Blindsight (16 page)

"Of course," Paul said. "Because that's what happened."
"How are the eyes doing?" Lou asked.
"Pretty good, considering what could have happened," Paul said. "But the doctor says I'll do fine as soon as I have my operations. First I have to wait a while, but I'm sure you know about that." "What are you talking about?" Lou said. "I don't know anything about eyes except how many you got." "I didn't know much either," Paul said. "At least not before this happened. But I've been learning ever since. I used to think they transplanted the whole eye. You know, like changing an old-fashioned-type radio tube. Just plug the thing in with all the prongs in the right place. But that's not how it works. They only transplant the cornea."
"That's all news to me," Lou said.
"Want to see what my eyes look like?" Paul asked. "I'm not sure," Lou said.
Paul took off his reflective sunglasses. "Ugh," Lou said. "Put your glasses back on. I'm sorry for you, Paul. It looks terrible. It looks like you have a couple of white marbles in your eyes." Paul chuckled as he put his glasses back on. "I would have thought a hardened cop like you would have felt satisfaction that his old enemy took a fall." "Hell no!" Lou said. "I don't want you handicapped. I want you in jail." Paul laughed. "Still at it, huh?"
"Putting you away is still one of my ultimate goals in life," Lou said agreeably. "And finding that acid burn in Frankie DePasquale's eye gives me some hope. At this point it looks mighty suspicious that you were behind the kid's murder."
"Aw, Lou," Paul said. "It hurts my feelings that you'd think something nasty about me after all these years."
6
8:45 p.m., Wednesday
Manhattan
At first Laurie thought the experience was unique enough to be tolerable, but as the time approached eight forty-five she began to get irritated. Thomas, Jordan's driver, had shown up exactly at the agreed-upon time, eight o'clock, and had rung Laurie's bell. But when Laurie got down to the car, she

learned that Jordan was not there. He was still in surgery doing an emergency operation.
"I'm supposed to take you to the restaurant," Thomas had said. "Dr. Scheffield will be meeting you there."
Taken by surprise with this situation, Laurie had agreed. She'd felt strange entering the fancy restaurant by herself, but she was quickly put at ease by the maitre d', who had been expecting her. She'd been discreetly ushered to a waiting table wedged among others near to the window. Next to the table stood a wine stand icing down a bottle of Meursault. The sommelier had appeared instantly and had shown Laurie the label of the wine. After she'd nodded, he'd opened it, poured her a dollop, waited for her OK, then filled her glass. All this had been accomplished without words.
Finally at five minutes before nine, Jordan arrived. He came into the room with a flourish, and although he waved a greeting at Laurie, he didn't join her immediately. Instead he weaved his way through the crowded room, stopping at several tables to say hello. Each group of diners greeted him with gusto; animated conversation and smiles followed in his wake.
"Sorry," he said, finally sitting down. "I was in surgery, but I guess Thomas told you as much." "He did," Laurie said. "What kind of emergency surgery was it?" "Well, it wasn't exactly an emergency," Jordan said, nervously rearranging his place setting. "My surgery has picked up recently, so I have to squeeze standby cases in whenever the operating room can give me a slot. How's the wine?"
The wine steward had reappeared and gave Jordan a taste of the wine. "The wine is fine," Laurie said. "Seems that you know a lot of people here." Jordan took a sip of his wine and for a moment he looked pensive while he swished it around inside his mouth. He nodded with satisfaction after he swallowed, motioned for his glass to be filled, then looked at Laurie. "I usually run into a few of my patients here," he said. "How was your day? I hope it was better than mine."
"Some sort of trouble?" Laurie asked.
"Plenty of trouble," Jordan said. "First, my secretary, who's been with me for almost ten years, didn't show up in the morning. She's never not shown up without calling. We tried calling her but there was no answer. So scheduling got all fouled up by the time I came in from the hospital. Then, to make matters worse, we discovered that someone had broken into the office the night before and had stolen our petty cash as well as all the Percodans we kept on hand." "How awful," Laurie said. She remembered how it had felt to be robbed. Her room at college had been ransacked one day. "Any vandalism?" she asked. Whoever had broken into her room had smashed what they couldn't carry away.
"No," Jordan said. "But strangely enough the burglar rifled through my records and used the copy

