meeting at a doctor’s office?”
“Beckham’s idea,” Dalesia said, pulling into a parking place a few doors farther on. “I like it.”
They got out of the Audi, and as they walked back along the empty sidewalk, Dalesia said, “I heard of guys doing this with lawyers before, meet at his office because the law can’t bug a lawyer’s office because of lawyer- client privilege, but it works just as good with a doctor. Patient confidentiality. It could be even better, because lawyers worry about the law all the time, but what doctors worry about is money.”
Dalesia opened the door beneath the doctor’s sign, which had another, more discreet sign in its curtained window, and Parker followed him up a steep carpeted staircase with oak railings on both sides. At the top were two dark-stained wooden doors, both with brass plaques screwed to them. The one straight ahead read PRIVATE and the one to the right read ENTER.
Dalesia pushed open ENTER and they stepped into a large square waiting room with shabby armchairs and worn carpet. Three people who looked like the room were waiting there; all looked up from their magazines, then down again.
Across the way was a glassless window in the opposite wall, and beyond that a smaller office with a woman seated at a desk, behind her a row of white filing cabinets. Dalesia crossed to the window, Parker following, and said to the woman, “Turner, I got an appointment.”
“William Turner? Yes, here you are. Has the doctor seen you before?”
“Oh, sure, I’m in your files.” Jabbing a thumb at Parker, he said, “This is Dr. Harris, my diagnostician.”
This didn’t seem to surprise the woman at all. Making a note, she said, “Just have a seat, the doctor will see you shortly.”
“Thanks.”
They found adjoining chairs in front of the venetian-blinded windows, and leafed through fairly elderly newsmagazines. After about three minutes, the woman behind the window said, “Mrs. Hancock,” and one of the waiting patients got up and went through the interior door.
Parker said, “Lawyers are quicker.”
Dalesia thought that was funny. “Yeah, they are.”
Two or three minutes later, a man who must be the doctor himself came out the door that Mrs. Hancock had gone in. He was a heavyset, polished-looking man of about fifty, with lush iron-gray hair combed straight back over a high forehead, and large, pale eyeglasses that bounced the light. He carried a manila folder, and his eyes swept casually over Parker and Dalesia as he walked to the open window, bent there, and spoke briefly with the woman. He gave her the manila folder, turned away, scanned Parker and Dalesia again, and went back into his office.
Now it was less than a minute before the woman said, “Mr. Turner.”
Dalesia got to his feet. “Yeah?”
“Go right in.”
Dalesia and Parker stepped through the interior door to a narrow fluorescent-lit hallway with closed doors along both aides. A shy girl dressed as a nurse smiled at them and opened a door on the right, saying, “Just in here. Dr. Madchen will be right with you.”
“Thanks,” Dalesia said.
They went through, and she closed the door after them. This was an examination room, with a long examining table and two chrome-and-green vinyl chairs. The walls were covered with glass-fronted cabinets of medical supplies, and posters about various diseases.
Seated on the examining table, reading a
When Parker and Dalesia came in, he tossed the magazine onto the table, hopped to his feet, and stuck his hand out in Dalesia’s direction, saying, “Whadaya say, Nick?”
“Nice place you got here,” Dalesia said, shaking hands.
The man laughed and put his hand out toward Parker, saying, “You’d be Parker, I guess. I’m Jake Beckham.”
Taking the hand, finding it strong but not insistent, Parker said, “This is an examining room.”
“That’s what it is, all right,” Beckham said. He was proud of his meeting place.
Parker said, “So why don’t we all look at our chests?”
Surprised, Beckham laughed and said, “By God, you’re right! Nick, this guy is good.”
They all stripped to the waist, showing that none of them carried a recorder or transmitter. Dressing again, Beckham said to Parker, “Nick told you the idea, I guess.”
“Two banks merge, move the goods from one to the other. You’ve got an inside woman to tell you which truck the cash is in.”
“And some inside woman she is,” Beckham said, grinning to let them know he’d slept with her. “Sit down, guys, let me tell you the situation.”
While the other two took the vinyl chairs, Beckham hopped back up on the examination table. He was a bulky guy, but he moved as though he thought he was a skinny kid. Settled, he said, “Small banks are getting eat up, all around the country. If they don’t bulk up by merging with one another, they get swallowed by some international monster out of London or Hong Kong. The bank in this town—you might’ve noticed it, coming in: very old-fashioned, brick, with a clock tower—it’s called Rutherford Combined Savings, and the ‘Combined’ means it already ate a couple even smaller banks, outfits with three offices in three towns ten miles apart. So now Rutherford’s got maybe twenty branches all around the western half of the state, and a little farther south you’ve got Deer Hill Bank, four branches. Deer Hill’s who I used to work for before they caught me with my hand in the till.”
