Last Surgeon (13 page)

“Hello, Manny,” Jillian said, keeping her voice intentionally calm and nonthreatening. “I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to talk to you about some pictures that I took.”

Manny gazed at her blankly.

“Got to get to work,” he mumbled.

“Of course,” Jillian said, walking over to him, “but before you do, I have some pictures I want to show you. They’re of the Lincoln Memorial. Do you know that building?”

She could see the color begin to drain from his face. He took several cautious steps backward, pinning himself into a corner.

“No… yes… no.”

“Don’t worry, Manny. Nobody is going to hurt you. I just want help knowing why you don’t like that building. Can I show you some pictures? They won’t hurt you. I promise.”

“No! Don’t want to help.” Manny’s voice was hoarse and strained.

Slowly, Jillian reached out and took his hand. He made no attempt to pull away. After a minute his tension began to abate.

“Come,” she said. “Sit down here next to me.”

A few more seconds and the frightened Marine did as Jillian asked and stared at the photos she had printed earlier that day at the Lincoln Memorial.

“Is there anything about what is in these pictures that upsets you? Think, Manny, it’s important.”

Nothing.

Jillian began to lose hope, but when she arrived at the pictures taken from the rear of the memorial, Manny’s tension returned and he began to shake. She showed him the final shots of the day, taken from the bike path across the Potomac. Manny looked at the first picture and began to sob.

“Please… no more…”

Jillian felt her pulse quicken as she studied the man.

“It’s this shot, isn’t it, Manny? This one from across the river. This is a view you remember. Did something happen to you out there?”

“Please…”

“Tell me, Manny,” she implored, “What was it? What happened to you there?”

Manny Ferris could not or would not answer. Then the connection between them was broken by footsteps descending the wooden staircase. Billy Pearl appeared, grinning broadly.

“My bouncer, Felix, remembered your friend from the last time he was here and threw him out. He’s across the street. Felix says he was a real troublemaker-a pain in the butt. You sure he’s a doctor?”

Jillian laughed. “He drives around in a huge RV clinic taking care of poor people.”

“Bad Felix. Well, at least that’s one mystery solved. Did you get what you needed from Manny?”

“I’m not sure,” Jillian replied. “But I think I know where to start looking. Let me check my hospital and see if there are any doctors who might be able to help Manny.”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate it. Come back anytime. I’ll have Felix bring your friend back in. Drinks are on me.”

“Thanks,” Jillian said, “but I think he’d be just as happy with a few hundred Pearl Bucks.”

Phillip MacCandliss hated the zoo. It wasn’t the notion of captive wild animals he hated, it was the specific place itself-the National Zoo off Connecticut Avenue. He hated the commotion and the bratty children. He hated walking on an unending bed of peanut shells, and the overpriced crap food and cheap souvenirs. But mostly he hated the smell-the odiferous stench of beasts, pissing on straw beds, buzzing with flies. Something about the rank smell reminded him of the majority of the vets who relentlessly harassed his office begging for handouts.

He assumed that his intense distaste for the place went back to the trips he had taken there with Denise and the girls before she had left and poisoned them against him. But it really didn’t matter. He hated the place and that was that.

Why his CIA contact had picked the zoo as his meeting point he had no idea. An unfortunate coincidence was his best guess, but by no means his only one. They had ways of knowing things-everything. It was what they did.

Apart from receiving a mysterious iPod, delivered to him via interoffice mail the day after taking the assignment, this meeting was the most spylike thing he’d done. The device came with a single preloaded song, titled simply “Play Me.” By listening to that track, MacCandliss learned how to use the iPod as a two-way radio, as well as how to arrange a rendezvous with his contact in the event of trouble. The song vanished from the iPod after one listen. It was very
Mission Impossible
, and MacCandliss loved being a part of it all, even if only a peripheral part. Now, though, there was legitimate trouble.

MacCandliss had never had reason to use the emergency number before. After dialing, he hung up at the sound of a tone and synced the iPod with his computer, as he had been instructed. The sync operation added a new track to the iPod playlist. It wasn’t a song, but a computer voice detailing the specific location at the zoo, and the time when his contact would be waiting. He synced the iPod again to erase the track.

His instructions were to proceed into the zoo from the Lot B entrance at precisely eleven o’clock, buy a box of Cracker Jack, and then take Olmsted Walk past the Reptile Discovery Center. At that point, he was to put the iPod headphones on and await additional instructions. MacCandliss wondered about the early hour. He had heard that crowds were the friend of the Agency. To his surprise, there were already hordes of people strolling the paved walkways, along with field trips that included what seemed to be every grammar and middle school student within fifty miles of the city.

Coincidence? Doubtful.

