“But he’ll have to leave it to go in for surgery.”
Brovski shakes his head. “We’ve built an operating theater in his home. It’s state-of-the-art.”
That term again.
Maggie takes her time, tries to play it cool.
“What do you say, Doctor McCabe?”
“I’ll need to stay for two weeks post-op.”
“Yes, of course.”
“That’s a fair amount of time for me to be away.”
“Ah,” Brovski says with the hint of a smile, “very good.”
She says nothing.
“Let me guess, Doctor McCabe: You’re not sure our paying off the debts is adequate compensation.”
Maggie shrugs. “What you’re asking me to do is pretty risky.”
“It’s not, not in the least, but fair enough.” Brovski checks his watch and feigns boredom. “We are in a bit of a rush, so let me cut to it. If you come with me to the airport right now, on top of getting you and your sister out of debt and settling your malpractice case, how about we pay you...” He pauses and looks up purely for effect. Then he just drops the bomb.
“...ten million dollars?”
If Maggie ever had a poker face, it’s gone now. He almost laughs.
“Five million put into your account at Merrill Lynch right now. The other five million when you’re done.”
Maggie is not sure she can speak. Ivan Brovski grins.
“So we have a deal?”
Chapter Five
Maggie stares out the window of what could inadequately be described as a “private plane.” Not that she’s had a lot of experience with private planes, of course. When she boarded, the flight attendant introduced herself as Hannah and then proceeded to give Maggie an orientation tour of a full-size 180-seat Airbus A320 renovated for private use. The new interior more resembles an upscale Manhattan penthouse than anything in the aviation family. The décor is gold with leopard prints. Flight Attendant Hannah leads her through a curving open floor plan with two lounges, a dining room, a gourmet kitchen, a theater room with a 65-inch contoured TV (“One of our four large-screen TVs,” Hannah had told her), and a primary suite with a king-size bed and a marble ensuite bathroom, including one of those oversize rain showerheads.
In the primary bedroom, there is a Matisse oil of a woman reclining on a couch.
“Is this a real Matisse?” Maggie asks.
Hannah’s reply is a simple smile.
Two hours earlier, she and Ivan Brovski finish their meeting at Barlow’s, and Ivan leads her back toward the elevator.
“Before we leave,” Maggie tells Ivan, “I’d like to speak to Doctor Barlow.”
“He’s in surgery.”
The elevator opens. Maggie gets inside.
Alou and the Mercedes await them in the basement garage. Alou opens the back door. She slides in. Her phone is there. Ivan gets in the other door and sits next to her. She picks up her phone. No service in the garage’s underbelly. When the Mercedes finally reaches street level, six notifications for unanswered calls pop up, all from Sharon.
Ivan sees the notifications over her shoulder and smiles.
“What?” Maggie says.
“Your sister,” he says. “Call her back.”
She does. Sharon answers immediately, before the first ring finishes, and asks in a harried voice, “What the hell’s going on, Mags?”
“Meaning?”
“The bank called. My debts have been paid. All of them.”
Sharon keeps babbling excitedly as Maggie looks up at Ivan and that no-teeth grin.
When Sharon stops to take a breath, Maggie explains. “I was just hired for a job.”
That silences Sharon for a moment. Then: “And this job paid off my debts?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of job?”
“A high-paying one.”
“Well, I knew that already.”
“I’ll be gone for a week, maybe two.”
“Doing what, Mags?”
“Don’t worry, okay?”
“Good thing you said, ‘Don’t worry,’ because no one ever worries after someone says that.”
“I can’t say more.”
“Why not?”
Maggie switches the phone from her right hand to her left. “It’s confidential. There are privacy clauses and HIPAA and all that.”
“So, wait, you’re working as a physician again?”
“What part of ‘it’s confidential’ is confusing to you?” Maggie half snaps. “Look, it’s all fine, trust me. Please just let me do this.”
Sharon has more questions, but Maggie dodges and weaves and gets her off the phone. When she hangs up, she tells Ivan, “I need to go back to the hotel to check out and pack—”
“Done.”
“That ‘done’ stuff,” Maggie says. “It’s getting annoying.”
Ivan Brovski sits back and smiles. The car turns north on the Henry Hudson Parkway.
“Suppose I change my mind,” Maggie says.
He tilts his head the smallest amount.
“Suppose I want out.”
“Your phone,” Ivan says, pointing at it with his chin.
“Yes.”
“You have your banking app, no? Check your balance.”
Maggie knows or at least suspects what’s coming when she uses facial recognition to open the app, but her eyes still bulge.
The five million dollars are already there.
“Call your financial advisor before we get to the airport,” Ivan says. “He may have to report such a large deposit.”
“She.”
“What?”
“She may have to report, not he,” Maggie says. “My financial advisor is a woman. I would have thought your research would have told you that.”
“The first name Leslie threw me off,” Ivan says.
Man, they really do know everything.
“Also call your attorney,” he says. “The suit against you is being settled as we speak.”
Maggie sits back. The implications are overwhelming. No more malpractice suit. Wow. “You didn’t answer my question,” she says.
Ivan glances out the window, then back at Maggie. “The ‘suppose I change my mind’ question?”
“Yes.”
He shrugs. “You can give us the money back, I suppose. The debt relief and the malpractice settlement might make the rest of the recompensation unwieldy and arduous, but let’s not go there quite yet, shall we? I want to assure you that this is all on the up-and-up. My client is a very important man. Because he has the means and craves secrecy, he is hiring you as” — Ivan looks up as though again searching for the right words — “the ultimate concierge physician. Please don’t worry.”
“Good thing you said, ‘Don’t worry,’” Maggie mutters, echoing Sharon.
“Pardon?”
But there it is — that whole thing about recompensation being unwieldy and arduous. It’s too late. She is in it now. There is no way out. It is how they do it. Ivan Brovski might smile a lot, but that smile never reaches his eyes. You don’t cross these people. She should have learned that a long time ago.
Marc’s voice: “I have a bad feeling about this...”
She should have listened. Or maybe not. Nothing has changed. Ivan is right. It is a job, a good one, ridiculously well paid, and really, she had heard rumors about this kind of private surgery for years. Like he said: She is being hired as a concierge doctor. It’s not uncommon.
In the end, this patient, like any other patient, is hiring her to perform specific services, and — not to toot her own horn — he can afford the best.
It’s a win-win.
“Once you board the plane,” Ivan Brovski says, “we will insist on no communications with the outside world. This was explained to you before, but to reiterate: No calls, no emails, no FaceTime, no messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal or Telegram or—”