"I know I'm late," Johnson said.
Everybody knew he was late this morning. But Willis was not yet in the office.
"What have you got for me?" Carella asked.
"You wanted to know the commercial applications of nicotine."
"That's right."
"Why are you interested?" Johnson asked.
"We're investigating a nicotine poisoning."
"That's unusual, isn't it?"
"First one I've ever had."
"The victim didn't eat any cigars or cigarettes, did he?"
"We have no indication of that."
"Because that'll do it, you know. Your lethal dose is what, forty or fifty milligrams?"
"In there."
"Well, that'd be something like three cigarettes or two cigars. If your victim ingested them. But you say he didn't."
"We don't think so."
"So what you want to know is how your man could've got his hands on something with nicotine in it, is that it?"
"Yes."
"Well, I ran a data-base printout before calling you, got it right here in front of me. The EPA—the Environmental Protection Agency—has twenty-four pesticides registered in which nicotine is one of the major active ingredients. They've also got four registered in which an active ingredient is nicotine sulfate. And another two, dating from the Forties, where the active ingredient is tobacco dust."
"These are all insecticides?"
"Some of them are animal repellents—like your Dexol Dog Repellent which contains six percent nicotine in a mixture of wood creosote, phenol, pine tar and soap. Or your Jinx Outdoor Dog and Cat Repellent, which has a very low percentage of nicotine mixed in with dried blood, Naphthalene and Thiram. Your nicotine content in any of the pesticides varies from a low of 1 /700th of a percent to a high of ninety-eight percent. Some of the stuff is restricted, some of it's unclassified."
"Restricted how?"
"A pesticide company submits appropriate health and safety data to the EPA. The EPA studies the data, and then assigns a registration number. The company then has to register with the individual states before marketing a product in them. Some of the products are unclassified. This means the EPA hasn't yet determined whether they should be restricted or allowed for general use."
"Restricted to whom?"
"Certified applicators. Exterminators, lawn and turf people, forestry people… like that."
"How many of the products are unclassified?"
"Most of them."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning you can buy them over the counter in your hardware store or garden center. No restrictions. You take something like your Black Leaf 40 Garden Spray, it's registered in twenty-seven states, your home owner can just pick it off the shelf. It's got a nicotine content of forty percent. For anything over that, you have to be a certified applicator. Is it possible your man's an exterminator?"
"We don't know what he is," Carella said.
"Well, let's say he isn't. And let's say he wanted to convert Black Leaf 40—or any other solution with a forty percent nicotine content—to a free alkaloid. He'd add sodium hyroxide to it… well, you may know all this."
"No, I don't."
"Well, what he'd do… let me see if I can explain this to you. He'd put a PH-meter on the solution, and that'd tell him how acidic it was. Then he'd set about making it more basic and less acidic. Once he…"
"How would he do that?"
"Well, by adding the caustic soda, you see. To remove the sulfate group. He might get a reading of, say, nine or ten to begin with, I really don't know for sure, and he might be going for a three or a four, again that's a guess. He's going for the free alkaloid, you see. The nicotine. Separating it from the sodium sulfate. Once he's got his nicotine and water, he'll mix that in a separating funnel…"
"Mix it with what?"
"Well, ether, for example. It'd be soluble in ether, and the ether layer would be lighter than water. He'd drain some of the water off, add more ether, shake the mixture again, separate it again, do the same thing over and over again till he got the purity of nicotine he was looking for."
"That's a long process, isn't it?"
"It wouldn't be easy, that's for sure, unless your man had access to laboratory equipment. I don't know how many grams of the solution he'd have to titrate to get a single gram of pure nicotine. Your fatal dose, forty milligrams, is just a taste of the stuff."
The exact word Blaney had used. A taste. Carella suddenly remembered all the cigarette ads that touted either "taste" or "flavor."
"All this is assuming he knows how to separate pure nicotine from a forty-percent solution."
"Well," Johnson said, "I suppose he could do what my daddy used to do when I was a kid in Kentucky."
Carella was suddenly all ears.
"What was that?" he said.
"Used to make his own bug-killer. Used to mix cigarette tobacco and water in a coffee can, let it soak for a week or so, then boiled it. Made a sort of a tea, you know? Mixed that with soap suds so it'd stick to the leaf. Worked real fine in his garden. I suppose your man could have gone through the same process. Mix cigars or cigarettes in a can of water, distill the mash, extract the poison." He paused a moment, and then said, "Have you got a police lab?"
"Yes," Carella said.
"Call your people there. Ask them about distillation."
"Thank you," Carella said. "You've been very helpful."
"No problem," Johnson said, and hung up.
Willis came into the squadroom just as Carella was dialing the lab. Both men looked up at the clock. Ten-fifteen.
"Captain Grossman, please," Carella said into the phone.
"Sorry I'm late," Willis said again, and went to his desk.
Meyer Meyer, who'd been waiting an hour and a half for Willis to relieve, said nothing. He went to the coat rack, took his hat from it, lighted a cigarette, and walked out.
"When do you expect him?" Carella said into the phone. "Well, would you ask him to call Detective Carella, please? Tell him it's urgent."
He put the receiver back on the cradle.
"Want to talk about this?" he asked Willis.
"Talk about what?"
"Moving in with a suspect."
Willis glanced across the room to where Andy Parker was hunched over a typewriter, laboriously pecking out a report. Parker was in shirtsleeves, the window behind his desk open to a balmy breeze and the sounds of traffic below on Grover Avenue. Parker was what Brown would have called a "burnout" cop, a man who'd been coming to work with a beard stubble long before the cops on "Miami Vice" considered it stylish, but only because he thought the job was the pits and wouldn't dignify the work by dressing up for it. It normally took Parker two hours to type up a D.D. report, even if the perp had been caught redhanded at the scene. Parker figured the best way to put in a working day was to do as little work as possible. It was not advisable to discuss anything sensitive within Parker's earshot. To Parker, sensitivity was for hairdressers and interior decorators.
"Come on down the hall," Carella said.
"Sure," Willis said.
They walked through the slatted rail divider and down the hall into the Interrogation Room. Carella closed the door behind them. Both men sat on opposite sides of the long table. Behind Willis, there was a two-way mirror through which the room was visible from the room next door.
"So?" Carella said.
"So it's none of your business," Willis said.
"I agree. But it is the Department's business."
"The hell with the Department," Willis said. "I can live wherever I want to. With whoever I want to."
"I'm not sure that includes a suspect in a double homicide."