The Body Human (10 page)

I said to her, “He knows when your free period is.”

She looked at me coolly. “Yes.”

“So you’ve gotten him to talk to you.”

“A little.”
Still cool.
“His mother disappeared for three days. She uses. She’s back now, but Jeff doesn’t trust her to take care of his little brother. Did you even know he had a little brother, Gene?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”
She looked like
Lateesha
.
Disapproving mother.
The raccoon eyes were etched deeper. “This boy is in trouble, and he’s one we don’t have to lose. We can still save him.
You
could have, last year. He admires you. But you never gave him the time of day, beyond making sure he wasn’t any trouble to
you
.”

“I don’t think you have the right to judge whether
-
”

“Don’t I?
Maybe not.
I’m sorry. But don’t you see, Jeff only wanted from you—”

“That’s the bell. Good luck today, Ms. Kelly.”

She stared at me,
then
gave me a little laugh.
“Right.
And where were
you
when the glaciers melted?
Never mind.”
She walked into her classroom, which diminished in noise only a fraction of a decibel.

Her earrings were little silver hoops, and her silky blouse was red.

After school I drove to the Angels of Mercy Nursing Home and pretended I was interested in finding a place for my aging mother. A woman named Karen
Gennaro
showed me a dining hall, bedrooms, activity rooms, a little garden
deep in marigolds and asters, nursing facilities. Old people peacefully played cards, watched TV, sat by sunshiny windows. There was no sign that eighty-year-old Lydia Smith had thrown herself from the roof, or that her J-24-bonded boyfriend Giacomo
della
Francesca had stabbed himself to death.

“I’d like to walk around a little by myself now,” I told Ms.
Gennaro
. “Just sort of get the feel of the place. My mother is…particular.” She hesitated. “We don’t usually allow—”

“Mom didn’t like Green Meadows because too many corridors were painted pale blue and she hates pale blue. She rejected Saint Anne’s because the other women didn’t care enough about their hairdos and so the atmosphere wasn’t self-respecting. She wouldn’t visit
Havenview
b
e
cause there was no piano in the dining room. This is the tenth place I’ve reported on.”

She laughed. “No wonder you sound so weary. All right, just check out with me before you leave.”

I inspected the day room again, chatting idly with a man watching the weather channel. Then I wandered to the sixth floor, where Lydia Smith and Giacomo
della
Francesca had lived. I chatted with an elderly man in a wheelchair, and a sixteen-year-old Catholic Youth volunteer, and a Mrs.
Locurzio
, who had the room on the other side of Lydia Smith’s.
Nothing.

A janitor came by mopping floors, a heavy young man with watery blue eyes and a sweet, puzzled face like a bearded child.

“Excuse me—have you worked here long?”

“Four years.” He leaned on his mop, friendly and shy.

“Then you must come to know the patients pretty well.”

“Pretty well.”
He smiled. “They’re nice to me.”

I listened to his careful, spaced speech, a little thick on each initial consonant. “Are all of them nice to you?”

“Some are mean. Because they’re sick and they hurt.”

“Mrs. Smith was always nice to you.”

“Oh, yes.
A nice lady.
She talked to me every day.” His doughy face became more puzzled. “She died.”

“Yes. She was unhappy with her life.”

He frowned. “Mrs. Smith was unhappy?
But she…no.
She was happy.” He looked at me in appeal. “She was
a
l
ways
happy. Aren’t you her friend?”

“Yes,” I said. “I just made a mistake about her being unhappy.”

“She was
always
happy.
With Mr. Frank.
They laughed and laughed and read books.”

“Mr.
della
Francesca.”

“He said I could call him Mr. Frank.”

I said, “What’s your name?”

“Pete,” he said, as if I should know it.

“Oh, you’re Pete! Yes, Mrs. Smith spoke to me about you.
Just before she died.
She said you were nice, too.”

He beamed. “She was my friend.”

“You were sad when she died, Pete.”

“I was sad when she died.”

I said, “What exactly happened?”

His face changed. He picked up the
mop,
thrust it into the rolling bucket.
“Nothing.”

“Nothing?
But Mrs. Smith is dead.”

“I
gotta
go now.” He started to roll the bucket across the half-mopped floor, but I placed a firm hand on his arm. There’s a cop intuition that has nothing to do with
neur
o
pharms
.

I said, “Some bad people killed Mrs. Smith.”

He looked at me, and something shifted behind his pale blue gaze.

“They didn’t tell you that, I know. They said Mrs. Smith killed herself. But you know she was very happy and didn’t do that, don’t you? What did you see, Pete?”

He was scared now. Once, a long time ago, I hated myself for doing this to people like Pete. Then I got so I didn’t think about it. It didn’t bother me now, either.

“Mrs.
Gennaro
killed Mrs. Smith,” I said.

Shock wiped out fear. “No, she didn’t! She’s a nice lady!”

“I say Mrs.
Gennaro
and the doctor killed Mrs. Smith.”

“You’re crazy! You’re an asshole! Take it back!”

“Mrs.
Gennaro
and the doctor—”

“Mrs. Smith and Mr. Frank
was
all alone together when they went up to that roof!”

I said swiftly, “How do you know?”

