Falls the Shadow (35 page)

I entered Dr. Pfeffer’s waiting room with great wariness. I almost expected Tilda to be guarding the entrance with a baseball bat and a sign saying
NO TWO
-
BIT LAWYERS ALLOWED
, but everything was as it was before. The walls were still beige, pretty Deirdre behind the desk was still smiling. The same bright lights, same jaunty Muzak, same oppressive sense of cheer.

And I, apparently, was still more than welcome.

“Oh, Mr. Carl, we’re so glad you’ve come for a visit. Is that a new tie? And what’s that on your cheek? I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“Just a little too much television,” I said, not mentioning the hours spent in the emergency room, the needles of Novocain, the fourteen stitches.

“I don’t see you down as having an appointment today. Are we mistaken?”

“No, Deirdre, your book is right. I thought I’d drop in for a friendly little chat with the doctor. Is he in?”

“Dr. Pfeffer is seeing another patient right now, but he’ll certainly be glad to see you. You’re one of his favorites.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I think one of the examination rooms is available. If you want, Mr. Carl, you can wait for the doctor in Examination Room B. As a rule we don’t let visitors in the operational part of the office, but I’m sure that’s a rule we can bend for you.”

I looked at the closed door that led to the hallway that led to the examination rooms and the examination chairs and the picks and the drills and the…I looked at the door and I shuddered.

“No, thank you,” I said. “To tell you the truth, you couldn’t drag me back there with a chain and a backhoe.”

She smiled, unsure of what to say to that. “Then please take a seat. I’m sure the doctor will be out shortly.”

I sat in a beige chair, picked up an old magazine, tried to calm my nerves. It was unsettling enough to be there in the first place—it was the waiting room to a dentist’s office, after all—but it was doubly so since this dentist seemed to be after more than the usual amount of my blood. He wanted me to leave him out of the Dubé case, and the pressure was accelerating at an alarming rate. It had to stop, somehow, and that was the purpose of my visit. I could back off, sure, but as much as I had decided to do just that the night before, as the doctor was tying up the stitches in my cheek, one after the other after the other, I’m not built that way. I don’t have much of a spine, it’s a wonder I can stand up in the morning, but push me like he had been pushing me and whatever is actually there stiffens with doggedness. So I figured the way to get it over with was to get it over with, to drop the damn subpoena on his lap and end the suspense.

The door to the examination room opened. I jumped to my feet. Tilda stood in the doorway, bent stiffly to the right, her left eye swollen shut. She stared at me with malice in her one open eye before she moved to the side and Dr. Bob and his patient, a lovely young woman, brushed past her to the desk.

Dr. Bob stopped suddenly when he saw me, his face startled for a moment before recovering into a smile. “Victor, hello. What an unexpected pleasure.”

He squinted at the bandage on my cheek, as if he were actually surprised to see it, then turned to take in Tilda’s sorry condition.

“Have you two been seeing each other behind my back?” he said, his voice wide with amusement.

I waited as he spoke to his patient while writing a note in her file. She looked nervously at the bandage on my cheek before leaving. When the door closed, I stepped over to the reception desk with the subpoena in my hand.

“I have something for you, Doctor,” I said, and then, quick as that, I served him. I felt suddenly lighter, as if, instead of a few official pages backed with blue cardboard, I had shed a couple barbells and a curling iron.

He looked the subpoena over briefly, shrugged. “I’ll see if I’m available on that date,” he said flatly. “But on to something far more worthwhile.” His face abruptly brightened, his voice turned hearty and cheerful. “I seem to remember I wanted to give you a thorough cleaning before I installed your new bridge. Well, I have good news. A hole has opened in my schedule. I have time to do the cleaning right now. Come on back.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be worried, Victor, this is the easiest part of the process. Sometimes I have Tilda do the cleanings, she’s very thorough, as you can imagine, but you I’ll take care of myself.”

I glanced over at the now open doorway, from where Tilda glared. “I’m not going back there.”

“Of course you are,” he said. “I noticed your gums are quite spongy. A cleaning will do wonders. Your smile will shine, I promise you.”

“I’ll find someone else to do it, and to fill the hole, too.”

“But that’s such a waste. Your bridge will be here any day. Oh, don’t be such a chicken boy. Cluck, cluck, cluck. We’re both professionals, are we not? If we are to trust anything in each other, we at least must trust that. Can I have Victor’s file, please, Deirdre?”

I watched nervously as Deirdre left the front office to retrieve the file, leaving me alone with Dr. Bob and Tilda, who continued to stare with one eye swollen shut and the other eye evil.

