It was Tess’s practice to give out as little information as possible, but she needed to dish if she was going to prod Bandit into providing anything useful. “Herb thinks the delivery guy did it, on his own.”
Bandit rolled his shoulders in a large, looping shrug. “Then he shouldn’t have used someone new. Manny was a good guy. I signed a ball for him, chatted with him in Spanish.”
“Someone new?”
“Yeah, and he was kind of a jerk. His attitude came in the door about three feet in front of him, then he treated it like a social call, as if I should offer him a beer, ask him to sit down and take a load off. He acted like… he owned me. I thought he might be a little retarded.”
“Retarded.”
He mistook her echo for a rebuke. “Oh yeah, you’re not supposed to say that anymore. I mean, he was over forty and he was a delivery boy. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? And he wouldn’t shut up. I just wanted to eat my dinner and go to bed.”
“I assume this building has a video system, for security?”
Another Bandit-style shrug, only forward this time.
“I dunno. Why? You think he spit in my meat on the elevator or something?”
Tess was going to be a vegetarian before this was over.
“Do people sign in? Do they have to give their tag numbers, or just their names?”
“The doorman would know, I guess.” She started moving toward the door. “Hey, don’t you want a photo or something?”
“Maybe for my dad. His name is Pat.”
He walked over to the sleek, modern desk, which didn’t look as if it got much use, and extracted a glossy photo from a folder. “Nothing for you?”
“No, that’s okay.”
Bandit gave her a quizzical look. “If I told you I had an ERA under four, would that impress you?”
“No, but I would pretend it did.”
THE DOORMAN PROVED to be a nosy little gossip. Tess wouldn’t want to live next door to him, but she wished every investigation yielded such helpful busybodies. He not only remembered the motormouth delivery “boy,” but he remembered his car.
“A dark green Porsche 911, fairly new.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Why would I make that up? Guy got out in a rush, handed me his keys like he thought I was the fuckin’ valet. I told him to go up and I’d watch his precious wheels. He even had vanity plates-‘ICU.’”
“As in ‘Intensive Care Unit’?”
“Could be. Although, in my experience, the doctors drive Jags while the lawyers who sue them pick Porsches. Hey, do you know the difference between a porcupine and a Porsche?”
“Yes,” Tess said, refusing to indulge the doorman’s lawyer joke, on the grounds that it was too easy.
Everything was too easy. She ran the plates, found they belonged to Dr. Scott Russell, who kept an office in a nearby professional building. Too easy, she repeated when she drove to the address and saw the Porsche parked outside. Too easy, she thought as she sat in the waiting room and pretended to read People, watching the white- jacketed doctor come and go, chatting rapidly to his patients. He had a smug arrogance that seemed normal in a doctor, but how would it go over in a delivery boy? A motormouth, the doorman had said. As if he were on a social call, Bandit had said. The doctor may have dressed up like a delivery boy, but he hadn’t been prepared to act like one.
The only surprise was that he wasn’t a surgeon or a gastroenterologist, but an ophthalmologist specializing in LASIK. ICU-now she got it. And wished she hadn’t. But his practice, billed as Visualize Liberation, was clearly thriving. He presided over a half-dozen surgeries while she waited. It was easy to keep count, because each operation was simulcast on a screen in the waiting room, much to Tess’s discomfort.
By 2:45 P.M., the last patient had been ushered out. The receptionist glanced curiously at Tess.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but I need to speak to Dr. Russell.”
“It’s almost three P.M. He doesn’t see anyone after three, not on Wednesdays.”
“He can see just me now, or meet with me and the Baltimore city police later.”
“But it’s three P.M. and it’s Wednesday.”
“So?”
“That’s trade deadline. The last girl who interrupted him on a Wednesday afternoon got fired.”
“Luckily, I don’t work for him.”
Tess walked past the receptionist, assuming someone would try to stop her. But the receptionist sat frozen at her desk, face stricken, as if Tess were heading into the lion’s den.
Dr. Russell was on the phone, a hands-free headset, his back to her as he leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the windowsill.
“-no, no, Delino is healthy, I swear. You always think I got inside information because I’m a doctor, but all I know is eyes, not backs. I want to trade him because I don’t need run production as much as I need pitching, so I’m unwilling to give you him for a closer. Look, you’re not even in the hunt for one of the top four slots. It’s bad sportsmanship to refuse a good trade just because you don’t want me to take first place.”
“Hey,” Tess called out. “ICU. Get it?”
When he turned around, his narrow, foxy features were contorted with rage. “I am BUSY,” he said. “I know everyone wants to consult with me, but the other doctors here are quite competent to do the intake interviews.”
“I’ve got twenty-twenty vision,” Tess said. “So does the doorman who saw you and your car at Harbor Court when you delivered food to Bandit Gonzales. Here’s a tip-the next time you attempt a felony, don’t use a Porsche with vanity tags.”
“I’ll call you back,” he said into the headset. “But think about Delino, okay?” Then to Tess: “Felony? He didn’t get that sick. I love Bandit Gonzales and would never hurt him. I’m counting on another win from him in his next start.”
“You love Bandit Gonzales so much you poisoned him?”
“It’s August and I’m in first place by only three points. There’s five thousand dollars at stake. But also a principle.”
In fact, five thousand dollars was what Visualize Liberation charged for one of its higher-end surgeries, a procedure that took almost fifteen minutes to perform.
“First place?”
“In roto. Rotisserie baseball. I’ve been in the No Lives League for almost fifteen years and never won. Never even finished in the money. Bandit Gonzales was going to help me change that. I picked him up cheap, in the draft. It was genius on my part, genius. But if he goes to the Mets…” He was getting visibly agitated, shaking and sweating, swinging his arms.
“But it’s a fantasy league. You’d still have him, right?”
“We’re an American League-only roto. When our players go to the National League, they might as well have died or quit baseball.” He jumped up, began pacing around his desk. “You see? If they traded him to the Mariners, I’d be fine. But they were talking about the Mets, the Mets, the fuckin’ Mets. I’ve hated the Mets since 1969 and they’re still finding ways to screw me.”
He was now hopping around the room, Rumpelstiltskin in his final rage, and Tess wondered if he would fly apart. But all he did was bang his knee on his desk, which made him curse more.
“How much did you pay Armando Rivera to let you deliver the food?”
“Two thousand dollars.”
“So if you win roto, you’ll only be up three thousand.”
“It’s not about the money,” he said. “I’ve never won. This was supposed to be my year.”
“And if you’re arrested for a felony-and what you did to Bandit constitutes felonious assault-would you be disqualified?”
Russell looked thoughtful. “I dunno. I think it’s all just part of being a good negotiator. That trade I was about
