The Conspiracy Club (20 page)

The old man had even scrambled Jeremy’s intuition. Before meeting Arthur, Jeremy had had faith in his ability to judge people, to sum up, predict, all those tricks you convinced yourself you knew so that you could go from room to room and comfort the ill and the scared and the dying.

Lately, he had nothing to show for his efforts but a slew of bad guesses. The doting wife, living well, haute cuisine. Turned out the old bastard roomed out in the flatlands, surrounded by fast-food joints.

That first time at the bookstore, assuming Arthur would be reading a book on butterflies, turned out he’d been studying war strategy.

Where’s the war, old man?

At least he’d been right about the house in Queen’s Arms. Decades off the mark, but technically right.

A feeble vindication. He was turning into Wrong Man. He
needed
his intuition. Without it, where would he be?

Arthur had definitely led him up a path.

Late-night supper, fine wine, haute cuisine, the old eccentrics filling their geriatric guts.

All that good cheer, then a curt dismissal.

Now, this. Postcards.

The old eccentrics . . .

Had Arthur appointed one of
them
to send the articles? Handed over a pile of ENT envelopes to one of his pals and left instructions about mailing them, in his absence?

Why not? The articles hadn’t been posted from the outside, simply dropped down the intrahospital tubes. Anyone could gain access to the system. Just waltz through the lobby, find a mail drop, and
poof
.

How did the tube system actually work? He thumbed through his hospital directory and found the number for Postal Collection. Down on the subbasement, a floor below Pathology.

A deep-voiced man answered his call. “Collection, this is Ernest Washington.”

“Mr. Washington, this is Dr. Carrier. I was just wondering how mail got from the tubes to each department.”

“Dr. who?”

“Carrier.”

“Carrier,” Washington repeated. “Yeah, I recognize the name. First time anyone’s ever asked me that.”

“There’s always a first.”

“Dr. Carrier, from . . .”

“Psychiatry.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Then: “This a prank?”

“Not at all. If you want to call me back, my extension is—”

“I know what it is, got it right here, hold on . . . Jeremy Carrier, Ph.D., Extension 2508.”

“That’s it.”

“It’s really you, huh?”

“Last time I checked.”

Washington chuckled. “Okay, okay, sorry. It’s just that no one ever asked me . . . is this some kind of
psychiatry
experiment?”

“No, sir, just curiosity. I was walking past a chute and realized I’ve worked here for years, had no idea how my mail gets to me. It must be quite a challenge.”

“For sure. You don’t have no idea,” said Ernest Washington. “We’re down here all day, and no one ever sees us. Like invisible folk.”

“Know what you mean.”

Washington harrumphed. “The system’s divided up. The U.S. Mail don’t go through the tubes, they bring it all in trucks, once a day, and it goes straight to our central clearing area — right where I am. We sort it and send it to you.”

“And the intrahospital mail?”

“That goes through the tubes. The way it works is the tubes all lead to three collection bins, all down here in the Sub-B. One on the north end of the building, one on the south end, and one right here, in the middle. My staff checks each bin out — we do it regular, so you doctors can have your important mail ASAP. We sort it and send it on to your departments. Not once a day like the U.S. Postal Service. Twice. So you doctors can keep up with your important medical issues. That clear it up for you?”

“Crystal clear,” said Jeremy. “Does it matter where the mail comes from?”

“What do you mean?”

“If it comes from Otolaryngology as opposed to let’s say Surgery, is it handled differently?”

“Nope,” said Washington. “To us, you’re all the same.”

Any port of entry. A sweet old person could slip an envelope down a chute and walk away, and no one would notice or care. A
bomb
could be dropped down the tubes . . .

Then he realized he’d been wasting his time and Ernest Washington’s. The envelopes had found their way to him,
despite
being unmarked. That meant someone was getting to his mail between the time it arrived at Washington’s dominion and ended up at his door.

Someone in Psychiatry? Or afterward?

He couldn’t see anyone in the mental health army doing this. A pleasant, bland bunch, the lot of them. Caring people, nice. Vanilla nice. He was happy to be housed away from them.

Someone else knew he was an isolate, was taking advantage of that.

