First, Do No Harm

by Larry Karp

  All that next year, I stayed with the Belmonts, awful. They were decent enough people, but I never did like them, and we rubbed each other raw. When I went away to college, I stayed away. Rented a room in town, worked summers as a waiter. Someone in New York sent payments to the registrar to cover my school expenses, every semester, every cent, so after college I could afford to go study art in London and Paris, four years. I came back to New York in 1954 and began to paint seriously. The rest is history.” Jagged smile. “That’s my story.”

  I hesitated, finally said it. “You never thought of going to medical school?”

  Dad shook his head. “Hate to admit it, but I knew that bitch Lily was right.” Speaking softly, slowly, as if he’d spent his allowance of words and didn’t want to max out his credit. “Crazy to spend the rest of my life trying to live up to a legend. Old people in Hobart still whisper about your grandfather, but only after a quick look over their shoulders. You never had to call him back once he’d taken on a case—he knew when he was needed and there he was at the door. He once appeared in two sickrooms at the very same time, and of course saved both patients. He knew about medications no other doctor could find. Only one person, Oscar Fleischmann, was stupid enough to take on Samuel Firestone, and for that, Samuel made him disappear from the face of the earth. But only after Oscar inflicted mortal wounds on both Samuel and his son.”

  Dad chuckled, not with humor, then extended his right hand to show the thick, white scar across his wrist I’d never had the nerve to ask about.

  “Story goes, Samuel had to choose between curing his own wound or his son’s.”

  “Lot of truth in legends,” I said. “Sometimes a truth that reality can’t get itself around.”

  Dad’s eyes narrowed. Slowly, as if I were armed and dangerous, he picked a slice of cheese off the tray, slipped it into his mouth, chewed. “What ever happened to Murray?” I asked.

  “No idea. I never went back to the junkyard, didn’t want to see him.”

  I glanced at my watch, almost four o’clock. Dad picked up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk so long. Should’ve told you this garbage years ago, but I thought—”

  “You thought you might never have to. That I’d keep puttering with computers the rest of my life. That you’d get away with it.”

  Dad looked as if he’d swigged spoiled milk. “I used to watch you at your computers, Martin. Other kids played games, but not you. You had to write them, and the dicier they were, the better. Goddamn it to hell, you’re going to do just what Samuel did, spit on that contract and throw it back.” He wiped a finger across the corner of his mouth. “Don’t go into medicine, Martin. Please.”

  I didn’t think, just lashed back. “Just because you didn’t have the nerve to take on your father’s legend… Remember that night at dinner when Samuel first got you to be his extern, you told your mother you’d want to be a doctor if you were good enough? “

  “Huh.” Tight little smile. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “Runs in the family.”

  Dad pounded a fist, rattled dishes and silverware. His eyes bulged, mouth an ugly red gash. Fortunately, the restaurant was near-empty. Both waiter and maitre d’ took care to look in the other direction. “I made myself a goddamn good life as a painter. You can do the same with computers.”

  “Painting!” I said. “And computers, for that matter. Going for eight in your own house, doors locked, no one to see or care if you drop every one of the goddamn balls.”

  Dad flopped back into his chair, eyed me as if I were a roach who’d had the nerve to come crawling out from between the floorboards in full daylight.

  “I know what medical work is,” I said. “No thanks to you. I applied to med school, I’ve been accepted, I’m going.”

  He shook his head, shoved two palms in front of my face. “All right. Fine. Go. Not the first afternoon I ever wasted, won’t be the last.” He slid to the edge of the seat. “Time to get on the road—” A sharp hiccup cut him off.

  “Forget about that.” I jumped to my feet, stood over him. “No way I’m letting you drive across Long Island, sloshed and foaming at the mouth. You can dry out at my place.”

  “What, leave my car overnight? Cost me more than fifty bucks! Shit, I’ve driven a whole lot drunker than this.” Cagey eyes, challenging me. “All of a sudden you’re worried about my well-being?”

  “Yours and anyone’s in a car within a half-mile of you. Give me your keys.”

  I held out a hand. He got halfway to standing; I pushed him back. He looked up, face suddenly a map of foolish questions. Great stuff, adrenaline, but in a long-distance race, alcohol wins every time. “I’m fifty years younger than you,” I said. “In just as good shape, and cold-sober besides. Now are you going to give me your keys or do I have to take them?”

