more I thought about that the more I reasoned that there was no real reason that had to be true. Maybe it was something simpler-like he liked Mitchell and Harter’s workout equipment.
Regardless, I had some work to do. The last time I saw the doctor I threw a cup of coffee at his head and that wasn’t right. Sure, I didn’t need to hear the shit about being knocked out, but my response was out of proportion.
“Doctor, hey wait up,” I yelled. He froze for a second and then turned toward me. He looked braced for something.
“Look, Doc, I want to apologize for the other day. I was way out of line.” I extended my hand.
He looked down at my hand and half smiled. Then, he paused for what seemed like a long time.
“The Lord tells us to forgive others as we will want to be forgiven,” he said, and he finally shook my hand. He smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes.
“Yeah, well, like I said, I was out of line,” I said.
“Yes.” He continued to smile with his mouth while his eyes looked through me.
“What are you doing here, Doc?”
“I do a weekly consultation and supervision with the social work staff. As you might imagine, there’s been more work to do lately.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
There was an awkward silence while neither of us said anything.
“How do you like working with teenagers?” I said for no other reason than to break the awkward silence.
“Teenagers are in the midst of God’s development. It’s imperative that they get set in the right direction,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess. Look, Doc, I gotta run.”
Abadon just nodded. As I walked away, I noticed that he had the cross pin on his tweed suit coat.
I’m not sure what I accomplished, but I know I didn’t feel right in that way that is tough to identify. It feels a little dirty, a little guilty, and a lot confused. I decided to do my best not to think at all and threw in Elvis. I headed back past the high school and thought how wrong it is that the police would have to guard a school to this degree. I thought about the fear the kids and the parents must be living with, and I thought something had to be done.
Elvis was into the chorus of “One Night of Sin” when I made the left up Albany Street and headed toward 9R.
30
I called Rudy and had him meet me for lunch in the park. I sweetened the deal by promising him a Big Dom’s Double Special sub, which delivered on its ad-copy promise to “Bust any belly!” We met at a bench by a fenced-in area designated for dogs. I figured Al could use some quality time with his peers.
Just outside the gate of the dog run there was a very well-put-together woman who looked to be in her late thirties. She wore a pink velour sweatsuit, the kind that isn’t really designed for sweating, and her shiny shoulder- length black hair formed a nice contrast against the powder pink. She was on a mat in the grass doing some sort of yoga-Pilates-who-knows-what routine, and it didn’t really matter because she was lying on her back scissoring her legs wide open before closing them. I did my best not to stare.
“Excuse me,” I said in my softest nonthreatening-male voice. “Is it okay if my dog goes in with your dog?”
“Sure.” She gave me a halfhearted smile and about a millisecond of eye contact.
Her dog was a Corgi, one of those low, cute, and sissified dogs that are favored by British royalty and about the same height as a basset. She had a pink collar, the same color as the scissor kicker’s suit. I looked back over at her master who was now on all fours doing some sort of kickbacks, and I suddenly felt a little perverted at the imagery that popped onto my mental movie screen. The first reel was only slightly blurred by the glint bouncing off the ring on her finger that featured a stone bigger than any doorknob in the Moody Blue.
“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked.
“Matisse, after the artist,” she said, this time with zero eye contact.
“I love Matisse,” I said. This failed to get a response. I loved Matisse without knowing him, as I love all of mankind.
The dogs were done sniffing each other and Al had moved on in a different direction to do some olfactory forensic work on a pile of organic material left by a previous visitor. Thank God, that’s when Rudy showed up.
“All right, kid, what is it this time? You sprang for a Double Special, you must want something,” Rudy said while he manhandled the wrapping the sub came in with a force that might have gotten him charged with assault.
“What happens if a doctor is caught dealing drugs?” I said.
“He gets arrested and loses his license forever.”
“Why would a doctor making a zillion dollars take that kind of risk?”
“Well, first of all, your premise is off. Doctors don’t make that kind of money anymore.”
“Yeah sure…”
Rudy’s second bite got him into trouble. The oil dribbled on his chin and a spiral of an onion slapped up against it. It didn’t seem to bother Rudy at all, and I could tell he really loved his meal-his face was starting to sweat.
“Look, kid, we have a gazillion dollars in student loans to pay, we have a gazillion in liability to pay, we have to pay dues in every organization we’re in, and insurance companies do all they can to disallow payment. You add in an ex-wife, like in my case, and what you have to pay attorneys to defend you and your staff to support you and I’m not much better off than the guy who made this sub.”
The oil actually dripped off his chin and onto his shirt. Rudy shifted the sub into one hand and used the other hand to run through his hair. He now had kind of a Big-Dom’s-meets-Pat-Riley coif thing going on.
“So a doc might deal for the money?”
“Of course, but there’s something else. A lot of guys get into doctoring because of messiah complexes. They feel they deserve tons of money, and when they don’t get it, they get resentful and they start to take. With some it’s insurance fraud, with others it’s becoming an easy touch for prescription hounds.”
“But why illegal drugs?”
“I don’t know, they see how easy it is to become addicted and they see an easy market. They see how they can control people.”
I sat and thought or at least tried to think. Rudy was chewing with his mouth open and it reminded of the second-grade trip I took to the Bronx Zoo. I remember we got to the pen with the wildebeests right at feeding time and watched and listened to them devour a bunch of cabbages and apples.
“I think the shrink at work, Abadon, is dealing to the kids he’s counseling at McDonough. He hangs out with the steroid heads, and a dealer I was talking to said his supplier was a man of God or something.”
“Kid, slow down.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand and smeared oil over one cheek. “This is the guy you threw the cup of coffee at?”
“Yeah, he’s a self-righteous, born-again type.”
“Hey, I’m not crazy about the born-again crowd either, but-”
Rudy was interrupted by screaming from Scissor Legs.
“Get him off, get him off!” she screamed.
I jumped off the bench and saw Al furiously humping away at poor Matisse. He was lost in the moment and failed to respond to the shrieks from Lady Scissor Legs. She was traumatized, but I didn’t pick up trauma from Matisse. Actually, Matisse looked like she was having an okay time.
I bounded over the fence and ran toward Al who, for the first time, actually gave me a menacing growl. I grabbed him by the waist and pulled him off, but as I did it, Al’s head snapped around and nipped my little finger. I dropped him and he ran after Matisse, who by this time had been scooped up by her traumatized master.
“Matisse, Matisse!” was all that came out of her mouth. She was too traumatized to see Al running toward
