Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

Chapter 10

Step Six.

With MacWhorter on Punch and Judy's case, Veil and his students safeguarding my charges, and Bailey Kramer at work trying to replicate the drug, I had breathing room to go off on another tack. As a result of our recent work on an industrial espionage case in the prescription drug business, Garth and I had made a lot of contacts in the pharmaceuticals industry. I figured it couldn't hurt to do a little poking around in a few executive suites to see if I might not be able to get a lead on what company had been playing Igor to the CIA's Dr. Frankenstein.

Since there were upwards of a hundred drug companies that had corporate headquarters or major branch offices in New York, and since my time was severely limited, to say the least, I decided to start at the top with Lorminix, the biggest drug and chemical company of them all, a giant cartel with corporate headquarters in Berne and its largest distribution outlet and branch office in New York. In addition to the logic of starting with the largest researcher, designer, and manufacturer of pharmaceuticals in the world, with sensitive, up-to-date information on just about everything that was going on in the business, I had another reason for going first to Lorminix; I had a personal relationship with the vice president for North American Operations, Peter Southworth. Not only had I worked with Southworth on the industrial espionage investigation, but we had served together on the board of directors of the Bronx Zoo, which housed a certain animal in which I had an intense personal interest.

I considered Peter an interesting man-not exceptionally bright, but good-hearted, and with the strength of character to fend off the bitterness that I was certain he must feel, and which could have twisted his life if he had allowed it. His grandfather had founded Lorminix, and his family had run it up until the time of his father's death, when control had passed to Peter. Peter had simply lacked the vision, marketing skills, toughness, or whatever it was that was needed to run such a gigantic enterprise. Whatever the reason, in a relatively short time he had just about run the company into the ground before it had been acquired by a team of European businessmen in a leveraged buyout that had brought Peter millions of dollars and a lifetime sinecure, but on the payroll of a company that was no longer his. He had immediately been shunted off to New York, and it was widely known in the industry that he was nothing more than a figurehead, even in his own office. The fact that he had so much money, a great deal of which he gave away through various philanthropic foundations he had set up, could not erase the fact that he had lost the family business, and been branded an incompetent. Unless there was something about his personal situation or contract I didn't know about, I frankly couldn't understand why he remained where he was. A very wealthy man like Peter Southworth can find a lot of better things to do with his time and money than sit around a plush office on sufferance. Like start another business, or, through investment capital, buy his way to an executive position of real power with another company. Maybe he was just gun-shy, or possibly gutted. The long knives of big-time capitalism will do that to a man. In any case, it was none of my business. I liked the guy, and felt sorry for him. I hoped he could be useful.

I'd made an appointment, and I was immediately ushered into his palatial office by his secretary the moment I arrived. The secretary left, but reappeared with coffee and croissants before I'd barely had time to shake Peter's hand and settle down on the plush, butter-soft brown leather sofa he'd motioned me onto, and which stretched along the entire length of one of the walls in his office.

"Mongo the Magnificent!" the lanky executive exclaimed, slapping me on the back as he sat down next to me on the sofa. He was wearing a thousand-dollar Armani suit and three-hundred-dollar wing-tip shoes, a wardrobe that clashed somewhat with the gold hoop earring he wore in his left earlobe and his long, graying brown hair which he wore in a ponytail, probably some kind of statement he was trying to make that had nothing to do with fashion. "It's good to see you, my friend. How the hell are you?"

"It's good to see you, Peter, and I'm doing fine. You look well."

"I am. We miss you at the zoo's board meetings. They just aren't the same without you. Too damn stuffy; not zooey enough, in a manner of speaking. Why did you resign?"

"I just didn't have the time to spare any longer."

I also didn't have the time to sit around all afternoon chatting with Peter Southworth, something I was quite certain he would be happy to do, since there was very little real work or decision making his bosses in Berne let him handle. In order to expedite the point of my visit, I took the last of the black-and-yellow capsules I had appropriated from Margaret's supply, one I would at least be able to return, and set it down in the center of the glass-topped coffee table in front of us. "Peter," I continued, "I was hoping you might be able to help me on a very important matter I'm working on. Have you ever seen a capsule that looks like this? It looks larger than average to me, and I don't recall ever seeing a medication that was packaged in black-and-yellow. I thought a pharmaceuticals man might have. Is there anything you can tell me about this? I'm looking for the manufacturer."

