The Throat (19 page)

John Ransom and I were in Jimmy's, an old east-side restaurant on
Berlin Avenue. Jimmy's was a nice wood-paneled place with comfortable
banquettes and low lights and a long bar. It could have been a
restaurant anywhere in Manhattan, where all of its tables would have
been filled; because we were in Millhaven and it was nearly nine
o'clock, we were nearly the only customers.

John Ransom ordered a Far Niente cabernet and made a ceremonial
little fuss over tasting it.

Our food came, a sirloin for Ransom, shrimp scampi for me. He forgot
Tom Pasmore and started talking about India and Mina's ashram. "This
wonderful being was beautiful, eighteen years old, very modest, and she
spoke in short plain sentences. Sometimes she cooked breakfast, and she
cleaned her little rooms by herself, like a servant. But everyone
around her realized that she had this extraordinary power—she had great
wisdom. Mina put her hands on my soul and opened me up. I'll never stop
being grateful, and I'll never forget what I learned from her." He
chewed for a bit, swallowed, took a mouthful of wine. "By the time I
was in graduate school, Mina had become well known. People began to
understand that she represented one very pure version of mystic
experience. Because I had studied with her, I had a certain authority.
Everything unfolded from her—it was like having studied with a great
scholar. And in fact, it was like that, but more profound."

"Haven't you ever been tempted to go back and see her again?"

"I can't," he said. "She was absolutely firm about that. I had to
move on."

"How does it affect your life now?" I asked, really curious about
what he would say.

"It's helping me make it through," he said.

He finished off the food on his plate, then looked at his watch.
"Would you mind if I called the hospital? I ought to check in."

He signaled the waiter for the check, drank the last of the wine,
and stood up. He pulled a handful of change from his pocket and went
toward the pay telephone in a corridor at the back of the restaurant.

The waiter brought the check on a saucer, and I turned it over and
read the amount and gave the waiter a credit card. Before the waiter
returned with the charge slip, Ransom came charging back toward the
table. He grabbed my arm. "This is—this is unbelievable. They think she
might be coming out of her coma. Where's the check?"

"I gave him a card."

"You can't do that," he said. "Don't be crazy. I want to pay the
thing and get over there."

"Go to the hospital, John. I'll walk back to your house and wait for
you."

"Well, how much was it?" He dug in his trousers pockets for
something, then rummaged in the pockets of his suit jacket.

"I already paid. Take off."

He gave me a look of real exasperation and fished a key from his
jacket pocket and held it out without giving it to me. "That was an
expensive bottle of wine. And my entree cost twice as much as yours."
He looked at the key as if he had forgotten it, then handed it to me.
"I still say you can't pay for this dinner."

"You get the next one," I said.

He was almost hopping in his eagerness to get to the hospital, but
he saw the waiter coming toward us with the credit card slip and leaned
over my shoulder to see the amount while I figured out the tip and
signed. "You tip too much," he said. "That's on your head."

"Will you get away?" I said, and pushed him toward the door.

Apart from two UI students in T-shirts and shorts walking into a bar
called Axel's Tuxedo, the sidewalks outside Jimmy's were empty. John
Ransom was moving quickly away from me, swinging his arms and going
north along Berlin Avenue to Shady Mount, and as he went from relative
darkness into the bright lights beneath the Royal's marquee, his
lightweight suit changed color, like a chameleon's hide.

In two or three seconds Ransom passed back into the darkness on the
other side of the marquee. A car started up on the opposite side of the
street. Ransom was about fifty feet away, still clearly in sight,
moving quickly and steadily through the pools of yellow light cast by
the street lamps.

