I nodded, then pointed toward the rear of the rig. As Tony scooted into the back to open the rear doors, I reached for the Macy’s bag between my feet; it was as warm as mother’s milk.
After the rear door squeaked open and Tony had dragged the stretcher onto the walk, I joined them under the awning. “Follow my lead,” I said. “I’ll do the talking until I hand it over to Jan.”
Her eyes were moons of apprehension. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Tell the truth.”
“About what?”
“This.” I held up the favors she’d brought to the party. “All set, boys and girls?”
The nods were hesitant at best. I walked to the door and turned the knob. It opened without resistance. I paid silent homage to Clarissa Crandall and motioned for the others to precede me. By the time Tony and his stretcher were rolling toward the library, it was 3:15. I was tired, Jan was scared, and Tony was Tony.
I got out my gun. When I got to the door, I opened it. The lights were low; the fire was well on its way to coals. The music was Sinatra, and the mood was a match for the game being played on the couch.
Richard Sands was shoeless and in shirtsleeves, which was a break—businessmen feel vulnerable without their brogans. The spaghetti straps of Clarissa’s gown had slipped from her shoulders, and only the jut of her heavy breasts kept the bodice from falling to her lap. Her hair was as mussed as her dress, but her eyes seemed lit less by lust than artifice. Sands was so intent on seduction he didn’t hear me, but Clarissa knew the moment I came through the door. The expression that began as relief that I’d arrived on time turned to misgiving when she saw the masked marauders in my wake.
Her gasp alerted her swain. Thwarted, then startled, Sands looked over the back of the couch. “Tanner,” he said as he squinted me into focus. “Who let you in here? What the fuck do you think you’re—”
When Tony rolled the stretcher out from behind my back, Sands lost his train of thought.
“Sorry about the osculation interruptus,” I said. “It’s time to talk.”
Sands abandoned Clarissa with a dispatch that disconcerted her and bent to slip on his shoes. “I don’t do business down here. Call my people and make an appointment.”
When his wing tips were knotted and his attentions were back my way, I held my gun where he could see it. “Let’s be spontaneous tonight.”
His eyes flicked toward the desk.
I wriggled the hand with the gun in it. “I’m sure there are a dozen alarm systems within reach, but leave them be till you hear me out. I’m not going to hurt anyone, or steal anything; I’m just going to tell you a story and then ask you some questions. If you answer them, that will be the end of it.”
“And if I tell you to go to hell?” The words were crisp and unconcerned.
“My assistant will perform a minor medical procedure.” I looked at Tony. “This gentleman is a trained technician, just so you’ll know.”
“A what procedure?” Sands said, his voice rising like a kite.
“We’ll get to the specifics in a minute. First, you need to lie down on the stretcher.”
Sands’ brow became a thunderhead. “Like hell.”
I waved the gun again. “Don’t make me tap your skull and drag you—it wouldn’t be healthy for either of us.”
Sands could barely rein his pique. “You spend too much time watching TV. Do you know what I can do to you for this?”
Probably because she was afraid her boyfriend was nearing apoplexy, Clarissa whispered something in his ear. Sands fumed for a moment longer, then looked at me again. “What happens when I’m on the stretcher?”
“We strap you down.”
“Then what?”
I looked at Jan. “She tells you a story.”
“What kind of story?”
“A true story.”
“What about?”
“Nicky Crandall and the Healthways Corporation.”
His sneer slacked a bit. “I know all about the Healthways Corporation. I own the damned thing.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
He decided to try the benign approach. “Now look. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’ve clearly gotten some misinformation. Lots of people resent the hell out of me, you know. They spread a dozen rumors a day trying to bring me down by making me sound like some kind of crook. So if that’s what this is, let’s calm down and discuss it. I’m sure we can straighten out any—”
I shook my head. “No discussion. This is a monologue. For once in your life, you’re not the star.”
