by Dick Cluster
Alex watched it happen in slow motion, in the helpless way you watch your favorite coffee cup crash to the floor. The steaming thermos tilted back toward Kramer, who stiffened his arms by instinct, trying to get the thing away from him before the supercooled liquid started pouring out. Then he let go, right over Alex’s head. Foster leaped from the other side and grabbed. A splash of liquid nitrogen shot upward, a fizzy frothing streak. Alex rolled away, shutting his eyes. He felt his hair stiffen and tum to icicles against his head. When he looked back, the thermos sat on the floor, steaming. Foster’s big hands came down to screw on the cap. Then Foster left the marrow behind as he plowed ahead into the kitchen, where Kramer must have gone.
Between Foster’s legs Alex could see Gordon Kramer, crouched, a small serrated steak knife in his hand. Kramer lunged forward, but Foster dodged and got him by the wrist. Foster twisted the doctor’s arm behind his back, then took one hand off long enough to rip the kitchen phone cord out of the wall. He pushed Kramer back into the living room, kicked his feet out from under him, straddled him, and started tying him up.
“Oh yeah, I’m the real Paul Foster,” he said between heavy breaths, whipping the plastic cord around Gordon Kramer’s wrists. “You better believe it. Now it’s my turn with that stuff.” Kramer wasn’t fighting. He started to shake and moan, then convulsed with loud, racking sobs. Alex struggled to free his own hands, but couldn’t. Kramer was out of the picture but something wasn’t right. Alex started wriggling toward the squat, silvery thermos. Foster finished with the wrists and turned around to work on Kramer’s feet.
“You think you fucking invented me,” Foster pronounced. He tightened his last knot with a hard, jerking motion and stood up, brushing his palms together in a satisfied way. “You think you invented me,” he repeated more calmly, “but I was always out there. You think you’re the only one Jay Harrison ever did wrong?”
Alex had managed to get to the thermos, and now he flipped on his side and curled up, wrapping his thighs and belly around the vessel that held Linda Dumars’s suspended cells. Foster laughed and tugged Alex’s head back by the hair, just above where the fierce cold had been. His scalp felt raw. Foster tugged backward, his knee behind Alex’s spine. Alex wouldn’t let go.
Foster said, “You think I should turn that torch on you, or break your neck, which?” He yanked at Alex’s bound feet. Alex let his thighs be pulled away.
“Now I’ve got what I’ve been after,” Foster said. He lifted the container carefully, smoothing his thumbs along the shiny sides. “Now the both of you just stay here and keep out of trouble. From here on it’s all between me and Dr. Jay.”
34. For You, Doctor
From weakness and drugs, Linda Dumars had slept most of Day Number Two away. Then there’d been last night, coughing till she didn’t care what happened to her as long as she could rest. But she’d insisted on being awakened in time to call the kids before they left for school.
Tom hadn’t been there, only Juanita. She hadn’t asked about Tom, and nobody had said. Probably Tom hadn’t been home all night. Juanita had put Claire on one phone and Nicky on the other. Claire had talked about something— jam on her cereal. Linda had said that sounded awful, though she hadn’t possessed the energy to care whether it had been jam or glue or Nicky’s salamander.
Afterward, that not-caring had made her unreasonably sad. Thousands of times before she’d listened to Claire’s energetic rambling with half an ear, but now there might be so few times left. It had taken every ounce of her energy to tell the kids that soon Daddy would bring them in to see her, just through the plastic curtain, because she wouldn’t be well enough yet for them to come into the room. It had taken all her energy to keep from telling some part of the truth. After that effort she’d slept again, for the remainder of the morning it seemed.
Now it was Day Three, a sunny afternoon. Nobody had kept any promises. Now Harrison was lecturing her. She’d asked him for a straightforward presentation of her chances. He’d said her condition was stable for now, and he’d started talking about the long run. It was hard to believe in the long run. She fought to keep her mind from wandering.
