Chapter 37

CHET TELEPHONED AT 7 P.M. and told me he was parked across the street from the front entrance of Teresa’s apartment building.

“How did you get such a perfect spot?” I asked.

“I bought it,” Chet said. “For fifty bucks the guy who had just pulled into the space was willing to vacate. When will you be here?”

“Fifteen minutes.” I gave him my cell phone number. “Call me if Teresa goes out before I get there. You follow her, let me know where you are, and I’ll catch up.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” he said.

A CAB LET me out at the corner of Seventy-Seventh and Lexington, and I walked the rest of the way to Chet’s Range Rover. Holding two thermos bottles of hot coffee against my chest, with my free hand I rapped my knuckles against the front passenger’s window. When Chet, who had been keeping his eyes on Teresa’s building, saw me, he reached across the seat and opened the passenger door. I climbed in and handed him a thermos.

“What’s this?”

“Hot coffee,” I said. “Essential for stakeouts, according to my favorite cop shows.”

“You’re the perfect partner. Thanks.” As he unscrewed the top of the thermos, he indicated Teresa’s building with a nod of his head. “I know she’s still in there because there’s no back entrance. Deliveries go in through the walk-in door to the garage, and that’s over there, at the far corner of the building, in the front. Whichever exit she uses, we’ll see her.” He took a sip of coffee and smiled his approval. “Gourmet coffee on a stakeout.” Then he screwed the cap back on and set it down between us.

“Could she have gone out earlier?” I asked.

He shook his head; negative. “I phoned her when I got here, to apologize again for breaking our date. I said I wanted to make another one, but she said she was going out of town soon and would let me know when she got back.”

We had been watching Teresa’s building for more than an hour when Chet began squirming in his seat, as though he was trying to find a comfortable position. I wondered if he needed a bathroom break. Since no one in daytime drama ever has to relieve themselves, this wasn’t something I had planned for. I was about to ask him if he wanted to find a restroom, when I noticed his forehead was beaded with perspiration.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” he said. But his voice was tight with pain, belying his words.

Automatically—I think this must be encoded in female DNA—I reached out and put the palm of my hand against his glistening forehead.

“My God, you’re burning up!”

“My . . . stomach . . .” He was panting now, his breath horribly labored. He gagged mightily, threw open his driver’s side door, leaned way over into the street and vomited. As soon as he tried to straighten up, I grabbed his shoulders and guided him back inside.

“I’m sorry . . .”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. I found the little package of tissues I carry in my handbag, pulled out a handful and gave them to him. He groaned in pain as he wiped his mouth. It was obvious something was very wrong. I opened the door on my side. “Scoot over into this seat,” I told him. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

He started to protest, but I was already out of the Rover and heading around to his side. Careful not to step where he had just emptied his stomach, I climbed into the driver’s seat as he maneuvered his body into the shotgun position. “Lenox Hill is on this street,” I told him, naming one of the best hospitals in the country, a teaching facility affiliated with NYU Medical Center. It was on Seventy-Seventh, only three blocks west. I was very familiar with it; I’d had my wrist surgeries there.

Hoping to attract a police escort, I made an illegal U-turn and sped as fast as traffic allowed toward Lenox Hill Hospital, but no patrol car spotted me. It was true; there never seemed to be a cop around when you wanted one. I screeched to a stop at the Emergency entrance, leaped out and pushed through the door.

“Help! Please! I have an emergency outside!”

A doctor and two orderlies rolling a gurney swept past me. I ran behind, pointing to the Rover. In a matter of seconds, they had Chet on the gurney and were speeding him into the E.R. The doctor shouted that I had to get my vehicle out of the Emergency lane. I didn’t want to leave Chet, but I rushed outside to move it.

I was back in three minutes and grabbed the first nurse I saw.

I asked where Chet was and she directed me to where they had taken him.

He was in terrible pain, but was managing to gasp out answers to the doctor’s questions. He even summoned a grimace when he saw me.

“What’s the matter with him?” I asked the doctor.

Chet answered, “Ap . . . appen . . . dicitis.”

“We’re taking him in to surgery,” the doctor told me.

Chet groped in his jacket, pulled out his wallet and handed it to me. “Take this . . .”

Then he passed out.

“Oh my God.”

“He’s going up to the O.R.,” the doctor told me as a nurse drew the curtain separating us. “You’ll need to fill out some paperwork—ask at the desk.”

CHET HAD BEEN in an operating room for two hours.

I couldn’t find out anything about his condition.

I sat, then I paced, then I sat again, all the while holding tight to his wallet and his watch. When the cell phone in my jacket pocket rang, I jumped. I fished it out and answered it to hear Tommy Zenos’s voice. He was rushing his words together in an unintelligible jumble.

“Morgandoyouknowwhat’shappened?”

“I’m in the hospital with a friend—”

He raced on, “RickSpencerquitandJoeNiles’sbeenar-restedwithanunderagehooker!”

“What? Tommy, calm down. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

I heard Tommy expel breath in four quick bursts. He sounded like a Lamaze coach. He cleared his throat loudly in my ear. I was about to protest when he said clearly, “Rick Spencer quit, and Joe Niles got arrested with an underage hooker.”

My heart began to thud in my chest. “Tell me everything you know,” I said.

