Strange Brew Part 23

"What did you give her?" I asked.

"Just a couple beers," Hap said. "The little lady is fascinated with beer. Knows all about it. She was telling Miranda about her big plans for this place. Same kind of big plans her boyfriend had, that a.s.shole." He winked at me again. "You ever hear of roofies?"

"Rohypnol," Miranda said. "Callahan knows everything. She must know about roofies."

"Doesn't ring a bell," I said, trying to look pa.s.sive.

"The looove drug," Hap said. "All the kids know about it. It's the nineties equivalent of blotter acid. Direct to you from old Mexico."

He reached in the pocket of his baggy olive-green shorts, calm and unruffled, like he was reaching for a stick of gum. He held his hand out to show me two small white tablets.

"Swallow these, please," he said. "Everybody says it's great stuff." He shoved it at my face.

"f.u.c.k you," I said, swatting his hand away. The pills went flying, and Hap slapped me with the open palm of his hand.

"Don't," he shouted, his face contorting in anger. "Don't make me hit you. I hate that."

"Hap?" Miranda's voice was a whisper. "I'm going back to the Yacht Club. You'll take care of everything, right?"

"Oh yeah. I'll be over in a few minutes. Put the sign on the door, okay? Anybody asks, we've got a malfunction in the water lines. Health Department won't let us stay open. Go on, baby. I'll handle this."

He had the tenderest expression on his face as he watched her step delicately over Anna's limp body and out into the alley. Then he reached in his pocket and brought out two more roofies.

"I'll f.u.c.kin' slap you senseless if you try that again," he warned me.

"You're going to hit me," I said. "You're going to kill Anna, if she's not already dead. You killed Wuvvy. But you don't like to hit. What a G.o.dd.a.m.ned hypocrite you are, Hap."

He held my gun out and turned it back and forth, like he'd never seen one before. "I'm not a violent man, Callahan. You know that. I'm a businessman. It's not like I get off on hurting people. I'm nothing like Jackson Poole. He enjoyed watching people squirm. You've got a business. You know how it goes. Sometimes you have to make the hard choices."

Hap took a step closer. He grabbed me by my hair, jerked my head backwards, and tried to shove the pills down my throat. I gritted my teeth. He put the pistol in his pocket and then held his free hand over my nose until I gasped for air. With the other hand, he popped the pills in my mouth, then clamped my jaws shut.

I gagged, and he kept his hand over my mouth. "I can put it in some beer and make you swallow that," he said, his lips close to my ear. "But you're gonna take that roofie."

I felt the pills slide down my throat. He shoved me and I went sprawling on the floor. It was thick with sawdust and Sheetrock dust. I could hear Anna's breathing, shallow and labored. Her eyes were open but unfocused.

Hap pulled the back door closed and locked it. "Now it's just us," he said, pointing the gun at me.

"Why?" I said, asking the question only he could answer. "You've got a good business, enough money. Why go down this road?"

He walked over to the gleaming copper-clad brew kettle, then to the control table. There was a computer screen, and a row of switches and b.u.t.tons. He frowned as his hand hovered over each b.u.t.ton.

"It was Poole," Hap said. "He screwed me over, the son of a b.i.t.c.h. He screwed everybody. It made him happy. But he f.u.c.ked with the wrong person when he came knocking at my door."

"He came to you?"

Hap nodded. "He knew I owned Wuvvy's building. He'd looked it up in the deed records. Poole had waited a long time to mess with her. Like I told you, Wuvvy was a victim looking for a crime. I just helped things along a little. To protect my investment. Everything would have been cool if he hadn't done me like he did. Wuvvy would have gotten along. But he had to try to screw me."

"So you killed him. Over some beer distribution deal."

He shrugged. "You figured it out. I'm impressed, Garrity. Poole thought he had me by the b.a.l.l.s. He came in here, to my neighborhood. My building! Cut a deal with my import beer distributor to give Blind Possum exclusive rights to all my premium imports. Paulaner, Haufbrau, Ba.s.s, every yuppie brand I sell. Bribed my distributor! I would have been out of business in a month. He told me just before he left the bar that night. Slimeball! I followed him over here, picked up a piece of galvanized pipe the plumbers had left lying around. He went down without a sound."

"And then Wuvvy came looking for him," I said.

"She had a talent for disaster," Hap said. "Nothing I could do."

He turned back to the control panel and punched a b.u.t.ton. I heard a clicking noise, and then the sound of water rushing. Hap turned and pointed the gun at me. "Stand up," he said. "You'll feel much better after a hot bath."

