First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  She twisted her wedding ring one way, then the other. “Why, yes, dear, almost two hours ago. You know he always starts his hospital rounds at eight.”

  “He’s all right?”

  Her face asked why such silly questions? “Of course. Why shouldn’t he be all right?”

  “Why shouldn’t he be all right? Ramona, I saw him in the Crosbies’ back yard, heard him, after Erskine died. Screaming like a madman, smashing everything he could get his hands on. Then all night long, calling Erskine’s name. Is that enough?”

  Ramona spun her ring furiously, then seemed to draw herself together like a spring being wound. “He’s all right,” she said, as severely as I’d ever heard her speak. “This happens sometimes, not often. Don’t ever talk to him about it. Understand?”

  “But Ruth Crosbie was there, saw the whole thing. What about—”

  “Ruth knows Samuel.”

  I remembered what Ruth murmured as we looked out the back window into the yard. “Poor Moses. Raised his hand but the Red Sea didn’t give a good goddamn.”

  Ramona picked up her coffee cup, looked at me over the rim. “It’s over. Do not mention it to him. And now we’re done talking about it.” She turned abruptly, flung the remainder of her coffee into the sink. Then she got up and strode out of the room.

  A crack had developed in my world, and the more I peered through and saw, the more I needed to pry. Murray said Lily went in to work at ten, didn’t he? I ran upstairs, put on a clean white shirt and pressed pants, brushed my hair and teeth, then went out and got my bike. I was at the Fleischmanns’ by ten-thirty.

  I left my bike out of sight, against the wall in the narrow alley, then strolled up the brown steps to the porch. As usual, only the front screen door was closed. I knocked, called out, “Hello?”

  At first no answer, then I heard a soft, “Just a minute.” I shifted from one foot to the other. Finally I saw Teresa Baker moving slowly, heavily, to the front door. She wore a white cotton maternity dress with red polka dots, black hair gathered back in a ponytail. She studied me a moment, then her face brightened. “Oh—Leo, right? Hi. Lily’s out right now.”

  “I came to see you,” I said, surprised at how smoothly it flowed. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.” She opened the screen door, stepped back to let me pass. “You came to see me? Why?”

  “Remember, last night I said I’m working with my father over the summer, and…let’s go inside, sit down. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable off your feet?”

  Bashful smile. She worked a fold in her dress between two fingers as she led me into the kitchen and lowered herself carefully into a chair. I sat opposite her, the white table between us, chip-speckled black. “I wanted to get to know you a little,” I said. “Couple of nights ago I was here, helped my father with a delivery, and I think I could’ve done a better job if I’d met that girl before she started her labor.”

  Teresa smiled, more openly now. “That was Shannon.” Then I caught a break. Teresa’s smile went wicked. “Yeah, Shannon said something about this cute collar-ad who helped Dr. Firestone with her delivery. Bet she’d like to see him again.” She struggled to her feet, started toward the hall. “Come on.”

  I got up, followed. “She’s still here?”

  “Well, natch.” Hands on hips, giving me a tough once-over. “You’ve got to stay in bed for a week after you have a baby, otherwise you can get real bad problems. Don’t you know that?”

  “Of course. Everybody knows that. I just thought she might be staying someplace else.”

  That got me a raucous laugh. “Like where? With her parents? If it wasn’t for Dr. Firestone and Murray and Lily, the only place for us’d be the Wayward Girls Home, over on Ryerson.” Her face told me exactly what she thought of that choice. She put a foot on the lowest stair. “Hey, you want to see Shannon or not?”

  I went up the stairs after Teresa, timing my pace to suit hers. At the second-story landing she stopped for breath, then led me past the room Shannon delivered in, to a second flight of stairs. The higher we went, the slower Teresa moved.

  From the top of the stairwell, I looked into an attic converted into a…I’d call it a dormitory, but that wouldn’t really be the right word. Lightly shaded ceiling fixtures and white plasterboard walls with pink and blue trim made the room bright and cheerful. Low dividers split the space into eight cubicles so as to give the occupants privacy without isolating them. Everywhere, pictures of animals and happy children.

  A low chatter stopped as Teresa and I came in. Then, three girl-heads popped up, prairie dogs in their burrows. Giggles jumped like ground lightning from a blonde girl to Teresa, who put her hand to her mouth but couldn’t stop the attack of contagious embarrassment. With her other hand she took mine, then led me across the room, into Shannon’s cubicle.

