The Shadow of Your Smile

  Anything else he might have said was drowned out by the enthusiastic welcoming cries of her Georgetown colleagues. Seeing them again, Monica realized how much she still missed the companionship she had enjoyed in Georgetown. It was eight years of my life, she thought as she hugged her friends. We worked hard those years, but there sure were a lot of good times.

  She knew two of the eight visitors, Natalie Kramer and Genine Westervelt, very well. Genine had just opened her private practice as a plastic surgeon in D.C. Natalie was an emergency room doctor. I know them better than I know Ryan, Monica thought, as she settled down in a chair with a glass of wine. He was three years ahead of me, and I never had a class with him, and from a distance he always seemed so reserved. Even now, except when he’s wearing scrubs or a white jacket, anytime I run into him he’s got a suit and tie on. Tonight, in a corduroy shirt and jeans sitting cross-legged on the floor, a beer in his hand, he looked totally relaxed and was obviously enjoying himself.

  She looked at him thoughtfully. His specialty is brain injury. I wonder what his opinion would be if he saw Michael O’Keefe’s CAT scans. Should I ask him to take a look at them before I meet with the priest about that supposed miracle? Maybe I will, she decided.

  She glanced around instinctively, hoping to get some overall sense of Ryan Jenner from his surroundings. The room was surprisingly formal, with matching couches in a patterned blue fabric, an antique armoire, side tables with elaborate crystal lamps, occasional chairs in blue and cream, and an antique blue and maroon carpet.

  “Ryan, this is a lovely apartment,” Genine was saying. “You could put my whole place in this living room. And that’s the way it’s going to be until I’m off the hook with school loans. By then I’ll need to be performing do-it-yourself plastic surgery on my own face.”

  “Or replacing my own knee,” Ira Easton chipped in. “Between Lynn and me, our school loans are matched only by our annual malpractice insurance premiums.”

  I don’t have school loans, Monica thought, but I don’t have much else. Dad was sick for so long that I’m lucky to be okay financially.

  “First of all,” Ryan Jenner was saying. “This is not my apartment. It’s my aunt’s, and everything in it except my toothbrush is hers. She never leaves Florida, and sooner or later she’s going to put it on the market. However, in the meantime she invited me to live in it if I keep up with the maintenance expenses, so here we are. I am paying off school loans, too.”

  “Now we all feel better,” Seth Green told him. “Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

  An hour later in the restaurant, the talk turned from the cost of malpractice insurance to the difficulty their various hospitals were having in expanding because of the problems with fund-raising. Ryan had arranged the seating so that he was next to Monica. “I don’t know whether you heard,” he said quietly, “but the money Greenwich has been promised for the pediatric wing may not come through. The Gannon Foundation is claiming reduced income and intends to renege on their pledge.”

  “Ryan, we need that wing,” Monica protested.

  “I heard today there’s talk of having some people meet with the Gannons and try to get them to change their minds,” Ryan said. “No one’s been more persuasive about the pediatric needs at Greenwich than you. You should be there.”

  “I’ll make sure I am,” Monica said hotly. “That guy Greg Gannon always has his face in the Sunday Times as a major-league philanthropist. My dad was a research consultant at a Gannon lab in Boston for a few years before he died. It was the patents on the orthopedic parts that gave the Gannons their money. He said they collected zillions of dollars over the life of the patents. They pledged fifteen million to the hospital. Now let them pay up.”

  15

  Wrapped in a bathrobe, Rosalie Garcia woke her sleeping husband up at six A.M. on Monday. “Tony, the baby has a fever. He’s caught my cold.”

  Tony struggled to open his eyes. The night before, he had driven a couple to a wedding in Connecticut, and then waited to drive them home, which meant he’d had three hours’ sleep. But as what Rosalie was saying sank in, he was instantly awake. Tossing back the covers, he rushed into the tiny second bedroom of their walk-up apartment on East Fourth Street. A sleepy Carlos, his face flushed, ignoring his bottle, was fretfully moving around the crib. With a gentle hand, Tony touched his son’s forehead and confirmed that it was unnaturally warm.