  He reached slowly into his pocket, came out with a key ring, dropped it into my hand with an exaggerated flourish. Then he pulled two hundreds from his wallet, slipped them under his water glass, and got himself to his feet. He leaned on the table top, tried to focus on my eyes. “Be right with you, Salvation Army Annie…just want to get my note pad from my car.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, and took his elbow. “That extra key you keep under the hood just might be too much of a temptation.”

  He battled a smile, but his alcohol-disabled resolve was no match. He shook his head weakly, muttered a feeble, “God damn. Samuel vs. Samuel.”

  “Samuel by a split decision,” I said. “Six drinks in less than three hours? Cab’s on me. Let’s go.”

  Second Avenue just north of Sixty-seventh is far from tenement territory, but neither is it elevator country. I wrestled Dad up three flights of narrow steps and into my apartment. Helene’s face was a study, but she kissed Dad’s cheek, then took his right arm and helped me lead him into our bedroom. We sat him on the edge of the bed, pulled off his shoes, dragged his pants down past his ankles, got him between the sheets. Before we were outside, he was snoring.

  As she closed the door behind us, Helene asked, “Is it something you can tell me?”

  Not a story I wanted to drop on her. But I remembered what Dad said, how he’d never told Mother about Harmony, and I felt a terrible sadness below my ribs, as if I’d just swallowed a cannonball. “It’s all right,” she said. “We all have a secret or two, don’t we?”

  I put an arm around her, squeezed. “I’d better call Mother—don’t want her to wait up for him, or worry.”

  Mother sighed when I told her Dad was safe in bed, sleeping off his bender. “I don’t even want to think about him like that, going eighty or ninety along the Sunrise Expressway,” she said. “Thirty-five years with your father, and I’ve never seen him anything like he was yesterday. A madman. Martin, what on earth did you tell him?”

  “Just that I’ve been accepted at medical school.”

  Silence, then a strangled, “Oh, my.”

  “Mother?”

  “Did he tell you about…?”

  “His father? Yes.”

  Deep sigh. “That’s what I thought.”

  “You know the story?”

  “Only that his father was a doctor, but Leo would never consider a medical career. Is it as bad as I think it was?”

  “Worse.”

  Another sigh. “All right, then. Any more, he’ll have to tell me himself. As long as I know he’s safe. Thanks for calling, dear.”

  I hung up the phone slowly, not wanting to look at Helene. She walked over, rested her head against my back. A shaft of late afternoon sunlight found its way between buildings, through our window, cast a glow on the Leo Firestone painting next to the door. A summer meadow, grass waving gently in the breeze, each blade a sharp sawtooth flecked with red. I thought I might choke on the dry gall in my throat. “Come sit on the sofa with me,” I finally managed to say. “Dad wants secrets in his house, that’s up to him. I don’t want them in mine.”

  Chap
ter 17

  Helene and I slept on the sofa that night, curled into each other like nesting spoons. By the time we woke, Dad was gone. No note, bed rumpled, unmade. “Are you going to call home, make sure he got there?” Helene asked.

  “I am home,” I said. “And he’s gotten home all right for seventy-six years. We did our part last night.”

  She clearly didn’t agree, but didn’t argue.

  We had breakfast, then I went down, bought a copy of the four-inch-thick New York Times. Our usual Sunday morning routine. Helene took the first section, plopped into one of the plaid armchairs, began to read. I picked up the magazine, but couldn’t get into it. I tried the financial section, entertainment, sports, but the harder I worked at diverting myself, the more my mind wandered down a path I was trying to stay off. Like Oscar Wilde, I can resist everything except temptation.

  I strolled into the kitchen, washed the breakfast dishes, then walked to my study and sat a few minutes at my computer. Then I came back to the living room, tried to read the News of the Week. Pale stuff beside the churning mess in my mind. I strolled to the kitchen, dried the dishes. When I ambled back into the living room, Helene lowered her paper, stared, then said, “Martin, what’s with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean?” She dropped her reading to the floor. “I mean you’re prowling. Into the kitchen, out to the computer, off the computer, back here, back to the kitchen, back here again. You look like a hamster running between a treadmill and a roller-ball.”

