Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  Inside the foyer, weapon in hand, I could hear the sounds of a struggle from the kitchen. I crossed to the swinging door, hitting it and diving onto the linoleum.

  I slid to a stop three feet from Maisy Andrus, thrashing around on the floor.

  Arms outstretched, back arched, her legs pistoned like a brat throwing a tantrum. Her eyes and throat bulged, and her mouth was locked half open, saliva cascading down her chin and cheeks. One leg kicked out, toppling a breakfast stool.

  I realized that she was alone. A windowpane over the sink was broken, but only as if something had been thrown through it from the inside. Water drummed from the faucet.

  Then Andrus began to choke, and I got on the phone for 911 and the closest hospital I knew before trying to help her.

  * * *

  Dr. Paul Eisenberg came around the corner, a chart in his hand. I worked my way up from the cheap plastic chair in the waiting room. "How is she?"

  The skin on his forehead wrinkled toward the baldness above it.

  "Not good. Coma, signs very low. Where's her husband?"

  "Europe. Tennis tournament in Paris, I think she said."

  "He should be notified."

  "What the hell is wrong with her?"

  Eisenberg consulted the chart. "You told the EMTs that Andrus was choking when you got there?"

  "She was having a fit of some kind when I got there. The choking started after that."

  "How long before you got to her did the fit start?"

  "I don't know for sure. I heard glass breaking, turned out to be a window in the kitchen. I was to her within two, three minutes after that."

  "In the kitchen, you say?"

  "Yes. I thought it was somebody trying to get at her, but maybe it was her trying to signal for help with the fit."

  Eisenberg sighed. "Probably not. Not consciously, I mean. Was there any water near her?"

  "Water?"

  "Yes."

  "Doc, she was writhing on the floor like she'd been gutshot. The only water was the faucet running in the sink."

  "And which window was broken?"

  "The one over the sink. Why'?"

  "Have you seen her much the last few weeks?"

  "Yes. Well, no, just a couple of times."

  "How did she seem to you?"

  "Pretty tired. Haggard, even."

  "Irritable?"

  "Yes. Much more than before she went out to San Diego."

  "Sensitive to breezes or drafts?"

  I stared at him. "Yes."

  "Has she been in any wilderness in the last six months?"

  "Wilderness? Not that I know of."

  "Camping? Or maybe on a farm?"

  "No."

  "Out of the continental U.S. at all?"

  "No. Wait, yes, down to Sint Maarten."

  "Caribbean?"

  "Right."

  "When?"

  "December into January."

  Eisenberg jotted something on the chart. "Incubation period is within the brackets. That's a possible, but not likely."

  "What's a possible'?"

  "Sorry. A possible source of the infection."

  "What infection?"

  "You have to understand, we don't see this anymore, not in cities. I saw it only twice in Brazil, and I don't think there have been six deaths in the whole U.S. over the last — "

  "Dr. Eisenberg, what the hell is wrong with her?"

  He told me.

  "Sweet Jesus of God."

  * * *

  I lay awake until after midnight Monday, when the effects of the marathon finally overcame everything else. Tuesday morning I got on the phone. First, I called in a favor from a friend at an airline. He patched his computer into four other carriers before finding what I needed to know and making reservations for me too. By Tuesday afternoon my legs were recovered enough to drive south to Providence. I hand-carried Steven O'Brien from counting beans at work to leafing through old clippings at home. Just to be certain.

  When I got back to Boston, I dialed Mass General. Paul Eisenberg's voice told me Maisy Andrus had died two hours earlier. That left only one stop more.

  "Oh. John."

  Del Wonsley's voice and face both showed surprise in seeing me.

  "I was afraid you might not have gotten my message."

  A polite way to ask what the hell had taken me so long.

  "Can I come in?"

  "Oh, sure. Sorry."

  I stepped over the threshold into a first-level entry, the walls lined with tapestries.

  Wonsley said, "Please, come up."

  We climbed the stairs of the Bay Village town house to a second, living room floor. Two men I'd never seen were there, chatting quietly over cheese and crackers and fruit. The men looked surprised, too, as if they had been expecting Wonsley to bring up someone they knew.

