“Yes. You see, when we finally found it, your appendix was the size of a ... oh, a small grapefruit. It had begun to perforate, and tissue had formed around the appendix to contain the poison.”
“It was the size of a grapefruit?”
“A small one, yes.”
“And you had a hard time finding it.”
“Yes, and we had an even harder time getting it out. It didn’t want to come. We had to treat your body rather rudely.”
Young frowned. “What do you mean rudely?”
“We had to move quickly.”
“I was in danger?”
“Oh yes. If this had happened in some remote area, if you had been on a fishing trip, for example, you might very well have died.”
Young swallowed. “No shit.”
“That’s why we operated on you so soon after you came in.”
Young glanced down towards his stomach. “So you had to go in fast, grab what you were after, and get out fast.”
“That’s right.”
“I feel like some animal’s been at me.”
“Well,” Dr. Habib sighed, “like I say, we had to be fairly rough. If you can, just picture a dog digging for a bone.”
Richard Ludlow was out of town on business, but his receptionist seemed to take a shine to Tony Barkas, who looked a lot like Tony Danza, the TV star. She offered him a cup of coffee and invited him to sit down. He sat in a deep leather chair beside a glass table with magazines and a bowl of peppermints on it. As she stood up from behind her desk to fetch his coffee, he saw that her black leather skirt was short and tight, and her legs looked eight feet long. She wore a yellow blouse, and her black hair hung down over her breasts. Her complexion was as pale as a geisha’s. After she handed him a mug of coffee and once again seated herself at her desk, Barkas explained that he was assisting in a murder investigation and asked if the receptionist, who said her name was Sandi—“with an ‘i’”—knew whether or not Mr. Ludlow was acquainted with a man named Shorty Rogers.
Sandi said she’d never heard of anybody by that name, but would Detective Barkas care for a cookie to go with his coffee.
“Sure,” Barkas said. He didn’t really want one, but he wanted to see her legs again.
Sandi walked to a small pantry in the corner of the office and took a package of Oreos out of the cupboard. “They’re double-stuffed,” she said. “I hope that’s all right.”
“That’s fine.”
When she was seated at her desk again, Barkas asked her how long she had been working for Mr. Ludlow.
“Almost three years now.”
“Three years? That’s a long time. You two work pretty closely, I guess.”
“Oh, yes. He depends on me.” She smiled. “He calls me his right hand.”
Barkas nodded. “I guess you have to work late some nights?”
The smile disappeared. “Some nights, yes. Why do you ask?”
Barkas scratched his head. “Please don’t take this personally, but I was just wondering if you and Mr. Ludlow ... well, you know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
“It’s just that you’re such an attractive young woman. I’m sure Mr. Ludlow—”
“Our relationship,” Sandi interrupted, her face suddenly pink, “is strictly professional.”
Barkas said, “I’m sure it is, but word on the street is Mr. Ludlow likes the ladies.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s not?”
“No, it’s not.” Sandi was twisting a pen in her fingers. “Mr. Ludlow is a respected member of the community.”
Barkas said, “He’s married, isn’t he?”
She dropped her head. “I know he’s married.”
“His wife know what’s going on?”
“There’s nothing going on! You have no right to talk to me like this. I’m going to have to ask—”
“What I hear on the street is Mrs. Ludlow found out about the others, and now their relationship—”
“What others?”
“—and now their relationship is one of those ones where the husband and wife sleep under the same roof, but not in the same bed, if you catch my meaning.”
Sandi snapped the pen in two. Royal blue ink spattered her yellow blouse.
“I’m sorry,” Barkas said, standing, “I didn’t mean to upset you, but I have to dig as deep as I can. A man’s been murdered, and we have to catch the killer before he does it again.”
Sandi was sobbing. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make me say things, but I won’t! You don’t know him. He’s gentle and kind.” She dabbed at the ink stains with a Kleenex, smearing them. “He couldn’t kill anybody. He couldn’t even take a dead mouse out of a mousetrap under my sink, and I had to do it.”
“Just because he can’t take a mouse out of a mousetrap doesn’t mean he can’t kill somebody, or have somebody killed.”
Sandi looked across her desk at Barkas. Her eyes were like ice. “You walk in here out of nowhere, you say you’re investigating a murder, you start implying things about me and Mr. Ludlow, but you know what? Your little game won’t work. I won’t say a word against him. Whatever you think he may have done, you’re wrong. And you know why? Because he’s way too smart to put himself in a situation where he might lose his money or go to jail. He’s way too smart for that.”
A black nurse and a white nurse helped Young stand up. The black nurse greased one end of a transparent plastic tube. When she looked up at Young, who was looming over her like Frankenstein’s monster, she said, “He’s too tall.” She found a chair, stood it in front of Young, and stepped up onto its seat. Then she slipped one end of the tube into his left nostril. Two or three inches in it stopped. She pushed harder, and Young cried out. She tried again, harder, but Young cried out again, so she stopped.
Down below, the white nurse said, “Try the other side.”
The black nurse withdrew the tube, stepped down off the chair, greased the end of the tube again, and climbed back up on the chair. This time she inserted the tube into the right nostril and it slid in smoothly, but when it reached the back of his throat, Young gagged and vomited a small amount of liquid into a kidney-shaped basin the white nurse held in front of him.
Eventually the tube was all the way in, about three feet of it. Young wasn’t sure he would be able to stand it. It felt like a spoon down his throat.
Friday, June 16
Trick, reasoning that Mahmoud Khan was the kind of man who didn’t like to spend more money than he had to—how many millionaires entrust their precious thoroughbreds to the cheapest trainer on the grounds?—looked up websites for all of the storefront investment advisors he could find. The websites offered a lot of general information about the companies—locations, fees, guarantees—but no access to databases.
Now what? thought Trick. He looked across his desk at Wheeler. “Lynn,” he said, “I’ve got a hunch about Mahmoud Khan, but I don’t know how to prove it.”
“What do you need?”