“Ah, now I see,” he said, pleased with the engagement. “Our friend here has done his homework, Natasha. What did you say your name was again?”
“I didn’t.”
“What did you say it was, love?” he asked his nurse. “Dick, was it?”
“He calls himself Duck,” she said.
“How original. And does this Duck have a last name?”
“Darley,” I said. “I’m curious to learn more about your background, behind the Wall. I’m curious to hear how a convicted felon is able to continue practicing medicine.”
“Another time and place,” he said. “The West always liked to be outraged, when, in fact, our means of assisting performance was no different than yours.”
“So you were stealing from thieves?” I asked. “The classic rationale.”
“Poetically put,” he said. “In my decades as a sports physician, I never had an athlete test positive for any banned substance. Not once. I paid a fine for that ridiculous political persecution. In any case my business now is treating older clients, men like myself, who do not wish to grow old quite as quickly as nature intended.”
“That must explain the teenagers in your waiting room yesterday.”
“Many young men experience testosterone deficiencies. I’d be happy to explain these conditions further if you have the time.”
“Tell me about your partner,” I said. “This Dr. Crowley.”
He glanced at Tasha, said, “Dear, would you mind if Mr. Darley and I spoke a bit in private?”
“Of course not,” she said.
As she slid from her stool and Lipke’s grasp, she flashed me a look beneath her lashes. There was complicity in her eyes. It wasn’t betrayal that brought me inside this house but collusion. Tasha was making it easier for me. Whatever her previous relationship with her boss, she’d served him up for me now. At least that’s what I wanted to see.
We watched her walk to the back of the house, open a sliding door and step out onto a shaded patio. She took a seat in white wicker with her back to us. Drank from her glass, tapped at her phone.
“Loyalty is the most valuable of commodities,” said Lipke, still staring after her. “She is a special one.”
“She seemed very nice.”
The doctor looked back at me with dark eyes. The false cheer and easy jousting was over. “Enough,” he said. “Alex Nestor’s parents are married. The mother did not hire you. Enough of your charade, tell me why you’re here.”
“Tell me about Crowley,” I said.
“Who are you working for?”
“Myself.”
He snorted. “So this is just professional curiosity?”
“Amateur,” I said. “Strictly amateur.” When he smirked, I added, “You can also tell me about Carl Kruger. I understand he could really toss the javelin. While you’re at it, tell me about Victor Wingate.”
Lipke grinned. “Which one would you like to know about first?” he asked.
“Crowley,” I said. “Tell me about your partner, and then tell me about the racist skinhead he likes to keep company with. He told me his name was Oliver.”
“Very well,” he said, “but first let’s pour us a drink. You strike me as a whiskey man, is that correct?”
“It is.”
“Good, as am I, but not the crude American kind, I cannot abide bourbon. Only single malts for myself, will that be okay?”
“You pour it, I’ll drink it.”
Lipke opened a cabinet in the kitchen and produced a bottle of Macallan, a stainless-steel measuring shot, a pair of Waterford tumblers, and a couple coasters. “Eighteen year,” he said. “I do hope you enjoy it.”
He filled each serving in the shot, then poured the precise amount and handed it over neat. It was not even a finger in the heavy glass.
“Prost,” he said.
I raised the amber, met his eyes. It tasted fine, in that fussy way of old scotches. My tastes were cruder.
Lipke walked past with his glass and the coasters and said, “Come, we’ll talk in the dining room.”
I joined him in a soulless space dominated by a long, glass table, a crystal chandelier, and an abstract canvas of slashing black paint framed on one wall. He took a seat at the head of the table and motioned to the chair next to him. He slid a coaster, with the initials EL etched in glass, beneath my drink before I could set it down. We had a sip in unison, and sat back and regarded each other.
“So, what would you like to know about my associate, Dr. Crowley?”
“I understand he has a rather select clientele,” I said.
“Did Natasha tell you that?” he asked.
