“You telling me he’s on a nutrient rush?”
“That . . . is one way of putting it. But the imbalance is only temporary. Once the activity normalizes . . .”
“Oh, great. But until then, he’s a PMS time bomb. Any way to speed the process along?”
George turned to May.
“May, have you tried having Albert ingest large quantities of soda water? If he belches a lot, the release of carbon dioxide may calm him considerably.”
She smiled gratefully.
“Thank you, George.”
George smiled back hugely. “No thanks needed. I am, after all, the gannaum. It is my responsibility.” Matt observed the moment with the slight residue of a discomfort he should long since have shed. But it was weird, still, to think that it took three Newcomers to make a baby: a female, a binnaum to catylize her, and a gannaum to fertilize her. Well, no, that wasn’t what was weird. What was weird was that the Newcomers were just hunky-damn-dory with the idea. Albert had been the binnaum to George’s daughters Emily and Vessna. Less than four months ago, George—in what would turn out to be his last pre-riana hurrah as a fertile male—had returned the favor. It was considered an honor. A big one. Sacred ceremony and everything.
In the background there was the sound of something falling, the sound of someone cursing, and Albert’s drunken, soprano laughter.
May turned to Grazer. “Captain, I’d like to fix the damage done to your shoes, if I may.”
She reached for them with such guileless innocence that Grazer didn’t have enough reaction time to reflexively pull them away.
“That’d be great!” he smiled. And then asked, “How?”
“Albert has about five bottles of Wite-Out in his locker, I can just—”
Quickly, Grazer snatched the shoes back. “On—second thought . . . You have enough to do, kiddo. See to your husband. That takes first priority.”
“You’re very kind, Captain,” she said—incredibly enough, meaning it—and hustled off.
Grazer stood by his open office door, wearing his shoes on his hands, shorter than usual in stocking feet, muttering, “Wite-Out on suede . . .”
He looked up at Sikes and Francisco, as if noticing them for the first time.
“What’re you hanging around for?”
Matt bobbed his head back and forth in tiny increments for a while, and said slowly, “To report on the case, Bry.”
“What? . . . Oh, that.” He brushed past them, on his way back to his desk chair. “Yeah, sure, get to it.”
He wrapped his fist with tape again and the two detectives filled him in on the morning’s progress as crinkle and thwop punctuated the information. The sound effect slowed only near the end when George’s sense of outrage resurfaced briefly. The heightened emotion seemed to snap Grazer into some kind of sober awareness, and he dislodged a hand from a shoe, lifting a cautioning finger.
“I need not remind you, gents, you’re in a gray area. The doctor’s activities, however abhorrent, are not illegal. Right now, all you get is a ticket to ride”—making reference to the prescription—“which expires in less than forty-eight hours if you can’t get a lead on the specific pharmacy used by your actress friend. I can’t spare the time it would take for you guys to scam every fishy drugstore in L.A.”
“But, Captain—” Matt began.
“I thought we had an understanding, Sikes. I applaud your efforts so far, but don’t push your luck. Get it?”
A long pause.
“Got it.”
“Good.” Grazer glanced at George. “Francisco?”
“Of course.”
“Fine. Thanks for the tip on Albert. Now get outta here.”
They left the office and crossed to the adjoining desks, the sound of crinkle-thwop, crinkle-thwop fading behind them.
The timing couldn’t have been better.
No sooner had Sikes’s fanny hit the chair than a khaki officer told him there was a call waiting on line three.
“Sikes here.”
“Matt, it’s Cathy.”
“Cathy! How are you?”
“They set up a cot for me in the nurses’ dorm.”
“Yeah, but . . . how are you?”
“Oh . . . you know.”
He didn’t. Rephrased the question. “Get any sleep?”
“Enough to function. Hasn’t been that much to do . . . until now.”
“She’s awake?”
“You could call it that. One minute of rationality for every five of delirium.”
“. . . What’s her condition?”
“Good news, bad news. Order’s up to you.”
“Let’s go out on a win. Start with the bad.”
“The delirium probably signals the beginning of withdrawal. It’ll be rough.”
“How can you tell?”
“Weren’t you paying attention last night?”
“. . . You sound angry.”
“Do I?”
“A bit.”
“I’m not.”
“You sure?”
“Ma-att . . .”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“Okay, right. What’s the good news?”
“Provisional. I got her to come up with the name of a pharmacy. Took a lot of shouting, but I think I got through. The one she named was See Gurd Nurras in Little Tencton.”
“See Gurd what?”
“Nurras.”
“You spell that?”
“Phonetically only. Like it sounds, but that may not do much good. Pass it on to George, he’ll know what to make of it. It translates as ‘The Drug Runners.’ ”
“Cute.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“She give you an address?”
“You’re lucky to have that.”
“Never mind, we’ll look it up. And it is good news. What’s provisional about it?”
“She’s not connecting much. I can’t guarantee that’s the right name or that such a place even exists.”
“It’s better than nothing. We need an excuse to roll. If George and I can’t be in full-tilt boogie by tomorrow A.M., the case turns into a pumpkin.”