machine."
"That sounds like more than a simple robbery," Laurie said. "That's what makes me uneasy," Jordan said. "The petty cash and the few Percodans I could care less about. But I don't like the thought of someone in my records, not with the high accounts receivable I have. I've already called my accountant to run a tape; I want to make sure there isn't some big change. Have you looked at the menu?"
"Not yet," Laurie said. Her irritation was fading now that Jordan had arrived. Responding to Jordan's gesture, the maitre d' appeared with two menus. Jordan, who ate there frequently, was full of suggestions. Laurie ordered from the daily specials menu attached to the main menu.
She thought the food was wonderful although the frenetic atmosphere made it difficult for her to relax. But Jordan seemed in his element.
While they were waiting for dessert and coffee, Laurie asked Jordan about the effects of acid in the eye. He warmed to the request immediately, going on at length about the cornea's and the conjunctiva's responses to both acid and alkali. Laurie lost interest halfway through his discourse, but her gaze remained steady. She had to admit: he was an attractive man. She wondered how he maintained such a fabulous tan.
To Laurie's relief, the arrival of dessert and coffee interrupted Jordan's impromptu lecture. As he began his flourless chocolate cake, he changed the subject. "I probably should be thankful those crooks didn't take any of the valuables last night, like the Picassos in the waiting room." Laurie set her coffee cup down. "You have Picassos in your waiting room?" "Signed drawings," Jordan said casually. "About twenty of them. It's truly a state-of-the-art office, and I didn't want to scrimp on the waiting area. After all, that's the place the patients spend the most time." Jordan laughed for the first time since he'd sat down. "That's even more extravagant than the limo," Laurie said. Actually, she felt more strongly than she let on. The idea of such ostentation in a medical setting seemed obscene, especially given the runaway cost of medical care.
"It's quite an office," Jordan said proudly. "My favorite feature of it is that the patients move. I don't go to them, they come to me."
"I'm not sure I understand," Laurie said. "Each one of my five examining rooms is built on a circular mechanism. You've seen these revolving restaurants at the tops of certain buildings. It's kind of like that. When I push a button in my office, the whole thing turns and the examining room I want lines up with my office. Another button lifts the wall. It's as good as a ride in Disneyland."
"Sounds very impressive," Laurie said. "Expensive but impressive. I suppose your overhead is pretty high."

"Astronomical," Jordan said. He sounded proud of it. "So high that I hate to take a vacation. It's too
expensive! Not the vacation itself, but letting the office sit idle. I also have two operating rooms for outpatient procedures."
"I'd like to see this office sometime," Laurie said. "I'd love to show it to you," Jordan said. "In fact, why not now? It's just around the corner on Park Avenue."
Laurie said she thought that was a great idea, so as soon as Jordan took care of the bill, they were off. The first room they entered was Jordan's private office. The walls and furniture were entirely of teak, waxed to a high gloss. The upholstery was black leather. There was enough sophisticated ophthalmological equipment to outfit a small hospital. Next they entered the waiting room, which was paneled in mahogany. Just as Jordan had said, the walls were lined with Picasso drawings. Down a short hall from the waiting room was a circular room with five doors on its perimeter. Opening one, Jordan asked Laurie to sit in the examining chair. "Now stay right there," he said before leaving the room. Laurie did as she was told. Next thing she knew, she felt like the room was moving. Then the movement--real or imagined--stopped abruptly and the lights in the room began to dim. Simultaneously, the far wall rose. Its disappearance effectively joined Laurie's examination room to Jordan's private office. Jordan was sitting at his desk, backlit, and leaning back in his chair. "What's that line about not having Mohammed go to the mountain, but the mountain going to him? Same principle applies here. I like my patients to feel they are in powerful hands. I actually believe it makes them heal more quickly. I know that sounds a bit hocus-pocus, but it works for me." "I'm impressed," Laurie said. "Obviously I've never seen anything quite like this. Where do you keep your records?"
Jordan took Laurie through another door that led from his office into a long hall. At the end of the hall was a windowless room with a bank of file cabinets, a copy machine, and a computer terminal. "All the records are in the file cabinets," he said. "But most of the material is duplicated on the computer on hard disk."
"Are these the records that the burglars went through?" Laurie asked. "They are," Jordan said. "And that's the copy machine. I'm very meticulous about my records. I could tell someone had been in them because the contents in some had been put out of order. I know the copy machine was used after we closed because I have my secretary record the number from the machine at the end of each day."
"What about Paul Cerino's record?" Laurie asked. "Was that disturbed?" "I don't know," Jordan said. "But it's a good question." Jordan flipped through his "C" drawer and pulled out a manila folder.