“Come on back, now,” said Dr. Bob as he headed past Tilda and through the door. “This won’t take much time. And while I’m scraping the tartar and buffing the enamel, I have some interesting news to tell you. That address you were looking for? I found it.”

“The key for me was Rex,” said Dr. Bob as he slipped his metal pick between my tooth and gum and scraped and scraped and scraped.

“You remember Rex, of course, the rather large man with the unfortunate teeth stationed outside the Hotel Latimore. Loosen your lower lip, please. Don’t fight me here, Victor. I need to get beneath the gum line. Whoever taught you to floss should be shot. Once I figured that Rex was my key to entering the Hotel Latimore, it was only a matter of finding a way to reach him. Lucky me, I have rarely seen a man more in need of a dentist.”

Frankly, I was having a hard time concentrating on Dr. Bob’s story. I was having a hard time not bolting out of the examination chair and running for my life. But Dr. Bob had an address and a story to tell, and I needed both, not to mention that my teeth could always use a good cleaning. So I decided to gut it out, even though my nerves were so hyperalert that every time the metal of his pick touched tooth or gum, I jumped. But, surprisingly, Dr. Bob was being uncharacteristically gentle. In fact, the most pain I was experiencing was the cramping in my hands as I gripped tight the arms of the chair.

“I must say he was a better patient than you, Victor. A higher tolerance for pain, or maybe he simply doesn’t know me as well as you do. Well, Rex led me to a young woman named Claire, who worked in the office with the formidable Miss Elise, the Reverend Wilkerson’s unlikely-looking paramour. I first tried with Miss Elise and got nowhere. Such a dried-up old spinster, immune to all my charms, imagine that. But Claire was something different. Very beautiful, idealistic, a truly spiritual young woman. I think Rex has a thing for her. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could get those two together? I think I’ll make that my next mission. Why don’t you spit?”

Spit, splot, splat.

“It was Claire who finally located for me the address. A rather simple operation in the end. Only had to break a few minor laws. But it wasn’t the address I found most interesting in the whole affair. It was Rex.

“We seem to be a little jumpy today. Why is that? You know, you’re going to have to come in more frequently, Victor, if we are to avoid such problems in the future. Considering the state of your teeth and gums, you should come in every three months. As we always say at the A.D.A. convention, the two things you can never have too much of are anal sex and dental care.

“Okay, I think we’re finished with the bottoms. Open wide, and we’ll attack your uppers. What kind of toothbrush do you use? Maybe you need something new. It helps if you don’t use the same brush two years running.”

Pick, scrape, jab, scrape, pick pick pick.

“I’m always on the lookout for new talent, a pure soul with the heart, the muscle, the determination to make a difference in the world. I could point you to a woman in Baltimore, to a couple in Albuquerque, to a man in Mexico City who can move mountains. All of us, all we want to do is to help. And I think Rex might be another. He is very much a raw talent, he so lacks confidence in anything except his size, but his heart is pure, and he’s much sharper than he lets on. I think he’ll be a fine recruit, if I only have the time to properly work with him. But in this business one never knows when the time will run out.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I maybe dug a little too deep. From your reaction it looks like I hit a nerve. Hold on a second, and let me get some suction in there.”

Awhoosh-ashiga-awhoosh-ashiga-ashiga-ashiga-awhoosh.

“My, you are quite the bleeder, aren’t you?” said Dr. Bob as he went back to picking and scraping. “I once considered recruiting you, too, Victor. Your wisecracking, hard-bitten cover is so obviously a false front. I hoped inside wasn’t simply the usual dark recess of selfish indifference. But no, I’ve discovered something remarkable in you, something I had hoped to work with. Look at the way you are helping that boy, Daniel, and your crusade on behalf of his half sister. And even your work for that horrid waste of humanity, Mr. Frog, the short-order chef. Yes, you have so much potential, and your empathy would have been your greatest strength. Yet, as so often happens, there is a flaw.

“Well, now, I think I’m finished.” He stuck a mirror in my mouth, whipped it around. “Yes, all done. That wasn’t too bad, was it?”

Shockingly, it wasn’t. Except for the minor incident when he drew blood while he was talking obliquely about the subpoena, the whole cleaning was relatively pain-free, relative to kidney surgery, maybe, but still.

“Time to polish,” he said cheerily.

As the round brush whirred across my teeth, Dr. Bob continued. “Some recruits never make the final leap. It all becomes too personal. I look at your face, and I look at Tilda’s eye, and I feel that I have failed her. She is a wonderful woman, strong and fearless, and surprisingly agile in bed, but her impulses are all wrong. It is always better to be Loki than Thor. Now, hold on, I’m almost finished. Yes. Done. A fine job, if I do say so myself. Rinse carefully and spit.”

