A Night at the Operation (8 page)

“Did you answer the call about that?” I asked.

Betty nodded. “Yeah, but Dr. Westphal was the one who actually spoke to the police. You know, I just shepherd the calls. I knew it was the police, but I didn’t know what it was about.”

“Why Dr. Westphal?” I asked. “Why not Sharon?”

“Dr. Simon-Freed was gone by then,” Betty said.

“Did she say where she was going?”

Betty puckered her lips, and not in the way Lennon Dickinson would have appreciated. “Yeah, Elliot. She said specifically where she’d be, and I just haven’t told anybody until you asked.”

“Well, that’s sort of unusual, isn’t it? Doesn’t Sharon usually let you know where she’ll be, in case there’s an emergency?”

Betty took in a good deal of air through her nose. “She was upset,” she said.

My head must have jerked up. “Upset? Like the other day? About what?”

“What am I, her mother?” Betty asked. Then she saw the look on my face, and shook her head. “Sorry. She got a set of test results back right before she left, and it really seemed to shake her.”

“Additional test results for Russell Chapman?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t get the stuff from the lab that afternoon; it came when I was on break. I think Grace took them.”

“Is she around?” I asked.

Betty nodded. “But she’s in with Dr. Westphal, in conference about a patient. You’ll have to wait.”

“Where’s Lennon?” I asked.

“Dr. Dickinson is dealing with a patient emergency,” Betty answered.

I sat in one of the patient chairs in the waiting room, and pretended to read a magazine. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in “10 Tips That Will Drive Him Wild!” but I might have been just a little preoccupied. I didn’t even try the fragrance sample included in the centerfold.

I’ve been lucky enough never to have a serious medical problem, and I was married to a physician, so I’ve never really been nervous in a doctor’s waiting room. But today I wasn’t able to do anything but stare at the door to the back offices and wonder when the hell it would open and let me in. Not that I actually thought the key to Sharon’s whereabouts was back there, but I certainly didn’t have much else to go on.

After about ten minutes of waiting, I was sure the door would never open, and to be honest, it still didn’t. But the main office door did swing open, and a little man, about seventy years old by my estimation, shuffled in, wearing an overcoat that looked like it weighed a little bit more than I did. He had his coat closed over the lower part of his face, braced against the cold.

It took him a while to get to the reception desk, and when he did, he spoke so quietly that I heard Betty asking “Excuse me?” a few times before she could get a decent bearing on what the man was saying. Betty’s replies became progressively louder, until I could hear every word she said, and nothing of what the man told her.

“She’s still in the back, in a patient conference,” Betty almost shouted. “But it’ll just be a few minutes, if you wouldn’t mind waiting.” She gestured toward me, and the man nodded and shuffled over. He sat down next to me, in a room filled with empty seats, and let out an
oof
as he landed in his chair.

The man was small and trim, and wore thick glasses that made his eyes look like they were far away and also wore a hearing aid in each ear. Finally he opened the top button of his coat and exhaled. He had a thick black mustache and bushy eyebrows, bringing to mind Groucho’s look. But I’ll bet he touched them up with black dye. Groucho used grease-paint.

I tried to look preoccupied, since I was, but the little man bumped me on the arm and said, “That’s some receptionist, huh?” I nodded inconclusively, not wanting to insult Betty by intimating that she wasn’t gorgeous, but also not wanting to reduce her to a sex object, at least not today. The man was undaunted. “They named the room right, huh? Waiting room. Doctors.” He waved a hand to indicate disgust. If he’d had a Yiddish accent, he could have been my late grandfather. But his voice was weaker; he was barely audible in normal conversation.

“Well, they don’t want to rush people through like a factory,” I said. I felt it necessary to defend Sharon’s practice, with words she’d used on me many times.

“Sure, sure.” The man wasn’t going to disagree. “But it’s not efficient.”

“I guess not.” I went back to looking preoccupied, but the little guy wasn’t buying. He stuck out a hand. “Martin Tovarich,” he said. “I’m with East Coast Insurance.”

