Ladyfingers

by Shepard Rifkin

  "Will you listen to that heartbeat!"

  I listened. I thought it was lucky the kid on the table had that heart; he was also lucky he had that team working on him at that hospital. If he had arranged another intersection for his accident, not even that fine heart would have been enough; he might have wound up at a third-rate hospital with less than adequate staff surgeons.

  "Next," he said, "Henley went and bought himself a yawl. He kept it at a mooring somewhere in Connecticut."

  "Where?"

  "Rowayton, I think. About fifty-five miles up the coast. He called his boat the Lively Lady." He sighed. "Do you have any idea how much it costs to maintain even a little boat? And I heard that the Lively Lady was fifty-five feet overall."

  I shook my head. I didn't know how much it cost to maintain a yawl and I didn't want to know. I never worry about the problems of the rich until they begin to buy heroin, and it's rare that a rich addict gets in trouble. Why should he? He doesn't have to steal to buy, and a rich woman doesn't have to peddle her ass. I thought of that while I let the good doctor go on about boats. He was the type who had to be given free rein, or he would become more and more tangled in his statements. He went on for a while about expensive brass fittings, paint, and shipyard labor. Well, Henley had the boat and the car; then he took an expensive apartment right next to the United Nations.

  "It all took money," Dr. Morrison said. "I wondered where it was coming from. Then I noticed he seemed to be doing a lot of surgery on referrals from Dr. Lyons. Quite a lot. More than the average. Certain kinds of cases one might see, say, five or six times a year. She would come across ten or twelve of them. All needing expensive surgery. Which Dr. Henley would do. Right here in this room.

  "I began to feel uneasy about it. And then Dr. Lyons found out that Henley was having an affair on the side. Several affairs, as a matter of fact. Mothers of the children he operated on. An anesthetist. A nurse. Word got around. Dr. Lyons challenged him on that. There was quite a scene. She was a little drunk and he knocked her around."

  "How do you know?"

  "There's a fancy nightclub around here called Bruno's. The place to go to if you don't want to drag yourself to Manhattan and back. Someone saw it and a hospital is just like a family. No secrets. Two days later he went off to the Caribbean in his yawl. He's a good seaman, they tell me."

  The bowline on the packages! I said casually, "They ended it?"

  "No. I'm afraid not. A month after he left she went and married a psychiatrist she had met here at a staff party for new staff members. Dr. Falcone."

  That wasn't too good for my theory. "And then?"

  "That love affair lasted for two months."

  "Divorced?"

  "He died very suddenly."

  "How?"

  He looked at me and shrugged. "The death certificate said it was a coronary embolism."

  "Who signed it?"

  He looked at his dials a few seconds. Then he lifted his eyes and said, "She did."

  "Was there an autopsy?"

  "No. There was no reason to doubt her. Nothing suspicious."

  "But you did doubt her."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Henley had just come back from the Caribbean."

  "She killed Falcone so she could go back to Henley?"

  "Maybe."

  "Why not get a civilized divorce?"

  "Falcone was a practicing Catholic. Moreover, he loved her. I know that look. Moreover, he was fantastically jealous."

  "You seem pretty well up on the local gossip."

  "Yes," he said. "Yes. I loved her before either of them had ever seen her."

  Even stupid people, boring people, get hold of dignity when some kind of a tragedy comes close to them. The annoying little mannerisms that grate on you don't do so anymore; sometimes they just drop off people such as Morrison like dead twigs from a tree that gets smacked with a violent summer storm. Morrison had acquired dignity this way in the last few minutes.

  I had no time for a respectful pause. I asked, "How did she kill him?"

  "There are lots of possible ways."

  "I could get an order to exhume the body for the medical examiner."

  "What for? To look for arsenic? She isn't stupid. If she did use poison she'd use one that wouldn't leave any traces. Or she could have given him a Nembutal and then injected an air bubble into a vein. Simple. One Nembutal couldn't have caused death. And how do you find an air bubble?"

  "I'd like to talk with her."

