Edited to Death (37 page)

“You did what?” I whispered back.

“I killed Quentin.”

With that, the van lurched to a stop. I frantically slipped Glen’s gag back in place
and composed myself on the seat. Staying calm seemed like the only possible option.
Surely he wouldn’t just gun us down. Surely.

The door slid open.

Orlando, gun in hand, gestured impatiently. “Come on out, both of you.”

“Let me come first,” I said, crawling over Glen, “and I’ll help him out.”

“Ever the Helpful Hannah,” muttered Orlando. “Hurry it up.”

Glen scooted across the seat to the edge. I helped him duck, and half-caught him as
he propelled himself out the door. Orlando leaned down and unlocked the shackles on
Glen’s legs. Glen shook one, then the other.

“Move along,” Orlando said, and gestured with the gun to the edge of the water.

We walked while I frantically consulted my mental store of useless information. Wasn’t
there something I knew, anything that could get us out of this mess? Somehow, it seemed
as if I should have been concentrating on collecting techniques in martial arts all
these years instead of uselessly storing up the names of all the French Symbolist
poets and how to get ketchup stains out of silk. As if on cue, Orlando broke the silence.
“I have been wondering” he said, “how you figured out who I was in the first place?”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “If I tell you, will you let us go?”

He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Right.”

“Shakespeare,” I said. “Orlando was the name of one of the sons of Sir Rowland de
Boys in
As You Like It.”

Orlando lifted his lips in a grim approximation of a smile. “Aren’t you the clever
girl?” he said. “Well, here’s a little more Shakespeare. ‘What fates impose, that
men must needs abide; It boots not to resist both wind and tide.’”

“
Henry the Sixth, Part III
,” I said promptly. “What do I win?”

“An encounter with the tide itself,” said Orlando. “Hold it right here.” Glen and
I came to a halt and looked bleakly at each other. We were under the pilings, nearly
ankle deep in mud, and the icy, cloudy water of the bay was lapping near our feet.

“Sit down,” said Orlando, and with a few yanks, he managed to get us arranged next
to a splintery wood piling. He took a length of cord from his windbreaker and handed
it to me. “Tie the little Irishman right up to the piling,” he said to me. “And make
it snug. I’ll be checking on you.” My hands were stiff and growing more numb by the
moment from the cold, but I did as he ordered, looping the cord around Glen’s torso
and the piling. Then Orlando gestured me to sit on the other side of the piling. I
felt the mud and water seep through my skirt. My mind drifted a minute as I wondered
if I’d be able to get the smell off these clothes before I was jerked back to reality.
I should be so lucky to have laundry problems ever again. Awkwardly, with the gun
in one hand, he began wrapping the cord around me. I felt it bite into my arms, and
for a moment the accompanying rush of blood felt wonderfully warm. Then, my arms began
to ache. Orlando leaned in close to my ankles and began looping the cord around them.
In one instant, I saw the gun droop and point toward the mud. I raised both feet and
kicked hard at his face. He gave a shout, staggered back, scrambled for a foot hold
on the muddy ground, and fell smack against a piling sticking out of the mud. As he
did, there was a flash of light, a terrible noise, and a jolt of pain in my arm. And
then, quiet.

I heard Glen breathing hard, and then his voice,

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, Maggie, have you killed him?”

“I wish,” I said grimly. “I think he’s just knocked out. He’ll wake up in a minute
and he’ll be pissed.”

“I’m not sure we’ve improved our situation,” said Glen.

“Well, you got the gag off,” I said bitterly. “At least we can chat to the end.”

“Are you ever serious, Maggie?” asked Glen.

I bit my lip as, all of a sudden, the ache in my arm seemed to deepen.

“Glen,” I said, “can you look over at my arm a minute?”

I heard him struggle against the cord. “Maggie, you’re bleeding.”

“Yeah, I seem to be,” I said. “I don’t think it’s serious. It just hurts like hell.”

