But what I saw in her face was less than comforting. There was sadness in her eyes, and pity, too. There was embarrassment in her cheeks and tension in the way her fingers twisted as her hands lay folded together atop her yellow legal pad, all of which was as I had expected. And more than anything else, in the squint of her eye and the way her mouth curled down at the edges, there was disgust, which I had expected, too. But the disgust wasn’t aimed at the videos, no, nor at our client sitting just to her left. Instead I saw her disgust plain only when she turned her head to stare at me.
And I deserved every bit of it.
70
I worked late at the office that night. I had hoped Beth would come back after court so I could explain myself, but what was there to explain? She had told me her feelings toward François were not romantic, yet I hadn’t believed her. She had refused to see the tape when I had offered it, so I jammed it down her throat in court, even if it meant risking our client’s case. I was playing the paternal role, even though I wasn’t her father. I would damn well help her whether she liked it or not.
He was rubbing off on me, was Dr. Bob. And as I realized it, a chill rode up my spine. Next thing you knew, I’d have this strange desire to drill Beth’s molars.
As I waited vainly for Beth, I prepared for the rest of the trial. First I called Mrs. Winterhurst, who had recommended Dr. Bob to Leesa. I remembered that during one of my emergency visits, the doctor had to run out and treat Mrs. Winterhurst in the other room, she was the woman with the complaining manner and the fancy clothes. Yes, she told me over the phone, of course she would testify. She said it would be so exciting, and she had just the outfit. I was sure she did.
Then I was on the phone to Chicago, speaking first to Franny Pepper, then checking the flights from O’Hare, and then trying to find the right nurse to take care of Virgil Pepper while she flew in to testify. I doubted whether Jim could even get out of the lounge chair, better yet climb the stairs to take care of the brutal old man. So I called a couple nursing homes, I asked the administrators if any of their nurses moonlighted, I requested someone with strong hands and a nasty temper. You’d be surprised how many candidates I found.
When all was put in place, I typed up a subpoena for Dr. Bob. Tomorrow court was in recess, the judge had a conference, so I’d have time enough to pay a visit on my dentist, though hell if I’d ever let him touch my teeth again, despite the gap that still remained unfilled.
So it was late by the time I shut off the office lights, locked the office door, stepped out into the warm, humid night. I was exhausted and hungry, and the Phillies were in San Francisco for a late-starting game, which meant I’d fall asleep on the couch by the third inning, which sounded just right. On the way home, I bought a six-pack of beer and a take-out cheese steak—yes, we actually do eat those things—grabbed my mail from the entranceway of my building, and headed up the stairs to my apartment.
I opened the door, stepped inside, and stopped cold.
There was something familiar and terrifying in the air. And something else, too.
I had left the place a mess, yes, I admit it, but not this big a mess. Clothes were strewn, the cushions of the couch were slashed, the dining table was overturned, chairs were scattered, framed posters were flung about, my cheap china was shattered, and, worst of all, the television was crumpled on the floor, its screen smashed. No baseball for me. My first thought was whether my homeowner’s insurance would cover it all, and my second thought was that I didn’t have any homeowner’s insurance. Before I could conjure a third thought, something grabbed me around the neck and killed my breath.
My back was pressed against a wall, wide and surprisingly soft. I was lifted into the air. My throat was constricted in on itself. I am using the passive tense here on purpose, because frankly, in the first few instants I was paralyzed into passivity by shock.
When I finally realized what was happening, I grappled helplessly at the thick arm around my throat. I slid my hands down the shaft of the arm, hoping I could find my attacker’s hand and maybe bend a finger back to force him to let go of me. I felt a thin layer of latex over an unmovable mass of gristle and bone. So much for that.
The finger gambit having failed miserably, I took my next-best option, and as my lungs started screaming for oxygen, I flailed about like a madman. I might have looked like some bad Elvis impersonator dancing to “Jailhouse Rock” on a bed of hot coals during an epileptic fit, but it wasn’t all about styling.
