by Robin Cook
The Pierre elevator reached the correct floor. Hector allowed Adam to disembark first, then pushed ahead to open the door to Adam’s room. He gave Adam a rapid tour of the room, including how to navigate the hotel’s simple entertainment systems and the location of the minibar. Then he backed out of the room, obsequiously clutching Adam’s tip.
For a few minutes, Adam stood in front of the window that gave out onto Central Park. The most apparent object was the skating rink, brightly illuminated in the center of the park’s mostly dark expanse. He then turned back into the room. He took his tennis bag from his shoulder and unzipped it. Inside was a selection of favorite firearms, carefully wrapped in towels and tape. He took each out, unwrapped them, and checked to make sure they were all in the same working order as they had been when he had packed them. When he was satisfied that his arsenal was unscathed by the drive, he pulled out a single sheet of paper from an inner zipped pocket. On it was the target’s name, a brief and probably useless description, and the rather odd address of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York.
15
APRIL 3, 2007
10:15 P.M.
It doesn’t look good,” Dr. Tom Flanagan said. “It doesn’t look good at all.”
Dr. Tom Flanagan was one of eight intensivists employed by University Hospital at great cost to supervise care in the intensive-care unit, or ICU. He was either there at the unit or on call 24/7. He was speaking to Dr. Marlene Ravelo, who was board-certified in internal medicine and infectious disease and who ran the University Hospital department of infectious disease.
“Unfortunately, I agree,” Dr. Ravelo said.
They were standing at the foot of Ramona Torres’s bed in a special isolation cubicle off the main ICU room.
On the right side of the bed was Dr. Raymond Grady, a pulmonologist. He was busy adjusting her positive-pressure ventilating machine in an attempt to give adequate volume. It was becoming difficult. He glanced at the readout for the central venous pressure and the other one for the pulmonary wedge pressure. “We’re not ventilating her very well,” he called across the bed to Dr. Phyllis Bohrman, the cardiologist consult they’d called. She was watching the ECG on another monitor. Next to her was the chief resident in medicine, Marvin Poole.
“It’s pretty clear why,” Dr. Bohrman said. “Look at that last chest X-ray. The lungs are full of fluid.”
“Let’s look on the bright side,” Dr. Flanagan said. “We’re getting a lot more practice handling sepsis with septic shock than usual with these Angels Healthcare patients.”
“That’s true,” Dr. Ravelo agreed. “But it would be nice to save one of them now and then.”
“We can’t be faulted. Having had a liposuction, this individual’s surgical site infection covered a significant percentage of her body’s surface area.”
“Let’s not forget what I believe is necrotizing pneumonia,” Dr. Ravelo said.
“Do you think the pneumonia is a result of seeding by her surgical-site infection, or do you think it is primary—I mean, isn’t primary staph pneumonia rather rare?”
“It is, but the time interval seems strange. Weren’t we told the pulmonary symptoms preceded the symptoms of cellulitis?”
“That was what was on the record.”
“It’s very strange, especially considering last night’s case was so similar, although the surgical-site infection was so much smaller.”
“Okay, guys and girls,” Dr. Flanagan called out. “Pulmonary function is heading south to Antarctica, cardiac function is going in the same direction so that the blood pressure is in the basement. There’s no longer any urinary output, so that tells us what’s happening in the kidneys, and the liver is not doing what it should be doing. Thank you all for your hard work, but we’ve clearly lost the battle.”
Dr. Flanagan and Dr. Ravelo turned and walked back to the central desk, where they got Ramona Torres’s chart to write their final notes.
“Do you think we should have done anything differently?” Dr. Ravelo asked as they took seats side by side.
Dr. Flanagan shook his head. “We followed the newer protocol to a T, so I don’t think so. Hell, we gave her everything we’ve got, including the activated protein C and corticosteroids. Equally as important, you changed the antibiotics the instant we knew we were again dealing with MRSA, so we can be confident we had the right cocktail. And remember her APACHE II score was off the charts when she arrived, so we didn’t have much to work with.”
“Why can’t we get Angels hospitals to send these patients sooner?”
“That’s a damn good question. What I’m guessing is these patients’ infections develop just too damn quickly postsurgery. I mean, this woman was operated on just this morning at seven-thirty a.m. In her chart, it says the first nonspecific symptoms started a little after four p.m. That’s one hell of a rapid course.”
“With all the nasty toxins potentially at staphylococcus’s disposal, it’s understandable. I’d be willing to put some money on this patient’s bug to have the Panton-Valentine leukocidin, or PVL, gene.”
“Does it surprise you that the Angels hospitals are having so many MRSA cases?” Dr. Flanagan asked.
“Yes and no. Staph is the most common surgical site pathogen, and whereas MRSA comprised only two percent back in the nineteen seventies, today it is sixty percent and rising all the time.”
“Actually, what bothers me most about these cases is the whole specialty hospital dilemma. They don’t have the resources for this kind of case, and they have to outsource it. In fact, in one specialty hospital, I think it was also an orthopedic hospital, a patient had a heart attack. And you know how they dealt with it?”
