Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

'You can stop worrying about what Theo calls you, Michael,' I said as I rose, picked up the fifty-dollar bill, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. 'Also, your career as a chess hustler is over, at least for the time being. You're not going back to Theo's place. You're coming to live with me for a while.'

Chapter 6

With two recovering schizophrenics in residence, the brownstone was beginning to resemble a halfway house. After introducing Michael to Francisco and Margaret Dutton, and leaving instructions for my bemused but sympathetic secretary to bring them anything they wanted, I ensconced myself in my private office on the ground floor and settled in for a good long, hard think. Although I hoped I had put up a cheerful, optimistic front for Francisco and my two guests, the fact of the matter was that I felt shaky, not only made sick to my stomach by what I had witnessed and heard but also not a little overwhelmed by the responsibility I had taken upon myself and the position I had put myself in. I needed time to center myself, and then figure out what I was going to do for my next trick. Of one thing I was certain, and that was the need for extreme caution.

I had entered the lair of monsters, and the ice-pick-wielding man who was dispatching New Yorkers by the dozens was only their mascot. The killings had started at just about the time when Raymond Rogers would have hit town.

I believed every word of Michael Stout's story, for so much of it jibed with what I had already seen and heard from Mama Spit. The horror of the patients' situation was not lost on me, and I was struck dumb by the unimaginable cruelty of the people who had run River-cliff on a day-to-day basis, physicians who had betrayed their Hippocratic oath and become willing pawns in conducting Nazi-like illegal and immoral research on fellow human beings. And then there was the equally monstrous, inconceivable motives and behavior of some pharmaceutical research team, possibly but not necessarily an arm of the company that manufactured the drug. They had come up with at least a preliminary model, however flawed, of a miracle drug for schizophrenia, one that was generations ahead of any medication currently available. Yet they had then kept it a secret for years because they or their backers were apparently more interested in the flawed drug's side effects than the fact that it might furnish normal lives to untold numbers of men, women, and children who suffered from one of the most debilitating of mental illnesses.

Instead of searching for what might be only a minor reformulation that would produce freedom for the many, they had chosen to imprison and experiment on a few. Monsters; every last one of them, from the maintenance personnel at Rivercliff who had conspired to keep the secret, to the doctors who had conducted the experiments, to the drug company executives who had cooperated, to whoever was behind it all. It made me very angry, and it was this anger as well as my nausea and horror that I had to overcome before I rode off in search of windmills, or started pushing any buttons that could open a trapdoor under me as well as the wandering members of Sharon Stephens's lost flock.

All of which led me to the next mantra in my meditation: pondering who might be pulling the strings. It would take an extremely powerful organization to mount and maintain an operation like Rivercliff. Over the years laws had been broken, state and federal regulatory guidelines and commissions blithely ignored with impunity, detailed and confidential information gathered from state institutions across the country, specific patients without family or friends culled and transferred to Rivercliff. All this, presumably with no follow-up from the bureaucrats who had sent them there, and very likely with no paper trail of records. Accomplishing it with no apparent breach of security was no mean feat. And then there was the question of finances, how Rivercliff could have stayed afloat with an apparently large building or complex of buildings, a professional staff and patient population of half a hundred, all with presumably no revenue from insurance companies or funding from state and federal mental health programs.

It didn't take me long to come up with a favorite candidate for Culprit, my usual suspect when it came to conspiracies of this magnitude, expense, and lunacy-the beloved, frequently deadly CIA. It was probably a group of busy beavers in one of the Company's science research divisions. I was going to need help.

Normally it would be Garth I would turn to, assuming he was not already involved and running at my side, but my brother and his wife were on a skiing trip that was scheduled to last through New Year's, and since I had nothing specific to ask him to do, I saw no good reason to interrupt their vacation. What I needed most was information, and I needed it quickly. I had three weeks to take care of a lot of business. Not the least important was the task of somehow finding a fresh supply of the drug that was keeping the schizophrenics mentally afloat and alive. Accomplishing this would give me a time cushion of however long it might take, after the survivors had gathered on Christmas Eve, to negotiate a safe passage for them through the treacherous shoals of bureaucracy to a haven with some authority that understood and respected their special need. I knew these three weeks could slip through my fingers like water; I couldn't count on Sharon Stephens getting the job done, because I couldn't be certain I'd find her before the professional assassins on her trail took her out. Indeed, except for the pressing needs of Margaret and Michael, it was possible that replicating the drug in large quantities could be a wasted exercise, for all of the remaining ten patients who were presumably still alive and out on the city streets could be dead by Christmas Eve; in addition to whatever else I had to do, I was going to have to start tracking the shepherdess, Ms. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde, and her lost flock myself.

I needed the NYPD, state police, and FBI playing on my side, and I was severely limited in the amount of information I could offer up as enticement to get them to even enter the game; no matter what, I was not going to offer up Margaret Dutton or Michael Stout, except perhaps as a very last resort if it became clear there was no other way to save their lives and sanity. Finally it came down to the question of whom I was going to reach out to first, and I was afraid I already knew the answer. I might have plenty of contacts, and even a few friends, at One Police Plaza, in Washington, and other seats of power, but I was convinced that most of the coming action would take place on the playing field of Manhattan, since I was certain that most of the missing patients, like Michael, had stayed close. Sooner or later I was going to have to deal with Felix MacWhorter, and if he found out he'd been left out of the loop at the beginning, not only could it prove seriously counterproductive but I'd have destroyed any chance I had of building a relationship with him.

Step One.

I picked up the phone and called Midtown North.

'Midtown North. Sergeant Colchen speaking.'

'Lou, it's Mongo.'

'Mongo, my friend,' the police sergeant said, and laughed. 'Angel was telling me about the show you and the chief put on earlier. I wish I'd been here. Angel said it was the best stuff he's seen since Abbott and Costello.'

'Yeah. We plan to polish it just a little more, and then maybe take it on the road. As a matter of fact, I'd like to speak to the dear man. Is he around?'

'You've got to be kidding. In case you haven't noticed, he doesn't much care for you; his blood pressure goes up when he so much as thinks about you. I've even heard him refer to you in unflattering terms, such as 'fucking dwarf vigilante.' '

'Well, that does it; I'm not going to ask him to marry me. But I'd still like to talk to him.'

'Seriously, Mongo,' the desk sergeant said, lowering his voice. 'I don't think he'll take your call; if he does, all you'll get is a hassle. Why bother? Tell me what you're looking for, and I'll try to accommodate you. You and Garth have always been straight with us, and it's not your fault that a lot of action comes your way. The chief just has some bug up his ass.'

'Thanks, Lou; I appreciate that very much. But it's MacWhorter I have to talk to. Tell him I may be able to provide him with some information on the ice-pick killer.'

There was a short pause, then: 'No shit?'

'No shit. There's been some action coming my way.'

'Hang on.'

I didn't have to wait long, less than twenty seconds, and then

MacWhorter's sharp, impatient voice came over the line. 'What's this business about the ice-pick killer, Frederickson?'

'Chief, I'm involved in a matter where I've happened to come across certain information, and you're the first