I slumped into a rear table overlooking the front window. A few people sat inside the café; two left just as I entered, and a white Toyota disappeared from the parking lot. A couple snuggled intimately in a booth. By the way his hand wandered periodically over her buttocks and her lack of protest, I surmised that they were not married to each other. Two tables further down, three guys were loudly discussing last night’s football game.
Friday’s newspaper lay on an empty table next to mine, flapping in the occasional gust. I leaned over, grabbed it, and flipped straight to the obituary page—a common practice of junior surgeons and medical students doing night shifts. I spread the paper out to its full extent, placed it in front of me and buried myself behind it. I concentrated more on peeping over it than doing any actual reading.
I devoured the croissant in three bites and took a sip from my coffee. My nose was running, and my head ached again, heralding my anxiety about the major decision on the horizon.
I was no hero, and life as a fugitive did not suit me.
I had to turn myself in to Ramzi. This way I would, at least, save my own life, even if that meant going through seven gates of purgatory with the Druze shepherd. He might soften, because my conviction would contribute to his promotion. Even if he exploded on me, that would still be preferable to being prey for the Irish psycho.
I would do it with Harrison, so that he, too, got a photo-op and a moment of glory on the Saturday Night News.
I made my decision then. First, I would call the Meadows, then Harrison. He’d send someone to pick me up.
But then I realized I had no phone. My gaze wondered around the café, settling on the most likely candidate. The chubby bald guy in the group of football fans had a kind smile. As he met my eyes I rose from my table, approached him with suitable humility, and to my surprise he obliged.
Grandma answered almost immediately. Before I had a chance to utter my apology, she screamed her lungs out, in a voice I could hardly recognize because of its extreme agony. My iron lady of a grandmother was actually crying.
“It’s Joseph-Arthur, Milbert. He… he’s dead! They killed him! I’m telling you, they killed him! The funeral is this evening, at six o’clock. And these evil people won’t let me—”
And this time she hung up on me.
47
I stood under the awning of a public phone that was relatively hidden from the main road. Because of the rain, the carwash tunnel was deserted and there wasn’t a soul to be seen.
I called Harrison collect. As expected, I got an ice-cold shower. “Why aren’t you available on your cell? You know how many messages I’ve left? Man, you’ve just picked the perfect time to disappear on me.”
I considered filling him in on my adventures since he’d dropped me off at the corner of Kennedy and Frankfort, but right now I had something more urgent to do.
“Harrison,” I said in the calmest voice I could muster.
“You violated the terms of your bail,” he yelled. “Do you know what that means? Are you nuts?”
I had no energy to quarrel, so I pursed my lips, and when I heard his breathing start to even out, I said, “Harrison, hear me out, please. I need a favor.”
I awaited his recovery. He could only grit his teeth. “Where the fuck are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me?” he repeated contemptuously. “Milbert, I’m your attorney. There’s no such thing as ‘can’t tell you.’”
Afraid he’d hang up on me, I said quickly, “I’m calling from a pay phone.”
“I know that! But why? What’s wrong with the one that I got for you?”
Nothing wrong at all, aside from the fact that it had fallen from the fifth floor of the medical school building and was in need of an orthopedic surgeon.
“Why didn’t you show up last night? Wait, just wait a minute—you have to report this morning. It’s not too late. This is serious, Milbert, don’t you get it? Tell me where you are, and I’ll come over and pick you up.”
Saturday morning, and Harrison Zucker, Esq., was offering to pick me up in person. In another world and state of mind, it would’ve been quite touching, but right now I wasn’t emotionally free for gratitude. “The Irishman is after me.”
“I told you—no excuses!”
“Does it sound to you like an excuse?” I pleaded through a choked throat.
“Milbert—”
“He’s still trying to find me.”
I heard the sound of the TV in the background. Harrison had apparently accepted the fact that he was not going back to bed and was flipping between channels. Finally he settled on what sounded like a football game. “You have to surrender yourself. Immediately. Otherwise you’re going to be in such deep shit that even the biggest snorkel won’t be able to rescue you.” The biggest snorkel, of course, was him.
“I can’t.”
“Again this ‘I can’t’? What do you think you are doing, playing Harrison Ford?”
“He’s going to kill me.”
“Why? Why should he kill you?”
“Very simple. He thinks I have the tube, and I’m one of the few people who can identify him.”
“Yes,” Harrison sighed. “No doubt. You’re the one and only.”
I ignored the sarcasm. “Something terrible is happening. Someone has been doing experiments on human eyes.”
“Who? Your beloved scientist was found half-digested, lying naked in the bottom of a pit.”
“Someone has picked up her torch. Maybe a partner. I think a major drug company funded the professor and poured zillions of dollars into her project, but she went with the competition. The original company decided not to give up without a fight and sent the Irish guy after the tube. The active compound is in there. That’s why she asked me to keep tube #12 for her.”
“Number 12 again,” Harrison said.
“The one I hid in the electric kettle. Apparently, Johanna took it.”
“Well, great!” Harrison crowed. “Let Johanna return the tube, and everyone can go back to their daily routines with a smile.”
