As he entered the clinic door, he saw Doctor Dumondais’s nurse, an imposing woman who seemed to measure five feet two both vertically and horizontally, but who possessed undeniable strength in her large body, and a voluminous knowledge of folk remedies and voodoo cures applicable to any number of tropical diseases.
“Bonjour, Hélène,” Ricky said. “Tout le monde est arrivé ce jour.”
“Ah, yes, doctor, we will be busy all day . . .”
Ricky shook his head. He practiced his island French on her, and she, in return, practiced her English on him, preparing for the hope, he knew, that someday she would gather enough money in the strongbox she kept buried in her backyard to pay her cousin for a place on his old fishing boat, so that he would risk the treacherous Florida Straits and carry her to Miami and she could start over again there, where she had been reliably informed, the streets were cluttered with money.
“No, no, Hélène, pas docteur. C ’est monsieur Lively. Je ne suis plus un médecin . . .”
“Yes, yes, Mister Lively. I know what you do say to me this so many times. I am sorry, for I am forgetting once again another time . . .”
She smiled widely, as if she didn’t quite understand but still wanted to join in with the great joke that Ricky played, to bring so much medical knowledge to the clinic, and yet, not want to be called a doctor. Ricky believed that Hélène simply ascribed this behavior to the odd, and mysterious mannerisms of all white people, and, like the folks crowded at the clinic door, she could not care less what Ricky wanted to be called. She knew what she knew.
“Le Docteur Dumondais, il est arrivé ce matin?”
“Ah, yes, Monsieur Lively. In his, ah, bureau.”
“Office is the word . . .”
“Yes, yes, j ’oublie. I forget. Office. Yes. He is there. Il vous attend . . .”
Ricky knocked on the wooden door and stepped inside. Auguste Dumondais, a wispy, small man, who wore bifocals and had a shaved head, was inside, behind his battered wooden desk, across from the examination table. He was pulling on a white clinical coat, and he looked up and smiled as Ricky entered. “Ah, Ricky, we shall be busy today, no?”
“Oui,” Ricky replied. “Bien sûr.”
“But, is not this day the day you are leaving us?”
“Only for a brief visit home. Less than a week.”
The gnomelike doctor nodded. Ricky could see lingering doubt in his eyes. Auguste Dumondais had not asked many questions when Ricky had arrived at the clinic door six months earlier, offering his services for the most modest salary. The clinic had thrived after Ricky was set up with an office much like the one he was standing in at that moment, nudging le Docteur Dumondais out of his own, self-imposed poverty, and allowing him to invest in more equipment and more medicines. Lately, the two men had discussed obtaining a secondhand X-ray machine from a clearinghouse in the states that Ricky had discovered. Ricky could see that the doctor was afraid that the serendipity that had delivered Ricky to his door was going to steal him away.
“A week at the most. I promise to you.”
Auguste Dumondais shook his head. “Do not promise me, Ricky. You must do whatever it is that you have to do, for whatever purpose that you have. When you return, we will continue our work.” He smiled, as if to display that he had so many questions that it was impossible for him to find one with which to start.
Ricky nodded. He removed his notebook from the bellows pocket of his shorts.
“There is a case . . . ,” he said slowly. “The little boy I saw the other week.”
“Ah, yes,” the doctor said, smiling. “Of course, I recall. I suspected this would interest you, no? He is what, five years old?”
“A little older,” Ricky said. “Six. And indeed, Auguste, you are correct. It interests me greatly. The child has not yet spoken a single word, according to his mother.”
“That is what I, too, understood. Intriguing, I think, no?”
“Unusual. Yes, very true.”
“And your diagnosis?”
Ricky could picture a small child, wiry like so many of the islanders, and slightly undernourished, which was also a typical statement, but not tragically so. The boy had a furtive look in his eyes as he’d sat across from Ricky, scared even though he occupied his mother’s lap. The mother had cried bitterly, tears streaking down dark cheeks, as Ricky had asked her questions, because the woman thought her boy to be the brightest of her seven children, quick to learn, quick to read, quick with numbers—but never speaking a word. A special child, she thought, in most every way. Ricky had been aware that the woman had a considerable reputation in the community for magical powers, and made some extra money on the side selling love potions and amulets that were said to ward off evil, and so, he understood, for her to bring the child to see the odd white man in the clinic must have been a truly hard-reached concession that spoke of her frustration over native medicines, and her love for the boy.
“I do not think his difficulty is organic,” Ricky said slowly.
Auguste Dumondais grimaced. “His lack of speech is . . . ?” This became a question.
“A hysterical response.”
The small black doctor rubbed his chin, and then ran his hand across his glistening skull. “I remember this, just a little bit, from my studies. Perhaps. Why do you think this?”
“The mother would only hint at some tragedy. When he was younger. There were seven children in the family, but now, only five. Do you know the family history?”
“Two children died. Yes. And the father, too. An accident, I recall, during a great storm. Yes, this child was there, that I remember, too. This could be the origin. But what treatment can we perform?”
