“There’s no question but I’m hallucinating.”
Michaelson tried not to smile at the utter conviction in his patient’s voice. His years as a psychiatrist had informed him long ago how self-diagnosis was far more often wrong than right. And seldom did actual hallucinators recognize the unreality of the sights or sounds they reported.
It took little prompting for the complete story to emerge at the abbreviated session.
“She came into my office early yesterday.”
“She?”
“A student. Or, at least, she claimed she was a student.” He described the visit…and its aftermath.
“Then, when I looked at my grade book after class, her name had disappeared!”
“What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?”
“I mean when she was in my office, I saw her name on the list, and when I looked again after class, her name was gone.”
“Maybe you picked up a different version of the list, or someone is setting up a hoax.”
“I thought of those possibilities, but they make less sense and are even less likely than hallucinating.” As he spoke, he reached into the slim briefcase he’d brought along, and pulled out a bound printout. “This is my grade book—straight from the computer. The names are all alphabetized and numbered. See! There are only a hundred and forty-two entries there. I even checked with the office, and that’s the correct number. But when woman was in my office, I not only saw her name in the book, but there were a hundred and forty-three entries in it.”
The psychiatrist struggled to find other explanations. His client was as quick to dismiss them, Michaelson was finally willing to tentatively accept Coulter’s label for what he was describing—a vivid hallucination. Was his delusion really vivid, however? Yes and no. He couldn’t really remember why she had come to his office. Something trivial about an assignment, he thought. The meeting had lasted no more than four or five minutes. At the time he’d been thinking of other matters, in fact, a research problem he’d been working on.
From there, Michaelson explored various explanations for why Coulter had the illusion there had been a visitor—possibilities to be re-examined at the next session when the psychiatrist knew a more probing exploration would be necessary. Perhaps a search back into the earlier divorce. Probably confusion about his sexuality when confronted with an attractive female. Perhaps…but it would have to wait until later. Another patient was due in.
WEDNESDAY
She was sitting in the outer office when Michaelson arrived. Wednesday morning was normally quiet, clear of appointments, and his receptionist wasn’t scheduled to come to work until ten. He frowned, and wondered how she’d managed to get in. Doors were supposed to be locked. Night watchmen checked to make sure they were. He was about to ask, when she dropped the magazine on the end table and, hand outstretched, rose to greet him.
“I know this is imposing, but I had to talk right away to someone who could help me.”
THURSDAY
Dr. Trent Weiss was looking forward to seeing his old friend again. They hadn’t so much as had lunch together for weeks—but psychiatrists didn’t always have time to spare and a flexible schedule to work around. ER physicians most certainly had neither the spare time nor any flexibility. When Michaelson had called, they’d decided on a hospital meal, since Providence provided passable fare, a significant cut above the traditional, bland institutional meals.
Small talk carried over to the after-lunch coffee, though Weiss could see something was bothering his friend. No need to press. Weiss mentioned some recent cases, commenting, as he had once or twice before, how there was more satisfaction in treating broken bones than twisted minds—the results, good or bad, being more readily observable. Michaelson broke in impatiently to describe the case of the hallucinating professor.
Weiss shrugged. “The answer’s simple enough. College record-keeping is probably even worse than the hospital equivalent. We lose and find patients with embarrassing regularity, especially when it comes to billing Medicare. Maybe there was a duplicate grade book. There must have been. Students keep changing classes, you know.”
“I thought of the possibility and mentioned it to my patient. He was adamant. According to him the grade book had never been out of his possession from the time the woman left his office until he checked it at the end of his lecture.”
“So, okay. I don’t know much about hallucinations, but I’ve heard some can seem very real.”
Michaelson shook his head. “It isn’t simple. He not only saw her, spoke to her, felt her when they shook hands, but even smelled her. After she left, the odor of gardenias lingered in his office. Simultaneous visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory hallucinations are rare. Very rare. I’ve checked the literature and, while some such cases do occasionally occur, there’s reason to doubt the accuracy of the reporting on the part of the physician in many instances.”
