by Dick Cluster
He shone his flashlight around the dark study. On the desk was a computer, of course, some kind of Macintosh. Alex had a passing familiarity with Macs because that was what Meredith had, but a telltale file could be hidden under any cryptic or innocuous name. He gave the computer a pass for now.
Next to the computer was a phone and answering machine, which held only one message, according to the digital display. If he played it the display would go back to zero, but Jay, if he discovered that anomaly, would chalk it up to gremlins or machine error rather than human intervention, no doubt. The message was from somebody named Cathy or Kathy who said to try her around seven or keep playing message tag if that didn’t work. She didn’t leave her number and did sound used to this routine. Maybe she was the doctor in D.C.
Also on the desktop were a few piles of mail. Alex checked them, lighting each envelope with the flash, keeping the stacks in order. He found a bank statement, but it showed no big deposits. Harrison J. Harrison had four thousand some dollars in a NOW account.
Alex played his light on the bookshelves, finding a mix of medical books and journals, popular science, novels, travel books, some politics and history; nothing told him what he wanted to know. He let the light linger on a shelf of poetry: Keats, Wordsworth, Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell. Probably left over from a college course that rounded up all the usual suspects, or as Meredith would say, all the boys. Except for the fattish volume lying sideways on top of the others: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Alex held that one in his hand. No vibrations, no hair from the wild horse’s mane came to his aid. He knelt down and let the book fall open. My Life had stood— a Loaded Gun, one poem began. This seemed promising, but neither that poem nor any other on the two-page spread made any reference to marrow or bones. Alex used the index to locate “The Bone that has no Marrow”— Dickinson’s capitalization and punctuation seemed either erratic or profound— but found no bent corners or any pencil marks on the page. He was just putting the book back where he’d found it and getting ready to attack the desk drawers when he heard the front door open and then slam shut.
He switched off the flash and sat down in the dark, trying to remember the room, to recall whether it offered any place to hide. Behind the couch, maybe, if he pushed the couch out from the wall. He heard Jay say “…under the circumstances,” with a kind of catch in his voice. A quieter voice said something he couldn’t decipher. It might not have been a word, maybe just a laugh or a grunt. Then Jay’s voice came again but muffled, farther away.
Music came on, music Alex knew, drums and a harmonica drowning out whatever Jay and his guest had to say. The harmonica stopped long enough for the player to take a breath before he started singing: You say you love me and you’re thinking of me, but you know you could be wrong… Alex knew this album by heart, of course. It was Blonde on Blonde, the same album he’d been listening to the night before this all started, the night the kidnappers must have been going over all their plans one last time. Now Jay was supposed to be at a restaurant and then back at the hospital. Instead he was home entertaining, grooving on the old familiar tunes.
Alex reached out to shut the door all but an inch and then turned the flash back on. He wanted to know who the guest was, but he couldn’t very well expect to creep down the stairs unobserved. He could march downstairs and join the party. Or he could keep doing what he’d come here for and see what happened next. Shining his light around the floor, he spotted a cardboard box in the kneehole under the desk. He pulled this out and started going through it, his ears on the living room and his eyes up here. The box had that musty, moldy basement smell. It turned out to be full of stuff from twenty years ago.
On top Alex found old flyers and leaflets, probably printed by Jay himself. They announced rallies on the Boston Common and boycotts of the producers of napalm and cluster bombs. They said, “A War for Dictatorship, Not for Democracy,” and “Run by the Rich, Fought by the Poor.” Below the leaflets he found letters addressed to Jay at a Third Avenue, San Francisco address. He took time to skim one letter, from somebody whose name meant nothing, about meeting a wigged-out Czech, dropping acid, and talking rock and politics on a hill outside of Prague. The date was 1970, after the Soviet tanks; without the acid it must have been difficult to see any hope.
Farther down, the pile got less political, mostly stuff from medical school. It dawned on Alex that Jay kept all his old papers in chronological order, just the sort of compulsive thing you might expect a research scientist to do. But he must have hauled this box out to find something in it. Had he found it? Alex felt like an archeologist confronted by a missing layer. Suddenly he realized that the music had stopped. The last song he could consciously remember was “Absolutely Sweet Marie.”
