"Hardly; but I suspect the three of you may have something in common: you take your beliefs seriously. Concentrate on the mother; right now she's trapped by the notion it's all been written, and that it's a waste of time to try to change the ending. If the big weirdo with her gives you any lip about accepting fate, kick ass. Okay?"
"When do you want me to go?"
"Right now. I don't know when I'll be there, but there isn't a minute to spare."
"I'll do my best, Mongo."
"I know you will, Janet. Thanks."
I made my second call to Senator Younger. I told him to meet Garth at the station house, then quickly filled him in on what I hoped to do.
Now I had to make the crucial decision whether to call Eric Jordon or go directly to see him. If I called and he simply refused to see me, my show closed out of town. I preferred to confront him directly, without any prior warning. On the other hand, his office was about thirty minutes away, allowing for traffic. He could have an office full of patients; he could be out on a Long Island golf course; he could be in Bermuda. In which case, precious hours would be wasted. I decided to call; it might give me a slight advantage if I could start him stewing before I got there.
I dialed his number and got his nurse. I was told that Dr. Jordon was in, but that he couldn't be disturbed. I asked her to tell him I wanted to talk to him about his dead colleague. She sniffed, informed me that she'd see if he'd come to the phone. He did.
"Dr. Jordon here."
My stomach picked that moment to heave, and I tasted bile in my mouth; a burning, acid sensation undulated back and forth across the inside of my belly. I couldn't afford any show of weakness; I had to appear cold, confident. I crouched down on the floor and pressed my fist into my stomach. The nausea passed. I activated the tape recorder and put the tiny microphone up against the receiver.
"This is Robert Frederickson," I said, blinking sweat out of my eyes.
"Who?"
"Right now I'm the most important person in your life," I said, trying to imagine how Laurence Olivier would handle it if he wanted to sound casually menacing. "I've been doing some checking on your operation, and I've found out some interesting things. I thought I'd talk to you before I went to the police."
I winced when a new spasm of nausea hit me, and shoved my fist even deeper into my stomach. I felt short of breath. There was silence on the other end of the line. All Jordon had to do was laugh, or be outraged, or hang up, and the play was finished. If there was a play.
Finally Jordon said, "What things have you found out?"
The curtain was going up. I covered the receiver with my hand as my breath came out of me in a whoosh. I took a deep breath, said evenly, "I don't think you want me to go into it over the phone."
"What do you want, Frederickson?"
"We can talk about that when I see you. I'll be over in a half hour. Be sure you make yourself available."
Hanging up quickly, I doubled over and waited for the spasms to pass. Then I left the apartment, got into my car and began to drive to Jordon's offices. Despite the adrenaline pumping through my system, I suddenly felt exhausted, unable to keep my eyes open. I lighted a cigarette.
That helped some, but the smoke made me sick to my stomach. I pulled over to the curb, opened the door and retched.
Thirty-five minutes later I walked into the offices Jordon had once shared with Robert Samuels. I paused and hyperventilated. The nausea and pain in my stomach had subsided, and I was grateful for that: I was about to do the most important Command Performance of my life.
There were no patients in the waiting room. Jordon's nurse-secretary directed me down a narrow connecting corridor to a wood-paneled office, where I found Eric Jordon sitting in a leather-backed chair behind a massive oak desk. He was wearing a starched white lab coat. He'd crossed one ankle over the opposite knee; he held his hands in front of his chest and was gently tapping his fingertips together. If he was surprised to discover I was a dwarf, he didn't show it; his face didn't show anything. His mouth seemed frozen in a kind of grimace, and his pale flesh looked the color and consistency of plaster of Paris. I reached inside my pocket and activated the tape recorder as I walked up to his desk. I was feeling light-headed again; it wouldn't do to pass out on my co-star's floor.
"Dr. Jordon," I said with a curt nod.
"Say what you have to say, Frederickson," he said tautly. He sounded as if he were talking through a thick gauze mask, and he was breathing shallowly. His thick brown hair was tousled, greasy. He seemed to be looking straight through me.
