I felt like weeping. But I had no compunction, none whatsoever, about using this poor, disturbed woman.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m going to get the evidence.”
In my own ears, it sounded as gamy and cornball as if I had said, “I’m going to grab the boodle and take it on the lam.”
“All right,” she said firmly, “I’ll help you.”
We went over it again in more detail: what I wanted, what she could get, what we might have to improvise.
“How will you get over the fence?” she asked.
“Leave that to me.”
“You won’t hurt anyone, will you?”
“Of course not. I don’t carry a gun or a knife or any other weapon. I’m not a violent man, Mary.”
“All you want is information?”
“Exactly,” I said, nodding virtuously. “Just information. Part of my investigation of Thorndecker’s application for a grant.”
That seemed to satisfy her. Made the whole scam sound more legal.
We left it like this: she was to collect as much of what I wanted as she could, and on Sunday she was to call me at the Coburn Inn.
“Don’t give your real name to the switchboard,” I warned her. “Just in case they ask who’s calling. Use a phony name.”
“What name?”
“Joan Powell,” I said instantly, without thinking. “Say your name is Joan Powell. If I’m at the Inn, don’t mention any of this over the phone. Just laugh and joke and make a date to meet me somewhere. Anywhere. Right here would be fine; it’s deserted enough. Then we’ll meet, and you can tell me what you’ve found out. And give me the keys if you’ve been able to get them.”
“What if I call the Coburn Inn, and you’re not there?”
“Call every hour on the hour. Sooner or later I’ll be there. Any time before midnight on Sunday. Okay?”
We went over the whole thing once more. I wasn’t sure she was getting it. She was still white as paper, and every once in awhile her whole body would shudder in a hard fit of trembling. But I spoke as quietly and confidently as I could. And I kept touching her. Her hand, arm, shoulder. I think I made contact.
Just before I got out of the car, I leaned forward to kiss her smooth, chill cheek.
“Tell me everything’s going to be all right,” she said faintly.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I said.
I knew it wasn’t.
I drove back to Coburn as fast as Hanrahan’s rattletrap would take me. I kept watching for a public phone booth. I had a call to make, and didn’t want it to go through the hotel switchboard. My paranoia was growing like “The Blob.”
I found a booth on Main Street, just before the business section started. I knew the offices of the Bingham Foundation were closed on Saturday, so I called Stacy Besant at his home, collect. He lived in a cavernous nine-room apartment on Central Park West with an unmarried sister older than he, three cats, a moth-eaten poodle, and a whacking great tank of tropical fish.
Edith Besant, the sister, answered the phone and agreed to accept the call.
“Samuel!” she caroled. “This
is
nice. Stacy and I were speaking of you just last night, and agreed you must come to us for dinner as soon as you return to New York. You and that lovely lady of yours.”
“Well, ah, yes, Miss Edith,” I said. “I certainly would enjoy that. Especially if you promise to make that carrot soup again.”
“Carrot vichyssoise, Samuel,” she said gently. “Not soup.”
“Of course,” I said. “Carrot vichyssoise. I remember it well.”
I did, too. Loathsome. But what the hell, she was proud of it.
We chatted of this and that. It was impossible to hurry her, and I didn’t try. So we discussed her health, mine, her brother’s, the cats’, the poodle’s, the fishes’. Then we agreed the weather had been miserable.
“Well, my goodness, Samuel,” she said gaily, “here we are gossiping away, and I imagine you really want a word with Stacy.”
“Yes, ma’am, if I could. Is he there?”
“Of course he is. Just a minute.”
He came on so quickly he must have been listening on the extension.
“Yes, Samuel?” he said. “Trouble?”
“Sir,” I said, “there are some questions I need answers to. Medical questions. I’d like to call Scientific Research Records and speak to one of the men who worked on the Thorndecker investigation.”
“Now?” he asked. “This minute? Can’t it go over to Monday?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t think it can. Things are moving rather rapidly here.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I see,” he said finally. “Very well. Wait just a few minutes; I have the number somewhere about.”
I waited in the closed phone booth. It was an iced coffin, and I should have been shivering. I wasn’t. I was sweating.
