Phantom of Riverside Park (17 page)

She wasn’t about to start now. The reason she
was standing in David’s doorway like a honeysuckle vine taking root
was simple: he’d set her heart on fire.

It wasn’t the kind of flame that burned for
her son nor for Papa. It wasn’t the kind that made her wake up at
night in a sweat over whether she could manage one more day, one
more hour, one more minute to carry the terrible burden of poverty
and fear. It wasn’t that kind of flame at all, but rather a
respectable-sized spark of curiosity that made her want to know
more about the man.

She didn’t want to know the things the news
media revealed. She wanted to know the small intimate details of
his life--what he had for breakfast, whether he was a grapefruit
man or a bacon-eggs-and-biscuit man, what kind of music he liked
and whether he was the sort of man who would drape a strong arm
over the back of the sofa and invite a woman to rest her weary
head.

Was he that kind of man?

The moon laid a bright path across the floor,
and at the end sat David Lassiter.

“I think you are the kindest man I’ve ever
known,” she said, and then she left quickly while the words were
still floating about in the room like angels of mercy.

o0o

Shaken to the bone, David stared at the door
until his vision began to blur.

“I must be tired,” he said, but when he raked
his hands across his eyes he knew that the cause of his blurred
vision was not fatigue but tears, tears so hot they scalded his
face and burned his soul.

“I feel like some kind of queen,” Quincy
said, and to tell the truth, Thomas was feeling high and mighty
himself. Imagine, him arriving at the hospital in a limousine,
high-stepping out of that long black car like he was Somebody with
a capital
S.

It made Nicky feel good, too. Instead of
being concerned about his surgery, the child was jumping up and
down in excitement. Elizabeth, though, was pale and subdued, a
mother worried about her child.

“Everything’s going to be all right.” Thomas
hoped he was telling the truth.

Edwards held open the door for the ladies,
and Quincy wiggled her bottom around on the seat. “Just look at me.
I look like somebody ought to be cleaning my house instead of vicey
versy.”

That made Elizabeth laugh, which was probably
Quincy’s plan all along. She didn’t want people to know how smart
she was, but in Thomas’s book she could outdo just about anybody
when she wanted to.

Edwards had even set Nicky behind the wheel
and let him toot the horn before they pulled out of the driveway
and headed north to pick up Fred. Everybody was climbing on board
to support that child, and Thomas had never seen anybody as happy
as Nicky.

“I must be somethin’ really special, huh?” he
said when they stopped for Fred.

“Yes, Nicky,” Elizabeth said. “You’re very,
very special.”

“And ‘cause I’m special I get to ride in a
lemon zing, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“And who sent it to me? Who, Mommy?”

Elizabeth had told him the story every night
for the past two weeks, but he never tired of hearing it.

“A very kind man who must be one of your
guardian angels, Nicky.”

“‘Cause I’m a good boy?”

“Yes, because you’re a really good boy.”

And because there was, after all, a
benevolent God who’d been bending down listening to Thomas’ prayers
all those long years.

“It took you long enough, God. I thought I
was going to be dead before You ever got around to this,” he’d said
last night after he crawled in bed. Not because he was ungrateful,
but because he was scared and had to tell somebody. He couldn’t
tell Elizabeth. He wanted to be a tower of strength for her.

What scared him was the possibility that
they’d all arrive at the hospital and somebody would pop out from
behind door number three the way they did on television and yell,
“Surprise. There’s nothing here. The joke’s on you.”

Instead, a regular greeting committee was
waiting for them, nurses and orderlies and no telling what all,
treating them like VIPs.

That’s the way it had been ever since
Elizabeth had gone to see David Lassiter that second time. Doors
opened up, doctors appeared, fancy, ones, too, and now this--this
suite at the hospital, all for little Nicky.

“Edwards is at your disposal until Nicky
comes home from the hospital,” Lassiter had told Elizabeth after
he’d made all the arrangements. Called her up on the telephone
himself. That shot him up another notch in Thomas’s book. You could
bet your bottom dollar on that.

