The morning meeting was a convention. The double doors at the back opened to a busy lecture hall where stepwise rows of long tables faced the white boards at the front. The folks scattered about the chairs looked at their phones or talked to each other in hushed tones while the single speaker, a full-figured black woman in a maroon dress suit, pointed to the writing on the boards, or to the projection overhead, and barked orders. I did what everyone did: came late and took a seat and waited for someone to call my name. Or at least say something interesting.
The speaker was Dr. Angela Chalmers, the head of my unit and my on-site supervisor. She was a formidable woman, despite her stature. Most of the time she didn’t look at you when you spoke. She’d be too busy approving requisitions, or whatever, and nodding along with your plea as if earnestly moved by your argument. But when you said something that warranted a gaze, she’d stop what she was doing and look right to your core. She had eyes like pistols, fingernails like daggers, and a voice like a Howitzer.
“Alex!” she called before my butt hit the seat.
That’s what everyone called me. It was easier than my first name. So Dr. Alexander became Alex.
I stood.
“See me after.”
“But it wasn’t me, Teach,” I objected.
Someone near me snickered and Dr. Chalmers shot me a look over the rim of her glasses.
I was part of a joint program set up by the city, state, and federal governments to test active monitoring in the nation’s largest urban centers—a reaction to several high-profile outbreaks everyone likes to pretend weren’t as scary as they sounded. It’s no accident that the first case of Ebola in the US was in a major city like Dallas, or that adenovirus hit Jersey. If an epidemic ever does come, it’s not gonna start in Des Moines or Tucumcari. It’ll be where people overwhelmingly enter the country: New York, LA, San Fran, Chicago, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, D.C., and Atlanta. That’s where pretty much every peer-reviewed epidemic model puts Patient Zero. So that’s where you start.
Something something needles and haystacks.
While some guy from the city droned on about the new retirement program, Dr. Chalmers walked up the steps and pointed at me to follow her. There was a small crowd waiting for her in the hall, but she waved them away with those daggerlike fingernails and held up one of the files from the stack in her arms. We walked to her office, where she tossed it on the side table and took a seat.
“Someone actually read your health alert. Color me impressed.”
Several weeks earlier, I’d been allowed to include a “Health Alert”—four sentences of white text in a red box—in the department’s monthly blast email, which went to just about every hospital, clinic, lab, doctor, dentist, podiatrist, chiropractor, and nursing home in the Tri-State area, as well as most of the relevant governmental and non-governmental agencies.
She looked at me like she was waiting for me to gloat. I didn’t.
“As of this morning, your undocumented have officially gotten case numbers. We’re opening a file. Congratulations.”
“Should that really be a cause for celebration, boss?”
“You’re doing an excellent job, Alex. Are you sure you want this one?”
The question surprised me. “I found it.”
“And you’d keep credit for that.”
“Are you saying you’re giving it to someone else?”
“I’m saying that I’m giving you the option the passing on it in lieu of other work. You’ve been one of our more successful appointees and I’d hate to see anything jeopardize that.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. “What makes you think I can’t handle it?”
“It’s not the science I’m worried about.” She sat back. “I read the file. You have nothing. These people have no names, no identification. Anyone they might’ve had contact with almost certainly works for whatever criminal group smuggled them here. They’re not exactly going to open up to you, even if you could find them. And you won’t get anything out of the Chinese. They won’t admit—on record, to an American governmental agency—that they have an organized crime problem. Or that their poor are dying to leave the country. Literally.”
“So we see what the police turn up.”
“And in the meantime?” It was a test.
“I take another line of attack.”
“I’m not sure you’ve really thought this one through. Where do you think this will end? You’re eager. Energetic. I appreciate that.” She said it earnestly. “But the decisions we make have repercussions.”
“Ollie gave me the lecture yesterday, boss.”
“Don’t get smart.”
“Look, I get why we didn’t open a case before. I didn’t have anything. A hunch, basically. But now there are five dead people in a basement. How can we just let that go?”
“I wasn’t suggesting that. So tell me, what are going to do first?”
