The Society

by Michael Palmer

  “Grant! Give it up!” Gold called from behind. “Those were warning shots. I can kill you right now, but I won’t. Just give me the films!”

  The killer was gaining rapidly now. Will knew that, barring the sudden appearance of a patrol car or police station, it was almost over for him. Ahead and to his right was the entrance to an old, unlit cemetery. From what he could tell, none of the headstones seemed large enough to offer a place to hide. Still, the route would take him even farther from Lionel, and if he made it through, maybe there was more activity on the other side.

  With no plan other than to keep moving, he cut sharply to his right, between two shoulder-high granite steles and into the graveyard. He hadn’t gone more than twenty or thirty feet when he tripped over a low stone nearly obscured in the long grass and pitched forward, slamming shoulder first into a marker that looked to be centuries old. At that moment, part of him wanted to quit, to just roll over and wait. Instead, he scrambled to his feet and stumbled ahead. The far side of the small cemetery seemed to border a fairly busy street. Two cars sped past, then a third. If he could just make it there, he sensed he had a chance.

  What little remained of his hope lasted only a few more seconds. Before he reached the low hedges marking the far border of the graveyard, he was tackled from behind with stunning force. His face narrowly missed a stone as he pitched forward into cold, wet mud with Gold’s full weight upon him. Another instant and he was on his back, his attacker straddling him, looking furiously about, his dirt-stained face a mask of rage. Squeezing Will’s cheeks inward until his mouth involuntarily opened, Gold thrust his pistol to the back of his throat.

  “Okay, you son of a bitch,” he rasped, “where are the frigging films?”

  CHAPTER 30

  There was no way Will could tell what was first to work its way into his fragmented consciousness—the free-floating, disconnected images of the hours, perhaps days, just passed, the distinctive odors of animals and disinfectant, or the intense pain. The room was quite long and fairly narrow, with a high ceiling illuminated by two rows of fluorescent tubes and the light from three windows along the wall to his left.

  He was naked, lying faceup on a hard, thin mattress. Whether out of pity or anger, someone had thrown a moldy brown army blanket over him. He flashed on the similar sensations of waking up on a respirator in the ICU following his fentanyl overdose. He was absolutely helpless then and terrified of the tube down his throat. This time he was simply miserable.

  There was swelling about his eyes that made it difficult to see clearly. His face felt as if it were caked in cement. He could open his mouth, but only at an agonizing price. His nostrils admitted only thin streams of air.

  Shakily, he reached up a puffed, abraded hand and confirmed that the cement was, in fact, thick layers of dried blood covering his nose, lips, chin, and chest. Bits of memory continued to drift together, then flutter apart like windblown leaves. He knew that at some point he had been drugged, then hurt, then drugged again. A wiry little man with bad skin and yellowing teeth had cut him or burned him in some way, asking over and over about the X-rays.

  Had he told them about Lionel?

  Given that he was alive, it didn’t seem likely. He had always had a well-documented stubbornness and bull-like obstinacy. Could those traits, so often a source of problems for him, possibly have been enough to resist torture and, at least for the moment, save his life?

  Again, the smell of animals worked its way past his swollen nostrils. A farm of some sort? He struggled to focus. He was in a virtually bare room in what seemed to be a house—possibly a farmhouse. Little by little, the fog shrouding his senses and his memory began to lift. The rain . . . the Cobras . . . the guns . . . the envelope . . . Marshall Gold hunched over him, his face pinched with rage, the muzzle of his pistol jammed so hard against the back of Will’s throat that it seemed ready to tear through to the other side. There, abruptly, the memories ended. Had he passed out? Had the drugs and the pain ablated the final pieces of his ill-fated trip into the city?

  The questions kept coming. How had Gold gotten him out of Roxbury to this place? Who was the little man who had tortured him? When they were ready for him to die, how were they going to do it? Would the kids ever know for certain that he was dead, or would he simply become a missing person—a photo in a thick binder or one of many flyers on the bulletin board of a police station? And perhaps most baffling, what were the thick collection of X-rays in the envelope all about?

  Gingerly, he tested first his fingers and hands, then his arms, feet, and legs. None of them was pain-free, but none brought the sharp, boring discomfort of a broken bone. It seemed strange that Gold hadn’t bothered to tie him down in some way. He rolled uncomfortably to one side and squinted into what might have been morning sun, filtering through the gauze curtains that covered each of the three windows. The unadorned walls of the room were painted light blue, the door and trim around the windows white.

  To his right was a small, gouged wooden table, with no chairs. Piled by one of the legs were his clothes. The notion of trying to retrieve them brought a wry, painful smile. Given the agony of even minute movements, the clothes might just as well have been lying on the floor of his closet at home. Still, his nakedness felt unpleasant and demeaning enough to push him to try. It wasn’t until he had propped himself on one elbow that he first noticed the burns—small black discs of seared flesh, a dozen or more of them, half an inch or so in diameter, covering his chest and arms in a more or less random pattern. He shuddered. These same burns dotted much of Charles Newcomber’s corpse. Whatever instrument was responsible had apparently been more than the radiologist’s heart could handle. Will was relieved that the fingers of his own memory seemed unwilling to fully grasp his experience with it.