And he’d proceeded to be as good as his
word.

Why, these last two weeks everywhere his
granddaughter went she was carted off in that automobile as shiny
as patent leather shoes. Elizabeth hadn’t let on, but Thomas could
tell she was pleased. Not that she was stuck-up or even had any
desire to be, not by a long shot. She’d been happy for the sake of
Nicky.

Thomas looked over at her sitting by the
hospital bed holding a little boy who looked fragile as a
toothpick, and all of a sudden the bubble burst and he thought that
he might never see Nicky again. Something could go wrong back there
in the bowels of the hospital. It happened.

He nearly cried thinking about it. Now he
wished he hadn’t been such a smart-aleck with God.

“We’ve come to take the child.” Two men in
green wheeled the gurney into the room, and Thomas wanted to take a
stick and run both of them off. That’s how scared he was. But he
couldn’t let on. Elizabeth needed him.

He stood by her side while she kissed Nicky
and told him goodbye. “It’ll be over soon, sweetheart, and I’ll be
waiting right here for you.”

“Papa, too?” Nicky’s voice was small and
sleepy-sounding from the shot the nurse had given him.

“Papa, too. And Quincy and Uncle Fred.”

They wheeled him out, and so began the long
wait.

“Anybody want coffee?” Quincy said, and
Elizabeth shook her head no.

“Bring me some chips,” Fred said, and then
when Quincy got back he set in to eating like there was no
tomorrow. Silly old coot. By the time he got to his fifth bag,
Thomas couldn’t stand it any longer.

“I’ve told you and told you what that’ll do
for your cholesterol,” he said.

“Maybe you ought to eat some. Maybe it would
improve your disposition.”

Fred grinned when he insulted Thomas. He’d
been grinning ever since he got into the limousine. Quincy, too.
And my, how she’d preened.

She wasn’t preening now, though. She was as
nervous as Elizabeth, both of them jumping every time somebody came
into the waiting room.

Suddenly Elizabeth grabbed his hand, and
Thomas saw the doctor coming toward them like Judgment Day, his
face as blank as a piece of paper. Thomas wanted to get up and slap
him. Where did they train these doctors, anyhow? How come they
couldn’t smile? Didn’t they know a little smile made a body feel
better whether the news was good or not?

Besides that, Thomas had boots older than
this doctor. Where did they get them, anyhow? Kindergarten? The
next time they had to go through something like this, Thomas was
going to take charge. He’d find a doctor with a few years on his
face and some experience under his belt instead of leaving it all
to strangers, and after all, wasn’t David Lassiter a stranger to
them?

What did they know about him, really, except
that he was richer than Midas and had so many cars he could afford
to do without his limousine for two weeks?

“Everything went fine,” the doctor said.
Actually he was a plastic surgeon named Jared Hall, the best in the
South according to Elizabeth. “Nicky’s as good as new.”

Thomas revised his opinion on the spot. These
young whippersnappers had some of the best training in the world.
They sure knew their business because there was no way you could
argue with success unless you were a fool of the first degree.
Thomas Jennings might be many things, but he was nobody’s fool.

“When can I see Nicky?” Elizabeth said.

“He’ll be in recovery another thirty minutes,
then we’ll bring him to the room.”

“And it’s all over? There’s nothing else that
needs to be done?”

Elizabeth had been anxious about so many
things for so many years, she didn’t know how to react when she
heard good news for a change. Thomas wished he could have spared
her all that anxiety.

His failure sat on his heart like a
stone.

If he could have kept the farm things might
have been different. If he weren’t so old, things would certainly
have been different.

He hates old age. He’d made up his mind a
long time ago that he wasn’t going into it gracefully. He was being
dragged into old age kicking and screaming all the way.

“It’s all over,” the doctor told them, and
Thomas sent a hallelujah winging upward.

“Will there be scars?” Elizabeth wanted to
know.

“As young as he is, you won’t even notice in
a few weeks.”

