Silent Treatment (32 page)

She turned on the den light and ran her finger over the
volumes in the bookcase, searching for something light—very light. Then again, she thought, perhaps heavy would be better. She pulled out a thin paperback of poems by Lord Byron.
Evelyn DellaRosa
was written in perfect script inside the cover. Evie was, of course, another valid reason for Harry’s maintaining distance between them. Maura closed the book and slid it back. She and Harry had been through so much since his wife’s death that it was difficult to remember it had only been a few weeks.

She scanned the shelves once more and finally settled on a coffee-table book on Ireland. In six hours she and Harry were scheduled to meet with Pavel Nemec. Maura desperately wanted the session to work out. Connecting with the face that was locked in her subconscious would just about balance her humiliation at having fallen off the wagon. She had never been hypnotized before and had no idea whether being sleepless for the entire preceding night would be a plus or a minus. On the other hand, if the legendary Hungarian was as incredible as his reputation, it probably didn’t matter.

As Harry had predicted, the moment Nemec heard his request, a time slot had been cleared out for them.

“Exactly what
did
you do for his son?” Maura asked after Harry told her about the appointment.

“Ricard? Nothing, really. I just did a routine physical for music camp,” he said. “He plays the French horn.”

“And?”

“And I found a little lump that I didn’t like beneath one arm.”

“Cancer?”

“Hodgkin’s disease, actually. Thank God it was in an early stage. It’s been about six years now, so he’s considered a cure.”

He said it all so matter-of-factly, like she might talk about mixing paints. But Maura knew about school physicals and camp physicals and such. She had had enough of them to know that most doctors did nothing but listen to your heart. But Harry hadn’t dealt with Pavel Nemec’s son in such a cursory way. Harry had been … Harry.

Maura reflected on what he had told her of the drama swirling around him at the hospital—the call from his friend Atwater asking him to remove himself from the staff; the hearing that was being arranged to decide whether or not he would be allowed to continue to practice there.

Harry Corbett didn’t deserve that sort of treatment, she thought angrily. She brushed her fingers across her feathery new hair and along the still-sensitive margins of her craniotomy scar. He also didn’t deserve the treatment
she
had given him. Drinking again had been petulant, immature, and stupid. She was lucky he hadn’t just handed her a bottle and booted her out.

“No more,” she muttered, knowing that she had failed to honor the same pledge many times before. “That’s it, lady. Not one more drop.”

She flipped through a few pages of Irish countryside and felt her eyelids grow heavy. She wondered what it would feel like to be hypnotized—if it would feel like anything at all. O’Brien’s Tower atop the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare blurred, then faded.

No more
. The words echoed in her mind. Not one more drop …

The aroma of brewing coffee worked its way into her consciousness. She opened her eyes a slit.

Pale morning light filtered into the den from between buildings. Harry sat on the easy chair beside the sofa. He was dressed in gray sweats with a towel draped around his neck, and had obviously just finished a workout. His dark hair glistened with sweat, and the color in his cheeks made his rugged good looks just that much more appealing.

Maura reached over dreamily and squeezed his hand.

“What time is it?” she said.

“After seven. We still have a while if you want to doze off again. I’m just being selfish by waking you up like this.”

“Then I’ll be even more selfish and stay awake.”

“How do you feel?”

“Sober.”

She knew it was the only word he really wanted to hear.

“You ready to have your brain probed by The Hungarian?”

“I am. He had just better be set to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

“He’s a wizard—at least that’s what I’ve been told. Hey, listen. Evie’s three-hundred-dollar coffeemaker is hard at work in the kitchen. The first thing she did after the wedding was to give away my Mr. Coffee. Hers goes to the gourmet shop by itself, mixes the perfect blend, then grinds, brews, and samples it.”

“With that buildup, I’m all taste buds.”

“How do you take it?”

“After yesterday you have to ask?”

Harry smiled.

“Black it is,” he said.

Maura had never paid a great deal of attention to her looks. One ex-lover had said that was because she had never had to. Today, though, she took a bit more time than usual getting ready—a little makeup, the enamel earrings Harry liked, and a cotton dress instead of her trademark jeans.