  Shannon wasn’t giggling. As we walked up to her bed she waved limply. Sad face, a question in her eyes. “Came to see how you’re doing,” I said.

  She started to cry. “I’m all right. Just…well, you know.” She swiped a soggy handkerchief across her eyes, managed a smile as unstarched as the wave she’d given me. “Thinking about my baby…”

  That did it. She started to bawl. Teresa sat on the edge of the bed, put an arm around her, patted her hand. Shannon blew her nose into the handkerchief, then looked at me. “I know my baby’s better off with Phil and Nancy—you met Nancy, right? Phil stayed at the hotel ’til the baby came. Then both of them sat with me the rest of the night and most of the next day. We all three of us picked his name, Alan. Alan Robert. When Phil and Nancy left with him, it was the saddest I ever felt. I’m such a dumb bunny, still crying…”

  Like a stuck faucet. On and on she went about how she’d been in that attic for nearly five months, how wonderful Lily and Murray were to her, how nice Phil and Nancy were, how in another four or five days she’d be going to her aunt and uncle’s in Pittsburgh. “I didn’t get here ’til I was so far along, everybody on the block knew I was in the family way.” She choked, wiped at her eyes. “So I can’t go back home no more. I’ll finish high school in Pittsburgh, then maybe go to secretary school and get a job, pay my aunt and uncle rent ’til I get married.” Tears again. “If I ever can get married, that is.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  The two girls’ faces scared hell out of me and broke my heart at the same time. “Would you marry damaged goods?” Shannon asked.

  In those days, a real question. “Ye-e-s,” I said. “If I wanted to marry you, I don’t think that’d stop me. But a guy’s not going to know unless you tell him.”

  Doubt worked its way back across Shannon’s face. She chewed at her upper lip.

  “Everybody’s got a secret or two.” The bitterness in my voice surprised me, but the girls didn’t seem to notice.

  Teresa smiled. “I was luckier’n her. Soon’s I missed my second monthly, my boyfriend arranged for me to come here, to…” She bit the tip of her tongue.

  “To what?”

  “Get rid of it,” she spat. “But I knew if I did, I wouldn’t ever be able to take communion again. Your dad told me if I wanted to have the baby, he’d get a good couple, people with money who couldn’t have their own, they’d adopt my baby and give it the right kind of life. He helped me tell my parents, and gave us a fakerino for the rest of the family and the neighbors. See, I’m supposed to be in a TB san. When I go back home, I’ll have papers from Dr. Firestone sayin’ I’m all cured.”

  “Papers?”

  “Yeah. He’ll make out papers for the baby too, sayin’ the people who adopt it are the actual-factual parents. Right now, the lady’s pretending she’s preggers, and sick. Stays in her house, not supposed to have visitors. When my baby’s coming, her husband’ll bring her here and tell their friends they’re going to the city because they need a specialist to deliver the baby. When they go back home, they’ll say it worked out buttered side up, and here’s our baby.”

>   Every time I thought I’d heard it all. The Firestone and Fleischmann Baby Factory. Got an inconvenient little pregnancy? No problem. We’ll take care of it one way or the other. Good couples, people with money, faked birth records, faked sanitorium clearances. Or a few swipes with a sharp curette.

  I heard a creak behind me, turned to look. The woman in the cubicle across from Shannon rolled onto her side, propped her chin in the palm of her hand. Lank, tangled dark hair, cheeks pallid as cream, soft brown eyes, long lashes. Deep lines between her nose and the corners of her mouth, sharp crows’-feet running outward from her eyes. Like a piece of antique china. “If it wasn’t for your father I’d be dead now,” she said in a voice as anemic as her cheeks. “I’d’ve killed myself. My guy said maybe I had a problem, but he didn’t. I went back to the doctor who did the rabbit test, and he said, well, go to Dr. Firestone, he’ll help you. Your father talked to me, then he did my abortion. He said when I’m better, I should go to New York, or maybe California. He says there’s more in life than being a bookkeeper for a department store in downtown Hobart.” She lowered her head to the pillow, began to cry.

