“Yeah, well, I didn’t think it would. But sometimes…”
“Well, he doesn’t sound like anyone I know, if that’s what you mean. Personally, I mean. If that’s what you mean.”
“Yes, that’s what I…”
“But he does sound familiar.”
“Oh?“
“He sounds like Jack Nicholson.”
“Jack…?”
“The actor.”
“Oh.“
“That same sort of voice.”
“I see. But you don’t know Jack Nicholson personally, is what you’re…”
“I wish I knew him,” she said, and rolled her eyes.
“But you don’t.”
“No, I don’t.”
“The caller just sounds like Jack Nicholson.”
“Or somebody trying to imitate Jack Nicholson.”
“I don’t suppose you know anyone who does Jack Nicholson imitations, do you?
“Yes, I do,” she said.
“You do?” he said, and leaned across the desk toward her. “Who?”
“Everybody.”
“I meant personally. Anyone in your circle of friends or…?”
“No.”
“Can you think of anyone at all who might want to harm you, Miss Cassidy?”
“No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t suppose you have caller ID, do you?”
“I sure don’t,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “let me talk this over with some of the other detectives, get their opinion, run it by the lieutenant, see if he thinks we can get a court order for a trap-and-trace. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“I wish you would,” she said. “I think he’s serious.”
There were three deputy chiefs working under the police department’s chief surgeon. One of these was an elderly shrink, another was an administrative executive, and the third was Sharyn herself. Sharyn was a board-certified surgeon with four years of medical school behind her, plus five years of residency as a surgeon, plus four years as chief resident at the hospital. The shingle on the door to her office read:
She had worked here at 24 Rankin Plaza for the past five years, competing for the job against a hundred applicants, some of whom now served elsewhere in the police department’s medical system; there were twenty-five district surgeons employed in five police clinics throughout the city. Each of them earned $62,500 a year. As one of the deputy chief surgeons, Sharyn earned $68,000 a year, for which she had to put in some fifteen to eighteen hours a week here in the Majesta office. During the rest of the week, she maintained her own private practice in an office not far from Mount Pleasant Hospital in Diamondback. In a good year, Deputy Chief Cooke earned about five times what Detective/Third Grade Kling earned.
Which had nothing to do with the price of fish, as her mother was fond of saying.
She had not yet told her mother she’d dated a white man last night.
Probably never would tell her.
The man in her office at four-thirty that Monday after-noon was a black man. There were some thirty-one thousand police officers in this city, and whenever one of them got sick, he or she — fourteen percent of the force was female — reported to one of the district police surgeons who worked for two and a half hours every day of the week at staggered times specified by the department and familiar to every member of the force. The district surgeon conducted a thorough physical examination, and then determined whether the officer should be allowed to stay out sick — with full pay, of course — or be put on limited-capacity duty for ninety days, after which the officer was expected to return to active duty unless he was still sick. It was up to the district surgeons and ultimately the deputy chief surgeon to determine whether a cop was really ill or simply malingering. Any cop who was out sick for more than a year was brought before the Retirement Boad under Article IV, and requested either to return to full duty or else leave the job. There was no alternative. It was all or nothing at all.
The black man sitting in a straight-backed metal chair alongside Sharyn’s desk had been out sick for a hundred and twenty-two days now. Part of that time, he’d been flat on his back in bed at home. The rest of the time, he’d worked on and off at restricted-duty desk jobs in precincts here and there throughout the city. His name was Randall Garrod. He was thirty-four years old and had been a member of the force for thirteen years. Before he began developing severe chest pains, he had worked as an undercover out of a narcotics unit in Riverhead.
“How are the pains now?” Sharyn asked.
“Same,” he said.
“I see you’ve had an electrocardiogram…”
“Yeah.”
“… and a stress test…”
“Yeah.”
“… and a thallium stress test, all of them normal.”
“That’s what they say. But I still have the pains.”
“Gastroenterologist took X rays, did an endoscopy, found nothing.”
“Mm.”
“I see you’ve even had an echocardiogram. No indication of a mitral valve prolapse, everything normal. So what’s wrong with you, Detective Garrod?”
“You’re the doctor,” he said.
“Take off your shirt for me, will you?”
He was a hit shorter than she was, five-seven or — eight, Sharyn guessed, a small wiry man who stood now and unbuttoned his shirt and then draped it neatly over the back of the metal chair. His chest, arms, and abdomen were well-muscled, he obviously worked out regularly. His skin was the color of a coconut shell.
She thought suddenly of Bert Kling. Stethoscope to Garrod’s chest, she listened.
That color is good for you.
Referring to her suit. The blue of her suit. The smoky blue that matched her eye shadow.
“Deep breath,” she said. “And hold it.”
Listening.
Sinatra was singing “Kiss” for the ten thousand, two hundred and twenty-eighth time.
— So hold me tight and whisper
— Words of
— Love against my eyes.
— And kiss me sweet and promise
— Me your
— Kisses won’t be lies…
“Another one, please. And hold it.”
— That color is good for you.
But what had he really been saying, this blond, hazel-eyed honkie sitting opposite her, twirling linguini on a fork, what had he really been saying about color? Or trying to say. How come he hadn’t until that very moment noticed or remarked upon the very obvious fact that she was black and he was white? That color is good for you, sistuh, and then moving on fast to comment pithily on a dumb song featuring a drunk in a saloon pouring out his heart to a jaded bartender who kept setting them up, Joe, when all she wanted to know…
— Is it because I’m black?
— Is what because you’re black?
— That you asked me out.
— No, I don’t think so. Is it because I’m white? That you accepted?
— Maybe.
— Well… do you want to talk about it?
— No. Not now.
— When?
— Maybe never.
— Okay.
Which, of course, had been the end of all conversation until it calve time to say Gee, you know, Bert, I don’t think we have time to catch that movie, really, and besides we’ve both got to be up early tomorrow morning, and anyway do you really like cop movies, maybe we ought to call it a night, huh?