Silent Treatment

by Michael Palmer

  “Until when?” she asked.

  Harry didn’t try arguing with her on that point. Especially since she was right. If someone, particularly a professional, wanted badly enough to kill her, she would have to go into the deepest hiding, or else sooner or later she would be dead. It was that simple.

  There was one person seated in the waiting room of Harry’s office when he arrived, a man he had never seen before. His face, hollow-eyed and gaunt, spoke of hard times. His black, graying hair was close-cut, and there was nervous tension about him that Harry could almost feel. He had on faded jeans, worn sneakers, and a navy blue windbreaker with a Yankees logo on one breast. Harry nodded a greeting before heading into Mary Tobin’s cubicle. The man responded with a thin smile.

  “Who’s our friend?” Harry whispered, studying the appointment book, which showed a number of cancellations and no name written in this time slot.

  “His name is Walter Concepcion. He’s unemployed and has no insurance.”

  “What else is new.”

  “He’s been having headaches.”

  “Who referred him?”

  “Believe it or not, he says he read about you in the papers.”

  “Doctor suspected of murdering his wife—what better recommendation could any patient want?”

  “Well,” Mary said, “you’ve never turned any patient away that I could remember, so I took the liberty of having him fill out a registration sheet and questionnaire.”

  “Fine. It doesn’t exactly look like we’re going to get buried in an avalanche of appointments.”

  “Oh, we’ll be all right. Tell me, though. How’re you doing?”

  Aside from almost getting Maura killed last night, witnessing a murder, and having almost no idea what in the hell is going on, not bad. Not bad at all

  “I go to bed confused, I wake up confused,” he said instead.

  “That doesn’t make you any different from the rest of us,” Mary said, smiling. “You just hang in there an’ the answers will come.”

  She looked as strained and tired as he had ever seen her. Yet here she was with anxious callers to assuage, cancellations to accept without comment, reporters to fend off, and she was concerned with how he was doing. Harry added her to his list of heroes.

  He picked up the clipboard with the health questionnaire his new patient had filled out. Walter Concepcion was forty-five, with no phone, a next-of-kin—his brother in Los Angeles, and an address in Spanish Harlem. As Mary had warned, he had no health insurance. But he did list an occupation—private investigator. Harry introduced himself and motioned the man to follow him to his office.

  “I was a licensed PI,” Concepcion explained in response to Harry’s question. “But I got in a little trouble a few years back and they pulled my ticket.” His New York accent, without a hint of Latino, suggested he was U.S. born. “Next March I’m eligible to get it back. I still do some jobs for people, but under the table, if you know what I mean.”

  The tension Harry had sensed in the waiting room was physically apparent in an intermittent tic of the muscles on the right side of Concepcion’s face, and in his fingers, which seemed to be in almost constant motion.

  “The trouble you got into,” Harry said. “Drugs?”

  Without hesitation, Concepcion nodded. “Cocaine. Crack, actually. I thought I could handle it.”

  “No one can.”

  “You got that right. I been clean for almost three years now, though. No drugs, no booze, no wine. Nothing. Not that I deserve a medal or anything, but I’ve gotten my act back together.”

  “That is a big accomplishment,” Harry said. “There’s no need to put it down.” He liked the man’s directness. Concepcion’s eyes, though deeply sunken, were bright and intelligent, and made steady, level contact with Harry’s.

  “Well, Mr. Concepcion, I have about twenty minutes before my next patient is due,” Harry said. “Headaches are among the hardest symptoms to diagnose correctly, but I’ll do my best. You may have to come back another time or two.”

  “That’s okay with me, Doc, as long as I can stretch out my payments. I’m not broke, but I do have to balance who gets what, if you know what I mean.”

  “No problem,” Harry said. “Why don’t you go on down to room two on the left. I’ll take a brief history and examine you there.”

  Concepcion rose and left the room just as Harry’s private line began ringing.

  The private line, direct to the back office, enabled Harry to make calls without tying up an office line. It also ensured that emergency calls from the hospital wouldn’t encounter a busy signal.

  “Dr. Corbett,” he said, flipping through a small stack of mail, mostly junk, that Mary had left on his desk.

  “I am very upset with you, Doctor,” the familiar, slightly accented voice said. “Very upset,”

  Harry tensed. Even if he could somehow alert Mary, there was no extension to this line at the front desk.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “The man you trapped and killed so mercilessly last night meant a great deal to me.”

  The words were spoken without emotion.

  “Listen, I didn’t trap anyone. Your goons tried to kill us. I’m not sorry someone saved our lives. But I have no idea who did it.”

  “I think you’re lying, Dr. Corbett. I blame myself for not considering that you might have arranged to have yourself followed. But I think you’ll see that it was an unfortunate, foolish thing for you to do. Very unfortunate and very foolish.”

  “Who are you? Why are you doing this? Why did you kill Evie?”

  “You have become a great inconvenience to me, Dr. Corbett,” the soft voice went on. “And I intend to do something about it. It would make things much easier for any number of people if you would just find some clever, painless way to take your own life.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Dead or in prison for life. I am afraid those are now the only options available to you. If you don’t wish to kill yourself now, I promise you will before Ì am through. The man you arranged to have gunned down last night was a close associate of mine. He will be avenged.”