  “Something’s bothering me.”

  “Your father.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, then, call. Don’t be so proud, or standoffish, or whatever. Pick up the phone and call him.”

  “It’s not that, Helene. It’s his story. It’s not right.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like how it ended. Lame. He damn near quit talking a couple of times when the story got nasty, and I think he bailed before the end. I’m supposed to believe he lived for a year with a couple of people he couldn’t stand, then toddled off to college, then Europe, then back to New York, where he decided to become a painter? My father? Helene, Dad’s a force of nature. If he’d wanted to be a doctor, he’d’ve been a doctor, and on his own terms. Lily Fleischmann and a Marine brigade couldn’t’ve stopped him. Something else happened in Hobart that summer, something he didn’t talk about.”

  She frowned. “It happened so long ago—your dad’s seventy-six years old. Maybe you ought to leave well enough alone.”

  “Well enough’s not good enough. Almost sixty years now, he’s lived in pain, hasn’t even been able to tell my mother. Should I just stand back and let him go on beating himself up, all the way to his grave?”

  She bit at her lip. “I only hope you won’t—”

  “Push him over the edge? He’s been at least half-over for half a century. Maybe I can pull him back. And besides…”

  “There’s more?”

  “How about a murder that was never solved?”

  “Jonas Fleischmann and the strychnine? You’re going to solve that? Now? Sixty years later?”

  I nodded. “Pretty sure.”

  She looked as if she’d just noticed what might be either a rye seed or a bug on a half-eaten piece of bread. “I guess good luck to you and your father.”

  “Your father”… The book on the coffee table, right in front of me. Leo Fleischmann, A Fifty-Year Retrospective, by Carla Marcuse, signed on the title page by author and subject. Dad said he’d been in Europe when? I ignored Helene’s silent question, picked up the book, flipped to page 3, biography line. Born, Hobart, NJ, April 20, 1927. B.A., Rutgers University, 1950. M.A., Royal College of Art, London, 1953, Free-lance study, Paris, 1954. Four years in Europe, just as he said, but starting in 1950. If Dad went into his senior year of high school in 1943, he should’ve graduated from college in 1948. Simple math, but not adding up.

  I hustled back to my study, sat down at the computer. Think you’ve got privacy? Try FindEm.com. Armed with only $29.95 and a person’s date of birth or Social Security Number or state of residence present or past, you can locate anyone. Or so they advertise. For another $59.95 you get a background check, for $19.95 a report on criminal records. I doubt their database is anywhere near infallible, but for thirty bucks on my VISA card I figured I was playing a strong hand. Date of birth, Good Friday, the day we declared war on Germany—April 6, 1917. Last known residence, New Jersey. In just a few minutes, I learned that a Murray Fleischmann, aged eighty-six, lived at 462 Mountain Road, Verona, New Jersey. I printed the information, then disconnected from FindEm and went to GreatYellow.com. New Jersey…Hobart…Yes! Jack’s Pharmacy, 247 East Sixteenth Street.

  I logged off, grabbed the phone, called my office, left a message for Frank. I really do work with a Frank Riccardi. Told him I’d be taking tomorrow off, mental health day. I didn’t think he’d like it, too bad.

  By nine next morning, I was in one of Mr. Avis’ blue compact Hondas, going through the Lincoln Tunnel into Jersey. Route Eighty to Forty-six, across the Grassville Bridge into Hobart. A few minutes later I pulled up in front of Jack’s Pharmacy. Shabby little place, brown shingle siding faded and warped. Whole neighborhood looked down at the heels, sagging roofs, peeling paint, grass all scruffy, untrimmed. I got out of the car, walked to the screen door, pushed against the seventy-year-old metal Nehi ad. A bell tinkled. Behind the counter a man looked up.

  Watery blue eyes framed by wire-rimmed spectacles followed me across the shop. I walked by wooden shelves crammed with over-the-counter remedies and health-related appliances, strolled past an honest-to-God soda fountain. Clocks do run faster in New York, but here they seemed to have stopped some time before the New Deal.

  “Help you?” the druggist asked.

  “Hope so. You the proprietor?”

  “Yes.”

