Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) (14 page)

“With dispatch,” Jimmy said.

“Funeral?” I asked.

“He was cremated. Emmie confessed that she had the urn with his ashes in it up in the back of her closet, behind the hats, because her husband didn’t want to see or hear about it. She seemed very embarrassed. I was glad she didn’t offer to show me.”

The family had refused an autopsy, though we didn’t know who’d spoken most loudly against it. Maybe Emmie’s husband, maybe someone else. We kicked it around for a while. If someone in the family had poisoned God, and they had the slightest doubt they’d gotten away with it, they’d have jumped at the chance to make sure no expert examined the body. And the whole family went along with it. Anyone who had no hidden agenda must have figured that the less known about God’s condition at the end, the better. And cremation was the flambé on the cherries jubilee, so to speak. There went any evidence of poison. To make it even easier, God had specified in his will that he wanted to be cremated.

“Just as well,” said Barbara. “Emmie says she was the only one who wouldn’t have minded ending up next to him in the family mausoleum. Speaking of family, I still haven’t met her husband.”

“The plastic surgeon?”

“Yeah, Dr. Samson Weill. And I can’t ask to meet him.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Anonymity,” Jimmy said, looking at me as if I should have known.

“She’s a program friend,” Barbara amplified. “You know it’s not done to be curious about each other’s outside lives.”

“So maybe you shouldn’t have taken her to program,” Jimmy said. “Not that I want to say I told you so.”

“So don’t,” Barbara snapped. Visibly reining herself in, she said, “If she’d had an alcohol problem, you’d have offered to take her to a meeting. You know you would, Jimmy.”

“Yeah, I would have. Sorry, peach.”

“It would still be a good idea to meet the guy,” I said. “Get a sense of what Dr. Samson Weill is like.”

“I have an idea,” said Barbara. “Cut it out!” she added as we both groaned. “But I swore these words would never cross my lips.”

“What words, poppet?” Jimmy asked. “Have I heard this one before?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “It was my first act of moral courage, back when I was a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl in Queens. All the girls were doing it. I had to choose between being who I was—cultural pride, I guess—and the kind of looks the girls’ magazines said would attract men. And I swore I’d never even say it, no less do it.”

“What?” we asked simultaneously.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “I am about to consider getting a nose job.”

It took Barbara a week to get an appointment and seven minutes in the doctor’s waiting room to confirm her diagnosis: Dr. Samson Weill was an egotistical bastard. His personality had all the earmarks of narcissism. Although his personality was hell on everyone around him, it felt fine to him. Along with several other embarrassed patients in his waiting room, she listened as, from behind the closed but not adequately soundproofed door of his office, he annihilated his unfortunate secretary. She had allowed a patient into his presence before double checking on that patient’s insurance status. Barbara, ever the counselor, decided that the secretary’s self-esteem would be in dire need of reconstructive surgery by the time he was through. She doubted that Dr. Weill kept staff for long.

As the abusive tirade rolled on, she sat in the waiting room hating herself for failing to rise and storm the arrogant sonofabitch’s office. She wondered if the other waiting patients, all women, felt the same. When the doctor had roared himself to a standstill, the hapless secretary came stumbling out of his office holding an inadequate clump of tissues up to her face. She had a streaked blonde fluff of shoulder-length hair and a face that would have been pretty if it hadn’t been puffy with crying. An open white lab coat failed to hide a well filled stretchy red top, a black skirt that was both too short and too tight, and too much cheap jewelry. She looked very young. The waiting patients tactfully kept their eyes cast down at the floor or glued to their magazines as she blundered across the room toward the coat closet. She snatched a faux fur in a leopard print from the closet, dropping several wire hangers on the floor in the process. Sneaking quick peeks as she pretended to read a months-old issue of
Vogue
, Barbara noticed that additional heavy wooden hangers were securely fastened to the metal bar they hung from, as if the doctor were afraid his patients would walk off with them. Anal retentive bastard, Barbara thought. The secretary fumbled with the coat for an endless couple of minutes before she succeeded in poking both arms in the sleeves, dropping gloves, tissues, and a bright red scarf in the process. Finally she got herself out the door.

