“As long as it takes to bring her home.”
He rose and reached across the desk to offer his hand. The detective looked mildly surprised by the gesture, but met him with a firm shake.
Rusty was halfway out of the office when Hubbard spoke again.
“You didn’t seem to care for my first piece of advice. Want another one?”
“Sure.”
“You’re really worried about this woman? Hire a private detective. I could dig up a reference, if you want to go that way.”
Rusty gave a small nod. It wasn’t quite the nugget of professional insight he had hoped to hear. If this was the best Dan Hubbard had to offer, Rusty felt more than ever like he was on his own.
“I’ll call you about that,” he said, stepping away to free himself from the sun-starved confines of the Sixth as quickly as he could without looking like a man on the run.
9.
Dr. Philip Roque leaned back in the padded leather chair behind his desk, a look of studied compassion etched across his handsome if fleshy face. His eyes, a placid shade of blue that had long aided him in both personal and professional affairs, drifted left to right and back again. Roque paused his gaze to meet that of the young woman seated across from his desk, hands folded nervously in her lap.
I know, his expression told her. This is an uncomfortable and, yes, sad situation. But you’ve done nothing wrong and I help people like you every day. Together, we’ll find the best possible resolution.
Roque’s eyes rotated to the opposite position. Here those sky blue corneas expressed manly commiseration toward the twitchy young fellow seated in a matching chair.
Feel ya, dude. I know it’s a drag but you’re doing the right thing. Lot of guys in your shoes, they’d let her handle it all by herself. Good on you, bro.
Back and forth, Roque imbued a two-tiered sense of trust in this anxious couple from the suburban enclave of Kenner. They felt good about bringing their troubles to someone who treated them both with discretion and respect. In all of Orleans Parish, no medical professional could possess more empathy than Philip Roque, MD.
“Well,” the young woman said, dabbing at her eyes. “We have a big decision to make.”
“You certainly do. This isn’t something to be undertaken on a whim. You’d be surprised how many young people come in here with that outlook. I’m glad you folks have an appropriately mature view of the matter.”
Roque resisted an urge to glance at his Rolex. It had to be almost five o’clock.
The sign in front of his office on the third floor of this swank medical plaza just off Magazine Street read “Uptown Family Planning.” That sounded a whole lot friendlier than “Uptown Abortion Clinic,” but the latter would have been more accurate. Very little in the way of family planning ever transpired here. If pressed, Roque would find himself challenged to conjure an adequate description for that term. Stocking up on diapers was probably a big part of it.
Philip Roque had no children. He had an aggravated soon-to-be-ex-wife who retained an uncanny ability to emasculate him with a few choice words, even though they mostly communicated through lawyers these days. And he had a mistress already angling toward a five-carat marquis engagement ring, who drained his bank account with a rapacious determination that made her bedroom attentions seem demure by comparison.
Most of all, he had expenses. The two houses—both of them situated on coveted Uptown streets within walking distance of the bridle paths in Audobon Park—one of them soon to be forfeited as part of the divorce settlement. And the yacht, moored on Lake Ponchartrain. Christ, what a windblown fancy of middle-aged insecurity that acquisition had proved to be. All because Yvonne, his mistress, convinced him with honeyed words that sex afloat the waves left its landlocked counterpart in the dust.
And those were just the big outlays. Roque also had the Jaguar, requiring near-constant repair. The time-share condo in Orlando, which hardly ever got used. And the membership dues at Riverside—that galled Roque to ponder more than any of his other looming obligations. Because the club is where he wanted to be right now, instead of inside his office which adjoined the examination and operating rooms.
Roque felt pretty certain this youthful couple had not yet reached a point where they were ready to terminate their unplanned pregnancy. Today’s consultation was quite possibly no more than preamble to a procedure that never happened, and for which Roque wouldn’t receive a dime. Which seemed pretty unfair—a man’s time ought to be worth something.
