How could that be? Zak did a run-down of credits. The Archbishop’s collections alone were bringing in about twenty grand a month. Kurt was skimming?
As if reading his mind, Kurt added, “Don’t forgot the forklift for the statue’s installation, limo rental for the Bishop, concrete for the plinth, robes for the choir and honorarium for the artist.”
“I’ll check the spreadsheet.” Zak ran his fingers through his hair. “If we can’t buy off the Muslims—”
“Mosque-rats.”
“The only thing left is to take the kid back. By force, if we have to. I’ll send Bassem. Where’s the kid at?
“Thought you’d ask me that. I think Veber stashed him in an abortion clinic somewhere near Antiquera. A fancy spa called Papillion, That’s a French word.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Veber’s a genius. A phony spa that’s really a medical set-up he runs under the radar.”
“Where to find it?”
Kurt shrugged. “As if I should know.” Then came a sly smile. “Idea. Tell that bimbo you’re hiding in your boat you want a family. She starts in on making one, and you change your mind and ask around for a friendly doctor.” Weber leaned back and laughed, cracked narrow lips, small yellow teeth.
Zak picked up the check. “You’re so sick, you make me sick.”
12
Tony started to say something, then fell quiet as he maneuvered the tiny Seat
Panda around a hairpin curve. “You’re acting dodgy, Paige.”
Irritable, fighting a sense of futility, I braced myself with a hand on the dashboard. “This whole trip’s a waste. We’ll never find Hamid.”
Tony downshifted.
“I wish you had a GPS,” I said.
“I told you, it doesn’t work. Just follow the map on your phone.”
“I throw up if I read in cars. Even if we find this Papillion place, for all we know the bad guys could have moved Hamid.” A flash of the woman’s remains on the beach. “Or even beheaded him.”
“Tricky, love, with a baby. They wiggle and squirm.’
“Not funny.”
Anxiety can be a physical state as well as a state of mind. My stomach fluttered, and my nerves were strung tight as guitar strings. “This Papillion spa, I’m wondering—” I half-turned to Tony, “why the Muslims didn’t deliver the kid directly to his father? The big-shot, Tariq?”
“Simple. The little nipper’s sick. The soldiers took him to be treated.”
“Assuming spas have nurses. And what if the staff won’t tell us if the kid’s there. Or they lie.”
Tony reached across the console and patted my hand.
Tony the rescuer. A label for me as well? I looked out at the forest rolling by the window, as if the trees answered the questions I asked myself. If not a rescuer, what was I doing in this underpowered kiddy-car, chasing across Spain, risking being done-in by jihadists, rescuing a child I didn’t even know, but whose life I was hell-bent to save? You’d think years of clinical practice would put a dent in my urge to throw my arms around the addicted teen, the battered wife, the alcoholic retiree. Not that I ever did in fact. But maybe should have. Perhaps I should have used my arms to shield my husband from an inner demon he hated and feared.
So many times, I’d held Grant as he lay on the sofa berating himself, saying he was a failure, inadequate, useless. As if his brilliance belonged to a superior being inside him whom he had to destroy. And because Grant was a competent thirty-seven-year-old neurologist, he knew the exact dosage of barbiturates to do the job. Of course, I understood despair can lead to suicide. What I could never accept was my own failure to protect Grant from himself.
“Lost in thought?” Tony asked,
“Something bad’s about to happen. I feel it.”
“Nonsense.” Tony squeezed my hand and turned his attention back to the wheel.
“And you’ll know what to do after we find—if we find—Hamid?” I asked.
“I told you, I’ll follow through.”
As a doctor, it would be easy for Tony to contact local adoption agencies, have the child placed in a Spanish home after we found him. At first rescuing, Hamid seemed so simple. Reality hit last night that it would take two people, one to manage Hamid, the other to make a quick getaway from the Papillion, assuming the spa I brought up on the Net was the right place. I needed help. Zak was my choice until I thought of his quick temper and decided he was too volatile. Casey’s connection to the Foreign Office might keep him from anything bordering on illegal, assuming re-kidnapping a kidnap victim was a crime. The solution was calm, sensible Tony.
