The Awakening of Dr. Brown Page 4

  “Doveman,” she said in a raggedy croak, “I didn’t know.”

  He replied, his voice husky with more than the lifelong effects of whiskey and cigarettes, “I know, child. I know.”

  Father Frank had tried his best once again to convince Ethan to skip the meeting.

  “We promised her no publicity,” the priest had argued. “What if somebody spots you and follows you? The cat will be out of the bag for sure, and there goes any hope we have of a quick resolution.”

  Ethan promised to keep a low profile. He was confident he could-he’d gotten very good at eluding reporters over the years. Now and then even his Secret Service agents-to their extreme dismay-found themselves guarding an empty nest.

  “I know why you want to go so bad,” Father Frank teased him. “You just want a chance to see Phoenix up close and personal. Hey-you think I don’t know? Whose picture do you think was taped inside my locker door all through high school?”

  “Sure, I want to see her,” Ethan said, not smiling back. “I want to see her face.”

  He couldn’t have said why it shocked him so profoundly to learn that one of his all-time favorite singer-songwriters-the one responsible for the music that had fueled his idealistic fervor all through college-was, in fact, a slumlord and the person responsible for Louise Parker’s death. Or what he hoped to see in her face-the face that had filled his adolescent dreams-as she confronted Louise Parker’s neighbors. Repudiation, maybe? Say it ain’t so, Joe. He only knew that thinking of his favorite Phoenix songs, like “Fire On The Water” and “City Woman”-more poignant and gut-wrenching than “Pretty Mary” as far as he was concerned-now left him with a bitter taste in his throat, and a very personal sense of betrayal and loss.

  So, while wild horses couldn’t have prevented Ethan from attending the meeting in Phoenix’s business manager’s high-rise office, in keeping with his promise to Father Frank, he was doing his best to keep from being noticed. Which was proving to be more difficult than he’d anticipated.

  He supposed he couldn’t really blame Phoenix for not wanting to confront the delegation of citizens in the intimate confines of her business manager’s office. Instead, she’d chosen to hold the meeting in one of the building’s conference rooms. Designed for corporate business meetings, its furnishings consisted of a huge expanse of polished tabletop surrounded by sumptuous leather-upholstered chairs. At the head of the table, a polished wooden lectern flanked by potted dracaena plants loomed before a screen worthy of a small multiplex. It was a room designed to intimidate corporate vice presidents; it would have taken much less to awe the small group of people that stood shifting their feet on the plush burgundy carpeting.

  Having been shown into the room by an aloof secretary and left to their own devices, the delegates-Father Frank and Ruthie Mendoza, Mrs. Schmidt, Kenny Baumgartner from EMS and six residents from The Gardens, eleven in all including Ethan-rather tentatively selected seats around the huge table. No one spoke; the only sounds were some rustlings and scrapings, nervous throat-clearing, a subaudible hum of tension.

  A door, cleverly hidden in the design of the paneling to the left of the movie screen, swished silently open. There was a collective intake of breath, followed by a disappointed exhalation as a tall but slightly built, rather stoop-shouldered man came into the room. He moved without hurry, pausing just short of the lectern to make eye contact with those seated around the table and to introduce himself as Phoenix’s business manager, Patrick Kaufman.

  “We come to see Phoenix,” one of the tenants, a balding, heavyset black man in his early sixties said in a loud, belligerent voice, which prompted several of the other delegates to nod and mutter in agreement, much like an evangelical congregation murmuring “Amen.”

  The business manager held up a long, pale hand. “She’ll be along very shortly. As I’m sure you’re aware, she is currently in the midst of preparations for a new world tour. She has rearranged her schedule in order to meet with you today, so I hope you will be patient-” He broke off as Father Frank rose to his feet on a wave of more rustlings and angry murmurs.

  “Yes, and as I’m sure you’re aware, a woman has died.” The priest spoke quietly, but even his customary poise was betrayed by a slight tremor of nervousness. “And many of these people have taken time off from work in order to come here today-time they can ill-afford. I would hope-”

  “Hi-I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.” The husky voice, instantly recognized and unmistakable, spoke from the back of the room. And every head in the room snapped toward the sound as if pulled by the same invisible thread.