My heel hit a shin, my knuckle landed on something soft in the middle of a face, my elbow banged a rib. The monster holding me started hopping, loosened its grip, and let out a quick exhale along with a deep grunt.
Next thing I knew, I was facefirst on the floor. I started struggling to my feet, but something hard and heavy slammed into the small of my back and I was pancaked again onto the floor. The whole of my front was in pain, and it seemed to center on a sharp jut in my cheek.
I lifted my head away from the pain and something smacked it hard so that my nose smashed against the floor.
“This is your last chance, bucko,” came a sharp Germanic whisper.
Something grabbed my ear and twisted it so hard I screamed.
The weight on my back disappeared. I again jerked my head up to escape the pain in the cheek. I tried to turn around to see who was there, and something inside my face slipped. I stopped moving, reached a hand gingerly to my cheek. It came away slick, as if my cheek was covered with a viscous oil. But it wasn’t oil.
I lifted myself slowly to my hands and knees, sat down on the floor, reached again to my cheek. Something was sticking out, some shard. I took hold and pulled, and after an initial tug of resistance out it came, with little slurp. A wedge of glass, slightly curved. I wasn’t the first person skewered by television, but all in all I would have preferred it be on 60 Minutes.
I thought about climbing to my feet, staggering down the steps, seeing if I could spot my attacker, but as the nausea started blossoming like a beastly flower in my gut, I thought better of it. And I already knew, didn’t I?
Tilda. It rhymes with Brunhilda. The fat lady had sung.
71
I entered Dr. Pfeffer’s waiting room with great wariness. I almost expected Tilda to be guarding the entrance with a baseball bat and a sign saying NO TWO-BIT LAWYERS ALLOWED, but everything was as it was before. The walls were still beige, pretty Deirdre behind the desk was still smiling. The same bright lights, same jaunty Muzak, same oppressive sense of cheer.
And I, apparently, was still more than welcome.
“Oh, Mr. Carl, we’re so glad you’ve come for a visit. Is that a new tie? And what’s that on your cheek? I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“Just a little too much television,” I said, not mentioning the hours spent in the emergency room, the needles of Novocain, the fourteen stitches.
“I don’t see you down as having an appointment today. Are we mistaken?”
“No, Deirdre, your book is right. I thought I’d drop in for a friendly little chat with the doctor. Is he in?”
“Dr. Pfeffer is seeing another patient right now, but he’ll certainly be glad to see you. You’re one of his favorites.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I think one of the examination rooms is available. If you want, Mr. Carl, you can wait for the doctor in Examination Room B. As a rule we don’t let visitors in the operational part of the office, but I’m sure that’s a rule we can bend for you.”
I looked at the closed door that led to the hallway that led to the examination rooms and the examination chairs and the picks and the drills and the…I looked at the door and I shuddered.
“No, thank you,” I said. “To tell you the truth, you couldn’t drag me back there with a chain and a backhoe.”
She smiled, unsure of what to say to that. “Then please take a seat. I’m sure the doctor will be out shortly.”
I sat in a beige chair, picked up an old magazine, tried to calm my
nerves. It was unsettling enough to be there in the first place—it was the waiting room to a dentist’s office, after all—but it was doubly so since this dentist seemed to be after more than the usual amount of my blood. He wanted me to leave him out of the Dubé case, and the pressure was accelerating at an alarming rate. It had to stop, somehow, and that was the purpose of my visit. I could back off, sure, but as much as I had decided to do just that the night before, as the doctor was tying up the stitches in my cheek, one after the other after the other, I’m not built that way. I don’t have much of a spine, it’s a wonder I can stand up in the morning, but push me like he had been pushing me and whatever is actually there stiffens with doggedness. So I figured the way to get it over with was to get it over with, to drop the damn subpoena on his lap and end the suspense.
The door to the examination room opened. I jumped to my feet. Tilda stood in the doorway, bent stiffly to the right, her left eye swollen shut. She stared at me with malice in her one open eye before she moved to the side and Dr. Bob and his patient, a lovely young woman, brushed past her to the desk.
