The Lasko Tangent (21 page)

I pulled up in the front parking lot and got out. At closer range it looked off center, like a patient too distracted to keep himself up. The lawn was long and ratty and a couple of windows were askew, like an idiot’s glasses. Lasko’s money hadn’t gone for renovation.

An iron plate was screwed into the brick next to the front door. It read “The Loring Sanitarium” in capital letters and in small print under that was “Dr. Ralph Loring, Director.” The front doors were broad plate glass. I opened one. A uniformed guard sat at a metal desk in front of a second row of doors. He gave me a pleased, suspicious look, as if being suspicious beat boredom.

“Yes, sir,” he asked, but not the polite “yes, sir” of a maître d’ or a saleslady.

“I’m here for Dr. Loring,” I said, trying to suggest that Loring should be pleased.

The guard wasn’t impressed. “Does he know you’re here?”

“Not unless you tell him.”

He didn’t like that. “Does he know you were coming?” he asked roughly.

“No.”

His face closed. “What’s your business?”

That forced me to do what I didn’t want: pose as a federal officer whose boss knew his whereabouts. I pulled out my ID card. “I’m with the ECC, headquarters office. I’ll take my business up with Dr. Loring.”

That bought me another stare. But his thick hand grudgingly reached for the phone. He dialed two digits and asked whoever answered for Dr. Loring, without moving his eyes from me. I stared past him through the second doors. There was a hallway with light green linoleum fading into chartreuse beneath darker green tile walls. There appeared to be offices on the right side.

“Yes, sir,” the guard was saying. “I have a Mr. Paget here. His identification says he’s with”—he looked again—“the United States Economic Crimes Commission.” Whatever that is, his eyes said, but his voice didn’t admit that. Security people were supposed to know these things. He listened for a moment, then hung up.

“Dr. Loring will see you,” he said in a disappointed voice. I hadn’t turned out to be any fun. I started for the doors. “Wait here,” he growled, pointing in front of his desk.

I complied. The guard leaned back, eyes moving uneasily between me and the outer door. Dr. Loring was taking his time. I jammed my hands into my pockets and shifted from foot to foot, feeling nervous and a little silly.

My feet were wearing out when a tall, grey-haired man appeared beyond the second doors, walking with a slight stoop. He wore a tweed suit and through the glass he looked like an English gentleman hunting for grouse. The apparition came toward the doors and opened them.

“Mr. Paget,” he said, ignoring the guard, “I’m Ralph Loring.” He had a thin nose and a lightly pocked face, partly covered by a neat beard. The brown eyes had a liquid, volatile quality as if about to change into some unstable element. Sensitive, but not quite right. Psychiatrist’s eyes, I thought.

I shook his hand and walked with him through the second doors. “I appreciate being received,” I said. “Your man out there had me at bay.”

It was intended as a light remark. But he gave me a sideways, troubled gaze. “I’m sure you understand our security problems.”

I thought maybe I did. Loring had resumed the downcast hunch. I looked at him. He was thinner than he’d first appeared, but not wiry, just bony. His skin was pale and seemed almost translucent.

Loring led me to an office on the right corridor. It was wood paneled and fairly plain: a couple of framed diplomas and two prints by the guy who paints the children with big eyes. I didn’t like the pictures much and looking at Loring I liked them less. His eyes were something like that.

I took a chair. Loring sat behind his desk, legs crossed and hands folded. He eyed me uneasily, as if I were a threat to some delicate balance in the environment.

“I’m told that you have identification,” he ventured.

I took out my plastic card and slid it across his desk. He took it with two fingers, eyes half-closed, the odd reluctant gesture of a man who has just drawn to an inside straight. Then he looked down at it for an overly long time, as if it could tell him something.

He looked up. “What do you want here, Mr. Paget?”

I gambled. “Peter Martinson.”

His eyes flickered for an instant. “I’m not sure I understand.”

I decided to go all the way. “Martinson’s a witness in an investigation. The case involves fraud, murder, and your leading patron, William Lasko. I know that Martinson is no crazier than you or I and that he didn’t volunteer for this rest cure. Which puts you in a crack.”

I could have been wrong. And he could have said that I was delusional, or just ordered me out. The last idea seemed to flash through his eyes, then leave, along with his chance to play innocent. “Mr. Martinson is a patient of mine.” The voice held a weak man’s stubbornness.