She felt keyed up at the prospect of what lay ahead—frightened that the session would be a bust, but almost equally apprehensive about other possibilities. Over the two and a half years of her downward spiral she had been a blackout drinker, with little regard for the places she went or the company she kept. Now she wondered just how selective Pavel Nemec could be in unlocking her memory. Most of what was hidden away in her subconscious might just as well stay right where it was.

Nemec lived and worked at an address on the Upper East Side. Before going there, she and Harry took a cab to his office, stopping at her place to pick up an artist’s sketch pad, some pencils, and some pastels, and at his bank to withdraw fifteen hundred dollars.

“I’ve canceled another half day at the office and gotten someone to make rounds on my patients in the hospital,”
he told her. “Most of my practice is pretty loyal, I think. But I’m really beginning to put some of them to the test.”

She nodded sympathetically. “This is the day,” she said. “This is the day it all begins to turn around. Trust me. Hey, speaking of turning around, turn this way a bit. I want to try something.”

He did as she asked, and in less than two blocks she had sketched a passable likeness of him. By the time they reached the office, the drawing was quite good.

“That’s amazing,” he said.

“I can do better. But at least this tells me I can do it at all. It’s been a while. I actually once spent a summer in Italy doing sketches and caricatures for the tourists on the Piazza Navona.”

Walter Concepcion was already in the waiting room, chatting with the woman behind the reception desk, whom Maura learned was Mary Tobin. Maura was glad to see him again. Today he wore a black T-shirt, and she noticed that his arms were sinewy and more muscular than she would have expected. He had a tattoo over his left deltoid, artfully done, of a skull with a serpent slithering out of one eye.

“They called from Dr. Erdman’s office at the hospital,” Mary said. “The meeting is scheduled for ten tomorrow morning in the conference room next to his office.”

Harry sighed.

“I guess you’ll have to call my morning appointments arid cancel them again.”

“I already did.”

“This is getting ridiculous. You know, maybe we should just close up shop for a while.”

The older woman’s eyes flashed.

“You do,” she said, “and I’m gonna find me one of those bamboo canes. You know, the ones that take flesh off with the second stroke …”

“Okay, okay. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”

“Fine. I called your attorney to tell him the time. He wants you to call him later today, but he said he’ll be there.”

“At three hundred fifty an hour, why shouldn’t he be?”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing, Mary. Nothing. I’m just in my irritable idiot mode is all. It never lasts long.”

“
Thank goodness
,” she said.

Harry handed Concepcion the money in an envelope. It was clear to Maura that Harry still had doubts about the man. But she had absolutely none. Walter had already given them a place to start—the first steps of a counterattack.

“Okay, we’re in business,” Concepcion said, pocketing the envelope. “And don’t worry, Harry. Every dollar of this will be accounted for on paper—receipts and all. I actually think we got off to a running start last night. After I got home I called about forty escort services. My line to them was that a woman named Desiree had given me the night of my life when I was last in town six months ago. Unfortunately for me, a friend had made the arrangements, and I had no way of getting hold of him for the name of the escort service. Money was no problem, but only if it was for Desiree. Three of the services made it sound as if they knew her. They said they’d try to get in touch with her and I should call back. A fourth one, Elegance, said she wasn’t working for them anymore. That’s the one I’m homing in on.”

“Why that one?” Maura asked.

“Because the woman I spoke to initially gave me vague answers about Desiree. She took my number and said I’d be called. About an hour later, a different woman called. She said her name was Page. I think she runs the business. We played cat and mouse for a time. I mentioned money as often as I could. She denied knowing anyone named Desiree as often as she could. Finally I told her that I knew Desiree was dead, and I just wanted some information about her. I offered her five hundred dollars just to talk with me in person for half an hour. Not one minute more. And she didn’t have to answer any questions about Desiree that she didn’t want to. I was sure she was going to say no. But when she said again that she didn’t know Desiree, I knew I had her. We’re meeting tomorrow morning.”

“That sounds promising,” Maura said.

“It sounds like we’re about to be taken for five hundred bucks,” Harry muttered.

