Bitter Medicine (22 page)

Dr. Barnes’s desk was a piece of working furniture. Made of scarred oak, it was covered with papers. She sat behind it in a leather swivel chair, moved some of the documents to one side to create a blank place for working, and spoke into an intercom, asking for the nurse.

While we waited, she gave me a rapid rundown on the department. “The Department of Environment has an enormous responsibility, which ranges from approving and certifying hospitals to making sure schools aren’t contaminated with asbestos. I’m in the Health and Human Services division. I trained with Lotty—Dr. Herschel—in obstetrics, but in fact my responsibility is for state-run clinics and hospitals. We have another assistant director who is in charge of the whole hospital certification program. Nurse Candeleria works for both of us—she heads investigative teams that go into hospitals and clinics when we feel the need for an inspection.”

Nurse Candeleria came in on cue. She was a plain white woman around Dr. Barnes’s age, with a strong, intelligent face brightened by a hint of humor in her
brown eyes. She carried a thick file, which she shifted to her left hand so she could shake hands with me when Dr. Barnes introduced us.

“Cindy told me you wanted to talk about Friendship Hospital, Phil, so I’ve pulled their file. What’s the question?”

“They had a maternal and neonatal death out there—when, Ms. Warshawski?—four weeks ago tomorrow. Have you sent a team out there yet? Can I see the report?”

Ms. Candeleria tightened her lips. “I got the report of the death”—she looked in the file—“fifteen days ago. I was scheduling a site visit for later this week. Tom told me he would take care of it himself, to cancel my team. I’ve diaried it to talk to him tomorrow, but I don’t think he’s been out there.”

“Tom Coulter,” Dr. Barnes said. “He’s in charge of hospital certification programs—master’s in public health, not a doctor. MDs make him feel inferior and he’s not madly in love with professional women.”

She quickly punched the buttons on her phone. “This is Dr. Barnes—let me talk to Mr. Coulter, Cindy…. Tom—can you stop into my office for a moment? I’ve got a question about Friendship. Yes, I’m busy, too. I’m backing up two people who flew in from Carbondale just to see me, so you could make their lives easier by getting this over with quickly.”

She hung up. “The bureaucracy in a place like this just about kills you. If I had charge of the whole program,
instead of just a piece of it—” She folded her lips, cutting off the sentence. We all three knew that having a sex-change operation—and perhaps dying her skin—was the only way that would happen.

To prove he wasn’t responding to the demands of a woman who was merely his organizational equal, Tom Coulter made us wait ten minutes for him. Eileen frowned through the Friendship file. Dr. Barnes used the time to go through a stack of mail, making quick notes on some documents, tossing others. I sat on the uncomfortable vinyl chair, trying not to fall asleep.

Coulter eventually breezed in in a lightweight summer suit, a brown-haired white man a good fifteen years younger than the two women.

“What is it, Phil?”

“The maternal and neonatal mortality at Friendship Five in Schaumburg three weeks ago, Tom. When are we going to see a report on the causes?”

“Well, Phil, it’s hard for me to understand why you want to know.”

She made a Pavlova-like gesture toward me. “Ms. Warshawski is an attorney representing one of the defendants in a suit involving the dead girl. They have an arguable interest in our report.”

Coulter turned his impudent smile on me. “Lawsuit, huh? Has Friendship been sued?”

I did my best imitation of Dick’s stuffy-attorney manner. “I have not conferred with any representatives of the hospital, Mr. Coulter.”

“Well, Phil—I haven’t been out there yet. But don’t worry—we’ve got it under control.”

She gave him a withering look. “I want a date. Before the end of the day.”

“Sure, Phil. I’ll talk to Bert about this right now, tell him you want a date.”

A pencil snapped in her long fingers. “Do that, Tom. I guess that’s all we need to discuss.”

He ignored her to look at me. “So who’s your client?”

Before I could speak, Dr. Barnes interrupted. “I’ll tell Ms. Warshawski how to find your office if you want to talk to her before she goes.” She spoke with such finality that Coulter was forced to give in and leave.

He flashed his impudent grin at me. “I’m around the corner to the left—stop in before you leave.”

I looked at the doctor’s tight-lipped face. “What’s the story?”

