“Just for the fun of it.”
“Kid, you’ve got chutzpah. Who are these people?”
“A couple of doctors. They run a fertility clinic on the Upper East Side.”
“Fertility clinic? What the hell’s that?”
“They get women pregnant.”
“I used to do that,” Davenport says, “but not recently. What’s Haldering’s interest in a fertility clinic?”
“We’re checking them out for a venture capital outfit. The clinic wants to go national.”
“All right,” the NYPD man says, sighing. “I guess I owe you one. Give me the names and I’ll see if we’ve got anything on them.”
Cone spells out the names of Drs. Victor January and Phoebe Trumball.
“Okay,” Davenport says, “I’ll check and get back to you.”
“Today?”
“Don’t push your luck, sonny boy. This is going to cost you a couple of belts in that Garden of Delights you call home.”
“Anytime,” Cone says, and they hang up.
He broods a few moments, then wanders down the corridor to the office of Sidney Apicella, chief of Haldering’s CPAs. As usual Sid is furiously rubbing his bugle when Cone enters.
“Leave it alone, Sid,” Timothy advises. “You’re just going to irritate it more.”
“It irritates me,” Apicella grumbles, “so why shouldn’t I irritate it. If you’re looking for the accounting PIE on the Nu-Hope Clinic, it’s not completed yet. You’ll get a copy when it is. Now leave me alone; I’ve got work to do.”
“This isn’t about Nu-Hope,” Cone says. “Can you get me a financial rundown on Lester Pingle?”
Apicella looks at him with astonishment. “Since when do we investigate clients? Pingle Enterprises is in the black; we checked them out before we took them on.”
“I know,” Cone says patiently. “It’s not the company I’m interested in; it’s Lester, the junior partner. I want to know his cash assets, liabilities, and investments. You can find out.”
“My God, Tim,” Sid says, groaning, “that’ll be a day’s work—and a pain in the ass.”
“Sure it is,” Cone agrees cheerfully. “So is everything else around this joint. Let me know when you’ve got some numbers. And stop massaging your schnozz. You know, W. C. Fields had the same thing, and he used Allen’s Foot Ease on it.”
“No kidding?” Apicella says, interested. “You really think it’ll help?”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
Cone goes back to his office, calls a local deli and orders a cheeseburger, fries, a dill pickle, and a cold can of Black Label Light.
On a sloppy day like this, everyone is eating in, so it’s almost an hour before his lunch is delivered. Meanwhile he hacks away at the weekly progress report Samantha Whatley demands of all her detectives. That woman is a holy terror, Cone decides, and pads his expense account outrageously.
After finishing his lunch he types up the progress report on the old Remington standard that’s been allotted to him. The keys haven’t been cleaned in years, and all his two-finger typing comes out with the o’s, p’s, a’s and e’s filled in. Cone’s finished manuscript looks like the Rosetta stone.
He takes it down to Samantha’s office, hoping they’ll have a chance to exchange intimate insults, but she’s not in. So he flips his report onto her desk and wonders if he should go home. He’s not doing any good sitting at his desk, staring at the walls. At least, back in his loft, he can read more of the books on artificial birth and discuss original sin with Cleo.
It’s almost two-thirty in the afternoon, and he’s preparing to make his break when the receptionist calls and tells him Detective Davenport is there and wants to see him.
“Yeah,” Cone says, “send him in.”
Neal K. Davenport, a big, overweight guy, shoves into Cone’s office, wearing a soaked raincoat, a plastic cover on his fedora, and carrying a dripping umbrella that he props in a corner, letting it piddle on the floor.
“How come you’re not out detecting?” he says. “A glorious day like this. You got anything medicinal? I think I’m coming down with something.”
“Terminal thirst?” Timothy says. “I haven’t got a drop, but maybe I can find something. Wait a minute.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” the cop says. “I just got here.”
Cone goes down the corridor to Sol Faber’s office. Sol isn’t in, but Cone knows he keeps a pint of gin in the bottom drawer of his desk, which Cone finds, half-empty. He takes it and leaves a note scrawled on Sol’s desk calendar: “I lifted your jug. The Masked Marvel.”