I had to grasp the ladder rails tightly to keep from falling. I was already feeling drowsy, dizzy. The copper and stainless steel brew kettle loomed blurrily above me, and Hap was right behind me, jabbing the pistol into my leg. "Go on," he said. "Or I'll blow your head off right here. Either way, you're going in."

My legs weren't working right. It took forever, but I finally pulled myself up the top rung and flopped over onto the metal platform. At the top of the ladder a catwalk stretched between the two kettles. Through the open rectangular manhole of the kettle on the right, the brew kettle-Anna had called it-I could hear the water flowing in.

"Get in," Hap said, standing on the catwalk beside me. "Go on. Poole told me all about these kettles, you know. He said brewmasters sometimes fill them up and use them for their own personal hot tubs, with their girlfriends, you know?"

"This is insanity, Hap," I said, but my lips weren't moving just right, and it came out garbled. "They'll catch you. You're going down."

He put his hand on my back and shoved.

It was the oddest sensation, falling into that kettle, like a slow-motion dream, sliding down the slick stainless steel side and coming to rest in the bottom, in about ten inches of lukewarm water. Water flowed into the vat from a valve near the top of the tank. I moved lazily to one side, to keep it off my head. Hap stuck his head over the edge and looked down at me.

"It'll look like Anna the brewmaster was trying out her tanks and fell in. Then the busybody private eye came along, tried to save her client, but instead fell in, too. So tragic!" I could swear he winked. "See, it's kind of fun, isn't it? Relax. I'll be back in a minute."

Everything was so slow and stretched out. I slapped my face, trying to get alert, but I could already feel the loss of coordination. Whatever was in the roofies, it was definitely fast-acting. I had to get rid of it before any more got into my blood-stream. I rammed three fingers as far down my throat as I could, gagged, then retched. I could hear Hap's feet on the ladder rungs outside. Water splashed around me, and I could feel the side of the tank warming where the heat elements were. He was moving slowly, must have been carrying Anna. I gagged and retched so hard I thought my ribs would crack open, but quietly, hoping Hap wouldn't hear me. I splashed water on my face and whimsically wished my mother was there to hold my head.

"Here she comes," Hap called.

Anna's body fell straight down, like a pebble into a fast-moving stream. The water was waist-high on me, but she was so pet.i.te, barely five feet, and probably didn't weigh ninety pounds. She fell forward and I struggled to hold her upright, to keep her head out of the rising water.

Hap's head peered over the side. "I haven't tried one, but the roofies are basically supposed to paralyze you, Callahan. It's like a super tranquilizer. Respiratory depression, coma, then nothing. Not a bad way to go at all. See? I told you I'm not a violent man."

"Don't let him close the lid," I prayed. "Please don't let him close the lid."

He flipped the manhole doors shut.

I heard him climb back down the ladder, and then it was quiet, if you didn't count the rush of the water, which was getting much warmer. During our tour of the other Blind Possum, Anna had told us how hot the brew kettle got. How many degrees? My mind wouldn't focus on numbers. But the word boil came to mind.

Anna's head kept slipping under the water, and she was so limp, so pale. I tried to remember more of what she'd told us on that tour, about the kettles. I flailed around in the water with one hand, looking for something to catch hold of, to anchor me in one spot. My sneakers felt like they weighed a thousand pounds apiece. I leaned back, tried to grasp one, to take it off, but my fingers fumbled with the wet laces. Useless to try to untie them. I tugged, and one and then the other came loose. Peeling off my socks took a Herculean effort. Finally, I stood, felt around the bottom of the tank with my toes, found two agitator blades. Thank G.o.d Hap hadn't been able to figure out how to turn them on.

I peered up toward the top of the tank. It was about ten feet deep and seven feet wide. The water level was nearly shoulder high on me. Anna bobbed around, and I kept one hand on her shirt to keep her head from slipping under the water.

There were two handholds, but they were high up in the wall of the tank, over my head. So high. And I was so tired, so groggy. The water was bath temperature now, and I wanted to let go, just lie on my back and float, with my toes sticking up and my hair fanned out around me, like I used to do at the beach as a kid. Dead man's float, we called it.

Dead man. I shook my head, stood upright, my toes curving under the agitator blades to gain a grip. I let go of Anna's shirt, tried to stand on my tiptoes and reach. My fingertips touched the bottom rung, then slipped off. I lost my balance and fell off the blade.