  I just thought I'd try that on for size. Sometimes if you try the totally unexpected in a casual way you get interesting answers.

  "Nobody's seen her for a week. We called her apartment. No answer. Her home phone was disconnected. The super looked in at our request. Everything in order. Nothing missing. One little suitcase gone, he said, the one she took with her whenever she went for a weekend to the country. We got a letter from her four, five days ago. She wrote she needed a vacation badly. She said she'd be gone two or three weeks. She hadn't been acting too well ever since her husband's death, so no one thought her behavior unusual."

  "Any idea where she might have gone?"

  "No."

  The surgeons were walking away from the table. The patient was wheeled by me. His mouth was open. The nurses began to scrub up the mess. Everyone on the team was in a good mood.

  "Nice, nice," one of the surgeons said to Dr. Morrison.

  Miss Forsythe went by and gave me a cool green stare. I thrust her firmly from my mind.

  Dr. Morrison stood up. "Let's go outside," he said.

  As we walked out into the corridor I said it looked as if he had a well-run hospital.

  "It's one of the best in the northeast. That's why this business of Dr. Lyons and Dr. Henley got us worried. We were about to probe into the high operation rate when he left for that Caribbean vacation. Then he came back suddenly. I was in the cafeteria with Dr. Lyons when he showed up. She seemed to take it pretty calmly. I had the feeling that he must have written her that he would be back. And here she was married! To a jealous, loving husband."

  "Do you think Henley told her to get rid of Falcone?"

  Dr. Morrison shook his head. "I doubt it. He came back, did a rash of operations she had referred to him, and charged very high fees. I considered the charges excessive, as usual. But these matters are very delicate."

  "One has to be discreet."

  He disregarded my sarcasm. "When a man spends fifteen years of his life studying day and night as he moves toward a life and death specialty, you have to be very careful as to what you say. And there was no proof."

  "I suppose by no proof you mean a clear statement from either or both of them that she was diagnosing nonexistent conditions, and that he was charging exorbitant fees for unnecessary operations?"

  "That's right. Hard to prove if they won't talk."

  "What happened after he came back from the Caribbean?"

  "They were not seen together."

  I said they were playing it cool.

  "Probably. Then her husband died. A month later Henley went to Japan to study new operative techniques the Japanese surgeons had developed with the Hiroshima survivors. A week later she said she was going to take a two-week vacation in Italy."

  "Did she go there?"

  "Yes."

  "How do you know?"

  "I took her to Kennedy and put her on an Alitalia plane."

  "When was that?"

  "Oh, April second or third."

  "When she married what kind of a ring did she wear?"

  "It was a gold ring."

  "Anything unusual about it?"

  "No. Completely ordinary."

  I drew a line about an inch long. I marked it off in eight units.

  "Show me how wide it was."

  He marked it halfway between an eighth and a fourth of an inch.

  "It was just about like this. But now that we're talking about it I remember something. I didn't understand it at al
l, but I did notice it. I didn't even mention it because it was really so trivial."

  "Well?"

  "When Dr. Falcone died she shifted the ring to her right hand, the way widows do. But when she came back from Italy, she wore a much wider ring. I thought she had probably lost the original one somewhere, maybe when she washed her hands in some hotel, or even on the plane. So I naturally assumed she had bought another one. But what I didn't understand was why she had begun to wear it on her left ring finger again."

  I could have told him. But all I said was, "Then what?"

  "She seemed very unhappy. I-I tried to cheer her up. I took her out for dinner. I heard there was a good show at Bruno's. I took her there."

  "Where she and Henley had had a fight?"

  "Yes. Sometimes I am absent-minded and all I remembered was that she had once told me she liked the place. She sat quietly all evening rolling up her napkin into a ball and unrolling it. It was the kind of gesture you see in the disturbed wards of mental hospitals. It was obvious she was under terrific tension. So the evening was not a success. A couple of weeks later Henley came back from Japan. And then the whole thing started up again-their business with referrals for operations."

