Marker

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding! So maybe you’d better start thinking about getting involved.”

  “What’s the official take? Are Calvin and Bingham on board, too?”

  “Hardly. In fact, I found out Laurie was pressured to sign out her first cases as natural deaths by Calvin, who was pressured by Bingham, who was pressured by somebody over in the mayor’s office.”

  “Sounds political, which means our hands are tied.”

  “Well, at least I warned you.”

  fifteen

  JACK PUT SOME SERIOUS muscle into his pedaling, and his bike responded. He was presently streaking past the United Nations building, heading north on First Avenue. Although the five-thirty traffic was at its peak, Jack had no altercations with any of the drivers. He had scaled back his aggressiveness to a degree following the recent arrival at the morgue of one of the city’s many bicycle messengers. That poor fellow had had a dispute with a sanitation truck, for which he paid dearly. When Jack saw him in the morgue, his head had the diameter of large beach ball but the thickness of a quarter.

  Ahead loomed the massively pillared viaduct of the Queensboro Bridge. Jack clicked into a higher gear as the roadway began to drop away in a gradual decline. With the help of gravity, Jack was neck and neck with the traffic, and the wind was whistling through his helmet. As usual, the exhilaration gave him a sense of detachment, and for a few minutes all his cares, worries, and bad memories evaporated in a wash of endorphins.

  Earlier that afternoon, Jack had turned off his microscope light, put his desk in order, and walked down to Laurie’s office with the idea of discussing with her how they should get to the restaurant. But he’d found her desk empty just like he had on his many visits that morning. On this occasion, Riva had explained that she had gone back to her apartment to change clothes. Jack gathered that his expression had been one of surprise, because Riva had gone on to explain that it was a woman thing, although that explanation only confused him more. Laurie’s attire had been perfectly appropriate for their early dinner. More than anyone else at the OCME, Laurie always dressed in a smart, feminine fashion.

  Just beyond the Queensboro Bridge, the traffic snarled with backed-up cars vying to get onto the ramp leading to the FDR Drive north. Jack was reduced to slaloming between stopped cars, buses, and trucks until he was able to worm his way across the grid-locked 63rd Street intersection. Breaking away from the pack, he stood up on his pedals to regain his speed.

  From that point north, Jack had no trouble. At the corner of 82nd Street and Second Avenue, Jack went up onto the sidewalk and dismounted. He secured his bike and helmet to a No Parking sign. When he walked into Elios, he was only three minutes late.

  Jack stood by the mahogany bar just inside the door and took in the scene. Waiters in freshly laundered white aprons scurried about, making sure the linen-topped tables were in order. There were few customers sprinkled around the narrow but deep interior. To Jack’s immediate right was a round table occupied by a loud group, several of whom Jack vaguely recognized as TV people, even though he didn’t own a TV. At first, he didn’t see Laurie and thought he was the first to arrive.

  The owner, an elegantly tall woman, approached him; when Jack said he was there for a reservation under the name of Montgomery, she took his leather bomber jacket, which she immediately handed to an unoccupied waiter, and motioned for Jack to follow her. Halfway into the dining room, he saw Laurie at a table to the right, engrossed in conversation with a mustached waiter. In front of her was a bottle of sparkling Italian water, but no wine. He knew how much Laurie liked wine, and in the past, if he was ever late for a dinner together, she always went ahead and ordered a bottle. Why she didn’t on this occasion, he had no idea.

  Jack leaned over and gave Laurie a fleeting kiss on the cheek before he even thought about whether he should do it or not. He then shook hands with the waiter who was a remarkably friendly chap. As Jack sat down, the waiter asked him if he wanted any wine.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Jack said. He looked at Laurie.

  “You go ahead,” Laurie said pointing to her water glass. “I’m going to stick with this.”

  “Oh?” Jack questioned. He was already slightly off guard at a dinner date where he had no idea what to expect. He waffled for a moment, then told the waiter to bring him a beer. If Laurie wasn’t going to drink wine, he wouldn’t, either. He thought it was a matter of principle, even if he had no idea what the principle was.

