V.I. Warshawski 04 - Bitter Medicine (30 page)

Climbing gingerly down the backstairs in nylons and heels, I was glad my normal business attire was jeans. In the summer heat, pantyhose clings to the legs and crotch, cutting off air to the skin. I was feeling slightly baked by the time I got to my car.

I didn’t think the police would bother to tail me-the law thinks of me as reasonably responsible and even though the same make of gun as mine had killed Fabiano, Rawlings didn’t seriously suspect me. Still, just in case, I drove over to the clinic and asked Lotty if we could trade cars for the day.

She greeted me in a subdued, almost fearful way. “Vic, what is going on? Now Fabiano is dead. You don’t think Carol’s brothers would have killed him trying to pro-tea me?”

“God, I hope not. Besides, if they did, it wouldn’t really help you. The law regards a juicy lawsuit like this as an asset and his estate inherits it. Probably the only thing he had to leave besides that Eldorado. The Alvarado boys are too sensible-I don’t think they’d jeopardize their futures just for the fleeting satisfaction of knocking off Fabiano. And no, I didn’t kill him.”

She blushed faintly under her olive skin. “No, no, Vic. I didn’t really think you might have. Of course you can take my car.”

I followed her to her office to trade keys with her. “Can I borrow one of your lab coats, too? Or one of Carol’s-it’d be more my size. Also a pair of your nifty little plastic examining gloves.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I want to know why, but certainly.” She took a clean white jacket from her office closet and took me to an empty examining room where she pulled out a box of gloves and handed me two pairs.

Her venerable Datsun was parked in the alley behind the clinic. She went with me, giving me a worried, most un-Lotty-like good-bye.

“You must be careful, Vic. This summer has been very rough on me. I could not bear it for anything to happen to you.”

We’re not usually so demonstrative, but I pulled her to me and kissed her before taking off. “Yeah, I’m a little nervous myself. I’ll try to talk to you tonight, but it’ll probably be late before I get back. If-well, if I’m stupid or careless, tell Murray where I’ve been, okay?”

She nodded and returned to her patients. Her narrow shoulders were a little stooped, and she looked her age.

Lotty fancies herself as Sterling Moss and drives her car fast and recklessly. Unfortunately her intrepidity isn’t matched by her skill and over the years she’s stripped the gears on the Datsun. Shifting up and down in the city traffic took patience and enough attention that I couldn’t be sure my back was clean until I got onto the Northwest Tollway. After going a couple of miles, I pulled onto the shoulder and watched the cars sweep past. Nobody slowed, and when after five minutes I reentered the swarm of traffic, I didn’t see anybody dropping back to tag me.

The heat hung heavier in the northwest suburbs. Being away from the lake adds a good fifteen degrees to the air in the summer. Lotty’s no-frills approach to life didn’t include car air-conditioning. I shrugged out of my suit jacket, but the armpits of the silk shirt grew sodden as the morning progressed. When I exited onto Route 58 and headed south toward the hospital I looked as though I’d been heading across Death Valley on foot for three or four days.

I parked in the visitors’ lot and came in through the hospital’s main entrance. Alan Humphries and the admissions clerk were the only people who’d met me when I’d been here before. That had been three weeks ago and I’d been in jeans. If they passed me this morning they’d assume I was a visitor and probably not spare me a second glance.

I found a rest room where I washed my face and neck, combed most of the Tollway dust from my hair and tried to restore some semblance of professional demeanor. When I’d done the best I could, I returned to the information desk in the main lobby.

A neat, white-haired woman wearing the pink coat of a volunteer smiled at me and asked me how she could help.

“Can you direct me to the medical-records office?”

“Straight down this hallway, then turn left, go up the first flight of stairs and you’ll find it easily at the top of the stairs.”

This is a little embarrassing-I have an eleven o’clock appointment with the director and forgot to put the name in my pocket diary.“

She gave me an understanding smile-we all do these silly things from time to time. She flipped through her directory. “Ruth Ann Motley.”

I thanked her and headed down the hallway. Instead of going up the stairs, I went on down to the emergency entrance where I’d brought Consuelo four weeks ago. I pulled Lotty’s white doctor coat out of my portfolio, slipped it on, and immediately became part of the hallway furniture.

To one side of the entrance was the emergency-admissions office. Unlike a city hospital’s emergency room, which is always packed with the people who use it in lieu of a family doctor, only one woman was sitting in the waiting area. She looked up at me as I walked briskly past, seemed about to speak, and sat back down.

A beige internal phone was mounted on the wall near the outside doors. I used it to call the hospital operator, asking her to page Ruth Ann Motley down to the emergency-room office. After a short wait I heard Motley’s name echoing from the loudspeaker.

I stood in the doorway, where I could view the hall and the entrance to the emergency room. After perhaps five minutes a tall, lanky woman appeared, moving at a fast trot. She looked to be in her mid-forties, with dark hair done in a disheveled perm. She wore a light-blue seersucker suit that showed too much of her bony wrists and fleshy thighs when she walked. After a few minutes she reappeared, frowning in annoyance, looked around, and trotted back down the hall.

