Tampered (20 page)

“Don't give us that,” Gretzky said.

“I've got nothing to give you.”

Gretzky stiffened and let out a rumbling sigh. “The goods, man. We know there's criminal activity being perpetrated at that old-people's place.”

How much should he tell them? Should he spill everything? Luncheon-meat sandwiches misappropriated from a respectable charity, recurrent listeria infections in a subset of residents tied to a federal political party, empty antibiotic capsules and counterfeit antihypertensives? Then what would these guys do? Stomp into Camelot with their Tasers? Storm into Steeltown Apothecary and ruin any chance of catching Horvat red-handed?

Zol pushed himself back farther onto the sofa and let the cushions take the weight of his back and shoulders. This had nothing to do with Max, the core of his life. It was only about work. He could cope with that. He wiped the sweat from his hands with the ball of Kleenex. He bored his gaze into Gretzky's chiselled face.

“Tell us what you know about Joe Medeiros,” Gretzky demanded.

Now that Max was out of the equation, Crosby and Gretzky had lost their bite. Zol shook his head. “Don't know him.”

Crosby pulled a photo from his inner jacket pocket and thrust it at Zol. “Sure you do. He hangs out at Camelot.”

Zol studied the photo. The face looked familiar, but he couldn't place it. Then he pictured the right eye swollen and blood streaming from the forehead and he knew who it was. “Oh. That's Joe. The nephew.”

“Whose nephew?”

“Um . . . Gloria's, I think.”

“What do you know about him?” Gretzky asked.

“He's a visitor. From Portugal. Got in a car accident three or four days ago. He's here at the funeral, but you'd never recognize him with his face banged up. You can talk to him yourselves. His English is perfect.”

Now that Zol didn't feel like the target, the words were stumbling more easily out of his mouth. He tightened his fists and reminded himself to be careful. Gretzky and Crosby were undercover for some reason, and they could scupper his own investigation.

Crosby flipped his notepad to a fresh page. “What do you know about his frequent trips between Canada and Europe?”

Things suddenly started to make sense. These guys were RCMP drug squad. They must be hot on the heels of that drug bust in Escarpment Country out near Kilbride. The front section of the
Spec
had been full of the story all week. The cops had uncovered a crystal meth factory on a rundown old farm, but hadn't nabbed anyone.

“If you're asking if I've seen anything to suggest that the Oliveiras are in the drug trade, the answer is no.” If he was right about the crystal meth connection, neither Gretzky nor Crosby showed it on his face.

“Have you noticed anything suspicious about Joe's behaviour? Or his uncle's?” Crosby asked, his pen poised over his notepad.

Zol clamped his jaw and fixed his gaze on the door, still blocked by the armchair.

Suspicious? Hell, he could give them suspicious. He could spill it all and be done with it. But . . . whether these guys were CSIS, or RCMP, or a couple of thugs from the local criminal families, he was going to keep his mouth shut.

Could he maintain a neutral face and flat-out lie to Gretzky and Crosby?

He'd do his damndest.

An hour later, outside Betty McKenzie's room on the Mountain Wing, Zol shrugged out of the black suit coat he'd worn to the funeral. He rolled up his sleeves, still tacky from the sweat of his interrogation. His tongue was dry as the Gobi. It would have been easier to cave, to spill everything to the two bullies, whoever they were. But he'd put up a wall and stood behind it. Despite their badgering, they had no inkling about Horvat, didn't even mention his name, which had made it easier to tell them nothing about the events at the Lodge that bothered him most.

But how much information would the Mounties turn up on their own? And when would they be back?

“You okay?” Hamish asked him. “You look terrible. Funerals always affect you like that?”

“Just tired, I guess.” He was in no mood to tell Hamish about the goons.

Hamish's isolation gown cast a yellow glow of jaundice to his pale skin and bloodshot eyes. Last night's beers, and whatever else Hamish had got up to, had taken their toll.

“That'll be Art,” Hamish said as the elevator pinged. “His daily visit with Betty. Will you get him gowned up?”

Zol fastened Art's isolation gown at his neck and tucked the trailing edge between Art's skinny thighs and the scooter seat. More than ever, the old man was showing his age. Funerals did that to you, Zol reckoned, especially when you were over ninety. The solemn service brought you face to face with the possibility that the next person lying in the coffin would be you. And such thoughts were bound to show in the creases on your face.

