The Third Twin (25 page)

Lisa stared at her.
“What?”

“They locked me out of my office and dumped my stuff in this fucking garbage bag.”

“I don’t believe it!”

Jeannie took her briefcase out of the bag and extracted the
New York Times.
“It’s on account of this.”

Lisa read the first two paragraphs and said: “But this is bullshit.”

Jeannie sat down. “I know. So why is Berrington pretending to take it seriously?”

“You think he’s pretending?”

“I’m sure of it. He’s too smart to let himself be rattled by this kind of crap. He has some other agenda.” Jeannie drummed her feet on the floor, helpless with frustration. “He’s ready to do anything, he’s really going out on a limb with this … there must be something big at stake for him.” Perhaps she would find the answer in the medical records of the Aventine Clinic in Philadelphia. She checked her watch. She was due there at two
P.M
.: she had to leave soon.

Lisa still could not take in the news. “They can’t just
fire
you,” she said indignantly.

“There’s a disciplinary hearing tomorrow morning.”

“My God, they’re serious.”

“They sure are.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

There was, but Jeannie was afraid to ask. She looked appraisingly at Lisa. Lisa was wearing a high-necked blouse with a loose sweater over it, despite the hot weather: she was covering up her body, a reaction to the rape, no doubt. She still looked solemn, like someone recently bereaved.

Would her friendship prove as fragile as Ghita’s? Jeannie was terrified of the answer. If Lisa let her down who would she have left? But she had to put her to the test, even though this was the worst possible time. “You could try to get into my office,” she said hesitantly. “The results from the FBI are in there.”

Lisa did not answer right away. “Did they change your lock, or something?”

“It’s easier than that. They alter the code electronically so that your card no longer works. I won’t be able to get into the building after hours either, I’ll bet.”

“It’s hard to take this in, it’s happened so quickly.”

Jeannie hated pressuring Lisa to take risks. She racked her brains for a way out. “Maybe I could get in myself. A cleaner might let me in, but my guess is that the lock will no longer respond to their cards either. If I’m not using the room it won’t need cleaning anyway. But security must be able to get in.”

“They won’t help you. They’ll know you’ve been locked out deliberately.”

“That’s true,” Jeannie said. “They might let you in, though. You could say you needed something from my office.”

Lisa looked thoughtful.

“I hate to ask you,” Jeannie said.

Then Lisa’s expression changed. “Hell, yes,” she said at last. “Of course I’ll try it.”

Jeannie felt choked up. “Thanks,” she said. She bit her lip. “You’re a friend.” She reached across the desk and squeezed Lisa’s hand.

Lisa was embarrassed by Jeannie’s emotion. “Where in your office is the FBI list?” she said practically.

“The information is on a floppy disk labeled SHOPPING.LST, in a box of floppies in my desk drawer.”

“Got it.” Lisa frowned. “I can’t understand why they’re so against you.”

“It all started with Steve Logan,” Jeannie said. “Ever since Berrington saw him here, there has been trouble. But I think I may be on the way to understanding why.” She stood up.

“What are you going to do now?” said Lisa.

“I’m going to Philadelphia.”

32

B
ERRINGTON STARED OUT OF THE WINDOW OF HIS OFFICE
. N
O
one was using the tennis court this morning. His imagination pictured Jeannie there. He had seen her on the first or second day of the semester, racing across the court in her short skirt, brown legs pumping, white shoes flashing.… He had fallen for her then. He frowned, wondering why he had been so struck by her athleticism. Seeing women play sports was not a special turn-on for him. He never watched
American Gladiators,
unlike Professor Gormley in Egyptology, who had every show on videotapes and reran them, according to rumor, late at night in his den at home. But when Jeannie played tennis she achieved a special grace. It was like watching a lion break into a sprint in a nature film; the muscles flowed beneath the skin, the hair flew in the slipstream, and the body moved, stopped, turned, and moved again with astonishing, supernatural suddenness. It was mesmerizing to watch, and he had been captivated. Now she was threatening everything he had worked for all his life, yet he still wished he could watch her play tennis one more time.

It was maddening that he could not simply dismiss her, even though her salary was essentially paid by him. Jones Falls University was her employer, and Genetico had already given them the money. A college could not fire faculty the way a restaurant could fire an incompetent waiter. That was why he had to go through this rigmarole.