So, I explained about Johanna’s distress call, the encounter at the construction site, the Irishman showing up in the middle of it, how I had managed to escape, and how Johanna had fallen to her death. Then I told him about the tortuous journey in the taxi to the university lab, and the very last analysis.
“Urine?” Harrison gasped.
“I’ve told you everything. I swear I’m not making anything up. This manipulation sounds exactly like something Efron would do. There must be another tube—the one with the real thing.”
“And where is it now, this ‘real thing’?”
“I wish I knew.”
Harrison paused, trying to decide whether I was on hallucinogens again. “I don’t follow your logic, Milbert, your train of thought. What exactly were you thinking when you went to meet with her and the Irish nutcase?”
“She’s the one who invited the Irish guy! I didn’t know about it beforehand. She assumed that if she gave him what he wanted, he would get out of our hair. Sometimes women can be like that.”
“So where is she now?” he asked again, grumpily.
“I don’t know. I took the elevator down and she didn’t come with me. It sounded like he was on his way up, so I didn’t hang around. I hated to abandon her, but what could I do? You should see this guy—he’s a monster. All muscles, insane eyes. He could smash me like a roach. I decided Johanna and I stood a better chance if we split—she did it before—but… anyway… there was a loud racket like something had collapsed and then a thud. Either he pushed her, or she lost her balance while trying to escape. There were no railings and…”
“All that because of a lousy test tube full of urine?”
“Not urine—a cure for cataracts. Something that could be worth
millions.”
“A physician from Austria, a killer from Ireland—what else is on the menu, a vampire from Transylvania?”
I decided I was right in choosing not to tell him where I was. In all likelihood, he would have shown up with a psychiatrist and two goons in long white coats.
“Listen, Harrison! I just saw an obituary for the gentleman from the room opposite Grandma’s in the nursing home. He was a perfectly healthy eighty-nine-year-old.”
“He was eighty-nine, for God’s sake! People don’t live forever, no matter what they’ve been telling you in medical school.”
“And he had cataracts.”
“Is that uncommon in an eighty-nine-year-old?” Harrison’s voice rose an octave. “Who doesn’t have cataracts at that age? Grandma Dotty, Uncle Charlie, the other one—from Krakow, what’s his name?”
“No, Uncle Walter had glaucoma. But it doesn’t matter. The man across the hall from Granny—I had a chance to meet him. He participated in the experiment.”
“What experiment?”
“The clinical trial with the new eyedrops.”
My cousin, an ace attorney, would naturally assume that the experiment had been conducted with all necessary approvals, informed consents, and regulatory licenses, and I didn’t see any hope in convincing him otherwise. “Joseph-Arthur told me himself—they gave him one drop twice a day. They must’ve followed a timetable, some sort of a protocol.”
“I’m losing you. What protocol?”
“What have I been talking about here all this time?” I sighed and said, “An experiment with human eyes.”
“Milbert, I hope you have proof of what you’re saying.”
“Not yet. Which is why I need to determine the cause of death.”
“The cause of death—old age.”
“And to see the cadavers. To check the eyes, the sockets.”
“What? What? Any of them had a postmortem? If not, you mean—what, to exhume them? By golly, Olivia was right. With you, never a dull moment.”
“Joseph-Arthur Ginzburg. I think he was on their list. He must’ve been. In this kind of experiments, you need at least eight or even ten samples to achieve significance. I counted six already, four in some rural hospital in Tyrol, Rebecca Cox and Belle Mohay from the nursing home, and now Joseph-Arthur. I wish I knew who’s next.”
“And you know all that—”
“From a note that I found in Professor Efron’s Cold Room. Each one of them had received her eyedrops. After death the concentration of active compound in the ocular tissues are measured. I know all the stages exactly, because I’ve been doing just that with rabbit and bovine eyes.”
“Maybe people donated their organs—hearts, livers, lungs, eyes—after death. It’s trendy nowadays.”
“I haven’t seen human eyes in the lab, only empty containers. She must’ve checked them on her own, when I wasn’t there.” I recalled her crazy schedule.
There was silence on the other end of the phone line for a while, then Harrison’s voice came back, his intonation a mixture of pleading and commanding. “Milbert, none of that matters right now. It’s completely immaterial. You must surrender yourself, and I’ll see that you are granted full police protection.”
“Harrison, I need just few more hours—”
“Cut the bullshit! Give me the address of that construction site where you met that Austrian woman and I’ll try to find out if anyone has reported anything to the police. It would be advantageous if it came from you, either directly or through me.”
“Harrison, it’ll be over soon. Don’t hand me to Ramzi. I promise you I’ll do it myself, of my own free will, with you by my side.”
“You don’t have more than a few hours. I cannot collaborate with you on this. I’m an attorney.”
“I know you have contacts in the FBI, CIA, and even Interpol. Ask them to look for an employee of a pharmaceutical company called Medionetyx, based in Chicago. He has red hair and a heavy accent—I can’t place it, but it sounds a little like your friend Julian. Goes by the name Gibbons. First name Jeff; maybe Jeffery or Jefferson.”
