Silent Treatment (16 page)

“Dorothy, I don’t know if this man Sidonis is telling the truth or not,” Harry had said. “And frankly, I don’t care. I loved Evie, and I’m sure she loved me. Even if she was involved with this other man, which I strongly doubt, I’m sure we would have worked things out in time.”

“Oh, my,” was all Dorothy could think of to say.

As the service was about to commence, Harry glanced back and spotted Caspar Sidonis slipping into the last row. The sight of the man brought a strange mixture of anger and embarrassment.
Cuckold
was a repulsive word and an even more disgusting concept.

“Sidonis just walked in,” he whispered to Julia Ransome, the literary agent who was Evie’s closest friend in the city.

“Do you really care?” she asked without bothering to look back.

Harry thought about it. Perhaps it was her nature as a literary agent, but Julia always had a way of slicing to the essence of any situation.

“No,” he said finally. “To tell you the truth, I guess I really don’t.”

From the moment he turned away from Evie’s body and walked out of her hospital room, Harry had been trying to sort out his feelings. He thought about moving, about just leaving his practice and taking off, perhaps starting over again in one of those eternally warm, low-crime Edens the medical classifieds were always extolling. But just
as he ultimately could not trade in his patients for the Hollins/McCue pharmaceutical job, he knew he would not leave them now. Not that Albert Dickinson would let him leave anyway.

Evie’s casket rested on a draped stand surrounded by flowers. At the center of a wreath of white roses was a blowup of the same flawless, sterile, professionally done portrait that she had allowed on Harry’s desk. There would be no burial. The day her obituary appeared in the
Times
, a Manhattan attorney had contacted Harry. Three weeks earlier, Evie had made out a new will amending a previous one. In it, she requested cremation and changed the beneficiary of her jewels and artwork from Harry to her parents—another sign that she anticipated the demise of their marriage. Harry was left as beneficiary on a $250,000 insurance policy they had taken out jointly some years before, but that was all. Nowhere in the will was there a mention of Caspar Sidonis.

Harry sat in the first row, between Julia and Evie’s parents. His brother Phil, Gail, and their three children were just to Julia’s right. Doug Atwater sat directly behind him. Harry felt grateful that none of them could read his thoughts, which, at that moment, were dominated by the wish that this whole thing would just be over so that he could return home. With the help of his associate Steve Josephson, Steve’s wife, and a cleaning service, the apartment was pretty much back to normal, minus a few shattered drawers and the missing valuables. Now, all he wanted was to spend a night or two sitting in on bass with the combo at C.C.’s Cellar, and then lose himself in his practice and patients.

The mass was dignified and reasonably brief. Harry had been offered the option of speaking, but had declined. The priest, who had known Evie since childhood, did his best to make sense of her death, but Harry heard only snatches of what he said. He was preoccupied with trying to make sense out of her
life
. His thoughts kept drifting to Evie’s IV line and to the doctor or doctor-impostor who had somehow marched onto and off of the neurosurgical
unit totally unseen by any of the staff. Now, further complicating the conundrum was another riddle: three keys on a rabbit’s foot chain.

“You okay?” Julia whispered as the priest was concluding his eulogy.

“Not really,” he responded. “Listen, Julia, are you free for a drink tonight? There’re some things going on I’d like to talk to you about.”

Although he and Evie had occasionally spent a social evening with Julia and her husband, he had never been alone with her. She was several years older than Evie, slim, attractive, and sharply intelligent. Her agency was one of the more successful in Manhattan. She was working on her third marriage.

Julia considered his request. Some minutes later, during Holy Communion, she leaned over and whispered, “Nine o’clock at Ambrosia’s.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

Although Phil, Julia, and Doug Atwater each offered to stay with him, Harry remained alone in the sanctuary until it had emptied.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Father Francis Moore spoke softly, but Harry was startled nonetheless.

“No. No thanks, Father. I was just thinking.”

“I understand.”

Harry turned and headed out. The old priest walked alongside him, a Bible cradled in one hand.