“I’d like to see him.”

“I’m sure you would,” he said with a spurt of righteous sarcasm, as if I were the neighborhood bully, torturing an animal. Loring, the protector. He’d probably played that role long enough to believe it.

I said nothing. He blurted into the silence. “In my opinion, seeing you would do Mr. Martinson no good.”

“Would do who no good?”

He flushed slightly. “I can’t entrust the mental health of one of my patients to you.”

I decided to give Loring a dose of reality. “You have at least kept him alive?”

“Of course,” he said with real indignation.

“Bully for you, Doctor. The last one in Martinson’s position ended up deader than your rotten paintings.”

He snapped upright. “You’re not a very pleasant young man.”

“This isn’t a very pleasant subject. And I’m tired of sparring.”

He picked up my ID card, as if something on it might help him. It gave me a chance to decipher the list on his desk, upside down.

“Christopher Kenyon Paget,” he was reading. “Wasn’t Christopher Kenyon a railroad owner in California in the last century?”

I was still decoding. “My great-grandfather, if that concerns you.”

Somehow that placed me within his frame of reference. “As I recall, he sent out armed guards to kill some strikers. Nine men died, I think. Is that what makes you tick, Mr. Paget? Overcompensation, perhaps.”

I was through. “You know,” I said evenly, “I get tired of jerks who want me to apologize for having a middle name instead of an initial and a great-grandfather I didn’t ask for. I’m especially tired of jerks who do it for a living. And I never heard that the old man fronted for other people’s murders. Which is what you’re doing.” I snatched the list off his desk. “Now, Doctor, I’d like to see Martinson.”

His hand jerked in a futile grab for the list. He suddenly broke down. “You must realize that I need money for our work,” he stammered. “This hospital would have to close.”

The list said that Martinson was in Room 19-W. I looked back at Loring. The hand was still outstretched, pleading now. “Never mind, Doctor,” I said, and started to leave.

He stepped after me. “Do you have a search warrant?”

I turned back. “No.”

“Then you’re trespassing.”

That was true. I felt as if somewhere between Lehman and here I’d stopped being a lawyer and become someone I didn’t know. I pushed all that aside. “If you’re so confident of your legal position, call the police. As an accessory to kidnapping you’ll have their fullest sympathy.”

His shoulders stooped at that. He stood in front of his desk, wet eyes seeing some inevitable disaster. I thought he looked like a man in a bomb shelter would look when he heard the first siren. I left and went hunting for Martinson.

The west wing was in the opposite corridor. It was the same green, but the dim lighting gave it a sort of restrained ghastliness. Ahead I saw doors and before that a broad beam of light coming from a nurses’ station. An older nurse peered out, puzzled. I nodded, smiled, and walked on. I heard voices behind me, a woman’s, then a man’s. Then footsteps scrambling in the other direction. It reminded me of the lump on my head. But I didn’t look back. 19-W was at the end of the corridor. It surprised me. No guard. Just a simple latch which locked the door from the outside. I turned the latch and opened the door.

Twenty-Eight

Martinson sat in an armchair, reading a copy of Sports Illustrated. He half-dropped the magazine, and stared at me with fearful unrecognition. His eyes asked who I was, but his mouth couldn’t form the words.

“I’m Christopher Paget, from the ECC. I’ve been looking for you.”

“My God,” he exclaimed, and his tone wasn’t grateful. I looked him over then. Tracy’s picture was a good likeness. He was tan and wiry, with black curly hair and chiseled features. The plaid slacks and oxford cloth shirt went with the expensive loafers. A well-preserved college boy from the early sixties, catnip for gullible women. What was wrong in him began in the myopic foxiness of the green eyes and bled subtly into his features, making them spoiled and vaguely weak.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he blurted.

I hadn’t expected this. I remembered the running footsteps in the corridor. “Why don’t you tell me on the way out?”

“Where are we going?”

“To the police.”

He shook his head. “Look, if I keep my head down, I won’t get hurt.” The words mixed fear and calculation. “You’re the one who got me into this mess.”

Tension raised my voice. “We’ll argue that later. Come on.”