“Well.” I thought for a moment. “We need to identify cause. When the autopsy—”
“On five dead? Will take a week. At least.”
I paused. “A week?”
She nodded sagely.
“Okay. So.” I paced. “We start with the other two cases. It’s not contagious. Frankly, it almost seems random. So whatever this is, it’s unusual, not something people run into in daily life. We look for exposures. What did these people have in common? What did they eat or inject or put on their skin?”
“You’ll need medical histories first. Have you started a database?”
“Not yet. I was told I wasn’t allowed to work on it.”
“But that hasn’t kept you from sniffing around, has it?”
She jumped in before I could object. “It’s alright. It’s the sign of a good investigator. I wish we had more like you, I really do. So now you wanna tell me why this one’s so important to you?”
I went for honesty. “Not really.”
“Fair enough. Talk to Ollie. Tell him it’s official.” Then she pointed stiffly to the door with a turquoise fingernail and returned to her work.
I didn’t find Ollie at his desk. I didn’t wait. I had exactly one solid lead, and it had come from the closest thing in the city I had to a friend. I stood on a sidewalk and watched her sort the stacks of plastic trays that filled the back of the delivery van. Meals on Wheels. The trays were empty. Sanitized. Just returned from the commercial wash.
I nodded to the load. “I thought you were a real doctor,” I joked.
To an MD, us PhDs aren’t “real” doctors.
She let out a single sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, well, we do it all here.”
Amber Massey had sandy brown hair that she tucked behind her ears, a pert nose, and a once-athletic build that now hovered, like so many of ours, on the unhealthy side of fit. She was originally from Waco but had gone to school on the East Coast. Shortly after completing her residency, she joined the Urban Outreach Center in the Bronx with the idea of spending a few years giving back to the poor and unfortunate before settling into a career as a general practitioner back in her native Texas. That was five-going-on-six years ago. I knew her because she was the first physician to report a live case. A man named Alonso White, a colleague of hers—of sorts—had approached her after work complaining of fatigue and hair loss, but when she was suggested it was serious, he waved off her objections and left the clinic. No one had seen him since.
“We’re staffed mostly with volunteers,” she said. “Like Jaime here.” She smiled at a skinny teenager who enthusiastically stuck out her arms for more trays. “We’re luckier than most, though. We have some wealthy benefactors who like to use us as a tax write-off. Keeps the clinic going, at least. Most of the food is donated from area grocers. Stuff that’s about to expire.”
“That’s nice of them.”
She made a face. “Whatever. It’s cheaper for them to dump it here than to dispose of it outside the city.” She lifted a stack of trays so large I wasn’t sure she could see around them and turned for the center’s back door.
“So give me something to do,” I urged.
“Please! You’re doing enough.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shifted the bag strapped over my shoulder, grabbed a much smaller stack, and followed.
“Oh, come on! No one gave a shit about Alonso. The police barely looked.” She waddled carefully around a corner with the too-tall stack balanced carefully in her hands.
I followed her into a long, carpeted room where a group of volunteers, mostly women, were checking, sorting, and counting the trays. There was a small stack in the corner with pink lids instead of gray. I smelled potpies baking in the commercial kitchen at the far end.
Opposite the tray-sorting line were two long tables with empty lunch bags—bleached white paper, like I’d seen in the basement of the Chinese grocer.
“What are those?” I asked.
“The meals in trays”—she pointed—“get delivered to the elderly and homebound. The bag lunches we hand out from the back of the center to whoever comes. Until we run out.”
“How long does that take?”
I walked over and lifted one of the bags. Black circle on the bottom with the letters CE.
Amber gave some instructions to young Jaime, who scurried off to complete them, and walked over to me.
“So to what do we owe the pleasure? Is this personal or professional?”
“Professional,” I said. I paused for dramatic effect. “It’s official.”
“Really?” She seemed excited, like it was her case as much as mine.
I nodded again. “As of this morning.”
