“There’s nothing to be frightened about, Maurie,” he whispered. “Nothing.”
Maura was startled. Maurie, not Maura. He had definitely said that. No one except her father had ever called her Maurie. And then only until she was ten or so.
Harry stopped talking. Maura became acutely aware of the traffic noises from the street. It was happening, she realized. No couch, no watch-on-a-chain, no New Age music, no gimmicks at all. Pavel Nemec was at work—right here, right now.
He moved around to face her and placed his fingertips on her temples. Her eyes had closed now, but her mind was racing. Images and faces cascaded through her thoughts like, a video on rapid search. Faces from her childhood—teachers, playmates, Tom, Mother … houses and rooms, rural scenes and city streets. She connected easily with some of the pictures, not at all with others.… Then suddenly, one scene began repeating itself over and over. It was her father, a drink sloshing in his hand, turning towards her. His rheumy eyes were cold with contempt. His words were thick and slurred. Spittle sprayed from his mouth as he railed at her.
You’re worthless, Maurie … hopeless and worthless.…
You can’t do a damn thing right except give me headaches. Just like your mother …
Except for marrying her, you’re about the worst mistake I’ve ever made.… In fact, if it weren’t for you, I’d never have had to marry her in the first place.…
“Easy, Maurie,” Nemec said with gentle firmness. “He will never, ever speak to you like that again.… He was sick. That’s all.… You never deserved to be spoken to like that. He just couldn’t help it.” Nemec cupped his calming hands behind her ears. “You did your best to please him.… He hated himself too much to show love for anyone.… He never thought about what he was doing to you.… You can let it go now, Maura.… You can let it go forever.…”
The swirling images began to recede. Maura knew her eyes were closed, but she could see the mystic in his gray cardigan, pacing in front of her. Her apprehension was gone now—the shroud of self-loathing that had blanketed her life for so long had lifted, leaving her with an incredible sense of peace. All those times her father had crushed her pride, belittled her. Even news of his death couldn’t kill the terrible seeds he had sown. Throughout her life, each time success was in her grasp, her pathological self-doubt would lead her to find some way to sabotage and destroy it.
Worthless … How old could she have been when he began calling her that—seven? Eight?
Now, finally, she knew that it had never been her. Not once. She never deserved what Arthur Hughes had done to her. And, like Pavel said, he could never hurt her again.
Her eyes still closed, she saw Nemec move to the table and retrieve her sketch pad and charcoal. Then she felt him set it on her lap.
We have work to do. She heard his voice, but knew he had not spoken. You’re free now, Maura—free to see what needs to be seen.…
Harry would later tell her that she had never opened her eyes until the detailed sketch was complete. He would describe the eerie way the charcoal in her hand darted over the paper, the disjointed but absolutely unified process by which the man’s face took shape. He would tell her about the moment, as she was still shading and shadowing with her charcoal stick and finger, when he recognized him.
Maura stretched her arms and worked her neck around. She felt relaxed and refreshed, as if she had just stepped from a warm spa. She knew that she had produced a drawing of the man who had murdered Evie DellaRosa. She also knew that Pavel Nemec had helped her in ways no therapist or counselor ever had. There were flaws in her perception of herself—gaping flaws for which she had never been responsible, flaws that kept driving her self-destructive behavior, flaws that had made her time and again break the promises she made to herself.
No more … Not one more drop …
She opened her eyes and looked down at the rendering. Then she drew in the man’s clip-on tie and shaded it green with gold accents. Pavel Nemec was back in his chair, casually sipping tea.
“How’d you do that?” she asked.
He smiled at her kindly and shrugged.
“My encounters with clients are not always this successful. Some days it is like walking through a dense fog for me. Some days, like today, I can see with incredible clarity. I believe you have been waiting for me for some time, Maura. Possibly years.”
“You did something about my drinking, didn’t you?”
“No, but you did. And most forcefully, I might add.”
She held up the drawing for Harry. Tears glistened in her eyes.
“I did it,” she said.
“I guess you did. It’s amazingly accurate.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw him. The exact man you drew. He was right outside your room the whole time I was there, just waiting for the chance to finish what he had started when he ordered Evie’s IV.”
“Outside the room?”
“Buffing the floors, listening to a Walkman—the sort of person you look at over and over without actually seeing him. The nurses never saw him come on the floor after I left because he didn’t. He was already there. He left before I returned.”
“Are you sure?” Maura asked.
Harry studied the drawing for just a few seconds.
“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life,” he said. “You two make a hell of a team.”
Maura crossed to the unassuming little man and kissed him on the cheek.
“You don’t know the half of it,” she said.
CHAPTER 25
The day was New York City hot. By late morning, waves of steamy air were rising off the pavement and children were opening hydrants. Kevin Loomis left his air-conditioned midtown office at ten-thirty for a circuitous trip to Battery Park, a waterfront oasis on the southernmost tip of the island at the convergence of the Hudson and East Rivers. In response to James Stallings’s warning against being followed, he had carefully planned every step of the journey.
