"Look, lady, I'm sorry I lost my temper. But this is really important."

"I will try to get a message to Dr. Payne. What is it?"

"I need to talk to a doctor. Could you please get one on the line?"

"I told you, sir, that's just not possible."

"Jesus Christ, will you get a G.o.dd.a.m.n doctor on the phone?"

Mrs. Dubinsky again replaced the handset in its cradle.

And two minutes later, the telephone rang again.

"Seven-C."

"You might as well get it through your G.o.dd.a.m.n head that I'm gonna speak to a G.o.dd.a.m.n doctor if I have to call every two minutes until the G.o.dd.a.m.n sun comes up!"

Mrs. Dubinsky, her facial skin now blotched with red spots, started to replace the handset in its cradle again, but at the last moment instead laid it on the plate gla.s.s on her desk.

Shaking her head, she got out of her chair, left the nurses' station, and walked down the corridor to her left, where she entered a room about halfway down. She walked to the bed, where a very small, thin, brown-skinned man in a medical smock was sleeping under a sheet.

She gently pushed his arm, and when he showed no sign of waking, pushed harder.

"Doctor?" she said.

Juan Osvaldo Martinez, M.D., opened his eyes and sat up abruptly.

"Sorry," Nurse Dubinsky said.

"There is a problem?"

"There's a nut on the phone who insists on speaking to a doctor."

Dr. Martinez's eyebrows rose in question.

"He won't give up, Doctor. He calls every two minutes."

He nodded his understanding, swung his feet off the bed, and sort of hopped to the floor.

He retraced his steps to the nurses' station and picked up the telephone.

"Dr. Martinez," he said.

There was no reply. He looked at Nurse Dubinsky and shrugged helplessly.

"No one on the line."

"Hang up. He'll call back," Nurse Dubinsky said with certainty.

Dr. Martinez hung up the phone. The two of them stared at it for two long minutes. It did not ring.

"Well," Dr. Martinez said, and shrugged again.

That figures, Nurse Dubinsky thought, after Nurse Dubinsky thought, after I wake this poor young man up, I wake this poor young man up, then then this b.a.s.t.a.r.d decides to h.e.l.l with it, he'll wait 'til morning. this b.a.s.t.a.r.d decides to h.e.l.l with it, he'll wait 'til morning.

"I'm sorry, Doctor."

"It is not a problem," Dr. Martinez said, and started back down the corridor.

He had taken a half-dozen steps when the telephone rang.

He picked it up.

"Seven-C, Dr. Martinez."

"You're a hard man to get on the G.o.dd.a.m.n phone, Doctor."

"How may I help you?"

"I have a message for Dr. Amelia A. Payne."

"She's not here," Dr. Martinez said.

"The nurse told me that. That's why I wanted to talk to you."

"What is the message?"

"You got a pencil and paper?"

"Yes," Dr. Martinez said, although in fact he did not.

"Okay. Now, get this right. You ready?"

"Ready."

"To Dr. Amelia A. Payne. Your patient, Miss Cynthia Longwood . . . Am I going too fast for you?"

"No. Go ahead," Dr. Martinez said.

He had looked in on 723 just before going to an empty room to try to catch a little sleep. She had been awake. Privately, Dr. Martinez disagreed with her attending physician, Dr. Payne. If the Longwood girl had been his patient, he would have prescribed at least a mild sedative to help her through the night. She had recurring, and very disturbing, dreams, the consequence of which was that she slept very badly, did not get enough sleep, and thus dozed through the day.

If she had been his patient, he believed it would be best to have her rested when he spoke with her, trying to get to the root of her problem. But she was Dr. A. A. Payne's patient, not his. And he was a resident, and Dr. Payne was not only an adjunct professor of psychiatry, but held in the highest possible regard by the chief of Psychiatric Services, Aaron Stein, M.D., former president of the American Psychiatric a.s.sociation.

Despite that, and his own genuine respect for her, Dr. Martinez felt that Dr. Payne was wrong when she told him that in cases like this the best sedation was the least sedation, and it was her call.

"Okay," the caller said. "She was stripped naked and orally raped by a policeman under circ.u.mstances that were themselves traumatic. You got that?"

"No. You were going too fast for me," Dr. Martinez said as he gestured to Nurse Dubinsky that he wanted to write something.

She pushed an aluminum clipboard to him, and when she saw that he was having trouble finding his own pen or pencil, handed him her own ballpoint.

"Miss Cynthia Longwood was stripped naked and orally raped," the caller began, very slowly, making it clear to Dr. Martinez that he was reciting-probably reading-what he was saying, "by a policeman under circ.u.mstances that were themselves traumatic. You got it all now, Doc?"

And what he had recited-probably read-didn't sound as if it had been written by the man on the telephone.

"I've got it now, thank you," Dr. Martinez said.

"Read it back to me."

"Miss Cynthia Longwood was stripped naked and orally raped by a policeman under circ.u.mstances that were themselves traumatic," Dr. Martinez recited.

