The Last Goodbye (35 page)

I watched her car glide under the iron gates, rolling past her as she did. A block later I turned around and followed inside. I could see her car about a hundred yards ahead. Tracking her undetected inside the gates would be difficult; the streets were as straight as boards, and normally saw very little traffic. I slowed, watching the Lexus move down the street. Eventually, it stopped a few feet away from the curb; I pulled in behind another car, watching through the glass of the car ahead. It was a good place from which to observe; my own car was completely obscured, but I had a clear view of what was happening ahead. I put the car in park and took a look around; nobody was in sight.

After a moment a man came out of the building opposite Michele's car. He walked toward her, motioning for her to lower her window. My heart froze. It was Pope. He leaned forward, resting his arm on the door. He and Michele talked, but I couldn't hear a word. What was definite was the tone of the conversation: unpleasant. Both sides quickly grew agitated, and after a couple of minutes, Pope backed off from the car. I slipped my transmission into drive, holding it still with the brake. If anything went down, I wanted to be able to get to Michele as quickly as possible. My options against somebody like Pope would be limited. I was unarmed and he was as deadly as a jungle cat. Unless I drove him over, a fight wouldn't last long. But driving him over wasn't something that I was unalterably opposed to doing.

The argument seemed to flare a moment longer, then subsided. Eventually, Pope moved back toward the car, a thin, shit-eating smile on his face. He reached a hand inside the open window, and I could see him stroke Michele's hair. I almost retched with nausea.
My God, Michele and Pope? Not possible.
She said something, and her car started slowly rolling forward. Pope pulled back, watching her car pick up speed away from his building. She turned right a few yards down the street, then headed back toward the entrance to the Glen.

I opened my car door, which was enough to get Pope's attention. He turned toward me, peering down the street. I got out and stood. Pope watched me quietly, but his normal affability was gone. I walked away from my car, hands clearly visible to my side. When I was about fifteen feet away from him, he said, “You healed up pretty good.”

“I need some answers,” I said. “About the woman you were talking to just now.”

Pope shook his head. “This ain't a lucky time for you. You got to quit while you ahead.”

“Listen to me, Pope,” I said. “You're in charge here, right? Not the police. I mean, nothing goes down in the Glen without your say-so.”

He shrugged. “That's right.”

“So it's up to you to enforce some decency around here. You can't let all hell break loose.”

Pope tilted his head. “What you drivin' at?”

“You're extorting Michele over her own daughter, aren't you?” Pope's demeanor darkened, but I pressed on. “Kill me after I finish, Pope. Just let me say this. It's too much. You have to rein it in. It can't actually be hell in here, can it? It can look like it, sure. I mean, people can destroy themselves and there can be poverty and despair and all the rest of it but Jesus, Pope. There have to be some kind of limits, don't there?”

Pope watched me silently awhile. Like Ralston—his counterpart in the legitimate drug trade—he proved that being a completely amoral killer who made his living dealing death didn't mean he couldn't be thoughtful, even philosophical. But his morality was carefully cordoned off, restricted to the nonbusiness areas. Eventually he said, “You and this girl. That ain't such a good idea.”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks.”

Pope pointed to my Buick. “How much gas you got in that piece of shit car?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

Pope shrugged. “The thing for you to do is get back in and drive away from here till you run out,” he said. “Just drive as far away from here as you can, so I don't have to fuck you up.”

“For the love of God, Pope. Do something for your own people.”

Pope's eyes narrowed. “You did a good thing for my boy Keshan a while back,” he said. “But you seriously pushin' your luck.”

“But listen to me, Pope. Look around. Seriously.”

Pope looked around, taking in the Glen halfheartedly. Then he shook his head. “Naw, see, you got this all wrong. I didn't make this world. I just got to survive in it. Now this here is just business. Your girl tryin' to find somebody. I told her I'd take care of it for her. It's like a service. Like a finder's fee.”

