Bikini? she thought. I've never owned even a two-piece. Never even considered it.
"But the biggest benefit I see is in pediatrics," Oliver was saying. "Kids scar more than adults, and some of those scars, depending where they are, can be disabling because they don't stretch as the rest of the body grows." Tell me about it.
"That sounds wonderful."
"It will be. And the word is out. Other surgeons want to try the implant. Companies are calling every day wanting to license it and the FDA has put it on the fast track for approval. And that's only the start. Duncan came up with an innovative idea on how to enhance the implant, and I've just about got the bugs worked out of the new, improved model. And . . . " He raised his hand and wagged his index finger in the air. "And . . . someone very important has taken a very personal interest in the implant procedure."
"Who?"
"Sorry. I can't tell you. Not yet, anyway."
She didn't want to care, but the way his eyes shone with excitement piqued her curiosity. "Come on, Oliver. You just told me about beta-3, you can trust me with this too."
"No. Duncan would kill me. It's his secret after all. And it's big."
"Okay," she declaimed with her best forlorn sigh. "I guess I'll just have to read about it in the papers."
"Oh, dear. I hope you never do that. But I have a feeling Duncan may tell you himself when the time comes."
"Speaking of Duncan, you started telling me about the daughter Lisa he had. Does that mean what I think it does?"
Oliver nodded glumly. "She was just eighteen when she died five years ago." From her days as a teenaged file clerk in Duncan's office, Gin vaguely remembered an occasional mention of his two children, a boy and a girl, both younger than she.
"Five years ago . . . I was away in medical school then. I never heard about it. What happened?"
"A fall. She never regained consciousness. It was terrible. Duncan was devastated. It was the straw that almost broke his back."
"Why? Was there something else?"
"I've said enough. If Duncan wants you to know, I'm sure he'll tell you. He's put it all behind him." His gaze wandered away. "He's put a lot of things behind him." He took a deep breath.
"But as for the here and now, why don't you solidify your technique by filling a few more membranes? Then call it ‘Will do’," she said, and patted his shoulder. "One thing's for sure, Oliver, it looks to me like these implants are going to make you a very rich man."
"Oh, I hope so."
"What are you going to do then?"
"Get as far away from here as I can."
"Really? Where? Hawaii?"
He sighed. "Anyplace where I don't have to watch Duncan wasting his talents like he is . . . prettifying twits and playing . . . golf!" And then he hurried out with his white lab coat flapping around him.
Gin stared after him in shock.
7
DUNCAN
DUNCAN GRIPPED THE LITTLE GIRL'S CHIN BETWEEN HIS thumb and forefinger.
He tilted her head up, then down, then rotated it left and right.
Her name was Kanesha and she was six. She wouldn't meet his gaze directly, and her hand kept rising and fluttering about the left corner of her mouth, hovering there like a hummingbird that had found a nectar-loaded blossom. Only there was nothing sweet or flowerlike about the thick wad of scar tissue massed at that corner of her mouth.
Her skin was a glossy milk chocolate, her eyes huge and a deeper brown, the color of espresso. She had big white teeth and a smile that would have been knockout beautiful if not for that scar, fusing the lips at the corner, cutting every smile in half.
Her skin was scrubbed, her hair was braided, her shirt and shorts had been ironed. Kanesha and her mother had dressed up for her visit to the doctor.
Duncan liked that, not simply because it showed respect for him, but for themselves as well. Some of the people he saw in the clinic had estranged relations with all species of the soap genus and didn't give a damn. What the hell, it was a free clinic, right' Right. The maxillofacial clinic occupied a fifth-floor corner of one of D. C.
General Hospital's older buildings. The seats and fixtures in the waiting room were worn but clean, the examining room smelled faintly of the bleach that had been used to wipe the counters, its sickly yellow paint was chipped, its examination table needed reupholstering, but the staff was efficient and, more important, they cared.