Dr. Bob stopped suddenly when he saw me, his face startled for a moment before recovering into a smile. “Victor, hello. What an unexpected pleasure.”
He squinted at the bandage on my cheek, as if he were actually surprised to see it, then turned to take in Tilda’s sorry condition.
“Have you two been seeing each other behind my back?” he said, his voice wide with amusement.
I waited as he spoke to his patient while writing a note in her file. She looked nervously at the bandage on my cheek before leaving. When the door closed, I stepped over to the reception desk with the subpoena in my hand.
“I have something for you, Doctor,” I said, and then, quick as that, I served him. I felt suddenly lighter, as if, instead of a few official pages backed with blue cardboard, I had shed a couple barbells and a curling iron.
He looked the subpoena over briefly, shrugged. “I’ll see if I’m available on that date,” he said flatly. “But on to something far more worthwhile.” His face abruptly brightened, his voice turned hearty and cheerful. “I seem to remember I wanted to give you a thorough cleaning before I installed your new bridge. Well, I have good news. A hole has opened in my schedule. I have time to do the cleaning right now. Come on back.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Oh, don’t be worried, Victor, this is the easiest part of the process. Sometimes I have Tilda do the cleanings, she’s very thorough, as you can imagine, but you I’ll take care of myself.”
I glanced over at the now open doorway, from where Tilda glared. “I’m not going back there.”
“Of course you are,” he said. “I noticed your gums are quite spongy. A cleaning will do wonders. Your smile will shine, I promise you.”
“I’ll find someone else to do it, and to fill the hole, too.”
“But that’s such a waste. Your bridge will be here any day. Oh, don’t be such a chicken boy. Cluck, cluck, cluck. We’re both professionals, are we not? If we are to trust anything in each other, we at least must trust that. Can I have Victor’s file, please, Deirdre?”
I watched nervously as Deirdre left the front office to retrieve the file, leaving me alone with Dr. Bob and Tilda, who continued to stare with one eye swollen shut and the other eye evil.
“Come on back, now,” said Dr. Bob as he headed past Tilda and through the door. “This won’t take much time. And while I’m scraping the tartar and buffing the enamel, I have some interesting news to tell you. That address you were looking for? I found it.”
“The key for me was Rex,” said Dr. Bob as he slipped his metal pick between my tooth and gum and scraped and scraped and scraped.
“You remember Rex, of course, the rather large man with the unfortunate teeth stationed outside the Hotel Latimore. Loosen your lower lip, please. Don’t fight me here, Victor. I need to get beneath the gum line. Whoever taught you to floss should be shot. Once I figured that Rex was my key to entering the Hotel Latimore, it was only a matter of finding a way to reach him. Lucky me, I have rarely seen a man more in need of a dentist.”
Frankly, I was having a hard time concentrating on Dr. Bob’s story. I was having a hard time not bolting out of the examination chair and running for my life. But Dr. Bob had an address and a story to tell, and I needed both, not to mention that my teeth could always use a good cleaning. So I decided to gut it out, even though my nerves were so hyperalert that every time the metal of his pick touched tooth or gum, I jumped. But, surprisingly, Dr. Bob was being uncharacteristically gentle. In fact, the most pain I was experiencing was the cramping in my hands as I gripped tight the arms of the chair.
“I must say he was a better patient than you, Victor. A higher tolerance for pain, or maybe he simply doesn’t know me as well as you do. Well, Rex led me to a young woman named Claire, who worked in the office with the formidable Miss Elise, the Reverend Wilkerson’s unlikely-looking paramour. I first tried with Miss Elise and got nowhere. Such a dried-up old spinster, immune to all my charms, imagine that. But Claire was something different. Very beautiful, idealistic, a truly spiritual young woman. I think Rex has a thing for her. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could get those two together? I think I’ll make that my next mission. Why don’t you spit?”