This was the first time in over five years that MacCandliss had set foot inside the place. Not coincidentally, it had also been more than five years since he had seen, or even spoken to Melissa, seventeen, and Cassie, now fifteen. La Bitch had made certain of that. Years of bad-mouthing him and accusing him of abuse had the girls acting as if he was a cobra. His only regret now was not having smacked Denise more often when they were married. At least then the girls would have something to get over with their therapists.

Feeling as uncomfortable as if he were trying on new shoes, MacCandliss continued to walk the park. The heat was forecast to be near record high and he wished he had dressed lighter. He saw a boy, about six, standing in front of the glass-enclosed gorilla yard. The child clung to the string of his red balloon with one hand while slurping down a slush he held with the other. The toxic neon blue drink had stained the bottom half of his face. MacCandliss had little patience for children-even when his daughters were small. As he neared, the boy ducked under the guard railing and banged on the glass.

“Hi, gorilla!” the boy called out. “Can you say hello?”

The boy’s mother, a modestly dressed, somewhat frumpy woman in her late thirties, knelt down beside the youth to encourage her child’s exuberance. MacCandliss cringed.

“It’s not a parrot,” he said to the child. “It’s an ape and apes don’t talk.”

The boy spun around, but moved too quickly and accidentally let go of his balloon. MacCandliss watched as the diminishing red dot shrank into the cloudless sky.

Another reason to hate zoos
, MacCandliss decided.
Balloons.

“That wasn’t very nice,” the boy’s mother snapped.

“But it was nevertheless, madam, the truth,” he said, handing her a ten. “Good day.”

The truth.

His job was all about sifting through a dung heap of lies searching for it. How many vets had embellished their psychiatric symptoms just to steal from the taxpayers by way of the government, MacCandliss wondered as he strolled off in victory. What he hated most about his job at the VA were the times when he was forced to be the liars’ enabler. It sickened him. What he enjoyed most was blocking PTSD benefit pay and watching how fast a seemingly helpless, hapless vet found sustainable work.

Of course standing up to the PTSD sissies was an unpopular position within the VA, though he knew of other bureaucrats who secretly felt the same way he did. Support for crooks left the best impression with his superiors, along with the highest probability for promotion. The key was doing things by the book… but precisely by the book. As long as the denial of benefits appeared to fit within regulatory guidelines, the claims administrator who paid out the least was the one who got the most.

But the call from Jericho, now years ago, had shown him that there were possible shortcuts if a man were willing to take some chances, and accepting Jericho’s proposal had been a no-brainer.

Now, for the first time since becoming part of the operation, his future was under attack. There had been a security breach at the Vermont Avenue VA office. He adjusted his iPod headphones.

“Hello?” he said softly. “Anybody there?”

Silence.

He continued along Olmsted Walk, listening for his contact. He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. He was just passing underneath the heavy overhead wires by which the orangutans traversed the road from one cage to another when a man’s deep voice spoke to him.

“Look up,” the voice said.

MacCandliss did as instructed and immediately spied three hideously ugly orangutans, traveling hand over hairy hand across the O Line from the Think Tank to the Great Ape House on the opposite side of the walkway.

“Beautiful creatures, aren’t they,” the voice said. “I didn’t want you to miss that.”

“Where are you?” MacCandliss asked.

“I’m here. That’s all you need to know.”

“Jericho?”

“Call me that if you wish. Just keep walking. You don’t have to speak so loudly. Your iPod was put together by people who know what they’re doing. Don’t move your lips too much and you’ll appear as though you’re singing to yourself. Understand?”

Cloak-and-dagger
, MacCandliss thought.
These guys love cloak-and-dagger.
He couldn’t tell if this was the same man who had initially contacted him on his unlisted home phone, offering him a chance to help his country and his bank account. In exchange for his services, MacCandliss was promised a significant jump in job grade and salary level. A no-brainer. Two days later, he was called into his supervisor’s office and informed he’d been promoted.

“Proceed to Lemur Island,” the voice said.

“Aren’t those the animals that would follow each other anywhere, even off a cliff?”

“That would be a lemming, Mr. MacCandliss, and it’s a myth that the rodents commit mass suicide. Clearly, you’re not much of an animal lover.”

“Only if they’re grilled medium rare and smothered with onions.”

“Very well, Mr. MacCandliss. Assume that I can see you. Stop when you reach Lemur Island and look at the exhibit while we talk. Under no circumstances are you to turn around. Do not try to figure out who or where I am. Is that understood?”

MacCandliss felt a surge of anger. He was treated like one of them, but only when it suited their purposes. Well, they were anonymous and he was set to take a fall if the security breach wasn’t straightened out. All he could do was to follow Jericho’s instructions and supply them with some names. Perhaps it was time to up the ante on his services.