Duncan turned to Kanesha's mother. "When did this happen, Mrs. Green?" No father was listed on the intake form, but Duncan had never been able to adjust to the noncommittal "Ms". Cindy Green was young, barely into her twenties, probably little more than a baby herself when she'd had Kanesha. The intake form said she worked as a waitress. She was very pretty in a round-faced, full-lipped way. Duncan studied those lips.
Kanesha's mouth would look exactly like her mother's if not for the cicatricial deformity.
"About four and a half years ago. When she was seventeen months old. Happened before I knew it." How many times had he heard that one?
But he kept his voice neutral, "They're a handful at that age, aren't they."
"One minute she was sitting on the floor playing with the pots and pans. I turn to clean the sink and I hear her scream. I turn around and she . . . " Her throat worked and her voice grew thick. "She was knocked out and her mouth was smoking. I knew she was teething but I never dreamed she'd bite an electrical cord."
"Happens more often than you'd think." Which was true. Obviously it happened more often in neglected kids, but he didn't think Kanesha was neglected. Just one of those tragic accidents.
Near tragic, actually.
Duncan could fix it.
He was mapping out the incisions now . . . debride the scar tissue, restore the mouth to full width, evert some mucosa for the lips . . .
This wasn't the first time he'd reconstructed an electrical burn on a child's face, and it wouldn't be the last. Kanesha was a lucky one. She'd survived without brain damage, and she had a mother who cared.
And now she had him.
A shame he couldn't use the beta-3 on her, but a clinic was no place for an experimental protocol. The hospital didn't want the hassles, and he couldn't blame them. As soon as free-clinic patients heard the word "experimental" they started thinking Frankenstein and feared someone was going to use them as guinea pigs.
"Can you fix her, Dr. Duncan? When I saw what you did for little Kennique,"
"Who?"
"Kennique LeFave . . . you know . . . her cheek was all,"
"Oh, yes. Of course." The names people came up with these days. But he certainly remembered the three-year-old who'd fallen from a window last year and ripped the right side of her face to the bone.
That had been a real challenge.
"All her mommy does is sing the praises of Dr. Duncan, Dr. Duncan. So I knew I just had to bring Kanesha to you. Do you think you can . . . ? "
Duncan nodded. "It will take a couple of procedures, but yes, I think we can fix her up good as new."
The mother's eyes were intent on Duncan's. "Can you? Can you really?"
"Is that a note of doubt I detect?"
"No, it's just,"
"Smile for me, ' Duncan said.
"What?"
"Go ahead. Smile."
The mother smiled, a lovely smile, even when forced.
Duncan reached out and grasped her chin just as he had Kanesha's.
"I'd like to make your daughter's smile look just like yours."
"You can do that?" the mother whispered.
Yes. He could. This was the age of miracles, and he was a miracle worker.
But still . . . never promise too much. Better to give them more than they're expecting.
"A certain amount depends on Kanesha. Not everyone heals the same. So . . . a smile like yours . . . that'll be okay?"
The mother smiled softly, hesitantly, but genuinely this time "Yes. That will be okay."
"Good!" He pressed a buzzer on the w
all. A heavyset black nurse entered. "Marge, see if we can set up Kanesha for a facial reconstruction, left upper and lower labial, for late Wednesday, morning."
"Next week?" the mother said.
"Too soon?"
"Well, no, I just . . . "
"She's had that scar long enough, don't you think?"
The mother looked at him, staring into his eyes, looking for assurance there.
"Yes," she said finally. "Too long."
As Marge led them out, Cassie Trainor stepped into the room and slipped behind him. She was tall, blond, and well proportioned, her uniforms were tailored to maximize the effect of her ample bust. Midforties, trim, and sexy. She gripped his shoulders and began to knead the muscles at the back of his neck with her thumbs.
"How's Dr. Duncan today?" Duncan had everyone at the clinic refer to him as "Dr. Duncan." It was a legitimate moniker and it obscured the Lathram name.
He didn't want it getting around that Duncan Lathram was doing charity work. He'd made such a point of refusing to deal with insurance companies, private, government, or whatever, and about performing no surgery that was necessary, that he didn't want to have to explain why he was fixing up ghetto kids for free.
