“What about a cold shower? An awful lot has happened, Marc. I need to know you’re listening.”
“I will if you will.” He struggled out of the bed and tottered upright, clinging to her. Amanda had been in bed with him. This was too good an opportunity to miss. “Come with me into the shower. We can talk as much as you like.” He began to undress.
He was less drunk. Another sigh of relief. But she knew if they got into the shower together, talking was not what they would do; certainly not what she wanted to do. But as he pulled off his shirt and his broad bare chest was exposed, she panicked. He began to unzip his pants. She leapt off the bed to leave the room.
“Wait a minute, Ace,” he pleaded, stumbling after her, his trousers half off. “You said take a shower. C’mon, please…”
“David was hurt very badly at the League tonight. I think it was an accident. But so much as been happening lately, I need desperately to talk to you about it.”
He stood frozen in the middle of the room, holding his trousers, dressed only in his white cotton briefs, assimilating what she had said. Comprehension almost visibly raced through his body, slicing through the drunken stupor. She wanted to throw herself at this incredibly handsome, powerful man and turn her life over to him this instant. He would protect her from all harm. He would make everything well. He would certainly make her well.
Marc blinked hard, his mind furiously working on willing the drunkenness away. He concentrated on Amanda’s face, waiting for a fuller explanation.
“David is going to be fine. There was a riot.” She gave a giddy laugh, her nerves taut, overwhelmed at the amazing memory. “Because Antonio didn’t show up. See what you did?” She gulped for air. “Someone knocked into that large cabinet with the plaster casts and one fell on David. He was knocked out. It was pretty bloody.” She shivered.
He turned and headed for the bathroom. “Follow me and keep talking.”
He pulled off his shorts and stepped into the shower. Amanda stopped dead at the sight of his naked body disappearing behind the mottled glass.
“David is going to be fine? More information, Ace.” His voice was firm over the noise of the water.
Thank God, he seemed to be sobering by the minute. Just what she needed.
“He’s in Roosevelt. The CAT scan came back clean. It’s a minor concussion with superficial cuts. He should be okay in a day or two. They gave him medication for the bleeding and the pain and hooked him up to all sorts of monitors. If he develops no complications, they’ll release him in a day or two.” She stayed outside the room, yelling through the open door.
Suddenly the water stopped. He stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel to wrap around his middle. “We’ve gotta get there right away. Is he alone?”
She blinked at the sight of his naked body. “Wh… what do you mean, alone? We all left. There was nothing else we could do. He was moved upstairs.”
Marc was hurriedly pulling on clothes. “This big guy that’s been hounding us is getting panicky, Ace. I wondered why he didn’t finish me off. Maybe it’s because he’s got someone else who it’s more important to finish off first.”
Amanda felt the breath knocked out of her. “F… finish off…?”
He grabbed the phone. “Do you know Roosevelt’s number?”
“No… it’s…”
He punched the operator. “This is an emergency. I need to be connected to the emergency room of Roosevelt Hospital on 59th Street. Damn, they connected me to 911.”
“Marc, what’s going on? Tell me what we need to do.”
He was explaining to the emergency operator there was the possibility of a murder attempt on a man’s life in the emergency room of Roosevelt Hospital.
Amanda’s jaw dropped.
“Marc, he’s not in emergency anymore…”
Marc was furious at not being able to make himself clear. The operator thought it was a hoax. There would be people everywhere in the E.R. She demanded more information. Marc slammed the receiver down in frustration and ran for the door, still standing wide open.
“We’ve got to get to David. With him out of the way, the lead suspect would be gone.” He dashed outside.
Amanda’s jaw dropped. David was the lead suspect? She grabbed her purse and dug for her address book. She punched in the numbers quickly. “Christine, don’t ask any questions. This is an emergency. Get to the hospital and get into David’s room and stay by him until we get there. Yes. It is a very big deal. I don’t care how you do it.” She hung up and ran outside where Marc was still frantically searching for a cab, cursing mightily that cabs were never around when you needed them.
“Marc, it’s the middle of the night. Tell me what’s going on. What do you mean, David’s the lead suspect?”
A cab appeared and they threw themselves inside. Marc urged the driver to run whatever red lights he could safely run. “If a cop stops us, even better.” The large bill he waved made his point.
He turned to Amanda. “It seemed logical to the auction house. The drawings had been traced to David’s class. He’s the instructor. Ostensibly the most talented. They hired me, his brother, to prove that he wasn’t the forger figuring if anybody had a motivation to prove him innocent it would be me. If I can’t do it, David gets sent up by default.”
They were zooming up Ninth Avenue, screeching through red lights, racing past other late-night traffic.
“At the very least, his reputation would be ruined. Again,” he added grimly. “At the worst, he’d be put away for awhile. That would kill him.”
Amanda stared out the window, desperately trying to put all the pieces together. The jumbled New York landscape racing by making no impression. The cab hurtled past refurbished 42nd Street. 43rd. 44th.
“Do you think he is the forger? Is he capable of such a thing?” She couldn’t allow herself to even consider the possibility that he and David might be working together. She clutched Marc’s hand even tighter as if to squeeze that remote possibility from her mind.
“Talent-wise? The man’s a genius, when he lets himself forget how the world has never discovered that fact. He’s got a huge ego. He had to make something of himself; he had to show Dad. He’s still trying to do that. My brother wants to dance on my father’s grave. And I say more power to him. I just happen to have gotten another life. Better things to do with my time.”
He pulled her close. It wasn’t a romantic hansom cab clip-clopping through the spring rain, she thought, but it would do.
They were into the fifties now.
“You said his reputation would be ruined again.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
They pulled up in front of the emergency entrance to the hospital. Marc shoved large bills at the driver and he and Amanda dashed into the waiting room. The emergency room doctor she had dealt with before was still on duty. The doctor made a quick phone call and gave them David’s room number.
Christine sat glowering by David’s bed in the dimly lit room. Her face washed clean of most of its make-up and her hair beaten down by the day’s turmoil, she seemed soft and almost shockingly vulnerable, even through her annoyance. Nathan perched on the window sill nearby sketching on a small pad by the light of the small table lamp.
Marc stood frowning, framed in the doorway, the harsh, fluorescent hall lights behind him, his face in shadow.
“I called Christine,” Amanda explained. “She lives on Central Park South, minutes away. Nathan was a bonus.”
“Which I was rudely interrupted right in the middle of collecting,” Christine added airily, swooping over to shake Marc’s hand. She winked at Amanda. “Not bad. With or without the horn rims.” She looked more closely at Marc, squinting against the light. “You look familiar. Have we met? Nooo,” she decided. “I would have remembered you.”
“That’s my Ma,” Nathan said, as he chuckled smugly from across the room. He gave Marc a cursory glance and
