The Awakening Of Dr. Brown

Whatever the import of the news they’d brought, it had to wait while Ethan finished suturing a toddler’s badly mangled lip—from falling off the steps, his mother claimed. Ethan devoutly hoped it was true.

He was on his own, since Ruthie wasn’t due in until two o’clock and Clair, the morning nurse, was accompanying a compound fracture to Memorial Hospital for emergency surgery. He did his best to comfort the hysterical child and just barely managed to shove the mother into a nearby wheelchair before she passed out in a heap beside her son’s gurney. Meanwhile, Mrs. Schmidt and Father Frank fidgeted, reminding Ethan of leashed hunting dogs eager to be off after their quarry, whining and quivering and licking their chops.

“You’re never going to believe it,” they both said at once, leaping into the lull after the still-sniffling toddler and his mother had departed. Folding his arms across his barrel chest as if to physically contain himself, the priest yielded the floor to Mrs. Schmidt with a nod.

She took over eagerly, breathless as a girl. “It wasn’t easy. Thank goodness my friend Clair knew what to look for. I don’t think we’d have found it—at least not so quickly—if it hadn’t been for her. Not to mention the computer. Aren’t they just the most amazing things, though? You just punch in—”

Anticipating a major sidetrack, Ethan interrupted. “So, did you find out who owns those buildings?”

Mrs. Schmidt opened her mouth, but Father Frank—self-control apparently exhausted—got there first. “It’s an investments firm. They own all sorts of things, real estate, mostly. That firm in turn is owned by a corporation. The name of the corporation is…Phoenix Enterprises, Inc.” And he and Mrs. Schmidt said the last together then paused, once again looking fit to burst.

Ethan waited. A long five seconds or so ticked by before he made the connection. “Phoenix…what, you don’t mean—”

Mrs. Schmidt and Father Frank both nodded happily. Ethan groped for the wheelchair recently vacated by the toddler’s mother and lowered himself into it.

In an office in a downtown high-rise—situated almost directly across the harbor from the rehearsal studio and temporary living quarters of the rock icon known as Phoenix— Doveman sat on a leather sofa and watched his girl-child pace. Like an angry panther. Some critic had said that, he remembered, talking about the way she’d pace back and forth across the stage—he’d forgotten which concert tour it was, now. Didn’t matter. That critic had been right on. A panther was what she looked like, and right now, angry was what she was.

“How did this happen?” she asked as she about-faced, in a voice like a panther’s snarl. “Explain that to me, Patrick. I want to know how I became the owner of a tenement. A tenement in which somebody died.”

Doveman had often thought Patrick Kaufman resembled a great big rabbit with that overbite and those pale buggy eyes, especially like he was now, sitting upright and alert with his skinny forearms braced on his desktop. Which Doveman knew was a misleading impression; no man as meek and mild as Kaufman appeared to be could have survived twenty or so years as Phoenix’s business manager.

“It was a sound investment,” Patrick said, in the pleasantly deep voice that always seemed a surprise coming out of that Don Knotts body. “Those old row house neighborhoods are right in line with this whole wave of renovation that began back in the eighties with the yuppie invasion—block by block, they’re taking over the city. It’s only a matter of time—”

“A matter of time?” Phoenix’s soft, whiskey voice cracked on the last word, like the crunch of broken glass. Only Doveman heard the pain in it. “There’re people living in those buildings. What did you think they were going to do while you’re waiting around for the yuppies?” She paused, one hand going briefly to her forehead, then suddenly whirled and slapped both hands down on the business manager’s desktop. Knowing what was coming, Doveman winced and closed one eye. “You know what, Patrick?” she snapped, leaning across it, her face barely inches from Kaufman’s. “You’re fired.”

Kaufman merely sighed and shook his head; Phoenix was notorious for firing people. Over the past twenty years, Doveman figured the business manager had probably been fired six or seven times, at least. This time, though, he wasn’t all that sure she didn’t mean it.

“You never told me not to invest in apartment buildings—”

“Tenements, Patrick—tenements. I…am…a slumlord.”

She pushed herself away from the desk and in turning, caught Doveman’s eye. Just for an instant, but that flash of blue cut into his heart like a steely knife. Easy, baby-girl, his old whiskey-burned eyes said back to her, singing the song he’d sung to her for so many years. Doveman knows how you’re hurtin’. Doveman understands.

But she pivoted away from his eyes, body still tense, not ready to hear him yet. “Well. So now somebody’s died.” Her voice was hard, harsh, trying so hard not to show any emotion at all. “What now? Am I being sued?”

Kaufman shook his head. “No, not yet, anyway. This citizens group—apparently they just want you to meet with them, talk about what needs to be done. They said—”

“So do it.” Phoenix waved a regal hand in Patrick’s direction, apparently forgetting already that he was by her own decree no longer hers to command. “Meet with whoever you need to meet with. Find out what they want and give it to them. And no publicity, do you understand? Whatever it takes— What?” Kaufman was slowly but firmly shaking his head.

“I said you. It’s you they want to meet with. They made that very clear. They want you to meet them at the building where—” Now Phoenix’s head was going back and forth like a mechanical doll’s.

“No. No way José. Not even if Hell freezes over.”

“Then there will be publicity,” Kaufman said flatly. “That they’ve promised, and I think you’d be wise to believe them. The media has already been all over this. Be thankful it’s not an election year, or it would probably be worse. As it is, it’s a five-minute wonder—Young Ghetto Mom Seeks Relief From Heatwave, Dies in Balcony Collapse; Slumlord Sought. Film At Eleven! Tomorrow it’ll be old news.” He paused, rocking slightly in his swivel chair. “Unless, of course, somebody gets hold of the juicy little factoid that the slumlord in question is none other than the rock icon known as Phoenix. Who, by the way, currently happens to be in town preparing to launch a career comeback with a new album and world tour….”

“Tell them here,” Phoenix whispered, after a tense and prolonged silence. Perhaps only Doveman could see that she was trembling. “I’ll meet with them here, in this office—that’s it, or nothing. Let them go to the media if they want. Then they can sue me. And see how long it takes before they get one dime out of me!”

With her panther’s stride she crossed the office and was out the door. While Kaufman let go a hiss of breath, Doveman gave a shrug, picked up his stained and crumpled fedora and followed.

In the elevator, Phoenix leaned like an exhausted marathoner against the back wall. She heard Doveman step on just before the door closed, but he didn’t speak and neither did she. Behind her usual pair of mirrored sunglasses, her eyes were shut tight. There was a brassy taste in her mouth, and a sickening lurch in her stomach that had nothing to do with the elevator’s controlled plunge.

Tenements. Dear God, she owned tenements. She— Joanna Dunn—was a slumlord.

Somewhere God—no, not God. Somewhere the Devil must be laughing.

Momma, we’re cold. Can me and Jonathan and Chrissy get in bed with you?

That was what she remembered most—the cold. But it wasn’t cold that had killed this woman…this Louise Parker. It was the heat. All she’d wanted was a little breath of air.

“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 throat 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?”