Harvest

on. Tenser. Softer. 'I have to get off the phone.'

'You said it was a large transaction. How large?'

For a moment there was no reply. Abby thought perhaps Nina had already hung up. Then she heard the whispered answer.

'Five million,' said Nina. 'He transferred five million dollars.'

Nina hung up the telephone. She heard Victor's footsteps, but she did not look up as he came into the bedroom. 'Who were you talking to?' he asked. 'Cynthia. I called to thank her for the flowers.'

'Which flowers were those again?'

'The orchids.'

He glanced at the vase on the dresser. 'Oh, yes. Very nice.'

'Cynthia says they're going to Greece next spring. I guess they're tired of the Caribbean.' How easily she lied to him. When had it started? When had they stopped speaking the truth to each other?

He sat down beside her on the bed. She felt him studying her. 'When you're all better,' he said, 'Maybe we'll go back to Greece. Maybe we'll even go with Cynthia and Robert. Wouldn't you like that?'

She nodded and looked down at the bedspread. At her hands, the fingers bony and wasting away. But I am never getting better. We both know that.

She slid her legs out from under the covers. 'I have to use the bathroom,' she said.

'Shall I help you?'

'No. I'm fine.' Rising to her feet, she felt a brief spell of lightheadedness. Lately she'd been having the spells often, whenever she stood up or exerted herself in even the slightest way. She said nothing about it to Victor, but just waited for the feeling to pass.

Then she continued slowly into the bathroom.

She heard him pick up the telephone.

Only when she'd shut the bathroom door did she suddenly realize her mistake. The last number she'd called was still in the phone's memory system. All Victor had to do was press Redial, and he would know she'd lied to him. It was just the sort of thing Victor would do. He'd learn she hadn't called Cynthia. He'd find out, somehow he'd find out, that it was Abby DiMatteo she'd called.

Nina stood with her back pressed to the bathroom door, listening. She heard him hang up the phone again. Heard him say, 'Nina?'

Another wave of lightheadedness hit her. She dropped her head, fighting the darkness that was beginning to cloud her vision. Her legs seemed to melt away beneath her. She felt herself sliding downwards.

He rattled the door. 'Nina, I need to speak to you.'

'Victor,' she whispered, but knew he couldn't hear her. No one could hear her.

She lay on the bathroom floor, too weak to move, too weak to call out to him.

She felt her heart flutter like a butterfly's wings in her chest.

'This has to be the wrong place,' said Abby.

She and Katzka were parked on a rundown street in Roxbury. It was a neighbourhood of barred storefronts and businesses on the verge of collapse. The only apparently thriving enterprise was a body building gym a few doors down. Through the gym's open windows, they could hear the clank of weights and occasional masculine laughter. Adjacent to the gym was an unoccupied building with a For Lease sign. And next to that was the Amity building, a four-storey brownstone. Over the entrance hung the sign:

Amity Medical Supplies Sales and Service Behind the barred front windows was a tired-looking display of company products: Crutches and canes. Oxygen tanks. Foam mattress pads to prevent bedsores. Bedside commodes. A mannequin wearing a nurse's uniform and cap straight out of the sixties.

Abby gazed across the street at the shabby display window and she said, 'This can't be the right Amity.'

'It's the only listing in the phone book,' said Katzka.

'Why would he transfer five million dollars to this business?'

'It could be just one branch of a larger corporation. Maybe he saw an investment opportunity.'

She shook her head. 'The timing's all wrong. Put yourself in VictorVoss's place. His wife is dying. He's desperate to get her the operation she needs. He's not going to be thinking about his investments.'

'It depends how much he cares about his wife.'

'He cares a lot.'

'How do you know?'

She looked at him. 'I know.'

He regarded her in that quiet way of his. How strange, she thought, that his gaze no longer made her feel uncomfortable.

HARVEST

He opened his door. 'I'll see what I can find out.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Look around. Ask a few questions.'

'I'll go in with you.'

'No, you stay in the car.' He started to step out, but she pulled him back.

'Look,' she said. 'I'm the one with everything to lose. I've already lost my job. I'm losing my licence. And now people are calling me a murderer or a psychotic or both. It's my life they've fucked up. This could be my one chance to fight back.'

'Then let's not screw it up, OK? Someone in there could recognize you. That would certainly tip them off. Do you want to risk that?'

She sank back. Katzka was right. Goddamn it, he was right. He hadn't wanted her to come along on this ride in the first place, but she'd insisted. She'd told him she could drive here on her own, with or without him. So here she was, and she couldn't even walk in the building. She couldn't even fight her own battles any more. They'd taken that away from her, too. She sat shaking her head, angry about her own impotence. Angry at Katzka for having pointed it out.

He said, 'Lock the doors.' And he stepped out of the car.

She watched him cross the street, watched him walk into the shabby entrance. She could picture what he'd find inside. Depressing displays of wheelchairs and emesis basins. Racks of nurses' uniforms under dustcovers of yellowing plastic. Boxes of orthopaedic shoes. She could imagine every detail because she had been in shops just like it when she'd purchased her first set of uniforms.

Five minutes passed. Then ten.

Katzka, Katzka. What are you doing in there?

He'd said he was going to ask questions, that he would try not to tip them off. She trusted his judgment. The average homicide cop, she decided, was probably smarter than the average surgeon. But maybe not smarter than the average internist. That was the running joke among hospital house staff: the stupidity of surgeons. Internists relied on their brains, surgeons on their precious hands. If an internist is in an elevator and the door starts to shut prematurely, he'll stick in his hand to stop it. A surgeon will stick in his head. Ha, ha.

Twenty minutes had gone by. It was after five now, and the anaemic sunshine had already faded to a gloomy dusk. Through the window crack, she could hear the continual whoosh of cars on the Martin Luther King Boulevard. Rush hour. Up the street, two men with biceps of heroic proportions came out of the gym and lumbered to their cars.

She kept watching the entrance, waiting for Katzka to emerge. It was five-twenty.

The traffic was beginning to thicken even on this street. Through the flow of cars, she caught only intermittent glimpses of the front entrance. Then, suddenly, there was a gap in the traffic and she was looking straight across the street as a man emerged from the side door of the Amity building. He paused on the sidewalk and glanced at his watch. When he looked up again, Abby felt her heart kick into a gallop. She recognized that face. The grotesquely heavy brow. The hawklike nose.

It was Dr. Mapes. The courier who'd delivered NinaVoss's donor heart to the operating room.

Mapes began walking. Halfway up the street, he stopped at a blue Trans-Am parked at the kerb. He took out a set of car keys.

Abby looked back at the Amity building, hoping, praying for Katzka to appear. Come on, come on. I'm going