Gin laughed. "Tell me about it." She glanced at the dais and saw the committee members seating themselves. "Got to run. Enjoy yourself, Duncan." His smile was tight. "I hope to." Her palms were moist by the time she regained the dais. She hoped she didn't look a tenth as nervous as she felt.
Let's stop fooling around and get this thing started, foZks.
She knew she'd be fine once the hearing was rolling, it was the waiting that was killing her.
She checked out the dais. All the attending committee members except Senator Vincent were in place. Where was he?
She searched the floor of the hearing room and spotted him, standing next to Duncan again. She saw Duncan say something to him and turn away.
She couldn't see Duncan's face, but Senator Vincent's wore a baffled look.
Gin had a sudden sense of deja vu . . . Duncan . . . his beeper .
.
.
a parting comment . . .
Gin chewed her lip as the senator gained the dais and approached his seat. She knew it was all coincidence but she wanted to know what Duncan had said to him.
Now wasn't the time, however. But right after the hearing she'd find a way to ask. Duncan sat quite literally on the edge of his seat, his hands clutched tightly between his knees. He struggled for outer calm, to hide the surging adrenaline within.
No glitchff today. This one had to go according to plan. The setting was absolutely perfect.
He'd waited to see where Senator Vincent was sitting before choosing his own place. When he spotted Vincent settling himself three seats to Marsden's right, Duncan found a chair halfway back with a clear view of the senator.
He glanced at his watch.
Won't be long now.
He watched Gin sitting tense and stiff against the back wall as Marsden brought the room to order. The senator made a few brief opening remarks about the missing committee members, offering condolences to the Lane family and hope for Congressman Allard's speedy recovery. Out of respect, he said, their nameplates would remain before their places until their replacements were chosen.
Duncan knew he was tempting fate to do this with Gin here, but he had little choice. Another of those perverse twists that dogged his heels lately. Still, there was no way Gin could connect him to what was about to happen to Senator Vincent.
Ah, Gin, he thought. Look at you, my naive cygnet, thinking you can have some effect on these proceedings. But it's all preordained. The real decisions as to whether or not American medicine will be practiced via government-issue cookbooks, and whether your fellow physicians will be suffocated under mountains of regulations where they'll spend more time dodging fines and penaltiff than attending to the health of their patients, will not be made here but in back rooms and hallways, where a vote for the Guidelinff act will be traded for a bridge or a highway spur.
The first witnffs was called, Samuel Fox, MD.
i Typical, Duncan thought. Congress's favorite pet doctor, the physician-hating physician.
Fox styled himself as a consumer advocate but was little more than a grandstanding autolatrous worm. This hearing was proceeding exactly as expected.
As the notoriously prolix Fox began reading a prepared statement, Duncan kept his eyes fixed on Vincent, watching for the first signs. His thoughts wandered back to the day Congressman Hugo Lane had shown up at his officer. That had been earlier this year, shortly after the president had instigated the anabiosis of the committee. Lane the notorious lush had come to him for removal of the spidery blemishes sprouting all over his face and upper trunk. Supposedly from too much sun. Duncan recognized them immediately as arterial angiomas, known in the trade as boozer blossoms. They meant a fatty, cirrhotic liver.
Too much sun? Too much Johnny Walker.
It had required enormous control not to slam the man back on the examining table. The flagitious toper! Lane had been a member of the original McCready committee, a participant in the savaging of Duncan's career, his life, and he didn't even remember him.
Like the old song, Am That Easy to Forget?
He'd been part of the process that had killed Lisa and he had never even heard her name.
Duncan remembered staring dumbfounded, thinking, We have this history together, the most traumatic time of my entire life, and you have no inkling.
If Duncan had not been in a towering rage over the revival of the committee, if Lane had not been reappointed to it, Duncan might have simply explained who he was, what he and his cronies had done to his life, and thrown the bastard the hell out.
But circumstances being what they were, Duncan had said, Yff, Congressman. No problem. We can take care of all those unsightly areas of sun damage. Cautery of the central vessel of each with an ultrafine laser. Easy as pie. Barbara will arrange a day and time for the procedure.
While I arrange a little something extra for you.
So Congressman Lane had been the first.
Duncan's plan had been to have him make an ass out of himself at the French embassy. Duncan had been there, had watched and waited, but Hugo Lane had behaved as usual, drank too much, ate too much, and talked too loud. Maybe all the alcohol in his system was to blame, maybe his fatty liver wasn't working up to snuff. Whatever the reason, Lane was apparently his usual self until he was driving home. Wimesses said he wove all over the road before crashing through a barrier and rolling down an embankment in Rock Creek Park.
Duncan had been shocked and dismayed. He hadn't intended for Lane to die, just go crazy in front of a roomful of his peers. And maybe stay crazy for a few years.
No worry about being found out. Lane's blood-alcohol level was explanation enough for the accident. But even if the ME had looked for other causes he would have come up empty. Toxicology screens can find only what they're looking for, and no one would be screening for what Duncan had put into Lane. Only a handful of people had ever known it existed.
Schulz had been next. This procurante, too, had no memory of the doctor his committee had flagellated years past, no knowledge of the teenage girl who'd died because of it. Duncan realized then why they didn't remember him, He'd never been important to them. Duncan Lathram was a name on a piece of paper handed to them by one of their aides five years ago. They'd reviled him when the microphones were on, but never gave him a thought between hearings, and forgot about him after a couple of weeks.
Schulz . . . a vain, strutting, womanizing roue whose diligent efforts over the years to keep a year-round tan had left his face a mass of wrinkles. On the recommendation of his good friend Congressman Lane he'd come to Duncan for a solution. He'd already tried Retin-A but to no avail. His myriad wrinkles seemed baked in. Could Duncan help?
Of course, Senator. Duncan had smoothed his rugose hide, and given him something extra.
Duncan hadn't yet decided on the time and place for Schulz when the shocking news reached him that the senator was dead. Duncan had been baffled until he'd learned that a physical therapy session had been the penultimate event in the good senator's life before he took a dive from the balcony of his high-rise town house. That probably explained it.
Or maybe Schulz simply had a guilty conscience.
Not likely.
Again, no loss to the world. But once again he'd been deprived of the catharsis he craved.
Allard had come the closfft to what Duncan had planned for him, but that, too, had fallen short.
Today was going to be different. Duncan could feel it in his bones.
And when he noticed the corner of Senator Vincent's mouth begin to twitch, he was sure of it.
Gin leaned forward in her seat and placed another note in front of Senator Marsden. She'd been culling one question after another from Dr. Fox's parade of dubious statistics but was passing only the more flagrant errors forward. There wasn't time for the senator to consider all of them.
As she slid back she noticed a small fleshy bump atop the auricle of the senator's left ear. Smooth with a pearly surface.