As Zol followed Art into Betty's room, he was struck by a sudden wistfulness. He'd never known either of his grandfathers. The Second World War had consumed them both, consigned them to unmarked graves somewhere in Europe. No funerals. No burials. Just open-ended grief. Their widows, his grandmothers, had lived the rest of their frugal lives in Budapest, imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain. As a child in Ontario, Zol imagined the curtain as a giant wall encircling his grey-haired
Nagymamas
. In the rare photos sent from Hungary, he'd looked in vain for soldiers and a barbed-wire barricade. The letters with the bold
Magyar
stamps stopped coming sometime in the eighties, before he became a teenager.

Zol handed Art two vinyl gloves and squeezed into a pair of his own, afraid the flimsy things might rip. Large was never large enough, and the nurses didn't put out boxes of XL. Hamish had no trouble slipping on the smalls.

Art took Betty's blue-veined hand. She seemed tiny, swallowed up by the hospital bed. “You're looking a little better, my love,” he said.

“Only a little?” She pushed wisps of silvery hair from her pallid cheek, then extended her arm towards Hamish. “How am I doing, Doctor?”

Hamish hesitated, then glanced at Zol and said, “We'll soon have you dining on . . . on filet mignon.”

Zol stiffened at the false note in his friend's tone. They both knew she had a long way to go before she could eat solid food.

“Thank you, Dr. Wakefield,” Betty said. “I think I'm getting there.”

Hamish looked away, then turned his attention to Betty's tubes. Zol could see him subtly checking the labels on the IV bag, the rate of the infusion, the volume in her urine container, the moisture on her tongue, the temperature of her brow, the distension of her belly, the pained look in her eyes when he pressed on the four quadrants of her abdomen. They'd already reviewed her chart and seen that the frequency of her diarrhea had decreased. Only three stools since midnight. Was that a minor triumph or a signal that the intestines were giving up, injured beyond repair?

Zol studied the rainbow of get-well cards displayed on the windowsill. “A lot of fan mail there, Betty. Once you're up and about, you'll have your hands full with correspondence.”

Her eyes dipped modestly. “It's nice to be remembered, even after all these years.”

“A lifetime of friends and associates in high places,” Zol continued.

“Most of the old friends are gone. But the party machine still remembers. And they know I'm writing my memoirs. They must think cards and chocolates will keep me from soiling their reputations.”

“For heaven's sake,” Art said. “They have nothing to worry about. Your stories aren't salacious. No bedroom scandals.”

She touched her finger to the side of her nose as her eyes brightened. “It
is
a minority parliament, remember. So they're nervous over rumours about a certain former PM's noontime indiscretions, which only his former assistant knows about for sure.”

Art squeezed her hand through his gloves, the vinyl an ugly barrier between them. But there was no mistaking the love in his eyes. “You're making an important contribution to the nation's history.”

“Thank you, Art dear,” she said. “But you know how skittish politicians can be. When it got around that the old den mother was writing a book, they became as edgy as a bunch of cats.”

“You haven't been threatened, have you?” Zol said.

“Oh no. Though I hear they
are
a little unsettled in the PMO. Wish I'd taken up crocheting afghans instead of writing books.”

“Are you still in touch?” Zol asked.

“Myrtle's nephew. He works for the current prime minister. Says the office is afraid of the tidbits I might reveal about the old guard. Afraid my insights will reflect badly on the current generation.” Betty pulled her bedsheet up to her collarbones. A moment went by. She looked exhausted. Then she rallied slightly and smiled. “Once I get out of this sickbed, the gang at the PMO will have to put away their champagne.”

“Betty, please,” Art said, squeezing her hand, “don't talk like that. You've always been beloved.”

“Except when I poisoned my prime minister.”

“You what?” said Hamish.

“Gave him salmonella,” Betty said. “By accident, of course. But they never again let me contribute to the office potluck.”

Art's face was full of concern. “How were you supposed to know home-grown sprouts, or whatever they were, could make anyone sick, let alone a prime minister.”

“Was he hospitalized?” Hamish asked.

“No, no,” she said. “Just a few days of the runs. And antibiotics, if I remember correctly. But when the health unit in Ottawa discovered it was my alfalfa sprouts that poisoned the PM, I was
persona non grata
in the lunchroom for a long time, I'll tell you. But the boss was very good about it. When I retired, he named it the Betty McKenzie Lunchroom and had a plaque placed on the door.”

“Makes you a culinary legend, I would say,” Zol said.

“But it's got Myrtle's nephew worked up,” Betty said. “He's not sure he wants his aunt living in the same residence as Lunchroom Betty. Told Myrtle I must be somehow responsible for the diarrhea around here.” She turned to Zol. “Between you and me, I wouldn't be surprised if he called you from the PMO and threw his weight around. Just ignore him. He's a not a very big fish.”