  Teresa ran fingers through the woman’s hair, across her cheek. “Take it easy, Angela. You’re gonna be all reet, sweet. All of us are. You’ll be outa here in a few days. Me, I’d go to California, all that sun, jivey boys—” Angela’s glare silenced her, but only for a moment. “But I guess I’d be more careful. I’m gonna remember what Doc says about takin’ precautions.”

  I felt like a new toy in that attic. The fourth girl, Susie, the giggling blonde, showed me her cubicle, decorated with pinups of Frankie-boy and Jimmy Dorsey. “Jimmy’s such a dreamboat, Tommy’s cold potatoes.” To Jimmy’s right hung a map of the world, pins in Midway, the Fijis, Guadalcanal, the Solomons, North Africa. “Green is my brother, red’s my cousin, blue’s my uncle. When I get a letter they tell me where they are and I put in another pin.” Susie had been a cheerleader at Marblemount High, her boyfriend the star quarterback. One night when her parents were out… Same choice in the end, get rid of it now or later. She had four months to go. Lily looked after the girls, and when Lily was at work, they looked after each other. They had Lily’s phone number at the beauty parlor, and Samuel’s at the office and home. Lily was such an angel cake. Samuel was such a smoothie.

  I finally got away, told the girls I hoped I’d see them again. As I wheeled into our driveway I was surprised to hear “Crazy Rhythm” blaring from Harmony’s basement. I put away my bike, ran over, down through the cellar doors. “Why aren’t you at the Red Cross?” I shouted over the music.

  Harmony lowered her sax, gave me a hard look. “Day off. Why aren’t you with Samuel?”

  I told her about Erskine Crosbie and my morning visit to the Fleischmanns’ attic. When I finished she said, “Well, that’s it, then. The connection.”

  “Connection?”

  “That’s what’s the connection.”

  “What’s what connection?”

  “Leo, you’re making us sound like Abbott and Costello. The connection between the Fleischmanns and Samuel. You were saying yesterday, Jonas wouldn’t play along with the scrap metal black market, and everyone was afraid he might squeal, so Oscar or Murray or both of them got some strychnine and put Jonas on ice. Then Murray called Samuel, and Samuel signed Jonas out as a heart attack. That is what you said, right? So think about it. If Samuel’s been making out all those phony birth and health certificates, a death certificate wouldn’t have been the first fake medical paper he signed. I hate saying it, but there’s the connection.” She put hands to her hips. “Don’t you see?”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. But how can we connect Murray or Oscar to the strychnine?”

  She flashed that smile, gotcha. “Been thinking about that since yesterday. Where do people buy strychnine?”

  “At drugstores. For rat poison, or by prescription as a stimulant. What’re you getting at?”

  She reached to the table behind her, came forward with a small brown bottle with a rubber dropper-top. “Here. What do you think, all I did since last time we talked was roll gauze bandages? Look at the bottle, would you.”

  I looked, saw the skull and bones, read, Miss Opal Weller. Tincture Strychnos nux-vomica. Five drops in water or juice once daily. Do not exceed prescribed dosage. I couldn’t believe it. “Harmony!”

  “It was easy. I just snuck one of my father’s pads, and wrote for a patient named Opal Weller.”

  “You forged a prescription?”

  “Leo, don’t talk to me like that. Yes, I forged a prescription, so what? Then I took the Crooks Avenue bus—”

  “How appropriate.”

  “I’m going to smack you. I went down to a drug store on Raritan Av, gave the prescription to a druggist, signed the register, ‘Opal Weller’. Signed…the…poison…register. Which they keep on a shelf under the counter. So what we’ve got to do now is see which drug store’s closest to the junkyard, then find out whether Murray or Oscar Fleischmann bought some strychnine right before Jonas died.”

  “We’re going to walk into that drug store,” I said. “Say to the pharmacist, ‘Excuse us but we’re investigating a murder and we’d like to see your poison register.’ And the pharmacist is going to say, ‘Fine, glad to help. Can I make you an ice-cream soda to drink while you’re looking?’”

  Matched emeralds, sparkling, perfect. “I’m a girl, Leo. I want some lipstick, a little makeup—”

  “Lipstick? Makeup? You never—”

  “Listen, would you. Or don’t you think I can come up with a good idea? I’ll say I’m just starting to buy lipstick and makeup, and I need some help. But you’re a boy, you’re not interested in that stuff. You’ll go off and wander around the store while the druggist shows me what I ought to wear to look pretty.”

