True-Life Adventure

by Julie Smith

  A moment passed and then he said, “Got it.”

  “I’ll send the new guy over.”

  “Okay, Doc. You take care of that cold now.”

  I hung up. “It worked.”

  “Of course it worked. Booker the Burglar always comes through.”

  Booker looked more the messenger type than I did, so we decided he should make the pickup.

  Per Erin’s directions, we went to the left side of Ambulatory Care, where, surrounded by dense evergreens, we found a stairway leading down from the sidewalk to the plaza Erin mentioned.

  And that plaza, let me tell you, was something to see. The med center was on top of a hill on a street called Parnassus, and so the plaza, even though it was on the basement floor of the building next door and ten or twelve feet below the sidewalk, was a steep cliff at the other end. It had a banister around it, being an urban cliff, but it was still a wild and spectacular thing. It showed you all the lights of the city, and some across the bay as well.

  Mesmerized, I walked back to the banister, Booker following. For the moment I’d forgotten the serious work of burgling and I honestly believe he had too. That plaza was something else.

  But there’s only so long you can look at lights, so in a few minutes we ambled back to Ambulatory Care. Booker went up to the glass door and knocked or rang a bell or something, and I stayed a few feet away, just out of sight, still staring at the view.

  Somebody came to the door, and I barely paid attention to what happened next, I had so much faith in Booker. But to the best of my recollection, there was an exchange something like this:

  “Hi. I’m here to pick up Terry Koehler’s chart. For Dr. Rumler.”

  “Poor Dr. Rumler! What a time for an emergency.”

  “He’ll be all right. I think he sounds worse than he feels.”

  For some reason, I turned in their direction then, and what I saw was not reassuring. The medical librarian looked terrified. He tried to push the door shut.

  But Booker had his foot in it. He grabbed for the chart, but the librarian, a split second ahead of him, jerked it out of his way, turned tail, and started running down the corridor.

  “Let’s go,” Booker hollered, and opened the door a little wider.

  I followed him into Ambulatory Care, no longer ambling at all. I hadn’t figured out what scared the librarian; I just knew he was moving fast.

  That basement floor was as spooky a place as you’d want to be in the middle of the night while committing a felony. Mostly, its walls were a sort of dull orange, which wasn’t the spooky part, but the orange sections alternated with big hunks of aggregate concrete, which was. These concrete parts kind of stuck out— maybe they were meant to resemble half-pillars or something, but the effect was more cave-like than classically elegant.

  As he ran, the librarian hollered: “Help! Joe! Joseph! Call the cops!” So clearly the thing to do was to get to Joe.

  The librarian was in the lead. Booker was gaining on him, and I was gaining on both of them when I passed a door with a window in it and happened to glance in. What I saw was a room with bookshelves to the ceiling, arranged like stacks in a library and jammed with manila file folders. A vast, cavernous room. Near the door were a few tables, and seated at one of them was a young man dialing a telephone. I surmised that this, at last, was the long-sought Medical Records. I also surmised that if I didn’t get my ass in there fast, it was going to get thrown in the Big House.

  I didn’t want to add assault to my crimes, so I figured the best approach was the lightning instilling of fear. You and I know I’m gentle as a gerbil, but I look a lot more like a bear and Joe there might have been the guy I talked to on the phone— he had the body to go with the voice. I crashed through the door, raised my arms in an ersatz karate pose, jumped up in the air, and yelled, “EEEEEEEyah!”

  Instantly Joe quit dialing. I was beginning to think there was something to this genetic superiority after all.

  But then Joe stood up, bent his knees, and arranged his arms in a karate pose that didn’t look ersatz worth a damn.

  I backed up a step and he came forward one. I figured backing up was very poor policy if I was planning to instill fear in this runt, but going forward seemed an even worse idea. Joe moved his arms in an entirely menacing manner while I tried to think what to do next.

  And then the door opened very suddenly indeed. The first librarian, still clutching the file, came through as if pursued by killer bees. Booker came through right after him.