My eyes followed the dense pines along the road until they became a blur.
“So quiet. Your broken bones kicking up?”
“Along with everything else, I worry about the emotional damage done to kids who’ve been biffed around. Like Hamid.”
Tony glanced over at me. “He’ll survive. Others have it much worse.”
“You’re an internist. I deal with the after-effects of trauma: Post Traumatic Stress, Major
Depression, suicidal ideation: I see them every day.”
“Children transcend. We, my grandparents, that is, came through the London blitz, the Luftwaffe strafing the roof, my granddad outrunning bullets.”
“Did he make it?”
“We all came through.” The Panda bumped over a railroad crossing. “Family stability’s the key. When I think of the stories about Gram’s Christmas tree in the underground bunker and how she always fixed Sunday roast whenever she got her hands-on meat.”
I studied his profile, sturdy cheekbones and jaw, weathered ruddy skin. On the surface, Brits and Americans look alike. But the profound differences in family narratives shaped profound differences in character. Take my anxiety, Tony’s stoicism. Except for low-carb diets, my parents had never known hunger, nor life under siege. Americas forget that humans not only survive, but thrive in adversity.
A blown truck tire blocked the center of the narrow road. “What in bloody hell was a lorry doing way out here?” Tony said. “Getting back to kids’ resiliency, I believe there’s a link between a child’s stability and his ego strength as an adult. The sooner we get Hamid to his dad, the better.”
“Dad? What dad?” I leaned forward, closed my eyes, wanting to reject what I sensed was coming. “The imam dad? Tariq as dad?”
“So right. His family.” Tony glanced over at me. “I say something wrong?”
It never occurred to me Tony would see Hamid as a Muslim. Or, rather, that Tony didn’t see Hamid through my eyes, as a child yet to be exposed to violence, fanatism. “We don’t know how Hamid will be raised and educated with his real family. We don’t even know where Tariq lives.”
What was I thinking? Of course, Tony would turn Hamid over to the police. What any normal law-abiding person would do. Like a fool, I’d assumed he’d get Hamid to a Spanish adoption agency. My heart, brain, and even my gut rebelled. “Let me get this straight. You want to add one more terrorist to the universal supply. You don’t see anything wrong with him sitting cross-legged in a madrassa memorizing the Koran? No play, no music? As a teenager blowing himself up in a suicide bomb? I won’t allow it. No way.”
“You mean, your way.”
“He has to listen to rap music, dance, chase girls and sing,” I said.
“How sweet.” Tony turned to me. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But he’s not your kid.”
“Watch the road,” I snapped.
Tony and I clearly reading from different scripts. My mind raced as I pretended to change it. I should not alien
ate Tony. I needed a plan B, and he might have to help. “Maybe you have a point,” I said.
A mistake choosing Tony. If I wanted to rescue Hamid from his own people, a justifiable, but arrogant act if there were ever one, I should have called Zak. Whether a member of the screwball Catholics or not, as a Spanish Christian he’d be on my side.
We crested a hill overlooking miles of silvery olive trees. In the distance, the sea was a long gray snake stretched across the horizon. At a crossroad, Tony slowed at the faded sign marking the C2344. “Turn here?” I said. “If I’m reading the map right.”
“You’re sure this spa’s the Papillion the soldier mentioned?”
“Has to be. The only thing like it north of Malaga. I think it’s a covert abortion clinic. The website pitches it as a trendy beauty retreat for Tangier’s society ladies. But between the lines, I picked up off-kilter references—confidentiality, pain management and a give-away phrase, maternity solutions. Geez, maternity solutions, what a spin on reality.”
“Hey.” Tony pointed ahead to a grove of striped umbrellas. “Food and petrol. Would you believe?”