  Later, when he’d had a chance to think about it, Ethan was able to convince himself that she probably hadn’t meant to make such a dramatic entrance. It was just that, with Phoenix, there couldn’t be any other kind. The woman had only to step onto a stage, or walk into a room, he thought, and you could hear the thud of bass guitars and the zap-zap of laser lights, taste the tension, smell the excitement. It seemed as if she carried the spotlight with her wherever she went, like some kind of personal energy field. And yet…and yet… For the life of him, he could not put his finger on the reason why.

  It couldn’t have had anything to do with the way she was dressed. In jeans-fashionably low-slung on hips as slender and lithe as a girl’s-and a pale blue knit top with a square-cut neckline that clung to her supple body like a stocking and stopped just where the waistband of the jeans began, she could have passed for one of the delegates seated around the conference table-or one of their children. But for the mirrored sunglasses, of course. And the hair-that famous hair, now the irridescent blue-black of a crow’s wing-that fell from a haphazard center part, rippled down her back and slapped gently against her buttocks when she walked.

  “Traffic was murder,” the world famous rock star said as she crossed the room with the same long-legged stride that would carry her the width of a concert stage in a few pounding beats. Her voice was breathless, her smile wry, inviting those seated around the table to commiserate. “They’ve got Fremont all torn up-what are they doing, fixing potholes? Anyway, I got lost in all those one-way streets they’ve got downtown now. Whose idea were those?” Having reached the head of the table, she whirled and addressed those seated around it as if she truly wanted to know.

  The delegates shifted uncomfortably, awestruck but unwilling just yet to relinquish the angry baggage they’d come with. Father Frank, apparently only just remembering that he was still on his feet, slowly lowered himself into his chair. Someone-Kenny, maybe-cleared his throat too loudly. Ethan wasn’t surprised to find that his own heart was beating hard and fast. He could hear its echo, like distant drumbeats, inside his own head.

  Phoenix stepped behind the lectern and slowly took off her sunglasses. Then, for long, unmeasurable moments she said nothing, while her unshielded eyes-those remarkable, trademark eyes, electric, heart-stopping blue and fringed with sooty-black-traveled around the table, touching each person there in turn.

  With his own confrontation with those famous eyes fast approaching and his frequent and futile wish for invisibility strong within him, Ethan was surprised to find himself smiling. Laughing, actually-silently, with a schoolboy’s dry mouth and sweaty palms, deafened by his own heartbeat-laughing with pure chagrin at his own childish vulnerability.

  And it happened to be just that moment that the eyes touched his. They slid past the laughter and moved on… Then jerked back suddenly, flared with something he couldn’t fathom, and abruptly lost all expression, as if a curtain had fallen behind them. But in the instant before they moved on, for good this time, Ethan felt a strange jolt of recognition. They reminded him of someone, those eyes. Someone or something he’d seen just recently.

  It was a few moments more before it came to him exactly where. With the shutters down, devoid of all life and expression, Phoenix’s eyes-the almond shape, the exotic tilt, not the color-reminded him of Louise Parker’s eyes.

  The realization made his thro
at tighten and his body go chill with the cold wash of memory. And he no longer felt the slightest urge to laugh.

  Her eyeball-to-eyeball circuit complete, Phoenix spoke softly, in her trademark rusty croak. “First, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to meet me here.” Her smile was quick-not too much, for this was a somber occasion. “I thought we’d all be more comfortable here, on such a hot day.”

  Ethan winced as a low mutter rose from those seated around the table. Could the woman not know how it was, exactly, that Louise Parker had come to die?

  “Got no AC in The Gardens,” someone growled.

  “Maybe if we did, Louise Parker still be alive.” That was echoed by a rumbling chorus of Amens.