“You just hang in there with me, boss,” Walter replied, the tic at the corner of his mouth firing off several times. “You don’t seem to know it yet, but what you got here is the detective bargain of the century. Just keep in touch. Maybe we can get together tomorrow night and compare notes. By the way, Maura, I’ll check on an AA meeting for us to go to then if you still want to.”

“I’m ready.”

“You have my number at home,” Harry said. “Call anytime if you learn something.” He hesitated and then added, “Walter, I’m sorry to be giving you a hard time. I’ll try not to.”

Concepcion pinched his own forearm.

“Hey, skin as thick as rhino hide, man,” he said. “Besides, I haven’t done anything yet except cost you money. When I do produce, and I will, I expect you to get off my case.”

He shook hands with them both, waved to Mary Tobin, and headed out.

“Come on,” Harry said. “We can catch a cab on Fifth.”

“Okay,” Maura said, battling a sudden, inexplicable case of nerves, “let’s do it.” She started toward the door and then turned back. “Cross your fingers, Mary,” she said. “We’re off to see the wizard.”

The discreet brass placard above the bell read:

P. Nemec
Behavior Modification

Pavel Nemec greeted them warmly and served them tea and cakes in the oak-paneled Victorian waiting room of his office. He and Harry spent some time catching up on Nemec’s family and on Harry’s life over the years since they had last spoken. He was in his early sixties, Maura guessed,
graying and very slight, but fit. She found him charming and unpretentious.

Even so, the free-floating anxiety that had begun to take hold of her in Harry’s office intensified. Maura had tried so hard to reconnect with the face of the man in the white clinic coat. But the harder she tried, the flimsier the memories became. Now, she wondered whether the DTs, and the surgery, and the drugs had distorted reality so much for her that the man, in fact, never did exist.

Her hands were shaking ever so slightly. She abandoned trying to hold her teacup and instead sat quietly as Harry explained their situation. Nemec also listened intently. But midway through Harry’s account, he stood and began pacing slowly behind her chair, pausing twice to rest his hands gently on her shoulders. Then suddenly he bent down, his lips close to her ear.

“There’s nothing to be frightened about, Maurie,” he whispered. “Nothing.”

Maura was startled.
Maurie
, not
Maura
. He had definitely said that. No one except her father had ever called her Maurie. And then only until she was ten or so.

Harry stopped talking. Maura became acutely aware of the traffic noises from the street. It was happening, she realized. No couch, no watch-on-a-chain, no New Age music, no gimmicks at all. Pavel Nemec was at work—right here, right now.

He moved around to face her and placed his fingertips on her temples. Her eyes had closed now, but her mind was racing. Images and faces cascaded through her thoughts like, a video on rapid search. Faces from her childhood—teachers, playmates, Tom, Mother … houses and rooms, rural scenes and city streets. She connected easily with some of the pictures, not at all with others.… Then suddenly, one scene began repeating itself over and over. It was her father, a drink sloshing in his hand, turning towards her. His rheumy eyes were cold with contempt. His words were thick and slurred. Spittle sprayed from his mouth as he railed at her.

You’re worthless, Maurie … hopeless and worthless
.…

You can’t do a damn thing right except give me headaches. Just like your mother
 …

Except for marrying her, you’re about the worst mistake I’ve ever made.… In fact, if it weren’t for you, I’d never have had to marry her in the first place
.…

“Easy, Maurie,” Nemec said with gentle firmness. “He will never, ever speak to you like that again.… He was sick. That’s all.… You never deserved to be spoken to like that. He just couldn’t help it.” Nemec cupped his calming hands behind her ears. “You did your best to please him.… He hated himself too much to show love for anyone.… He never thought about what he was doing to you.… You can let it go now, Maura.… You can let it go forever.…”

The swirling images began to recede. Maura knew her eyes were closed, but she could see the mystic in his gray cardigan, pacing in front of her. Her apprehension was gone now—the shroud of self-loathing that had blanketed her life for so long had lifted, leaving her with an incredible sense of peace. All those times her father had crushed her pride, belittled her. Even news of his death couldn’t kill the terrible seeds he had sown. Throughout her life, each time success was in her grasp, her pathological self-doubt would lead her to find some way to sabotage and destroy it.