F Paul Wilson - Novel 02 (3 page)

           
"Friday's a long way off. An
early bite it will be. Any place special you'd like to go?"

           
"You choose."

 
          
"Okay.
I will." He pulled a small leather folder from his pocket and gave her two
cards along with a pen. "Give me your number and I'll call when I think of
an appropriate place." She wrote down her number and handed back the
cards. He returned the bottom card to her.

 
          
"That
one's for you. Call me any time you witness a federal crime." He waved and
moved off. "I'll call you tonight or tomorrow." And then he was
hurrying through the glistening marble whiteness toward the exit. Gin glanced
at his card, Gerald Canney, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

 
          
She
smiled. Gerry was an FBI man? Amazing. She'd always imagined him going into
business. Who'd have ever thought? And now the former major heartthrob of
Washington-Lee High wanted to take her out. Who'd ever believe that?

 
          
She
just hoped they didn't wind up at a pasta place. That wouldn't be funny.

 
          
Pasta
. . . when had she picked up that name? Freshman year?

 
          
Somewhere
around the time her hormones had begun to flow. Overnight she'd seemed to
balloon. It was horrible.

 
          
She
couldn't squeeze into her clothes. Her breasts were growing, which was fine,
but so were her thighs and hips and waistline. She hadn't changed her eating
habits but her body seemed to have stopped burning off the calories she'd once
been able to pack away. She'd gone from slightly above average to obese in less
than a year. She'd wanted to die.

 
          
Her
father couldn't see a problem, "There's more of you to love!" was
definitely not a solution to her misery. Mama understood, and together they
started a diet, but already it was too late. The school comedians couldn't
resist "Pasta" Panzella.

 
          
She
changed internally as well, becoming moody and reclusive. Looking back now,
from the far side of a medical education, Gin realized Pasta had sunk into a
clinical depression. She'd tell people she didn't care about her weight or what
anybody called her, and to prove it, she'd binge. Especially on lonely weekend
nights. Primarily on chocolate.

 
          
Pasta
loved chocolate. Chocolate cake, chocolate donuts, Hershey's with almonds, and
Snickers. God, she loved Snickers. And bingeing only made her fatter, which
made her even more depressed.

 
          
Pasta
missed the junior and senior proms, and lots of other high-school activities in
her self-imposed exile. The only bright spots in those dark days had been her
novels and her part-time job in Dr. Lathram's office. Her grades began to slip
but not enough to keep her out of the Ivy League.

 
          
The
summer before going off to college she realized that she had a chance to start
all over again. The kids in
Princeton
had never heard her called Pasta. She vowed that none of them ever would. She
began a strict diet, no bulimia, no starvation, no trading one problem for
another, just low fat and calorie restriction, plus a grueling exercise
program. She remembered the constant hunger, the burning lungs, the aching legs
as she forced her body to jog one more mile . . . just one more. By the time
she registered at Princeton she was proud to be merely overweight. According to
her charts, her weight hit the fiftieth percentile for her age, height, and sex
during sophomore year, as a junior she overshot and got too thin, so she backed
off. When she graduated she was the person she wanted to be, She had her BS in
biology, was on her way to U. of P. med school, and she liked what she saw in
the mirror.

 
          
She'd
maintained that weight through four years of med school and three years of
residency. Pasta Panzella was gone.

 
          
Well,
almost gone. The ghost of Pasta still haunted her, and every so often she'd
propel Gin to the chocolate section of a candy store, and Gin would give in and
let Pasta have a Snickers. But only once in a while, and only one.

 
          
And
now Gerry Canney was asking her out. Strange how things come full circle.

 
          
She
frowned. Hadn't she heard somewhere along the line that Gerry was married? She
wanted to get to know Gerry, she certainly hadn't known him well in high
school, but she wasn't into games.

 
          
Pasta
Panzella had been a vulnerable adolescent.

 
          
Gin
Panzella, MD, was anything but.

 
          
'"Sorry
I'm late," Gerry said as he burst into Marvin Ketter's cramped officer on
the
EYE
Street
side of the Bureau building. He was puffing a little and he'd broken a
sweat on the rush up from the parking garage.

 
          
"Took
me a little longer than I planned."

 
          
Which
was true. It had taken Pasta, no. . . Gina, a long time to finish her business
in the Hart Building. And all the way back here his mind had been on her
instead of Senator Schulz. God, she was beautiful now.

 
          
The
metamorphosis from Pasta to Gin fascinated him. Reminded him of the time as a
kid he'd left a caterpillar in a dry aquarium and returned after a weekend away
to find a graceful butterfly fluttering against the glass. He'd let it fly
around his room, watching it in awe for hours before opening the screen to let
it glide out the window.