Barbara hesitated, uncertain as to whether or not to follow her. Her plan had been to tell the doctor that she wanted to buy herself a more shapely nose. She would then engage him in a conversation digressive enough to lead to his late brother-in-law. With luck, she would get a sense of whether the doctor hated him and how likely it was that he had poisoned him. Barbara had great confidence in her powers of digression. She planned to back out before the point of actual surgery. But who was more likely to talk freely? An angry egomaniac just past volcanic eruption or a disgruntled employee? Barbara patted her nose. Why even pretend she wanted to trade it in? Most of the women her age that she knew who had had nose jobs in their teens had ended up with identical, unmistakable little pinched-off snouts with too much nostril showing. She hadn’t even seen Dr. Samson Weill, but she had seen enough. She grabbed her bag and ran after the secretary.

At least she was easy to follow, thanks to all that leopard and red. Barbara caught up with her at the corner of Lexington Avenue.

“Uh, excuse me.”

The young woman turned and looked at Barbara dully. Smudged makeup gave her the look of a raccoon with a hangover. Her nose ran copiously in spite of the fistful of sodden tissues she kept dabbing at it.

“Excuse me,” Barbara repeated. “I’m sorry.” Barbara told herself to get a grip. “Sorry to bother you. I was in there just now.” She jerked her head back toward the doctor’s office. “I was so mad at how he treated you that I decided I was damned if I’d go to him, so I came out to see if you were okay.”

The young woman’s face turned brick red. Evidently, she hadn’t known the whole waiting room could hear him.

“Look, I’m really sorry.” Barbara reached out and put a hand on her faux-leopard arm. “He has a very loud voice, and everybody in there thought he was being a real pig.”

“Thanks.” Her voice came out in a pitiful little wobble. “Thanks, that’s nice of you. I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s okay,” Barbara said. “Sorry. I mean, uh, look, I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.” Hard to believe, she thought, how firm and decisive I can be when I sail into a crowd of Bowery drunks and junkies with a clipboard. It must be the clipboard. She had always carried one, adopting it on the first day of her internship on the advice of Sister Angel, who had called it “Dumbo’s magic feather.”

“Marlene.” The young woman still sounded embarrassed.

“Look, Marlene, would you like to go for coffee? I think there’s a place right around the corner.” She smiled warmly. “I’m a good listener.” That’s true, she thought. And when I’m listening, I’m not apologizing.

“It’s on the next block,” Marlene said, her voice small and childish. Regressing, Barbara thought with professional acumen. She put her hand on Marlene’s elbow to steer. The secretary trotted along obediently beside her.

Once they were settled in a padded vinyl booth, it wasn’t hard to get her talking about the doctor’s family. Barbara had a steaming cup of coffee in front of her. Marlene had ordered hot chocolate topped with marshmallows—comfort food—and fiddled with her spoon as she talked.

“She’s a lot nicer than he is. I wouldn’t mind if she came downstairs more often, but I don’t blame her for staying away. He’s got quite a temper. She’s such a—well, a lady—she never sinks to his level. She does a lot of smoothing down, though. She’s good at letting him have his way.”

“A case of the Yes Dears?” Barbara suggested.

Marlene sniffled, blew her nose, and smiled for the first time.

“There’s also a drunken brother-in-law. Her brother, not his. That poor woman, what a family. The drunk was in here”—she meant the office—“right after New Year’s.”

“Looking for a handout?” Barbara prompted, hoping to keep her going.

“It sounded more like he was threatening the doc.”

“Threatening?”

“I couldn’t hear it all,” she said ingenuously, “just mostly the doctor’s side and when he was yelling on top of the doctor. Something about money, something he would sign or wouldn’t sign?” She shook her head.

“When was that?” Barbara kept her tone as casual as she could. “After New Year’s, you said?”

“It must have been the day after,” Marlene said. “I had the holiday off.” She had been busy taking the holiday decorations in the waiting room down when the doctor bellowed at her to bring in a pot of coffee.

“I’m surprised he gave him that much.” Marlene sniffed again. “I’ve heard him telling the wife he doesn’t want her brother going near the children. The brother behaves a lot better than the doc does, if you ask me. So what if he drinks. The doc keeps all sorts of pills in his desk drawer and pops them whenever he feels like it. The pharmaceutical reps are always bringing samples, you know, and if they don’t, he writes the scripts himself. Valium, codeine, Fioricet. Guess who has to go all the way to Madison to pick them up. On my lunch hour, yet! God forbid I should run his errands on his time.”