“I will come up with a plan after some research. We will have to persuade the mother, of course. I don’t know how easy that will be.”
“Will it be expensive for her?”
“No,” Ricky said. He realized that there was some design in Auguste Dumandais’s request for him to examine the child at the same time that Ricky had a trip out of the country planned. It was a transparent design, but a good one, nonetheless. He suspected he might have done more or less the same. “I think it will cost them nothing to bring him to see me after I return. But I must learn much more, first.”
Doctor Dumandais smiled and nodded. “Excellent,” he said, as he hung a stethoscope around his neck, and then handed Ricky a white clinical jacket of his own to wear.
The day went by rapidly, busily, so much so that Ricky almost missed his CaribeAir flight to Miami. A middle-aged businessman named Richard Lively, traveling on a recently issued American passport with only a few modest stamps from various Caribbean nations, was waved through U.S. customs without much delay. He realized he didn’t fit any of the obvious criminal profiles, which were invented primarily to identify drug smugglers. Ricky thought he was a most unique criminal, and one that defied categorization. He was booked on the eight a.m. plane north to La Guardia, so Ricky spent the night in the airport Holiday Inn. He took a lengthy, hot, soapy shower, which he enjoyed from both a sanitary and sensual point of view, and thought bordered on true luxury after the spartan accommodations he was accustomed to. The air-conditioning that defied the heat outside and cooled his room was a remembered treat. But he slept fitfully, in starts, tossing for an hour before his eyes closed, then waking twice, once in the midst of a dream about the fire at his vacation home, then again, when he dreamed of Haiti, and the boy who could not speak. He lay in the bed in the darkness, a little surprised that the sheets seemed too soft and the mattress too springy, listening to the hum of the ice machine down the hall, and an occasional footstep passing by in the hallway, muted by the carpet, but not completely so. In the quiet, he reconstructed the last call he’d made to Virgil, nearly nine months earlier.
It was midnight, when he’d finally covered the distance to the cheap room on the outskirts of Provincetown. He had felt an odd, contradictory sense of exhaustion and energy, tired from the long run, ent
hused by the thought that he had come through a night very much alive that should have seen his death. He had slumped down on the bed, and dialed the number of her apartment in Manhattan.
When Virgil picked up the call on the first ring, she said only, “Yes?”
“This isn’t the voice you expected,” he replied.
She fell instantly quiet.
“Your brother, the attorney is there, isn’t he? Sitting across the room from you, waiting for the same phone call.”
“Yes.”
“Then have him pick up the extension and listen in.”
Within a few seconds, Merlin, too, was on the line. “Look,” the lawyer started, blustery with false bravado, “You have no idea—”
Ricky interrupted him. “I have many ideas. Now be quiet and listen to me, because everyone’s lives depend upon it.”
Merlin started to say something, but he could sense that Virgil had thrown a glance in his direction, shutting him up.
“First, your brother. He is currently in the Mid Cape Medical Center. Depending on their abilities, he will either remain there, or be airlifted to Boston for surgery. The police will have many questions for him, should he survive his wounds, but I think they will have difficulty understanding what crime, if any, was committed this night. They will have questions for you, as well, but I think that he will need both the support of the sister and brother he loves, as well as some legal advice before too long, assuming he makes it. So, I think the first task ahead of you is to deal with his situation.”
Both remained silent.
“Of course, that is for you to decide. Perhaps you will leave him to handle things by himself. Perhaps not. It is your choice, and you will have to live with your decision. But there are a few other matters that need to be dealt with.”
“What sort of matters?” Virgil asked, her voice flat, trying to not betray any emotion, which, Ricky noted, was just as revealing as any other tone might be.
“First, the truly mundane: The money you stole from my retirement and other investment accounts. You will replace that sum into Crédit Suisse account number 01-00976-2. Write that down. You will do this promptly . . .”
“Or?” Merlin asked.
Ricky smiled. “I thought it was an old truism that no lawyer should ever ask a question they don’t already know the answer to. So, I shall assume you know the answer already.”
This silenced the attorney.
“What else?” Virgil asked.
“We have a new game,” Ricky said. “It’s called the game of staying alive. It’s designed for all of us to play. Simultaneously.”
Neither brother nor sister responded.
“The rules are simple,” Ricky said.
“What are they?” Virgil asked softly.
Ricky smiled to himself. “At the time I took my last vacation, I was charging patients between $75 and $125 per hour for analysis. On average, I saw each patient four, sometimes five times each week, generally forty-eight weeks each year. You can do the math yourselves.”
“Yes,” she said. “We’re familiar with your professional life.”
“Great,” Ricky said briskly. “So, this is the way the game of staying alive works: Everyone who wants to keep breathing enters therapy. With me. You pay, you live. The more people who enter the immediate sphere of your life, the more you pay, because that will buy their safety, as well.”
“What do you mean ‘more people’ . . . ?” Virgil asked.
“I’ll leave that up to you to define,” Ricky said coldly.