He stared at the capsule on the glass for what seemed to me an inordinate length of time, almost as if he couldn't quite manage to focus on it. It seemed an odd reaction; the capsule was unusual enough so that it seemed to me he would recognize what it was immediately, or not. Finally he looked back at me, said quietly, "I don't think I can help you, Mongo."

And that seemed an odd choice of words. I couldn't help but notice two things: he hadn't really answered my question, and a furrow had appeared on his brow. Peter Southworth was a naturally cheerful and open man whose emotions were transparent, and at the moment he definitely looked worried. "Well, I guess you'd certainly know if it had been manufactured by Lorminix, wouldn't you?" I said carefully, watching his face. "I was just hoping you could steer me to the company that did make it. This is very important, Peter. Otherwise, I wouldn't be taking up your time."

He abruptly rose from the sofa, went across the room, and sat down behind his enormous desk, turning his back to me. I could hear his fingers nervously drumming on the oak desktop. "How important is very important?" he asked in a tone that had suddenly become curt and distant.

My heartbeat began to race, and I felt a tightening in my stomach and the muscles across my back that had nothing to do with the treatment Punch and Judy had recently entertained me with. "As important as anything ever gets, Peter. Life and death important. That is not an exaggeration. People are going to die if I can't get more of this stuff, soon, and its main component is known only to the people who make it. It's a very powerful psychotropic, an experimental drug that was being tested on schizophrenics. The researchers who were doing the work dropped the ball on the project. They abandoned their test subjects, and these people have only a very limited supply of the medication left. The drug changes blood chemistry. Once a person goes on it, he can't go off. To do so causes a severe allergic reaction that includes cellular collapse and imminent death. There is no known substitute. It's a complicated story, but the bottom line is that all records have been lost, and nobody seems to know who made the stuff. The patients whose lives depend on this medication don't have much time left, and I have to contact the manufacturer in order to get a fresh supply. That's how important it is. Now, can you help me?"

The man whose back was turned to me drummed his fingers some more, then said, "The sons of bitches. Fuck them."

Feeling a little light-headed, I rose from the sofa, walked around the coffee table and over to his desk. "Uh, Peter. . just what sons of bitches would we be fucking here?"

"Those pinstriped pricks in Switzerland!" he snapped as he abruptly swung around in his chair to look at me. There was a grim expression on his face. "There was a woman in here earlier talking about a capsule just like that one. Actually, there were two women, but one did all the talking."

I stiffened and swallowed hard. My mouth had suddenly gone very dry. "Earlier today like when, Peter?"

He glanced at his elegant and very expensive watch. "About three hours ago, just before lunch. They'd left just before you called."

"What was the name of the woman who did all the talking?"

"She said her name was Dr. Jane Knowlton, or Nolte, or something like that. She didn't show me a business card, so I can't remember exactly."

"What did she look like?"

"Very attractive-pretty short, great legs. Blond hair cut short, green eyes, great teeth. She'd called in the morning, told my secretary she was a psychiatrist involved in a research project studying psychotropic drugs. She wanted to know if I would agree to talk to her for a few minutes. I said I'd see her at eleven-thirty. But the minute she walked in here, I knew there was something not quite right about the situation."

"Like what?"

"For one thing, the woman she brought with her. She wasn't much more than a kid, maybe in her early twenties. She had long black hair and these really big brown eyes she kept staring at me with. The shrink introduced her as Roberta something, her research assistant. She was real skinny, downright anorexic. I don't think she was any research assistant."

"Why do you say that?"

