Read Online Three To Get Deadly by Paul Levine - Free Book Online
Authors: Paul Levine
Tags: Fiction / Thrillers
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many guys fall for young hookers. Want to change them. Old male fantasy. Some guys lose their marriages over it. Not many doctors, though. Most are too scientific to get involved."
"She wasn't a hooker," he said indignantly and louder than necessary.
Now the two women were doing their best not to show that our conversation was more interesting than their own. I smiled in their direction. One recoiled as if I had exposed myself.
Roger Stanton poked the ice in his tea. "Anyway, I hadn't seen her for probably five years when Philip Corrigan asked me over for dinner. He was seeing me for a cartilage problem in the knee. I scoped it. Then the disc started flaring up. We became friends. I had no idea he was married to Autumn … Melanie."
"So you started slipping out of the hospital a little early. Sneaking in nooners while old man Corrigan was littering the Keys with ugly condos on stilts."
He laughed a short, bitter laugh. "Hardly."
Then he clammed up again. I gave him a c'mon Roger look.
Finally he spoke in a whisper. "This is where it gets a little sticky."
"I'll bet."
They didn't have to sneak around, he told me over the watery tea.
Why not? I asked.
Philip wanted to watch, Roger said. Sometimes to take part, sometimes to videotape. On their boat, a custom Hatteras furnished like a Bal Harbour penthouse, in their mansion on a giant waterbed, in their swimming pool.
So Philip Corrigan was a peeper and an old letch. Probably got to an age where the money bored him, and his engine wouldn't start without some kinky provocation.
"Then, after doing a few lines of coke, we'd mix it up, ménage à trois ," Roger said. He paused and gave me a sheepish look.
If the two women at the next table craned their necks any farther our way, they'd need a chiropractor.
Are you disappointed in me? he asked.
I don't make moral judgments about clients, I told him, because it interferes with my ability to give good advice.
Just the same I tallied a moral scorecard on the yellow pad of my mind. We all do that. We try to live and let live, but underneath it, we're left with a smug sense of superiority about ourselves and vague disgust for others who don't measure up. Roger Stanton didn't measure up. He was doing drugs and a group grope like some kind of sleaze. But he was my sleaze, my client, and his bedroom—or swimming pool—activities didn't make him an incompetent doctor, much less a murderer.
After his mea culpa , I thought his morale could use a boost.
"Here's how I see it," I told him. "You got stuck in a little game with a tramp who slithered her way to Gables Estates and a guy who couldn't get his rocks off in the missionary position. That doesn't put you in a class with Charles Manson, but if it ever came out in court or the newspapers, that's all anybody would know about you. You might be donating half your time to charity cases and feeding homeless cats, but the world would know you only as a sex-crazed doctor who aced his girlfriend's husband. Makes good reading. Now do you see why I have to know about this? If I make an uninformed decision at some point, it could hurt you. Badly. Understand?"
"Understood."
"Is that all there is to it?"
"I guess so. Except that I'm still sort of under her spell."
Oh brother.
"In all these years," he said, "nobody's been able to turn me on like her. She knows things, does things. She's totally uninhibited and free with herself. She's a pleasure giver. Do you know how hard it is for me to give that up?"
Dr. Ruth, I'm not, but I took a stab at it anyway. "Roger, it sounds to me like Melanie Corrigan is a taker, not a giver, and you better stay the hell out of her hot tub."
"There is a certain side to her, a kind of danger," he said. "Maybe that's part of the appeal, I don't know." He just let it hang there, his mind working something over, not letting me in on it.
"Okay then, I've got it all, right? You played hide the weenie with the missus while the old man watched, videotaped,
"She wasn't a hooker," he said indignantly and louder than necessary.
Now the two women were doing their best not to show that our conversation was more interesting than their own. I smiled in their direction. One recoiled as if I had exposed myself.
Roger Stanton poked the ice in his tea. "Anyway, I hadn't seen her for probably five years when Philip Corrigan asked me over for dinner. He was seeing me for a cartilage problem in the knee. I scoped it. Then the disc started flaring up. We became friends. I had no idea he was married to Autumn … Melanie."
"So you started slipping out of the hospital a little early. Sneaking in nooners while old man Corrigan was littering the Keys with ugly condos on stilts."
He laughed a short, bitter laugh. "Hardly."
Then he clammed up again. I gave him a c'mon Roger look.
Finally he spoke in a whisper. "This is where it gets a little sticky."
"I'll bet."
They didn't have to sneak around, he told me over the watery tea.
Why not? I asked.
Philip wanted to watch, Roger said. Sometimes to take part, sometimes to videotape. On their boat, a custom Hatteras furnished like a Bal Harbour penthouse, in their mansion on a giant waterbed, in their swimming pool.
So Philip Corrigan was a peeper and an old letch. Probably got to an age where the money bored him, and his engine wouldn't start without some kinky provocation.
"Then, after doing a few lines of coke, we'd mix it up, ménage à trois ," Roger said. He paused and gave me a sheepish look.
If the two women at the next table craned their necks any farther our way, they'd need a chiropractor.
Are you disappointed in me? he asked.
I don't make moral judgments about clients, I told him, because it interferes with my ability to give good advice.
Just the same I tallied a moral scorecard on the yellow pad of my mind. We all do that. We try to live and let live, but underneath it, we're left with a smug sense of superiority about ourselves and vague disgust for others who don't measure up. Roger Stanton didn't measure up. He was doing drugs and a group grope like some kind of sleaze. But he was my sleaze, my client, and his bedroom—or swimming pool—activities didn't make him an incompetent doctor, much less a murderer.
After his mea culpa , I thought his morale could use a boost.
"Here's how I see it," I told him. "You got stuck in a little game with a tramp who slithered her way to Gables Estates and a guy who couldn't get his rocks off in the missionary position. That doesn't put you in a class with Charles Manson, but if it ever came out in court or the newspapers, that's all anybody would know about you. You might be donating half your time to charity cases and feeding homeless cats, but the world would know you only as a sex-crazed doctor who aced his girlfriend's husband. Makes good reading. Now do you see why I have to know about this? If I make an uninformed decision at some point, it could hurt you. Badly. Understand?"
"Understood."
"Is that all there is to it?"
"I guess so. Except that I'm still sort of under her spell."
Oh brother.
"In all these years," he said, "nobody's been able to turn me on like her. She knows things, does things. She's totally uninhibited and free with herself. She's a pleasure giver. Do you know how hard it is for me to give that up?"
Dr. Ruth, I'm not, but I took a stab at it anyway. "Roger, it sounds to me like Melanie Corrigan is a taker, not a giver, and you better stay the hell out of her hot tub."
"There is a certain side to her, a kind of danger," he said. "Maybe that's part of the appeal, I don't know." He just let it hang there, his mind working something over, not letting me in on it.
"Okay then, I've got it all, right? You played hide the weenie with the missus while the old man watched, videotaped,
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