'I'm not ready yet for a transplant,' he said with determination.
'Joseph, you'll be as good as new once you have the operation.'
'I'm doing fine most of the time as is.'
'Is there nothing I can say to convince you?'
'Not at this moment. Listen, Elizabeth, I really could use a little sleep…before the morning clinic. Do you think you could take over for me here? Marielle has gotten all of her meds.'
'Of course.'
Still battling the surging air hunger, Anson pulled himself to his feet, thanked St. Pierre, and with a posture of accentuated dignity headed off to his apartment.
'Joseph?' St. Pierre called out as he reached the doorway.
He spun quickly.
'Yes?'
'Use some oxygen for a while. Your respirations have sped up to twenty-four, air movement is down, and you're stopping to breathe between sentences.'
'I'll…do that. Thanks.'
Elizabeth St. Pierre made brief rounds on most of their hospitalized patients, then repaired to her office and placed a long-distance call to London.
'This is Laertes,' a man's deep, cultured voice said.
'Laertes, this is Aspasia. Is it safe to speak?'
'Please go ahead, Aspasia, I hope you are well.'
'Things with A's health are getting worse,' St. Pierre said. 'I don't know how much longer he can last like this. Even if we had his notebooks and could translate them, the project would be terribly delayed if he should die. I think we must find a way to break through his fear and move forward with a transplant.'
'The council agrees.'
'Then I will do what I must to convince him.'
'Excellent. We know we can trust you.'
'Just remember, Laertes, it must be a perfect or near-perfect tissue match, no worse than eleven out of twelve. I don't want to proceed with anything less.'
'We have word there is such a donor.'
'Then I will proceed.'
'Very well. We will get the details to you shortly.'
'Please extend my warmest regards to the rest of the council.'
CHAPTER 6
The justice of the State consisted in each of three classes doing the work of its own class.
Mrs. Satterfield, what do you mean Pincus is gone?' Bracing the receiver between his shoulder and ear, Ben bunched the thin pillow beneath his head.
'He wanted to go out, dear, so I let him go out, and he hasn't come back.'
Ben groaned and stared up at the ceiling of room 219 in the Okeechobee Motel 6. It was just after eight in the morning of yet another day that was going to be cloudless and hot. The motel, fifty-two dollars a night for a single, was just off the highway, twelve miles from where Glenn had been hit face-on by a speeding tractor-trailer. Although Ben had no more idea of the man's identity now than he had when Alice Gustafson first presented the case to him, he found it easier to motivate himself with a name than Unknown White Male, or even John Doe.
He chose Glenn because of the vanity plate glenn-1 on a black Jaguar convertible that cruised past his rented Saturn as he left the Melbourne International Airport on Florida's Atlantic coast. Perhaps that Glenn won the Jag in a raffle. Maybe he had won the lottery. Whatever the case, the man had to have had some good luck along the way, and Ben knew he was going to need more than a little of that. So far, though, over his five days in Okeechobee County, and several counties surrounding Okeechobee, good luck had been in depressingly short supply. Dogged by a lack of enthusiasm, he had nevertheless worked long hours every day. Still, he had come up with absolutely nothing that would shed any light on who Glenn was or what had happened to him.
The unpleasant conclusion persistently nagging at him was that despite some modest successes in stalk- and-gawk domestic cases, as a real private eye, he left much to be desired.
And now, his cat had gone missing.
'Mrs. Satterfield, remember what I said about Pincus being an indoor cat and not having any claws, and how he couldn't climb trees to get away from things like dogs?'
'But he wanted so desperately to go out, dear. He was crying.'
Ben sighed. Althea Satterfield, his next-door neighbor, was Pop-Tart sweet and as kind as St. Francis, but she was also on the north side of eighty, and a little shaky on details. Her voice reminded him of comedian Jonathan Winters doing ancient Maudie Frickert.
'It's okay, Mrs. Satterfield,' he said, 'Pincus is a really fast runner. Besides, it's my fault for letting his claws be removed in the first place.'
And, he reflected ruefully, it was. He and Dianne were still a few years from the big split when she caught his longtime pet having its way with the hem of one of her slipcovers. All right, Ben, either that cat of yours gets declawed, or I'm out of here! As always, the memory of her words brought a bittersweet smile. It could never be said that she hadn't given him a chance to take the initiative.
'So, how is your latest investigation going, Mr. Callahan?'
My only investigation.
'I haven't cracked the case yet, Mrs. Satterfield.'
'You will.'
I won't.
Alice Gustafson's former student, coroner Stanley Woyczek, had been as helpful as he could be, but the police in Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, as well as those in the sheriff's office and, for that matter, the state police, had a serious resentment against a private investigator whose very presence suggested they were not able to do their job. There wasn't a single question he could ask nor a single way to ask it that didn't sound condescending or patronizing. After five days of repeated visits to the various stations and substations, attempts to chat about the Marlins, Devil Rays, Buccaneers, Jaguars, and Dolphins, and several dozen doughnuts, he had failed to cultivate even one dependable source of information. Ultimately, he was forced to conclude that, had he been one of the policemen, he would probably have reacted and sounded just like they did.
'Mrs. Satterfield, don't worry about Pincus. I'm sure he'll come back.'
'I wish I shared your optimism, dear. Even your plant is sad.'
'My plant?'
'It's the only one in your whole apartment.'
'I know that, Mrs. Satterfield.'
'It used to have such a big, beautiful pink flower.'
'Used to?'
'I'm afraid it's fallen off.'
The plant, an Aechmea, was a gift from a violinist in the philharmonic, his significant other for ten weeks before she took up with a French horn player, claiming, quite correctly, that Ben simply had no direction to his life. Not surprisingly, over the intervening two years, a replacement significant other for him had simply failed to come forward.
'Mrs. Satterfield, you have to water that plant every d — ' He stopped himself mid-sentence, imagining Jennifer Chin stretched out naked on red satin sheets with her French horn blower. 'You know what, Mrs.