“You will be going over to the DellaRosas?” he asked.

“Yes. For a while anyhow. I’m pretty worn-out.”

There was no way he could avoid going to his in-laws, but he was determined to head back to the city as soon as possible.

“I understand,” Father Moore said again. “Although we haven’t met before today, Dorothy and Carmine speak very highly of you. They say you’re a very gentle, kind man.”

“Thank you,” Harry said.

They left the church with Harry a few feet ahead of the
priest. Several pockets of people were standing around some distance away, talking or waiting for their rides. Harry had just reached the bottom of the stairs when Caspar Sidonis stalked over and confronted him.

“You killed her, you bastard,” he rasped, his whisper harsh and menacing. “You know it and I know it. And pretty soon everyone’s going to know it. You couldn’t stand to lose her so you killed her.”

It had been thirty-three years since Harry had last thrown a punch at someone’s face. That time he had barely grazed the cheek of the bully who had been baiting him. The larger boy’s retribution had been swift and memorable. This time, Harry’s punch, thrown from a much better angle and with much more anger and authority behind it, was more effective. It connected solidly with the side of Sidonis’s nose, sending the surgeon spinning onto his back in some low, rain-soaked shrubbery. Blood instantly spurted from both his nostrils.

Shocked, Father Francis Moore dropped his Bible. Harry calmly picked it up, wiped it on his trousers, and handed it back.

“I guess I’m not so gentle after all, Father,” he said.

*   *   *

Ambrosia’s was an eternally packed, upscale bistro on Lexington near Seventy-ninth. Harry spent an hour at the office reviewing patient lab reports and catching up on paperwork before taking a cab to the club. The drizzle that had dominated most of the day was gone, and the dense overcast had begun to dissolve. The city seemed scrubbed and renewed. It was before nine, but Julia Ransome was already there, nursing a drink at one of the tall, black acrylic tables opposite the bar. It was relatively early by Manhattan standards, even for a Thursday, but the bar was already three deep.

Julia exchanged pecks on the cheek with him. She was wearing a black silk blouse and an Indian print vest, and looked very much at home among the beautiful people.

“Who’d you have to pay off to get this table?” Harry asked, sliding onto the stool opposite hers.

“Donny, the bartender over there, has been writing a novel for the last ten years or so,” she said, smiling. “I promised to read it when he finishes. In the meantime, I call ahead and he puts one or two of his pals on these stools until I get here. It’s one of the perks of being a book agent. My seamstress has a first novel in progress, too. So does the plumber I can get at ten minutes’ notice anytime, day or night. The trick is being able to tell which people haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of ever finishing their book. Once in a while I’m wrong. When that happens I just have to read it and then set about finding a new mechanic or dentist or whatever.”

“Well, I appreciate your meeting me like this.”

“If you think for one moment that I wouldn’t have, I obviously haven’t done a good job of letting you know you’re one of my favorite people.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it, Harry.” Julia finished her drink and motioned the waitress over with a minute shake of her head. “You drinking tonight?”

“Bourbon neat. Might as well make it a double.”

“Whoa. Double bourbon neat. Now there’s a side of you I’ve never known.”

“Don’t worry. If I actually finish it they’ll have to haul me out of here in a wheelbarrow.” He waited until the waitress had returned with their drinks and left. “Julia,” he said then, “please tell me about Evie.”

The agent studied her glass. “What do you want to know?”

“At this point, almost anything you choose to share would probably be news to me. The surgeon I pointed out to you today at the church—the one who claims Evie was in love with him—is convinced I gave her something, a drug, that caused her aneurysm to rupture. He’s wrong about it being me, but I’m not sure he’s wrong about the rest of his theory.…” Harry reviewed the nightmarish evening on Alexander 9, his conversation with the anesthesiologist, and
his conclusions. “Julia,” he said, “I had no idea Evie was involved with another man, even though for a year or so she wasn’t particularly involved with me. I just thought she might have shared some other things with you that … that I didn’t know about.”