  "Anything else?"

  He looked pink. "I know she was with him again. I used to drive past her apartment just when she would come out to go to the hospital. So she'd get a ride with me. But when he came back she'd never come out, and when I'd get to the hospital she'd be there. She would say Henley had come by and offered her a lift. But I was sure she had spent the night with him in Manhattan."

  He didn't like telling me that.

  "And there's something else I want to tell you."

  "Yes?"

  "When Henley was in Japan at that Surgical Congress he made plenty of contacts with the medical services of the new African states, and with Indonesia as well. He was boasting about the attractive offers he had received from them. To run a hospital, to run a surgical teaching unit in their medical schools, things like that."

  "Why would a man who spent money like he did consider working in Africa?"

  "It's true the money and the convenient things of life that he found so attractive wouldn't be so readily available over there. But for a man who might have to run fast-and far-a well-prepared nest would be even more attractive."

  He was right.

  "Some of these countries," he went on, "don't like the U.S. He is a good surgeon and he won't have to worry about being extradited.

  "Do you hate him?"

  He said immediately, "Yes."

  Morrison was intelligent. He was in a situation where the woman he wanted and loved would never feel that he was anything more than a nice Joe upon whose shoulder she could cry from time to time. The kind of guy who's allowed to take a girl out to dinner, to pat her hand. And if he touched her, her flesh would crawl, try as she might to like him. But not in bed. Sometimes this kind of a long hopeless passion ended up in murder. Sometimes in resignation.

  And sometimes in between. For instance, would Dr. Morrison be trying his best to implicate Dr. Henley in Dr. Lyons' disappearance?' That would be some kind of revenge for a sad, ineffectual lover.

  His hesitant, shy, diffident manner gave me the impression of sincerity. But Morrison was intelligent. He may have deliberately cultivated this kind of an approach with me.

  But would his hate make him lie? I wasn't sure. I needed someone else to talk to who wouldn't be emotionally involved with either Henley or Lyons. Yes, another angleshot would come in handy.

  "What has the hospital administration been doing about all this?"

  "As far as I know, nothing. All that reaches the staff at my level are rumors."

  "Who can I talk to about that?"

  "Berman would be best."

  "Berman?"

  "If you want to go to the top, go to the top."

  "He's the superintendent?"

  Morrison nodded. "Go down that corridor and make a right at the end. Go up one flight. When you see an office like the Taj Mahal, that's Berman's simple little cubbyhole."

  I looked at him. I gathered he didn't like Berman. I soon found out why.

  When I walked into the office the receptionist was buried behind Vogue. I said, "Good afternoon."

  She looked me over without any excitement, lowered the section with the wedding photographs of the Prince and Princess of Kress von Kressenstein, and said, "Yes?"

  Not "Yes, sir." Not "Good afternoon." I never waste time being indignant with clerks' bad manners; that's always the fault of their employers. I had a feeling I wouldn't like her superior.

  "Good afternoon," I said pleasantly.

  "Yes?" she repeated with an irritated tone.

  "Good afternoon." I was determined to be pleasant, whether she liked it or not.

  "Look, you a wise guy? I asked you what you wanted."

  Well, she was stupid. Another minus for Dr. Berman. I gave up. "Tell Dr. Berman it's a police matter."

  She became subservient. Another minus. What she should have done was to ask for my I.D. card.

  "Yes, sir. I'll tell him right away, sir."

  Plenty of "sirs" now. She became efficient on the intercom. She said I was to go in. "Good afternoon," I said, as I went by. Her mouth opened and then said the same. A slow learner.

  Berman's office was expensive and in poor taste, the usual sign of someone who made it all the way in his lifetime from poverty to riches. I know what good taste is in furniture. My mother had it. She would have none of that junk they sell to poor families on 14th Street or on Third Avenue around 149th Street. What we had was heavy Spanish oak. Most of it had been in the family for a couple of hundred years.

