THE OVERTON WINDOW (29 page)

Noah had excused himself suddenly and then stumbled his way into the elegant stall in the corner of his father’s private restroom. You know you’re sick when you’re still vomiting ten minutes after the last thing was expelled from your stomach. He was still hugging the porcelain bowl, drained and wretched, feeling like he’d just capped off a marathon with four hundred sit-ups.

Once he was fairly sure the nausea had passed, he pushed himself to his feet, walked to the sink, and turned on the water as hot as he could stand. He let the basin fill and then bent and washed his face, let the heat try to revive him until he felt whatever flicker of energy he still possessed begin to gather. He stood then, dried himself with a hanging towel, re-buttoned and tucked in his shirt, and then used his sleeve to clear the steam from the ornate mirror over the lavatory.

His skin was as pale as a Newark Bay oyster, but while he was certainly beat he wasn’t quite out of commission yet.

The doctor had said these aftereffects could linger for up to a day, but would ease as the hours went by. He took another of the pills from his pocket and told himself that the worst of it was behind him now. He
needed it to be, because in addition to coming to grips with what he’d just heard from his father, there was also a score he needed to settle before a certain young woman’s trail became too cold to follow.

As Noah hurried down the stairwell toward the mailroom he lost his shaky footing and nearly tumbled down the last half flight. The people he passed in the hallway stood back and gave him a wide berth; whether they sensed his illness or his anger, they obviously didn’t want to catch whatever he was carrying. He was breathing hard as he made the last corner, feeling chilled and damp under his clothes.

It’s not that he expected her to be at work that day, innocently sorting the mail as though nothing were wrong. But he was going to find her one way or the other, and this was the closest stop on the tour.

“Frank!” Noah called.

The department manager popped his head out from behind the sorting shelves. “Yes, sir.”

“Have you heard from Molly today?”

“No, sir. She was on the schedule but she ain’t been in. I called her agency about an hour ago and they haven’t got back to me yet.”

“Okay, thanks. Does she have, I don’t know, some emergency contact numbers down here, from her application?”

Frank looked a little surprised to be asked such a thing. “Maybe that’d be up in Human Resources, Mr. Gardner. All I could give you is the number of the place we hired her from.”

“You’re talking about that temp girl, Molly?” Another of the mail-room staff had apparently overheard the conversation, and he came nearer. “Somebody called here for her over the weekend. I picked up the voice mail when I opened up this morning.”

“Do you have that message?” Noah asked. “It’s important.”

“I deleted it, and I didn’t write anything down, since it was a personal thing. The fellow who called must have just tried all the numbers he had for her. He said her mama was in the hospital.”

Noah stood there and let that bit of news sink into his empty stomach.
As it gripped him there he remembered what Warren Landers had said, up in his father’s office. It had passed in one ear and straight out his other, because, as usual, he was immersed in his own significance, as though the only bad things that existed were the ones that had happened to him.

We’ll make them sorry.
That’s how Mr. Landers had put it.

“Which hospital?”

“Uptown, Lenox Hill,” the man said, and then he leaned in and offered a quiet addendum. “None of my business, Mr. Gardner. But it didn’t sound so good.”

CHAPTER 33
 

In the cab on the way uptown Noah had made two phone calls, one to the hospital’s automated system to find the patient’s floor and room, and the other to an old and trusted acquaintance who was now on her way to meet up with him at Lenox Hill.

Over a long-ago summer Ellen Davenport, of the East Hampton Davenports, had become his first real friend who was a girl. It was a new thing for him, because though they’d hit it off immediately, they both also seemed to realize that dating each other was the last thing they should ever do. They’d actually tried it once just to be sure, and the discomfort of that terrible evening was matched only by its comic potential when the story was retold by the two of them in later years.

Now Ellen was a second-year neurology resident at Mount Sinai Hospital across town. His call had caught her at the end of a twenty-six-hour shift, but, true to form, she’d told him that she’d be right over without even asking why.

As he walked down the hallway of the ward he saw three things: the crowd of people overflowing from the double doorway of the floor’s small chapel, a smaller knot of visitors waiting outside a single room
down near the end, and Dr. Ellen Davenport, still in her wrinkled scrubs, waving to him from an alcove near the elevators.

Ellen gave him a hug when he reached her, and then held him away at arm’s length and frowned. “You look like hell, Gardner.”

“Thanks.” He was preoccupied, looking over the people milling through the hall, every bit as afraid that he might see Molly as that he might never see her again. Some of these people were looking back at him, too, and by their manner it seemed they knew who he was.

“Hey.” Ellen snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. “I mean it. You look like you need to lie down.”

“I need for you to do me a favor,” Noah said. There was a slight tremor in his hands as he retrieved the medicine from his pocket, shook out a pill into his palm, and swallowed it dry.

Ellen took the vial from him, rattled it, and held it close to her eyes. She looked at him again with a little more concern than before. “If you’re going to ask me to score you some methadone, I left my prescription pad in my other pants.”

“That woman in the room down the hall there,” he said. “I need for you to help me—I don’t know, line up a specialist, make sure everything’s being done. I just want her to be taken care of.”

“They’re pretty good at that sort of thing here, Noah.”

