V.I. Warshawski 04 - Bitter Medicine (31 page)

The privacy of the hallway made it possible to relax; I opened Humphries’s office suite easily. A small outer room was clearly the secretary’s-Jackie Bates, to whom I’d spoken yesterday morning. She had a utilitarian desk, a state-of-the-art word processor, and her own photocopy machine. The back wall was lined with filing cabinets. If Consuelo’s file wasn’t in Humphries’s office I’d have to bite the bullet and go through every drawer.

The door to Humphries’s inner sanctum was made from a heavy slab of real wood, perhaps rosewood. Once I had the lock undone and was inside, I felt I was truly in the for-profit part of the hospital.

Instead of the general-issue linoleum, real wood parquet covered the floor. On top of that lay a rug, Persian by the looks of it, big enough to let you know it had cost a whole bunch, but not too large to obscure the inlaid wood. Astride the rug stood an antique desk, the double-sided kind, soft red leather inset into the top, gold marquetry all down the legs and in the drawers. Brocade drapes covered the glass that separated his office from the parking lots outside.

The desk drawers weren’t locked, a relief since forcing them might damage the beautiful old wood. I sat in a spa-cious leather chair and carefully worked my way through them, trying hard not to disturb the order in which papers lay. For someone of my untidy habits, the invisible-search part of the detective’s job was perhaps the most difficult.

Consuelo’s file was not among Humphries’s open papers, but I did find the organization and ownership of the hospital. Behind it was a folder labeled “Monthly Operating Reports.” I pulled both into one thick stack. I was tempted to steal it rather than spending the time on photocopying, but virtue triumphed and I went to Jackie’s antechamber and switched on the machine.

While waiting for it to warm up, I turned my attention to the discreet wooden filing cabinet built into the wall behind Humphries’s desk. This was locked, but like all the Friendship locks it yielded easily. When you live in Schaumburg and don’t expect to be burglarized, you make the detective’s job infinitely simpler.

Consuelo’s file was in the front of the cabinet’s top drawer. I sucked in a breath and opened it. I was expecting something dramatic-Lorry’s missing records or some striking statement about Consuelo’s treatment. Instead, a few skimpy pages announced her arrival at the hospital: female Hispanic patient, aged sixteen, presented on July 29 unconscious and in labor… From there it deteriorated into medical jargon, which Lotty would have to interpret. The three pages were typed, apparently from Peter’s dictation, and dated and initialed by him.

I weighed the file in my hand, frowning. Somehow I’d expected more than this. I went slowly to the antechamber, where I copied both it and the massive documents relating to the hospital organization. When I was putting the three sheets back into the folder I noticed a small piece of paper stuck inside, one of those desk sheets that’s labeled “A memo from,” in this case Alan Humphries.

The only thing on it was a phone number, no area code, so presumably 312, and no name or address. I copied it, then restored everything to its original upright position, carefully switched off the machine, turned out the lights, and headed back to the main part of the hospital.

At the door leading back to the hallway I paused for a moment, listening to make sure no one was standing on the other side, then slipped into the main wing. Two nurses were walking toward me, deep in conversation. They didn’t seem to notice that I’d been where I oughtn’t, and didn’t give me even a cursory glance. I headed on up the hallway to the obstetrics wing.

It was always possible that Peter was making a late-night delivery. Better to be safe than sorry. I found a pay phone in a waiting area and dialed his home number. He answered the phone immediately, so he wasn’t asleep. I hung up without saying anything, just the usual annoyance call we all get from time to time.

I had never been to Peter’s office, but knew from his conversation that it was in the same general area as the labor and delivery rooms. These were on the second floor of the wing where Consuelo had been treated. I climbed the stairs, only to be faced with a double door informing me that I had to be gowned and masked to pass that point. I returned to the ground floor and walked down the corridor until I came to another stairwell. This one entered the second floor on the other side of the restricted zone.

The hall here was deserted, lighted dimly by occasional emergency bulbs. I had arrived in an office area; with luck no one would appear before morning. A large Xerox machine stood at about the halfway point of the floor.

Peter’s office was the fourth door down. His title, Director of Obstetrics, was lettered neatly below his name on the glass door. I unlocked it and went in.

Like Humphries, Peter had a small suite for a secretary and himself. While Jackie and her boss lived in opulent tidiness, here everything was bright colors and chaotic. A rack of gaily colored brochures invited me to make Friendship my full-service obstetrical care provider. Pictures of beaming mothers nestling wholesome infants stared at me from the walls. A poster with an illustration of a stork perched happily on top of the starfish-shaped hospital showed what a great place this was to give birth.

A little row of keys hung next to the desk. One was labeled “Dr. Burgoyne’s office”; another was for the photocopier. The secretary’s desk was crammed with patient files and other documents. A row of filing cabinets was covered with paper as well. I gave them a jaundiced look before taking the key to Peter’s office door.

Parquet apparently was an executive perk at Friendship-secretarial linoleum ended abruptly at Peter’s office door and the expensive wood began. The floor looked funny at the join, but we can’t let the hired help forget their place. And with his door shut, you couldn’t tell. Peter had not furnished his office with the opulence favored by Humphries. An ordinary modern wooden desk, also covered with stacks of paper, was in the middle of the room. A few plain chairs were placed for patient consultations; his own was a standard-supply vinyl-covered swivel chair. A large picture of his retriever made the sole personal contribution to the decor.