  He straightened up and turned to his wife, understanding the panic he saw in her eyes. “Look, Rosie,” he said soothingly. “He doesn’t have leukemia anymore. Remember that. We’ll get some aspirin into him and at eight o’clock we’ll call Dr. Monica. If she wants to see him, I’ll take him right over. With that cold you can’t go out.”

  “Tony, I want her to see him. Maybe it’s just a cold but . . .”

  “Honey, she told us that we should remember to treat him as a kid who bumps his head or gets a cold or has an earache, because he is a normal, healthy kid now. His immune system is perfect.” But even as he was speaking, Tony knew that neither he nor Rosalie would have any peace of mind until Dr. Monica Farrell had seen Carlos.

  At seven o’clock he phoned and reached Nan as she was walking into the office. She told him to bring Carlos over at eleven, because that was when the doctor would be back from the hospital.

  At ten thirty Tony bundled a sleepy Carlos into a warm jacket and cap and put him in his stroller. He tucked blankets around him, then snapped in the protective plastic shield that kept out the wind. With long strides he began to walk the ten blocks to Monica’s office. He had vetoed the suggestion that he take a cab there. “Rosie,” he had said, “I can get there faster walking, and round-trip in the traffic it could cost up to thirty dollars. Besides, Carlos likes the feel of being pushed in the stroller. He’ll end up taking a nap.”

  When he reached Monica’s office twenty minutes later, she was just taking off her coat. She took one look at the fear in Tony’s eyes, then quickly unsnapped the plastic shield and, as Tony had done earlier, felt the small forehead of Carlos Garcia. “Tony, he has a fever, but not much of a fever,” she said reassuringly. “Before we even get his hat off, let me assure you of that. Alma will get Carlos set up for me to look at him, but my diagnosis as of this moment is that all he needs is baby aspirin and maybe an antibiotic.” She smiled. “So stop looking like that and don’t have a heart attack on me. I’m a pediatrician, not a cardiologist.”

  Tony Garcia smiled back as he tried to blink away the sudden moisture in his eyes. “It’s just, Doctor . . . You know.”

  Monica looked at him and suddenly felt infinitely older than the young father. He’s not more than twenty-four, she thought. He looks like such a kid himself and so does Rosalie and they’ve gone through such hell these two years. She touched his shoulder. “I know,” she said gently.

  Thirty minutes later, Carlos, again dressed in his outerwear, was back in the stroller. Tony had samples of an antibiotic and a prescription for a three-day dosage of it in his pocket. “Now remember,” Monica cautioned, as she walked with him to the outer door, “I can just about promise you he’ll be running you ragged again in a couple of days, but if his fever does go up I want you to call me on my cell phone day or night.”

  “I will, Dr. Monica, and thanks again. I can’t tell . . .”

  “Then don’t. I can’t hear you anyhow.” Monica nodded her head to the waiting room, which now had four little patients, among them a pair of screaming twins.

  Tony, his hand on the outer door, stopped. “Oh, just quick, Dr. Monica. I drove a very nice elderly woman last week. I showed her Carlos’s picture and told her how you had taken care of him and she told me she knew your grandmother.”

  “She knew my grandmother!” Monica looked at him astonished. “Did she say anything about her?”

  “No. Just that she knew her. Tony pulled open the outer door. “I’m holding you up. Thanks again.”

  He was gone. Monica was tempted to run after him but then stopped h
erself. I can call him later, she thought. Could this person possibly have known my paternal grandmother? Dad didn’t have a clue who his birth mother was. He was adopted by people in their midforties. They’ve been gone for years and so are Mom’s parents. Dad and Mom would both be in their midseventies now. If their parents were still alive they’d be over 100 years old. If this lady knew my adoptive grandparents she must be really old herself. She must be mistaken.

  But all through the rest of her busy day, Monica had a nagging sense that she ought to call Tony and ask for the name of the woman who had claimed to know her grandmother.