“When are you going to see him again?”
“That’s the problem. I’m not. I was supposed to see him later this week but, about two hours ago, I got a call from his departmental secretary who’d checked his appointment calendar. He died last night from a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
“There’s your answer. I know what brain trauma can do. There’s the source of his hallucinations. Prior small hemorrhages.”
Michaelson attempted a smile. “That’s not terribly reassuring, since I had a visit yesterday from a woman who vaguely fits the description my patient gave me of his visitor.” He paused. “Perhaps we now have a classic case of folie à deux.”
A laugh greeted the comment. “Visual, tactile, auditory?”
“Definitely. Even down to a trace of gardenia odor after she left.”
FRIDAY
The morning in the ER had been too hectic for Weiss to give much thought to the previous day’s luncheon conversation, except to again be thankful he had chosen trauma and not psychiatry as his specialty. “I always knew shrinks run the risk of becoming like their patients.”
By 2:00 pm, activity had slowed enough to allow for a long coffee break—long enough for him to check on some of the cases which had come through earlier.
The motorcycle head injury in 102 was out of danger. A helmet would have meant nothing more than a broken clavicle rather than what would be at least a two-day stay in the hospital.
103 was a recovering heart attack. Asleep. No need to do more than check the chart.
The next three rooms were empty, thanks to the new wing now taking up the slack. 107 he didn’t remember. Someone who had undoubtedly been one of the morning’s walking wounded treated by some other doctor called in during the morning avalanche of emergencies. She was pale, smiled up at him, said “hello” as he checked for a pulse without really thinking why he was doing so, when his phone screamed at him. A hotel fire, and burn victims on the way.
SATURDAY
Friday night had been duty night and a busy one. Not much time to think. A short two hours on the cot. Several cups of coffee. Respite by five am and time for another nap. Nine was the end of the shift, and a summons to the ER for a DOA. There wasn’t much question, but formalities had to be attended to. The medic gave an abbreviated version—a gravel truck skidding on the icy streets had plowed into a taxi at an intersection. The only injury was the fatal one to the passenger.
The shock was slow in coming as he saw the face of his friend—Michaelson of Thursday’s lunch. Death was always hovering in the ER, and Weiss had come to terms with it. Still—when it struck this close to home…
There was nothing more for him to do. Family would be notified—something for others of the hospital staff to take care of. Nothing left but to change and head home for an uninterrupted sleep. On his way, he stopped at 107. Nurse Timothy came by, looking into the room.
“What happened to this patient? The one who was here yesterday?” he asked, nodding toward the empty bed.
“Wrong room, Doctor. One-o-seven’s been empty for over a week.” She mov
ed on.
Weiss sat in the sole chair and stared at the bed. He noticed a tightening in his chest. He had never felt it before, but he knew what it was, and he knew there would be no time to reach the button to summon the nurse.
Was he mistaken, or was there a smell…a faint smell…of gardenias in the room?
BREACH OF CONTRACT
Attorney Samuel Thom pushed the packet of paper aside, having already made up his mind to take the case. Victor Selwick’s long diatribe about how Karl Kurtland had broken their contract was disjointed, erratic, confused and just generally a pain to read, but it did seem like a winnable case. Even if it wasn’t, business was slow, Selwick had plenty of money, and this was a grudge he would pursue regardless of whether or not Thom took the case. The attorney was also aware Selwick had chosen him because he was a no-holds-barred lawyer. “Win, no matter what,” was his spoken motto. He’d been tempted to have it engraved on his business card, but decided the Ethics Committee might take umbrage at a display of unvarnished truth.
Working with Selwick was no tea party. Thom padded his charged time even more than usual to make his client’s continual second guessing somewhat more tolerable. Selwick’s criticisms and complaints carried on into and beyond jury selection. During the brief recess following the impaneling, Selwick was fully engaged in bending his attorney’s ear.