He stops at the water cooler to pull out two paper cups, then goes back to his office. Davenport has taken off his raincoat and condomed hat, and is sitting placidly in one of the uncomfortable office chairs, unwrapping a fresh stick of Juicy Fruit. He looks at the paper cups and the half-filled pint of gin.
“Bless you, my son,” he says. “May your tribe increase. I never drink gin except on the third Tuesday of every month, but in this case I’ll make an exception.”
Cone closes the door and fills their cups. They’re little triangular dunce caps—you can’t set them down—so both men hold their drinks, sipping as they talk.
“Nice of you to stop by,” the Wall Street dick says. “I suppose you were out for a stroll on this pleasant afternoon and just found yourself in the neighborhood.”
“Uh-huh,” Davenport says, drinking and chomping on his wad of chewing gum. “Something like that. You know those two names you gave me this morning? The doctors? Well, they’re clean. We’ve got nothing on them.”
“And you waded through muck and mire just to tell me that? Come on!”
“Ordinarily,” the city dick says, “I wouldn’t have been in any hurry to check out those names. Just something to do when I got around to it. I mean I got a full plate. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Sure. So why all the speed?”
“Funny story. Not funny ha-ha, but definitely oddball. I work out of an office with another guy, a dick too. Our desks butt up against each other. He’s a nice guy, Nick Galanis, a Greek. A very sharp eye. He always smells of garlic, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, this morning he’s sitting there and he hears me on the phone repeat those two names you gave me: Doctor Victor January and Doctor Phoebe Trumball. When I hang up, he wants to know what that was all about. I tell him a guy I know wants those two people checked out—and what’s it to him.”
Davenport pauses to reach across the desk for the gin bottle.
“Finish it,” Cone says. “The booze and your story.”
“All right,” the cop says, “don’t mind if I do.”
He empties the bottle and shakes it carefully to get the last few drops.
“Well, here’s what happened: A few months ago, Nick caught a squeal from the Fulton Fish Market. You know those guys down there go to work like at two in the morning. There’s a Volkswagen parked right in front of a loading dock. So the first guy to show up for work looks in and sees a Caucasian male in the driver’s seat with half his head blown away. They call us, and Nick Galanis goes down to take a look.
“It turns out the clunk’s name is Harold Besant. That’s the name on his driver’s license, and that’s who the Volkswagen is registered to. There’s a Charter thirty-eight Special on the seat to his right, like it’s fallen from his hand. One round fired. The slug that killed Besant went into his right temple and took a lot of his brains with it when it came out. Powder burns around the entrance wound. The only prints on the gun were Besant’s. So what does that tell you?”
“Suicide,” Cone says.
“Sure it was suicide,” Davenport says, almost angrily. “Open and shut. But why did he pick the Fulton Fish Market? Who the hell knows? But Nick Galanis gets a hair up his ass. You know how you feel when a case is so neat and clean; you begin to wonder if you might be missing something. So Nick starts snooping, mostly on his own time. He finds out the dead guy
was a research assistant at the Nu-Hope Fertility Clinic.”
“Oh-ho,” Cone says.
“Yeah oh-ho. That’s why Nick perked up his ears when he heard me repeat those names. He had questioned Doctor January and Doctor Trumball. They claimed the guy had been depressed lately, and his fellow workers agreed he’d been in a down mood.”
“Did you trace the gun?”
“Of course we traced the gun. It wasn’t registered. I mean Besant had no permit. The piece was part of a shipment swiped from a Jersey warehouse. It was probably sold on the street.”
“Did Besant leave a suicide note?”
“No, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He could have done it on the spur of the moment. Entrance wound in the right temple with powder burns. Gun found on the seat by his right hand. No prints on the gun but his. So where does that leave Detective Nick Galanis? In nowheresville—right? He figures he’s making a big something out of nothing. The file is closed as an apparent suicide. The ME says it was, so the Department’s home free and clear.”
