by Chris Gilson
“Forget about Tesla. Tucker’s the problem here.” Her voice sounded a little wild, even to herself.
“Tucker?” He stood dumbfounded. “No, I’ve decided that a time-out will be good for you now. I’ve made all the arrangements.”
O’Connell arrived in the doorway clutching two of her suitcases. Uh oh.
“Time-out, good idea.” She made a frantic T with her hands. “Stop the clock and listen a minute. Tucker lied to me about things. He told me you needed my help to stop the Kois from taking over Lord & Company.”
“He wasn’t lying, darling. It’s true.”
She felt poorly organized, at an awful disadvantage. “I know, I mean, about other things.”
“About what?”
“I believe that Tucker is involved with Han Koi in this takeover.”
Her father sucked his breath in. “Why?”
She needed to fight for both of them now. And quickly, with her luggage already in the hall. Sent away. That inevitable fate of Electric Girls who knew disturbing truths. She grasped for facts, but they seemed slippery and inconclusive at best.
“Tucker promised to take me to South America if I’d marry him. He claimed that he’d found a Tesla Tower and…”—the old man—“…an engineer. But the engineer turned out to be a senior without a partner. I found that out because all the supplies for the trip wound up in your office…”
This wasn’t helping. Chester looked baffled.
“Darling, I take full responsibility for anything that Tucker may have told you. He asked my permission, I gave it.”
Tucker’s planning had tied her up in knots, leaving Chester to administer the last little nips and tucks. It made her stomach boil with injustice that her father could trust him so implicitly.
“I suppose you told him to behave suspiciously with the Kois.”
“Suspicious in what way?”
“There was a distinct connection between them.” She gave up and tears burst onto her cheeks. “Please, Daddy. I have to ask you to take it on faith. Keep an eye on Tucker. Look at his motives.”
“You look, Cornelia.” His exasperation had smoldered like firewood. Now it snapped at her. “Tucker brought the takeover to my attention. If he was involved, I wouldn’t have known about it until it was too late. And it wouldn’t have gone well for us after that, I assure you.”
“Tucker warned you?” She tried to process that new information.”
Chester turned one palm up, continued his grating reasonableness.
“Cornelia, contrary to what you said in front of my business associates, Tucker did not lie to you or make underhanded deals with Han Koi. Tucker had every intention of taking you to South America, he assured me. Now he’s more concerned, as I am, with getting you help. O’Connell, please put Cornelia’s bags in the car.”
“Wait, O’Connell,” she pleaded. The butler stood frozen in the doorway. “What kind of help?”
“A more residential sort of help than Dr. Bushberg can give you. There’s a place in Armonk called the Sanctuary.” He paused. His palm spun in a circle while he searched for words. “We’ll come up to visit…”
“‘We’ should be you and me, Daddy.”
Chester winced but didn’t budge. She felt a sudden cold shudder.
As bad as this was, it could get worse. What if she kept protesting, and Tucker began snooping into her past thirty-six hours? He would certainly uncover Kevin Doyle. Poor Kevin, so innocent under his beautiful corona. Tucker could hurt him, if he found out, in ways that might not end just with Kevin losing his job.
“Darling,” her father intruded. “Tucker’s waiting for us in the car. All I’m asking is that you take an evaluation for thirty days. The Sanctuary is practically a resort.”
“Oh? Do they let you leave?”
“Not immediately. You’ll take some tests first, talk to the doctors.” He softened a bit. “Tell them whatever you can’t confide in me.”
O’Connell stood firm, becoming better acquainted with his heavy shoes. Her father had folded his hands stiffly in front of him like a parson.
The Sanctuary.
Her thoughts drifted to soft foods and even softer walls. She would need to get word to Kevin, and to Dr. Powers, to let them know that she would be away temporarily. But what else could she do? Chester didn’t believe her.
It dawned on her that she would be more likely to find a sympathetic ear at the Sanctuary than here at home.
Kevin lay on his bed in the dark bedroom, staring at his telephone.