"All right, I'll lay it on the line for you. I lied to you on the phone; I haven't been doing any investigating. I haven't had the time, which is a subject I'll get back to in a minute. The point is that I'm going to be doing a lot of digging, and I'm here to tell you up front what I expect to find. I know you were a brilliant medical student, and you're probably a great diagnostician. But I expect to find that you're not a very good physician. Patients just don't respond to you. As brilliant as you are with facts, figures and computer readouts, you screw up when it comes to people."
Suddenly my head spun. I leaned heavily on his desk and tried to cover the pause with a cough. The room straightened out. Judging from Jordon's glazed expression, I wasn't even sure he'd noticed.
"I think I'll find that a number of malpractice suits were filed against you-and won," I continued quickly. "You lost your hospital affiliation, but you weren't really concerned about that because you still had your main meal ticket-a partnership with Robert Samuels in this medical-services conglomerate. I think I'll find that you're very good at what you're doing, which is attending to the business side of medicine. But that wasn't enough for Samuels. After all, it was his business he'd brought you into, and he had a controlling interest. Samuels was a good physician, and when he found out you weren't he wanted to dissolve the partnership. If that happened, you'd be finished. After all those years of medical school-not to mention the financial investment-you saw yourself being cut out of the profession. Something in your head snapped-if I may be generous. You couldn't let that happen. I think I'll find that the two of you insured each other's lives-a common business practice. So you had to kill Samuels to protect your future. When Janet Monroe approached you concerning the Esteban project, you saw your chance. Somehow you managed to talk your partner into cooperating, but Esteban was a setup from the beginning. You were the one who went to Samuels with the story about Esteban drugging one of your patients; a lie, but Samuels bought it. He hadn't wanted to work with Esteban in the first place. Now he blew up and filed a complaint with the police. You'd established a motive. Then it was a simple matter of you leaving a message for Esteban saying that Samuels wanted to see him that Thursday evening. You killed Samuels, then waited around for Esteban to show up. Everything just fell into place. Esteban's too passive to be outraged, and he's considered a bit peculiar to begin with; everyone just assumed he was guilty."
I paused. Jordon hadn't batted an eye during my speech, and it didn't look as though he intended to say anything now. I needed him to react so that I'd have something on the tape; a word-a tone of voice-anything to indicate, however tenuously, that I'd struck a nerve, and that what I was saying could be true. It was the only thing that could provide a bail situation for Esteban.
Jordon wasn't exactly being cooperative; he continued to sit and stare like a robot. I wasn't even sure he'd been listening.
"You're thinking that all this is going to be hard to prove," I continued, not having the slightest idea what he was thinking-if he was thinking at all. I was fighting off a growing sense of panic. "True. But there have to be records somewhere; records and insurance policies. I'll get to it, Jordon, I assure you. Maybe I won't find out anything, maybe I will. But if you are guilty, you've got an opportunity few murderers do: you can almost square things by giving yourself up. The reason I haven't had time to do any real investigating on you is because I've been working on a case involving a little gi
rl who's dying. Now she's slipping fast, and if there's even a chance that Esteban can give her a few more days, I want her to have those days. You can give them to her. Personally, I doubt that the old man can do her any good. But you'd know better than I would if Esteban has any healing gifts; you kept records on the patients he worked with."
I paused to give Jordon a chance to say something; anything. He sat as rigid and silent as a catatonic. My mouth was dry and puckered, and there was an acid, burning taste at the back of my throat.
"Here's the bottom line," I continued, my voice cracking. I licked my lips and swallowed hard, trying to work up some moisture in my mouth. "If you killed Samuels, I'm going to prove it anyway. If you're guilty, come with me now and give yourself up so that we can get Esteban out of jail. First, you'll be doing yourself a favor; second, you'll be doing me a favor-and I'll do what I can to help you; most important, you'll be doing the child a favor. A friend of mine can-and will-bring a lot of political juice to bear in order to get you the best possible deal. What about it, Jordon? What do you have to say?"