“Help!” I yelled.

“Shh, Maggie,” said Glen. “You’ll rouse the bloody bastard.”

The light was fading fast.

“Tide’s rising,” observed Glen, in a whisper.

“So since we’re in all this trouble,” I whispered back, “why don’t you distract me
from the thought of my kids growing up without a mom and your kids growing up without
a dad, and tell me what the hell this is all about.” I felt my voice thicken and the
pinpricks of tears starting in my eyes. Moon and Michael had warned me away from all
this, I was irresponsible beyond belief, and my kids would grow up without a mom.
How could I have been so arrogant?

“Ah, Maggie,” said Glen. “Maybe my dear Corinne and your Michael will fall in love
and give our youngsters a full complement of parents.”

“My mother-in-law would love that,” I said. “At long last, a nice Catholic wife for
her precious son.” I gave an anxious glance over to Orlando. Still not stirring.

“So tell me the story,” I said, “before the tide comes in all the way, and we either
drown or freeze to death. Or that son of a bitch Orlando wakes up and just shoots
us.”

“I think you know some of it,” said Glen.

“I think I do,” I said. “Skunkworks is a drug smuggling operation—but I can’t figure
out why.”

“It’s a subsidy,” said Glen. “Orlando and his partners smuggle all sorts of drugs,
but they use most of the money they make on the hard-core street stuff to distribute
any promising new AIDS drug. And then they sell it at a premium to AIDS patients.”

“Geez, don’t the insurance companies pay for that stuff?” I asked.

“God, are you naive,” said Glen. “Comes of having a husband with a great insurance
plan, I imagine. They’re smuggling stuff to late-stage AIDS patients, the ones who
aren’t responding to conventional therapies. And a lot of this stuff is very experimental.
There’s a small amount of it available in highly controlled clinical trials, and you’ve
got to get in queue to get access to any of it. Orlando was a natural at this, because
he’s supported himself all these years with dope dealing gigs wherever he’s been.
And now he’s got partners who help him run little kitchen-table labs all over the
world, shipping this stuff in.”

“But he wasn’t doing this out of the goodness of his heart? Wasn’t Skunkworks a nonprofit?”
I asked.

Glen snorted. “Skunkworks was a nonprofit on paper. It was just a cover. Orlando and
his retail pals were making big, big money on this deal. They’re selling to people
who cash in their life insurance to buy these drugs.”

“And do they work?”

“Long-term, I have no idea. But in the short term, several people seem to buying a
reprieve.”

I thought about Joe Connolly’s rapid comeback and remembered the cylinder I’d fished
out of the trash can.

“And how did Quentin get involved?”

“He owed Orlando a couple of favors from the old days. And for all of Quentin being
a self-centered SOB himself, he did have a lot of compassion for people with AIDS.
And besides, all Orlando was asking him to do was run his damn little drawings with
his communication codes in them.”

“What was all that about?”

“You mean Jorge, the boy wonder, didn’t explain everything to you? I couldn’t believe
how much that kid figured out.”

“Yeah,” I said, “he’s a smart kid. Maybe he can do both our jobs now that we’re out
of the picture.”

“Fine,” said Glen. “Anyway, the codes were just a distribution system, to let anyone
in the city who was in Orlando’s underground know when a new shipment was coming in.”

“In the pot handles?”

Glen sighed. “In the pot handles.”

“And why couldn’t they use a phone tree or e-mail to let people know?”

“Too traceable,” I guess.

“And was Quentin paid for his part in this?”

“He was,” said Glen. “And with Claire keeping him on a short string, the cash came
in handy. Plus, he liked having access to the bonus—hash on hand, whenever he wanted
it. He was covering all his bases. Even with all the precautions he took, Quentin
must have worried he’d turn up HIV-positive one day.”

We sat in silence and listened to the fog horns. The water was rising little by little.

“Glen,” I said, “maybe Orlando will drown before he wakes up.”

“I wouldn’t be going to the races on it—he’s face up.”