  They ran between Joe and me and I started chasing them, hoping Joe would forget about the phone in the thrill of the moment. He did. It was probably the triumph of his life, terrifying a man-mountain such as myself. He joined the parade, hollering a bunch of karate-sounding stuff.

  For the moment I wasn’t being torn limb from limb by some kid half my size, nor was I being reported to the authorities, so I should have been happy. But it occurred to me there was something wrong with this picture— how was I ever going to get the file and get out of there if I was being chased? I pondered the problem as I ran down one row of stacks and up the next. Something had to break soon.

  It did, of course. The first librarian and Booker got so far ahead that they were in a separate row when the librarian banged into one of the stacks and knocked it over backward— right onto my Atlas-like shoulders. If it had been full of books I’d have been buried alive. But manila folders were nothing much. Most of them slid onto the floor and the ones that were left were nothing I couldn’t handle, but I couldn’t seem to get the thing righted. So there I was with a bookcase on my back. Being smaller, Joe escaped scot-free from the avalanche, but was he grateful that I’d probably saved his life by taking the blow? Hah! He punched me in the stomach.

  Then there was an awful crash from the next row over, an oof noise and a beleaguered, librarian-sounding squeal. I figured Booker had finally caught the other guy. So did Joe. He landed another one in my stomach, then squeezed past me, to lend his expertise in the martial arts.

  I had to get the damn bookcase off my back; there were no two ways about it. I gave a mighty heave, backward. It worked. Unfortunately, I underestimated my heaving ability.

  The bookcase went as far as it could, crashing into the next bookcase and starting a chain reaction that brought down the next three stacks as well. Booker and the librarians were buried alive.

  But fortunately they were buried under only one bookcase, and an empty one at that. All I had to do was pick it up and they’d be rescued.

  “Partner,” I said (not wanting to use Booker’s name), “you okay?”

  “I’ve got him,” said Booker.

  “How about you, Joe?”

  No answer.

  “Okay, Joe, listen. I’ve got a gun. I’m going to hold it in my hand while I lift the bookcase. It’s going to be kind of awkward, and if I’m not careful, the gun might go off and you never know who might get hurt. So I’m not going to need any distractions, okay?”

  No answer. I figured I hadn’t fooled Joe for a second. But I couldn’t stand there all night with Booker buried under the bookcase. I lifted it off.

  And sure enough, Joe lunged the instant he was free. I turned to face him— God, he was coming right at me— and not knowing what else to do, I ducked.

  Since I didn’t know karate and had no idea what Joe was up to, I couldn’t have predicted the result and I’m still not sure exactly how it happened. But I think Joe simply zigged where I expected him to zag and that’s how my head, coming down fast and scared, happened to catch him full in the chest and knock the wind out of him. Maybe he didn’t really know karate after all.

  Anyway, now I had committed assault, whether I meant to or not. I didn’t know much about assault etiquette, so I had to make do with a combination of common decency and tough-guyness— meaning I asked him if he was all right and helped him get up, just like anyone would, only I had to hold both his wrists while doing it, to make sure he didn’t try something fa
ncy.

  Booker was holding the other guy’s wrists behind his back. “Where’s the file?” I said.

  “I’ve got it. I mean, I think I can find it. Skinny here dropped it when I tackled him.”

  “Skinny! Look who’s talking,” said Skinny.

  “Shut up, Skinny,” said Booker. To me, he said, “We’ve gotta tie these guys up.”

  “Hey, listen,” said Joe. “We won’t call the cops. I mean, not right away. Just take the file and go and we’ll give you fifteen minutes.”

  “Yeah, you will like my partner’s got a gun,” said Booker. “Take off your shirt.”

  “Take off your shirt,” I said to Joe, dropping one of his wrists to make it possible.

  We sat them in chairs, back to back, and tied them together with their own shirts and belts, poor bastards.

  While Booker was getting the file, I asked Skinny a question: “What tipped you off my partner wasn’t sent by Dr. Rumler?”

