Never Fear (71 page)

Well, if nothing else, the lack of
make-up gave her a clean, scrubbed look, which Jack supposed was a
good thing for a doctor.

But her eyes… something hiding there.
Fear? Anger? A little of both, maybe?

She thrust out her hand. “Welcome,
Mister Niedermeyer.”

She had a good grip.

“
Just call me
Jack.”

“
You’ll want to see the
scene of the crime, I imagine.”

“
I was going to suggest
that.”

No wasting time. All business. Jack
liked that.

The Center wasn’t at all what he’d
expected. The halls were bright, painted cheery shades yellow and
orange.

“
You’re a pediatrician?”
he said as they walked along.

She nodded. “Subspecialty in
infectious diseases.”

“
My sister’s a
pediatrician.”

“
Really? Where’s she
practice?”

Jack kicked mentally himself. Why the
hell had he said that? He never thought about his sister the
doctor. Or his brother the judge. Must be those calls from
Dad.

“
I’m really not sure. We
don’t keep in touch.”

Dr. Clayton gave him a strange
look.

Yeah, he thought. Sounds pretty lame,
I know, but my sister’s far better off not being linked to
me.

As they passed open doorways he peeked
through and saw rooms filled with toddlers laughing and playing and
running around. They didn’t look sick.

“
That’s the daycare area,”
Dr. Clayton said. “Where HIV-positive kids can play with other
HIV-positive kids, and no one has to worry about passing on the
infection.”

A little boy ran out of one of the
rooms and skidded to a stop before them.

“
Doctor Alith!” he cried.
“Look at my hair! I got a buthcut!”

“
Very nice, Hector. But
you know you’re supposed to stay in the playroom.”

Hector was all of four years old and
maybe thirty pounds, with ultra-short light brown hair about the
same shade as his skin. He looked pale under his pigment, but his
grin was a winner.

“
Feel my head! It’th a
buthcut.”

A heavyset woman in a flowered smock
appeared at the door of the playroom, filling it.

“
C’mon back, Hector. It’s
your turn at the light box.”

“
No. I want Doctor Alith
to feel my buthcut!”

The woman said, “He just got that
haircut and he’s been driving us all nuts about it.”

Dr. Clayton smiled and brushed her
hand over Hector’s stubbled head. “Okay, Hector, I’ll check out you
buzzcut, but then–”

Her smile faded and she pressed her
hand to his forehead. “I think you feel a little warm.”

“
He’s been running around
like a little madman—‘Feel my buzzcut! Feel my buzzcut!’ I’m sure
he’s just overheated.”

“
Could be, Gladys, but
bring him by my office before he goes home, okay?”

Hector jumped in front of Jack and
angled the top of his head toward him. “Feel my buthcut,
mithter!”

Jack hesitated. Hector was a cute
little guy, but he was a cute little guy with HIV.

“
C’mon,
mithter!”

Jack gave the bristly top of Hector’s
head a quick rub. He didn’t like himself for how quickly he pulled
his hand away.

“
Ithn’t it mad
cool?”

“
The maddest.”

Gladys scooted Hector back to his
playroom and they moved on to the next area, which wasn’t so
pleasant. Jack peeked through a window in a door and saw a room
full of kids hooked up to IV’s.

“
This is the clinic area.
Kids come in here for outpatient therapy—we infuse them, monitor
their progress, then send them home.”

Then they came to a huge plate-glass
window that stretched from waist level to the ceiling.

“
We board the homeless or
abandoned infants in there. We have volunteers to hold them and
comfort them. The crack babies need a
lot
of comforting.”

Jack spotted Gia cradling a baby in
her arms on the far side of the glass, but he didn’t pause. He
didn’t want her to spot him.

“
You do a lot here,” he
said as they moved on.

“
Yeah, we’ve had to become
a clinic, a nursery, a daycare center, and a foster
home.”

“
And all because of a
single virus.”

“
But we have to deal with
more than the virus. So many of these kids aren’t born merely HIV
positive—as if ‘merely’ can somehow be used with ‘HIV’—but addicted
to crack or heroin as well. They hit the world screaming like any
other baby at the insult of being ejected from that warm cozy womb,
but then they keep on screaming as the agonies of cold-turkey
withdrawal set in.”

“
A double whammy.” Poor
kids.

“
Yes. Some parents leave
their kinds an inheritance, some leave hidden scars, these kids
were left a virtual death sentence.”

Jack sensed something very personal in
that last sentence but couldn’t latch onto what it might have
been.

“
Perhaps ‘death sentence’
is overstating it,” she added. “We can do a lot for these kids now.
The survival rate is way up, but still… once they get through
withdrawal, they still have the aftereffects of addiction. Crack
and heroin burn out parts of the nervous system. I won’t bore you
with a lecture about dopamine receptors, but the result is fried
circuits in the pleasure centers. Which leaves our little crack
babies edgy and irritable, unable to take solace in the simple
things that comfort normal infants. So they cry. Endlessly. Until
the strung-out junkie mothers who made them this way beat them to
shut them up.”

Jack realized she probably gave this
spiel to all the visitors, but he wished she’d stop. He was getting
the urge to go hurt somebody.

“
The lucky ones”—she
cleared her throat harshly—”try to imagine a lucky HIV-positive
crack baby—wind up here.”

She stopped before a windowless
door.

“
Here’s the storeroom
where the toys were kept.”

She showed him the space, empty but
for some scotch tape and wrapping paper.

“
The toys will be wrapped
in this paper?” he said, memorizing the pattern.

“
Most, but not
all.”

