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37.
Linsey Simon returned to the office, and saw Louise Trost waving through the smoky glass of her office. Louise had a serious, animated look about her. Linsey, holding a cup of coffee, walked in and sat down. Louise finished a phone and sat forward, steepling her fingers. "Linsey, the fudge is going to start hitting the fan."
"Oh?"
"I had a meeting with Dr. Nolan at lunch time. We've decided to raise the alarm level a few shades of color. We've had one guy die, and it looks like the whole city is coated with this unknown yellow fungus." She pointed to a plastic cup full of mushrooms, sealed under a sandwich baggie tied down with several rubber bands. "What if this starts an epidemic? What if it's some terrorist launching what could become a plague?"
Linsey shook her head and winced as she sipped hot coffee. "Keeps us employed, but is a real nuisance."
"No time for flippancy, young lady; what's the action plan?"
"I'm planning to take Cleve out to interview the two surviving roofers. Seems the dead guy, Hugh Milton, may have inhaled fresh yellow spores and/or drunk a lot of water with the freshly fallen spores in it. I want to try and get a lead on those crop dusting planes."
"Every police and military agency in Southern California is on that case. Good luck."
"And I want to track down whatever there is to be tracked down about the Lima Voyager."
"I like that better. Good luck again. Sounds like you have your hands full. Say, Linsey, have you had a talk with that muck-racking husband of yours?"
Linsey grinned. "You mean Yellow Press Jack? I threatened his life if he coughs up as much as a single syllable about what I may mutter in my sleep."
Louise picked up a pair of long-bladed, scary looking scissors—usually used for cutting cloth or newspapers. "You tell old Jack I'm going to personally emasculate him if he does that." She cackled with laughter. Then she added: "Seriously, keep this as hushed as you can until we come out with a joint statement."
"You think it's that far?"
"My gut tells me it's a sleeper, honey. I've been in law enforcement all my life, and I still have a vivid imagination.This story is going to cause a sensation."
* * * *
That afternoon, as Jack Simon sat in his office typing a story about City Council kickbacks scandal, the phone rang. "Simon," he answered curtly while squinching the phone under one cheek and continuing to whale away on the keyboard with both hands.
"This is Jim Robertson, Mr. Simon. Just wanted to confirm that we are meeting this afternoon in an house."
Jack's stomach lurched. "Mr. Robertson, I hate to tell you but I am on a deadline right now with a front-page story..."
"It's extremely urgent."
"I have to postpone, Jim. I'm really sorry."
"I have a friend here, from Peru, who can explain—"
A red, angry looking face under a wave of white hair poked in. The Publisher. "Is it done?"
"Almost," Jack said to the Publisher. To the man on the phone he said: "Jim, God just stuck head in and asked for my rear end on a platter if I'm not done with this front page story in time for a review meeting at five. I'm trying to be a nice guy and not hang up on you, but this is costing me seconds I don't have."
"I will come with this man and we will sit outside your door until you have a free moment. It's urgent."
"Okay, you do that. I can't guarantee I'll have a free moment, but maybe after five?"
"We will be there shortly. Thanks so much, Mr. Simon."
* * * *
Jim Robertson, a balding, graying man of 50 with the soft, paunchy physique of a man who has spent his entire life at a desk without ever kicking a ball or swimming a lap, walked down his front drive. It was hot in the East County, with clear blue skies and a sun whose fierce light reflected hotly on chrome and glass all around. Accompanying Jim were Paco Tlocl and his daughter, who had Americanized her distant, jungle Quechua name to Marie Passos.
"Did you bring a sample?" Jim asked as they got into his car at the curb. Marie sat in the back and explained: "He is not allowed to carry even a grain with him, for fear it would cause calamity." The old man rode shotgun and remained stony, projecting his usual focused, intense, thoughtful air.
Jim shook his head. "I think it would have been good to drop a few spores on his desk and convince him by demonstration." He pulled away from the curb and started driving down East Main Street in El Cajon. He planned to take Interstate 5 westward into San Diego—a drive of less than half an hour. It was mid-afternoon, and the rush hour had not yet begun. Besides, the afternoon rush came eastward as city workers returned to their homes in the suburbs.
As Jim drove through the quiet streets of his working class neighborhood, Marie and Paco conversed in their obscure, sibilant dialect. Jim's mind was on a variety of matters, from a late electric bill to a rattle in his engine and a missed phone call from an attractive divorcee he'd been courting in Rolando. Jim paid minimal attention to the simple actions of driving, and paid no attention to the softly murmuring Indians.
As he turned onto Johnson Avenue, he sensed that something wasn't right. Something around him, in the traffic, something bothered him suddenly. Already, Marie had noticed and he heard her gasp. As they waited under a red traffic light, he heard the roar of an approaching automobile. He had just time enough to turn to his left. He heard Paco remark in an even, unexcitable voice, and heard a drawn out wail from Marie.
At the same time, he glimpsed the older model, heavy 1960s American car making straight for him. The car cut across lanes of traffic like a torpedo seeking its target in some naval vessel. None of the dozens of drivers all around on the broad avenue had time to register what was going on, much less blow their horns in protest. Like in a staged motion picture, the car made directly for Jim's car. Jim could see the dark-skinned man behind the wheel. He heard the engine accelerating. A second later, the impact slammed Jim's car sideways across six lanes devoid of traffic. As the right wheels hit the curb, they buckled. Jim had the breath knocked out of him and was losing consciousness, but he had time to note that the T-boning car kept pressing them and that he was heading across a lawn into the side of a furniture store. As his consciousness faded, he heard glass from the showroom window raining down on concrete. He felt a terrific pressure in his left side.