“Bert McMichaels is our boss—Tom’s and mine. He’s a good old boy and Tom’s his drinking buddy. I don’t know why Tom’s dragging his rear end over this hospital visit, but there’s no way I can promise Lotty any kind of report in the near future…. I’m sorry to have to rush you, but I’m behind on my appointments. Give Lotty my apologies.”

I got up and thanked the two of them for their time. Wherever I go, good cheer and fellowship follow in my wake. I grimaced, and turned left around the corner to find Coulter.

The contrast to Philippa Barnes’s office was striking. Modern furniture—the great slabs of wood that vibrate with masculine authority—stood on a Scandinavian rug shot through with blacks and reds. Coulter was the kind of executive who follows the old adage that the desk, like the mind, should be completely blank.

He was on the phone, his feet crossed at the ankle on the blond wood in front of him. He waved a cheerful hand at me and beckoned me to sit down. I made a big play of looking at my watch; when he continued to impress me with his importance for three minutes, I got up and told him he could get my number from Dr. Barnes.

I was leaving the receptionist’s office when he caught up with me. “Sorry, Ms.—uh—didn’t catch your name with Dr. Barnes. She kind of mumbles, you know.”

“I hadn’t noticed. Warshawski.”

“Whom do you represent, Ms. Warshawski? Not the hospital, I presume.”

I smiled. “My clients wouldn’t have much reason to trust me if I blabbed their affairs in public, would they, Mr. Coulter?”

He slapped my arm playfully. “I don’t know. I’m sure they’d forgive a pretty lady like you anything you did.”

I continued to smile. “You’ve put me on the spot, Mr. Coulter. I hardly like to deny an allegation of prettiness. On the other hand, when you are fantastically beautiful, you have to be careful not to use it to dazzle people into overlooking the law. Wouldn’t you agree? Or would you?”

He blinked a few times and laughed a little. “Why don’t I buy you some lunch and you tell me about it?”

I looked him over. What did he want to know? “A quick one.”

He bustled down the hall to the elevator with me, his coat skirts whirling around his hips in his eagerness. On the way to the ground-floor parking lot he explained (wink) that there wasn’t anyplace private to go to in the building—how about some little restaurant a few blocks away?

“I don’t need to be private with you, Mr. Coulter. And I don’t have endless amounts of time. The only thing I’m really interested in is your postmortem on the death of Consuelo Hernandez at Friendship Five in Schaumburg. Or failing that, the reason you don’t propose doing one.”

“Now, now.” He took my arm as the elevator doors opened and started to steer me toward the exit. I gave my shoulder bag, weighted by the Smith & Wesson, a little tap with my free hand, making it swing casually into his stomach. He dropped my arm, looked at me suspiciously, and moved on to the Clark Street exit.

The State of Illinois building has as neighbors the City-County building, an old concrete pillbox occupying the block to the south, and the Greyhound Bus Terminal, with a predictable coterie of winos, hustlers, and lunatics. Neither was likely to contain the slick kind
of restaurant I thought would appeal to Tom Coulter. I wasn’t surprised when he suggested we hop into a cab and head north.

I shook my head. “I don’t have that kind of time. One of the Loop delis will do me fine.”

We walked a couple of blocks east, Coulter chattering brightly the whole way, and turned into a dark little restaurant on the corner of Randolph and Dearborn. Sound reverberated from the walls, and cigarette smoke thickened the air.

Coulter cupped his hands against my ear. “Sure you don’t want to head north?”

I turned to face him squarely. “Just what do you want, Mr. Coulter?”

His impudent grin came again. “I want to find out what you’re really doing coming into E and HR. You’re a detective, not a lawyer, aren’t you, Ms. Warshawski?”

“I’m a lawyer, Mr. Coulter. I’m a member of the Illinois bar in good standing—you can call the bar association and find that out. And what I really want is the report on the death of Consuelo Hernandez and her infant daughter.”

A harassed waitress in a stained uniform took us to a table in the middle of the small floor, plopped menus and water in front of us, and hurried on. Another waitress, laden down with plates of french fries and corned-beef sandwiches, bumped into my chair. My favorite lunch: grease, starch, and nitrosamines. Guessing by the
waistlines of the city employees around me, they liked it, too. I decided to have cottage cheese. When we’d ordered, Coulter continued grinning at me.

“But you don’t practice law, do you? So you’re detecting something. I want to know what.”

I nodded. “I’m trying to find out why you care.” I also wanted to know how he knew I was a detective, but if I asked that, I could expect a pleased smirk and little else.