“Why in hell did you let that dizzy blonde on the jury? You said yourself we didn’t want any women. She’ll take one look at Kurtland in his wheelchair and fall all over herself to find in his favor, even though the old fool is faking it—like he has been for the past seven years.”
Thom pushed back his anger and, in a patient voice, tried to explain. “We’re down to one woman. Just keep in mind Ms. Erickson is a dumb bimbo and won’t have any effect on the eleven men we have on there. And, remember, we used up all of our perempts, and there was no basis for challenging her. Besides, this isn’t a criminal trial. We only need ten on our side, which should be duck soup.” As a matter of fact, Thom had become increasingly convinced the case was already lost. Asking for five-hundred-thousand dollars for a breach of contract, where Selwick had made only token payments for services, wasn’t going to look good. Added to this fact were the last-minute lies his client had revealed—lies which could be devastating if the opposing attorney had any inkling of their existence.
“You could have kept that one guy, instead—the one who looked like a moron,” Selwick persisted.
“That moron-looking guy happens to be a CPA. Which is all we needed on the jury—someone who could see through the maze of crazy payments you made and can read between the lines of the ‘don’t knows’ in your deposition.”
Five minutes into the trial, Thom’s recent pessimism began to fade. Kurtland’s attorney was extraordinarily inept, had the charm of a sick lizard and an insight into Selwick’s weird accounting rivaling the abilities of a slightly retarded ten-year old. Kurtland, on the stand, acquitted himself fairly well, but Thom, who relished the opportunity to beat the old man down, enlarged upon his confusion in trying to describe the problems in Selwick’s unique records.
And Selwick, himself, proved to be an extraordinarily slick and slippery witness. He easily parried the opposing attorney’s feeble attempts at penetrating the maze and, at the end, got down triumphantly from the witness stand. Since no other witnesses were called, the judge recessed, told the jury to have a good lunch, set the afternoon session for one-thirty and stated jury deliberation would start shortly afterwards.
A half-hour into deliberation, both Thom and Selwick—who were already optimistic about the outcome of the trial—became even more so. Thom insisted the longer the jury was out, the better. “If they’d decided against us, it would have been over long ago. Dollars to donuts they’re in there arguing about the size of the award.”
Forty-five minutes later, the jury filed back in for further instructions. The judge, who obviously had assumed the case should have been decided by then so he could move on to more pressing matters, asked the foreman impatiently, “What’s the question?”
“Your Honor, we would like to know if it would be possible to award the plaintiff more than he’s asking for.”
Seemingly with the same breath, Thom and Selwick gasped in astonishment and pleasure.
Annoyed at the question, the judge simply said, “Yes.” The tone of his voice and the expression on his face clearly implied, “Decide and get it over with!”
“We’ve already decided, Your Honor.” As the foreman spoke, he handed a note to the court clerk. Thom and Selwick were ecstatic as the piece of paper passed to the judge and back to the clerk, who then read the six word statement.
“We unanimously find for the defendant.”
The judge immediately rapped his gavel and closed the case, but held the jury for one last question.
“Why did you ask whether you could award the plaintiff more than he was asking for if you didn’t intend to find for the plaintiff?”
The foreman stood and replied, “We reached our decision in the first ten minutes, your Honor. But Ms. Erickson brought up the question, and we just kept arguing it back and forth. It was her suggestion we ask you for the answer when we came in with the verdict—just to settle the argument.”
BRIGHTON BANK
“Let’s go over it again. The Brighton Bank is a special Federal Bank depository, like about a dozen other small rural banks all around the country. They were set up during the Cold War to hold enough gold so if the value of paper money went to pieces following a nuclear attack, the country would be able to stabilize its currency with the stashed away gold reserve.”
Ignoring the blank expressions, Hadley continued. “The policy hasn’t changed, maybe because Washington thinks the North Koreans or someone like them will drop a few nukes on us some day. Whatever the reason, the gold is there in a special vault, separate from the bank’s regular vault.”