“I thought you said the whole thing was DOA. What changed?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
“That bad? Should we be scared? Should I be telling people to stay at home and be extra careful about washing their hands?”
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s not contagious. Not by contact, anyway.”
“Then how?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew.”
She studied me for a moment. “Look, I know all men are big and strong and they never need help from anyone, but—”
“I’m alright.” I smiled at the implication. “Really. I’m not being macho. I’m just . . . thoughtful, I guess.” I could see the question on her face. “There was this old woman. Her eyes. They reminded me of something, that’s all, something I hadn’t thought of in a while.”
“So what’s next?”
“That’s why I’m here, actually. I was hoping to get Alonso’s medical file.”
“You already know everything I do.”
“I know, but it’s not just me. You know how it is. I have to document everything. It’s not real unless it’s on paper.”
“Of course. Civil bureaucracy. It’s been three years and we’re still waiting on my license to appear in the mail. Five requests. Can you believe it?”
“I believe it.”
She looked around a moment. “Umm. Okay, let me see. Where would that be? This way, I think.”
She led me through the center and around to the clinic side, where a pair of nurses sat before computers and completed federal claims forms, one after the next. She bent over a wide file cabinet. It was open and stuffed tight with color-tabbed files. She had to grunt just to separate them enough to leaf through.
“Let’s see . . . Alonso, Alonso. Where are you?”
According to Amber, Alonso White was a clinical counselor by trade but worked as a community organizer in Spanish Harlem, and occasionally the Bronx. He was mid-30s, single, no kids with a healthy, athletic build. Supposed to be rather handsome. Volunteered regularly—not just at the Urban Outreach Center but also at area churches and food banks—and was known to be preparing a bid for office. Dr. Massey noticed he didn’t look well one evening and asked him to stay. Alonso mentioned he’d been feeling nauseated and weak since the day before, and that some of his hair had come out in the shower. His chest and forearms were flushed. Amber urged him to go to the ER.
“He’s a workaholic,” she had explained at our first encounter, “like a lot of us in the trenches. There’s just never enough hours in the day, even to do the minimum. You always go home to a warm bed having left someone else in the cold.”
Alonso had thanked her for her concern and left for an appointment and that was it. Shortly thereafter, he was reported missing when he didn’t show up to a vigil.
I waited as Amber rifled through the bulging cabinet.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” she asked. “Getting out, I hope.”
“Oh, you know. The usual.”
“Ha. In other words, you go to work and go back to your hotel and hope your wife will call?”
“You make it sound so pathetic. Mostly I just watch porn.”
A plump nurse with cornrows, late-40s, was sitting at a desk. She smirked and turned to a stack of files.
“Seems to me I was supposed to take you to dinner,” Amber said, “wasn’t I?”
I had technically agreed but then never followed up. Just being polite. We were both busy.
She stopped rifling and scowled.
I looked at the stacks of files the nurse was alphabetizing. “Shouldn’t all this be on computer?”
“Of course. But data entry is unfortunately very low on the list of budget priorities,” she said without turning. She was staring at the overstuffed drawer. “This is so odd.”
“What?”
She looked around. She lifted a stack of files from the printer and flipped through them.
“It’s not here.” She stood and rested her hands on her full hips.
There was a pause. She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. It fell in front of her full lips.
“I’m so sorry. I—uh . . . I don’t know what to say. There’s no excuse. He mostly worked East Harlem. Maybe they have something over there?”
Young Jaime appeared in the door and said there was a problem with the tray count, and Amber sighed. She crossed her arms across her chest, which pushed up her cream-colored breasts. I tried not to look.
“I’ll be right there.” She looked at me apologetically.
I smiled and nodded.
“I’ll keep looking,” she said.
“Thanks, but it’s—”
“No, it is a big deal. I’ll find it and bring it to dinner, okay?”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Really. You got your hands full.”
“Please,” she insisted.
It was plaintive and caught me off guard. It seemed then like maybe she needed an excuse to get away for an evening, to do something other than work.
“Sure. Sounds great.”