She gave Art a demure flash of her eyes, then turned a more determined gaze on Hamish. “So tell me, why did I get so sick and take so long to get better?”

Hamish and Zol exchanged glances.

Hamish clasped his gloved palms together. The gloves were contaminated with the invisible veneer of pathogens that coated everything in Betty's room. He scratched his nose and cheek against his gown-covered shoulder. “You had two pathogens — two germs — at the same time. C diff and listeria. We had trouble . . . well, let's just say we had to find them both, then treat both of them to make you better.”

If she'd sensed any evasion, she didn't show it. In the PMO, she'd had years of practice keeping her observations and judgments to herself. Of course, she could voice them later, to anyone, any time it suited her. To the RCMP, perhaps, if they came calling again.

Half an hour later, Zol led the way into Camelot's reading room on the top floor of the turret. The room's best feature was its heavy oak door, which he planned to shut as soon as Hamish, Natasha, and the available Camelot Irregulars got settled. It was past tea time, which meant they wouldn't be disturbed.

The first thing he noticed, besides the room's small size and overwhelming clutter, was the musty odour of stale coffee, old carpet, and heavy drapes. A dusty-rose loveseat and a striped armchair sat in front of the windows. Paperbacks spilled out of the curved bookshelves that gave the room its name. Two hardback chairs piled with dog-eared magazines crowded a small wooden table, on which were balanced two insulated carafes, a sugar bowl, a pitcher of milk, and a plate of stale-looking doughnuts. No sandwiches today. The place looked like an afterthought, somewhere to stash faded chintz, mismatching stripes, discarded newspapers, three garage-sale lamps, and, it seemed, past-their-prime snacks.

“Don't sit on that,” Phyllis told Natasha, who was sweeping crumbs from the armchair's frayed cushion. “Its unruly springs poke into one's . . .” Phyllis tightened her lips and continued in a stage whisper:
“Puga pyga.”

“Where would you like to sit, Miss Wedderspoon?” asked Natasha, struggling to keep a straight face.

“I seldom come here. It's not sanitary. I'm not squeamish about bats, but I do draw the line at their droppings underfoot while I'm taking my tea. For some reason, they congregate here. But certainly not for the fine prose on offer.” Phyllis flicked her hand at the bookcase. “Just look at those potboilers.
Tainted. Grinder. Darwin's Nightmare.
None of it proper literature.” She tugged at her cardigan, checked the floor for bat droppings, and strode to the loveseat. “I obtain my reading material from the public library. The Terryberry branch is a splendid resource. What's more, the parking and Internet are free.”

Natasha covered her mouth and nodded politely, her eyes crinkling. She lifted the stack of magazines from one of the hardback chairs. As she sat down, Hamish did the same, and Art completed the circle with his scooter.

Zol closed the door and took a deep breath. He and his
puga
-whatever would have to take their chances with the prehistoric armchair. “Thank you for coming.”

“It's about time we had a powwow,” said Phyllis. “No one tells us anything.”

“Now, now,” Art cautioned. “We met two days ago. Zol was kind enough to have us to his office. Remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Phyllis snapped. She pulled at a disobedient pleat in her kilt. “But surely, a few
occasiones graves
have turned up in the past forty-eight hours. Come now, you must have at least one significant development to report.”

Hamish turned to Zol and raised his eyebrows, his wide eyes replaying their heated conversation of a few minutes earlier. Hamish had insisted they bring Art and Phyllis into their confidence, tell them about Horvat's bogus meds. Zol had said no, it was too early. A tongue might slip and send Horvat covering his tracks. But Hamish — hangover gone, the police reasonably hopeful about the Saab, his passions revived — was adamant. He insisted that Art, Phyllis, and the others laid up with repeated episodes of diarrhea in the past few weeks had every right to know they'd been fed counterfeit medication. And, Hamish reckoned, Art and Phyllis might have noticed something crucial to proving Horvat's culpability. Zol had finally agreed, but only if they didn't include Myrtle. The last thing he needed was the Prime Minister's Office updated, via Myrtle's nephew, on the latest commotions at Camelot Lodge.

At Zol's nod, Hamish finished a long draft from his water bottle, screwed on the cap, then explained how he'd found the empty capsules.

For a moment, even Phyllis was dumbstruck. She and Art would have been less stunned if they'd been told Betty had spent the morning skydiving.

Fire lit Art's face, the patches of rosacea on his cheeks glowing more crimson than ever. “Outrageous,” he sputtered.

