Nolly shrugged. 'He can't know for sure. And anyway, he didn't get the pushed idea until he'd already taken the case.'
'Cain got millions. What was Simon's fee?'
'Twenty percent. Eight hundred fifty thousand bucks.'
'Deduct what he paid you, he's still close to eight big ones ahead.'
'Simon's a good man. Now that he pretty much knows Cain pushed the wife, he doesn't feel better about representing him just because the payoff was big. And in the current case, he's not Cain's lawyer, so there's no conflict of interest, no ethics problem, so he's got a chance to set things right a little.'
In January 1965, Magusson had sent Cain to Nolly as a client, not sure why the creep needed a private detective. That had turned out to be the business about Seraphim White's baby. Simon's warning to be careful of Enoch Cain had helped to shape Nolly's decision to withhold the information about the child's placement.
Ten months later, Simon called again, also regarding Cain, but this time the attorney was the client, and Cain was the target. What Simon wanted Nolly to do was strange, to say the least, and it could be construed as harassment, but none of it was exactly illegal. And for two years, beginning with the quarter in the cheeseburger, ending with the coin-spitting machines, all of it had been great fun.
'Well,' Kathleen said, 'even if the money wasn't so nice, I'd be sorry to see this case end.'
'Me too. But it's really not over till we meet the man.'
'Two weeks to go. I'm not going to miss that. I've cleared all appointments off my calendar.'
Nolly raised his martini glass in a toast. 'To Kathleen Klerkle Wulfstan, dentist and associate detective.'
She returned the toast: 'To my Nolly, husband and best-ever boyfriend.'
God, he loved her.
'Veal fit for kings,' said their waiter, delivering the entrees, and one taste confirmed his promise.
The glimmering bay and the shimmering amber candlelight provided the perfect atmosphere for the song that arose now from the piano in the bar.
Although the piano was at some distance and the restaurant was a little noisy, Kathleen recognized the tune at once. She looked up from her veal, her eyes full of merriment.
'By request,' he admitted. 'I was hoping you'd sing.'
Even in this soft light, Nolly could see that she was blushing like a young girl. She glanced around at the nearby tables.
'Considering that I'm your best-ever boyfriend and this is our song?'
She raised her eyebrows at our song.
Nolly said, 'We've never really had a song of our own, in spite of all the dancing we do. I think this is a good one. But so far, you've only sung it to another man.'
She put down her fork, glanced around the restaurant once more, and leaned across the table. Blushing brighter, she softly sang the opening lines of 'Someone to Watch over Me.'
An older woman at the next table said, 'You've got a very lovely voice, dear.'
Embarrassed, Kathleen stopped singing, but to the other woman, Nolly said, 'It is a lovely voice, isn't it? Haunting, I think.'
Chapter 61
Northbound on the coastal highway, headed for Newport Beach, Agnes saw bad omens, mile after mile.
The verdant hills to the east lay like slumbering giants under blankets of winter grass, bright in the morning sun. But when the shadows of clouds sailed off the sea and gathered inland, the slopes darkened to a blackish green, as somber as shrouds, and a landscape that had appeared to be sleeping forms now looked dead and cold.
Initially, the Pacific could not be seen beyond an opaque lens of fog, Yet later, when the mist retreated, the sea itself became a portent of sightlessness: Spread flat and colorless in the morning light, the glassy water reminded her of the depthless eyes of the blind, of that terrible sad vacancy where vision is denied.
Barty had awakened able to read. On the page, lines of type no longer twisted under his gaze.
While always Agnes held fast to hope, she knew that easy hope was usually false hope, and she didn't allow herself to speculate, even briefly, that his problem had resolved itself. Other symptoms-halos and rainbows-had disappeared for a time, only to return.
Agnes had read the last half of Red Planet to Barty just the previous night, but he brought the book with him, to read it again.
Although, to her eyes, the natural world had an ominous cast this morning, she was also aware of its great beauty. She wanted Barty to store up every magnificent vista, every exquisite detail.
Young boys, however, are not moved by scenery, especially not when their hearts are adventuring on Mars.
Barty read aloud as Agnes drove, because she'd enjoyed the novel only from page 104. He wanted to share with her the exploits of Jim and Frank and their Martian companion, Willis.
Though she worried that reading would strain his eyes, worsening his condition, she recognized the irrationality of her fear. Muscles don't atrophy from use, nor eyes wear out from too much seeing.
Through miles of worry, natural beauty, imagined omens, and the iron-red sands of Mars, they drove at last to Franklin Chan's offices in Newport Beach.
Short and slender, Dr. Chan was as self-effacing as a Buddhist monk, as confident and as gracious as a mandarin emperor. His manner was serene, and his effect was tranquility.
For half an hour he studied Barty's eyes with various devices and instruments. Thereafter, he arranged an immediate appointment with an oncologist, as Joshua Nunn had predicted.
When Agnes pressed for a diagnosis, Dr. Chan quietly pleaded the need to gather more information. After Barty had seen the oncologist and had additional tests, he and his mother would return here in the afternoon to receive a diagnosis and counseling in treatment options.
Agnes was grateful for the speed with which these arrangements were made, but she was also disturbed. Chan's expeditious management of Barty's case resulted in part from his friendship with Joshua, but an urgency arose, as well, during his examination of the boy, from a suspicion that he remained reluctant to put into words. Dr. Morley Schurr, the oncologist, who had offices in a building near Hoag Hospital, proved to be tall and portly, although otherwise much like Franklin Chan: kind, calm, and confident.
Yet Agnes feared him, for reasons similar to those that might cause a superstitious primitive to tremble in the presence of a witch doctor. Although he was a healer, his dark knowledge of the mysteries of cancer seemed to give him godlike power; his judgment carried the force of fate, and his was the voice of destiny.
After examining Barty, Dr. Schurr sent them to the hospital for further tests. There they spent the rest of the day, except for an hour break during which they ate lunch in a burger joint.
Throughout lunch and, indeed, during his hours as an outpatient at the hospital, Barty gave no indication that he understood the gravity of his situation. He remained cheerful, charming the doctors and technicians with his sweet personality and precocious chatter.
In the afternoon, Dr. Schurr came to the hospital to review test results and to reexamine Barty. When the early-winter twilight gave way to night, he sent them back to Dr. Chan, and Agnes didn't press Schurr for an opinion. All day she'd been impatient for a diagnosis, but suddenly she was loath to have the facts put before her.
On the short return trip to the ophthahnologist, Agnes crazily considered driving past Chan's office building, cruising onward-ever onward-into the sparkling December night, not just back to Bright Beach, where the bad news would simply come by phone, but to places so far away that the diagnosis could never catch up to them, where the disease would remain unnamed and therefore would have no power over Barty.
'Mommy, did you know, every day on Mars is thirty-seven minutes and twenty-seven seconds longer than ours?'
'Funny, but none of my Martian friends ever mentioned it.'
'Guess how many days in a Martian year.'
