Michael Palmer

by The Last Surgeon

  “Hey, slow down, there, kid!” the security guard barked as Reggie hobbled past his desk.

  “Sorry, sir,” Reggie shouted back. “Sorry.”

  He hurried as best he could manage out the huge glass doors and down the outside stairs. He was in pain and breathing heavily when he reached Junie and Nick. Behind him, he sensed more than saw the security guard racing down the stairs.

  “Go! They’re coming!” he managed, scrambling onto the backseat.

  “Are you hurt?” Nick asked as Junie accelerated and turned at the next intersection.

  Reggie patted the USB key in his pocket. “Not really,” he said.

  It was going to be hard to thank Junie for the rush.

  CHAPTER 17

  Koller kept pace behind Jillian Coates, close enough to breathe in her apricot-scented perfume. His shadow, stretched long and thin by the midday sun, occasionally overlapped hers. He liked touching her that way. Sometimes he walked in perfect synchronized step. She of course had no idea that for blocks she was being followed. Wearing a different disguise, far more doughy Robert Greene than urbane, intelligent Paul Regis, Koller felt confident that even if she did make eye contact with him, he would be unrecognizable to her. At worst, she would think he was just a typical letch, testing how close he could get to her and thinking dirty thoughts.

  How wrong she’d be.

  The Landrew non-kill had been a masterpiece, flawlessly researched, planned, and executed. Now, Koller’s bank account reflected his reward for that effort. There was no way of knowing how much more work Jericho intended on sending his way, but Koller had been in this business long enough to develop a sense for when a client’s well was about to run dry. Jericho’s pockets were extradeep, though, and he believed the work was far from over.

  He decided it would be a wasted trip to return to the Panama City estate, his condo in Taos, or back to California to resume his life as a sedate but colorful substitute chemistry teacher. More jobs were bound to come his way and probably soon. Meanwhile, he was content to use the downtime to get to know Jillian Coates and see for himself how motivated she was to further investigate the cause of the fire that had ravaged her condominium. He applied simple mathematical logic to his plan on how best to deal with her: the pushier she was in her efforts, the less time she had to live. Even the students at Woodrow Wilson High could handle that equation.

  Jillian left the crowded sidewalk and headed toward Anne Marie Cosco Hall, a nursing school dorm according to the signpost Koller read. Perhaps she’s living there now, he mused. His mind flashed on the chaos and havoc he could wreak if left to his own devices on a floor full of student nurses. The images, more horrible than any circle of Dante’s inferno, aroused him.

  Koller occupied himself with The Washington Post, which he read on a nearby park bench while waiting for his quarry to reappear. She did so twenty minutes later and proceeded to head off at a more accelerated pace. He liked her choice of clothes—not flashy or excessively tight, but not at all dowdy. Her breasts, beneath a cotton blouse, were totally enticing—a nice C cup, he guessed. But it was her behind, moving unself-consciously in her chino slacks, that he found most appealing. The way her hips swayed with each step was inspiring. Koller moved even closer to her than he had been before, wanting to take in another whiff of her intoxicating perfume. He decided then and there that he would have her, a willing sex partner or not, before he killed her. He considered it a bonus for a job well done.

  The notion made him smile.

  Jillian took a left onto Twentieth Street and walked a few blocks north, stopping underneath a green awning. Koller walked past her, but turned just in time to see her slip inside Madame Jessica’s Psychic Readings Studio.

  “Communing with the departed, are we?” Koller muttered to himself.

  He wished it had been a private investigator she was visiting and not some medium who would take her money and toy with her emotions. Perhaps she could use someone to comfort her—someone like Paul Regis.

  He was rock hard from following her, and from the taste of his last non-kill still fresh in his mind.

  CHAPTER 18

  Of the five Manuel Ferris files Reggie Smith had obtained from his close call at the Veterans Administration building, only one seemed promising—a thirty-five-year-old with an address on H Street NW in Washington. There was no apartment number. The Internet and Nick’s maps placed the address in D.C.’s compact Chinatown. As his cab pulled up to the curb, Nick stared at the structure and checked Reggie’s printout again.