“Who? How?” he said out loud.

Obsessed.

So this was what curiosity was all about. It had been a long time since question marks had danced in his head. Then Arthur Chess, the most inquisitive man Jeremy had ever encountered, had come along, and now his own mind couldn’t sit still.

Contagious, like a virus.

That made him think about poor Angela. He phoned her apartment, got no answer. Probably sleeping. Good.

The suicide article and the postcard from the Museum of Tools stared up at him. He found the drawer where he’d tossed the card from Oslo, placed all of it in a folder that he labeled
Curiosity
.

Then he took pen in hand and composed a list. Alphabetizing, because it blessed him with a sense of pseudocontrol.

Tina Balleron
Arthur Chess
Norbert Levy
Edgar Marquis
Harrison Maynard

His first patient was scheduled soon — half an hour — and he had several more appointments after that. Meaning for the rest of the day he’d stuff his ego in the closet and concentrate on others. For thirty minutes, he’d indulge himself.

N
one of the CCC gourmets had listed phone numbers.

Twenty minutes before he had to run. Jeremy scrambled to remember personal details.

Harrison Maynard had written romance novels under female pseudonyms; no easy avenue of inquiry, there. The ancient Edgar Marquis was ex–State Department and had served on remote islands. That, too, offered little promise.

Norbert Levy. The engineer was emeritus at an Eastern university. A campus one thousand miles away and Levy living here implied an appointment in name only.

If
Levy lived here.

No more assuming. Jeremy phoned the institution, connected to the Engineering Department, and asked for Professor Levy.

“Retired,” said the secretary. “Quite a while back.”

“Do you have a current address for him?”

“What’s this about?”

Jeremy gave his name and the hospital’s, spun a tale about a biomechanical engineering convention, wanting to invite Levy.

“Okay,” said the secretary. “Here it is.”

Levy took his mail at a post office box south of downtown, not far from the Seagate district where Arthur had taken him for supper and confusion.

In a movie, Jeremy would rush over to stake out the mail drop. In real life, he had neither the time nor the ability — nor a sane reason to do so. Sitting day and night waiting in the rain? And what if, through some quirk, he encountered the white-bearded academic?

Professor Levy, what a coincidence! You wouldn’t happen to be sending me weird stuff in hospital envelopes, would you?

He needed to
talk
to someone. Look into their eyes, read the nonverbal messages he’d supposedly been trained to decode.

That left Judge Tina Balleron, formerly of superior court.

Now
of
the golf course.

The woman’s gigantic black pearls said she was fixed financially. Perhaps the good life included country club golf.

The city hosted three clubs. The Haverford, a relative upstart at sixty years old, accepted selected minorities. The Shropshire and the Fairview remained Protestant and lily-white.

Was Balleron a Latin name?

He called the Haverford first and asked for the judge. The man who answered said, “I don’t believe she’s arrived yet.”

“This is Dr. Carrier. When’s she due?”

“Let’s see . . . she’s scheduled to tee off at 3
P.M.
A doctor . . . is the judge all right?”

“She’s dandy,” said Jeremy, hanging up. The man had made no inquiries about a husband or other family member. Assuming any trouble would be the judge’s.

Did that mean Tina Balleron lived alone? Just like Arthur.

Just like Jeremy?

So what?

No more assuming.

He saw his patients nonstop, eschewed coffee or lunch or breaks, hurried through his charts and kept his trench coat with him so he’d be able to leave the hospital without returning to his office.

At two-fifteen, he drove city streets to Hale Boulevard, continued on that sleek condominium-lined byway with its views of the lake, and continued out to the northern countryside.

The scenic route. Opposite direction from the journey to Arthur’s rooming house in Ash View.

This trip was upper-level exurbia, then equestrian estates and gentleman’s farms, the occasional riding academy, a couple of boarding schools surrounded by obstructive greenery. A mesh of finger lakes appeared, the land between them sodden as rice paddies. More empty meadows followed. Brightly painted signs advertised hundred-acre parcels. At 2:40
P.M.
, Jeremy was rolling up to the twenty-foot stone posts and iron gates of the Haverford Country Club.