  16

  Sammy Barber had used the weekend to do some serious thinking. The guy he was dealing with was big-time. When he’d arranged the meeting in the diner, he had not given his name, only his cell phone number, and of course that was one of those prepaid untraceable ones. But it was obvious he wasn’t used to making this kind of deal. The stupid guy drove to the diner in his own car and thought he was being smart by parking it down the block!

  Sammy had followed him and used the camera on his cell phone to photograph Douglas Langdon’s license plate, then, through one of his contacts, traced down his name.

  He had not told Langdon that he knew who he was when he had called to raise the price for the hit on Dr. Farrell because he had wanted to decide his next step first. When he had called Langdon, Sammy had phoned the cell number he had been given. But over the weekend, Langdon had ignored his demand, so Sammy knew exactly what he would do next.

  Langdon was a shrink, but better than that he was on the board of the Gannon Foundation and that was worth millions and millions of dollars. If he was desperate enough to order a hit on that doctor, he must be in big trouble, Sammy reasoned. He ought to be able to dip into that foundation and get a million-dollar grant approved for Sammy Barber’s favorite charity. Meaning myself. Of course, it wouldn’t be put that way. Langdon could skim a million off a legit grant. It must happen all the time.

  Sammy bitterly regretted that he had not taped his meeting with Langdon, but he was sure he could make Langdon think he had. And of course at their next face-to-face meeting he would be sure that a tape was running.

  On Monday morning at eleven o’clock, Sammy showed up in the lobby of the Park Avenue building where Douglas Langdon’s office was located. When the security desk phoned to confirm his appointment, Langdon’s secretary, Beatrice Tillman, emphatically said, “I have no record of an appointment with Mr. Barber.”

  When the person at the desk passed the word to Sammy, it was the response he was expecting. “She doesn’t know that the doctor talked to me over the weekend and told me to come in. I’ll wait till he’s available.” He saw the mistrust in the security officer’s eyes. Even though he’d worn his new jacket and slacks and his one tie, he was fully aware that he didn’t have the look of someone who had thousands of bucks to throw away on a shrink.

  The guard gave that message to Tillman, waited, then put the phone down and reached for a pass. He scribbled Langdon’s name and suite number and handed it to Sammy. “The doctor isn’t expected for another fifteen minutes, but you can go upstairs and wait for him.”

  “Thanks.” Sammy took the pass and sauntered over to the elevator bank, where another guard allowed him to go through the turnstile. Mickey Mouse security here, he decided disdainfully.

  Nice offices, though, he thought when he entered suite 1202. Not big, but nice. It was clear that the shrink’s secretary still wasn’t sure if she bought his story but she asked him to sit down in the reception area near her desk. Sammy took care to settle himself so that Langdon would not see him when he opened the door.

  Ten minutes later Langdon came in. Sammy watched as he started to greet the secretary, who interrupted him and, her voice too low for Sammy to hear, said something to him. Langdon turned and Sammy chortled to himself at the look of sheer panic that crossed his face.

  He stood up. “Good morning, Doctor. It’s really nice of you to see me on such short notice and I do appreciate it. You know how sometimes my head gets all messed up.”

  “Come in, Sammy,” Langdon said abruptly.

  With a cheerful wave at Beatrice Tillman, whose face was a study in curiosity, Sammy followed the doctor down the hall into what he guessed was his private office. It was carpeted in deep crimson. The walls were lined with mahogany bookshelves. A handsome leather-topped desk dominated the room. A wide leather swivel chair was behind it. Two matching chairs finished in a red and cream fabric faced the desk.

  “No couch?” Sammy asked, his tone bewildered.

  Langdon was closing the door. “You don’t need a couch, Sammy,” he snapped. “What are you doing here?”

  Without being invited, Sammy walked around the desk to the swivel chair and sat down on it. “Doug, I made you an offer and you didn’t get back to me. I don’t like to be disrespected.”

  “You agreed to a twenty-five-thousand-dollar price and raised it to one hundred thousand,” a shaken Langdon reminded him.