He did, and I didn’t believe a single word of it. In a press release that came as a shock to the industry, Rick said he had decided to leave television and follow his dream of going back to school to become an architect.

“An architect?”

“That’s what he said,” Tommy affirmed. I could tell by the tone of his voice Tommy didn’t buy it.

“Tell me about Joe.”

“This is really juicy,” Tommy said. “It was on the news! Cops busted Joe in a hot-bed hotel with a thirteen-year-old hooker. He claims he was drugged in a bar and has no idea how he got to the hotel, or who the girl is, but the girl tells a different story.”

I’ll bet she does. I asked Tommy, “Did she swear Joe sought her out, and told her he wanted her because she was so young?”

“Something like that,” Tommy agreed.

“I bet somebody’s going to find child porn in his apartment or on his computer.”

“Really?”

Winston Yarborough hadn’t wasted any time. With resources at your command, justice was swift. At that moment I saw Chet’s surgeon, still in scrubs, coming down the hall toward me.

“Tommy, I can’t talk anymore.” I said a quick good-bye and hurried to meet the surgeon. His photo badge identified him as Doctor Karl Wenders.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Mr. Thompson is out of surgery, in the recovery room. You’re the woman who brought him in?”

“Yes.”

“You got him here just in time—that appendix was about to burst.”

“But he’s going to be all right?”

“We’ll want to monitor him closely for two or three days, but I expect he’ll be good as new. Or better; he won’t have to worry about his appendix.”

The doctor explained Chet’s appendix was removed by a surgical procedure called arthroscopy. “While we were inside, we looked around. No blockages, no problems. He’s in great shape.”

I thanked the doctor and asked when I could see Chet.

“In about an hour, but just for a few minutes.”

IT WAS NEARLY 1 A.M. when I was finally allowed into the ICU.

Chet was groggy, and it was hard for him to talk, but he smiled when he saw me. He grabbed my hand and held it. “Do you think we’ll ever have a normal, dull evening together?” he whispered.

“Don’t talk,” I said.

“Thanks . . . for . . .” He was fighting to stay awake, but sleep was what he needed most.

“I was looking for an excuse to drive the Rover,” I joked. “Go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Do you . . . have your appendix?”

“Lost it when I was eleven.”

“You show me your scar . . .an’ I’ll show you mine . . .”

“No deal. You won’t have a scar, Chet—you had arthroscopy. And the doctor says you’re in great condition.”

“I could’ve tol’ em that . . .” He yawned, and closed his eyes.

I stayed with him for a few minutes longer, until his breathing was deep and steady and I was sure that he was asleep.

What a night.

I drove the Rover back to the Dakota and found a parking space half a block from the entrance. Seventy-Second Street between Central Park West and Columbus was empty of people. The only footsteps I heard on the pavement were my own. I greeted Frank at the desk, then hurried through the courtyard, taking the flashlight out of my handbag as I approached the stairs. I was so tired I was operating on adrenaline.

Three flights and I was inside, home, safe.

The living room lights were on, as I’d left them, and I could see that the glazier had replaced the glass in the window. But he’d left the shutters open, so I closed them. I felt lonely. I wished Nancy was here tonight, or Penny. Or Chet.

Or Matt . . . I still hadn’t figured out what his grandfather invented . . .

The phone rang, shattering the silence. It seemed as loud as a shrieking fire alarm in the empty apartment. I snatched up the receiver even before I took time to wonder who would be calling me at this hour. “Doll?” It was Harrison. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, I just got in,” I said.

“You been out club-hopping?”

“A friend’s in the hospital,” I said.

I heard the concern in his voice. “Serious?”

“It’s going to be all right, but it’s been a long night.”

“Doll, I hate to bother you, but there’s something I was hoping you could do for me. I wouldn’t ask, except I really need it.”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Remember back four years ago, we were thinking about doing a story line on MS? You used to keep everything up in your office—I called you the filing fairy. Hope you haven’t changed.”

“No, I still have all that. It’s in my ‘What Were We Thinking?’ file.”

“Can you let me have it? I figured out how to make the story work.”

“I’ll bring it over first thing in the morning, before I go back to the hospital.”

“Well . . . that’s a problem, Doll. I need it right now. I’ve got a messenger standing by to pick it up from your reception desk.”

I let out a deep, exhausted sigh, but I held my hand over the receiver so Harrison wouldn’t hear it. “I’ll go upstairs and get it now,” I said.

“I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t really important. Thanks, Sweet Face.”

“Tell your messenger it’ll be in an envelope downstairs in twenty minutes.”

We said good night. I took the keys and a flashlight, locked the apartment door behind me and started up the stairs. When I reached the fifth floor, I saw that the light had burned out. That’s why God made flashlights, I said to myself as I flicked it on and continued up to the sixth floor.

The light was burned out up there, too.

Both lights . . .

I was only a few feet from the door to my office when a figure sprang out of the darkness and grabbed me from behind. Before I could scream, a ferociously strong man clapped a hand over my mouth and the cold steel barrel of a pistol was pressed hard against my cheek.

“I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth,” the man whispered, “but if you try to scream, I’ll kill you before you can utter a sound. Understand?”

I nodded my head; yes, I understood. And understanding broke my heart, because I recognized the voice hissing at me in the darkness.

“Unlock the door to the office,” Harrison Landers said.