Bitter Medicine

by Sara Paretsky

  “So is Dr. Abercrombie a chimera?” I asked. “They just hire an actor to pose with a fetal-monitor machine?”

  “No.” Max spoke judiciously. “I’m sure he’s real. But is he really attached to the hospital? Friendship Five is in an upscale neighborhood, correct? They do not typically treat high-risk pregnancies—the type of patient that Consuelo was—young, bad diet, and so on. If one of your Dr. Burgoyne’s patients seemed to be prone to complications, he’d get Abercrombie over to see her. But why pay a quarter of a million dollars a year for someone whose work you need only once a month at best?”

  He poured more wine into my glass and tasted his own. He nodded absentmindedly, a fraction of his attention on the wine.

  Lotty frowned. “But, Max. They’re advertising a full-service obstetrics service. Level Three care, you know. That’s why we told Vic to take Consuelo there. Carol spoke with Sid Hatcher, asked him where they should go in that part of the suburbs. Sid had seen the advertisements, had heard their services discussed at some meeting he’d been to. That’s why he recommended Friendship.”

  “So if they didn’t have this Abercrombie really on staff they couldn’t advertise?” I asked skeptically. Truth in advertising is the law, sure, but only if you get caught.

  Lotty leaned forward in her intensity. “The state comes in and certifies you. I know this, because I was the perinatologist at Beth Israel when we got our original certification. Before I went into family medicine and opened my clinic. They came in and put us through a major review—equipment and everything.”

  I emptied my glass. I hadn’t eaten since the virtuous fruit and yogurt I’d had for breakfast. The rich, heavy wine went straight from my stomach to my brain, warming me. I needed a little warmth to deal with what I was learning.

  “If Murray shows up I think he’ll have the answer to that.” I held out my right hand and rubbed my first two fingers against my thumb, the Chicago city symbol.

  Lotty shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Payoffs,” Max explained to her kindly.

  “Payoffs?” she echoed. “No. It wouldn’t happen. Not with Philippa. You remember her, don’t you, Max? She’s with the state these days.”

  “Well, she’s not the only person with the state,” I said. “She has a boss who’s in charge of health regulation. She’s got an obnoxious young prick of a colleague who’s on the make. The two of them are good drinking buddies. Now all we need to find out is what state rep they drink with, and we’ll be all set.”

  “Don’t joke about it, Vic. I don’t like it. You are talking about the lives of people. Consuelo and her baby. Who knows what others. And you are saying a hospital and a public official would care more about money. It is not a joke.”

  Max put a hand over hers. “That’s why I love you, Lottchen. You have survived a horrible war and thirty years of medicine without losing your innocence.”

  I poured more wine, my third glass, and pushed my chair back a bit from the table. So everything falls to the bottom line. Humphries and Peter are part owners of the hospital. It’s important to them personally that every service make a profit. More important to Humphries, perhaps, since his potential take is bigger. So they advertise their full-care service. They get Abercrombie on a part-time basis and figure that’s all they need because they’re in a part of town where they won’t have a lot of emergencies.

  The emergency room at Friendship. After all, I’d been there twice—yesterday, and earlier when I came in with Consuelo. No one used it. It was just there to be part of the full-care image, to keep the paying guests walking in the door.

  And then Consuelo and I showed up and put a spanner in the works. It wasn’t exactly that they thought she was indigent so they didn’t treat her. That might have been part of it, but the other part was they were trying to locate their perinatologist, Keith Abercrombie.

  “Where was he?” I asked abruptly. “Abercrombie. I mean, he must be in the neighborhood someplace, right? They couldn’t expect to use him if he was at the University of Chicago or some other remote place.”

  “I can find that out.” Lotty got up. “He’ll be in the American College Directory. I’ll call Sid—if he’s at home he can look it up for us.”

  She went off to use the phone. Max shook his head. “If you’re right… What a horrible thought. Killing that brilliant young man just to protect their bottom line.”

