The Blacker Death: An Ebola Thriller (8 page)

“Are you sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure.”

“All my things are at the hotel in Philadelphia.”

“Can’t help you there, unless you want to take a quick ride. I know a drugstore where you can get a toothbrush and a new version of whatever it is you wear underneath your shirt and pants.”

“What makes you think I wear anything underneath?”

I guess I blushed because she laughed at me.

“I’ll be fine, Bam. What I really want is a shower.”

“The bathroom is at the top of the stairs. Towels are in the bathroom closet. Help yourself.”

She went upstairs. I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen a little, resisting the temptation of turning on the TV again. Instead, I called Jimmy Barnes.

“Jimmy, it’s Bam.”

“Hey, Bam. How’s it going?”

“Any word yet?”

“Hold on a sec.”

I heard him put the phone down and get up to close his door.

When he came back, he said, “One of morgue employees took sick this morning. They’ve got her in isolation at the hospital.”

“She got it from a dead guy?”

“The ME says that’s one of the ways it spreads in Africa so fast. They’ve got some thing over there about touching dead people.”

“Wasn’t she wearing protective gear?”

“She was, but she said she might have pulled her mask down to scratch her nose. She can’t remember.”

“Did you see the news?”

“I did. We’re mobilizing now, and we just got the word: FEMA is on the way.”

“Christ. They don’t even know that it’s Ebola.”

“It doesn’t matter now. If a panic shuts the city down, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

I filled Jimmy in on my situation and gave him the update on Billy.

“And Izzy’s spending the night here.”

“Bam, you’re old enough to be her father.”

“It’s not like that. She can’t get back into the city and just needs a place to crash for the night. It’s okay if she hangs onto your car for another day, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

“Take care,” I said and hung up the phone.

I went upstairs and found Izzy sacked out on the bed in my daughter’s old room, wearing nothing but my Hawaiian shirt. It looked good on her. I came back downstairs, planted myself at the kitchen table with a bottle of scotch, and turned on the TV.

It’s never good starting off the day with ashtray mouth, but that’s the way Monday began for me. I’d gone through half a bottle of booze and a pack of Pall Malls watching the news until they ran out of experts and I ran out of gas and passed out in the chair. When I opened my eyes, it was light out, and the cat was batting a cigarette butt around the floor like it was a hockey rink.

“Hey, Bobby Orr, cut it out,” I said. “I just swept that floor.”

She jumped up in my lap, rubbed against me, and purred.

“How the hell am I supposed to be mad at you when you do that?”

Cats are like women. They know how to get whatever they want. I petted her awhile, and set her down and tried to straighten things up a little when I heard Izzy coming down the stairs.

“Good morning,” she said, looking first at me, then at the liquor bottle I was jamming into the wastebasket.

“Morning,” I said.

“Were you up all night?”

“Pretty much. Want some breakfast?”

“That would be nice.”

She was sizing me up like I was a bum they’d dragged out of the gutter for a line-up.

“I look that bad, huh?”

“Yes, you do,” she said.

She had a killer smile. She also looked good in my Hawaiian shirt and a pair of pants I didn’t recognize.

“Where’d you find those?” I asked.

“The shirt was on a hanger in the bathroom. I found the slacks in the guestroom. I hope it’s all right if I borrow them.”

“Knock yourself out. The shirt’s mine. The pants were Peggy’s, I guess. She’s about your size.”

“Peggy was your wife?”

“Daughter. She and Pam left in kind of a hurry. I went to work one day, and when I got home after my shift, they were gone. Next time I heard from them was in a letter from some lawyer in Omaha.”

“Why don’t I make us breakfast while you get cleaned up?” she said.

I took her up on the offer, got showered and dressed, and by the time I came back downstairs breakfast was ready. She’d made omelets and French toast. Not bad, a hell-of-a-lot better than I could have done. That’s for sure. We ate while I filled her in on the news from the night before. The networks had nothing but one woman’s word and a bunch of so-called experts who stirred the pot with the same spoon over and over. From the CDC on down, no one in authority was talking, and no one would admit to anything. Phyllis Jones swore up and down that the EMTs had said Birot had Ebola before they took him away, but there’s only so long a bogus story can play on TV without corroboration before the newshounds give up and move on to something better for the ratings.