I shook his hand. “Elliot Freed,” I said. “I own Comedy Tonight. It’s a movie theatre—”

He cut me off. “It shows only comedies; I know,” Tovarich said. “I haven’t been yet, but I’ve been meaning to go. I love the classics, but mostly the serious stuff: Bergman, Fellini, von Stroheim. People like that.”

I was amazed. It’s rare that I don’t have to defend my business upon meeting someone new (“You do
what
?”), and I almost always have to at least explain it. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Tovarich. You live around here?”

“East Brunswick,” he said. “Close enough that I see your ads, but not so close that I can just walk in without thinking about it first. Sorry about that.”

“You should try it,” I said. “You seem like you could appreciate a classic comedy.”

“Perhaps I will,” Tovarich said.

“I’m flattered you even know about the theatre. Which doctor do you see here, Mr. Tovarich?” If he was waiting for Sharon, I figured to tell him he had a long stretch in front of him.

“Oh, I’m not a patient,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m here on business.”

“Insurance business?”

“Yeah. One of their patients . . . passed away a couple of days ago. I’m looking into it from an insurance point of view.”

Oops.

“Really?” I said. So it wasn’t original. Maybe he didn’t mean Chapman. Did insurance companies investigate medical practices for suicides? Maybe they did, if malpractice was considered a cause. I must have looked worried.

“Are you a patient here, Mr. Freed?” he asked.

Well, that left me with a dilemma. I
was
a patient here, but I was also the ex-husband of the doctor he was presumably investigating. On the one hand, I’d just as soon not incriminate Sharon, but then, I’d rather not withhold information, either.

“I have been,” I said.

Tovarich looked me up and down, assessing. “Of course. Freed. You’re the doctor’s ex-husband.”

My dilemma was no longer relevant.

I realized that the insurance company would have had my name, and so admitted to my identity, but I kept stealing glances at the door in the hope that Toni Westphal and Grace would finish their conference and let me in. No such luck.

Then, Tovarich said the absolute last thing I would have expected. “Your ex-wife is a fine doctor, Mr. Freed.”

My eyebrows probably circled my head a couple of times: Everybody seemed to think Sharon was somehow at fault in the Chapman situation, and yet, the deceased’s insurance company, which would seem to be the party that would most want to hang the blame on her, was singing her praises.

So the hesitation on my part was understandable, if unfortunate. Before I could respond, Tovarich said, “Is that the men’s room?” and got up to excuse himself faster than I would have thought he could move. I guess when you’re seventy, you don’t argue with your digestive system.

I was not alone long, though, because the front door had already opened to admit a woman in her early forties, wearing all black, into the waiting room.

She and Betty spoke in tones I couldn’t pick up for a minute or so, and then I heard Betty tell the woman that she could speak to Dr. Westphal as soon as the doctor emerged from the private office in the back. The Woman in Black protested for a moment, in a slightly more aggravated voice, but eventually sat down two chairs from where I was seated.

I smiled my best conspiratorial smile at her and said, “I think we should make
them
wait once in a while. Go in there and read a magazine when they come in, and then tell them to hang on until we finish the crossword puzzle.”

The woman gave me a less-than-enthralled look.

Undaunted—even though I should have been—I went on. “Maybe there should be a waiting room for doctors,” I tried. “We could make them wear a paper gown with their butts hanging out and then call them in for an examination.”

There are sculpture exhibits that react more dramatically. Tovarich had gotten me into a conversation with less material than this.

I reverted to my junior high school personality, and sat back in the uncomfortable metal frame chair. “Didn’t mean to bother you,” I mumbled.

The Woman in Black smiled, tolerantly, which I hadn’t expected. “I’m sorry,” she said, in a low, almost musical tone. “I have a lot on my mind. My father died the other night.”

That sort of thing had never happened in junior high school; it took me a long moment to regain the power of speech. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I told her. “Was he a patient here? Not a great advertisement for the place.”

“He certainly was,” the woman said. “And make no mistake.” Then her voice dropped to a whisper.
“One of the doctors here killed him,”
she said.

