them.'
Garth nodded. 'There are a number of suppliers I want to check out. I'll start my calls, see if anybody is open. If not, it will just have to wait until Monday.'
'Christ, they'd need hundreds of tons of glass, plastic, steel, whatever, to build a biosphere big enough for people to live in. You'd think somebody would remember orders like that, even if they didn't remember that it was for Nuvironment.'
'They'd remember-unless they've been told not to remember.'
'Or unless all of the supplies have been ordered and delivered through companies owned by Blaisdel.'
'Right. But you're correct about them needing an awful lot of shit, including a few million gallons of sea water. And they'd need a lot of expertise. They've gone outside before, to the Botanical Garden; there may be other outside experts they've used. I think I'm going to check back with Sam Zelaskowich and see if he knows of anyone else, in any other institution, who's done consulting work for Nuvironment.'
'Good idea. But you're going to have to be very careful-for Zelaskowich's sake.'
'I know, Mongo. I will be.' He paused, nodded to the bartender as he brought us over our drinks, then continued: 'All we need is one lousy lead, the name of one person who won't end up dead on us. There are records somewhere, and there are people who have the information we want.'
'Where are you going to start?'
'I'm not sure,' Garth answered after what seemed an unusually long pause.
Something about the tone of my brother's voice made me wonder if he was being evasive; but since I could think of no reason why he would be evasive, I let it go. We finished our drinks, Garth grabbed the check, and we headed for the cashier. Outside, the sky was leaden with thick, dark clouds. It was, I thought, going to be a very long Christmas Day.
The good news was that I slept; the bad news was that I woke up at two thirty in the morning. I made a large pot of coffee, exercised, then sat for a half hour in my sauna and tried to relax. It was useless; the more I sweated, the more nervous I became. Something was nagging at me-something besides the obvious difficulties and frustrations of the situation we were dealing with. I kept struggling to find the source of my unease as I showered, dressed in a terry-cloth jumpsuit, and went into the kitchen to make myself something to eat.
I'd just popped two slices of rye bread into the toaster when it came to me.
Three men associated with Nuvironment had killed themselves rather than divulge information they didn't want Garth and me to have; all three had implied that they, at least, expected something to happen very soon, namely the end of the world. Peter Patton, on the other hand, certainly hadn't seemed to share their sense of urgency; indeed, he'd offered to give Garth and me the run of his place. Next week. After the first of the year.
Under any circumstances it would be most unlikely that anyone would be at the Nuvironment offices in the middle of the night to answer the phone. In addition, it was a holiday weekend, and Patton had said that the offices were being closed down until after New Year's. Still, acting on an impulse that sprang out of my unshakable sense of foreboding, I picked up the telephone and dialed the number for Nuvironment.
There was no ringing; instead, a recorded voice came on, courtesy of the New York Telephone Company, to tell me that the number I was trying to reach had been disconnected.
It left me with a very cold, knotted feeling in the pit of my stomach. I buttered my toast, ate it with my fourth cup of coffee. But I put the eggs I'd been about to cook back into the refrigerator; I wasn't hungry anymore.
At eight thirty I rolled Beloved out of the garage and noted with decidedly mixed feelings the black limousine parked just down the block. As I headed downtown, the limousine tailed along, about six car lengths behind me. Nuvironment might have closed up shop permanently, but Peter Patton was obviously taking no chances on having any loose cannons messing up his act-whatever that act might be; the tails were still on duty. It was almost comforting to be followed, implying as it did that it still might be possible for us to learn something, and I made no effort to lose the Cadillac.
I returned to Jersey City, found a few of the shipping offices open and operating with skeleton crews. Nobody knew anything about a shipment of a hundred tons of Amazon rain forest soil.
The one thing I did discover was that my tail was none other than Tanker Thompson himself, apparently alone, and looking even meaner and uglier in person than he had on television. He was truly massive, with his six- and-a-half-foot height and three-hundred-pound body, and a neck that was almost as thick as his head. Perhaps because it would be difficult for such a big man to move with much stealth, he didn't bother. When I stopped my car, he stopped his only a few yards behind; when I got out and walked, he got out and walked, keeping no more than a block or so between us. There was an arrogance in this open, casual approach that tended to infuriate me, and once I almost stopped and turned around, intending to confront him. But I knew that he would simply keep coming at me until I found myself staring up into his bruise-colored face with its flattened nose and small, black eyes. There was no question but that Tanker Thompson frightened me, and I knew that it would be a waste of time to try to talk to him. I just wasn't ready for a confrontation with the murderous ex-football player, and I quickened my pace.
I finished visiting all the offices that were open in Jersey City, then headed for Hoboken. I was thoroughly dispirited, certain now that I was wasting my time, but just as certain that I would have no peace of mind if I didn't play out the string.
It was five thirty by the time I got back into Manhattan. With Tanker Thompson still on my tail, I came out of the Holland Tunnel, headed for uptown and home. I resisted the impulse to wave at the black limousine as I pulled into my garage.
Garth wasn't in his apartment-a fact that disturbed me somewhat, since I couldn't figure out who or what he would be visiting at six in the evening on the Saturday after Christmas. I left him a note asking him to come up as soon as he got in, then wearily climbed the circular staircase in his den that led up to my own apartment.
I poured myself a stiff Scotch, downed it quickly. I started to pour myself another, then thought better of it. I busied myself making linguini with homemade clam sauce, ate it with a half bottle of Chianti while I watched the Cable News Network-always with half an ear turned to hear the door opening or the phone ringing. I finished the linguini and wine, fell asleep in my chair in front of the television set.
10
I awoke with a start, knocking the food tray on my lap to the floor. CNN was showing something that looked like a farm report, with a two-hundred-pound woman kneeling and chucking a six-hundred-pound pig under the chin as she spoke about how the new, sophisticated farmer always has a computer linkup to check the latest prices of futures in pork bellies. I glanced at my watch; it was four thirty in the morning. My first reaction was annoyance with Garth for not waking me up when he'd come in.
My second reaction was fear that he hadn't come in.
I bolted out of my chair, kicking the tray and wine bottle out of the way, and hurried down the circular staircase to his apartment, went into the bedroom. His bed was made, unslept in.
This time Santa Claus was more than just late; he was missing.
The first thing I did was make myself instant coffee, using hot water from the tap in the kitchen, just to give myself time to calm down. I sipped at the tepid liquid, grimaced. Then I made a systematic search of his apartment for a note he might have left me. There was none. Next, I sat down at the telephone in his den and pulled out his list of the numbers of all the hospital emergency rooms in the city; there was no Garth Frederickson in any of them. I searched through his desk until I found his private phone directory, found the number I wanted, and dialed it.
Malachy McCloskey answered on the sixth ring. 'Yeah,' he mumbled sleepily. 'What is it?'
'Lieutenant, this is Robert Frederickson.'
It took a few moments for the words to register. 'Frederickson? How did you get this number? Do you know what the hell time it is?'
'They've got Garth,' I said tersely.
