True-Life Adventure

how these things could happen.
    That night I didn’t sleep on the sofa. In fact, I hardly slept at all.
    Sardis and I were very good together. I couldn’t remember being as excited by a woman as I was by her. I couldn’t remember wanting somebody so much for so long (forty-eight hours, wasn’t it?) and having it turn out so well. Come to think of it, the way my life had been going, I couldn’t remember much about women at all.
    But I’m being silly. The truth is, it was a night of flashing lights and calliope music. The next morning I felt as if I’d risen from the dead.
    I felt so good I cooked breakfast— cheese omelets, homefries; I even whipped up some biscuits. It was Saturday, so we had champagne with our orange juice. Neither of us even brought up the subject of Lindsay until the paper was read.
    But the last Sardis knew was that Tillman was dead and I’d gone off to warn Joan. She had to be brought up to date. So when she had a sufficient amount of champagne inside her, I told her about Terry’s illness and about sending Blick to find Lindsay in Quackland.
    Once over the shock, she remembered something that seemed related. Steve Koehler had consistently refused to reveal the nature of Kogene’s projected product, even to her. But last night, for the first time, he had hinted broadly about it.
    “I told him flat out I couldn’t design a logo without knowing what he’s selling and he gave me all this garbage about how it should signify health and feeling good and the fountain of youth. And then he said I should imagine feeling the worst kind of hopelessness, being absolutely sure you were going to die, and then getting a second chance. That was what the logo should convey, he said. So I said, ‘Like if you had cancer and somebody came up with a cure for it?’ And he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Exactly like that.’”
    “It’s got to be a cancer cure.”
    She nodded. “He all but spelled its name.”
    “But it’s something other than interferon.”
    “Right. But I’m afraid we digress. I just wanted to tell you while we were on the subject. Back to Lindsay— did Jacob and Marilyn mention Terry’s illness when you went out to see them?”
    “No. And I think that’s pretty strange, don’t you?”
    ‘‘Paul, there’s something creepy about all this.”
    “More than one thing.”
    “I mean about Jacob.”
    “You said he’s always been crazy.”
    She sighed. “True. I keep forgetting he can’t be expected to behave like a normal person.”
    All of a sudden my brain felt tired. “Oh, hell,” I said. “Let’s go back to bed.”
    And that’s how the weekend went. I don’t mean to give you the impression it was nothing but speculation about the case interspersed with galvanic, white-hot lovemaking. It was nothing of the sort. That was the last speculating we did until Monday.
    After two days of unspeakable bliss, you can imagine how eager I was to reenter the world of journalism. But Sardis went to her office, so it was either that or play with my toes.
    I had no idea in hell what to do next. But I figured I’d better let Joey Bernstein know I was still alive, just because it was good psychology, so I ambled into my office. And there I found a message from none other than Jacob Koehler, the Nobel laureate himself.

CHAPTER 14
    The message was dated that day, Monday. Jacob had called me first thing that morning. I was flattered.
    I dialed Kogene Systems, asked for Jacob Koehler, and waited confidently. The receptionist said she would check to see if he was in. Then she said he wasn’t.
    The number he’d given me was the office, but undaunted, I called his house. No answer.
    I was getting annoyed.
    There being nothing else to do, I brought Joey up to date, telling him about the fire and little Terry’s leukemia and how I had single-handedly figured out where Lindsay was and put the cops on the trail.
    No matter how much you give them, editors always want more. Joey asked if I’d checked with Blick to see if he’d found her. The truth was, I hadn’t thought of it because he said he’d call me, which just shows you how overconfident a person can get when a woman like Sardis looks at him twice.
    Obligingly, I called Blick.
    He was his usual charming self: “I don’t want to talk to you, you son of a bitch.”
    “What’d I do now?”
    “Look. We had a little personal difference or two, so you gave me a bum steer to get even. Very funny, Mcdonald. Very