He nodded his understanding, swung his feet off the bed, and sort of hopped to the floor.
He retraced his steps to the nurses' station and picked up the telephone.
"Dr. Martinez," he said.
There was no reply. He looked at Nurse Dubinsky and shrugged helplessly.
"No one on the line."
"Hang up. He'll call back," Nurse Dubinsky said with certainty.
Dr. Martinez hung up the phone. The two of them stared at it for two long minutes. It did not ring.
"Well," Dr. Martinez said, and shrugged again.
That figures, Nurse Dubinsky thought, after I wake this poor young man up, then this bastard decides to hell with it, he'll wait 'til morning.
"I'm sorry, Doctor."
"It is not a problem," Dr. Martinez said, and started back down the corridor.
He had taken a half-dozen steps when the telephone rang.
He picked it up.
"Seven-C, Dr. Martinez."
"You're a hard man to get on the goddamn phone, Doctor. "
"How may I help you?"
"I have a message for Dr. Amelia A. Payne."
"She's not here," Dr. Martinez said.
"The nurse told me that. That's why I wanted to talk to you."
"What is the message?"
"You got a pencil and paper?"
"Yes," Dr. Martinez said, although in fact he did not.
"Okay. Now, get this right. You ready?"
"Ready."
"To Dr. Amelia A. Payne. Your patient, Miss Cynthia Longwood… Am I going too fast for you?"
"No. Go ahead," Dr. Martinez said.
He had looked in on 723 just before going to an empty room to try to catch a little sleep. She had been awake. Privately, Dr. Martinez disagreed with her attending physician, Dr. Payne. If the Longwood girl had been his patient, he would have prescribed at least a mild sedative to help her through the night. She had recurring, and very disturbing, dreams, the consequence of which was that she slept very badly, did not get enough sleep, and thus dozed through the day.
If she had been his patient, he believed it would be best to have her rested when he spoke with her, trying to get to the root of her problem. But she was Dr. A. A. Payne's patient, not his. And he was a resident, and Dr. Payne was not only an adjunct professor of psychiatry, but held in the highest possible regard by the chief of Psychiatric Services, Aaron Stein, M.D., former president of the American Psychiatric Association.
Despite that, and his own genuine respect for her, Dr. Martinez felt that Dr. Payne was wrong when she told him that in cases like this the best sedation was the least sedation, and it was her call.
"Okay," the caller said. "She was stripped naked and orally raped by a policeman under circumstances that were themselves traumatic. You got that?"
"No. You were going too fast for me," Dr. Martinez said as he gestured to Nurse Dubinsky that he wanted to write something.
She pushed an aluminum clipboard to him, and when she saw that he was having trouble finding his own pen or pencil, handed him her own ballpoint.
"Miss Cynthia Longwood was stripped naked and orally raped," the caller began, very slowly, making it clear to Dr. Martinez that he was reciting-probably reading-what he was saying, "by a policeman under circumstances that were themselves traumatic. You got it all now, Doc?"
And what he had recited-probably read-didn't sound as if it had been written by the man on the telephone.
"I've got it now, thank you," Dr. Martinez said.
"Read it back to me."
"Miss Cynthia Longwood was stripped naked and orally raped by a policeman under circumstances that were themselves traumatic," Dr. Martinez recited.
Nurse Dubinsky's eyebrows rose, and she shook her head.
"That's it. You make sure Dr. Payne gets that."
"Of course. Just as soon as she comes in. And who should I say called?"
The caller laughed. "Nice try! Fuck you, Doc."
There was a click and the line went dead.
Dr. Martinez and Nurse Dubinsky looked at each other.
"Interesting," Dr. Martinez thought aloud.
"You believe that?"
"I don't believe the man who called wrote the message, " Dr. Martinez said. "I think he was reading it."
"Yeah," Nurse Dubinsky agreed. "He didn't sound as if he would say things like 'orally raped' or 'traumatic circumstances.' "
Dr. Martinez looked at his watch and wrote down the time.
"If I happen to be asleep-"
"You mean, 'are not at the moment available,' " Nurse Dubinsky interrupted him.
"Thank you, but no thank you," Dr. Martinez said. "What is it you say up here about 'calling a shovel'?"
"A spade a spade," she corrected him. "It's from playing cards."
"If Dr. Payne should come here in the morning, and I am sleeping, please wake me. I want to talk to her about this. I think we both should be available to her."
"Of course," Nurse Dubinsky said.
"This is very interesting," Dr. Martinez said. "I wonder who that man was? Not the policeman, certainly."
"That poor girl," Nurse Dubinsky said.
When Matt woke up, the first thing he saw was Susan's brassiere, which he had placed with the other contents of his trousers and jacket pockets on the bedside table.
He sat up in bed and reached for it, feeling more than a little chagrined. Taking it did not seem nearly so much a fine idea in the light of day as it had the night before.
"Jesus," he said aloud.
He examined the torn buttonhole on the strap.
Was I "mad with passion"? Or did that just happen, because we were like two squirming snakes on the seat of the Porsche?
He raised it to his nose and sniffed it. There was a very faint odor of Susan-or her perfume? Same thing?-on it.
Do I really love her? Or do I have a fatal case of penis erectus?
How could I possibly love her? Christ, I hardly know her. And what we've done most of the time is either fight or lie to each other.
But if I don't love her, where did this Susie-and-me-against -the-whole-goddamned-world feeling come from?
And does she love me? Or is this because she knows I'm onto her and fucking the cop, under the circumstances, seems a more logical thing to do than docilely putting out your wrists to have them cuffed?
And where is Susie now? Waking up and getting ready to go to work, to wait for my call, or already on an airplane headed for San Josй, Costa Rica, having stopped only long enough to call Chenowith from a pay phone in the airport to tell him the cops are onto him for his bank jobs?
Could she have been faking what happened to us in the car? Or in bed?
Why not? I got my sex education from two sources. Dad telling me about how not to knock up some decent girl, and Amy telling me the important stuff, including that because the female is smaller and weaker than the male, nature has equipped them with superior mental mechanisms to even things up. They lie much better than men, according to Amy. And, Amy said, they are entirely capable of allowing themselves to get knocked up if that's the only way they see to get the male of their choice to the altar. And to do that, they are entirely capable of pretending a far greater physical fascination with, sexual reaction to, the male than is actually the case. They can and do fake orgasms.
Was that what Susie was up to? Convincing me that I was the greatest thing since Casanova in the sack because that made more sense than getting herself hauled off?
It is entirely possible, Matthew the Innocent, that you have been played like a violin by a really tough female who had trouble not laughing out loud at your naпvetй.
Particularly when I wanted to keep her brassiere. Jesus!
Am I that fucking stupid? Face it, you are.
And how am I going to explain this to Peter Wohl? "Sorry, boss. I was thinking with my pecker. You know how it is"?
Will I be allowed to resign? Or are they going to prosecute me for being an accessory? They'll prosecute me. And they damned well should. I have betrayed that oath I took. What cops are supposed to do is get the bad guys, not help them walk from a multiple murder. I forgot that oath until just now.