  He had a lousy modern painting of two huge black lines on a white background. A green wall-to-wall carpet that would show dirt right away. A cabinet with a combination TV, radio, hi-fi, and tape recorder, and phony French provincial decor all over it, as well as overmassive brass fittings. An imitation art nouveau chandelier above a twelve-foot-long couch. Ceiling-to-wall cream-colored drapes.

  He stood up as I came in. He was a big, overweight man in a blue pin-stripe which looked as if it had been cut for him at Knize. Three hundred bucks. It also looked as if it had been glued to him. All his bad points were cleverly camouflaged: his big ass, wide hips, and narrow shoulders. The suit was worth every cent he had paid for it.

  He put out his hand and gave me a very sincere handshake.

  "I'm glad to see you, sir," he said.

  I said nothing. A detective coming in to see the superintendent of a hospital is always bad news. Why be glad? This guy was a professional handshaker. Why shouldn't he be? He wasn't a doctor anymore. His function was to get money from donors. His function was to make people like him. I would never like him. But then I suppose I'm too critical.

  I showed him my I.D.

  "We'd like a little information," I said. "We" is good. It gives the impression that there's lots more guys with I.D. cards and a lot of interest in the hospital sitting at their desks backing me up. I decided to improve that angle with a little wholesale lying.

  "I'm from the D.A.'s office," I said. That would imply terrible things like fraud and customer complaints. I couldn't get into any more trouble than I was already in.

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, yes." He looked nervous and unhappy. He was probably running a little racket on the side, such as sending city ambulances on private calls up to Westchester County at fifty bucks a throw, ten for the driver and the rest in his pocket.

  "We've been getting complaints about excessive fees," I said. "Mind if I sit down?"

  "Of course, of course." He had forgotten his phony good manners fast.

  "We want to hold it back from the papers," I said. "After all, you do receive a part of your income from the city. We feel involved."

  "Yes, yes."

  "So, before we act, we'd like to find out what steps you've taken to put a stop to it. We'd hate to impound your files and records and start
subpoenaing you and your staff. I suppose you wouldn't like it either." My voice expressed the deepest, most sincere compassion for Dr. Berman's problem.

  He turned white.

  "No, no; it would disturb our patrons."

  And you, too, you phony bastard. I bet a good look at your files would turn up some little smelly deals of yours.

  "I'd hate to do it," I said sadly. "Getting out the warrants and all. And, much against my will, I've had to place a couple of undercover people in here."

  His eyes opened wide.

  "But why?"

  "Someone on your staff, perhaps Dr. Henley, might drop around and destroy some compromising material."

  "But what material?"

  A small nod. He had considered that possibility before and believed it.

  "An early diagnosis by Dr. Lyons, perhaps. Worked up by Dr. Henley into something serious. An operation following. That sort of material. The kind of material I'd like to vanish if I were Henley. Or maybe I'd insert a rewritten diagnosis."

  "Rewritten?"

  He was either dumb or playing dumb.

  "That way the operation would look necessary."

  He looked shaken.

  "So we put some men around. No one can get at the files without my knowing about it. We'll find out."

  He looked dubious.

  "Infrared sensors," I said. "CIA let us have some. Top secret." That sounded sinister enough. I almost believed it myself. It shook Berman.

  "Yes, yes," he said slowly. "Yes, of course."

  The poor son of a bitch would have to leave in his own incriminating material. Let him sweat a bit.

  "What kind of a man is Henley?" Now I had him warmed up and in such a daze that his defenses would probably be down.

  "Very arrogant. Very arrogant. He had an uncontrollable temper." His face became red. "A few months ago I received a report that during an operation he got annoyed at the anesthesiologist. He left the patient on the table and walked up to the man and cursed him in a vile manner."

  "Is that unheard-of? Don't surgeons frequently curse during an operation?"

  "Yes, they do. But no one blames them. They are under terrific pressure and seconds count. But he not only cursed, he waved the bloody scalpel in the anesthesiologist's face. Then he reached out and deliberately cut the man's gown. That, you must admit, can be called unusual."