Hooked (2 page)

Bobbi Eames’s estate was in a pleasant neighborhood of Baltimore but hidden from the street behind a ten-foot-high brick wall. Inside, there was crystal and marble and mahogany. Even the air seemed to smell of money but it was not the surroundings that impressed Gavin, but Bobbi herself.

He knew from his conversation with Cleo that Bobbi was in her seventies but she appeared to be twenty-five years younger. She was trim and energetic, dressed in a flattering shade of dusty blue. A sapphire ring glittered on her finger.

“I’m Mrs. Eames,” she said, greeting Gavin with a firm handshake. “But you should call me Bobbi—”

He knew the name Eames well — everyone in Baltimore did. Eames was a big deal and Bobbi Ames was on the hospital’s board.

“Then, Bobbi,” Gavin replied with a smile. “I’m Gavin—”

“Yes, Dr. Gavin Jenkins,” said Bobbi, offering him a glass of sherry. “Cleo and I owe you a great deal. You saved her from something no woman should have to go through—”

“Menopause?” asked Gavin.

Cleo cringed at his bluntness but not Bobbi. Not at all.

“Exactly,” she said. “These days there’s no reason for any woman to be a dried up old lady—”

Dinner was boned squab with wild rice and buttered broccoli. Conversation moved from the Suez crisis, to concerns about President Eisenhower’s health, the Baltimore Colts and talk about the renovations to Bobbi’s guest house. Finally, over dessert of strawberry mousse, Gavin could no longer contain his curiosity about Bobbi’s youthful appearance and he asked her what her secret was.

“Cell therapy,” she answered. “Have you heard of Paul Neihans?”

“The Swiss doctor?” Gavin replied. He
had
heard of Dr. Neihans. He had heard he was a genius. He had also heard he was a quack and a charlatan.

“Dr. Neihans treated the Pope a couple of years ago,” Cleo said. “Everyone says the results are amazing—”

Gavin had heard rumors about the Pope and cell therapy but nothing had been published in any of the prominent medical journals.

“Do you know what Neihans does?” Gavin asked.

“He injects cells from sheep fetuses,” said Bobbi. “He uses the biggest needle anyone’s ever seen.”

“A wide-caliber syringe,” said Gavin.

“I don’t know what it’s called,” said Bobbi, “but I hear it’s very large—”

“‘You hear?’” quoted Gavin. “Doesn’t Paul Neihans himself treat you?”

Bobbi giggled and shook her head. “Neihans is a fanatic about not smoking or drinking, and I’m not about to give up my cigarettes. Or my glass of sherry,” she said. “I see Lars Mendl. He’s younger than Neihans and much more progressive but he’s based his own work on Dr. Neihans’s discoveries—”

“Dr. Mendl injects you with live sheep cells?” Gavin asked. His medical training told him that a patient injected with foreign cells would suffer anaphylactic shock and die.

“No, they’re not live,” said Bobbi. “They’re frozen. Dr. Mendl has a process by which he freezes the cells and examines them to make sure the animal is free of disease before injecting them.”

Gavin was riveted. Bobbi Eames was talking about a new kind of medicine and, judging from her appearance, one that worked.

“You’re sure this has been done successfully?” Gavin asked.

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Bobbi replied with a laugh. “Everyone goes to him. Movie stars, politicians, Somerset Maugham, Willy Cranford—”

“And you,” Gavin said, still astonished by Bobbi Eames’s youthful appearance and vitality.

“You seem interested,” said the ever-astute Bobbi who hadn’t gotten to be one of the richest women in Baltimore by being shy. “Would you like to meet Lars Mendl?”

“He’s coming here?” Gavin asked.

Bobbi shook her head. “You’re going there,” she said with the conviction of a woman who was accustomed to running things and getting her way. “You’ll go to Positano with Cleo and spend the weekend there at my villa. From there, it’s a quick drive to Lars Mendl’s clinic—”

But first a stop at the hospital and a meeting with an icily furious Everett Storrick.

