There was a pause. “Berry, it would be wrong for me to prejudge the issue …”
“ … but I think I can say that Genetico need not worry about this.”
“Strictly between the two of us, of course.”
“Naturally.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Bye.” Berrington hung up.
Did Jack really not know he had just been bribed? Did he kid himself about it? Of did he understand perfectly well, but simply pretend not to?
It did not matter, so long as he steered the committee the right way.
That might not be the end of it, of course. The committee’s decision had to be ratified by a meeting of the full senate. At some point Jeannie might hire a hotshot lawyer and start to sue the university for all kinds of compensation. The case could drag on for years. But her investigations would be halted, and that was all that mattered.
However, the committee’s decision was not yet in the bag. If things went wrong tomorrow morning, Jeannie could be back at her desk by midday, hot on the trail of Genetico’s guilty secrets. Berrington shuddered: God forbid. He pulled a scratch pad to him and wrote down the names of the committee members.
Jack Budgen—Library
Tenniel Biddenham—History of Art
Milton Powers—Mathematics
Mark Trader—Anthropology
Jane Edelsborough—Physics
Biddenham, Powers, and Trader were conventional men, long-standing professors whose careers were bound up with Jones Falls and its continued prestige and prosperity. They could be relied upon to support the university president, Berrington felt sure. The dark horse was the woman, Jane Edelsborough.
He would deal with her next.
33
DRIVING TO PHILADELPHIA ON I-95, JEANNIE FOUND HERSELF thinking about Steve Logan again.
She had kissed him good-bye last night, in the visitors’ parking lot on the Jones Falls campus. She found herself regretting that the kiss had been so fleeting. His lips were full and dry, his skin warm. She quite liked the idea of doing it again.
Why was she prejudiced against him because of his age? What was so great about older men? Will Temple, aged thirty-nine, had dropped her for an empty-headed heiress. So much for maturity.
She pressed the Seek button on her radio, looking for a good station, and got Nirvana playing “Come As You Are.” Whenever she thought about dating a man her own age, or younger, she got a scared feeling, a bit like the frisson of danger that went with a Nirvana track. Older men were reassuring; they knew what to do.
Is this me? she thought. Jeannie Ferrami, the woman who does as she pleases and tells the world to go screw? I need reassurance? Get out of here!
It was true, though. Perhaps it was because of her father. After him, she never wanted another irresponsible man in her life. On the other hand, her father was living proof that older men could be just as irresponsible as young.
She guessed Daddy was sleeping in cheap hotels somewhere in Baltimore. When he had drunk and gambled whatever money he got for her computer and her TV—-which would not take him long—he would either steal something else or throw himself on the mercy of his other daughter, Patty. Jeannie hated him for stealing her stuff. However, the incident had served to bring out the best in Steve Logan. He had been a prince. What the hell, she thought; when next I see Steve Logan I’m going to kiss him again, and this time I’ll kiss him good.
She became tense as she threaded the Mercedes through the crowded center of Philadelphia. This could be the big breakthrough. She might be about to find the solution to the puzzle of Steve and Dennis.
The Aventine Clinic was in University City, west of the Schuylkill River, a neighborhood of college buildings and student apartments. The clinic itself was a pleasant low-rise fifties building surrounded by trees. Jeannie parked at a meter on the street and went inside.
There were four people in the waiting area: a young couple, the woman looking strained and the man nervous, plus two other women of about Jeannie’s age, all sitting in a square of low couches, looking at magazines. A chirpy receptionist asked Jeannie to take a seat, and she picked up a glossy brochure about Genetico Inc. She held it open on her lap without reading it; instead she stared at the soothingly meaningless Abstract art on the lobby walls and tapped her feet impatiently on the carpeted floor.
She hated hospitals. She had only once been a patient. At the age of twenty-three she had had an abortion. The father was an aspiring film director. She stopped taking the contraceptive pill because they split up, but he came back after a few days, there was a loving reconciliation, and they had unprotected sex and she got pregnant. The operation proceeded without complications, but Jeannie cried for days, and she lost all affection for the film director, even though he was supportive throughout.
He had just made his first Hollywood movie, an action picture. Jeannie had gone alone to see it at the Charles Theater in Baltimore. The only touch of humanity in an otherwise mechanical story of men shooting at one another was when the hero’s girlfriend became depressed after an abortion and threw him out. The man, a police detective, had been bewildered and heartbroken. Jeannie had cried.
The memory still hurt. She stood up and paced the floor. A minute later a man emerged from the back of the lobby and said, “Doctor Ferrami!” in a loud voice. He was an anxiously jolly man of about fifty, with a bald pate and a monkish fringe of ginger hair. “Hello, hello, good to meet you,” he said with unwarranted enthusiasm.
Jeannie shook his hand. “Last night I spoke to a Mr. Ringwood.”
“Yes, yes! I’m a colleague of his, my name’s Dick Minsky. How do you do?” Dick had a nervous tic that made him blink violently every few seconds; Jeannie felt sorry for him.
He led her up a staircase. “What’s led to your inquiry, may I ask?”
“A medical mystery,” she explained. “The two women have sons who appear to be identical twins, yet they seem to be unrelated. The only connection I’ve been able to find is that both women were treated here before getting pregnant.”
“Is that so?” he said as if he were not really listening. Jeannie was surprised; she had expected him to be intrigued.
They entered a corner office. “All our records can be accessed by computer, provided you have the right code,” he said. He sat at a screen. “Now, the patients we’re interested in are … ?”
“Charlotte Pinker and Lorraine Logan.”
“This won’t take a minute.” He began to key in the names.
Jeannie contained her impatience. These records might reveal nothing at all. She looked around the room. It was too grand an office for a mere filing clerk. Dick must be more than just a “colleague” of Mr. Ringwood’s, she thought. “What’s your role here at the clinic, Dick?” she said.
“I’m the general manager.”
She raised her eyebrows, but he did not look up from the keyboard. Why was her inquiry being dealt with by such a senior person? she wondered, and a sense of unease crept into her mood like a wisp of smoke.
He frowned. “That’s odd. The computer says we have no record of either name.”
Jeannie’s unease gelled. I’m about to be lied to, she thought. The prospect of a solution to the puzzle receded into the far distance again. A sense of anticlimax washed over her and depressed her.
He spun his screen around so that she could see it. “Do I have the correct spellings?”