“The hell with her,” he said aloud, and he went back to his desk.

This morning’s interview had proceeded smoothly, until the revelation about Jack Budgen. Berrington had got Maurice good and riled in advance and had neatly prevented any rapprochement. But it was bad news that the chair of the discipline committee was to be Jeannie’s tennis partner. Berrington had not checked this out in advance; he had assumed he would have some influence over the choice of chair, and he had been dismayed to learn that the appointment was a done thing.

There was a grave danger Jack would see Jeannie’s side of the story.

He scratched his head worriedly. Berrington never socialized with, his academic colleagues—he preferred the more glamorous company of political and media types. But he knew Jack Budgen’s background. Jack had retired from professional tennis at the age of thirty and returned to college to get his doctorate. Already too old to begin a career in chemistry, his subject, he had become an administrator. Running the university’s complex of libraries and balancing the conflicting demands of rival departments required a tactful and obliging nature, and Jack did it well.

How could Jack be swayed? He was not a devious man: quite the reverse—his easygoing nature went along with a kind of naivete. He would be offended if Berrington lobbied him openly or blatantly offered some kind of bribe. But it might be possible to influence him discreetly.

Berrington himself had accepted a bribe once. He still felt knots in his guts whenever he thought of it. It had happened early in his career, before he had become a full professor. A woman undergraduate had been caught cheating—paying another student to write her term paper. Her name was Judy Gilmore and she was really cute. She ought to have been expelled from the university, but the head of the department had the power to impose a lesser punishment. Judy had come to Berrington’s office to “talk about the problem.” She had crossed and uncrossed her legs, and gazed mournfully into his eyes, and bent forward so that he could look down the front of her shirt and glimpse a lacy brassiere. He had been sympathetic and had promised to intercede for her. She had cried and thanked him, then taken his hand, then kissed him on the lips, and finally she had unzipped his fly.

She had never suggested a deal. She had not offered him sex before he had agreed to help her, and after they had screwed on the floor she had calmly dressed and combed her hair and kissed him and left. But the next day he had persuaded the department head to let her off with a warning.

He had taken the bribe because he had been able to tell himself it was not a bribe. Judy had asked him for help, he had agreed, she had fallen for his charms, and they had made love. As time went by he had come to see this as pure sophistry. The offer of sex had been implicit in her manner, and when he had promised her what she asked she had wisely sealed the bargain. He liked to think of himself as a principled man, and he had done something absolutely shameful.

Bribing someone was almost as bad as taking a bribe. All the same, he would bribe Jack Budgen if he could. The thought made him grimace in disgust, but it had to be done. He was desperate.

He would do it the way Judy had: by giving Jack the opportunity to kid himself about it.

Berrington thought for a few minutes more, then he picked up the phone and called Jack.

“Thanks for sending me a copy of your memo about the biophysics library extension,” he began.

There was a startled pause. “Oh, yes. That was a while ago—but I’m glad you found time to read it.”

Berrington had barely glanced at the document. “I think your proposal has a lot of merit. I’m just calling to say that I’ll back you when it comes before the appropriations board.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“In fact, I might be able to persuade Genetico to put up part of the funding.”

Jack seized on that idea eagerly. “We could call it the Genetico Biophysics Library.”

“Good idea. I’ll speak to them about it.” Berrington wanted Jack to bring up the subject of Jeannie. Maybe they could get to her via tennis. “How was your summer?” he said. “Did you get to Wimbledon?’

“Not this year. Too much work.”

“That’s too bad.” With trepidation, he pretended he was about to hang up. “Talk to you later.”

As he had hoped, Jack forestalled him. “Uh, Berry, what do you think about this crap in the newspapers? About Jeannie?”

Berrington concealed his relief and spoke dismissively. “Oh, that—tempest in a teapot.”

“I’ve been trying to call her, but she’s not in her office.”

“Don’t worry about Genetico,” Berrington said, although Jack had not mentioned the company. “They’re relaxed about the whole thing. Fortunately, Maurice Obeli has acted quickly and decisively.”

“You mean the disciplinary hearing.”

“I imagine that will be a formality. She’s embarrassing the university, she’s refused to stop, and she’s gone to the press. I doubt she’ll even trouble to defend herself. I’ve told the people at Genetico that we have the situation under control. At present there’s no threat to the college’s relationship with them.”

“That’s good.”