  “I’m glad you got here safely,” Laurie said. “I was hoping after that courier case you’d rethink the advisability of courting death on a daily basis.”

  Jack nodded but didn’t respond. To him, Laurie looked radiant. She was wearing one of his favorite outfits, and he wondered if she had chosen it on purpose. Not only had she changed clothes, she had washed her hair. At the OCME, Laurie wore her hair either piled on top of her head or in a French braid, but tonight it was down and cascaded over her shoulders to form a soft frame around her face.

  “You look great,” Jack said.

  “Thank you. You look good, too.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” Jack said with obvious disbelief. He looked down at his wrinkled chambray shirt, mildly spotted, dark blue knitted tie, and slightly grease-stained jeans. Next to Laurie’s splendor, he felt like the poor relation.

  While the waiter was off getting Jack’s beer, they made small talk about the numerous times they had been at the restaurant. Laurie mentioned the time she had brought Paul Sutherland into Elios for a surprise meeting with Jack and Lou when she was thinking of marrying the man.

  “Well, that wasn’t my favorite night here,” Jack admitted.

  “It wasn’t mine, either,” Laurie agreed. “The reason it comes to mind is that just yesterday, Lou brought it up out of the blue and said that you and he were jealous.”

  “Really? Well, what does Lou know?”

  “I have to tell you, just so you know, I never thought you were jealous.”

  The waiter returned with Jack’s beer and a basket of bread. “Would you like to hear the specials now, or do you want to wait?”

  “I think we’ll wait for a few minutes,” Laurie responded.

  “Just give a yell,” the waiter said agreeably. Jack and Laurie watched him head back into the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry about suggesting this afternoon that having dinner with you was a sacrifice,” Jack said when they looked back at each other. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It was supposed to be funny.”

  “Thank you for your apology. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have reacted as I did. I’m afraid I’m not seeing much humor in things lately.”

  “Well, I didn’t get a chance to tell you that Mulhausen was clean, just as you suspected. There was no pathology whatsoever on gross. And talking about Lou, you should know that I told him that I was coming around to your serial-killer idea and that his department might want to look into it.”

  “Really? And what did he say?”

  “He wanted to know what the official OCME position was, and I told him.”

  “And?”

  “He said under the circumstances, with neither the OCME or the hospital taking a stand and the mayor’s office tangentially involved, his hands were, in a sense, tied.”

  “I’m going to try to change all that by coming up with a list of suspects.”

  “Actual suspects! Whoa! That would certainly alter the landscape. And strange that you should say that. I had a new thought along those lines.”

  “This should be interesting.”

  “Although the deaths in your series seem counterproductive to the actuarial interests of managed care, there are a couple of ways they could be related to the managed-care phenomenon.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Managed care has had to be aggressive, taking over practices and hospitals in an often hostile way. Your serial killer could be someone as angry at AmeriCare as I am. I have to admit I’d harbored s
ome murderous thoughts after AmeriCare gobbled up my practice. If it weren’t for AmeriCare, I’d still be a conservative ophthalmologist back in the Midwest, walking around in a glen plaid suit and struggling to put a couple of girls through college.”

  “No matter how many times you tell me the story of your former life, I find it hard to picture. I’m sure I wouldn’t recognize you.”

  “I wouldn’t recognize myself!”

  “But your point is well taken. A physician who has admitting privileges at Manhattan General and Saint Francis Hospital is one of the profiles that is being considered. What’s your other idea?”

  “Managed-care competition! It’s a dog-eat-dog business world out there in the medical arena. As the two local giants in the industry, National Health and AmeriCare have bumped heads in the past with some strikingly underhanded machinations coming to light. I know National Health has generally conceded New York to AmeriCare, but they could have had a change of mind. Causing AmeriCare a major PR disaster, which your series will be sooner or later, would undoubtedly be a boon to National Health. And as long as I’m thinking in this vein, any individual or group who wanted AmeriCare stock to tumble could be involved, because once your series hits the media, investors are going to turn away in droves.”

