Silent Treatment by Michael Palmer Page A

daughter had been able to keep her job.
    Harry reminded himself that there were no Mabel Espinozas connected with the position of Director of Physician Relations at Hollins/McCue Pharmaceuticals.
    Mary Tobin, Harry’s office manager-cum-receptionist, oversaw the waiting room from her glass-enclosed cubicle. She was a stout black woman, a grandmother many times over, and had been with Harry since his third year of practice. She was notably outspoken regarding those subjects on which she had an opinion, and she had an opinion on most subjects.
    “How did the meeting go?” she asked as he entered her small fiefdom to check the appointment book.
    “Meeting?”
    “That bad, huh.”
    “Let’s just say that all these years you’ve been working for a baritone, and from now on you’ll be working for a tenor,” Harry said.
    Mary Tobin grinned at the image.
    “What do they know? You’ll make do, Dr. C.,” she said. “You’ve been through tough times beforehand you always find the right path.”
    “Keep telling me that. Any calls I need to deal with?”
    “Just your wife. She called a half an hour ago.”
    “Is she okay?”
    “I think so. She’d like you to call her at the office.”
    Harry headed past his three examining rooms to his office. In addition to Mary Tobin, he had a young nurse practitioner named Sara Keene who had been with him for four years, and a medical aide who must have been the twentieth he had hired from the nearby vocational tech. One of that group he had fired for stealing. The rest had leftto have babies, or more often, for better pay. Sara looked up from her desk and waved as he passed.
    “I heard about the meeting, Dr. C.,” she called out cheerily. “Don’t worry.”
    “If one more person tells me not to worry, I’m going to start worrying,” he said.
    His personal office was a large space at the very back or the once elegant apartment building. In addition to an old walnut desk and chairs, it contained a Trotter treadmill which he had used for cardiac stress tests until the Associated malpractice premiums made performing the tests prohibitively expensive. Now, he used the mill for exercise. The walls of the office, once paneled with what Evie called “Elks Club pine,” had been Sheetrocked over at her request and painted white. They held the usual array of laminated diplomas, certifications, and testimonials, plus something only a few other physicians could put on their walls—a silver star from Vietnam. There were also three original oils Evie had picked out, all contemporary, all abstract, and none that Harry would have chosen had he been left to his own tastes. But the majority of his patients seemed to like them.
    There were three pictures in frames on the desk. One was of Harry and his parents at his medical school graduation; one was of Phil, Gail, and their kids; and one was of Evie. It was a black-and-white, head-and-shoulders publicity shot, taken by one of the city’s foremost photographers. There were several dozen snapshots of her in his desk that Harry would have preferred in the frame, but Evie had insisted on the portrait. Now, as he settled in his chair, Harry cradled the frame in his hands and studied her fine, high cheekbones, her sensual mouth, and the dark intensity in her eyes. The photo was taken just before their wedding nine years ago. Evie, twenty-nine at the time, was then, and remained, the most beautiful woman he had ever known.
    He picked up the phone and dialed her number at
Manhattan Woman
magazine.
    “Evelyn DellaRosa, please,” he said, setting her likeness back in its spot. “It’s her husband.”
    Evie had been the consumer editor for the struggling monthly for five years. Harry knew it was an unpleasant comedown for her from the network television reporting job she had once held. But he admired her tenacity and her commitment to making it back into the spotlight. In fact, he knew something good was going on in her professional life. She