“Of course, if the committee should take Jeannie’s side against Maurice, for some reason, we’d be in trouble. But I don’t think that’s very likely—do you?” Berrington held his breath.

“You know I’m chair of the committee?”

Jack had evaded the question.
Damn you.
“Yes, and I’m very pleased there’s such a cool head in charge of the proceedings.” He mentioned a shaven-headed professor of philosophy. “If Malcolm Barnet had been chair, God knows what might have happened.”

Jack laughed. “The senate has more sense. They wouldn’t put Malcolm in charge of the parking committee—he’d try to use it as an instrument of social change.”

“But with you in charge I assume the committee will support the president.”

Once again Jack’s reply was tantalizingly ambivalent. “Not all the committee members are predictable.”

You bastard, are you doing this to torment me?
“But the chair is not a loose cannon, I’m sure of that.” Berrington wiped a droplet of sweat from his forehead.

There was a pause. “Berry, it would be wrong for me to prejudge the issue …”

The hell with you!

“ … but I think I can say that Genetico need not worry about this.”

At last!
“Thank you, Jack. I appreciate it.”

“Strictly between the two of us, of course.”

“Naturally.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye.” Berrington hung up.
Jesus, that was hard!

Did Jack really not know he had just been bribed? Did he kid himself about it? Of did he understand perfectly well, but simply pretend not to?

It did not matter, so long as he steered the committee the right way.

That might not be the end of it, of course. The committee’s decision had to be ratified by a meeting of the full senate. At some point Jeannie might hire a hotshot lawyer and start to sue the university for all kinds of compensation. The case could drag on for years. But her investigations would be halted, and that was all that mattered.

However, the committee’s decision was not yet in the bag. If things went wrong tomorrow morning, Jeannie could be back at her desk by midday, hot on the trail of Genetico’s guilty secrets. Berrington shuddered: God forbid. He pulled a scratch pad to him and wrote down the names of the committee members.

Jack Budgen—Library
Tenniel Biddenham—History of Art
Milton Powers—Mathematics
Mark Trader—Anthropology
Jane Edelsborough—Physics

Biddenham, Powers, and Trader were conventional men, long-standing professors whose careers were bound up with Jones Falls and its continued prestige and prosperity. They could be relied upon to support the university president, Berrington felt sure. The dark horse was the woman, Jane Edelsborough.

He would deal with her next.

33

D
RIVING TO
P
HILADELPHIA ON
I-95, J
EANNIE FOUND HERSELF
thinking about Steve Logan again.

She had kissed him good-bye last night, in the visitors’ parking lot on the Jones Falls campus. She found herself regretting that the kiss had been so fleeting. His lips were full and dry, his skin warm. She quite liked the idea of doing it again.

Why was she prejudiced against him because of his age? What was so great about older men? Will Temple, aged thirty-nine, had dropped her for an empty-headed heiress. So much for maturity.

She pressed the Seek button on her radio, looking for a good station, and got Nirvana playing “Come As You Are.” Whenever she thought about dating a man her own age, or younger, she got a scared feeling, a bit like the frisson of danger that went with a Nirvana track. Older men were reassuring; they knew what to do.

Is this me? she thought. Jeannie Ferrami, the woman who does as she pleases and tells the world to go screw? I need reassurance? Get out of here!

It was true, though. Perhaps it was because of her father. After him, she never wanted another irresponsible man in her life. On the other hand, her father was living proof that older men could be just as irresponsible as young.

She guessed Daddy was sleeping in cheap hotels somewhere in Baltimore. When he had drunk and gambled whatever money he got for her computer and her TV—-which would not take him long—he would either steal something else or throw himself on the mercy of his other daughter, Patty. Jeannie hated him for stealing her stuff. However, the incident had served to bring out the best in Steve Logan. He had been a prince. What the hell, she thought; when next I see Steve Logan I’m going to kiss him again, and this time I’ll kiss him good.

She became tense as she threaded the Mercedes through the crowded center of Philadelphia. This could be the big breakthrough. She might be about to find the solution to the puzzle of Steve and Dennis.

The Aventine Clinic was in University City, west of the Schuylkill River, a neighborhood of college buildings and student apartments. The clinic itself was a pleasant low-rise fifties building surrounded by trees. Jeannie parked at a meter on the street and went inside.

