"I'm not going back to that horrible Julio's again."
"I was thinking your place."
Two visitors in one day? That might be a record. She found Jack a little frightening. Would it be reckless to be alone with him here?
"Gee, I don't know."
"You going to be around?"
"Yes, but—"
"Good. Your place, then."
She gave in. "Okay, but how about… later?"
"Sure. After lunch. What's your address?"
She gave it to him, hoping she hadn't made a big mistake, then hung up and returned to the foyer.
"I've got some appointments to keep," she said, thrusting out her hand. "But I do want to thank you again, Detective Matthews. This is all very kind of you."
"Call me Will," he said, taking her hand and holding it.
Alicia pulled away and opened the door. "Okay… Will."
She felt terribly awkward, shooing him out like this, but she had a sudden, overwhelming urge to be alone.
"You'll be hearing from me," he said as he stepped outside.
"With good news, I hope."
She made a stab at a smile as she closed the door. Then let it fade as she pressed her forehead against its rough surface. Suddenly she felt exhausted.
Criminal charges… a civil suit… complaint to the hospital board. What else could go wrong?
And this visit from a police detective—what was that all about? He could have called and told her all this. Why go to all the trouble to come over and tell her in person? , Alicia groaned. "I hope he's not interested in me."
But the more she thought about it, the more she was sure that was it. Detective Matthews's personal interest in this case was just that… personal.
"Forget about it, Will," she muttered. "You don't know what you're getting into."
2
Jack bounded up the stairs and knocked on the sturdy oak door—or more precisely, on the countless coats of paint that blunted the details of the door's carved surface. Four A was spelled out in brass at eye level, and he wondered why the "A?" This was the only apartment on the floor.
He'd pushed to meet her here because he wanted to get more of a handle on the enigmatic Dr. Alicia Clayton—treater of children with AIDS, buster of child-molester skulls, and would-be burner of ancestral homes.
The door swung in and Alicia stood there, staring at him—a little tentatively, he thought—with those steely eyes. Her black hair was pulled back into a short ponytail, giving her an almost girlish look. She was wearing dirty gardener's gloves.
"You're not breathing hard," she said.
"Well, I admit you're attractive, but I don't think—"
She smiled. "No-no. I mean, the walk up the steps. Most people are winded by the time they get here."
Winded? Why?
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Me too. Really winded. Can I come in and rest?"
She hesitated.
"I won't bite," he said. "Promise."
"Sorry," she said, and stepped aside to let him in. "It's just that you can't be too careful, you know?"
As she closed the door behind them, Jack popped the Semmerling out of his sleeve and held it out to her. She gasped when she saw the tiny pistol.
"Take it," he said. "It's loaded. The world's smallest four-shot .45. Keep it handy while I'm here."
She stared at it as if it were alive and going to bite her. "That's okay. Really."
"Sure?"
When she nodded, he tucked it into a pocket. He didn't know who was more relieved right then: Alicia, because he'd offered her the weapon, or himself, because she hadn't taken it. He didn't feature anyone else messing with his Semmerling.
She led him out of the foyer. "Come on. We can talk in here."
Jack followed her as far as the threshold, then stopped, staring.
A jungle. A high-ceilinged room, almost a loft, with big skylights, and green everywhere. Not houseplants. Trees. Little trees, yes, but trees. Some with their tops wrapped in clear plastic, like oxygen tents, and others with bandages around their trunks.
"What is this?" he said. "A tree hospital?"
She laughed, and Jack realized this was the first time he'd heard that sound from her.
"You ought to do that more often," he told her.
"What?"
"Laugh."
Her smile faded. "I might do just that… once the house is gone." Before Jack could say anything, she turned and waved a gloved hand at the room. "Anyway, this is my hobby: plant grafting."
"No kidding?" he said, stepping into the room and looking about. "That's a hobby?"
"It is for me. Or maybe it's therapy of sorts. Whatever it is, it gives me… pleasure."
For an instant there he'd had the strangest feeling she was going to say "peace."
"How'd you get into something like this?"
"I don't know, exactly. It started in college. There was this sickly tree right outside my dorm window. All the other trees around it were doing fine, but this one was stunted, had fewer leaves, and those it did have were shriveled and smaller than its neighbors'. I took it upon myself to save it. It became my mission.. So I watered it, fertilized it, but no good. It just got worse. So I asked one of the grounds-keepers what he thought, and he said, 'Bad roots. Nothing you can do about bad roots.' They were going to rip it up and plant a replacement there."
"Don't tell me," Jack said. "You started a save-the-tree movement."
"Yeah, right… 'Woodsman, woodsman, spare that tree.' " She shook her head. "Believe me, between my pre-med courses and my waitressing job, I barely had time to sleep, let alone become some sort of tree-hugging activist. No, I simply read up on grafting, took a couple of cuttings—they're called 'scions'—from the sick tree, and cleft-grafted them onto a branch of a healthy one, then I sealed the union with grafting wax. Shortly after that, they cut down the sick tree and replaced it. But it wasn't really dead, you see. Part of it was alive and well on its neighbor. By the time I graduated, the grafted limb was growing like crazy—easily the leafiest branch on the tree."