He pulled open the door to the alley
and checked the alley itself. Easy to see how it had been done. The
outer door frame and the surface around the latch were deeply
gouged and warped. Looked like the work of a long pry bar in the
hands of someone with the finesse of an orangutan.

He saw Dr. Clayton shiver in the cold
wash from the open door. She rubbed the sleeves of her white coat.
She was very thin—no insulation.

“
How are you going to
handle this?” she said as Jack closed the door.

“
Not here. Can we talk in
your office?”

“
Follow me.”

On the way to her office, Dr. Clayton
stopped at the front door and peered out at the street. He saw her
stiffen, as if she’d seen something that frightened her.

Chapter 5

A chill rippled over Alicia’s skin and
collected at the base of her spine as she watched a gray car
double-parked across the street. It idled there, slightly uptown
from her vantage point, its motor running.

The same car as this morning? She
couldn’t be sure. Was it watching the door of the Center or waiting
for someone in one of those stores? How could she know? Hell,
between the sun glare and the tinted windows, she couldn’t even
tell how many people were in it.

She forced herself to turn away and
led Jack Niedermeyer back to her office. Maybe it was just her
imagination. Why would anybody follow her? What was the point? She
did the same thing every day: from her apartment in the Village to
the Center, from the Center to her apartment. A model of
predictability.

Relax. You’re making yourself
crazy.

“
Have a seat,” she said as
they entered her office.

Raymond stopped by to drop off some
papers. She introduced them but said nothing about why Mr.
Niedermeyer was here.

When Raymond was gone and they were
seated, facing each other, she took a good look at this
mid-thirtyish man in jeans and a reddish flannel shirt. He stood
about five-eleven, had a tight wiry build, dark brown hair, lips on
the thin side, and mild brown eyes. The very definition of
average.

This
is the guy who’s going to get the toys back? Oh, I doubt
that. I doubt that very much.

“
Now, Mister
Niedermeyer–”

“
Just call me
Jack.”

“
Okay, Just Jack.”
And you can call me Doctor Clayton.
No, she wouldn’t say that. “Ms. DiLauro told me
you might be able to help. Are you a friend of hers?”

“
Not really. I did some
work for her aunt once.” He leaned forward. “I believe the subject
is missing toys?”

A tiny flash of intensity there. Well
hidden, but Alicia had spotted it. Something personal between these
two? Or simply none of my business?

When he’d leaned forward he’d put his
hands on her desk. Alicia was struck by the length of his
thumbnails. His hands were clean, his nails well trimmed… all
except for the thumbs. Their nails jutted a good quarter inch or
more beyond the tips. She wanted to ask him about them but didn’t
see how she could do so with any grace.

“
I wasn’t prying. I’m
simply curious as to how one man could possibly find those toys
ahead of the whole New York City Police Department.”

Jack shrugged. “First off, it won’t be
the ‘whole’ department. Maybe one or two robbery detectives—if
you’re lucky.”

Alicia nodded. He was
right.

“
Second, I think it’s a
safe bet that the guys who ripped you off aren’t family men
stocking up for their own kids’ Christmases. And from the look of
that door, they weren’t pros. I smell a quickie, spur-of-the-moment
heist. I’ll bet they don’t have a fence in place to dump their
loot, which means they’ll be looking for one. I know
people…”

He left that hanging. What people?
People who buy stolen Christmas gifts? Was he some sort of criminal
himself?

She looked at him and realized that
his mild brown eyes revealed nothing… absolutely
nothing.

“
So… you ‘know people’…
people, I assume, who might lead you to the thieves. And then
what?”

“
And then I will prevail
upon them to return the gifts.”

“
And if you can’t
‘prevail?’ What then? Call in the police?”

He shook his head. “No.
That’s one of the conditions of my involvement: no contact with
officialdom. If the police recover the gifts, fine. All’s well that
ends well. If
I
return them, it’s a wonderful occurrence, a Christmas
miracle. You don’t know who’s responsible, but God bless ’em.
You’ve never seen me, never even heard of me. As far as you know, I
don’t exist.”

Alicia tensed. Was this some sort of
scam? Rob the gifts, then charge a fee to “find” them. Maybe even
collect a reward?

But no. Gia DiLauro would never have
anything to do with something like that. Her anger this morning had
been too real.

But this man, this “Just Jack”… he
might have involved Gia without her knowledge.

“
I see. And what would you
charge for–?”

“
It’s taken care
of.”

“
I don’t understand. Did
Gia–?”

“
Don’t worry about it. All
taken care of.”

“
There’ll be a
reward.”

She’d had calls—businesses and
individuals offering to contribute to a reward fund for the arrest
of the perpetrators. The total was mounting.

“
Keep it. Spend it on the
kids.”

Alicia relaxed. All right. So it
wasn’t a scam.

“
What I need is some
information about the gifts—anything distinctive that’ll help me
make sure I’m on the right track.”

“
Well, for one thing, they
were all wrapped. We only accepted new toys or clothing—all of
it
un
wrapped—and
then we wrapped them ourselves as they came in. You saw the kind of
paper we used. Other than that, what can I say? It was a real
hodgepodge of gifts, a beautiful, generous assortment…”

Alicia felt her throat begin to lock
with rage.

And they’re all
gone!

The man rose and extended his hand
across her desk. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Alicia gripped his hand and held it.
“What are our chances? The truth. Don’t think you have to make me
feel good.”

“
The truth? Chances for
recovery are zip if they’ve already fenced the toys. Slim if they
haven’t. If they’re not recovered, say, by Sunday, I’d say they’re
gone for good.”