  Phoenix waited, her face impassive, until the last grumble had died. It occurred to Ethan then-irrelevently, he thought-that she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. Or it was so skillfully applied that it appeared as if she wasn’t. The eyes, of course, needed no enhancement, but the matte texture and soft color of her lips could only have been natural, with a slight sheen on the lower one as if she’d recently wet it with her tongue. Her skin showed telltale flaws-a hint of a flush, faint traces of freckles across her cheekbones, thumbprint smudges beneath her eyes. Something about the smudges touched Ethan, before it occurred to him to wonder if she might have deliberately gone without makeup-or even enhanced those shadows-for just that very purpose.

  “I want you to know how deeply we regret this terrible accident.” She spoke stiffly now, without her customary charisma, as though she were reading from a prepared statement. “Of course we intend-”

  “Accident? Wasn’t no accident killed Louise-it was negligence, pure and simple!”

  “Negligent homicide.”

  “Murder, that’s what it was!”

  “Yeah, out-and-out murder.”

  At that outburst, Kenny Baumgartner came alert in his chair and placed a protective arm across the back of Ruthie’s. Mrs. Schmidt shifted and made distressed noises, while Father Frank leaped to his feet, arms upraised to quiet the angry delegates.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please-this isn’t what we came here for. We came here to talk-and listen. Let’s listen to what she has to say.”

  Patrick Kaufman, who had moved to his client’s side at the first angry shout, was now urgently whispering in her ear. Phoenix listened, nodded almost imperceptibly, then faced the room once more. This time her eyes stabbed at the seated delegates, cold blue slashes from out of a face so set and pale it seemed frozen.

  “Until yesterday,” she said in a tight, harsh voice completely unlike her famous tiger’s purr, “I had no idea I even owned these buildings, much less what condition they were in. Now that the…situation has been brought to my attention, obviously I’m going to see to it that any existing problems are taken care of. If you people will submit a list of needed repairs, Mr. Kaufman will-”

  “What’s wrong in The Gardens ain’t no paint and plaster gonna fix,” said the older man who’d first spoken. Once again his neighbors muttered and nodded, apparently approving of the job he was doing as their spokesman. Until he added, “Those buildings shoulda been condemned a long time ago.”

  Now the murmurs of approval broke off in a collective double take, followed by a few uncertain little cries of protest. Father Frank and Mrs. Schmidt both turned toward the speaker in alarm. Directly across the table from the outspoken man, a black woman with caramel-colored hair sculpted into a tower of braids and curls half rose and leaned toward him on her hands. “What you talkin’ about, condemned? Then where am I gonna go, huh? You tell me that, Jerome Wilkins! Ain’t nothin’ else around here I can afford.”

  Jerome shifted his focus from the head of the table to this new protagonist. “You rather stay and have the place fall down on your head? What’s wrong with you, Neva? You just got done telling me you got chunks falling outa your ceiling, came near to hitting the baby’s bed. Now you’re telling me-”

  “Chunks of plaster? That ain’t nothin’. I got rats big as cats climbin’ in bed with my kids. You want to see-”

  And suddenly everyone was talking at once, shouting back and forth across the conference table, some even whacking its polished surface with open palms or fists to make their point. Father Frank was on his feet again, pleading for calm to absolutely no effect. Kenny Baumgartner had his body shifted clear around to form a barrier between Ruthie and the other delegates, as if he expected missiles to start flying at any moment. Mrs. Schmidt had her hand over her mouth and her eyes closed and was slowly shaking her head.

  So it was that, for a moment at least, no one but Ethan noticed that Phoenix had left the lectern. Only he watched her business manager dither briefly, then step out of her way…watched as she strode the length of the room, back the way she’d come, moving so quickly her passing left a breeze. By the time she reached the door, though, every eye in the room was on her, and the bickering and shouting had died into abashed silence.

  Phoenix turned, one hand on the doorknob, and spoke to the shocked assembly in a voice barely above a whisper. “I will not deal with a mob. One person…I’ll talk to one person. You-” and she pointed a finger directly at Ethan “-the quiet one-what’s your name?”

  Ethan probably couldn’t have answered if his life had depended on it. Fortunately, Father Frank stepped in and did it for him. “Uh…this is Dr. Brown,” the priest said hoarsely, so flustered he actually stammered. “He’s the doctor that-”

  “Fine,” snapped Phoenix. “Doc, I’ll meet with you. Patrick, set it up.”

