Toxin (36 page)

“Mr. Billy Rubin!” a voice called out over the heads of the waiting crowd.

Kim raised his free hand and stood up. Tracy did likewise. An ER resident dressed in all white saw them and walked over. He was carrying a clipboard with Kim's ER registration sheet attached.

“Mr. Billy Rubin?” the resident repeated. His name tag said:
DR
.
STEVE LUDWIG
,
EMERGENCY MEDICINE RESI
-
DENT
. He was a brawny fellow with a ready smile and
closely cropped, thinning, dirty-blond hair. “Did you know that bilirubin is a medical term?”

“No,” Kim said. “I didn't have any idea.”

“It is,” Steve commented. “It comes from the breakdown of hemoglobin. Anyhow, let's take a look at your laceration.”

Kim pulled away the four-by-four. Due to swelling, the wound was more gaping now than earlier.

“Whoa!” Steve intoned. “That's one nasty cut. We'd better get that sewn up. How did it happen?”

“Shaving,” Kim said.

Tracy couldn't help but repress a smile.

Monday, January 26
th

T
racy shifted her weight impatiently. She had her arms folded and was leaning against the plaster wall of the upstairs hall. She'd positioned herself directly across from the door into the guest bath. She'd been there for almost five minutes.

“Well?” Tracy called through the door.

“Are you ready?” Kim's voice answered.

“I've been ready,” Tracy answered. “Open the door!”

The door squeaked open. Tracy's hand shot to her mouth and she let out an involuntary giggle.

Kim looked completely different. His hair was unevenly cut short, teased to stand mostly upward, and bleached platinum blond. His eyebrows matched his hair in color and formed a stark contrast with the dark stubble-covered face. The sutured laceration wrapping over the bridge of his nose and extending through one blond eyebrow gave him a Frankenstein look. He was dressed in a black, double-flap pocket corduroy shirt over a black
T-shirt with black leather pants. He had a black leather belt and matching bracelet decorated with stainless-steel rivets. The outfit was topped off with a fake diamond-stud earring in his left earlobe and a tattoo of a wolf with the word “lobo” on his right upper arm.

“So what do you think?” Kim asked.

“You look bizarre!” Tracy said. “Especially with the black silk stitches. I'd hate to run into you in a dark alley.”

“That sounds like the effect I was striving for,” Kim said.

“You certainly don't look like anybody I'd want to know,” Tracy added.

“In that case maybe I should swing by the hospital,” Kim suggested. “Maybe with this outfit they'll reinstate my privileges without a hearing.”

“A doctor is the last thing I'd suspect you were,” Tracy said with another laugh. “I particularly like the tattoo.”

Kim lifted his arm to admire his handiwork. “Pretty cool, huh?” he said. “The directions guaranteed it would last for three or four days, provided I don't shower. Can you imagine?”

“Where's the microphone?” Tracy asked.

“Right here under my collar,” Kim said. He rolled over the upper edge of the shirt. A tiny microphone was safety-pinned to the underside.

“Too bad video was out of the question,” Tracy said.

“Hey, remember it's not completely out of the question,” Kim said. “Lee said he'd work on it, and when he says that, nine times out of ten he comes through. It just won't be for a few days.”

“Let's test the audio system,” Tracy suggested. “I want to make sure it's working as well as it did last night in Lee's garage.”

“Good idea,” Kim said. “You hop in your car and drive down to the corner. That should be just about right. Lee said it would work up to two hundred yards.”

“Where will you be?” Tracy asked.

“I'll move around inside the house,” Kim said. “I'll even try going down into the basement.”

Tracy nodded and went down to the hall closet. She got out her coat, then called back up the stairs. “Don't forget to put in your earphone, too.”

“I already have it in,” Kim yelled.

Tracy went out into the crisp morning. A wind had come up during the night, blowing the storm clouds to the East. In their place was pale blue sky.