  He rolled off the mattress onto the chilly hardwood floor. Doing his best to ignore the stabs of a thousand daggers, he pulled his way across to the pile of clothing and began arduously pulling on his underwear. As he finished, he noticed that beneath the nearby gauze curtains, the windows were unbarred. He scanned the room, but saw no obvious cameras. If they weren’t watching him through some sort of monitoring, and if the room wasn’t any higher up than the second floor, he had a chance. He could use a table leg on the window and strips of blanket tied to the table to get to the ground. He leaned against the wall and inched into his jeans, which were filthy and sodden. Apparently he hadn’t been in the room long enough for them to dry.

  He was turning back to inspect the window when the single door to the room opened. Marshall Gold entered, accompanied by the slightly built man with the pencil-thin mustache and pockmarked face. Gold, handsome and fit in a button-down dress shirt and tan slacks, looked rested and refreshed. He was pushing a well-used, high-backed wooden armchair. His unpleasant-looking companion, dressed all in black, clutched a scuffed leather briefcase to his chest as if it were an infant.

  Will had little doubt that the contents of the case had everything to do with the burns on his body.

  “Don’t bother, Doctor Grant,” Gold said. “Those windows are half-inch-thick Plexiglas.”

  “Is that why there are no cameras?”

  Will’s voice was sandpaper. He tried unsuccessfully to clear away the raspiness.

  “Do you think we need them?”

  “I think you’re sick.”

  “Maybe . . . maybe so,” Gold replied thoughtfully. “I think I’ll take that as a compliment. Well, now, my friend, you’ve given us quite a night.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I believe we’ve heard him say that before, don’t you, Dr. Krause?”

  Krause nodded.

  “A tough nut, Mr. Gold,” he said, his formality sounding like Wint or Kidd, the hand-holding killers in James Bond’s Diamonds Are Forever. “A tough nut, indeed.”

  “It’s too late,” Will said. “You’ll never get those X-rays.”

  “I don’t care whether we get them or not,” Gold said. “I care whether an
yone else does.”

  “How did you get me here?”

  Will began to pull his sweatshirt over his head but quickly gave up, exhausted and aching from the effort.

  “You mean after you passed out on me, or after the kids spotted us in the cemetery and ran away? Those jerks took my favorite weapon, but not my cell phone.”

  “And not the other gun,” Will said as a few more pieces of the hideous night just past fell into place.

  “Not the other gun,” Gold said, moving the ominous chair a foot closer. “Potentially a lethal move. There were only six of them, so I could have just taken them out and walked away with the films. Now it appears that perhaps I should have done it that way.”

  “Pity.”

  Gold’s expression darkened.

  “You will tell us what we want to know.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “So, pardon me for saying it, Doctor, but you’re really not in very good cardiovascular shape.”

  “Take that up with my personal trainer.”

  “The point is, you really didn’t get very far before I caught up with you. Still, by that time the films were gone.”

  “Gone,” Will echoed, holding his hands up in mock dismay.

  He glanced at the chair, then at Krause, and decided that from then on he had best keep his flip retorts in check. He had won round one, but at a severe price. Round two was certain to be even more horrible. And if he lost that round, if he gave in and told them about Lionel, it was going to be over for him—no more twins, no Patty, no more anything.

  “But where?” Gold went on. “That is the question that has been troubling me for most of this night. Where? After we removed you from Roxbury, several of us retraced the steps of your flight, inspecting every can, Dumpster, and doorway along the way. Nothing. I don’t believe we would have missed a postage stamp let alone an envelope the size of the one you were carrying. You could have had someone waiting for you, but we were watching you from the moment you left the parking lot at the cancer center, to the hospital, then to your condo, to the bank, and finally all the way into Roxbury. There was no one. I’m certain of that. You could have given it to a passing driver, but none of them even slowed to help you—nor would they in that part of the city.” He moved the chair to the center of the room. “So, how did you do it? There were a few seconds in the beginning when you were out of my sight, then a few more just as you were crossing the street. That’s when something happened, isn’t it? You gave the films to someone right there, but who?”

  “You’re way off. I shoved them in a mail slot.”

  “We actually checked that. There were none on the route that were large enough. No, sir, you had to have handed it to someone, and the only person I can think of is that old man you stopped just before you parked your car—the one with the umbrella. You stopped him to ask directions, then ran into him again at that corner. He told you his name, didn’t he? He told you how to find him.”

  “You’re way off base.”

  “You will tell us who that man is and how you were going to meet up with him again. If you don’t, then you will have suffered through a mountain of pain for nothing, because sooner or later we’re going to find him. We’re just going to go back there and work the neighborhood with enough money until we find someone who will send us to the right door.”

  “Then do it.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to have to. Do you, Dr. Krause?”

  Krause pulled the table over near the chair and set his briefcase on it.

  “I don’t believe so at all,” he said. “We have a bet, you and I, Mr. G., and I never lose a bet.”

