Dear Old Dead

by Jane Haddam

  The count came out wrong. Augie pushed the tray away and looked up at Sister Kenna and Sister Mary Grace. Both looked haggard. It was horrible when the counts came out wrong. You always knew what had happened when you were short a dose. The junkies would take anything if they were far enough gone. You always wondered if your carelessness had killed somebody. Mixing drugs was not the safest thing to do.

  “It’s all right,” Augie said. “I’ll have to report it, but it’s all right. It’s only three doses.”

  “Only three,” Mary Grace repeated miserably. “Three is enough.”

  “For a veteran junkie, three is barely an appetizer.”

  The tray was lying on the lower level of the counter at the nurses’ station. From there Augie could see the front doors and the people coming in and out. Most of the people tonight looked damaged. There was nothing hidden about their pain. Then a flutter of excitement seemed to rise from the darkness just outside the door. The people milling around the entrance stood back. Augie saw Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed come in one right after the other. They stopped near the front to talk, Augie didn’t know to whom.

  “It’s the detectives,” she said to Sister Kenna and Sister Mary Grace. “With the kind of night we’ve been having, I’d almost forgotten they were here.”

  “They haven’t been here,” Sister Mary Grace said. “They’ve been out. I know because Michael was looking for them earlier, and I couldn’t find them for him.”

  “They went down to the New York Sentinel,” Ida Greel said, coming up to the nurses’ station with her white smock open and a red smear of Mercurochrome across her cheek. “Victor and Martha and I heard them talking before they left. I don’t know what it was about.”

  “The New York Sentinel.” Sister Kenna brightened. “That’s a new tack, isn’t it? Maybe they don’t think those murders had anything to do with the center. Wouldn’t that be a relief?”

  “No,” Ida said.

  Sister Kenna shot Ida a remorseful look.

  Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed had finished talking to whoever it was they were talking to. Augie watched them detach themselves from the crowd that had gathered around them and begin to work their way to the back of the hall. The crowd drifted in their direction, but not for long. Everybody wanted to be close to the action, to know what was going on—but not too close. Getting too close could be a jinx. The police could pin anything on you if they wanted to. Augie was surprised at how much of the ordinary attitudes of this neighborhood she had taken for her own. She wouldn’t have thought that way about the police when she first came here.

  “I hate to be callous,” she said, “but I don’t really care what they’re doing as long as they’re not being a threat to Michael.”

  “I don’t think they were ever a threat to Michael,” Ida said. “I think that was just our paranoia.”

  “Somebody’s a threat to somebody,” Sister Kenna said. “I’m glad Robbie Yagger didn’t die, in spite of all the trouble he’s caused us. I don’t think I could have stood to have somebody else die around here—I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” Augie said.

  “Is Robbie Yagger doing well?” Ida asked. “I was on duty in Family Planning when all that happened. Later somebody told me that Michael had committed another miracle, and done something nobody had ever done before. Doesn’t Michael always?”

  “Robbie’s doing all right,” Augie told her. “Michael’s saying he should be sitting up and talking in a couple of days. There’s something going on now about making sure he stays absolutely still because there might still be some strychnine in his body.”

  “I’ll have to tell Julie Enderson about that.” Ida touched the red smear on her cheek. “She was all worked up about it. I’m going down to the cafeteria right now. Maybe I’ll run into her.”

  “Are you taking a break?” Augie asked.

  Sister Kenna nudged Augie in the ribs. “Look. They’re coming right this way. I think they’re going to stop and talk to us.”

  “Why shouldn’t they stop and talk to us?” Augie demanded. “We can talk to them any time we want to. Or at least we can talk to Mr. Demarkian. That’s why he’s here.”

  “Oh, Augie,” Sister Kenna said.

  Hector Sheed and Gregor Demarkian were only a couple of yards away. Augie hated to admit it, but she knew what Sister Kenna was getting at. This morning, she had felt as if she could command Gregor Demarkian’s attention any time she wanted it. Now she didn’t. Robbie Yagger’s near-death had caused a psychological shift Rosalie van Straadt’s murder hadn’t. That probably means they’re close to knowing the answer, Augie thought. And then she shivered.

