IX

TOXIC

Too high,
Can’t come down.
Losing my head,
Spinnin’ ’round and ’round.
Do you feel me now?
— BRITNEY SPEARS, TOXIC

OCTOBER 16

DO YOU KNOW WHAT AN office on the 27th floor gets you? A perfect view of the morose, gray-scale cityscape of New Orleans. A miserable little town unless you enjoy binge drinking and flooded sewer water.

“I fucking hate this city,” I say outloud. “I don’t understand what my father found so charming about this dump. Who builds a city next to a river delta below sea level, huh? And we’re supposed to feel bad for these people every time a hurricane hits! Mother nature is screaming “get out of here” every time it rains and the fire department has to break out the paddle boats to rescue people off their roofs. Oh, and don’t get me started about the food. Every restaurant…Has. The. Same. Menu.”

“Umm,” a meek little voice says behind me. “Should I continue with the presentation, Ma’am?”

I turn around and look at my assistant, Angel, and it’s lights, camera, magic…

The world slows all around as Rayvon sings that old hit Shorty you’re my Angel, you’re my darling Angel… Moments stretch apart, as she nervously brushes a lock of hair from her face.

Flashbulbs pop like gunfire. Light captures microsecond stills of the emerald flecks in her green eyes.

The way her teeth are biting down on her lower lip.

Small, perky little breasts.

Perfect, taut skin that I want to peel it off her so I can see if she’s as beautiful underneath—

Androgynous. Delicious. Heroin-chic.

My beautiful Angel.

“Ma’am?”

I snap back to reality. “Oh, I’m sorry, darling. I was thinking about how lovely you look in that sleek little white dress. It’s as if St. John made it to your exact dimensions. I love that asymmetrical neckline.”

She pushes hair back over her ear and shyly looks down at the ground.

She says coyly, “You picked it out.”

“That’s because I know every centimeter of your body and exactly how best to cover, or uncover it. Now—” I walk in front of my desk and lean back on the front edge. One Louis Vuitton crosses over the other.

“Continue, please.”

She quickly nods and says, “Ricin.”

“Ricin,” I repeat with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes. Ricin.” She turns to the large in-wall display. Her powerpoint presentation goes to the next slide. A pile of scattered caster beans on the left, a rich set of bullet points on the right informing me of the many pros of using ricinus communis as a method of murder.

“Let me stop you right there,” I say while sitting forward. “Did you get this idea from ‘Breaking Bad?’”

She clears her throat and tugs at her dress nervously before answering. “That might be from where the idea originated, but—”

“No, no, no, no.” I stand and walk between the set of white arm chairs and across the hand-tufted area rug until my hand reaches out to place on her shoulder. “Angel, sweetie, I know this isn’t exactly your area of expertise but come on. Ricin?” I roll my eyes, give her a pat on the shoulder and walk back to the desk.

“Come over here,” I say and then point at one of the chairs. “Sit there and I’ll educate you.” While she scrambles her way to take a seat, I hop up on the desk and scoot back enough so my legs dangle over the front.

“The show got a few things wrong. Ricin will absolutely fucking kill you in as little time as a few hours, but the symptoms combined with that speed will absolutely be suspicious, and it wouldn’t take long for a competent medical examiner to draw unwanted conclusions. So—”

I hold up one finger. “First, the lethal dose of ricin is so small that your’e likely to kill yourself trying to make it. This also makes it really difficult to handle and use. Throwing a few grams in a sweet and low packet will not work for us.”

She’s taking notes on her iPad. How adorable. Don’t worry. It’ll get ground dust later.

A second finger. “It isn’t completely untraceable. Sure, there isn’t a test that can detect ricin in biological fluids, but the toxin’s effects are so extreme it will certainly alert the white coats that the deceased was poisoned by something, which defeats the whole purpose of using an undetectable poison.”

And a third finger. “Finally, the method of contact greatly affects the symptoms and their severity. For example, ingestion will begin with common gastrointestinal symptoms but the target will quickly begin hemorrhaging out both ends.”

“Oh, my,” she says as she looks up from the screen.

“Oh, yes. Bloody vomit and diarrhea are significant warning signs for a number of concerning infections. As soon as someone mentions hemorrhagic fever, you’ll have every local, state and federal authority crawling all over the hospital, the victim’s home, and anywhere else they had visited in the weeks prior for an explanation.”

She nods her head while saying, “I must admit, I didn’t consider the effect the severity of the sickness’s presentation would have on the investigation.”

“That’s okay, Angel. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I was taught by the best.”

She taps her finger to her chin. “So how do we overcome these challenges? How do we ensure our untraceable poison is actually untraceable?”

“That, my love, is the question of the day. The answer, though it may seem complicated, is rather simple. I need to introduce an undetectable toxin in the exact manner that will elicit a specific set of symptoms. Symptoms that will mimic an infectious agent that is both rampant and dangerous.”

I know what you’re thinking. You’ve seen enough true crime documentaries to know that the more people who know about a crime, the more likely it is that the perpetrator is caught. Normally you would be 100% correct. Angel, however, is more than simply my assistant. She’s my friend. My lover. My only true confidant.

Let’s rewind to 2013.

Her father, Glazkov, moved them into the house next to my mother’s in Chişinău. Angel and I connected instantly and she became my only true friend, something I had actively avoided at that point. After all, personal relationships can get so messy.