 

 

 

 

LILLIAN
Chapman Mayer introduced herself, and I think I might have tried to do the same, but she wasn’t listening. She was not reticent in her judgment of Sharon, Sharon’s practice, the medical profession in general, the American Medical Association, and anyone wearing a white coat, especially after Labor Day. But mostly Sharon.

This time, the dilemma about identifying myself did not present itself, since I never managed to get a word in edgewise. Lillian began with the serious breach of ethics involved in “a business arrangement with a patient,” and then moved on to the crass disregard for a patient’s emotional state, the lack of communication among doctors working on the same patient, the high cost of medical insurance in America, Michael Moore’s
Sicko
, something about avian flu, and after that I sort of lost consciousness with my eyes open for a while.

I did notice Tovarich shuffling out of the restroom and into the hallway, where he appeared to be having a professional conversation with Betty. She nodded a lot. He watched her face, which, even for an elderly gentleman, is an effort when talking to Betty. One’s eyes tend to wander.

When I came to, Lillian was working up a head of steam over Dr. Simon-Freed’s obvious use of “feminine wiles” to coerce her father into leaving her money, and that was when I spoke over her long enough to be heard.

“Hold on a second. You’re suggesting that Sharon seduced your father so he would include her in his will?” I think my tone more than my words betrayed me.

Lillian, eyes wide, sat still for a moment.
“Sharon?”
she asked. “Do you know the doctor personally?”

“You could say that. We used to be married.” What the hell.

Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she managed, “Well! You might have said so sooner!”

“I didn’t have enough duct tape to keep you from talking that long,” I said. This wasn’t a good day to get on my bad side.

“Well, you should feel lucky you got out when you could. Your ex-wife was clearly seeing my father, and I don’t mean as a patient.”

I stared at her. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. He used to make sure he was here at least one evening a week, always when the office was closing. And I know he didn’t make it home for hours after, sometimes not at all.” Lillian grinned at me with the smug satisfaction of someone who enjoys the discomfort of others.

“And you think he was . . . seeing Sharon?” I would have known. There was no way I wouldn’t have known. Sharon would have told me. And even then, there wasn’t any way. I didn’t believe it.

“I know it.” She stabbed her finger at me. “I had them followed.”

I came close to swallowing my lips. “I beg your pardon?”

Lillian nodded. “I hired a private detective, a guy named Konigsberg. When there’s that much money on the line, someone like me needs to be on the lookout for every little slut like your ex-wife.”

I considered going for her throat, but there were witnesses. And besides, Lillian didn’t give me the time before she started talking again.

“Thank god my husband’s out of town,” she said. “If Wally knew everything I know about this, you’d be dealing with your ex-wife’s murder, not my father’s.”

It was all I could do not to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. I gritted my teeth. “Where
exactly
is your husband now?” I considered asking if she could verify his whereabouts, as well, but I didn’t want to tip my hand.

“Trying to get a flight home,” she answered. “He was in Japan when we had to call him last night.”

“Japan?” I asked. It’s not that I’m not familiar with the name, but it seemed incongruous in this conversation.

“He had business there. Wally’s in importing. I’m going to be picking him up at the airport. And he loved my father as if he were his own. This is hitting him even harder than me, I think.”

I didn’t care who it was hitting, or how hard. “He’s flying in from Japan tonight? How long has he been there?”

“Only since Wednesday,” Lillian said, surprised that I was asking. “He was supposed to stay for a week, but now, of course, he’s coming home. Why do you ask?”

Luckily, at that moment the office door opened and Betty approached, smiling sympathetically, effectively saving Lillian’s life. “Ms. Mayer?” she said. I understood that even though I had gotten there first, she was the family of a deceased patient, and therefore outranked me. “Dr. Dickinson will see you now.” Good move. Get the handsome serious guy to talk to the dead man’s daughter.

Lillian got up and walked toward the conference room. Tovarich turned away to let her by, and Betty used the excuse to walk back out toward the reception area. She appeared at the door, and crooked a finger at me, a gesture very few men would be able to resist. I walked over.