She smiles, punches my arm. “That Dee,” she says. Then laughs heartily.
“What?”
“He used to call it my third nipple!”
I share her laugh until she says, “Wanna touch it?”
What I want to do is cut that abomination off her head and feed it to whoever kidnapped Rachel. But God help me, I do touch it, and she giggles.
“How long are you planning to stay in town, Joe?” she says, calling me by the name I gave her on the phone.
I force a smile. “Well, I was planning to leave after the funeral.” I wait till she looks up at me, then I wink. “But now I’m not so sure.”
She smiles and twists her hair. Then takes a pen from her purse and carefully writes her phone number on the back of a blank appointment card.
“Call me if you decide to stay. We can go somewhere and hoist a glass to Dee’s memory.”
“You think Dee would mind?”
“Who gives a shit?” she says, and punches me in the arm again.
We laugh about that, and when the laughter dies down she excuses herself and heads to the bathroom. When she comes out I notice she is still bowling shoe ugly, but her panty hose is missing.
Her first words are, “I do remember Ms. Crouch.”
“You do?”
“I just called Ricki at the office to check on it.”
“And?”
“She brought us Rachel Case. Patient Number 18660.”
10.
Ruth has never ridden in a limousine, and hopes I’ll let her get in and circle the block just once. I oblige her. As we complete the turn, my driver, Pete, pulls up beside the coffee shop.
Ruth leans into me and whispers, “Will you hold the door for me when I get out?
“Be glad to,” I said.
She whispered, “Good. I don’t want Pete to see my panties.”
Pete puts the car in park.
“Pete?” I call out.
“Yes sir?”
“Stay put. I’ve got this.”
He nods. I climb out and circle the car and open Ruth’s door with a flourish. As she exits the limo, I realize the only way Pete could’ve seen her panties is if he’d opened her purse. In the space of three seconds I manage to see more of Ruth Henry’s anatomy than Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears have revealed, combined.
“You like that, don’t you?” she says.
“Very much so,” I lie, thinking my driver Pete to be a lucky man.
After agreeing to meet at the funeral tomorrow, Ruth and I say our goodbyes.
On the way back to Rachel’s apartment I call Lou Kelly, my facilitator, and tell him everything I’ve learned since getting Nadine’s phone call seven hours ago. He listens carefully, asking no questions. When I’m done, I ask him what he thinks.
“We don’t have enough information yet,” Lou says. “But I agree we should check the blood test. I can get the results and have them interpreted if you want.”
“Get at least one set of eyes on them before sending them to me. Then I’ll have someone at the hospital review them.”
“What hospital?”
“There’s a hospital below Rachel’s apartment, remember? Someone there can help me.”
Lou pauses a moment, and I say, “How long will it take?”
“Give me thirty minutes.”
“That sounds too quick.”
“Well, you’ve given me the name of the doctor, the date, and Rachel’s patient number. That ought to be enough for our guys.”
I described Lou Kelly as a facilitator, but he’s worlds beyond that. He’s also a computer wizard who employs a group of geeks who can access anything in the world that can be accessed. He’d been my right-hand man for years, both at the CIA and afterward, at Sensory Resources, where we teamed up to kill suspected terrorists. Lou found them, I killed them. Now we’re semi-retired, but we still do some work together.
I paid Lou an enormous sum of money recently, for helping me steal billions of dollars from the world’s most dangerous criminals. To this day he’s the one asset I can’t afford to lose. We had a temporary falling out once, when he tried to murder me, but we’ve moved past that. Our relationship is symbiotic. He continues to make things happen for me, and I continue not to kill him for his disloyalty.
11.
It takes Lou more than an hour to call me back. When he does, the news is bad.
“There’s no record of Rachel Case’s blood work.”
“Could they have lost it?”
“Doesn’t matter. There’d still be a record of submission in one of the data bases.”
“Maybe Dr. Dee used an out of town lab.”
“That’s what took so long. I checked them all.”
“The whole country?”
“The whole world.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” he says.
“You’re taking this personally.”
“I don’t like it when things go missing. This isn’t some routine kidnapping. This is a government thing.”
“Well, we assumed that already. They used a professional extraction team.”
“Right. But there are lots of government operatives who could’ve pulled that off. What I’m saying, this goes all the way up.”
“And you’re basing that on a missing blood test?”
“You keep forgetting I still work for Sensory Resources.”
He’s right, I do keep forgetting. “So?”
“So when this sort of thing goes down, I’m the guy who makes the records disappear.”
“What are you saying—that whoever’s responsible knows Rachel and I have a personal relationship? And you and I have a business one?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
We’re silent awhile. Eventually I say, “Let’s approach it from the other end. Let’s say something turned up in Rachel’s blood test that was so terrible, so dangerous, they wanted to abduct her and study it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“But let’s say it’s not. What could possibly come out of her blood test that would cause this type of reaction? I mean, they killed her doctor, for God’s sake.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Sure we do.”
“No,” Lou says, “we don’t. Not for certain. If we assume the doctor died of natural causes, and that someone wanted Rachel enough to kidnap her and kill Nadine, the blood test becomes irrelevant.”
“Except that the blood test suddenly never existed. And the doctor died from a heart attack within the same time frame Nadine suffered one. And we know hers was induced. Thank God she keeps an emergency beeper at her bedside for Rachel. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have made it.”
Lou pauses. “If you’re clinging to the blood test, I have no answer for you. If Rachel had any type of blood disease, the lab would’ve contacted the doctor, and he would’ve gotten her to a hospital.”
“What if she’s a carrier for something the military could use for chemical warfare?”
“Are you listening to yourself?” Lou says. “I mean, I know you’re upset about what’s happened to Rachel and Nadine. But sometimes the simple reason is the way to go.”
“Which is?”
“If you assume the doctor’s death is a coincidence, you’re left with an attempted murder and kidnapping. A single event.”
“To what end?”
“My best guess?”
“Shoot.”
“We stole billions of dollars from war lords and terrorists.”
“So?”
“Maybe they want it back.”
I think about this a minute. Then say, “Well, I’m not going to sit around and wait for a ransom note.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Call someone who might be able to help me find Rachel.”
“Who’s that?”
“Sam Case.”
Lou laughs out loud, then catches himself. “Sorry, Donovan. Didn’t mean to laugh with Rachel being kidnapped and all. But you’ve got to admit it’s hilarious about you and Sam working together. I mean, she’s still his wife, right?”