“What’s wrong with it?” Jack had been finding it hard to concentrate on Joey or the food. His mind had been on Kolabati and how she had made him feel last night. From there it flowed to the odor that had crept into the apartment and her bizarre reaction to it. His thoughts kept drifting away from Joey, and so it was easy to appear laid-back about the analysis. He had been playing everything low-key for Joey. No big thing—just see if there’s anything really useful in it.

“Nothing wrong, exactly.” Joey had a bad habit of talking with his mouth full. Most people would swallow, then talk before the next bite; Joey preferred to sip his Coke between swallows, take another big bite, then talk. As he leaned forward, Jack leaned back. “But it ain’t gonna help you shit.”

“Not a laxative? What will it help me do? Sleep?”

He shook his head and filled his mouth with fries. “Not a chance.”

Jack drummed his fingers on the grease-patinaed, wood-grained Formica. Damn! It had occurred to him that the tonic might be some sort of sedative used to put Grace into a deep sleep so she wouldn’t make a fuss when her abductors—if in fact she had been abducted—came by and snatched her. So much for that possibility. He waited for Joey to go on, hoping he would finish his Whopper first. No such luck.

“I don’t think it does anything,” he said around his last mouthful. “It’s just a crazy conglomeration of odd stuff. None of it makes sense.”

“In other words, somebody just threw a lot of junk together to sell for whatever ails you. Some sort of Dr. Feelgood tonic.”

Joey shrugged. “Maybe. But if that’s the case, they could have done it a lot cheaper. Personally, I think it was put together by someone who believed in the mixture. There are crude flavorings and a twelve percent alcohol vehicle. Nothing special—I had them pegged in no time. But there was this strange alkaloid that I had the damnedest—”

“What’s an alkaloid? Sounds like poison.”

“Some of them are, like strychnine; others you take every day, like caffeine. They’re almost always derived from plants. This one came from a doozy. Wasn’t even in the computer. Took me most of the morning to track it down.” He shook his head. “What a way to spend a Saturday morning.”

Jack smiled to himself. Joey was going to ask a little extra for this job. That was okay. If it kept him happy, it was worth it.

“So where’s it from?” he asked, watching with relief as Joey washed down the last of his lunch.

“It’s from a kind of grass.”

“Dope?”

“Naw. A non-smoking kind called durba grass. And this particular alkaloid isn’t exactly a naturally occurring thing. It was cooked in some way to add an extra amine group. That’s what took me so long.”

“So it’s not a laxative, not a sedative, not a poison. What is it?”