  LUCKY BILL PEARL’S, the sign above the awning of a windowless, black brick building read. SERVING D.C.’S FINEST GENTLEMEN SINCE 1949. Below the fringed awning, the entrance was moderately discreet, with three glass-encased glossy photographs of women on each side, presumably advertising the headliners in their roster of performers and exotic dancers. Nikki . . . Sabra . . . Colette . . .

  Before he paid off the cabbie Nick checked the address a final time. Lucky Bill’s hardly seemed like the residence for a man who had gone off for a top-secret covert military mission—unless the mission was here, in which case it hardly seemed likely the VA would be making the operative’s identifying information available in its database.

  The façade of the building was four stories high. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine what the upper floors might be used for, but apartments were certainly one of the other possibilities. He scanned to the right and left, but there were no more entrances. Perhaps there was one on the far side of the building.

  Nick tipped the driver 25 percent and went inside. He was carrying a small manila envelope containing several photographs of Umberto and one of Manuel Ferris, enlarged by Reggie from a unit snapshot Matt McBean had come up with. The original photo was creased and grainy, and the enlargement only enhanced the deficiencies. In addition, Ferris was wearing some sort of a cap, further obscuring his appearance. From what Nick could tell, he was a narrow-faced, swarthy man with deeply set eyes, and was about the same height as McBean—five-foot-nine.

  Nick had last set foot inside a gentleman’s club with a group of fellow surgical residents. Bill Pearl’s was considerably more upscale than that place had been. Just outside the barred ticket window, a bald muscleman sat perched on a wooden stool. Above the collar of his tux shirt, the tops of a kaleidoscope of tattoos circumnavigated his tree-trunk neck.

  “How’re you doing?” he asked the brute, who he realized had no eyebrows.

  The man nodded without interest, and mumbled a reply. Nick fished a twenty out of his wallet, realizing as he did that he could have been much more subtle. The bouncer reached up a beefy paw and, instantly, the bill was gone.

  “I’m looking for a man named Manny Ferris,” Nick said. “I was told he worked here.”

  “Don’t you think you’re in the wrong club, sir?” the giant replied. “This is girls only.”

  “No, no. What I mean is . . . is there a guy named Manny Ferris who works or . . . or maybe even lives here?”

  “What I mean is that I don’t know,” came the humorless reply.

  Inwardly, Nick smiled. Here he was—a trauma surgeon, able to make life-and-death decisions in the hospital or in the field, fumbling for words with a man who threw people out of a bar for a living.

  The club’s interior was dark and loud, but smoke-free, and not yet very crowded. Someplace in the building, though, near the nightclub, he could smell that cigars were being smoked. So much for city ordinances, Nick mused. All hail King Cash. Several men sat at the bar, glued to the busty topless dancer on center stage slithering her athletic body down a polished brass pole. The stage lighting was professional, and Nick noted that it was synchronized to the dance music that was blasting out of an impressive stack of speakers.

  In front of the arcing bar, plush, high-backed chairs lined the edge of the stage. There were a few men seated there as well, all dressed in business attire. Lucky Bill’s was hardly the low-rent district of gentlemen’s clubs. What business
could such a place have with a burnt-out GI?

  Nick had crossed to the opposite side of the club when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. A slender young woman in a slinky black dress was smiling up at him. Her elfin features were framed by stunning, jet-black hair, which flowed halfway down her back.

  “You look lost, handsome,” she said.

  “I’m looking for somebody,” Nick replied. “Do you know a guy named Manny Ferris? This is the address I was given for him. Are there apartments upstairs?”

  The girl cooed playfully. “Hey, that’s a lot of questions for a first date. How about a little champagne first? My name’s Brandy, but champagne’s my drink.”

  Nick wondered how much Bill Pearl’s charged for a bottle of champagne, to say nothing of the services from Brandy. Even without her biggest-ticket item, it was doubtful his night-on-the-town ATM withdrawal was going to last long.

  “So,” Nick said, taking a seat at a corner table, “what about Manny Ferris, or Manuel Ferris?”