“And sorry, Art, that's not all,” Hamish said. “It looks like your Zytopril — your blood pressure pills — are counterfeits, too.”

“You mean poisonous?” Art said.

“Heavens, no,” Zol said. “Counterfeit in the sense that the tablets may be perfectly good but come from an unlicensed supplier. At a bargain price.”

“No point in mincing words, Dr. Szabo,” Phyllis said, her face more stern than anxious. “You mean pirated. Pure and simple.”

Hamish pulled the ballpoint from his shirt pocket and clicked it anxiously. “There's no telling what's in those pills. They could contain the genuine drug. Or they could be completely fake, with no active agent, just filler. How's your blood pressure been lately, Art?”

“Hell . . . I don't know,” Art said. “It's been ages since Dr. Jamieson checked it.”

“Did the nurse take it last time you were in bed with the runs?” Hamish asked.

Art shrugged. “I suppose. Didn't mention it was a problem.”

“Well, I'll take it as soon as we're finished here.”

“Pirating is big business,” Phyllis said. “The Internet is rife with deceivers. How many other dubious medications is Horvat purveying?”

“So far, there are only two that we know about,” Zol said.

Phyllis scowled and voiced a skeptical
tsk
.

“We have an independent pharmacist working with us,” Hamish countered. “A man we can trust. He's checking all the meds Horvat's been dispensing at the Lodge.”

“I don't think there can be anything fake about the arthritis meds,” Natasha said. “There's a strong link between listeria infection and both Xanucox and Durimab, which means they must be biologically active.”

Phyllis pulled the pencil from behind her ear and waved it at Art. “I warned you before, it's not natural to take so many medications.” She straightened her back and fussed with her kilt, then pressed her lips together and held Art with her brown-eyed glare. That look must have bolted countless teenagers to their seats until they could decline
murus muri
and
puella puellae
to her satisfaction. “All I ever take is a baby aspirin. Eighty-one milligrams.”

“But you haven't been cursed with arthritis,” Art said, pointing to his legs. “Nor neuropathy.”

Hamish grabbed at his belt and pulled his chiming cellphone from its holster. He flipped it open. “Hamish Wakefield here . . . Hi Ellen . . . You do? We're discussing them right now . . . And? . . . That was fast . . . What's it called, again? . . . Oh . . . Atlanta? Impressive . . . Every one, eh? Wow! . . . Correct, I looked after him . . . That can't be right, Ellen. There has to be a mix-up, a glitch in your new method . . . Oh. Yes, of course, your controls . . . Sorry, I understand. I didn't mean it the way it . . . You do have to admit, this is a surprise. I mean, totally unexpected . . . Yes, I'll share this with the folks at the health unit. They'll be amazed.”

Hamish said goodbye, closed his phone, and put it away. Oblivious to the four expectant faces aimed at him, he uncapped his water bottle and sipped delicately. Then dabbed his lips with a tissue and stared into space.

“Hamish!” Zol said, “You're killing us. What's so amazing?”

“That was Ellen,” Hamish said finally. He turned to Art and Phyllis. “She's the chief tech in the diagnostic microbiology lab at Caledonian University Medical Centre.”

“We gathered that much,” Zol said. He thrust his hands into his pockets, but he'd left home without his loonies. Damn.

“Ellen finished fingerprinting the listeria isolates,” Hamish continued.

“Pulse-field gels on all of them?” Natasha said. “That's a lot of work. How'd she do it so fast?”

“She didn't,” Hamish said. “She used a new technique. MLVA. Got the primers from Atlanta, the CDC. Overnight courier.”

The epidemiological whiz kids at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control always had some new wonder toy from the world of molecular genetics. “ML-what?” Zol asked.

“Let's just say it uses DNA amplification technology to examine fragments of a bacterium's genetic code. Much faster than running pulse-field gels, and the results are reproducible from lab to lab.”

Hamish explained that such reproducibility was a breakthrough. Different labs could compare their strains from a distance, without testing all the strains in the same lab at the same time.

“You mean they can make the comparison with a simple phone call, a fax, or a file from the Web?” Zol asked.

“That's right,” Hamish said. “MLVA is turning the pulse-field method into a dinosaur.”

“In plain language?” Phyllis tsked.

Natasha glanced at Zol before explaining. “It's a way of fingerprinting the listeria found in the dozens of stools submitted from Camelot's residents with diarrhea. A way of telling whether the bacteria are identical, like twins. Or close relatives, like sisters or cousins. Or come from different families altogether.”

