“I’m Dr. Marshall,” Tansu said.
The man grunted something that sounded like, “‘Nice seeing ya.’”
The newspaper had a full-length picture of a horse on the cover. The horse posed for the picture with a bouquet of flowers across his back where the saddle normally went. Next to the horse was a tiny midget of a man with a pink shirt.
“Nasty break you got there,” Tansu said, looking at the man’s leg, trying to decide who he should kill first.
“Snapped my metacarpal,” the man said from behind the newspaper.
Tansu shook his head. The man was far too preoccupied to care what he was doing. He turned toward Julie Bracco and made sure the man’s view was blocked. He removed the scalpel from his pocket and palmed it as he leaned over her limp frame. Her face was turned away from him leaving her neck exposed. Tansu felt like a vampire in an old black and white movie, approaching his victim with much the same passion for blood. He quickly glanced back at the man who was still buried deep behind the newspaper. He raised his right hand with the scalpel while his left hand held her head in place. “Mirdin, Mrs. Bracco,” he whispered in her ear.
Suddenly, Tansu found himself lunging for the floor. His head bounced hard on the linoleum. He quickly turned to his side to see what happened. The man in the robe was wagging a finger at him. The straight part of his cane was in the palm of his hand. He had yanked the curved end around Tansu’s ankles and pulled his feet from under him.
“What are you doing?” Tansu said.
“The metacarpal bone is in my hand,” the man said, standing over him, holding up his free hand. “The metatarsal is in my foot. Capisce?”
Tansu saw the man favoring his good leg and realized that he could easily overtake him. The man reached down and picked up the scalpel from the floor. He looked at it with amusement. “Doing a little emergency surgery, Doc?”
Tansu slowly got his legs under him and remained in a crouch position, ready to strike. He was about to jump when he noticed that the man was now holding a gun. A gun with a silencer attached. Tansu was beginning to understand that this man was no ordinary patient. The man held a finger to his mouth. “Shhh, be real still. I’m not going to turn you in.”
Tansu was listening. He knew the man wasn’t a police officer, so maybe he could make a deal with him. In reality, all Tansu wanted was an opening. Just one little mishap or lax moment. He felt the outside of his pocket to make sure the other scalpel was still there. It was.
The man motioned Tansu to get to his feet. “You and I have a lot in common, Mohammed, or whatever your name is. By the way, if you’re from Turkey, does that make you an Arab?”
Tansu didn’t answer.
“Oh, fuck it, you turds are all the same-talk, talk, talk. Can’t shut you guys up.”
Tansu had his hand in his coat pocket now and was removing the plastic sheath from the tip of the scalpel blade.
“Anyway,” the man said, “all I want is a few answers to some simple questions and I’ll have you back on the street in no time.” The man smiled at Tansu. He smiled like a fool without any knowledge of Tansu’s physical abilities. Still, Tansu wished he knew who the man was.
Marie Clarendon sat at her reception desk facing the front door of Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was going back and forth between typing an admittance form for a new patient and sneaking glances at her pocket mirror. She kept pulling her skin back on the side of her face the way Dr. Marshall had done. She was imagining how many years her face could have back, when a man in a green sweatshirt walked through the automatic sliding glass door.
Marie snapped her compact shut and immediately returned to her paperwork. The man walked with a slight limp and went directly to the receptionist’s desk.
“Marie?” the man said.
Marie was told by the hospital’s attorneys not to engage the man in conversation. He had filed a lawsuit against one of their doctors for negligence and was using discreet interviews with hospital personnel to incriminate the young internist. He’d already pilfered information from a couple of unsuspecting nurses while pretending to be waiting for a family member in the emergency room. He was a farmer from the south somewhere and his good-old-boy accent lured them into believing he was harmless.
“Marie,” the man said urgently.
Without looking up, Marie said, “I’m not talking to you, Charlie. You already got me in too much trouble.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to use you like that, it’s just that-”
“Go away, Charlie. I’m not listening to you.”
“You don’t understand, one of your doctors is in real trouble.”
Marie tapped away at her keyboard.
“It’s not what you think,” he explained.
Marie stopped and pointed at the man. “I’m telling you for the last time, if you have a complaint, take it up with the administrator. I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“I don’t have any complaint. I’m talking about one of your employees being in trouble. Don’t you care about him?”
“Who?”
“The doctor-that’s who I’m talking about.”
“Which doctor?”
“I don’t know his name exactly.”
“Then how do you know he’s in trouble?”
“Because,” he said, pointing toward the parking lot, “I just saw him jump out of one of your windows.”
Chapter 28
At 35,000 feet the 747 ate up the sky in large chunks. Nick could hear the urgency in the four engines as clouds whipped passed by the windows.
“How fast you think we’re going?” Nick asked Matt, who was scrolling through a Globe, Arizona phone directory on his laptop.
“Huh?”
“How fast do you think we’re going?” Nick repeated.
“Uh, six hundred miles an hour,” Matt said, pointing at the screen with his finger.
“Hmm,” Nick said, already forgetting the question. He was also on a laptop navigating through the FBI’s private website. He’d just receive a new level of security clearance and was now viewing information that had previously been unavailable to him. The most intriguing was the data pertaining to Kemel Kharrazi’s renegade childhood. As he read the gruesome details of Kharrazi’s upbringing, he actually found himself feeling sympathy for the man.
“I’ve got the Gila County Recorders office,” Matt said, scribbling down a phone number on a legal pad.
“Good. Get a listing of all houses bought in the Payson area over, say, the past twelve months. Have them fax it to the Sheriff’s Office in Payson.”
Matt pressed buttons on his cell phone and Nick could hear him getting right down to business. The seats in the 747 resembled a steakhouse restaurant; there were crescent-shaped leather booths surrounding a round freshly-polished mahogany table. The booths and the tables were all fastened to the floor. In the center of the table was the emblem of the Secretary of Defense-a bald eagle with its wings spread, proudly exposing red, white and blue stripes on it’s chest.
Sitting at a similar setting behind them were agents Ed Tolliver, Carl Rutherford, Mel Downing and Dave Tanner. All four agents began the flight shuffling through files and writing notes. Now, they each seemed to be staring at the ceiling of the jet, until you noticed that their eyes were shut. They looked as if they had been the victims of chemical warfare instead of a simple deterioration of their sleep schedule over the past week. Behind them, sipping on a bottle of Diet Coke by himself, sat Silk. He was reading Forbes magazine with his feet propped up on the table.
Silk looked up and gave Nick a mock salute. Nick shook his head and smiled. He could use an army of Silks right about now.
Nick’s phone rang and saw that it was Johns Hopkins Hospital. He pushed a button. “Julie?”