  “You a cop?”

  “Nope, not a cop. Just a guy who’s looking for a guy named Manny Ferris. Do you know him?”

  “I get paid to talk with the customers, Officer,” she said.

  “I told you, I’m not a cop. I’ve got a hundred I’m ready to exchange for information about Manny Ferris. It’s very important to me.”

  “What if I don’t know anything?”

  “Forty just for trying.”

  “I’ll take the forty in advance.”

  Nick reduced his stack of twenties by two.

  “His name’s Ferris,” he said. “Manny or Manuel Ferris. The VA gave me this place as his address.”

  “The club? I think the owner may have an apartment on the top floor, and the girls use the second floor. But I don’t know if anyone lives in the rest of the place. What’s he look like?”

  Nick produced the photo McBean had given him, and the girl studied it.

  “He could be sitting right next to me and I might not recognize him from this picture. Height? Weight?”

  “Maybe five nine. He’s midthirties—might have been late twenties when this was taken.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Boy, I sure hope you’re not a cop. If you are, you’re not very good at it.”

  Without waiting for a reply, she turned, giving him one last look at her clock-stopping face and figure, and headed across the room toward a newcomer who looked strikingly like the cartoon mogul on Chance and Community Chest cards in the game of Monopoly.

  Nick stood to leave. Another young, attractive woman, a redhead, approached him before he had made it to the men’s room at the rear of the club. The VA record had to have been wrong, he was thinking, unsuccessfully trying the photo on the girl. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time they had bad information.

  The restroom, with a swashbuckling cavalier on the door, featured orange marble countertops, neat rows of toiletries, hair combs in blue liquid disinfectant, and several small bowls of mints. Nick could not see under the stalls, but it seemed as if there was no one else in the washroom besides him and an attendant in a stained white collared shirt, askew bow tie, and faded red vest. He had a clean towel draped on his arm and passed it over as soon as Nick had washed his hands.

  As the attendant turned toward him, Nick caught his breath. The man’s face was deformed. Two thick flaps of skin were separated by several crisscrossing scars. It was as if someone had started a multi-step plastic surgery procedure and then stopped before it was completed.

  “You have a nice day, sir,” the man muttered.

  Nick set a five in his jar. “Thanks. You . . .” He stopped mid-sentence. The attendant drying the sink and countertop in the strip club bathroom was Manny Ferris. Nick felt nearly certain of it.

  “Manny? You’re Manny Ferris, aren’t you?”

  Ferris looked away and mumbled a response.

  “Manny, I’ve been looking all over for you! My name is Nick Garrity. I’m a doctor and a good friend of Matt McBean. I can’t believe I’ve finally found you.”

  Ferris looked blankly at Nick. His rheumy eyes were empty and distant.

  “Do you want a mint?” he asked.

  His voice was flat—devoid of any emotion. His deformed face held no discernable expression.

  “Manny, I’m a friend of Matt McBean,” Nick said again. “McBean, from the service. I’ve been looking for you.”

  Nothing.

  From his stack of pictures, Nick pulled out the enlarged segment of the photograph of McBean and Ferris taken years ago, and handed it to the man.

  “Look, Manny. This is you right here. And this is Matt McBean. He told me you vanished four years ago. Where have you been?”

  Nothing.

  Ferris adjusted the combs and checked that the towels were aligned. Then, without so much as a nod at Nick, he turned and inspected each of the three elegant stalls.

  Night of the Living Manny, Nick thought.

  Ferris did not protest being shown the photo a second time. There may have been a flicker of recognition, but then, just as quickly, it was gone.

  “We have some new combs if you’d like to do your hair,” he said.

  Nick leaned in close to check the man’s pupils for any sign of drug use. They were mid-position and seemed to react to light. Then he took hold of Ferris’s wrist and measured his pulse. The former enlisted Marine offered no resistance and kept his wrist limp as Nick calculated his rate at sixty-eight.

  “Manny, there’s a good chance you know my friend Umberto Vasquez. It’s been four years since I saw him last. He was signed on to do a top-secret job for the military, just like you were. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “How are you doing today, sir?” Ferris replied. “Do you need a towel?”

