Tampa Burn (36 page)

What's the worst they could do?

He entered the hospital's East Pavilion wing, walking through the bricked patio—people were eating at the outdoor tables there, blackbirds whistling above them in a tree. It seemed more like a modern shopping center—Christ, there was even a McDonald's, along with other kinds of shops and crap.

Inside, he found a directory on the wall, then took the elevator to the sixth floor. He stepped out into a wide, well-lighted hallway to see a black sign with white lettering that read: WELCOME TO TAMPA GENERAL REGIONAL BURN CENTER.

Visiting hours were listed below, followed by: BURN ICU VISITORS MUST CALL BEFORE ENTERING.

Prax decided to try and get into the ICU area anyway, just to see how far he could take it.

He did, too—but only long enough to take a quick look. He saw the nurses' station—counter and walls done in blue pastels—with staff sitting and standing, talking or hurrying past, everyone wearing surgical scrubs and sometimes plastic, elastic hair coverings. Behind the counter, above a computer monitor, was a glass case filled with personal photographs: sons and daughters and grandbabies.

It gave the place a personal touch that made Lourdes oddly uneasy.

Beside and behind the nurses' station, in a separate but open room, was one of the things he'd come hoping to find. It was an entire wall of medicines and medical supplies, everything stored in tall metal lockers, on shelves faced with glass so that you could see what was inside.

Prax realized that he didn't have a chance in hell of getting into the room unnoticed and stealing the drugs he wanted. Even if he pulled the fire alarm and caused a panic, there were too many security people roaming around.

A disappointment.

Something that didn't disappoint, though, was the surgical schedule he found on a clipboard that was hanging on a wall. This was down the hall, near a far less busy Nurses' Station C3.

He read:
Thursday: Dr. Santos, 2000 hrs, Operating Room II.

He scanned down to read also:
Thursday: Dr. Santos, 1400 hrs, Operating Room II.

So maybe the famous lady was in the hospital right now, working her magic?

He followed the signs until he was outside the double doors of Operating Room II, looking at signs that warned he could not pass through the electronic doors without being scrubbed.

Coming through those doors, from inside the room, he could hear music playing. Loud music. Some kind of opera-sounding stuff, which always sounded like make-believe tragedy to him and which he hated. But maybe someone famous and sophisticated like Dr. Valerie would like opera.

So maybe she was in there. Judging from the schedule, it looked like she'd be in the same operating room that night, too, working late. Would probably have to jog home alone in the dark.

He wondered if she'd take a break, go home between surgeries, or just stick around the hospital.

Prax returned to his van, drove to the little business district, and waited. At 4:15 P.M., Dr. Valerie jogged by; waved to people eating at outdoor tables, a big smile on her pretty face. Seemed to know everyone.

Yeah, she was tiny. A little miniature woman who photographed like a full-sized fashion model.

He gave it a couple of minutes, then followed her down Magnolia Street to a pale yellow three-story mansion, with columns and fountains and a black wrought-iron fence. He watched her stop, still jogging in place, and punch in some kind of code before opening the gate. It took a while.

Hillsborough Bay was right across the quiet street, with a cement seawall to knock down waves if it was blowing.

Micki, the pushy freighter captain bitch, had called him earlier that day and told him she and her boat would be back in Tampa Bay tomorrow, Friday, and would probably return to Nicaragua very early Saturday morning, or during the day on Sunday.

“But stay on your toes,” she'd added. “If they get us loaded and on the transit schedule, we could be casting off earlier. And for me to get your weirdo special cargo aboard's gonna take us a little time. So have everything all set.”

They'd already discussed it. The fat captain knew what he was planning to bring—not who, but what—and how to make it work.

She would have two empty 50-gallon drums waiting.

But the jump ahead in schedule had made him feel tense, rushed.

Not now.

Prax could picture his Boston Whaler tied to the seawall in the darkness next to the doctor's house, and the miniature surgeon having to stop to punch in a code at the gate.

He thought,
Perfect.

 

LATER
that afternoon, Lourdes rushed back to the trailer park, where he put duct tape, a big pillowcase, and a rope into the back of the van. He also loaded a fresh gas canister into a mini-blowtorch. He'd bought the thing at Sears. It wasn't much bigger than his hand.

There was something else that he hid in the glove box: a small bottle of ether, wrapped in a hand towel.

After that, he brought the kid inside the trailer with him again. The skin of his cheeks was already on fire, and he could feel the first shock wave of pressure that preceded his headaches.

If Dr. Valerie had the operating room scheduled for eight P.M., there was no telling how late she'd get out. Even so, he wasn't going to risk screwing this up. He wanted to be right there in the boat waiting outside her house, no matter how early or late she was.

Even so, he still had time for a couple of drinks and to lie down on the couch. The combination sometimes made the pain disappear faster.

As he walked toward the living room, the kid said to him, “Let me get on the computer, there's something I've been thinking about. Something I want to show you. I found it yesterday, but you didn't give me time to follow up.”

Prax screamed at him, “Fuck off! It's getting so you're starting to give the fucking orders around here, which is bullshit!”