“We’ve activated a match search, of course. We did that right away. We might get you a match within about five weeks. If we have to wait that long, your debilitated state could mean it’ll be a tough fight getting past the graft versus host disease. If we recover your own marrow, on the other hand, you won’t be myelosuppressed as long, and we won’t need to worry about the GVH because we’ll be dealing with autologous cells.”
Even when she concentrated, there wasn’t anything in his words. She knew all this. She knew Caesar conquered Gaul. She knew there wasn’t any real-number square root of negative one. Yvonne had come in with the doctor, but she wasn’t standing by the bed. She was pretending to fuss with the oxygen tank and whatever all those other emergency devices were. The doctor looked around uncomfortably, as if he wished the nurse weren’t there or he wished she’d do his talking for him, Linda couldn’t tell which. He started to say something more but seemed to be tongue-tied for once. He took a step closer and gulped a breath of the supersterile air. His cheeks and eyes puffed out, like a toy Claire had, a rubber head whose features you could move around that way.
I’m drifting off into a very weird place, Linda thought. She had never done any psychedelics or downers, but she wondered whether this was what they were like. Or was this what it was like to drift into death? No, I won’t. She ought to be thinking positive thoughts about her future— about getting divorced and where she and Nicky and Claire would live. “That’s why I’ve overstepped my medical role,” Harrison was saying. “I need to tell you about a conversation I had when I went out drinking with your husband late last night.”
Linda pressed a button to raise up her back. “Well, tell me,” she said irritably. It felt good to be irritable. “Don’t stand there beating around the bush.” The top half of the bed rose. She felt like a building block being raised into position by a crane. She wanted to be upright when she found out it was Tom who was killing her, just as she’d thought.
“He told me some of what I’ve been hearing already: that you two were about to break up when you first got diagnosed. He said he was having a serious affair then, he was feeling estranged from you, he was feeling as if he didn’t really know his kids at all. He knew all about babies and toddlers and preschoolers, but he didn’t know anything about his own children, he felt. He said the first diagnosis brought you two back together, more or less closing ranks against the disease, but that was just temporary. This recurrence had, if anything, had the opposite effect. He basically told me he didn’t want to have to take care of the sick and the dying at home as well as at work. He feels you don’t much like him, either. He thinks you’re always fantasizing about other men.”
“Does he?” Linda said. The doctor was presenting Tom’s version of their marriage with clinical detachment. If Tom had her cells, still had them, alive, what did her doctor or her husband expect her to do? Plead?
Tom liked her to plead. There was the time years back when he’d sat on her car keys, when he’d claimed she was about to sneak out someplace and leave the kids alone in their cribs. It was really him who’d done that— snuck off with the fawning intern, the one who’d later written her the letter of apology about how “we women all learn from our mistakes.” Well, she’d refused to plead for the car keys. But she’d plead now, oh yes she would.
“Alex— that’s the private detective I hired— tells me lately Tom’s been having a relationship with the mother of a former patient of his. Yet I have to say that despite everything, Tom seemed to be worried sick about your condition. During our conversation he drank like a fish. He was on the edge of tears. I’m being as frank as I can. The opinion I came to was that he might conceivably have arranged for you to die if he’d stumbled on a simple and safe way and convinced himself it was for everybody’s good. But I didn’t believe he would have planned
anything as complicated as this. That was last night. Then something happened that I don’t understand. Someone who witnessed our conversation— your husband’s and mine— was killed. I thought you ought to know all this. Maybe you can tell me something that will help.”
Someone was killed? The three words seared her. They cut a path of pain, but also they sealed her juices in. Someone else had died over this, over her stolen blood-making cells. She felt this unknown person’s company and loss at one and the same time. “Oh my God,” she heard her shadow of a voice say. “You think that Tom—”
The phone rang, interrupting her. By habit she reached out her hand.
“Hello?” she said faintly. With her other hand she rubbed the green plastic thing around her gums. “Hello?” she said again.
“I want to speak to Dr. Harrison.” It was a deep male voice she didn’t know. She thought it had some South in it. “To Dr. Harrison in person. It’s urgent. They told me he was with you.”
She said, “It’s for you, Doctor. But can’t it wait?”