“You’ve given us a lot to think about, doc,” the father-to-be said.
“Yeah,” the pregnant girl nodded. “I’m even less sure now than before.”
“Don’t let that trouble you,” Roque said. “My advice is to let the matter sit for now. Talk it over, consult your friends, family, clergy…anyone whose opinion you hold in high regard.”
“That rules out your family,” the young man uttered with a sideways grin at his partner. The humorless look he got in return to that witticism knocked the smile off his face as efficiently as a right hook.
“However you wish to proceed,” Roque said, allowing a tone of avuncular wisdom to indicate this conversation was about over, “please know I’m here to answer any questions.”
“Thank you, Doctor Roque,” the girl uttered quietly.
“Yeah, thanks,” the young man said, rising from the chair with a velocity that betrayed his intense desire to vacate this clinic.
“Call any time,” Roque said, standing himself. “If you decide to proceed with what we’ve discussed, I’m here to make it as pleasant and pain-free as possible.”
The couple murmured more thanks and turned for the door. Roque opened it for them and they stepped into a carpeted hallway leading to the waiting room. Margaret, the silver-haired receptionist who’d been in his employ since he opened the clinic more than a decade before, looked up from her copy of Redbook.
“Will we be scheduling a follow-up?” she asked, glancing first at the couple and then at the doctor.
“Not today, Maggie.”
Roque handed each of them a card from the front desk and waved goodbye as they exited the clinic.
It was only after the door swung shut that Roque noticed the waiting room’s other occupant. Solidly built and of medium height, with a scruffy beard and a thick torso that leant him an almost anthropoid aspect of brute strength, Claude Sherman sat in a leather chair closest to the door. He wore a custodian’s uniform. An upright vacuum cleaner stood next to him, its rubber neck clenched in one knuckled hand.
Roque locked eyes with him for a tense moment, then turned to address Margaret.
“Last appointment for the day, I think?”
“That’s right. We had a cancellation, the Grahams.”
“Very well,” Roque murmured, casually leaning against the counter in front of Margaret’s desk.
“What’s he doing here?” he whispered.
“Beats me,” the receptionist responded quietly. “Asked if he could clean up now instead of waiting for the overnight. Says he has plans he can’t break.”
Raising his voice, Roque said, “Why don’t you knock off, Maggie. I’ll close up.”
Margaret didn’t need to hear that twice. It took her less than a minute to shut down her computer, gather up a leather purse from beneath her desk and waddle out of the clinic with hurried wishes for the doctor to have a good Sunday.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Roque demanded after the door clicked shut.
“We gotta talk. It’s important.”
“I told you never to show your face during business hours. Now I realize you’re not concealing an excess of gray matter under that greasy mop, but don’t tell me you’re actually dumber than you look.”
Claude’s only response was a rippling of the muscles in his shoulder and neck. Just enough to tell the doctor he was making an effort to restrain himself.
“Fine,” Roque sighed. “My office.”
Claude fo
llowed him down the hallway. Inside the office, Roque started briskly packing up his briefcase.
“We need a new batch,” Claude said. “We need it now.”
“Afraid I can’t help you. I haven’t performed any procedures since we last spoke.”
“Gettin’ a lot of heat on this, doc. Abellard’s crawling up my ass and I don’t even want to know what the Professor’s telling him. We need to deliver, tonight.”
“Look around, Claude. Do you see any patients lining up to volunteer?”
“What about them that just left?”
It took a beat for Roque to comprehend he was referring to the young couple from Kenner.
“What about them?”
“Are they gonna have it done?”
“They haven’t decided.”
“Did you tell them to have it done?”
Roque almost laughed at the blunt naiveté of that question as it related to his role as a family planning physician.
“I don’t tell people to do anything, Claude. Whether they choose to terminate a pregnancy or see it through is entirely their decision. I simply offer the best counsel I can.”
