Tegg felt delicately balanced as well. Pamela would not assist in the heart harvest. They had discussed the possibility of it before-it was constantly on Tegg's mind-and she had rejected it outright. It would have to be a solo harvest, even more challenging. More risky. Perhaps it was time to sacrifice one of the dogs to practice. "Practice makes perfect," he said into the wind as the ferry lumbered through the chop and headed back toward Seattle. Toward his family. His children. And yet away from all of that at the same time.
Toward his future, he thought, however it was now defined.
SATURDAY February 4
Dr. Elden Tegg attempted not to touch anything in Donnie Maybeck's van. Concern about leaving fingerprints behind had nothing to do with it-he was wearing gloves. The place was a cesspool. For a man repulsed by dirty environments, a man who had a fetish about cleanliness, this vehicle was a nightmare. A thick layer of dust and grime had baked onto the cracked vinyl of the dashboard. Some kind of solidified scum-soda? beer? coffee? worse?-had drooled over the engine cover that separated the two front seats and was now fuzzy with lint. The windows were tinted in a yellow filth, and the carpet what was left of it-was matted like the hair on the backside of an incontinent dog. For a man accustomed to the sights and smells associated with invasive surgery, it was strange, nauseous. "You don't look so hot," Donnie Maybeck said. "Drive."
"Hey, I know you don't like this, but I ain't doing this alone. And Connie ain't no help in this kinda thing."
"We've been over this."
"Don't be so fucking pissed about it, because there's nothing can be done."
just drive.
its not the same as the others. You said so yourself. This here is kidnapping. This here is some serious shit. Connie could never do this," ,You shouldn't involve her in any of it." He saw no point in attempting to reason with a little person like Maybeck. There were fly specks along the bottom of the windshield. Donnie Maybeck was a fly speck. And what was that lodged into the defrost slot? A discarded plastic wrapper for a Sheik Elite with Spermicide! He recoiled, wanting to levitate and not have to touch anything. "Hey, she's involved in it, all right. Okay? She's in this up to her short hairs. Ain't nothing can be done about it. Without her, without updating the database, how we gonna pick which donor to approach? "Humor me: Shut up and drive." Tegg felt uneasy. A mistake he had made years earlier had cost a human life. Now he possessed the skills and abilities to correct that wrong, even though it came at the cost of deepening his involvement with Maybeck. "You're sure she's alone?" Tegg asked. "You're the one who talked to her, not me."
Tegg had called Sharon Shaffer twenty minutes earlier and had introduced himself as a public health official. He apologized for calling on a Saturday but explained that this was something that couldn't wait. It was a question of some plasma donations she had made several years back. He suggested he and his assistant pay her a visit and that for confidentiality's sake, she would probably prefer to be alone. She had taken the bait, and she had sounded scared: just right. "You understand she could recognize me," Maybeck said to him, interrupting his thoughts. "I mean chances are, since she's in the database, that I mighta sold her a fake I.D. at some point."
"If she says anything, tell her you work for Bloodlines. We know she hasn't sold her plasma for over two years. She won't remember you. I do all the talking. Not a peep out of you. You're only there for control purposes-if things get out of hand, and only then if I tell you to act. Hmm?" The man didn't answer. Tegg felt nervous, a condition so foreign to him that at first it was unrecognizable. He thought maybe he was sick.
Maybeck sold fake I.D.s to underage runaways who needed them to sell their plasma. In this way, he won their confidence and obtained their vital statistics. He had been ' doing this ever since he had stumbled upon Tegg's Secret. The Secret had led to blackmail, the blackmail to a certain draining of Tegg's available cash, and subsequently to a new business for both of them: harvesting. With Maybeck assuming the streetside risks and logistics, connecting Tegg to the donors, this shaky alliance had begun. Now a kidnapping-their biggest risk to date. Tegg searched the dashboard's control panel, looking for a way to get more air.
Maybeck was in it for the money. Tegg, on the other hand, felt uncomfortable with the money. He gave every last cent of his share to charities in his wife's name, enhancing their social prominence. Feeling Maybeck's recklessness, he wondered how he would handle the man if he went too far-if he asked for too much. You had to watch the little pe-people when they cottoned on to the smell of money.
Tegg knew they couldn't screw this up. Wong Kei was unlikely to be a man with a predisposition toward forgiveness. He had a mobster's reputation. If Tegg failed this harvest, it might be his last. His moral salvation commanded a high price.
Tegg finally threw a lever, and a gust of dusty air dislodged the condom wrapper from the defrost vent. He swatted at it frantically.
Maybeck slowed and turned into Freemont Lane, a dead end servicing a pair of apartment buildings to the right and, to the left, the back doors of houses on Lyden Avenue, including the green one, thirty-six thirty-nine and a half. "Bring the laptop with you-it'll make you look more official. And remember to keep your mouth shut," Tegg reminded. He meant this literally: those teeth were enough to terrify anyone.
Sharon Shaffer had spent the last twenty minutes in terror. She had tried to drown out her recollection of that phone call by cleaning up, by running the vacuum. Public Health. The blood supply. It could only mean one thing ... She answered the knock on her back door.
Two men. The bearded one was well dressed and looked distinguished, especially compared to his assistant, who reminded her of an aging James Dean. He carried the Toshiba laptop computer in his right hand. "May we come in?" the distinguished one asked. She knew that voice from the phone call.
She felt afraid. If she refused them entry, would the reason for their being here leave with them? There were men she had been with during her years on the streets, complete strangers. There were things she had done that now, a few years later, she could hardly believe possible. She had not blocked them out, for she had no desire to forget her past; it was memories of her past that inspired her present work, that enabled her to so easily relate to the women who found their way to The Shelter. In an odd way, she was even proud of her past. But the characters she had encountered during that time were behind her now. She felt terrified. Was it true that your past always catches up with you?
She stepped back and admitted them. She knew what this was about. It was about dirty needles. About sex. About a different life, a different Sharon Shaffer. These two were about to ruin her new life. She felt faint. She waved them toward the dining table, for the place was small and there were only two stuffed chairs over by the television, and she wanted them all to sit. She had to sit no matter what.
The bearded man said, "Bloodlines Incorporated maintains an active database of all of its donors, past and present." James Dean patted the laptop and set it down. The bearded man explained, "The donated blood is tested prior to distribution for disease."
There was the word she had dreaded. Fear turned her palms icy.
Her eyes threatened tears. As hard as the streets had made her, as welcome as death would have been back then, she felt weak and terrified now by this one word. "What has happened," the man continued, "is that the state's department of health, in a routine audit, discovered a glitch in the software that drives the Bloodlines' database. With that glitch removed, certain donors appear in an at-risk category, as concerns certain diseases."
"HIV," Sharon said. It was no guess. They didn't come to your door on a Saturday morning over measles. "Yes, but we needn't jump to conclusions."