  Half an hour later we were on the Madison crosstown bus. Less conspicuous to check the neighborhood on foot than by bike. We got off at Sixth, started walking, and sure enough, across the railroad track and just a block from the junkyard we came to Raskin’s Pharmacy. “Murray’d go right past on his way to work,” I said.

  Harmony answered with a smug smile. She pushed the door open; a bell tinkled. We went inside.

  Cosmetics were right there, facing us, on shelf displays and free-standing carousels. All the way in the back, an old man stood behind a glass partition, probably working on a prescription. In front of him were shelves filled with cold remedies. Other display racks for vitamins and home cure-alls ran from the far left corner to the front of the shop. A hinged wooden counter interrupted the display midway. Harmony motioned with her head. “That’s where it’d be,” she whispered. “Right under the cash register, easy to get for customers to sign when they pay.” She poked me with her elbow, then walked to the back of the shop and called out, “Mr. Raskin? Sir? Yoo-hoo?”

  Raskin looked up, blinked. “Be right with you, Miss.”

  A minute later he was there, a gnome in a white pharmacist’s jacket. Round head permanently cocked to the left, narrow fringe of white hair. His dark blue eyes were bright and friendly. “Can I help you?”

  Harmony blushed, how did she do that? Maybe just thinking about the whopper she was about to tell. She dangled her little leather purse. Mr. Raskin smiled sympathy and encouragement. “I just turned sixteen,” Harmony said. “So my parents say I can wear makeup now. Can you help me find, oh, some nice lipstick and rouge, maybe a little eyeshadow. I don’t want to all of a sudden look…well, you know. Painted.”

  All the while Harmony talked, Mr. Raskin rubbed his hands together, then he punctuated her speech with a clap. “You’re a sensible girl, very sensible. Makeup should enhance a girl’s natural beauty, not cover it over and make her look cheap.” He waggled a finger toward the cosmetics corner. “Come on over here, and I’ll get you just what you need.”

  I rolled my eyes, strolled off toward the back of the shop. Old Raskin chuckled behind me. “Not interested—
well, never mind, Miss. Cosmetics on display won’t catch a young man’s fancy but I dare say he’ll take a great deal more notice when they’re on your face.”

  I ambled back toward the cold remedies, scanned shelves, looked around. No one else in the store. Slowly, I worked my way through the vitamins. At the little wooden counter, I shot a quick look over my shoulder. Harmony stood facing me, which forced Mr. Raskin to look the other way—she was so clever. I took a deep breath, ducked down under the counter, then crab-walked the couple of yards to the shelves under the cash register, where I promptly got good and embarrassed. In 1943, what did pharmacists keep out of sight, but close at hand for customers? The two lower shelves were crammed with birth control devices, enough condoms and diaphragms to lower the birth rate in Hobart by fifty percent. But there on the top shelf sat a gray and red ledger, POISON REGISTER carefully printed in dark ink on its cover.

  I dropped to the floor, grabbed the book, opened it in my lap. Entries on the first page started with January, 1943—name of poison, proposed use, date, signature of buyer. A lot of arsenic and strychnine went out of that shop, at least eighty percent supposedly to get rid of rats and other vermin. Jonas Fleischmann died early on July seventh, so I flipped pages to that day, then worked my way back through the log. July seventh, sixth, fifth, no luck. No entries for the fourth, of course. Third, second…wait a minute. I turned back to July sixth. I’d been looking for Fleischmann, but had seen another familiar name—yes, there it was, clear printed block capitals. George Templeton. Strychnine. To poison rats at the junkyard.

  I closed the register, leaned forward to put it back into place, but my foot had fallen asleep under me, and I lost balance, stumbled into the shelves. Cardboard boxes went flying, packages of condoms sailed in every direction. I froze, held my breath.

  “What’s…?” A one-word question told me the jig was up. I scrambled to my feet. Mr. Raskin, wrathful troll, stood glaring from the other side of the counter. “What are you…?” He shook one fist in the air, gawked at the sea of condoms on the floor, then let out a shriek of pure fury. “You’re stealing…” He wheeled around, couldn’t bring himself to mention the unmentionable in front of the young lady.