Chapter Five
In the primary bedroom, there is a Matisse oil of a woman reclining on a couch.
“Is this a real Matisse?” Maggie asks.
Hannah’s reply is a simple smile.
Two hours earlier, she and Ivan Brovski finish their meeting at Barlow’s, and Ivan leads her back toward the elevator.
“Before we leave,” Maggie tells Ivan, “I’d like to speak to Doctor Barlow.”
“He’s in surgery.”
The elevator opens. Maggie gets inside.
Alou and the Mercedes await them in the basement garage.
Alou opens the back door. She slides in.
Her phone is there. Ivan gets in the other door and sits next to her.
She picks up her phone. No service in the garage’s underbelly.
When the Mercedes finally reaches street level, six notifications for unanswered calls pop up, all from Sharon.
Ivan sees the notifications over her shoulder and smiles.
“What?” Maggie says.
“Your sister,” he says. “Call her back.”
She does. Sharon answers immediately, before the first ring finishes, and asks in a harried voice, “What the hell’s going on, Mags?”
“Meaning?”
“The bank called. My debts have been paid. All of them.”
Sharon keeps babbling excitedly as Maggie looks up at Ivan and that no-teeth grin.
When Sharon stops to take a breath, Maggie explains. “I was just hired for a job.”
That silences Sharon for a moment. Then: “And this job paid off my debts?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of job?”
“A high-paying one.”
“Well, I knew that already.”
“I’ll be gone for a week, maybe two.”
“Doing what, Mags?”
“Don’t worry, okay?”
“Good thing you said, ‘Don’t worry,’ because no one ever worries after someone says that.”
“I can’t say more.”
“Why not?”
Maggie switches the phone from her right hand to her left. “It’s confidential. There are privacy clauses and HIPAA and all that.”
“So, wait, you’re working as a physician again?”
“What part of ‘it’s confidential’ is confusing to you?” Maggie half snaps. “Look, it’s all fine, trust me. Please just let me do this.”
Sharon has more questions, but Maggie dodges and weaves and gets her off the phone. When she hangs up, she tells Ivan, “I need to go back to the hotel to check out and pack—”
“Done.”
“That ‘done’ stuff,” Maggie says. “It’s getting annoying.”
Ivan Brovski sits back and smiles. The car turns north on the Henry Hudson Parkway.
“Suppose I change my mind,” Maggie says.
He tilts his head the smallest amount.
“Suppose I want out.”
“Your phone,” Ivan says, pointing at it with his chin.
“Yes.”
“You have your banking app, no? Check your balance.”
Maggie knows or at least suspects what’s coming when she uses facial recognition to open the app, but her eyes still bulge.
The five million dollars are already there.
“Call your financial advisor before we get to the airport,” Ivan says. “He may have to report such a large deposit.”
“She.”
“What?”
“She may have to report, not he,” Maggie says. “My financial advisor is a woman. I would have thought your research would have told you that.”
“The first name Leslie threw me off,” Ivan says.
Man, they really do know everything.
“Also call your attorney,” he says. “The suit against you is being settled as we speak.”
Maggie sits back. The implications are overwhelming. No more malpractice suit. Wow. “You didn’t answer my question,” she says.
Ivan glances out the window, then back at Maggie. “The ‘suppose I change my mind’ question?”
“Yes.”
He shrugs. “You can give us the money back, I suppose. The debt relief and the malpractice settlement might make the rest of the recompensation unwieldy and arduous, but let’s not go there quite yet, shall we?
I want to assure you that this is all on the up-and-up.
My client is a very important man. Because he has the means and craves secrecy, he is hiring you as”—Ivan looks up as though again searching for the right words—“the ultimate concierge physician. Please don’t worry. ”
“Good thing you said, ‘Don’t worry,’” Maggie mutters, echoing Sharon.
“Pardon?”
But there it is—that whole thing about recompensation being unwieldy and arduous.
It’s too late. She is in it now. There is no way out.
It is how they do it. Ivan Brovski might smile a lot, but that smile never reaches his eyes.
You don’t cross these people. She should have learned that a long time ago.
Marc’s voice: “I have a bad feeling about this…”
She should have listened. Or maybe not. Nothing has changed. Ivan is right. It is a job, a good one, ridiculously well paid, and really, she had heard rumors about this kind of private surgery for years. Like he said: She is being hired as a concierge doctor. It’s not uncommon.
In the end, this patient, like any other patient, is hiring her to perform specific services, and—not to toot her own horn—he can afford the best.