A short laugh escaped Cathy then. “I actually think I understand that,” she said. It was the first time in the entire conversation that she sounded remotely like the Cathy he knew. The moment passed too quickly. “Well,” she sighed, “no doubt you’ll be checking in. I’ll let you know if the information gets more specific, or different.”
“Of course I’ll be checking in. Dammit, you are angry.”
“No, really. Just . . . just gearing up.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Matt . . .”
“Okay.” A beat. And then, softly, awkwardly, because he wasn’t always comfortable with it, even though it was the truth: “I love you, you know.”
“. . .”
“Cathy?”
“Boy, you’d better,” she said, and hung up.
He drew the phone away from his ear at the sharp click!, fighting an impulsive desire to speak her name into the mouthpiece—“Cathy?”—and retrieve her.
What checked the impulse, curiously, was a comedy bit he’d once heard on a scratchy old vinyl album featuring Mike Nichols and Elaine May.
In the bit, Nichols plays a poor schnook stranded on the road, trying to call for help from a phone booth. But his call has gotten cut off, and the phone has eaten his last dime (and the days when a phone call cost a dime were also the days without touch-tone dialing and calling cards, so this guy is stranded but good). He manages to connect with the operator, played by May, who won’t reconnect the call but assures him that if he just hangs up the phone, his dime will be returned to him. Which puts Nichols into a panic since he has no doubt that the dime has long since dropped into the phone’s innards; there’s no way to reroute it to the change basket. The operator argues that he will indeed get his dime back, and then N
ichols really becomes desperate. He swears to her that he distinctly heard the decisive clunk all pay phones make when they swallow your change—
—and, adding to that with the anguish of years, he cries, “I know that sound. I’ve been hearing it all my life!”
Matt felt like that now. One part of him not quite understanding, wanting to play the conversation with Cathy back, get it right, make amends for—whatever the hell it was he needed to make amends for; the other part saying, Forget it. She’s hung up on you.
I know that sound. I’ve been hearing it all my life!
“Matthew?”
Sikes looked across his desk toward George at the desk opposite.
“Is anything wrong?”
Yeah, something’s wrong, thought Matt. That open innocence of Cathy’s seems . . . seems, I don’t know what, diluted. Compromised. The woman whose face lights up at the tactile sensation of theatre tickets in her hand is not quite the same woman I just spoke to on the phone.
And then Matt thought, Business first, and snapped on a tight smile, holding aloft the piece of paper upon which he’d scribbled Cathy’s information.
“Maybe not, partner,” he said. “Maybe not.”
C H A P T E R 6
CATHY FRANKEL RACKED the receiver, leaned back in the chair, and sighed. Anticipating exhaustion. And worse. Dr. Steinbach had been nice enough to give her access to the phone and whatever else she might need in Dr. Casey’s office, and she wasn’t shy about accepting the offer.
A soothing office, Casey’s was, in soft earth tones, the swivel chair comfortable, with a substantial cushion for lower back support. She snuggled into it looking abstractedly at the office door. Closed now.
Procrastinating.
As long as she didn’t cross to the door, open it, face what was outside, she was safe. Safe from everything but her own thoughts, at least, which inevitably turned toward Matt.
Matt asking if she was angry. And her various responses: the noncommittal silences; the nos that meant yes. She hadn’t exactly been fair to Matt, but—
—as if prodded by electric shock, she shot out of the chair, walking purposefully toward the door. Safe from all but her own thoughts was not safe at all. She’d do better confronting the task at hand.
She threw open the door, began making her brisk way toward Fran Delaney’s room.
When she rounded the first corner, they were there.
“Ms. Frankel,” said the older woman, “my name is Iris McGreevey.”
“And I’m Dallas Pemberton,” the smaller, shaggy man said.
“Producer—”
“And director—”
“Of A Doll’s House,” they finished together, managing, by sheerest chance, to fall into a rhythm that sounded rehearsed.
“Hi,” Cathy responded, smiling in as kindly a manner as she could.
“If you need anything—”
“Anything at all—”
“We’re here . . .” finishing together again.
“That’s very good of you,” Cathy said. “I’m sure Fran will appreciate it.”
“She’s great friends with her other cast members,” Dallas said. “Should I arrange a visit or—”
“That,” Cathy advised, “would be premature. In fact, it would be best if you didn’t spread this around just yet.”
“Well, what should we do?” Iris asked primly. “There’s a performance tonight.”
Through a short laugh that was mostly shock, Cathy said the only thing she could think of to keep her anger in check. “I’m sure that didn’t come out the way you meant it.”
Pemberton interposed gently, quickly, “To be honest, Ms. Frankel, I have a feeling that . . . whatever we say under the circumstances, some of it’s bound to sound like insensitivity. You must know, we weren’t remotely prepared for anything like this. On the one hand, we don’t know what’s proper. On the other hand, there are pragmatic considerations that are unavoidable.”
Good save, thought Cathy—then, upon a better look at Pemberton, thought that perhaps it wasn’t a “save” at all. He was genuinely confused, trying to make sense out of an insane situation. What was that colloquial expression Matt would have used? Welcome to the flub. Because we have all flubbed. Yes, that sounded right.
