'Have a good day, now,' Hauser said.
'Yes. You, too.' Sidonis paused and lookedat the man once more. 'Have we met?'
The man's ocher smile prompted Sidonis tolook away.
'I don't think so, Doctor,' he said. 'Butperhaps we shall meet again sometime.'
Chapter33
By nightfall the three-day heat wave hadyielded to a pleasant summer rain. Harry left the apartment at ten-thirty andtook a cab to the East Side. As instructed, he was wearing a baseball-style cap- the only one he could find in the apartment. It was Evie's from herWashington days, navy blue with U.S. Senate in gold just above the brim.After reading the introduction to Desiree's book, Between the Sheets, hecouldn't help but wonder if the cap was a trophy.
Harry had been loudly rebuked by OwenErdman for breaking their agreement and putting up the posters. But as Santanahad predicted, he did not appear to be in danger of losing his staff privilegesso long as they were taken down promptly. Harry would do MMC. Santana and theman he had hired to help cover every hospital in the city would take care ofthe six others they had done so far.
When they had left Harry's apartment,there was still a good deal of tension lingering between the two of them. Harryfelt he could no longer trust Ray Santana to act in anyone's interest but hisown. To his credit, Santana did not dispute that point. But he maintained thatany sacrifice, by anyone, that resulted in The Doctor's death would have beenworth it.
They briefly considered bringing AlbertDickinson up to speed on the developments in the case. But neither of them werein favor of doing that. The chances of getting anything helpful from him weresignificantly lower than the chances of his causing more trouble for them.Perchek was arrogant and fearless, but he was not foolish. Dickinson would morethan likely end up driving him underground — perhaps the worst thing that couldhappen. Since it was still not at all clear what The Doctor was doing inManhattan or how he came to kill Evie, there was no way of predicting how longhe would stick around.
While Harry and Santana were off to teardown posters, Maura stayed at the apartment to screen phone calls. There was asteady flow of them now at about two or three an hour. Most of the calls wereclearly cranks. But some sounded interesting. Maura dutifully logged each oneand promised to get back to the caller.
With fifteen minutes to go before he wasto meet Kevin Loomis, Harry paid the cabby off at Park and Fifty-first andwalked the remaining blocks. Although he wasn't particularly worried aboutbeing followed, he had not forgotten his experience in Desiree's apartment. Hecut down to Forty-ninth and back, pausing in several doorways to survey thestreet. Nothing. It was a garbage collection night, and the light raindid little to wash away the stench from the mountains of plastic bags awaitingpickup. It had been a while since the last protracted garbage strike inManhattan. On summer nights like this, he could understand why they seldom wentunresolved for very long.
Traffic was light, and the intersection ofFifty-first and Third was nearly deserted. With Evie's U.S. Senate cap pulledlow over his eyes, Harry leaned against a light post and waited. At exactly11:05, a Yellow cab pulled up. The front passenger door swung open.
'Get in, Doctor,' the driver said, hisvoice like number thirty-six sandpaper.
'You Loomis?' Harry asked as the cabpulled away and headed uptown.
'Nope.' The driver said nothing more untilthey neared Fifth Avenue at Fifty-seventy. 'As soon as I'm across Fifth, jumpout and hurry up to the corner of Sixtieth. You'll be picked up there. I'vealready been paid, so just get out quickly and go.'
He slowed until the light was just aboutto turn red, then spurted across the intersection just ahead of the oncomingFifth Avenue traffic. The maneuver drew an angry volley of horn blasts, but ensuredthat no car could make it through behind them. Harry hurried up Fifty toSixtieth. As soon as he reached the corner, a black Lexus rolled up. The dooropened and Harry jumped in while the car was still moving. The driver, agood-looking man about forty, swung on to Central Park South and accelerated.
'Kevin Loomis,' he said. 'Sorry for thecloak-and-dagger stuff. I'm not even sure it'll do any good. Stallings and Itook every precaution we could think of when we went to meet at Battery Park,but somehow they still managed to follow one or both of us. Stallings was onthe way back to his office from our meeting when he had his cardiac arrest.'
'Who are they?' Harry asked.
'They are the people I think areresponsible for killing your wife. That's why I decided to see you tonight.They're health insurance people. They call themselves The Roundtable.'
'You mean like the Million DollarRoundtable?'
'More like the Hundred Million DollarRoundtable. . I'm part of it.'
They turned on to the West Side Highwayand headed uptown. Harry listened in near disbelief as Kevin Loomis describedthe secret society and his recent involvement with it. Harry liked the manimmediately — the hard edge to his speech, the street-smart toughnessunderlying the newly acquired executive's manners. If The Roundtable was aselite and exclusive as Loomis depicted, it was a bit difficult to imagine himbelonging.
As he listened, there were two things thatstruck Harry almost from the beginning. The first was the secrecy and mistrust — and how little Loomis had been allowed to know about the other knights. Itsounded more like a covert government operation than an old-boys club. Thesecond was something about the man, himself. Clearly Loomis was saddened bywhat had happened — to Evie and to James Stallings. But while hecertainly wasn't flip or glib, neither did he seem that distraught or desperate- or even frightened. He sounded much calmer tonight than when they first spokeon the phone. Calm and detached.
'As far as your wife goes,' Loomis said,'I'm just guessing at what might have happened. I'm assuming you had nothing todo with her death.'
'Our marriage was on the rocks, just likethe newspapers said. But I would never have harmed her.'
'The people on The Roundtable are terriblyparanoid. They were worried that Desiree was investigating them.'
'She wasn't,' Harry said. 'She was writinga book and preparing a tabloid TV report on the power of sex in business andpolitics.' He reviewed the night he had spent in Desiree's apartment, omittingany mention of The Doctor. 'Her involvement with your group was primarilyresearch,' he concluded. 'She probably went through your wallets when she hadthe chance. She figured out you were in the insurance business, but that wasall she knew. I don't think she had the faintest notion what you were meetingfor.'
'Well, apparently The Roundtable didn'tbuy that. I was there for the discussion, and there was not even a hint thatthey planned to track her down and kill her. But now I'm sure they did. I haveno idea who actually injected her with that chemical. I would imagine it's thesame guy who carries out the terminations of policy-holders who cost ourcompany too much money. Hell, for all I know, there may even be more than oneof them.'
Harry decided to wait until he knew a bitmore about Loomis and his motives before sharing the news of Anton Perchek.They entered the Bronx on the Henry Hudson Parkway and continued driving awayfrom Manhattan, toward Van Cortland Park. Harry remained uneasy about Loomis'saffect, and wondered if the man was lying or perhaps holding something back.
'Kevin,' he said, 'why have you decided totell me all this? I mean, you're part of it. If The Roundtable is destroyed,there's a good chance you'll suffer, too.'