A Case of Need: A Novel (21 page)

“Yes. He is a very nice man. A very nice man. Do you understand that? He is very friendly.”

“Good,” Sam said slowly.

“He needs your help. Will you help him?”

“Sure,” Sam said.

The bearded boy beckoned to me. I came over and said to him, “What is it?”

“Acid,” he said. “Seventh hour. He should be coming down now. But go easy, right?”

“O.K.,” I said.

I squatted down so I was on Sam’s level. Sam looked at me with blank eyes.

“I don’t know you,” he said finally.

“I’m John Berry.”

Sam did not move. “You’re old, man,” he said. “Really
old.”

“In a way,” I said.

“Yeah, man, wow. Hey, Marvin,” he said, looking up at his friend, “did you see this guy? He’s really
old.
”

“Yes,” Marvin said.

“Hey, wow, old.”

“Sam,” I said, “I’m your friend.”

I held out my hand, slowly, so as not to frighten him. He did not shake it; he took it by the fingers and held it to the light. He turned it slowly, looking at the palm, then the back. Then he moved the fingers.

“Hey, man,” he said, “you’re a doctor.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You have doctor’s hands. I can feel it.”

“Yes.”

“Hey, man. Wow. Beautiful hands.”

He was silent for a time, examining my hands, squeezing them, stroking them, feeling the hairs on the back, the fingernails, the tips of the fingers.

“They shine,” he said. “I wish I had hands like that.”

“Maybe you do,” I said.

He dropped my hands and looked at his own. Finally he said, “No. They’re different.”

“Is that bad?”

He gave me a puzzled look. “Why did you come here?”

“I need your help.”

“Yeah. Hey. O.K.”

“I need some information.”

I did not realize this was a mistake until Marvin started forward. Sam became agitated; I pushed Marvin back.

“It’s O.K., Sam. It’s O.K.”

“You’re a cop,” Sam said.

“No. No cop. I’m not a cop, Sam.”

“You are, you’re lying.”

“He often gets paranoid,” Marvin said. “It’s his bag. He’s worried about freaking out.”

“You’re a cop, a lousy cop.”

“No, Sam. I’m not a cop. If you don’t want to help me, I’ll leave.”

“You’re a rock, a cop, a sock, a lock.”

“No, Sam. No. No.”

He settled down then, his body relaxing, his muscles softening.

I took a deep breath. “Sam, you have a friend. Bubbles.”

“Yes.”

“Sam, she has a friend named Karen.”

He was staring off into space. It was a long time before he answered. “Yes. Karen.”

“Bubbles lived with Karen. Last summer.”

“Yes.”

“Did you know Karen?”

“Yes.”

He began to breathe rapidly, his chest heaving, and his eyes got wide.

I put my hand on his shoulder, gently. “Easy, Sam. Easy. Easy. Is something wrong?”

“Karen,” he said, staring across the room. “She was … terrible.”

“Sam—”

“She was the worst, man. The worst.”

“Sam, where is Bubbles now?”

“Out. She went to visit Angela. Angela …”

“Angela Harding,” Marvin said. “She and Karen and Bubbles all roomed together in the summer.”

“Where is Angela now?” I asked Marvin.

At that moment, Sam jumped up and began to shout “Cop! Cop!” at the top of his lungs. He swung at me, missed, and tried to kick me. I caught his foot, and he fell, striking some of the electronic equipment. A loud, high-pitched whee-whee-whee filled the room.

Marvin said, “I’ll get the thorazine.”
²

“Screw the thorazine,” I said. “Help me.” I grabbed Sam and held him down. He screamed over the howl of the electronic sound.

“Cop! Cop! Cop!”

He kicked and thrashed. Marvin tried to help, but he was ineffectual. Sam was banging his head against the floor.

“Get your foot under his head.”

He didn’t understand.

“Move!” I said.

He got his foot under, so Sam would not hurt his head. Sam continued to thrash and twist in my grip. Abruptly, I released him. He stopped writhing, looked at his hands, then looked at me.

“Hey, man. What’s the matter?”

“You can relax now,” I said.

