Chapter 8 — The Chemist
Barry Anderson grumbled as he made his way through the noisy crowded mall. He didn’t much care for other people, and the hours he spent in this hell hole buying Easter presents for his two brats only served to solidify that opinion. If it were up to him his family would convert to Buddhism so they could stop celebrating all of these stupid, stressful holidays. If he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t have kids or even get married.
Barry believed the world was stacked against smart people. He had a genius IQ, was a member of Mensa, and still, his job at the community college barely provided enough money to cover his bills. If it weren’t for the unending supply of credit cards that came in the mail, he would never have had any fun. Unfortunately, his wife found out about those cards, so now he had to use his superior intellect to make the credit card bills disappear.
As Barry drove to the meeting spot he thought about the irony of his situation. Drugs and gambling had pushed him into debt, yet it was his dealer/bookie Nick that had provided the solution to his problem. Tonight, he was meeting a ‘benefactor’ who would wipe his slate clean in exchange for a little college-level chemistry.
Barry thought that television was for idiots, but he had read a review of a television show where a high school chemistry teacher started cooking meth to cover his medical bills. He hoped that his benefactor wanted the same sort of thing from him. If he could skim off some of the crystal and trade it for cocaine, that would go a long way to reducing his monthly expenses. Or maybe he’d grow fond of crystal.
Steve Stevens flipped through the papers scattered across the picnic bench. He had the personnel files from the chemical warehouse, several maps of the region, three different white papers on the chemical that was spilled, and organization charts of the Milford city government and police department.
Steve was interested to see that Milford was already on the Federal Superfund Cleanup list. Their groundwater had been contaminated by chlorinated solvents years ago. The upside was maybe he could hide this new spill in with the Superfund spill. The downside was Milford had water quality monitoring wells scattered across the city to track the movement of the solvent—or anything else in the groundwater. But the two spills were miles apart, so maybe the old spill would be more of a hindrance than a help.
Steve looked up to see a beat-up sub-compact car pull into the park. He immediately put all but one of the papers back into his briefcase. Glancing down at his watch, the numbers just starting to glow in the fading light, he saw that his egg-head chemist was right on time. That was a good sign. He knew the jerk did cocaine from time to time and he was worried that he would be unreliable.
Steve watched the driver, male, late thirties, approximately six foot four, approximately one hundred ninety pounds, as he got out of the car and start walking towards him. “Hi, I’m Barry Anderson," he said, extending his arm for a handshake as he drew close. “I believe we have an appointment.”
Steve motioned for Barry to sit down, foregoing the handshake.
Barry was all legs and two left feet as he struggled to get his lanky frame seated at the table. “I am afraid I didn’t get your name.”
Steve stared at him, not responding, and counted silently to ten. “I have a series of questions for you, Mr. Anderson. Answer as precisely as you can. If you are not completely sure about an answer you can give me your opinion, but you must tell me it is an opinion. If you don’t know, just tell me that you don’t know. I will be paying for a chemist, not a Ouija board.”
Without giving Barry time to respond, Steve picked up the sheet of paper laying on the table and began the quiz. “First question: compare chlorinated solvents to dioxin.”
Barry did not like this man. It felt like he had been called into the principal’s office for an oral exam because they thought he cheated on a test. But he needed the money, and the question was easy, so he swallowed his pride and answered in a solid, convincing voice. “There is no comparison. One is a volatile organic compound created for dissolving grease and oil. The other is typically a side product from the production of other chemicals. It’s the contaminant that made Agent Orange so deadly.”
Steve was very familiar with Agent Orange. “So, I can’t just go out and buy a fifty-five gallons drum of dioxin?”
“Well, there are several classes of chemicals that are considered dioxin-variants. They have industrial uses, and you could buy a drum of one of them.”
“Are any of these dioxin-variants used to dissolve grease and oil?”
Barry sat up straighter and began to feel more in control of the situation. This idiot didn’t know anything. “No, they are not used as solvents. You typically find them used as a cooling agent for electrical transformers.”