"For openers, she didn't take any notes-didn't even have anything to write on. She just didn't have the air about her of a professional. She never said a word, just kept staring at me with those spooky eyes. She was real skittish, looked like she was ready to jump out of her skin at any moment. Every once in a while she'd squint and shake her head a little, like she might have some kind of nervous disorder. The blonde did all the talking, asked all the questions, and every now and then she'd glance over at the one with the big eyes, and the kid would nod. Then the blonde would start asking questions again. It was kind of bizarre, and to tell you the truth, I was sorry I'd let them into my office without having my secretary first make some calls to check on the shrink's credentials. You had to have been there. They both made me nervous right off the bat. I'm kind of an easygoing guy, but I think I'm going to have to start being more careful about salesmen, or anybody else, I let just walk in here. Sometimes I forget what I'm worth, and one day I'm liable to find a gun in my face."

"What kinds of questions did the blonde ask?"

"Well, she began by changing her story right off the bat. She showed me a capsule just like that one over on the table, and she asked me the same question you did-if I knew who'd made it. She said it came from a bad batch of drugs the manufacturer had supplied to some mental health clinic in the city. People were getting sick from the drug. Records had been misplaced, and nobody could identify the supplier, so she was working with one of the city's mental health agencies to track down the manufacturer. Well, the story was preposterous. The city keeps multiple records of all its pharmaceuticals suppliers, and if there really had been some kind of emergency involving a tainted drug, I would have been visited by somebody with a badge who wouldn't have had to lie his or her way into my office."

"Did you tell her you didn't believe her story?"

"Nope. I wasn't about to confront two strange women who might turn out to be drug addicts or loonies. Besides, I could see she was afraid-both of them looked scared. And I did believe her when she said it was very important, at least to her, that she find the manufacturer. She said it was a matter of life and death, just like you did. She also said she didn't have much time. By now she was almost pleading, and she actually had tears in her eyes. She said she'd already made inquiries at a couple of dozen other companies, and nobody had been able to help her. Anyway, I'd never seen a capsule like that one, with no markings whatsoever, and I was kind of curious myself. I told her Lorminix didn't make the drug, whatever it was, which was the truth; or at least I thought so at the time. Then she asked-virtually begged-for my help, asked if I would make inquiries for her. She said she couldn't give me the capsule itself, but she'd made enlarged color photographs of it, and she wanted to leave one with me. By that time all I wanted was to get the two of them out of my office, so I took the photograph and told her I'd look into it."

"How were you supposed to contact her if you found out anything?"

"I was supposed to call her. She wrote down a phone number on the back of the photograph."

"Peter, I need to contact those women. Do you still have the photograph?"

"Sure," he said, frowning slightly and looking around him. "Let's see now, where did I put it?"

"Think hard, Peter. It would be most useful to me."

He bent down out of sight behind his desk, and I heard him open a drawer and begin to rummage through it. Then I heard that drawer close, another open. I stood in front of the desk, a frozen smile on my face, fighting my impatience.

"I was so happy to see them leave, I wasn't really thinking when I put away the photo," Peter said, his voice slightly muffled by the mass of oak between us. "I know it's around here someplace. Just give me a minute."

"When I asked you before what sons of bitches you were referring to, you said it was the pinstriped pricks in Switzerland."

"That's right," the muffled voice replied. "Those arrogant bastards treat me like I was a piece of shit."

"Your people in Berne know about this?"

Now he surfaced, empty-handed, looked around the cavernous office and scratched his head, absently tugged on his hoop earring. "Yeah. Sure, I was glad to get rid of them. But I was still curious, and I'd been struck by how desperate they'd seemed. It occurred to me that some of the woman's story, the part about people being in danger from the drug, might be on the level. There are a number of pharmaceuticals companies in Europe who don't do a lot of business in the United States and don't have offices here, so I figured it couldn't hurt to check with the pricks in Berne to see if they recognized the capsule, could tell me what kind of medication it contained, and might know who made the stuff. I faxed them a message about my little meeting along with a copy of the photograph. Usually it takes them about a week to respond to anything I send them, but this time I got a return fax in under five minutes. I was ordered to destroy the photograph, and fax them the phone number I'd been given, along with any other information I had on the women. Then I was supposed to forget about the whole thing; I was ordered not to discuss the matter with anyone. Like I said, fuck them. If there are people in trouble because of this stuff, I want to help."

"Peter," I said, gripping the edge of the desk. "I know you disobeyed the order to destroy the photograph, because you said it's still around the office someplace. Did you fax them the telephone number the woman gave you?"