“The Valium doesn’t calm him down any? You’d think it would.”

Marlene giggled. “Actually, it does. The way he went off today, a little something from the pill drawer might have improved the situation. Same when the brother-in-law was here.”

“He had one of his outbursts with the brother and still gave him a cup of coffee?”

“It was funny,” she agreed. “Usually the next step would be to throw him out. But he managed to calm himself down that time. Maybe he did open up that drawer. He made a big fuss over giving the brother his coffee just the way he liked it. He had me running back and forth with cream and sugar. That powdered stuff is good enough for me and the patients! But oh, no, it’s got to be real half-and-half, and he sees him all the way out afterwards with his arm draped around his shoulder as if they were the best of friends. The patients waited fifteen extra minutes for their appointments, but that’s no problem as far as the doc is concerned. Speaking of which, I’d better be getting back.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“No problem, this happens at least once a week. I go back, we make like nothing happened. I’m leaving, don’t worry, but not until I get another job. Gotta pay down those credit cards. So I’m letting the doc cover my Christmas. And the time I spend going on interviews.” She shrugged herself into the leopard coat and applied another coat of lipstick.

“Thanks a lot for the coffee. Are you coming back for your appointment?”

“You know what?” Barbara massaged her nose reflectively. “I think I’ve decided to stick with the face I’ve got.”

“So what do you think?” Barbara asked us. “Was it worth it?”

We were on our way to a meeting. Two meetings, in fact, that met at the same time in the same church and drew a lot of couples in recovery. Families, even. They had an Alateen meeting for the kids. I couldn’t imagine what our lives would have been like if Jimmy and I had known about Alateen and been able to talk frankly about our drunken dads.

“To know if it’s worth it, you have to know the price,” Jimmy said. “What did your little talk with Marlene cost you?”

Barbara laughed.

“Just the arm and a leg they charge for two coffees—not even Starbucks latte or espresso, just plain old greasy spoon joe in a thick white mug—in the East Sixties.”

Jimmy draped his arm around her shoulders.

“I’m glad it didn’t cost you your beautiful nose.”

Barbara snuggled up to him with a little wriggle as they walked.

“The most wonderful guy in the world—he thinks my nose is beautiful. No, I got to keep my Ashkenazic schnozz.”

“Your nose is beautiful,” Jimmy said stoutly.

“And my mother thinks I should have picked a nice Jewish boy. They all go for blondes with thighs like Emmie Weill’s and no nose at all.”

“You’ve seen Emmie’s thighs? When did this happen?”

“No, but I can tell. It’s genetic.”

“You always say I have no nose,” said Jimmy fatuously.

Barbara reached up to caress his minimalist Irish snoot.

“You have a
good
no nose. Those shiksas have
bad
no nose. Noses.”

“When you folks are quite through being terminally cute,” I said, “maybe we can talk about what Barbara learned that’s relevant to the murder.”

“Okay, okay,” Barbara said. “I wrote it all down afterward so I wouldn’t forget.”

She fished in her bag and brought out a little lined notepad with a spiral binding. She flipped through its dog-eared pages. “Here it is. January 2, God dropped in on Dr. Weill, who gave him a cup of coffee. Dr. Weill keeps psychotropics in his desk drawer. Marlene mentioned Fioricet and Valium. Fioricet is a headache pill with a barbiturate in it. Suggestive, isn’t it?”

“Barbiturates can be lethal combined with alcohol,” Jimmy said.

We alkies know all about it. Ask us anything.

“The doctor could have hoped that God would drink,” he added.

“But he didn’t,” I said. “Because if he had, they wouldn’t have let him back into the detox, at least not without a fuss.”

“I still think it’s stupid,” Barbara said, “to throw people out for noncompliance. They never want to take the revolving door guys, even though those guys are their bread and butter. But I digress.”

“When do you not?”

“Smile when you say that.”

“I
am
smiling,” Jimmy said. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard the two of them do that routine, I wouldn’t have to temp.