“Oh, that’s easy. Ours is a confidential agency. I can’t have you trying to get information from my staff without looking into it.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware Dr. Barnes worked for you.”

He looked briefly uncomfortable, then recovered. “Not her. Eileen Candeleria.”

“I have a client who has a pertinent interest in your investigation of Friendship Hospital. If your file on them is not available under the Freedom of Information Act, I believe I could get a subpoena for it. The fact that you canceled Nurse Candeleria’s on-site visit and haven’t scheduled one of your own is interesting. It raises grounds for all kinds of speculation. I imagine I could even get one of the newspapers interested in it. Not too many people know that the state has an obligation to look into maternal and infant mortality, but motherhood is always a hot topic and I bet the
Herald-Star
or the
Tribune
could make it look really good. It’s
a pity your face is so round—it won’t show up well in newspaper photos.”

Our waitress slapped plates in front of us—cottage cheese and iceberg lettuce for me; BLT and fries for Coulter. He picked at his food for a few minutes, then looked at his watch and gave a sketch of his grin.

“You know, I’m glad you vetoed the North Side. I just remembered I’m supposed to see a guy. Nice talking to you, Ms. Warshawski.”

He walked out of the restaurant, leaving me to pay for his lunch.

At two o’clock I tried Peter Burgoyne again. He’d emerged from surgery but was on another call, the secretary said with no great interest; I told her I’d wait.

“He’s going to be a long time,” she warned.

“Then I’ll wait a long time.” I was in my office with a stack of unopened mail to handle; I used the wait to sort the offers of insurance, computers, and management-training seminars from the four or five pieces of legitimate mail.

When Peter finally came on the line, his voice was hoarse and sounded exhausted. “I don’t have time to talk now, Vic. I’ll call you later.”

“Yeah, I kind of got the feeling you didn’t want to talk to me. But this won’t take long. Consuelo’s record. Can you get that called up today? I’d hate to have to tell Lotty she needs a court order to see it.”

“Oh.” He sounded more tired. “We got our own
summons this morning in that lawsuit. Consuelo’s record has been impounded. I’m afraid the only way Dr. Herschel can see it at this point is through legal action.”

“Impounded? You mean the state or someone came and locked it up?”

“No, no,” he answered impatiently. “We do it ourselves, take it out of the records room and lock it up so no one can get at it and alter it.”

“I see. Sorry to bother you. Sounds like you ought to be in bed.”

“I should. I should be anyplace but here. I’ll—I’ll call you, Vic. In a few days.”

“Oh, Peter—before you go—how well do you know Richard Yarborough?”

He delayed answering a bit too long. “Richard, did you say? What was the last name? I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him.”

I hung up and stared thoughtfully in front of me. Impounded, huh? Abruptly I called Lotty.

“Are you free for dinner this evening? I’d like to talk to you—about Consuelo’s file.”

She agreed to meet me at Dortmunders, a little restaurant-cum-wine-cellar in the basement of the Chesterton Hotel, around seven.

I threw out my mail. As I was shutting the door, the phone rang. It was Dick, having a temper tantrum.

“What the hell do you mean, setting the papers on me?”

“Dick, it’s so exciting to hear from you. You haven’t called me this often since you wanted to copy my conlaw course notes fifteen years ago.”

“Goddamn you, Vic! You told that damned Swede from the
Herald-Star
that I had the IckPiff files, didn’t you!”

“Seems to me it was only five or six hours ago you were calling accusing me of having them. So why does it upset you if someone asks you the same question?”

“That’s not the point. My clients’ files are confidential. As are their identities and their problems.”

“Yes. Confidential to you. But, sweetheart, I’m not a member of your firm. Nor of your person. I have no obligation—legal, mental, physical, or ethical—to protect their privacy.”

“Yeah, and while we’re on the subject of confidentiality, did you call Alan Humphries at Friendship Hospital this morning claiming to be Harriet?”

“Harriet? I thought you keep telling me her name is Terri. Or are you on number three now?” I thought I smelled burning enamel coming through the wire from his teeth and smiled.

“You know damned well Harriet is my secretary. Humphries called at noon wanting to know why she hadn’t gotten back to him this morning. And we figured out after some confusion that she’d never called him to begin with. Jesus, would I like to see your ass in court for stealing those IckPiff files.”