  And she was gone, leaving a room filled with frustrated silence behind her.

  Leaving Ethan with an image burned into his mind like a sun-shape branded on his retinas: the image of a set, pale face and a pair of eyes that no longer reminded him even remotely of a dead woman’s…eyes so charged with emotion they left him feeling as though he’d received a jolt of electricity. He felt shocked and confused…and no longer certain the emotion he’d seen in those violent eyes was anger.

  Chapter 3

  “Why does it have to be me?” Ethan said to Father Frank in a low voice, half grumbling, half honest bewilderment. “You’re the one who should be doing this. You’re the group’s organizer and spokesman. I never said a word. What in the hell made her pick me?”

  The two of them were alone in the conference room; the other delegates of Citizens’ Alliance had long since been herded away by the relentlessly frosty secretary, and Patrick Kaufman had gone to consult with his client about arrangements for meeting with her chosen delegate. Father Frank was sitting in one of the conference chairs, leaning back with his arms folded across his belly, looking remarkably at ease and cheery, Ethan thought, for a man who’d just had a meeting of critical importance blow up in his face.

  He, on the other hand, found it impossible to sit still. At the same time restless and wary, he paced with the slow and tentative edginess of a cat exploring unfamiliar territory. When he got no immediate answer to his question Ethan threw the priest a glance and found him smiling.

  “What?” he demanded with a small uplift of shoulders and hands. For Ethan, who prided himself on his easygoing and unflappable nature, it was a gesture of extreme annoyance.

  Father Frank shook his head, in the maddeningly smug way of someone who knows the solution to a particularly vexing riddle. “To answer your first question, simply, it has to be you because you’re who Phoenix picked. She’s calling the shots right now, in case you haven’t noticed. It appears she’s called our bluff. Maybe she knows we don’t want publicity over this any more than she does-that it won’t get us what we’re after, which is action, fast. We’re lucky she’s at least willing to work with us-with you, anyway. As for why you-” He broke off, once more shaking his head, though his smile was more wry, now, than smug. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”

  Ethan did have a clue, actually, but it embarrassed him to say it. He waited, scowling, for his former college roommate to do so instead.r />
  The priest obliged with a sigh. “You’re a guy. As in, young, impressionable, and above all, the opposite gender.”

  Ethan snorted in a wholly ineffective attempt to disguise his discomfort. “You’re a guy, Kenny’s a guy, half the tenants are guys.”

  “I’m a priest, in case you’ve forgotten. And it’s pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that Kenny’s only got eyes for Ruthie. The tenants are after her blood, so that leaves you. Besides, as I said, you’re young, good-looking-”

  “Impressionable. You said impressionable.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Father Frank was silent for a moment. “I think it’s pretty safe to say Phoenix is someone who’s accustomed to having her way. She’s used to being the one in control. That’s why she walked out just now. Things had gotten out of hand-she wasn’t in control. She thinks-”

  “She thinks that with me, she will be.” Ethan pulled out the chair next to the priest’s and sank into it. After a moment he said in a soft, chagrined growl, half to himself, “I’m not sure she isn’t right. She’s Phoenix, for God’s sake.” He leaned forward earnestly; he and Frank Mendoza went back a long way, and he’d long since gotten over the impulse to apologize for his language lapses. “You think you’re the only one who had a crush on her all through high school? She was…” He lifted his hand and waved it helplessly, unable to find the words.

  “She was the classic rebel, the Bad Girl,” Father Frank said, in the gentle tone of reminiscence. “But there was something untouched-and untouchable-about her, too. Every girl wanted to be her, every guy wanted to have her, but nobody ever could. A potent recipe for an icon.”

  Ethan nodded. But he didn’t feel comfortable explaining, even to his closest friend, that with him, where Phoenix was concerned it hadn’t ever just been about sex appeal. That had been part of it, of course; he’d been a normal adolescent male. But raging hormones couldn’t have accounted for the way he felt when he listened to her music. The stirrings in his soul that even now he couldn’t give a name to. The hours he’d spent with his guitar and a Walkman portable stereo, softly playing and singing along.