“Hey, man. You let me go.”

I nodded to Marvin, who went and unplugged the electronic equipment. The howls stopped. The room became strangely silent.

Sam sat up, staring at me. “Hey, you let me go. You really let me go.”

He looked at my face.

“Man,” he said, touching my cheek, “you’re beautiful.”

And then he kissed me.

WHEN I GOT HOME
, Judith was lying awake in bed.

“What happened?”

As I undressed, I said, “I got kissed.”

“By Sally?” She sounded amused.

“No. By Sam Archer.”

“The composer?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“I’m not sleepy,” she said.

I told her about it, then got into bed and kissed her. “Funny,” I said, “I’ve never been kissed by a man before.”

She rubbed my neck. “Like it?”

“Not much.”

“That’s strange,” she said, “I like it fine,” and she pulled me down to her.

“I bet you’ve been kissed by men all your life,” I said.

“Some are better than others.”

“Who’s better than others?”

“You’re better than others.”

“Is that a promise?”

She licked the tip of my nose with her tongue. “No,” she said, “that’s a come-on.”

¹
The Federal narcotics agents, or “narcs,” are known in Boston to favor Chevrolets with licenses beginning with 412 or 414.

²
Thorazine is a tranquilizer, universally used as an antidote to LSD and employed to end bad trips. However, when other psychedelic compounds such as STP are used, thorazine heightens the drug effect instead of abolishing it. Thus physicians who see LSD psychosis in the EW no longer automatically administer thorazine.

O
NCE A MONTH
, the Lord takes pity on the Cradle of Liberty and lets the sun shine on Boston. Today was that day: cool, bright and clear, with an autumn crispness in the air. I awoke feeling good, with the sharp expectation that things would happen.

I had a large breakfast, including two eggs, which I ate with guilty relish, savoring their cholesterol. Then I went into my study to plan the day. I began by drawing up a list of everyone I had seen and trying to determine if any of them were suspects. Nobody really was.

The first person to suspect in any abortion question is the woman herself, since so many are self-induced. The autopsy showed that Karen must have had anesthetic for the operation; therefore she didn’t do it.

Her brother knew how to do the procedure, but he was on duty at the time. I could check that, and might, later on, but for the moment, there was no reason to disbelieve him.

Peter Randall and J. D. were both possibilities, technically speaking. But somehow I couldn’t imagine either of them doing it.

That left Art, or one of Karen’s Beacon Hill friends, or somebody I hadn’t met yet and didn’t even know existed.

I stared at the list for a while, and then called the Mallory Building at the City. Alice wasn’t there; I talked with another secretary.

“Have you got the path diagnosis on Karen Randall?”

“What’s the case number?”

“I don’t know the case number.”

Very irritably, she said, “It would help if you did.”

“Please check it anyway,” I said.

I knew perfectly well that the secretary had a filecard system right in front of her, with all the finished posts for a month arranged alphabetically and by number. It would be no trouble for her.

After a long pause, she said, “Here it is. Vaginal hemorrhage secondary to uterine perforation and lacerations, following attempted dilation and curettage for three-month pregnancy. The secondary diagnosis is systemic anaphylaxis.”

“I see,” I said, frowning. “Are you sure?”

“I’m just reading what it says,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

I hung up, feeling odd. Judith gave me a cup of coffee and said, “What happened?”

“The autopsy report says Karen Randall was pregnant.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t she?”

“I never thought so,” I said.

I knew I could be wrong. It might have been proven in the micro exam, where the gross had shown nothing. But somehow it didn’t seem likely.

I called Murph’s lab to see if he had finished with the blood-hormone assay, but he hadn’t; it wouldn’t be finished until after noon. I said I’d call him back.

Then I opened the phone book and looked up the address of Angela Harding. She was living on Chestnut Street, a very good address.

I went over to see her.

CHESTNUT STREET IS OFF CHARLES
, near the bottom of the Hill. It’s a very quiet area of town houses, antique shops, quaint restaurants, and small grocery stores; most of the people who live here are young professionals—doctors and lawyers and bankers—who want a good address but can’t yet afford to move out to Newton or Wellesley. The other people who live here are old professionals, men in their fifties and sixties whose children are grown and married, permitting them to move back to the city. If you are going to live anywhere in Boston, you have to live on Beacon Hill.