Earlier that morning, Kevin had endured a forty-five-minute meeting of Burt Dreiser’s eight-member executive planning staff. And although nothing unusual happened during the session, he felt constantly conspicuous and read double meanings into almost everything Dreiser said or did. By the time he checked out with Brenda Wallace and left for what he said was a long-scheduled meeting and lunch, he was perspiring for reasons that had nothing to do with the weather.
Evelyn DellaRosa had been murdered, and James Stallings, the other knight who had been with her, was terrified.
I wasn’t sure if you were one of them or not.… What in the hell had Stallings meant by that?
Loomis crossed the street against the light, dodging a succession of infuriated cabbies. He then entered a small custom haberdashery. There were seldom more than one or two customers in the shop at a time, and at this moment, only the proprietor was there. Since joining The Roundtable, Kevin had become a regular in the place. The fitting area was in back, next to an alley door. Kevin ordered a $150 shirt, allowed himself to be measured, and then made an excuse for leaving through the rear exit. Next he took a cab ride to the East Side and walked several blocks to an IRT station, ducking frequently into doorways to check the street behind him. The Battery Park stop was at the end of the line. He arrived there with ten minutes to spare.
Still anxious about the possibility of being followed or watched, he strolled casually past a tarmac playground, pausing for a minute against the high, chain-link fence. There were twenty or so children on the swings, climbing bars, riding seesaws, laughing and shrieking with delight. Kevin thought about his own kids and about the life they were about to enter—a fabulous home with a bedroom for each of them and land enough for a huge swing set and possibly even a pool someday, a clean suburban community with top-notch schools, and a limitless future.
Sunlight glared off the water. To the south, the Statue of Liberty stood tall against the sweltering heat. Kevin glanced about again and headed north onto
the grassy mall. It was exactly noon. Carrying his suit coat now, he passed half a dozen benches, each one occupied. Office workers eating take-out lunches; a bag lady asleep on a newspaper pillow; two young mothers lolling their sleeping infants in strollers; teen lovers nestled together, oblivious to all but one another. So normal.
“Loomis. Over here.”
Stallings, also holding his suit coat in his hand, beckoned to him from the shadow of a century-old maple. His briefcase was on the ground between his feet. The tension Kevin had picked up in the man at the Roundtable meeting was even more evident today. He glanced about nervously and constantly moistened his lips with his tongue.
“You sure you weren’t followed?” he asked.
“I’m sure. Who are you worried about?”
“Any of them—Lancelot, Kay, Galahad, Merlin. Or someone they hired. Shit, Loomis, I don’t know what to do. I just can’t believe this is happening.”
The man’s apprehension was contagious. Without even knowing what was going on, Loomis felt his pulse begin to race.
“Hey, you’ve got to calm down,” he said. “You want to walk?”
“No. No, this is a good spot. Let’s sit down right here. Keep your back against the tree and a sharp eye out for anyone who might be paying too much attention to us.”
Dark circles enveloped Stallings’s eyes, and his pale skin was covered with a sheen of sweat. He had the look of a hunted animal.
“Lancelot came to see me a couple of days ago,” he began when they had settled on the grass at the base of the tree. “His name’s Pat Harper. Do you know him outside The Roundtable?”
“Northeast Life. I played golf with him once.”
“Well, he picked me up after work and took me for a ride up into Connecticut. He drives a Rolls.”
“That fits. I really don’t know anything about him, except that his cigars make me queasy and he’s a much better golfer than I am. For that matter, I don’t know anything about any of the knights.”
“Neither do I. The secrecy’s on purpose. They really don’t care if we find out who they are, but they want it to seem like a big deal. They’re really into this mystique thing.”
“You keep saying ‘they.’ Who do you mean?”
“All of them, even Percivale, I think. They’re on one side of the fence. You and I are on the other. For a while I thought it was only me—that even though you joined after I did, you were one of them. You always seemed so confident, so tuned into everything that was going on. But listening to the way they grilled you about Desiree, I started to have the feeling that you were an outsider, too. Then, hearing you last night, I felt almost certain of it.”
“All I can tell you,” Kevin said, “is that the only contact I’ve had with The Roundtable or the knights has been at our meetings. I speak to my boss, of course. He’s the one who picked me to succeed him. But that’s all. And we never talk about The Roundtable at work—only on his boat.”
Stallings gazed out at the river and took a deep, slow breath. It was as if he was getting set to dive from a cliff.
“Did your boss ever tell you they were killing people?” he asked suddenly.
Kevin pushed back and stared at the man, half expecting to see a gotcha there, just kidding smile.
“Hey, easy does it, Jim,” Kevin said, forcing calm into his voice. “I’m sure it’s not what you think.”
Stallings laughed mirthlessly.
“It’s exactly what I think. Lancelot started by telling me how pleased everyone was with the work I was doing—especially the legislation I drafted on the terminal-care project. He said that because The Roundtable’s business was so unorthodox—that was the word he used, unorthodox—that each new member had to go through a probationary period. Now mine was over, and I was in a position to do my company and myself a great deal of good.”
