Hardly Knew Her

“Still, you’re looking for this thing, this bug. You think I might have it?”

Another shrug.

“Jesus fucking Joseph and Mary.” He bent forward, his head in his hands. He was a good-looking man by almost anyone’s standards, with bright brown eyes and glossy blue-black hair. His heavily muscled legs and arms were the color of flan. He was a young man by the world’s standards, but his sport considered him old, and this fact seemed to be rubbing off on him. His face was lined from years in the sun and his hair was thi

“Did you do it yourself,” Tess asked, “or did you have help?”

He lifted his face from his hands. “Why would I give myself a parasite?”

“I don’t think you intended to do that. But I think you asked someone to help you last weekend because you didn’t want to leave a city where you had finally put down some roots.”

“Huh?”

“Or maybe it’s as simple as your desire to open a restaurant that will rival the one you helped to make famous. I can see that. Why should someone else get rich because you eat his food? If someone’s going to make money off of you, it should be you, right?”

Bandit began to massage his left arm, rubbing it with the unself-conscious gesture that Tess had noticed in athletes and dancers. They lived so far inside their bodies that they saw them as separate entities.

“You don’t know much about baseball, do you?”

“I know enough.”

“What’s enough?”

“I know that the Orioles won the World Series in 1966, 1971, and 1983. I know that the American League has the DH. And I can almost explain the infield fly rule.”

Now Bandit was working his knees, rubbing one, then the other. They made disturbing popping sounds, but Bandit didn’t seem to notice. He could have been a guy tinkering on a car in his driveway.

“Well, here’s the business of baseball. I was going to be sent to New York, in exchange for prospects. But the Mets probably wouldn’t have kept me past this season, and my agent let the Orioles know I’d come back for one more season, no hard feelings. It could have been a good deal for everyone. Now I’m tainted as that meat that Herb sent over. Look, I know he didn’t do it on purpose, but it happened. He’s accountable.”

“Could it have been anything else? What else did you eat that day?”

“Nothing but dry cereal because I felt pretty punky when I got up that morning. I shouldn’t have tried to start.”

It was Tess’s practice to give out as little information as possible, but she needed to dish if she was going to prod Bandit into providing anything useful. “Herb thinks the delivery guy did it, on his own.”

Bandit rolled his shoulders in a large, looping shrug. “Then he shouldn’t have used someone new. Ma

“Someone new?”

“Yeah, and he was kind of a jerk. His attitude came in the door about three feet in front of him, then he treated it like a social call, as if I should offer him a beer, ask him to sit down and take a load off. He acted like…he owned me. I thought he might be a little retarded.”

“Retarded.”

He mistook her echo for a rebuke. “Oh yeah, you’re not supposed to say that anymore. I mean, he was over forty and he was a delivery boy. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? And he wouldn’t shut up. I just wanted to eat my di

“I assume this building has a video system, for security?”

Another Bandit-style shrug, only forward this time.

“I du

Tess was going to be a vegetarian before this was over.

“Do people sign in? Do they have to give their tag numbers, or just their names?”

“The doorman would know, I guess.” She started moving toward the door. “Hey, don’t you want a photo or something?”

“Maybe for my dad. His name is Pat.”

He walked over to the sleek, modern desk, which didn’t look as if it got much use, and extracted a glossy photo from a folder. “Nothing for you?”

“No, that’s okay.”

Bandit gave her a quizzical look. “If I told you I had an ERA under four, would that impress you?”

“No, but I would pretend it did.”

THE DOORMAN PROVED to be a nosy little gossip. Tess wouldn’t want to live next door to him, but she wished every investigation yielded such helpful busybodies. He not only remembered the motormouth delivery “boy,” but he remembered his car.

“A dark green Porsche 911, fairly new.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Why would I make that up? Guy got out in a rush, handed me his keys like he thought I was the fuckin’ valet. I told him to go up and I’d watch his precious wheels. He even had vanity plates-‘ICU.’”

“As in ‘Intensive Care Unit’?”

“Could be. Although, in my experience, the doctors drive Jags while the lawyers who sue them pick Porsches. Hey, do you know the difference between a porcupine and a Porsche?”

“Yes,” Tess said, refusing to indulge the doorman’s lawyer joke, on the grounds that it was too easy.

Everything was too easy. She ran the plates, found they belonged to Dr. Scott Russell, who kept an office in a nearby professional building. Too easy, she repeated when she drove to the address and saw the Porsche parked outside. Too easy, she thought as she sat in the waiting room and pretended to read People, watching the white-jacketed doctor come and go, chatting rapidly to his patients. He had a smug arrogance that seemed normal in a doctor, but how would it go over in a delivery boy? A motormouth, the doorman had said. As if he were on a social call, Bandit had said. The doctor may have dressed up like a delivery boy, but he hadn’t been prepared to act like one.

The only surprise was that he wasn’t a surgeon or a gastroenterologist, but an ophthalmologist specializing in LASIK. ICU-now she got it. And wished she hadn’t. But his practice, billed as Visualize Liberation, was clearly thriving. He presided over a half-dozen surgeries while she waited. It was easy to keep count, because each operation was simulcast on a screen in the waiting room, much to Tess’s discomfort.

By 2:45 P.M., the last patient had been ushered out. The receptionist glanced curiously at Tess.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but I need to speak to Dr. Russell.”

“It’s almost three P.M. He doesn’t see anyone after three, not on Wednesdays.”

“He can see just me now, or meet with me and the Baltimore city police later.”

“But it’s three P.M. and it’s Wednesday.”

“So?”

“That’s trade deadline. The last girl who interrupted him on a Wednesday afternoon got fired.”

“Luckily, I don’t work for him.”

Tess walked past the receptionist, assuming someone would try to stop her. But the receptionist sat frozen at her desk, face stricken, as if Tess were heading into the lion’s den.

Dr. Russell was on the phone, a hands-free headset, his back to her as he leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the windowsill.

“-no, no, Delino is healthy, I swear. You always think I got inside information because I’m a doctor, but all I know is eyes, not backs. I want to trade him because I don’t need run production as much as I need pitching, so I’m unwilling to give you him for a closer. Look, you’re not even in the hunt for one of the top four slots. It’s bad sportsmanship to refuse a good trade just because you don’t want me to take first place.”

“Hey,” Tess called out. “ICU. Get it?”

When he turned around, his narrow, foxy features were contorted with rage. “I am BUSY,” he said. “I know everyone wants to consult with me, but the other doctors here are quite competent to do the intake interviews.”

“I’ve got twenty-twenty vision,” Tess said. “So does the doorman who saw you and your car at Harbor Court when you delivered food to Bandit Gonzales. Here’s a tip-the next time you attempt a felony, don’t use a Porsche with vanity tags.”