The water was getting hotter. We had to get out. I plucked at the b.u.t.tons on my work shirt, but my fingers were so stiff and unyielding. I yanked harder, tearing the topmost b.u.t.tons off, then pulling the whole shirt off over my head. I twisted the shirt into a long, bulky roll, positioned myself on the agitator blades, and tossed one end of it up, toward the lower of the rungs. It fell back, slapping me in the face.

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit," I cried. I'd held out some hope that I could float as the water level rose, but my heavy cotton turtleneck and waterlogged blue jeans kept pulling me down, and I was getting groggier.

Once more, I perched on the blades, tossed the shirt upward. My vision was fuzzy, but I could see the sleeve slipping over the edge of the rung. I steadied myself, fed more of the sleeve through it, until I had a complete loop through the rung.

That work shirt was my favorite one, Gap, one hundred percent heavy cotton denim. I tugged hard on the makeshift rope, braced my feet against the side of the brew kettle, and somehow did what I'd never been able to do in four years of high school gym cla.s.s. I rope-climbed, hand over hand, three feet probably, until the fingers of my right hand wrapped themselves all the way around the lower rung.

I wanted to scream, or cry, or shout, but I didn't have the energy. I felt for the highest rung, managed to pull myself up to a crouch. The manhole cover was directly over my head. If I let go of the rung, I'd fall back down into the kettle. And there was no more energy to do the impossible twice in one day. I tucked my chin into my chest and then heaved my head and shoulders upwards, directly into the stainless steel manhole cover.

For fifteen seconds or morea lifetime, really-I hung there, half in and half out of the kettle, flopping around like a mullet on a dock. Screw this, I thought. I wriggled a little more, and dropped headfirst onto the platform.

The headache was a good hurt. It brought tears to my eyes. At least it was a sensation, a feeling. I pulled myself upright, looked back down into the kettle. Anna was floating facedown, her legs kept dragging her down. She was so rigid, unmoving. I had no idea whether she was still alive.

Somehow, I managed to drag myself down the ladder. I stood with difficulty, lurched over to the control panel.

The computer screen had a color diagram of the kettle, with all the parts labeled. But my vision was so blurred, I couldn't read the print below the b.u.t.tons. I'd seen the b.u.t.ton Hap had pushed to fill the kettle. I pushed it, waited. The water stopped. Thank G.o.d. Now to make it drain. I rested my head on the control panel, squinted, found a b.u.t.ton beneath the one I'd just pushed. I put my thumb on it and left it there, and then I sat down on the floor to take a little nap. Soon, I promised myself, I'd go back and drag Anna out.

"Callahan?" Somebody was tugging at me. It was always like that. Somebody always wanted something. Why wouldn't they let me alone? Let me sleep? I was so tired, and my head hurt. G.o.d, it hurt.

"Callahan!" Now they were pulling at my shirt, trying to make me sit up. I tried to push the hands away. "No," I mumbled. "Sleep."

"Wake up!" Hands patting my face, slapping me. Slapping hard. I opened my eyes. Cheezer. Good old Cheezer. He looked silly without that tooth. Why was he slapping me? "Go away," I said.

"Callahan!" he yelled. "Edna was worried when you didn't answer the phone. She sent me out to look for you, and I saw the Lincoln out in the alley. I called the police. What happened? What's wrong with you? Are you sick?"

"Roofies," I said in a singsongy voice. He held my face between both his hands. I smiled. "Roofies make me ralph." I threw up all over both of us.

32.

It would take a twisted mind to think of a drug like Rohypnol as "the love drug." Later on, while I was in the emergency room, waiting for the antidote, a drug called Romazicon, to take effect, Cheezer told me roofies were known among the college set as the date rape drug.

They kept me at Grady Memorial Hospital overnight, feeding me the antidote at twenty-minute intervals, the same way they do patients they're bringing out from under general anesthesia. I was still nauseous, and I had a splitting headache, which the doctor, a cute Korean resident named Dr. Soo, warned me was one of the side effects of Rohypnol.

"Something else, too," he said. "Rohypnol is a powerful sedative. It's one of a cla.s.s of drugs called benzodiazepam, although it's been outlawed in the U.S. since 1996. I don't want you to worry if you can't remember anything that happened after you were given the drug. That happens. It induces short-term memory loss. Luckily, you seem to have regurgitated part of the tablets, so you didn't really get a full dosage."

Anna. "What about Anna?" I asked. "She was with me. What happened to her?"

The doctor frowned. It didn't suit his pleasant, round face. "Anna Frisch? She was given a much larger dosage. As many as three or four tablets. And her body ma.s.s was so small." He shook his head.

"She has not regained consciousness. Her pulmonary function is not good." He wouldn't tell me anything more.

