The Conspiracy Club (27 page)

“Did you ask Dr. Ramirez about that?”

“Yeah, my spleen’s fucked up. They’ll maybe have to take it out.” He grinned. “No heavy lifting, I might explode, make a big fucking mess.” The grin faded. “Also my liver’s not primo. See?”

He tugged down an eyelid. The sclera was greenish beige.

Jeremy said, “No beer, today.”

“Too bad about that . . . so, how’ve you been?”

“You said two things were bothering you.”

“Oh, yeah. Number two: Everyone’s being too damn nice to me. Creeps me out. Like they think I’m gonna die, or something.”

“I can write an order, if you’d like,” said Jeremy. “ ‘Everyone be obnoxious to Doug.’ ”

The young man laughed. “Yeah, do that . . . so, you’ve been okay, Doc?”

“Fine.”

“You look a little, I dunno, wiped out. They working you too hard?”

“Same old same old.”

“Yeah . . . no offense — that crack about looking tired. Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m not seeing things right. Fact is, when I saw you yesterday, after all those years, I’m thinking, ‘This guy doesn’t change.’ It was like, back then, when I first met you, I was a kid and you were a grown-up, and now I’m grown-up and you haven’t really changed that much. It’s like . . . what, life slows down when you get older? Is that what happens?”

“It can,” said Jeremy.

“Guess it depends on how much fun you’re having,” said Doug.

“What do you mean?”

“You know — what they always say? Time goes fast when you’re having fun. My life’s been a blast, zip zip zip. One thing after the other, fucking adventures, one day I’m knocking up walls and then . . . and now I’m having a baby.” He glanced at the butterfly needle embedded atop his hand. “I hope they hurry up with getting me better. Gotta get the fuck outta here. Got lots of things to do.”

When he drifted off to sleep, Jeremy left the room and encountered Doug’s parents and wife. That turned into another hour in the cafeteria, where Jeremy brought the three of them coffee and food. They protested weakly, thanked him profusely. Young Marika barely spoke. Still stunned, she avoided Jeremy’s eyes when he tried to make contact.

Doug Vilardi, Sr. spent most of his time putting on the good cheer. That seemed to weary his wife, but she rolled with it. Most of the hour was filled with small talk.

When Jeremy got up to leave, so did Doug’s mother. She walked him out of the cafeteria, said, “I’ve never met a doctor like you.” Then she took Jeremy’s face in both of her hands and kissed his forehead.

A maternal kiss. It reminded Jeremy of something that had happened to him a long time ago. But he couldn’t be sure.

He saw his other patients, went to meet Angela up on the chest ward where she was finishing her last day. He found her in the company of three other residents, on the way to some kind of meeting. Got her away from the group with a raised eyebrow and herded her into an empty nurses’ room.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine.” She bit her lip. “I’ve been going over what happened. I think I overreacted.”

“You didn’t,” said Jeremy. “It happened, and it was bad.”

“Well, that’s not very comforting.”

“It happened, Angela.”

“Of course it did. I never doubted it did, but—”

“I repeated it for emphasis,” he said. “Because eventually, you may start to doubt that it happened. Denial’s like that.”

“I’m
denying
?” Her dark eyes flashed.

“It’s not a put-down. Denial’s not weakness — not neurotic. It’s a fact of life, a natural defense. Your mind and body will naturally want to protect themselves. Go with that. You may surprise yourself by feeling happy. Don’t fight that.”

“I may surprise myself?” she said. “What’s that, some sort of posthypnotic suggestion?”

“It’s a reasonable prediction.”

“I’m not
close
to happy.”

“Sooner or later you will be. The feelings will pass. But it happened.”

Angela stared at him. “All this advice.”

“Here’s more,” said Jeremy. “Stay away from him. He’s very bad news.”

“What do you—”

“Just stay away.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said. “This morning he was rounding, heading straight at me in the hall. I held my ground and when he saw me, he changed directions. Turned around and walked around to the other side. Took a circuitous route just to avoid me. So you see,
he’s
worried about
me
.”

If you knew.
“Let’s keep it that way.”

“What are you saying, Jeremy? You don’t think I can handle him?”