  “The pronoun,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Rumler’s a woman.”

  CHAPTER 18

  We stopped at a phone booth a few blocks away, called the hospital, and told them to check their librarians. It was the least we could do— to this day I feel bad about tying those guys up and wrecking their library.

  Then we went to Booker’s place and looked at the file. It was the first time I’d been in his apartment and all I can say is, the burgling business must be good. Booker has one of the more impressive art collections I have seen in a private home. Anyway, we looked at the file.

  It said Dr. Rumler had seen Terry on the Saturday before she disappeared. Saturday. The day docs play tennis and sail their sloops. I checked to see if Rumler had seen Terry on other Saturdays. She hadn’t. Which meant, I thought, that Lindsay had convinced her it was an emergency. That fit with Jacob’s saying he and Lindsay had talked about his treatments the last time Lindsay brought Terry back. I figured what happened was that Terry had mentioned the treatments and Lindsay had taken her to Rumler to have her checked out.

  As far as I could make out from the file, she was in remission— but she was going blind. And that wasn’t all. She was jaundiced. It looked as if Jacob’s bomb wasn’t as smart as he thought. The doctor had noted “poss. side effs.”

  I figured Jacob had lied to me. Lindsay must have done a good deal more than ask him a lot of questions about his treatments. She’d probably told him to stop them.

  And he must have refused and that was why she snatched the kid. She was afraid the treatments were actually hurting Terry, that they were causing her to go blind and destroying her liver. She was afraid Jacob was so wrought up about Terry that he’d lost his judgment— couldn’t tell if something was bad for her or not; wanted to think he could cure her and wouldn’t look at the facts or listen to anybody else. That must have been what went through her mind when she made the snatch.

  But where the hell had she taken the kid? I didn’t have a clue.

  I took myself home and to bed. By home, I mean to Sardis’s, and by bed, I mean the sofa. I didn’t think about where I was going to sleep; I just sort of automatically went to the sofa. For some reason I didn’t feel like sleeping with Sardis.

  It didn’t occur to me to wonder what the reason might be until I was just drifting off. I had some passing sort of erotic fantasy and remembered we’d been having a terrific time together. In bed especially. So why the hell did I suddenly out of the clear blue not feel like sleeping with her? It struck me as odd. She’d probably been disappointing me in some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. She’d acted possessive before I went out— maybe that was it.

  It must be. I was feeling crowded or something. Or she wasn’t going to work out and I was starting to see it. That’s just the way things are sometimes.

  The smell of coffee woke me up. I went in the kitchen to get some, but Sardis hadn’t made enough for me. She said she didn’t know how long I wanted to sleep. She didn’t say much else, and neither did I.

  I made my own coffee while she read the Chronicle, the business section. Then I remembered I had a story in the paper, for the first time in two years. I picked up the front section to find Jacob and Marilyn staring at me from page 1. My very own byline lent authority to a story headlined: BIZARRE KIDNAP CASE— NOBEL LAUREATE AND TV PERSONALITY. I was actually excited, just like I used to be when I had a page 1 story. Journalism’s a dirty job and all that, but it has its cheap little thrills.

  “Hey, Sardis,” I said, “did you see my story?”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t miss it, could I?”

  “Well?” Journalists are like two-year-old children. They have to be patted on the head and told “good boy” every time they go to the bathroom. I was looking for a pat. She wasn’t giving it:

  “Well what?”

  “What do you think?”

  She shrugged. “It was okay.”

  She got up and left for work.

  The average person might have spent five minutes or so staring into space and dwelling on his hurt feelings, but I have excellent powers of concentration. I simply turned to the comics section, read Doonesbury, Gordo, and Fred Bassett. My attention probably wouldn’t have strayed throughout a reading of the whole paper, but we’ll never know. A ringing telephone interrupted this John Wayne- like project.

  It was Susanna Flores: “Paul? We’ve got an I.D. on the mystery woman.”

