Читать книгу The Night Watcher - John Lutz - Страница 16

February 2002

Where the hell was Sharon?

She’d gone out over an hour ago to get a pedicure in Shear Ecstasy, the salon just off the lobby of the Bennick Tower, where the Lucettes lived in a fortieth-floor apartment. She should have been back before now, even waddling in her open sandals, balls of cotton tucked between her toes to keep them from rubbing together and smearing wet nail polish.

The heat was running behind today, and the luxury apartment was uncomfortably cool. For some reason sound was penetrating more than usual, the blasting of car and truck horns, the occasional roar of a bus at the stop near the corner. A police or fire department siren was screaming shrilly nearby, as if the vehicle was unable to move and protesting vociferously, adding to Dr. Ronald Lucette’s aggravation, and his anger. Had Sharon opened a window and forgotten to close it? It had happened before.

But the doctor wasn’t really upset with his wife Sharon. The object of his anger was one of his patients, Lillian Tuchman. So the woman’s navel was a few centimeters off to the left. What did she expect, after he’d performed liposuction and a tummy tuck on a 250-pound woman? It wasn’t as if he’d messed up Gwyneth Paltrow. What were Lillian Tuchman’s postoperation plans, anyway, to enter a bikini contest?

But he knew what her postoperation plans were: she was suing Dr. Lucette and New Beginnings Cosmetic Surgery Center for two million dollars. New Beginnings had a law firm on retainer, but as Dr. Lucette’s partners pointed out, the new, almost slim Lillian Tuchman was a woman not in a mood to compromise. She had already refused a nuisance settlement offer of $100,000, and her lawyers were hinting that there were intimations of sexual misconduct while she was under anesthetic.

Thinking about that last absurd charge made Dr. Lucette more than simply angry—he was outraged. Never had he touched a patient improperly under any circumstances, much less in a brightly lighted OR full of assistants. The charge would never stick!

But he knew better than to be so certain of such matters. Any charge might stick in court. Juries were more and more unpredictable, and if you were rich, as Dr. Lucette had to admit he was, jurors considered you fair game, one of the enemy caught in the sights of the common man. The jurors would be much like Lillian Tuchman herself, rather than Dr. Lucette. In the minds of people like Lillian Tuchman, the rich existed only to be envied, cursed, and plucked—unless of course they could be joined.

Dr. Lucette got up from where he was sitting in his soft green leather armchair and went into the bathroom. He stood at the basin and washed his hands in a way so practiced that he thought little about his actions as he studied his haggard face in the mirror. He was sixty-two now and looked fifty, meaning he was almost ready for another eye operation and forehead lift. There wasn’t much more he could do about his thinning gray hair. Growth stimulants didn’t seem to work for him, and within another few years he’d be one of those men who plastered strands of hair sideways over the tops of their skulls so they looked like lines drawn with a felt-tip pen. Well, perhaps there would be advances in the field of toupees.

He suddenly realized several minutes had passed and he was still soaping and scrubbing his hands. He’d been doing too much of that kind of thing lately. Nerves? Or a developing compulsive disorder? Obsessive compulsion ran in the Lucette family on his mother’s side. He’d had a cousin, Herbie, who had actually scrubbed all the hair from the backs of his hands with a coarse brush.

He grimaced and turned off the water, then dried his hands roughly on a nearby towel. Not obsessive compulsion! he assured himself. Nerves! He sure as hell had plenty to be nervous about. His daughter, Minerva, about to flunk out of Wellesley. His son, Bob, probably hooked on cocaine.

And now goddamn Lillian Tuchman and her off-center navel. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so potentially costly!

The doctor went back into the living room and sank again into the leather armchair. Always he warned patients not to expect too much from cosmetic surgery. If done correctly, once the healing was complete they would look much as their usual selves, only younger or well rested. But for some of them that wasn’t enough; they wanted to look like someone else because they wanted to be someone else. He sighed. They were seeing the wrong kind of doctor, he felt like telling them. They should—

He heard the apartment door open and close. Sharon—finally! Already he felt better. They could talk things over. She would sympathize with him. Then, after her toenails dried, they could go out and get some dinner at a nice restaurant. Maybe that new place on Amsterdam that served a tasty Caesar salad and genuinely medium-rare steak with garlic potatoes—comfort food. A drink, a good meal, another drink, and the world might seem habitable again.

Dr. Lucette waited, but Sharon didn’t emerge from the entry hall. Maybe she was waddling carefully, not wanting to get any nail polish on the carpet fibers.

She was taking her damned time, feeding his irritation.

At last he noticed a slight change of light and sensed her presence behind him and off to the side. He turned to look up and greet her but instead gasped.

Someone was standing silently staring down at him, but it wasn’t Sharon.