Reluctantly he convened his team of high-ranking specialists around the sewage pit, including Wilson from CSU and the new girl, whose name he forgot. She was the only one who hadn’t bitched about being dragged out to investigate a routine accident on the coldest Friday of the year. Maybe they were right and there was no reason to. Maybe the junior team could suffice.
And that awful stinking jelly. Upon first, second, and umpteenth inspection it still looked like a commonly occurring landslide caused by the storm. The angle of the drainage boards had changed, forming a basin or pit. The dirt and debris inside the pipes could have caused excessive pressure and exploded.
Ramzi’s eyes climbed up the rain-soaked foundation wall and screened the building. Huge balconies. Admittedly, he was curious enough to explore the place himself—a luxury complex, with one apartment on each floor, with panoramic views, health club, and a private waterfront. It was less than fifteen miles from his own home, but he reckoned it was worth as at least five times as much.
To the best of the inspector’s knowledge, a university professor earned a rather modest salary. According to the background material at his disposal, Lucy Efron had arrived alone in America from Romania at age sixteen. She was single and, until two months ago, had lived in a modest house in the Kingsley subdivision. How did she have the resources to buy an apartment in Louisville’s most expensive project?
Clearly there was a lot of money flowing through the golden faucets of the pharmaceutical world.
Chubby Wilson interrupted his meditations. Despite the chill, his forehead sprouted beads of sweat. “That’s it, Ramzi. I think we’re done. My wife’s going to have to use the garden hose on me.” He proffered his hands. “Christ! I need something to warm me up.”
“Okay, fine,” Ramzi said, waving a hand, “we’ll get a coffee or something. It’s on me.” He half-turned on the little bridge as the cellphone buzzed in his pocket. The inspector brought the device to his flushed ear and listened attentively. When he put the phone away, he told Wilson, “Go wait in the car. Townsend just called me up for a sec.”
He was not enthused about the idea of an elevator that opens straight into the living room. But he was sure his wife, Dina, would love it. “It’s like a private elevator, Sydee—that’s rich people’s lifestyle.”
Inside, the apartment was as freezing as outside—someone had cut off the electricity. It was almost empty except for a sofa covered with a plastic wrap, a table, an abandoned teacart, a pair of chairs at the kitchen counter, and boxes scattered along the long corridor. There were no pictures on the walls, except one opposite the elevator with the name ‘Lucy’ signed in the lower right-hand corner. There were no carpets, and the floor wasn’t clean.
As he approached, he noticed it was strewn with broken china, shattered ashtrays, and mugs. Golf balls lay between the pieces.
“What the hell…”
The howling wind made him divert his gaze to the windows. One of them had a hole the size of a golf ball, with cobweb-like tracings in the glass.
“Here, inspector,” his trainee hollered from somewhere in the back of the apartment.
“Townsend, where are you?”
The inspector walked the lengthy, winding corridor, peering into a series of guest rooms as he went. By the look of it, the Jacuzzi wasn’t being used yet. He didn’t even bother to count the empty rooms he walked past.
Policewoman Maggie Townsend was waiting for him inside the last, giant bedroom. The owner hadn’t finished unpacking and arranging. The bed frame and cherrywood beams leaned against the wall. The windows overlooking the river still had no curtains. A mattress lay on the floor covered by a disheveled sheet.
From the other side of the bed Townsend brandished a pair of Y-fronts.
She stretched the elastic band, displaying the red calligraphic embroidery that read: I love my butterfly
***
From a safe distance on the other side of the avenue, Jeffery Gibbons watched the student with the poodle.
The student took his time by the modern sculpture. Gibbons loathed modern art. He never respected work he could have created with his own hands. Rembrandt’s paintings, yes; Michelangelo’s statues, certainly—but the lump of twisted bars sticking out of concrete like broken umbrella spokes filled him with contempt.
The poodle, too, expressed his opinion of the statue by lifting a leg and peeing against it.
Gibbons was impatient. Up until now he had never returned empty-handed from a mission. Frustration was a new—and unbearable—experience; and all because of a bloody test tube.
His gut feeling was that the student and the Austrian were in it together. Their innocent appearance concealed a pair of shrewd crooks who’d decided to go freelance—sell to the highest bidder and split the loot.
Gibbons was convinced that soon the Austrian would contact the student. His gaze shifted back to the bench on the corner of Frankfort and Reservoir Road.
Suddenly the student sped up and began to walk quickly back home, dragging the dog roughly behind him. The Irishman allowed the gap between them to grow. When they reached Kennedy, he would emerge and snatch the student and drag him behind the churchyard. Or perhaps he could wait for the student to be well inside the stairwell of his home.
With Ashraf Nouri the situation had been slightly different. The interval would be the same—ten seconds exactly between the car stopping and dragging the man from the sidewalk into his car, parked near the corner with the motor running. It had been broad daylight in Chicago as well. Gibbons was proud of his professional performance. Here too his vehicle was already waiting behind the fence of the adjacent house on South Birchwood, the parallel street.
The Irishman put on a stocking cap, turned his coat inside out so the brown interior showed, donned black-framed glasses, and emerged from behind the tree as the student and his dog stopped near a bush at the corner of Kennedy and Frankfort.