There must have been considerable tension in my voice, because he looked at me with a puzzled, somewhat defensive expression on his face, then averted his gaze. "Yeah. I've gotten kind of used to doing most of what I'm asked."

I reached across the desk and snatched the telephone virtually from under his nose, picked up the receiver, and started to dial my office number. "I need to use your phone, Peter. Just keep looking for the photograph. Take your time; concentrate on trying to remember where you might have put it."

My secretary answered in the middle of the third ring. "Frederickson and Frederickson."

"Francisco," I said, watching Peter Southworth as he suddenly snapped his fingers, rose from his desk, turned, and opened the top drawer of a metal filing cabinet that stood against the wall behind his desk, "go into my office and get out my New York City reverse directories. They're in the bottom right-hand drawer of my desk."

I waited, sighed with relief when Peter, with a satisfied look of triumph, pulled the photograph from the file drawer. He handed it to me just as Francisco came back on the line.

"I've got them, sir."

"It's Manhattan. Give me an address on this."

I read off the telephone number written on the back of the photograph, waited thirty seconds, and then Francisco gave me an address on Warren Street, downtown in the financial district. I thanked him, broke the connection, then quickly dialed the number. I got a busy signal. I waited a couple of minutes, tried again. It was still busy.

Right. I wasn't going to bother to ask an operator to cut in, because I was certain I'd only be told the receiver was off the hook.

"Thanks, Peter!" I called over my shoulder as I rushed for the door, snatching up the capsule off the coffee table. "You've been a big help! Gotta run! I'll get back to you!"

I caught a cab down on the street, hopped in, gave the driver the address, and asked him to hurry because it was an emergency. The tall Rastafarian with shoulder-length dreadlocks merely looked at me as if I was crazy, then gradually eased his clunky taxi out into the clogged traffic.

As we slowly rumbled down Seventh Avenue, I absently patted first my left armpit, then my right ankle-futile, somewhat bittersweet gestures that only served to remind me that I was unarmed, my Beretta and trusty little Seecamp-constant companions in the bad old days, before Garth and I wound up spending most of our time working for Fortune 500 companies-back in the safe in my apartment, which is where they now remained most of the time, except for occasional outings for target practice or semiannual cleaning and oiling.

There was always the slim possibility that three hours wasn't enough time for the Lorminix executives in Berne to have contacted Punch and Judy, and for Punch and Judy to have found and gone to the address-but, of course, in an age of direct overseas dialing, faxes, cellular phones, and beepers, there had been plenty of time. If Punch and Judy, or some other assassins, weren't already there, they were certainly on the way. I could only hope there was some reason why Sharon Stephens and her frail charge wouldn't be summarily executed like Philip Mayepoles, who had ended up in the Carnegie Hall Dumpster.

We finally made it downtown. I paid the driver, got out, and looked up at the four-story building on Warren Street. There was a camera and electronics store on the ground floor, and another door next to the store entrance, presumably the one I wanted. I went into a deli down the block and bought myself a forty-ounce bottle of Colt.45 malt liquor as a beer-poor substitute for its namesake. Back out on the street I poured the beer into the gutter, then, gripping the empty bottle by the neck, I approached the door next to the camera-store entrance. It was open, and when I looked at the lock I could see that it had been jimmied. Not a good sign, but no less than I had expected.

The door opened into a narrow hallway, with a steep wooden stairway at the end. On the wall to the right were three mailboxes, two of them labeled with company names. The third mailbox, for what I assumed was a loft on the top floor, had no nameplate or company logo. That looked to be where I wanted to go.

I cautiously made my way up the ancient stairway, staying near the inside wall so as to avoid making the stairs creak, and peering around every corner before proceeding upward. As I made my ascent, I found myself growing increasingly depressed and anxious at the thought of what I was likely to find at the top-namely, the corpses of two women with neat, bloodless little bullet holes at the base of their skulls.

