Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy (35 page)

I realized that she was alone. A windowpane over the
sink was broken, but only as if something had been thrown through it
from the inside. Water drummed from the faucet.

Then Andrus began to
choke, and I got on the phone for 911 and the closest hospital I knew
before trying to help her.

* * *

Dr. Paul Eisenberg came around the corner, a chart in
his hand. I worked my way up from the cheap plastic chair in the
waiting room. "How is she?"

The skin on his forehead wrinkled toward the baldness
above it.

"Not good. Coma, signs very low. Where's her
husband?"

"Europe. Tennis tournament in Paris, I think she
said."

"He should be notified."

"What the hell is wrong with her?"

Eisenberg consulted the chart. "You told the
EMTs that Andrus was choking when you got there?"

"She was having a fit of some kind when I got
there. The choking started after that."

"How long before you got to her did the fit
start?"

"I don't know for sure. I heard glass breaking,
turned out to be a window in the kitchen. I was to her within two,
three minutes after that."

"In the kitchen, you say?"

"Yes. I thought it was somebody trying to get at
her, but maybe it was her trying to signal for help with the fit."

Eisenberg sighed. "Probably not. Not
consciously, I mean. Was there any water near her?"

"Water?"

"Yes."

"Doc, she was writhing on the floor like she'd
been gutshot. The only water was the faucet running in the sink."

"And which window was broken?"

"The one over the sink. Why'?"

"Have you seen her much the last few weeks?"

"Yes. Well, no, just a couple of times."

"How did she seem to you?"

"Pretty tired. Haggard, even."

"Irritable?"

"Yes. Much more than before she went out to San
Diego."

"Sensitive to breezes or drafts?"

I stared at him. "Yes."

"Has she been in any wilderness in the last six
months?"

"Wilderness? Not that I know of."

"Camping? Or maybe on a farm?"

"No."

"Out of the continental U.S. at all?"

"No. Wait, yes, down to Sint Maarten."

"Caribbean?"

"Right."

"When?"

"December into January."

Eisenberg jotted something on the chart. "Incubation
period is within the brackets. That's a possible, but not likely."

"What's a possible'?"

"Sorry. A possible source of the infection."

"What infection?"

"You have to understand, we don't see this
anymore, not in cities. I saw it only twice in Brazil, and I don't
think there have been six deaths in the whole U.S. over the last —
"

"Dr. Eisenberg, what the hell is wrong with
her?"

He told me.

"Sweet Jesus of God."

* * *

I lay awake until after midnight Monday, when the
effects of the marathon finally overcame everything else. Tuesday
morning I got on the phone. First, I called in a favor from a friend
at an airline. He patched his computer into four other carriers
before finding what I needed to know and making reservations for me
too. By Tuesday afternoon my legs were recovered enough to drive
south to Providence. I hand-carried Steven O'Brien from counting
beans at work to leafing through old clippings at home. Just to be
certain.

When I got back to Boston, I dialed Mass General.
Paul Eisenberg's voice told me Maisy Andrus had died two hours
earlier. That left only one stop more.

"Oh. John."

Del Wonsley's voice and face both showed surprise in
seeing me.

"I was afraid you might not have gotten my
message."

A polite way to ask what the hell had taken me so
long.

"Can I come in?"

"Oh, sure. Sorry."

I stepped over the threshold into a first-level
entry, the walls lined with tapestries.

Wonsley said, "Please, come up."

We climbed the stairs of the Bay Village town house
to a second, living room floor. Two men I'd never seen were there,
chatting quietly over cheese and crackers and fruit. The men looked
surprised, too, as if they had been expecting Wonsley to bring up
someone they knew.

Wonsley introduced us, then said, "Would you
like to see Alec?"

"If I can."

"I think he'd like that."

Wonsley led me up another flight to a door off the
corridor, then whispered so no one below us or behind the door could
hear him.

"Try not to stay too long."

"How strong is he?"

Wonsley's tongue darted out and back. "As strong
as he'll ever be. Why?"

"I should ask him some things and tell him some
things."

"John, it . . . it won't matter soon."

"Tomorrow?"

"I think so. He's asked me to be ready then."

Wonsley went downstairs, and I opened the door.

The bedroom was dark, just some muted track lighting
near the four-poster. Alec's head was framed by the pillows under and
behind it. The covers were pulled up close to his chin, the left arm
out but with no tubes in it. There was a lot of medicinal stuff on
the night table beside him. Small bottles of pills and tablets, the
leather case holding some ampules of insulin, a couple of syringes in
cellophane blister packs arrayed around it. From two corners I could
hear solo piano, a stereo secreted somewhere.

I got close enough to Alec for him to become aware of
me.

"John? John, good to see you."

Much of the hair was gone. Deep pouches under the
eyes shaded his cheekbones like a charcoal sketch.

"Alec."

His hand came up from the comforter a few inches. I
took it, felt him squeeze. I squeezed back with a little less
pressure.

"Del called you?"

"Yes."

The wry smile. "I'm afraid the time for makeup
has passed. Something about Maisy?"

He hadn't heard. I thought about what I'd gone there
to tell him, thought about how I'd want to spend the time if I were
Bacall. Thought about Beth.

I said, "No, Alec. I came to have that talk."

His eyes asked the question.

"About life," I said.

After a short while he drifted off in mid-sentence,
breathing pretty steadily. I squeezed his hand one more time and said
good-bye.
 

=33=

FROM BEHIND THE WHEEL, ANGEL SAID, "YOU SEE,
ESPANA IS not a morning country."

