the Third Twin (1996)

ask these invasive questions.”

McHenty raised his voice. “I’m trying to establish her credibility.”

“One hour after she was violated? Forget it!”

“I’m doing my job—”

“I don’t believe you know your job. I don’t think you know shit, McHenty.”

Before he could reply, a doctor walked in without knocking. He was young and looked harassed and tired. “Is this the rape?” he said.

“This is Ms. Lisa Hoxton,” Jeannie said icily. “Yes, she was raped.”

“I’ll need a vaginal swab,”

He was charmless, but at least he provided an excuse to get rid of McHenty. Jeannie looked at the cop. He stayed put, as if he thought he were going to supervise the taking of the swab. She said: “Before you do that, Doctor, perhaps Patrolman McHenty will excuse us?”

The doctor paused, looking at McHenty. The cop shrugged and went out.

The doctor pulled the sheet off Lisa with an abrupt gesture. “Lift your gown and spread your legs,” he said.

Lisa began to cry.

Jeannie could hardly believe it. What was it with these men? “Excuse me, sir,” she said to the doctor.

He glared at her impatiently. “Have you got a problem?”

“Could you please try to be a little more polite?”

He reddened. “This hospital is full of people with traumatic injuries and life-threatening illnesses,” he said. “Right now in the emergency room there are three children who have been in a car wreck, and they’re all going to die. And you’re complaining that I’m not being polite to a girl who got into bed with the wrong man?”

Jeannie was flabbergasted. “Got into bed with the wrong man?” she repeated.

Lisa sat upright. “I want to go home,” she said.

“That sounds like a hell of a good idea,” Jeannie said. She unzipped her duffel and began to put the clothes out on the bed.

The doctor was dumbstruck for a moment. Then he said angrily: “Do as you please.” He went out.

Jeannie and Lisa looked at one another. “I can’t believe that happened,” Jeannie said.

“Thank God they’ve gone,” Lisa said, and she got out of bed.

Jeannie helped her take off the hospital gown. Lisa pulled on the fresh clothes quickly and stepped into the shoes. “I’ll drive you home,” Jeannie said.

“Would you sleep over at my apartment?” Lisa said. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

“Sure. I’ll be glad to.”

McHenty was waiting outside. He seemed less confident. Perhaps he knew he had handled the interview badly. “I still have a few more questions,” he said.

Jeannie spoke quietly and calmly. “We’re leaving,” she said. “Lisa is too upset to answer questions right now.”

He was almost scared. “She has to,” he said. “She’s made a complaint.”

Lisa said: “I wasn’t raped. It was all a mistake. I just want to go home now.”

“You realize it’s an offense to make a false allegation?”

Jeannie said angrily: “This woman is not a criminal—she’s the victim of a crime. If your boss asks why she’s withdrawing the complaint, say it’s because she was brutally harassed by Patrolman McHenty of the Baltimore Police Department. Now I’m taking her home. Excuse us, please.” She put her arm around Lisa’s shoulders and steered her past the cop toward the exit.

As they left she heard him mutter: “What did I do?”

3

BERRINGTON JONES LOOKED AT HIS TWO OLDEST FRIENDS. “I can’t believe the three of us,” he said. “We’re all close to sixty years old. None of us has ever made more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. Now we’re being offered sixty million each—and we’re sitting here talking about turning the offer down!”

Preston Barck said: “We were never in it for the money.”

Senator Proust said: “I still don’t understand it. If I own one-third of a company that’s worth a hundred and eighty million dollars, how come I’m driving around in a three-year-old Crown Victoria?”

The three men had a small private biotechnology company, Genetico Inc. Preston ran the day-to-day business; Jim was in politics, and Berrington was an academic. But the takeover was Berrington’s baby. On a plane to San Francisco he had met the CEO of Landsmann, a German pharmaceuticals conglomerate, and had got the man interested in making a bid. Now he had to persuade his partners to accept the offer. It was proving harder than he had expected.

They were in the den of a house in Roland Park, an affluent suburb of Baltimore. The house was owned by Jones Falls University and loaned to visiting professors. Berrington, who had professorships at Berkeley in California and at Harvard as well as Jones Falls, used the house for the six weeks of the year he was in Baltimore. There was little of his in the room: a laptop computer, a photograph of his ex-wife and their son, and a pile of new copies of his latest book, To Inherit the Future: How Genetic Engineering Will Transform America. A TV set with the sound turned down was showing the Emmy ceremonies.

Preston was a thin, earnest man. Although he was one of the most outstanding scientists of his generation, he looked like an accountant. “The clinics have always made money,” Preston said. Genetico owned three fertility clinics that specialized in in vitro conception—test-tube babies—a procedure made possible by Preston’s pioneering research in the seventies. “Fertility is the biggest growth area in American medicine. Genetico will be Landsmann’s way into this big new market. They want us to open five new clinics a year for the next ten years.”

Jim Proust was a bald, suntanned man with a big nose and heavy glasses. His powerful, ugly face was a gift to the political cartoonists. He and Berrington had been friends and colleagues for twenty-five years. “How come we never saw any money?” Jim asked.

“We always spent it on research.” Genetico had its own labs and also gave research contracts to the biology and psychology departments of universities. Berrington handled the company’s links with the academic world.

Berrington said in an exasperated tone: “I don’t know why you two can’t see that this is our big chance.”

Jim pointed at the TV. “Turn up the sound, Berry—you’re on.”

The Emmys had given way to Larry King Live, and Berrington was the guest He hated Larry King—the man was a red-dyed liberal, in his opinion—but the show was an opportunity to talk to millions of Americans.

He studied his image, and he liked what he saw. He was in reality a short man, but television made everyone the same height. His navy suit looked good, the sky blue shirt matched his eyes, and the tie was a burgundy red that did not flare on the screen. Being supercritical, he thought his silver hair was too neat, almost bouffant: he was in danger of looking like a television evangelist.

King, wearing his trademark suspenders, was in an aggressive mood, his gravelly voice challenging. “Professor, you’ve stirred up controversy again with your latest book, but some people feel this isn’t science, it’s politics. What do you say to that?”

Berrington was gratified to hear his own voice sounding mellow and reasonable in reply. “I’m trying to say that political decisions should be based on sound science, Larry. Nature, left to itself, favors good genes and kills off bad ones. Our welfare policy works against natural selection. That’s how we’re breeding a generation of second- rate Americans.”

Jim took a sip of scotch and said: “Good phrase—a generation of second-rate Americans. Quotable.”

On TV, Larry King said: “If you have your way, what happens to the children of the poor? They starve, right?”

Berrington’s face on the screen took on a solemn look. “My father died in 1942, when the aircraft carrier