“Right,” Gregor said.
Alexandra was back with the coffee, in two white ceramic mugs that looked a little uneven. “These are hand thrown by the Joy Hope Women’s Cooperative in Lagos, Nigeria,” she said. “The Aubergine Harpsichord supports women’s cooperative enterprises throughout the developing world.”
“You hungry?” Brian asked.
“A little,” Gregor said.
Brian handed Alexandra both the menus. “Give us a couple of western omelets.” He turned to Gregor. “They’re vegetarian but not vegan, so no ham but a lot of cheese.” He looked back at Alexandra. “And no more lectures, sweetheart. Please.”
Alexandra rolled her eyes and wandered off, and Gregor noticed that she hadn’t written down anything they’d said. Didn’t waitresses carry order books anymore?
“Can you grow coffee in the Brazilian rain forest?” he asked Brian.
“How should I know?” Brian said. “If you really want ananswer, you should talk to Kitty, who owns this place. She actually knows what she’s talking about. Alexandra is, well, Alexandra.”
“I see.” Gregor took a sip of his coffee. It tasted like coffee. He knew people who could tell the difference between coffees, and who treated drinking coffee like some people treated drinking wine, but he wasn’t one of them.
“So,” Brian said, “you want to tell me what’s going on exactly?”
Gregor nodded. “Mark DeAvecca, the boy I came up to see, was admitted to the hospital last night. I was there when he convulsed by the way. I’d gone to his dorm to see if I could ask him a few more questions, and when I got there he was throwing up everywhere and whipping around like he was being electrocuted.”
“Drug overdose?”
“No.” Gregor reached into his pocket, got out his wallet, and got the folded-up sheets of paper he had put in behind his credit cards the night before. They were bad notes, but at least they were notes. He flattened out the papers against the table. “At least as of three o’clock this morning,” he said, “every drug test done on Mark DeAvecca came back negative, except for one.”
“Ah,” Brian said.
“And that one was for caffeine.”
Brian Sheehy blinked. “You did say caffeine.”
“Yes, I did, and it’s not as trivial as it sounds. I wrote down all the numbers, but the bottom line is that he had enough caffeine in him to kill him. The only reason it didn’t kill him was because he vomited out a lot of it. In chunks. In the form of pieces of caffeine tablets, the kind of tiling kids take to stay up during exam week.”
“Jesus Christ. What did he think he was doing?”
“Well,” Gregor said, “what he wasn’t doing was getting high. I need to find out exactly what sort of symptoms caffeine can cause, but I’ve been wondering, ever since I heard this, if caffeine could explain everything people have been saying about Mark up here. The high anxiety levels, for instance, and the sweating. And the memory losses. And the blackouts.”
“I’ve never heard of anybody having blackouts from too much caffeine,” Brian said.
“Neither have I, but we’re both thinking of people who have been drinking lots of coffee, not people who’ve been ingesting these tablets. Maybe wholesale. We’re talking about a level of caffeine use here that exceeds even the worst coffee habit by a factor of ten.”
“But what did he think he was doing?” Brian asked again. “Did he decide he never wanted to have to sleep at all? What?”
“I think we should consider the possibility that he didn’t take them on purpose,” Gregor said.
“You mean he took some and forgot about it and then took more?”
“Maybe,” Gregor said, “but I’m thinking more along the lines of somebody giving them to him without his knowing it or without his knowing what they were.”
Brian took a deep breath. “Is that what he says happened?”
“No,” Gregor said. “At the time I left, he still hadn’t said anything except hello to his mother and then only for a split second. I’m speculating here.”
“It doesn’t make much sense,” Brian said. “I’m going to have to look up the particulars on caffeine poisoning, if there is such a thing, but the simple fact is that people drink coffee by the gallonsful without dying from it, or having convulsions, or having any of those other symptoms you were talking about. Except for the anxiety maybe. The coffee jitters.”
“I know.”
“Did he have some kind of allergy to the stuff?” Brian asked.