Splish, splosh, splish, splosh—splat.

“Is that it?” I said hopefully.

“Not yet. Tilda,” he called out. The wounded Valkyrie appeared. “Mr. Carl needs his fluoride. What flavor do you take, Victor? Chocolate, piña colada, or mint?”

I eyed the huge woman standing the doorway and my nerves crashed in on themselves. “Let’s say we skip the fluoride,” I said in a girlish squeal.

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Bob. “Piña colada, why don’t we say? That would go so well with those Sea Breezes you favor. Take over for me, Tilda, won’t you? I’ll be back in a flash.”

He disappeared, leaving me at the mercy of his hygienist. I looked up at the fearsome, swollen face. “Open wide,
ja
,” she said as she reached for my mouth. “And no crying this time, bucko.”

I was still shaking from the ordeal of the fluoride when Dr. Bob stepped back into the room. His mask was on, his little blue cap, his hands were held out from his body like a surgeon, fingers up, palms toward his chest, rubber gloves already in place.

“I think that’s it, Victor,” he said. “We’re done here. I have another patient waiting, so I can’t dally and chat.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Deirdre will let you know when the new bridge comes in so we can snap it on. That won’t take but a moment. Then you and I, we’ll be finished. I now have to request that you take back your silly subpoena. It is difficult for me to ask this of you, believe me, but I have no choice. And we did have a deal.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No,” he said with a flat sincerity. “She was a patient, just like you. I only wanted to help her.”

“Either way, you need to testify.”

“So you won’t withdraw the subpoena?”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but it is as I supposed.”

“You said there was a flaw in me. What did you mean?”

“We’re seeing it play out right now, aren’t we? A certain stubborn belief in the status quo and the rote laws of men. A certain feigned helplessness in the face of a mutable world. You say there is nothing you can do? I say there is nothing you can’t achieve, as long as you are willing to pay the price. I suppose I’ll see you at least once more to install the bridge, and we’ll talk all about it then.”

As he turned to leave, I said, “What about the address?”

“Check your shirt pocket.”

I did, and there it was, written neatly on a small scrap of paper.

“Why do you do that?” I said.

“Some tricks never grow old,” he said before he disappeared, and maybe he was right.

I didn’t stop at the office, I didn’t stop at Tommy’s High Ball to pick up Horace, I didn’t stop at Social Services to get ahold of Isabel, I didn’t stop anywhere. I left Dr. Bob’s office and jumped in my car, checked the map, and then drove straight west, out to the address Dr. Bob had left in my shirt pocket.

And I drove fast.

I had no real idea of what I’d find when I got there, other than a girl who had been deserted by her mother and failed by everyone she had ever come in contact with, but I expected the worst. Philadelphia might be the City of Brotherly Love, but it’s also the city of Erica Pratt, who was brutally kidnapped and who escaped her captors by chewing through the duct tape binding her body, the city of Gary Heidnik, who kept a torture and sex-slave chamber in the basement of his Philly home and who fed his victims the flesh of those he had murdered.

Was my imagination running amok? You bet, and when it came to a child within the ambit of my responsibility, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The street turned out to be just a stone’s throw from Cobbs Creek, Philadelphia’s best municipal golf course, in a section of the city called Overbrook Hills. I drove past a
WATCH CHILDREN
sign, turned right, passed by the address and spied nothing unusual. I drove through the alley behind the house, past the front again, and then parked halfway down the block and across the street so I could keep my eye on the front door.

Once again I was surveilling. You’d think I would have learned.

It was a neighborhood of row houses, great lengths of identical brick homes lining either side of streets laid out in a rectangular grid. These houses were newer and smaller than the usual Philly row house, without the grand architectural details or great stone porches found in the older sections of West and North Philadelphia, just flat brick fronts, with the occasional pediment above aluminum screen doors. The lawns were narrow and scruffy, about half were fenced in.

As I stared at the house, I tried to conjure again the horrors of possibility, but it was harder now that I saw the street. There were children’s toys all over the place, plastic cars, large plastic play sets, a blow-up pool within the confines of a fence. And people were out and about, youngsters moving together in groups, teenagers, kids zipping by on their bicycles. An old man sat out on a lawn chair, sucking on a cigar in the shade of a green plastic awning. A woman was sweeping.

I sat back, scrunched down in my seat, and waited.

I wanted to see someone go in or out of the house; I wanted to get a sense of what I was dealing with. I had my cell phone, and if anything scared me enough I was ready to dial 911 and call out the SWAT team, but I thought I’d better get a grip on things before I did.

The door remained closed, the windows were dark, nothing was happening.