Cheezer rode in the ambulance to Grady's emergency room with me. His was the first face I recognized, once I could focus. He smiled that gap-toothed smile, which I was getting very fond of, and told me he was glad I was all right. Before I succ.u.mbed to the big sleep, I told him he was getting a raise for finding me.

Edna brought Mac to the hospital with her. He brought me flowers and a Polaroid of Edna holding all eight of Maybelline's tiny black puppies in a bath towel. She'd gotten my note and rushed out to Mac's cabin with Baby and Sister. They'd gotten Maybelline home and settled just before the puppy onslaught began.

"We're gonna need a new sofa in the den," Edna told me.

"I'm buying," Mac said. He didn't say a lot else, but he slept in a chair beside my bed all night and only let go of my hand when I told him he was giving me a cramp.

Deavers showed up in the morning, with a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a hangdog expression. He and Mac shook hands and Mac went out to get me a Diet c.o.ke to go with the doughnuts.

I made Deavers tell me everything that had happened. "The last thing I remember is Hap telling Miranda to leave," I told him. "This doctor says the drug does that."

"I should have listened to you," Deavers said. "Christ. Hap Rudabaugh. The guy was a Jekyll and Hyde. You know, he and Miranda were so cool. Unbelievable. They left you and Anna there to die, went home, packed their bags, and booked a flight to Grand Cayman. We stopped them at the airport. Hap was talking on his cell phone to his lawyer when one of our guys stopped them."

"You got them?" I said.

Deavers fidgeted. "We're holding them on drug charges. We found Hap's stash in the back room of the bar. Roofies, steroids, speed, a real smorgasbord of goodies."

"What about the murder charges?" I asked. "He killed Poole. He killed Wuvvy. He tried to kill me. Anna Frisch could still die. And all you've got is drug charges?"

"It ain't over yet," Deavers said. "There were enough drugs in the bar that we can get them under one of the federal racketeering statutes. Rudabaugh and Miranda weren't just selling dime bags. They were smuggling the roofies and steroids in from Mexico and using the bar as a distribution point. It turns out Hap was a model capitalist."

"What's that mean?" I asked irritably. My mouth felt awful, and I still had a searing pain over my left eye.

"He was reinvesting all his profits. In Little Five Points," Deavers said. "They've been quietly buying up buildings for the past five years."

"Gemini Properties," I said. That part I could remember. "They bought up Wuvvy's building, but she had a dirt-cheap, long-term lease. They were in the process of forcing her out of business when Jackson Poole showed up."

"We think Hap originally tried to sell him the building across the street, Lolita's," Deavers said. "But Poole had done his homework. It wasn't just about business. He wanted to get at Wuvvy."

"Revenge," I said.

"Excuse me." Dr. Soo poked his head in the doorway of my room. "Your friend is better. Maybe in the morning, you can talk to her."

"Thanks," I told him. I looked back at Deavers. "The doctor told me they fed her a huge dose of roofies. They said earlier she might not make it."

"That's good news," Bucky agreed. "You know, we've still got blood samples from Wuvvy's autopsy. The state crime lab's backed up, but the DA wants a drug screen done, to see if they can find traces of the Rohypnol. Once that's done, we'll add murder charges against Hap and Miranda."

"But you need a statement from me," I said, guessing at what he was getting at. "And Anna."

"You're the glue that holds it together," Deavers admitted. "But we've got time. Hap and Miranda aren't going anywhere anytime soon. We've also figured out the cop was a guy who used to work not in Atlanta but for the Fulton County P.D. His name is Jimmy Davis. We're looking for him and Stahlgren. When we find them, I guarantee they'll spill their guts about Hap and Miranda."

The nurses wouldn't let anybody stay for very long. They kept giving me the Romazicon and taking my pulse and messing with me.

At ten o'clock that night, just before visiting hours were over, Edna chased everybody else out of the room.

"I'm going home to get some sleep," she announced. "If those puppies don't keep me up all night." She reached inside her new leather pocketbook and fumbled around and finally brought out a small package wrapped in toilet paper and scotch tape.

She pressed it into my hand. "The doctors found this in your pocket when they brought you into the emergency room," she said, blinking rapidly. "I think you better keep it. Your daddy would want you to have it." My small motor coordination was still knocked loopy by the pills, so I handed it back and let her undo the wrappings.

It was the gold St. Christopher's medal. The chain was still broken, and wisps of toilet paper were still stuck to it.

"That's yours," I said, taking her palm and closing her fingers over it. "It's still got a lot of protection left in it. Better than a thirty-eight, even."