Shadow Woman

19

Linda Thompson spent all of her time studying Dr. Carey McKinnon. He was attractive, with a lean body and gangling walk and big hands that made her wonder if he had made his way through college playing basketball. He always looked as though he was late, ducking out of the driver’s seat of the BMW, unfolding those long legs, then taking two steps toward the hospital building before the door that he had flicked with his hand slammed shut. Then he would step along toward the entrance without looking to either side or slowing down as visitors did to be sure the automatic door would open in time, and then disappear inside.

When his shift ended, he would come out alone at the same speed, slip into the BMW, and drive off. She watched him travel the same route each time, back to his big old house in Amherst. After a few minutes she would see him moving around in the kitchen. Later there would be the glowing bluish light in a room on the upper floor from a television set. When it went off, he would sleep.

It took Linda two days to grow accustomed to his hours. He was at the hospital for surgery by seven and usually walked across the street to the medical building where he had his office at around one. Some time in the late afternoon he would walk back to the hospital and stalk the hallways, talking to patients in their rooms until at least seven, and sometimes nine.

After she became used to his movements and had adjusted her internal clock to his, she had long stretches of time when she could let him out of her sight. The mornings were good, because she knew that he wasn’t going to leave in the middle of an operation. She spent some mornings with realtors. His neighborhood was wrong for her purposes. The houses were all big and expensive, sitting well back on vast lots. The nearest one that was for sale was two long blocks away, and the view of his house was obscured by a row of old maple trees along the sidewalk. The zoning apparently didn’t permit apartment buildings, because there was not one on any of the surrounding streets.

She considered getting a job in the hospital, but only for a moment. Hospitals checked credentials to avoid lawsuits, and she could never create any that would get her a job that placed her in his path frequently enough. At best she would find herself emptying bedpans three floors away from him, with no excuse to leave and follow him.

Linda had an expert eye for bodies and could tell he was in reasonably good condition. He didn’t jog or work out at home, so it was possible that he belonged to some local club. She looked up all of the ones in the telephone book, made some calls, and learned nothing.

His entry in the A.M.A. directory told her he had gone to Cornell and then to the University of Chicago Medical School. She opened an account at the bank listed on his credit report and shopped at the supermarkets closest to his house, but never saw him.

She visited the main library in downtown Buffalo and read old issues of the Cornell alumni magazine until she found the right obituary. A woman named Susan Preston had died six years ago in a plane crash. Susan Preston would have been five years younger than McKinnon, so they weren’t in school together. She had been survived by various Prestons in San Francisco, so it was unlikely that McKinnon had known her family. Linda took the catalog off the shelf and studied the maps and photographs of the Cornell University campus, then memorized the names of professors and courses. If the university was going to be an entree to anything, she might need to be able to talk about it.

Linda called her house and reached Lenny. She told him to punch the name Susan Preston Haynes onto some blank credit cards, make her a California driver’s license, and send them by overnight mail. It was a gamble to use a real name, but it would put her on the right lists, and adding a husband’s surname gave her the option of being Haynes any time Preston seemed too risky.

After six days of stalking Carey McKinnon, Linda found an article in the Buffalo News about a benefit dinner to be held by the auxiliary of Buffalo Memorial Hospital. She called the number in the article and bought a ticket for a hundred dollars. Carey McKinnon seemed to do nothing but work and sleep, but maybe he would consider a benefit for the hospital a part of his work. She had just taken out the good dress she had brought from California in case she needed it in Las Vegas and begun her preparations when the telephone rang.

“Yes?” she said into it.

“It’s me.” Earl sounded angry.

“Hi,” she said. “Have you got anything yet?”

“Zero,” he said. “I’ve watched his goddamn car for a week. If he’s in Billings at all anymore, he doesn’t drive anywhere. He’s also not visible in any hotel, motel, or park bench in the city. If you don’t have anything for me soon, I think we might want to begin considering our alternatives.”

“What alternatives?”