He came back on the phone. He gave me the number of SRR, and the name of the man to talk to, Dr. Evan Blomberg. If SRR was closed on Saturday, as it probably was, I could call Dr. Blomberg at his home. The number there was—
“Mr. Besant,” I interrupted, “I know this is an imposition, but I’m calling from a public phone booth for security reasons, and I just don’t have phone credit cards, although I have suggested several times that it would make your field investigators’ jobs a lot easier if you—”
“All right, Samuel,” he said testily, “all right. You want me to locate Dr. Blomberg and ask him to call you at your phone booth. Is that it?”
“If you would, sir. Please.”
“It’s that important?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
“Let me have the number.”
I read it off the phone. He told me it would take five minutes. It took more than ten. I was still sweating. Finally the phone shrilled, and I grabbed it off the hook.
“Hello?” I said. “Dr. Evan Blomberg?”
“To whom am I speaking?” this deep, pontifical voice inquired. I loved that “To whom.” Much more elegant than, “Who the hell is this?”
I identified myself to his satisfaction and apologized for calling him away from his Saturday relaxation.
“Quite all right,” Dr. Blomberg said stiffly. “I understand you have some questions regarding our investigation of the application of Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker?”
“Well, ah, in a peripheral way, doctor,” I said cautiously. “It’s just a general question. A general medical question.”
“Oh?” he said, obviously puzzled. “Well, what is it?”
I didn’t want to say it. It was like asking an astronomer, “Is the moon
really
made of green cheese?” But finally I nerved myself and said:
“Is it possible to infect a human being with cancer? That is, could you, uh, take cancerous cells from one human being who is suffering from some form of the disease and inject them into a healthy human being, and would the person injected then develop cancer?”
His silence sounded more shocked than any exclamation.
“Good God!” he said finally. “Who would want to do a thing like that? For what reason?”
“Sir,” I said desperately, “I’m just trying to get an answer to a what-if question. Is it possible?”
Silence again. Then:
“To my knowledge,” Dr. Evan Blomberg said in his orotund voice, “it has never been done. For obvious reasons. Unethical, illegal, criminal. And I can’t see any possible value to any facet of cancer research. I suppose it might be theoretically possible.”
Try to get a Yes or No out of a scientist. Hah! They’re as bad as lawyers. Almost.
“Then you could infect someone with cancer cells, and that person would develop cancer?”
“I said theoretically,” he said sharply. “As you are undoubtedly aware, experimental animals are frequently injected with cancer cells. Some host animals reject the cells completely. Others accept them, the cells flourish, the host animal dies. In other words,
some
animals have an immunity to
some
forms of cancer. By extension, I suppose you could speculate that
some
humans might have or develop an immunity to
some
forms of cancer. It is not a chance I’d care to take.”
“I can understand that, Dr. Blomberg, but—”
“Different species of animals are used for different kinds of cancer research, depending on how similar they are to humans insofar as the way they react to specific types of cancer. Rats, for instance, are used in leukemia research.”
“Yes, Dr. Blomberg,” I said frantically, “I can appreciate all that. Let’s just call this speculation. That’s all it is: speculation. What I’m asking is if healthy humans are infected with cancer cells from a diseased human, will the healthy host develop cancer?”
“Speculation?” he asked carefully.
“Just speculation,” I assured him.
“I’d say the possibility exists.”
“Possibility?” I repeated. “Would you go so far as to say ‘probability’?”
“All right,” he said resignedly. “Since we’re talking in theoretical terms, I’m willing to say it’s probable the host human will develop cancer.”
“One final question,” I said. “We have been talking about injecting a healthy human host with cancerous cells from a live but diseased human donor. You’ve said it’s probable the host would develop cancer. Does the same hold true of abnormal cells that have been cultivated
in vitro?”
“Good God!” he burst out again. “What kind of a nightmare are you talking about?”
I wouldn’t let him off the hook. “Would it be possible to infect a healthy human being with cancerous cells that have been grown
in vitro?”
“Yes, goddammit,” he said furiously, “it would be possible.”
“In fact—probable?” I asked softly. “That you could infect a healthy human being with cancerous cells grown in a lab?”
“Yes,” he said, in such a low voice that I could hardly hear him. “Probable.”
“Thank you, Dr. Blomberg,” I said, hung up gently and wondered if I had spoiled his weekend. The hell with him. Mine was already shot.