“You should have been an actor,” Cone says. “You’re leading up to your great dramatic moment—I can feel it coming.”
“Yeah,” Davenport says, grinning, “something like that. This Harold Besant’s closest relative is an uncle who’s in the merchant marine, and he was on the other side of the world when Harold shuffled off this mortal coil. About a month ago, the uncle gets back to New York and looks up Nick Galanis, wanting to know how his nephew died. Nick tells him, and the uncle says no way; it was imfuckingpossible. You know why?”
“I’ll bite. Why?”
“Because, according to the uncle, Harold Besant was left-handed,”
“Son of a bitch,” Timothy Cone says.
Whatley and Cone are lounging in Sam’s ruffled apartment. They’ve had a fast dinner of grilled franks, baked beans, and cold sauerkraut, washed down with bottles of Dark Heineken. While she stacks the dishes in her little kitchen—trim as a ship’s galley—Cone tells her about the books he’s been reading on artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and embryo transfer.
“Keep talking,” Sam says, “but pick up a dish towel. I’ll wash and you wipe.”
He complies and goes on describing the laboratory technique for conception without intercourse.
“No sweat,” he says, “and no grunting. No ‘Was it as good for you as it was for me?’ A lot of single women are doing it. Interested?”
“No, thanks,” she says, swabbing out the sink. “The patter of tiny feet doesn’t interest me. Besides, I’ve had all my plumbing excavated; I told you that.”
“You could always adopt.”
“Who?” she asks. “You?”
He finishes the last plate, and she takes the damp towel from him and hangs it away carefully to dry.
“And now,” she says, “the surprise.”
“Oh, God,” he says. “You’re sending me home?”
“Not yet. You know what negus is?”
“Negus? Never heard of it.”
“Red wine, hot water, sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon. I came across the recipe in an old cookbook and stirred up a batch. Want to try it?”
“Sure,” he says bravely. “Sounds like it’ll go great with beans and sauerkraut.”
She heats the negus in a saucepan until it begins to bubble. Then she pours it into thick mugs and adds a sprinkling of nutmeg.
“Go ahead,” she commands. “Try it.”
He sips cautiously. “Hey! Not bad.”
“Not bad, you asshole? It’s delicious.”
“It’s okay. A great winter drink. It warms the hearties of my cock.”
“You’re disgusting,” she says, smiling. “I’m going to trade you in for a new model.”
“Nah,” he says. “You get used to an old clunker, and you never want to scrap it.”
They take their mugs of hot negus into the living room and sprawl on one of the rag rugs.
“You know,” Sam says, “you’re the most unromantic man I’ve ever met. But while you were talking about those test-tube babies made in the lab, I got the feeling that you don’t really approve.”
“Sharp lady,” he says, blowing on his drink to cool it. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I understand that it’s a boon for couples who can’t have kids naturally. But something about the whole idea turns me off. It’s so goddamned mechanical. Like making sausages or stamping out widgets. How do you feel about it?”
Whatley shrugs. “I guess if women want kids so bad they’ll go through all that, then more power to them. It’s legal, isn’t it?”
“I guess so. Nu-Hope isn’t breaking any laws that I know of.” He pauses a moment, wondering if he should tell her about that questionable suicide of a research assistant. He decides to keep his mouth shut—about that and Ernest Pingle’s fears for his son.
“You’re holding out on me again, aren’t you?” Sam says, looking at him closely. “You get a thousand-yard stare in your eyes, and I know something is going on in that tiny, tiny brain of yours.”
“Nah,” Cone says. “I’m just brooding about babies coming off a kind of assembly line. What a weird world it is.”
The empty mugs are set aside.
“Bed?” she asks.
“I like it right here.”
“Suits me,” she says. “You don’t know what a pleasure it is not to have the damned cat biting my toes.”
