Near Death (22 page)

The other one climbed into Martell’s passenger seat and made him drive to the research facility. He told him he’d be calling to check on him and warned him not to call the police or he’d crush the baby’s head and make his wife
watch.

Martell threw himself into the task, running around various labs, utilizing the company’s sophisticated hardware. By 4 A.M., he’d analyzed the compound and knew its structure.

“What is it?” Cyrus asked.

“It’s a circular peptide,” Martell answered. “A new one on me.”

Cyrus wasn’t surprised. He sighed and showed Martell the Desjardines structure. “This it?”

“Yeah!” Martell exclaimed. “That’s it. That’s the exact isomer!”

“Were you able to make it?” Minot asked.

“Yes. I’ve made circular peptides before. I ran it through our peptide synthesizer and did the linker chemistry. No problem.”

“How much did they want? Cyrus asked.

“They said they wanted a minimum of one hundred thousand doses, about fifty grams of compound.”

Avakian whistled. “At the current street price, that’s ten million bucks worth.”

“Street price of what?” Martell asked, dazed.

“Bliss,” Cyrus answered. “Ever hear of it?”

“I’ve been making Bliss?” Martell moaned. “I had no
idea.”

“How much have you made so far?” Minot asked.

“About twenty-five grams. The guy who drove me here picked it up Saturday night. I’m just purifying the second batch now.”

“So another fifty thousand hits are on the streets?” Avakian howled. “Man alive!”

“Look, I don’t care about that!” Martell cried. “I want my wife and son back!”

Minot was soothing, something he was good at. “We’ll get them back, Mister Martell. Believe me, we will.”

“She’s so scared.” He started sobbing.

“How do you know she’s scared?” Cyrus asked.

Before the chemist could respond, Minot said helpfully, “Of course she’s scared.”

Martell, though, looked at Cyrus. “Because I talked to her,” he replied.

When? they all wanted to know.

“Last night?”

How?

“On her cell phone. She had it in her bag when she left. They called me on it and let her speak to me.”

Minot jumped up muttering, “Can they be that stupid?” He got her number from Martell and sprinted into the hall.

Martell looked alarmed.

“No, it’s good. In this case stupidity is very good,” Cyrus reassured him. “If we have her phone, we have her.”

By the time it was dark, a coordinated plan was in place involving the FBI, the Mass State Police, and the Boston Police Department. Minot handled interdepartmental issues and left the tactical plan to Cyrus and Avakian, who mapped out a minute-by-minute scenario.

Marcie Martell’s cell phone signal was tracked to Clark Street off of Hanover in Boston’s North End. Multiple drive-bys gave them a high probability the source was a five-story narrow brick apartment building with only ten units.

At four in the afternoon, Comcast agreed to cut off cable service to the building. Within five minutes, the cable company received calls from three of the apartments reporting the problem. Cyrus chuckled at the speed as he and Avakian, dressed in Comcast gear, responded to the service call.

For an hour they had nearly free rein of the building, sketching the layout and planting listening devices. They were most suspicious about one of the units on the top floor where a woman angrily refused them access. On the
roof, they scoped out access points from adjacent buildings and took photos to help them finalize the takedown plan.

Then they left and had the cable turned back on.

Two hours later, they instructed Martell to call his wife to confirm her safety. She was tired but fine—but most importantly, the FBI listening team picked up her ringtone in the hall outside Apt. 9, top floor, rear.

At 11 P.M. a car pulled into the vacant parking lot of Chemotherapeutics. It was Martell’s Kia, driven by John Abruzzi. He was on his own. When Abruzzi knocked on the glass door Martell came out and handed him a large plastic jar of powder. A sniper from the state police had Abruzzi in his sights with instructions to fire if he made a move to attack the chemist but the exchange was benign.

“Your first bottle was good, at least that’s what the junkies reported,” Abruzzi joked into the microphone Martell was wearing.

“Will you let my wife and son go now?” Martell pleaded.

“Soon. Go back home and wait. And keep your mouth shut about this. We know how to get you. Be smart. When we need more, next time, maybe we’ll pay you. Bring you over the wall. Don’t be a jerkoff and you’ll do good.”