I waited for him to reply further. He crossed his short legs, glanced over at his ridiculous art.
“Dr. Crowley was once a champion runner himself,” he began. “A world-class miler. He broke four minutes, when it still meant something. He came from the northern part of Florida, in Jacksonville. When I arrived in the U.S. in the mid-nineties, I did not know this country well. I didn’t grasp the ways of your South, in particular. In Germany we have our sins, our dark history, ja? But here, you must believe me, it is much worse in certain parts. Maybe not in Miami or New York, in your liberal coastal areas, but where Dr. Crowley comes from the tension between the races is more open. And he was a runner, ja? A sport once dominated by white gentlemen, ages ago, but no longer. Dr. Crowley has an interest in correcting certain perceived genetic disadvantages.”
“Sounds like an alt-right man of medicine. That must explain his henchman, Oliver. Your partner must approve of his tattoos.”
“We all have our little obsessions,” said Lipke. “I don’t consider my partner to be racist. The concept is fundamentally foolish. He is fascinated with the human body, by its potential. Each of us has certain advantages and disadvantages according to our genes, our environments, or any number of factors. The field of play is never equal, is it? One could argue that so-called performance enhancement is a way of striving for more fairness, not less.”
“One could also argue that racist crackers like your partner are actually the inferior ones,” I said. “What about Oliver, Doctor? I’ve had the displeasure of meeting him a few times now.”
Lipke sipped his scotch, his Santa’s eyes twinkling over his glass. “I never will get used to that aggressive American way of speech. Where does your confidence come from? You all have it, even those who seem to have no right to their convictions.”
“As opposed to hiding behind walls and lies and fake manners?”
“No, as opposed to understanding there is more than one obtuse side to every story.”
“Then tell me your side, Doc.”
“You don’t see yourself as you are, do you? So righteous, so convinced that you’ve zeroed in on the enemy, in your narrow way of perceiving things.”
“From what I understand—from your own employee out there—your business partner is a bigot, and from my own experience and observations, the man I’ve seen him with is a blatant neo-Nazi. I know what his tattoos mean, I’ve seen them before.”
Lipke shook his head, tried out a frown. “The gentleman you’re referring to is very close to me. It pains me to hear you refer to him that way. He is not what you say, not anymore. We have discussed having those tattoos removed, due to the fact that some folks, felons like you, will recognize its unfortunate meaning.”
He pushed a hand in his pocket and brought out his phone and began to thumb through it. Finding what he was looking for, he handed it over for me to see. “I’m showing you this so you know that I have nothing to hide,” he said.
It was a picture of Lipke and Oliver standing on a beach, arms around one another, smiling for the camera. “My son,” he said. “My adoptive son, Oliver Lipke. He took my name, bless him.”
“All undue respect, Doctor, but your son is still an ignorant racist punk. We had an altercation when he and your partner came to see me. They wanted to send some sort of message. I don’t think I got it. Maybe
you could share it in person?”
Lipke glanced away toward his art. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, fidgeted in his seat. “You should not have provoked him,” he said. “It will not help matters.”
“Wasn’t that the point? You sent those two to the city to warn me off, to shut me up. They haven’t succeeded.”
“Oliver is quite intelligent,” he said. “Despite your assumptions. And he is also dangerous, someone you do not want to provoke. He is a well-trained man of action. You’d be wise to remember that.”
“And you’d be wise to remember the blood on your hands. Two people are dead—and your boy has provoked me. I wonder how he’d react if I put his daddy in the hospital right now?”
Lipke rolled his eyes. “I abhor threats. I told you, I have nothing to hide. I understand you attacked my son, in the presence of my partner. If you’d like to assault me too, go ahead.” He swept a little hand around his airy home. “I could always use more money.”
“Where are Dr. Crowley and Oliver now?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“You sure about that? It would be a bad idea to lie to me. Your boy, Oliver, might have done his homework, but have you? Do you know my history of violence? PTSD, the works, you’re dealing with an unstable man, Doc.”
