The Blacker Death: An Ebola Thriller (12 page)

“Where’d you learn to drive like that?” I said.

“My parents live not far from Germany. My friends and I would go there on weekends to race on the autobahn.”

“Any other secrets you haven’t told me, like how you’re a ninja warrior or something?”

“Every woman has her secrets,” she laughed. I liked a woman who could laugh after dancing with the devil.

When we got to my place, my new sofa was sitting outside by the back door with a delivery slip stapled to one arm. I’d forgotten all about it. I went over to grab the slip, and a skunk came out from underneath. As I backed away slowly, it took off, leaving behind the gift that keeps on giving.

Shep barked from the screened-in porch. Baby was sitting beside him.

“You big sissies,” I said. “Letting a little skunk like that wreck your new sofa.”

Izzy was trying not to laugh. “What now?” she said.

“First, I’m going to feed the kiddies. Then I’m going to get out of this clown suit, find some gloves, and drag that piece of shit sofa down into the woods. The skunk can have it. After that, I’m getting a shower, and I think I’ll have a drink. Maybe two. Want to stick around and join me?”

“I’d like that. Do you mind if I change out of these clothes?”

“Knock yourself out. You know where everything is.”

She grabbed her carryon bag from the car and we went inside. Later on, we were sitting at the kitchen table having that drink and talking about Billy, when Shep came over with the checkerboard between his teeth. Izzy thought it was funny when I told her that he was pretty good at the game.

“How does he play?” she asked.

“I point to the piece and he barks if it’s the one he wants me to move for him.”

“Really? Does he ever win?”

“All the time, but I let him. He’s a poor loser, and he bites hard. Look, thanks for hanging with me and letting me ramble on about Billy. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over this one, but it helped to talk it through.”

Something about the way she looked at me just then made me feel like I didn’t understand women at all.

“It’s getting late,” I said. “You should probably head back.”

“I don’t think you should be alone tonight, Bam.”

After all those years of dealing with liars, killers, thieves, and the occasional honest Joe, I thought I could read a person’s expression like a book. I thought I knew what she meant, but I had to give her one last chance to back out.

“What?” I said. “You’re afraid Carmine will come back? I’m a card-carrying NRA member, sister. I’ve got an arsenal here big enough to wage World War III and a dog that will hear them coming a mile off. I’ll be just fine.”

She put her drink down and took my hand. “I wasn’t talking about that.”

They say life’s a bitch, then you die, but in the end life’s all we’ve got. Izzy was right. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to have to think of Billy and all the things he’d never get to do, all the dreams he’d never see fulfilled. He was just a kid with everything to look forward to and no regrets to look back on, just a kid.

When we got up the next morning, it was raining big time. Shep was asleep on the floor. He’d been out in it and smelled like a wet blanket. Baby was nowhere to be found. We got dressed and went downstairs to make breakfast. Izzy went to turn on the TV, but I stopped her.

Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee. That’s what Cassius Clay had said he was going to do to Sonny Liston before he knocked him out. I’m no Cassius Clay.

“About last night,” I began.

I was telegraphing the blow. She’d felt sorry for me and given me comfort when I needed it. I didn’t want her to think there was any more to it than that, even though there was.

“I understand,” she said. “Not another word about it, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and let it drop.

I switched on the TV. The Blacker Death. That’s what they were calling it. That was the news, the only news. The mayor had used an old FDR line in his speech the day before that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself, but he had no clue just how big a punch fear was packing that day.

I channel-hopped through the stations: a man coughing like a steam engine complaining to a reporter that he’d been turned away at the hospital even though he had symptoms, a woman crying as she told another reporter about her next-door neighbor who had died the night before and they were sure it was Ebola, a close-up shot of a vagrant lying in the alley with blood on his face. Clip after clip, they fed the frenzy. There were reports of Ebola everywhere in Philadelphia. They said it was spreading to the suburbs and across the river as if it were a pack of rats running around biting people. The facts didn’t matter anymore. Overnight, the Blacker Death had become the disease that was everywhere and nowhere.

Airline baggage handlers and airplane cabin cleaners walked off the job at the airport that morning. They wanted guarantees of protection from the virus. Firemen refused to go into a burning house because someone on the scene had said that the person inside had Ebola. Cab drivers were on strike. The transit workers union staged a sickout, shutting down all but the two major subway lines. The city was imploding because the truth was nowhere to be found. There was only fear, and everyone including us was glued to his TV set watching it pummel the city into submission.

