Zodiac. The Eco-Thriller

"I am. You got a tire patch kit in that thing?"

"You bet." The guy even knew my full name. We carried his kit down to the water and fixed the Tazer holes in my Zodiac. Then he got back in his BMW and drove away. I told him he didn't even have to think about donating more money to GEE this year.

22

EVEN THESE PUSSWADS couldn't afford to own more than one Cigarette, so I figured I was okay as long as I stayed on the water. The yacht club was definitely not an option, but I could come ashore just about anywhere else.

So I took the Zode up and out of Fort Point Cha

"What's up?" Bartholomew asked.

Where to begin? "Well, I just killed some guys."

For once he didn't say anything, just sat there uncomfortably silent, and I realized that this was a stupid way to commence a conversation. "Look, how many people are at the house this evening?"

"Just me. Roscommon's banging on something downstairs. Shut off our water."

"Could you track the others down?"

"I think maybe. Why?"

"Because everyone should stay away from the house for a while. Somebody's trying to kill me."

"Again?"

"Yeah. But for real this time."

"You call the cops?"

Of course. When people try to kill you, you're supposed to call the cops. Why hadn't I done that? "Don't let anyone in. I'll get back to you in a minute."

Then I called the cops. They sent a detective around to the Aquarium and we sat there beside the Seal Pool for a while. I gave them a statement. A harbor seal sat behind us the whole time, looking up at us and shouting, "Thunderbird, Thunderbird!" The bums who hung out around the Seal Pool were skilled instructors. "Spare change? Spare change?" But the detective had the courtesy to concentrate on me. Didn't see much point in trying to explain all the stuff with the PCBs, since all I had was conflicting evidence. I just told them I was taking some samples and these guys tried to kill me.

Then I called Bart again. He was still sitting there watching the same Stooges flick and I could still hear Roscommon's thuds resounding from the basement.

"I feel like a sap. Why don't I own a gun?" I asked rhetorically.

"Beats me. I don't have one either."

Actually, I knew the answer. I didn't own a gun because then I'd look like a terrorist. And because, hell, I didn't need one. "You got any plans for tonight?" I asked.

"No more than usual," Bart said. "Amy's in New York."

"There's a chance that, if I get crazy enough, I'll ask you to drive me around all night sewer-diving and possibly being chased by amateur hit men."

"Whatever."

I buzzed off into the darkness again, going a little slower now, trying to keep my head on straight. Paused at MIT and ran to the office to get the manhole lifter, a bandolier of test tubes and a bucket on a rope. Went across the river and re-emerged at the university. Went straight to the lab and ran a test on the sample I'd just taken from the Dorchester Bay CSO.

It was stuffed with organic chlorine compounds. Not just PCBs, but a whole stew of venality. To go back to the gunboat metaphor, what we had here was soldiers with machine guns, riding not just on patrol boats, but on surfboards, Zodiacs, water skis and i

Tomorrow it was going to rain-a big storm coming in from the Atlantic-and the sewers were going to overflow. If there was any evidence in them, it was bound to be washed out to sea. So now was the time for executive-hunting. I called my roommate and asked him to meet me under the birdshit, then I hung up.

It was a fifteen-minute walk from our house on the Brighton side of the river to the mall on the other side. Along the way we had to walk below an overpass, a highway bridge made of metal girders. For some reason, pigeons happened to like those girders very much, and the sidewalk underneath was thick with birdshit. This was a reference only Bart would understand.

For me, it was just a pleasant nighttime cruise on the river. The fog had cleared off as the wind had risen, and now the air was cold and smelled cleaner than it was. It was a chance to relax, get my head clear.

The Charles wasn't as bad as it used to be. From here it seemed like the Main Street of civilization. Beacon Hill behind me, Harvard ahead, MIT on one side and Fenway Park on the other. After playing fatal video games on the Harbor, it was comforting to go for a slow putt-putt out here, watch the traffic on the riverside boulevards-comfortable, normal people in nice cars, listening to the radio-and stare into the lights of the university libraries, and listen to the Sox hounds celebrating a run-scoring double.

Within a few minutes, Harvard came up on the right, dark and ancient, with a neon corona rising up from Harvard Square behind it. Then around a bend, and suddenly the Charles was narrow, just a minor river surrounded by trees. Past the big cemeteries, then the IHOP reared up on the left and I tied my Zodiac to a tree. A short hike took me to the birdshit, and, voila there was the van, sitting there dark, ZZ Top rumbling from within. Bart opened the door, which was nice, because that way I didn't have to wonder who really was inside.

"Anyone follow you?"

"If they did," he said, "they did a good job of it. You have any more trouble?"

"No."

"Hey. Check this out." He unzipped his leather jacket and pulled it open to reveal a .38 Special stuck in his belt.

"Where the fuck did you get that?"

"Roscommon."

"Roscommon?"

"Once, when he got really pissed, he started threatening me. Told me that he had an equalizer in his car. So after you called, I just went out and busted the window and took it."

"There's beauty in that, Bart."

Call me a fool, but I felt a lot tougher now. We pulled the van onto the grass along the river beside Soldiers Fields Road, and hauled up the Zodiac's gas tanks and the outboard motor. We put them in the van and then put the Zodiac on top and tied it down. We went to the IHOP and got big fat coffees to go. Then we turned up the stereo and went out sewer-diving.

This I had done before. Put me in the sewers and I'm in my element. The tendency of Boston's sewers to gush directly into the Harbor whenever more than three drops of rain fell made them an ideal place for companies to dump their hazardous waste without the embarrassment of a mediapathic pipe. Sometimes I'd discover a bad thing coming out of a CSO and then I'd have to go on one of these expeditions. Bart knew the drill.

The principle is simple. If there's poison coming out of a sewer, you should be able to trace it to its source. It helps to have a map of all the sewer lines and where they feed into one another. I find the CSO on my sewer map and, just like that, I know which neighborhood it's coming from. Once I get to that neighborhood, my map tells me where the key manholes are and, by ru

Besides a manhole tool, the only requirement is some kind of quick, simple test for the presence of the toxin you're tracing. Preferably it's a test you can perform right in your vehicle. I had something like that for organic chlorine compounds, a test built into small plastic test tubes. They were about the size of shotgun shells, so when this whole mess had started I'd made up several dozen and stashed them in an army-surplus bandolier. With that slung over my shoulder and my manhole cracker in my hands, I was a toxic Rambo, prepared to rain media death upon the bad guys. We were all set.