Glazkov was a bigot and a drunk. He couldn’t understand why his baby boy was wearing makeup and running around town in dresses, and so he tried beating it out of her, and when that didn’t work he decided more extreme measures were required.

After not seeing her for several days and receiving no response to my texts or calls, I went to her house and knocked on the door. Glazkov answered and when I asked him if she was okay he insisted his son was visiting his grandmother’s and that I was no longer welcome in their home.

Unfortunately for Glazkov I saw the padlocked crawl space under the stairs and the bucket next to it swarming with insects before the door slammed shut in my face. Most people would have called the police. Help, help, my trans friend is being held prisoner.

Those people are idiots.

I did what was necessary. I went home and searched through my mother’s lingerie while she slept off the prior night’s inebriety. Glazkov was a sick little puppet who was always staring at me with hungry eyes and flashing his nicotine-stained teeth. It was a weakness I was more than willing to exploit.

In nothing but black lace and knee high boots I sat down at her vanity and applied foundation to smooth my features, a little blush to warm my cheeks, shadow to darken my eyes, and bright red lipstick to make my lips stand out even in the dark. Wasn’t I such a doll? My mother’s overcoat hung off the edge of her bed. I slipped it on as I went to the kitchen. By the sink was the knife block. I reached for the biggest handle and withdrew the butcher’s blade.

The neighborhood was quiet and the stars were trying to pierce through the haze and light pollution when I returned to Angel’s house, this time to the backdoor. I knocked. Her father answered. I left enough buttons of the coat open so he could see the lattice pattern of the bra.

Being the perverse monster he was, he welcomed me inside and led fourteen year old me upstairs to his bedroom. I made him lay down. He stank of whisky, sweat and cigarettes. I told him to close his eyes. The coat slipped off my shoulders and down my arms. The knife handle was hot with anticipation in my grip as I crawled on top of him. With one hand on his chest for balance, I drove the butcher knife through skin, fat and meat, all the way to the handle. His eyes shot open and he started to scream but my aim was true. When I pulled the knife out of him, his dissected aorta burst. Screams withered into pitiful whimpers and in seconds he was dead. I stabbed him ten more times, you know, just to be sure.

Now, before you go catching feels for me over killing a pedophile who tortured and imprisoned his trans daughter, I’ll admit to you that my actions were not entirely unselfish. When I opened that crawl space door and saw Angel half-starved, barely able to raise her head, and she saw me covered in blood, I knew she was mine forever forever. She would never leave me. She would never betray me. I wanted her to worship me—and she has ever since.

I took Angel home and called my father. The next day a van arrived next door and parked in the garage. A few hours later it was gone and no one ever heard from Glazkov again. He was my first kill, and you know what they say. You never forget your first time.

Angel’s been with me ever since, and look at her, sitting in the chair, staring at me with big doe eyes like I’m a rockstar. She’s like this perfect little queer doll that I get to use however I want, whenever I want. Plus she cooks and, it turns out, is pretty good at making powerpoint presentations.

“Ricin isn’t the right direction,” I say, “but you have given me an idea.” Hopping off the desk, I order her to follow me with my hand. She jumps up and is quick behind me as we move through the office and to the door. My hand opens it and I wait, letting her scurry through first.

Walking ahead, I say, “We can’t have Vanessa eat or drink ricin, or any toxin for that matter, because the symptoms will scream EBOLA!”

All my employees are gone for the day. The lights are dimmed but still on as we navigate the hallway, past a row of dark rooms, until we wind our way around to a security door, and through it to reception.

“No,” I say with a little grin crawling across my lips. “What we need, my darling Angel, is for the symptoms to whisper covid… covid… covid…”

Angel beeps, “Oh!”

There’s a rather impressive aquarium in the center of the room. All sorts of little creatures are floating around in the salt water. A dozen different species of fish, some because they’re cute, others because they clean up the feces the cute fish release into the water. More to the point, there is an impressive shelf of coral running the length of the glass; and even more specifically, take note of the several beautiful green bulbs of the species palythoa toxicai gently waving in the slow moving current generated by the pump.

“My brother wasted twenty grand on this aquarium,” I say as my arms cross under my chest. “When I took over the Foundation, I thought it was the dumbest thing ever and even considered getting rid of it but it just goes to show you, Angel. Sometimes a solution is staring you straight in the face.”

She looks closer at the glass, as if she’s trying to figure out what little critter inside will prove useful to our current predicament.

My fingers snap. “Go back to her file. You said that she was a heavy s—”

“—smoker,” Angel finishes my sentence. “Yes. One second.” Angel makes several quick swipes and taps on her iPad screen before turning it around to reveal a black and white photograph of Vanessa Byrne with a cigarette between her fingers.

“She has a pack and a half habit these days, Ma’am. And look in her other hand, at the etched case. She self rolls her cigarettes. Or someone who works for her.”

I bend down in front of the aquarium and stare at the coral glowing in the ultraviolet light. The longer I stare at all the little petals and appendages, the more I imagined Vanessa Byrne choking to death on her own lung fluids. My fingers rap across the glass, causing a few of the fish to quickly zip away. My eyes roll left and up, finding Ange’s looking down at me. My mouth hurts because I’m smiling so hard.

A little giggle slips out of my mouth, followed by four curious words.

“A plan is forming.”