  Wonsley introduced us, then said, "Would you like to see Alec?"

  "If I can."

  "I think he'd like that."

  Wonsley led me up another flight to a door off the corridor, then whispered so no one below us or behind the door could hear him.

  "Try not to stay too long."

  "How strong is he?"

  Wonsley's tongue darted out and back. "As strong as he'll ever be. Why?"

  "I should ask him some things and tell him some things."

  "John, it . . . it won't matter soon."

  "Tomorrow?"

  "I think so. He's asked me to be ready then."

  Wonsley went downstairs, and I opened the door.

  The bedroom was dark, just some muted track lighting near the four-poster. Alec's head was framed by the pillows under and behind it. The covers were pulled up close to his chin, the left arm out but with no tubes in it. There was a lot of medicinal stuff on the night table beside him. Small bottles of pills and tablets, the leather case holding some ampules of insulin, a couple of syringes in cellophane blister packs arrayed around it. From two corners I could hear solo piano, a stereo secreted somewhere.

  I got close enough to Alec for him to become aware of me.

  "John? John, good to see you."

  Much of the hair was gone. Deep pouches under the eyes shaded his cheekbones like a charcoal sketch.

  "Alec."

  His hand came up from the comforter a few inches. I took it, felt him squeeze. I squeezed back with a little less pressure.

  "Del called you?"

  "Yes."

  The wry smile. "I'm afraid the time for makeup has passed. Something about Maisy?"

  He hadn't heard. I thought about what I'd gone there to tell him, thought about how I'd want to spend the time if I were Bacall. Thought about Beth.

  I said, "No, Alec. I came to have that talk."

  His eyes asked the question.

  "About life," I said.

  After a short while he drifted off in mid-sentence, breathing pretty steadily. I squeezed his hand one more time and said good-bye.

  =33=

  FROM BEHIND THE WHEEL, ANGEL SAID, "YOU SEE, ESPANA IS not a morning country."

  I nodded at him as we bounced around another bright but unpopulated corner in Gijon, a picturesque city that reminded me of New Orleans. My passenger seat was black leatherette with no headrest, an after-market chrome stickshift rising from a rubber nipple on the floor. The speedometer optimistically suggested that Angel's SEAT 600 was capable of hitting 120 kilometers per hour, or about seventy-two mph. I decided the plastic Virgin Mary on the dashboard couldn't hurt.

  The flight that was supposed to leave Kennedy at eight-thirty P.M. didn't actually take off until ten-thirty. I cadged a nap during the six and a half hours in the air, but with an additional time difference of six hours, it was 11:00 A.M. Spain time before the plane landed in Madrid. At customs, the officer in a tan shirt and black epaulets checked only my passport, not the small duffel bag.

  In Madrid, a cab took me to the Estacién del norte, a magnificent marble building with an orange tile roof and an elaborate, platformed interior. Unfortun
ately, the next train to Gijon wasn't until ten P.M. My own body clock was so screwed up that I was more hungry than sleepy. For lunch, I had a menu de dia that turned out to be four courses, wine included. The weather was pleasant, and my joints were still sore from the marathon, so to loosen up I walked around Madrid for a few hours. Grand public buildings and banks, ornate gold work bordering the doors and windows, blackened statues on the parapets. Food stores with hams and legs of lamb hanging in the windows, large whole fish staring blankly from beds of cracked ice. Men and women with lottery tickets attached by clothespins to strings around their necks, crying out extended syllables like 1930s newsboys hawking an extra edition. The entrance line for the Prado Museum, a clever entrepreneur plying the captive parents by block-printing the names of sons or daughters in the matador-of-the-day space on bullfighting posters.

  I slept a little during the train ride north to Gijon. A taxi strike was in progress when we arrived at six A.M. I wasted another couple of hours before Angel, a scholarly looking guy of thirty, befriended me. I'd had the foresight to cash two hundred dollars into pesetas before I'd boarded the plane in New York, and we agreed on a fair price for driving me where I wanted to go. Now, in the car, I found I had to focus on what Angel was saying to follow him at all.