He had stopped explaining.
"I'm fine, and that feels good."
"So, what're you doing after we finish here? Ready to buy that drink you've been promising?" Duncan tried to keep his shoulders from tightening. He'd been ducking Cassie for months now. Not long after his divorce they'd had a little fling.
Very hot. Too hot not to cool down, as the song went. She was an excellent nurse and uninhibited under the covers. He remembered one night when . . . no, now was not the time to relive that, not with her fingers kneading his shoulders. Eventually, they'd gone their own ways, but every now and again Cassie seemed to like to fan the embers of old blazes. Duncan knew there were plenty of old blazes in Cassie's past.
Too many for comfort nowadays when casual sex had stopped being a recreational sport and metamorphosed into serious business, grim business, requiring research and background checks, especially with someone with such a busy and enthusiastically varied history as Cassie Trainor.
He hated that something so basic and so wonderful as sex had become a source of paranoia and anxiety, a new religious sect with purification rites and latex Eucharists.
What a world. What a goddamn screwed-up world.
Casual sex was all he had the heart for these days, and casual sex was like Russian roulette. No time or heart to invest in a lasting relationship, and no desire to pursue one, not after what had happened to his marriage.
What had happened to him since the divorce? Where had his passion for life gone? He'd withdrawn from all his old friends. Not consciously.
He hadn't even realized what was happening until it was done. He spent a lot of time alone now, but that didn't seem to bother him. He didn't know this preoccupied, isolated man he had become.
Maybe Lisa hadn't been an aberration. Maybe it ran in the family.
Whatever the reason, he realized he'd become a man who feared intimacy more than solitude.
But at least today he could tell Cassie the truth.
"I'd love to, Cassie, but I'm meeting my son for dinner."
"Too bad. How old is he now?"
"Twenty-one last month." Lisa would have been 23 last spring, already graduated a year. "Starting his senior year in college. We're trying that new Italian restaurant in Georgetown."
"Giardia?"
Duncan laughed. "Not funny. Giardinello. I'd ask you along but we're going to talk about the flare."
"I getcha. Okay. Maybe next time"
"Definitely." She glided away and he watched the white fabric of her uniform slide back and forth over her buttocks, an urge rose within and he almost changed his mind, almost called her back. Instead he looked at his watch. He'd have to pick Brad up soon at the house.
The house . . .
Used to be his house too. Now it was just Diana's. He wondered how she could live there, walk through that foyer where . . .
Duncan rubbed his eyes and rose from the chair. When things finally fell apart, he didn't contest the divorce action. So while it wasn't exactly an amicable dichotomy, it never got vicious. He let Diana have what she wanted, agreed to generous alimony payments, and, of course, he'd seen to it that Brad had whatever he needed. He loved his son, wanted to stay close to him, and most of all, wanted to spare him the spectacle of his parents hissing and clawing at each other.
And Duncan got . . . what?
What did I get besides out?
He and Diana still were on speaking terms, but only on neutral, practical matters, never anything personal. And he would never set foot in that house again.
He tended to heal slowly, sometimes not at all. He had no implant full of beta-3 for the soul.
Which was why he had been on the west portico of the Capitol yesterday morning. Trying to heal himself by balancing the scales, by closing the circle, by imposing a symmetry on the chaos his life had become.
Only then would this cancerous rage cease its relentless metastasis and allow him to get on with his life.
He barked a laugh in the empty room. His life? What life?
Marge poked her head in. "Dr. Duncan . . . you all right?"
"Fine, Marge. Just fine." That's a laugh, he thought, waving her off.
Nothing at all is fine.
Yesterday morning . . . another failure. Why wasn't anything ever simple? Why couldn't things go the way he planned?
Neither of the other two had gone the way he'd intended either.
Lane and Schulz, both dead, one in a car, the other in a twenty-story swan dive.