“I’m sure you can. Just avoid him. Listen to me. Please.” He took hold of her shoulders, drew her close.

“This is scaring me a little.”

Good.

“If you’re careful, there’s nothing to be scared of. Promise me you’ll stay away from him. And look out for yourself.”

She pulled away from him. “Jeremy, you’re really freaking me out. What is going on?”

“He’s a bad guy, I can’t say more.”

“What? That heart patient who died? Did you learn something about that?”

“That may be part of it.”

“Part of it — God, what is going on?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“You come in here with all these dire pronouncements, and now you’re holding back? What’s gotten into you?”

“You’re off Thoracic, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Just do your work and stay away from him.” He smiled. “Don’t take candy from strangers.”

“Not funny,” she snapped. “You can’t just—”

“Do you think,” he said, “that I want to upset you?”

“No — I don’t know. I wish I knew what’s come over you. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

He thought about that.

“Because I’m not sure.”

“About Dirgrove?”

“About everything he’s done.”

“Everything.” Her eyes got hard. “This is about her — Jocelyn — isn’t it — and don’t close up the way you did when I hinted around about her the other day. I know you went through hell, know I can never really understand it. But don’t you think, with what’s happened to us — with how close we’ve gotten so quickly — that you could trust me enough to not throw up barriers?”

Jeremy’s head pounded. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, drive her away. “It’s not a matter of closing up,” he said, softly. “There’s just nothing to talk about. And this isn’t the time.”

“Nothing,” she said. “You go through something like that and nothing?”

Jeremy didn’t answer.

She said, “That’s the way it has to be, huh?”

“For the time being.”

“Okay,” she said. “You’re the expert on human emotions — I’ve got to go. You pulled me away just as we were going to conference with the chief. Tropical pulmonary disease. Maybe I’ll take a rotation in some jungle clinic.”

Jeremy’s head filled with teeming, squirming insects.

“The jungle,” he said, “is an interesting place.”

She gaped at him as if he was mad, walked around him, avoided touching him, made it to the door, and turned the knob hard.

He said, “When will you be free?”

“Not for some time,” she said, without looking back. “You know how it is. The schedule.”

He finished his charts, talked to Ramirez about Doug Vilardi, and paged Angela from a phone on Five West. No reply. Returning to his office, he repeated the page. His beeper remained silent. He tried the nursing station on chest ward, the residents’ locker room, the House Staff office. Zip.

Two hours had passed since he’d angered her, and he found himself missing her.

Being alone was different, now. No longer part of him, a phantom limb.

You couldn’t miss someone after two hours. Silly.

And even if Angela shut him out for a while, it was all for the better. As long as she heeded him and stayed away from Dirgrove.

He thought she would, she was an extremely bright person, a well-adjusted person.

He thought of the obsessive-compulsive rituals to which she’d confessed.

A driven woman. All the better. In the end, good sense would prevail, and she’d stick with it.

Besides,
he
needed to be alone for a while.

Had work to do.

N
ight work.

Jeremy avoided scrutiny by keeping odd hours and entering the hospital through another out-of-the way rear door — one on the basement level that led to a loading bay. One of those forgotten places inevitable in a place as old and sprawling as City Central. Same level as Pathology and the morgue, but the opposite wing. Here, he passed laundry rooms, boiler housing, electrical entrails, storage space for defunct medical charts.

The guts. He liked that.

He kept to a schedule: saw Doug, and his other patients, at the assigned times, but left the wards by the stairs, rather than the elevators.

No coffee or meals in the DDR or the cafeteria. When he was hungry — which was infrequent — he grabbed something at a fast-food stand. His skin grew greasy, but that was the price you paid.

Once, as he stuffed french fries down his gullet without tasting, he thought:
a far cry from
foie gras. Cheap food sat in his gut, just dandy, thank you. Perhaps, he’d never been destined for better.

He made sure to check his mail at day’s end but received no more cards from Arthur, no surprises in interoffice envelopes.

They know: I’ve been educated sufficiently.

When he left the hospital, he put the place out of his mind. Concentrating on night work. Driving.

