"Leave the second-guessing to the shrinks. Got anything concrete? " "Yes. An odd little correlation popped out of the database. What if I told you that both Lane and Schulz had plastic surgery this summer? " Ketter shrugged. So? ' '"And what if I told you they both used the same surgeon? " "Same response. These Old Boys go to the same dentist, the same chiropractor, eat at the same restaurants, have the same personal trainer, sometimes the same mistresses. So why not use the same plastic surgeon? Who's the doc? " "Duncan Lathram." Ketter stared at him a moment. "Well now, " he drawled. "Seems I've heard that name before. And I do believe I heard it from you. Or am I wrong? " "No, you're right."
"Seems to me you had yourself a bit of a hard-on for this Doc Lathram a while back." '"We had a disagreement. That's all. ' More than a disagreement, actually.
Duncan Lathram had flat out refused to operate on Gerry's face after the car accident. It had been a very bad time for Gerry. The worst.
And Lathram's brush-off had almost put him over the edge. He still smarted from the sting of that rejection.
"You seemed pretty heated up at the time, if I remember." '"Look.
The computer spit out the correlation on its own. I didn't go looking for it. But you've got to admit it seems a little strange that a congressman and a senator both die a month or so after plastic surgery performed by the same doctor."
"One in a car accident, the other in a fall. I don't exactly see a trend here."
"Neither do I. Just mentioning it as a curiosity. ' "Fine. So basically we've got no evidence of foul play in the Schulz death. ' "None."
"Okay. Then let's fold up that tent and move on without muddying the water with plastic surgeons."
"Will do." . .
But Gerry's interest was piqued. It might be nothing, doubtless was nothing, but he'd keep an eye out for any other Lathram patients who wound up in the morgue.
Just for the sheer hell of it.
SURGERY DR. PANZELLA? " Gin sat before a computer terminal, completing a pre-op physical, summarizing her evaluation of a patient's cardiopulmonary status and suitability for surgery. At least that was what she was supposed to be doing. Actually she was staring at the screen ruminating about yesterday's disaster at Marsden's office and that officious little, Don't think about it.
She looked up. A young black woman, dressed in surgical scrubs and cap, had poked her head and upper body through the door of the record room and was looking at her expectantly.
'"He's ready to scrub, " said Joanna, the surgicenter's OR nurse.
"Be right there, " Gin said.
She hit F10 to save the H and P, jotted down the file name so she could finish it later, and headed upstairs for the operating suite. Even on a V.I.P morning, with only one very important patient, Duncan Lathram did not like to be kept waiting. She hustled.
Not that she had that far to go. Lathram Surgical Associates sounded like a multicenter medical group, but actually it was one surgeon at one location in Chevy Chase. That location was an old single-story stone building, somewhat Gothic looking, that had once been a bank.
Duncan Lathram and his brother Oliver, also a doctor, but a PhD in pharmacology, had maintained the old facade while completely gutting and refitting the interior into a state-of-the-art prlyate surgicenter.
The main floor offered a two-room operating suite, a large recovery room with six cubicles, a private V.I.P recovery room, an examination/consultation room, and Duncan's office. The records room, lounge, and Oliver's lab took up the basement.
Gin rushed into the scrub room, shucked her white coat, tucked her unruly black hair under a disposable cap, and joined Duncan at the sink.
His forearms were already coated with tan lather.
"Morning, Duncan." Since her first day here he'd insisted that since she was now a full-fledged physician, she must call him by his first name, "Call me Doctor Lathram' once more and you're fired." But she had to make a conscious effort to say Duncan. He'd been her hero since she was ten.
He grunted and nodded absently as he continued working the Betadine into his skin with the disposable brush.
Hmmm. Preoccupied this morning.
Gin watched him out of the corner of her eye as she adjusted the water temperature with the foot controls and began her own scrub. Assisting Duncan Lathram at surgery, still hard to believe it was true. Simply being alongside him like this never failed to give her a warm tingle.
She'd been working with him for months now and still marveled at how good he looked for a man of sixty-two. Neat as the proverbial pin, with dark, glossy, perfectly combed hair graying at the temples, piercing blue eyes over a generous nose set in a longish, rugged face that creased deeply when he smiled, which wasn't all that often. Six feet, maybe six-one, with a weathered Gary Cooper-Randolph Scott look, more like a saddle hand than a plastic surgeon. Long, lean, and close to the bone, a rack of baby-back ribs.
The image made her smile and took her back to her childhood when she worked in the family's Italian deli and meat market. Her dad made a practice then, still did, no doubt, of labeling certain customers with the names of cuts of meat or one of his Italian specialty dishes. Mrs. Fusco, who always had to touch everything, was a calatnan, potbellied Mr. Prizzi was a pork loin, Mrs. Bellini, who'd always leave her shopping list home and could never remember what she needed, was capozella, and once when he'd thought she was in the front of the store, Gin had heard Dad ask one of the butchers if he'd got a load of the cannolis on Mrs. Phillips.
Little Gin adopted the practice and began categorizing the kids she knew by cuts of meat. Duncan Lathram was definitely a rack of baby-backs.
But Duncan's hands didn't quite go with the rest of him, long, delicate, agile fingers that could perform miracles, do medical origami with human tissues.
She felt awkward even thinking it, but the old guy was sexy.
Listen to me, she thought. He's older than my dad.
But no getting around it, Duncan Lathram was an attractive man. Not that she felt any libidinous tugs toward him. God, no. But from a purely esthetic standpoint, he was pretty hot for an old dude.
Must be our history, she thought. We go back a long way. And I've got the scars to prove it.
The big guy was quiet today. Duncan almost always had something to talk about. A news junkie. Read all the District papers, plus the Baltimore San and the northern Virginia rags. Had them strewn all over his office every morning. Never missed MacNeil/Lehrer and Meet the Press.
And never failed to find something to tick him off.
Duncan had his Permanently-Ticks-Me-Off list and his Ticks-MeOff-Today list. Always had something to talk about.
But not today.
The silence was starting to get to Gin.
"Hear about Senator Schulz? " she said.
She thought he seemed to stiffen at the name.
"Schulz? " Duncan's voice was smooth, deeply melodic. "What about him? " "According to the TV there's rumors that his cause of death is being investigated." Duncan began to rinse the honey-colored foam from his arms and hands.
"The scuttlebutt on Schulz is that he jumped. And with reason. He was, please excuse the demotic crookeder than most, and his scams were unraveling." Duncan shook his head sadly. "Twenty stories straight down, flat on his face." He sighed. "All that exceptional plastic work, all those hours of toil, wasted."
"Duncan!"
"Well, it's true. If I'd known defenestration was in his future, I wouldn't have taken such pains with him." Gin thought she was used to his dark sense of humor, so often skating along the line between mordant and sick. But sometimes he did veer over the line.
He pressed his elbow against a chrome disk in the wall and the OR doors swung open. "Hurry up. Another of the kakistocracy's finest awaits us." Gin glanced at the clock. Another minute to go with her scrub.
She felt a warm flush as she remembered yesterday's chance encounter with Gerry Canney, and wondered if he'd call. Not the end of the world if he didn't, but it would certainly be nice. She reviewed the obscure words she'd collected to spring on Duncan today, and then her thoughts probed the enigma that was Duncan Lathram.
When they first met nineteen years ago he wasn't a plastic surgeon.
At age ten she woke up in a hospital with everything hurting.