Her blue-gray eyes beamed at the memory.
"Congratulations," Jack said.
"Thank you. After that, I sort of got the bug. I go to a nursery—the plant kind—and pick out the sickliest-looking sapling. I buy it for a song, along with another healthier looking tree of the same or similar species, bring them home, and graft the runt onto the healthy one."
"Does that make you the tree world's Florence Nightingale, or its Frankenstein?"
"Florence, I hope. The graft union is actually stronger than the rest of the tree, and the scion usually grows faster and lusher than the understock's own branches. But maybe there's a little Frankenstein in me too. I've got what you might call a 'lymon' tree over there: I grafted a branch from a sickly lime tree onto a healthy lemon tree. In a few years it'll yield lemons and limes."
"Sure," Jack said. "And what are you asking for that nice bridge to Brooklyn?"
"No, it's true. You can cross-graft the same species, but you can't cross genera."
"You're losing me."
"Lemons, limes, grapefruit are all in the citrus group—one will usually accept another of the same species. But that lime scion wouldn't have taken if I'd grafted it to, say, apple or pear understock."
Jack walked around the room, checking out the recovering plants.
"So… you take two trees and make them into one."
"It's a strange sort of math," Alicia said. "As one of my grafting books put it: One plus one equals one. And the nice thing is, there's no loser. The understock's roots are getting fed by the scion's leaves."
"I bet you wish you could do that with people."
When Alicia didn't answer, Jack turned and found her standing rigid in the center of the room, staring at him. Her face was pale, and her voice sounded strained when she finally spoke.
"What did you say?"
"I said it would be great if it were that easy with people. You know, cut them loose from their cru
mmy roots and let them grow free and uncontaminated by their past."
She seemed even paler.
"Is something wrong?"
"No," she said, but Jack couldn't believe it. "I just want to know why you said that."
"Well, I was thinking of your AIDS kids. I mean, they inherited their sickness from their roots… too bad you can't find a way to graft them onto healthy stock that'll allow them to grow up disease free."
"Oh." She visibly relaxed. "You know, I never thought of that. But it's a wonderful thought, isn't it."
She still seemed troubled, though, as if she'd taken a step back into another dimension, and only appeared to be in the room. Jack wondered what nerve he'd touched, what region of her psyche it sprang from, and where it led.
"If only it were possible," she said softly from that other place.
"Speaking of those kids," Jack said, "how's my man, Hector?"
And then abruptly, she was back. "Coming along," she said. "The antibiotic seems to be doing the trick." She clapped her hands once. "Now… I guess we have business to discuss."
"Uh, yes… and no," Jack said.
"Oh, I don't think I like the sound of that."
Might as well get it out on the table: "I checked out your father's house yesterday, and I think if you really want to get rid of it, you've got to find some way other than fire."
"No," she said stonily. "It's got to be fire."
"But the rest of the block could go with it."
"That's what the New York City Fire Department's for, isn't it—to prevent that from happening."
"Yeah, but fire's funny. You never know what it's going to do. The wind changes and—" He saw her expression and realized he was getting nowhere. "Maybe one of those demolition experts"—he was inventing this, right off the top of his head—"you know, the guys who can set charges just right so a building collapses in on itself? I can look around for you, see if one of them might—"
Alicia stood there, her face an alabaster mask, slowly, deliberately shaking her head.
"No. Fire. And if I'm willing to pay you, why won't you do it?"
Jack stared at her. This was not at all what he'd expected from Alicia. She seemed to care so deeply about so many things, why was she so blind about this? Almost as if her rational processes ducked for cover whenever that house was mentioned.
But whatever the reason, Jack wasn't about to get into a debate about doing the arson. It wasn't something he put up for discussion.
"Because who I work for and what I do for them is entirely up to me. And I choose not to do this."
After a moment of utter silence, during which Alicia's eyes blazed with such intensity Jack thought she might explode, she turned and walked back to the door to. her apartment, opened it, and stepped back.
"Then, there is nothing left for us to discuss. Goodbye, Jack."
She had that right. But as Jack passed her at the door, he said, "Just remember, there are other ways you can handle this. Take a few deep breaths and think about it before you go looking for somebody else to do the job."
"Don't worry," she said. "I won't be looking for somebody else."
And then she slammed the door.
Jack took the stairs down slowly. Maybe it was all for the best to cut loose from Alicia Clayton. That was one seriously overwound human spring back there in that apartment. He'd rather not be around when she snapped and started bouncing off the walls.
At least now he could devote himself full time to Jorge's problem. He'd already learned some interesting stuff about Ramirez.
Jack turned and glanced back at Alicia's door. Still… something appealing about her. Or maybe tantalizing was a better word.
What was that expression—something about a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma? That was Alicia Clayton: a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma within a thick coat of Semtex.
And a very short fuse.
3
"I don't have to go looking for somebody else," Alicia whispered as she locked the door and headed for the phone. "Because I already have a name and number."
She'd call him now, and set this up as soon as possible. That house was a cancer on the face of the city, the planet, her life.
