Dear Old Dead (32 page)

“Well?” she said again. “What was it about? What did you overhear?”

“It was about the contest,” Victor said.

Martha drew a blank. “What contest?”

“The Father’s Day contest down at the paper. You know, what I do on my job. It was about that.”

“It was about it how?”

Victor shrugged. “Well, you know. How do the contests run. What happens with the winners. That kind of thing. Lisa was there, too. Lisa Hasserdorf. My boss.”

This was like swimming through mud. This was really awful. Martha hated talking to Victor.

“Look,” she said. “Try to make sense. Demarkian and Sheed went all the way downtown just to talk to Dave Geraldino and Lisa Hasserdorf about the contest? Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“It wasn’t just this contest. It was all the contests that I’ve run. And no. It doesn’t seem strange to me.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. And it shouldn’t seem strange to you, either.”

“Oh, Victor, for God’s sake. Make sense. Nobody cares about those contests. Even the paper doesn’t care about them. They’re just something Grandfather liked to do because that sort of thing works so well in other places.”

Victor shifted in his chair. The line of his leg was elegant. The cut of his suit was beyond belief. He had a dreamy smile on his face. Was Martha crazy, or was he even vaguer and stranger than usual? There was something Martha definitely didn’t like in this attitude of Victor’s. There was something menacing under the surface. Had it always been there? Martha walked quickly away from Victor’s chair and went to look out the window.

“You’re not making sense,” she said again. “If you’ve got some idea why Demarkian and Sheed are doing what they’re doing, I wish you’d tell me. I don’t like the way things are going. I keep expecting one of us to be arrested at any moment. It’s making me physically ill.”

“They got the names of the people who wouldn’t let themselves be photographed,” Victor told her placidly. “The one from the supercontest last year, with the quarter million payoff. Mrs. Esther Stancowycz from Brooklyn. I love the name Esther Stancowycz, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Martha’s voice had a wild note to it. She could hear it. “Why should I like it?”

“They got the name of that woman in Queens who won the Presidents’ Day contest in February, too. Miss Sharon Cortez. All the names they got were names of women. Of course, they had to be women.”

“Why?” Martha asked desperately.

Victor stood up. “We ought to go over and get Ida, don’t you think? She’s going to want to know about this as much as you do. We’re going to have to fill her in.”

“Ida’s on duty in the emergency room,” Martha said uncertainly.

“I think I’ll go down and tell her I’m here anyway. Then I think I’ll go down to the cafeteria and drink some coffee and read the papers. I’m going to find that very interesting. And it will be the last time. The last time for anything is always interesting.”

All of a sudden it hit Martha, in a wave, that she knew what was going on here. She felt poisoned. Sickness rose in her stomach and spread into her veins.

“Victor,” she said, “did you kill Grandfather?”

“No.”

“No? Just like that?”

“What other way is there to say no? No. No. No. No. But I’ll tell you a secret. I’m going to get arrested for killing him and I’m going to get tried for killing him and I’m going to get convicted of killing him. I’ll even go to jail for killing him. I don’t think the state of New York would take too well to a request for alternative community service in a case like this, do you? Not even for somebody with a name like van Straadt.”

Victor’s lost his mind, Martha thought, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to say anything. She was just glad Victor knew so little about the center. He had volunteered here, of course, just like the rest of them, but he hadn’t really taken to it. He didn’t know his way around. Martha knew half a dozen ways to get to Ida before he could. Martha had to get to Ida. Martha had to warn her.

There was a framed photograph of Michael Pride on the wall of the reception room. Victor stopped in front of it, straightened it unnecessarily, and smiled.

“Saint Michael Pride,” he said.

And then he burst out laughing.

D
OWN IN THE EMERGENCY
room, Sister Augustine was counting sodium pentathol doses on a long metal tray. The doses had already been counted twice, once by Sister Kenna and once by Sister Mary Grace. The counts had come up wrong both times. Augie could see now that the counts were going to come up wrong again. The tray had been left out. That was the problem. The situation had gotten bad—not as bad as it had been two weeks ago, on the night when Charles van Straadt had died, but bad—and somebody had gotten careless. If Augie went to work at it, she could figure out just whose responsibility it had been. She never did bother to go to work at it in these cases, because doing that was stupid. She just took responsibility for it herself. There wasn’t a single member of this staff that hadn’t gotten careless at least once because of lack of sleep or lack of food or lack of something else. Except Michael, of course, but Michael didn’t count. Michael was the exception to all the rules in the universe except one.