There were, of course, some students living here, but usually they were stacked three or four deep in small apartments; it was the only way they could afford the rents. Older residents seemed to like the students; they added a little color and youth to the neighborhood. That is, they liked the students so long as the students looked clean and behaved themselves.

Angela Harding lived on the second floor of a walk-up; I knocked on the door. It was answered by a slim, dark-haired girl wearing a miniskirt and a sweater. She had a flower painted on her cheek, and large, blue-tinted granny glasses.

“Angela Harding?”

“No,” said the girl. “You’re too late. She’s already gone. But maybe she’ll call back.”

I said, “My name is Dr. Berry. I’m a pathologist.”

“Oh.”

The girl bit her lip and stared at me uncertainly.

“Are you Bubbles?”

“Yes,” she said. “How did you know?” And then she snapped her fingers. “Of course. You were the one with Superhead last night.”

“Yes.”

“I heard you’d been around.”

“Yes.”

She stepped back from the door. “Come in.”

The apartment had almost no furniture at all. A single couch in the living room, and a couple of pillows on the floor; through an open door, I saw an unmade bed.

“I’m trying to find out about Karen Randall,” I said.

“I heard.”

“Is this where you all lived last summer?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you last see Karen?”

“I haven’t seen her for months. Neither has Angela,” she said.

“Did Angela tell you that?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“When did she say that to you?”

“Last night. We were talking about Karen last night. You see, we’d just found out about her, uh, accident.”

“Who told you?”

She shrugged. “The word got around.”

“What word?”

“That she got a bad scrape.”

“Do you know who did it?”

She said, “They’ve picked up some doctor. But you know that.”

“Yes,” I said.

“He probably did it,” she said, with a shrug. She brushed her long black hair away from her face. She had very pale skin. “But I don’t know.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Karen was no fool. She knew the score. Like, she’d been through the routine before. Including last summer.”

“An abortion?”

“Yeah. That’s right. And afterward she was real depressed. She took a couple of down-trips, real freaks, and it shook her up. She had this thing about babies, and she knew it was rotten because it gave her freak trips. We didn’t want her to fly for a while after the abortion, but she insisted, and it was bad. Real bad.”

I said, “How do you mean?”

“One time she became the knife. She was scraping out the room and screaming the whole time that it was bloody, that all the walls were covered with blood. And she thought the windows were babies and that they were turning black and dying. Really bad news.”

“What did you do?”

“We took care of her.” Bubbles shrugged. “What else could we do?”

She reached over to a table and picked up a jar and a small wire loop. She swung the loop in the air and a stream of bubbles floated out and drifted gently downward. She watched them. One after another, they fell to the floor and popped.

“Real bad.”

“Last summer,” I said, “who did the abortion?”

Bubbles laughed. “I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“Well, she got knocked up. So she announces that she’s going to get rid of it, and she takes off for a day, and then comes back all smiling and happy.”

“No problems?”

“None.” She swung out another stream of bubbles and watched them. “None at all. Excuse me a minute.”

She went into the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and swallowed it with a pill.

“I was coming down,” she said, “you know?”

“What was it?”

“Bombs.”

“Bombs?”

“Sure. You know.” She waved her hand impatiently. “Speed. Lifts. Jets. Bennies.”

“Amphetamine?”

“Methedrene.”

“You on it all the time?”

“Just like a doctor.” She brushed her hair back again. “Always asking questions.”

“Where do you get the stuff?”

I had seen the capsule. It was at least five milligrams. Most of the black-market material is one milligram.

“Forget it,” she said. “All right? Just forget it.”

“If you wanted me to forget it,” I said, “why did you let me see you take it?”

“A shrink, too.”

“Just curious.”

“I was showing off,” she said.

“Maybe you were.”

“Maybe I was.” She laughed.

“Was Karen on speed, too?”

“Karen was on everything.” Bubbles sighed. “She used to shoot speed.”