  "You see, the Alcalde, how you say it, the major of the city?"

  "Mayor."

  "Si, si, the mayor. He want to make the taxis to forty more, but the drivers, they say no. They have the huelga, the strike, si?"

  "Right."

  "Like from the beisbol?"

  "Same word, different meaning."

  "Si, si." Angel swerved around a piece of lumber in the road.

  "You will stay in Gijon when we get back?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "You should stay in our city. Gijon is a better city from Madrid. No much expensive, good food, less persons. No crimes, you don't lock the doors in the night. Most days, we have the rain, but for you, the sunshine."

  We left Gijon behind and began winding through the countryside.

  Full morning light lifted the dew from green hills, occasional glimpses of the ocean to our right. Except for the curvature of the earth, I could have seen the south of England.

  We'd been paralleling the coast for a few miles when Angel pointed. "The corrida of Candas you ask me for."

  A line of stone cabanas overlooked a jettied beach. Some small fishing boats were grounded on the sand, mooring lines swaying up to the cabanas. Part of the jetty curved around, creating an enclosure that might be dry at low tide.

  I said, "Slow down a little, please."

  Angel did. A ritzy outdoor café was opening on the town side of the bullring, white tables and chairs under red umbrellas.

  "A man of great sculpture live here before they kill him. He was name Anton. There is a museo just for him. You have the time for it?"

  "Maybe later." The cliff was rugged, dotted with gulls hovering and landing. The promontory rose about a hundred feet from jagged rocks poking through the surf. I didn't see what I was looking for.

  "Can we drive around a bit?"

  "Around the town?"

  "Yes."

  "Si. Candas is a nice town, you see."

  We drove through narrow streets, cobblestoned walkways covered against the climate by the overhang of buildings. Little cottages of beige stucco under orange roofs, flower boxes and pots in the windows. A carefully restored theater commanded the main drag.

  "Can we drive up, Angel?"

  "Up? Si, up."

  We ascended and rounded a curve, and there it was. I let him go past, keeping track of where it was as we continued on.

  After a few blocks I said, "I'd like to walk for a while. Choose a bar to sit in, drinks on me."

  "I can walk you, tell you some things."

  "I'd rather try it on my own. Can I leave the duffel bag here in the car?"

  Angel shrugged and parked under a sign that said Cerveza.

  * * *

  I approached the house, catching just the perspective in the photo on Ray Cuervo's bookshelf at the veal plant. Peeking through blinds, I couldn't see anyone. I tried the front door. Unlocked.

  I entered the house of the late Dr. Enrique Cuervo Duran. A lot of dark beams contrasted with rough plaster on ceilings and some walls. Beneath my feet the reddish tile on the floor was set in black grout, the staircase Ray Cuervo had described stretching upward in front of me. I stood still long enough to be sure no one was moving in the house. Beyond the staircase I came into a room with a view of both the ocean and the bullring below, some gulls hanging and wheeling in the air currents above the cliff.

  On the lawn, Inés Roja lounged in one of two chairs, perhaps twenty feet from the edge of the drop-off. A small wicker table sat between her and the empty chair. On the table stood a dark green wine bottle and a single, clear glass, like an iced tea tumbler. Roja's hands were folded in her lap, chin tilted into the sun, eyes closed. I walked outside, the breeze freshening as I reached her. Resplendent in a long-sleeved dress over sandals, she turned her head slowly to me. The black hair was slicked back, held in place by dainty silver combs. As her eyes opened, a lazy smile crossed her face.

  "Not surprised, Inés?"

  "I was expecting you." She motioned at the other chair. "You will have some cider?"

  "No thanks."

  "A pity. It is new sidra, just opened. It will be very sweet."

  "No."

  When I stayed standing, Roja got to her feet, picking up the bottle in one hand, the glass in the other. She held the bottle high over her head and the tumbler at waist level.

  Pouring three inches of cloudy yellow liquid in an exaggerated arc into the tumbler, Roja said, "To carbonate the sidra." She held the glass up to the sunlight and spoke to it. "The professor is dead, then?"