Sands reddened to the color of rhubarb. “If this is some kind of kidnapping, I warn you I have—”
I was so used to his threats I finished it for him. “You have a veritable army at your disposal, and they’ll hunt me to the ends of the earth and I’ll never get away with it. Well, kidnapping isn’t what this is about—after you hear us out, we’ll leave you to your business.” I winked at Clarissa. “If your partner is so inclined.”
Sands was finally operating at speed, and he had a revelation. “You’re part of this,” he said to Clarissa. “You have to be.”
She was so hurt by his charge I tried to come to her rescue. “She doesn’t have any idea what this is about. Neither do the others. I’m the only one who’s read the script, and that’s because I wrote it.” I looked at my watch, then flashed the gun again. “Stretcher, please.”
“You must be insane.”
A rage that had been festering for a long time, from long before Tom Crandall died, erupted without warning. “You know what I hate most about guys like you?” I asked, then answered my own question. “You don’t have the guts to do the dirty work yourselves. You hire guys like Chadwick to do it—fleece the little guy out of his job or his retirement plan or his life savings—while you hide in the penthouse and the boardroom, so if someone blows the whistle you can pretend you didn’t know about it. Well, that may wash with the government, or the courts, but it doesn’t wash with me. You’re responsible for every trick the Chadwicks of your world come up with, Sands, because you hire them for one thing—ruthlessness. You know it, and so do they. What you want is for them to sacrifice anything and anyone for the bottom line, and that’s exactly what they do. Well, this time you went too far.” I let my outburst simmer before I finished up. “Now get on that fucking stretcher.” My revolver was aimed at his sternum.
Sands thought about it for so long I thought I was going to have to get rough. As I was trying to remember how hard you have to hit someone to render them unconscious but not for very long, Sands walked to the stretcher and lay down on it. “This better be quick. And you’d better be lucky, because after it’s over, I’m coming after you with all I’ve got.”
I looked at Tony. “Strap him.”
With consummate ease, Tony flipped the restraints across Sands’ limbs and chest. When Tony signaled all was well, I put my shopping bag on the floor and took out one of the smaller bags inside it. The slick and sloppy feel was so repellent it made me want to change my mind.
I looked at Jan. “Tell him what this is.”
She blinked and cleared her throat, making her mask a balloon of white. “Blood.” The word was blunt and portentous.
“Whose blood?”
“Nicky’s.”
“Who’s Nicky?” Sands grumbled from his litter, eyes locked on the eddying blob of blood I cradled in my hand.
“My boyfriend. He’s … got a thing about his body. He saves, like, his fingernails, and hair, and piss and stuff.”
“And this,” I prompted, jiggling the bag like Jell-O.
She nodded. “The fridge is full of it.”
“When did he extract this particular batch?”
“It’s marked on that piece of tape. A few weeks ago, I think.”
I nodded to confirm it. “Tell Mr. Sands a little more about Nicky, so he can see how he fits into the scheme. For example, Nicky has a mental problem, doesn’t he?”
> “He’s a schiz,” Jan said simply.
“Does he have a job?”
She shook her head.
“So you don’t have a lot of money.”
“Not after rent and medication. Clozapine costs a fortune.”
“But Nicky has a doctor, doesn’t he?”
She shrugged. “Sort of. He saw Dr. Marlin after we got back to town, I know.”
I started warming to a role I’d once played in court. “Dr. Marlin is a Healthways psychiatrist, right?”
Jan shrugged. “I guess so.”
“How long ago did Nicky see him?”
“About three months.”
“How did Nicky feel about Dr. Marlin?”
“He didn’t like him.”
“Why not?”
“He said the doctor was trying to poison him. Fill him with microbes and stuff. I don’t know if it’s true or not,” Jan concluded ingenuously. “It’s hard to know what Nicky means, sometimes.”
Sands’ laugh was bilious. “You’re all crazy. Jesus. Why don’t we just adjourn to Langley-Porter?”
I looked at Jan again. “Dr. Marlin did some follow-up with Nicky, didn’t he?”
“He sent Ron and Don around to see him, if that’s what you mean.”
