An Affair Of Sorcerers

up, and the play was finished. If there was a play.

Finally Jordon said, 'What things have you found out?'

The curtain was going up. I covered the receiver with my hand as my breath came out of me in a whoosh. I took a deep breath, said evenly, 'I don't think you want me to go into it over the phone.'

'What do you want, Frederickson?'

'We can talk about that when I see you. I'll be over in a half hour. Be sure you make yourself available.'

Hanging up quickly, I doubled over and waited for the spasms to pass. Then I left the apartment, got into my car and began to drive to Jordon's offices. Despite the adrenaline pumping through my system, I suddenly felt exhausted, unable to keep my eyes open. I lighted a cigarette.

That helped some, but the smoke made me sick to my stomach. I pulled over to the curb, opened the door and retched.

Thirty-five minutes later I walked into the offices Jordon had once shared with Robert Samuels. I paused and hyperventilated. The nausea and pain in my stomach had subsided, and I was grateful for that: I was about to do the most important Command Performance of my life.

There were no patients in the waiting room. Jordon's nurse-secretary directed me down a narrow connecting corridor to a wood-paneled office, where I found Eric Jordon sitting in a leather-backed chair behind a massive oak desk. He was wearing a starched white lab coat. He'd crossed one ankle over the opposite knee; he held his hands in front of his chest and was gently tapping his fingertips together. If he was surprised to discover I was a dwarf, he didn't show it; his face didn't show anything. His mouth seemed frozen in a kind of grimace, and his pale flesh looked the color and consistency of plaster of Paris. I reached inside my pocket and activated the tape recorder as I walked up to his desk. I was feeling light-headed again; it wouldn't do to pass out on my co-star's floor.

'Dr. Jordon,' I said with a curt nod.

'Say what you have to say, Frederickson,' he said tautly. He sounded as if he were talking through a thick gauze mask, and he was breathing shallowly. His thick brown hair was tousled, greasy. He seemed to be looking straight through me.

'All right, I'll lay it on the line for you. I lied to you on the phone; I haven't been doing any investigating. I haven't had the time, which is a subject I'll get back to in a minute. The point is that I'm going to be doing a lot of digging, and I'm here to tell you up front what I expect to find. I know you were a brilliant medical student, and you're probably a great diagnostician. But I expect to find that you're not a very good physician. Patients just don't respond to you. As brilliant as you are with facts, figures and computer readouts, you screw up when it comes to people.'

Suddenly my head spun. I leaned heavily on his desk and tried to cover the pause with a cough. The room straightened out. Judging from Jordon's glazed expression, I wasn't even sure he'd noticed.

'I think I'll find that a number of malpractice suits were filed against you-and won,' I continued quickly. 'You lost your hospital affiliation, but you weren't really concerned about that because you still had your main meal ticket-a partnership with Robert Samuels in this medical-services conglomerate. I think I'll find that you're very good at what you're doing, which is attending to the business side of medicine. But that wasn't enough for Samuels. After all, it was his business he'd brought you into, and he had a controlling interest. Samuels was a good physician, and when he found out you weren't he wanted to dissolve the partnership. If that happened, you'd be finished. After all those years of medical school-not to mention the financial investment-you saw yourself being cut out of the profession. Something in your head snapped-if I may be generous. You couldn't let that happen. I think I'll find that the two of you insured each other's lives-a common business practice. So you had to kill Samuels to protect your future. When Janet Monroe approached you concerning the Esteban project, you saw your chance. Somehow you managed to talk your partner into cooperating, but Esteban was a setup from the beginning. You were the one who went to Samuels with the story about Esteban drugging one of your patients; a lie, but Samuels bought it. He hadn't wanted to work with Esteban in the first place. Now he blew up and filed a complaint with the police. You'd established a motive. Then it was a simple matter of you leaving a message for Esteban saying that Samuels wanted to see him that Thursday evening. You killed Samuels, then waited around for Esteban to show up. Everything just fell into place. Esteban's too passive to be outraged, and he's considered a bit peculiar to begin with; everyone just assumed he was guilty.'

I paused. Jordon hadn't batted an eye during my speech, and it didn't look as though he intended to say anything now. I needed him to react so that I'd have something on the tape; a word-a tone of voice-anything to indicate, however tenuously, that I'd struck a nerve, and that what I was saying could be true. It was the only thing that could provide a bail situation for Esteban.

Jordon wasn't exactly being cooperative; he continued to sit and stare like a robot. I wasn't even sure he'd been listening.

'You're thinking that all this is going to be hard to prove,' I continued, not having the slightest idea what he was thinking-if he was thinking at all. I was fighting off a growing sense of panic. 'True. But there have to be records somewhere; records and insurance policies. I'll get to it, Jordon, I assure you. Maybe I won't find out anything, maybe I will. But if you are guilty, you've got an opportunity few murderers do: you can almost square things by giving yourself up. The reason I haven't had time to do any real investigating on you is because I've been working on a case involving a little girl who's dying. Now she's slipping fast, and if there's even a chance that Esteban can give her a few more days, I want her to have those days. You can give them to her. Personally, I doubt that the old man can do her any good. But you'd know better than I would if Esteban has any healing gifts; you kept records on the patients he worked with.'

I paused to give Jordon a chance to say something; anything. He sat as rigid and silent as a catatonic. My mouth was dry and puckered, and there was an acid, burning taste at the back of my throat.

'Here's the bottom line,' I continued, my voice cracking. I licked my lips and swallowed hard, trying to work up some moisture in my mouth. 'If you killed Samuels, I'm going to prove it anyway. If you're guilty, come with me now and give yourself up so that we can get Esteban out of jail. First, you'll be doing yourself a favor; second, you'll be doing me a favor-and I'll do what I can to help you; most important, you'll be doing the child a favor. A friend of mine can-and will-bring a lot of political juice to bear in order to get you the best possible deal. What about it, Jordon? What do you have to say?'

He still didn't have anything to say. He sat in the same position, unmoving, bloodless fingertips pressed tightly together. His face was a pale, ashen gray, and his eyes shone fever-bright. It was then that I knew I was right; but Jordon's appearance was useless to me, because it would be worthless at a bail hearing.

I tried to think of something else to say that might prod him, but came up empty. And my stomach took that moment to knot with the worst pain I'd experienced yet. I gasped and doubled over. At the same time, Jordon abruptly uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and opened a drawer in his desk. When his hand emerged from the drawer, it was holding a small automatic. I tried to bunch my legs under me as I looked for some place to dodge or run. It wasn't necessary; he was no longer interested in me.

In one swift motion, Dr. Eric Jordon put the barrel of the pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Chapter 13

The judge was not happy with me.

He was particularly unhappy with the way I'd pressured Jordon, and he made it clear that he considered me partly responsible-in a moral, if not legal, sense-for the physician's death. He was unhappy with the fact that I'd left it to Jordon's hysterical nurse to call the police, and had left the offices before the investigating officers had arrived. Most of all, the judge was unhappy with the fact that no one had told him that Jordon had committed suicide before he'd been startled by the gunshot on the tape recording. He was also unhappy about what he considered the irregularity of the in camera proceeding.

That was for the record. Off the record, he told us he personally did not believe in psychic healing, but was impressed by Senator Younger's sincerity and the fact that Linda Younger was, after all, still alive. The judge attributed this to God's mercy, but conceded that God just might be working through Esteban. He understood the unusual circumstances and the pressure I'd been working under. More important, he agreed that the tape recording