“You could at least suggest it,” Claude grumbled in a louder voice. “We need more, for Christ’s sake.”
Roque took a half step closer to his desk, weighing his next words with considerable care.
“You know, this is all academic. Until we clarify the matter of equity I mentioned in our last conversation, any new material is out of the question.”
Claude inched closer, just enough to telegraph some latent hostility.
“What’re you talking about?”
Roque retracted a full step, slowly.
“Don’t pretend I have to remind you. I want a larger taste of whatever Abellard’s seeing on the back end.”
“Yeah, I remember. He says forget it. A deal’s a deal.”
“Look, whoever you’re supplying is paying a hell of a—”
“Hold on there, doc. You don’t want to know nothing about what happens after you hand over a package. Ain’t that right?”
“That’s right,” Roque agreed with a swift nod. “Where the material goes, who the ultimate buyer is and to what use the cells are put…I want no knowledge of that. As far as price, that’s a different issue. I want twenty percent of whatever Abellard is getting from his client. Either that, or a flat fee of $10,000 per batch. Since I don’t know what the final sale price is, I can’t determine which option is better from his point of view. However he wishes to meet my fee, that’s his business. Until we settle this, don’t expect any more material coming from this office.”
“He’s not gonna like that.”
“Then he can look for another source.”
“You ain’t the only scraper in town, doc.”
Roque flinched at the word ‘scraper’ and saw Sherman smile at his reaction. It was infuriating, but he forced a calm tone into his reply.
“Correct, Claude. I’m not the only family planning specialist in New Orleans. You and Mr. Abellard are free to shop around for an alternate connection. Finding someone with my discretion, that’s your challenge. And that’s why you’re going to meet my terms for continuing this arrangement.”
Feeling emboldened, Roque snapped his briefcase shut. He stepped out of his office, hoping the conversation was over. It disturbed him to see Claude following closely behind, all the way into the waiting room.
“Try to do a better job with the dusting from now on,” the doctor said over his shoulder. “This facade won’t hold up if you’re not a convincing custodian.”
Roque opened the door, then added, “And don’t forget to turn the lights out. Goddamn Louisiana Power’s worse than a vampire.”
With that, he stepped out of the clinic and pulled the door closed behind him.
• • •
Claude Sherman badly wanted to smash something. He scanned the silent office for a likely target. Margaret’s goosenecked desk lamp. Ceramic bowl filled with pens. Glass-covered wall painting of Lake Ponchartrain at sunset. Claude didn’t care. Anything would suffice. He’d struggled hard to maintain his composure for the last several minutes. Releasing some measure of his suppressed fury felt really important right now.
He resisted the urge, knowing he’d have to clean up any mess made by such a pointless outburst.
Christ, he hated coming to this place. Taking the part-time overnight custodial gig was degrading enough, though it provided a sensible cover for his frequent visits. What he really hated was having to interact with the man who called the shots here. Forced to look at that shit-eating smirk, those artificially whitened teeth glistening every time he opened his mouth, stretching the spray-on tan covering that overgrown infant’s face. It was almost too much to bear.
Claude had despised Philip Roque on a gut level since the day four months ago when the abortionist had driven out to Vacherie for a sit-down. The whiff of superiority that oozed off him like a sickly cologne rankled Claude in a serious way. He wasn’t alone in this reaction. All the guys at the casino felt it.
He’d complained to Mr. Abellard numerous times that he didn’t want to deal with Roque directly. Those protests fell on deaf ears. Abellard insisted he be the one to handle transport of their contraband from the clinic to a refrigerated safe in Vacherie. No arguments.
Well, Mr. Abellard had a few surprises coming his way. All in due time.
Grabbing a feather duster from a pouch sewn into the side of his vacuum cleaner, Claude violently rubbed it over the surfaces closest at hand. The receptionist’s desk, the phone, the computer. He scrubbed and swiped and slashed with the duster, almost knocking a lamp to the floor before catching it with his free hand.