A commotion broke from down the hall. A woman was making a helluva racket in another room. Something about evil eyes. The nurses at the desk barely noticed.
“I’m afraid you’re not catching us at our best,” Amber said apologetically.
The yelling increased. Someone fell and by the sound of it took a whole pile of trays with them.
“I’ll catch you later,” I said.
“Thank you.” She touched my arm before rushing into battle.
“Hey, one more thing,” I called. “Do you remember the names of the investigating officers?”
“I’m sorry,” she said over the noise. “Let’s talk at dinner. I have to go. I’m sorry.”
The nurse with the cornrows smiled at me knowingly.
“Have a nice day,” I told her.
I showed myself out, fiddling with my wedding ring the whole way. I walked through the front doors and down the wheelchair ramp to the sidewalk. There was already a line forming at the corner of the building. It looked like those old pictures you see from the 1930s—guys queued up for a bowl of soup, or to see if there was any work that day. A police car rolled by. The officers inside scanned the line of people on the sidewalk. Most turned away. It seemed like cheating to me, like hunting for deer at a feed stand.
Cops did that kind of thing back home, too. When I was a kid, they would routinely speed toward us, sirens blaring. Occasionally, it was to arrest someone. Mostly it was just to see who would run. Running from the police constitutes probable cause, which means you can be searched on the spot. A second car waiting around the block would intercept whoever fled. Of course, attempted evasion justifies the use of armed force. A kid from my school got shot that way. He had a bag of weed and went for his cell phone to call for help. Cop said he thought it was a gun. After that, we avoided the parks and corners and hung in people’s back yards, which only made the cops that much more suspicious.
“How you fellas doin?” I called to the men in the patrol car.
The uniform in the passenger’s seat had his window down. He watched me. I watched back, practically daring them to stop. But they didn’t. They rolled slowly around the corner.
I found Detective Rigdon’s card in my wallet and gave him a call. He answered on the first ring.
“Southern boy,” he said after I introduced myself. “Ran into one of your guys at the scene earlier. He was cataloging all the food from the shop. Didn’t seem very happy you weren’t around to help.”
Tucker would get over it. I explained my problem.
“One missing person? Out of the whole city?” He said it as politely as he could.
“I’m ambitious.”
He laughed.
I told him I didn’t mind doing the legwork. I just needed a place to start. He gave me a name. Officer Stacy Montalvo, Missing Persons.
“She’s good. Gives a shit, too. Like you. She can give you whatever we have. Just don’t get your hopes up.”
“Don’t suppose your guys turned up anything at the scene.”
“Nada. And you were right. Neighborhood canvas was a bust. No one heard or saw anything. Seems several of them were even surprised to learn they had a grocer just down the block, as if they’d never noticed before. Oh, and our good friends from the FBI are involved. Just thought you should know.”
“Thanks. Let me know if you turn up anything on the symbol.”
But he had already hung up.
It took twenty minutes of navigation through the NYPD switchboard before I finally reached the right desk. Officer Montalvo had the competent directness of a woman who knew her job and was happy to help as long as you knew yours and didn’t waste her time. It wasn’t long before I tripped that threshold. She said pretty much the same thing as Rigdon.
“Can I at least know who worked the case?” I asked.
“Um . . .” I heard her typing a search. “Ha,” she chuckled. “Figures.”
“What does?”
“Manson and Dahmer.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mansour and Damon,” she said. “We call them Manson and Dahmer. I have to admit, there is an uncanny likeness. Look, you’re not gonna get anything outta those guys. A coupla sandbags would dance more than they do.”
“I don’t need them to do anything. I just need the case file.”
I heard her clicking.
“Is there any way I can get it?”
Silence.
“I have the appropriate authority. If you need—”
“Maybe so, but all requests have to go through Records.”
“Come on, Detective. That’ll take days. I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes here. I have at least seven bodies already with every indication of more on the way. How about a little inter-agency cooperation? If anyone asks, I didn’t get it from you.”
A pause. “Let me see what I can do. But only because I grew up in Spanish Harlem. Your guy was legit. A real saint.”