“Make some fake ID with Hatcher’s picture on it that won’t fool even a Montana cop, rent an apartment in that name. We salt the apartment with the ID and the mail we found in Las Vegas, and anything from the car that has Hatcher’s prints on it.”

“Then what?” She knew he wasn’t serious. He was saying it because it sounded desperate and risky, and the thought that he was contemplating such a fraud would affect her.

“Pop some guy Hatcher’s size and shape, put him in the car, and torch it. Once the police run the prints we leave in the apartment and identify the photograph on the fake ID, they won’t have any reason to strain themselves with a lot of tests, and Seaver won’t be able to. If anybody’s real curious they might go to the Denver apartment the car’s registered to and find more of Hatcher’s prints there. We collect the rest of the money from Seaver. End of story.”

“What happens if Pete Hatcher shows up later?” She sounded as worried as she would have been if she believed Earl would give up. Earl didn’t need safety as much as he needed to win.

“Honey, if I can’t find the bastard, you think anybody else is going to?”

“Of course not. Nobody’s better than you, Earl. I’m just talking.”

“If we wait too long, we might have to do it in reverse.”

“What do you mean?” asked Linda.

“Cut and run before Seaver’s bosses send somebody for us. Find a man and woman and make it look like this specialist Hatcher hired set a trap and killed us first.”

“Please don’t do anything yet, Earl,” she said. “I won’t disappoint you, I promise.” Her own voice, sounding breathy and submissive, gave her an erotic shiver. She experimented with making her voice break, not quite a sob. “I’ve been trying really hard.” The effect was good. “I’ll have something for you in a few days.”

“I sure hope so,” he said. “I’ve got nothing. I’ve been running computer checks on the two names he used so far, her name, car rentals, everything. None of it leads anywhere in particular. So I’m beginning to think she picked him up and they were long gone before I got here.”

“I know it’s up to me,” she said. “I won’t forget it for a second.”

Carey McKinnon stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom and studied the man who stared back at him. He had been aware long before tonight that he looked foolish in a tuxedo, but he had consoled himself by renting a tuxedo to look foolish in instead of owning one, and by picking out the plainest model that Benjy’s Midnight Tux had to offer, with black cummerbund and white plastic studs and cuff links. Probably the last time this one had been out of Benjy’s, it had been taken to a prom. The shoes were his, but only because Benjy’s selection of shoes for big feet had the sturdy spit-shined look of military footwear.

With resignation, he brushed his hair into place one last time. The warring cowlicks would reassert themselves in the car. Then he turned off the light, walked downstairs, and stopped. He looked at the telephone before he opened the door. He had been looking at telephones all over the house for two hours, each time remembering that the way they looked had nothing to do with ringing.

It was two hours earlier in Montana, so it was still about five o’clock there. His mind warned him that thinking about time was the first step into treacherous territory. The second was to ask himself what she could possibly be doing that made a telephone call to her husband such a hard thing to accomplish at any hour of the day or night. That brought a hundred contradictory answers into his mind together, elbowing past one another to the front to be acknowledged.

He left the lamp by the door burning and hurried out to his car. As soon as he had started the engine, he noticed the fuel gauge again and cursed himself for forgetting. He hated to stop at the full-serve side of the gas station and wait by the pump helplessly until the attendant happened to glance out the window and notice him, then get so lonely and bored that helping a customer was all he could think of to do. But Carey was determined not to pump gas in a tuxedo. The unwritten laws of physics meant that the pump nozzle would backwash or the hose would leak.

He backed out of the long driveway quickly, drove up the street, and stopped at the light. He hoped the needle of the fuel gauge was still just working its way upward to its correct reading. The light changed, and he turned left to drive the familiar route back to the hospital.

When he reached his reserved parking space he found a big black Mercedes had been backed into it. He paused for a moment with his foot on the brake, then drove on into the visitors’ parking lot, took a parking ticket, and found a space. As he walked toward the building, the argument the muscles of his mouth and tongue were rehearsing was that taking a surgeon’s space in a hospital parking lot could cost the driver’s child the five minutes that might have saved his life some time. He clamped the argument to the roof of his mouth with his tongue. He wasn’t going to say it. He wasn’t going inside to save anybody’s life. He was going in there to kiss that Mercedes owner’s rich ass with enthusiasm and sincerity, and hope it bought the hospital a new children’s wing.