Milbert picked up the pace, almost running now.
Gibbons hurried after him but made sure to maintain a safe distance as he saw him turning into Avon Court. Despite all the activity around the park at the Reservoir several blocks away, the side street was still sleeping, and there was no traffic.
Milbert was about three houses away from his home when Wilbur stopped to investigate a bush and urinate again. Gibbons squeezed into a gap in the fence, but the student did not look back and Gibbons returned safely to the sidewalk.
The dog might present a problem. It was absolutely essential to ensure it didn’t start to bark all of a sudden.
They moved swiftly toward the house. Gibbons looked at the surrounding homes. He had a talent for detecting suspicious movements—a face in the window, even a fleeting shadow. He decided to go back to his original plan and allow Milbert to enter the house. But the student and the poodle were still idling by the bush.
Shit!
Gibbons watched the student pull on the leash as the dog lagged behind. Finally, they approached the three steps and the front lawn. At that same moment, a car drove by, and the driver honked and exchanged waves with Milbert.
Shit! Shit!
Gibbons considered overtaking the student before he reached the front door. His right hand closed around the bag inside his coat pocket that held Dr. Nouri’s enucleated eye as a mascot. Petting the ragged globe soothed his nerves.
The front door creaked open in the blowing wind, providing the signal for the Irishman to start his countdown. Milbert was already standing at the foot of the stairs, reaching for the iron railing. Suddenly a loud squealing sound came from around the corner, and he turned back curiously and stepped back outside.
A police car emerged from the slope. It leaped onto the gravel, trampled the grass, and blocked Milbert’s way with the vehicle’s front bumper. Two cops hopped out.
The face of one of them was flushed with anger. He was chewing h
is gum vociferously, gritting his teeth. “Boss told us you all doctors are wiseasses.”
“I’m not—”
He shoved Milbert forward, bending him over the hood as he frisked him. Then he handcuffed him and pushed him toward the open car door, capping the student’s head with a hand to avoid it being banged on the roof.
The dog’s leash—still clutched in the student’s hands—got trapped in the door, and the other cop released it and leaned toward the poodle.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Wilbur started barking.
33
Harrison was my bright cousin from the affluent Mockingbird Valley subdivision.
He was reluctant to interrupt an important videoconference with a high-tech company in Dublin, from whom he hoped to extract exorbitant fees, just to get to the police station and post bail for an immature relative in trouble.
Harrison Zucker, Esq., was a senior partner at the flourishing law firm Frankel, Benzinger, Zucker, & Russell, which occupied the entire top floor of a high-rise in downtown Louisville, across from the courthouse.
The firm specialized in huge mergers and corporate work, but Harrison admitted to having “a soft spot for criminal cases,” as he said in every interview he gave to the media or local magazines.
‘Death under suspicious circumstances on the riverbank.’ The idea of being the lead story on each of the three main news channels in the weekend’s primetime probably made him salivate. Cousin or not, I was sure he was already evaluating the potential publicity. My mother’s side of the family was generally made up of people who were calculating to the ends of their nostril hairs. I was told that Uncle Herman had gasped when he’d heard my mom had given up medical school to start studying butterflies. That bitter pill was sweetened by her husband—Dad came from a cattle farm in Harlan, but was an architect, nevertheless.
They escorted us to a separate room. Harrison dropped into a chair next to me, waiting for the inspector to leave us alone in the room. He stroked his glistening bald scalp. His wife Olivia must have told him it was in fashion, and after he’d begun to show signs of alopecia, he had decided to avoid the cost and suffering associated with hair transplants. What was left atop his shirt, which was decorated with a black official-looking tie, was an egg-shaped tanned head, devoid of any hair follicles on the scalp. His black eyebrows almost met above a pair of rimless foldable glasses, behind which small intelligent eyes darted back and forth.
I told him the whole story. I was particularly annoyed by his occasional whistle and the way he shook his head in disbelief. A few times he even burst out laughing, which infuriated me. I didn’t see what was so funny. Now the roles were reversed, and it was I—the one who had at first underestimated my situation—who had to impress on my lawyer the severity of the situation.
Once we were joined by the inspector, my blood pressure skyrocketed. “Would you explain why you arrested me on my street, in front of everyone?”
“Your client is in deep shit.” Ramzi sounded offended. He disliked smartasses like medical students with future salaries twenty times his, so he ignored me altogether by addressing Harrison.
“Me?” I whispered.
“Yes, you!” this time he barked at me, “Stoned to the tip of your cock.”
“Huh?”
Harrison touched my hip under the table, signaling me to remain cool. Ramzi sat in front of us in the interrogation room, his jugular vein tortuous and swollen.
The inspector shrugged, made sure that the camera was recording, then tried to relax. He took some deep breaths and even offered us a Ricola with an inviting grin. I wondered if he was trying to play good cop/bad cop all by himself. A minute passed and a pretty policewoman with a nametag reading ‘M. Townsend’ joined us. She took a seat across from Harrison, pulling open her tablet.
