The Awakening of Dr. Brown

Chapter 2

The day after the tragedy in The Gardens, Ethan was in the rectory of St. Jude’s Catholic Church monitoring the progress of a hastily convened meeting of the Citizens’ Alliance for Community Action from his hiding place in the rectory kitchen. Such skulking and hiding seemed cowardly to him but was actually a compromise of sorts. Father Frank had tried his best to dissuade him from coming at all.

“Bad idea,” the priest had insisted that afternoon on the phone. “The news media’s got their teeth in this in a big way. When word gets out-and it will-that the ride-along doctor on the scene was the president’s son…”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Ethan said heavily. He’d thought about it a lot, during the course of a difficult day and worse night. “Something needs to be done. If we use my name, my dad’s influence-”

“We’ll be sitting in the middle of a three-ring circus. Ethan, my friend-my naive friend-I know you mean well, but do you have any idea what will happen down here-what will happen to these people once the various government agencies and the media get involved in this?”

Ethan’s jaw tightened. “Well, I expect my work at the clinic would be history, but at least something would be done about improving conditions in The Gardens. Those tenements-”

The priest’s snort interrupted him. “The Gardens will become a political football, everybody fighting over what to do and how to pay for it and who gets the credit, and the media will be egging them on, and while the struggle goes back and forth, what do these people who actually live down here do? After an appearance or two on national network television, they go on as before-only with less privacy. No, my friend…” a sigh gusted over the line “…and perhaps it is shortsighted and God forgive me, but I don’t much care about what new legislation gets passed, or what new ordinances, or what new development projects get proposed for sometime in the far-distant future. I care about these people, and what they need is some changes to be made now. Before somebody else dies.”

Before somebody else dies.

Safely out of view of those attending the meeting in the next room, Ethan leaned his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes. In his mind, as in a darkened movie theater, he saw again the body in the rubble, the blood, the blind dead eyes. And another pair of eyes, very much alive. Angry amber eyes. Proud, frightened eyes. He felt again the frustrated blow from a pair of small, clenched fists. He heard poignant echoes of Mrs. Schmidt’s voice: With a mother like that, he has a chance. What will become of Michael Parker, he wondered, now that his mother is dead?

Ethan knew what it was like to be a small boy left suddenly without a mother. Those memories came to him, not as images on a movie screen, but as a cold, sick feeling in his stomach, a yawning emptiness in his heart. Almost a quarter of a century later, oh, how well he remembered it-the fear, the desolation, the terrible sense of abandonment. Back then, part of him had wanted to lash out in anger; part had tried to retreat into the remembered security of babyhood. Every part of him had felt utterly bereft.

But he’d had his sister, Lauren. He didn’t know what he’d have done without Lolly, even though most of the time she’d treated him the way older sisters generally treat younger brothers. Still, she’d been there for him when it counted.

And then…there’d been the miracle. Dixie had come. Dixie, with her gifts of music and laughter and breezy Texas ways. Starved for a mother’s love, six-year-old Ethan had fallen for her immediately, long before his father had made her officially his stepmother. Long before the entire country had fallen in love with her casual, down-home charm and embraced her as its most unconventional First Lady. As his father the president was fond of saying, both in public and in private, God Bless Dixie.

Ethan had been lucky. He’d had Lolly to keep him on his toes and Dixie to love and care for him. Who would Michael Parker have?

Beside him the crack in the kitchen door cautiously widened, and he straightened hurriedly as Ruthie Mendoza slipped through and sidled past him. From the parlor, which also served the church as an informal meeting room, he could hear a rising level of noise and activity. He wondered what he’d missed while his mind had been wandering in his own distant past.

“What’s going on?” he asked Ruthie in a whisper.

“Wrapping up.” Ruthie didn’t bother to lower her voice. Nor did she look at him, but went on making unnecessary adjustments to the platters of oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies that were spread across the kitchen table. From the way she’d been pushing them on him all evening, Ethan suspected she’d made them herself. “I’m just going to take these in…”

She swept toward him with a plate of cookies in each hand and a spot of color in each cheek. All Ethan could do was pull the door open for her and shrink back behind it, well out of the line of sight of anyone in the parlor. As Ruthie sailed out the door, her brother, wearing a short-sleeved black shirt and his clerical collar, for once, sidestepped around her and into the kitchen. Ethan all but pounced on him.

“What happened? What did they decide? Are they going to the mayor? What about-”

“No city, state or federal officials-not yet,” Father Frank said with the contained satisfaction of someone who’s had things go exactly his way. He picked up a cookie and bit into it, glancing down at his rounded shirtfront as he did so; apparently Ruthie had been nagging him again about putting on weight. He shrugged and picked up another cookie. “First thing we have to do is find out who owns that building-or block of buildings. Then we decide where to go from there. Lawsuits, like government agencies, take too long. What we’re hoping is that the threat of bad publicity will be enough to squeeze these slumlords into bringing their buildings up to standard.”

“You want me-”

The priest shook his head. “Mrs. Schmidt’s volunteered to go down to city hall tomorrow morning. She’s got a friend who works in the…I forget what department, the one where they issue permits, fire and safety inspections, things like that. Anyway, she’ll-” He broke off with a muttered, “Oops” as someone bumped the door from the outside. He lunged to block unauthorized entry while Ethan once again flattened himself against the wall.

Through the partly open door he could hear the unmistakeably carrying voice of a television news reporter: “Oh-Father Mendoza-Father, I wonder if you could take just a moment to tell us-” The door closed, cutting off the rest.

After a moment, swearing softly and feeling utterly powerless, Ethan adjusted a Chicago Cubs baseball cap to hide his blond hair and let himself out of the rectory through the side door, where a Secret Service agent waited unobtrusively for him in the shadows.

Mrs. Schmidt arrived at the clinic shortly after noon the next day, four hours late and with Father Frank Mendoza close on her heels. Ethan didn’t have to ask if the trip to city hall had been successful; both looked ready to burst.

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.