The Naked Face

"I don’t care where you got him. Something smells fishy. Moody says he set a trap to catch whoever’s after you, but he doesn’t close the trap until the bait’s already been taken, so we can’t pin it on anyone. Then he shows you a bomb in your car that he could have put there himself. And wins your confidence. Right?"

"I suppose you could look at it that way," Judd said. "But – "

"Maybe your friend Moody is on the level, and maybe he’s setting you up. I want you to play it nice and cool until we find out."

Moody against him? It was difficult to believe. And yet, he remembered his earlier doubts when he had thought Moody was sending him into an ambush.

"What do you want me to do?" asked Judd.

"How would you feel about leaving town? I mean really leaving town."

"I can’t leave my patients."

"Dr. Stevens – "

"Besides," Judd added, "it really wouldn’t solve anything, would it? I wouldn’t even know what I’m running away from. When I came back, it would just start all over again."

There was a moment’s silence. "You have a point." Angeli gave a sigh, and it turned into a wheeze. He sounded terrible. "When do you expect to hear from Moody again?"

"I don’t know. He thinks he has some idea of who’s be hind all this."

"Has it occurred to you that whoever’s behind this can pay Moody a lot more than you can?" There was an urgency in Angeli’s voice. "If he asks you to meet him, call me. I’ll be home in bed for the next day or two. Whatever you do, Doc tor, don’t meet him alone!"

"You’re building up a case out of nothing," countered Judd. "Just because Moody removed the bomb from my car – "

"There’s more to it than that," said Angeli. "I have a hunch you picked the wrong man."

"I’ll call you if I hear from him," promised Judd. He hung up, shaken. Was Angeli being overly suspicious? It was true that Moody could have been lying about the bomb in order to win Judd’s confidence. Then the next step would be easy. All he would have to do would be to call Judd and ask him to meet him in some deserted place on the pretext of having some evidence for him. Then…Judd shuddered. Could he have been that wrong about Moody’s character? He re membered his reaction when he had first met Moody. He had thought that the man was ineffectual and not very bright. Then he had realized that his homespun cover was a facade that concealed a quick, sharp brain. But that didn’t mean that Moody could be trusted. And yet…He heard someone at the outer reception door and looked at his watch. Anne! He quickly locked the tapes away, walked over to the private corridor door, and opened it.

Anne was standing in the corridor. She was wearing a smartly tailored navy blue suit and a small hat that framed her face. She was dreamily lost in thought, unaware that Judd was watching her. He studied her, filling himself with her beauty, trying to find some imperfection, some reason for him to tell himself that she would be wrong for him, that he would one day find someone else better suited to him. The fox and the grapes. Freud was not the father of psychiatry. Aesop was.

"Hello," he said.

She looked up, startled for an instant. Then she smiled.

"Hello."

"Come in, Mrs. Blake."

She moved past him into the office, her firm body brushing his. She turned and looked at him with those incredible violet eyes. "Did they find the hit-and-run driver?" There was concern on her face, a worried, genuine interest.

He felt again the insane urge to tell her everything. But he knew he could not. At best, it would be a cheap trick to win her sympathy. At worst, it might involve her in some un known danger.

"Not yet." He indicated a chair.

Anne was watching his face. "You look tired. Should you be back at work so soon?"

Oh, God. He didn’t think he could stand any sympathy. Not just now. And not from her. He said, "I’m fine. I can celed my appointments for today. My exchange wasn’t able to reach you."

An anxious expression crossed her face. She was afraid she was intruding. Anne – intruding. "I’m so sorry. If you’d rather I left…"

"Please, no," he said quickly. "I’m glad they couldn’t reach you." This would be the last time he saw her. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

She hesitated, started to say something, then changed her mind. " A little confused."

She was looking at him oddly, and there was something in her look that touched a faint, long-lost chord that he could almost, but not quite, remember. He felt a warmth flowing from her, an overpowering physical longing – and he sud denly realized what he was doing. He was attributing his own emotions to her. And for an instant he had been fooled, like any first-year psychiatry student.

"When do you leave for Europe?" he asked.

"On Christmas morning."

"Just you and your husband?" He felt like a gibbering idiot, reduced to banalities. Babbitt, on an off day.

"Where will you go?"

"Stockholm – Paris – London – Rome."

I’d love to show you Rome, thought Judd. He had spent a year there interning at the American hospital. There was a fantastic old restaurant called Cybele near the Tivoli Gar dens, high on a mountaintop by an ancient pagan shrine, where you could sit in the sun and watch the hundreds of wild pigeons darken the sky over the dappled cliffs.

And Anne was on her way to Rome with her husband.

"It will be a second honeymoon," she said. There was strain in her voice, so faint that he might almost have imagined it. An untrained ear would not have caught it.

Judd looked at her more closely. On the surface she seemed calm, normal, but underneath he sensed a tension. If this was the picture of a young girl in love going to Europe on a second honeymoon, then a piece of the picture was missing.