The Matarese Circle (68 page)

“Maybe. Let’s try the next.”

The student keyed in the name. “Well, we know what happened to this boy.
Ceb. Hem.
He died right here on the third floor. Cerebral hemorrhage. Never even got a chance to get his tuition back.”

“What do you mean?”

“Med school, man. He was only thirty-two. Hell of a way to go at thirty-two.”

“Also unusual. What’s the date?”

“March 21, 1954.”

“Appleton was discharged on the thirtieth,” said Scofield as much to himself as to the student. “These three names are nurses. Try them, please.”

Katherine Connally. Deceased 3-26-54.

Alice Bonelli. Deceased 3-26-54.

Janet Drummond. Deceased 3-26-54.

The student sat back; he was not a fool. “Seems there was a real epidemic back then, wasn’t there? March was a rough month, and the twenty-sixth was a
baad
day for three little girls in white.”

“Any cause of death?”

“Nothin’ listed. Which only means they didn’t die on the premises.”

“But all three on the same
day?
It’s.…”

“I dig,” said the young man. “Crazy.” He held up his hand. “Hey, there’s an old cat who’s been here for about six thousand years. He runs the supply room on the first floor. He might remember something; let me get him on the horn.” The black wheeled his chair around and reached for a telephone on the counter. “Get on line two,” he said to Bray, pointing to another phone on a nearby table.

“
Furst
floor supply,” said the voice in a loud Irish brogue.

“Hey, Methusala, this is Amos—as in Amos and Andy.”

“You’re a nutty boy-yo, you are.”

“Hey, Jimmy, I got this honkey friend on the horn here. He’s looking for information that goes back to when you were the terror of the angels’ dorm. As a matter of fact, it concerns three of them. Jimmy, you recall a time in the middle fifties when three nurses all died on the same day?”

“T’ree.… Oh, indeed I do. ’Twas a terrible thing. Little Katie Connally was one of ’em.”

“What happened?” asked Bray.

“They drowned, sir. All three of the girls drowned. They was in a boat and the damn thing pitched over, throwin’ ’em into a bad sea.”

“In a boat? In
March?
”

“One of those crazy things, sir. You know how rich kids prowl around the nurses’ dormitories. They figure the girls see naked bodies all the time, so maybe they wouldn’t mind lookin’ at theirs. Well, one night these punk-swells were throwin’ a party at this fancy yacht club and asked the girls up. There was drinkin’ and all kinds of nonsense, and some jackass got the bright idea to take out a boat. Damn fool thing, of course. As you say, it was in March.”

“It happened at night?”

“Yes, indeed, sir. The bodies didn’t wash up for a week, I believe.”

“Was anyone else killed?”

“Of course not. It’s never that way, is it? I mean, rich kids are always such good swimmers, aren’t they now?”

“Where did it happen?” asked Scofield. “Can you remember?”

“Sure, I can, sir. It was up the coast. Marblehead.”

Bray closed his eyes. “Thank you,” he said quietly, replacing the phone.

“Thanks, Methusala.” The student hung up, his eyes on Scofield. “You got trouble, don’t you?”

“I got trouble,” agreed Bray, walking back to the keyboard. “I’ve also got ten more names. Two doctors and eight nurses. Can you run them through for me just as fast as you can?”

Of the eight nurses, half were still alive. One had moved to San Francisco—address unknown; another lived with a daughter in Dallas, and the remaining two were in the St. Agnes Retirement Home in Worcester. One of the doctors was still alive. The skin-graft specialist had died eighteen months ago at the age of seventy-three. The first surgeon of record, Dr. Nathaniel Crawford, had retired and was living in Quincy.

“May I use your phone?” asked Scofield. “I’ll pay whatever charges there are.”

“Last time I looked, none of these horns was in my name. Be my guest.”

Bray had written down the number on the screen; he went to the telephone and dialed.

“Crawford here.” The voice from Quincy was brusque but not discourteous.

