by Neil Mcmahon
“You’re right, the confusion could be very damaging,” she said quickly. “Especially just now. So why don’t we get back to the people who’d be glad to take care of it?”
Monks weighed the situation. Without proof, the hospital had nothing. Even if substantive evidence did turn up, bringing it to bear would involve a David-and-Goliath fight with Aesir Corporation: a court battle that was likely to drag on for years, cost a lot of trouble and money, and end up a pyrrhic victory at best.
On the other hand, there was the principle of the thing. An assault on a place of healing, felony theft and destruction, outrage and insult to the institution itself, to what it stood for, to the people who worked there. Monks had become less hard-edged about principles over the years, but there were still lines drawn deep within his consciousness. Often, even he did not know where they were until something got close to crossing one.
This was close.
“What would ‘taking care of it’ involve?” he said.
“Let me make a phone call.”
She left the room. Monks looked over the paintings on the walls. Like everything else, they were tasteful, a mix of modern and more classical styles. But he was drawn to the smallest, a rough-textured Impressionist landscape of muted blues, greens, and browns, about sixteen inches wide by twelve inches high. The scene was a somber afternoon in a late autumn countryside with a single small figure bowed in a weary walk, a tableau that evoked with almost painful intensity the lonely distances between human beings, before those could be filled by televisions and phones. Monks was pretty sure he recognized the small signature at bottom right, but he stepped close to be positive. It was Renoir.
Martine came back into the room and said, “I can’t reach the person I need. How about tomorrow morning?”
Monks nodded. “Give me a number. I’ll talk to administration and call you.”
She went to an antique secretary desk and leaned over to write. There was something about her profile, face intent, her braced leg a little bent at the knee, that touched him with a quick, fierce emotion he could not quite identify. Then he had it: an urge to protect.
She handed him the paper, then walked with him to the entry way and stepped into shadow.
“About that admiration,” she said. “When I told you that you don’t know anything about me—let’s say there was a girl who let her head be turned, a long time ago.”
“Turned how?”
“Into a world where right and wrong get blurred.”
“I think that happens to most people, in some way,” Monks said.
“Maybe. But she moved further in. Now she can’t even look back and see her footprints, they’re covered in sand.”
It sounded like the flip side of his own dilemma. But representing your own or your employer’s best interests was one thing. Covering a crime was another.
“So what’s that girl telling me?” he said.
“She’s not sure there’s really much you’d admire.”
“She doesn’t look like the devious type.”
“That’s part of what made it fun, at first. Nobody would have dreamed it. She was a cripple, overachieving to make up for it. Then one day somebody important noticed her. Cinderella.”
Monks glanced around the elegant room. “Doesn’t look like she regrets it too much either.”
Anger came into her eyes. “It’s not about money, it’s about comfort. She found out she couldn’t trust people. Especially men. So she bought nice things instead. Those, she can count on.”
Monks said, “Comfort, or armor?”
The anger in her eyes deepened and her mouth set in a thin line.
“What happened to that woman who killed Robby Vandenard?” she said. “Alison, wasn’t that her name?”
Monks blinked, taken off balance. For the second time tonight, he recalled the man who had almost killed him with a grape-picker’s knife. Earlier, when Martine Rostanov had put her finger on that raw wound of terror in his memory, it might have been only naive. But this time it was a counterpunch. He supposed he had asked for it.
“Alison left the area,” he said. “I haven’t heard from her in a while.”
“Did it change her?”
“I think it’s safe to say that.”
“How about you?”
“I still wake up sometimes trying to scream,” he said. “If that’s what you mean.”
She deflated a little, the anger seeming to leave her, as if she realized that the punch was a low one.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help wondering what it would be like to experience something—that powerful.”
“I’d say it’s best left to the imagination.”
Abruptly, Monks was aware of a figure at the edge of his vision. He turned swiftly. It was a man, standing in the living room toward the back of the house, watching them. There was no telling how long he had been there.
The lawyer, Ronald Tygard.
Tygard walked toward them, right hand in his coat pocket, as if he was holding a pistol.
Martine stared at him. “What are you doing in my house? How’d you get in?”
“Something’s come up,” Tygard said.
“What kind of ‘something’?”
Tygard ignored her question and jerked his head at Monks. “What’s he doing here?”
Monks said, “Fire and blood.”
When the implication hit, Tygard’s mask of cold control slipped, just for an instant. He caught himself quickly. “What the hell does that mean?”
But it had been enough, and both men knew it.
“Dr. Monks and I are working things out,” Martine said to Tygard. “I called Ken Bouldin but he wasn’t in.”
Then she inhaled sharply and reached out to touch Tygard—an instinctive gesture that she stopped partway. “What happened to your head?”
Now Monks saw it: a swelling on the right rear of Tygard’s skull above his ear, with the hair slightly matted with blood.
Tygard shrugged impatiently. “Banged it.” It looked more as if someone had banged it for him. “You’d better talk to Bouldin right now,” he said to Martine. “He’s in his office.” Tygard moved back toward the room’s far end, punching numbers on a cell phone, gesturing her to follow. “You stay here,” he told Monks.