  29

  A Good Wine with Dinner

  Murray arrived just as Max finished speaking. His red beard glistened with sweat. Sometime during the day he’d discarded his tie and jacket. His shirt, which he had custom-tailored to cover his large frame, had come out of his trousers on one side; as he came up to the table he pushed at it ineffectually, trying to get it back into his pants.

  “What brilliant young man?” he demanded by way of greeting. “You hadn’t given me up for dead, had you?”

  I introduced him to Max. “Murray’s friends worry about him—he’s too shy and modest, they say. How can he survive in the raw world of journalism?”

  Murray grinned. “Yeah, it’s a problem.”

  The waitress sauntered over. Murray ordered a beer. “In fact, bring me a couple. And something to eat—one of your cheese and fruit plates. You guys didn’t wait, huh?”

  I shook my head. “We’ve been too busy to eat. I guess we’d all like something—you, Max?”

  He nodded. “Lotty won’t want much. But let’s have some pâtés to go along with the cheese.”

  After the waitress had brought Murray a bottle of Holsten, Max and I recapitulated our conversation for him. Murray’s eyes began to gleam with excitement. He drank the beer left-handed, jotting madly in his notebook.

  “What a story,” he said enthusiastically when we’d finished. “I love it. ‘Profit Motive Ices Teenager: What Price the Bottom Line?’”

  “You’re not going to print that.” That was Lotty, who’d returned to the table, flat-voiced and angry.

  “Why not? It’s terrific copy.”

  Lotty’s objections centered on not wanting to violate Consuelo’s privacy. I waited for her to finish speaking before turning to Murray, who was looking blandly unconvinced.

  “It’s a great part of a great story,” I said as patiently as I could. “But we don’t have any admissible proof.”

  “Hey, I’m not taking this to court—I’m quoting a reliable source. A usually reliable one, that is.” He wiggled his eyebrows provocatively.

  “You’re not taking it to court. But Lotty is. She’s been sued for malpractice, for failure to treat Consuelo. Her file on Consuelo was stolen during the great abortion raid—”

  I broke off. “Of course. How simpleminded can I get? Humphries got Dieter to organize a protest. Then he had someone break in for him and steal the file. Whoever took it didn’t have time to be picky—he just grabbed everything with the Hernandez name on it. He was looking for Malcolm’s report, of course. That’s why Friendship’s counsel is representing Dieter Monkfish. It doesn’t have anything to do with Humphries’s feelings about abortion. It’s part of his debt to the guy.”

  “Then the attack on Malcolm?” Max asked, his eyes troubled.

  I hesitated before speaking. I couldn’t imagine either Humphries or Peter actually battering someone to death. And Malcolm had been badly beaten. But if it was true, if Friendship was covering up for failure to deliver the obstetrics care they were promoting… I turned abruptly to Murray.

  “What did you find out today?”

  “Nothing as hot as you’ve come up with, kid.” Murray flipped back through his notebook. “Bert McMichaels. Associate director of Environment and Human Resources, responsible for hospital regulation. Fifty years old. Been in state government for a long time. Was with the state environmental-protection agency, got a promotion into the health side in the last round of appointments. No particular background in public health or medicine, but a lot of savvy with state agencies, administration, finance, that kin
d of thing.”

  He stopped to drink more beer, wiping his mouth on his hand, like Sutcliffe after a sweaty pitch. “Okay. What you want to know is, his pals in Springfield. He’s tied in with Clancy McDowell.”

  He turned to Lotty and Max, who were looking at him in puzzlement. “McDowell is just an average hack state rep—Northwest Side district. He has pals who go out and get votes for him and in return he gets them jobs, that kind of stuff. So McMichaels is a big vote deliverer and he has had steady employment with the State of Illinois.”

  Lotty started to object. Murray held up a hand. “I know. It’s awful. It’s shocking. A guy like that shouldn’t be in a position to decide whether a hospital gets built or an obstetrics service gets licensed, but alas, this isn’t Utopia or even Minneapolis—it’s Illinois.”