Beyond the scrollwork was a sloping drive bordered by a low fieldstone ledge. Monumental trees sprouted on all sides. A white guardhouse sat in the distance. Jeremy parked at the side of the road.

The sun was recalcitrant, but that did little to ruin the scenery. He rolled down his window, and the air smelled sweet. Miles of barbered grass were too green, and rain-inked tree trunks glistened like obsidian columns. Stalwart rhododendrons and courageous roses defied the season and tossed off arrogant color. Ferns dripped with promise, and a few scarlet cardinals flitted in and out of the foliage.

No marauding ravens out here. A sky that had gloomed the city managed to be pretty: planes of polished silver striped with apricot deepening to crimson where the moisture refused to budge.

Jeremy thought of a poster in one of his colleague’s offices. A psychologist named Selig, a kind, smart man who’d made a bundle in the stock market but continued to see patients because he enjoyed healing. He drove an old Honda to work, kept a new Bentley in the garage.

I’ve Been Poor and I’ve Been Rich. Rich Is Better.

Jeremy wondered what it would be like to be rich. He’d treated enough wealthy depressives to know that money didn’t buy you happiness. Could it do anything to blunt the misery when things went really bad?

He sat in his car, eyes on the country club’s gates. During a fourteen-minute period, five luxury cars arrived, punched in at the call box and, when the ironwork swung open, cruised through confidently.

The sixth car was Tina Balleron’s white Cadillac and Jeremy was waiting, standing several feet in front of the gate, when she pulled up.

Not a new Caddy. Five, six years old, with dark-tinted windows and chromed, spoked wheels. A thin red pinstripe bisected the robust chassis, and a fresh wax job repelled moisture.

Like Arthur’s Lincoln, beautifully maintained.

The dark windows were rolled up. When they lowered, Jeremy noticed they were much thicker than usual — a good half inch of convex glass.

He’d expected Tina Balleron to be startled by his presence, but her face was serene. “Dr. Carrier.”

“Your Honor.”

“Do you golf?”

Jeremy smiled. “Not quite. I was hoping to speak with you before you teed off.”

She glanced at a diamond wristwatch. No black pearls today; a pink cameo on a gold chain. Diamond chip in the coral woman’s eyes. One of Tina Balleron’s silver-nailed hands curled on the Cadillac’s padded steering wheel. The other rested on a cream-colored ostrich handbag. A long fur coat lay across the rear seat.

She said, “Let me pull over.”

She parked behind Jeremy’s car. He followed on foot, heard a click that meant she’d unlocked the doors, and headed for the passenger door.

The passenger window lowered. The same thick glass. “Come in out of the cold, Jeremy.”

When he opened the door, he felt its extra weight. The panel closed with the hiss of a bank vault. An armored car.

He slid onto the passenger seat. The car’s interior was ruby red leather. A tiny gold plaque on the glove compartment was inscribed:
To Tina, With All My Love, Bob. Happy Birthday!

An August date, just over five years ago.

So there had been a husband. Maybe there still was.

The ostrich purse rested in Tina Balleron’s sleek lap. She wore a baby blue, knit pantsuit and navy patent shoes. Her champagne-tinted hair was freshly done. The fur across the backseat was dyed mink — a precise match to her coiffure. A crystal bud vase bracketed between the windows on the driver’s side held a single white rose.

“So,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Sorry to barge in like this, but I’m looking for Arthur. I haven’t been able to reach him in nearly a week.”

“He’s traveling.”

“I know that,” said Jeremy. “He’s been sending me postcards.”

“Has he? Well, that’s good.”

“Why is that?”

Tina Balleron smiled. “Arthur’s fond of you, Jeremy. It’s good when people express their fondness, don’t you think?”

“I suppose . . . does he travel much?”

“From time to time — Jeremy, my dear, you can’t have driven all the way out here to discuss Arthur’s travel habits. What’s really on your mind?”

“I’ve been getting other things in the mail — the hospital mail.”

“Things,” she said. Her fingers played with the clasp of the ostrich-skin bag.

“Articles from medical journals — on laser surgery. Then an account of a ten-year-old murder in England and a piece on physician suicide.”