At the top of the stairway, beyond a short, narrow landing, there was a sliding steel door that was open perhaps an inch. Gripping the neck of the beer bottle even tighter, I stepped up on the landing, hooked the fingertips of my left hand around the edge of the steel door, sucked in a deep breath, and gave a little tug. The door made only a slight scraping sound as it slid open wider. I peered around the edge of the door and found myself looking across an expanse of raw, open, unfinished loft space. A maze of beams, wires, and pipes crisscrossed the ceiling. There were only two hanging bare lightbulbs to light the place, and the atmosphere was decidedly dim and gloomy. Near the opposite wall were two mattresses covered with sheets and blankets, one chair, and a small coffee table, all of which looked like they had been scavenged off the street. There was a telephone on the floor, and its receiver was off the hook.

When I cautiously poked my head in and glanced to the right, I found myself looking into the startled faces of two women-one a leggy blonde with green eyes, the other a very thin young woman with long black hair and the largest, most expressive eyes I had ever seen. Both were bound by the wrists and ankles with rope, and they had duct tape strapped over their mouths.

I put a finger to my lips, then gestured to indicate that I needed to know where their captors were. The psychiatrist motioned with her head and leaned over slightly to indicate that I should look the other way. I turned to my left, where there was a sink and toilet stall, and when I moved a few more inches into the loft, I could see that beyond the toilet stall there was an open doorway leading into a section of the loft that had been partitioned off. Through the doorway I could see kitchen cabinets and part of another sink. I nodded reassuringly to the women, then removed my shoes, straightened up, and, clutching my glass Colt.45 firmly in my right hand, shuffled past the sink and toilet stall to the entranceway. I could smell the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee, and I heard Punch and Judy talking; from the direction of their voices, I could tell that they were sitting, probably at a table, right around the corner, against the partition.

"Shazam," I said as I stepped through the doorway.

Judy was sitting closest to me, so she was the one who would need more, and extensive, plastic surgery after I gave her the beer bottle full in the face. As Punch knocked over his coffee mug clawing for the gun in his shoulder holster, I upended the table on him, sending him toppling backward in his chair. I pushed the table aside with my foot, then crouched down and cracked him in the jaw with the heel of my hand, a blow carefully calculated to knock him unconscious and perhaps remove a few teeth, but not break his jaw so that he wouldn't be able to talk.

The initial reunion festivities over, I went back into the loft proper, put my shoes back on. I walked over to the women, removed the duct tape from their mouths, then began to untie the ropes from their wrists and ankles.

"My God," Sharon Stephens gasped in a high-pitched, breathy voice. "Who are you?"

"Well, Doctor, you know I'm not from the CIA, so I must be your fairy godmother." Without waiting for a reply from the psychiatrist, I turned to the frail woman with terror still swimming in her eyes, said, "Emily, my name's Mongo. I'm not going to hurt you, and neither is anyone else. You're safe now. Okay?"

I watched as the fear in her incredibly expressive eyes was replaced by trust and relief, and she nodded tentatively.

Sharon Stephens said, "Mongo? I think I've heard of you. Aren't you-?"

"I've heard of you too, lady. To you, I'm Dr. Frederickson, or Mr. Frederickson, or just Frederickson."

She smiled thinly as I finished removing the rope from her ankles, then started on her wrists. "I take it what you've heard isn't so good."

"I'm trying not to be judgmental. Anybody who helped a dozen people escape from Rivercliff can't be all bad. Look, I don't want to spend a lot of time up here; our friends resting in the kitchen might have backup, and I don't know how long it may be before their friends show up. Why aren't the two of you dead?"

The blond woman swallowed hard, replied, "They want Emily, and Emily doesn't function well without me. How did you know. .?"

"Let me ask the questions for now," I said, removing the last length of rope. There looked to be enough of it for my purposes. "Why do they want Emily?"

The woman rubbed her wrists and ankles to restore circulation, got to her feet, then helped the younger woman, whom I had freed first, get to hers. They stood for a few moments staring at me, their arms around each other. They looked at one another, then back at me. "She's an empath," Sharon Stephens replied at last.

"An empath?"

"Emily is extremely sensitive to what other people are feeling."

"You mean she's like a mind reader, a telepath?"

"No. Simply what I said."

"Just what the CIA needs, somebody who's sensitive to other people's feelings," I replied curtly. "You can tell me all about it later. Right now, you can both give me a hand dragging those two hotshots in here. I want them under that low-hanging beam over there by your beds. Let's move fast."