It was probably somebody he had met before. Around Buffalo, most big money was old money, handed down from the days of the Erie Canal, or at least the days of Civil War profiteering, enhanced by practices like buying up the tax liens on family farms in the surrounding countryside during the Depression and turning them into suburbs.

He walked into the foyer and glanced into the garden. He could see a few fat penguins and their bejeweled consorts loitering out there, flicking cigarette ashes into the shrubbery and sipping drinks where their cardiologists couldn’t catch them at it.

He caught a glimpse of Lily Bortoni, the wife of his friend Leo, an orthopedic surgeon. She looked as serene and elegant as she always did at these affairs, every shining chestnut hair in place and with just enough makeup so her skin looked like the smooth surface of a sculpture. She was staring unperturbed through a cloud of cigar smoke at a potential donor as though he were saying something important, so Carey couldn’t catch her eye.

As he walked on, a series of conflicting thoughts flashed through his mind. The sight of Lily made him miss Jane and feel annoyed with her at the same time. He felt sorry for himself for having to show up here alone, felt guilty that Leo’s wife, Lily, had to work the crowd while Jane escaped it, dreaded having to explain ten times in the next hour why Jane wasn’t here. Then he remembered that she could be running for her life right now. He forced the idea out of his mind: she was out finding a new address for some moron. It was unfair to Carey and inconvenient for her, but the danger was over. She was doing what she felt she had to do, and he would just have to cover for her until it was over.

He stepped into the cafeteria, and a hand patted his arm. He turned to look down at Marian Fleming. She had managed to confine herself in a beige evening gown with metallic filigree on the front that looked as though its purpose was to protect her from body blows. Her blond hair was sprayed and sculpted into a spun-sugar helmet, and her ice-blue eyes fixed him with a stare that told him he was not about to be offered any choices. “There’s somebody you’ve got to meet,” she said.

Carey understood the words “got to,” so he waited.

“Where’s Jane?” Her eyes flicked around behind him.

“She’s out of town,” he answered. “I’m on my own tonight.”

He did not miss the tiny twitch above her eye as Marian’s mind punched Jane’s card. She was already pivoting to push him along toward someone, still talking. “Here’s the doctor I told you about.”

“You did?” asked Carey.

“Susan Haynes, this is Carey McKinnon. He went to Cornell too.” She gave Carey a perfectly benign empty look. “So did his wife, but she’s not with us tonight, so he’ll have to do.”

Carey looked at the woman and smiled. Her blond hair beside Marian’s was the difference between polished gold and yellow paint. Her eyes were big, a bright green with flecks in them like malachite, and her lips were full, with a natural upturn at the corners. She gave a reserved smile, as though she were bestowing tiny portions of a powerful spice.

“Hello, Dr. McKinnon,” said Linda.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Haynes. I have a feeling you must have shown up in Ithaca after my time. I would have remembered.”

She looked as though she was not surprised by anything men said to her, just mildly disappointed. “I was Sue Preston then.”

“It doesn’t help,” he said. “I’ve been out about ten years, and you’re only twenty …” He squinted at her. “Eight.”

The big green eyes widened. “How did you know that?”

“I’m a specialist in looking at people as bundles of cells. Yours are twenty-eight.”

She looked around her, but nobody was nearby bursting to explain it. “This is some kind of trick.”

He shook his head. “Nope. You weigh one hundred and twenty-two pounds, right?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t weigh myself every day.” She lowered her head and conceded from behind her eyelashes, “That’s close, though.”

He leaned closer, and she turned her ear to listen. “Those guys at carnivals who guess your age and weight?”

“What about them?”

“They’re all old doctors.”

He could tell she was getting used to him now. She just smiled, showing perfect teeth and spilling a prodigal supply of the precious spice into the room, but it was all for him. “Now I know it’s a joke.”