“Is her daughter in the Glen or isn't she?”

“For fifty thousand dollars she will be. That's all that matters.”

“It's a human being, Pope. For God's sake, Pope, you're black. Don't you see the irony?” I was growing exasperated. “I'm sure she'll pay you anything you want.”

“That's pretty much how we left things.”

“Look, you did a good thing for me once. You let me walk even though I was talking bullshit.” Pope watched me quietly, saying nothing. “So I'll return you the favor. You're making a mistake. You're getting involved with things you don't understand. Michele has powerful people who don't want her to find her daughter. Helping her will seriously piss them off.”

Pope laughed. “Like who?”

“People from the outside. I'm not talking about a little inconvenience, Pope. There are people who fly around in private jets and have serious money. They're powerful, and they've already killed seven people.”

I could feel Pope leaning in, listening intensely. “Maybe the price goes up.”

“For the love of God, Pope, don't be a fool. It's going to end like shit.”

Pope laughed, although his usual bravado was scaled back. “Let them come into my world and try it out for a while,” he said.

Pope's intransigent ignorance was grinding my patience to dust. “Derek Stephens doesn't give a damn about your world,” I muttered, under my breath.

Pope shrugged. “Derek Stephens is about the only white man I ever saw who
did
give a damn about my people.”

I stopped, momentarily startled. “You know Stephens? Derek Stephens? Chief operating officer of Horizn Pharmaceuticals?”

Pope nodded. “Hell, yeah.”

“You mean to tell me Derek Stephens has set foot in McDaniel Glen?”

“Naw. I meet him outside, with the needles.”

“What are you talking about?”

“For the program. I give him the needles.”

“The needle-exchange program? You mean he picks up the used needles personally?”

“Yeah, he my boy. Rabbit collects the needles with the names and addresses of all the people who turn 'em in. Stephens showed him how to do it, real organized. You get the needle, have the user put the cap on it. Don't want to get stuck with that shit. Then you mark down who gave you the needle, his address and all that.”

I stared at him. “There's a record that matches individual needles to people?”

“That's what I'm sayin', white boy. So don't go talkin' shit about Derek Stephens, ‘cause he my boy.”

One thing had repeatedly been made clear during all the political debates about the needle-exchange program: it was scrupulously anonymous. Now I was finding out the opposite, and stranger yet, that none other than Derek Stephens was picking up the used needles. Something was wrong, although I had no idea what. All I knew was that if anybody could tell me, it was Thomas Robinson. I was already heading for my car. “I gotta go,” I said.

“Don't come back,” Pope said, and I could hear in his voice that he meant it.

It was a half hour to get home, which made it pretty close to three by the time I arrived. I went to my briefcase and found the list of the people on the Lipitran test. Then, I got a city map and pressed it flat on my dining table. I found the first name:
Chantelle Weiss, 4329 Avenue D. Avenue D. That was familiar.
I found it on the map and marked it with a black felt-tip pen with a small x. It was in the heart of McDaniel Glen.
Jonathan Mills, 225 Trenton Street.
I found it, a few streets over from Weiss.
Najeh Richardson.
Not inside the Glen, but right outside. It was the same with the others. Every person on Robinson's experimental trial either lived in the Glen or was on the border.
Okay. So they lived in the Glen, and they were drug addicts. Which means there's a good chance they were participating in the needle-exchange program. If they were, that connects them to Horizn. But what the hell does it mean?
Suddenly, something flashed all over my brain like Christmas.
He was poisoning these people with the needles. He hid something in the cartridges, and when they shot up, they killed themselves. That's got to be it.
I didn't even bother calling Robinson again.
I'm going to that damn park to drag Robinson out of his stupor.

I stashed the papers in my desk, went downstairs, and got in my car. I made the forty-minute drive over to the park where I had met Robinson before. He was sitting motionless on his park bench. I parked and trotted across the street. He heard me coming, turning toward the noise. When he recognized me, he looked away.