In the silence that followed, Harry felt certain Julia was going to deny any knowledge of what he was talking about. Suddenly, though, the woman looked up at him and nodded.

“You were outmatched from the beginning, Harry,” she said. “You may have been able to handle the Vietcong”—she gave him a quick, ironic smile—“but you didn’t have a chance against Evie DellaRosa. She and I have known each other since she lived with me one summer during college. That’s almost twenty years. She was an exciting, intriguing person in many ways, and God knows I’ll miss her. But over all those years, I’ve never known her to be content. Whatever she had—
whoever
she had—she always wanted more. And she didn’t particularly care what it took or, unfortunately, who got hurt in the process. That’s the part of her—that seductive charisma—that always frightened me. It kept us from getting closer than we were. John Cox was at the funeral today. Did you see him?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What did Evie tell you about their breakup?”

“That she caught him having affairs, and that when she confronted him, he got her fired from the news staff and blackballed throughout the industry.”

“Does that jibe with his showing up at her funeral today?”

“No. I have to say I was surprised to see him.”

“John Cox was crazy about Evie.
She
had the affair, Harry—with John’s boss. I only know what John told me and that’s not much, but it was the boss, not John, who gave her the boot.
And
blackballed her. I think John would even have given her another chance. But she wasn’t interested.”

“Was she at all happy with me?”

“For a time—maybe a year or two. Harry, Evie needed
to be in the spotlight. She needed to be at the center of the action. Part of her fought that need—that’s why she married you, I think. Stability. But the stronger pull was clearly winning out.”

“Did you know about Sidonis?”

“Nope. Not about him or any other men during your marriage—if there were any. I’m not sure that sort of thing was ever important enough for Evie to talk about. Or maybe she didn’t trust me that much.”

“I know she was dissatisfied with her job on the magazine, but—”

“Hated it
She was born to be in front of the camera, Harry. You know that. At least you should. From the moment she started at
Manhattan Woman
she was searching for a ticket back into the limelight.”

“I’ve had the impression lately that she was working on something special.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Do you know what it was?”

Julia shook her head.

“I tried to get her to tell me about it the last time we were together. All she would say was that it was big stuff, and that the producers of
A Current Affair
and some other tabloid shows were already offering her big bucks and on-air guarantees just to see what she had.”

Harry stared off at a wall across the club. On it, artfully done, was a six-foot-high neon sculpture of a woman’s profile and hand. She had a twenties look and was smoking a glowing cigarette in a foot-long holder. Although Evie smoked only rarely, something about the rendering reminded him of her. He suspected it would be a long time before things didn’t.

“No further questions, Your Honor,” he said, finishing his bourbon. “I really appreciate your coming to meet with me like this, Julia.”

“Nonsense. You’re a terrific guy. And whether she appreciated it or not, Evie was lucky to have you. Harry, do you really think someone purposely killed her?”

“I don’t know what to think. The chemical analysis of
her blood should be completed within a few weeks—sooner if the police detective who wants to mount my scalp on his lodge pole has his way. I’m concerned about what might happen if one of the tests is positive, but I’m also wondering whether I’ll trust the results if they’re negative.”

“So you believe that woman, Evie’s roommate?”

Harry studied the neon smoker as he considered the question. Two days after Evie’s death he had gone back up to Alexander 9, but Maura Hughes had been sent home. “Shaky as hell, but not chasing any spiders,” was the way one of the nurses described how Maura had looked upon discharge. Harry was sure that the real reason for the rapid discharge was the refusal of her insurance carrier to cover any more days. A typical scenario. Companies were shortening stays and refusing coverage with almost as much vigor as they were denying any responsibility for the consequences of their policies.

“Harry?” Julia was looking at him curiously. “I asked you a question about Evie’s roommate in the hospital. You seemed like you were about to answer, and then you sort of drifted off.”

Harry glanced down at his empty glass. Years of virtual abstinence had reduced him to amateur status as a drinker. He knew that being easily distracted was the first clue that if he wasn’t tight yet, he soon would be.

So what
, he thought.
The tighter the better
.