“My name is Scofield, sir. We’ve never met and I’m not a physician, but I’m very interested in a case you were involved with a number of years ago at Massachusetts General. I’d like to discuss it briefly with you, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Who was the patient? I had a few thousand.”

“Senator Joshua Appleton, sir.”

There was a slight pause on the line; when Crawford spoke, his brusque voice took on an added tone of weariness. “Those godamned incidents have a way of following a man to his grave, don’t they? Well, I haven’t practiced
for over two years now, so whatever
you
say or
I
say, it won’t make any godamned difference.… Let’s say I made a mistake.”

“Mistake?”

“I didn’t make many, I was head of surgery for damn near twelve years. My summary’s in the Appleton medical file; the only reasonable conclusion is that the X-rays got fouled up, or the scanning equipment gave us the wrong data.”

There was no summary from Dr. Nathaniel Crawford in the Appleton medical file.

“Are you referring to the fact that you were replaced as surgeon of record?”

“Replaced, hell! Tommy Belford and I got our asses kicked four-square out of there by the family.”

“Belford? Is that Dr. Belford, the skin-graft specialist?”

“A
surgeon.
A plastic surgeon and a godamned artist. Tommy put the man’s face back on like he was Almighty God Himself. That whiz-kid they brought in messed up Tommy’s work, in my opinion. Sorry about him, though. The kid hardly finished when his head blew.”

“Do you mean a cerebral hemorrhage, sir?”

“That’s right. The Swiss was right there when it happened. He operated but it was too late.”

“When you say ‘the Swiss,’ do you mean the surgeon who replaced you?”

“You got it. The great
Herr Doktor
from Zürich. That bastard treated me like a retarded med school dropout.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“Went back to Switzerland, I guess. Never was interested in looking him up myself.”

“Doctor, you say you made a mistake. Or the X-rays did or the equipment. What kind of a mistake?”

“Simple. I gave up. We had him on total support systems, and that’s exactly what I figured they were. Total support; without them he wouldn’t have lasted a day. And if he had, I thought it would be a waste; he’d live like a vegetable.”

“You saw no hope of recovery?”

Crawford lowered his voice, strength in his humility. “I was a surgeon, I wasn’t God. I was fallible. It was my opinion then that Appleton was not only beyond recovery,
he was dying a little more with each minute.… I was wrong.”

“Thank you for talking to me, Doctor Crawford.”

“As I said before, it can’t make any difference now, and I don’t mind. I had a hell of a lot of years with a knife in my hand; I didn’t make many mistakes.”

“I’m sure you didn’t, sir. Goodbye.” Scofield walked back to the keyboard; the black student was reading his textbook. “X-rays?…” said Bray softly.

“What?” The black looked up. “What about X-rays?”

Bray at down next to the young man. If he ever needed a temporary friend it was now; he hoped he had one. “How well do you know the hospital staff?”

“It’s a big place, man.”

“You knew enough to call Methusala.”

“Well, I’ve been working here off and on for three years. I get around.”

“Is there a repository for X-rays going back a number of years?”

“Like maybe twenty-five?”

“Yes.”

“There is. It’s no big deal.”

“Can you get me one?”

The student raised an eyebrow. “That’s another matter, isn’t it?”

“I’m willing to pay. Generously.”

The black grimaced. “Oh, man! It’s not that I look askance at bread, believe me. But I don’t steal and I don’t push and God knows I didn’t inherit.”

“What I’m asking you to do is the most legitimate—even moral, if you like—thing I could ask anyone to do. I’m not a liar.”

The student looked into Bray’s eyes. “If you are, you’re a damned convincing one. And you’ve got troubles, I’ve seen that. What do you want?”

“An X-ray of Joshua Appleton’s mouth.”

“Mouth? His
mouth?
”

“His head injuries were extensive, dozens of pictures had to be taken. There had to be a lot of projected dental work. Can you do it?”

The young man nodded. “I think so.”

“One more thing. I know it’ll sound … outrageous to
you, but take my word for it, nothing’s outrageous. How much do you make a month here?”

“I average eighty, ninety a week. About three-fifty a month. It’s not bad for a graduate student. Some of these interns make less. Course, they get room and board. Why?”