He shut off the light again and crawled to the door. He didn’t hear anything now. No, he heard breathing. Lying on the hallway carpet, he inched his way forward, easing himself down the open, carpeted stairs. He gripped the lathed posts of the bannister so he wouldn’t go sliding into view. Dropping his head just under the ceiling level, he saw the guest hadn’t left. Jay and Barbara Binder were stretched out on a big couch with soft-looking cushions. Jay had taken off his shoes and his tie, and somebody had unbuttoned his shirt, which Barbara’s arms had disappeared inside. Barbara was wearing blue jeans and a gold-colored necklace like the one she’d worn yesterday. Between jeans and necklace all Alex saw were bare back and one of Jay’s hands, the other one being hidden inside the pants. Their mouths were locked. Then they came apart— more breathing— and Jay slid his lips around her chin and started working down her neck. Alex pulled his head back up before it got too red from gravity taking hold of his blood.
Now he knew what Jay considered more important than waiting around the hospital in hopes Linda Dumars’s bone marrow might appear. He crawled back into the study and closed the door halfway, the way he’d found it. He remembered Yvonne’s friend Wallia commenting about the kind of detective he didn’t seem to be. He pushed the box back under the desk and was trying to decide what to do next when he heard low voices and footsteps. The happy couple were on their way upstairs. They were almost whispering, as if they expected somebody to be listening in.
“…I mean… should have… didn’t bring…” he heard Barbara say as she went past. And Jay: “…safe sex… responsible medical professional,” with a slightly hysterical laugh. Then Alex didn’t hear any more talking. When he heard murmurs and smacks he thought it would be safe to slip down the stairs and out into the fresh night air.
For a minute, out on the walk, he just stood looking at the house, the charming one-family, and he wished he’d only imagined that scene of Dr. Harrison and Ms. Binder making out on the couch and creeping upstairs to condom and bed. It wasn’t that they seemed old or tired or flabby, or whatever made children and teenagers unable to imagine members of the next most senior generation having sex. It was that he’d fixed in his mind an idyllic image of the two of them a generation ago, in a field of Teton wildflowers. Since then, scores or hundreds or thousands of times, each had murmured and cavorted in somebody else’s arms. Now what were they trying to prove? He wanted to tuck them back into Jay’s box of musty papers. He didn’t want to be spying on them. He didn’t want to have to ask them what lies they might have been telling him over the past few days.
Alex turned his back on Jay and Barbara and walked up the quiet street to his car. He’d give them a decent interval, as Henry Kissinger might have said. He hoped they’d enjoy themselves. Then, if they didn’t emerge, he’d go ring the doorbell and everybody could act all surprised.
27. Following
Another half an hour would be long enough, Alex decided. At twenty-eight minutes, both Jay Harrison and Barbara Binder walked out the door. They neither embraced passionately nor kissed affectionately nor looked in a guilty way to right and left. Each one said something to the other, and their hands touched as they parted. Then each one went to a separate car. Alex saw
Jay check his watch.
Barbara started her car first, made a U-turn, and headed down the hill toward Comm Ave. Jay went the other way, over the crest. Alex stayed well back and lost him, but he guessed Jay ought to be headed downtown. Sure enough, he spotted the Celica a block ahead of him on Beacon.
From there he felt safer staying close, because now he’d picked Jay up at an anonymous point. He followed the Celica through a logical if zigzag route over to Brookline Avenue and then across the thin strip of green, the so-called Emerald Necklace that separated Brookline from Boston. Jay was headed right into the Medical Area. Only he kept going, past the glass tower in which his office waited on the fourth floor, in which his patient lay on the seventh in drugged or agitated suspension, Alex didn’t know which. Maybe he was going to some other hospital, Alex thought, maybe Children’s or Beth Israel, but instead the Celica drifted along with the in-town traffic past all the hospitals to the red light at Park Drive. Alex waited four cars back, wondering which way Jay would turn. He could go toward Cambridge or toward Roxbury or straight ahead alongside the mammoth brick castle that wasn’t Sears anymore. Jay went straight, toward Kenmore Square, then forked right onto Boylston. Where the hell was he going? That look at his watch had meant an appointment. Alex didn’t like it. He followed his client down Boylston past all the lights of Fenway Park over to his left. He remembered the Sox were at home playing Milwaukee. Suddenly Jay signaled for a left and turned into the lot of the Howard Johnson motel, a low-slung two-story building that stretched back a block to the ballpark’s right-field stands. What the hell was he doing there? Did he have another date in somebody else’s bed? Alex double-parked. Jay parked in the lot and hurried inside.