When MacCandliss was in position at Lemur Island, the voice again spoke to him through his headset.

“You sent word you needed to speak with us?”

“At the weekly staff meeting at my office, we discussed security measures in the wake of a breach at the Vermont Avenue building.”

“I wasn’t aware.”

“Neither was I. Then I read the official report.”

“And?”

“A man-a young black man from what we can tell-using a bogus ID, hacked into the desktop computer of a low-level account specialist, then almost got caught getting away. Computer forensics traced the specific files that had been compromised and included that information in their report. The intruder was looking for Manny Ferris, one of our guys.” There was a prolonged silence. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here. Do you know who the person was?”

“No. But I did get a copy of the security tape. It looks like a boy-a teenager-but I don’t know who he is. As usual with the stone-age equipment they buy from convenience stores and allocate to the VA, the camera didn’t get a clear shot of his face.”

“Do you have the tape with you?”

“Of course.”

No “nice job” or “great work.”

“We have ways of figuring those things out,” the voice said. “Now listen carefully. I want you to put the tape in your Cracker Jack box and drop it into the trash receptacle to your left. Then leave the park the way you came in. We’ll be in touch.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“Look, I’m not comfortable with this anymore. Unlike most everyone in the VA system, the computer forensics people actually know what they’re doing. I did a lot of research for you. There are ways to connect me to Ferris.”

“I said we’ll be in touch.”

“That’s not enough anymore,” MacCandliss snapped, aware of a sudden flush of nervous perspiration. “I want information. I want to know exactly what I’m putting my neck on the line for.”

“We promised you promotions and you’ve gotten them.”

“Well, that’s not enough anymore. My job security might be shot. If these forensics people keep digging, I may end up in front of a judicial hearing. I want to know what I’m involved in. I don’t know how deep this thing goes, but I’m guessing deep enough.” MacCandliss could not believe what he was hearing his own voice saying. “Forget the promotions,” he went on, “I want cash and I want information, or I’m going to dial forensics’ number before they dial mine.”

“I… see. And what sized… bonus do you think would be appropriate?”

“Half a million should cover what I would stand to lose from my pension if this situation blows up and I have to run,” MacCandliss replied, the uncertainty now gone from his voice.

“Thank you for bringing these matters to our attention, Mr. MacCandliss. I understand your position and I will see that your concerns are addressed. Please rest assured that you will be well taken care of.”

“I’m deadly serious,” MacCandliss said.

“Oh, so are we.”

When his phone rang-the Bach Organ Fugue in G Minor Koller had programmed for that number-he knew Jillian Coates was calling Paul Regis. He answered on the fifth ring, already in character.

“Yes,” he said, as his mind traveled back to that day in her condominium, seizing upon the details that made her put so much trust and faith in the insurance investigator.

“Hello, is this Paul?”

“Yes it is,” Koller said. “Can I help you?”

“Paul, it’s Jillian Coates. You were at my condo last week.”

“Jillian, of course.” Koller made certain his voice revealed both surprise and delight at her call. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I was speaking with a friend of mine. Well, not really a friend. We just met actually.”

Naturally, she was talking about Dr. Nick Garrity. Koller had followed her to the Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit, but had tired of waiting for her when an hour passed after she disappeared inside the RV. He had returned to his hotel and done some research on Garrity’s operation, and knew enough about the onetime army doctor and his shoestring-budget medical RV to feel certain that the man was hardly a threat.

“So,” he said, drumming his fingers on the desk, “does this new friend have anything to do with me?”

“No,” Jillian said, her laugh sounding somewhat forced. “I went to see him because… because we have some friends in common. In passing, I happened to mention the fire and my persistent suspicion that having my sister being murdered one day and my apartment burning down just a couple of weeks later seems like more than a coincidence. He agreed with me, and promised to speak with a friend of his who is a detective on the Washington police force.”

“Do you know this detective’s name?”

Koller was bouncing the eraser more rapidly and forcefully.

Stupid Jericho!

“I don’t know his name,” Jillian said, “but I was wondering if you might send me a copy of your report so my friend Nick can take it to him?”

“Of course. Where are you staying?”

Jillian gave him the address of the nursing school dorm, which he had already written down.

“I’m so grateful to you, Paul. Do you expect to be in D.C. any time soon?”

“Not that I know of, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’m still busy trying to find a lead on Belle’s murderer, and I’ve used up most of my vacation time at work, but as soon as things slow down for me, I’ll call, okay?”

“That would be terrific,” Koller said, wondering why she almost certainly was lying about how she knew Garrity. “Listen, I’ll get a copy of the report and get it right off to you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Paul. You’re the best.”

“No, Jillian Coates, you are.”