I turned around to go up the block and saw a blue car move away from
the curb across the street. For a second I stopped moving, aware that
something had caught in my memory. Just before the car slid into the
light spilling out from the Royal's marquee, I had it: the same car had
pulled over to the curb on Eastern Shore Drive so that we would be out
of sight when Sarah Spence Youngblood drove into Tom Pasmore's
driveway. Then light from the movie theater fell on the car, and
instead of Sarah Youngblood, a man with big shoulders and long gray
hair pulled back into a ponytail sat behind the wheel. The light caught
the dot of a gold earring in his left ear. It was the man I had almost
bumped into at the hospital pay phones. He had followed us to Tom
Pasmore's house, then to Jimmy's, and now he was following John to the
hospital.

And since I had seen him first at the hospital, he must have
followed us there, too. I turned to watch the blue car creep down the
street.

The driver bumped along behind John. Whenever his target got too far
in front of him, he nudged the car out into the left lane and slowly
rolled forward another twenty or thirty feet before cutting back into
the curb. If there had been much other traffic, he would not have been
noticeable in any way.

I walked along behind him, stopping when he stopped. I could hear
the soles of Ransom's shoes ticking against the sidewalks. The man in
the blue car swung away from the curb and purred along the nearly empty
street, tracking him like a predator.

Still hurrying along, Ransom was now only a block from the hospital,
moving in and out of the circles of light on the sidewalk. The man in
the blue car pulled out of an unlighted spot and rolled down the
street. He surprised me by going right past Ransom. I thought he had
seen me in his rearview mirror and swore at myself for not even getting
his license number. Then he surprised me again and swung into the curb
across the street from the hospital. I saw his head move as he found
John Ransom in his side mirror.

I started walking faster.

Ransom turned into the narrow path between tall hedges that led up
to the visitors' entrance at Shady Mount. The door of the blue car
opened, and the driver got out. He pushed the door shut behind him and
began to amble across the street. He was about my height, and he walked
with a slightly tilted-back swagger. The apostrophe of gray hair jutted
out from his head and fell against his back. His big shoulders swung,
and the loose jacket of the suit billowed a little. I saw that his hips
were surprisingly wide and that his belly was heavy and soft. The way
he moved, his hips floating, made him look like he was swimming through
the humid air.

I got my notebook out of my pocket and wrote down the number of his
license plate. The blue car was a Lexus. He stepped up onto the
sidewalk and turned into the path. He had given John Ransom enough time
to get into an elevator. I walked down the block as quickly as I could,
and by the time I turned into the path, he was just letting the
visitors' door close behind him. I jogged up the path and came through
the door while he was still floating along toward the elevator. I went
across the nearly empty lobby and touched him on the shoulder.

He looked over his shoulder to see who had touched him. His face
twitched with irritation, and he turned around to face me. "Something I
can help you with?" he said. His voice was unadulterated Millhaven,
fiat, choppy, and slightly nasal.

"Why are you following John Ransom?" I asked.

He sneered at me—only half of his face moved. "You must be outa your
mind."

He started to turn away, but I caught his arm. "Who told you to
follow Ransom?"

"And who the hell are you?"

I told him my name.

He looked around the lobby. Two of the clerks behind the long desk
sat unnaturally still at their computer keyboards, pretending not to be
eavesdropping. The man frowned and led me away from the elevators,
toward the far side of the lobby and a row of empty chairs. Then he
squared off in front of me and looked me up and down. He was trying to
decide how to handle me.

"If you really want to help this guy Ransom, I think you should go
back to wherever you came from," he said finally.

"Is that a threat?"

"You really don't understand," he said. "I got nothing to do with
you." He wheeled around and started moving fast toward the visitors'
entrance.

"Maybe one of these nervous clerks should call the police."

He whirled to confront me. His face was an unhealthy red. "You want
police? Listen, you asshole, I'm with the police."

He reached into his back pocket and came out with a fat black
wallet. He flipped it open to show me one of the little gold badges
given to officers' wives and contributors to police causes.

"That's impressive," I said.

He stuck his broad forefinger into my chest, hard, and pushed his
big face toward me. "You don't know what you're messing with, you
stupid fuck."