You stare at something long enough, your mind slips into a meditative fog, which is what must have happened, because I didn’t notice until too late the car that slowly slid beside me.

“Is there a problem?”

I startled at the sound, turned to see a cop car blocking my exit, the uniformed driver looking me up and down, wondering, I was sure, what a stranger in an old car and a cheap suit with a bandage on his face was doing in this neighborhood.

“I’m fine, Officer, thank you,” I said.

“Anything I can help you with?”

“Nothing right now, thank you.”

“Can I ask you what you’re doing here?”

“You can ask, sure,” I said.

We stared at each other for a moment, and then a moment longer, before he figured out the gag.

“Step out of the vehicle, please,” he said.

I guess he wasn’t amused.

The name on his shirt was Washington, and he told me that his dispatcher had received a number of calls about the presence of a strange car on the street. After checking my license and registration, and wincing at the Bar Association card I keep in my wallet, he listened patiently as I explained what I was doing there. I showed him the notice of appointment from the judge, I gestured toward the quiet house on the quiet street that matched the address I had been given.

“Why don’t we just go up and ask them?” he said.

I started to say something about Erica Pratt or Gary Heidnick, but within the aura of Officer Washington’s calm, I realized I was being an idiot.

“Sure,” I said, and we did.

The woman who answered the door was plump and pretty. She rubbed her hands nervously together when she saw the uniformed cop and the guy next to the cop in a suit.

“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Good day, ma’am,” said Officer Washington. “This man’s name is Victor Carl.” The woman reacted to the name as if it was Beelzebub. “He has a court order that appoints him the lawyer for a girl named Tanya Rose. He’s trying to locate her and believes she could be here. Do you have any idea where this Tanya Rose might be?”

“How did you get this address?” said the woman.

“I just want to find her,” I said, trying to flash a comforting smile and, based on her reaction, failing miserably. “I just want to make sure she’s all right.”

“I need to make a call,” said the woman.

“Is she here?” I said.

“I need to make a call before I let you do anything. I have rights. You just can’t come barging in.”

“Ma’am,” said the officer. “Based on the order, he has a right to see the girl if she’s here.”

I heard a light tread bouncing down the stairs. I stepped past the woman into the dark parlor of the little house. I didn’t notice the ragged furniture or the wall hangings, the old shaggy rug, the spicy scent coming from the kitchen, I didn’t notice anything except the small set of white sneakers jumping down the stairs, the thin bare legs, the denim jumper, the little girl with pigtails and wide eyes who was holding on to a brown stuffed unicorn.

She stopped when she saw me staring at her. “Mama,” she said, “what’s going on?”

“Is your name Tanya?” I said.

She didn’t answer. Instead she backed away, back up the stairs, frightened. I was wrong, Dr. Bob had blown it, she wasn’t the right girl, this woman she called Mama was her mother. I didn’t know what else to do except keep on talking.

“My name is Victor Carl. I’m a lawyer. If you’re Tanya, I’ve been appointed to help you in any way I can.”

The girl tilted her head as if I were an idiot telling a nonsensical story in a language of my own devising. I thought about turning around, apologizing to the woman and to Officer Washington, of ducking out of there and avoiding any more humiliation, but then I thought of three more words to say.

“Daniel sent me,” I told her.

Her smile blew a hole in my heart.

And here’s the thing that surprised me and mystified me and cheered me all at the same time: Tanya was okay, Tanya was in good hands. The Reverend Wilkerson, against all my suppositions and, I have to admit, all my prejudices, the Reverend Wilkerson had done his best by the girl.

The woman’s name was Mrs. Hanson, and she was sweet and nervous and scared to death of me. “Are you going to take my Tanya away?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I told her, and I didn’t.

So we sat in her living room and we talked, Mrs. Hanson and Officer Washington and myself. Tanya went back up to her room to play, sneaking down every now and then to listen before running back up again. Mrs. Hanson called her husband home from his work, and while we waited for him, she made us tea and she told us about her family, about her older son, Charles, who attended Central High, the premier magnet school in the Philadelphia school system. And she told us that when she heard from the good reverend of this girl who needed a family, she and her husband talked about it and prayed about it and decided there was nothing they could do but open their door to her. They would make the effort, suffer through the inconvenience, give this poor girl the benefit of a home, whatever the burden. What they didn’t expect was that they would fall, all three of the Hansons, so much in love with the little girl.

After a while Officer Washington raised his eyebrows, and I nodded that it was all right, and we both thanked him for his time. After he left, Mr. Hanson showed up, a short, energetic man in blue work shirt and pants, and the three of us talked some more. They told about the friends Tanya had made, they told me about their trip to King’s Dominion.

