I frowned. “For real?”
“Maybe it’s nothing, but I’ve seen cases like this. Notlike this, but you know what I mean. The first suspect is always family.”
“Meaning my sister.”
“No, meaning close family. Or closerfamily, if possible.”
“Are you saying the police suspect me?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t.” He paused but not for very long. “Okay, yeah, probably.”
“But I was shot, remember? My kid was the one taken.”
“Right, and that cuts both ways.”
“How do you figure that?”
“As the days pass, they’re going to start suspecting you more and more.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know. That’s just how it works. Look, the FBI handles kidnappings. You know that, right? Once a child is gone twenty-four hours, they assume it’s interstate and the case is theirs.”
“So?”
“So for the first, what, ten days or so, they had a ton of agents here. They monitored your phones and waited for the ransom call, that kinda thing. But the other day, they pretty much pulled up stakes. That’s normal, of course. They can’t wait indefinitely, so they scale back to an agent or two. And their thinking shifted too. Tara became less a possible kidnapping-for-ransom and more a straight-on abduction. But my guess is, they still have the taps on the phones. I haven’t asked yet, but I will. They’ll claim they’re leaving them there in case a ransom demand is eventually made. But they’ll also be hoping to hear you say something incriminating.”
“So?”
“So be careful,” Lenny said. “Remember that your phones—home, biz, cell—are probably tapped.”
“And again I ask: So? I didn’t do anything.”
“Didn’t do . . . ?” Lenny waved his hands as if preparing to take flight. “Look, just be careful is all. This might be hard for you to believe, but—and try not to gasp when I say this—the police have been known to twist and distort evidence.”
“You’re confusing me. Are you saying I’m a suspect simply because I’m the father and husband?”
“Yes,” Lenny said. “And no.”
“Well, okay, thanks, that clears it up.”
A phone next to my bed rang. I was on the wrong side of the room. “You mind?” I said.
Lenny picked it up. “Dr. Seidman’s room.” His face clouded over as he listened. He spat out the words “Hold on,” and handed the phone to me, as if it might have germs. I gave him a puzzled look and said, “Hello?”
“Hello, Marc. This is Edgar Portman.”
Monica’s father. That explained Lenny’s reaction. Edgar’s voice was, as always, way too formal. Some people weigh their words. A select few, like my father-in-law, take each one and put it on a scale before letting it leave their mouths.
I was momentarily taken aback. “Hello, Edgar,” I said stupidly. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you. I feel remiss, of course, for not having called you earlier. I understood from Carson that you were busy recuperating from your wounds. I felt it best if I let you be.”
“Thoughtful,” I said with nary a whiff of sarcasm.
“Yes, well, I understand you’re being released today.”
“That’s right.”
Edgar cleared his throat, which seemed out of character for him. “I was wondering if perhaps you could stop by the house.”
Thehouse. Meaning his. “Today?”
“As soon as possible, yes. And alone please.”
There was silence. Lenny gave me a puzzled look.
“Is something wrong, Edgar?” I asked.
“I have a car waiting downstairs, Marc. We’ll talk more when you arrive.”
And then, before I could say another word, he was gone.
The car, a black Lincoln Town Car, was indeed waiting.
Lenny wheeled me outside. I was familiar with this area, of course. I had grown up scant miles from St. Elizabeth. When I was five years old, my father had rushed me to the emergency room here (twelve stitches) and when I was seven, well, you already know too much about my salmonella visit. I’d gone to medical school and did my residency at what was then called Columbia Presbyterian in New York, but I returned to St. Elizabeth for a fellowship in ophthalmology for reconstruction.
Yes, I am a plastic surgeon, but not in the way you think. I do the occasional nose job, but you won’t find me working with sacks of silicone or any of that. Not that I’m judging. It just isn’t what I do.
I work in pediatric reconstructive surgery with my former medical school classmate, a fireball from the Bronx named Zia Leroux. We work for a group called One World WrapAid. Actually, Zia and I founded it. We take care of children, mostly overseas, who suffer deformities either through birth, poverty, or conflict. We travel a lot. I have worked on facial smashes in Sierra Leone, on cleft palates in Upper Mongolia, on Crouzon’s in Cambodia, on burn victims in the Bronx. Like most people in my field, I’ve done extensive training. I’ve studied ENT—ears, nose, and throat—with a year of reconstructive, plastics, oral, and, as I mentioned above, ophthalmology. Zia’s training history is similar, though she’s stronger with the maxillofacial.
You may think of us as do-gooders. You’d be wrong. I had a choice. I could do boob jobs or tuck back the skin of those who were already too beautiful—or I could help wounded, poverty-stricken children. I chose the latter, not so much to help the disadvantaged, but alas, because that is where the cool cases lie. Most reconstructive surgeons are, at heart, puzzle lovers. We’re weird. We get jazzed on circus-sideshow congenital anomalies and huge tumors. You know those medical textbooks that have hideous facial deformities that you have to dare yourself to look at? Zia and I love that stuff. We get off on repairing it—taking what’s shattered and making it whole—even more.
The fresh air tickled my lungs. The sun shone as if it were the first day, mocking my gloom. I tilted my face toward the warmth and let it soothe me. Monica used to like to do that. She claimed that it “destressed” her. The lines in her face would disappear as if the rays were gentle masseurs. I kept my eyes closed. Lenny waited in silence, giving me the time.
I have always thought of myself as an overly sensitive man. I cry too easily at dumb movies. My emotions are easily manipulated. But with my father, I never cried. And now, with this terrible blow, I felt—I don’t know—beyond tears. A classic defense mechanism, I assumed. I had to push forward. It’s not so different from my business: When cracks appear, I patch them up before they become full-fledged fissures.