Spit, splot, splat.

“It was Claire who finally located for me the address. A rather simple operation in the end. Only had to break a few minor laws. But it wasn’t the address I found most interesting in the whole affair. It was Rex.

“We seem to be a little jumpy today. Why is that? You know, you’re going to have to come in more frequently, Victor, if we are to avoid such problems in the future. Considering the state of your teeth and gums, you should come in every three months. As we always say at the A.D.A. convention, the two things you can never have too much of are anal sex and dental care.

“Okay, I think we’re finished with the bottoms. Open wide, and we’ll attack your uppers. What kind of toothbrush do you use? Maybe you need something new. It helps if you don’t use the same brush two years running.”

Pick, scrape, jab, scrape, pick pick pick.

“I’m always on the lookout for new talent, a pure soul with the heart, the muscle, the determination to make a difference in the world. I could point you to a woman in Baltimore, to a couple in Albuquerque, to a man in Mexico City who can move mountains. All of us, all we want to do is to help. And I think Rex might be another. He is very much a raw talent, he so lacks confidence in anything except his size, but his heart is pure, and he’s much sharper than he lets on. I think he’ll be a fine recruit, if I only have the time to properly work with him. But in this business one never knows when the time will run out.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I maybe dug a little too deep. From your reaction it looks like I hit a nerve. Hold on a second, and let me get some suction in there.”

Awhoosh-ashiga-awhoosh-ashiga-ashiga-ashiga-awhoosh.

“My, you are quite the bleeder, aren’t you?” said Dr. Bob as he went back to picking and scraping. “I once considered recruiting you, too, Victor. Your wisecracking, hard-bitten cover is so obviously a false front. I hoped inside wasn’t simply the usual dark recess of selfish indifference. But no, I’ve discovered something remarkable in you, something I had hoped to work with. Look at the way you are helping that boy, Daniel, and your crusade on behalf of his half sister. And even your work for that horrid waste of humanity, Mr. Frog, the short-order chef. Yes, you have so much potential, and your empathy would have been your greatest strength. Yet, as so often happens, there is a flaw.

“Well, now, I think I’m finished.” He stuck a mirror in my mouth, whipped it around. “Yes, all done. That wasn’t too bad, was it?”

Shockingly, it wasn’t. Except for the minor incident when he drew blood while he was talking obliquely about the subpoena, the whole cleaning was relatively pain-free, relative to kidney surgery, maybe, but still.

“Time to polish,” he said cheerily.

As the round brush whirred across my teeth, Dr. Bob continued. “Some recruits never make the final leap. It all becomes too personal. I look at your face, and I look at Tilda’s eye, and I feel that I have failed her. She is a wonderful woman, strong and fearless, and surprisingly agile in bed, but her impulses are all wrong. It is always better to be Loki than Thor. Now, hold on, I’m almost finished. Yes. Done. A fine job, if I do say so myself. Rinse carefully and spit.”

Splish, splosh, splish, splosh – splat.

“Is that it?” I said hopefully.

“Not yet. Tilda,” he called out. The wounded Valkyrie appeared. “Mr. Carl needs his fluoride. What flavor do you take, Victor? Chocolate, piña colada, or mint?”

I eyed the huge woman standing the doorway and my nerves crashed in on themselves. “Let’s say we skip the fluoride,” I said in a girlish squeal.

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Bob. “Piña colada, why don’t we say? That would go so well with those Sea Breezes you favor. Take over for me, Tilda, won’t you? I’ll be back in a flash.”

He disappeared, leaving me at the mercy of his hygienist. I looked up at the fearsome, swollen face. “Open wide, ja,” she said as she reached for my mouth. “And no crying this time, bucko.”

I was still shaking from the ordeal of the fluoride when Dr. Bob stepped back into the room. His mask was on, his little blue cap, his hands were held out from his body like a surgeon, fingers up, palms toward his chest, rubber gloves already in place.

“I think that’s it, Victor,” he said. “We’re done here. I have another patient waiting, so I can’t dally and chat.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Deirdre will let you know when the new bridge comes in so we can snap it on. That won’t take but a moment. Then you and I, we’ll be finished. I now have to request that you take back your silly subpoena. It is difficult for me to ask this of you, believe me, but I have no choice. And we did have a deal.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No,” he said with a flat sincerity. “She was a patient, just like you. I only wanted to help her.”

“Either way, you need to testify.”

“So you won’t withdraw the subpoena?”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but it is as I supposed.”

“You said there was a flaw in me. What did you mean?”

“We’re seeing it play out right now, aren’t we? A certain stubborn belief in the status quo and the rote laws of men. A certain feigned helplessness in the face of a mutable world. You say there is nothing you can do? I say there is nothing you can’t achieve, as long as you are willing to pay the price. I suppose I’ll see you at least once more to install the bridge, and we’ll talk all about it then.”

As he turned to leave, I said, “What about the address?”

“Check your shirt pocket.”

I did, and there it was, written neatly on a small scrap of paper.

“Why do you do that?” I said.

“Some tricks never grow old,” he said before he disappeared, and maybe he was right.

72

I didn’t stop at the office, I didn’t stop at Tommy’s High Ball to pick up Horace, I didn’t stop at Social Services to get ahold of Isabel, I didn’t stop anywhere. I left Dr. Bob’s office and jumped in my car, checked the map, and then drove straight west, out to the address Dr. Bob had left in my shirt pocket.

And I drove fast.

I had no real idea of what I’d find when I got there, other than a girl who had been deserted by her mother and failed by everyone she had ever come in contact with, but I expected the worst. Philadelphia might be the City of Brotherly Love, but it’s also the city of Erica Pratt, who was brutally kidnapped and who escaped her captors by chewing through the duct tape binding her body, the city of Gary Heidnik, who kept a torture and sex-slave chamber in the basement of his Philly home and who fed his victims the flesh of those he had murdered.

Was my imagination running amok? You bet, and when it came to a child within the ambit of my responsibility, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The street turned out to be just a stone’s throw from Cobbs Creek, Philadelphia’s best municipal golf course, in a section of the city called Overbrook Hills. I drove past a WATCH CHILDREN sign, turned right, passed by the address and spied nothing unusual. I drove through the alley behind the house, past the front again, and then parked halfway down the block and across the street so I could keep my eye on the front door.

Once again I was surveilling. You’d think I would have learned.

It was a neighborhood of row houses, great lengths of identical brick homes lining either side of streets laid out in a rectangular grid. These houses were newer and smaller than the usual Philly row house, without the grand architectural details or great stone porches found in the older sections of West and North Philadelphia, just flat brick fronts, with the occasional pediment above aluminum screen doors. The lawns were narrow and scruffy, about half were fenced in.