The women did as they were asked, each of them taking one of the bleeding, unconscious Judy's ankles and dragging her out of the kitchen, while I performed the same service for Punch. I tied their wrists separately with the ropes they had used to truss the psychiatrist and Emily. Then I tossed the ends of the ropes over the low-hanging beam above my head, pulled both assassins up until only their toes were touching the floor, tying off the ends of the ropes to an exposed pipe in the wall. Then I went back into the kitchen, retrieved Punch's.22 pistol, brought it back, and handed it to the blond woman.

"Did your former employers teach you how to use a gun?"

"No."

"Well, it isn't rocket science. It's loaded. Just point it at the chest of anybody who comes through that door who doesn't look like me, and then pull the trigger. Don't hesitate, don't ask questions, and don't threaten. Just aim and shoot. Use both hands."

"I'm not sure I can do that."

"Then the chances are pretty good that both of you will be gone if friends of this couple show up before I get back. They'll be professional killers."

"Where are you going?"

"Not far. The electronics store downstairs. I need a tape recorder."

"I have a small one in my purse."

"Ah. That should save me a trip."

Sharon Stephens retrieved her purse from the space between the mattresses. She took out a small, voice-activated tape recorder and handed it to me, along with the gun. I stuck the gun in my waistband, pointed to the small spool of tape inside the recorder, continued, "What's on here?"

"Just conversations I had with various drug company executives. There's nothing on the tape worth keeping."

"You've got that right," I said as I punched the rewind button. "Lorminix, the last place you visited, is the company that manufactured your little wonder drug."

Her jaw dropped slightly, and she put a hand to her mouth. "How did you find that out?"

"Not now, Doctor," I said, striding over to the steel door, which I closed and locked. "I don't know how much time we've got before somebody tries to contact these two, or comes looking for them, and I don't want to be interrupted. You two might want to excuse yourselves into the kitchen for a few minutes, maybe turn on the water if it gets too noisy in here. You're not going to like what I'm about to do."

The women stayed where they were. Both Punch and Judy had regained consciousness, and were beginning to moan in pain. I quickly searched through Punch's pockets until I found what I was looking for, his stun gun. Both grimaced and looked away, obviously not liking what they saw.

I continued, "I guarantee the two of you are going to get a charge out of seeing me again."

"Don't," the woman whispered weakly, blood dribbling out of her broken mouth.

I pressed the voice activation on the tape recorder, set it down on the floor at their feet. Then I held up the stun gun. "Now, let's see if

I can get the hang of how this thing works," I said, and jabbed the steel prongs into Punch's exposed belly. I held it there for a second or two while he screamed and thrashed, then took it away and let him hang and twitch while I turned my attention to Judy. One of the woman's eyes was swollen shut, but the other was open wide, glittering with terror as I held the stun gun up in front of her. "You know the drill, madam," I continued. "I need the answers to a few questions, and I'm going to use the interrogation technique you taught me. First, I get your attention-"

"Stop it!" Sharon Stephens shouted as I started to extend the stun gun toward Judy's rib cage. "You don't have to torture them!"

"I appreciate your fine sensibilities, Doctor," I said over my shoulder. "I'm sure they were honed at Rivercliff. I told you to excuse yourself. Information these two have might be able to save the lives of the rest of your patients, and I don't have time to fool around with lies."

"You don't need to torture them. Emily can tell you what they're feeling."

"Believe me, lady, I already know from personal experience how they're feeling. They feel downright rotten."

"That isn't what I mean. She'll know if they're telling the truth."

"Explain," I said, turning around to face the psychiatrist.

The woman shrugged, then glanced at the frail girl, who was still clinging to her. "Emily's just very sensitive to people's feelings-their reactions, body language, tone of voice. She can tell if people are lying or telling the truth. She just senses it."

Well, well. An empath. Emily was beginning to sound remarkably like my brother, and some things I'd only suspected about the CIA's motives were becoming clearer to me. "How reliable is she?"

"I told you she's the reason we're both still alive. She's more reliable than any polygraph. I'm not just saying that; she's been thoroughly tested."

