Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [151]
Max evidently sensed a cooling of emotion between us. Having made himself scarce earlier, he now joined us. “How are you feeling detective?”
“Almost like normal.” The two men shook hands. “Thank you, Max. I think you saved my life tonight.”
“I was delighted to help!” Max asked, “What will happen to the foundation now?”
“It may be shut down for a few days as a crime scene, and there’ll probably be a minor scandal,” said Lopez. “But then it’ll go back to normal.”
“Catherine was never what made the foundation tick, after all,” I said. “It’s always been Martin’s money.”
“And Martin himself, before she killed him,” Lopez said a little grimly.
I had made my heart-wrenching decision about him, and now I wanted to get it over with. So I said, “Max, Lopez wants to know what was in the antidote you gave him.”
“Ah! It’s a fairly complex recipe, concocted to address a wide range of threats, and some of the ingredients are things which I’m not really at liberty to discuss without a more extensive knowledge of your heritage.”
“Excuse me?”
I said to Lopez, “You’re not Lithuanian, are you?”
“What?”
“However, the primary ingredients,” Max said, “the base of the formula, if you will, is a concoction of excrement mixed with holy water that has been used to wash the external genitalia of an adult human female. The additional—”
“What?” Lopez said.
I realized now why Puma had been embarrassed. I suspected she was intimately acquainted with the water she had poured down Lopez’s paralyzed throat tonight.
Max blinked at Lopez’s tone. “Water used to wash the ex—”
“No, not that part. Though that part is bad enough. What female . . . No, I don’t want to know. Go back to the other thing you said.”
“Ah! Excrement,” Max said with enthusiasm. “We used the excrement of a canine familiar—specifically, Nelli—which has the properties of dejecta from both a physical being and a mystical one, and is therefore—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You gave me Nelli’s excrement?” Lopez shouted. “While I was lying there paralyzed and helpless, you poured dog shit down my throat?”
Realizing that his recipe was not being met with the intellectual enthusiasm that he had hoped to inspire, Max said, “Well, it was also mixed with—”
“Oh. My. God.” Lopez looked at me. “I need to go to a hospital. I need an emergency room. I want my stomach pumped. I want a boatload of antibiotics. I want three—no, four tubes of toothpaste. And a gallon of mouthwash. I may want laxatives, but the night is young, so I’ll dwell on that question for a while longer.”
I said, “So I guess you’re leaving?”
“You knew this would happen,” he said accusingly.
“Well . . .”
“You can get home by yourself,” he said sternly to me. “Good night!”
“Er . . .” Max raised his fist in the gesture that Biko had taught him. “Peace out.”
As Lopez stalked away, I heard him saying into his police radio that he was on his way to an emergency room for treatment and wasn’t immediately available.
Max and I looked at each other.
“You must be very tired, my dear.”
“I am. Will you see me home?”
“I would be delighted. It may take us quite a while to get there, though. The city is in chaos.”
“Hey, Esther!” Jeff called, coming over to me. “Henry keeps a little portable radio at the reception desk. Puma and I have got it on to a news station that’s able to broadcast, and . . . Well, it’s pretty upsetting news. You should brace yourself.”
“What?”
“Mike Nolan had another heart attack tonight. He’s alive, but back in the hospital.”
“Oh,” I said. “And he was taking such good care of himself, too. It’s a mystery.”
“I guess this means your scene will be rescheduled again,” said Jeff. “And probably rewritten.”
“Or my mother will get her wish and the episode will be canned,” I said morosely. Once the city was functioning normally, I’d contact Thack about this. And also nag him about The