“Maybe there wasn’t.”
“I was just trying to protect him.”
“Or maybe you were just protecting yourself. Like you said, everyone thinks they understand when they think the worst.”
He didn’t answer, he didn’t have to, the truth of it was writ upon his face. But if he had spoken up, things might have been so different. The D.A. would have turned over the information to the defense, she would have had to, and it would have been rough for Seamus on the stand, sure. It might have made a difference in the François Dubé case, sure, but it would have made a difference to Detective Gleason, too. Because if his commanding officers had known of his relationship with Seamus Dent, he never would have been assigned Dent’s homicide, he never would have rushed off rashly to confront Seamus’s murderer, he never would have killed the man, never would have been booted down to the auto squad. And he never would have been in this situation now, right now, with his fate in my hands.
“You should have told them,” I said.
“I know it now.”
“If they find out, they’re going to look again at that shooting.”
“Most likely.”
“It’s going to appear less like self-defense and more like a dark vigilante form of revenge.”
“It was what it was,” he said.
“But still.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“It’s going to be bad.”
He shrugged.
“You understand I don’t have a choice.”
“I was just trying to do something good.”
“But that’s the way of it, Detective,” I said as I pulled out the subpoena I had typed up in my office and placed it gently before him. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
He didn’t look at it, he didn’t have to.
I emptied my second Blue Hawaii. The alcohol puckered my throat, the pineapple juice jabbed like a steel pick into my tooth. For a moment my jaw trembled and the blood in my head drained and the world grew pale.
Gleason reached out a hand and grabbed my shoulder. “Sakes alive, boy. What’s going on? Are you drunk?”
I shook my head and immediately regretted the action, the pain burrowing deeper with each shake.
“It’s your tooth, isn’t it? Let me give you the name of the dentist I was telling you about.”
“I have a name,” I said, grabbing into my jacket for the card Whit had given me.
“But you should give this guy a chance. He’s supposed to be relatively painless.”
“It’s the relative part that has me worried.”
“You need help, son. Really. I could give him a call.”
I put the cool of the glass against my jaw. “Who is he?”
“Pfeffer,” he said.
My eyes snapped open at the name.
“Dr. Pfeffer,” said Detective Gleason. “He’s the one who helped Seamus, and believe me when I say, based on what he did for Seamus, he’s an absolute magician.”
18
“Oh, Mr. Carl,” said Dr. Pfeffer’s receptionist, “we’re so glad you’ve come in for a visit. You’re looking well, I must say. And such a nice tie. The doctor is seeing another patient right now, but he’s certainly expecting you. If you could just fill out this new-patient questionnaire, we’d be so very grateful.”
It was bright in Dr. Pfeffer’s flat beige waiting room, too bright. The colors of the magazines laid out in perfect rows on the side tables were washed by the relentless incandescence of the fluorescent lights overhead, the air itself was conditioned by the jaunty Muzak pumping loudly through speakers in the ceiling. And then there was the pretty young receptionist herself, with her daunting cheerfulness, her own wondrous smile, her lies about my tie. Her perk made my aching tooth ache all the more. Walking into Dr. Pfeffer’s waiting room was like walking into a timeless, context-free capsule of dental cheer. We could as easily have been soaring to the moon as in a building in Philly, but wherever we were, we would show off our pearly whites and be jolly.
As I took the clipboard with the questionnaire, I noticed something strange on the wall beside the reception desk. Hanging in their wooden frames were an array of smiles, photographs of gleaming, perfect sets of teeth one above the last, just the smiles, nothing else, a sort of hall of fame of happy dental hygiene. I looked at all those perfect mouths, rubbed my tongue along the rows of my ragged teeth, and then retreated to one of the generic beige chairs and started on the questionnaire.
NAME: Sure.
DATE OF BIRTH: Getting a bit far away.
EDUCATION: Too much.
INCOME: Not nearly enough.
FAMILY HISTORY: Murky, at best.
HEALTH HISTORY: Surprisingly good, except for a tooth.
NATURE OF PROBLEM: Dental.
CURRENT MEDICATIONS: Sea Breezes at dusk.
HEALTH INSURANCE: Deficient.
DISABILITY INSURANCE: Why does this question make me nervous?
LIFE INSURANCE: Yikes.
GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT: Huh?
GREATEST DISAPPOINTMENT: Excuse me?
DARKEST SECRET: You’re kidding, right?
PERSON YOU’D MOST LIKE TO MEET: A dentist. I have a toothache and I’d like to meet a dentist.
ARE YOU CURRENTLY IN A FULFILLING SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP?
That last question sent me back to the receptionist. “What is this all about?” I said.
“It’s the new-patient questionnaire, Mr. Carl. Every new patient fills it out.”
“But it’s getting a little personal. Like this question here about current relationships.”
“Well?”
“I don’t understand the relevance to my sore tooth.”
“Dr. Pfeffer takes a holistic approach to the practice of dentistry. You don’t just treat a tooth, he likes to say, you treat a person.”
“How about if the person only wants to treat the damn tooth?”
She sighed cheerily. “That’s fine, Mr. Carl. Only answer the questions you are comfortable with, so long as you put down all your insurance information.”
“I don’t have dental insurance.”
“Then we take Visa and MasterCard.”
“Of course you do.”
“Just give us your card number and the expiration date. But remember, Mr. Carl, as Dr. Pfeffer constantly reminds his patients, every tooth is connected to a nerve, and every nerve is ultimately connected to every other nerve in a series of switches we don’t yet fully understand.” Her bright, cheery smile was suddenly not so cheery. “You wouldn’t want to cure the tooth only to find something else stops working.”
I smiled politely back until it hurt, sat down, read again question sixteen.
Are you currently in a fulfilling sexual relationship? How does one answer such a question? Do I talk about my past affairs, my hopes for the future? Do I discuss the dates I had been on in the last couple of months, the prospects I was prospecting for as we spoke. And what does fulfilling mean, anyway? Can a sexual relationship be equated to a brisket, where after your third portion you push away from the table and say, No more, thank you, I’m fulfilled? By and large, my fulfilling relationships had not been sexual and my sexual relationships had not been fulfilling and that seemed to me exactly the way the world worked. So I thought about it some more, all the twists and turns, the ambiguities inherent in the question, when a door opened.
A woman holding a file strode out, her smile blinding in its whiteness, its width, its perfection. She was tall, thin, her ginger hair straight and silky, her eyes blue. She was dressed like a high-fashion model on a runway and was every bit as lovely.
I watched as she handed the file to the receptionist.
“How did it go, Ms. Kingsly?”
“Fine, Deirdre, wonderful.” She rubbed her tongue, pink and glistening, across her upper teeth. “He has such gentle hands.”
She glanced my way. I tried to smile. She turned back to the receptionist as if my chair had been empty.
“The doctor wants to see me in four months. A Wednesday would be best. In the afternoon.”