Do a better fucking job with the dusting? Is that what the son of a bitch said to him?
Claude would do a fine job of dusting, all right. When the doctor had outlived his usefulness, Claude would dust that fucking arrogant smile right off his overfed face. And he wouldn’t use a feather to do it.
Oh, yes. Abellard. Roque. Even Professor Guillory. Claude would be squaring all accounts, when the time was right.
That was a pleasing thought, but it did nothing to help him right now. He’d come here with a very specific purpose—obtain a fresh batch of material. Deliver it to Vacherie within twenty-four hours, without fail. Dire consequences awaited, should that deadline not be met.
Now the doctor was gone. With the clinic closed tomorrow, Monday was the earliest possible day to deliver, and that would be too late. Claude had miserably struck out in persuading Roque of the matter’s urgency. He’d fallen short, and he had no alternative but to report his failure to Mr. Abellard.
Claude walked down the hallway and through a side door into the operating room. He flicked on the overhead light and continued waving the duster around with only scant awareness of what he was doing. Every corner of his conscious mind turned itself to the same pressing dilemma.
More material. Tomorrow. Whatever means necessary.
Deadweight.
That last word echoed louder than the others. He knew what it meant, having seen firsthand the way Abellard dealt with individuals who by bad luck or gross incompetence failed to prove their usefulness.
Claude had been pushed to the edge of a cliff, by no fault of his own. This was survival, plain and simple. He didn’t want to do anything bad. He wasn’t warped. He only did bad things when someone made him. Someone he wasn’t strong enough to say no to.
A plunge over the cliff. That was the only alternative to delivering what Mr. Abellard expected. Claude consoled himself with the knowledge that he had no real choice at all.
He stepped over to a glass case mounted on the wall adjacent to the operating table. Inside, lined up with careful precision, lay a collection of surgical knives. Many different shapes and sizes, with blades ranging from a curved hook barely an inch long to a straight cutting edge the size of a nail file. All of them gleaming with polished perfection.
Claude pulled a rubber glove from the open vent of a box on the counter to his left. He slid it onto his right hand and reached for the knob of the case. The glass door opened silently.
Whatever it takes.
He would do what had to be done, like always. And he’d do it with one of the doctor’s own instruments. That was the best part. He even giggled a bit pondering the beauty of it.
After the bad thing was done, he’d walk back into this clinic with one hell of a shock for Philip Roque. And then he’d see how easily the son of a bitch smiled through that.
Feeling like he was in control of events for the first time since his tense phone call with Abellard last night, Claude pulled a four-inch straight blade from the case.
10.
Bourbon Street pulsed under a cloud-bloated sky. A short-lived downpour around ten o’clock had left a glossy veneer over everything. The damp flagstones reflected a smeared rainbow of neon.
Rusty kept a slow pace along the sidewalk. A glance at his watch told him it was six minutes before midnight. He’d killed the past few hours idly canvassing the Quarter, sitting out the brief storm over a ruminative drink at the Old Absinthe House.
Even with his thoughts consumed by Marceline, it was hard not to stray into a nostalgic fugue. The nine years since he’d last seen the Quarter felt like a tick of the clock too miniscule to measure.
This place had once constituted his entire world. It held everything he could ever want. He’d had the greatest mentor a fledgling illusionist could ever hope to study under. Nightly crowds of spectators in front of whom he could practice his trade, making small but essential improvements with each sidewalk performance. Most of all, he had Marceline, the perfect companion for his first clumsy forays into the realms of love and sex.
When exactly did I decide this wasn’t enough? Rusty wondered as he walked.
He concluded it had occurred right after his twenty-first birthday, when he’d announced to Prosper and Marceline that the time had come to abandon NOLA for a bigger and brighter stage. Las Vegas beckoned, and he’d been convinced that’s where his ultimate destiny lay waiting.
Blind Shuffle Page 6