Phyllis nodded and smiled. She liked Natasha's explanation.

“Out with it, Dr. Wakefield,” Art said. “Tell us what's the surprise.”

“Ellen tested every listeria recovered from Camelot residents over the past two months — from stools, blood, and cerebrospinal fluid. And she examined listeria from a bunch of other patients with no links to Camelot — those were her controls.” Hamish stopped and looked from face to face, making sure his audience was with him.

“And?” Zol said, struggling to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

“The Camelot isolates all belong to a well-known strain, serovar 4b. It's the most aggressive listeria, so there's no surprise there. Then she did the genetic fingerprinting with MLVA. All the Camelot listerias came out identical, but completely different from the other patients she tested except one.”

“No genetic variations within the Camelot cohort?” Natasha said.

“None.”

“A huge set of twins?” Art said proudly, clearly pleased at his grasp of a complex situation.

“Exactly,” Hamish said.

Natasha opened her notebook. “The first Camelot isolate was obtained from a stool sample submitted on January eleventh. The most recent would be Earl Crabtree's, grown from his blood culture taken two days ago. Does that sound right, Dr. Wakefield?”

“Correct.”

Natasha looked up from her notepad, the wheels turning furiously. “That's a span of sixty-seven days.” She paused again, her pen suspended in the air. She looked at Zol for reassurance, as if she needed his permission to voice her opinion.

“What are you thinking, Natasha?” Zol said.

“This has to be a point source,” she said, her confidence growing. “And one that's sustained over a period of more than two months.”

“Again, in plain language?” Phyllis said. “Is one to suppose that a point source is a single object that's contaminated with the bacteria in question?”

“Exactly,” Zol said.

Art dipped his chin to the tea table beside him, his eyes hooded with guilt. “And you think our illicit salami sandwiches are the culprits?”

“Are the sandwiches
always
salami?” Natasha asked.

“Oh, no,” Art explained. “Salami is just my favourite. We'll have it for a week, then not see anything but turkey for a while. Then bologna turns up. Then nothing but tuna or egg salad for a few days. Come to think of it, we've had a lot of that soya stuff lately. It may look like bologna, but one bite and I can tell it didn't come from anything with legs.”

Zol remembered the outbreak of listeria at the Royal Hamilton Hotel last fall — traced to cheese made from unpasteurized milk. “Was there cheese in the sandwiches?” he asked.

“Occasionally,” Art said.

Natasha dashed a few notes into her scribbler, then paused before asking, “Do all the residents eat the sandwiches from this room?”

“Hard to say,” Art said. “It's a casual arrangement. You bring your own mug, help yourself to tea or coffee, grab a sandwich, then take it back to your room. As you can see, there's not much space to sit.”

“Some of us never come up here,” Phyllis said. “Maude, Myrtle, and I make our own tea. And we don't snack between meals.”

“As I remember, Miss Wedderspoon, the three of you haven't had any diarrhea,” Natasha said.

Phyllis crossed her arms. “Certainly not.
Mea non culpa.
”

Natasha dipped into her briefcase and pulled out a folder. She riffled through it until she found what she was looking for and turned to Phyllis. “In the medication survey, the three of you put down hardly any medicines. You take your baby aspirin, Maude takes only vitamins, and Myrtle takes Zytopril, acetaminophen, and a sleeping pill.”

“She didn't listen to me about those sleeping pills, and now she's addicted.”

“None of you have bad arthritis?” Natasha asked.

“We exercise together. Regularly. Walk the circuit in Lime Ridge Mall from nine to nine-thirty, three mornings a week.”

Zol pictured Art's best friend Earl, fighting for his life at Caledonian Medical Centre. He touched Art's arm. “When would be the last time Earl ate one of the sandwiches from this room?”

“He's fussy. Only eats corned beef. We haven't seen it around here for a month, maybe longer. He wouldn't touch the salami or the fake bologna they've been serving lately.”

“I don't think our source can be the sandwiches,” Zol said. He eyed the tea things on the table. His mouth was parched. He had half a mind to drink the milk right out of the pitcher. Only half a mind.

“Let me tell you about your sandwiches,” Zol continued. “They've been coming to you from all over the place. Colleen followed them here from the Royal Hamilton Hotel, the Convention Centre, Four Corners Fine Foods, and Delia's Donuts in Ancaster.” He explained about Waste Not and its roster of volunteer drivers who recycled food to the needy by shuttling leftovers from hotels, restaurants, and caterers. He told them how Gus brought a tray or two of sandwiches back to Camelot Lodge at the end of each run.