“No.”
“They called nine-one-one.”
“You are kidding!” Dr. Ravelo blurted in total disbelief.
“They didn’t have any doctors on duty. Can you believe it?”
“Did the patient survive?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s a travesty.”
“I agree, but what can you do? Are you aware of the specialty hospital debate in general?”
“I know a little about it, I suppose. It’s one of the advantages of being in academic medicine. We don’t have to get so involved in various private-sector squabbles.”
“I would not be so sure. It might eventually influence our salaries. The biggest problem most people see in these private specialty hospitals is that they are only interested in the cream of the patients: i.e., the healthy, well-insured who come in to have a quick procedure and then are out. It’s really a moneymaking machine, because they get paid the same as the university gets paid, but because they don’t have ICUs like ours or an ER like ours, which are not moneymakers, their costs are significantly less.”
“I heard the government had a moratorium against them for a while. Was that the reason?”
“No,” Dr. Flanagan said. “The government was against them for a time, actually from late 2003 to late 2006, because the specialty hospitals involve some level of physician ownership to guarantee a continual flow of patients. There is an existing ban in Medicare law for physicians to refer patients to medical service organizations in which they have ownership interest, like imaging centers or clinical laboratories or the like. But there is a loophole as far as a whole hospital is concerned. Ownership in that situation was not banned because it was thought that in a whole hospital, there would be little risk of a conflict of interest.”
“But a specialty hospital is not a whole hospital!” Dr. Ravelo said indignantly. “They only do a very limited number of services.”
“Exactly! Yet it is by claiming they are a whole hospital that they are taking advantage of the loophole.”
“Why was the moratorium lifted then?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea. There were a number of hearings on the issue in which all these points were clearly raised. Most people familiar with the debate, who’d either attended the h
earings or read about them, thought for sure the moratorium should be sustained and actually strengthened because the existing moratorium was only against new specialty hospitals getting Medicare provider numbers, which are necessary for reimbursement.”
“What happened?”
“Suddenly, the moratorium was lifted with little explanation. My guess is that it was a behind-the-scenes lobby competition, with the lobbyists from the AMA pitted against the lobbyists for the AHA, or American Hospital Association, and the FAH, or Federation of American Hospitals. I guess the doctors spent more money than the hospital admin groups.”
“That’s awful. Everything comes down to money. I’m embarrassed for our profession.”
“Well, it’s not all bad. Patients generally like specialty hospitals, and for routine procedures, they are certainly more comfortable.”
“Maybe we should ask Ramona Torres,” Dr. Ravelo said. “Maybe she’d have an opinion about which is best: a specialty hospital and its comforts or a truly full-service hospital. If she’d been here from the start, from our statistics, she would have had a significantly higher chance of surviving her infection.”
“Good point,” Dr. Flanagan said. “A very good point.”
16
APRIL 3, 2007
11:05 P.M.
Hey, asshole!” Carlo called while giving Brennan’s shoulder a sudden forceful shake.
Brennan, who’d fallen asleep and had slowly slipped down in his seat until his knees were pressing against the dash, overreacted to being awakened so roughly by sitting bolt upright. Frantically, he searched the immediate area outside the windshield for a beast or foe. As soon as he heard Carlo begin to chuckle in the darkness of the car’s interior, he became oriented to time, place, and person. And just when he was about to say he’d had quite enough of Carlo for one night, Carlo pointed out something beyond the windshield.
“I think our charges are returning to port,” Carlo said. “Front and center!” He’d spent a year and a half in the armed forces before earning a dishonorable discharge. He’d hated the regimented experience, but he still indulged in the phraseology on occasion.
Brennan had to squint into the distance beyond the pier. A sliver of a moon had arisen over the New York City skyline, throwing a limpid line of reflections toward them across the Hudson River. Brennan and Carlo were still in Carlo’s Denali parked high on the hill at the very back of the marina’s parking lot, waiting for Franco and Angelo’s return.
“I don’t see them,” Brennan said. Hardly had the words escaped his mouth before a sizable yacht silently slipped through the moon’s reflection. “Okay. I see a boat. How do you know it’s them?”
“How many boats have we seen go in and out tonight?”
“You still don’t know it’s them,” Brennan said, as he raised his binoculars. With the magnification, the boat looked ghostly as it slipped through the mist suspended over the water’s surface. “Aren’t they supposed to have some lights on?”
“How do I know?”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to sit here and watch them leave and see if they are still accompanied by the young lady. Then we are going to take a look at their boat.”
It seemed to take forever as the boat backed into its slip and Franco and Angelo made it secure. When it was finally done, the two men walked along the pier toward dry land.
Carlo put down his window. Even from the distance, Carlo and Brennan could hear that Franco and Angelo were carrying on as if they’d been to a party. They were laughing as they climbed into Franco’s finned Cadillac, slammed the doors, and drove away.
“It must have been quite a boat ride.”
“At the girl’s expense,” Carlo commented as he started the car. “What a couple of pigs.”