  So caught up was I in “Letters to the Editor” that I temporarily forgot what mystery woman we were talking about. “Umph?” I said. “Umph. Yes. The woman Lindsay met at the Hunan.”

  “It was Marilyn Markham. The cameraman saw her picture this morning. Good piece, by the way.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Good heavens. The hoped-for pat on the head. “He’s sure it was Markham?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Good. How are you, by the way? Any more threatening calls?”

  “No, thank God. Everything seems fine.”

  I rang off, phoned Marilyn at Kogene, and asked her how she liked the story. I couldn’t resist the opportunity for another pat. But it wasn’t forthcoming.

  “It was… fine,” she said, in the brave, reluctant tone you might use if your hostess asked how you’d liked your brains and capers.

  All right, then. If she was going to be brutal, so was I. “Did you tell the cops,” I said, “that you saw Lindsay the night before she disappeared?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think they’d be interested,” I said.

  “What is this? Some kind of blackmail attempt?”

  “Dr. Markham, please.” I can be very haughty when I don’t get my pats. “I think we both want the same thing. Maybe we can work together.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To find Lindsay Hearne, of course. Don’t you?”

  She sucked in her breath. “Yes. Of course.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about your meeting with her. I don’t know how to say this exactly, but I think we should talk alone. I mean—” I meant outside Jacob’s presence, but I didn’t have to say so. She interrupted me, sounding resigned.

  “I suppose we should. Can you come here at seven P.M.? I’ll say I’m working late and send Jacob home to make dinner.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I didn’t have much to do all day. I figured to go into the office and see if I could collect a few more pats, but other than that I was a bit at loose ends. So I sat around the kitchen awhile and had some more coffee and made myself a bagel. I was feeling kind of tense and I didn’t know quite why.

  Sardis called around eleven. “I’m sorry I was a bitch this morning.”

  “You weren’t a bitch. A couple of months at charm school’d probably fix you right up.”

  Silence.

  “Sardis? Hey, Sardis? Little joke. Honest.”

  More silence.

  “Listen, you weren’t a bitch, really. It’s nice of you to call.”

&n
bsp; “I thought your story was good.” Her voice sounded all teary.

  “You did? Hey, forget charm school. Listen, want to run for president? I’ll vote for you, and I think my mother will and I have this friend named Debbie Hofer who might…”

  “Coming home for dinner? We could have cold pork roast.”

  “Could we make it late?” I told her about my date with the mystery woman and we agreed to have dinner afterward.

  Things were okay between us again. Or so I imagined. I may have mentioned that I make it a point not to think about things I don’t want to think about.

  I went out, photocopied Terry Koehler’s hospital file, bought a manila envelope for the original, and mailed it back to Moffitt Hospital. I wanted to be rid of the thing before I went into the office because I had a feeling there was going to be a police beat story about a certain burglary that Joey was going to ask me some questions about. I was going to have to compound all my other sins by lying to my city editor.

  I went in and got that out of the way (“Who, me, Boss? Oh, come on. How could you even think…”), wrote a few fan letters to my favorite detective novelists, did a few pages of my own book, and generally passed a pleasant day. I turned up at Kogene at precisely 7:00 P.M.

  Marilyn saw me in the reception room, not even in her office. Her demeanor wasn’t what you’d call welcoming. In fact, she reminded me of the sculpture in front of the Bank of America building— the one nicknamed “The Banker’s Heart”. It’s the biggest, blackest, hardest rock in the Western Hemisphere.

  “I agreed to see you,” she said, “because I thought you could do us a lot of harm if I didn’t. I never underestimate the power of the press.” She spoke bitterly. That kind of hatred and suspicion was one of the reasons I quit journalism.

  “But I want you to know,” she continued, “that I consider talking about poor Lindsay to be revealing family secrets. I don’t think that anything I’m going to tell you could be of any possible journalistic interest and I ask that it be considered off the record. Do you agree?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “All right. What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me what you and Lindsay talked about that Friday.”