  The man looked like an old-time schoolteacher, florid cheeks, narrow nose, thin tight lips, sparse gray hair combed over his dome. He began to work his thumbs rapidly against his index fingers. I flashed ivories. “My name’s Martin Firestone; I’m a student at N.Y.U. Med School, doing a study.” I pulled my wallet, flipped it open.

  He studied the picture on my driver’s license. “Firestone… Firestone…”

  “Samuel Firestone was my grandfather. He did a lot of business with Jack.”

  Lips tighter, face redder. “Yes, Jack did talk about him.” Thumbs going sixteen to the dozen, I hoped he wouldn’t set the counter on fire. “Jack was my father-in-law, died twenty-two years ago. Now, please, Dr., uh, Mr. Firestone. What’s this all about?”

  “I’d like to look in your poison log from July, 1943,” I said. “If it’s still around. See about one of my grandfather’s patients.”

  He started to laugh, then looked closely at me. “God damn, you’re serious. From ‘forty-three? Yeah, sure, what do I care? There’s a ton of old stuff, prescriptions, ledgers, down in the basement. You want to go look, be my guest. Gonna get your hands a little dirty, though.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” I said quietly—and thought, or the last.

  Verona’s an upscale town west of Montclair, about half an hour from Hobart. I drove slowly, rehearsed my lines, just a bit twitchy at the prospect of gambling big-time with Dad’s chips. But that’s what doctors do every day, gamble with other peoples’ chips.

  I wound my way past one small palace after another, finally pulled up in front of a huge black wooden sign with gold letters: The Wapping Ridge Residence for Seniors, Number 462 Mountain Road. Behind the sign, a long hill, grass manicured neat as the eighteenth fairway on a championship golf course. A narrow asphalt drive wandered through the green to a great stone building, brown crossbeams below each window.

  I turned into the drive, tooled to the front of the building, pulled into a visitor’s space. A geezer in a striped shirt and screaming red and yellow plaid pants sat strapped into a wheelchair
on the porch. He watched me get out of the car, eyed me all the way up the steps. Then he waved a shaky hand in my face. “Marty! Get over here!”

  That threw me and it must’ve shown. “His son’s named Marty,” said a man in a deck chair next to the old guy. Crisp white shirt, narrow gold tie, full head of brown hair neatly combed, super-thin Duke Ellington mustache. “He calls every young man he sees Marty.” The dandy’s speech was Bostonian, each word veneered with patrician precision. “I’ve not seen you before. Are you looking us over for your parents?”

  “Marty!” Phlegmy old-man’s voice. “Come over here! Can’t you even say hello to your father?”

  Now fighting a full-blown case of fidgets I patted the man’s shoulder. “Sure, Dad, I’m always glad to see you, but right now I’ve got some business inside. I’ll be back a little later, all right?” I bent, planted a light kiss on his forehead.

  “Always busy, always running places,” the man groused, but there was no longer bite to his words. I wondered how often the real Marty kissed his old man. “My name actually is Martin,” I said to Wapping Ridge’s Brahmin-in-Residence. “Martin Firestone.”

  The man extended his hand, gave mine a tentative press. “Paul Conklin.”

  “I’m here to visit Murray Fleischmann,” I said. “Do you know him?”

  The expression on Conklin’s face suggested I’d just turned over a rock and sent something brownish-black with a thousand legs scurrying for new cover. “Yes, I’m afraid I do know Mr. Fleischmann.” He pointed at the doorway. “You’ll probably find him in the billiards room. Take a right as you enter, then four doors down on your left. But perhaps you should check in at the office—on the right, directly inside.”

  I thanked Mr. Conklin and went in, to the office. A young woman with a round face and frizzy permanent curls beamed a professional smile at me from behind her desk, then got to her feet. She wore a light blue summer dress, cut low across the front. A name tag pinned precariously on the left identified her as Shirley. When I gave my name, told her why I was there, she opened a gorgeous pair of violet eyes to the limit. “Oh, Mr. Fleischmann.” Her voice was like her manner, all bouncy gaiety, hallmark of a person who spends every day dealing with young children or old people. “Except for his daughter I don’t think he’s had a visitor as long as I’ve worked here, and that’s almost five years now. Are you a friend?”