Stallings again glanced furtively about. Then he snapped open his briefcase, withdrew a computer printout, and passed it to Kevin. It was a list of “qualifications” very similar to the ones Merlin had presented at the meeting—the factors that had led to Beth DeSenza’s being selected by microchip to lose her job. Only this list of criteria began with Currently Hospitalized.
“You know about the future-cost analyses, right?” Stallings asked.
“That’s what Merlin was talking about—the estimate of what any illness will cost the industry over its entire course.”
“Exactly. Well, this program here has a future-cost minimum of five hundred thousand dollars. Lancelot wants me to run it through our data banks each week and come up with two or three names. AIDS, cancer, chronic heart problems, mental illness, multiple trauma, blood diseases, cystic fibrosis, even babies born under a certain weight.”
“There’s certainly no shortage of conditions that’ll cost half a million over time.”
“Much more than that, actually. A million, even two. Things like bone marrow replacements and liver transplants. A twenty-five-year-old mental patient who can’t make it outside of a hospital will be in seven figures before he’s thirty-five. And his life expectancy isn’t much different than normal.”
“What happens to the names you come up with?”
Stallings bit at his lower lip.
“I am to hand-deliver them to each of the other knights—not including you, apparently. I guess you’re still on probation. Then I am to transfer into a Swiss bank account an amount equaling twenty-five percent of the total that person’s care would cost my company. Lancelot explained that the funds I transfer will come from payouts to a set of nonexistent patients. He seemed very proud of the system, which he says is tried and true, and foolproof. Those were his exact words: tried and true, and foolproof”
“Then what happens to the patients?”
Sir Gawaine shrugged helplessly.
“They die,” he said.
“You mean they’re murdered in the hospital?”
“Lancelot never used that word. My company would achieve a net savings—that’s just how he put it, ‘net savings’—of around a million and a half to two million a month.”
“Oh, I just don’t believe that. Surely there must be some other explanation.”
“Go ahead and try to come up with one. I did. How else is that kind of money going to be saved?”
“And all the rest of them are doing this, too?”
“As far as I know.”
“This is crazy. How can they do it? How could they keep getting away with it over and over again?”
Stallings dropped the printout back into his briefcase, snapped it shut, and adjusted each of the combination wheels.
“I don’t know. But I kept thinking about that DellaRosa woman. I think whoever injected her with that stuff must be the one who …”
His voice trailed away. He stared off at a distant freighter. Not far from where they were sitting, a teenage girl in tight shorts and a tank top Rollerbladed past, hand-in-hand with a tall, gangly boy. So normal.
“Did you ask Lancelot about DellaRosa?”
“I mentioned her. But he claimed that if she and Desiree were the same person, he surely would have known it. I asked who handled matters in the hospital, and how they did it. All he said was, that wasn’t his department.”
“There’s got to be something you misunderstood.”
“Kevin, did they promise you an additional bonus of one percent of everything your company saves through your work with The Roundtable?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too. Well, Lancelot took special pains to point out what one percent of a million five to two million a month comes to. He also pointed out things we all know—that the cost of caring for critically ill and terminally ill patients has spiraled out of control, that all our companies are being battered as never before, and that health care reform, what with premium caps and all, is only making matters worse. He said that the money being saved by our efforts meant more jobs and better services throughout the industry. At one point, he listed a bunch of condit
ions like AIDS, metastatic cancer, and muscular dystrophy. ‘Truthfully, now,’ he said, ‘to all intents and purposes, considering that doctors have absolutely no treatments available to cure any of these diseases, when the diagnosis is made, these people are as good as dead. Right?’
“And you want to know the worst part, Loomis? The worst part is that as he talked on, I found myself buying into the whole thing! Dollars and cents, profit and loss, cost containment, for chrissake. I stopped thinking of the quality of these people’s lives. I began agreeing with everything he said. Diagnosis, prognosis. That was it. That was all that mattered. I even started thinking about all the ways an additional fifteen thousand dollars a month would change our lifestyle. Then, at the last moment, just before I signed on, I began remembering that he was talking about people. That’s what I believe you were thinking about when you started questioning Merlin’s program last night.”
“I knew one of the women on that list of his.”
Stallings nodded. “That’s why I kept signaling you to stop. Kevin, these people mean business. We were on our way back to the city when I asked Lancelot what would happen if I decided not to participate in this program. He said that he really didn’t believe anything would happen. He explained that only one knight had ever refused to participate—Sir Lionel. That was about a year ago. But before The Roundtable could decide whether or not he’d be allowed to continue with them, he got some sort of food poisoning and died.”
“Oh, God,” Kevin groaned. “I know all about that guy. When he died, his company lost its seat on The Roundtable completely. In fact, it was probably given to you. My boss used him to illustrate what I would cost our company and myself if I was ever removed and not replaced. But Jim, Lionel didn’t die from food poisoning. It was from a coronary after the food poisoning. He died in the hospital, just like …”
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