  Will felt a wave of nausea wash over him. Slick sweat materialized beneath his arms. He had passed out during Krause’s last go at him and had awakened with a merciful amount of amnesia. How far would his stubbornness take him this time?

  “So, Dr. Grant,” Gold said, “you have just two choices at this moment. Tell us the name of the man you gave the films to, or take off your clothes for an encore of last night’s festivities.”

  “Fuck you,” Will managed.

  “Your choice.” Gold turned to the doorway. “Mr. Watkins?”

  A black man the size of a pickup truck stepped into the room.

  “At your service.”

  “Mr. Watkins, our guest is complaining about feeling hot and also about a sudden desire to be up in that chair. Do you think you could help him out?”

  “I would love to help him out,” Watkins said.

  He reached behind him, brought in a metal bucket and a mop, and lumbered across the room toward Will.

  “You only threw up once last night before you passed out,” Gold said. “Dr. Krause has promised me he won’t cut things so close today.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Lying in their darkened bedroom, Donna Lee felt her husband’s fingertips slip under her T and begin gently kneading the muscles in the hollow of her back and down over her buttocks. She had never been a very deep sleeper, especially over the year since little Davy was born, and she was awake in seconds.

  “Honey, can’t you sleep?” she asked dreamily.

  “I don’t want to.”

  She stopped herself at the last possible moment from asking what would happen if one of the kids walked in on them and was it worth locking the door. When was the last time they had made love in the early morning? Maybe a couple of years. She rolled from her side to her belly and he responded by massaging her behind in slow, patient loops, one side to the other, the way she loved it—the way that never failed to turn her on.

  “Oh, baby,” she moaned softly. “That feels so good . . . so good.”

  His hand slid between her thighs and helped her become even wetter than she already was.

  She could feel his hardness against her. Responding, she raised her arms over her head, pointed her toes, and stretched her body out as taut and straight as an arrow. The trade-off for fewer surprises in their lovemaking was that each of them knew so well what pleased the other. Not predictable, really, just . . . comfortable.

  She pulled her shirt off and he turned her toward him, kissing her in the way no other man ever had or ever would—pressure just right on her mouth, lips apart, but not too much, tongue exploring, caressing, even as hers explored him.

  “Oh, I love this, Jeff,” she said. “And I love you so much.”

  She took him in her hand and stroked him rhythmically until he had grown so large she could barely get her fingers around him, and so hard it seemed he might break. Fifteen years of marriage, and rubbing him this way still excited her so.

  “Don’t stop, Donna. Don’t stop . . .”

  “Donna?”

  “Huh?”

  “Donna . . .”

  Donna pushed away from her desk and rubbed her eyes. Anne Hajjar, arms folded, was looking down at her mischievously. Like Donna, she was dressed in a set of aqua scrubs and a flower-print hair cover. Beyond her, Donna could see the ICU pulsating the way it always did when the census was near capacity. Today, though, they were again short a nurse, so everything was, if possible, moving even faster.

  “What’s up?” she asked, trying for a business-as-usual look.

  “You were actually out, weren’t you,” her longtime friend said, teasing. “Asleep at the switch.”

  “It was my break.”

  “Come on, you looked like you were smiling there.”

  “So?”

  Anne peered down at her, then suddenly grinned knowingly.

  “You had sex this morning, didn’t you?”

  Donna raised herself up regally.

  “I refuse to say.”

  “You bimbo!”

  “Jesus, Hajjar. You’re not a bimbo when you make love to your husband.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I divorced mine before I could find out what it was like. Listen, go back to your daydreaming. It’s good that at least someone around here is smiling today. I’m jealous as hell and I hate you for Jeff, but I’l
l still handle the new admission the ER just called about.”

  “Nonsense. I’m up for the next one, and I’ll do it. I can put Jeff on pause. What do they have?”

  “Sixty-eight-year-old man with chest pain. Looks like it may be an evolving MI. There’s still a chance they may want to take him to the cath lab to open up a couple of his arteries with stents.”

  “So, this guy’ll fill us up. Do you want to ship someone out to keep a bed open?”

  “If we can do it, sure.”

  “Who do we have? Mr. Turnbull?”

  “He had runs of extra beats all night, remember? Or were you busy reliving you-know-what during report?”

  “Hey, cut me some slack. With three kids, this is not an everyday occurrence. What about Lila?”

  “It’s either her or Patty Moriarity. All the others are too unstable.”

  “I vote Lila. Her cardiac enzymes are down and her pacemaker’s working fine, and she’s even more of a demanding pain in the neck than she was the last time she was here. Besides, Patty’s still in a coma and hasn’t even been here for two days yet. Even though she’s medically stable and off the vent, Dr. Ng would go ballistic if we tried to ship her out to the step-down unit in this condition.”

  “So would Dr. Grant. He was in there with her for a good long time yesterday.”

  “Hmmm. Should we be crossing him off the hospital’s most-eligible list?”

  “I think he crossed himself off the list with the fentanyl.”

  “But he may be back on. I just heard he’s getting his license back. Something about somebody soaking the insides of his OR shoes with fentanyl.”