  He didn’t sound particularly depressed about it. How could you bother getting depressed, or angry, about a situation so entrenched that schoolchildren routinely learn about it as part of their civics lesson? I mean, Mayor Daley’s control of city and county had been in my eighth-grade government textbook.

  Murray was going on. I don’t know why he looks at his notes when he talks—he knows it all by heart, but somehow he can’t talk without the prop, the thumbing—maybe that’s how he convinces himself he’s really a journalist.

  “Anyway, your pals at Friendship made a nice little contribution to Clancy’s reelection campaign in ’80, ’82, and ’84. About ten thousand each time. Not spectacular amounts of money, but it doesn’t take much to elect a state rep, and after all, it’s the thought that counts.”

  He closed his notebook with a flourish. “I want something to eat. And I want more beer.”

  The Dortmunder is not famous for its speedy service. That’s why it’s a good place for a supper meeting. The staff doesn’t hover trying to kick you out. In exchange for that, you don’t complain when it takes an hour to get your food.

  Lotty was seriously upset. “I know you and Vic think this is commonplace. But I cannot accept it so lightly. How can they do that—buy off a politician just to save a few dollars. And then put someone’s life at risk. It is treating medicine like—like an automobile company deciding to put a faulty car on the streets!”

  No one said anything for a few minutes out of respect for Lotty’s feelings. It hurt her badly to find corruption in the profession she’d chosen to cure those injustices she’d suffered as a child. She would never develop a shellac of cynicism to protect herself against it.

  Finally Max said hesitantly to me, “Perhaps the people in Springfield, the friends of this Clancy, might have tried killing Malcolm? Rather than have their part in the certification come to light? Or you know, it might really have been what the police are saying—a random break-in.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. And I doubt that Bert McMichaels would care, at least not care to the point of murder, if Friendship’s dereliction came to light. After all—he can claim he accepted the hospital’s submission about its facilities in good faith. No, the ones who have something at stake are the people at the hospital. They couldn’t afford for Malcolm’s report on Consuelo to get to Lotty. When they didn’t find it at his apartment, they staged the raid on the clinic. But where on earth is it? We found his recorder, but it was empty.”

  And who actually killed Malcolm? I added to myself. I still couldn’t see Alan Humphries doing such dirty work. And Peter, with his sensitive conscience? He’d be in a straitjacket by now if he’d battered someone’s head in.

  Max turned to Lotty and took her hand again. “My dear, how many times have I begged you to come to me when you are in difficulty? I know where the report is.”

  The rest of us broke in in a chorus, demanding an answer. The waitress chose that moment to arrive with a towering tray of cheeses, salamis, pâtés, and fruit. Murray took the opportunity to order more beer and I told Max I was game for more wine if he was.

  Max agreed amiably. “But not Clos d’Estournel, Vic. I can’t stand to watch you gulping it like Kool-Aid.”

  He got up and made his leisurely way to the wine bins.

  “How maddening,” Lotty said. “Why did you ask for more wine, Vic? You should have known it would slow him down ten minutes.”

  I broke off a piece of country pâté and ate it with mustard and cornichons. Lotty nibbled at a slice of apple; tension makes it hard for her to eat. Murray had already consumed most of a half-pound wedge of Brie and was starting in on the cheddar.

  Max returned to the table with a house Bordeaux. While the waitress opened it and poured, taking her time in the hopes of getting to join the party, he discoursed gently on the proper way to drink fine wines.

  “You are in the wrong profession,” Lotty informed him when the waitress finally ambled away. “You should be an actor—bringing people to the brink and then making them wait. Now this is serious, Max. If you have Malcolm’s final dictation, why have I not seen it?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t say I had it, Lotty. I know—or I suspect—where it is. Malcolm brought his dictation to Beth Israel for typing. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it. It’s probably sitting in the Medical Transcription room in an envelope with his name on it, waiting for him to pick it up.”

  Lotty wanted to go to Beth Israel at once, but I restrained her. “We want to know what Dr. Hatcher said about Abercrombie,” I reminded her. “And Murray is going to agree not to run this story until we say it’s okay.”