“We don’t have time.”
“Except a loo and a cuppa would be spot on.”
Before I could argue, he pulled up near the terrace café and got out. “Back in a sec.” He trotted off toward the caballeros’ sign. No other customers, and I pulled out a chair and reached for a menu in the grip of a chrome holder. An orange cat wove around the table legs.
“He’s a sucker for attention.” The waiter wore a green apron over a black tee-shirt and shorts. “You’re a UK-er?” he asked. “Or speako de Deutch?”
“American.”
“Seriously?” His smile revealed brown rotting teeth. Moustache seedlings failed to hide the acne on his upper lip. “I’m from Monroe. Ever heard of Loosianna.? Where y’all from?”
“Texas.”
“Oh, wow. The first non-Brit I seen here.”
My saying, “You’re a long way from home,” triggered his volley of unasked for self-disclosure.
“A bunch of us came to do Pamplona until Jamie got sick. I guess you wouldn’t know Jamie. But being from Texas, you never can tell. Me?” He tapped his chest with his thumb. “They call me Kevin after my old man.” He smiled with his hand half over his mouth, as if trying to hide his blackened teeth.
I tuned him out. Studied the menu marveling not at the exorbitant prices, but at the tragedy of methamphetamines, a home-cooked drug able to totally devastate teeth, judgment, and lives.
Tony returned and nodded to Kevin, who was now complaining about work visas.” You from Texas, same as her?” Kevin asked.
Tony lifted a menu. “Earl Grey, please. And we need to double-check directions if you know the area. My GPS is on the fritz.”
Why on earth was Tony asking this deadbeat anything? On the other hand, the kid was probably an expert on local low life.
Tony explained where we were headed, and added, “I understand this Papillion’s a posh place.”
Kevin looked up at the racing clouds competing with his thought process. “Yeah, run by Parisians from Paris.” Staring pointedly at my waistline, he grinned. “I know where you’re coming from, and why you’re off to where you’re going.”
I pulled in my stomach and drew in a breath to tell the creep no, I wasn’t pregnant, I was a doctor whose office overlooked the Gulf of Mexico and my income usually—I brought myself up short. My God, how pathetic could I get? Trying to impress this creep to offset humiliation? This was where feeling cheap lead.
Tony and Kevin huddled over the map, while I reflected on the word cheap, meaning of no value, temporary, a throwaway. The teenaged girls in the psychiatric service recovering from overdoses and motorcycle spills. A girl with tattooed breasts who was ashamed of the refrigerator in the front yard, and if she had a father, her dad’s dirty mouth and hands. My upbringing and education were far too expensive for me to feel cheap. Until now.
“You ready to move on?” Tony said to me and turned to Kevin. “We’ll find it.”
I picked up my bag.
“Have a good one,” Kevin said as we passed him on our way to the parking lot.
Was his wink real? Or imagined?
Tony was smiling as he turned the key in the engine. I spoke through gritted teeth. “You thought his thinking I’m pregnant was funny.”
“You must admit the conclusion’s logical.”
“That wasn’t a smile on your face. It was a smirk.”
“I have never smirked in my life.” Tony put the car in reverse.
“Furthermore,” I said, “his directions will be as inept as he is.”
“Stop picking on the lad. He knew all about the Arab’s place, and we’re almost there.”
As if by magic the instant we turned onto the grounds of Le Papillon, the sky changed from the work-a-day washed-out azure of the coast to magnificent cerulean blue. I struggled from the cramped passenger seat and gazed at the white palace with its spires and fluted columns, its narrow reflecting pool flanked by Italian cypress and the Oleander nodding magenta heads over pink roses. Bougainville tumbled from marble urns. The air smelled of the jasmine tangled in a three-board fence.
Tony came up beside me. “In Xanadu did Kublai Khan,” I recalled the words as he went along. “A stately pleasure-dome decreed, Where Arp the sacred river ran—
“Alph,” I said. “Alph, Alph the sacred river ran.”