  “Good points!” Laurie conceded. “I really hadn’t thought of either one of those ideas. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Jack took a long pull on his beer, drinking it directly from the bottle. Laurie sipped her sparkling water. The restaurant was awakening from its daytime slumber. A few more patrons were seated. A bar crowd had materialized, raising the noise level with excited chatter and bursts of laughter.

  Noticing the break in Jack and Laurie’s conversation, the waiter came over to ask if they’d like to order appetizers. After Laurie and Jack exchanged glances to see if either objected, they both nodded, which keyed off an impressive performance on the waiter’s part. He rattled off a long list of appetizer specials, explaining each in painstaking detail. Despite the enticing recital, Laurie ordered an arugula salad, and Jack settled on calamari. Both were from the regular menu.

  After the waiter had gone and left them alone again, Jack eyed Laurie. She had her head down while busily repositioning her flatware that was already perfectly well positioned. Jack sensed that she was tense. After several more minutes went by, what had started out as a mere pause in the conversation seemed to Jack to become an awkward lull. He adjusted himself on the hard seat, and after a glance around the room to make sure they were being appropriately ignored, he broke the silence: “When would you like to talk about your important ‘whatever’ that involves you and me and no one else? Is it an appetizer subject, an entrée subject, or a dessert subject?”

  Laurie looked up. Jack tried to read her blue-green eyes, but he couldn’t tell if she was angry or anguished. His speculation about what she was going to say ran the full gamut from her wanting to patch things up, as Lou had suggested, to telling him she was tying the knot with her French-sounding boyfriend. The fact that she was dragging the mystery out was starting to wear thin.

  “If it’s not too much to ask, I would like you to kindly avoid any attempts at sarcastic humor. I’m sure it is obvious I’m having a hard time with this, and you could at least show some respect.”

  Jack took a deep breath. It was a tall order for him to abandon his most potent psychological defense in a situation when he feared he needed it the most. “I’ll try,” he offered, “but I’m all over the map trying to figure what this is all about.”

  “First, let me say that I learned yesterday that I have the marker for BRCA1.”

  Jack stared at his former lover while myriad thoughts reverberated inside his head. Along with a rush of sympathy and concern was what he considered a less noble sense of relief. Selfishly, he knew he could personally deal with the BRCA1 problem a lot better than he could with the idea that she was getting married.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Laurie asked after a pause.

  “I’m sorry! The news has just caught me unawares. I’m truly sorry to hear that you have the marker. On the positive side, I still think it is better that you know than if you didn’t know.”

  “At the moment, I’m not convinced.”

  “I am. There’s not a shred of doubt in my mind. For now, it will merely mean you’ll have to be that much more vigilant, perhaps with mammograms or MRIs on a yearly basis. Remember that although the marker means you have an increased risk of developing cancer before the age of eighty, your mother, whose mutation you undoubtedly share, didn’t develop the problem until she was in her eighties.”

  “That’s true,” Laurie said, recognizing that Jack had a point. Her face visibly brightened. “And my maternal grandmother who’d had breast cancer didn’t develop it until her eighties, either. And my aunts who are all in their latter seventies haven’t gotten it—at least not yet.”

  “Well, there you go,” Jack said. “It seems reasonably clear to me that your particular family mutation determines an octogenarian illness.”

  “Maybe,” Laurie said, retracting some of her optimism. “But there’s no test for such an assertion, and it doesn’t take into account the increased risk of ovarian cancer.”

  “Has anyone in your family on either side ever had ovarian cancer?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “It seems to me that is all very positive information.”

  “I suppose,” Laurie said, going back to tinkering with her flatware.