“A Healthways ambulance crew.”
Jan nodded. “They wanted Nicky real bad, but I don’t think they caught him. Nicky’s tricky when he has to be,” she added proudly.
“Someone else has been looking for Nicky, am I right?”
Jan frowned, then brightened, glad to be accomplished. “Dracula was after him, too.”
I reached in my pocket with my free hand, then looked at Sands. “If the nickname doesn’t ring a bell, maybe it will if I tell you that Dracula is the young man Healthways sends out into the Tenderloin to hunt up donors for the Fremont Memorial Blood Bank. He doesn’t hustle just anyone; he works from a list given to him by Lex Chadwick. Here’s the current crop of recruits.” I showed Sands the paper I’d taken from Dracula as he lay unconscious at Vinny’s Video. “See? There’s Nicky, right near the top.”
Sands read the paper, then looked at Clarissa. “What’s this guy to you?”
The words were lemony in her mouth. “My brother-in-law.”
“How does he matter?”
“I don’t know.”
Sands looked back at me. “Am I supposed to know what this blood stuff means?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I don’t.” The words were thick and too believable.
“I guess that remains to be seen,” I said, then held out the bag of blood. Tony reached in his shirt and took out two plastic packets. After he tore them open, he extracted tubes and clamps and needles and a second plastic bag.
When the paraphernalia was laid out on the coffee table, I handed Tony the bag of Nicky’s blood, and he began the transfer to the bag he’d brought along. “That’s an IV unit,” I said to Sands. “When he’s ready, he’s going to stick a needle in your arm and hook you up to the IV system. When it’s set, I’ll turn that little blue valve, and then this blood—Nicky Crandall’s blood—will start mixing with your blood. A special transfusion, just for you.”
Sands was unnerved enough to writhe against his restraints. “You do that and I’ll see that you rot in jail for life.”
“I forgot one thing,” I interrupted pleasantly. “The valve stays closed if you tell me all about it.”
His eyes rolled, desperate and disbelieving. “Tell you about what?”
“The horror story you’re perpetrating at Healthways. The scheme to save your company from ruin.” I let my anger linger. “The plot that got Tom Crandall killed.”
“What scheme?” Fear assaulted him headlong. “What plot? I don’t know any—”
I waved the gun again. “The pharmaceutical breakthrough. The new product that’s going to pull Sandstone’s fat out of the fire.”
“The Alzheimer’s thing? It’s going to restore some memory, sure, but it’s not a cure or anything.”
I shook my head. “Not Alzheimer’s.”
“But that’s the only breakthrough I know about.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to do to you what you’ve been doing to those poor souls in the Tenderloin.”
I nodded to Tony. He plucked some paraphernalia off the table and walked to the stretcher and swabbed the back of Sands’ hand with antiseptic, then wound a tourniquet around his forearm. After slipping the cap off the needle, Tony inserted it into an engorged vein just below Sands’ left wrist, then tugged off the tourniquet. After fitting an adapter to the needle, he hooked the adapter to a cannula, which led to the little plastic valve that dangled just below the bag that bulged with Nicky’s blood, which Tony held aloft.
“You can’t put any blood into anyone, you moron,” Sands cried. “It has to be typed and cross-matched and—”
“I’m not going to use it all. Just a little. Just enough to do the job. Of course, I won’t use any of it if you admit to what’s been going on at Healthways and to having Tom Crandall killed to cover it up.”
Sands fumed in silence, looking for a way out—guys like Sands never believe they’ll be caught, never concede that there isn’t a bribe, a payoff, or a threat that will erase the mess their greed has made. What puzzles me is why we’ve let guys like Sands become our gods.
Time was as thick and languid as the blood. Sands closed his eyes and seemed to sleep. When he opened them again, he looked at Clarissa, less with cunning than with sorrow. “Is that what you think? That I had your husband killed? For something to do with business?”
Except for the tear that traveled down her cheek, Clarissa Crandall was as immobile as a stone.