There were four people in the waiting area: a young couple, the woman looking strained and the man nervous, plus two other women of about Jeannie’s age, all sitting in a square of low couches, looking at magazines. A chirpy receptionist asked Jeannie to take a seat, and she picked up a glossy brochure about Genetico Inc. She held it open on her lap without reading it; instead she stared at the soothingly meaningless Abstract art on the lobby walls and tapped her feet impatiently on the carpeted floor.

She hated hospitals. She had only once been a patient. At the age of twenty-three she had had an abortion. The father was an aspiring film director. She stopped taking the contraceptive pill because they split up, but he came back after a few days, there was a loving reconciliation, and they had unprotected sex and she got pregnant. The operation proceeded without complications, but Jeannie cried for days, and she lost all affection for the film director, even though he was supportive throughout.

He had just made his first Hollywood movie, an action picture. Jeannie had gone alone to see it at the Charles Theater in Baltimore. The only touch of humanity in an otherwise mechanical story of men shooting at one another was when the hero’s girlfriend became depressed after an abortion and threw him out. The man, a police detective, had been bewildered and heartbroken. Jeannie had cried.

The memory still hurt. She stood up and paced the floor. A minute later a man emerged from the back of the lobby and said, “Doctor Ferrami!” in a loud voice. He was an anxiously jolly man of about fifty, with a bald pate and a monkish fringe of ginger hair. “Hello, hello, good to meet you,” he said with unwarranted enthusiasm.

Jeannie shook his hand. “Last night I spoke to a Mr. Ringwood.”

“Yes, yes! I’m a colleague of his, my name’s Dick Minsky. How do you do?” Dick had a nervous tic that made him blink violently every few seconds; Jeannie felt sorry for him.

He led her up a staircase. “What’s led to your inquiry, may I ask?”

“A medical mystery,” she explained. “The two women have sons who appear to be identical twins, yet they seem to be unrelated. The only connection I’ve been able to find is that both women were treated here before getting pregnant.”

“Is that so?” he said as if he were not really listening. Jeannie was surprised; she had expected him to be intrigued.

They entered a corner office. “All our records can be accessed by computer, provided you have the right code,” he said. He sat at a screen. “Now, the patients we’re interested in are … ?”

“Charlotte Pinker and Lorraine Logan.”

“This won’t take a minute.” He began to key in the names.

Jeannie contained her impatience. These records might reveal nothing at all. She looked around the room. It was too grand an office for a mere filing clerk. Dick must be more than just a “colleague” of Mr. Ringwood’s, she thought. “What’s your role here at the clinic, Dick?” she said.

“I’m the general manager.”

She raised her eyebrows, but he did not look up from the keyboard. Why was her inquiry being dealt with by such a senior person? she wondered, and a sense of unease crept into her mood like a wisp of smoke.

He frowned. “That’s odd. The computer says we have no record of either name.”

Jeannie’s unease gelled. I’m about to be lied to, she thought. The prospect of a solution to the puzzle receded into the far distance again. A sense of anticlimax washed over her and depressed her.

He spun his screen around so that she could see it. “Do I have the correct spellings?”

“Yes.”

“When do you think these patients attended the clinic?”

“Approximately twenty-three years ago.”

He looked at her. “Oh, dear,” he said, and he blinked hard.

“Then I’m afraid you’ve made a wasted journey.”

“Why?”

“We don’t keep records from that far back. It’s our corporate document management strategy.”

Jeannie narrowed her eyes at him. “You throw away old records?”

“We shred the cards, yes, after twenty years, unless of course the patient has been readmitted, in which case the record is transferred to the computer.”

It was a sickening disappointment and a waste of precious hours that she needed to prepare her defense for tomorrow. She said bitterly: “How strange that Mr. Ringwood didn’t tell me this when I talked to him last night.”

“He really should have. Perhaps you didn’t mention the dates.”

“I’m quite sure I told him the two women were treated here twenty-three years ago.” Jeannie remembered adding a year to Steve’s age to get the right period,

“Then it’s hard to understand.”

Somehow Jeannie was not completely surprised at the way this had turned out. Dick Minsky, with his exaggerated friendliness and nervous blink, was the caricature of a man with a guilty conscience.

He turned his screen back to its original position. Seeming regretful, he said: “I’m afraid there’s no more I can do for you.”

“Could we talk to Mr. Ringwood, and ask him why he didn’t tell me about the cards being shredded?”

