CHAPTER 7 #2
"He is a coward and he is expensive. We have him.
The procedure-billing fraud, the two internal peer-review complaints the medical-staff office buried before they became state-board reports, the relationship with the second-year resident HR kept as a workplace matter so the credentials committee would not see it.
He submitted a retaliation complaint against me yesterday.
He thinks I do not have him. It will be administratively closed by the CMO after the dossier hits the Medical Executive Committee on day nineteen; the dean will be copied because Hayes wears faculty title on his coat.
Day twenty is also when he meets the man at the Plaza Athénée bar.
I am close. I will have the name by day twelve. "
"Move on day twenty and not before."
"Pakhan. May I."
"Speak."
"He came for her again in the trauma bay six corridor last night.
Chart as cover. Voice clean enough for a committee, aimed badly enough for Volkov to hear it.
She held. Volkov called you this morning at five fifty-eight because he was up all night and he wanted to tell you about Hayes before he told you about the bay. He could not get the order right."
"He told the bay first."
"The bay was the part of the night he was afraid would change the order. The order does not change because of the bay. It changes because of the corridor."
I issue it aloud.
"From this hour, no one outside the four of us and Kostya touches her.
No one. Not Hayes. Not a colleague. Not a federal officer.
Not a man in a stairwell. The order is mine.
The enforcement is yours and Volkov's. The consequence is whoever crosses it.
Do not draw a weapon if intelligence will do the work. "
"Understood. Pakhan. The offer."
"Day nine."
He waits the four counts. He is the only one of the three who does not speak inside the count.
"The offer is the structure."
"The four-share-her structure. Yes."
"You have decided."
"I have decided. I am going to pretend, when she asks me later, that the ledger discovery was accident and the offer was consequence. The truth is that I would have found a reason regardless. The truth can wait."
"Until."
"Until the day I say a word I have not been allowed to say. Stefan."
"Pakhan."
"Bring Castellan to the loft tonight at nineteen hundred. The four of us. Leave her out of it for now. The consent protocol, rest intervals, sequence, risk points, exit terms. The capo’s instruction. I want Gabriel in the room when I write it down."
"He will be there."
"Sleep five hours tonight."
"I will sleep five."
"Lie to me again."
"I will lie to you again."
He goes.
Kostya knocks at eleven oh-three.
"Pakhan. Hayes."
"Send him in."
Hayes comes in at six minutes past. French cuff. The Patek Philippe Aquanaut at his right wrist, which is the wrong wrist for a watch a man has decided to brag about. He sits without asking. He smiles.
"Romanov."
"Hayes."
"I wanted to clear the air about the complaint."
"I left it unread. It stays unread. It will be dismissed on day twenty. Day twenty removes your access to this building. I am telling you now as a professional courtesy. The next eighteen days belong to you. They are yours. Use them as you would like to be remembered using them. Hayes."
Hayes lets the sentence sit for one breath. Then he uncaps the Montblanc. Click.
"The credentialing committee meets Thursday," he says. "Frohman owes me two votes. The dean dislikes scandals on donor week. I have not decided what to put in my addendum to the complaint."
There. The real man shows himself for the first time: the surgeon who knows where a file goes when it wants to become a knife, past the hand at a scrub sink and the voice in a corridor.
"Then put in the truth," I say. "That you isolated a nurse twice, touched her twice, entered a corridor you had no case in, and used a service assignment as cover. The committee will hear you. It will also hear Stefan’s recording, the HR record, the billing variance, and the two peer-review complaints the hospital buried when you were still useful. "
His hand closes around the pen. The cap does not click this time.
"Romanov."
"Do not touch her again. Do not speak to her in a voice meant to be overheard.
Do not enter a corridor she is in. Do not enter an elevator she is in.
Do not appear within ten feet of the door of any room she enters.
Do not call her name. Do not call her any name.
