“I always wanted to be a Secret Service agent,” he confessed. “Because then you're the only person in the world who can knock down the president and get away with it.”
We climbed into the chopper and Boone started giving a prolonged, monosyllabic, “aw shucks” interview about why he had put another man's life before his own. He was claiming to be a Boston environmentalist named Daniel Winchester. I seized upon a catnap; it wasn't that far back to Boston. I was hoping they'd swing over the yacht club, because I wanted to look down into our slip and see if Wes had gotten out the other Zodiac yet. If so, I'd probably be ripping it off sometime soon. I was in luck; they took us back to Logan itself.
That was fine, since the Blue Line took us right in to the Aquarium stop. I was still too recognizable around the yacht club, so I had Boone saunter by there while I loitered at a McDonalds. I had one of those milkshakes that's made from sweetened Wonder Bread dough extruded by a pneumatic machine. This, perhaps, would serve as a buffer against the toxic waste inside my system.
When Boone emerged from traffic he wore a grin. The Zodiac was there, all right, but with a wimpy ten-horse motor, and even that was missing a few strategic parts. So before we did anything else, we prepared ourselves. At a marine supply place out on one of the piers we bought ourselves a fuel line, spark plugs and other small important items that Wes might have removed to make the Zodiac unstealable. Boone flaunted his stack of credit cards.
We rode the Green Line to Kenmore Square and hopped a bus out to Watertown Square. Then it was a two-mile walk to Kelvin's. My pant legs had turned into stiff tubes from being saturated with mud and then drying out, and at one point I had to climb down an embankment into some dead shrubs and broken glass and take a quick squat on the ground. While I was there I looked through my wallet and realized that all my credit cards belonged to a dead man. My transformation into a derelict was almost complete. Jim had been supporting me through that bad week in New Hampshire, but now I was back in Boston, with nothing except a wicked case of diarrhea.
“You should bow out too,” I said. “Shit, you've got your opportunity now. You're a national hero. You can rehabilitate yourself, tell your story.”
“I've been thinking about doing that,” Boone confessed.
“Well don't be shy. I can get along without you.”
“I know. But this is more interesting.”
“Whatever.” This was a useful word I'd picked up from Bart.
“I'll stick with it a little longer and see what's happening.”
“Whatever.”
I'd been going through a lot of laxatives, trying to flush out my colon. It seemed to be working, because the nausea and cramps had subsided. Maybe I could ease off a little, get a Big Mac or something. Or if we could get to Hoa's, I could eat some steamed rice.
We got to Kelvin's just about twelve hours after our first, midnight visit. Since it was daylight, we came in the front door and got the full family welcome: dogs poking their muzzles into our balls, kids showing us their new toys, Kelvin's wife, Charlotte, fetching big tumblers of cranraz. All the kids were running around either naked or in diapers and pretty soon I joined them as Charlotte wouldn't let me out of the foyer without removing my pants. All I managed to hang on to was my colored jockey shorts and my t-shirt. Boone had to give up his socks and his shirt. All of it went into the laundry. We wandered half-naked down into the basement.
Charlotte's sister had decorated Kelvin's third-floor office just the way he wanted it - ergonomic furniture, a couple extra speakers wired into the main stereo, coffee maker, warm paneling. He went up there about an hour a week to write letters to his mother and balance the family checkbook. Then he spent about a hundred hours a week down here in this dank, dark, junk-filled basement. There was a workbench in the corner where he made stuff. There was a pool table in the middle where he relaxed. An old concrete laundry tub against one wall which he used as a urinal. He'd covered two entire walls with old blackboards he'd bought at flea markets. That was the only way he could think: on a blackboard, standing up. Sometimes it was long, gory strings of algebra, sometimes it was flowcharts from computer programs. Today there were a lot of hexagons and pentagons. Kelvin was doing organic chemistry, diagramming a lot of polycyclic stuff. Probably trying to figure out the energy balance of these bugs.
“Give up already?” he said, without turning around.
For once, I got to surprise him. “No. We found him.”
“Really? How is he?”
“Leaking, but aware. I'm not sure what they're going to charge him with.”
“That's for damn sure,” Boone said. “They can't call it attempted murder.”
Kelvin stood there watching us, then decided not to clutter his mind with an explanation. “I have some ideas on this,” he said, sweeping his hand across the blackboards.
“Shoot.”
“First of all, have you been following the news?”
“Look who's asking,” I said. “You haven't heard about Pleshy?”
“Shit, we've been creating the news,” Boone said.
“I mean the Boston news.” Kelvin picked up a Herald that was sprawled on his pool table and flipped it over to expose the full-page headline.
HARBOR OF DEATH!
MIT PROF: TOXIC MENACE COULD “DESTROY ALL LIFE”
There was a picture of a heavy white man with his shirt off, showing a vicious case of chloracne.
“So they know about the bug,” I said.
“Not exactly,” Kelvin said. “A lot of people know of it, but it's not mentioned in there.” He nodded at the Herald. “And in the Globe, as you might guess, it's just a farfetched speculation. Everyone thinks it's just a toxic waste spill.”
“So why do they say that it could destroy all life?”