We watched a little TV after breakfast. The special reports of the previous day had been replaced by the usual morning show programming. Ebola had become a sidebar for the time being and everything was back to normal. Traffic was back to normal, too, if you could call squeezing 300,000 cars a day over the bridges from New Jersey into Philadelphia normal.

We were cleaning up when my friend with the local garage called about the Gremlin. I told him to replace the tires and the windows, but leave the “Love child” on the hood. I’d figure that one out later. He said he would have to special order the glass, and it would be a couple days before he could get it in. I said that was fine, and hung up. When I asked Izzy if she would drop me at a car rental place, she offered to stay on as chauffeur if I’d go with her on a few stops she needed to make. I agreed, even after she told me that I’d have to wear a suit. Good thing I still had one that I kept dry-cleaned for funerals. It must have surprised her. She said I cleaned up good for an American.

First stop was her hotel in West Philadelphia. She wanted to change into something less tropical and more in line with my formal appearance. I waited in the car and almost didn’t recognize her when she came back. She looked good in a skirt. She dropped a carryon bag in the back and we took off.

“What’s in the bag?” I asked.

“A few things, just in case.”

“Where to now?”

“The Medical Examiners.”

The ME was located not far from her hotel in a brick building built like a bomb shelter. Nobody, not even the higher ups, had a window seat there. There were no windows. We found a spot in the parking garage next door, ignored the two reporters hovering outside the building like mosquitoes, showed our IDs to the guard at the desk, and were escorted to the office of Carol Jones, MD. The lettering on her door said she was the director of the Division of Disease Control. We introduced ourselves and sat down.

“Thank you for taking the time to see us,” Izzy said. “I know you must be very busy right now.”

“Believe it or not, we’ve seen worse,” she said.

I wondered if her fake smile meant she’d been a politician in some past life. That would make it easier for her to lie to us like that through her perfect teeth.

Izzy handed her an envelope. Dr. Jones took out the letter that was inside and read it.

“As you can see, I am here on behalf of the Government of Belgium,” Izzy said. “We understand the delicate nature of this situation, but we would like an official update on François Birot please. And rest assured, anything you say will be kept in the strictest confidence.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Amy was it?”

“Aimée.”

“Yes, Ms. Aimée. I’d be happy to tell you what we know, but what we know is very little. We have all the CDC precautions in place now and will be starting the autopsy this morning. Perhaps, if you checked back later or tomorrow?”

“You know,” I butted in. “You’re just not saying.”

“If you are referring to the determination of cause of death, Special Agent Matthews, this office has no comment because we have not performed the autopsy yet.”

“I’m talking about the CDC, Doc. They got back to you, didn’t they?”

I should have majored in dumb questions at school. I knew what her answer was going to be. If the CDC hadn’t gotten back to her yet, she’d say no and mean it. If they had, she’d lie through her perfect teeth and still say no.

“No,” she said.

“Can I let his father know that a determination will be made in the next day or so and that the body will be released to a mortuary for burial at that time?” Izzy asked. “He is anxious for closure on this matter.”

“Yes, that would be fine. We have several funeral homes in the city that are certified for this kind of thing. You should tell him, though, that an open-casket viewing may not be possible.”

Izzy had a few more questions about how it would be handled. I had questions, too, but I was saving them for someone who I knew would be shooting straight with me.

When we got back outside, one of the reporters stopped us.

“Bam, Bam Matthews. I thought I recognized you. Don’t you remember me? It’s Barney, Barney Sams. I string for the Inquirer. You helped me out on a story a couple years back.”

I remembered. It’s hard to forget a maggot that feeds on the carcasses of innocent people’s reputations, but I suppose even maggots have to eat.

“How’s it going?” I said.

“Think you could help me out here? I’m trying to get into the ME’s to get an interview. If you vouch for me, maybe the guard will let me in.”

“Interview with who?”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyone. I just need a few quotes for a story I’m pushing with the paper.”

“About what?”

“Where’ve you been? It’s about the Ebola outbreak here in the city.”

“What outbreak? And what makes you think they’ll have anything to say to you?”

“Word on the street is that there’s a stiff in there who died from it. I heard he’s not from around here. I also heard he was a real mess.”

I grabbed him by the collar. “It’s not nice to talk that way about people who’ve passed on. Someone might take offense.”

“Sorry, man. None meant.”

I let him go. “Nice seeing you again.”