I drove the rest of the way into Coburn, reflecting that now I knew it could be done, what Mary Thorndecker feared. But why?
Why?
As Blomberg had said, who would want to do a thing like that? For what reason?
The Grand Prix was waiting for me in the parking lot of the Coburn Inn. Not only had it been equipped with new radials, but the car had been washed and waxed. I walked around it, kicking the tires with delight. But gently! Then I transferred my new purchases from the pickup to the trunk of the Pontiac.
In the lobby, a tall, skinny gink with “Mike’s Service Station” stitched on the back of his coveralls was leaning over the cigar counter, inspecting Millie Goodfellow’s cleavage with a glazed stare. He had a droopy nose and looked like a pointer on scent. Any minute I expected him to raise a paw and freeze.
I interrupted their tête-à-tête—and guessing the subject of their conversation, that’s the only phrase for it. I asked the garageman about the bill for the tires and wax job. He said Betty Hanrahan had picked up the tab; I didn’t owe a cent. I handed him a ten for his trouble, and he looked at it.
“Jesus, Mr. Todd,” he said, “Betty told me I wasn’t to take any money from you
a
-tall. She find out about this, she’ll bite my ass.”
He and Millie laughed uproariously. At last—Coburn humor. The hell with the quality; people were laughing, and after the way I had spent the last two hours, that was enough for me.
“I won’t tell Betty if you don’t,” I said. “Can you get her pickup back to the Red Dog?”
“Sure,” he said happily. “No problem. Hey, Millie, I’m a rich man now. Buy you a drink tonight?”
“I’ll be there,” she nodded. “For the ten, you can look but don’t touch.”
He said something equally as inane, and they gassed awhile. It was that kind of raunchy sexual chivying you hear between a man and woman who have been friends a long time and know they’ll never go to bed together. I listened, smiling and nodding like an idiot.
Because I can’t tell you how comforting it was. Their smutty jokes were so
normal.
There was nothing deep, devious, or depraved about it. It had nothing to do with cancerous cells and fluorescent tumors. No one dying in agony and pushed into frosted ground. That stupid conversation restored a kind of tranquility in me; that’s the only way I can describe it. I felt like an infantryman coming off the front line and being handed a fresh orange. Fondling it, smelling it, tasting it. Life.
I waved goodby and went up to my room. I had an hour to kill before my meeting with Dr. Thorndecker. I didn’t want to eat or drink. I just wanted to flop on my bed, dressed and booted, and think about the man and wonder why he was doing what he was.
I think that investigators work on the premise that most people act out of self-interest. The kicker is that a lot of us don’t know, or can’t see, our true self-interest. Case in point: my breaking up with Joan Powell. I thought I acted out of concern for my own well-being. All I got was a galloping attack of the guilts and a growing realization that I had tossed away a relationship that was holding me together.
What was Telford Gordon Thorndecker’s self-interest—or what did he
think
it was? Not merely avarice, since Mary had said the lab didn’t profit from the deaths of many of the victims. Then it had to be some kind of human experimentation that might result in professional glory. A different kind of greed.
I tried that on for motive. Mary had reported that Dr. Draper had said Thorndecker was a genius on the verge of a great discovery. Thorndecker himself had admitted to me that human immortality was his true goal. So far the glory theory made sense. Until I asked myself why he was injecting cancer-free patients with abnormal cells. Then the whole thing fell apart. The only fame you achieve by that is on the wall of a post office.
The man was such a fucking enigma to me. Inspired scientist. Paterfamilias. Skilled business administrator. Handsome. Charming. Energetic. And remote. Not only from me, I was convinced, but from wife, children, friends, staff, Coburn, the world. Either he had something everyone else was lacking, or he lacked something everyone else had. Or perhaps both.
Have you ever seen one of those intricately carved balls of ivory turned out by Oriental craftsmen? It only takes about ten years to make. The artist starts with a solid sphere of polished ivory. The outer shell is carved with fanciful open designs, and within a smaller sphere is cut free to revolve easily. That second ball is also carved with a complex open design, and a third smaller ball cut free to revolve. And so on. Until, at the center, is a ball no larger than a pea, also intricately incised. Spheres within spheres. Designs within designs. Worlds within worlds. The carving so marvelously complicated that it’s almost impossible to make out the inscription on that pea in the center.