“There you go.” Spectacle Island - specifically, that old barge - would be a great place to process drugs. A nice, abandoned, lawless zone, only minutes from downtown.
Bart had said that PCP was very hip among the Poyzen Boyzen drones. PCP was easy to make - even a metalhead could manufacture it by the fifty-five-gallon drum. And I could detect it, by the wastes and smell it generated. No wonder they didn't want me taking samples out there.
“You want to know exactly what happened?” I said. “Those poor idiots overheard me saying I was hunting for PCBs, and they thought I said PCP!”
“Great. So you've got a band of dustheads after you?”
“No. We have a band dustheads after us.”
“That's great. I'll never take another shower.”
I refrained from offering showering privileges at my place. Without being her official boyfriend, there wasn't much I could do.
Reassuring was my best bet, but I wasn't. I wanted Debbie and Tanya as scared as I was, because that way they'd be careful. “Watch your ass. I have stuff to do.”
“Going to call the cops?” she asked.
“About what - the PCBs?”
“No, the PCP.”
“Uh, no. Look, the angel dust is weird and exciting; the PCBs are ten times as important. So right now I'm thinking about the PCBs. Sorry.”
Went to a bank machine and took out a hundred dollars.
I'm not sure why. Called Bartholomew and told him where I was going, just in case. And had an idea.
"How'd you like to become a Poyzen Boyzen fan?'
“I have to anyway. Amy is.”
“Oh. Is that your woman?” Amy was his new girlfriend. Hadn't met her face-to-face, but I'd heard her in the next room, late at night; the second loudest copulater I'd ever heard.
“Yeah. Have you guys met?”
“Indirectly. Well, go hang out with the hard core if you can, okay? The young ones - teenagers. Shit, I'll even subsidize it.”
“But teen Boyzen heads are like two-legged cockroaches or something.”
“So bring some Raid. Come on, you're the social critic, right? This is it, man.”
“We'll see.”
Then I headed for Fenway Park, only a few blocks away. Everything in Boston's only a few blocks away. It was approaching dusk and the wind was coming up, with something cold and wet behind it. The baseball game probably wouldn't make it to the seventh inning. Tonight it was going to rain like hell - the first Nor'easter of the fall.
When I was almost there, I walked by another phone booth, saw its white pages fluttering in the wind and remembered Dolmacher. Formerly of Basco and presently of Biotronics, a subsidiary of Basco, he was now my prime suspect. “I'm in the book - look me up,” he'd said. So I did. I knew for damn sure he wasn't about to tell me anything, but if I hit him with a frontal assault, and he was his emotionally retarded self, I'd know he was totally ignorant. If he went into adrenaline overdrive and called me a terrorist, I'd know Basco was involved. So I dropped a dime on Dolmacher and let the phone ring twelve times.
“Hello?”
“Dolmacher, this is ST.”
“Hi!” He sounded terribly cheerful, and a cheerful Dolmacher was almost unbearable. It meant that his work was going wonderfully. “I just got in the door from work, S.T.”
“Dolmacher, just tell me one thing. Why is the floor of the Harbor, right off Castle Island Park, a lake of solid PCBs this evening?”
He laughed. “You're taking too many of those hallucinogenic alkaloids, Sangamon. Better get a real job.”
I hung up - he didn't know shit - then I bought a bleacher ticket and ran around to the dark side of Fenway Park.
A toxic crime had been committed. I had witnesses and an address. The witnesses were bleacher creatures, and the address was underwater. First I had to see those witnesses, and it was easy to track them down. Like dolphins, Townies communicate with high-pitched sonar; “Heyyy, Maaahk! I'll meet ya at the Aaahk afta da geem!”
“Mr. Gallagher,” I said.
“Heyyy, S.T.! Heyyy, guys, look who's here! It's the invironmintle!”
“Heyyy, S.T, how ya doin?”
“Barrett grounded out, Horn flew out, now it's 0 and 2 on Dewey. He's swinging for the bleachers, that stupid bastard.”
“Look. Those oily-smelling lobsters. You haven't been eating any, have you?”
“Shit no. Tried it once but they taste awful. When you gonna do something about that, S.T? That whole area there, it's for shit now.”
S.T., when are you going to stop pollution? “Which area?”
Gallagher looked around at his buddies and they all threw out rough descriptions: “Right out there, you know.” “South of the airport.” “North of Spectacle Island.” “Right off Southie.”
“Since when?”
“Month or two.”
“Look, Rory. I gotta tell you something. I know sometimes you guys give me shit, you think I'm kind of flaky, but I'm telling you that shit is dangerous. I'm not talking about maybe getting cancer in twenty years, I'm talking about croaking next week. Don't eat those lobsters. I want you to go find all the other lobstermen and tell them not to use that area.”
Gallagher took me seriously until I got to the last part, then his face turned even redder and he laughed. “Hell, ST., no one uses it anyway. They all found the same thing we did. But shit, it's a big area, I got no business telling people not to use it.”
Fenway Park turned on its lights. I knew Gallagher was right. He couldn't personally embargo half the harbor. Maybe I could get through to the state authorities. But the last time I'd done that, I had to dress up in a Santa Claus suit. What was the drill this time, Bozo the Clown?