“Hello, Jay Harrison,” the doctor said. He listened without speaking. It couldn’t wait, apparently. Some other emergency. And somebody who witnessed his conversation with Tom had been killed. Linda started to cough again. Yvonne looked up and took a step toward her bed. Harrison moved his lips, but Linda couldn’t hear over the barking going on in her lungs and throat. Now the doctor was bouncing on the balls of his feet. He put down the phone and stared at her. She tried to breathe normally.
“That was a man claiming to know where your marrow is,” Harrison told her. “I’m going to meet him right now.”
“What?” Linda felt ready to jump up and go with him. Blood hammered in her temples, and adrenaline surged through her heart. But everything was dreamlike. “A man? What man?”
“His name is Paul Foster. I think… I’m afraid all along this has had to do with me, not with you at all. Yvonne, get somebody else to check the other charts. I’ll call in as soon as I can.”
“Do you want me to notify the police?” Yvonne asked.
“No. He wants me by myself. Just go on as if it didn’t happen. But I think, Linda, we’ll have you back together soon.”
He rushed out through the portal, leaving the two women staring at each other, leaving those words trailing behind.
Downstairs, though nobody knew it, Mary Forziati tried again, pounding her fists against the closet door.
35. Hold the Knife
For a while Kramer kept shaking, convulsed by his spasms of shame and defeat. Alex felt like doing the same, but instead he rolled onto his side, drew up his knees, and tried to stand. He knew his bonds were only telephone cord— just plastic with tiny copper filaments inside. He could find something to cut them on, if he could get upright and hop around. If he could rock himself over onto his knees, then he should be able to stand.
He threw his weight that way but kept falling back onto his side. Not enough momentum. Make yourself insubstantial, he thought. He felt too fucking insubstantial already, insubstantial and stupid. But each time he rocked, he got a little further. It was like rocking a tire out of a rut. Finally he got up far enough to wedge his right elbow under his side for support. His arm felt wrenched half out of its socket. The cord sliced hard into the back of his wrist. He rested with that pain while Kramer’s sobs subsided into gasps, the way a baby’s would. With a big push Alex managed to get to his knees. He saw Kramer blinking at him. Now the only thing that kept him from standing was that his legs were crossed above the ankles. Foster had trussed his turkey well.
“That was really him, really Jay’s Foster?” Kramer asked in an unsteady, used-up way.
Alex pointed his left foot and flexed his right, trying to slide his left ankle over his right heel. It wouldn’t go. He stopped and tried to stretch the cord by pulling his legs apart. Direct the energy just where you need it, he thought. Leave the rest empty. Breathe out the pain. Finally he got the one foot around the other. He took time to steady himself. If he fell and landed sideways, he’d have to struggle onto his knees all over again. When Kramer repeated the question, he said, “Yes, Jay’s Foster, that was him.”
“I don’t… this isn’t making any sense. I can’t— up until I drove off the road, I thought I had it all under control.”
“Under control,” Alex said. Hogtied on the floor, the doctor still couldn’t understand how come he wasn’t in charge. Shifting his weight forward, Alex got the tips of his toes under him. He straightened his legs, shifted his weight back, and came down easily on his heels. He was standing up, no problem. The kitchen would be the best place to find something sharp. He bunny-hopped to the doorway and leaned against it. “Did you kill Sandra Stewart?” he demanded. “Was that part of keeping it under control?”
“I didn’t mean to do that. She wasn’t going to get hurt either. But then it got down to her or me. I couldn’t let her go to the police. If it came down to me or you— or me or the patient— you’d kill me, right?”
Alex hopped through the kitchen doorway, not answering Kramer’s question.
“Did I do it for nothing?” Kramer called after him. “She was right? You were the one on the beach? You came to the bar to spy on us? You were playing with me? Why?”