  “If I wasn’t a nun, I’d think Hector Sheed was cute,” Sister Mary Grace said.

  Augie hated waiting for things to happen to her. She stepped around the side of the nurses’ station counter and said, “Mr. Demarkian? Mr. Sheed? Can I speak to you for a moment?”

  The two men came to a stop when there were less than six inches left between them and Augie. Augie backed up a little. She had been trained in the days when nuns had been careful to keep a safe space between themselves and seculars at all times. She didn’t like to get too close.

  She also didn’t know what she wanted to say. “Mr. Demarkian,” she tried, ignoring Hector Sheed completely. “We’ve heard—that is, there’s a rumor going around—there’s some talk that you might have the answer. That the police might be close to an arrest.”

  There was, of course, no such rumor. Augie was telling a lie. She didn’t care.

  Hector Sheed was looking impatient. “The police are close to losing their tempers,” he said pointedly.

  Gregor Demarkian ignored him. “I think it’s a little soon to talk about arrests,” he explained to Sister Augustine. “Right now, I need a word with Dr. Pride.”

  Augie tensed. “With Michael? But you can’t have a word with Michael. It’s Friday night.”

  Gregor Demarkian’s eyebrows rose up his forehead. Augie flushed.

  “It’s Friday night,” she repeated. “We’re inundated. We’re always drowning in emergencies on Friday night.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ida Greel asked. “We’re busy, but we’re not drowning. Actually, we’re doing pretty well for a Friday night.”

  “Shut up,” Augie told her fiercely. “Michael’s busy.”

  “I just want to ask him a couple of questions,” Gregor said gently. “I’m not going to slap him into handcuffs and haul him off to the Tombs. I don’t have the authority.”

  “He does.” Augie pointed at Hector Sheed.

  “Oh, Augie,” Ida Greel said. She turned to Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed, looking a little helpless. Augie felt anger welling up inside herself and turned away. “Michael’s in his examining room,” Ida continued. “I think he’s alone. He did a job in OR about ten minutes ago and when he came out there was nothing immediately waiting. Of course, it’s early in the night.”

  “Thank you,” Gregor Demarkian said.

  Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed started to walk away. They knew where Michael’s examining room was. Every single reader of the New York City newspapers knew where Michael’s examining room was. Augie could feel the fury mounting up inside her like steam in a pressure cooker. She spun around on Ida and hissed, “What did you think you were doing? What did you think you were doing? Do you want to destroy him?”

  “Destroy him?” Ida was shell-shocked. “Augie, what are you talking about?”

  “None of you thinks for a minute about him,” Augie raged. “None of you thinks for a minute. You treat him like he’s some kind of machine.”

  Sister Kenna and Sister Mary Grace were looking at each other.

  “Augie,” Sister Kenna said tentatively, “I think you’re a little tired. You’re overreacting.”

  “Of course I’m not overreacting,” Augie exploded. “Oh, you’re all such babes in the woods. None of you understand anything. You don’t realize h
ow dangerous this situation is.”

  “Dangerous,” Sister Mary Grace repeated in bewilderment.

  But of course, Augie knew she was overreacting. She knew she had been overreacting for days. She couldn’t help herself.

  What she could do was get out of there, and that she did. She picked up the tray of sodium pentathol doses and sailed off down the hall to put them away in the drugs cupboard.

  3

  THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR of his examining room, Michael Pride had seen Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed and then Augie, having one of her epiphanies of sense. Now he sat on the corner of his desk and waited, tired, for the two men to get to him. He had gone on working without so much as a nod in the direction of his condition, at the same intensity, at the same hours, with just as little food or rest. It hadn’t mattered until tonight. That was the real problem with cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma or any other kind. Your body spent so much time fighting a war it couldn’t hope to win, there was nothing left over for your ordinary life. Half an hour ago, Michael had been standing in the operating room, extracting four .38-caliber bullets from the bone marrow of a boy no more than fourteen years old. Michael had stayed awake and alert throughout the procedure, but in the end he had done it only by an effort of will. In a week or two, he knew the effort of will would not be enough. With proper care and careful management, he could expect to go on working for months, or even for years—but he could not expect to go on working like this. The twenty-hour days, the six operations back to back, the endless marathons that constituted his part in the gang warfare of the ghettos of New York City: All that was going to have to come to an end. Michael rubbed his face and told himself that all that had already come to an end, just now, it was over, he was never going to be able to do it again. He needed somebody to lean on and there was nobody here. Eamon and Augie were falling apart. They reached out to him and he gave them what help he could, because he always had. What was he going to do next? Michael Pride had always been a man alone. He had always wanted to be a man alone. He wanted to be that now. He just wanted to rest.