Monks bristled, starting to declare that he would do whatever he damned well wanted to. But he was not about to leave just to prove he could. He stepped to the front door and looked out. He saw Tygard’s car now, a deep green Jaguar XK convertible that must have driven in without lights. It was parked behind Monks’s Bronco, blocking it in. Andrew, the football player-type who had been with Tygard in the ER, was standing by. Monks’s anger intensified, but so did his wariness.
There are people who think they’re above the law.
It was a good bet that the bump on Tygard’s head had not improved his mood.
Monks turned back just in time to see Martine hurrying from the room, looking agitated. Tygard was still talking grimly on the phone. He thrust his hand toward Monks, palm out: stand back. The hand stayed there, fidgeting, for ten seconds longer. Then it dropped, and Tygard stalked to Monks and handed him the phone.
“You’re talking to the CEO of Aesir Corporation,” Tygard said, with the air of warning an altar boy that he was addressing the pope.
“Dr. Monks?” the voice on the phone said. It was urbane, firm, a powerful instrument: a voice that knew its job and how to get its owner what he wanted. “Ken Bouldin here. I gather there were some problems this evening for you and your colleagues. I’d like to see if we can’t smooth things over.”
“I think the hospital would be interested in a meeting,” Monks said.
“Any chance you could come to me, sir? I’m afraid I’m in a state of siege, here in my office.”
“You mean now?” Monks said, surprised. It was 10:41 P.M.
“I’d like to resolve it immediately.”
Monks realized that his usual post-ER wearines
s had vanished. “All right.”
“My men will be glad to drive you.”
Monks glanced at Tygard’s sour face. “I have a vehicle,” Monks said.
“Bank of America Building. They’ll be expecting you at the desk.”
Monks handed the phone back to Tygard. Martine had not returned to the room.
“What happened to Dr. Rostanov?” Monks said.
“She’s not feeling well.”
“She was fine a minute ago.”
Tygard stepped close, giving Monks the hard stare. Quietly, he said, “Don’t piss me off any more than you already have.”
“Your car’s blocking mine,” Monks said. “I’ll need you to move it.”
On the drive back into the city, Monks could see in his rearview mirror that Tygard’s Jaguar was traveling steadily along with him, a few car lengths behind. For about the first time in his life, he started to feel important.
5
Monks walked through the night across the Bank of America plaza, skirting the sculpture at the corner of California and Montgomery Streets. It was a modern work, its surface hard and glittering and black as obsidian, shaped something like a large torpedo. Around San Francisco, it was known as The Banker’s Heart. Fifty yards past it rose the BOA building itself, fifty-two stories of smoked-glass corporate splendor that was a dominant feature of the city’s skyline.
Although it was after 11 P.M., there was plenty of activity in the lobby. Apparently an IPO like this one was big business, even here. Uniformed security guards met Monks at the doors, checked his identification, then led him to a desk where the appointment was verified by telephone. The guards rode with him up the elevator to Aesir Corporation’s thirty-fourth-floor offices.
Doors were open all along the wide main corridor. Personnel with the executive look—impeccable hairstyles, perfect teeth, expensive eyewear—hurried around with charged, expectant energy. The guards still stayed with him. He sensed that they were wary, confused, and even annoyed by his presence. It was not just his much-worn tweed sports coat or the Wellington-style work boots he wore for comfort through the long ER hours on his feet. He simply did not belong in this world—and yet he had been invited by the CEO. It made Monks hard to peg.
His keepers finally released him into the custody of a very attractive secretary, who told him that Mr. Bouldin would be with him in just a minute and showed him to a waiting room. Monks declined a chair but accepted coffee. It was good, a rich, strong brew that had not come from an urn. He gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows, down on the city spreading like a glowing opulent mirage. A text from long-ago religion classes came into his mind, one of those lessons that had been imprinted so early and thoroughly, it was impossible to estimate the effect it had had on his life.
And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them.
The secretary returned. Monks followed her fillylike prance—slim taut calves and smooth hips encased in a thigh-high bandage-tight skirt—to a very large corner office.
When he stepped inside, his gaze was caught first by a banner on the far wall, shaped like a square sail and almost as big. It sported the Aesir Corporation logo: a black longboat, a replica of the Viking ship that had terrorized the civilized world for centuries, cutting across an ice-blue sea.
In front of the banner was a massive rosewood desk that must have weighed a quarter ton. A man stood behind it. He was handsome, fit, vital, with a deep, even suntan and hair just graying:
The man who had been sitting in the limousine earlier, and who had touched Martine Rostanov’s wrist.
“Ken Bouldin,” he said, offering Monks a handshake with just the right firmness of grip. “Thanks for coming, Doctor.”
Beside Bouldin sat a woman who could have been thirty-five but was probably closer to fifty, with the kind of beauty that was gene-deep, enhanced by artifice but not depending on it. She wore a close-fitting charcoal cashmere dress that accentuated her shimmering mass of tawny hair and lithe body. She made Monks think of a not-quite-tame cat.
