Pierce glared at the small framed photo of her parents, carefully placed to one side of her desk. Then her expression softened. It wasn't their fault, being poor. Just their fate. They didn't want the stroke or the cancer that had forced their daughter to shelve her dreams and begin a life of taking orders from privileged brats who, more often than not, couldn't come close to her intellectual capacity. One hundred and fifty.
What was Kate Bennett? One-ten?
One-twenty tops. Yet there she was with the degree and the power and the future. Listen, Sheila, you're terrific at your job. I don't see that there's anything to gain by bringing this up to Dr. Willoughby, or even by making you reimburse the depailment. But never again, okay?
"Patronizing bitch."
"Who's a bitch?"
Startled, Sheila whirled. Norton Reese stood propped against the doorjamb, eyeing her curiously. "Jesus, you scared me."
"Who's a bitch? " Reese checked the corridor in both directions then stepped inside and closed the door behind him. "Bennett, that's who."
"Ah, yes. What's our little Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm up to now?"
"Oh, nothing new. It's that damn American Society meeting."
"Miami?"
"Yes. The time you assured me there was no way anyone would ever find out I didn't go."
"She is a resourceful cunt, " Reese mumbled. "I'll say that for her."
"What?"
"Didn't she say she was going to do her Girl Scout good deed for the month and let the whole matter drop?"
"That's what she said, but she and Dr. Willoughby are like that." Sheila held up crossed fingers. "Either she's already told him or she's going to hold the thing over my head forever. Either way She shook her head angrily. "Easy, baby, easy, " Reese said, crossing to her and slipping his hands beneath her lab coat. Sheila grimaced, but allowed herself to be embraced. Balding, moderately overweight, and wedded to three-piece suits, Reese had never held sex appeal for her in any visceral sense.
Still, he was the administrator of the entire hospital complex, and time and experience had taught her that true sex appeal was based not so much on what a man could do to her as for her. "You have the most beautiful tits of any woman I've ever known, " Reese whispered. "Baby, do you know how long it's been?"
She blocked his move toward her breasts with an outstretched hand. "It's not my fault, Norty. I'm divorced. You're the one with all the family commitments. Remember?"
Reese gauged the determination in her eyes and decided against another advance. "So, " he said, settling into the chair by her desk, "Wonder Woman has been at it again, huh? Well, believe it or not, she's the reason-one of the reasons-I came down here."
"Oh? "
"Maybe you'd better sit down." Reese motioned her to her chair and then waited until she had complied. "Did you know that old Willoughby has decided to resign?"
"No. No, I didn't, actually." She felt some hurt that Reese had been told of the decision before she was. "He's giving health as a reason, but I think the old goat just can't cut it anymore. Never could, really."
Sheila shot him a look warning against any further deprecation of the man she had worked under for fifteen years. "That's too bad, " she murmured. "Yeah? Well, baby, hang onto your seat. You don't know what bad is. For his successor, your Willoughby wants to recommend one K. Bennett, MD."
Sheila fought a sudden urge to be sick. For years she had, in effect, run the pathology department, using Willoughby for little more than his signature on purchase orders and personnel decisions.
With Bennett as chief, she would be lucky to keep her job, much less her power and influence. "You said wants to recommend, " she managed.
"Bennett refuses to give him the go-ahead until she's talked it over with her husband."
She picked a tiny Smurf doctor doll off her desk and absently twisted its arm. "How do you feel about it? " she asked. "After what she did last year, writing what amounted to a letter of complaint about me to the board? How do you think I feel?"
"So? " The blue rubber arm snapped off in Sheila's hand. "I won't have that woman heading a department in my hospital, and that's that."
"What can you do?"
The forcefulness in Reese's voice softened. "There, at least for the moment, is the rub. I've started talking to some of the members of the board of trustees and some of the department heads. It turns out that as things stand, she would have no trouble getting approval. It seems only a few beside me-" he smiled conspiratorially, "and now you know what an incredible pain in the ass she is."
Sheila flipped the arm and then the body of the doll into the trash. "So we both know, " she said.. "Baby, I need something on her. Anything that I can use to influence some people. The prospect of dealing with Bennett's crusades month after month is more than I can take. Keep your eyes and ears open. Dig around. There's got to be something."
"If I do find something, " Sheila said, "I'll expect you to be grateful.
"I'll be very grateful."
"Good," Sheila said sweetly. "Then we shall see what we shall see." She rose and kissed him on the forehead, her breasts inches from his eyes.
"Very grateful, " she whispered. "Now don't you forget that."
She backed away at the moment Reese reached for her. "Next time, Norty.
Right now I've got work to do."
The Braxton Building was more impressive as an address than it was as a structure. At one time, the twenty-eight story granite obelisk had been the centerpiece of Boston's downtown financial district. Now, surrounded by high-rise glass and steel, the building seemed somehow iu at ease. No uninformed passerby could possibly have predicted from the building's exterior the opulence of the lobby and office suites within, especially the grandeur of the twenty-eighth floor, most elegant of the three floors occupied by the law firm of Minton/Samuels. J. Winfield Samuels selected a Havana-made panatella from a crystal humidor and offered it to his son. Jared, seated to one side of the huge, inlaid Louis Quatorze desk, groaned. "Dad, it's not even eleven o'clock. Didn't Dr. What's-his-face limit the number you're supposed to smoke in a day?"
"I pay Shrigley to fix me up so I can do whatever the hell I want to do, not to tell me how many cigars I can smoke." He snipped the tip with a bone-handled trimmer and lit it from the smokestack of a sterling silver replica of the QE 11. "I swear, if Castro had found a way to keep these little beauties from making it to the States, I would have found a way to cancel the bastard's ticket years ago. Think of it. We'd probably have world peace by now because of a cigar." He took a long, loving draw, blew half of it out, inhaled the rest, and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling window at the harbor and the airport beyond. Jared sipped at his mug of coffee and risked a glance at his watch.
Win Samuels had summoned him and Win Samuels would tell him why when Win Samuels was good and ready to do so. That was the way it had always been between them and, for all Jared knew, that was the way Jared Winfield Samuels, Sr. had related to Win. The notion left a bitter aftertaste.
Beyond his grandfather, the family had been traced through a dozen or more generations, three centuries, and three continents. Not that he really cared about such things. His years of rebellion in Vermont had certainly demonstrated that. But now, with the possibility that he represented the end of the line he was… more aware. "So, how's Kate?