  Jack took another gulp of his cold beer. He felt hot and wondered vaguely if his face reflected it. He stuck a finger into his collar and pulled it away from his perspiring neck. He was dying to take off his tie, but he didn’t dare, with the chic way Laurie was dressed. What was bothering him was the way Laurie had introduced the BRCA1 issue. She’d said “first,” which made Jack worry there was a “second.”

  At that moment, the salad and calamari arrived. The waiter served the food and then busily rearranged the table and scooped up the breadcrumbs before disappearing. He’d not pestered them about their entrée order, which reminded Jack of one of the reasons he liked to eat at Elios. He’d never felt victimized by the inevitable bum’s rush in an effort to turn the table, as he had at so many other “in” restaurants.

  After taking a few bites of his calamari and another sip of beer, Jack cleared his throat. Superstitiously, he didn’t want to ask the question, but the suspense was killing him: “Was there anything else you wanted to tell me tonight, or was it just this BRCA1 issue?”

  Laurie put down her fork and locked eyes with Jack. “There is something else. I wanted to tell you that I am pregnant.”

  Jack swallowed, tipped his head slightly to the side as if something had just caromed off his scalp, and put his beer back on the table. He kept his eyes glued on Laurie’s. Laurie being pregnant was perhaps the last thing he expected to hear, and his mind was a jumble of complicated thoughts. He cleared his throat again.

  “Who’s the father?” Jack questioned.

  Laurie’s face clouded over like a sudden summer storm, and she leaped up so fast that her chair tipped over backward. The crash brought general conversation in the restaurant to a sudden standstill. She threw her cloth napkin down onto the top of her salad and started for the front of the room. Jack, who had initially recoiled from the unexpected flurry, regained his senses enough to reach out and catch Laurie by the forearm. She tugged back, but Jack held on tightly and wouldn’t let her go. She glared down at him with nostrils flared.

  “I’m sorry!” Jack blurted and then hastily added, “Don’t run off! Obviously, we need to talk, and perhaps that wasn’t the most diplomatic first question.”

  Laurie gave another tug to free her arm, but it was with less force than the first.

  “Please sit down!” Jack said in as calm and reassuring a voice as he could muster.

  As if suddenly becoming aware of her surroundings, Lau
rie’s eyes swept around the room, and she saw that the restaurant had been seemingly caught in a freeze-frame, with all eyes directed at her. She looked down at Jack, nodded, and took a step back around the table. As if on cue, the waiter materialized, righted her chair, and took away both the napkin and plate of salad. Laurie sat down, and as soon as she did so, the conversation in the restaurant recommenced as if nothing had happened. New Yorkers were accustomed to the unexpected and took it in stride.

  “How long have you known?” Jack asked.

  “I suspected it yesterday but didn’t get confirmation until this morning.”

  “Are you upset about it?”

  “Of course I’m upset. Aren’t you?”

  Jack nodded and paused for a moment while he thought. “What are you going to do?”

  “Do you mean whether or not I’m going to have the baby? Is that what you’re asking with your damn question?”

  “Laurie, we are having a discussion. You don’t have to act angry.”

  “Your first question, as you called it, struck the wrong chord.”

  “That was apparent, but considering that you have been having what seems from the outside as an intense affair, my question isn’t so inappropriate.”

  “It struck me as inordinately insensitive, since I have not had sex with Roger Rousseau.”

  “How am I supposed to know? Over the last few weeks, I’ve tried on a number of occasions to call you in the evening. One night I continued the effort until rather late, which lead me to believe you were not there.”

  “I have stayed at Roger’s on a few occasions,” Laurie admitted. “But there was no sex involved.”

  “That sounds like a rather suspect distinction, but let’s move on.”

  The waiter reappeared with a fresh napkin and salad for Laurie. Sensitively, he quickly withdrew.

  “How pregnant are you?” Jack asked.

  “Six weeks, although the OB office would call it seven weeks. There is no doubt in my mind that it occurred that last night we spent together. It’s rather ironic, wouldn’t you say?”