“Audrey Cabot, our chief of operations,” Bouldin said. She inclined her head, with a look that Monks had encountered before, but never with such easy intensity. It suggested that she assigned values to everything she saw, and owned what she wanted, and that Monks did not cost very much.
So: Kenneth Bouldin and Audrey Cabot were the top-ranking Aesir, the gods who controlled fabulous wealth, power—even genetic destiny.
“And Pete Hazeldon,” Bouldin said.
Monks had hardly noticed the other man in the room, slumped in a chair off to the side. He was younger, even boyish looking, with long, frizzy hair, a cheap plaid shirt, and baggy pleated khaki pants—the only other person Monks had seen here who did not seem to fit. He raised his hand in an awkward wave, as if shy about being acknowledged, and went back to writing or doodling on a scratch pad.
“Pete’s head of research and development,” Bouldin said. “He’s been Lex Rittenour’s long-time partner.”
There came a pause—a still, brittle couple of seconds when Monks sensed that they were waiting to see how he was going to play this, if he would suggest that what had happened at the hospital had anything to do with Rittenour.
Monks said, “I know the name. Not much else about him, I’m afraid.”
The tension broke with small subliminal movements, Bouldin relaxing, Audrey brushing back her hair. Monks sensed that he had passed the test. Bouldin gestured him to a chair and took his own seat. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
“Martine—Dr. Rostanov—tells us you saved John Smith’s life tonight.”
“It was actually a taxi driver who saved his life,” Monks said.
Bouldin seemed not to hear. “I can’t tell you how grateful we are. It’s a troubling situation: a bright man who’s been acting erratic. Where the hell he got hold of narcotics, what prompted him to do it, I don’t know. But his timing couldn’t have been worse. Aesir can’t afford even a breath of scandal now. The market can be a timid animal. A danger signal sounds, even a completely false one, and it might panic.”
“I could see where you’d want to avoid a stampede,” Monks agreed.
“Exactly. We felt that we had to use discretion. As I said, we’d like to compensate the hospital for any abrasiveness.”
Bouldin opened a drawer and laid a packet on the desk: sheafs of paper that looked like oversized currency.
Stock.
“The pre-IPO value is fifty thousand,” Bouldin said modestly.
If the pundits were right, the sheaf on the desk was going to be worth upward of a quarter of a million dollars in less than sixty hours. There was also the fact that, on the brink of an event that had Aesir Corporation executives camped until midnight in their offices, the CEO was personally taking the trouble—
“We’d want a clear understanding of continued discretion,” Bouldin said.
—to tender a bribe. Monks was starting to feel important again.
“I’ll pass the offer on,” he said. “But I can’t speak for the hospital.”
“How about for yourself?” It was Audrey Cabot, the first time she had spoken. She had a pleasingly throaty voice. The effect sounded practiced, but well practiced. “We got the impression that you were particularly offended.”
“Not ‘particularly,’ Ms. Cabot. I get offended a lot in the ER; this was nothing special. The real issue is what happened later, the fire and tearing up the lab. There, we’re talking tangible damage, in the felony range.”
There was another pause. Monks understood that he had raised the stakes.
“Martine mentioned something about that,” Bouldin said. “I assure you that Aesir had nothing to do with it.” He spoke the last syllables with staccato emphasis and steady gaze. “Any rumors damaging to Aesir could have very serious legal consequences. For the hospital, and possibly
for its personnel.”
Monks ignored the obvious threat: personnel like you.
“There are a couple of coincidences,” Monks said. “The fact that the raid occurred right after John Smith’s release. That blood samples from the ER seem to have been singled out.” He considered adding, And let’s face it, that John Smith is a dead ringer for Lex Rittenour, but decided to let that rest. “That’s all they are at this point, coincidences.”
“What we’re concerned about is those coincidences finding their way to public attention,” Bouldin said.
Monks shrugged. “If an investigation comes along, I’ll cooperate fully. On the other hand, attention is something I try to avoid.”
He got the sense that Bouldin and Audrey Cabot exchanged nods, although he could not perceive any actual motions. It was as if they understood each other so intimately, there was no need.
Audrey stood, moving toward the door. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Monks. Oh, I understand you have a daughter entering medical school. It must be enormously expensive.” She left the room, legs stretching with feline grace, steps making no sound.
Bouldin opened the desk drawer again and laid a second sheaf of stock beside the first.
“This is for you and your family,” Bouldin said, and smiled. “It might perk up your interest in following the market.”
A tap came at the door, and the secretary who had shepherded Monks stepped in. “Mr. Bouldin? Call for you, on line three.”
Bouldin rose swiftly. When he reached her, she leaned close to his ear to whisper. Monks was pretty sure he heard the word “senator.” Bouldin’s lips compressed. He raised a hand toward Monks in apology or dismissal, and followed her out.
Monks was left alone with Pete Hazeldon, who had not really seemed to be a part of the interaction. But when Bouldin left, he dropped his scratch pad on the floor and leaned forward, suddenly animated.
“Nobody seems to give a damn about John Smith, you notice that?” he said.
Monks thought the trace of accent came from southern New Jersey, maybe Philadelphia. He was not as young as Monks had first thought; the boyish look was undercut by a lined face.