We walked away, but he followed us back to the car, badgering us the whole time. Sams wanted to know why we were there, who Izzy was, and if we had anything, anything at all for him. I was happy to slam the door in his face.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Izzy.

She drove us to West Detectives. There were a few reporters there, too, but there were always reporters at busy police stations. They didn’t give us a second look.

Jimmy saw us right away. He wasn’t alone. A few introductions and handshakes later, and we were sitting around his desk with Cathy Eland of FEMA.

“Nice suit,” Jimmy said.

“It’s a new look for me. What have you got for us?”

“Let’s start with the bad news. Special Agent Fink is our FBI liaison on this one.”

I didn’t say anything.

“If you want in, it has to be unofficially since you’re on administrative leave.”

“That’s fine by me. What’s the good news?”

“The good news is that for once we’re actually out in front of what could be a real mess. Cathy has been filling me in on what we can expect in the way of help from FEMA.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?” I said. “More trailers, or are you moving the Superdome up here?”

She gave me a sideways look. Jimmy came to the rescue.

“It’s okay, Cathy,” he said. “He’s like that with everyone, and you’re right, he’s an asshole, but he’s a damn good cop and one of the few who actually gives a shit about people. Bam burned all his vacation time to volunteer in New Orleans after Katrina. He’s still a little bitter about FEMA’s response.”

“Really?” Izzy said.

I must have impressed her, but I shrugged it off. “It’s no biggie. They only let me go because they were hoping I wouldn’t come back.”

I gave the floor back to Eland and she filled us in. “We’re setting up Command and Control at City Hall. It’s the most centrally located place with access to all branches of government and the main transportation lines. Later this morning, I’ll be meeting there with the local government and people from SEPTA, AMTRAK, and the regional rail lines. Representatives from the police, fire, EMS, hospitals, and the National Guard will be there. If this plays out like we think it might, transportation will be key. A million and a half people live in this city. A half million more commute here every day. We have to plan for the worst-case scenario of every single one of them trying to get out of town at the same time when this outbreak is confirmed to the media.”

“So, it
is
Ebola,” I said.

“The preliminary CDC report is in. It’s Ebola all right, but they want to do more testing and isolate the virus before they make the general announcement. That gives us time to get our game plan in place.”

“Which is what?”

“You don’t stop an Ebola epidemic by running away. That only spreads it. And you don’t treat an Ebola epidemic by the mass isolation of 1.5 million people. That only cuts everyone off from the help they need and turns the entire city into an incubator for the disease. The key is to educate the public to self-report suspected cases, isolate the individuals who show symptoms, and treat the cases where treatment can help.”

“Maybe you didn’t catch the news last night. As soon as you announce that Ebola is loose in this city, every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a cold will be heading for the nearest hospital.”

“That’s why education and control will be key. And we’re planning for the worst-case scenario. If it comes to that, hospitals will be off-limits without a doctor or 9-1-1 referral. They’ll continue to handle emergencies, but all elective surgeries will be cancelled. People with Ebola symptoms will be told to call 9-1-1. They’ll be advised to stay home and wait for us to come to them. The 9-1-1 system will be expanded to handle the additional traffic. We’ll be training everyone we can: firemen, policemen, EMTs, aid workers, social workers, school bus drivers, everyone we can lay our hands on. Their job will be to work the streets, respond to these calls, do the triage, bring the suspected cases in to the hospitals, and tell the rest to stay home.”

“That’s it? That’s the plan?”

“In a nutshell. Fortunately, Ebola is only spread through direct contact with bodily fluids. We’re certain we can stop it by stopping this contact. Some people may die. We can’t help that, but we can keep life as normal as possible for everyone else.”

“Any more on how Birot got it?”

Jimmy handled that one. “Not yet. Izzy’s people have tracked down five of his previous indiscretions, but it wasn’t any of them.”

“Whoever gave it to him is probably dead by now. Did NYPD check the morgue?”

“They did. Nothing. We obtained a warrant to get his credit card info. He bought an Amtrak ticket to Philly online.”

“The witnesses at the Hyatt said he was coming from the parking garage.”

“If he had a car, Bam, it wasn’t a rental. You can’t get one without a credit card, and we checked every card he had in his wallet and every rental place in New York City.”

“It doesn’t add up unless he was sneaking into the hotel. Did you talk to Rico in Flanagan’s?”

“We did, and we’ve gotten in touch with the four names he gave us. It was a dead end.”