Jay didn’t have to be going to anybody’s room, Alex told himself, because the place also had a cocktail lounge. He’d never been there, but he recalled that Meredith once had a student who tended bar there and knew some of the Sox lesser lights who’d go drinking after the night games. She’d gotten friendly with the now-departed Eddie Romero, if Alex remembered right. Alex parked in the lot too, away from Jay’s car, and walked to the motel door with his head down. Jay might still spot him, and then there would be a confrontation, and maybe that would be just as well. On the other hand, the small lobby was brightly lit, so the windows ought to act as mirrors on the inside.
Jay wasn’t in the lobby. He might have disappeared down a corridor. Alex stuck his head around the corner into the lounge. It was much darker than the lobby, though spotlights illuminated acrylic poster paintings of old ballplayers on the wall— Ted Williams, Joe Cronin, Tris Speaker, Yaz, Smoky Joe Wood. This being Boston, the baseball heroes were all white. So was the man sitting opposite Jay Harrison, a white man with longish brown hair, neatly parted, and a trim mustache.
The man was wearing a sports jacket and a tie. Compared to Jay, he seemed trim, athletic. He was a conventionally nice-looking man, with almost fashion-model looks, though an executive-attire model, not particularly young. What made him important enough to drag Jay away from Barbara? And from his patient? Alex was tempted to walk in, sit down, say, “Oh, how are you Jay, what’s up and who’s your friend?” But he decided he might learn more if he waited. Not here, though. He went back out to his car and turned on the game. The Sox had been hitting this week, and tonight they were leading 8-3 in the eighth. He listened till the game ended, 8-5. It didn’t mean anything. It was only late April, that was all.
If he’d ever met Meredith’s student who worked in there, he thought, he’d know whether she was the young, curly-haired blond woman he’d just seen behind the bar. But Meredith had merely told him about her, repeating the names of the ballplayers the student mentioned even though they meant nothing to her. Meredith had been fresh off the plane from London in those days, though even now she insisted baseball was a bore, too slow. Maria, on the other hand, was happy to go to games. She liked the hidden green field, the whole hidden fantasy world of territories inhabited by personages with litanies of achievements and quirks. She liked being with him in this world they shared. Taking Maria to Fenway had led Alex to conclude that baseball parks and ballplayers allowed boys to find a substitute for dollhouses and dolls. None of which helped Alex to guess what Jay Harrison’s appointment here in very foul right could be about. No ballplayers showed up, none that Alex could recognize anyway, but sometime after midnight Jay and his friend finally wandered out. The friend didn’t seem too steady. When they shook hands Jay took hold of the other man’s forearm with his left hand as if either to help hold him up physically or to reassure him that things were going to be okay. Then the friend went off to a red BMW, in which he sat while Jay went to his own car and drove away. Jay turned right, back the way he had come, toward either the hospital or home. Alex waited so he could follow the man Jay had been drinking with. He didn’t plan to follow very far.
The BMW turned left and so did Alex, following to where Boylston merged into the curve of Park Drive on the edge of the Fens. The BMW went left again, and then bore right to stay off the entrance to Storrow. The driver signaled for the left fork that would get him into the Back Bay. Alex floored the gas pedal, and the old Saab lurched ahead as if to cut the BMW off. The other driver slowed down, mindful of his shiny fenders, and leaned on his horn. Alex braked hard, linings screeching in response, just before he would have come alongside the other car. He twisted the steering wheel. As planned, his front bumper banged into the left rear fender of the BMW. He hit the horn and jumped out screaming.
