True-Life Adventure

move fast then. It strikes me that several matters are still unexplained. Does everyone agree?”
    Everyone did. So I told them my new plan. In minutes they were off, Sardis to Rossmoor, Susanna and Freddie to deal with the Department of Motor Vehicles. I turned over and went back to sleep, thinking I could get to like being an armchair general. The nurse woke me up for another shot of Demerol. That was fine with me.
    I was starting to get woozy when Marilyn Markham came in.
    “How are you feeling?” She was smiling, looking healthy and pretty in camel slacks and a turtleneck.
    “Woozy. I was just thinking about the smart bomb.” I was speaking slowly and slurring my words a bit. It was the best I could do.
    “You know about that?”
    “I’ve got a primitive idea how it works. What I don’t know is why Terry got side effects.”
    “For the smart bomb to work, the antibody has to be monoclonal, meaning it will bind to only one protein. Ours worked fine on rats and hamsters. But in chimps it binds to three proteins. One of them is the leukemia protein, one is associated with the optic nerve, and one is associated with the liver.”
    “I don’t think I get it.”
    “We haven’t yet done any tests on humans. But it looks as if the drug will cure leukemia, all right. However, it’ll make you go blind and destroy your liver as well. Whereas being blind might be preferable to dying of leukemia, the drug will kill you as dead as the cancer will— because you can’t live without a liver.”
    “I thought you told me Jacob wasn’t treating Terry. How do you know about the side effects?”
    “I lied. I was shocked that you knew. But I didn’t know myself until Lindsay told me; I told her she was crazy.” She came over and stood by my bed. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? You sound awful.”
    “Just weak. How close are you to finding the right monoclonal antibody?”
    “Very close. I’m going to do it.” She spoke with an odd, steely determination.
    “You know, Marilyn,” I said, “I have a feeling Jacob isn’t the only mad scientist at Kogene.”
    She had a hand in her pocket. “What are you talking about?”
    “I was kind of wondering what you were doing waving a gun around last night.”
    “I was doing a little sleuthing of my own. I knew Jacob wasn’t the murderer. That meant it had to be Steve. I was tailing him. Isn’t that what you call it?”
    “You were backing him up.”
    “What?”
    “You knew Jacob was nuts. You couldn’t live with him and not know it. That’s why you and Steve protected him from the press, why he wasn’t even allowed to take phone calls. You had as much stake in the future of Kogene as Steve did. Only all he cared about was the money. You were crazy-determined to finish the project. And I do mean crazy…” I closed my eyes a moment to rest. The Demerol was sneaking up on me.
    “You were in all the way with Steve,” I was barely whispering. “Technically, he killed those guys, sure. But you knew about it and you helped him.” That song about the little horses switched on again, somewhere in the back of my brain. “At the last minute you switched horses…”
    I felt her arm grip mine, and then I felt something like a pinprick. My arm went flying up, instinctively, I guess. The pricking stopped, but Marilyn had a better grip on me now— with both hands. I grappled with her, trying to pull her down so I could bite her or something. I don’t know what I was trying to do. I was too woozy. But judging from what happened next, I guess it looked like I was trying to kiss her.
    “Mcdonald, what the hell?” said Howard Blick’s voice. And then it said, “Uh, excuse me.”
    “Help!” I said. “Howard! Help!”
    What an unbelievable humiliation. Getting rescued by Howard Blick. It was Sardis’s fault too. She was stepping off the elevator on my floor about that time. Thirty seconds sooner and I could have been saved by a lovely maiden instead.
    She came in while Blick was still struggling to get cuffs on Marilyn and I was still struggling to stay awake. It took her about two seconds to assess the situation. “Hi, Marilyn,” she said. “Aunt Hallie sends her love. She says she hopes you’ll come back to see her soon, she enjoyed your last visit so much.” She looked at me. “That was a couple of weeks ago, right before Birnbaum died. Neither Jacob nor Steve has been there in six months.”
    “That clinches it,” I said. “Sardis, look on