Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [138]
“What’s that on the inside of the safe door?”
“Oh, crap. I didn’t see that.” I walked across the room to the vault and moved the door until the combination of ultraviolet and outside light made the notice readable. “They call it DiMaggio number fifty-six, or D number fifty-six. Your aunt related to Joe DiMaggio, the baseball player?”
“By marriage. Phil was.”
“He hit safely in fifty-six consecutive games. D number fifty-six: ’Avoid contact with skin. Avoid contact with eyes. Avoid flame. Avoid breathing vapors in the event of fire. Rinse thoroughly in a series of staggered showers. Use cold water and at least fifteen minutes of heavy soaping. Destroy clothing and anything else that comes into contact with number fifty-six.’ ”
Circumventing the green glow on the floor, Stephanie took a couple of steps into the room. “You go take a shower. The way you are now you can’t even sit in the car.”
“Don’t come in.”
“Push that door back toward me. I’ll turn on the light and read it. There might be something about an antidote.”
“Okay, but don’t walk over here.”
“I won’t.”
I swung the heavy vault door so Stephanie could read the instructions; then I stepped into Marge DiMaggio’s shower facility. The room had two exits. Now I knew why. You went in one end contaminated, came out the other clean. Or so you hoped. There were three shower stalls, with rinse-off areas outside each, glass doors arranged so that you stepped in one side, then out the other, making a kind of S as you worked your way through. A diagram on the wall presented the steps.
I took off my clothes, then rendered the latex gloves I’d been wearing inside out, one into the other, and stepped into the first shower stall and turned on the water. It was heart attack cold—warm water opened the body’s pores and allowed the absorption of foreign substances. I soaped up, scrubbing every part of my body with the sterile mitts provided, scrubbing until I ached all over from the cold. I found the shampoo and lathered my hair. I shivered under the cold spray for fifteen minutes and found myself beginning to go hypothermic. I stayed in the second shower ten minutes, as suggested on the wall diagram. Ten more minutes in the third shower.
After toweling off, I stepped into a too-small set of blue hospital scrubs and a pair of paper slippers that fit perfectly. DiMaggio had big feet. Or maybe these were leftovers from her husband.
Back at DiMaggio’s office the overhead lights were on. Stephanie was on the other side of the room, her back pressed firmly against the wall. I wondered for a split second whether she’d somehow gotten into the D#56. She seemed frightened, no, petrified.
But D#56 wasn’t the problem.
The problem was standing next to the closed vault door. Scott Donovan was the problem. An even bigger problem was the nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol he held in his right fist.
“Hey, lady-killer,” he said, grinning at me. “All clean now?”
59. TUB-O’-LARD
“Don’t be shy,” Donovan said, waving the pistol around in a mock orbit of greeting. His voice was as calm and soothing as it had always been. “Come in and join the festivities.”
I stepped into the room, but not so far that I wouldn’t fall back into the corridor when he shot me. Had Stephanie not been there, I would have fled. Or tried to. Now Stephanie and I were stuck to him and to each other as if he were a strip of flypaper and we were hapless insects.
Standing near the vault, Donovan turned his head to examine it, and Stephanie took the opportunity to gesture at me with her right hand. She held a small object behind her hip, but I couldn’t tell what it was. A handheld heat-seeking missile launcher would have been nice, but it looked more like a syringe. I had no idea where she’d found it. She hadn’t brought it with her. After Donovan made certain the safe was locked, he turned to us, his eyes as blank as a cod’s.
“Too bad you’re not safecrackers,” he said, his tone reasoned and mellow, his demeanor so nonchalant you would have thought