Ramzi leaned towards the recording device and announced for the microphone my name, the date and time, and the people present. Then he reached out to the edge of the table and steered a sheet of paper toward me. Harrison put on his foldable D&G readers and leaned towards my shoulder.
It was a computer printout of a laboratory analysis. I noticed that the alcohol level did not exceed the permissible limits and no traces of barbiturates or cocaine were detected.
Yet there was something anomalous, underlined with a red marker.
“Methyl-amino-sergid,” the inspector recited from his copy. “A powerful hallucinogenic drug. Comes from Burma. Used as analgesic and in orgies.”
I grabbed the paper from the table and my eyes darted quickly over the title.
My urine test? Surely not!
My name was there, right beneath the police laboratory logo. This has to be a mistake. It wasn’t unheard of for lab tests to get mixed up—there was always a risk of human error in test results, X-ray films, and so forth. But then I remembered how I had been found on the riverbank—whole body tremor, teeth chattering, bloodshot eyes, and a constantly dripping nose.
Jesus! Could someone have injected me with something when I was temporarily incapacitated?
I rolled my sleeve up quickly, looking for signs of a needle puncture, but found only the Band-Aid in the crook of my elbow, a souvenir from my ER intravenous infusion.
I removed my glasses, brought my hands up to about an inch from the tip of my nose, and slowly scanned all the pores on my skin, using my extremely near-sighted eyes as a double comb. I scratched with my fingernails to find any tender spots but could not find any punctures or bruises.
I rocked in my chair and started to sweat profusely. Cold sweat. The full name of LSD was lysergic acid diethylamide. Lysergic… any relation to sergid? Sounded decidedly similar.
“Milbert, are you all right?” Harrison’s brows arched.
“You want water?” Townsend offered.
But I was deep in my acute anxiety attack. This Burmese stuff had been rambling around inside my body. Maybe it had already knocked out my liver. How about my kidneys? Where else in my body did it get? What else was going to happen to me—muscle cramps? Diarrhea? Vomiting? Total collapse of all my vital systems? Maybe I needed to be hospitalized in the ICU. Wait a minute! Was my blood pressure already taking a dive in the ER? Was that why I’d had those dizzy spells?
I measured my pulse—eighty-six beats per minute, regular and full normal sinus rhythm.
Efron had told me Johanna was an Austrian physician, but after recent events it was no longer clear to me how much of this was true. Efron had always been on the verge of insanity. Had she, too, been given a shot of this sergid before being treated to a sewage bath?
Ramzi snorted under his breath. “I want you to go back to last night’s events and retell them in the order they happened. Start from seven in the evening.”
My head bobbed on the armless chair and my eyes burned. I blinked in the merciless neon. “Inspector, please, not again.” Why wasn’t he checking his notebook? “I told you she called and asked me to bring the tube.”
“Yes, the tube, at one thirty a.m.”
“I guess. I didn’t check the time.”
“Enough with this horseshit about a tube! I swear, if I hear the word tube one more time—” The inspector pretended to gag.
Harrison raised his hand; the Druze nodded and lowered his voice by several decibels. “Please advise your client that it’s in his best interest to cooperate.”
“My client has nothing to hide,” said my cousin, and for a moment I wanted to forget his irritating Zucker character and kiss him. “Let’s get on with it, I don’t have the whole day.”
Ramzi nodded again, his gaze piercing me like toothpicks. “So she called you to come in the middle of the night. That, I believe. Then you raved a bit, smoked some dope, got high, then what? C’mon, shed some light on what happened next.”
I thought in horror about the hallucinogens called sergids. What really had happe
ned last night?
Ramzi massaged the nape of his neck. I removed my glasses and tried my mind-reading: Not even a doctor yet, and already thinks he’s beyond everything. Tell me, wise guy, didn’t you think even a primitive cop like me would check this stuff? He had something against doctors. I could feel it.
But somewhere, I detected a hint of doubt in his voice. He was taking his time, pondering, and I might not have enough time to recover from whatever was, even now, perfusing all my vital tissues.
Logic and the truth were my best weapons. They must suffice.
But I also saw his point. He insisted on recounting the events of the previous evening, starting at seven pm, and I was not supplying the answers. I was willing to swear on any Bible or Koran or the Druze holy book, if they had one, that I had done my best. Honestly, I wanted to know myself. More than him, even. I took a deep breath and whispered, “Please explain why.”
“Why what?”
“Why would I push my teacher into a pit two months before I finish the lab rotation?”
Ramzi’s face turned crimson. “You are not asking the questions here!”
Harrison started to protest, but this time it was my hand on his arm.
“No, no, please… Why should I fuck up my entire career?”
“You tell me.”
He lurched to his feet and started to stride back and forth, like someone trapped in a cage. He stroked his cheek with his knuckles and gazed glumly through the window at the lucky ones, sitting in the delicatessen across the street enjoying a leisurely Friday.
Finally, Ramzi found refuge between the window and the cabinet. The location was not convenient for me. I had to stretch my neck at an impossible angle to follow his actions. He blew his nose, wiped his face with a Kleenex, and turned around with a weird cunning smile. “It’s okay if you had a thing going with your professor, it really is.”
An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller Page 17