He took a sip of his scotch, set it down on his monogrammed coaster, and folded his arms across his chest. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” he said. “I abhor threats. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
“Carl Kruger,” I said. “You ordered his execution, didn’t you?”
“I did no such thing. I’ve had no contact with Kruger in many years.”
“When was the last time?”
“Never, not with him,” he said. “I only knew Hilde Kruger, one of the most brilliant athletes I ever treated.”
“ ‘Treated’—as in, abused as a minor. One of thousands you forced to dope, as has been proven in a court of law.”
“A political circus, a sham of justice,” he said. He swallowed his scotch. Blood rushed up his ruddy face.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said. “They were just guinea pigs, weren’t they? These days it’s been more perfected. You can produce supermen that make hundreds of millions of dollars. Must make you feel like a kind of god, doesn’t it?”
He scoffed. “Another Internet expert. What, did you spend a few minutes Googling, read some Wikipedia, and now you think you know about me? I don’t have time for this.” He pushed out his chair, stood, and waited for me to do the same.
“I was with him when he died,” I said. “Carl was murdered with his own javelin. Impaled through the throat.”
I watched his flushed face go as white as his beard. “I have nothing to hide,” he said again. “And I can assure you, neither my son nor my associate had anything to do with that.”
“What about Victor Wingate?” I asked. “You sure no one you know might have followed him into the woods, gave him a push over those falls?”
“We are done here, Mr. Darley. I’ve had about all of the disrespect and accusations that I can stomach. If you wish to assault me, go ahead. I invite your attack, and the retribution it will bring.”
And I almost did. It would have been so easy to mop those marble floors with the supercilious Kraut. Rub his face in his own blood. Let him feel some real pain. But it would have been like attacking a child. A craven act of temper, it would result only in my arrest—and would put Stevie in further danger. Instead I reached out and grabbed his cheeks in my hand and squeezed. Leaned in close until our noses almost touched and looked into his eyes.
“I do hope you’ll remember this meeting,” I said. “Do be careful, won’t you?”
Chapter 27
I waited for Tasha to follow me out. When she didn’t, I sat in the Crown Vic across the street, expecting her to appear between the white gates. After an hour of sitting and seething, I gave up on her and drove back to the mainland. I could have sworn that glance said she was on my side, not the doctor’s. Or maybe I was an arrogant fool, convinced that a hot romp in a hotel room was enough to shift her allegiances.
It was Lipke who wrote that note about Stevie. That child-abusing disgrace of a doctor who abhorred threats, who claimed he had nothing to hide, he was behind it all. He had to be. “I do hope . . .” I knew the moment he handed me that scotch and said those words. And Oliver was his adopted son? Had he raised that neo-Nazi? Did he really believe his kid had changed? No, true character can always be measured by who it is that you surround yourself with most. In Lipke’s case it was an alt-right Southern supremacist and a kid covered in racist hate ink. The man had plenty to hide.
When I returned to the ChateauBleau, I gathered my bag and checked out and headed for Miami International. The skies went from dull to dark and then opened with the region’s patented late-afternoon monsoon. The rain in South Florida is like nowhere else. It is a reminder that the land is a temporary condition, a low-lying peninsula that will someday be swallowed from above and below. The water rules these parts. Street flooding is as natural an occurrence as Midtown traffic in Manhattan. You learn to live with it.
When visibility became zero, I had to pull over and wait it out. Traffic continued to move past at the speed limit, unfazed by driving blind or hydroplaning through busy intersections. I turned off the wipers and let the storm envelop the car. It felt biblical. Yet ten minutes later it was gone. Just passing through, thanks, see you tomorrow at the same time. I pulled back onto the avenue, feeling cleansed. Maybe that was the secret to South Florida sin—it was always rinsed away by those fierce daily storms.
I returned the Crown Vic as the floodwaters began to recede in the Enterprise lot. Took the shuttle to the terminal, shrugged when the driver asked what airline. I had no return ticket, but it didn’t take long to find a cheap one with Frontier Air. Two hundred bucks one-way, departed in two hours. Perfect, enough time for a few drinks.
