Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

water in their digestive systems.”
    “They’re not selective about what they eat?”
    “No. If the plankton is in what we call a ‘bloom’ stage, there’ll be a lot of plankton in their systems. If the level of toxin is eighty micrograms, then it has reached the alert standard.” Ervin crossed his legs and laid an elegant hand on the top knee. “But that’s well below the level at which people get sick; they develop real symptoms at a thousand micrograms. When it gets into the multi-thousands, then people begin to get seriously sick. Last spring we measured twenty thousand micrograms at Drake’s Estero—just north of Stinson Beach.”
    Liz was quiet for a moment, letting it sink in. Finally she said, “Twenty thousand micrograms!”
    The doctor nodded. Liz said: “If one mussel in a given area had that much toxin in it, would it follow that most of the others in the area would?”
    “It would vary with the size of the mussel, of course.”
    “But if you gathered mussels at Drake’s Estero last spring, you’d have been almost certain to gather—”
    “—a very deadly harvest,” finished the doctor.
    “Do the effects vary with each individual who eats mussels contaminated with the toxin?”
    “Yes. They vary with the number of mussels eaten, the size of the mussels, the concentration of the toxin, and the individual’s tolerance. People who eat a lot of shellfish tend to have more tolerance.”
    “Such as Bay Area natives.”
    “Possibly.”
    “Would you say that tourists would be particularly vulnerable to the effects of the toxin?”
    “Undoubtedly, if they came from inland areas. Unless, of course, they had their mussels flown in from one of the coasts, as restaurants do. But a tourist like that probably wouldn’t be at Pier 39.” He got a laugh on that one.
    “Dr. Ervin, why is it that the mussels are only dangerous at certain times?”
    “We don’t know, really. Our educated guess is that environmental factors come together to produce favorable growing conditions for the plankton. Sunny periods with calm seas, for instance, may be healthy for them. But no one knows for sure. So far we’ve had no luck in trying to predict the contamination, except from May 1 to October 31; that’s the normal quarantine.”
    “Is it unusual to have a mussel quarantine in April?”
    “It’s not common but it happens. It’s not impossible we might even have a quarantine in January. It’s simply related to how much of the plankton is available.”
    Liz sat down abruptly. I got up with a sigh, ready to play one of the games lawyers play. She hadn’t asked a word about the symptoms, so that the drama could come from the victims, the doctor who’d attended them, and the people who’d watched them get sick. It was up to me to take the sting out of the testimony to come. “Dr. Ervin,” I began, “is the shellfish neurotoxin a fast-acting poison?”
    “Very fast. It acts within minutes.”
    “How does the poison work?”
    “It acts on the human central nervous system, eventually causing a respiratory paralysis that makes it impossible to get air into the body.”
    I took him through the poison’s progress, symptom by symptom, and then asked, “Is there an antidote for it?”
    “Not an antidote. But there is a cure.”
    “And what is the cure?”
    “An iron lung.” Damn him, he got another laugh. He had an ironic delivery that could turn the simplest statement into black humor.
    “Is the paralysis reversible?”
    “Yes. If you can keep a victim breathing, he’ll probably be all right.”
    “You’ve studied the cases from Full Fathom Five?”
    “Certainly.”
    “And is that what happened?”
    “In six of the eleven cases, yes. Mr. Baskett didn’t respond to treatment. But six people were easily revived, and four had eaten only one or two or three of the mussels—they had seen other people get sick, had begun having symptoms themselves, and had stopped eating. They were not seriously ill.”
    “Thank you, Doctor.”
    When the judge called the morning recess, I headed for the ladies’ room to wash my sweaty hands. The previous two had been damaging enough, but Liz’s next miracle was twenty-three-year-old Alice Jones, the very picture of Pepsi-generation wholesomeness. She had light brown hair, blue eyes, and a slight Oklahoma twang. She’d been in San Francisco on her honeymoon when she’d found herself in a restaurant suddenly transformed into a Bosch landscape; I was