“I’m afraid Peter’s off sick today.”

“What a remarkable coincidence.”

He tried to look offended, but the result was a parody. “I hope you’re not implying that we’re trying to keep something from you.”

“Why would I think that?”

“I have no idea.” He stood up. “And now, I’m afraid, I’ve run out of time.”

Jeannie got up and preceded him to the door. He followed her down the stairs to the lobby. “Good day to you,” he said stiffly.

“Good-bye,” she said.

Outside the door she hesitated. She felt combative. She was tempted to do something provocative, to show them they could not manipulate her totally. She decided to snoop around a bit.

The parking lot was full of doctors’ cars, late-model Cadillacs and BMWs. She strolled around one side of the building. A black man with a white beard was sweeping up litter with a noisy blower. There was nothing remarkable or even interesting there. She came up against a blank wall and retraced her steps.

Through the glass door at the front she saw Dick Minsky, still in the lobby, talking to the chirpy secretary. He watched anxiously as Jeannie walked by.

Circling the building in the other direction, she came to the garbage dump. Three men wearing heavyweight gloves were loading trash onto a truck. This was stupid, Jeannie decided. She was acting like the detective in a hard-boiled mystery. She was about to turn back when something struck her. The men were lifting huge brown plastic sacks of trash effortlessly, as if they weighed very little. What would a clinic be throwing away that was bulky but light?

Shredded paper?

She heard Dick Minsky’s voice. He sounded scared. “Would you please leave now, Dr. Ferrami?”

She turned. He was coming around the corner of the building, accompanied by a man in the police-style uniform used by security guards.

She walked quickly to a stack of sacks.

Dick Minsky shouted: “Hey!”

The garbagemen stared at her, but she ignored them. She ripped a hole in one sack, reached inside, and pulled out a handful of the contents.

She was holding a sheaf of strips of thin brown card. When she looked closely at the strips she could see they had been written on, some in pen and some with a typewriter. These were shredded hospital record cards.

There could be only one reason why so many sacks were being taken away today.

They had destroyed their records
this morning
—only hours after she had called.

She dropped the shreds on the ground and walked away. One of the garbagemen shouted at her indignantly, but she ignored him.

Now there was no doubt.

She stood in front of Dick Minsky, hands on hips. He had been lying to her, and that was why he was a nervous wreck. “You’ve got a shameful secret here, haven’t you?” she yelled. “Something you’re trying to hide by destroying these records?”

He was completely terrified. “Of course not,” he managed. “And, by the way, the suggestion is offensive.”

“Of course it is,” she said. Her temper got the better of her. She pointed at him with the rolled-up Genetico brochure she was still carrying. “But this investigation is very important to me, and you’d better believe that anyone who
lies
to me about it is going to be fucked over, but good, before I’m finished.”

“Please leave,” he said.

The security guard took her by the left elbow.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “No need to hold me.”

He did not release her. “This way, please,” he said.

He was a middle-aged man with gray hair and a pot belly. In this mood Jeannie was not going to be mauled by him. With her right hand she grasped the arm he was holding her with. The muscles of his upper arm were flabby. “Let go, please,” she said, and she squeezed. Her hands were strong and her grip was more powerful than most men’s. The guard tried to retain his grasp on her elbow but the pain was too much for him, and after a moment he released her. “Thank you,” she said.

She walked away.

She felt better. She had been right to think there was a clue in this clinic. Their efforts to keep her from learning anything were the best possible confirmation that they had a guilty secret. The solution to the mystery was connected with this place. But where did that get her?

She went to her car but did not get in. It was two-thirty and she had had no lunch. She was too excited to eat much, but she needed a cup of coffee. Across the street was a café next to a gospel hall. It looked cheap and clean. She crossed the road and went inside.

Her threat to Dick Minsky had been empty; there was nothing she could do to harm him. She had achieved nothing by getting mad at him. In fact she had tipped her hand, making it clear that she knew she was being lied to. Now they were on their guard.

The café was quiet but for a few students finishing lunch. She ordered coffee and a salad. While she was waiting, she opened the brochure she had picked up in the lobby of the clinic. She read:

The Aventine Clinic was founded in 1972 by Genetico Inc., as a pioneering center for research and development of human
in vitro
fertilization—the creation of what the newspapers call “test-tube babies.”

And suddenly it was all clear.