I nodded at him as we bounced around another bright
but unpopulated corner in Gijon, a picturesque city that reminded me
of New Orleans. My passenger seat was black leatherette with no
headrest, an after-market chrome stickshift rising from a rubber
nipple on the floor. The speedometer optimistically suggested that
Angel's SEAT 600 was capable of hitting 120 kilometers per hour, or
about seventy-two mph. I decided the plastic Virgin Mary on the
dashboard couldn't hurt.

The flight that was supposed to leave Kennedy at
eight-thirty P.M. didn't actually take off until ten-thirty. I cadged
a nap during the six and a half hours in the air, but with an
additional time difference of six hours, it was 11:00 A.M. Spain time
before the plane landed in Madrid. At customs, the officer in a tan
shirt and black epaulets checked only my passport, not the small
duffel bag.

In Madrid, a cab took me to the Estacién del norte,
a magnificent marble building with an orange tile roof and an
elaborate, platformed interior. Unfortunately, the next train to
Gijon wasn't until ten P.M. My own body clock was so screwed up that
I was more hungry than sleepy. For lunch, I had a menu de dia that
turned out to be four courses, wine included. The weather was
pleasant, and my joints were still sore from the marathon, so to
loosen up I walked around Madrid for a few hours. Grand public
buildings and banks, ornate gold work bordering the doors and
windows, blackened statues on the parapets. Food stores with hams and
legs of lamb hanging in the windows, large whole fish staring blankly
from beds of cracked ice. Men and women with lottery tickets attached
by clothespins to strings around their necks, crying out extended
syllables like 1930s newsboys hawking an extra edition. The entrance
line for the Prado Museum, a clever entrepreneur plying the captive
parents by block-printing the names of sons or daughters in the
matador-of-the-day space on bullfighting posters.

I slept a little during the train ride north to
Gijon. A taxi strike was in progress when we arrived at six A.M. I
wasted another couple of hours before Angel, a scholarly looking guy
of thirty, befriended me. I'd had the foresight to cash two hundred
dollars into pesetas before I'd boarded the plane in New York, and we
agreed on a fair price for driving me where I wanted to go. Now, in
the car, I found I had to focus on what Angel was saying to follow
him at all.

"You see, the Alcalde, how you say it, the major
of the city?"

"Mayor."

"Si, si, the mayor. He want to make the taxis to
forty more, but the drivers, they say no. They have the huelga, the
strike, si?"

"Right."

"Like from the
beisbol
?"

"Same word, different meaning."

"Si, si." Angel swerved around a piece of
lumber in the road.

"You will stay in Gijon when we get back?"

"I'm not sure."

"You should stay in our city. Gijon is a better
city from Madrid. No much expensive, good food, less persons. No
crimes, you don't lock the doors in the night. Most days, we have the
rain, but for you, the sunshine."

We left Gijon behind and began winding through the
countryside.

Full morning light lifted the dew from green hills,
occasional glimpses of the ocean to our right. Except for the
curvature of the earth, I could have seen the south of England.

We'd been paralleling the coast for a few miles when
Angel pointed. "The corrida of Candas you ask me for."

A line of stone cabanas overlooked a jettied beach.
Some small fishing boats were grounded on the sand, mooring lines
swaying up to the cabanas. Part of the jetty curved around, creating
an enclosure that might be dry at low tide.

I said, "Slow down a little, please."

Angel did. A ritzy outdoor café was opening on the
town side of the bullring, white tables and chairs under red
umbrellas.

"A man of great sculpture live here before they
kill him. He was name Anton. There is a museo just for him. You have
the time for it?"

"Maybe later." The cliff was rugged, dotted
with gulls hovering and landing. The promontory rose about a hundred
feet from jagged rocks poking through the surf. I didn't see what I
was looking for.

"Can we drive around a bit?"

"Around the town?"

"Yes."

"Si. Candas is a nice town, you see."

We drove through narrow streets, cobblestoned
walkways covered against the climate by the overhang of buildings.
Little cottages of beige stucco under orange roofs, flower boxes and
pots in the windows. A carefully restored theater commanded the main
drag.

"Can we drive up, Angel?"

"Up? Si, up."

We ascended and rounded a curve, and there it was. I
let him go past, keeping track of where it was as we continued on.

After a few blocks I said, "I'd like to walk for
a while. Choose a bar to sit in, drinks on me."

"I can walk you, tell you some things."

"I'd rather try it on my own. Can I leave the
duffel bag here in the car?"

Angel shrugged and parked
under a sign that said Cerveza.

* * *

I approached the house, catching just the perspective
in the photo on Ray Cuervo's bookshelf at the veal plant. Peeking
through blinds, I couldn't see anyone. I tried the front door.
Unlocked.

I entered the house of the late Dr. Enrique Cuervo
Duran. A lot of dark beams contrasted with rough plaster on ceilings
and some walls. Beneath my feet the reddish tile on the floor was set
in black grout, the staircase Ray Cuervo had described stretching
upward in front of me. I stood still long enough to be sure no one
was moving in the house. Beyond the staircase I came into a room with
a view of both the ocean and the bullring below, some gulls hanging
and wheeling in the air currents above the cliff.

On the lawn, Inés Roja lounged in one of two chairs,
perhaps twenty feet from the edge of the drop-off. A small wicker
table sat between her and the empty chair. On the table stood a dark
green wine bottle and a single, clear glass, like an iced tea
tumbler. Roja's hands were folded in her lap, chin tilted into the
sun, eyes closed. I walked outside, the breeze freshening as I
reached her. Resplendent in a long-sleeved dress over sandals, she
turned her head slowly to me. The black hair was slicked back, held
in place by dainty silver combs. As her eyes opened, a lazy smile
crossed her face.