“How can dioxins be neutralized or disposed of?”
Barry wracked his brain on this question. If he was going to be tested on this crap, he should have been given a warning, or at least be allowed a reference book.
“I don’t know that this is the only way to do it," he began, wanting to demonstrate both his humility and the precision of his answers to his potential boss, “but you can burn it at extremely high temperatures in a controlled environment. However, I believe this results in a different set of toxic chemicals being produced, depending on what variant you’re burning.”
Steve began to think Barry might work out. He seemed to know, off the top of his head, information that had taken Steve many hours to find out. Now came the first real question. “Is it possible to chemically transform dioxin-variant chemicals into a chlorinated solvent or some other class of solvent?”
“I couldn’t answer that without doing some research, but I don’t think there would be a cost-effective way to do it.”
“How long would it take you to do the research?”
“Umm … I’m not sure. I’d have to do a literature search, set up a laboratory, and have samples of the specific dioxin-variant and chlorinated solvent you’re talking about. But their chemical makeup is very different, so I doubt you could do it.”
Steve nodded. The next question was a big one. It would show if Barry was willing to help, or if he was going to be a problem. “The chemical transformation would have to take place in the ground. Is that possible?”
Barry looked at Steve with question marks and exclamation points written all over his face. His hands pressed into the rough weathered surface of the picnic table. “Are you asking if can we change a dioxin spill into a solvent spill? Why in the world would you want to do that? You’re changing a rotten, horrible, awful toxin into just a very, very bad toxin, but it’s still an environmental disaster.”
“Okay, can you change a dioxin spill into something that is not a very, very bad toxin?”
Barry shook his head. “No. No way! You don’t want to fuck around with dioxin. It’s a ticking time bomb. It messes up your immune system and dicks around with your hormones. It can cause cancer, diabetes, liver failure, not to mention the birth defects that show up down the line. If there is a dioxin spill you need to sink wells all around it and start pumping out the contaminated groundwater right away. You can’t let it get into the general water supply.”
“So, is there another, less obvious, way to ameliorate or disguise a dioxin spill if I’m willing to throw money at the problem?”
This was not what Barry was expecting. He could feel his face turning red. If it hadn’t been such a struggle to sit down at the fucking picnic table, he would hop up and walk away right now. “No, sir. No fucking way. It’s one thing to manufacture meth for consenting adults. But it is quite another to poison innocent people who just want a glass of clean water. I’ll cook crystal for you, but there is no way I am going to get involved in hiding a dioxin spill, no matter how much money you throw at me.”
Steve had to digest that for a moment. He didn’t know why Barry thought he was going to cook meth, but he may as well run with it.
“You did well, Barry," Steve said, extending his arm for a handshake. “I’m sorry about all of that, but I had to find out what kind of person you are. I see that you’re smart and that you have morals. Maybe not morals that the chief of police would approve of, but certainly morals that are in line with my own. I am responsible for quality control for a fairly large meth operation, and you’re just the kind of guy I want working with me. I don’t need you to do the actual cooking, just monitor the product and make improvements to the process.”
Steve could see that Barry was buying it. “I don’t want you to decide tonight, but I’d like to put you on retainer as soon as possible.” He reached into his right coat pocket and tossed a small bag containing white powder onto the table. “Here’s some coke for you, as an added incentive to take the job. Meet me here this same time tomorrow night with your answer. By the way, you can call me Harry.”
If Barry had examined the bag closely, he would have seen the faint impression of a phone number embossed in the plastic. If Barry had watched closely, he would have seen the tissue Steve used to avoid leaving his fingerprints on the bag.
When the chemist was gone, Steve popped some pain pills for his hip and walked the 2.5 miles to the strip mall where he parked his rental car. It would have been better if Barry could have contributed to the dioxin project, but he didn’t need a goody-two-shoes involved. When the police found him dead from the contaminated cocaine, the incriminating phone number would put the finishing touches on one of Steve’s other assignments. He congratulated himself on killing two birds with one stone.