Tracy got into her car, started it, and drove to the corner as they'd discussed. She pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine. Next she opened her driver's-side window and put a makeshift antenna on the roof of her car.

Inside the car, Tracy slipped on a pair of stereo earphones that were attached to an old-style reel-to-reel tape recorder. The tape recorder was wired to an amplifier, which in turn was connected to a transformer sitting on top of a freestanding car battery.

A red light on the front panel of the amplifier illuminated when Tracy turned the unit on. She heard some brief static in her earphones, but it cleared quickly. On top of the amplifier was a microphone. Tracy picked it up.

After glancing outside her car to make sure none of her neighbors were watching, she spoke into the microphone.

“Kim, can you hear me?” she asked.

Kim's voice came back so loud, Tracy winced. “I can hear you like you were standing right next to me,” he said.

Tracy quickly turned down the volume and pressed the start button on the tape recorder.

“How's your volume?” Tracy asked. “You were much too loud on this end.”

“It's fine,” Kim said.

“Where are you?” Tracy asked.

“I'm in the back part of the basement,” Kim said. “If it works here, I'm pretty sure it's going to work anyplace.”

“It is surprisingly clear,” Tracy admitted.

“Well, come on back,” Kim said. “Let's get this show on the road.”

“Ten-four,” Tracy said. She had no idea what the expression meant but had heard it in lots of movies and TV shows.

She took off the headphones and stopped the tape. She rewound it and then played it. She was pleased that both sides of the conversation came through perfectly clearly.

By the time Tracy got back to the house, Kim had everything they intended to take waiting by the front door. They'd packed lunches and filled thermos bottles, banking on Kim being hired on the spot. They also had a blanket and extra sweaters for Tracy. Kim was sure it would be cold sitting in the car all day.

They stowed everything in the backseat. Kim climbed in the back, too, since the front passenger seat was taken up by the electronic equipment.

Tracy slid behind the wheel and was about to start the car when she thought of something else.

“Where's your gun?” she asked.

“It's upstairs in the guestroom,” Kim said.

“I think you should have it,” Tracy said.

“I don't want to carry a gun in the slaughterhouse,” Kim said.

“Why not?” Tracy asked. “God forbid, what if you have to face that creep with the knife again?”

Kim considered the suggestion. There were reasons against taking it. First, Kim was afraid the gun might somehow be discovered. Second, he'd never once fired it and didn't know if he could actually shoot someone. But then he remembered the panic he'd felt when he'd been chased by the man with the knife and how he'd wished he'd had some kind of weapon.

“All right,” Kim said. He opened the door, took Tracy's keys, and returned to the house. A few minutes later, he climbed back into the car and handed the keys to Tracy.

Tracy started the car and was about to back up.

“Wait a sec,” Kim said. “There's something else.”

Tracy turned the ignition key. The engine coughed and died. With a confused expression, she faced around at Kim. “What now?” she asked.

Kim was staring up at the house. “I was just thinking about that creep being in my house when we arrived last night,” Kim said. “I don't want to be surprised like that again. It's not entirely inconceivable that they could trace me here.”

“What do you propose?” Tracy asked with a shudder.

“Are any of your neighbors particularly nosy?” Kim asked. “These houses are all pretty close together.”

“There's Mrs. English across the street,” Tracy said. “She's an elderly widow who I swear must spend the whole day looking out the window.”

“That's a start,” Kim said. “Let's ask her to keep an eye out until we get back. Would you mind?”

“Not at all,” Tracy said.

“But that's not enough,” Kim said. “We got to have backups. It's got to be one-hundred-percent sure. How many doors into the house?”

“Just the usual front door and back door,” Tracy said.

“What about the basement?” Kim asked.

“The only way into the basement is through the house,” Tracy said.

“The guy last night came through the back sliders,” Kim said, while thinking out loud.

“This house has no sliders,” Tracy said.

“Good.” He got out of the car. Tracy did the same.