“Some do it to save up for their malpractice insurance, some just hate golf. I think some of them do it just to get away from these.” He showed her his beeper. “Ever have one of these?”

“I’m not the kind of person anybody needs urgently.”

“Good. Don’t ever start.” He put his beeper away. “Well, I should introduce you to more people. Or you should introduce me. Just because I haven’t met you at one of these things doesn’t mean I know more people than you do.”

“This is my first time,” she said.

Marian Fleming drifted up with Harry Rotherberg. “There,” she said. “I knew you two would have something to talk about. But I need to take Carey back for a minute. This is Dr. Rotherberg. He’s the head of pediatrics, so he can answer any questions you have about the new wing.”

Carey flashed a valedictory smile at the young woman and stepped away with Marian. “How am I doing?”

“You’re my paladin,” she said. “Right now I’m going to jump you over a few pawns and get you to work this bunch over here.”

“The captain of industry with the plaid cummerbund?”

“Yep. Know him?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen his cummerbund at these things before, but his name doesn’t leap to mind.”

“He’s Charlie Fraser. That’s his tartan. He comes off as a dope, but he’s not. He’s given about a hundred thousand so far this year. Be nice to him.”

“What a devious plan.”

“Oh, and Carey?”

“What?”

“Since Jane isn’t here, I’ve seated you with Susan Haynes. I’m counting on you to romance her a little for me.”

“Why?”

“She doesn’t know anybody,” said Marian. “Harry’s a great pediatrician, but ten minutes with him is an evening in Mister Rogers’ neighborhood. She’s got money and she wants to do good with it.”

“I’ll get it for you if I have to turn her upside down and shake her.”

“I have no doubt. Your reputation precedes you.” There was no trace of a smile as she expertly moved him into the space before Charlie Fraser. “Charlie, this is Dr. McKinnon,” she said.

Carey shook Fraser’s hand and smiled while Marian Fleming said, “And this is Honoria Fraser, his wife.”

“I’m glad you could come,” said Carey. “I had heard you had given us quite a bit of help in the past, and I wanted to thank you.”

Fraser looked shocked. “Who are you, anyway? What do you do?”

“I’m a surgeon.”

Fraser leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek. She laughed, then put her fingers over her mouth as though it were a breach of decorum. Her husband said, “That’s another one for you, Honey.”

Carey said, “I don’t understand.”

“I made a bet with Honey two years ago. Every year I get a printed thank-you note with my name written on it so the I.R.S. will be satisfied. But to this day, no actual human being connected with the hospital ever walked straight up like a regular person and said thanks. I said nobody ever would, or if they did, it would be an administrator from fund-raising. You just won her the bet.”

Carey looked worried. “Uh-oh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“If nobody ever did it before, maybe I wasn’t supposed to. I guess this means you’ll stop giving money now?”

“Do I look like an idiot?” asked Fraser. He looked down at his tuxedo. “Well, I suppose I do. But I’m not. I do lose most of my bets with Honey, but so would you.”

Carey looked at Honoria Fraser and smiled. “I can believe it.”

“Let me tell you something about fund-raising, since you seem to be sensible,” said Fraser. “These dinner-dance things are a mistake. When I want to lure investors into my business, I take them to the plant. I let them meet the good people I’ve got working for me. They show them the machinery and computers and trucks. They let them see how we make our products, from the quality of the raw materials to the packing and shipping. They show people what Charlie Fraser’s going to do with their money. Now, if I was an idiot”—he turned his head to survey the room—“I would put on something like this party.”

“Charlie!” said Honoria sharply.

“The doc doesn’t care,” Fraser assured her. “He can tell I mean well.” He turned to Carey. “There’s nothing that makes a person who gives money cringe more than a fancy party. It costs money, and if he’s reasonably intelligent he knows it’s his money. He didn’t give it so he could go to a party. He gave it so some poor kid gets his turn on a kidney machine. He’d like to see that. If it comes down to parties, he knows he could do a pretty good party himself for a few thousand, invite whomever he pleased, and serve better food.”

