FBI agent—Isham. Tell her the franks aren't at MLI's office building. It's just a front, like everything else. If they're anywhere, they're at NuFood's R&D facility. Tell her the MLI franks are based on a dextro amino acid biology. Got that?"
"Yes, but-"
Nohar was hobbling back to the Maduro. He stopped at the remote. An Uzi wouldn't do much to one of the things Manny described. He looked in among the crates of flush and saw a pump shotgun. He'd take that, and hope.
He was beginning to hear sirens in the distance. Stephie ran after him. "Where are you going?"
"NuFood. This isn't over—"
He slumped up next to the car. "Did they wire the car?"
"No—"
"What's the combination?"
"Nohar, you can't! You're in no condition ..."
"The damn combination!"
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Stephie backed up a bit at Nohar's growled command. Nohar shook his head. "Please, God damn it."
Stephie heard the sirens now as well.
She stepped up and punched the combination on the driver's door. Nohar watched the numbers. She looked up at him afterward. She was crying. "You are not going to die on me."
Nohar hugged her with his good arm. "I don't intend to."
The Maduro had pulled out of the parking lot and was going down Mayfield by the time a convoy— Chesterland and Cleveland local cops, sheriffs from Cuyahoga and Geauga, six ambulances, two police wreckers, a fire rescue vehicle, and three Haviers— shot by going in the opposite direction.
Everything but the National Guard.
Nohar drove by them going a sedate sixty klicks an hour. He was squeezed in the sports car, but the gentle ride of the undamaged suspension made up for it.
Everything came together for him when he saw that NuFood label. He had been right along. Despite the hyped violence, the morey terrorism, the Johnson killing came down to one little piece of information in Binder's financial records.
The precognitive letter from Wilson Scott was only part of it. That only proved MLI had a hand in planning the Zipheads' terrorism. MLI was trying to hide something else.
Their origin.
Johnson used to be a chemistry major. It made sense he would figure this mess out.
It had all started thirteen years ago. Midwest Lapidary would have approached Young, Binder's new finance chairman. It would have been a very tempting offer. Young took the offer, and the bucks poured into the campaign.
And Binder's position became more and more reactionary.
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Over the next few years, other, similarly unpopular candidates had made some sort of deal with the shadowy diamond merchants working out of Cleveland-candidates that weren't supposed to win. Their positions would evolve as well.
Then, in 2042, morey communities across the country exploded into a week of riots and burning that took the National Guard to control. Led by the psychopathic rhetoric of a morey tiger named Datia Rajas-than.
The violence created a convenient wave of anti-moreau sentiment that catapulted most of MLI's candidates to office.
MLI had about seventy hard-core puppets in the House now, all incumbents. They only had a few men in the Senate, though, and a large percentage of their men, including Binder, wanted to be Senators.
The rogue agents in MLI, without Smith's knowledge, recruited the Zipheads to step in to create their own "Dark August." The Zipheads were happy to comply, considering the profits they made on flush on the street level.
Daryl Johnson knew or suspected all of this. At first he must have condoned it. You couldn't keep that kind of conspiracy secret from the campaign manager. The whole Binder inner circle must have known about the illegal financing. That's why it was so tight. Harrison, Thomson, Johnson, and Young stuck with Binder through his radical shift to the right. They all had been bought.
Johnson was the first to have second thoughts. Nohar suspected that it would probably have originated with the whole duplicitious situation with Stephie.
It must have grated badly. He stewed for years. Even tried to drug himself out of an untenable situation.
MLI must have thought they had him under control because he was hooked on flush that they supplied— though indirectly. If he did anything to break the silence, his supply would be cut.
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Three weeks before his death Johnson found a new supplier, Nugoya.
That wasn't what got him killed. The flush still came from MLI, they still controlled his supply even though Johnson didn't know that. What killed Johnson was why he was trying to get out from under the thumb of his supplier. Johnson's problem was curiosity. He thought too much.
He had thought too much about NuFood.
He thought too much about Kathy Tsoravitch's letter.