Another car pulled into the lot.

Abruzzi tossed Martell the keys to his car, climbed into the other sedan and drove away.

Cyrus was inside the company building, peering through the blinds of a darkened window. “Okay, he’s rolling,” he announced into his radio. “Keep four vehicles on him at all times and don’t move on him till you get the word.”

A quarter of a mile away, a state police helicopter was waiting in a parking lot to fly Cyrus to Boston. Within fifteen minutes he was disembarking onto the helipad roof of Mass General Hospital and was then whisked off to Boston Police District A-1 on New Sudbury Street where the operation was being staged.

Minot sat quietly, watching Cyrus lay out the tactical plan to the Mass police SWAT commander and Boston police support teams. When O’Malley was done, Minot patted him on the back in his fatherly way, filled his pipe bowl with fruity tobacco and wished him luck.

At midnight, the state police SWAT team was in place on the roof of the Clark Street building. Eight armed men in flak jackets, night vision goggles and assault rifles anchored their rappel lines.

Cyrus was in an unmarked communications van up the block near North Street. Before giving` the go ahead he called Avakian, who was in one of the cars trailing
Abruzzi.

“Where’s your guy?” Cyrus asked.

“He’s still in the Seagull Lounge in Revere. We’ve got front and back covered. He’s not going to be showing up at your party.”

The lights were black in Apartment 9.

Cyrus gave the green light.

On the count, the SWAT commander initiated.

There were two windows at the side and two at the rear. With a looping rappel the first four went through the windows boots first. Then a second wave crashed in.

Cyrus sat forward, eyes closed, straining into his headset. The sound of crashing glass had barely stopped when he heard the first cracks of gunfire.

Pop
.
Pop
.

The voices were eerily businesslike.

“One male down in bedroom two!”

A woman cried out, “Mario!”

Pop
.

“One female down bedroom two.”

“I’m in bedroom one. I’ve got the baby. Cover the door. I think the mother’s okay. Are you Marcie Martell?”

“Yes!”

“How many of them are in here?”

“Two men! One woman!”

“Where’s the other guy? Who’s got the other guy?”

“Watch out. I think he’s behind the sofa.”

Pop. Pop. Pop
.

“Second male down!”

“We’re clear! Get the paramedics in!”

Moments later, the street was alive. A burly cop walked out of the building with the baby in his arms, his mother supported between two other officers.

Cyrus watched Marcie Martell emerge. She looked like a woman who’d been through hell. He called Avakian.

“It’s over on Clark Street. Pick up your guys.”

Avakian and four special agents calmly walked in and took down John Abruzzi and his driver without a struggle. The large plastic bottle was in Abruzzi’s coat pocket.

“It’s sugar, asshole,” Avakian said. “Where’s the first bottle?”

Abruzzi thrust out his chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about but if I did I’d bet it’s long gone. I’d bet it’s all over the fucking streets already.”

Thirty

Cyrus was too busy to leave the office but he refused to cancel the appointment. Days after the North End raid he was still grinding away on his after-action reports but that morning he kept thinking about his date, if that’s what it was. Emily Frost was getting under his skin, creeping up on him, invading his thoughts at odd times—while reading; shaving; eating cereal.

He was determined to be on time. In fact, he blew into the coffee shop a few minutes early. She was there already in a booth, on her cell phone. She waved and kept talking as he sat and stripped off his overcoat. He could tell from her tone she was in doctor mode talking to a family. He tried not to eavesdrop on the content but listened to the sound and cadence of her voice. She was able to blend gravitas with warmth. It was soothing. He could use some of that.

She finished up. “I’m sorry. How are you, Cyrus?”

He was pleased she’d remembered their deal on first names.

“Fine, Emily. Busy but fine.”

“Still reading Shakespeare?”

He laughed. “That’s like asking me if I’m still breathing air.”

“You’ve got me doing it too. The sonnets are really lovely.” They ordered their coffees. “How’s Tara?”

“Not bad, not good,” he said heavily. “Every time I see her she seems to be getting a little farther away. Does that make sense?”

She smiled sadly. “Yes it does. Like a star getting dimmer.”

He swallowed hard and nodded.