A lesson in history and economics was definitely not something his audience could absorb, and the first question convinced him he’d been casting pearls to swine.
“Where’s Brighton?”
Hadley managed to conceal his exasperation as he answered. “It’s in Indiana.” To himself, he muttered, I suppose I’d better consider myself ahead of the game if he doesn’t ask where Indiana is.
Right from the outset the meeting had gone badly. Hadley had had to choose the three men for their brawn and not for their brains. He now realized explanations would have to be kept as simple as possible and confined to what was expected of them.
“I cased the Brighton Bank for a couple of months last winter. The routine is simple. On the last Friday of every month a Federal inspector comes out to physically check the bank’s gold holdings. He comes in at exactly ten minutes to five. The bank has been cleared of customers, and the bank manager, the bank security guard and the inspector are the only ones there. The timing mechanism allows the gold vault to be opened right at five. The inspector ticks off the holdings, makes a sample check to be sure no one’s been doing any substituting, closes the vault and resets the clock. Then the bank manager closes the regular vault and the three of them are out by ten after five. The locks go on automatically, and the bank’s another Fort Knox until Monday at nine.
“Timing is going to be everything. At eleven minutes before five, exactly, we go up to the bank entrance. That’s when we put on our ski masks. The guard, who’s in our pocket, will let us in. Then we hold him and the manager. When the inspector shows up, we two,” Hadley nodded toward one of the brighter-faced members of his audience, “will grab him and lock all three of them in the main vault. Meantime the two of you will be packing the gold into four satchels, fifty bars in each. They’re twelve-ounce bars, so that’s six hundred ounces apiece—about all we can handle.” By now, Hadley was hoping fifty wasn’t beyond their counting ability.
“Is that all clear?”
Three heads nodded in unison.
“OK. The date will be
the last Friday in August. The temperature should be up around a hundred by that time of day, so the streets will be about deserted. We meet in Chicago on Thursday. Once I’ve made the arrangements, I’ll let you know the exact time and place. We’ll rent a car and drive to Brighton in time to park near the bank by four-forty-five.”
The bright-faced one asked, “Don’t those banks have all sorts of hidden alarms they can set off by just pressing a button or stepping on a pedal or something?” Hadley was surprised and pleased to find even one of the trio thinking beyond lunchtime.
“We’ve located the switching center for the bank. I’ve got a technician, a local guy, who’ll cut off everything—alarms, phones, the works—right at eleven of five.”
“How much ammo do we pack?”
Hadley, noting this came from the one he had already recognized as being most in need of a brain transplant, drew in a breath. “Look. I told you. No ammo! The guns will be empty, and I don’t want you carrying even slingshot rocks in your pockets.” Though he had no special aversion to loaded guns, Hadley had long ago become aware there was a high correlation between the intelligence of the gun wielder and the appropriate use of the weapon. After seeing the trio he had to work with, he had decided to give his own safety in their company high priority. Besides, he had also long ago discovered the muzzle end of an unloaded automatic was just as persuasive as the muzzle of a loaded one.
A quick call to his technician after the briefing was a relief. It was pleasant to be talking to someone other than a Neanderthal. Right from the moment of his first contact with the man, Hadley had felt respect for someone who could master and defeat the intricacies of a telephone and alarm system.
“Yup. No problem. I’ll pull the switch at exactly eleven minutes to five, right on the dot. Be sure to pat them down for cell phones. Then they’ll need carrier pigeons to communicate with the outside.”
The preliminaries went so smoothly, Hadley found himself relaxing for the first time since he’d made the final plans for the robbery. The trio found their way successfully to Chicago, well ahead of time. The car rental resulted in a vehicle which gave every sign of being thoroughly reliable. The trip across the Indiana border to Brighton proved uneventful.
Expect the Unexpected Page 47