Then he marched past me and out the door. I walked after him and
watched him jam the wallet back into his pants on the way down the walk
between the hedges. He moved across the street without bothering to
look for other cars. He pulled open the door of the Lexus, bent down,
and squeezed himself in. He slammed the door, started the car, and
looked out of the open window to see me watching him. His face seemed
to fill the entire space of the window. He twitched the car out into
Berlin Avenue and roared off.

I walked off the sidewalk and watched his taillights diminish as he
moved away. The brake lights flashed as he stopped at a traffic light
two blocks down. The Lexus went another block north on Berlin Avenue
and then turned left without bothering to signal. There was no other
car on the street, and the night seemed huge and black.

I went back up between the hedges and into the hospital.

Before I got to the elevator, a police car pulled up into the
ambulance bay outside the Emergency Room. Dazzling red and blue lights
flashed like Morse code through the corridor. A few clerks leaned over
the partition. A short balding man with an oversized nose got out of
the car. The detective charged through the parting glass doors. A nurse
skittered toward him, grinning and holding her hands clasped beneath
her chin. The detective said something I couldn't hear, picked her up,
and carried her along a few steps before whispering something into her
ear and depositing her on the ground again just at the beginning of the
corridor. Bent double, the nurse gasped and waved at his back before
straightening up and smoothing out her uniform.

The detective held me with his eyes as he moved toward me.

I stopped and waited. As soon as he got into the lobby, he said, "Go
on, get the elevator, don't just stand there." He waved me toward the
buttons. The clerks who had been leaning over the partition to see what
was going on smiled at him and then at each other. "You were going to
call the elevator, weren't you?"

I nodded and went to the closed doors and pushed the up button.

The detective nodded at the clerks. His heavy face seemed immobile,
but his eyes gleamed.

"You didn't call us, did you?"

"No," I said.

"We're all right, then."

I smiled, and the gleam died theatrically from his eye. He was a
real comedian, with his saggy face and his unpressed suit. "Police
should never go to hospitals." He had the kind of face that could
express subtleties of feeling without seeming to move in any way. "Will
you get inside that thing, please?" The elevator had opened up before
us.

I got in and he followed me. I pushed the third floor button. The
elevator ascended and stopped. He left the elevator, taking the turns
that would lead him to April Ransom's room. I followed. We went past
the nurses' station and rounded the bend of the circular corridor. A
young uniformed officer came out of April's room.

"Well?" the detective said.

"This could actually happen," said the uniformed policeman. His
nameplate read Thompson. "Who is this, sir?"

The detective looked back at me. "Who's this? I don't know who this
is. Who are you?"

"I'm a friend of John Ransom's," I said.

"News gets around fast," the detective said. He led the way into
April's room.

John Ransom and a doctor who looked like a college freshman were
standing on the far side of the bed. Ransom looked slightly stunned. He
looked up when he saw me—his eyes moved to the unkempt detective, then
back to me. "Tim? What's going on?"

"What is going on?" asked the detective. "We got more people in here
than the Marx Brothers. Didn't you call this guy?"

"No, I didn't call him," John said. "We had dinner together."

"I see," said the detective. "How is Mrs. Ransom doing, then?"

John looked vague and uncertain. "Ah, well…"

"Good, incisive," said the detective. "Doctor?"

"Mrs. Ransom is showing definite signs of improvement," said the
doctor. His voice was a thick plank of dark brown wood.

"Does it look like the lady might actually be able to say something,
or are we standing in the line at Lourdes here?"

"There are definite indications," said the doctor. The heavy wooden
voice sounded as if it were coming from a much larger and older person
who was standing behind him.

John looked wildly at me across the bed. "Tim, she might actually
come out of it."

The detective came up behind him and insinuated himself at the
bedside. "I'm Paul Fontaine, and the assault on your friend's wife is
related to a homicide case I'm handling."

"Tim Underhill," I said.