Perhaps my retreat home was too hasty, but after my conversation with Dr. Lipke, I knew it was time to get back and find his associates. Lipke was a self-righteous bastard who would never own up to his crimes. He told himself he had nothing to hide, while living for decades inside a moral vacuum. Sure, he doped thousands against their will back behind the Wall. Sure, it was cheating, but he was following orders. Now he continued his dark art at BioVida, using vain old men as his cover patients. He refused to acknowledge his hand in the health problems that came later: the ruined bodies and souls of a generation sacrificed on the altar of sport. But I knew he and Crowley were guilty of much more than that. They may not have pushed Wingate or driven the javelin through Kruger’s throat; they had probably ordered Oliver to do it.
I remembered Crowley outside that Hell’s Kitchen bar, not flinching as I twisted his arm behind his back and prepared to take on his henchman. I pictured Lipke composing that letter to Juliette Cohen, threatening her son. Taking private pleasure in the fear and panic it would provoke in the mother, the rage it would fuel in me. I remembered his partner seated alongside Oliver as they followed us to LaGuardia, thin-lipped and hard-faced behind dark glasses.
I realized I hadn’t heard from Juliette since I arrived in Miami. I took out my phone, shot her a text: Hey, just checking in, all okay? Looked at the screen and waited for the teasing ellipses that indicate a reply is forthcoming. None appeared. I put it away, found a gate-side bar and ordered a pint. Knocked it back and added a Maker’s alongside the next one.
An hour and a half later I was good and sauced as I weaved down the Jetway to my flight. I didn’t bother to check my phone before slumping into my window seat and passing out. I dreamed of knives and torture and suffocation, all standard fare since my last case. I woke to the sound of the landing gear lowering over the Manhattan skyline. Drenched in sweat, dry-mouthed, desperate for a flight attendant to bring water. But it was too late. Time to stay strapped in and compliant as cattle.
* * *
My passage from plane to
terminal to cab to apartment was made in unconscious transition. One moment I was blinking away nightmares above the city lights, the next I was seated on my couch, reaching to pet a dog that wasn’t there. I’d received no word back from Juliette, nothing from Detective Miller since our conversation the night before, no call from Cass either. I remembered she had a lawyer, a former slave at the dungeon. He helped us through the legal morass last time. Anytime you’re involved in death, the law likes to have its say. We each killed someone, very bad someones. It was justified, the definition of self-defense, but still. It was never as easy as explaining the circumstances to a cop and then heading home, free and cleared. I’d find the lawyer’s number, reach out to him tomorrow.
Sleep came late and troubled. The nightmares on the plane picked up where they left off. I was back in a darkened room bound to a chair with all manner of horror around me. Chained bodies were strewn about with needles hanging from arms. Heads lolled sideways, the floor filled with vomit. Pets were being killed and cooked and fed as last meals to the captives. I learned that I had committed some unnamable crime, something deserving of great punishment. It became clear that my sentence would involve the loss of something vital, a hand perhaps. But no one would tell me what I did. The terror was real, the threat imminent. I dreamed that I would negotiate with my captor. How about a foot instead? That was less essential than one of my hands. How would I type?
It was nine a.m. when I woke on the couch, uncertain of my surroundings. Home stopped feeling like home, ever since Elvis died. I needed to find a new apartment, a clean new space that had never experienced death. But I couldn’t imagine living in one of those modern glass towers that scarred the skyline. I used to tell myself that I welcomed the ghosts in these haunted rooms. As far as I was concerned, admirable architecture ceased to exist following the Second World War. When materials grew cheap and labor expensive, taste was the sacrifice. Out with the ornate exterior flourishes, the crown and base moldings in high rooms full of wide hardwood floors and marble fireplaces. In with the white boxes and flat lines and bad windows.
Against Nature Page 21
