'No, I'm a doctor.'
The man reached behind him and opened the door. 'That'll be forty bucks,' he said, without taking the cigar out of his mouth.
'Forty bucks? What are you talking about? That's a two-dollar ride at the most.'
The taxi driver slammed the door shut again. 'That's the price. Forty bucks or no trip.'
Dr. Petrie said firmly, 'Come on, Adelaide. We'll find ourselves a cab driver with some goddamned morality.'
The taxi driver was unfazed. 'Mister,' he said, 'you can search all day. All the moral cab drivers have taken their taxis and headed north. So has anyone else who's realized what the hell's going on in this town.'
Dr. Petrie reached for his wallet and peeled off three ten-dollar bills. 'Here's thirty. Take me down to the hospital, and you'll get the other ten. But don't think for one moment that I enjoy paying money to a flake like you.'
The taxi driver tucked the cash in his shirt pocket, and opened the car door. They climbed in, and the driver performed a wide U-turn, and drove them downtown to the hospital.
'I've seen fifty, sixty people dead in the streets,' said the driver conversationally, puffing on his cigar. 'I came out for my roster this morning, and I couldn't believe it. You know what they said on the radio? It's a kind of an influenza, and that it's all going to be over by the end of the week. Nothing to get excited about. You think fifty or sixty stiffs is nothing to get excited about?'
'I'm surprised you didn't leave town along with the rest of your buddies,' said Adelaide tartly.
'Why should I?' said the cab driver, turning the car towards the hospital. 'I can make a few bucks here in the city. I've lived here all my life. Look — there's another stiff on the sidewalk — right there.'
They looked, and saw the body of a woman in a blue-and-green dress lying on the concrete sidewalk outside a delicatessen. Her basket of groceries had spilled all over the pavement, and her arms were drawn up underneath her like a sick child.
The delicatessen proprietor was standing in his doorway staring at her, but what struck Dr. Petrie more than, anything else was the attitude of the few passers-by. They stepped over the sprawling woman as if she and her shopping were quite invisible.
Dr. Petrie said, 'Don't slow down. I have to get to the hospital as soon as I can.'
Adelaide was pale. 'Leonard,' she said. 'That woman.'
Dr. Petrie looked away. 'There's nothing we can do. She's probably dead already.'
The taxi driver puffed his cigar. 'You bet she's dead. I hear tell they got so many stiffs in the streets, they're going to start collecting them with garbage trucks.'
Adelaide looked shocked. 'Yes,' Dr. Petrie said, 'I heard that too.'
Dr. Selmer was waiting for him in his private office. The corridors outside were jammed with medical trolleys, and the weeping and wailing relatives of the dead were adding to the confusion of amateur ambulance drivers and local doctors who had been brought in to console the sick. All that was left to give was consolation. In spite of every kind of antibiotic treatment, people who caught the plague were dying with the inevitability of mayflies. 'Firenza was on the phone about an hour ago,' said Anton Selmer, leaning back wearily in his large leather chair, and resting his feet on his cluttered desk. 'He's agreed to close the beaches.'
'What's the death toll?' asked Dr. Petrie, taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.
'About a hundred and twenty so far. That's with this hospital and all the others. Add to that another thirty who may be lying dead in their apartments or in the streets, and you've probably got yourself a reasonably accurate figure.'
'The city's real quiet. I thought it would have been more.'
Dr. Selmer shook his sandy head. 'Don't worry, Leonard. It will be more before the day's over. Every one of those dead people came into contact with seven or eight or maybe even more live people, and every one of those live people, right now, is incubating the plague bacillus.'
'What about quarantine? Did Firenza mention that?'
'He said that he's talking to Decker, when the mayor flies back from Washington this afternoon. Between them, they're going to decide what emergency action they ought to take.'
Dr. Petrie heaved a sigh. 'For the first time in five years, I feel like smoking a cigarette.'
Anton Selmer pushed a wooden box across the desk. 'Have one,' he said. 'It might even be your last.'
Adelaide knocked on the door and came in. She had been down in the ladies' room, washing her face and repairing her make-up. She looked pale and tense, and her hands were trembling.
'Hallo, Adelaide,' Anton Selmer said. 'Take a seat. Can I fix you a drink? I have some fine medicinal whiskey.'
'Please.'
'Leonard?'
'I'll take a beer. The way this city's going, I'm not sure how long it's going to be before we taste cold beer again.'
Selmer fixed the drinks. 'I wish I knew how this city was going, Leonard. It seems to be impossible to get any straight information. Either the newspapers are blind and deaf, or else they're following a deliberate policy of keeping this thing quiet. It's the same with the TV channels. They all keep saying that the epidemic is isolated, and that it's containable, and that it won't spread. But, Jesus Christ, you only have to come here to the hospital, or walk out into the streets, and you can see that something's wrong. We have a major epidemic on our hands, Leonard, and yet everybody in charge of anything seems to be smiling and waving and making out it's nothing worse than a slight headcold.'
Adelaide said, 'Doesn't the government know? What about the federal health people? Surely they've been informed? Even if they haven't, they must be worried.'
Dr. Petrie pulled the ring of his flip-top can, and took a freezing mouthful of beer. He stood up and walked across to the window. Through the Venetian blinds, he could see the sparse streets of downtown Miami, and the afternoon sun on the white buildings opposite. High in the sky, a long horse's-tail of cirrus cloud was curled by the wind.
'Maybe they do know,' he said. 'Maybe they're helping to keep the whole thing quiet. I haven't heard any airplanes coming out from the airport this morning, Anton.'
'Oh, that,' said Dr. Selmer. 'As a precautionary measure, the baggage handlers at Miami International Airport have suddenly decided to go on strike, which means all Miami flights are being diverted to Palm Beach or Tampa.'
'That's convenient. Maybe Firenza does take this plague more seriously than we think. What about boats?'
Dr. Selmer shrugged. 'I don't know, but I guess they're working the same kind of stunt there.'
'But why no official quarantine?' frowned Dr. Petrie. 'I know this thing has spread in just a few hours, but surely there's somebody around with enough sense to seal the city off for a while, even if Firenza won't do it.'
'Don't ask me,' said Dr. Selmer. 'The official line is perfectly straightforward. We have a minor epidemic of something akin to Spanish influenza which we expect to have run its course by the end of the week. I've seen it on the television, and I've read it in the paper. Here.'
He leafed through a stack of letters and manila files, and produced the morning's paper. The main headline read: Twenty Die In Influenza Outbreak.
'That's incredible,' Adelaide said. 'There are people lying around in the streets dead. Why don't they print the truth?'
Dr. Petrie shuffled through the newspaper until he found the telephone number of its city desk. Without a word, he picked up Dr. Selmer's phone, and dialed. He waited while it rang, and Adelaide and Anton watched him in tense anticipation.
The girl on the newspaper's switchboard answered, and Dr. Petrie asked for the city desk.
There was a long pause, and then finally he was switched through. A nasal, surly sub-editor answered. 'Can I help you?'