“It doesn’t make much sense. I wonder who she was. Why all the effort? She certainly didn’t look like anything special.”
“It doesn’t make sense to us, but maybe Louie can make sense out of it,” Carlo said. Then, turning to Brennan, he asked, “Did you bring your locksmith’s tools?”
“I always do.”
“Let’s take a quick look around the inside of the Full Speed Ahead, if you can manage the door and the alarm system.”
“I’ll manage them,” Brennan said confidently. Two of Brennan’s skills were lock picking and understanding electronic equipment, including alarms and computers. He’d gone to a technical school for electronics after he’d been kicked out of regular high school.
Carlo reparked in approximately the same place Franco’s car had been. He took a flashlight from the dash before he and Brennan walked out the pier. They proceeded in silence, listening to the waves softly lapping against the pilings. When they got to the gangplank of Full Speed Ahead, Carlo hesitated. He looked back at his vehicle. “I hope they didn’t forget something and come back.”
“Want me to run back and move the car?”
Carlo shook his head. “Let’s just keep a sharp eye out for headlights. We’d have a lot of warning. It’s not like this is the only boat on the pier.”
They boarded the yacht quickly. “Start on the door,” Carlo said. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Posh boat,” Brennan said. Then he stopped. “What do you think this stack of cinder blocks is for?”
“Three guesses and the first two don’t count, lunkhead.”
Brennan looked back at the cinder blocks and suppressed a shiver at the thought. Proceeding on to the glazed double doors leading into the yacht’s interior, he got out his set of tiny locksmith’s tools. He didn’t have much light, but he didn’t need much. Lock picking was a skill done mostly by feel.
“What do you think?” Carlo asked. He was sitting on the gunwale at the very stern where he had a good view of the approach into the marina, as well as the entire parking lot.
“A piece of cake,” Brennan said. Two minutes later he had the lock open but had to deal with the primitive alarm system. With that taken care of, he called to Carlo.
Carlo used his handheld light to quickly scan the interior of the main saloon. He pointed to the glasses on the bar. “So they were drinking. Explains their mood.”
“What if we find the girl? What are we going to do?”
“We’ll have to improvise.” His light found the steps and the gangway forward. After taking another look up at the entranceway into the marina, which he could barely see, thanks to the neighboring boat, which was almost as large as the one they were on, Carlo led the way down the stairs and into the galley and dining area. Moving quickly to avoid being out of sight of land, they crossed the galley into the gangway leading forward. Carlo briefly tried each door, but the staterooms were all empty and undisturbed until they came to the last one. In it, the queen-sized bed cover was in disarray, as was a towel on its surface.
“I’d say this was the scene of the crime,” Carlo said. He shone the light around the room, which was otherwise totally shipshape. “The girl’s gone. That’s what we came here to find out, so now let’s blow.”
They rapidly backtracked. Carlo didn’t feel comfortable until he had a reasonable view of the marina and the parking area at the boat’s stern. All was serene. He turned back to Brennan. “I just had an idea. How easy would it be to hide a tracking device on this yacht?”
“Easy,” Brennan said. “What kind of tracking device are you interested in: one that records exactly where the boat’s been or one that tracks in real time and you can watch where the boat goes.”
“The second one,” Carlo said, warming to the idea.
“No sweat. We can put a thing about the size of a deck of cards someplace here on the boat and then set up a situation where we can follow it on the Internet.”
“Good. Let’s run it by Louie first.”
“AH, COME ON,” Angelo pleaded. “It’s not that much out of the way.”
“But it’s going to midnight, and I’m exhausted,” Franco said.
They were in the Linc
oln Tunnel heading back to New York City, where Franco was intending to drive directly across Manhattan to connect with the Queens Midtown Tunnel.
“I want to stop at the Neapolitan,” Franco continued. “The party will be breaking up soon, and I’d like a chance to make sure Vinnie understands the secretary is history.”
“It’s only twenty blocks out the way. I just want to see if she still lives in the same place, because if she does, the job will be a piece of cake. You can’t believe how much I’m looking forward to getting some revenge. I’ve done two stints in the slammer for that bitch, got coldcocked by her damn boyfriend, and she’s the one responsible for my face looking the way it does.”
Franco glanced over at Angelo in the half-light of the car. He’d become accustomed to Angelo’s horrific facial scarring. He wondered if it were his own face, would he ever get used to it?
“What would it take?” Angelo said. “Ten minutes, fifteen at most.”
“Okay, okay,” Franco said reluctantly.
Twenty minutes later, Franco’s big black car was creeping along 19th Street with Angelo bent down to see the building’s façades. The last time he’d been there had been ten years earlier, but the experience had been burned into his memory. He’d been certain he’d remember the building, but it wasn’t happening.
“Which one, for chrissake?” Franco demanded. He’d made the decision to sacrifice the time because he’d momentarily felt sorry for Angelo, but the rationale was wearing thin with Angelo taking so freaking long merely to pick out the right building. Earlier, Angelo had assured him there wouldn’t be a problem.