Cruising through the garbage-strewn alleys of Iron Mount, past the pawnbrokers and bail bondsmen and rescue missions and discount clothing stalls that filled the slum. A couple of times he headed out to Saugatuck Finger, where he removed his shoes despite the frozen air and walked barefoot in the hard, wet sand. No remnants of the crime scene remained, just beach and lake and gulls and ragged picnic tables. Behind the spit loomed the backdrop of big trees that would have served the killer so well.

Both times, he stayed for just a few moments, studying the rippling murk of the water, finding a dead crab here, a storm-buffeted rock, there. When the rain came, so cold it was a step away from sleet, he allowed it to pummel his bare head.

Sometimes he cruised the industrial stretch that separated the two kill spots and wondered where the next woman would be found. Driving openly, with the Nova’s radio blasting oldies. Thinking about terrible things.

After dark, he took the scenic route, north. The same route that had led him to the gates of the Haverford Country Club and the brief, cool talk with Tina Balleron. This time, he stopped well before Hale gave way to estate acreage, at the far end of the boulevard, where he motored slowly up chic, elm-shaded streets edged with bistros and boutiques and custom jewelers and graystone town houses, until he found the kind of parking space he needed.

A spot that gave him a full, close view of a particular, cream-colored, limestone high-rise.

A postmodern thing, with gratuitous trim, a green-canopied awning, a cobbled circular drive, not one, but two maroon-liveried doormen. One of the best addresses on Hale, a premium condo.

The place Theodore G. Dirgrove, M.D. listed on his curriculum vitae under “Home Address.”

Exactly the kind of sleek, stylish building in which you’d expect a successful surgeon to live with his wife and two children.

That had been a bit of a surprise, Dirgrove married, with kids, playing at domestic life. Then Jeremy thought:
No, it’s not. Of course he’d play the game. Just as his father had done.

Spouse: Patricia Jennings Dirgrove
Children: Brandon, 9; Sonja, 7.

Sweet.

Another surprise: Dirgrove drove a dull car — a five-year-old Buick. Jeremy had expected something pricier — something smooth and German, wouldn’t that have been a nice tribute to Daddy?

Once again, Dirgrove’s cleverness became apparent: Who’d notice the grayish blue sedan nosing its way out of a darkened alley in a low-rent neighborhood?

When you knew what you were dealing with, everything made sense.

Clarity was a heady drug. Jeremy worked all day, drove all night, lived on insight, convinced himself he rarely needed to eat or sleep.

The surgeon kept surgeon’s hours, often leaving for work before 6
A.M.
and not returning until well after dark.

On the third day of watching, Dirgrove took his family out to dinner, and Jeremy got a good look at the wife and kids as they piled into the Buick.

Patricia Jennings Dirgrove was short and pleasant-looking, a brunette with a curly, rather mannish hairdo. Good figure, high energy, nimble. From the flash of face Jeremy caught, a determined woman. She wore a black, fur-collared wrap and left it unbuttoned. Jeremy caught a glimpse of red knit pants and matching top. One step above sweats. Dressing for comfort. Dirgrove hadn’t changed out of the day’s suit and tie.

The children resembled Patty — as Jeremy came to call her — more than
Ted
. Brandon was stocky with a mop of dark hair, little Sonja slightly fairer but with none of Dirgrove’s Nordic bone structure.

For their sake, Jeremy hoped the lack of resemblance to their father didn’t end there.

Cute kids. He knew what was in store for them.

He followed them to dinner. Ted and Patty chose a midpriced Italian place ten blocks south, where they were seated up front, visible to the street behind a plate-glass window decorated by ornate gold leaf lettering. Inside were wooden booths, a brass-railed cappuccino bar, a copper espresso machine.

Jeremy parked around the corner and made his way past the restaurant on foot, drawing the lapels of his raincoat around his face, a newly purchased black fedora set low.

He strolled past the window, eyes concealed by the hat’s brim. Bought a newspaper from a stand to look normal and repeated the pass. Back and forth. Three more times. Dirgrove never looked up from his lasagna.

The surgeon sat there, bored. All the smiling conversation, between Brandon and Sonja and Mom.