Part 30 (1/2)

Is this me? she thought. Jeannie Ferrami, the woman who does as she pleases and tells the world to go screw? I need rea.s.surance? Get out of here!

It was true, though. Perhaps it was because of her father. After him, she never wanted another irresponsible man in her life. On the other hand, her father was living proof that older men could be just as irresponsible as young.

She guessed Daddy was sleeping in cheap hotels somewhere in Baltimore. When he had drunk and gambled whatever money he got for her computer and her TV--which would not take him long-he would either steal something else or throw himself on the mercy of his other daughter, Patty. Jeannie hated him for stealing her stuff. However, the incident had served to bring out the best in Steve Logan. He had been a prince. What the h.e.l.l, she thought; when next I see Steve Logan I'm going to kiss him again, and this time I'll kiss him good.

She became tense as she threaded the Mercedes through the crowded center of Philadelphia. This could be the big breakthrough. She might be about to find the solution to the puzzle of Steve and Dennis.

The Aventine Clinic was in University City, west of the Schuylkill River, a neighborhood of college buildings and student apartments. The clinic itself was a pleasant low-rise fifties building surrounded by trees. Jeannie parked at a meter on the street and went inside.

There were four people in the waiting area: a young couple, the woman looking strained and the man nervous, plus two other women of about Jeannie's age, all sitting in a square of low couches, looking at magazines. A chirpy receptionist asked Jeannie to take a seat, and she picked up a glossy brochure about Genetico Inc. She held it open on her lap without reading it; instead she stared at the soothingly meaningless Abstract art on the lobby walls and tapped her feet impatiently on the carpeted floor.

She hated hospitals. She had only once been a patient. At the age of twenty-three she had had an abortion. The father was an aspiring film director. She stopped taking the contraceptive pill because they split up, but he came back after a few days, there was a loving reconciliation, and they had unprotected s.e.x and she got pregnant. The operation proceeded without complications, but Jeannie cried for days, and she lost all affection for the film director, even though he was supportive throughout.

He had just made his first Hollywood movie, an action picture. Jeannie had gone alone to see it at the Charles Theater in Baltimore. The only touch of humanity in an otherwise mechanical story of men shooting at one another was when the hero's girlfriend became depressed after an abortion and threw him out. The man, a police detective, had been bewildered and heartbroken. Jeannie had cried.

The memory still hurt. She stood up and paced the floor. A minute later a man emerged from the back of the lobby and said, ”Doctor Ferrami!” in a loud voice. He was an anxiously jolly man of about fifty, with a bald pate and a monkish fringe of ginger hair. ”h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, good to meet you,” he said with unwarranted enthusiasm.

Jeannie shook his hand. ”Last night I spoke to a Mr. Ringwood.”

”Yes, yes! I'm a colleague of his, my name's d.i.c.k Minsky. How do you do?” d.i.c.k had a nervous tic that made him blink violently every few seconds; Jeannie felt sorry for him.

He led her up a staircase. ”What's led to your inquiry, may I ask?”

”A medical mystery,” she explained. ”The two women have sons who appear to be identical twins, yet they seem to be unrelated. The only connection I've been able to find is that both women were treated here before getting pregnant.”

”Is that so?” he said as if he were not really listening. Jeannie was surprised; she had expected him to be intrigued.

They entered a corner office. ”All our records can be accessed by computer, provided you have the right code,” he said. He sat at a screen. ”Now, the patients we're interested in are...?”

”Charlotte Pinker and Lorraine Logan.”

”This won't take a minute.” He began to key in the names.

Jeannie contained her impatience. These records might reveal nothing at all. She looked around the room. It was too grand an office for a mere filing clerk. d.i.c.k must be more than just a ”colleague” of Mr. Ringwood's, she thought. ”What's your role here at the clinic, d.i.c.k?” she said.

”I'm the general manager.”

She raised her eyebrows, but he did not look up from the keyboard. Why was her inquiry being dealt with by such a senior person? she wondered, and a sense of unease crept into her mood like a wisp of smoke.

He frowned. ”That's odd. The computer says we have no record of either name.”

Jeannie's unease gelled. I'm about to be lied to, she thought. The prospect of a solution to the puzzle receded into the far distance again. A sense of anticlimax washed over her and depressed her.

He spun his screen around so that she could see it. ”Do I have the correct spellings?”

”Yes.”

”When do you think these patients attended the clinic?”

”Approximately twenty-three years ago.”

He looked at her. ”Oh, dear,” he said, and he blinked hard.

”Then I'm afraid you've made a wasted journey.”

”Why?”

”We don't keep records from that far back. It's our corporate doc.u.ment management strategy.”

Jeannie narrowed her eyes at him. ”You throw away old records?”

”We shred the cards, yes, after twenty years, unless of course the patient has been readmitted, in which case the record is transferred to the computer.”

It was a sickening disappointment and a waste of precious hours that she needed to prepare her defense for tomorrow. She said bitterly: ”How strange that Mr. Ringwood didn't tell me this when I talked to him last night.”

”He really should have. Perhaps you didn't mention the dates.”

”I'm quite sure I told him the two women were treated here twenty-three years ago.” Jeannie remembered adding a year to Steve's age to get the right period, ”Then it's hard to understand.”

Somehow Jeannie was not completely surprised at the way this had turned out. d.i.c.k Minsky, with his exaggerated friendliness and nervous blink, was the caricature of a man with a guilty conscience.

He turned his screen back to its original position. Seeming regretful, he said: ”I'm afraid there's no more I can do for you.”

”Could we talk to Mr. Ringwood, and ask him why he didn't tell me about the cards being shredded?”

”I'm afraid Peter's off sick today.”

”What a remarkable coincidence.”

He tried to look offended, but the result was a parody. ”I hope you're not implying that we're trying to keep something from you.”

”Why would I think that?”

”I have no idea.” He stood up. ”And now, I'm afraid, I've run out of time.”

Jeannie got up and preceded him to the door. He followed her down the stairs to the lobby. ”Good day to you,” he said stiffly.

”Good-bye,” she said.

Outside the door she hesitated. She felt combative. She was tempted to do something provocative, to show them they could not manipulate her totally. She decided to snoop around a bit.

The parking lot was full of doctors' cars, late-model Cadillacs and BMWs. She strolled around one side of the building. A black man with a white beard was sweeping up litter with a noisy blower. There was nothing remarkable or even interesting there. She came up against a blank wall and retraced her steps.

Through the gla.s.s door at the front she saw d.i.c.k Minsky, still in the lobby, talking to the chirpy secretary. He watched anxiously as Jeannie walked by.

Circling the building in the other direction, she came to the garbage dump. Three men wearing heavyweight gloves were loading trash onto a truck. This was stupid, Jeannie decided. She was acting like the detective in a hard-boiled mystery. She was about to turn back when something struck her. The men were lifting huge brown plastic sacks of trash effortlessly, as if they weighed very little. What would a clinic be throwing away that was bulky but light?