Dr. Knox
Page 36
I sighed. “Jesus, Mandy.”
“My aunt is in with him now, and my parents, too. I called Kyle down in Mexico the day it happened, and he’s been MIA ever since. Which maybe is for the best.”
“It’s…it’s a horrible thing to have happen. To anybody.”
She laughed bitterly. “Even to him, right? You know, I’ve been trying to dredge up some warm thoughts about him, some nice memory, but…” She sighed. “My corporate communications guy should be here soon, to work on the press release. Maybe he can come up with something. Anyway, I thought you’d want to know.”
She hung up after that, and I stood looking at my phone for a long time, thinking of Harris Bray’s massive head and brutal face, and hearing Nora’s voice saying something about justice.
I stood in my towel, sipping beer, while my phone rang and then stopped ringing. Mandy didn’t leave a voice mail. There were five Stellas left in the fridge, and after I pulled on jeans and a tee shirt, I carried them to the roof, along with the joint I’d rolled the night before.
The sky was a supersaturated orange in the west, and still full of heat. The downtown towers were bright, and Friday night traffic was beginning to thicken on the streets. There was a parking lot a block away, where a charred storefront had been a month back, and it was full every weekend night. A gluten-free bakery was opening next to it next week. The tide of progress, still pushing relentlessly eastward, still driving the poor and sick and luckless before it. I stretched out on a lawn chair, and my bones felt suddenly like lead. I sighed, and opened another beer.
I’d been lucky, I knew—to have survived Siggy and the Brays; to have survived Elena; to have survived with the clinic intact; to have survived at all. Nora had said it, so had Sutter, and I knew they were right. I knew it, but somehow—even at a distance of five months—I didn’t feel it. Maybe it was the cost of my luck—the price paid in fear and danger by people I cared for. Maybe it was the price I was still paying, in relationships that were strained or damaged or gone altogether. Or maybe it was the fact that a pile of money—no matter what height—could never undo what had been done to Elena and Alex. That it was all, finally, just another holding action.
I shook my head at my own bullshit, took a sip of beer, and dug in my pocket for my phone. I scanned through my music but couldn’t choose, and put it on shuffle. Miles came on, and I hung the joint at the corner of my mouth and patted my pockets for a match. I’d just found one when my phone burred again.
“You have plans tonight, brother,” Sutter said, “or are you up for a house call?”
I sighed. “You know, my cash flow is better, right? Without rent to pay, the clinic supports itself.”
He laughed. “You remind me every time I call lately, but still you don’t say no. The alley, in fifteen?”
“Make it twenty,” I said. I tucked the joint behind my ear, and hauled myself upright.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Much gratitude to the many who helped while I was writing this book: Denise Marcil, for her unwavering enthusiasm and support; Drs. Spiegelman, Miller, and Glucksman, for their various consultations with Dr. Knox; Nina Spiegelman, for another early read; Sonny Mehta, for—yet again—vast patience and invaluable feedback; and Alice Wang for…well, you know.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Spiegelman is the author of Black Maps, which won the 2004 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel, Death’s Little Helpers, Red Cat, and Thick as Thieves. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Mr. Spiegelman spent nearly twenty years in the financial services and software industries, and worked with leading banks and brokerages around the world. He lives in Connecticut.
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