But then Prax remembered that he
had
to let the kid on the Internet. He'd told the kid's stubborn asshole father that he'd get a personal e-mail from the boy. So, a short time later he watched Laken sign online.

He felt like slapping the boy out of his seat. The smug little prick always seemed to get his way.

After a few minutes squinting at the monitor and typing fast, the kid stood and said, “Have a look at this.”

His head pounding, his skin screaming, Prax sat and read:

The article then went into specific detail.

When Prax had read it through twice, he leaned back and said, “Shit, I think that's
exactly
what I got. I had a doctor in Masagua, a plastic fucking surgeon he called himself, and he couldna figured it out in a hundred years. The stupid damn quack!”

The man tended to get louder and more animated as his pain increased.

Now he slapped at the screen. “But what fucking good does it do me to know? It says right here medications don't work. As if I haven't tried every fucking pill on earth! Why'd you even bother me with this bullshit?”

The more furious he became, the calmer the boy always seemed to get. He was very calm now as he said, “That's where you might be wrong. There's a whole new class of drugs, they haven't been out long. They were developed as anticonvulsion medications, but doctors are finding all kinds of ancillary benefits. They're finding out that the medicine changes the chemistry of the brain in some way—it's hard to explain—but these new meds can stop chronic pain. Back pain, pain from scars, that sort of thing.”

Christ, now the smug little son-of-a-bitch was talking down to him, like he was stupid.

“I've got a fuckin' brain, asswipe! If you can understand how a pill works, I sure as shit can understand how it works. For all I know, you're making this bullshit up.”

The red color had flooded in behind Lourdes' eyes, and he was thinking:
If the little prick talks back to me one more time, I'll drag him down to the river and set his shirt on fire.

Still very calm, the kid said, “I'm not making it up. This new drug is also helping people who have severe emotional problems—chemical imbalances in the brain. I have a friend who has some problems like that. I'm trying to get her to try them. I think you ought to give it a try, too.”

With the kid looking over his shoulder, Prax found information on the Internet about the new class of drugs. He spent half an hour reading.

Son-of-a-bitch if the brat wasn't right!

After that, Prax let the kid write the e-mail to his father. But he read it carefully several times to make certain the smug little bastard didn't sneak in any clues about where they were.

When he was convinced that he hadn't, Prax sat at the desk and sent the kid's e-mail to Nicaragua so it could be forwarded.

THE
sender's address was the familiar random mix of letters and numbers at
Nicarado.org
. But on the subject line, I read “Message from
Chamaeleo.
”

I opened the e-mail, and with Tomlinson leaning eagerly over my shoulder, we read a note written by my son in English:

Excited, I jumped up and turned away from the computer to see that Tomlinson was beaming, as excited as I was. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him as I said, “
Unbelievable.
Do you realize the importance of the things he's saying? Jesus, what a boy!”

Tomlinson was talking at the same time, jumping up and down as if I were bouncing him. “Moe Berg, man! That's the farthest kind of far-out.
I
told him about the dude, man. And now he's
using
it. The kid's a blessed genius.”

I said, “On the satellite phone and in my e-mail, I dropped a couple of hints, and he picked right up on what I was asking him to do. He's smuggling information to us. He's trying to tell us where he is through the biological references. That's the only interpretation I can . . . .”

I had begun to sit back at the computer to reread the letter, but then I paused, thinking about it, suddenly worried. “Hey, I just thought of something. What are the chances, do you think, that Lourdes—anybody associated with him—would know who Moe Berg is? That they'd figure it out? Lake would be in even more danger than he is now.”

Tomlinson created a circle with thumb and forefinger. “Zero. Hardly anyone in the States even knows who the man was. Central America, it's got to be zilch.”

Moe Berg isn't well known, I couldn't argue that. He'd never been a great baseball player, was remembered by only a few—but he was one of the baseball greats of the twentieth century.

Intellectually, Berg had been massively gifted. Athletically, he had not. About Berg, sportswriters of the time said that the oddball catcher could speak seven languages, but couldn't hit in any of them, which was an exaggeration, but close. He'd played more than a dozen years in the major leagues, mostly as a benchwarmer and bullpen specialist, yet somehow he'd managed to be chosen for the 1934 All-Star team, and he'd toured Japan with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and all the other greats.

It wasn't until decades later that the truth had come out. The .243 lifetime hitter hadn't made the All-Star team because of his skills on the field. He'd made it for the same reason he'd been sent to pre-World War II Germany, and then into Latin America on “goodwill” baseball missions. The catcher was a spy for the OSS.

In Tokyo, when he hadn't been in the bullpen, he'd been out roaming the city, speaking Japanese like a native and using a movie camera to take film of Tokyo Harbor, munitions factories, and the city skyline that would later be invaluable to American bomber pilots.

In Nazi Germany, he'd become “friendly” with nuclear physicists who were also baseball fans.

Berg never married. He died in 1977. His last words, to a hospital nurse, were, “How'd the Mets do today?”

I had to agree with Tomlinson. Berg's name was the perfect signal flag. My son was telling me that his e-mail included imbedded information.

Now it was up to us to decipher it.