Martinson’s hands clamped the chair as if it were a life raft. “They’ll kill me. They’ve already killed Alec Lehman.”

That stopped me for a moment. But there wasn’t time for questions. “Then you’re in a jam,” I said, “because now that I’ve found you, they’ll do just that.”

He hesitated, stiff with fear and resentment. I grabbed his forearm and pulled him up. He stumbled with me out the door, gaping at the bleak empty corridors. His voice was a savage whine. “Did Tracy tell you where to look?” I nodded and pulled him with me. “Stupid bitch,” he mumbled.

My grip tightened. “You know, Martinson, rescuing you is a real disappointment.” But I understood, in a way. He was a frightened man. I was frightened too.

The walk up the corridor seemed treadmill slow. The nurses’ station was empty. I looked quickly around. Except for Martinson, the wing was vacant.

Then I heard a drum roll of footsteps. A clump of figures appeared suddenly at the end of the corridor. I picked out Loring and the guard and two large men I didn’t know. The other man was tall and broad-built. Lasko. Whatever Martinson knew had flushed him out.

I felt Martinson blanch. “Jesus.”

I tried to put up a front. “Just let me handle this,” I said, without looking at him. Lasko was standing ahead of the group, waiting. Ahead must be the only way out.

We were within thirty feet of them now. Lasko’s face was a mask of controlled anger. Something I didn’t quite understand had pushed his plans awry, and it showed in his face. The two large men fanned out to either side of him, blocking our way. Loring and the guard hung back as if lost.

We got within ten feet and stopped. Lasko stared at us, eyes hard and calculating. The man to his left was bald, and watched us with a greyhound’s watery eyes. The other man was younger, with a mustache and thick brown hair. I wondered if they had guns. No one moved. I wished fiercely that I hadn’t come.

Lasko’s voice rang commandingly in the hall. “You’re very persistent, Mr. Paget, and you don’t pay attention when you should. But you’re not leaving.”

My brain pumped words in some panicky reflex. “We are unless you’re planning a mass murder.” I didn’t like my voice. My mouth felt artificially dry, as if the saliva had been sucked out.

A spark of interest crossed Lasko’s face. “All right. You’ve got my attention.” The carefully controlled voice made it sound as if we were discussing a business decision.

“You should have killed Martinson in the first place. But now I know what he knows.” Which wasn’t true. Lasko’s eyes snapped toward Martinson. But Martinson didn’t, or couldn’t, say anything. “So when you kill Martinson, you have to kill me too. And there’s a Boston cop who knows where I am.”

I shot a glance at Loring. He gaped at the word “murder” like a man listening to a foreign language, hoping he had somehow misheard. I went on. “You can’t trust Loring either. Kill us and the cops will be here tomorrow, poking around. He’s got his license to consider, not to mention his freedom.”

My voice had turned advisory. Lasko paused, as if he could hear my words coming from Catlow’s mouth. The two men at his side were cool and relaxed, waiting for orders. It could go either way, I thought. I was feeling the cold reality; for whatever reason, Lasko wanted us dead.

Lasko picked for words that could never hurt him. “You’re talking nonsense, Mr. Paget,” he said casually. “I doubt the people in your agency have ever authorized this.”

I pointed to the guard. He froze in stupefaction. “The cops will track him down too. So I figure you have to kill four people anyway. I probably left someone out. I saw a couple of nurses a while ago.”

Lasko’s eyes turned inward, as if he were deciding whether to wait. He said nothing more; there were witnesses all around him.

I started walking, steering Martinson to the right. Five feet between me and the mustached man. My stomach felt empty. The mustached man looked back, hand in his pocket, his eyes completely blank. He stepped back three feet, to see Lasko and me at once. We kept moving. The man took in Lasko with the corner of his eyes. Then a signal moved through them.

We reached him. His hand stirred in his pocket. Then he turned sideways. We passed him and turned the corner, heading for the entrance.

Loring stood to our left in an angular slouch, like some lone desiccated bird about to become extinct. We swept by. He stared at his feet.

The inner set of doors was a few feet ahead. Silence behind us. Our footsteps echoed in the corridor. Martinson looked white. My back burned with imagined gunshots.

We burst through the first set of doors. They closed behind us with a slow sigh. I grabbed the outer door. It opened. Fresh air splashed our faces.