“Why not do something to the doors so we'd know if they'd been opened,” Tracy suggested. “I mean for someone to get in, they'd have to break a window or go through one of the doors. When we get back we can check.”

“That's a good idea,” Kim said. “But then what would we do?”

“Well, we sure as hell won't go in the house,” Tracy said.

“Where would we go?” Kim asked. “We wouldn't want to be followed.”

Tracy shrugged. “A motel, I guess.”

“I know what we'll do,” Kim said. “On the way out to Higgins and Hancock, we'll stop by the bank. We'll pull out our savings as a fallback. If we're really worried about being followed, credit cards aren't the best idea.”

“Wow, you really are thinking ahead,” Tracy said. “In that case, we might as well grab our passports too.”

“Listen, I'm being serious,” Kim complained.

“So am I,” Tracy said. “If it gets to the point that we're that worried, I want the option of going far away.”

“Fair enough,” Kim said. “Let's do it.”

It took them a half hour to do everything they had in mind around the house and another half hour to stop at the bank. They used separate tellers to speed things up, but it didn't work. Kim's teller had been nonplussed by his appearance and had to go back to a manager to get the signature authenticated.

“I feel a little like a bank robber,” Tracy said as they walked out to the car. “I've never carried this much cash.”

“I was afraid they weren't going to give me my money,” Kim said. “Maybe I've overdone it a little with this disguise.”

“The fact that they didn't recognize you is the important point,” Tracy said.

It was mid-morning by the time they got on the freeway en route to Higgins and Hancock. The day that had started out so clear was already becoming veiled with high cirrus clouds. Midwestern winter weather rarely saw long periods of sunlight.

“What did you say to Mrs. English?” Kim asked from the backseat.

“I didn't have to say much,” Tracy said. “She was delighted with the task. It's nasty to say, but I think we've given her life new meaning.”

“When did you say you'd be back?” Kim asked.

“I didn't,” Tracy said.

“Let's review our high school Spanish,” Kim said out of the blue.

Surprised at this suggestion, Tracy glanced at Kim's reflection in the rearview mirror. In the last twenty-four hours she couldn't tell when he was kidding and when he was being serious.

“I want to try to speak with a Spanish accent,” Kim explained. “Marsha said that a lot of the slaughterhouse workers are Hispanic, mostly Mexican.”

For the next few minutes, they counted in Spanish and constructed simple sentences. Neither could remember much vocabulary. They soon fell silent.

“Let me ask you something,” Tracy said after they'd driven for a few miles without conversation.

“Shoot,” Kim said.

“If all goes well,” Tracy said, “and we succeed in getting Kelly Anderson to cover the story and make it a big exposé, what would you hope would happen?”

“I'd like to see no market for the twenty-five billion pounds of ground meat produced each year,” Kim said.

“And then what?” Tracy asked.

“Well,” Kim said while he put his thoughts in order. “I'd want the public to demand that meat and poultry inspection plus farm-animal feed approval be taken away from the USDA. It would be better if it were given to the FDA, which doesn't have a conflict of interest. Or better still, I'd like to see the system privatized so that there'd be a true competitive incentive for finding and eliminating contamination.”

“You don't put much stock in this new meat irradiation movement?” Tracy asked.

“Hell, no,” Kim said. “That's just the industry's way of copping out. Allowing meat irradiation is just an invitation for the industry to allow that much more contamination to get in during processing in the hopes it will all be killed with the gamma rays at the end. You'll notice even with irradiation the industry insists the onus is on the consumers to handle and cook the meat in a way the industry considers proper.”

“That was Kathleen Morgan's position as well,” Tracy said.

“It should be any thinking person's position,” Kim said. “We've got to get the media to make people
understand that contamination must not be tolerated even if it means the product will cost a little more.”

“This is all a very tall order,” Tracy commented.

“Hey, we might as well aim high,” Kim said. “And it's not impossible. After all, meat and poultry weren't always contaminated. It's a relatively recent phenomenon.”