Nurse Dubinsky's eyebrows rose, and she shook her head.

"That's it. You make sure Dr. Payne gets that."

"Of course. Just as soon as she comes in. And who should I say called?"

The caller laughed. "Nice try! f.u.c.k you, Doc."

There was a click and the line went dead.

Dr. Martinez and Nurse Dubinsky looked at each other.

"Interesting," Dr. Martinez thought aloud.

"You believe that?"

"I don't believe the man who called wrote the message," Dr. Martinez said. "I think he was reading it."

"Yeah," Nurse Dubinsky agreed. "He didn't sound as if he would say things like 'orally raped' or 'traumatic circ.u.mstances.' "

Dr. Martinez looked at his watch and wrote down the time.

"If I happen to be asleep-"

"You mean, 'are not at the moment available,' " Nurse Dubinsky interrupted him.

"Thank you, but no thank you," Dr. Martinez said. "What is it you say up here about 'calling a shovel'?"

"A spade a spade," she corrected him. "It's from playing cards."

"If Dr. Payne should come here in the morning, and I am sleeping, please wake me. I want to talk to her about this. I think we both should be available to her."

"Of course," Nurse Dubinsky said.

"This is very interesting," Dr. Martinez said. "I wonder who that man was? Not the policeman, certainly."

"That poor girl," Nurse Dubinsky said.

When Matt woke up, the first thing he saw was Susan's bra.s.siere, which he had placed with the other contents of his trousers and jacket pockets on the bedside table.

He sat up in bed and reached for it, feeling more than a little chagrined. Taking it did not seem nearly so much a fine idea in the light of day as it had the night before.

"Jesus," he said aloud.

He examined the torn b.u.t.tonhole on the strap.

Was I "mad with pa.s.sion"? Or did that just happen, because we were like two squirming snakes on the seat of the Porsche?

He raised it to his nose and sniffed it. There was a very faint odor of Susan-or her perfume? Same thing?-on it.

Do I really love her? Or do I have a fatal case of p.e.n.i.s erectus?

How could I possibly love her? Christ, I hardly know her. And what we've done most of the time is either fight or lie to each other.

But if I don't love her, where did this Susie-and-me-against-the-whole-G.o.dd.a.m.ned-world feeling come from?

And does she love me? Or is this because she knows I'm onto her and f.u.c.king the cop, under the circ.u.mstances, seems a more logical thing to do than docilely putting out your wrists to have them cuffed?

And where is Susie now? Waking up and getting ready to go to work, to wait for my call, or already on an airplane headed for San Jose, Costa Rica, having stopped only long enough to call Chenowith from a pay phone in the airport to tell him the cops are onto him for his bank jobs?

Could she have been faking what happened to us in the car? Or in bed?

Why not? I got my s.e.x education from two sources. Dad telling me about how not to knock up some decent girl, and Amy telling me the important stuff, including that because the female is smaller and weaker than the male, nature has equipped them with superior mental mechanisms to even things up. They lie much better than men, according to Amy. And, Amy said, they are entirely capable of allowing themselves to get knocked up if that's the only way they see to get the male of their choice to the altar. And to do that, they are entirely capable of pretending a far greater physical fascination with, s.e.xual reaction to, the male than is actually the case. They can and do fake o.r.g.a.s.ms.

Was that what Susie was up to? Convincing me that I was the greatest thing since Casanova in the sack because that made more sense than getting herself hauled off?

It is entirely possible, Matthew the Innocent, that you have been played like a violin by a really tough female who had trouble not laughing out loud at your naivete.

Particularly when I wanted to keep her bra.s.siere. Jesus!

Am I that f.u.c.king stupid? Face it, you are.

And how am I going to explain this to Peter Wohl? "Sorry, boss. I was thinking with my p.e.c.k.e.r. You know how it is"?

Will I be allowed to resign? Or are they going to prosecute me for being an accessory? They'll prosecute me. And they d.a.m.ned well should. I have betrayed that oath I took. What cops are supposed to do is get the bad guys, not help them walk from a multiple murder. I forgot that oath until just now.

And if all this is true, and logic tells me that it is, why don't I believe it? Why do I think that when, after carefully casing the First Harrisburg Bank & Trust Building to make sure the FBI doesn't have somebody watching the safe-deposit-box vault, and I call her office, she will be there, waiting for my call to come get the bank loot she's holding for Chenowith?

Because I am the f.u.c.king fool of fame and legend, thinking with my d.i.c.k?

Or because I think that she loves me, and I love her, and she's the best thing that's ever happened to me?

Well, Matthew Payne, if you're going to go down in flames, you're really going to go down in flames. You're going to play this little scenario out to the end, believing what you saw in Susie's eyes-not only that she didn't know Chenowith was going to blow up the science building but, more important, that she loves you back-until Special Agent Leibowitz puts the cuffs on your wrists and starts reading you your Miranda rights.