He had slept fitfully, trapped in that netherworld of people in crisis, where spasmodic dreams solved all problems. The painful throbbing in his shoulder had woken him. He felt punches in the shoulder over and over again, imagined a burly Irishman slamming his shoulder with an overgrown fist. And his first thought was about light reflecting on blond hair that vanished in the back of a car.
You have to trust me.
When she had left the studio, he disciplined himself to not go to the window and look. He finally decided to take just a small peek, not because he didn’t trust her but because he just liked to watch her. All he could make out, pressing his mouth and fingertips against the cold glass, was the halo of bright golden hair in a dirty back window. Then he felt panic, the need to take action.
He had steeled himself to act cool, phoning Andrew to see what he knew, just pretending he wanted to stay in the loop of building events while on sick leave. Andrew told him nothing except that they whisked Cornelia Lord away in a brand-new Mercedes limousine, her father and Tucker Fisk, less than an hour after the police brought her home. And the driver loaded the trunk with two suitcases.
Kevin pulled the covers up over his head. His ear and shoulder pounded, drowned out by the wailing in his chest.
Suddenly, feeling like the whole floor buckled under his bed, Kevin understood why he’d never fallen in love before. Who would want this hollow longing, to feel ripped open from inside out? And the lust part. He’d been lonely and disillusioned for so long, he’d almost forgotten about the lust part. After she’d gone, he realized she’d awakened that in him, too.
He rolled over, twisting in his sheets.
Just when his hands and eyes had seemed shriveled and useless, she’d brought him back from his Art Death. Soul mates were the elusive wonder of the world. He’d always worried deep in his gut that his real soul mate might be someone so unappetizing he’d never get to know her. Like the nasty waitress with the bleached arm hair in the coffee shop. But Cornelia Lord? She was so unattainable, he might as well fall in love with the Pope. Still, he desperately needed to find her. He climbed out of bed and looked at the print of Saint Sebastian.
Lucky Sebastian with only a few arrows to think about.
His body felt so wretched, he wished he could just check out of it like a cheap hotel room. This would not be a temporary loss if he let her run away.
This would be another permanent one.
A deadly, freezing loneliness crept over him. This time, he wouldn’t just take the hand he was dealt. He’d turn over the table if he had to.
This was the time for performance art.
* * *
Kevin marched to Gus Anholdt’s little building manager’s office, with its shabby aura of punishment.
“Back two weeks early?” Gus had a high forehead and small wire-rimmed glasses that pinched his nose. He looked unhappy. “I’m supposed to tell you, Chester Lord’s very grateful to you.”
Gus handed him an envelope.
“He said thanks for not talking to the media, exploiting the whole thing. If there’s anything more you need, doctors or whatever, he said you ought to call the phone number on the note.”
“Thanks,” Kevin mumbled to Gus, whipping out of his office for the staff room. He opened the envelope and pulled out a card. It was a “Season’s Greetings” card, designed only for giving cash tips to low-level service employees. The cut-out pouch contained a check, drawn on a Lord & Company bank acc
ount at AmeriCorp.
The check was made out to “K. Doyle,” with a blue and red check protector imprint, in the amount of “$5,000.00 EXACTLY.” A little notation in the lower left corner said, “For Services.” The typed signature on the card read, “Per Chester Lord IV.” It gave the office number for Lord & Company.
He studied the typed data. Not even a handwritten note. Kevin put the envelope in his jacket pocket.
He sat alone in a corner booth at the Waldorf-Estonia Luncheonette, trying to stomach a club sandwich, when Philip Grace arrived. The photographer shook the snow off his old camel-hair coat, not half as nice as the gray leather one. Grace untied his white silk scarf and tossed his aviator-style sunglasses on the table between them.
“Hey, Philip.”
“Our reluctant hero,” Philip greeted Kevin. He rubbed his hand over his shaved head, wiping off the wet snow. “Threw yourself in harm’s way out of valor, a rare jewel in our time. ‘Course that was two days ago, and the Globe ain’t exactly a historical publication. You got something new for me?”
“Maybe. First, I was hoping you could tell me where she is.”