The count came out wrong. Augie pushed the tray away and looked up at Sister Kenna and Sister Mary Grace. Both looked haggard. It was horrible when the counts came out wrong. You always knew what had happened when you were short a dose. The junkies would take anything if they were far enough gone. You always wondered if your carelessness had killed somebody. Mixing drugs was not the safest thing to do.

“It’s all right,” Augie said. “I’ll have to report it, but it’s all right. It’s only three doses.”

“Only three,” Mary Grace repeated miserably. “Three is enough.”

“For a veteran junkie, three is barely an appetizer.”

The tray was lying on the lower level of the counter at the nurses’ station. From there Augie could see the front doors and the people coming in and out. Most of the people tonight looked damaged. There was nothing hidden about their pain. Then a flutter of excitement seemed to rise from the darkness just outside the door. The people milling around the entrance stood back. Augie saw Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed come in one right after the other. They stopped near the front to talk, Augie didn’t know to whom.

“It’s the detectives,” she said to Sister Kenna and Sister Mary Grace. “With the kind of night we’ve been having, I’d almost forgotten they were here.”

“They haven’t been here,” Sister Mary Grace said. “They’ve been out. I know because Michael was looking for them earlier, and I couldn’t find them for him.”

“They went down to the New York
Sentinel,”
Ida Greel said, coming up to the nurses’ station with her white smock open and a red smear of Mercurochrome across her cheek. “Victor and Martha and I heard them talking before they left. I don’t know what it was about.”

“The New York
Sentinel.”
Sister Kenna brightened. “That’s a new tack, isn’t it? Maybe they don’t think those murders had anything to do with the center. Wouldn’t that be a relief?”

“No,” Ida said.

Sister Kenna shot Ida a remorseful look.

Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed had finished talking to whoever it was they were talking to. Augie watched them detach themselves from the crowd that had gathered around them and begin to work their way to the back of the hall. The crowd drifted in their direction, but not for long. Everybody wanted to be close to the action, to know what was going on—but not too close. Getting too close could be a jinx. The police could pin anything on you if they wanted to. Augie was surprised at how much of the ordinary attitudes of this neighborhood she had taken for her own. She wouldn’t have thought that way about the police when she first came here.

“I hate to be callous,” she said, “but I don’t really care what they’re doing as long as they’re not being a threat to Michael.”

“I don’t think they were ever a threat to Michael,” Ida said. “I think that was just our paranoia.”

“Somebody’s a threat to somebody,” Sister Kenna said. “I’m glad Robbie Yagger didn’t die, in spite of all the trouble he’s caused us. I don’t think I could have stood to have somebody else die around here—I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” Augie said.

“Is Robbie Yagger doing well?” Ida asked. “I was on duty in Family Planning when all that happened. Later somebody told me that Michael had committed another miracle, and done something nobody had ever done before. Doesn’t Michael always?”

“Robbie’s doing all right,” Augie told her. “Michael’s saying he should be sitting up and talking in a couple of days. There’s something going on now about making sure he stays absolutely still because there might still be some strychnine in his body.”

“I’ll have to tell Julie Enderson about that.” Ida touched the red smear on her cheek. “She was all worked up about it. I’m going down to the cafeteria right now. Maybe I’ll run into her.”

“Are you taking a break?” Augie asked.

Sister Kenna nudged Augie in the ribs. “Look. They’re coming right this way. I think they’re going to stop and talk to us.”

“Why shouldn’t they stop and talk to us?” Augie demanded. “We can talk to them any time we want to. Or at least we can talk to Mr. Demarkian. That’s why he’s here.”

“Oh, Augie,” Sister Kenna said.

Hector Sheed and Gregor Demarkian were only a couple of yards away. Augie hated to admit it, but she knew what Sister Kenna was getting at. This morning, she had felt as if she could command Gregor Demarkian’s attention any time she wanted it. Now she didn’t. Robbie Yagger’s near-death had caused a psychological shift Rosalie van Straadt’s murder hadn’t. That probably means they’re close to knowing the answer, Augie thought. And then she shivered.

“If I wasn’t a nun, I’d think Hector Sheed was cute,” Sister Mary Grace said.

Augie hated waiting for things to happen to her. She stepped around the side of the nurses’ station counter and said, “Mr. Demarkian? Mr. Sheed? Can I speak to you for a moment?”