Cathy was less sure about the sincerity of Iris McGreevey’s concern. Cathy didn’t much like her flinty-eyed expression. There is a coldness to this woman, she thought. But the little man beside Iris was so pitifully distraught, so open in his vulnerability (and his willingness to admit it), that he balanced out the equation.
That decided her.
“Walk with me,” she said, heading toward a bank of elevators, setting the pace, speaking as briskly as she walked.
“You need to keep in mind that Fran did not enter into this situation lightly. In order to express herself, she had to deny herself, the very idea of herself at a fundamental Tenctonese level. You can’t tell anybody yet; she’s too ashamed.”
“I don’t think there’s a person in the company who won’t empathize,” Dallas said. “I think they’d rally to her support.”
They reached the elevators, and Cathy punched the Up button. She studiously kept watching the indicator lights above the doors. Some odd impulse she was unable to articulate made her want to look away from this nice man. They were on the first floor. The indicator read six.
“Even worse,” she sighed. “Empathy from those she set out to fool would probably only increase her shame . . . or reinforce her initial convictions. Both very dangerous during withdrawal.”
“What,” Iris asked, “would be so terrible if her original convictions were reinforced?”
“Iris,” Dallas said warningly.
Cathy kept her eyes glued to the indicator. Five now. Why, oh, why were hospital elevators so slow? Again, she spoke without turning.
“I assume by that you mean, Why can’t she just take the good stuff—pure Stabilite—and continue as before?”
Behind Cathy there was a palpable pause. She imagined that Dallas must have scowled at Iris in disapproval, because she was suddenly defensive. “Well, that is what I meant.”
Cathy said, “She can’t go back—”
Four now from the indicator.
“—because she has to thoroughly detox before any more foreign chemicals can be introduced into her system. And in order to detox, she has to revert. After that, assuming she wanted to do it all over again—even if she could afford to, which she can’t—she’d have to start from the beginning.”
“New surgery, too?” Dallas asked, stunned.
“Yes,” Cathy replied.
Holding on three.
“God,” he whispered softly. And then added, “I can’t help but feel responsible.”
Cathy hadn’t expected that. She sort of didn’t want to deal with it.
“You’re not,” she said, keeping it simple.
Holding on three. What in Andarko’s name were they doing up there?
“I wouldn’t have cast her if she’d come to me as a Newcomer.”
Bingo. That was why she didn’t want to face him. Because, nice as he was, that would always be the truth. She could hear in his voice, though, that it was not an admission he was proud of. And so she offered him a little slack . . .
“Ask yourself this. Given what you’ve learned in the last twelve hours, would you cast her now?”
Holding on three.
Ding!
Behind her.
It would be an elevator from the bank in the opposite wall that came first. Which meant she had to turn—and face him for his reply.
To his credit, he looked at her squarely.
“I can’t answer that. I’m sorry.”
She wanted to say, Congratulations. Now you’re responsible. But that seemed harsher, more judgmental, than she had any right to be. So she opted for the neutral standby.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, walking past him and Iris into the waiting elevator.
&nb
sp; “Ms. Frankel,” she heard Iris’s voice—that woman, I don’t like that woman—and faced forward, holding the Door Open button, wishing other people had been waiting for the elevator so she’d have a reason to excuse herself. But no . . . it was just her. And them. She didn’t prompt Iris, merely waited for her to continue.
“Fran Delaney’s situation does raise inevitable business questions. About whether or not we can continue to run the show with an understudy. About whether or not to look for a replacement. About what kind of damages, if any, Ms. Delaney is liable for—”
“What?” Cathy blurted, only a millisecond before it came out of Dallas’s mouth as well.
“She signed on to do a job. One she was clearly in no condition to complete. The entire company is at risk, not just the production. I’ve been left holding the bag, as they say, and I need some barometer by which to gauge matters. You being on the case, I thought—”
“Think again, Ms. McGreevey. The answers to those questions are between you and your soul.” Cathy released the Door Open button, the elevator began to enclose her, and she just had time to add, before the sliding doors broke their gaze, “If you can find it.”
On the third floor, a nurse told her that Fran had been moved to the fifth. Room 503, to be precise.
Already? Cathy thought. All I did was leave to make a phone call.
And she headed back toward the elevators.
The fifth floor was the psychiatric ward. Its west wing contained the patients with bent minds, who needed constant supervision, or restraint, or continuous medication—
Or, like Fran Delaney/Fancy Delancey, isolation.
The elevator doors opened, and Cathy was treated to the background noises that permeated the air like ceaseless, sad underscoring—intermittent cries of despair, muffled gibbering. Not nearly so profound or unsettling as they might have been in a specialized medical facility—this was, after all, but one part of a comprehensive hospital complex—but what she heard was unsettling enough.
She was almost used to it, though.
She’d spent enough time getting used to the layout last night.
Young Dr. Steinbach—it suddenly struck her like the name of some iconographic movie character, Young Dr. Steinbach; it was good to smile at that; it would probably be her last unburdened smile for quite a stretch—was waiting for her to return from phoning Matt.
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