“How’re
you
doing?” she asked.

“Ordinarily, I’d be bitching about being out-of-control swamped with work but I think the distraction’s probably a good thing.”

“I’m sure you’re right. Can you talk about any part of your work? Or is it confidential?”

The coffees arrived and he watched to see if she was going to get cappuccino foam on her upper lip again. She did and he liked it.

“Have you heard about the drug, Bliss?”

Her eyes widened. “You’re working on that!”

“I’ve gotten drawn into it through a related investigation.”

“I’m fascinated by it, absolutely fascinated,” she enthused. “I’ve been reading everything I can. I even saw my first patient last week, a fifteen-year-old girl who attempted suicide after taking it. We’ve got her as an inpatient.”

“It’s spreading like crazy,” he said. “The world’s gotten more dangerous in the past few weeks.”

“More dangerous and more comforting at the same time, don’t you think?”

“How do you mean?”

“Many people find the notion of an afterlife comforting. It’s the foundation for great religions. People want to believe there’s more.”

“Your patient tried killing herself. There’ve been plenty of successful ones. But not everyone opts for that. What do you make of it?”

“I don’t think the drug’s effects are monolithic. Maybe the underlying psyche of the user predicts the response. If a person has a marginal, unfulfilled life full of sorrow, then maybe suicide and the promise of something better proves irresistible.”

“Choosing death over life,” Cyrus mused.

“From what I’ve read and heard from colleagues who’ve seen more patients than I, users describe experiencing
feelings of incomparable joy and peace, the purest pleasure they’ve ever had.”

“And those who don’t want to off themselves?”

She paused. “My guess is that healthy, self-actualized people may find the experience gives them an added dimension. For them, heaven can wait, though it might change some of their lifestyle decisions.”

Cyrus took on a mocking tone. “They zoom through a tunnel toward the light! They see a beautiful river! There’s a loved one waiting for them! They feel the presence of God! What’s your explanation for these identical hallucinations?”

Emily chuckled. “Your skepticism comes through loud and clear but there really are only two explanations, aren’t there? Either it’s a drug-induced hallucination with mass suggestibility … or it’s real.”

He allowed the waitress to refill his cup before exclaiming, “Real?!”

“Who am I to say the afterlife doesn’t exist? Most people think it does, you know. Ninety-two percent of Americans believe in God, eighty percent believe in an afterlife. Heck, one in three believes that the bible is the actual word of God!”

“What do you believe?” Cyrus asked. As soon as he said
it, he realized it wasn’t an appropriate question but before he could retract it, she answered.

“I’m a card-carrying agnostic,” she replied. “Since you asked me, I guess for me to ask you the same thing is fair game.”

He shook his head and looked out the window for a few seconds. “I’m a practicing Catholic,” he answered. “I have faith. But for me, these kinds of things have to be necessarily abstract. To solidify concepts of God and afterlife in specific imagery … I don’t like it. It goes against my grain.”

“I understand completely.” She bunched her lips in curiosity. “So what’s the FBI’s role in Bliss?”

“Like I said, I’m coming at it from another angle, which I can’t go into.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I’m too nosy. Does anyone know where it came from?”

“Yeah, that’s another thing I can’t talk about.”

“There I go again.” She laughed.

He changed the subject. “The crazy thing is, the drug’s not illegal! Using it
or
selling it. There’s nothing the authorities can do.”

“Is something being done about that?”

“The DEA’s looking at it. Drugs don’t get scheduled
overnight but if it were me, I’d be working overtime.”

“I think your concern is well placed. I don’t know if the drug is addictive in a classical sense, but it surely is seductive.”

“Remember I asked you once about Alex Weller?”

She nodded.

“You said you went to one of his salons. Do you remember a nurse named Thomas Quinn? Or a lab tech named Frank Sacco?”

“There were so many new people there and it was a couple of years ago. Sorry.”

“Have you seen Weller lately?”

“No, why?”

“No reason.” Her cup was empty. “You want another one?” he asked. “Something to eat?”

“I’ve got to get back for clinic,” she said.

He called for the check. “Can I ask why you chose to work with sick kids?” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word
dying
.