“Where the hell did you learn to drive, asshole?” Alex yelled.
Other late night motorists edged around the accident, honking loudly to join the fun. The man who had been drinking with Jay, now minus his tie, climbed warily out of his car. He didn’t yell or scream, just complained that Alex had cut him off and then driven out of lane. He made it sound as if everybody had it in for him tonight.
“Yeah, and how would you know?” demanded Alex. “You stink like a distillery, Mac. Either you give me your name and insurance like you’re supposed to, or else I take your plate number and go right now and get a cop.”
The driver agreed to exchange licenses and policy numbers. He ducked his head, the lank brown hair falling in front of his eyes, as he hurried to get his license out. He was drunker than Alex had expected. He read out loud from his license, as if speaking the facts aloud would make them more true. The license testified that he was Dr. Thomas Dumars of Topsfield, Mass.
“Listen,” Alex said, pulling his own wallet out. “I got mad the way you were weaving, but you know, on second thought, it’s just a little dent.” On Alex’s car, it was just one more deformity of the bumper. On Dumars’s it was a couple hundred body-shop bucks. “Let’s keep the insurance and the police out of it. What do you say?”
Dr. Thomas Dumars squinted at Alex, looked around at the headlights that flicked past, and nodded quickly, a small, sharp nod, caught in a headlight beam, a nod as if a secret deal had just been made in a few words that meant more than they said.
Alex said, “All right. Get home safe now.” He felt vaguely guilty not waiting for a cop, since Dumars could in fact be a danger on the road, especially if he was headed all the way home, not just as far as Joy Street on Beacon Hill. But Alex had found out what he wanted to know. On balance it seemed better to stay anonymous and unpoliced. He thought it wouldn’t hurt to go back to the bar, because the place was near the Medical Area and open late. It could be that either Jay or Dumars was a regular there. It could be that the bartender or a customer could tell him something he didn’t know.
First, though, he’d call Jay from the phone in there. He’d demand Jay’s version of the night’s events. Then he’d see whether or not he could shoot it full of holes.
The phone was in the coatroom, not really a room but just a little alcove painted to look like a locker room, with a rack and hangars for coats. The lockers had been painted in muted colors on the white plaster wall. The one closest to Alex was depicted with an o
pen door; inside hung a pair of cleats, a baseball glove, a towel, and an indistinct pinup with exaggerated female curves. Alex listened to Jay’s office phone ringing. He watched the bartender handing draft beers to the waitress. There were only three tables occupied, plus one man sitting at the bar. Jay picked up the phone on the fifth ring.
“Dr. Harrison,” he said. He sounded edgy. He was calling himself Doctor.
“Jay,” Alex said.
“Alex? I’ve been trying to find you. Your girlfriend said she didn’t have any idea where you were. When the phone rang I thought it might be the kidnapper. No word yet. It’s past midnight, but I’m still waiting. I’m glad you called. I wanted to say I was sorry about this morning.”
This morning. Alex could barely remember what Jay had done to be sorry about. Blown up at Alex’s suggestion he might not be sharing all the data? And now?
“Uh-huh. Since then I’ve been running around following up some leads,” Alex said.
“Well, I am sorry, sorry I got so pissed off. It was having Fridley take over that way and then treat me like a suspect. That got to me, and I took it out on you. What have you found out? What do you mean, leads?”
“I found out that Tom Dumars has been having an affair with the mother of one of his patients, a woman named Claudia Stevens. I found out that word about Linda’s marrow being taken has apparently spread on the medical grapevine, because the doctor at MGH who I talked to about Tom already knew. I found out that you seem to be in touch with Barbara Binder, close touch, the kind that makes people gasp and ooh and ahh. I know you and Tom Dumars had a long talk tonight outside the hospital, at a place you might have chosen because you thought you could meet there unobserved.” Alex counted these discoveries on the fingers of the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. He knew he was letting his mouth run away with him. He wanted explanations. He was tired of trusting the doctor, and tired of suspecting him too.