"You were right," he said after paging through. "This one was disturbed as well. See this information
sheet? It's supposed to be in the front. Instead it's in the back." "Is there any way to tell if it had been copied?" Jordan thought for a moment but shook his head. "Not that I can think of. What's going through your mind?"
"I'm not sure," Laurie said. "But maybe this supposed burglary should convince you to be a bit more careful. I know you think taking care of this Cerino character is mildly entertaining, but you have to understand that he is apparently one nasty man. And maybe even more important, he has some very nasty enemies."
"You think Cerino could have been responsible for my break-in?" Jordan asked. "I truly don't know," Laurie said. "But it's possible, one way or the other. Maybe his enemies don't want you to fix him up. There are all sorts of possibilities. The only thing I do know is that these guys play for keeps. Over the last two days I've done autopsies on two young men who'd been murdered gangland style, and one of them had what looked like acid burns in his eye." "Don't tell me that," Jordan said.
"I'm not trying to scare you just to scare you," Laurie said. "I'm only saying this so that you will think about what you are getting yourself involved with by taking care of these people. I've been told that the two major crime families, the Vaccarros and the Lucias, are currently at each other's throats. That's why Cerino got the acid slung in his face. He's one of the Vaccarro bosses." "Wow," Jordan said. "This does put a different complexion on things. Now you got me worried. Luckily I'll be operating on Cerino soon, so this will all be behind me." "Is Cerino scheduled?" Laurie asked.
Jordan shook his head. "Not exactly," he said. "I'm waiting on material, as usual." "Well, I think you should do it as soon as possible. And I wouldn't advertise the date and the time." Jordan put the contents of Cerino's file back into its proper order and replaced it in the file drawer. "Want to see the rest of the office?" he asked. "Sure," Laurie said.
Jordan took Laurie deeper into the office complex, showing her several rooms devoted to special ophthalmologic testing. What impressed her most were the two state-of-the-art operating rooms complete with all the requisite ancillary equipment. "You have a fortune invested here," Laurie said once they'd reached the final room, a photography lab. "No doubt about it," Jordan agreed. "But it pays off handsomely. Currently I'm grossing between one point five and two million dollars a year."

Laurie swallowed. The figure was staggering. Although she knew her father, the cardiac surgeon, had to
have a huge income to cover his life-style, she'd never before been slapped with such an astronomical figure. Knowing what she did about the plight of American medicine and even the shoestring budget the medical examiner's office ran under, it seemed like an obscene waste of resources. "How about coming by and seeing my apartment?" Jordan said. "If you like the office, you'll love the apartment. It was designed by the same people." "Sure," Laurie said, mainly as a reflex. She was still trying to absorb Jordan's comment about his income.
As they retraced their route through the office, Laurie asked after Jordan's secretary. "Did you ever hear from her?"
"No," Jordan said, obviously still angry about the no-show. "She never called and there was never any answer at her home. I can only imagine it has something to do with her no-good husband. If she'd not been such a good secretary, I would have gotten rid of her just because of him. He has a restaurant in Bayside, but he's also involved with a number of shady deals. She confided in me in order to borrow bail on several occasions. He's never been convicted, but he's spent plenty of time on Rikers Island." "Sounds like a mobster himself," Laurie said. Once they got into the back of the car, Laurie asked Jordan his missing secretary's name. "Marsha Schulman," Jordan said. "Why do you ask?" "Just curious," Laurie said.
It didn't take long for Thomas to pull up to the private entrance of Trump Tower. The doorman opened the door for Laurie to get out, but she held back. "Jordan," she said, looking at him in the dim light of the interior of the limo, "would you be angry if I asked for a raincheck on seeing your apartment? I just noticed the time, and I have to get up for work in the morning."
"Not at all," Jordan said. "I understand perfectly. I've got surgery again myself at the crack of dawn. But there is a condition."
"Which is?"
"That we have dinner again tomorrow night." "You can put up with me two evenings in a row?" Laurie asked. She'd not been "rushed" like this since high school. She was flattered but wary. "With pleasure," Jordan said, humorously affecting an English accent. "All right," Laurie said. "But let's pick a place not quite so formal." "Done," Jordan said. "You like Italian?"