The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [102]
“Relax,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s—business.” I liked the feeling of being able to tell her that. “Go get yourself some more coffee. We got an icebox, too, if you want—”
I stopped when I realized that the woman on the ‘phone was yelling at me. “Detective sergeant—vat vun? Lucius or Marcus?”
“Hunh? Oh. Either, it don’t—it doesn’t matter.”
“Marcus iss not here! Headqvarters! I get Lucius! Who ist—whom ist calling?”
“Just tell him it’s Stevie.”
“Stevie?” she repeated, not sounding too impressed. “Stevie who? Stevie vat?”
I was getting a little impatient. “Doctor Stevie!” I said, raising a small laugh out of Kat, who’d gone to investigate the food in the new icebox.
“Business,” she said, giving me a cunning little sideways glance. “Sure …”
“Oh, ah, Doctor Stevie!” the woman on the line said, satisfied. “Only just ein moment, please!”
She set the ‘phone down with a crash that echoed into my ear and made me pull my receiver away. “Jesus Christ!” I said, hoping my eardrum wasn’t busted. “Whole damned family’s nuts …”
In a few seconds the ‘phone on the other end rattled around again, and I heard Detective Sergeant Lucius speaking, though not into it. “No, Mama, Stevie isn’t a doctor,” he just—please, Mama, go!” There were some unidentifiable protests from the woman, then Lucius again: “Mama! Go!” He took a deep breath and spoke into the phone. “Stevie?”
“Right here.”
“I’m sorry about that. She still doesn’t really understand this thing, and I don’t know that she ever will. What’s going on?”
” I got some news, and I think it’ll save you and Detective Sergeant Marcus some work. Can you collect him and get over here?”
“I can come,” Lucius answered. “I’ve been doing the chemical analysis of the sample I took from the tip of that stick, but I just finished. It is strychnine, by the way. But Marcus is poking around down at headquarters, then going on to the Doctor’s Institute. Why?”
“I think you’d better tell him to come up,” I said. “What I’ve found, it—I think it’s important.”
“Where’s the Doctor?”
“Him and Cyrus went to the museum already. They shouldn’t be too long, though. Can you make it?”
“I’ll get a cab now, and try to intercept Marcus at the Institute.” He yelled away from the telephone again: “No, Mama, that’s the chemicals you’re smelling, there’s nothing to clean—” His voice came back to me. “I’ve got to go before my mother sets herself on fire. See you in half an hour.” The line clicked, and I hung the receiver up.
Wandering back into the kitchen, I found Kat had scared up some eggs and a few herring and was getting ready to fry them in a big skillet. “So,” she said with a smile. “How’s ‘business’?”
I was too amazed by what she was doing to hear the question. “Kat—you can cook?”
“Don’t gimme that kinda air,” she answered playfully. “You think me and Papa had servants, Mr. Stuyvesant Park? I cooked for him all the time. Eggs and herring, now that’s a breakfast.” She tried to crack an egg into the pan, but her hand shook badly; and as it did, she lost her smile and took a deep breath. “Say—Stevie,” she said quietly, again without looking at me. “Does your doctor friend have—well, you know, does he see any patients here?”
“Unh-unh,” I said, shaking my head and knowing full well what she meant by the question. “None of that, Kat.”
“It’s just—” Her hand shook again, and her eyes filled with those sickly, desperate tears. “I don’t know if I can crack the eggs …”
My mind seemed to grab hold of a thought, something the Doctor’d said when I’d been at the Institute and he’d dealt with a kid who was in even worse shape than Kat: something about what a cold cutoff of drugs could do to the human body. I knew that in fact he might have some cocaine stashed in the small examination room he maintained toward the front of the house on the ground floor, but I wasn’t going to let Kat have it. When she suddenly let out a little cry, though, then grabbed at her gut and sat down quick on a chair, I figured I’d better do something; so I