Gwen Martin called me the next morning. “He didn’t freak out or anything. He just looked at the picture and then he asked me to buy some for him. I asked him why, and he didn’t know.”
That was interesting. I just didn’t know what to do with it.
Rachel came in a few minutes later and kissed me. “Told you that you didn’t need any of those pills last night.”
“Just some sexy lingerie.” I kissed her back.
She snorted. “Now I know what to buy for your birthday. Anything up?”
I told her about Gwen Martin’s call. “I don’t know how it ties in. I’m thinking of going down to Hyde Park to check out David’s apartment. Maybe some of his neighbors will talk to me.”
“Sounds like a plan. Not a good plan, but something.” She sank into her office chair. “Don’t bother me today, okay? I’ve got deadlines.”
I worked on other cases until lunchtime. After my sandwich, I got into the car and headed down to Hyde Park.
David Drachon’s apartment building was east of the campus, close to the Museum of Science & Industry with its doll house and German submarine. Not that far from the Point, too. I parked, walked up to the building, and scanned a list of names. No doorman. I’d have to bluff my way inside, or sneak in when someone came out. I found “D. Drachon” on the list, though, so I thought I’d give it a try first. Since his brother hadn’t heard from him in month, I didn’t expect—
“Hello? Who’s this?”
Oops. Bad assumption. “Uh, I’m Tom Jurgen. I’m a private detective. Your, uh, brother Ronald is concerned about you, and I just came down to check that you’re all right.” Which was true. Sort of.
“I’m calling him. Hang on.”
I waited, expecting him to tell me to go to hell. It wouldn’t be the first time. But after five minutes the door buzzed, and David said, “Come on up. Apartment 3C.”
On the third floor I knocked on a door.
David Drachon wore a dirty gray T-shirt and jeans, no shoes. His head was shaved close to the scalp. His arms were thin and sinewy. He crossed them. “Yeah? You can see I’m fine. What do you want?”
“Can I come in?” Again, I expected him to say no. Again, he surprised me by stepping aside.
The apartment was small, but clean. An oriental rug lay over a parquet floor. Posters of birds and seascape hung in frames. Books crammed two bookcases—textbooks, mostly, but a few hardcover novels, and on the bottom shelf, some leatherbound volumes that looked straight out of Hogwarts. A window looked across the street, over the tops of the trees outside. A computer sat on a desk in the corner.
Hundreds of purple bottles of Dragon’s Breath were buried in plastic bins stacked along one wall.
“Okay?” David spread his arms. “I’m not being held prisoner or anything. There’s nobody here. I’m doing research. That’s why I haven’t called Ron.”
“What kind of research?”
“Physics. You wouldn’t understand.” He smirked.
“Probably not.” I looked at the bins. “What’s all that? Vitamins?”
“It’s a project.” He glanced at the door. “Is that all?”
I’d outlasted my unwelcome. “Sorry to bother you.”
My phone buzzed on the way back to the car. Ronald Drachon. “Are you still there? What’s going on?”
“David is fine.” I dodged a woman walking a dog on the sidewalk. “I apologize. I’m trying to figure out if there’s any connection between your brother and the disappearances. From what you said, I didn’t expect David to be home, so I thought I’d just be talking to some neighbors—”
“Well, I’m glad it made him call me, but after that, I really don’t think you have any right to bother him anymore. You didn’t find anything, you said? So I want you to just leave him alone.”
I reached my car. “He did have several hundred bottles of Dragon’s Breath. That’s all I saw. He said it was for a physics project.”
Drachon hesitated. “Well, I guess that’s his business. Not mine. Not yours. If you bother him again I’ll call my attorney.”
“I’ll stay away.” I wasn’t sure that was true, but it felt like the right thing to say.
“How’d it go?” Rachel asked when I got back home.
“He had enough of that stuff to give erections to a herd of elephants.” I picked up my coffee mug. “I wish I’d taken you for a psychic overview.”
“Elephants? Thanks for that mental image.” She turned back to her computer. “Sorry. Work, work, work.”
My phone buzzed a few minutes later. My client. “Abel just had a nap, and he remembered something. Just a minute. Abel?”
A moment later: “Tom? I remember those pills. This guy was asking us to get them. Or steal them. Wherever we could get them.”
I sat up. “What guy?”
“I don’t . . . damn it! I don’t know. He—there was a car, a big blue car. And he was inside it. We’d give him the pills. He gave us—stuff. I don’t remember his name. Wait . . .” I heard him breathing. “Drakon. He was Drakon.”
Drakon—David Drachon? I didn’t have a picture of him, and I doubted his brother would send me one. Maybe he had a Facebook profile. “Do you remember where you saw him? What kind of a car he had?”
“Just a big blue car. I don’t know.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll try and remember more. I’m sorry.”
“You’re doing great, Abel. This is a big help.”
“Tom?” Gwen Martin. “He’s doing a lot better today. Right, baby?”
“Y-yeah.” His voice was firmer than yesterday. “Slept good. Doctor says my stuff is getting better.”
“That’s good.”
“You sound like you’ve got some idea about what happened,” Gwen said.
“It’s got something to do with those pills. There’s someone who was trying to get a lot of them, or what’s in them, for—some reason. I don’t want to give you his name right now, until I’ve got more to go on. I’ll be in touch.”
She obviously wanted more, but she let me go.
I told Rachel as her eyes flicked back and forth from her computer screen. “Now what?” she asked.
“I need to find out more about David Drachon. Or Drakon. And . . .” I hesitated. I knew Ronald Drachon wouldn’t want to talk to me, but there was a question I had to ask. I swigged some coffee. “Give me a minute.”
This time the operator at Golden Drug Corp. put me on hold. I waited for her to come back and tell me he was in a meeting, but he came on after 30 seconds. “Jurgen. What is it that you want? I thought I made things clear.”
“I just have one question. Not about your brother.”
A moment. “Ask it.”
“Have you been selling a lot of Dragon’s Breath in the last few months?”
Again he paused to think about it. “Why?”
“The man who disappeared, Abel Martin? He remembers someone asking him to buy Dragon’s Breath shortly before—whatever it was happened to him. And like I told you, there were hundreds of bottles of it in your brother’s apartment.”
“I don’t . . .” He sighed. “Let me call you back.”
I alternated between playing a game on my computer and gazing surreptitiously at Rachel’s legs while waiting. Until she caught me and threw a pen at me. Ten minutes later my phone buzzed.
“Jurgen? There’s apparently been a run on sales of the stuff in the last three months. Also shoplifting. And my marketing VP tells me he placed a large order for the pills last month, for—well, for my brother. He just assumed it was okay.” His tone suggested that the VP was in trouble now. “What does this mean?”
“I’m not sure. If my client agrees, I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“Fine. Just—this doesn’t make sense. What does this have to do with a couple of drug addicts disappearing?”
“Like I said, I’m not sure. I’ll be in touch if I have any more questions.” I hung up.
David Drachon kept a low internet profile. I couldn’t find any photos, and only a few mentions of him related to whatever research he’d been doing at the U of C, which might as well have been in ancient Etruscan. Or even modern Etruscan, if there is such a thing. So I finished my coffee and stood up. “I’m going down to Hyde Park to try getting a picture of David for Abel to look at.”
“Happy stakeout. Don’t forget a big bottle with a wide opening.”
“Always got them.” I headed for the door.
“Remember to throw it away this time!”
“That was just that one time—” But I fled before she could throw another pen at me.
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