“I don’t appreciate having patients walk out on me,” he told Gavin as they sat in Storrick’s office. “And I especially don’t appreciate having board members complain about me—”

“I don’t control what board members do or don’t do—”

“You never told me Cleo Talbot was Bobbi Eames’ granddaughter—”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know,” said Gavin. “If you were more cautious about your diagnoses, there’d be no problem in the first place—”

Everett Storrick turned red under his white hair and a vein throbbed in his forehead. “You’re telling me how to practice medicine?”

“I’m suggesting an area in which you might improve—”

Everett Storrick stood up and loomed over the seated Gavin. “And I’m suggesting you watch yourself,” he said in menacing tones. “I’m not going to forgive and I’m not going to forget—”

There was something about Gavin Jenkins — an almost arrogant quality — that challenged Cleo. Like her late husband, he was precise, controlled and extremely intelligent. Unlike her late husband, he had not been born with the advantages of money and worldly power. In fact, on occasion he could be abrupt and socially graceless, almost bordering on rude. She also noticed that although he spoke often of his father, he never mentioned his mother and brushed aside questions about her.

Beneath Gavin’s control, Cleo sensed a caged, almost wild, energy and it was this aspect of him — charismatic yet feral — that attracted her and repelled her.

They spent their first afternoon in Positano sitting on the terrace of Bobbi’s villa drinking Bellinis, a subtly intoxicating combination of champagne and fresh peach juice. Beyond the stone parapet of the terrace, the hill sloped down toward the water’s edge. Olive trees and herbs grew in tiered groves. The citric, powerful scent of lemons was in the air — lemons as large as oranges and almost as sweet. Below, white buildings clung to the steep cliffs, and out in the green-blue water, a gleaming white yacht moved gracefully toward Amalfi.

As they sat in the alluring Italian light, Cleo yearned for his touch on her skin. Perhaps it was the champagne, she told herself, but she wanted to feel his arms around her and savor the taste of his mouth. She feared her desire was obvious but he seemed not to notice. Later, when she gave him a tour of the grounds and the house and showed him her bedroom, he merely asked where his was.

After a leisurely dinner with neighbors — an English couple — Cleo and Gavin said good night and went to their own rooms. Cleo propped herself up in bed with an Agatha Christie and warned herself not to indulge in any hope of an affair.

She was surprised when, an hour later, he knocked, then quietly opened her door. He stood there for a moment, not saying a word, and then he walked into the room and closed the door behind him. He was fully dressed in a suit and tie. She wore only a sheer nightgown. She nodded but didn’t speak either.

He sat down next to her on the bed and slowly caressed her face and then her shoulders. At last, he reached for her nightgown. Almost without thinking, she flicked off the light and the room fell into darkness. He lifted the nightgown over her head, leaned over and turned the lamp on again. Like the first moment they’d met, he was fully dressed and she was on her back, naked, vulnerable, exposed.

He moved his right forefinger around and around on her left breast, languidly making smaller and smaller circles, until he finally came to her nipple. He touched it and, electrified, she thought she was going to cry out.

He stroked her right breast the same way, but with four fingers instead of one. She watched his hands, their fingers long and thick and strong, and was excited to see how the shade of his skin, lightly tanned from the Italian sun, and the brown hair on the back of his hand contrasted with her own pale, hairless body.

He ran his hands up and down her legs. He grazed her side, her waist, her hips, the inside of her wrists and thighs with his fingers. When he finally cupped his hands around her breasts, she sighed with pleasure, all the more intense because she had waited so long.

As he ran a finger along the very edge of her pubic hairs, she was conscious of making a soft mewling sound. Then he touched her vagina with just one finger, and then his entire palm, stroking her again and again, until her wetness slicked his hand. He was still outside, but she began moving up and down, following his rhythm.

When he inserted his middle finger, she arched, wanting him deeper, but nothing she did could make him hurry. Slowly he inserted a second finger and spread her labia until he was able to add a third. He moved his hand up and down, rubbing her clitoris with his thumb, going faster and faster. His fingers maintained a furious pace until she suddenly cried out as the almost unbearable tension passed and waves of pleasure surged through her.

He covered her mouth with his free hand to quiet her so the servants would not hear. Her body quivered for another moment and then she finally lay limp. But his fingers were insistent. They kept touching, exploring, insisting, bringing her to a new edge of sexual tension. She shook a second time, more violently than before, and still he kept on.