Honoria said to Carey, “Charlie’s quite the blowhard, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Carey agreed. “You are, Charlie. But you’re absolutely right. I can’t talk Marian out of throwing these parties, but I can do the rest for you.” He wrote a telephone number on his ticket and handed it to Fraser. “This is my office. Call any day, and I’ll have somebody arrange a tour for you, and for anybody you want to bring. If you see where the money goes, and what it does for this city, I think you’ll be proud.”

“I am proud,” said Charlie. “I’m just telling you how to get more.” He glanced at the number on the ticket. “I will do this, you know.”

“I expect you to,” said Carey. “Bring some friends.”

There was a chime, and people began to move beyond the screens dividing the cafeteria in half. “That’s dinner,” said Charlie. One of the waiters pushed the button to make the opening widen, and Carey could see white linen and gleaming silverware for the only time this year. “If you don’t have anybody to sit with, you can come with us.”

“Marian’s got other plans for me,” said Carey.

He drifted across the paths of a few familiar couples moving toward the tables and scanned for Susan Haynes. He found her standing with one arm across her chest and the other holding a glass of champagne, listening to Harry Rotherberg talking about the ultrasound machines the hospital was about to buy. Katie Rotherberg moved in ahead of Carey and separated them.

Carey said, “Dinner time. Don’t worry if the meat tastes funny. You’re already in the hospital.”

“ ‘Please be seated and the maître d’ will call you when your stomach pump is ready’?”

“I can see you’ve been to benefits before. Why this one?”

She shrugged. “I’m new in town, and I saw it in the paper. Hospitals tend to be everybody’s charity. I thought it was a good opportunity to get a look at the local gentry and make it clear I’m one of the good guys.”

He looked at her in mock suspicion. “You’re some kind of businesswoman, aren’t you?”

“Good grief, no.” She giggled. “Nobody in my family has ‘been’ anything in ages. My father used to sit on boards of directors. That way he got mail and was allowed to own a briefcase. But he didn’t actually know anything or do anything, or they wouldn’t have wanted him around. His epitaph should have been ‘He Voted Yes.’ ”

“Your mother?”

“She voted no. When I was about three. She turned up a few years ago, but we didn’t have much to talk about. To complete the whole sordid family tree, I have an older brother. Come to think of it, he’s something—a fisherman.”

“A commercial fisherman?”

“No, silly. Trout. He spends his summers at his house in Jackson Hole and his winters in rehab places. They don’t seem to have any therapeutic value, but it’s a quiet place to tie flies, once his hands stop shaking.”

“I’m sorry.”

She touched his arm, and it felt as though it had been brushed by a bird’s wing. “Don’t sound so solemn. None of this just happened, you know. It’s all old history.”

As they reached the newly unscreened section of the cafeteria, Marian Fleming caught Carey’s eye and nodded toward the front of the room near the head table. He gave his head a tiny shake, and she picked up two place cards from the front table, ushered Leo Bortoni and his wife from the back to Carey’s place, and watched Carey take Susan Haynes’s arm and walk her to the rear table. He could see that Lily Bortoni was delighted, having interpreted the move as a sign that her husband was appreciated. He liked them both, and he congratulated himself for having accidentally made them feel good. He pretended he had been looking past them for someone else, gave a little shrug, and continued toward the back of the room.

Carey and Susan Haynes sat at a table for four, but they were alone. He looked at her. “I guess this is where we’re supposed to talk about Cornell.”

“Do we have to?”

“Briefly. Uris Library.”

“Cruel to put it at the top of a hill,” she said. “Thought I’d die.” One of the photographs in the alumni magazine had shown the view from the library, so its altitude was all she knew about it.

“Goldwin Smith Hall.”

“Big, old, and cold.” She said it with an air of profound boredom. She hoped that was the long, low one across the quadrangle with the statue in front, but whatever it was, the description seemed to satisfy him.

“Had enough?”

“More than enough.” She leaned closer. “So what about your life story?” she asked.

“I was born in this hospital, and sort of never got out,” he said. “My education was just a leave of absence. I’m a surgeon.”