He still didn't have anything to say. He sat in the same position, unmoving, bloodless fingertips pressed tightly together. His face was a pale, ashen gray, and his eyes shone fever-bright. It was then that I knew I was right; but Jordon's appearance was useless to me, because it would be worthless at a bail hearing.
I tried to think of something else to say that might prod him, but came up empty. And my stomach took that moment to knot with the worst pain I'd experienced yet. I gasped and doubled over. At the same time, Jordon abruptly uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and opened a drawer in his desk. When his hand emerged from the drawer, it was holding a small automatic. I tried to bunch my legs under me as I looked for some place to dodge or run. It wasn't necessary; he was no longer interested in me.
In one swift motion, Dr. Eric Jordon put the barrel of the pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 13
The judge was not happy with me.
He was particularly unhappy with the way I'd pressured Jordon, and he made it clear that he considered me partly responsible-in a moral, if not legal, sense-for the physician's death. He was unhappy with the fact that I'd left it to Jordon's hysterical nurse to call the police, and had left the offices before the investigating officers had arrived. Most of all, the judge was unhappy with the fact that no one had told him that Jordon had committed suicide before he'd been startled by the gunshot on the tape recording. He was also unhappy about what he considered the irregularity of the in camera proceeding.
That was for the record. Off the record, he told us he personally did not believe in psychic healing, but was impressed by Senator Younger's sincerity and the fact that Linda Younger was, after all, still alive. The judge attributed this to God's mercy, but conceded that God just might be working through Esteban. He understood the unusual circumstances and the pressure I'd been working under. More important, he agreed that the tape recording represented enough circumstantial evidence to justify a reexamination of Esteban Morales' situation. Esteban was free on cash bond that Senator Younger had put up, on Younger's responsibility.
I could hardly believe I'd pulled it off. In fact, I was in such a mental haze that I remained in my seat, staring at the bench, after the judge had left. People were talking excitedly around me, but I was having trouble connecting words to their meanings. Garth grabbed my arm and started to help me up. I shook him off, rose and followed him out of the courtroom.
Garth drove Younger, Esteban and me to the hospital in a squad car. I was exhausted and in pain, and everything around me segued dreamily into and out of focus. The tension of my confrontation with Jordon had made me temporarily forget just what was the matter with me; now the realization that I was infected with a disease that tore up men's minds before it killed them washed over me like an icy wave. I wasn't exactly following doctor's orders, and I was afraid. I knew I should go home and go to bed, but Kathy was in even worse danger; I had to know what was happening at the hospital, which meant I'd have to hold myself together for another hour or so.
There was something approaching a crowd outside Kathy's room, and there was palpable tension in the air. Joshua Greene was there, along with three other doctors who I assumed were the team of specialists he'd called in. Flanking the physicians were three men in dark, pin-striped suits with name tags that identified them as hospital administrators. None of them looked happy. On the opposite side of the corridor, as if facing off against an opposing team, were Janet and April.
I anticipated problems, but Janet had done her job well; Linda Younger had been given a bed in a private room with Kathy. Indeed, it was Janet who seemed to be in charge of the whole operation-probably understandable since, obviously, no one associated with the hospital wanted to assume responsibility.
As soon as we arrived, Janet took Esteban by the arm and led him into the room. Through the open door I watched him as he stopped between the two beds and stared down at the girls. He spoke cheerfully to Linda Younger, then had a whispered conference with April, who'd followed them in. She nodded, and Esteban came back out into the corridor.
"I can still help Linda," Esteban said to the Senator. "With her, we have more time. But I must work with the little girl immediately."
"I understand," Younger said in a hoarse voice. "Go ahead and do what you have to do. I'm just so grateful-" He turned to me with tears in his eyes. "Frederickson, I'm so. . grateful." He broke into sobs, covered his face with his hands and hurried down the hall toward the men's room at the end.