  “Manny, please. This man served with me. He saved my life in battle. Then a few years later, just like you, he disappeared.”

  No reaction.

  Nick’s enthusiasm at having found the man had vanished, along with his hope of learning Umberto’s fate. He was wondering if it was worth trying to get Ferris into the RV in the near future for an examination and some blood work.

  “Here, Manny,” he said, with an edge of frustration and irritability that he knew was out of character. “Here’s a twenty. Take a look at these pictures of Umberto Vasquez.”

  Ferris took the bill, but he would not take the stack of photographs, so Nick was forced to flip through them. He paused on one picture for a few seconds before switching to the next. Each time, Nick was careful to point out Umberto. Ferris kept the same dull expression throughout. Then, while Nick was showing him the penultimate photograph, something changed. Ferris’s eyes widened. His mouth fell agape. He started to shake, and his face reddened. He turned away from Nick. Swinging him around by the shoulders, Nick held the photograph up to his face. The picture was of Nick and Umberto, standing in front of the RV with the Lincoln Memorial in the background. Nick could not remember with certainty, but he thought that Junie had taken the shot.

  “Do you recognize Umberto in this picture? Do you?”

  “Go away!” Ferris shouted, pushing Nick backward with force. “Go away from me!”

  Nick stumbled against the counter and nearly fell. His eyes caught a blur of movement and he ducked, just as the glass jar filled with combs sailed over his head, shattering the mirror behind him.

  “Manny, stop it!” Nick shouted.

  “Can’t stay. Must run!”

  The man’s eyes, once dead, had ignited with a feral frenzy. His strength was astounding. Stiff-arming Nick as he tried to follow him out of the bathroom, Ferris barreled into a cocktail waitress carrying a tray full of drinks. Nick managed three steps in pursuit before being grabbed from behind by the tattooed bouncer. Pinned face-first against the club’s velvet-lined wall, Nick watched helplessly as his only link to Umberto disappeared through the fire exit door.

  CHAPTER 19

>   The two biggest shortcuts to disaster in medicine are arrogance and everything else.

  Nick knew his focus was compromised. The warning about medical mistakes, from one of his former surgical professors at Brown, ran through his head like a Möbius strip. Arrogance wasn’t the problem with him. It never really had been. But even under the best of circumstances, his thoughts had a tendency to wander. And twenty-four hours after his bizarre encounter with Manny Ferris, this was hardly the best of circumstances.

  The RV was back in D.C., and the warming weather had brought with it a flood of patients. Routine . . . routine . . . routine . . . disaster masking as routine. The shattering of a medical career was as simple as a one-minute loss of concentration—a swollen lymph node missed, a rectal exam not done, an abnormal neurologic sign ignored, a telltale answer in the medical history passed over or not asked for at all. It was that easy. And for Nick, the danger increased in direct proportion to his SUD score, which tonight continued hovering around five.

  They were on the third and final stop of the evening, parked on the street in the Anacostia section of D.C. Nick and Junie had the help of an experienced volunteer nurse named Kate, who was working beneath the lightweight canopy that served as their annex and at other times as their triage area and waiting room. Slowly but surely, the crush of patients had vanished, and not a moment too soon. Fatigue and Manny Ferris were taking over Nick’s body and mind. For a few brief moments after entering Lucky Bill Pearl’s, it had seemed some answers to Umberto’s disappearance might be at hand. Instead, there were only more questions and more frustrations.

  “So, have you had the chance to think about Ferris?” Nick had asked Junie during the ride in from Baltimore to their initial stop at Jasper Yeo’s used car dealership.

  “Booze,” she said simply. “When in doubt, always bet alcohol. My money’s on wet brain.”

  “Maybe, but for someone who is as much of a zombie as Ferris was, I didn’t see too many of the stigmata that go along with alcoholism—you know, spider veins on the cheeks, a W. C. Fields nose, ascites, liver palms, weakness, impaired gait. Should I go on? Then there’s those scars and lumps on his face. It’s like he was the big loser in a gang fight.”