“Well,” Philip Grace fooled with the sugar packets on the counter, stacking them in a pile. “Let’s say I slip you tomorrow’s story today, and tell you Ms. Cornelia Lord’s presently residin’ in a luxury rubber room in Westchester County. I’d need a little quid pro quo from you before I go into more details.”
“Like what?”
“Help me get a shot of her in the funny farm.”
“Say you were in a hospital, drugged up,” Kevin asked him. “You’d want people taking your picture while you’re drooling on your bathrobe? I can’t do that.”
Philip smiled and settled back in his booth. “You know, I miss these ethical discussions. You never get into talkin’ philosophy after college.”
“I never got to college. You?”
“Ivy man for one semester, Columbia. Till they kept dunnin’ me to pay the tuition.” Philip chuckled, flicking his pile of sugar packets over with a snap of his finger. “Problem is with what you’re askin’, that’d be a whole mountain of quid for you without even an itty-bitty thimbleful of quo for me.”
“Are we off the record now?” Kevin asked him.
Philip laughed and wheezed until he almost choked. “Off the record? What you think, this is 60 Minutes? I’m wearin’ a camera inside my eyeball?”
“Well, are we?” Kevin said, not smiling. “Off the record?”
“Okay, Mr. Doyle. You go ahead and give me something on background, like we say, me and Diane Sawyer.”
“I need to see Cornelia,” Kevin said. “I don’t care how.”
Philip frowned and stared at Kevin. “That’s pretty tall money and power you’re up against. Chester Lord and her fiancé, Mr. Tucker Fisk.”
“Fiancé?” The blood roared in Kevin’s ears.
“What I hear about Mr. Fisk,” Philip blabbed on, “he may not always go strictly by the rules, he sees somebody wants to take his little ball away.”
“Tucker’s not even her boyfriend,” Kevin tried.
“You need to keep in touch with current events. Tucker Fisk put the word out they got engaged. Would she be playin’ with your head, Kevin Doyle?”
“No. I’m just surprised.”
Like if the earth stopped spinning around the sun and they all got flung into infinite space—that kind of surprised. That was exactly the reason he needed to talk to her one on one, without people like Tucker Fisk and Chester Lord and his lawyers and butlers to confuse things.
“I’m not saying it’s easy,” Kevin said. “But you act like a pretty slick guy. I’m just wondering if you can handle a problem that takes a little more strategy than hiding behind a garbage Dumpster.”
Kevin took the $5,000 check out of his pocket and handed it to Philip.
“I don’t know much about checkbook journalism,” Kevin said.
“But this is yours if you give me the name of the hospital they put her in.
Philip took the check and studied it. “She’s in the Sanctuary. Up in Armonk, New York.”
Kevin stood up again. “I have to call you tomorrow after I check some stuff out, ask your advice.”
“Hey,” Philip said sharply. “Checkbook journalism means we pay you. You best get that straight, you gonna be foolin’ around with the media.”
He dangled the check out in the air with two fingers and Kevin took it.
“Thanks, Philip,” Kevin said.
“Seems to be the pattern of our relationship, man, like a slot machine.” Philip put his hands up in the air, shaking his head at his own foolishness. “I keep givin’, you keep takin’, pay me off just enough to keep me interested. Don’t know why I do it.”
Kevin considered that. “I guess you need a lot of hope, the business you’re in.”
He picked up the plain brown shopping bag from under the table and placed it on Grace’s seat, watching him for a second while he walked away. Grace pulled out the gray leather bundle and unfolded his new coat, frowning.
Kevin felt the Debwatcher’s eyes on the back of his neck as he walked out of the luncheonette.
“Uncle Eddie? Kevin. I’m feeling kind of bad since the accident. Like I need to see a doctor. How good is my health plan? I mean, can I use any doctor I want?”
“You can go to Dr. Kevorkian if you want to.”
“Unlimited hospitalization?” Kevin asked.
“Yeah, any hospital.”
“Dental?” Kevin breathed in and held it. “Psychiatric?”
“Yeah. Jesus, Kevin, what’s wrong with you?”
