The Touch

by F. Paul Wilson

  “A girl likes to be told sometimes.”

  For perhaps the hundredth time this year—the first time had been New Year’s Eve—Alan promised to be more attentive to Ginny and less absorbed in his practice. They didn’t have much of a life together anymore. To an outsider they probably looked like the perfect couple—all they needed was two and a half children and they’d be the ideal American family. They’d talked about getting their lives on the same track again countless times, but all their good intentions seemed to remain intentions. The practice kept demanding more and more of Alan’s time, while Ginny became increasingly involved with the club, along with her civic and hospital-related groups. Their paths crossed at breakfast, dinner, and occasionally at bedtime.

  He would be more attentive and he would be less self-absorbed. Soon. But tonight was certainly a special case, especially after what had happened today.

  Ginny set a plate of shrimp salad on a bed of lettuce, plus a loaf of sourdough bread before him.

  “You’re not eating?” he asked as she continued to buzz around the kitchen.

  She shook her head. “No time. Why do you think I’m dressed up? Tonight’s the Guild meeting and I’ve got to give a progress report on the fashion show.”

  “I thought the Guild met on Thursday nights.”

  “Tonight’s a special meeting because of the fashion show on Sunday. I told you about it.”

  “Right. You did. Sorry. Just wanted to talk.”

  Ginny smiled. “Great. Talk.”

  “Sit,” he said, pointing to the chair opposite him.

  “Oh, I can’t, honey. Josie and Terri are going to be here any minute to pick me up. Can’t you tell me quick?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Give it a try.” She sat down across from him.

  “Okay. Something weird happened in the office today.”

  “Mrs. Ellsworth paid her bill?”

  Alan almost laughed. “No. Weirder.”

  Ginny’s eyebrows rose. “This ought to be good.”

  “I don’t know if it is or not.” He took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Somehow, some way, I…I cured two people of incurable illnesses today.”

  After a short pause Ginny shook her head slowly, a puzzled expression constricting her features. “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I. You see—”

  A car honked outside in the driveway. Ginny leaped up.

  “That’s Josie. I’ve got to go.” She came around the table and gave Alan a quick kiss. “We’ll talk about it later tonight, okay?”

  Alan managed to smile. “Sure.”

  And then her coat was on and she was out the door.

  He jabbed his fork into the shrimp salad and began to eat. Maybe it was just as well. Both he and Ginny knew doctors who had developed God complexes. All he had to do was start talking about healing with a touch and she’d have him ready for the funny farm.

  And maybe she’d be right.

  He swallowed a mouthful of shrimp, put the fork down, and leaned back. He wasn’t hungry; he was just eating so he wouldn’t get hungry later.

  What right did he have to think he had anything to do with Sonja regaining her hearing or with the disappearance of the lump in Henrietta Westin’s breast? Thinking yourself some sort of magical healer was the road to big trouble.

  Yet certain facts persisted and he couldn’t wish them away: Sonja Andersen’s deafness had been verified time and again by audiometry, and now she could hear; Mrs. Westin had found the breast mass herself and he had confirmed its presence, yet it was gone now.

  Something was up.

  And in each case the turning point seemed to be his touch. There was no sane explanation here.

  With a growl of frustration, disgust, and bafflement, Alan threw down his napkin and headed out to make late rounds at the hospital.

  Alan turned toward his office on the way back from the hospital. Tony DeMarco had left a message with the answering service that he wanted to see him—a fortunate coincidence, because Alan wanted to talk to Tony. He had a job for him.

  Along the way he found he was hungry and looked for a place to eat. He almost pulled into a downtown sandwich shop but turned away when he remembered that he’d treated the owner a number of times for various venereal diseases…and the owner made the sandwiches. He decided instead on Memison’s, where he ordered a fish dinner.

  Later, his hunger sated, he pulled into the parking lot of the free-standing building he half-owned and saw that the lights were still on in the law office.

  Tony answered Alan’s knock. “Ay! Alan! C’mon in.”