“Suppose I told you that I’d pay you ten thousand dollars to take a plane to Washington and bring me back another X-ray. Just an envelope with an X-ray in it.”

The black tugged at his short beard, his eyes on Scofield as though he were observing a lunatic. “
Suppose?
I’d say ‘feets, do your stuff.’ Ten thousand
dollars?
”

“There’d be more time for those tertiary kinetics.”

“And there’s nothin’ illegal? It’s straight—I mean really straight?”

“For it to be considered remotely illegal as far as you’re concerned, you’d have to know far more than anyone would tell you. That’s straight.”

“I’m just a messenger? I fly to Washington and bring back an envelope … with an X-ray in it?”

“Probably a number of small ones. That’s all.”

“What are they of?”

“Joshua Appleton’s mouth.”

It was 1:30 in the afternoon when Bray reached the library on Boylston Street. His new friend, Amos Lafollet, was taking the 2:00 shuttle to Washington and would return on the 8:00 o’clock flight. Scofield would meet him at the airport.

Obtaining the X-rays had not been difficult; anyone who knew the bureaucratic ways of Washington could have gotten them. Bray made two calls, the first to the Congressional Liaison Office and the second to the dentist in question. The first call was made by a harried aide of a well-known Representative suffering from an abscessed tooth. Could Liaison please get this aide the name of Senator Appleton’s dentist? The Senator had mentioned the man’s superior work to the congressman. Liaison gave out the dentist’s name.

The call to the dentist was a routine spot check by the General Accounting Office, all bureaucratic form, no substance, forgotten tomorrow. GAO was collecting backup evidence for dental work done on senators and some idiot on K Street had come up with X-rays. Would the receptionist
please pull Appleton’s and leave it at the front desk for a GAO messenger? It would be returned in twenty-four hours.

Washington operated at full speed; there simply was not enough time to do the work that had to be done and GAO spot checks were not legitimate work. They were irritants and complied with in irritation, but nevertheless obeyed. Appleton’s X-rays would be left at the desk.

Scofield checked the library directory, took the elevator to the second floor, and walked down the hallway to the
Journalism Division—Current and Past Publications. Microfilm.
He went to the counter at the far end of the room and spoke to the clerk behind it.

“March and April, 1954, please. The
Globe
or the
Examiner
, whatever’s available.”

He was given eight boxes of film, and assigned a cubicle. He found it, sat down and inserted the first roll of film.

By March of ’54 the bulletins detailing the condition of Joshua Appleton—“Captain Josh”—had been relegated to the back pages; he had been in the hospital more than twenty weeks by then. But he was not ignored. The famous vigil was covered in detail. Bray wrote down the names of several of those interviewed; he would know by tomorrow whether there’d be any reason to get in touch with them.

The brief story was on page sixteen. No mention that the surgeon was attending Joshua Appleton.

The story had made the lower left corner of the front page, but again, there was no mention of Joshua Appleton. Indeed, it would have been strange if there had been; the three were on a rotating twenty-four-hour schedule. If they were all in Marblehead that night, who was at the Appleton bedside?

He had found it.

It was—naturally—on the front page, the headlines prominent, the copy written as much to evoke sympathy as to report the tragic death of a young man. Scofield studied the story, positive that he would come to certain lines.

He did.

Bray wondered who was in that coffin in Col du Pillon. Or was it merely empty?

He returned to the cheap hotel, gathered his things together, and took a cab to the Prudential Center Parking Lot, Gate A. He drove the rented car out of Boston, along Jamaica Way into Brookline. He found Appleton Hill, driving past the gates of Appleton Hall, absorbing every detail he could within the short space of time.

The huge estate was spread like a fortress across the crest of the hill, a high stone wall surrounding the inner structure, tall roofs that gave the illusion of parapets seen above the distant wall. The roadway beyond the main gate wound up the hill around a huge brick carriage house, covered with ivy, housing no fewer than eight to ten complete apartments, five garages fronting an enormous concrete parking area below.