I followed her at a discreet distance. She took the stairs to the second floor. I watched her go into the records room and settled down with my portfolio in a chair about twenty yards up the hall.

I seemed to be in an outpatient area; ten or so other people, mostly women, were scattered against the wall in the cheap vinyl chairs, waiting their turns to see the doctor.

I took off the white coat, folded it, returned it to the little briefcase, and bent over a stack of papers I’d stuck into it at random.

Around twelve-fifteen, when the cadre in the hall had turned over completely, Ruth Ann Motley reemerged from the records room. She came up the hall toward me but apparently intended to go to the bathroom rather than accost me. When she came out, she headed back down the stairs. I gave her five more minutes and figured she was at lunch.

I strolled down the hall to the records room, looking as official as I could. Inside was the busiest setting I’d yet seen in the hospital. A half-dozen desks stood piled high with files. On each desk sat a computer terminal. Beyond lay the records, row on row of shelves packed with color-coded folders.

Only two people were at work, covering the place during the lunch hour. Both were women, one perhaps my age, the other a young girl handling her first post-high school job. I went to the older one, an overweight, uncertain-looking person in a salmon-colored shirtwaist dress.

I gave the brief smile of someone in a great hurry. “I’m Elizabeth Phelps, State of Illinois. We’re doing some surprise inspections around the state to make sure medical records are secure.”

The woman blinked watery blue eyes at me. Hay fever or a cold seemed to be attacking her. “You-uh-you’d have to talk to the director about that. Ruth Ann Motley.”

“Great,” I said briskly. “Take me in to her.”

“Oh. Oh, she’s at lunch right now. She’ll be back in forty-five minutes if you’d like to wait.”

“I wish I could, but I’ve got to be in Downers Grove at one o’clock. I don’t want to see any patient records, just see whether patient confidentiality is protected here. Why don’t you look up a patient record for me. I brought some names with me of people who’ve been admitted here.”

I flipped through the portfolio. “Oh, yes. How about Consuelo Hernandez. You don’t think Ms. Motley will object to your just showing me the system is secure by looking up one patient, do you?”

The two clerks looked at each other. Finally the older one said, “I guess it can’t do any harm. What we do is, we access the system through a password. Each of us has her own password, and I can’t tell you mine because I’m not supposed to let anyone else know it.”

I came around and stood behind her. She typed a few strokes that didn’t show up on the screen-a protected password. A menu came up.

“I can only get at two menu functions. Patient number by name, and file location. Do you want to spell the name of the person you’re looking for?”

I obligingly spelled out Consuelo’s name for her. She slowly typed it in and hit the return key. After a few seconds lines of type moved across the screen: Consuelo’s name, her admission date, and the record number: 610342. I memorized it and asked if she could show me file status.

She typed a few more commands and the screen responded: File charged out on 8-25 to Administration.

Thanks very much,“ I smiled. ”You’ve been most helpful, Ms.-“ I squinted at the nameplate on her desk- ”Digby. I don’t think we’ll have to come back here. You can tell Ms. Motley we’re impressed with the management of security here.“

I made my way briskly down the stairs and back out of the hospital. It was only twelve-forty-five. I had a good long time to wait before I could go on with my agenda and I

wasn’t much in the mood for more food. I drove around aimlessly for a while and happened on a public swimming pool, a beautiful, Olympic-length facility.

I went into one of the malls that dot the suburban countryside and bought a bathing suit, a towel, and a few toilet articles, including a heavy sunscreen for my face, which still needed protection against midday rays. With these and the latest junk book from the best-seller rack, I was ready to while away the afternoon in best suburban style.

At eleven o’clock I returned to Friendship. In the dark the star-shaped building loomed like a giant sea monster, the few lighted windows, its malevolent eyes. The visitors’ lot had emptied out and I could park close to the front entrance, the mouth of the beast.

I slipped on Lotty’s white coat and walked in, frowning, moving quickly: Doctor is worried about a patient and shouldn’t be disturbed. Few people were about. The information desk where I’d sought directions in the morning was vacant. A couple of orderlies chatted quietly in one corner. Ahead of me a janitor moved desultorily with a mop. With the bright neon lights, the periodic announcements over the intercom, and the empty halls it reminded me of O’Hare in the middle of the night. There is no more desolate place than an empty building that is normally crowded.

The administrative offices were I’d talked with Mrs. Kirkland and Alan Humphries lay near the stairwell I’d taken this morning to the records room. The door leading to the suite of offices was locked, an ordinary push-button lock. I pulled out my collection of keys, found one of the right make, and fiddled in the door with it. It turned after an agonizing few moments during which I expected one of the orderlies to notice me or a nurse to pass by and accost me.

Mrs. Kirkland’s little office lay directly in front of me. A black plastic label etched with white letters announced her name and title: Director of Admissions. I slipped on a pair of Lorry’s gloves and tried the doorknob out of curiosity; her room was locked. The corridor to Alan Humphries’s office ran parallel to her cubicle, with his office suite at its end. Two other doors, also locked, led off the hallway to the right.