He watches her undress, admiring the sharp-edged body, hard flanks, the twist of muscle and tendon. When she raises her arms to let down her long auburn hair, he sees the play of soft light on dark skin, warm shadows. Her body is as tight and bony as his, but the curves of hip, waist, and back are more elegant, smoothly glossed.
“At least,” she says throatily, “take off your stupid work shoes.”
He undresses quickly.
Their lovemaking, as usual, has a desperation about it, but never more than that night. Their coupling is a punishing duet, played furioso. They seem determined to rend walls of flesh and penetrate to a bliss that might consume them both. Perhaps their tumultuous striving springs from their talk of a brave new world with life manufactured in a sterile lab, all the ecstasy and pain of creation banished forever, along with joy and suffering, grief and laughter.
Their violence could have been a protest. Or it could have been an act of affirmation, asserting their humanness.
Whatever, it is one hell of a bang.
2
TIMOTHY CONE FIGURES HE could call the Nu-Hope Clinic and tell them he’s coming up to make a white-glove inspection. But the smart way to do it, he reckons, is to waltz in unexpectedly before they have a chance to sweep dirt under the rug or pop a skeleton into a closet.
He gets up to East Seventy-first Street about three o’clock on a dull, grimy day, a smell of snow in the air, and stands across the street a few minutes eyeballing the two town-houses. They look solid, dignified, well-maintained. There are big pots of ivy outside, still green, and all the windows are sparkling.
He dodges through traffic and crosses to the east wing, rings the bell beside the heavy front door. The judas is opened almost immediately; Cone can see only the eyes and white cap of what appears to be an extremely short nurse. He holds up his identification card for inspection.
“Timothy Cone,” he says. “From Haldering and Company. I’d like to see Doctor Victor January.”
“Just a moment, please, sir,” she chirps, and the judas is closed.
He waits patiently, stamping his feet a bit to chase the chill. It is almost three minutes before the door is swung open by a tall woman in a light-green lab coat. She holds out her hand, smiling.
“I’m Doctor Phoebe Trumball,” she says. “Do come in.”
Her handclasp is hard and dry.
“Doctor January is busy with a patient,” she explains, “but he’ll be able to join us shortly. Meanwhile, may I give you the fifty-cent tour?”
“Sure,” Con
e says. “I guess you were expecting me sooner or later.”
“Better sooner,” she says almost gaily. “Now let me put away your coat and we’ll get started. I suppose you’ll want to see everything. I think it best if we begin next door in the patients’ wing. That’s really where most of our work is done.”
She takes him up to the third floor, chattering on about the architect of the townhouses and how originally they were private residences of two brothers in marine insurance. Both of them died on the Morro Castle.
“Which,” Dr. Trumball says, “is rather ironic—don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Cone says.
She reminds him a lot of Samantha. The two women have an attractive angularity and bold features. But Sam is dark, and you can read everything she feels in her eyes. Phoebe Trumball is pale and all closed in. Cone bets she’s not usually so chatty. Maybe not devious, he acknowledges, but calculating.
They walk through the third-floor passageway to the west wing, Cone notes the doctor unlocking the door.
“Security,” Trumball explains. “Our research labs in the east wing are sterile and off-limits to patients.”
“What’s in the labs?”
“You’ll see them. That’s where the embryos are formed. And our sperm, egg, and embryo banks. Temperature control is very important.”
“Listen,” Cone says, unable to resist. “I’ve been doing some reading about artificial insemination, and I have a question, a silly one, but it’s been nagging at me. When a guy sells his sperm—well, what do you collect it in?”
Dr. Trumball laughs; “Believe it or not,” she says, “we use empty baby food jars. Sterilized, of course.”
They go on a whirlwind tour of the west wing, with Trumball introducing staff and answering questions before Cone asks them. She makes certain he sees it all, except the rooms where patients are being treated. He is shown offices, labs, lavatories, X-ray rooms, examination rooms, the pharmacy, recovery rooms, and the Doctors’ Lounge, where they pause at one of the steel tables and have a black coffee from one of the vending machines.
“Well,” Trumball says, “what do you think so far?”
Timothy Files Page 15