Once more donning my rubber gloves, I started through the papers on the desk top, skimming them briefly to make sure they held no reference to Consuelo. Finished with the top layer I made my way through the drawers.

Peter kept everything-mementos of infants he’d delivered, correspondence with drug companies, reminders from MasterCard that his bill was overdue. In a file marked “Per-sonal Papers” I found the original agreement between him and Friendship five years earlier. I raised my eyebrows at the terms-no wonder it had been more attractive than a perinatology residency at Beth Israel. I put it to one side for photocopying.

A report on Consueto lay at the bottom of the last drawer. It was written in a tiny, illegible hand-his, I presumed- I’d never seen his writing. To my untutored eye it was incomprehensible:

At 1430 called Dr. Abercrombie

At 1500 began IV administration of mg. sulf.

I scanned the difficult script and saw where the baby had been born, efforts to revive it, death at 1810. Then Consuelo’s death the following day at five-thirty.

I frowned with incomprehension. One more for Lotty. I debated whether it would be better to take the originals, running the risk that Peter would miss them, or stand at the machine in the hallway with the possibility that a nurse or doctor might come by and question me. Reluctantly I decided this was my one shot at burglarizing the files. I couldn’t very well return them in the mail.

I stopped at the secretary’s desk to get her key to the photocopier, then turned out the lights and closed the doors behind me without locking them. The hallway was still deserted when I went over to switch on the community copier. A half-dozen unlabeled locks in the back of the machine presumably belonged to the different offices on the floor. I tried the key in each; it turned in the fourth slot and the machine came to life.

A dead photocopier can take five or more minutes to warm up. While I waited for this one, I hunted in the hallway for a bathroom. The women’s room was next to the stairwell. I was just opening the door when I heard someone coming up the stairs. I couldn’t very well go back to turn off the machine; nor did I wish to be found standing in the hallway with a fistful of Friendship files. I moved into the bathroom, not turning on the light.

The footsteps came past me without halting and headed down the hall. A man, by the weight of the tread. I cracked the door and looked out. It was Peter. Why the hell was he coming into the hospital this time of night?

I watched tensely while he inserted his key in the lock. He turned it absentmindedly, couldn’t get the door open, frowned at the lock and turned the key again. His thin shoulders shrugged and he went inside. I saw the bars of light come on around the edges of the door. I waited for what seemed an endless amount of time. Would he call security when he found his own office unlocked as well?

I ran through “Batti, batti” from Dow Giovanni-that takes me about five minutes. I carefully mouthed the words twice. Ten minutes and no action. Ignoring the impulse that had sent me to the bathroom to begin with, I slunk down the hallway, retrieved the key to the photocopier and went back down the stairs to the main wing of the hospital.

I went briskly down the corridor to the main entrance, got into the car and circled around the building until I found the staff parking lot. In the suburbs., if you work you drive to get there. The parking area was filled with the night shift’s cars. I couldn’t drive into the area without a plastic card to open the gates, but I went in on foot and finally located Peter’s car at the far end.

I returned to the car and moved it down the road where it would be inconspicuous, but where I could see the lot entrance. At three o’clock, Peter finally emerged. I watched him into the lot, waited until the Maxima came out, and followed it at a discreet distance until I was sure he was heading for home.

My silk shirt was again wet with sweat. You are so dumb, I admonished myself. Why will you persist in wearing silk on difficult errands in midsummer?

By this point I was past caring whether anyone intercepted me. I boldly made my way back to Peter’s office wing. It was still deserted. Once more, I used his secretary’s key to bring the Xerox machine to life. When the “ready” light was on, I copied the papers, stuck them in my portfolio, reopened Peter’s office, and restored what I’d taken.

As I hung the keys I’d borrowed back on the little hooks by the secretary’s desk, I saw what had brought him into his office: work on his amniotic-embolism conference. A note in his cramped handwriting lay on top of a stack of papers: “Okay now for typesetting and 35 mm. Sorry to bring it down to the wire for you.” The conference was this coming Friday-he’d left his poor secretary with two working days to get his slides together.

On impulse I picked up samples of the brightly colored brochures and stuffed them with the other papers into my now-bulging portfolio. I carefully locked the doors behind me and left.

It was time for whiskey, bath, and bed. Near the entrance to the tollway I found a Marriott, which even at this late hour was willing to provide me with all three. I took a double Black Label from the bar up to my room. By the time I’d finished soaking in the narrow tub I’d drunk all the whiskey. Practice makes perfect in these precision-timed exercises. I fell into bed and slept the perfect sleep of the honest laborer.

I woke up at eleven, refreshed and relaxed. I lay stretching in the king-size bed for several minutes, not wanting to break my mood of lazy well-being. They say completing a successful criminal enterprise often leaves this feeling in its wake-the people I used to represent for the county weren’t successful, so I never saw it firsthand.

At last I swung out of bed and went into the bathroom to wash. The walls were covered with mirrors, offering me a complete and unappetizing view of my stomach and hips- time to lay off the pancakes and double orders of bacon. I sent down to room service for fresh fruit, yogurt, and coffee before phoning Lotty at the clinic.