“I’m going to find a knife,” Alex said, “and then you’re going to help cut me loose, so we can try to make it one murder on your conscience and not two. Linda Dumars deserves her marrow back, not to have it be the prize in some kind of grudge match going on between Foster and Jay.” He didn’t know why that should make any difference to Kramer. But what could he give the man? He could answer his question. He said, “I was in the bar because I followed Jay and Tom Dumars there earlier. I wanted to ask the bartender about them. I didn’t recognize her or you, not then.”
Gordon Kramer jerked his knees up, folding into a ball, so that Alex thought he was about to start sobbing again. Instead he started to laugh, though the laughter was on the edge of wailing.
“Ohmygod,” Kramer said finally, straightening again with a jerk. “That’s tragic. I mean, that’s really high tragic. That bar. I met Sandy because I got in the habit of going there. I should say Bobby got in the habit of going there. He went there because that pathetic place was the site of my big defeat. Where things came apart. It seemed like a good place to start over, take a different fork of the road. You followed Jay there? I didn’t know he made a habit of the dump.”
Who was Bobby?, Alex wanted to know. He had a Jay, a Tom, Deborah’s husband Richard, there wasn’t any Bob. It didn’t matter. Foster was who mattered, and the only way to get after Foster was to get loose. He hopped into the kitchen, looking for the knife Kramer had tried to use. He didn’t see it. He saw two wooden drawers under a counter. He hopped to the first and turned his back to it, closing his fingers around the knob so he could pull. Inside, his fingers recognized the blade of a knife.
Kramer was talking again, not as loud. Alex strained to make out the words as he slowly closed his fingers around the handle of the knife. Kramer was still going on about that bar. “HoJo’s,” Kramer muttered. “That’s where Jay took me. His idea of kindness— give me the bad news in some anonymous dump, neutral turf, where I didn’t have to walk out past anybody that knew he just turned me down. He took me there to tell me I didn’t have his high seriousness of purpose about getting people well. All that crap. So Bobby went back there to drink. Bobby went back there the way you can’t keep your tongue off the tooth that hurts.”
“Bobby?” Alex said this time. He started bouncing back toward the living room, the knife behind him in his right fist.
“Yeah, Bobby. My alter ego. Maybe I can plead insanity, dime-store schizophrenia, multiple personalities. My Bobby side, it was only my Bobby side that did all this. Would you back me up on that, if I do what you want me to do?”
“Yes,” Alex said, knowing it was a lie. He stood over Kramer, who looked up at him out of wet, shiny eyes.
“Sure you would. Te
ll me another. But maybe I am crazy. I’m a gambler. I bet six years, more, on the wrong horse. All gamblers are crazy— when they lose.”
Kramer started to giggle. The giggles went back toward sobs. Alex just wanted him to hold the knife. He had to sound sympathetic. He said, “You felt that Jay led you on, told you he had a future for you? And then he kicked you in the teeth?”
Kramer sniffled, and then from some hidden reserve he got some of that old sarcasm back. “Crazy when they lose,” he said. “Brilliant when they win. My late, great father was a doctor, the old-fashioned kind. Let’s put that in my plea. He doled out prescriptions and aspirin, and told people what was going to kill them and what specialist to go see. I was going to be on the next step up, the frontiers of science. All my eggs were in that basket. Six years of postgrad and five big figures in loans. When the eggs break, make an omelet. That’s what my father used to say. Snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.” Lying on his back, Kramer closed his eyes. Sarcasm had faded into self-pity. Alex wanted to throttle him, but didn’t. Kramer didn’t sound finished yet. Alex gave him one more minute to get it all off his chest.
“So I was going to start over, in a big way, three hundred grand in cash and all my bridges burned. Find myself. Oh yes, and leave a cloud over Jay. Nothing that could be proved, but he’d be suspected, him and this Foster. Do you know how I learned to put Bobby together? From Jay. He told me how to make false identities. He liked to be asked about his wild-oats days. He made it sound so full of that high moral purpose and fun too. I never, I just never really thought I could get caught.”
“Gordon,” Alex said. “I can’t change that. But I want you to cut through this cord with the knife I’ve got behind my back.”
“You cut mine first,” Kramer said.
“No thanks. You did get caught. Now it’s about getting yourself the best deal.”