“Arp, Tony said, locking the door. He shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other and shielded his eyes from the sun. “Two more minarets and Papillion would be the Taj Mahal.”
“Except the architecture’s Moroccan, not Mughal. Lovely,” I said. “As its name, butterfly, right?”
“Morocco’s French, or used to be.”
“What a gold mine,” I said, scanning the grounds. “Anything money can buy, abortions, liposuction, massage and pore-tightening facials with mud from the Dead Sea.”
“Better be from the Jordanian side.”
“Bus in the rich Arab ladies,”” I went on. “Imam-vetted staff. Swimming pools uncontaminated by infidels—what’s in that briefcase?”
“Every ID in my arsenal.”
“Good idea. We’ll need it.”
Our cover was hardly bulletproof. We decided Tony would explain he had been the attending when the child, Hamid—no record of the last name—was admitted to Marbella General’s emergency room. Coincidently, a Nigerian with Ebola, was admitted the same day. By current Spanish policy, everyone exposed to Ebola was to be examined and referred for follow-up. Tony was here for a hands-on check of Hamid. The story shot through with inaccuracies, but plausible—providing no screw-ups. A doorman in pantaloons and red tarboosh guarded the entrance. He bowed as I proceeded Tony through the doorway into a lobby the size of an airport hangar. “I’ll do all the talking,” Tony said. “Only because you don’t speak French.”
The scent of cardamom floated on the air. In the center of the room, marble nymphs spilled water from amphorae into a lily-pond. A sharp chill almost sent me back for my windbreaker until a glance at the Louis XV furniture warned I would be even more underdressed than I already was, my jeans and tee-shirt probably threatening to give the doorman an embolism. Two well-fed ladies in glittering robes sailed across the room, as elegant as Viking ships. A uniformed cleaning lady—black burka and veil with an eye-screen, bent over a dustpan.
Tony headed to a granite counter that ran along a wall. A receptionist looked up from her computer. To me Tony’s French sounded impressive until the woman winced at his pronunciation of “Merce.” She reached for her phone.
“Paging the Medical Director,” Tony explained.
The physician in street clothes who emerged from a door behind the counter could have posed for a Louis Vuitton ad. Strategically placed silver strands in her short dark hair, and a splendid shantung jacket hung open over a white silk shirt. Wire-rimmed glasses were an unexpected touch that would be dated on anyone but Doctor Ollu.
Tony launched into a complex explanation ending with, “Ebola,” and a sweeping gesture.
She frowned.
Why not agree? Who would want to risk not being vaccinated?
Ollu seemed to not notice me. I stood aside as Tony opened the briefcase and spread his credentials over the counter. A faint trilling from my bag and I took out my phone. A US area code with a familiar number. “Back in a minute,” I said, heading toward the glass doors opening onto a flagstone patio.
Jason Ventura, my lawyer in Houston, must have been mufti-tasking again, for as usual, his voice sounded harried and distracted. “The Board agreed to a postponement. They’ll schedule a new date next week.”
Continuing fallout from a misjudgment of character on my part. I had made a referral to a colleague I had known since my residency in Baltimore. I thought Gary was competent—he was, after all, widely published, his name well-known. One would assume he was a trustworthy clinician. I was wrong. He prescribed opioids to my fifty-four-year-old patient. Worse, with no medical work-up. The patient wound up in rehab, and her husband went to the board of licensure, naming me along with every other provider involved in her treatment.
“Reinstating your license wouldn’t be problematic, if we weren’t in the middle of this opioid crisis,” Johnathon said.
“Problematic?”
“We’ll see what happens.”
“Do they have cause?”
“Far as I can see, absolutely not.”
“So, you’re saying I should not sell my practice,” I said lightly, testing the waters. I waited for his laugh. Instead, I listened to a prolonged silence.
“We’ll know more after the hearing,” Jay finally said.
The Loss of What We Never Had Page 10