It took only one more brief meeting with Philip Grace the next day, same booth, same luncheonette, same waitress with the attitude. But this time she said she read about him in the paper and asked him to autograph her order pad. Then Kevin sucked up his strength to call Helen.
Helen and Harold lived in Stuyvesant Town, a project in the East 20s developed by an insurance company for middle-income people. In a city where new high-rise buildings were built as high as the city would let them and used windows as big as possible so they looked like giant ice cube trays stood on end, the low-rise mottled brick buildings of Stuyvesant Town looked like a village of brownies.
He heard Harold’s reedy voice over the intercom and got buzzed in. Harold wasn’t a bad guy, Kevin thought, once you got beyond the frizzy hair that stood up from his head and ears.
“You look terrible,” Helen greeted him at the door.
Harold sat him down on the Naugahyde living room couch. Kevin politely looked through a Kodak packet they handed him full of photographs taken on their last vacation, a photo safari in Africa. One picture showed them standing with their tour guide, a tall Masai. Harold said the guide was a fan of Seinfeld reruns who had to give his fiancée’s father five goats as a dowry. Kevin studied a picture of a monkey stealing Helen’s sunglasses from their jeep. Then a picture of a hippopotamus drifting in brown water. When he ran out of photographs in the yellow packet, he put them back and slowly folded it over.
“There’s no easy way to ask you for this,” Kevin said. “So I’m just going to do it.”
They looked both clueless and curious.
“I think I can help this girl I know. She’s got some issues…”
“That crazy debutante?” His sister bounced on her seat in horror, like he’d thrown a bucket of paint on her couch.
“Harold,” Kevin pressed on, “how do you diagnose people when they come into Bellevue?”
“We take the diagnostic process very seriously,” Harold said. “We give each patient a comprehensive battery of tests. We always try to interview family members to give us background and context. Several different staff members talk to the patient—”
“What do you want from us?” Helen interrupted him.
“I have time off and insurance,” Kevin said. “Lots of it. I can get any kind of medical care I want. Cornelia’s father sent her to the Sanctu
ary in Westchester.”
Helen’s face turned a blotchy red, and she spaced her words out. “I hope you’re not going to ask my husband to help defraud a psychiatric hospital.”
Kevin nodded. “And an insurance company, if you want to be negative about it. I can’t explain this in a way that’s going to make total sense to you. If I can be with this girl, one on one, I can help her. But I need to do this, Helen. I’ve never asked you for a favor like this in my life.”
“That’s the most self-serving excuse I’ve ever heard,” Helen told him. “Your mother would be ashamed of you.”
“Why?” He leaned over toward them, resting his elbows on his knees, ready for a siege.
“It’s totally dishonest,” Helen snapped. “And it’s despicable to ask my husband to coach you. He could lose his license.”
“I don’t expect Harold to open his mouth. All I need is a look at the diagnostic tests. Just an idea of what the questions are.”
“Kevin,” Harold spoke up. “Psychiatric diagnosis isn’t like a civil service exam. The Sanctuary? My God. You’re talking about fooling some of the best psychologists in the world. You can’t cheat the diagnostics. They give you a whole battery, five or six tests, and they crosscheck to weed out malingerers. They’ll know you’re faking. Even if you got referred by some psychiatrist, even if you got admitted, you’ll be under observation every day. Psychiatrists weren’t born yesterday.”
“What about Bellevue, Harold? You admitted some guy who claimed he was Robin Hood. So Robin Hood robbed the hospital pharmacy. You think he gave his Class A narcotics to the poor?”
“That was a fluke,” Harold mumbled.
“Come on, Harold, who’s going to get hurt?”
“The girl,” Helen said.
“How?” Kevin asked her.
Helen looked blank and turned to her husband.
Harold obliged her, warming to his task. “You want to manipulate your way into a relationship with her when she’s most vulnerable. I’ve always liked you, Kevin. Maybe you’re no hard-charging guy, but you always tried to do the right thing. If the girl wants you when she’s better, she’ll look for you. But I couldn’t let you do what you’re saying, even if I wanted to help. It’s selfish and irresponsible.”