If you would like to remain alive between now and day twenty, do these things. "
His mouth opens. His mouth closes. The smile fails. He walks to the door. He turns at the threshold. He is going to speak. I lift the right thumb to the crown of the watch. I don't press. The motion is the only motion in the room. He sees it. He closes his mouth. He goes.
The door closes softly. Hayes is the kind of coward who closes doors softly.
At fourteen thirty her badge runs at the freight elevator at the Floor 11 access corridor.
The reader chimes green. The cage descends three floors.
The door opens at Sub-basement 2. She stands inside the cage.
She stays inside the threshold and lifts her hand to tuck her left ear behind her hair, then untucks it. She rides up.
She is afraid and she is curious.
The combination is the one Sister Mary Catherine named.
I will use it.
At sixteen hundred I cross the Brooklyn Bridge. At the study desk I write the single line I had decided on at five fifty-nine this morning while my pulse was still settling toward the floor.
Day 9. Brownstone. Bring Gabriel for 11:00.
I fold the sheet. I leave it on the desk for Kostya to deliver.
The Castellan loft is in TriBeCa. The freight elevator is original to the building — brass-gate manual cage, slow, mahogany bench. I sit on the bench. The cage opens at nineteen oh-three.
The black-iron staircase to the mezzanine. The fourteen-foot oak table down the center. The pressed-tin ceiling painted black. The Persian rug at the west end. The room is lit by two pendant lamps at the table and the floor lamp at the couch.
Alexei is at the kitchen island. Henley sleeves shoved to the elbow. The knurled steel ring on his right thumb. He turns it once when he sees me come in.
Stefan is at the table with the folder in both hands.
Gabriel is at the south window with his left hand braced on the casement frame. The hair tied back. The black silk strap is folded in the left pocket of the lab coat hanging on the chair behind him. He turns from the window.
"Nikolai."
"Gabriel."
He gives me four counts of silence. Then, low: "She is asleep at her studio.
Volkov dropped her at six. She stayed inside the apartment all day.
She called Sister Mary Catherine at twelve forty-five.
She said fine. The sister told her to be careful.
She gave no promise. She is reading at the kitchen table. The book is the Sicilian prayerbook."
Stefan answers without my having to ask.
"Telephoto from the building across. Sister Mary Catherine described the book on the call — the brown one your grandmother gave you. Elena said yes. The lens did the rest."
I let it stand.
I take the chair at the head of the table.
Gabriel sits at my left. Stefan at my right.
Alexei comes over from the island with his water glass and sits across from me.
The four of us at the table. The light at the pendant catches Stefan's cord.
Catches Alexei's ring. Catches Gabriel's gold chain. Catches the Patek.
"We refuse to pretend," I say.
"We will not," says Gabriel.
"She has been claimed by Alexei. That happened at twenty-one fifteen last night."
Alexei says nothing. He turns the ring. His ring stays untouched while his attention stays on me.
"She was claimed by me, clothed, at twenty-one thirty on day four. She will be claimed by Gabriel, in the lab, tomorrow evening. She will be claimed by Stefan at the call room on day ten. That is the geometry. Tonight we lay it down."
"Tomorrow evening I will tell her to take the strap out of my pocket," Gabriel says. "I will name the safeword in private. I will let her name it back. She will sleep here. She will leave at nine."
"Day eight she sleeps at the suite," says Stefan. "Day nine she finds the ledger."
"Day nine," I say. "I will leave the gallery glass ajar at eight when I carry Q4 nineteen-eighty-nine down for my coffee. I have been working it for the thirty-fifth anniversary reconciliation."
"You did not need to," Gabriel says.
"Correct. I am giving her a reason. The story she will tell herself about staying is the story that begins with the ledger discovery. The story is the gift. The ledger is the prop."
The four counts of silence.
Gabriel speaks.
"She must choose, or the pretense collapses."
"She must choose," I say. "Yes."
He sets his left hand open on the table. The fingers spread slightly. The room narrows around the hand.