  “Twenty-five thousand for murdering Dr. Monica Farrell isn’t very much, I figure,” Sammy commented. “She’s not like some intern nobody ever heard of. She’s what would you say . . . distinguished?”

  “You agreed to that price,” Langdon said, and now Sammy could hear the panic he’d expected in Langdon’s tone.

  “But you didn’t get back to me,” Sammy reminded him. “So that’s why the price has gone up again. It’s now one million, payable in advance.”

  “You’ve got to be crazy,” Langdon whispered.

  “I’m not,” Sammy assured him. “I taped you the other night in the diner and I’m taping you now.” He opened his jacket and exposed the wire he had attached to his cell phone. With a slow, deliberate movement he buttoned his jacket and got up. “What you or someone you know has on me wouldn’t mean much if it came to a trial. The cops would drop that charge in a minute in exchange for this tape and the other one. Now listen real carefully. I want one million dollars, then I do the job. I’ve figured out how to make it look like a burglary gone sour. So get the money, and you can sleep at night. You have to be smart enough to know that when the job is done, I won’t be sending any tapes to the cops.”

  He got up, brushed past Langdon, and put his hand on the doorknob. “Have it by Friday,” he said, “or I go to the police myself.” He opened the door. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said, in a voice loud enough that he hoped the secretary could hear. “You’ve been a big help. Like you say, I can’t blame all my problems on my old lady. She did her best for me.”

  17

  Esther Chambers had had a dismal weekend. Her visit from Thomas Desmond of the Securities and Exchange Commission and his partner had thoroughly unsettled her. When she had found them waiting for her in her lobby on Wednesday evening, she had allowed them to come up to her apartment as Desmond had requested.

  There, in the privacy of her home, he had told her that her boss had been watched for some time by the SEC and that criminal charges against him for insider trading might be forthcoming.

  He had also told her that she had been thoroughly checked and that her finances had shown that in no way was she living beyond her income, so they felt confident that she was not engaged in any illegal activities. They told her that they wanted her to work with them and provide them with information about Greg’s business dealings. They stressed that confidentiality was of the utmost importance and that she would almost certainly be called to testify before a Grand Jury.

  “I simply cannot believe that Greg Gannon would be guilty of insider trading,” she had told Desmond. “Why should he? The investment firm has always been very successful, and for years he’s received a big salary as chairman of the board of the Gannon Foundation.”

  “It’s not a case of how much he has, but how much he wants,” Desmond told her. “We’ve had multimillionaires who couldn’t spend all their legitimate money in a lifetime, and still they cheat. Some of them do it because it gives them
a sense of power. But in the end, before they get caught, most of them are running scared.”

  Running scared. Those words convinced Esther that it wasn’t all some kind of mistake. Greg Gannon is running scared, she thought.

  Desmond had not been happy to learn that she had just submitted her resignation. He’d asked her if she could rescind it, then corrected himself. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. My bet is that right now he’s afraid to trust anybody. He might see a sudden change of heart as a tip that we’ve approached you. You say you offered to stay for one month?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then my guess is that he’ll take you up on it. He’s in deep trouble now. One of his big tips about a merger didn’t go through at the last minute. He lost a quarter of a billion for one of his hedge funds. He won’t want to worry about breaking in someone new right now.”

  And that’s the way it’s turning out, Esther thought on Monday morning. When Greg had seen her note on Thursday morning, he had come out to her desk. “Esther, I’m not surprised that you’re ready to retire. Thirty-five years is a heck of a long time to keep working in one place. But I do want you to stay for at least one month and do the interviewing for your replacement, then when you find someone, break her in.” He paused. “Or him,” he added.

  “I know we’re not gender-conscious. I’ll find someone good to replace me, I promise,” Esther said.

  For a moment, watching the troubled face of Greg Gannon, Esther’s heart had softened, seeing in it the ambitious young man who had joined his father’s business a week after his graduation from college. But then any pity she felt evaporated. With all that he had, if he really was cheating, he was doing it for himself, and gambling with other people’s hard-earned money, she thought scornfully.