  Murray’s blue eyes flashed angrily. “Look here, Warshawski. I appreciate the tip and the scoop. But you don’t run my head or my paper. With what I’ve found out today, and the story you three are fleshing out, this has banner headlines and a weeklong exposé written all over it.”

  “Come on, Murray. They say Polacks are dumb—jeez, use your head! Here’s Lotty, being dragged into court for malpractice. We have illegally obtained copies of evidence showing that all the negligence was out at the hospital. You print the story, they destroy the original of Peter’s notes, deny like hell, and what kind of defense does she have?”

  I paused to drink some of the new wine. It wasn’t as full-bodied as the Clos d’Estournel, so I was less inclined to gulp it like Kool-Aid. Not that I’ve ever liked Kool-Aid well enough to gulp it. I got back to my argument.

  “There’s a chance that they’ve kept Lotty’s file on Consuelo. If you run your story, that will disappear faster than democracy in Chile. I want to take them by surprise.”

  “Oh, all right.” Murray was grumpy for a minute or two, but his basic good nature won’t let him carry a grudge. “What do you propose doing, Nancy Drew?”

  “Well, I’ve got an idea.” I ignored Murray’s Bronx cheer and ate some more pâté. “Max, they know Lotty’s name, but I bet they don’t know yours. They’re giving a conference this Friday. Amniotic-something-or-other. Can you call tomorrow and sign up? You’ll want to bring—you coming, Lotty? Murray?—four people with you.”

  Max smiled. “Certainly. Why not? I will speak with my heaviest accent and tell them I am calling from New York, flying in just for the day.”

  “You don’t have to show up. Just get five spaces reserved. Maybe we’d better all have pseudonyms in case Peter checks the attendance roster. He knows Lotty and me. He won’t know Murray’s name, of course. Or Detective Rawlings.”

  “Rawlings?” Murray asked. “Why bring in the police? They’ll spoil everything.”

  “I don’t know if he’ll come,” I said impatiently. “But I’d like him to see the story with his own eyes. It’s too unbelievable otherwise. Will you do it, Max?”

  “Certainly. And I want to be there in person. If there are to be fireworks, why should I not see them? Anyway, this will be a fine opportunity for me to watch you at your detective work. I have always been curious.”

  “It’s not the thrill you’re expecting, Loewenthal,” Murray said. “Vic favors the Dick Butkus approach to detection—hit the offense hard—you know, just so they know they met you
at the line of scrimmage—then see who’s left on the ground when she gets done. If you’re looking for Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe doing some fancy intellectual footwork, forget it.”

  “Thank you for the testimonial,” I said, bowing over the table. “All are appreciated and may be sent to our head office in Tripoli, where an appropriate response will be generated. Anyway, Murray, you don’t have to come. I was just asking Max to include you out of courtesy.”

  “Oh, no. I’m coming. If this story is going to start breaking on Friday, I want to be there. Anyway, I’m going to have the thing keyed in, ready to transmit, the moment your pal Burgoyne looks at you with his honest but troubled eyes and says, ‘Vic, you’ve persuaded me to turn myself in.’ Or does he just call you ‘sweetheart’ or ‘Victoria’ or ‘She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed’?”

  30

  Voice from the Grave

  When we got to Beth Israel and went down to the Medical Transcription center, finding Malcolm’s dictation was almost anticlimactic. The night operators were startled to see Max come in. The laughter and raucous comments we’d heard while walking down the hallway stopped immediately and everyone turned to her machine with the intensity of radarwomen looking for incoming ICBMs.

  Max, behaving as if it were the most natural thing in the world for the hospital’s executive director to show up at ten at night, asked the lead operator for Malcolm Tregiere’s output. She walked over to an opened filing cabinet, thumbed through to the T’s, and pulled out a manila envelope with Malcolm’s name on it.

  “We wondered why he hadn’t come for it—it’s been sitting here for close to a month.”

  I took a look at Lotty, who appeared to be controlling herself with maximum effort.

  “He’s dead,” she finally said, her voice coming out harshly. “Perhaps you missed the news and the announcement here at the hospital.”