  I waited a beat. "Yes."

  A dreamy smile this time. "And you have come to kill me."

  "No, Inés."

  "Then to . . . arrest me."

  I didn't say anything to that.

  Roja shook her head. After drinking the cider down, she poured another few ounces. Back in her chair, Roja set the bottle on the table and sipped from the glass. "Sit, John."

  I couldn't see any weapons. Angling the empty chair away from the cliff, I sank into it. "You seem awfully at home here for a refugee from Cuba."

  Roja closed her eyes. "If you have come this far, that tragic tale no longer persuades you."

  "It doesn't. Still, the Marielito story was clever: nobody would inquire too much about a Cuba you never knew. Of course, your father didn't die on a boat at sea."

  A small grimace.

  "Your father committed suicide, here in Candas. Just after his cover-up came to light."

  "Does it amuse you to hurt me, John?"

  Roja's tone was flat, emotionless.

  I short-formed Steven O'Brien's clippings in Providence. "Your father was Luis Loredo Mendez, basically the local prosecutor. His old friend Dr. Enrique was dying. The doctor had saved the life of the prosecutor's young wife, Monica Roja Berrocal, in childbirth. Your mother, Inés, having you. Your father looked the other way when Maisy Andrus helped the doctor along. When everything came out, your father was disgraced."

  Tears began to gather next to the nose under each lid.

  "He killed himself, you and your mother leaving Spain for New York. Eventually, you found out that Andrus was still rich and famous, while you and your mother — "

  "Lived in a rathole, John." Same flat tone, no trace of rancor. "A vile, crumbling tenement in the Bronx. I spent years thinking about Maisy Andrus, about what she had done to my family. While my mother died slowly, cleaning for other people of means like the good professor."

  I lowered my voice. "So you got the job as her secretary in Boston."

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  Roja finished her glass and poured some more, minus the exaggerated arc. "It was easy. Growing up in New York, I read the newspapers,
articles about the great Maisy Andrus. Giant of the law, champion of those without hope. But I never forgot what she did to us. Last year, the week my mother died, I saw such an article. It was . . . intolerable. I took the train to Boston. I went to the law school, to see Andrus. To think out a proper way to kill her.

  "But the great professor was interviewing for a new secretary that day. She came from her office, hardly glancing at me. 'Are you my next interview?' she said. Realizing she did not recognize me, I said yes. In her office, Andrus said, 'What is your name?' I replied in the American fashion, 'Inés L. Roja.' I was thinking to add 'The L is for Loredo,' my father's surname, when she said, 'I have property in Spain. If you speak Spanish, it would be a great help to me.' If Andrus had not done that, I don't know how I would have dealt with her."

  "But she did."

  "So poor with the memory of names, so ignorant of our language and culture. She did not recognize even my mother's surname."

  "And that gave you the idea."

  "Yes. " The dreamy smile again. "Manolo had never met me here, and her stepson Ramon never visited the law school or her home in Boston. I decided it would be better to stay close to her for a time. To make her die slowly, like those she had hurt."

  "The reason you volunteered for the AIDS clinic."

  A shiver. "It was horrible. But I learned. I learned that the AIDS was a fitting death for the good professor. However, it was uncertain and could take years in the coming. That was too long."

  "So you went to the veterinary clinic instead."

  "I read first. I researched and studied until I found what I wanted. Then I went to the clinic. A doctor there was beginning a new project. He needed help. It took me only a short time to gain his confidence."

  "And then it wasn't so hard to get what you needed."

  "I knew the incubation period could vary, so I had to be careful."

  Roja took more cider. "But when she comes back from her rich lady vacation in the Caribbean, she has a little problem from a mosquito bite. It is nothing, but it is enough."

  Andrus had said that it was like someone's spit on her neck. "So that's how you administered the rabies."

  The voice of a teacher, explaining the instructions to a test. "I scrape the skin. I watch the little points of blood come up. I have the saliva specimen on a gauze pad, and I spread it on her. Later she tells me how much her neck itches. I know from then that I have done it, that I now can just wait and enjoy it."