  Alan smiled at the man who was perhaps his closest friend, his partner in the office building they shared, and who he hardly ever saw. Shorter than Alan, with close-cropped dark hair and a mustache, Tony was still whipcord lean as only an unmarried chain-smoker could be at his age.

  “Just finished up some dictation and was about to call it a day. Drink?”

  “Yeah. I could use one.”

  Tony handed Alan two fingers of Dewar’s, neat. He lifted his glass.

  “Brooklyn.”

  “And a new Ebbets Field,” Alan said, lifting his.

  “And the return of da Bums.”

  They both drank and Alan let it burn down the back of his throat. Oh, that was good. He looked around the lavishly appointed office. He and Tony had both come a long way from their roots in Brooklyn—only a few miles on the map, but income and prestige wise they’d traveled light years.

  They small-talked, and then Alan said, “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yeah.” Tony indicated a chair and lighted a cigarette as he seated himself behind his desk. “Two things. First—know what today is?”

  Alan didn’t have the foggiest.

  “It’s our eighth anniversary, you dumb shit!”

  Alan smiled at the ease with which Tony reverted to his Brooklyn accent and the street patois of their youth. Alan had quickly learned in medical school in New England that with his Brooklyn accent he could discuss baseball or hot dogs or street life with authority, but shouldn’t say anything about medicine, because nobody who talked like that could know anything about medicine. So he’d developed a neutral, regionless brand of English that was now as much a part of him as the way he walked.

  Tony used his “lawyer English,” as he called it, only when he was being a lawyer. When he was relaxing with friends, he was the old Tony DeMarco, street fighter and toughest kid on the block.

  “Really? That long?”

  Alan found it hard to believe eight years had gone by since he’d picked out Tony’s name under the Lawyers listing in the phone book—his office had been the most convenient for a lunchtime appointment then—and had learned to his delight that they’d grown up only a few blocks apart.

  He’d asked Tony about getting out of his practice agreement with Lou Alberts. Personally he’d got along fine with Lou, but their styles of practice didn’t mesh. Alan had found it utterly impossible to keep Lou’s pace, which was eight patients an hour on an average day, and ten or more per hour when things got busy. Lou’s technique was to hit the patient’s most immediate problem with an injection or a prescription, then shoo him out to make room for the next. He was a doctor with his hand forever on the doorknob. Trying to emulate him had made Alan feel like a pieceworker on an assembly line. Not at all the brand of medicine he wanted to practice.

  But Alan hadn’t wanted to break his contract unless Lou wasn’t holding up his end of it. Unfortunately, Tony’s analysis revealed that Lou had been living up to the letter of the contract. But that was no problem—Tony could get him out of it and slide him past any of the restrictive covenants described therein.

  “Yeah. Eight years ago you changed my life when you said you were going to finish your second contract year with Lou Alberts.”

  “Get out!”

  “I’m serious, man! I offered you half a dozen finagles out and you sat there with your w
hite-bread mouth and said, ‘No. I signed my name and so that’s it.’ Do you know how you made me feel? Like a scumbag! Never had a client say that to me. Never! You didn’t care if you had a legal escape hatch, you’d given your word and you were gonna stick by it. I felt like slipping down under the table and crawling out the door.”

  “You hid it well,” Alan said, amazed at the revelation. He’d never imagined—

  “So from that day on I changed my style. No more weasel shit like that. I’ve lost clients because of it, but I can sit in the same room with you now.”

  Something suddenly made itself clear to Alan in that moment. He had never known why Tony had called him only a month or so after that first meeting and asked if he wanted to go into partnership on a small office building on the other end of town, exactly one tenth of a mile outside that radius of the restrictive covenant in Alan’s contract with Lou. They could both share the first floor and maybe even find a tenant for the second.

  He and Tony had been close friends and partners ever since. He wished they could spend more time together. He felt more kinship with this feisty lawyer than with any of his fellow physicians.