I skipped all the pleasantries. “Where the hell have you been?” I demanded. “I've called you twenty times.”

Robinson looked like he hadn't slept in a while. He gazed over impassively and said, “Blah, blah, blah.”

“Great. You're back in your depression.”

“Yeah. And you want to know why?”

“Not really.”

“It's because we're not going to get the son of a bitch, that's why. Because he's”—Robinson paused, then spat—“better than me. He's better, damn it.”

“I know how Ralston and Stephens killed your patients.”

Robinson stared. “What are you talking about?”

“They used the clean-needle program to poison them.”

Robinson shook his head dubiously. “That'd be a hell of a trick.”

“Listen to me. It looks like all your patients participated in Horizn's needle-exchange program. And if that's true, they all got needles from Ralston. So they showed up for clean needles, and somehow he used the needles to poison them.”

Robinson's reaction wasn't what I had expected. If anything, he looked bored. “That's it? That's your theory?”

“Yeah. There's more. Stephens—”

“Save it.”

“Save it? I'm telling you, this has to be it!”

Robinson looked up, annoyed. “Except for the part about how it's impossible.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, this is a federally regulated clinical trial, Jack. We don't allow our patients to continue taking intravenous drugs while they're on the test. For God's sake, they'd just be reinfecting themselves. Think it through.”

“But if they're addicts, maybe they—”

“No, Jack. We don't take pixie dust and assume they just go along with our request. We put every one of them on oral methadone the day they sign up. Which means that from that day forward, the only needles they get are from us, when we give them the Lipitran. Okay, Einstein?
No needles from Horizn.
Maybe they participated in Ralston's bleeding heart program before they signed up, but not after. And even if somebody did slip through the cracks, it couldn't have been all of them. It's impossible.”

I stood, watching my theory blow up into tiny pieces. “Damn it! I was positive I had them.”

“Yeah, well, get used to disappointment.
I told you.
If Ralston scuttled the Lipitran test, it means he was operating on a completely unprecedented level.”

“I remember.”

“Then don't come to me with idiotic stories about poisoning people with needles. This is world-class science.
If
we're right about the whole thing in the first place.”

“But...”

Robinson stood and looked at me skeptically. “What gave you this crazy idea anyway?”

“I went to see Ralston.”

Robinson's look darkened. “You saw him?”

“Yeah. And then I went to McDaniel Glen. I found out Derek Stephens personally picks up the used needles. Stephens, not some flunky. The C-O-O of the company.” At Stephens's name, Robinson began to listen in earnest. “That's not all,” I said. “The used needles are matched to individual users, names, addresses, the whole thing. So the program isn't really anonymous. They match specific needles to individuals.”

Robinson was focused on me completely now, his eyes an unblinking stare. He began pacing, grating out words between his teeth, like he was arguing with himself. After several minutes, it was all I could do not to grab him by the neck and force him to tell me what he was thinking. He ground to a halt, turned toward me, and whispered, “Oh, my God.”

“What?”

“How could a person even think of something like this? What kind of mind would it take?”

“What
, damn it?”

“He used the needle-exchange program to kill my patients.”

I almost hit him in frustration. “That's what I've been trying to tell you!”

“No, Jack. Nobody got poisoned. I knew that was impossible. For God's sake, there would be residue around the puncture marks. It's
infinitely
more elegant than that.”

“Then tell me.”

Robinson stood quietly, his face ashen. After a second he said,

“Be quiet and listen to how a psychopath thinks.” He began pacing in front of me, as though he was beginning a lecture. “The human body has a way of handling toxins. It's called the cytochrome P-450 system. Ever hear of it?”

“No.”

Robinson stared at me. “Yeah. Well, you ever wonder what happens when you take an aspirin?”

“You lose your headache.”

“No, I mean what happens to the aspirin itself. Four hours later, it's gone from your system. What happened to it?”