"I'll call Patton tomorrow and apologize, Mongo," he said quietly as he sat down on the sofa in the living room and put his feet up on his coffee table. "You're right; it was stupid for me to grab and threaten him like that, and I've put us in a vulnerable position."
"Let's not go overboard with the sackcloth and ashes, brother. What's done is done, and we should forget about it until and unless he tries to throw some grief our way. Besides, he told me the office was being closed down and he was flying off to Europe. If he's hiding things, and I do agree with you that he is, I doubt he'll want to make waves and call more attention to himself and Nuvironment."
"The son-of-a-bitch knows," Garth said softly, the muscles in his throat and jaw beginning to twitch. "He knows where the girl is."
"Okay, he knows. But we don't have any room left to move in that direction. And I agree that any record they may have had of the shipment is gone by now."
"Which means that we're going to have to start looking elsewhere."
I nodded. "For openers, we'll check out all the maritime shipping companies-especially any that we find out are owned by Blaisdel Industries. Also, we can try to find out what other companies do business with Nuvironment-plastics, steel, glass, whatever. If they've reached the stage where they're actually trying to build a biosphere, they need a lot more than just dirt. If we can identify some of their suppliers and talk to them, we may be able to pick up a clue."
"Right," Garth said, getting to his feet. "That means a lot of browsing through the business journals. Let's go; the library's open until nine."
"Tomorrow, Garth," I replied. "It's beginning to look like we're going to have to pace ourselves. It'll only take one of us to do the shipping companies. I'll do that, since we don't want your black eyes to scare anybody away. You'll work the library."
Garth shoved his hands into his pockets, frowned. "I hate to lose any time, Mongo."
"I know, Garth. So do I. But we're not going to find the girl tonight. And no matter what information there is to be found in the library, the fact remains that we won't be able to talk to anybody until tomorrow; offices are closed now."
"Okay, you're probably right," Garth said quietly. He pulled the cotton from his nostrils, wriggled his nose, then looked at me inquiringly.
"It's not bleeding anymore."
"I don't think you broke it after all, Mongo."
"I didn't? Shit. I hit you as hard as I could."
"Well, you had a bad angle. Don't feel bad about not breaking it."
"I must be getting old."
Garth smiled, came over to me, and gently laid an arm over my shoulders. "We're both getting old, brother."
"You want to go out and get something to eat?"
Garth shook his head. "I'm just going to have a sandwich and a beer while I look through the Manhattan yellow pages for companies selling things that might be useful in building a biosphere. It's probably a waste of time, but I need to feel like I'm doing something."
I nodded, walked across the living room, stopped and turned back at the entrance to the vestibule. I decided that I wanted to share something else that was bothering me. "How high would you rate my paranoia index?" I asked.
"Extremely high-which is perfectly normal for a New Yorker. Why?"
"All right, let's look at what we've got. First, a nutty plant man who killed himself rather than risk telling us something he didn't want us to know. Then we have Patton playing games-but he offers to give us the run of his offices and labs after the first of the year, which is a little less than a week and a half away. Why?"
"He told you Nuvironment was closing down until then."
"Yeah, but why make the offer at all? He's got more than enough time to destroy files, sure. But what about his people? Valley knew something, and he killed himself rather than reveal it. Why should Patton be so willing to give us access to his people-after the first of the year? I'm thinking-''
"You're thinking that it may not matter what we discover after the first of the year because by then it won't matter to them? That whatever it is they're so anxious to cover up won't make any difference then? That by then it will be too late for us, or anybody else, to stop them?"
"Yeah," I said, blinking in surprise. "Something like that."
"The thought occurred to me too, Mongo. You're not the only one with a high paranoia index."
I smiled thinly. "But then, you've got a nose for evil, don't you? I must have some of the same genes in my nose."
"I really wish that fruitcake Valley hadn't killed himself," Garth said seriously. "After he told us where to find Vicky Brown, I'd have liked to ask him to be a bit more specific about when the world was going to end, and just what he thought was going to happen when it did."
7
Malachy McCloskey seemed oddly subdued and distracted when Garth and I went in the next morning to make our formal statements concerning the suicide of Dr. Craig Valley; I had the feeling that the few days he had left before retirement were weighing heavily on him, and that we made him decidedly nervous. Despite the fact that the police detective apparently believed our story, the process was still maddeningly time-consuming, and it was past eleven by the time we got out of the precinct station. Garth headed for the 42nd Street library, while I hailed a cab.
Pier 42, on the Lower East Side, was the last maritime shipping facility left in New York City, and it was used primarily for the importation of bananas. But bananas came from the tropics, and I considered it a good possibility that one of the container ships might have been persuaded to bring in some soil along with its bananas.
I visited five offices and warehouses, talked with secretaries, warehouse foremen, and longshoremen. Not a few people thought I was joking when I asked if they knew anything about a load of a hundred tons of dirt. Then I told them why I wanted the information and quickly got their cooperation. What I didn't get was any useful information.
It was four o'clock by the time I finished working the area around Pier 42, and I realized with a growing sense of frustration that by the time I went back for my car and then made it through the rush hour crush of traffic in the Holland Tunnel, all of the shipping offices in Jersey City and Hoboken, across the river, would be closed.
I hailed a cab, went to the library to help Garth.
My brother was not encouraging; just in Manhattan, there were close to a hundred companies that supplied glass or plastic.
The next morning, the day before Christmas, I was up bright and early, driving Beloved-a modified Volkswagen Rabbit-down the East Side and through the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey, where most of the shipping companies had fled over the years to lower taxes and modernized container-shipping facilities.
I started in Jersey City, visiting companies in alphabetical order. At my first stop I found that a Christmas party, complete with jug wine, cookies, and a huge grab bag, was already in progress, although it was only nine thirty in the morning. I decided that did not bode well.
It didn't. Everywhere I went, Christmas parties were in progress, sometimes covertly, and more than one person I talked to had glassy eyes and liquor breath. Christmas music was everywhere, on the streets and in the offices; people were smiling, eager to cooperate.
Nobody knew anything about any shipment of Amazon rain forest soil.
By noon, I had covered less than half the companies on my list, and I still had Hoboken to visit. I tried to keep my frustration and anger tamped down, because I knew these emotions would only drain me of energy, but it was difficult; the good cheer that was evident everywhere only underlined the fact that somewhere-perhaps only a short distance away-there was a little girl who was not going to get any puppy for Christmas, only rending physical and psychological pain. To make matters worse, Christmas this year fell on a Friday, which meant that it would be three full days before Garth and I would be able to resume our search through corporate America.