I changed the channel again. I recognized Paris in the background. A BBC reporter was talking about Ebola above an angry mob outside the Luxembourg Palace. A lot of them were carrying placards. A lot of them were shaking their fists and chanting. The French government had come clean at the outset, admitting that their three U.N. diplomats had returned to France and died of Ebola. They said they had the situation under control and were trying to track down everyone who had come in contact with them. They already had fifty people in isolation in Paris hospitals that they were monitoring for symptoms.

“What’s that sign say?” I asked Izzy.

“It’s says, ‘No Africans,’” she said. “That other one says, ‘Blacks go Home,’ but it uses an offensive word for black.”

The reporter started talking about the Paris hospitals that had been overwhelmed in just one night. People with symptoms were being turned away, mostly immigrants, mostly black. People with no connection to the disease were being turned away too. The hospitals couldn’t handle the load. Fear, panic, and rage had taken over another unprepared city.

“It doesn’t take long for everything to fall apart, does it?” I said.

“Society is built on the honor system, Bam. When there is no honor, it cannot stand.”

“Did you just make that up?”

“No. It’s something my father says.”

“Smart man.”

“And honorable, like you.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the guys.”

“Not all of them.”

She ran her fingers along my cheek like maybe there was something more to last night for her too.

“Do you always get what you want?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

“I think I’m hungry.”

Izzy started breakfast and I brought out my laptop and headed back to Google. You can find anything you want on the Internet. Some of it is even true. I retyped the search string I’d been working on the night before when Carmine paid us a visit: List of U.N. delegates. I located and downloaded the PDF from the United Nations website, scanned the list, and there it was, like a kid’s nightmare after watching scary movies all afternoon, staring back at me from under the bed.

“Jenson Wales,” I said.

“I know him,” said Izzy. “He’s Luxembourg’s ambassador to the U.N., a very nice man.”

“Was he friends with Birot?”

“Oh, no. They didn’t get along at all. Why?”

“Because he’s dead.”

She whispered the word Ebola like people whisper the word cancer, as if saying it too loud would make it come true.

I nodded. “His was the Luxembourg sample.”

Izzy put two and two together pretty fast. “The U.N. general assembly adjourned, and all the delegates went home to their own countries.”

“And they were all exposed to Birot. It says here, there are a hundred ninety-three of them. I’m emailing this to Tom Stalter right now for him to cross check against his test list. Do you have a connection with anyone at the U.N. who can pull a few strings for us?”

“What about the Assistant to the Secretary General? She called me after Birot died to get his father’s personal phone number so the secretary could express his condolences directly.”

“That’ll work. Get her on the horn. Ask her to put together a list of everyone who was at that assembly. Use the roll calls, security footage, whatever it takes. We need the delegates, their assistants, the pageboys, caterers, staff, everyone. Have her email it to Tom Stalter at the CDC ASAP. Tell her everything we know. This is no time to be pussyfooting around with politics.”

She dialed the number and started talking to her contact at the U.N. I got up and went looking for the cat. I found her sitting in the windowsill watching the birds in the front yard.

“Planning your strategy?” I said.

She purred when I picked her up to pet her.

“Us, too. How about some bacon?”

Izzy called out to me, so I took Baby with me back to the kitchen, gave her a piece of bacon, and set her down.

“She wants to know about the visitors, Bam. There are hundreds every day. What about them? How do they identify them?”

Just like the cat trying to figure out how to catch all the birds in the tree out front, the ones who could fly away at a moment’s notice, the answer was, we couldn’t.

My cell rang.

“Matthews.”

“Bam, it’s Tom. I’m going down that list you sent.”

“How many?”

“Eight, so far, including Birot. How many others did he come in contact with?”

“No clue.”

“Christ. No wonder it’s everywhere.”

“Whatever happened to Ebola being a bloodborne disease?” I said.

“It’s not just blood, Bam. It’s any bodily fluid, but it’s far more common in blood and feces because they’re closer to the environment the virus prefers. It can be transmitted through sweat, a handshake, a kiss, a cough, but the odds are far less because there are far fewer infectious particles present.”

“But someone like Birot working the crowd and glad-handing the other ambassadors could spread it?”

