Falls the Shadow

by William Lashner

  I sat up in terror. What the hell was that? Oh, yes, of course.

  It was a metal dentist’s pick, jabbed into the foam, pinning in place a piece of paper. I pulled the paper over the pick. Care and Cleaning of Your New Dental Bridge. Even as I was reading it, trying to figure out what it really meant, the nausea overcame me, and I rushed to the bathroom. Not much came out—I don’t know when was the last time I had eaten—but it was still rough enough to strip the enamel off my new prosthetic tooth.

  “Welcome to my world,” I said aloud to the bridge.

  Showered and shaved, my new tooth brushed along with all the others, I checked my messages. I got a sense of how long I’d been away from the number flashing at me: 17. Beth, Ellie, Beth, Beth, Torricelli, Dalton, Beth, Gleason, a reporter, Judge Armstrong’s clerk, Franny Pepper, Beth, Beth…And the messages were all the same: “Where the hell are you?”

  “How long have I been away?” I said to Beth after the histrionics were over and we could get down to business.

  “This is the third day you’ve been missing.”

  “Jesus, no wonder I had nothing in my gut when I puked. What’s going on in the trial?”

  “The judge put us in recess until you got back. He said next time you showed up in court, you’d better bring either a damn good story or your toothbrush.”

  “I have a story,” I said. “But I’ll take my toothbrush all the same. Never underestimate the value of good oral hygiene, Beth. That’s the lesson I’m holding on to from all this. Is Franny Pepper in town?”

  “I put her up at the Sheraton.”

  “Nice.”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “Later,” I said.

  “Is it interesting, at least?”

  “Interesting as hell. Now, this is what I need you to do. Tell the judge I’m back, that I’m prepared to finish up the trial starting tomorrow morning. First we need Mrs. Winterhurst ready to testify how she recommended Dr. Pfeffer to Leesa Dubé and how Leesa became his patient. Then I need Whitney Robinson in court. He’ll be home with his daughter. Drop a subpoena on him, I need him tomorrow. I wish I still had a statement he made on tape, that would make his testimony certain, but I can badger the truth out of him without it. Then have Franny Pepper ready to go after that.”

  “Did you find something?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Is it good?”

  “Good enough.”

  “What do I tell François?”

  That stopped me for a moment. It all seemed so clear just an instant ago: I was still alive, my teeth were fixed, I had the trial in my hand. And then I remembered who my client was and what Bob had said about him. I didn’t know if I could trust what Bob had told me, but when I thought back on everything, I realized that in all our dealings, he had never lied to me. He had embarrassed me, made my life a living hell, kidnapped me and pumped me full of drugs and performed unauthorized dental surgery, sure, but he had never lied to me. Which meant that my doubts about François remained profound. There was the young daughter waiting for him. What about her?

  “Victor,” said Beth. “What do I tell François?”

  “I have to go,” I said. “Just make sure to get everything done.”

  “While I’m doing all this, what are you going to do?”

  “Me, I’m going live the dream and put a dentist behind bars.”

  When I hung up with her, I called Torricelli.

  I was eating a falafel I bought off a cart on Sixteenth Street. This was the first thing I had eaten in three days and it wasn’t sitting well in my empty stomach—fried chickpeas, I should have known—but still I was so ravenous I couldn’t stop chomping. My face was buried deep in the pita when Torricelli suddenly appeared.

  “That’s a sight I’d like to forget,” said Torricelli.

  I lifted my head and smiled, the white tahini sauce smeared on my cheeks.

  “It’s dripping on your tie,” he said.

  I looked down, a white splatter on the red. “So it is. Fortunately, I’m no longer wearing the yellow silk number.” I took my napkin and wiped the splatter clean away. “This baby is made out of a special Teflon-coated polymer. The dry cleaner who sold it to me said it wasn’t just stainproof, it was bulletproof, too.”

  “Handy. You know, Carl, when you didn’t show up in court, I was strangely worried about you.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “You’re like a toe fungus; you’ve grown on me.”

  “Thank you, I think. And remind me never to see you in sandals. Do you have what we need?”

  “Pattycake, baby.”

  “Then let’s do it.” I moved to toss the rest of my sandwich into a nearby trash can, thought better of it, and took another bite.

  Side by side we walked into the Medical Arts Building, rode the elevator to Dr. Bob’s floor, walked past the sign with his name on it and into the now familiar beige waiting room. A few patients were idly turning the pages of old magazines as they restrained their natural terror. I gazed around once more for old times’ sake, soaked in the Muzak, the sterile cheerfulness.

  “Oh, Mr. Carl,” said Deirdre, the pretty and pert receptionist. “It is so nice to see you again. And it is good to see you, too, Detective Torricelli. I don’t think either of you has an appointment today. But, Mr. Carl, I’m so glad you came in, because I have something for—”

  “Is the doctor in?” I said, interrupting her.

  “He’s seeing a patient now. But if you wait—”

  “We’ll just pay a quick visit,” I said, heading toward the door. “I know the way.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Carl, that’s not allowed. You can’t go back—”

  “It’s all right, Deirdre,” said Torricelli, flashing his badge. “Official business.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t. Just make sure nobody leaves, please.”

