Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

"She's being flown north tomorrow, Saturday. I am told that surgery could follow immediately providing there are no setbacks. That will leave us in your hands, Dr. Tegg. We will be awaiting your call that the heart is on its way. She is running out of time. You understand this, I hope."

"I understand."

"You have found someone, I assume.

Brain-dead? Dying? How long do we have?"

"You know as much as you need to." He didn't like the change in the man's eyes. Had he angered him? The Chinese are so inscrutable, he thought. "It's for your own good as well as mine," he added. "I have a down payment for you. Call it good faith," he said. He pointed to the front seat where the ape belonged. The money was evidently up there. "No money. Not yet. We can do that when it's over."

Wong Kei persisted, "I have a sum for you now which, as I have just said, is to show my good faith. Yours as well as mine. Please take it."

No mention of a final figure. Tegg liked it that way. "No hurry," he said.

The ferry rocked violently to the left. Dozens of cars complained. "You are a trusting man," Won Kei put forward. "Not really," Tegg said. "If you don't pay me, I'll take the heart back." He waited. "It was a joke," Tegg added. "You joke about my wife's life?" His chin trembled. "Is that what I am hearing from you?" He drank more of the Coke, spilling some. "Allow me to explain something, Dr. Tegg. Allow me to explain the obvious." He finished the drink. He studied the empty can as if reading it. "I am relying on you. That is all I am going to say about it. That should be selfexplanatory. Yes?"

Tegg didn't like the sound of that. "You will call me when your wife is admitted and ready to go," Tegg instructed. He wrote out his cellular number on a blank memo pad from his Daytimer. No name, just the number. "Only the cellular. If you call me on the land lines, I will hang up."

Wong Kei sat forward, reached over the seat and dragged a small Alaskan Airlines flight bag to him. He looked incredibly tired. Anxiety and grief were swallowing him whole. Tegg knew the symptoms. "Take this. This is the purpose for this meeting my purpose. Our time is wasted otherwise. I insist." He didn't shove it at him, but he made its handle available.

Tegg accepted the bag, his curiosity mounting. He understood the commitment his acceptance of it represented. He was crossing a dangerous threshold: He would now owe this man. He immediately regretted his acceptance of the bag, but knew it would ' be impossible to return it. Wong Kei's expression told him as much.

For emphasis, the Asian added, "We must not overlook the seriousness of the situation. Time is everything. There is nothing I will not do to restore my wife to health. Yes?"

Tegg thought he meant it as some sort of veiled threat, although it was difficult to interpret exactly. Perhaps he was offering his help. Tegg said, "If I don't hear from you first, I'll call when we're set to go.

The man nodded. The ferry slowed and bumped the loading dock.

From the ferry's deck, Tegg, all alone in the wind and the night, watched the black car as it and the others disembarked. in the glow of a few meager street lamps and a mercury light far in the distance, he watched sea gulls resting on pilings, standing on one leg. Balanced.

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.

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.