That’s when Elizabeth cried. She’d always
been like that, holding up through the worst times he’d ever seen,
bending like a willow against the winds of adversity. It was after
everything was done that she broke apart.

Thomas wrapped his arms around his
granddaughter, grateful that at least he could still do that much,
lend a shoulder to cry on.

Across the room Quincy was unabashedly wiping
tears, and even Fred was looking a little teary-eyed.

“I can’t believe it, Papa. It’s all over.
Finally, it’s all over.”

o0o

David had gotten the report on Nicky before
Elizabeth, and that should have been the end of it. That should
have been the end of a connection that grew stronger every time he
saw her.

George could handle the rest of the details.
Or even McKenzie.

Elizabeth would be looking for a legal
document, something that would set forth the terms of repayment.
David got George on the intercom.

“Could you come in here a minute, George?
There’s a money matter I need to discuss with you.”

Less than five minutes later, George was
sitting in the chair where Elizabeth had sat, and David was asking
about Sondra and the children, not out of politeness but because he
had a genuine fondness for all of them. He’d never seen them except
in photographs, but he knew their names, their ages, the names of
their teachers and their pets and which sports they played.

George’s children all tended to be athletic
like Sondra’s side of the family and not the least bit inclined to
follow their father’s footsteps into the comparatively drab world
of number crunching.

“The money we’re spending on Nicky Jennings’
care will not show on the books as charity.”

“It won’t?” For the first time since David
had known him, George showed shock at what his boss demanded.
“Excuse me. I meant, how do you want it to show?”

“It’s a loan which I will repay from my
personal account. All except one hundred dollars.” George made
rapid notations as David talked. “Elizabeth Jennings will repay the
hundred at the rate of ten dollars a year over the next ten
years.”

Now shock-proof, George didn’t even look up
from his notebook when he heard the bizarre terms of this
unorthodox loan.

“Get with Glen first thing in the morning and
have him prepare the necessary papers.” Glen Stanford, David’s
in-house lawyer and the only living remnant of the nightmare he’d
brought with him. Glen had been known as Moose in Iraq.

“How will I handle it from there? Do you want
me to deliver them, or Glen?”

I think you’re the kindest man I’ve ever
known
, Elizabeth had said.

She would probably throw the papers in
George’s face. Glen’s too, even if he did have a body that looked
like a bulldozer and face that looked as if it had been left out in
the rain too long.

“I’ll handle it,” David said.

So it’s not the end,
he thought, and
then he astonished himself by wishing it would never come to an
end. He wanted Elizabeth Jennings to need him again and again. He
wanted her to come to him and sit in the ambient light on the other
side of the room so he could see how she looked in a pink dress. He
wanted to see her slender white hands move in her lap as graceful
as butterflies. He wanted to hear her name him kind,
needed
to hear her say the words that were balm to his
soul.

It wasn’t a need born of intellect but rather
a visceral need that later propelled David from his office and
through the night-black streets toward the hospital where a child
lay sleeping in a suite so private that even a man with a face like
his could walk unnoticed down the hallways.

The child slept curled on his side with both
hands clutching a tattered teddy bear. He had the innocent dewy
face of the very young, and pale fine hair that had matted while he
slept and now stood up around his head like the tufts on a baby
bird.

David had never meant to enter the room. He’d
intended to see for himself that the child was all right, then slip
back into the night, his mission over, his connection to the
Jennings severed.

But seeing the boy changed all that. How
could any man look at Nicky and walk away?

David eased quietly into the room. He would
keep watch a while, then leave, and nobody would ever know he’d
been there.

Nicky made a sound in his sleep, then flung
his covers off. Little stick-like arms and legs peeked from his Big
Bird pajamas. He was the most vulnerable looking creature David had
ever seen.

All of a sudden a killing rage filled him,
and he wanted to go down to Tunica, Mississippi, and beat Taylor
Belliveau into a bloody pulp. How could any man deny this child a
name, let alone deny his very existence?

“The Belliveaus don’t know about Nicky,”
Peter had reported to David when he’d called.