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Veil said, "Sure. Slycke was caught between a rock and a hard place. He was forced to take orders from, and feed information to, his K.G.B. controller. In the beginning, he may have thought that Mr. Lippitt was on to him."

"Which I wasn't," Lippitt said, anger and disdain resurfacing in his tone. "I only became suspicious when Garth first showed signs of regaining consciousness, and then the two operatives at Prolix took off."

Veil grunted. "The K.G.B. must have been leaning on Slycke hard from the beginning to keep them up to date at all times on what was happening with Garth. But you were right here all the time, Mongo, keeping a close eye on things, and they perceived you as a threat to their interests-for whatever reasons. You even mentioned to Slycke the possibility of removing Garth from the clinic, and that must have had the Russians climbing the walls. They didn't miss any of the implications of what was happening to Garth as a result of the NPPD poisoning, and they wanted to keep a close watch on all developments. They ordered Slycke to cut you out of the picture, which he tried to do."

"And then you started to make some very heavy noises, Mongo," Lippitt said. "Not only did you make it clear to Slycke that you still intended to remove Garth from the clinic, but you threatened to investigate his private life. You must have really rung his bell with that one, and he couldn't tolerate the danger of being exposed a second time."

"Which was why I ended up being carted around by Mama Baker," I said. I was thirsty. Veil poured me a glass of water from a pitcher on a table beside my bed. I drank it down, sighed. I was feeling better-better, for certain, than the man who had tried to kill me would ever feel. "I thought I saw Slycke with a needle stuck in his brain. Was that real?"

Lippitt nodded. "We don't know whether his controller ordered him to kill you, or whether it was his own idea. We're leaning toward the theory that Slycke thought it up on his own, since he was the one who felt most immediately and personally threatened; the K.G.B. could have gotten rid of you in a number of other ways. No matter whose idea it was, it seems that Slycke got caught in the same trap he'd set up for you. He knew about this Baker's obsession with killing dwarfs, and he figured he'd simply arrange for Baker to nab you 'by accident' after you'd sneaked into the clinic for an unauthorized visit to Garth. He probably sent the nurses off on some errand before he went down to ambush you. He used your beeper to signal Veil at the appropriate times while he took you upstairs and shot you up with those drugs. Then he opened up the secure unit-and got ambushed himself, with nobody around to help him. He'd juiced up the men in that unit beforehand; the blood of Baker and the other patients in the secure unit showed definite traces of amphetamines. . definitely not the medication of choice for disturbed and violent men."

"He'd primed them to go off beforehand," Veil said quietly, "and one or more of the patients in that unit blew up in his face. One of them got hold of Slycke's keys and-fortunately for you-opened up the whole place. Then the nurses came back and saw what was happening, but they were too late to save Slycke-or themselves. You were lucky Baker felt he had to make a special, ritual sacrifice out of you, or you'd have been killed right away, like the others."

"I don't understand why Garth didn't try to help me," I said, looking away from the two men.

"You don't know whether or not Slycke medicated the nonviolent patients," Veil said quietly. "He may have doped everybody up, and Garth slept through it all."

"Then where is he now?"

"There's no sense in speculating on what he could or couldn't have done until we find him, Mongo," Lippitt said. "And we will find him; or he'll turn up on his own. How far could he have gone?"

Part II

Missions of Mercy

14

About thirty-three miles, depending on construction detours.

I was out of the hospital two days later. There was no word on Garth or Marl Braxton. There was also no sign of Tommy Carling; I made it my business to check on his apartment in the staff quarters, and he was gone, the apartment stripped of his personal belongings.

There seemed nothing more to be done in Rockland County, so I moved back into Garth's apartment in the city-which by now seemed as much my home as his. I called my parents every few days, even though there was nothing to tell them; they had not heard from Garth, either.

As first the days, and then the weeks and months, went by, I tried to accustom myself to the strong possibility that my brother was dead, perhaps killed by Marl Braxton during one of the fallen D.I. A. operative's psychotic episodes. Then, on a bitterly cold afternoon in mid-fall, a Wednesday four months later, while I was standing in the express line in a Gristede's supermarket, I found a grainy picture of Garth staring back at me from the front page of one of the lurid, always ridiculous, tabloids sold at the checkout counter. With trembling hands I lifted the paper out of the rack, stared in disbelief at the, photograph and the blurb under it. Disbelief and a growing disorientation. I felt as if I had been struck, or drugged again, and for a moment I feared I would loose consciousness. Slowly, I became aware of a kind of Greek chorus of cursers in the stalled line behind me, and when another cart "accidentally" banged into mine I snapped out of it. I pushed my cart ahead. Then I flipped to the two-page spread and blaring but skimpy text inside the newspaper, cursed aloud when I could not find what I wanted.

Leaving my groceries in the shopping cart, I dropped two dollars on the checkout counter, then ran the three blocks back to the apartment. I was just reaching out to pick up the telephone to call the editorial offices of the tabloid when the phone rang. Irritated, I snatched up the receiver.

"Yeah?"

"Frederickson, this is Sergeant Mclntyre."

"Ah, yes, Sergeant Mclntyre," I replied tightly, still fighting a sense of disorientation and dizziness, trying and failing to mask the deep scorn and anger I felt. "Perchance, would you be calling to fill me in on what the massive forces of the NYPD have been doing in their attempt to find a missing colleague?"

There was a prolonged silence on the other end, and I half expected Sergeant Alexander Mclntyre, who had been in Garth's precinct and whom I considered a friend, to hang up on me. "You've seen The National Eye," he said at last in a flat voice.

"As a matter of fact, I just picked up a copy at Gristede's. There's nothing like going out for a few groceries and finding out that the brother you'd feared dead has become a local celebrity, of sorts. Mclntyre, can you explain to me how, with a Missing Persons report in the hands of the NYPD, I end up finding Garth's picture on the front page of a Goddamn fish wrapper like The National Eye? You worked with him for twenty years! What the hell's the matter with you people?! What the fuck have you been doing for the past four months?!"

"Just hold on a minute, Frederickson." Mclntyre's voice had grown cold, hard. "New York City, in case you haven't noticed lately, is a very big place which is easy to get lost in-if that's what you want to do. Also, in case you haven't noticed, we're in the midst of a crime wave caused by a crack epidemic; we don't have a lot of resources to look for a grown man who's just happened to have dropped out of sight. If their picture isn't on a milk carton, we don't spend a lot of time looking for them. We thought from the beginning that there was something not quite right about that MP request, and we kind of filed it away; we figured if Garth and this other guy they were looking for wanted you to know where they were, they'd have told you. Like I said, your brother's a big boy."