  “Tony…I never realized—”

  “Fuhgeddaboudit!” he said with a wave of his hand. “But on to the second thing: I overheard some real weird shit today.”

  “Like what?”

  “I was having a drink with this lawyer friend while he was waiting for a client. When the client came in they took the booth right behind where we’d been sitting, so while I’m finishing my drink I hear this dapper dude, who happens to be a doctor, tell my friend that he wants to sue another doctor—a guy by the name of Alan Bulmer. I later call my friend and in my casual roundabout way find out that this doctor’s name is Larkin.” He stared at Alan a moment. “So how come you don’t look too damn surprised?”

  Alan told him about his conversation with Fred Larkin that morning.

  Tony shook his head. “You can be a real jerk at times, Alan. I did a quick check on this Larkin guy. He’s a bigshot, lots of influence with the hospital Board of Trustees. Never know when you’re gonna need a friend or two in high places.”

  “What for?” Alan said. “I’ve no intention of ever running for chief of staff, even if I had the time for it. Hospital politics bores me to tears.”

  “Still, never hurts to have a friendly contact.”

  “That’s the politician in you talking.”

  “Ay! Don’t call me no fucking politician!”

  Alan laughed. “Scratch any lawyer and you’ll find a nascent politician.”

  “Don’t act so high and mighty about friends in high places. How do you think you got into that high-class club?”

  Alan shrugged. Lou had been his partner then and Lou had been serving on the club membership committee. “Wasn’t my idea. Ginny wanted it…I just went along.”

  “Yeah, but it was connections that got you in.”

  Alan shrugged again. His practice left him little time for tennis or yachting, so he was almost a stranger at the club.

  “Anyway, you’re a friend, aren’t you, Tony?”

  “Yeah. But I ain’t in what you might call a High Place.”

  Alan had an urge to tell Tony what had happened today: He tried to think of a way to phrase it so he wouldn’t sound delusional, but couldn’t find one.

  Damn, this was frustrating! He needed to talk about this, yet he couldn’t bring himself to spill it for fear of what people would think. He knew what he would think.

  So he turned the conversation away from himself.

  “How’s business?”

  “Great! Too great. Had to pass up a big party this weekend to fly up to Syracuse for a meeting with a client. Hate like hell to miss a Nash bash.”

  Alan was startled. “You know Sylvia Nash?”

  “Sure. Did a few closings for her around here. That lady either really knows what she’s doing with real estate or she’s just plain lucky. Everything she touches turns to gold.”

  “Them that has, gets.”

  “Well, from what I can gather, she didn’t always have. Greg Nash came back from the Gulf War, joined his father’s insurance agency, married Sylvia, insured himself to the eyeballs with term, then got blown away in that Seven-Eleven. With double indemnity and all, Sylvia became a millionairess overnight. She’s tripled and quadrupled that since then. Good businesswoman. Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite live up to her reputation as a loose woman.”

  “Oh?” Alan said, trying to sound casual.

  Tony’s eyebrows rose. “Got your interest now, ay?”

  “Not really.”

  “Yeah? You should’ve seen your eyes bug when I mentioned her name.”

  “Just wondering how you got to know her.”

  “Riiiight. You got something goin’ with her?”

  “You know me better than that. I just treat her little boy, that’s all.”

  “Yeah. I do remember her talking about you—like you could walk on water.”

  “She’s very perceptive. But how do you know she doesn’t live up to her reputation?”

  “We dated a few times.”

  The thought of Sylvia in Tony’s arms pained him. “And?”

  “Never got to first base.”

  He felt guilty relief. “Maybe it’s your technique.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think so. There’s a lot of anger in that woman, Alan. A lot of anger.”

  They both lapsed into silence, Alan thinking about Sylvia and how he had never perceived her as angry. He had seen her only with Jeffy, however, and saw only love for the child. But Tony was a perceptive guy. Alan couldn’t easily brush off his impressions.

  Finally, he broached the reason he’d come to see Tony.

