What had Biotronics wrought? Something new and strange. And at the very end, Dolmacher had been trying to get in touch with me.
I was a sick dude. My identity may have died, swept overboard into the Atlantic, but my body lived on, tied to Boston, to Biotronics and Dolmacher and Fleshy by a toxic chain.
Mrs. Singletary was up and about and I asked her if she had any enema stuff around the house. She went into her root cellar and came out with a hollow, long-necked gourd. I thanked her profusely and decided to forget about enemas for the time being.
Boone was sitting out in front of his tent, frying a trout. When he saw me, he gave me the biggest grin I'd seen from him yet, a genuine, unrestrained, shit-eating beamer. “I'd forgotten about this country, S.T. Ten minutes ago this fish was swimming through a stream that's clean enough to drink. And we're, what, a couple of hours away from Boston, is all?”
“Yeah. Welcome home. Let's work together.”
“You're joining me, then?”
“No. You're joining me, unless I'm totally wrong.”
I sat down and told him about everything. Was going to show him the chloracne, but no, he'd seen it in Vietnam. He asked me all the right questions. He tried to explore all the blind alleys in the problem that I'd already explored. The only alley that wasn't blind led to Boston.
“Since the sinking,” he said, “I haven't done an action in the U.S.”
“Time to get on the stick.”
“My people have all gone back to Europe.”
“What am I, dog meat? Look, Boone, this could be the biggest action of all time. We know who the target is, don't we? Our probable next president. How are you going to feel if you go home and let this guy become the leader of the Free World?”
“Very risky. And my setup in Europe is too sweet to risk.”
“Yeah, yeah. You see, Boone, that's exactly why I don't want to move to Europe. Because it's dirty everywhere. Because nobody has idealism, nobody gives a shit when you expose a toxic criminal. And because after six months there, I won't have any balls left. Geographic castration.”
He tossed his trout on the ground and came after me with both hands. I'm no boxer, so I just get in close, too close to punch, and use my weight. A little of that and we were rolling around in the leaves together. Then I curled up with stomach cramps and he took pity on me. He just rolled over on his back and lay there, the first yellow leaves of the New Hampshire fall spinning down into his face. “I feel alive,” he said.
“I feel like I'm dying,” I said, “and we both have something to prove.”
“The Groveler, man. His ass is grass.”
Zodiac
26
AS FOR JIM GRANDFATHER, I didn't want him along. I wanted him back with Anna. Everything I said just rolled off his back and he ended up driving the car.
Boone knew all about this identity-blurring stuff, to the point of knowing which brand of hair dye was the best. Before we left that reservation we were both brunettes. I was Tawny Oak and he was Midnight Ebony. Jim loitered outside the bathroom, loudly wondering if he should dye himself blond. “Greg Allman, man!”
We hit Boston around five in the evening. For the last half of the trip we were getting Boston radio stations and Boone went nuts. It was like he'd been on a desert island. The man was a Motown freak. He sat in the center of the seat with both hands on the radio, punching up and down the dial, hunting the beat.
Sometimes he had to settle for a news broadcast. They had pretty much stopped talking about me since my death. GEE was still in the news, repudiating my actions, covering its ass. That was fine, they had to do that. But Debbie, bless her, had come out in public, pointing out a few holes in the FBI's story, disputing my terrorism. Fleshy was on the prowl, visiting organizations in New Hampshire and, as always groveling. And then there was the usual crap: apartheid demonstrations downtown, murders, arson and some demented bandit who was stealing prescription drugs from pharmacies. His trademark was a Tazer gun. When the electrocuted druggists woke up, their shelves had been ransacked.
The first thing I wanted to do was get a message to Bart, so I wrote it down and gave it to Boone. We dropped him off near the Pearl and then pulled around to the alley in back to wait. He was going to give the note to Hoa and ask him to relay it to Bart the next time he came in, which, knowing Bart, would probably be within twelve hours. It was a pretty vague note. Hoa wouldn't understand it, but Bart would.
While we were waiting, watching the Vietnamese people come to the back door to buy cheap steamed rice, a motor scooter stopped next to us, by the dumpster. In the corner of my eye I saw the rider bending over on his seat and figured he was undoing the lock. Then the smell of vomit drifted past me. I glanced over; it was Hoa's busboy, doubled over, barfing in the alleyway.
Couldn't look any more than that because he might recognize me. I sank down in the seat and turned away. “Jim. That guy on the scooter, can you see if he's got a rash?”
“He's wearing clothes, S.T. Nothing on his face.”
Boone, coming out the back door, noticed him. The guy was slowly getting off his scooter, looking pale and sick of the whole business. Boone started talking to him in Vietnamese, then switched to English. Then he got into the truck.
“He's got it,” Boone said, and that was all we needed.
So we had another spill. This thing just kept getting more involved. The Dorchester Bay CSO couldn't possibly account for contamination under the public fishing pier.
What I wanted, real bad, was to have my maps of the sewer system. Then I could locate CSOs near the pier. Since I still had a few test tubes with me, I could trace them out and find the source of the spill.