And yesterday . . . Allard was supposed to crack up in front of the cameras, not crack his skull on the Capitol steps. Duncan hadn't wanted him physically hurt. Hell, any hired thug could do that. He'd come prepared to see Allard mortally embarrassed, terminally humiliated, politically ruined, he'd wanted his credibility bloodied, not his head. Damn! All the planning, the exquisite timing, wasted. Now Allard was just a victim of a bad fall, pitied, pathetic, an object of sympathy instead of ridicule.
Duncan wondered at his own cold-heartedness, but only briefly. He had plenty of warm emotions left, but they were already spoken for. No leftovers for the likes of Congressman Allard.
Allard, at least, was still alive.
Next time . . . next time he'd get it right.
Duncan rubbed his eyes. He'd started this for a payback in kind, not to kill or maim. Merely devastate their careers, their marriages, their reputations, and let them live among the ruins. A living death.
Like mine.
Although not his intent, the fatalities didn't particularly bother him.
After all, Lisa was dead because of them, and she was worth ten, twenty, a hundred of them.
Gin's presence yesterday had been another complication, one of those perverse coincidences that might one day trip him up and expose what he'd been doing.
Slim as it was, the possibility of exposure knotted his gut.
Indictment for murder, a circus of a trial, then jail. The scandal . . . what would it do to Brad? His son was one of the few things left in his life that mattered to him.
He'd do anything to avoid that. Anything.
But where was the risk, really? He had a virtually untraceable toxin, and an all-but-invisible means of delivery. The only one who might put it together would be Oliver, but his preoccupied brother tended to take little notice of events outside his lab. The only other real risk was someone like Gin. Someone who knew the patients, knew about the implants, and was bright enough to put all the pieces together.
Remote as it was, he grimaced at the possibility. What a frightful quandary that would be. What would he do if Gin stumbled onto him?
He'd have to find a way to neutralize her. He couldn't allow her to . . .
He shook off the grim train of thought. It wouldn't happen. Vincent would be the ne
xt to last. One more after him and then Duncan would close this chapter of his life.
But the last one would be the big one. The biggest.
8
MARTHA
GINA DELAYED HER RETURN TO THE APARTMENT. SHE didn't want to hear any bad news. And no news was bad news as far as the Hill was concerned. The capper would be a message from Gerry telling her he had to call off their dinner plans, or worse yet, no call from Gerry at all.
Gimme a break, she thought. Something's got to go right this week.
So she got off the Metro at the zoo and did a slow walk along Calvert Street across the Duke Ellington Bridge into her neighborhood.
Adams Morgan was sometimes described as funky, sometimes eclectic, but most times just plain weird. Gin loved the area. A big triangle on the hill sloping down toward Dupont Circle, roughly bordered by Calvert Street and Florida and Connecticut avenues, where you could find ethnic jewelry, folk art, and cutting-edge music while breathing the exotic aromas of an array of cuisines that could rival the entire United Nations for diversity. Where else in the District could you find an Argentine cafe flanked by a top-notch French restaurant and a Caribbean bistro? Even Ethiopian restaurants. Who'd ever heard of an Ethiopian restaurant? Yet there were three in her neighborhood.
Gin browsed an African bookstore, did touchy-feely with some Guatemalan fabric, tried on some Turkish shoes, then decided she'd delayed the inevitable long enough. She walked to her building, an old brick row house on Kalorama between Columbia and Eighteenth, it had a tower on its downhill side and was painted sky blue. She let herself into her third-floor apartment.
The rental agency had listed it as "furnished." Gin thought "not unfurnished'' would have been more in line with most truth-in-advertising laws. The rickety furniture had been varnished so many times that the type of wood underlying all those coats was a mystery. - Sometimes she suspected the varnish was the only thing holding some of the pieces together. But it was clean, and she loved her front bay window high over the street. She'd had a new mattress delivered and added a few of her own touches, a bright yellow throw rug and her three posters of Monet's Le J Nyrntheas. She kept meaning to brighten up the place, maybe with some new curtains. As soon as she had the time She went straight to her bedroom where the answering machine crouched on the nightstand. The message light was blinking. A good start.
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