The two men came to a stop when there were less than six inches left between them and Augie. Augie backed up a little. She had been trained in the days when nuns had been careful to keep a safe space between themselves and seculars at all times. She didn’t like to get too close.

She also didn’t know what she wanted to say. “Mr. Demarkian,” she tried, ignoring Hector Sheed completely. “We’ve heard—that is, there’s a rumor going around—there’s some talk that you might have the answer. That the police might be close to an arrest.”

There was, of course, no such rumor. Augie was telling a lie. She didn’t care.

Hector Sheed was looking impatient. “The police are close to losing their tempers,” he said pointedly.

Gregor Demarkian ignored him. “I think it’s a little soon to talk about arrests,” he explained to Sister Augustine. “Right now, I need a word with Dr. Pride.”

Augie tensed. “With Michael? But you can’t have a word with Michael. It’s Friday night.”

Gregor Demarkian’s eyebrows rose up his forehead. Augie flushed.

“It’s Friday night,” she repeated. “We’re inundated. We’re always drowning in emergencies on Friday night.”

“What are you talking about?” Ida Greel asked. “We’re busy, but we’re not drowning. Actually, we’re doing pretty well for a Friday night.”

“Shut up,” Augie told her fiercely. “Michael’s
busy.”

“I just want to ask him a couple of questions,” Gregor said gently. “I’m not going to slap him into handcuffs and haul him off to the Tombs. I don’t have the authority.”

“He does.” Augie pointed at Hector Sheed.

“Oh, Augie,” Ida Greel said. She turned to Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed, looking a little helpless. Augie felt anger welling up inside herself and turned away. “Michael’s in his examining room,” Ida continued. “I think he’s alone. He did a job in OR about ten minutes ago and when he came out there was nothing immediately waiting. Of course, it’s early in the night.”

“Thank you,” Gregor Demarkian said.

Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed started to walk away. They knew where Michael’s examining room was. Every single reader of the New York City newspapers knew where Michael’s examining room was. Augie could feel the fury mounting up inside her like steam in a pressure cooker. She spun around on Ida and hissed, “What did you think you were doing? What did you think you were doing? Do you want to destroy him?”

“Destroy him?” Ida was shell-shocked. “Augie, what are you talking about?”

“None of you thinks for a minute about him,” Augie raged. “None of you thinks for a minute. You treat him like he’s some kind of machine.”

Sister Kenna and Sister Mary Grace were looking at each other.

“Augie,” Sister Kenna said tentatively, “I think you’re a little tired. You’re overreacting.”

“Of course I’m not overreacting,” Augie exploded. “Oh, you’re all such babes in the woods. None of you understand anything. You don’t realize how dangerous this situation is.”

“Dangerous,” Sister Mary Grace repeated in bewilderment.

But of course, Augie knew she was overreacting. She knew she had been overreacting for days. She couldn’t help herself.

What she could do was get out of there, and that she did. She picked up the tray of sodium pentathol doses and sailed off down the hall to put them away in the drugs cupboard.

T
HROUGH THE OPEN DOOR
of his examining room, Michael Pride had seen Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed and then Augie, having one of her epiphanies of sense. Now he sat on the corner of his desk and waited, tired, for the two men to get to him. He had gone on working without so much as a nod in the direction of his condition, at the same intensity, at the same hours, with just as little food or rest. It hadn’t mattered until tonight. That was the real problem with cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma or any other kind. Your body spent so much time fighting a war it couldn’t hope to win, there was nothing left over for your ordinary life. Half an hour ago, Michael had been standing in the operating room, extracting four .38-caliber bullets from the bone marrow of a boy no more than fourteen years old. Michael had stayed awake and alert throughout the procedure, but in the end he had done it only by an effort of will. In a week or two, he knew the effort of will would not be enough. With proper care and careful management, he could expect to go on working for months, or even for years—but he could not expect to go on working like this. The twenty-hour days, the six operations back to back, the endless marathons that constituted his part in the gang warfare of the ghettos of New York City: All that was going to have to come to an end. Michael rubbed his face and told himself that all that had already come to an end, just now, it was over, he was never going to be able to do it again. He needed somebody to lean on and there was nobody here. Eamon and Augie were falling apart. They reached out to him and he gave them what help he could, because he always had. What was he going to do next? Michael Pride had always been a man alone. He had always wanted to be a man alone. He wanted to be that now. He just wanted to rest.