But he was panicked now, genuinely terrified. Not of me—of what he’d said. He opened his mouth to scream. I said, “Don’t worry, Pete. I’m a cop. I work with the cops you talked to before. They just sent me to double-check your story. I work with the same cops you told before.”

“With Officer Camp?”

“That’s right,” I said.
“With Officer Camp.”

“Oh.” He still looked scared. “I told them already! I told
them I unlocked the roof door for Mrs. Smith and Mr. Frank like they asked me to!”

“Pete—”

“I
gotta
go!”

“Go ahead, Pete. You did
good
.”

He scurried off. I left the building before he could find Karen
Gennaro
.

A call to an old friend at Records turned up an Officer Joseph
Camphausen
at Midtown South, a Ralph
Ca
m
pogiani
in the Queens Robbery Squad, a Bruce
Campinella
at the two-four, and a detective second grade Joyce
Ca
m
polieto
in Intelligence. I guessed
Campinella
, but it didn’t matter which one Pete had talked to, or that I wouldn’t get another chance inside Angels of Mercy. I headed for West End Avenue.

The sun was setting. Manhattan was filled with river light. I drove up the West Side Highway with the window down, and remembered how much Margie had liked to do that, even in the winter.
Real air, Gene.
Chilled like good beer
.

Nobody at the Beth Israel Retirement Home would talk to me about the two old people who died there, Samuel
Fetterolf
and Rose Kaplan. Nor would they let me wander around loose after my carefully guided tour. I went to the Chinese restaurant across the street and waited.

From every street-side window in Beth Israel I’d seen them head in here: well-dressed men and women visiting their parents and aunts and grandmothers after work. They’d stay an hour, and then they’d be too hungry to go home and cook, or maybe too demoralized to go home
without a drink, a steady stream of overscheduled people dutifully keeping up connections with their old. I chose a table in the bar section, ordered, and ate slowly. It took a huge plate of moo goo
gai
pan and three club sodas before I heard it.

“How can you
say
that? She’s not senile, Brad! She knows whether her friends are suicidal or not!”

“I didn’t say she–”

“Yes, you did! You said we can’t trust her perceptions! She’s only old, not stupid!” Fierce thrust of chopsticks into her sweet and sour. She was about thirty, slim and tanned, her dark hair cut short.
Preppy shirt and sweater.
He wasn’t holding up as well, the paunch and bald spot well unde
r
way, the beleaguered
husband look
not yet turned resentful.

“Joanne, I only said–”

“You said we should just discount what Grams said and leave her there,
even though
she’s so scared. You always discount what she says!”

“I don’t. I just—”

“Like about that thing at Passover. What Grams wanted was completely reasonable, and you just—”

“Excuse me,” I said, before they drifted any more. The thing at Passover wouldn’t do me any good. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhear. I have a grandmother in Beth Israel, too, and I’m a little worried about her, otherwise I wouldn’t interrupt, it’s just that…my grandmother is scared to stay there, too.”

They inspected me unsmilingly, saying nothing.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said desperately. “She’s never been like this.”

“I’m sorry,” Brad said stiffly, “we can’t help.”

“Oh, I understand.
Strangers.
I just thought…you said something about your grandmother being frightened…I’m sorry.” I got up to leave, projecting embarrassment.

“Wait a minute,” Joanne said. “What did you say your name was?”

“Aaron Sanderson.”

“Joanne, I don’t think—”

“Brad, if he has the same problem as—Mr. Sanderson, what is your grandmother afraid of? Is she usually ner
v
ous?”

“No, that’s just it,” I said, moving closer to their table. Brad frowned at me. “She’s never nervous or jittery, and never depressed. She’s fantastic, actually. But ever since those two residents died…”

“Well, that’s just
it
,” Joanne said. Brad sighed and shifted his weight. “Grams
was
friendly with Mrs. Kaplan, and she told me that Mrs. Kaplan would never in a million years commit suicide. She just
wouldn’t
.”

“Same thing my grandmother said. But I’m sure there couldn’t be actual danger in Beth Israel,” I said. Dismiss what the witness said and wait for the contradiction.

“Why not?”
Joanne said. “They could be testing some new medication…in
fact,
Grams said Mrs. Kaplan had volunteered for some clinical trial. She had cancer.”

Brad said, “And so naturally she was depressed. Or maybe depression was a side effect of the drug. You read about that shit all the time. The drug company will be faced with a huge lawsuit, they’ll settle, they’ll stop giving the pills, and everybody’s grandmother is safe.
That simple.”

“No,
smartie
.”
Joanne glared at him. “It’s not that si
m
ple. Grams said she spent the afternoon with Mrs. Kaplan a week or so
after
she started the drug. Mrs. Kaplan was anything but depressed. She was really up, and she’d fallen in love with Mr.
Fetterolf
who was also in the
trial,
and his daughter-in-law Dottie was telling me–”

“Joanne, let’s go,” Brad said. “I don’t really feel like arguing here.”

I said, “My grandmother knew Mr.
Fetterolf
slightly. And she’s worried about his suicide—”

“So am
I
,” Joanne said. “I keep telling and telling Brad—”

“Joanne, I’m going. You do what the hell you want.”

“You can’t just—all right, all right! Everything has to be your way!” She flounced up, threw me an apologetic look, and followed her husband out.