  Harry wanted to slam the receiver down. Instead, he sat transfixed, trying desperately to find words that would make a difference.

  “Why can’t you just leave us alone? I have no idea who you are, and neither does Maura Hughes. She doesn’t remember one thing from her time in the hospital. Nothing.”

  “Ah, would that I could believe that. Now, then, we come back to the dual issue of your punishment and your suicide—both of which I consider essential. To show you how serious I am about this, I have chosen that young gentleman you were speaking to not so long ago. Barlow is it?”

  “You bastard! Don’t you touch him!”

  “A nice enough fellow, it seems, but most unfortunate in having you for his physician.”

  “No!”

  “Consider your options, Dr. Corbett. IV morphine is totally painless. Any number of sleeping pills would do the trick for you as well. So would carbon monoxide. Falling from a great height would provide a wonderful rush I would think, and would only hurt for a moment. A bullet upward through the palate would probably hurt even less.”

  “Please,” Harry begged. “Please give me/time. Give me time to decide.”

  “Oh, you have all the time you want.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  “But I’m afraid Mr. Barlow has no time at all. Good day, Doctor.”

  “Nooo!” Harry bellowed as the dial tone intervened. “Damn you, no!”

  Harry looked up at that moment and realized that Walter Concepcion was standing just outside his door.

  “I … I just wanted to know if I should get changed,” he said, embarrassed.

  Mary Tobin, responding to Harry’s shout, came rushing past him and into the office.

  “Call Alexander Five,” he ordered. “Tell them to get someone into room five-oh-five now. Andrew Barlow. Room five-oh-
five. I’m on my way over.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Mary Tobin said.

  “Mr. Concepcion, you’ll have to come back another time.”

  Without waiting for a response, Harry bolted past the bewildered man, out of the office, and across the sunlit street. It was six blocks to the Manhattan Medical Center.

  CHAPTER 20

  In this part of the city, people were not that surprised to see a man dressed in loafers and a suit sprinting along the sidewalk, dodging pedestrians. Harry felt as if he was running through molasses. The morning was already nearing eighty and quite humid. Passersby moved aside and a few turned to watch. But most of them were looking past Harry to see who was chasing him. Harry knew he had a faster gear, but with the chest pain still unresolved, he was reluctant to use it. As it was, he felt some sharp jabs inside his left chest. And he wondered, with each block, when the debilitating, bandlike discomfort was going to take hold.

  By the time he reached the hospital, he was carrying his suit coat and using one sleeve to mop sweat off his face. He dashed through the main doors, anticipating that the overhead page would be calling out a Code 99 on Alexander 5. There was no such announcement, nor had the pager hooked to his belt gone off. The lobby was crowded as usual. Out of deference to the hospital and the patients, Harry slowed to a rapid walk down the main corridor to the Alexander Building cutoff. At certain times of the day, taking the elevator might have been faster than the stairs. But Harry never gave it a thought. Grateful for his regular workouts on the track, he took the stairs two at a time. Again, there was some discomfort in his chest, but nothing major, nothing that definitely said cardiac. Muscular or gastrointestinal, Harry decided, filing the conclusion away.

  The Code 99 cart was parked outside the doorway to room 505. Harry cursed out loud as he hurried toward it. He was just a few feet away when he realized that the cover had not been removed from the cart. The two nurses who had so blatantly snubbed him just an hour ago were standing nearby, chatting. They looked over at him, and he could feel as much as see their disdain.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” one of the women said pointedly. “You tell us.”

  Harry stepped past them and into the room. Steve Josephson, stethoscope in place, was standing on the far side of the bed, hunched over Andy Barlow, examining his chest and back. The young architect, with his oxygen running almost wide open at six liters a minute, looked about the same to Harry as he had on rounds—sick but in no mortal distress.

  “Stuff at both lung bases,” Josephson muttered to himself. He glanced up and noticed Harry. “Hey, there you are,” he said. “I was on the floor finishing rounds when the nurses grabbed me. Apparently your office nurse called and said there was an emergency with Mr. Barlow, here.”

  Harry approached the bed, aware that a cluster of people—nurses, the ward secretary, and a couple of residents—were now filling the doorway. He knew that no matter what he said, his credibility, already greatly diminished around the hospital, would soon be extinct. He had been set up by a maniac, and quite masterfully at that.

  “I got a call on the private line in my office,” Harry said, in a near whisper that he hoped would not be audible to the gallery. “The man on the phone implied that”—he looked at his patient and measured his words carefully—“that he might be planning to harm Andrew, here, in some way.”

  “But why?” Barlow asked, the question nearly lost in a spasm of coughing.

  Harry turned to the crowd.

  “Look, could someone please close the door?” he asked.

  No one in the group moved. Harry stalked over to do it himself. The head nurse, Corinne Donnelly, stepped inside.

  “I’ll allow you to close the door,” she said. “But I intend to stay and hear exactly what explanation you have to offer for this.”