* * * *
"On purpose," someone was saying. Jim heard voices as he tried to put his thoughts together. "Like one of those terrorists," said someone else. "A suicide bomber with a car for a bomb."
Sirens wailed, and Jim looked through a veiled haze at the wreckage of his car. He was in the wreckage, but alive. He couldn't move, but he deduced that the long, hard torpedo of steel had sliced through the rear of the car. Somehow the middle steel post between doors had deflected the left front fender of the attacking car, so that it completely crushed the rear half of Jim's car. He couldn't even move a hand to help, but he could turn his head to the right. As his vision came into a focus a little bit, he saw that Marie was buried in a mass of metal and glass. Only her face was visible, and the shattered window behind her revealed her blood splattered all over the gray-painted furniture store wall. Her facial features looked flaccid, but there were a few seconds of life left in her large, dark eyes.
Paco seemed unhurt, but for the first time, Jim saw him emote personal feelings. He'd known the man on and off for several years now, ever since that night when dad had still been alive and these two had come scratching furtively at the back door. Paco knelt on the seat, moaning softly in grief and shock. He fumbled with small brown hands and tiny fingers to undo that mass of metal, chips of safety glass, and viciously cutting seat springs that had torn and impaled his daughter in addition to the slamming between car and wall. In that tangle of materials, Jim saw, was the mangled and ripped, bloody body of the attacker, and much of the blood on the wall was his rather than Marie's. Must have come right through the windshield on impact and landed in Marie's midsection like a rocket.
Paco managed to find one of his daughter's hands and held it while she turned her eyes to look up at him. He brokenly cried desperate words of endearment as her eyes sank slowly shut and she died. Sirens sounded and rescuers came running—those things Jim heard, but was focused on what happened next. The dead assailant's body began to sprout fine yellowish tendrils, and Paco raised both arms as if in some religious ceremony, and spat on the man's body. While he repeatedly spat on it, he produced a small knife and, with two swift gestures, cut a tiny pouch open. Reddish powder filled the air, and the green tendrils wilted and turned into tiny dead brown grains that blew away. Paco continued his prayerful pose, grasping Marie's battered head in both palms, until Jim saw Paco literally will himself to die out of grief.
* * * *
That afternoon, Dylan came around. Jack rose from his keyboard to meet the older man. "Dylan, good to see you."
"And I'm halfway sober for a change." They shook hands. Dylan looked awful—red-skinned, pot-bellied, with stick limbs under his thick sweater and suit. "Have you had lunch?"
Jack glanced at the clock. "No, I was waiting for a guy to show up. Big deadline, but I got the story in early."
"If your date never showed up, why don't you let me buy you coffee and a sandwich."
"Yeah, I'm starving. It wasn't a date, just some crank." Jack rose and slipped his jacket on while he found Jovia's crumpled note again and read from it: "James Robertson Jr."
Dylan looked stunned. "That's who I came to tell you about."
"Oh?" They walked out of the office together, and down the carpeted halls to the elevator.
"This man came to see me about a year ago. Had an Indian with him, from Peru. I was too drunk to be coherent, but you know how it is. I put on a show of listening while twenty or more ounces of expensive Scotch swirled in my blood stream. I only heard half of it, and thought it was pretty uproarious, but just crazy enough that there might be some truth to it."
The elevator came and they rode down in its carpeted, steely ambience. Jack said: "That's how I look at it too. Usually it's cranks and limelighters, but once in a while if you can't figure out what they might gain, it is just possibly something for real."
They stepped out into the balmy sunshine and crossed the parking lot to Jack's car. "Someplace close, like in Hotel Circle?"
"Yeah, yeah, fine," Dylan said. They got in and Jack wondered if the frail looking other fellow had much of a stomach left to be eating lunch. Dylan said as Jack drove: "I couldn't figure this guy's game out, but it was something wild. Seems his father had been in the Flying Tigers back in China before the Second World War. Joined the Army Air Forces during the war, and afterwards spent some time in China. That's where he met this fellow Paco's old man, who had been brought by the Japanese from Peru. Now I only have a garble of it, but if you can connect with Robertson you can probably get the full story. If it's got anything to do with this mushroom story, you're sitting on a gold mine."
"I gather it involves Anaconda and Lee Collwood."
"That worthless on of a bitch," Dylan spat. "Ran someone over once, drunk of course, up in Santa Barbara. Daddy's money got him off the hook as always. They get these expensive lawyers that can lie their way through an iceberg, and you can get anyone off the hook. The Collwoods had plenty of money, but I think this is the last one. I think they're going belly up."
"Is that the angle?" Jack asked. What was Robertson's game?
"Nah," Dylan said. "I think Robertson is a believer. Believes his story. Is eager to pitch it to you, but very selective about whom he approaches. Like he's afraid for his life, or worse."
"Or worse?" Jack said with bite in his voice.
"The country, the world, what do I know?" As they parked outside a diner, Dylan launched a fragmentary story that Jack found baffling and interesting—he wasn't sure about plausible.
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