“Married?” He wasn’t sure if she said it so quickly and adroitly because she didn’t care, or because she did care.

“Just. Three months ago. She’s out of town right now.”

“Oh, yes. Marian said something about that. I forgot. What kind of surgeon are you—plastic surgery?”

“If you need anything cosmetic done, Buffalo isn’t really the best place. There are hospitals in Los Angeles and Boston that do more of those in a week than we do in a year. What I do is mostly basic medicine. If you have no further use for your gall bladder or your appendix, I’m your man.”

Her eyebrow raised in a perfect arch. “Do I look sick?”

“Hardly. But you could be a hypochondriac. The rich ones sometimes give money so they’ll have a nice place to stay during their next anxiety attack. I promised Marian I’d explore every avenue.”

“You’re doing just great,” she said. “I feel as though I’d been strip-searched. All my avenues have been thoroughly probed.”

“Are you going to cough up the loot?”

She nodded. “Some. I told you before that if I’m going to live here, I have to establish myself up front as one of the good guys. That makes me eligible for unearned invitations and so on.”

“What made you pick Buffalo?”

She turned the big green eyes on him and looked at him shrewdly. “I like it. Or maybe it’s better to say that I don’t dislike it, which is not true of certain other places. And real estate is cheap, so I can sell my house that’s teetering on a precipice in San Francisco and buy something nicer here. As you may have guessed, my heart and Mr. Haynes’s no longer beat as one. Before that, we spent some time being no longer a fun couple. I used to come through Buffalo when I was in college, and I decided it was the sort of place where I could be happy.”

“Because it’s not on the circuit you’re used to.”

“If you’re tired of humanity, maybe it’s time to meet new specimens. That’s the theory, anyway.” She brightened. “Did I pass my examination?”

“Sure,” he said. “You’re healthy as a young Hereford cow and as sane as Monsignor Schumacher.” He glanced at the tables around him and nodded. “Evening, Monsignor.” He turned back to her. “I think you’ll like it here, at least for a time. It’s smaller than you’d think, and people are clannish. But you’re the sort of person who makes a good impression, and anybody who comes here voluntarily has passed the first test.”

“And you’ve passed yours,” she said. The caterers arrived and dealt out plates of food from a cart, leaning down to mutter into each person’s ear, “Careful, the plate is very hot.”

She tasted the salmon on her plate and said, “You can go unplug the equipment. It’s very good.”

“That’s Marian’s fault. She’s always destroying cherished traditions. Usually after these things we used to spend half the night admitting people, giving upper GIs and so on. I have no idea what we’ll do with ourselves.”

She looked at him, her chin resting on her hands. “That brings me to something I’m a bit concerned about myself.”

“Oh?” he said.

“Well, it’s kind of embarrassing. I leased this big black Mercedes when I got to town, because I figured it would be good on snow and ice. But I’m not very good with it. I managed to steer it to the hospital okay, but about half an hour ago I went out to get my makeup bag from the front seat …”

Carey’s lips slowly, involuntarily curved upward.

“This is nothing to smile about. I backed into an empty parking space and hurried to get inside, so I wouldn’t be late and get stared at by a lot of people who knew each other. There’s a color code and a sign, but I guess I didn’t see it because I backed in. Anyway, I guess it was for some kind of emergency vehicle, and the police towed my car away. Why are you smiling?”

Carey’s smile grew, and he began to chuckle.

“Are you some kind of sadist?”

“No,” said Carey. “I’m very sorry. I saw your car when I got here, and I wondered whether I should say something. That’s all.”

“Then why on earth didn’t you?” she asked. “I would have moved it in a second.”

He looked down at his hands, then forced his eyes to meet her stare. “I didn’t want to seem like a jerk. It was my parking space.”

It took two breaths for her face to register confusion, then shock, then understanding. Her eyes sparkled, and her laugh was clear and musical. It seemed to linger on her lips. “You know where I can get a ride to the impound lot after this thing ends?”

“It’s the least I can do.”