And fire… the cleansing flame… was the only cure.
WEDNESDAY
1
"He spiked 103.4 last night," Sorenson said as they entered Hector's room. "But it responded nicely to a single dose of Tylenol, and it's stayed normal since."
Alicia glanced at the nurse. "One spike? Just one?"
Jeanne Sorenson flipped through the chart and checked the temperature graph. "Just one. At four-twenty."
Maybe it was nothing. One spike could be merely a fluke. She hoped that was all it was.
She pointed to the cluster of Mylar balloons floating at the corner of the bed.
"Where'd they come from?"
"Came yesterday. Addressed to 'Hector with the mad buzz cut on Pediatrics.' The teddy bear too. But the card only said it was from a friend."
Alicia seated herself on the bed next to where Hector lay clutching a new teddy bear dressed as a doctor.
Jack, she thought, smiling. You didn't forget.
She rubbed her hand over Hector's bristly hair.
"Hey, Hector."
"Hey, Dr. Alith."
He smiled up at her, but she didn't like the look in his eyes. Something wrong here. She could sense it.
"How's it going, guy?"
"My arm thtill hurths. You thaid you were gonna take the needle out."
"Soon as I can. I promise."
Still looking at Hector, she asked Sorenson, "How was his last chest?"
"Continued improvement," the nurse said.
"Labs?"
"CBC back to normal."
X rays and numbers on the upswing, yet Alicia couldn't shake the sense that something was wrong. She'd learned to trust that sense. Despite all the years of booking, of learning how to take a good medical history, how to do a thorough physical exam, how to interpret pages of test results, sometimes you had to throw them all away and go on your instincts. Sometimes it all came down to looking at a patient and sensing an indefinable something about his health.
She listened to the child's lungs, checked his lymph nodes, his belly. All normal.
Troubled, she put on a smile for Hector and rubbed his head again.
"You hang in there, Hector. We'll get you out of here as soon as we can."
Alicia rose and turned to Sorenson. "Get another chest on him, another CBC, and urine and blood cultures too."
She noted the nurse's questioning look as they moved toward the door.
"I hope I'm wrong," Alicia said in a low voice, "but I've got a feeling Hector's going sour on us."
2
Alicia's office phone beeped and she hit the intercom key.
"There's a Detective Matthews on the line," Raymond told her. "Says he needs to speak to you."
Alicia stiffened. Just a reflex. No way Matthews could know about her meeting with that arsonist last night. Benny… that was the only name she had for the man. Nobody she'd been dealing with lately seemed to have a last name. He'd said he'd check out the address and get back to her.
Alicia had been looking over her shoulder, literally and figuratively, ever since.
So what did Matthews want? Could he have dug up something on Floyd Stevens already?
"Put him through."
"Isn't he the cop who was here yesterday about—?"
"The same."
"Okay. Here he comes."
She lifted the handset and said, "Good morning, Detective."
"Will, remember?" he said.
"Oh, right. I forgot." A lie. She simply wasn't anxious to be on a first-name basis with him. "What can I do for you… Will?"
"As promised, I did a little research on an acquaintance of yours."
She squeezed the handset. Not Benny, she hoped. She cleared her throat.
"Who?"
/> "Someone you had an altercation with recently."
Floyd Stevens. Why wasn't he mentioning the name?
"Really. Any luck?"
"Oh, yes. I think the results might interest you."
"Really?" Suddenly glad he called, she leaned forward. "What have you got?"
"Rather not over the phone. Why don't you meet me for lunch, and I'll lay it all out for you."
Alicia closed her eyes and stifled a groan. He's interested, she thought. Definitely interested.
But she was not. She had neither the time nor the emotional resources for a relationship with Will Matthews or anyone else. Especially not now, of all times.
And even in the best of times, even with the best intentions, somehow, someway, they always managed to end up in disaster.
But how could she say no? Obviously he'd been out doing some legwork for her. The least she could do was have lunch with him. It didn't have to progress from there. She could let on that she was involved with someone. That was good… she was in this serious, long-term relationship.
And besides, the lawyer for the hospital board had called her yesterday, saying he'd heard from Floyd Steven's lawyer who'd laid out the charges he was planning to bring against Alicia and the hospital if she didn't drop the charges against his client. The board was looking into the matter.
Her intestines had been in a knot since.
"Lunch sounds fine," she said. "As long as it's a quick one. I'm up to my lower lip in paperwork."
"Short and sweet," he said. "I promise."
They arranged to meet at El Quijote at twelve-thirty.
Alicia hung up, and stared at the FedEx envelope on her desk. A copy of the will had been delivered here from Leo Weinstein's office yesterday and she'd been planning to spend her lunch hour reading it. Frustration tugged at her as she remembered what Jack had said Monday: If Thomas and his backers were desperate enough and ruthless enough to run down her private eye and blow up her lawyer, why had she been left unharmed?
Damn good question. And the answer might lay just inches away in that overnight envelope.
She'd hoped to get a peek at it this morning, but she'd spent a lot of extra time at the hospital with Hector. She was still waiting for the results of his latest tests.