  There was a gentle tap on his open door. In the hall, Gregor Demarkian and Hector Sheed waited politely. Michael stood, said, “Come in,” and walked around the desk to take a seat in the chair.

  “There was some discussion outside that you might be busy,” Gregor Demarkian said. “If we’re interrupting something we could wait a few minutes until you had time.”

  “I’ve got time.” Michael waved them into the two seats in front of the desk. The chairs looked much too small for such big men. “If I didn’t have time, waiting a few minutes wouldn’t be much help. Sometimes it seems to me that what we do around here is either everything or nothing. We’re either frantic or dead.”

  “And now you’re dead?”

  “Not quite,” Michael said. “No such luck on a Friday night. We just aren’t frantic quite yet. Could I get anything for the two of you? Coffee? Augie always keeps a pot of the stuff in here, in one of those drip machines. She says I run on caffeine.”

  Hector Sheed cleared his throat. “No, thank you,” he said. “Not for me, anyway. Although that’s funny, about the coffee.”

  “Funny?” Michael asked. “Why?”

  “Because that’s what Mr. Demarkian is here to talk to you about,” Hector Sheed said. “Coffee.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” Gregor Demarkian said. “And I don’t need any coffee now, either. What I want to talk to you about is Robbie Yagger.”

  Michael nodded. “Robbie’s all right. If everything goes the way it’s been going, he should be fine in about a week. Will that solve all our problems here? Will he be able to tell us who tried to kill him?”

  “Maybe.” Gregor nodded. “We can’t know for sure now if he saw who tried to kill him. When I saw him, he was saying something about there being ‘stuff’ in his coffee.”

  “I heard that, too.” Michael nodded vigorously. “Shana Malvera heard it, too. Shana is a friend of his. She’s been keeping him company in his room as much as she can. She told me just before dinner that Robbie keeps trying to talk through his tubes, and what he seems to be saying is that there was ‘stuff’ in his coffee.”

  “I wish I knew what that ‘stuff’ was,” Hector Sheed said.

  Gregor brushed it away. “I know. It’s not the stuff. It’s the who. And the coffee cup, of course. I don’t know if you realize it, Dr. Pride, but the police made a very thorough search for the cup from which Robbie Yagger drank his coffee. They didn’t find it.”

  “He didn’t have a cup,” Michael said. “Not when I saw him.”

  “He didn’t have a cup when I saw him, either,” Gregor agreed. “When did you first see him?”

  “We came into the cafeteria together. Down at the tray and flatware end of the line. If he was sick then, I didn’t notice it. What am I talking about? Of course he was sick then. He would have had to be. I must have been thinking about something else.”

  “He wasn’t carrying a coffee cup when you saw him.”

  “No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t carrying anything. He didn’t even pick up a tray. He just walked on through and started looking around. I assumed he was meeting somebody.”

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “I thought the same thing myself. Would that be Shana Malvera?”

  “She wasn’t in the cafeteria. You could ask her, though. Maybe she was supposed to be and she got tied up.”

  “Is she up in Robbie Yagger’s room now?”

  “Yes, she is. She’s got somebody to cover for her over in the east building and she’s going to spend the night sitting in the chair next to Robbie’s bed and keeping him company. Shana’s wonderful, really. She’s one of our staff volunteers next door. She’s not too bright, but she’s got all the right instincts. Just what Robbie needs to pull him through.”

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “I can see that. She can’t spend all night in that chair, can she? She would have to use the bathroom from time to time at least.”

