The Throat

'Does it look like the lady might actually be able to say something, or are we standing in the line at Lourdes here?'

'There are definite indications,' said the doctor. The heavy wooden voice sounded as if it were coming from a much larger and older person who was standing behind him.

John looked wildly at me across the bed. 'Tim, she might actually come out of it.'

The detective came up behind him and insinuated himself at the bedside. 'I'm Paul Fontaine, and the assault on your friend's wife is related to a homicide case I'm handling.'

'Tim Underhill,' I said.

He cocked his big oval head. 'Well, Tim Underhill. I read one of your books. The Divided Man. It was crappy. It was ridiculous. I liked it.'

'Thanks,' I said.

'Now, what was it you came here to tell Mr. Ransom, unless it is something you would prefer to conceal from our efficient police department?'

I looked at him. 'Will you write down a license number for me?'

'Thompson,' he said, and the young policeman took out his pad.

I read the license number of the man's car from the page in my notebook. 'It's a blue Lexus. The owner followed John and me all day long. When I stopped him in the lobby downstairs, he flashed a toy badge and said he was a policeman. He ran away just before you got here.'

'Uh huh,' said Fontaine. 'That's interesting. I'll do something about that. Do you remember anything about this man? Anything distinguishing?'

'He's a gray-haired guy with a ponytail. Gold post earring in his left ear. About six-two and probably two hundred and thirty pounds. Big belly and wide hips, like a woman's hips. I think he was wearing an Armani suit.'

'Oh, one of the Armani gang.' He permitted himself to smile. He took the paper with the license number from Thompson and put it in his jacket pocket.

'Following me?' John asked.

'I saw him here this afternoon. He trailed us to Eastern Shore Drive, then down to Jimmy's. He was going to come up to this floor, but I stopped him in the lobby.'

'That was a pity,' Fontaine said. 'Did this character really say that he was a policeman?'

I tried to remember. 'I think he said that he was with the police.'

Fontaine pursed his mouth. 'Sort of like saying you're with the band.'

'He showed me one of those little gold badges.'

'I'll look into it.' He turned away from me. 'Thompson, visiting hours are over. We are going to wait around to see if Mrs. Ransom comes out of her coma and says anything useful. Mr. Underhill can wait in the lounge, if he likes.'

Thompson gave me a sharp look and stepped back from the bed.

'John, I'll wait for you at home,' I said.

He smiled weakly and pressed his wife's hand. Thompson came around the end of the bed and gestured almost apologetically toward the door.

Thompson followed me out of the door. We went past the nurses' station in silence. The two women behind the counter pretended unsuccessfully not to stare.

Thompson did not speak until we had almost reached the elevators. 'I just wanted to say,' he began, then looked around to make sure that nobody was listening. 'Don't get Detective Fontaine wrong. He's crazy, that's all, but he's a great detective. In interrogation rooms, he's like a genius.'

'A crazy genius,' I said, and pushed the button.

'Yeah.' Officer Thompson looked a bit embarrassed. He put his hands behind his back. 'You know what we call him? He's called Fantastic Paul Fontaine. That's how good he is.'

'Then he ought to be able to find out who owns that blue Lexus,' I said.

'He'll find out,' Thompson said. 'But he might not tell you he found out.'

16

I let myself into the house and groped for a light switch. A hot red dot on the answering machine blinked on and off from the telephone stand, signaling that calls had been recorded. The rest of the downstairs was a deep, velvet black. Central air conditioning made the interior of Ransom's house feel like a refrigerator. I found a switch just beside the frame and turned on a glass-and-bronze overhead lamp that looked as if it had been made to hold a candle. Then I closed the door. A switch next to the entrance to the living room turned on most of the lamps inside the room. I went in and collapsed onto a sofa.

Eventually I went up to the guest room. It looked like a room in a forty-dollar-a-night hotel. I hung my clothes in the closet beside the door. Then I brought two books back downstairs, The Nag Hammadi Library and a paperback Sue Grafton novel. I picked a chair facing the fireplace and opened the book of gnostic texts and read for a long time, waiting for John Ransom to bring good news home from the hospital.

Around eleven I decided to call New York and see if I could talk to a man named An Vinh, whom I had first met in Vietnam.

Six years ago, when my old friend Tina Pumo was killed, he left Saigon, his restaurant, to Vinh, who had been both chef and assistant manager. Vinh eventually gave half of the restaurant to Maggie Lah, Tina's old girlfriend, who had taken over its management while she began work on her Philosophy M.A. at NYU. We all lived above the restaurant, in various lofts.

I hadn't seen Vinh for two or three days, and I missed his cool unsentimental common sense.

It was eleven o'clock in Millhaven, midnight in New York. With any luck, Vinh would have turned the restaurant over to the staff and gone upstairs for an hour or so, until it was time to close up and balance the day's receipts. I went into the foyer and dialed Vinh's number on the telephone next to the blinking answering machine. After two rings, I got the clunk of another machine picking up and heard Vinh's terse message: Not home. Buzzing silence, and the chime of the tone. 'Me,' I said. 'Having wonderful time, wish you were here. I'll try you downstairs.'

Maggie Lah answered the telephone in the restaurant office and burst into laughter at the sound of my voice. 'You couldn't take your hometown for even half a day? Why don't you come back here, where you belong?'

'I'll probably come back soon.'

'You found everything out in one day?' Maggie laughed again. 'You're better than Tom Pasmore, you're better than Lamont von Heilitz'

'I didn't find anything out,' I said. 'But April Ransom seems to be getting better.'

'You can't come home until you find something out,' she said. 'Too humiliating. I suppose you want Vinh. He's standing right here, hold on.'

In a second I heard Vinh's voice saying my name, and at once I felt more at peace with myself and the world I was in. I began telling him what had happened during the day, leaving nothing out—someone like Vinh is not upset by the appearance of a familiar ghost.

'Your sister is hungry,' he said. 'That's why she shows herself to you. Hungry. Bring her to the restaurant, we take care of that.'

'I know what she wants, and it isn't food,' I said, but his words had suddenly reminded me of John Ransom seated in the front seat of a muddy jeep.

'You in a circus,' Vinh said. 'Too old for the circus. When you were twenty-one, twenty-two, you love circuses. Now you completely different, you know. Better.'

'You think so?' I asked, a little startled.

'Totally,' Vinh said, using the approximate English that served him so well. 'You don't need the circus anymore.' He laughed. 'I think you should go away from Millhaven. Nothing there for you anymore, that's for sure.'

'What brought all this on?' I asked.

'Remember how you used to be? Loud and rough. Now you don't puff your chest out. Don't get high, go