  I opened the door to the hallway, expecting to see Tilda barring my entrance, but no Tilda, no bar. I could hear the whir of a drill in one of the examination rooms. The sound produced an involuntary shudder.

  “Let’s go,” I said as Torricelli and I headed straight for the drilling.

  The patient lay on the orange chair, wingtips shaking, his mouth agape, suction in place, as Dr. Bob, his back to us, mask on, cap on, rubber gloves tight, plied his barbarous trade.

  “Robert Pfeffer,” said Torricelli, “I have a warrant for your arrest on the charge of kidnapping.”

  The dentist extracted his hands from the patient’s mouth, turned to stare at the two of us. The patient lifted his head and stared, too, suction still in place, mouth still agape.

  “I tried to stop them, Doctor,” said Deirdre, rushing in behind us, “but they just barged in.”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” said the dentist. I noticed that his voice had deepened and he had changed the style of his glasses. “I’m in the middle of a procedure.”

  He pulled down his mask, showing off a bushy black mustache. Not Dr. Bob, not Dr. Bob at all.

  “Uh-oh,” said Torricelli. “Sorry about that. We’re looking for Dr. Robert Pfeffer, also known as Robert Pepper. Do you know where he is?”

  “I can’t help you,” said the other dentist.

  “Where’d he go?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said the dentist. “I’m Dr. Domsky. This is my office now. Pfeffer sold me his practice.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. I had been trying to buy his practice for quite some time, and suddenly he agreed on the condition I take over right away. I haven’t had time to change the sign.”

  “How’d you pay?”

  “He insisted on a cashier’s check.”

  “I bet he did.” I turned to Deirdre. “Where is he?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything,” she said. “But he gave me a very nice bonus.”

  “No hint?” said Torricelli. “No nothing?”

  “No, sir,” sa
id Deirdre. “But he did leave something specifically for you, Mr. Carl. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

  “He’s gone,” I said.

  “Seems so,” said Torricelli. “I wasn’t sure I believed your cock-and-bull story, but it looks like there might be something to it. I’ll tell Mia Dalton the news and put out an APB.”

  “You won’t find him,” I said.

  “No, I don’t think we will.”

  The patient still on the chair said, “Ahweehahooih?”

  “Of course,” said Dr. Domsky. “If you don’t mind, gentlemen.”

  “No, that’s fine,” said Torricelli, reaching into his pocket. “Here’s my card. If you hear from him, give me a call. Sorry to disturb you.”

  Dr. Domsky looked at the card appraisingly. “Torricelli, huh? And you’re Carl. I seem to recognize those names. You don’t happen to be patients of this office, do you?”

  I looked at Torricelli, who looked back at me and shrugged.

  “As a matter of fact,” I said.

  “I would really appreciate if you gave me a chance to keep your business.”

  “Dr. Domsky is a wonderful dentist,” said Deirdre. “He has such gentle hands.”

  “Oh, I bet he does,” I said.

  Back at the desk, while I was waiting for Deirdre to retrieve whatever it was Dr. Bob had left for me, I noticed that the smile hall of fame had been taken down off the wall. It would be up somewhere else soon enough, I was sure, and I had a decent idea of where.

  “Here you go, Mr. Carl,” said Deirdre.

  It was a manila envelope with my name on it, holding something small and rectangular. I ripped it open, slid the object into my palm. My tape recorder. I pressed play, and out came Whit’s voice: “…went through her neck. He said it was a nightmare of blood. He ran away and called Dr. Pfeffer, who said he’d take care of it, and he—” I clicked it off.

  “What’s that?” said Torricelli.

  “A parting gift, I suppose,” I said.

  I hefted the tape recorder in my hand even as I rubbed my tongue across the inside of my new false tooth. Whatever righteous anger I held toward Dr. Bob seemed to bleed out of me just then, replaced by a perverse gratitude. Maybe it was because of my perfectly fitting bridge. There is something about a medical professional competently healing your maladies that leaves you in his thrall. But there was something else, too. In our own bizarre way, we had battled like two heavyweights, subject to some strange set of rules I had never figured out. Neither of us had won decisively, we had fought to a draw, but that suited me just fine. And by his leaving me the tape recorder, he was giving me a tip of the hat before he moved on toward another prizefight in another town.

  “What are you going to do now?” said Torricelli.

  “First I think I’ll go over the calendar with Deirdre and schedule a cleaning and checkup for about three months from now. You can never be too careful with your teeth. And then tomorrow I’m going to march into court and win my case.”

  And that’s just what I did.

  78

  One final act of surveillance.

  It wasn’t such a tricky piece, this one. There was a sea of cars parked in a wide parking lot. I slipped my car between an Explorer and a red Dodge pickup and set it so I had a perfect view of the big gray door. Then it was just a matter of waiting. But no coffee needed this time, I had company to keep me awake.

  “What are we doing here, exactly?” said Beth.

  “Surveilling.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I can really use the practice. And I also want to know who he called to meet him on his first minute out.”

  “He told me he was meeting up with his daughter.”