 
          
"Well,
you've had all mornin' to scratch," Ketter said. "Find any worms?"
Marvin Ketter had ten years on Gerry. His dark curly hair was just starting to
gray at the temples and he wore it very very short. His eyebrows were his
outstanding feature, enormous, bushy, Groucho-league tangles that were longer
and thicker than the hair on his head. Give him a wide black mustache and a
cigar and he could join Harpo and Chico without a hitch. Until he opened his mouth.
Groucho didn't have a Georgia accent.

 
          
Ketter
was SSA, supervising special agent. One notch above Gerry.

 
          
Gerry
wanted his job. He didn't want to kick him out or make him look bad, he liked
Ketter, but when Ketter moved up, Gerry wanted to move into his chair. Not
simply as a career move or because he'd been a field agent long enough, there
were other, more important reasons.

 
          
"Found
a few goodies, but I don't know if they mean anything. And the more I learn
about our boy, the less I like him. I mean, there didn't seem to be anything
too small for this guy to steal."

 
          
"Plenty
like him down here."

 
          
"So
I'm beginning to see. Hell, I used to think I had few illusions about what
really goes on up there on the Hill, but I'm beginning to think I've been a
Pollyanna." He'd learned more than he wanted to know about Washington's
honoraria industry.

 
          
Years
ago the Senate had voted to cap the amount of honoraria each member could
collect in a year. This did not deter senators from accepting "speaking engagements,"
however. They continued to be flown to plush resorts, put up in lavish suites,
wined and dined for days before and after their 'speech", usually a few
after-dinner remarks to the corporate sales conference attendees, and then
flown back to Washington loaded down with gifts. The thousand-dollar honorarium
for speaking? That was donated, very visibly, to a charity.

 
          
The
all-expense-paid vacation and gifts were enough of a haul for most of the
legislators, but not enough for Senator Schulz. He accepted every speaking
invitation that came along, demanded high honoraria, but graciously donated
every dime to a church in his hometown where his uncle was minister. Gerry's
investigation had uncovered evidence that the minister was keeping only a quarter
of the donations for the church and funneling the rest back to Schulz.

 
          
But
then Gerry had come across a connection between Schultz and Representative Hugo
Lane. Both were cozy with one of the Japanese auto lobbies. A Japanese auto corporation
had bought an $800,000 condo in
Palm Beach
. It was registered in the company's name,
but its use was reserved exclusively for Schulz and Lane. Whenever they wanted
some fun in the Florida sun, it was theirs. They simply had to work it out
between themselves so they wouldn't arrive at the same time

 
          
Congressman
Lane had died in a car crash, ran it into a deep ravine in Rock Creek Park, two
weeks before Schulz's death.

 
          
A
connection? Maybe. Gerry was looking into that. So far he'd come up with zilch,
but he was still looking.

 
          
"One
interesting note," he said to Ketter. "I came across a fat canceled
check for plastic surgery."

 
          
"Let
me guess, drawn on his reelection campaign funds." Of course.

 
          
"So
what's the point?"

            
"Well, seems to me people
who've looking to end it all don't drop a bundle on cosmetic surgery. Sounds
more like someone who's looking toward the future."

 
          
'"Possibly.
Or someone who's unhappy with himself, tries plastic surgery to improve his
looks, finds out it doesn't make him feel the least bit better, so he dives for
the dirt."

 
          
"Spoilsport,
" Gerry muttered.

 
          
"Leave
the second-guessing to the shrinks. Got anything concrete?"

           
"Yes. An odd little
correlation popped out of the database. What if I told you that both Lane and
Schulz had plastic surgery this summer?"

           
Ketter shrugged. So?"

           
"And what if I told you they
both used the same surgeon?"

           
"Same response. These Old Boys
go to the same dentist, the same chiropractor, eat at the same restaurants,
have the same personal trainer, sometimes the same mistresses. So why not use
the same plastic surgeon? Who's the doc?"

           
"Duncan Lathram."

           
Ketter stared at him a moment.
"Well now, " he drawled. "Seems I've heard that name before. And
I do believe I heard it from you. Or am I wrong?"

           
"No, you're right."

 
          
"Seems
to me you had yourself a bit of a hard-on for this Doc Lathram a while
back."

           
"We had a disagreement. That's
all." More than a disagreement, actually.

 
          
Duncan
Lathram had flat out refused to operate on Gerry's face after the car accident.
It had been a very bad time for Gerry. The worst.

 
          
And
Lathram's brush-off had almost put him over the edge. He still smarted from the
sting of that rejection.

 
          
"You
seemed pretty heated up at the time, if I remember."

           
"Look. The computer spit out
the correlation on its own. I didn't go looking for it. But you've got to admit
it seems a little strange that a congressman and a senator both die a month or
so after plastic surgery performed by the same doctor."

 
          
"One
in a car accident, the other in a fall. I don't exactly see a trend here."

 
          
"Neither
do I. Just mentioning it as a curiosity."

           
"Fine. So basically we've got
no evidence of foul play in the Schulz death."

           
"None."

 
          
"Okay.
Then let's fold up that tent and move on without muddying the water with
plastic surgeons."