It’s a win-win.
“Once you board the plane,” Ivan Brovski says, “we will insist on no communications with the outside world. This was explained to you before, but to reiterate: No calls, no emails, no FaceTime, no messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal or Telegram or—”
“Yeah, I know what a messaging app is, thanks.”
“Wonderful. So if you have any more calls, you should make them now.”
Sure, she thinks. Make more calls now so Ivan can hear every word.
She hits the call button for Porkchop’s payphone and is surprised when the man himself answers.
“Talk to me,” Porkchop says.
“I have a job.”
She again vaguely explains that she will be traveling and will be well compensated for a work assignment she can’t disclose. She throws in the HIPAA and confidentiality talk. Porkchop says nothing. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t ask follow-up questions. He doesn’t argue.
That surprises her.
When Maggie finishes, Porkchop finally breaks his silence and says, “Put me on speakerphone.”
“Why?”
Silence.
That’s Porkchop. She bites back a sigh and hits the appropriate button and says, “Okay, you’re on speaker.”
“M47-235,” Porkchop says.
Ivan smiles.
“What’s that?” Maggie asks into the phone.
Ivan answers. “This car’s license plates.”
On cue, two motorcycles, one on either side of them, roar past the Mercedes. Pinky buzzes them from the driver’s side, Bowling Pin Guy—she never caught his name—from the passenger’s.
“I expect my daughter-in-law to remain safe and happy,” Porkchop says. “Are we clear?”
Ivan says, “Of course, Mr. Porkchop.”
“Don’t make me have to find you.”
“And vice versa,” Ivan says.
Porkchop disconnects the call.
Ivan Brovski is still smiling. “Your father-in-law has a flair for the dramatic.”
You don’t know the half of it, she thinks, but maybe he does. Still, it is comforting to know Porkchop is on this.
On the plane, Maggie takes a seat in an oversize leather-stitched recliner with a built-in massage function. She has learned something very fast and obvious in the past twenty-four hours:
It’s good to be rich.
Flight Attendant Hannah comes over and offers her “traveling sweats” from Brunello Cucinelli. Maggie accepts. Hannah asks whether she’d like a drink from the bar. Maggie is tempted, but for right now she wants to keep her wits about her, so she takes a water with a slice of lime.
She sits back and watches as the plane takes off from Teterboro Airport.
Again she is met by the spectacular skyline of New York City.
They don’t tell you this on tour websites, but if you want the best view of Manhattan, you have to go to New Jersey.
The plane reaches its cruising altitude of, according to the pilot over the speaker system, thirty-seven thousand feet.
The flight time, he tells them, will be eleven hours and twenty-three minutes.
“We have a large selection of films and television programming,” Hannah tells her.
“I just want to get on the Wi-Fi, thanks.”
“Oh, sorry, the Wi-Fi is currently unavailable.”
“Why’s that?”
Another nervous smile. “Here’s a menu of gourmet dishes we serve on board. Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.”
There is only one other person on the plane—a large man with a scowl who speaks no English. He sits up front, near the pilots. Security, she assumes. Package delivery—and she’s the package.
Maggie heads back to the primary bedroom. The bed looks inviting. She decides—why not?—to lie in it and watch some television. There is no way, she figures, that she will actually sleep, but the blend of exhaustion and stress must be playing games with her. She falls asleep in minutes.
At some point, Hannah wakes her. “Are you hungry?”
She blinks her eyes open. “I am.”
“Our chef Gregor makes wonderful omelets.”
Remembering the Aman, she half jokingly says, “Florentine?”
“Of course.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“I’m not sure. But we land in about an hour.”
No way. No way she slept that long.
“Your luggage is in the corner, but there is a change of clothes waiting for you in the closet if you prefer. There is also a warm coat, hat, and gloves for you. You will need them.”
Hannah leaves, sliding the door closed behind her. Maggie manages to sit up and stumble to the bathroom. She sees the empty glass of water on the night table.
Did they drug her?
In the closet, she finds Loro Piana cashmere loungewear and puts it on.
She can’t tell whether the full-length coat is real shearling fur or not—she suspects that a Russian oligarch doesn’t buy fake furs—but ethics aside for the moment, it’s too warm in the plane, so she carries it with her out of the bedroom.
She sits at the plane’s dining room table, and Hannah serves her the omelet.
It’s delicious, and she can’t help but wonder how Plane Chef Gregor’s compares to the one she refused at the Aman.
Inane thoughts like this circle her head because, as the kids say on social media, it’s about to get real.