  “That would be nice. But let’s wait and see.”

  “I’m just relieved that the whole thing is over.”

  “You know who seemed really relieved?”

  “Who?”

  “Mia Dalton. When Torricelli told her everything about Dr. Bob in the courtroom, you could see her jaw muscles twitch. I think she would have dismissed the case right there, except for what it would have done politically to her boss. I never saw a prosecutor let out such a breath of gratitude at a not-guilty verdict.”

  “She offered me the job again.”

  “She’s relentless.”

  “I told her it doesn’t pay enough.”

  “It pays more than you’re getting with me.”

  “But the benefits, Victor, the benefits.”

  “They get dental over there.”

  “Reason enough to stay put.”

  It was a hot, sunny day. Our windows were open, but still it was warm in the car. I took off my jacket. I took off my tie. If it had been seemly, I would have taken off my pants, too.

  “I’m sorry,” said Beth.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I never got a chance to apologize, and I wanted to.”

  “I accept.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m apologizing for.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you want to apologize for, I’ll take it. It doesn’t happen so often.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Okay.”

  “For being so unprofessional.”

  “That’s what you’re apologizing for?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on, Beth, you can do better than that. Being unprofessional is what we do. Derringer and Carl, the unprofessional professionals. In fact, we should copyright that before the CIA steals it. If we had to go around in these stinking suits acting like professionals all the time, what would be the point? I’d quit the business.”

  “What would you do?”

  I thought for a moment. “I’d like to try my hand at being a foot model. I’m told I have very lovely feet.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “A very nice Vietnamese woman who was giving me a pedicure.”

  She sat back, stared at me for a long moment. “You never fail to astonish me.”

  “You want to see?”

  “God, no.” She turned to look out the front window for a moment, stared at the still-closed metal door. “So what should I be apologizing for?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t do the whole accept-apology thing very well. I always want to say, ‘Forget the apology and just give me cash.’ ”

  “For doubting you,” said Beth.

  “Okay,” I said. “I accept.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “You were taking care of me the whole time. Even playing those tapes in court. They were as much for me as for the jury, weren’t they?”

  “Can lawyers plead the Fifth Amendment?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s what we do, Beth. We take care of each other.”

  “I don’t know where it came from, but I was just overwhelmed. I don’t remember ever feeling so emotionally fragile, so emotionally invested. I don’t ever remember feeling something that strong before.”

  “Oh, no?”

  She laughed. “You think different? When?”

  “Think about it.”

  “Victor, I don’t—”

  “Hold on,” I said. “There’s the door.”

  The big gray door opened a sliver. A guard walked through the opening. He took off his guard hat, wiped his brow with a forearm, put the guard hat back on just so. And then out stepped François Dubé.

  I could sense Beth beside me, holding her breath.

  François was dressed in a white shirt, open at the collar, and the pants from one of the suits he wore at the trial. He carried no suitcase; I suppose there was nothing inside worth taking with him. He shook the guard’s hand, looked around for a moment, waited for the guard to go back inside and close the door behind him. Then he took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, tapped one into his mouth, flicked a match to life, cupped his hands around the flame. He cut quite a dashing figure, did François, almost as if he were posing, like something
out of a Godard film, Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless, rubbing his lower lip with his thumb.

  And it didn’t take long for his Jean Seberg to arrive.

  The black limousine turned in to the parking lot, passed right by us, slid to a stop in front of François. The back door opened from the inside, before the chauffeur could do it himself, and out popped—who else?—Velma Takahashi.

  “I guess the papers got signed,” I said as François tossed away his cigarette and the two embraced.

  “I don’t understand,” said Beth.

  “Her divorce papers with Takahashi,” I said. “I suppose, after the verdict, she agreed to a quick settlement just to get it over with. Now there’s no more reason to hide in the shadows. She loves him. She always loved him. She gave him to Leesa to keep him for herself while she married Takahashi and his money. And everything’s worked better than she could have hoped. She’s free of Takahashi, she’s loaded down with Takahashi money, and Leesa’s out of the picture. She can spend the rest of her life with François, at least until she gets bored again.”

  “That’s why she tried to set up the fake story with Sonenshein.”

  “To get François out,” I said. “Even though she thought he really had done it, she missed the big galoot.”

  “And he loves her,” she said softly.

  “So it appears, or her new bank account. It’s hard to tell when looking into the lifestyles of the sick and self-absorbed.”

  We watched quietly as the two, still embracing, maneuvered themselves into the open door of the limousine. Doors slammed with resonant thunks, the limousine pulled away. Beth wiped at her eye.

  “I still feel something. Is that crazy?”

  “Yes. He has our bill, but it’s her money, so I don’t expect we’ll see any of what he still owes us. Nothing has a lower priority than paying yesterday’s lawyer.”

  “What about his daughter?” she said.

  “You figure it out. His first call was to Velma. He’s not the type to hang around for his daughter.”

  “The poor little girl.”

  “Remember Gullicksen, Leesa’s divorce attorney? I sent him to the Cullens, along with copies of the tapes. They’re going to fight for custody.”

  “Is he going to fight them back?”

  “Let’s hope not.”