“The Elvis karaoke bar in the Northeast?” I said.

“No,” said Mr. Hanson. “The amusement park in Virginia.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Of course.”

The furniture was aged, the paintings on the wall were the kind you buy in warehouses, the television was a decade old, one wall was covered with the style of block mirrors they used to advertise on UHF channels twenty years ago. Not rich, maybe not even middle class, but they were a family, the warmth was palpable, and my scalp didn’t itch inside their house, which was a good indication that the abject dysfunction that had marred my childhood didn’t have a hold here.

When I asked if I could speak to Tanya alone, they looked at each other nervously and then led me up to her room.

She was on her bed, surrounded by a sea of small stuffed animals. It appeared that she was putting on a play of some sort, but when she saw me standing in the doorway, she stopped, lowered her hands.

I stooped down so our eyes were roughly level, not that she was looking at me, and I told her who I was, why I was there. I could see she was listening, the way she smiled when I mentioned Daniel, the way her mouth tightened when I mentioned her mother, but she didn’t respond at all until I asked her if there was a place nearby to get some ice cream.

“A couple blocks away,” she said.

“You want to go?”

“Okay.”

Mrs. Hanson wasn’t happy that I was taking Tanya for a walk, but her husband calmed her down and gave me directions. He also, I noticed, followed us from a distance, which I didn’t mind at all. We walked quietly together, Tanya and I, turning left and then right, ending up at a small drugstore with a large white freezer in the corner. She picked the prepackaged ice cream cone with the chocolate and nuts on top, I took the Chip-wich. We found a curb on a quiet street on the way back to sit while we finished off the treats.

“Do you like it here?” I said.

She nodded.

“You called Mrs. Hanson Mama. Why did you do that?”

“She likes it.”

“Do you like her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She’s nice. She fusses over me and buys me stuffed animals. Did you see how many I have?”

“Yes, I did. Wow. It’s like a zoo in there.”

“I’m going to fill it up until I can’t hardly walk into the room. Then I’m going to jump right on top of the pile and sleep there every night.”

I glanced up the street. He was sitting on a hydrant about a hundred yards away, just keeping an eye on things. I gave a little wave, and he waved back. “Do you like Mr. Hanson?” I said.

“He’s nice, too.”

“And Charles?”

“Yeah, though he’s not home much. He’s really smart. He’s, like, a brain.”

“Do you think about your mother ever?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to go back and live with her?”

“I don’t know. I like it with the Hansons. Is Randy still there?”

“Not right now. You don’t like Randy?”

“He didn’t like me. Always yelling, smacking me. Can I have another cone?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just asking. How’s Daniel?”

“He’s all right,” I said. “I think he’s okay now. We fixed his teeth.”

“They sure needed fixing. I miss him. Can you go to my mommy’s place and tell him I miss him?”

“He’s not with your mother right now.”

Her eyes widened.

“Randy was hurting him, and your mother didn’t stop him. So Randy was arrested and Daniel’s now with another family.”

“I want to see him.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Are you really here to help me?”

“That’s right. Believe it or not, I work for you.”

“I don’t have any money to pay you.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Why should you be different from any of my other clients?”

“What happened to your face?”

“My television bit me.”

“I guess that’s why they don’t let me watch too much.”

“Does that make you sad?”

“Not really. There’s a nice school here. I can walk to it and it’s a pretty color outside and the kids I play with in the neighborhood, they go there, too, and will walk with me. Sam, he has a little pool and we swim together when it gets hot.”

“So what do you want me to do for you?”

“I don’t want to leave. I like the school.”

“Okay.”

“But I miss Daniel.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe he can go to the school, too.”

“He’s still a little young for school.”

“Yeah. Can I have another cone now?”

“No,” I said.

I left her with the Hansons. I thought about it, thought about the options, and the responsibility of the thing scared the hell out of me, but sometimes I think the braver thing is to do nothing, and Tanya deserved my bravery, so I left her there. I gave Mrs. Hanson Isabel Chandler’s name and phone number. I told her to call, to set up an interview with Social Services, to do what she had to do to become a certified foster home so her custody of Tanya could be made official. But until then I wouldn’t do anything to remove Tanya from her home.

“I was so worried when the reverend told us you were asking around about Tanya,” said Mrs. Hanson. “I was having nightmares about you.”

“I seem to have that effect on people.”

“She’s such a wonderful girl. She’s already part of the family. I told the reverend I was terrified you were going to take her from us.”

“I was terrified, too,” I said.

Sometimes I almost start to believe that the human race, contrary to all reason and against all odds, has a chance after all.