“Milbert, it’s worthless. People can falsify their name, invent a family, dye their hair, fabricate their accent—some even burn their fingertips with a laser to hide their prints.”
“He’s the man who killed Efron and Johanna, and now he’s after me.”
“This is for the police to handle, not one for a private law-abiding citizen. Milbert, let me repeat my professional advice—go to the precinct on your own initiative. You won’t be able to hide for long. You’re not cut out for a fugitive’s life. An innocent person doesn’t behave like this.”
His reasoning made a lot of sense, but I knew my life was at stake. The moment I emerged from my shelter, no one could guarantee anything. I’d heard about the dubious value of police protection.
I glanced at my empty wrist. Shit! “What time do you have?”
“It’s a little past eight… why? Milbert, please don’t bullshit me anymore.”
Ten more hours of hiding. Then I would do exactly as he’d advised. I told him so.
“Ten hours? Christ, why ten hours? What’s going to be different?”
“I need to attend a funeral.”
“Of that dry prune? But in ten hours it’ll be dark.”
“He belongs to a congregation that buries after sunset.”
“What cemetery?”
I said nothing.
“I have a better idea. Let me take you there.”
“No, Harrison. Any possibility of your being seen in my company could jeopardize you.” By his silence I understood he concurred. My concern for his status, in spite of my own agitation, had touched him. “I need somewhere safe to pass these next ten hours. After that, I promise you—swear on the Bible—I’ll turn myself in.” I gave him the address of the construction site on the southern outskirts of Louisville.
There was a moment of silence; I assumed he was mulling things over. Surprisingly, when he spoke, he sounded tired and humble. “Listen, you know it’s no less an offense in the eyes of the bar if they discover I assisted a client on the lam. Of course, I will deny everything. But if this is what’s needed to put an end to this tragic goose chase—do you remember the Schlossers? Olivia’s relatives from Antwerp?”
“The jewelers. We sat next to them at Nora’s wedding.”
“They have a house in Prospect.”
“I remember. I think my dad found it for them and did the remodeling.”
“True. I completely forgot. They live there only six months out of each year. When they’re in Belgium, they leave the property for me to administer.” Olivia was probably nearby, because the rest came as a whisper: “There’s a spare key in the fuse box, behind the power switch.”
48
Immediately after hanging up, I realized I had a problem.
How do I get to Prospect?
There were no buses from here to Oldham County, and after spending Mia’s cash on my croissant and coffee, I had no money left for a taxi.
There was only one way—hitchhiking.
Hoping one of the refueling customers at the service station on Broadway would be kind enough to take me at least as far as Spaghetti Junction, I headed to the gas station. But there was no one at the pumps.
I continued further out but stopped before I reached the edge of the sidewalk. On the one hand, in order to get a ride, I needed to pick a prominent spot, as exposed as possible. On the other, I was a fugitive, a murder suspect, seeking exactly the opposite. Was hitchhiking even legal? Would I be picked up by a passing patrol car? Or who’s to say the vicious Irishman hadn’t switched vehicles and would be the first to stop for me, opening the door with a smug grin on his face?
But maybe he wouldn’t even bother. He might simply run me over. It seemed stupid to risk being
crushed under the wheels of a car after surviving the outside fifth-floor walk and a night with the diabetic felines. Obviously, when Inspector Ramzi learned the identity of the victim—me—he would rush to the scene of the accident with a fleet of high-profile photographers.
But why would I care what happened after I was no longer around?
So free rides were out of the question.
Well, not exactly.
If someone had told my zoologist mother, Dr. Sarah Zucker Greene, that her nerdy son had stolen a car, she would have burst into uncontrollable laughter.
I headed two blocks back north, moving stealthily as a lizard, close to the concrete wall of a grocery store. I crouched between the cars that were parked behind the building, trying their doors. They were all locked. As I turned around, cursing in despair, a bunch of keys flapping in the wind caught my eye. They were stuck in the ignition of an old scooter, painted Halloween orange.
I leaped on it and turned the key. The engine fired up immediately. Relative to the scooter’s cough and rumble, my Kia sounded like a soprano, but it needed only one attempt to start.
I was very careful to obey all traffic signs, rules, and speed limits, but still reached the address in Prospect in half the time it would have taken by car—I took a shortcut through a vast horse farm I was familiar with. But it had its price—my ass was frozen solid.
I passed the wrought-iron gate that led to the Schlossers’ property, slowing down without going inside. Out of paranoia—or maybe I’d watched too many thrillers—I wanted to ascertain there was nothing to give away my intrusion. The house sat on a hill with a winding road lined by white fences curving gently between old trees, cultivated terraces, a detached stable, and an old Civil War cannon that loomed above a creek. In the pasture two Arabian stallions were scoffing a bale of hay, the incidental sunshine giving them a flickering appearance.
The scooter struggled at first, but then climbed the trail with surprising grace. I searched for a proper place to stow it away; by dusk I would need it again. I found a niche behind the stable, bordered by high hedge, and tucked the scooter under a blanket of branches.
An Eye For Murder: A Medical Thriller Page 24
