So far they had nada that even connected Block and Maggie as lunch pals. The whole thing could be a figment of Block’s imagination. April had heard of cases where a psychic revealed one thing, one tiny detail, about a case that gave everything else he said a weird kind of credibility. She’d heard stories of hopeful detectives feeding a psychic (like they’d fed Albert Block), talking for days, trailing off on a bunch of wild goose chases, only to find out in the end that the one tiny thing the psychic “saw” was just a fluke. Could be that way with Albert. She had to check him out with the owner of All Dressed Up. Maybe he knew about Block’s relationship with Maggie.
April applied fresh lipstick and tossed it back in her black leather shoulder bag with the two interlocking C’s that she got in Chinatown and looked like a Chanel. It contained her off-duty gun, her Mace, a couple of notebooks, some pens, her telephone book—most precious possession—that had all the numbers of every source she’d ever used, a couple of packages of tissues for when she had to go to court and use the unequipped ladies’ room, her badge and wallet.
Her stomach churned with hunger. During his long questioning, Albert had eaten a triple-decker turkey, salami, Swiss, and chopped chicken liver sandwich with Russian dressing and then a huge slab of cheesecake. Neither she nor Sanchez nor Joyce had eaten anything themselves. As she headed back to the squad room, she hoped Mike might want to grab a bite and talk things over.
He got to her before she hit the door. He looked as if he’d been hanging around in the hall, waiting for her. “Where you been?” he demanded.
“Seeing Block out the door. Qué pasa?”
“Magnífico. Hablas español.” Sanchez grinned and told her qué pasa en Español.
“La cosa está que arde. La autopsia de Maggie Wheeler está lista. Vamos a buscarla.”
Something, something Maggie Wheeler. Shit. That was the problem with this Spanish thing. You said something simple and got back something totally incomprehensible. April frowned. “Huh?”
“Never mind, you just started a few months ago.” Sanchez touched her arm and nodded toward the stairs.
“Vamos?” To lunch, she hoped.
“M.E.’s office. The Wheeler autopsy report is in.”
Oh. April shook her head. She should have gotten la autopsia está lista. Lista meant ready. They headed out into the heat, her stomach still protesting. Lunch was clearly not on the menu.
26
The black lacquered mantel clock was just chiming ten P.M. when Emma returned Jason’s call. He sat in the living room, still in his suit trousers and dress shirt, working on half a glass of straight gin. At eight forty-five, after his last patient had left, he wandered out onto the street and turned left toward Broadway. He was hungry to the depths of his soul, hungry in a way he had never been before.
Ironically, Teddy, his last patient on Wednesdays, had talked for forty-five minutes about a dinner he’d had last night. Teddy was a food critic for a major magazine. Jason had to endure hearing a bite-by-bite account of a four-course meal so sublime and tempting he would have given a lot to share it. Jason didn’t usually let Teddy talk too much about food. It was bad for him, distracted him from his real problems and gave him a false sense of feeling better. Teddy always went to some fabulous restaurant either before or after his sessions with Jason, which Jason could never reveal drove him crazy.
Jason sipped his gin and felt the pressure ease. He had lived through therapy with surgeons who had described in excruciating detail every surgical procedure they did, with businessmen who talked about balance sheets and taxes who expected Jason to be up on The Wall Street Journal, with a chess player so intense and obsessed Jason had to learn the game to understand what he was talking about. There was more to his job than people thought.
Every kind of pathology was in the books on his shelves. The theory was, all manner of sickness could be described and categorized. But a whole lot of cases weren’t just one thing, not just a character disorder, a personality problem, a garden-variety neurosis. Each human being was different, sang his own unique song. No matter what the books said about technique, the good doctor—the really good doctor—had to learn a new language and reinvent himself for each patient.
The myopic and chubby food critic’s highly erotic description of last night’s dinner was all the more poignant since his problem was impotence. Teddy’s conflicts about food and love were right in step with Jason’s own hunger for nourishment, for human warmth, and love. He certainly got no love from Teddy, who called Jason a food-and-wine know-nothing.
The remark stung all the more for being right on the mark. Jason decided to prove Teddy wrong. He headed for Zabar’s for something interesting and upscale to eat. Healthy gourmet salads like tabouleh, jambalaya, rice and beans, crawfish and wild rice. The sort of thing Emma liked. He walked slowly, legs aching a little from his run earlier in the day, dying inside because his wife had called and hadn’t called back. He meant to stay at home until they talked, but in the end he was starving and couldn’t wait.
He turned east. His thoughts shifted to pickled herring, cajun shrimp, smoked salmon, bagels in exotic flavors. Barbecued chicken—all the things he could have carried home wrapped in white paper and eaten in the kitchen, over the sink. But he didn’t go to Zabar’s and buy gourmet bits and pieces, carry them home to molder in the fridge. He got to Broadway and was stopped cold.
“Jason. Hi.” The voice was warm and confident.
Jason, deep in his own thoughts, swung around in surprise at the sound of his name. Then frowned reflexively as Milicia Honiger-Stanton stepped into his space, her slim hand with its blood red nails held out to him.
“How are you?” she said brightly, as if he and Milicia were the oldest of friends meeting unexpectedly after a long separation.
He nodded, disgruntled. He didn’t like it when patients called him by his first name. Familiarity was inappropriate. Especially if the patient was a woman, lovely to look at, and definitely coming on to him.
She didn’t appear to be put off. Her warm, smooth hand was in his before he could ward off the intimacy. She maintained the contact several seconds longer than necessary, gazing deeply into his eyes as if she could read his desperation there.
Jason looked away, uncomfortable with the powerful sexuality she projected. He hadn’t slept with Emma since before her abduction in May; he hadn’t slept with anyone else since. A normal healthy male starts going bonkers after three or four days of physical deprivation. Couldn’t help it. It was a biological thing.
From habit, before going out he’d put on the khaki jacket that went with his trousers, as if a camouflage of formality could hide the desperation he couldn’t help feeling was exuding from every pore in his body, like the kind of smelly sweat that couldn’t be masked by any cosmetic known to man.
“What are you up to?” Milicia’s voice was throaty and low.
He smiled vaguely. “Just out.”
“I saw you from the corner, and you looked very alone. Have you had dinner?”
She was wearing a purple suit, the jacket open to its one button at the waist, the skirt short and tight. Jason tried not to look at the white silk blouse she had on underneath. Cut low enough to reveal stunning breasts that were bigger than Emma’s, it was embroidered with gold stars and crescent moons.