“Ellen, listen to me—”

Whatever Noah had been about to confess, he was interrupted by the approach of a stranger. It was an older woman, frail and thin as dry reeds, and from the corner of his eye he’d seen her come from the direction of that room near the end of the hall. The woman nodded her respect to Ellen, turned to him, and then spoke with a gentle gravity in her voice that said more than the words themselves would convey.

“She’s awake now. Somebody told her you were here, and she says she wants to talk to you.”

CHAPTER 34
 

He stood just inside the open doorway, watching the remaining visitors say their good-byes before they quietly walked past him, one by one. Flowers were arranged all around the room, in baskets and vases and water pitchers, on extra rolling tables that seemed to have been brought in just to accommodate the overflow of gifts from well-wishers.

The door was closed by the last man who’d left, but still Noah stood where he was until Beverly Emerson looked over and smiled as best she could, inviting him to her bedside with a weak motion of her bandaged hand.

“We meet again,” she said. It was barely more than a whisper, spoken as though her lungs might hold the space for only a thimbleful of air.

There were bruises on her face and arms, dark, uneven spots within yellowing patches, and a bandage on her neck with a soak of crusted brown near its center. She was withered, already a shadow of the person he’d last seen on Friday night. The only thing that remained undimmed was that unforgettable spark in her light green eyes.

He had no idea what to say, but he said it anyway.

“You’re going to be all right.”

That brought a smile again, but she shook her head slowly and touched his hand that was nearest hers.

“We shouldn’t deceive ourselves,” she said. “I’m afraid there isn’t time.” She was measuring her breath as she spoke, managing only a few words of each phrase between shallow inhalations. “I don’t expect you to understand why Molly did what I asked her to do.” The grip on his hand tightened, as though all the strength she had was centering there. “You should blame me, and not her. But I hold the privilege of a dying woman now, and I want you to put everything aside except what I’m about to say.”

“Okay”

“My daughter is in danger. I need for you to promise me you’ll see her to safety.”

There were so many conflicting things hammering at his mind, but despite all that mental noise and everything that had happened, for once in his life he could see it all arranged in its true order of significance, and so he knew for certain there was only one thing to be said.

“I will.”

Her grip relaxed somewhat, her head rested back onto the pillow, and she closed her eyes. Soon a private little smile drifted into her features, as though she might have just then put the finish on a silent prayer.

“Thank you,” Beverly whispered.

He didn’t respond, but only because he didn’t want to presume to be the one she was addressing.

“I sent Molly away, but she isn’t safe yet,” she said. “She’s waiting now, near the airport. Look in the top drawer of the nightstand. She called and told one of the nurses where she’d be and they wrote it down for me.”

“Okay,” he said. “I think I’d better get started, then.” He moved to place her hand down on the bed at her side, but she didn’t let him go.

“Do you know what we’re fighting against, son?”

“Yeah, I think so. Some pretty evil people.”

She offered a look that seemed to suggest his naïvete was something she longed for. “Ephesians 6:12—look it up when you get a chance.”

“I will,” he said.

“There’s more to you, Noah. More than you might be ready to believe. I knew of your mother many years ago, and the good she wanted to do. That’s what Molly saw in you: she told me. Not your father, but what your mother’s given you. And I see it, too.”

“I guess I’m glad somebody does.”

“Noah …”

“Yes.”

There was that tiny glint of a smile again. “Noah, from the Bible, you know?”

He nodded, and despite everything, he smiled a bit himself. “Old Testament.”

The weak hold on his hand tightened once again.

“He wasn’t chosen because he was the best man who ever lived,” she said softly. “He was chosen because he was the best man available.”

Out in the hallway he hadn’t made it five steps before Ellen Davenport caught up to him. She took him firmly by the sleeve, pulled him behind her into a nearby storeroom, and closed the door.

“I need to go, Ellen.”

“You need to listen to me first. I learned some things while you were in there just now. Who is that woman to you?”

“She’s the mother of a friend of mine.”

Ellen nodded. “Sit down.”

He could tell by her tone that he shouldn’t argue, and he pulled over a nearby stool and sat.

“What is it?”

“She’s going to die, you know.”

“How can you say that? She just took a bad beating, right? She’s not that old. They can fix anything with enough—”

“Shh. Now listen. There are some things we can’t fix, Noah. Whoever did this to her did something they knew we couldn’t fix.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t tell anyone I’m talking to you about this, understand? And not just because I could lose my ticket.”

“Okay.”

“They gave her a beating, yeah, probably just for the fun of it. And then they poisoned her.”

A chill passed over him.

“What kind of poison was it?”

“Paraquat,” she said. She seemed to watch his eyes for signs of recognition but there were none. “Do you see now, the point they were trying to make? The animals who got to this woman? Paraquat is a pesticide. A weed killer.”

“A pesticide.” He’d heard what she said but he repeated it aloud, just to make sure he understood.

“It starts an irreversible fibrosis in the lungs—a scarring that progresses until you finally can’t breathe anymore. If that doesn’t kill you first, all the other organ systems begin to shut down, and then it’s over. There’s nothing we can do about it; we can’t even give her oxygen. That just makes it worse. She might have another day, or another week, but it’s obvious that they wanted her to suffer.”