When he stopped, she was limp and could barely keep her eyes open. All she was aware of as he walked to the door to leave was that they had not exchanged a single word and that he was still fully dressed in his suit and tie.

The next night she did not wear her nightgown. She waited, trying to concentrate on Eric Ambler while she kept looking up toward the door, expecting to hear his knock and see that tall, lean figure cross her bedroom. He did not appear.

He did not show up that night or any of the evenings after that. It was on the last night, when she was sure that he would not come, that he appeared again.

She slipped out of the covers and lay on top of the bed and did not turn out the light this time. She could almost feel his eyes examine every curve of her body and their dark, almost black gaze caused her to feel shameless and desired and desirable and to yearn for his touch.

Fully dressed, he lay down beside her, but he kept his hands at his side. Instead, he touched her with his mouth. His lips and tongue moved along her body the way his hands had done on the first night. He licked and teased the edges of her lips, the inside of her ears, and then he circled her breasts, moving closer and closer to the nipple. He covered every inch of her, from her ankles to her anus, until he reached her pubic thatch. She could feel the day’s growth of his beard against her skin as it scratched and excited her. He buried his head between her legs, his tongue circling her vagina, moving in and out. When she felt the flicker of his tongue on her clitoris, bringing her to climax, she gasped.

When he was finished, he kissed her for the first time fully on the mouth. His lips, wet from the juices of her body, pressed on her furiously, and she felt herself getting dizzy, sinking into ecstatic oblivion. Then, still dressed and once again wordless, he let himself out of her room and disappeared, silent as a fantasy, into the night.

Gavin drove Bobbi’s red Ferrari convertible as he and Cleo made the trip from Positano to Lars Mendl’s clinic in Seengen, Switzerland. He maneuvered the dangerous mountain curves deftly and passed other automobiles on the straightaway with skill. Cleo, sitting next to him, thought he handled the car much as he handled himself, with the confident hand of a man in control of a potent inner power.

As they drove north, Cleo couldn’t imagine that any woman had ever been so oddly seduced before. His sexual technique was extraordinary but his emotional opacity left her puzzled and uneasy.

She could not take her eyes from him and wondered what his chest looked like underneath his sport shirt. Underneath his trousers, were his legs slim and elegant, or were they thick and muscular?

Then she stared at his crotch, trying to detect the outline of his penis. Smaller than usual? Was it long? Thin? She closed her eyes and tried to imagine him naked. She stared and she wondered.

After she dropped him off at the clinic, she would drive back to the villa herself and in a week he would return to Positano. She wondered what their future would be like — or if they would even have a future — as they climbed higher into the Alps toward Dr. Mendl’s clinic.

Lars Mendl was dark haired and bear-like in physique with massive shoulders, a barrel chest and a slender lower body. At fifty-three, he looked thirty-five and appeared, Gavin thought, like someone with reserves of energy to spare.

Dr. Mendl introduced himself and brought Gavin up to date on the research on cellular therapy currently being conducted in Germany, Russia and Rumania.

“Each of us comes to the work with a different approach,” Mendl said, taking Gavin around the clinic, introducing him to the other doctors on the staff and showing him the immaculately clean area where the sheep were bred and raised. “But it’s all related.”

Gavin spent the following week with Lars Mendl observing his techniques and talking medicine. In the beginning, his host had been cordial because of Bobbi Eames, but he had grown to like Gavin and was impressed by his intelligence and probing questions.

“You possess
fingerspitzengefuhl
, a sensitivity in your fingertips, an intuition for the body, for the patient, for the disease,” Mendl said. “This cannot be taught and very few will ever develop it but, now that you’ve been here almost a week, tell me how you feel about our therapy. With your fingertips—”

“I’m intrigued,” said Gavin. “I see what you do but I don’t entirely understand why you obtain such successful results—”

“What exactly disturbs you?” asked Dr. Mendl who heard both the said and the unsaid as Gavin spoke.

“There’s no data, no reproducible outcomes—”

Dr. Mendl nodded and motioned for Gavin to continue.

“You claim cell specificity, that the sheep’s liver cells will go to the human patient’s liver, but you don’t
know
that and you can’t prove it,” Gavin said. “A radioactive trace on the sheep cells would permit you to X-ray them later in the human. It would not be difficult—”