I nodded. "And that's the reason the Chill Shop wants her."

Sharon Stephens frowned. "I don't understand what you mean. What's the 'chill shop'?"

"The Company's BUHR-Bureau of Unusual Human Resources."

"I worked for the CIA, yes, but I've never heard of this BUHR."

"Well, Doctor, my guess is that they're the people who paid for the work you did at Rivercliff. Listen up, and you may learn something." I paused, extended my hand toward the frail younger woman. "Emily, will you help me? I need to know if these two people who came for you answer my questions truthfully."

Emily looked at Sharon Stephens, who nodded. Then the dark-haired woman took my hand, and I led her over to where Punch and Judy were strung up to the ceiling beam. She sat down on the floor at their feet, next to the tape recorder, crossed her legs, and stared up into their faces. Punch and Judy, looking decidedly unhappy, stared back at her.

"What about you two?" I asked, looking back and forth between the two assassins. "You ever heard of the Chill Shop?"

Neither answered. I clucked my tongue in disapproval, waggled the stun gun at them, then stepped toward Punch.

"Yes!" the man said quickly. "We. . work for them. It's like you said."

I glanced down at Emily, who looked up at me and nodded her head.

"Excellent," I said, and crouched down close to the recorder. "Hello, Captain. This is the arrogant, publicity-seeking, interfering dwarf prick speaking. I trust I have your attention. I have here for you a couple of early Christmas presents, along with their taped confessions-inadmissible as evidence, of course, but they should help you get your very own confessions. Now you'll know everything I know, and I'm sure you'll put the information to good use. I'm leaving Punch's gun here next to the tape recorder, and I'll bet you a dinner that ballistics tests will match it to the bullet found in the skull of the corpse in the Dumpster. Ho-ho-ho on you."

Judy moaned, whispered, "They'll pay you … a great deal of money if you … let us go."

"Sorry, lady," I replied, straightening up. "I'm incorruptible in my quest for truth, justice, and the American way. Now, I think you get the picture. I'm going to ask you some questions, and the two of you are going to answer them. Answer them truthfully, and you get to go on to the next set of questions. Simple. But if my friend Emily tells me you're fibbing, then I will ask the ladies to step out of the room, I tickle you with your own little toy, and you do the electric boogaloo. Frankly, I'd enjoy that. It doesn't matter which one of you lies; you both get zapped. So, for your sakes, I hope you're fond of each other."

I started with a few simple questions about Lorminix, the Chill Shop, and Rivercliff that I already knew the answers to-a test for Emily as well as the two assassins. Punch and Judy got the answers right, and after each one Emily looked at me and slowly nodded her head. My human lie detector seemed to be in good working order, and my subjects reasonably cooperative, so I got serious.

When I asked for the names of the personnel at BUHR, Judy told me they didn't know, that they'd been hired by a middleman. Emily looked at me, shook her head. I clucked my tongue, then asked the psychiatrist and Emily to go into the kitchen. That was all it took. Judy started giving names, from the director of the operation right down to the various secretaries. Emily just kept nodding.

Twenty-five minutes later I had exhausted my repertoire of questions. I not only had the goods on BUHR and key people at Lorminix, but also the names of virtually every outfit and government agency Punch and Judy had ever worked for, as well as the identities of their victims. The information on the tape was going to keep a lot of law enforcement agencies in a number of countries busy for some time, but it was of only limited use to me at the moment. I was happy to hear that Philip Mayepoles had been the only patient the assassins had found, less pleased that nothing they had told me was going to help me solve the problem of obtaining a fresh supply of the patients' medication in the time I had left. Punch and Judy knew the names of a lot of players, because they'd been plying their trade for some time, but they knew almost nothing about the technical details of Rivercliff, nor did they know if any more of the drug could be found in the United States-or anywhere else, for that matter.

I turned off the recorder, set Punch's gun down next to it, then called Felix MacWhorter to tell him what he could have if he cared to send some of his people downtown. I also suggested he send a paramedic or two. Then I hung up and turned to the two women. "Let's get out of here."

"Where are we going?" the psychiatrist asked.

"To a safe place."