“Yes, it’s theoretically possible. It just seems an unlikely accident.”

“What if it wasn’t an accident?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if someone spiked the punch?”

“No way. The alcohol would kill it.”

“The drinking water?”

“Not enough salt in drinking water. Ebola likes a saline environment. If someone put infected blood in the water, osmosis would draw the salt from the cells, replacing it with pure water until the levels were equalized. The cells would explode and the virus would die in minutes.”

“Could they have spread it through the air conditioning, like Legionnaire’s disease?”

“Ebola can’t be spread through an air conditioning system. It can’t survive long enough outside a host. Look, I know what you’re getting at.”

“You do, do you?”

“That’s right, I do. I had to put up with you at school for four years, remember? You think because I said it was an unlikely accident that this is some kind of terrorist plot. Well, it isn’t. If a terrorist were looking for a biological weapon, he wouldn’t pick Ebola. It’s too difficult to spread. There’s just no effective delivery system.”

“I’d say infecting the U.N. was a pretty damned good delivery system.”

“There has to be another explanation.”

“Okay. Where do we go from here?” I said.

“I’m going to turn this list over to our Response Group leader. We have a teleconference scheduled for later today. I’m going to recommend that he work with the U.N. to isolate everyone involved. That’s the other thing about Ebola, Bam. It might be hard to treat, but it’s too easy to stop its spread. Any self-respecting terrorist would know that.”

I looked over at Izzy. She’d just hung up.

“I guess I should tell you that we already called the U.N., Tom. They know everything. They’re going to put together the list of who was there and send it your way.”

“Christ, Bam. Why the hell did you do that?”

“We need their help. You said that yourself, Tom.”

“That’s not the point. You, of all people, should know that we have to go through proper channels. If someone there leaks this, it could create a worldwide panic. People will die. Do you want their deaths on your hands?”

“I’ve already got Billy’s death on my hands,” I said, and hung up.

“That didn’t go well, did it?” Izzy said.

“It could have gone better.”

“Now what?”

“Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

After breakfast we went out onto the back porch to drink our coffees. I lit up a Pall Mall and tossed the empty pack into the wastebasket.

“I’m thinking it’s time to quit,” I said.

“Smoking?”

“That too.”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself for Billy’s death.”

“It should have been me helping your buddy, Birot, not him, but I’ve gotten slow, sloppy. I can’t do this anymore, Izzy. It’s time I got out.”

“What will you do?”

“I was thinking about buying a sailboat and heading south, someplace warm.”

“That’s your retirement plan?”

“That’s it.”

“My father always said that you can’t run from trouble. It will find you wherever you go.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“So, what does he recommend?”

“Make sure your gun is loaded.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” I said, answering my ringing cell. It was Jimmy. He’d heard about our little run-in with Carmine’s boys and asked if we were okay.

“We’re fine, but your car needs a little work.”

“Camden police ran those plates,” he said. “The Caddy was stolen in New York.”

“Figures. Where’s Carmine?”

“Don’t know. I spoke to your boss about it since it was an FBI case. He thinks your little run-in was just a good-bye kiss before they left town.”

“Right. So, I guess that’s that.”

“I can’t spare anybody to help track him down right now, Bam. I’m sorry.”

“No problem. I know you’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“You’re not shitting me. It’s crazier here than I’ve ever seen it. Every lockup in every district of this city is jammed right now. We’ve got disorderlies, weapons offenses, arson. You name it. We’ve got it. And they’re not all bad people. Most of them are just afraid. They want help, and we can’t give it to them. Hell, I just finished processing a kid who got married yesterday and was arrested for punching an officer outside the hospital because the cop wouldn’t let her in to get checked out.”

“What did you do with her?”

“What am I supposed to do? She didn’t have a temperature, so I let Mrs. Mavis Wilson Butterfield go home to her husband with a pamphlet and a warning. She’s sick as a dog, worried she’s got Ebola, and the ink isn’t even dry on her name change. What the hell kind of luck is that?”

Sometimes the answer to one question is the answer to another. Sounds funny, but it’s true, and when it happens, it hits you like a ton of bricks.

“You good with us keeping the car?” I said.

“Sure. Just try not to get shot at again, okay?”

“You got it.” I hung up and started dialing again.

“Who are you calling now?” Izzy said.

“Travis. I’ve got a hunch.”