  “Tony…could you look into something for me?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “It’s about a patient who died in the ER last night.”

  “Malpractice potential?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Tonight at the hospital, Alan had taken a look at the pathology report on the derelict. He’d been suffering from early lung cancer and end-stage alcoholic cirrhosis. A walking dead man.

  “What then?”

  “His name was Walter Erskine—no identification on him, but his prints were traced through the V.A. He was born in 1946, grew up in Chillicothe, Missouri, and served in Nam in the late sixties. He was treated once for a mental condition at Northport V.A. Hospital in 1970. That’s all that’s known about him.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “No. I want more. I want to know what he was like growing up, what happened to him in Nam, and what happened to him since 1970.”

  “Why?”

  Alan shrugged, wishing he could tell Tony. But not yet. He couldn’t tell anybody yet.

  “It’s a personal thing, Tony. Can you help?”

  “I think so. I’ll have to hire an eye, which is no problem—I use them on occasion.”

  “Great. I’ll pay all expenses.”

  “You bet your ass you will.”

  They had a little laugh over that and Alan felt himself relaxing for the first time all night. At least now he felt he was doing something about what ever it was that had happened. In his gut he sensed that this Walter Erskine was the key. He’d done something to Alan last night. And Alan had to learn just what.

  9

  At The Party

  Sylvia was standing at her bedroom window on the second floor when Charles Axford strolled into the room. He had his tuxedo jacket open and his hands thrust into his pants pockets. She liked the way clothes fitted on his solid, just-under-six-foot frame; he looked his forty-four years, with his rugged face, his salt-and-pepper hair thinning a bit on top, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but she liked the look.

  “Where’ve you been?” Sylvia asked him.

  “Down the hall discussing the national debt with Jeffy,” he said blandly.

  Sylvia smiled and shook her head. Charle
s was testing the limits of bad taste again. She framed a nasty remark about his daughter, Julie, but didn’t have the heart to say it. Besides, it would only spur Charles to elaborate on his opening comment. And where Jeffy was concerned, he was on very thin ice.

  “What did he say?” she asked with equal blandness.

  “Not much. He’s getting a bit of kip, actually.” He sat on her bed and leaned back on his elbows. “Anybody special coming tonight?”

  “The usual crowd, plus a special treat: Congressman Switzer and Andrew Cunningham of the MTA.”

  Charles’ eyebrows lifted. “Together? In the same bloody house?”

  She nodded, her smile mirroring his. “Only they don’t know it yet.”

  She was definitely looking forward to seeing what happened when those two enemies ran into each other tonight.

  “Oh, this is going to be jolly!” Charles said with a laugh as he got up from the bed and kissed her on the lips. “That’s why I love you, Sylvia.”

  Sylvia said nothing. She knew he didn’t really love her. He was simply responding to her sense of mischief.

  She’d met Charles Axford, M.D., at the McCready Foundation when she’d taken Jeffy there for a comprehensive evaluation. Charles had been and still was chief of neurological research at the Foundation. Although he had taken no particular interest in Jeffy, he’d taken a very definite interest in her. They’d had an on-again, off-again relationship for three years now.

  Sylvia wasn’t sure what attracted her to Charles—or “Chuckie” as she liked to call him when she wanted to get under his skin. It certainly wasn’t love. And it certainly wasn’t because he was irresistibly handsome.

  Simply put: He fascinated her.

  She’d never met anyone like him. Charles Axford could find something to dislike or distrust in anyone. Anyone! That plus the fact that he did not give a damn about what anyone thought of him resulted in one of the most sarcastic, cynical, verbally offensive human beings on earth. His acid wit coupled with his British accent made him a devastating gadfly. No treasured belief, no sacred cow, no religious, moral, or political dogma was safe from him. Charles believed in nothing, cared for nothing except his work, and was not above putting even that down if the mood struck him. In a rare, self-revelatory moment after too much to drink one night, he’d told Sylvia that a man with no illusions can never become disillusioned.