  “The bathroom’s right next door to Robbie’s room. We don’t have space for private bathrooms upstairs, but we do our best to make what we’ve got convenient. The nuns will bring Shana her food. They’ll even keep her supplied with coffee and magazines. I don’t see what else she would need.”

  “I don’t either,” Gregor said. Then he gave Hector Sheed a long look that made Hector squirm.

  Michael Pride looked from the face of one man to the face of the other. He might be in terrible pain. He might be exhausted to the point of collapse. But he hadn’t turned into a mental defective. Something was definitely going on.

  “Maybe one of you two could tell me what’s going on,” Michael said pleasantly. “Just so I’d know. Because I’m supposed to be head of this center, for instance.”

  Michael expected to get an argument. He was a little shocked at what he got instead.

  “Of course we’ll tell you what’s going on,” Gregor Demarkian told him. “In fact, we need your help. If we don’t do something right away, there’s going to be another murder.”

  FIVE

  1

  USUALLY, GREGOR DEMARKIAN WAS given to understatement, not overstatement. Ten years of chasing men who killed their victims and hung them on meat hooks, killed their victims and stuffed them in store windows, killed their victims and sent them to Honolulu in packing crates, had left Gregor with very little taste for exaggeration. Even the kind of hyperbole he was used to being handed on Cavanaugh Street made him uncomfortable. The Church Roof Fund was a worthy and necessary cause, but the four asphalt shingles that had fallen from the top of Holy Trinity Church to the pavement below didn’t constitute a crisis, a veritable crisis, no matter what Lida Arkmanian said. The afterschool program in Armenian language and culture that was being held every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon in the church basement was a nice idea and fun for the children who attended, but it did not constitute an eleventh hour rescue mission to snatch the flame of Armenian history from oblivion, and Gregor
had told Howard Kashinian so. No, Gregor was definitely one of the tribe that called full-scale tornadoes “windstorms” and major blizzards “a fair amount of snow.” He exaggerated in this case only because he felt he had to. He didn’t really know that there was about to be another murder. If he was right about what had happened at the Sojourner Truth Health Center—and Gregor was right; he could feel it—what happened next depended on a variable he had no way of determining for sure. Had Robbie seen the person who had handed him his last cup of coffee? Had that person been the same person who filled that coffee with “stuff”? The single impossibility was that the coffee had been handed to a third party with instructions to turn it over to Robbie. The third party would have come forward. That left Gregor with two avenues of investigation. Robbie could have gotten his own coffee, run into his murderer, and been slipped the “stuff” when he wasn’t looking. Robbie often wasn’t looking. Gregor had talked to him at length. Robbie was one of those people who seem to be perpetually distracted, with no attention span. Robbie couldn’t watch out for himself or anything else, for that matter. The more likely scenario was that the murderer had come right up and handed Robbie his coffee, “stuff” and all. This was especially likely because Robbie never had any money. That day Gregor had bought Robbie lunch had been no different from any other. Robbie was trying to live on unemployment benefits that were quickly running out. For someone whose job had been minimum wage and who had no assets to speak of—no house, no bank account, no property—those benefits had been inadequate to begin with. Robbie was always so grateful when somebody gave him something to eat or drink for free. He was always so hungry and so parched. Gregor thought he was on the verge of being homeless, too. Robbie couldn’t be paying the rent on a New York City apartment, even an apartment in one of the outer boroughs, on what he was getting in unemployment. How many months was he in arrears? How long did he have before he would be out on the street? Maybe Robbie’s church would take care of him then, Gregor didn’t know. What Gregor did know was that Robbie had had an air of desperation about him. It would be the easiest thing in the world for someone to walk up to Robbie Yagger, hand him a cup of coffee laced with strychnine, and stand by while Robbie took a great big gulp of it. Then it would only be a matter of a little subterfuge—jogging Robbie’s elbow, dropping something and offering to hold the coffee cup while Robbie picked it up—to get the cup back and whisk it away. A minute or two later, and it should all be over. The murder of Robbie Yagger should have been a much easier proposition than the murder of Charles van Straadt. It was worse than ironic that the murder of Charles van Straadt had come off without a hitch and the murder of Robbie Yagger had failed to come off at all.