“And you,” I said, “what did you get out of it?”

“Nothing—yet,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I just supported the system because I wanted it to be there when I needed it.”

I swallowed. “You’re HIV-positive?” I asked.

“I am,” he said. “And I will do—would have done—anything, anything to stay alive for
Corinne and the little ones.”

“And that’s why you killed Quentin?”

“It is. He finally began to understand the scope of the thing Orlando had going—and
that people were spending their last pennies for these drugs. He was putting you and
that young photographer on it to break the story.”

“And you didn’t want him to?”

“Absolutely not. I went to his flat to try to talk to him. He was cold as ice to me.
He really had nothing to lose. He could claim to be an innocent dupe, and he’d bring
the whole structure crashing down—and look like an investigative hero.” Glen’s voice
broke.

“I begged him to think it over. And he refused. I didn’t mean to kill him, but he
turned back to his desk, ignoring me, getting his notes in order for you, so I picked
up the walking stick and just smashed at him.”

“You connected,” I said. “Beginner’s luck.”

“Christ, that’s not funny a bit, Maggie.”

“I know, I’m sorry. It’s gallows humor. Quentin stopped being a hero to me long ago,
but of course, he didn’t deserve to die.”

“No, he didn’t. But neither do I.”

“And that’s how you saw it—life or death? People live for years now, with the drugs
that are available.”

“Some do,” said Glen. “But I saw Quentin doing just what he did at Oxford all those
years ago—walking away from a mess he’d had a hand in.”

“Then what?”

“I went crazy after I hit him. I knew he was dead. But I remembered that he kept a
few cylinders of the latest drug around, and I thought I’d better find it. I went
in the kitchen and began rummaging in the pots and pans.”

“Making a terrible noise,” I said.

“Right,” said Glen. “So I just hit the play button on the stereo and some of Stuart’s
dreadful metal music came on and I hoped it would completely drown out what I was
doing.”

“I knew it,” I said. “I knew Quentin wouldn’t listen to that stuff.”

Orlando groaned, and Glen and I both stiffened. He fell silent again, and I let my
breath out.

“The water’s getting higher,” said Glen.

I started to reply, when faintly, I heard the most magical sound on earth, someone
calling my name.

“Listen,” I said to Glen. And then, I began to shout, “We’re here, we’re over here.”
The sound of a barking dog and heavy boots clomping in and out of the muck came closer,
and in a minute, my own beloved Raider, German Shepherd extraordinaire, was covering
my face with dog kisses.

In a minute, Michael was there, shouting, kneeling at my side, and crying, with John
Moon and a bunch of other cops right behind him.

“See what I told you?” I said to Glen, as Michael hugged me, mud, blood, tears, and
all. “Italian men are so emotional.”

31

A Nice Long Run

I thought I might ask the guy at the Alta Bates Hospital parking garage for a discount.
After all, it was my second trip of the evening. But Michael insisted on screeching
up to the emergency entrance so that Glen and I could get checked out. John Moon arrived
half an hour later, looking ready to arrest anyone who crossed his path.

Glen cleaned up quite nicely, and after a very good-looking young doctor (Indian,
recommended a new Berkeley source for
papadam
, that crispy bread my kids love) stitched up the little tear in my arm created by
Orlando’s misfire, I was just fine also. When I stopped babbling long enough to let
Michael get a word in, he explained how they’d tracked me down. Turned out that Joe
Connolly was feeling so great he’d called the house to thank the kids for the plant.
Michael answered, knew when I’d left Alta Bates, and began to worry when I didn’t
turn up. Especially after Anya started leaking the news about the poison bouquet.
He called Moon, whose office paged him and dispatched a Berkeley black and white to
Alta Bates to begin retracing my trip home.

“I knew if the traffic was heavy, you’d sneak off to that frontage road, even though
I’ve told you a thousand times I think it’s dangerous to drive it at night by yourself,”
said Michael.