Sands sniffed and blinked and looked at me. “You’re saying the only way I can prove I didn’t know what was going on is to let you go ahead with this blood business.”
“That’s about it.”
He regarded me with a primacy I couldn’t have duplicated on the best day of my life. “Then go ahead.” He thrust his arm and then his jaw. “Not for you, you bastard. For her.”
I put my hand on the little blue valve.
Rather than recoiling in terror, Sands seemed to feed on the moment. “You thought I’d cave, huh? You thought you could run a bluff. Well, I don’t bluff, Tanner. When you go against me, you play all your cards.”
I turned the valve. A snake of red slithered from the bag and crawled toward the hand that lay naked and impaled on his chest. Clarissa started to sob; Tony emitted a sarcastic laugh. Sands and I appraised each other.
“I had a friend who died from AIDS last year,” I said softly. “Fungus, fevers, sarcoma, blindness. And huge amounts of pain. I’ve seen a lot of death, but I’ve never seen anything as bad as that. Just so you know why I’m doing this.”
Sands didn’t say a word. Clarissa Crandall said a prayer. I looked at the lengthening asp of blood.
When it was an inch from his hand, I squeezed it off, then tugged the tube off the needle and the needle out of his vein. Careful not to spill on the rug, I gathered up the entire apparatus and tossed it in the fire. As the blood and rubber and plastic began to smoke and stink, I told Tony to let him loose.
Clarissa’s eyes were wet, and her chest heaved with relief. “I needed to know whether he was the monster Tom thought he was,” I said to her, “and this was the only way I could think of to find out. It looks like the monster was someone else. I’m sorry.”
After a moment of reflection, she looked at Richard Sands. “I think it’s going to be all right,” she said.
Although she wasn’t talking to me, I told her I hoped so.
I like to think I meant it. I like to think Tom Crandall would have meant it, too.
THIRTY-SIX
“Why the detour?” Guy Heskett asked, his irritation barbed by his lack of sleep.
“It’s not a detour, it’s a pilgrimage. I told Sands I’d give him twenty-four hours to go public and clean house,” I added as I pulled into
the early-morning traffic on the bridge. “It will take you that long to do the background work and write it up. If you’re lucky, you can have it on the streets five minutes after his press conference.”
“I’d rather have it five hours before.”
“You would have if Sands had done what I expected. Since he didn’t, I had to give him time to wash the dirty linen himself.”
“When do I find out what that linen is?”
“When we get where we’re going.”
“Which is?”
“A little house in Danville.”
“Whose house?”
“The woman who can tell you how it all began.”
The woman in question was standing beside the highway waiting for her bus, trying to keep her bank attire in place as a stream of cars whizzed past at illegal speeds. She wore flat shoes and a plain green coat, but there was a flower pinned in her hair and a smile on her face when she saw me. I took a bit of credit for both of them.
“Mr. Tanner!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to take you to a telephone.”
“Why?”
“So you can call in sick.”
“But I’m not—”
“Sure you are. The symptoms are perverse—hallucinations of good health. Very serious if allowed to fester. Dr. Tanner advises the day off.”
“Why?” she asked again.
I pointed toward my car. “So you can tell that man about Tom and Nicky. And about them and you, if you want to.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I know why Tom was killed, and part of it has to do with the early days. Not a big part, but a part.”
She put a hand on my arm. “You look awful,” she said. “Like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“They aren’t ghosts yet, but I’m afraid they will be.”
She frowned. “Am I supposed to understand?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
She squinted into the morning sunlight. “Who’s the man in the car?”
“A reporter for the Chronicle.”
She looked more closely. “He’s cute.”
“That’s something you have in common. Another is that he’s a big admirer of Tom’s.”
Just then her bus rolled up. I looked at Ellen, and she looked at me. When the door swished open, she stepped toward it. I was about to reach out and stop her when she smiled up at the driver and spoke with the sweetness of the Sesame Street people. “I think I’m coming down with the flu; I’d better stay home today. Sorry to make you stop for nothing.”
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