'I agree,' I said. 'He'd heard the name Michelle
Oliveira before. And I don't buy that he didn't know about
Danny Linwood.' I stood in front of our car, thinking about what to do next.
'Think we should head back?' Amanda asked.
'No,' I said.
'Why not?'
'I'm going to wait for him. Petrovsky. I'm going to follow him when he gets off work and see where he goes.
If necessary, confront him off hospital grounds. Where there's no security, nobody but us.'
Amanda sighed.
'The least you could have done was tell me that upstairs. I would have grabbed a magazine from the waiting room.'
She smiled at me, and we both piled into the car, waiting for the good doctor to emerge.
19
The phone call was not unexpected, but it rattled
Raymond Benjamin nonetheless. He'd been sitting in his loft, sipping a glass of pinot noir, from the Argyle wineries,
2005 vintage. There were few things that beat a glass of red and a cigarette at night. Perhaps a little Coltrane.
Getting a phone call from this number ruined all of it.
He recognized the area code and extension immediately, and as soon as they appeared in the caller-ID display, Benjamin knew there was a problem. Petrovsky was only supposed to call if there was an emergency. And
Benjamin made it very clear about what constituted an emergency.
He answered the phone. 'Doctor,' Ray said. 'There'd better be a fucking good reason for this.'
Raymond Benjamin listened as Dmitri Petrovsky filled him in on what had occurred at the hospital that day. He ended the conversation by saying he'd watched the two people-Henry Parker and Amanda Davies-leave the hospital. Only, when they left, they didn't drive away. In fact, they'd been sitting in their car for several hours.
Petrovsky and Benjamin came to the same conclusion: they were planning to follow the doctor when he left work.
When Ray Benjamin hung up the phone, he sat there for a moment, thinking. Then he got up, tossing the rest of his glass into the sink, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. He called Vince and told him to be at the garage in fifteen minutes. Ray had a lot of phone calls to make.
First he called the house. The couple took it as well as he expected. He told them they'd prepared for a day like this. And if they kept up their end of the deal, it would all be worth it. And if they didn't, he only needed to remind them of the photograph.
When everything was in motion, and Petrovsky confirmed that Parker was still at Yardley, Ray Benjamin went to the garage. Vince was waiting for him. Vincent Cann was a tall, slender man of thirty-eight. His jet-black hair was slicked back, his face clean-shaven as always. A pair of designer sunglasses sat on his face. He nodded when he saw Benjamin approaching.
'Clusterfuck, ain't it, boss?'
Ray answered by not answering at all.
They piled into the car. Ray opened his window a crack.
The younger man was chewing gum, his jaws working overtime. Ray reached into his pocket and pulled out a fresh pack of Chesterfields. He depressed the electric lighter, unwrapped the pack, stuck the cig in his mouth and waited.
Vince said, 'Should we get going?'
'Wait a second,' the older man said. The lighter wasn't ready yet.
When the metal knob popped out, Ray took the end, pressed it to the tip and inhaled deeply. There was nothing like a good Chesterfield. When the butt was half smoked, a long finger of ash hanging off the end, Ray flicked it out the window.
'Clear your schedule for the next few days,' Ray said to Vince as he pulled into traffic. 'We're going to be busy cleaning this mess up, and there's not a lot of time.'
20
Paulina arched her back, feeling the convulsions ripple through her body. She embraced the aches of pleasure, the slightest hint of pain as Myron Bennett raked his too-long nails down her stomach. She felt the final shudder of orgasm, the sweat dripping down her chest, waiting until everything was calm before finally becoming still. Paulina looked down. She was still wearing her bra, a slight puddle of moisture collecting in between the cups.
Gathering herself, Paulina climbed off Myron, taking one more glimpse at his naked body, his erection like a flag of surrender. The boy had a beautiful body, that's for sure, and though nobody would ever know of their tryst, it secretly thrilled her to know she'd just fucked a man thousands of women would ditch their husbands and 2.4 children for.
She located her underwear, snagged the band on her shoe, kicked it into her hands and headed for the bathroom.
'Hey,' Myron called out as Paulina groped her way to the bathroom door. 'I didn't come yet!'
'Nobody's watching if you want to finish yourself off,' she said, closing the bathroom door. Paulina looked at herself in the mirror. Her mascara was streaked. She ran the faucet and washed it off. She looked at her breasts, felt a twinge of sadness, noticed they were sagging slightly more than she remembered. For years Paulina had taken care of her body, spending countless hours at the gym, countless dollars on every treatment under the sun. But aging happened to everyone, even women who were born to fight everything. Push-up bras did wonders to enhance her natural cleavage, but nobody could fight Father Time, especially since he had gravity on his side. She thought about having them done, wondered if it was an outpatient procedure. The last thing she needed was to be out of work a day or two, then come with them enhanced. Boob jobs were only worth it if no one knew you'd had one.
She could hear Myron moving about in the bedroom.
She heard the sound of his zipper, laughed to herself that he was too frustrated to finish the job. Myron was a nice treat, and thankfully she'd never have to see him again. At least not in person.
In Sunday's edition of the Dispatch, Paulina would be running a lengthy article about Myron's decade-long affair with Mitsy Russell Henshaw, wife of billionaire venture capitalist Richard Henshaw. Richard Henshaw had been a longtime critic of the Dispatch, specifically the paper's editor-in-chief, Ted Allen. It was what Allen called a 'have your cake and eat it, too' story. It was both a juicy bit of gossip that would sell papers, while accomplishing the goal of humiliating one of Ted's most vocal enemies.
Paulina figured it only fair that if she was going to report the piece, she deserved a piece of the cake, too.
Though Myron was in his late thirties and no longer in the kind of shape that had secured him deals as an underwear model in the nineties-the abs a little softer, the arms not quite as sinewy-he was still a striking bachelor, the kind of man that would turn heads and make very wealthy women think very bad thoughts.
She had interviewed him for three hours, at the end of which Paulina offered to buy him a drink. To make things a little more personal, she said, rinse off the professional.
And when they were in the comfort of a pair of martinis, she let Myron know that as long as she was putting