  Donnelly, about Harry’s age, had once sent a close friend to him for medical care. Now, she eyed him challengingly, almost begging for a confrontation.

  “Come on in,” Harry said wearily.

  The nurse nodded people away from the door and then closed it behind her. Steve Josephson rested his considerable bulk against the wall. Harry turned to his patient.

  “Andy, we haven’t spoken about this, but I assume you know about my wife’s death and some of the newspaper and TV reports about me.”

  “I do. I didn’t believe them.”

  The two sentences again sent Barlow into a racking cough. Harry wondered what this scene was costing him in stamina.

  “You’re right not to believe the papers,” Harry said. “I didn’t do anything to harm my wife. But whoever did administer that lethal injection is very angry with me—I … I’m not sure I know why. Apparently he’s decided to hurt me by threatening my patients.”

  Steve Josephson said, “You mean that because this guy has some sort of grudge against you, he’s killed Evie, and now wants to hurt your patients?”

  “I think there are other reasons he killed Evie. I think he was threatened by some research she was doing. But as far as Andy goes, the answer is yes. I know it sounds crazy, Steve, but—”

  “It doesn’t sound crazy,” Corinne Donnelly cut in. “It is crazy. Dr. Corbett, I think we should talk in my office.”

  Harry looked down at his patient.

  “Whatever you have to say, you can say right here.”

  “Okay, have it your way, Doctor. I intend to call the nursing director right now and ask her to speak with both Dr. Erdman and Dr. Lord immediately. I don’t believe your story one bit—about your wife or about this mystery caller. I don’t know what’s going on, what’s wrong with you, but I do know that recently you’ve changed drastically. Maybe it’s some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome—something to do with the war. Or maybe it has to do with your wife and Dr. Sidonis. Whatever it is, you need to get help before anyone else gets hurt. And for everyone’s sake, you should voluntarily take yourself off the admitting staff of this hospital until the truth comes out. This young man has enough problems without being put in jeopardy by his own physician.”

  Harry looked over at his longtime friend. Josephson shifted uncomfortably and stared down at the floor. In the prolonged silence, they could hear some scraping from the other side of the door. The staff was still there, undoubtedly pressing in to hear what was going on. Corinne Donnelly moved to put a stop to the eavesdropping, but Harry motioned for her to stay put.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Mrs. Donnelly, you’re right, I need to do whatever I can to keep my patients from being endangered by this … this sadistic lunatic. But there’s no reason to believe that taking myself off the staff will accomplish that. Closing my practice would be like admitting that I’ve done something wrong, and I haven’t. I’m sorry, but I intend to stay on and see this thing through.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” the nurse snapped.

  She turned and stalked from the room, nearly colliding with the assembly pressed against the door.

  “Harry, I’m behind you one hundred percent,” Josephson said. “Just let me know if there’s anything I can do. I’ll see you later, Mr. Barlow. I hope you know that you couldn’t have a better doc.”

  “I do know.”

  Josephson shook hands with Andy, then patted Harry on the arm and left, closing the door behind him.

  “Looks like we’ve both got some tough times ahead of us,” Barlow said.

  His breathing was more labored than it had been. Harry could see that he was exhausted and desperately in need of rest Stress was dangerous for a man in Andy’s condition. Harry felt at once angry and impotent. He was being manipulated like a puppet by a madman who thrived on inflicting pain.

  “Andy, I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Hey, what can you do?”

  “I’ll call here later on to check on things if it’s okay with you.”

  “Thanks.… Hey, Doc?”

  “Yes?”

  The young man with newl
y diagnosed AIDS reached out for the second time that morning and took Harry’s hand.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know it will.”

  Harry turned and hurried from the room, nearly colliding in the hall with a bronze-skinned man dressed in surgical scrubs, carrying the metal basket of the intravenous service.

  “Oh, excuse me, please,” the man said, in a dense Indian accent.

  Harry muttered that it was no problem. Aware that backs had turned and all activity had gone freeze-frame as soon as he neared the nurse’s station, he left the floor as quickly as possible. Once back at his office, he would call Doug Atwater at Manhattan Health to begin drumming up support should Corinne Donnelly or anyone else try to have him removed from the staff. A call to Mel Wetstone might be in order as well.

  As he headed back down the stairs, Harry found himself wondering what might have happened if, instead of shooting the two men in Central Park, the unseen gunman had captured them and turned them over to the police. Maybe the whole nightmare would have been over by now. Instead, Evie’s killer had decided that Harry would pay for that shooting.

  He entered the main corridor, again sensing the stares and whispers. Could it possibly get any worse than this?

  Five floors above, the male nurse from the intravenous service strolled unnoticed into room 505 and readied his equipment by the bedside. He wore the headdress and beard of a Sikh. Andrew Barlow glanced up at him sleepily.

  “Everything okay?” Andy asked.

  “Oh, yes, everything is fine, just fine,” the man said in staccato English. He peered down at Andrew’s IV site through tortoiseshell glasses. “Just a routine check. No needles. No new IV.”