“If we don’t do as you say?” Merlin sharply demanded.
Ricky replied with a blank, level harshness. “As soon as the money stops, I will assume that your brother has recovered from his wounds and is hunting me once again. And I will be forced to start hunting you.”
Ricky paused, then added, “Or someone close to you. A wife. A child. A lover. A partner. Someone who helps your life be ordinary.”
Again, they were quiet.
“How much do you want to have a normal life?” Ricky asked.
They did not answer this question, though he already knew what they would say.
“It is,” Ricky continued, “more or less the same choice you once gave me. Only this time it is about balance. You can maintain the equilibrium between yourselves and me. And you can signal that equity with the easiest and really the most unimportant of things: the payment of some money. So, ask yourselves this: How much is the life I want to live worth?”
Ricky coughed, to give them a moment, then continued, “This is, in some ways, the same question I would pose to anyone who sought me out for therapy.”
Then he had hung up.
It was clear above New York, and from his window seat he could make out the Statue of Liberty and Central Park, as the plane swept over the city and approached La Guardia. He had the odd sensation that he wasn’t returning home as much as he was visiting some long forgotten dream space, more like seeing the wilderness camp where one had spent a single unhappy summer as a child, crying his way through some long parentally imposed vacation.
Ricky wanted to move swiftly. He was booked back to Miami on the last flight that night, and he didn’t have much time. There was a line at the rental counter, and it took some time to extricate the car reserved for Mr. Lively. He used his New Hampshire license, which was due to expire in another half year and thought that perhaps it would be wise to relocate fictionally to Miami before returning to the islands.
It took about ninety minutes through modest traffic to get to Greenwich, Connecticut, but he discovered that the directions obtained over the Internet were accurate down to the last tenth of a mile. This amused him, because, he thought, life is never actually that precise.
He stopped in the center of town and purchased an expensive bottle of wine at a gourmet shop. Then he drove out to a home on a street that was, perhaps by the inflated standards of one of the nation’s richest communities, fairly modest. The houses were simply ostentatious, not obscene. Those that fit this second category were located a few blocks over.
He parked at the bottom of the driveway outside a fake Tudor-style home. There was a swimming pool in back and a large oak tree in the front that had yet to bloom. The mid-March sun wasn’t insistent enough, he thought, although it did have some weak promise as it filtered between branches that were still to blossom. An oddly unsettled time of year, he decided.
With the bottle of wine in hand, he rang the doorbell.
It did not take long for a young woman, no older than her early thirties, to answer. She wore jeans and a black turtleneck sweater, and had sandy hair that was swept back from her face, displaying eyes that were lined at the corners and some wrinkles, probably prompted by exhaustion, around the edges of her mouth. But her voice was soft and inviting, and she spoke, as she swung the door open, in a near-whisper. Before he could say anything, she said, “Shhhh, please. I’ve just gotten the twins down for a nap . . .”
Ricky smiled back. “They must be a handful,” he said pleasantly enough.
“You have no idea,” the young woman replied. She kept her voice very low. “Now, how can I help you?”
Ricky held out the bottle of wine. “You don’t remember meeting me?” he asked. This was a lie, of course. They had never met. “At that cocktail party with your husband’s partners about six months back?”
The young woman looked carefully at him. He knew the answer should be no, she had no recollection, but she was brought up more properly than her husband had been, so she responded, “Of course, ah, Mr . . .”
“It’s doctor,” Ricky said. “But you should call me Ricky.” He shook her hand, and then held out the bottle of wine. “Your husband is owed this,” Ricky said. “We had some business together a year or so ago, and I just wanted to thank him, and remind him of the successful outcome of the case.”
She took the bottle, a little nonplussed. “Well, thank you, ah, doctor . . .”
“Ricky,” he said.
“He’ll remember.”
Then he turned and with a little devil-may-care wave, walked back down the drive to his rental car. He had seen all he needed, learned all he’d needed. It was a nice life that Merlin had carved out for his family, one that held out much promise for being nicer still, in the days to come. But this evening, at least, Merlin would have a sleepless night, after uncorking the wine. Ricky knew it would taste bitter. Fear does that.
He thought of visiting Virgil as well, but instead merely had a florist deliver a dozen lilies to the film set where she had acquired a modest, but important role on a big-budget Hollywood production. It was a good part, he’d learned, one that, if handled well, might lead to much bigger and better roles in the future, although he had his doubts that she would ever play a character more interesting than Virgil. White lilies were perfect. One usually sent them to a funeral with a note expressing deep condolences. He suspected she would know that. He had the flowers wrapped with a black satin bow and enclosed a card, which read simply:
Still thinking of you.
s/Dr. S.
He had, he thought, become a man of far fewer words.
By John Katzenbach:
fiction
IN THE HEAT OF THE SUMMER*
THE TRAVELER*
DAY OF RECKONING*
JUST CAUSE*
THE SHADOW MAN*
STATE OF MIND*
Analyst Page 52