Esteban went back into the room and turned off the lights. He took off his jacket and shoes, then lay down on the bed next to the pale, comatose Kathy. To me, Kathy already looked dead, but occasionally her chest would rise almost imperceptibly, then fall again as she clung to life.
One of the administrators started to object. April came out into the corridor and silenced him with a reminder that she'd signed a paper releasing the hospital from any responsibility for what Esteban did to her daughter. Then she nodded to Esteban, who, taking care not to disturb any of the tubes connected to her body, picked Kathy up and placed her on his chest. He put his cheek against Kathy's, closed his eyes and began to stroke her body. In the silence I thought I could hear him softly humming to himself. April came over to me, put her arms around me and squeezed hard. Then, without a word, she went into the room and knelt next to the bed on which Kathy and Esteban lay.
"You're making things worse, Mongo."
I turned to face Joshua Greene. The rest of the local medical establishment stood slightly behind him, grimly nodding their agreement like a Greek chorus. "The girl is going to die," he continued tightly. "All you've done is raise false hopes. The mother and uncle were accepting. You should have left them alone with their grief; now they'll only have to go through that phase all over again."
"It seems to me that that decision is the mother's."
Joshua sighed. "How do you feel? You look terrible."
"I feel like shit. I've got stomach cramps, and I constantly have the sensation that I'm going to throw up. Is there something you can give me?"
He slowly, firmly, shook his head. "Within the past twenty-four hours you've been bitten-damn good-by a rabid animal. You've got rabies coursing through your system right now. You've had the first in a series of rabies shots that are painful and are no guarantee, in the circumstances, that you won't develop the disease anyway. The injections have side effects, and you're feeling them; I can tell by your eyes that you have a fever. If you don't rest and let the serum take effect, there's a very good chance that you could die of rabies. I don't think you're aware of just how dangerous your situation is."
He was wrong. I was very much aware of what I was risking. But I heard myself saying, "I have to keep going, and you know why I have to keep going. Give me something to prop me up."
"No," Greene said, a slight tremor in his voice. "I won't help you kill yourself; offhand, I'd
say that's what you're trying to do. Rabies is a horrible way to die, Mongo."
He paused, stared at me with his compassionate, soulful eyes. "First, your vision will begin to blur. Then your throat will begin to constrict to the point where you can't even swallow your own saliva; you'll slaver all over yourself and howl like an animal because you'll crave water but won't be able to drink it. Of course, by this time your mind will be gone. We won't be able to do anything but isolate you, strap you down and wait for you to die. And once you start to develop symptoms, it's over. And you are going to develop symptoms unless you do as I say. Think about it."
"Oh, I will, Joshua," I said softly. "I have." My mouth already felt dry. Greene had told me that symptoms wouldn't normally appear for several days, at least. But then, I was a dwarf-and the bat had really enjoyed a picnic on my thumb; I had to be carrying an extra-large dose of pathogens in my system.
A glacial wind rose from somewhere in my mind, chilling me; regardless of the consequences, I couldn't rest-not just yet. I had only a few years left anyway; Kathy had a lifetime.
I wanted to talk to Janet, but she was involved in what looked like a heated conversation with one of the hospital administrators. I walked quietly into Kathy's room, paused beside the first bed and smiled at Linda Younger. The frail twenty-four-year-old woman was resting serenely, her hands folded peacefully across her stomach. Suddenly she opened her violet eyes, saw me and smiled. She reached out and gripped my hand.
"Thank you, Dr. Frederickson," she whispered weakly. "My father told me what you did."
I blew her a kiss, then moved around behind the kneeling April and put my hand on her shoulder.
"Thank you for not letting me give up, Robert," she said quietly, taking my hand.
"Hey, there's no guarantee," I whispered in her ear. "I just had to take this last shot at buying some time."
"I understand. Even Daniel seems to believe that Esteban can help. Otherwise, he wouldn't have permitted it."
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