“Comments on her husband, his behavior, changes in the way he's acting?”
“No. I know Jack pretty well, too. I really like the guy. He's evidently a good husband. They have two great kids, and you know the story on what happened to them some years back as well as I do, right?”
“Correct, but people change.”
“Not them.” Katz' s comments had the finality of a death sentence.
“You seem quite certain.”
“I'm a doctor. I live by my judgment. What you are alleging is crap.”
“I'm alleging nothing,” the investigator said, knowing it was a lie, and knowing that Katz knew it for a lie. He'd judged the man correctly from the first moment. Katz was a hotheaded, passionate man unlikely to keep any secret he deemed unworthy of being kept. Probably one hell of a doctor, too.
“I return to my original question. Has Caroline Ryan acted in any way different from, say, a year ago?”
“She's a year older. They have kids, the kids are growing up, and kids can be a bother. I have a few of my own. Okay, so she's gained a pound or two, maybe — not a bad thing, she tries to be too thin — and she's a little tireder than she ought to be. She has a long commute, and work is hard here, especially for a mother with kids.”
“That's all, you think?”
“Hey, I'm an eye-cutter, not a marriage counselor. Not my field.”
“Why did you say you're not a marriage counselor? I never brought that up, did I?”
Clever son of a bitch, aren't you? Katz thought, letting go of his mustache. Degree in psychology, maybe… more likely self-taught. Cops were pretty good at reading people. Reading me, even? “Trouble at home for a married person generally means a troubled marriage,” Katz said slowly. “No, there has been no such comment.”
“You're sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Okay, thank you for your time, Dr. Katz. Sorry to have bothered you.” He handed over a card. “If you hear anything like that, I'd appreciate it if you called me.”
“What gives?” Katz asked. “If you want my cooperation, I want an answer. I don't spy on people for the fun of it.”
“Doctor, her husband holds a very high and very sensitive government position. We routinely keep an eye on such people for reasons of national security. You do the same thing, even if you don't think much about it. If a surgeon shows up with liquor on his breath, for example, you take note of it and you take action, correct?”
“That doesn't happen here, ever,” Katz assured him.
“But you would take note of such a thing if it did happen.”
“You bet we would.”
“Glad to hear it. As you know, John Ryan has access to all sorts of highly sensitive information. Were we not to keep an eye on such people, we would be irresponsible. We've — this is a highly sensitive matter, Dr. Katz.”
“I understand that.”
“We have indications that her husband might be acting… irregularly. We have to check that out. Understand? We have to.”
“Okay.”
“That's all we ask.”
“Very well.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, sir.” The investigator shook hands and left.
Katz managed not to flush until the man was gone. He didn't really know Jack all that well. They'd met at parties perhaps five or six times, traded a few jokes, talked about baseball or the weather or maybe international relations. Jack had never begged off on an answer, had never said I can't discuss that or anything. Pleasant enough guy, Bernie thought. A good father by all accounts. But he didn't know the man at all.
Katz did, however, know Cathy as well as he knew any other doctor. She was a thoroughly wonderful person. If one of his kids should ever need eye surgery, she was one of the three people in the world whom he would trust to do the fix, and that was the highest compliment he could pay to anyone. She'd backed him up on cases and procedures, and he'd backed her up. When one needed advice, it was the other who got asked. They were friends, and associates. If they'd ever decided to leave the Hopkins/Wilmer faculty, they would have set up an office together, because a medical partnership is even harder to maintain than a good marriage. He might have married her, Katz thought, if he'd had the chance. She would have been an easy girl to love. She had to be a good mother. She drew a disproportionate number of kids as patients because in some cases the surgeon needed small hands, and hers were small, dainty, and supremely skillful. She lavished attention on her little patients. The floor nurses loved her for it. Everyone loved her, as a matter of fact. Her surgical team was extremely loyal to her. They didn't come any better than Cathy.
Trouble at home? Jack's playing around behind her back… hurting my friend?
“That worthless son of a bitch.”
He was late again, Cathy saw. After nine this time. Couldn't he ever get home at a decent hour?
And if not, why not?
“Hi, Cath,” he said on his way through to the bedroom. “Sorry I'm late.”
When he was out of sight, she walked towards the closet and opened the door to check the coat. Nothing. He'd had it cleaned the very next day, claiming that it had been spotted. It had been spotted, Cathy remembered, but, but, but…
What to do?
She almost started crying again.
Cathy was back in her chair when Jack came through on his way towards the kitchen. He didn't notice the look, didn't notice the silence. His wife stayed in her place, not really seeing the television picture her eyes were fixed on while her mind kept going over and over it, searching for an answer but finding only more anger.
She needed advice. She didn't want her marriage to end, did she? She could feel the process by which emotion and anger were taking over from reason and love. She knew that she ought to be worried about that, ought to resist the process, but she found herself unable to do either as the anger simply fed on itself. Cathy walked quietly into the kitchen and got herself a drink. She didn't have any procedures tomorrow. It was okay to have one drink. Again she looked over at her husband, and again he didn't notice. Didn't notice her? Why didn't he notice her? She'd put up with so much. Okay, the time they'd spent in England had been all right, she'd had a fairly good time teaching on staff at Guy's Hospital; it hadn't hurt her tenure at Hopkins a bit. But the other stuff — he was away so damned much! All that time back and forth to Russia when he was messed up with the arms treaty, so many other things, playing spy or something, leaving her at home with the kids, forcing her to lose time at work. She'd missed a couple of good procedures for that reason, when she'd been unable to get a sitter and had been forced to stick Bernie with something that she ought to have done.
And what had Jack been up to all that time? She had once accepted the fact that she couldn't even ask. What had he been doing? Maybe having a good laugh? A little fling with some sultry female agent somewhere? Like in the movies. There he was, in some exotic setting, a quiet, darkly-lit bar, having a meeting with some agent, and one thing might have led to another…
Cathy settled back in front of the TV and gulped at her drink. She nearly sputtered it back out. She wasn't accustomed to drinking bourbon straight.
This is all a mistake.
It seemed as though there were a war within her mind, the forces of good on one side, and the forces of evil on the other — or was it the forces of naivete and those of reality? She didn't know, and she was too upset to judge.
Well, it didn't matter for tonight, did it? She was having her period, and even if Jack had asked — which he wouldn't, she knew — she'd say no. Why should he ask, if he was getting it somewhere else? Why should she say yes if he was? Why get the leavings? Why be second-string?
She sipped more carefully at her drink this time.
Need to get advice, need to talk to somebody! But who?
Maybe Bernie, she decided. She could trust Bernie. Soon as she got back. Two days.