Spit, splot, splat.
“It was Claire who finally located for me the address. A rather simple operation in the end. Only had to break a few minor laws. But it wasn’t the address I found most interesting in the whole affair. It was Rex.
“We seem to be a little jumpy today. Why is that? You know, you’re going to have to come in more frequently, Victor, if we are to avoid such problems in the future. Considering the state of your teeth and gums, you should come in every three months. As we always say at the A.D.A. convention, the two things you can never have too much of are anal sex and dental care.
“Okay, I think we’re finished with the bottoms. Open wide, and we’ll attack your uppers. What kind of toothbrush do you use? Maybe you need something new. It helps if you don’t use the same brush two years running.”
Pick, scrape, jab, scrape, pick pick pick.
“I’m always on the lookout for new talent, a pure soul with the heart, the muscle, the determination to make a difference in the world. I could point you to a woman in Baltimore, to a couple in Albuquerque, to a man in Mexico City who can move mountains. All of us, all we want to do is to help. And I think Rex might be another. He is very much a raw talent, he so lacks confidence in anything except his size, but his heart is pure, and he’s much sharper than he lets on. I think he’ll be a fine recruit, if I only have the time to properly work with him. But in this business one never knows when the time will run out.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I maybe dug a little too deep. From your reaction it looks like I hit a nerve. Hold on a second, and let me get some suction in there.”
Awhoosh-ashiga-awhoosh-ashiga-ashiga-ashiga-awhoosh.
“My, you are quite the bleeder, aren’t you?” said Dr. Bob as he went back to picking and scraping. “I once considered recruiting you, too, Victor. Your wisecracking, hard-bitten cover is so obviously a false front. I hoped inside wasn’t simply the usual dark recess of selfish indifference. But no, I’ve discovered something remarkable in you, something I had hoped to work with. Look at the way you are helping that boy, Daniel, and your crusade on behalf of his half sister. And even your work for that horrid waste of humanity, Mr. Frog, the short-order chef. Yes, you have so much potential, and your empathy would have been your greatest strength. Yet, as so often happens, there is a flaw.
“Well, now, I think I’m finished.” He stuck a mirror in my mouth, whipped it around. “Yes, all done. That wasn’t too bad, was it?”
Shockingly, it wasn’t. Except for the minor incident when he drew blood while he was talking obliquely about the subpoena, the whole cleaning was relatively pain-free, relative to kidney surgery, maybe, but still.
“Ti
me to polish,” he said cheerily.
As the round brush whirred across my teeth, Dr. Bob continued. “Some recruits never make the final leap. It all becomes too personal. I look at your face, and I look at Tilda’s eye, and I feel that I have failed her. She is a wonderful woman, strong and fearless, and surprisingly agile in bed, but her impulses are all wrong. It is always better to be Loki than Thor. Now, hold on, I’m almost finished. Yes. Done. A fine job, if I do say so myself. Rinse carefully and spit.”
Splish, splosh, splish, splosh—splat.
“Is that it?” I said hopefully.
“Not yet. Tilda,” he called out. The wounded Valkyrie appeared. “Mr. Carl needs his fluoride. What flavor do you take, Victor? Chocolate, piña colada, or mint?”
I eyed the huge woman standing the doorway and my nerves crashed in on themselves. “Let’s say we skip the fluoride,” I said in a girlish squeal.
“Nonsense,” said Dr. Bob. “Piña colada, why don’t we say? That would go so well with those Sea Breezes you favor. Take over for me, Tilda, won’t you? I’ll be back in a flash.”
He disappeared, leaving me at the mercy of his hygienist. I looked up at the fearsome, swollen face. “Open wide, ja,” she said as she reached for my mouth. “And no crying this time, bucko.”
I was still shaking from the ordeal of the fluoride when Dr. Bob stepped back into the room. His mask was on, his little blue cap, his hands were held out from his body like a surgeon, fingers up, palms toward his chest, rubber gloves already in place.
Falls the Shadow Page 38
